If you wanted to see a monster in the wild, there were many places to go—caves, mountain tops, castles, islands, Salem, Massachusetts. You might even look under your bed if you were so inclined. 

But real monster hunters knew the sea was the best place to look. There were all sorts of horny Octomen, clever octopods, gigantic kraken, lonely mermaids and restless sea-hags living in the briny deep. 

“Deep down below, where the pressure would crush you in an instant and the dark is midnight black forever, life teems in abundance,” wrote editor Mark Bilsborough at the beginning of this excellent short story collection. “Who’s to say this life is not intelligent? Who’s to say it’s not curious? Who’s to say we won’t see it one day wrapped around an ocean vessel or singing to us from sun kissed waves?”

The unfathomable ocean manifested itself in many surprising ways. One deep sea monster, for example, came from a primordial soup of shit and piss, oestrogen and crude oil. On land for the first time, the mutant creature breathed the sweet smells of carbon and sulphur, and filled its lungs with fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses. It was ambulatory trash born from the ocean and it represented a new “Food Chain” according to author Morgan Melhuish. 

In other ways, the ocean provided a home for otherworldly castaways. “Reshaping Tentacles” by Jennifer Jeanne McArdle was a story about an alien race trying to acclimate itself on a strange new planet. 

The Octomen, who resembled super octopuses in their original form, were allowed to stay on Earth if they twisted their bodies into human effigies (“We can never not be human,” said one conflicted alien). Problems arose when the tentacled creatures tried to assert their sovereignty.

More than anything, the watery depths were a metaphor for identity, fate, freedom and emotional rescue. “Beneath the Glass Dark” was a story about a grieving brother’s search for solitude at the bottom of a lake. The story becomes even more poignant when you read N.V. Haskell’s author bio.

A nature spirit, trapped in the wooden mast and figurehead of a pirate ship, finds companionship with a friendly mermaid in Lynne Sargent’s story “Creatures of Salt and Soil.” Women on the seas were rare, after all, and the loneliness of a dryad and mermaid were palpable. “I don’t want to lose her like I lost the forest,” cried the fairy. 

And finally, there has always been curiosity between marine lifeforms and surface-dwellers. Michelle Tang addresses this eternal attraction in the book’s final story “Depth Becomes Her.” When a human-like sea creature rescues a drowning man, a surprising (not surprising) connection is made. 

“I tried to see myself through his human eyes,” said the aquatic maiden. “I was a glowing creature with wild sea-kelp hair and large, dark eyes. My lips were like his though my nose was nearly flat. Maybe, to him, my amorphous body resembled a dress billowing in the current. He looked neither displeased nor afraid. Though I was unversed in the ways of such creatures, I detected a glint of … interest in his stare.”

[From the Depths / Edited by Mark Bilsborough / First Printing: March 2023 / ISBN: 9781914417153]