All my summers were spent at Playa Santa, which literally translates to Sacred Beach. No summer camps, no sleepovers, no hanging out with my friends at the mall, it was all at Playa Santa. My family from my Dad’s side were from Ensenada, and we had a beach cabin near Manglillo Beach. Playa Santa had gotten the name because of the huge stone cross by the bay that had eroded many decades ago, kind of like the stone dog at Condado Beach in San Juan. I miss that dog.
After Grandma drowned, Grandpa moved to the cabin. All his friends lived in Ensenada, and like he said, “might as well spend some time with those fuckers before they all die off”. Dad hated that Grandpa had moved two hours away, but understood that he couldn’t stay at the same house he had shared with Grandma for 50 years, plus the cabin was Grandpa’s childhood home.
The cabin itself was magical. Three bedrooms, small kitchen and a cozy living room. White walls and big, airy windows that when opened, let all that warm, salty air come in. Huge, colorful conch shells, and weathered wooden planks decorated the house, in and out. And mermaids. They were all around. Old metal beer signs, framed postcards, sofa cushions, vintage posters, towels, bed linens, all of mermaids. Small wooden door stops shaped as mermaids. Mermaid figurines, all shapes and sizes in every corner. My little sister Ava’s and I favorite were the sea glass wind chimes on the front porch, with tiny mermaids that looked like they were swimming between the glittering lights when the cool, seawater evening breeze blew. Grandpa’s favorite piece tho was the huge, wooden, wind-weathered mermaid figurehead that he had bartered from an old captain friend of his. He loved that figurehead. He always said that it reminded him of her.
Now, I’m not complaining about spending all my summers at the cabin. I was ten and Ava was six when we started spending every summer there. Going over there was like entering a fantasy realm, filled with undersea creatures and mysteries. And mermaids. beautiful, enigmatic mermaids. C’mon, what little girl isn’t obsessed with mermaids at that age, or any age?
There was a little stone walkway behind the cabin back porch that lead to a small beach only we could reach. We would spend hours playing, splashing, swimming, making sand castles, collecting even more sea and conch shells, overall pretending to be mermaids. Dad would fling us in the water, with us doggy paddling back to shore. Mom would slather us with sunblock so we wouldn’t burn, Grandpa always looking over us from up on the back porch. When we would return to the cabin, Mom drenched us with white vinegar so our skin wouldn’t burn nor peel. We would smell like salads, but take it from me, it works!
One day, while Ava and I were running around on the sand, we started getting deeper and deeper into the mangroves. Not really anything to worry about, since only we had access to this part of the beach. We found a battered, old tombstone, hidden between the trees. We were startled when we saw it, not expecting a tombstone were it was. We stopped and stated daring each other to touch it. We were so excited about our new discovery, that we didn’t hear Grandpa desperately hollering our names. In my short life, I had never heard him raise his voice, so this was terrifying! Mom and Dad were running behind him, looking as confused as us, since nobody understood why Grandpa was reacting this way! “Don’t go near it!!! DO NOT GO NEAR THE GRAVE!!” Grandpa screamed at us. “What grave?! Take it easy, Dad! What the hell is going on?!” Dad shouted as Mom called our names, making sure we were ok. We were petrified on the spot, just as Grandpa swooped us up, carried us, and placed us down just outside the mangroves. “DID YOU GO NEAR IT?!” “No” I managed to whisper. “We were close…” lil’ sis said. Grandpa got on his knees, and grabbing Ava’s hand, it looked abnormally small on Grandpa’s massive, callous hands told her “You don’t joke about something like this, little girl. Don’t go near the grave.” He said it almost in a whisper, but I would had rather he had screamed it as he was doing only a couple of minutes before. His manner was unnerving. We both recoiled from him, as Mom stood between us and said “That’s enough, you’re scaring them.” Dad demanded an explanation for what was happening, Grandpa got up, ignoring Dad’s questions, and started to walk back up to the cabin.
That night, after a very silent dinner, while we stayed in our room, listening through the door, the all the grownups were arguing about what had happened. Dad was worried about how Grandpa had reacted, while Mom was worried about us. Soon after that, Grandpa had a small swimming pool built on the property. Needless to say, we didn’t return to the beach for the rest of that summer.
Next year, when we returned to the beach, we stayed away from the grave. We used to stand, looking at the grave from a distance. We still had fun at the beach, but the grave loomed over us. Grandpa watched over us while we were down there, making sure we didn’t get close the the grave again. He was always relieved when we went up the worn, stone path, and got into the pool. Years passed, One day, while looking at the grave, I finally made out the name and number on the grave.
Nervina, 1943.
Who was Nervina? Was she family? I knew the cabin was Grandpa’s childhood home, and in these parts, it was common that when family died, they would be buried near the family home, but this grave was hidden. Who has ever buried somebody in the sand? Did the mangroves grow around the grave after the fact? Was it hidden on purpose? I asked Dad if he had any aunts or uncles that died young. Any great aunts? Great uncles? No, Grandpa was an only child, no mysterious relatives that he knew about, plus Grandpa didn’t talk about his childhood anyway, so I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking him.
Watching the waves from the back porch was otherworldly. The salt in the air, the cool breeze that would make your cheeks tingle. One night, some years later, the breeze was stronger than usual, and I was standing against the rails, looking down at the mangroves swaying. Instinctively, my eyes moved to where I knew the grave was, and that’s when I first saw it. The glow. A sublime, turquoise glow, a green fog barely there, but it was there. I squinted my eyes, trying to see, to catch a glimpse of whatever was moving down there. I motioned for Ava to look at it, to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. She saw it too. I was relieved, but realized something unnatural was happening. “Let’s go down.” Ava whispered. “Fuck no I’m not going.” We were leaning more and more forward. “If you keep leaning forward, you could fall over.” Grandpa was older, like all of us, but he still had that booming voice, broad shoulders and intimidating nature about him. “What’s got you so fascinated?”
“I’m not going to lie. We’re looking at the grave.” I said.
“Yes. I have been waiting years for you to talk to me about it.” Grandpa says.
To be honest, it took me by surprise since I wasn’t expecting to have a conversation with him about the grave. I wanted to ask him so many things, but I drew a blank. I didn’t even think of the faint glow I had just seen before he came out. I knew I wanted to start slow, not going for the kill with my questions, then I heard myself blurt out…
“Who was Nervina?”
Ava choked on her tea. He drew a long sigh while sipping on his 12 year old whiskey. “Didn’t expect for you got go for the jugular so fast.” “Hehe…me neither.” I answered anxiously.
“She was my first love.” He said.
C’mon, I knew there was more than that. “Why is her grave there?” I mean, so close the the cabin. Was she a local?” He answered “She didn’t have any family here, I was the only one she knew, so I had to bury her where I knew I had her close.”
Grandpa continued: “I remember seeing her for the first time. I was with your great grandfather, fishing near the rocks at Caracoles. First, I wasn’t sure if I had seen anything. The sun was in my eyes, and it was well known that manatees live in these waters. Didn’t think anything of it, but it seemed that the figure was following our tiny fishing yola, but every time I turned my head, it was gone. I asked my father if he had noticed something following us and he say to pay it no mind. I knew he knew something was following us. That night, after cleaning all our gear, I sat here, looking out at the waves, and there she was, down at the shore, looking up at me. I can still see her like it was yesterday. Her hair long, with a blueish hue. translucent, pearl like skin, and eyes as black as onyx stones. Polished onyx stones that shined in the moonlight, looking up at me. I made sure that Father and Mother were already asleep, then I went down the stony path to the shore. There she was. Her long hair covering her bare breasts, her head cocked to the side, she was as curious about me as I was about her.”
“Next thing you’re going to tell us is that she was a mermaid.” Ava said.
Silence. Ava and I looked at each other, wide eyed and our mouths moronically open. We knew.
You know that feeling you get when anxious and/or scared? That cold tingle that goes down your spine. That thump in the pit of your stomach. Lump in your throat. All of them at the same time.
“Pop, are you telling us they’re real? You saw a mermaid.”
“Not only saw one, I loved her, and she loved me.” Grandpa answered. “We would spent endless nights together. She couldn’t speak, at least not human speech, but mimicked sounds, voices. We communicated by actions, touches, expressions. We didn’t need to talk.” You could tell he was getting lost in his thoughts.
He continued. “She started helping us with the fishing. Father noticed how much more we were catching, we were able to upgrade to a bigger fishing boat, got a car, and fixed up the house. Not only our family, but all the fishermen started to do well. Father knew something was up, he was an old man of the sea, he was familiar with its secrets and legends.”
He paused, took a sip of whiskey. “One day, while pulling up our nets for the day, Father straight up told me that being in love with a mermaid felt like paradise, but it was not meant to be. He was afraid that I was already too deep, that it would end in tragedy if I didn’t stop it as soon as possible. His words caught me by surprise. I thought, like all kids that age, that I was being so careful in keeping the romance hidden.”
“He told me her name was Nervina. She had approached him many years ago, when he was young, while he was fishing, before he had met Mother. He was tempted, but since he and his mother lived alone, and he knew how mermaids behaved, he knew if something happened to him, his mother would have no one. He wasn’t going to risk his mother’s life for a mermaid. I wasn’t ready to stop seeing her.” He was reliving that conversation.
Grandpa looked relieved while recounting the story, like he was letting go after keeping it inside for so long. “That night, I called her by her name. She smiled, hugged, and passionately kissed me. She was beaming with excitement, then she noticed my sadness. I knew I had to end it, find a nice, decent girl and get married. We sat at the shore, holding each other’s hands looking at the waves. In a whisper, I heard her say no. She could mimic sounds, and that no sounded like my mother’s voice, but I knew what she meant. She didn’t want end the relationship, and she damn well understood that I didn’t either.”
He lowered his head, and continued. “I laid my head on her lap, the cold, slippery scales felt soothing against my cheek, I felt my eyes getting heavy and closing. Suddenly I hear a shriek. Shrieks and chittering, like wounded birds, loud shrills I’ve never heard before! I opened my eyes, and Nervina’s face was all twisted and elongated. Her mouth was a giant maw filled with razor teeth, pointed and tainted with, was it blood? I snapped up, the sand made it so hard to get my footing. I noticed that the chittering was coming from the waves. The water was boiling, with a blue glow from underneath, and a light green fog on top of it. Claws came out of the sea foam, like luminous daggers, trying to grab my legs.”
Ava and I were transfixed on Grandpa’s every word. He continued. “Nervina kept screaming no, no. NOOOOOOOOOO sounding like Mother, which made it more disturbing. The jarring shrieks made it so hard to stay on my feet. I covered my ears, I couldn’t stand all the shrills. I was so disoriented, kept falling on the sand. She was violently coming at me, swiftly crawling on her hands, her tail furiously snapping behind her, her disfigured face, and wide shark eyes focused on me still shrieking NOOOOO in Mother’s voice. In all the commotion, I hadn’t heard Father’s voice coming down the stony path screaming to stab her in the heart.”
I heard myself asking “Did you?”, while Ava gasped.
I don’t think Grandpa heard our reactions, he just continued. “I took out my fishing knife. I always kept it inside my pant leg, even when sleeping.” We’ve seen that knife. He keeps it on his chest of drawers in his room. We didn’t know about the knife, not even Dad did, before Grandma died. He goes on. “Nervina drew close, her claws digging in my leg. Other mermaids were coming out of the water, the fog made it difficult to clearly see how many, but by their shrills they were more than Father and I could fight against, and before I knew it, the knife was in my hand, and instinctively plunged it into her chest.”
Grandpa paused. Was he teary eyed? I wasn’t sure, but I swear I saw a tear glistening.
“Nervina slashed frantically, slicing my arm. I drove the knife deeper into her heart. Father was fighting off the other mermaids with the fishing spear, swiping as they tried to swim out, screeching as the spear wounded them. Her skin yielded as I pushed the knife further inside. She shuddered for an instant. The mermaids’ howls grew louder as Nevina’s body became limp and fell on top of me. Suddenly, everything was still and quiet. Only the faint glow underwater and the green fog showed any movement. The mermaids receded into the water, leaving Nervina’s body on the shore.”
“Father and I stood over her body, all bloody and battered, like us. He said we had to bury her near the shore. She had been in love with a human, and the sea wouldn’t accept her. If we threw her body into the sea, it would bring storms and scarce fishing. I barely heard him. I was numb, looking at her lifeless, disfigured body in front of me. All those nights, all those caresses, all those secret kisses, gone. Father told me that none of it was real. Their mission is to tempt men and drown them. She wasn’t different. But Father was wrong. He had to be. Why would she spend so much time with me. She was different.”
Ava and I just sat there looking at him. We had never, NEVER seen Grandpa so vulnerable. We didn’t even know he could be vulnerable. He was still in love with her. “Did you ever love Grandma?” Ava asked. “Yes, it was different. She was kind, she was my rock. She gave me the mental stability that I needed after Nervina. Then she started having those dreams”
I remember Grandma telling us about her mermaid dreams, well, nightmares. In them, she would see the family turning into beautiful, engaging mermaids that turned into hideous sea monsters. “What the sea wants, the sea gets.”, she would say. She was the one that filled the cabin with mermaids. Growing up, we just thought she loved them, but it was more like an obsession, but we were kids, we didn’t mind mermaids all over the place.
One day, after a particularly bad night for Grandma, Grandpa finally told her all about Nervina. Grandma was silent, listening. “She’s in my dreams. Every single one.”
Grandma became more and more distant. She was still kind and loving, but finding out about Nervina both made her understand what was happening to her and question Grandpa’s true feelings towards her. He did try to convince otherwise, but she always suspected that he never got over Nervina.
Her favorite part of her home was the bathroom. It had one of those deep, iron clawed bathtubs. She would spend hours relaxing in it. The only place where she could be by herself. She had started to lock herself in there. We all knew that if Grandma was in the bathroom, she was not to be disturbed. Grandma was becoming more and more isolated. She would spend hours in the bathroom. One day, Grandpa had to travel for business, and he wanted Grandma to come with him, but the strain of the nightmares and the secrets kept had taken their toll on their relationship. A few days later, no more than a weekend, Grandpa came home to an eerily quiet house. He started calling for her, but no answer. He directly went to the bathroom, calling out her name. He then noticed the blueish glow coming under the bathroom door, followed by that ghostly green fog he hadn’t seen since that fateful day so many years ago. He started slamming against the door, trying to break it open. When he did, he found Grandma.
She her cheeks were sunken in, her skin gray and stretched over her skeletal form. She looked emaciated, like she had been on that tub for decades, forgotten. But her eyes. Her eyes were wide open, and when Grandpa looked into them, they were as black as polished onyx stones. Nervina’s eyes. What was left of her body was suspended in the bathtub water. Salty water. Sea water.
“What the sea wants, the sea gets.”
“Pop, the glow…” Ava pointed out, “the glow is down there…” Grandpa leaned over the back porch rails and looked down. “That’s the glow…” he muttered. “No, NO!! You won’t take them! YOU WON’T TAKE MY GRANDAUGHTERS LIKE YOU TOOK HER!!” Before we knew it, he was barreling down the stone path, taking out the enormous fishing knife, with us following him, desperately trying to keep up. The moment he reached the beach and his feet touched the waves coming in, the water started boiling.
Shrills and screeches filled the shore. Ghostly figures bobbing up and down between the green fog covering the water, the familiar blue, luminous light glowing beneath them. As they got closer, the chittering became louder, we could see their long, flowing hair, the pearly shimmering skin, and those soulless black, shark eyes. They went right after Grandpa, reaching up to him, clawing at his legs. Grandpa fell on the cold sand, pulling himself back up, but falling back down. He frantically tried to free himself, stabbing at those long gauntly arms with the knife. We ran right in, grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him back to shore without success. We realized we were already waist deep in the water. That’s when we all saw her.
Nervina’s ghost was levitating over the sandy shore behind us. Her luminous hair shining under the faint moonlight resembled the gleaming sea at night. Her pearly, shimmering translucent skin, but you couldn’t look away from those eyes. Deep black, soulless eyes. The mermaids wraiths stopped pulling at Grandpa and slowly backed into the water. Ava and I fell back on the sand, we were sweaty and covered in bloody sand. Grandpa stood up with the little strength he had left and approached the apparition. Falling to his knees, begging for her forgiveness. “It was you, it was always you…please don’t take them…” pointing at us. She just stood there, no expression on her face, looking down on him.
She quickly nodded her head, and all the monstrous creatures came back out of the water, rapidly crawling over to Grandpa. We tried, we tried so hard to keep them away from him, but it seemed that there were hundreds of them, pulling him back to the boiling seashore, and just as we again got a strong hold of his shoulders to pull him out, he looked at us right in the eyes and told us to let go. Bawling hysterically, we shouted we weren’t letting go. With the last of his strength, Grandpa pushed us away from him. Our last memory of him was the sea wraiths digging their monstrous claws, slashing him, turning the boiling water red with his blood as he went under.
We sat on the seashore, embracing each other, expecting to be next. Nervina’s specter was hovering over the now calm waters. Looking at us with those unforgettable deep, black shark eyes, she said “What the sea want, the sea gets” in Grandma’s voice.