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A
white-on-black Jolly Roger flapped over Steve Black’s head as he steered his boat west into a stiff onshore breeze. He looked up at his flag and smiled back at the skull and crossbones, gold glinting from one of his teeth. He was happy to have some business this evening, even if it was a black family. Sturman would be jealous. Ever since the economy had floundered, all the dive boat captains had struggled to make ends meet. Later tonight, though, the beers could be on him.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to find the dive site marker, staring almost directly into the setting sun as he was. He was headed for his well-kept secret—a hotbed of sea life just off the coast that few divers knew about. Here, the bottom rose up to a forty-foot rock pinnacle, which was home to a miniature forest of giant kelp. Below the surface, the kelp’s sturdy strands swayed in the current as they stretched for the light of the surface above, securely anchored to the rock with root-like holdfasts. Steve had learned about the spot from a fishing buddy and could only navigate to it using GPS. Since it wasn’t far from shore, he would swing
Black Bart
around and approach the site from an angle to make it harder for the people he brought on board to figure out where it was. One guy had tried to GPS the site when Steve had brought him out here, but that device now rested somewhere on the bottom around the pinnacle, collecting silt.

The sun was just dipping below the horizon, looking impossibly large and distorted as it sank into the Pacific. A bright line of color spread along the ocean to each side, and clouds above the sun harnessed its dying light to form themselves into gigantic masses of pastel-pink coral.

Tourists loved sunsets. And happy tourists meant better tips. Regardless of how this dive went, the Jackson family was enjoying their evening.

Steve looked down to the main deck at his dive group. The family from Las Vegas had stopped pulling on their wet suits to watch the sun, smiling broadly and uttering praises for the amazing show Mother Nature was putting on.

Steve was able to charge these people a bit more for the night dive. Maybe it was the novelty, or maybe because night dives were more dangerous. They probably thought a divemaster had more responsibility at night. He probably did, but he didn’t care. He expected divers to use their own heads. He’d gotten jaded to scuba diving after logging thousands of dives—more than half right here in the San Diego area. Now he rarely got excited or scared. All the dives were fairly routine now, even shark dives in open water . . . or octopus encounters like he had planned for tonight. This was just a job now.

But it was one hell of a sunset.

When his GPS indicated that they were nearing the site, Steve eased back on the throttle. He held a rubber band between his teeth as he pulled his shaggy gray hair back with both hands, gathering it into a ponytail. Having hair in his dive mask allowed water to seep in, and strands sometimes got tangled in the mask strap. Ponytail secured, he stood and turned to face his clients.

Showtime.

“Ahoy, mateys! Thar be the treasure we seek,” Steve boomed down at his passengers. Tourists loved the ridiculous pirate gimmick, especially the really young divers.

“Captain Curt, lad, help me fetch the anchor.” The boy looked at his father for approval. Steve wondered for a moment what it would have been like to have known his own father.

The boy’s father smiled. “Go ahead, son.”

Good kid
, Steve thought. The youngest in the family, a boy of maybe thirteen, Curtis grinned and followed Steve to the bow. Steve had learned long ago that one key to a bigger tip was remembering the names of the kids. He had already forgotten the mother’s first name; the dad’s name might be Bill. But he was certain the kids’ names were Jennifer and Curtis. Jennifer was too old to be amused by his pirate act, but her brother was loving it.

After Steve had dropped anchor, they all headed to the stern for a pre-dive briefing.

“Aye, ladies and gents, here be a real gem of a night dive. Below us be the lair of many an eight-armed octopus. These scallywags are said to gather the treasures of the deep, and ye never know when you’ll discover a gold watch or diamond ring in thar clutches!” This was only partially a lie; Steve had found a watch at this site on a dive years ago, which surely had fallen off a careless diver. An octopus had even been next to it, curious about its glint in the beam of the scuba lights.

“Take care to watch yer own jewelry—these beasts will snatch ’em right off of you and make for their caves.” The brother and sister smiled at each other as she touched the gold chain around her neck. Steve wasn’t surprised they were more eager than scared, since their father claimed each of them already had logged over thirty dives. This was going to be their first night dive, though, so Steve wanted to be sure he built up the anticipation without frightening them.

“Also keep yer eyes out fer the other active denizens of nighttime waters. Ye may spy me mate the leopard shark, and be warned to not touch the spiny lobsters, as they may decide to stick ye!” Steve knew they would never actually get close to any of the wary lobsters.

“Is this safe? I mean, none of these animals are really a threat, right?”

Steve smiled at the children’s mother and gave her a wink. “None more dangerous than Captain Black himself. If ye stay with me, no harm will come to ye.”

After Steve finished his colorful pre-dive briefing, everyone finished suiting up and checking their air supplies, weight belts, and other scuba equipment. The sun had vanished beneath the waves and the first stars were appearing to the east.

On Steve’s instruction, the family entered the water one at a time. Steve would be the last to leave the boat. Seated on the side of his vessel, he watched them all go in until Jennifer finally fell backward and splashed tank-first into the waves. She surfaced a moment later near her family and looked back at Steve as she touched the top of her head with one hand.
I’m okay.
He nodded and looked back to make sure everything was secure on his vessel, then leaned back and rolled off the side of the boat.

Cold water instantly flooded his wet suit at the openings in his face mask and neckline. To him, this was the worst part of night diving off California. As he sank below the surface in the darkening water, he gritted his teeth on his regulator as he waited for the chill water against his torso to warm. By the time he bobbed back up to the surface and gathered the family off
Black Bart
’s stern
,
he felt relatively comfortable again
.

Steve faced the Jackson family on the surface to give an “okay” sign with thumb and forefinger and waited for each person to return it. Nobody could respond verbally, with masks on their faces and regulators secured in their mouths. Everyone returned his gesture; they appeared ready to go under. Steve flipped on his dive light and began to dump the air out of his BCD. As his eyes dipped below the waves and cold water closed in over his head, he caught a final glimpse of his boat.

Underwater, Steve directed his light toward the vessel. He couldn’t make out the hull just twenty feet away as the cone of light was swallowed by the gloom. He looked toward the bottom as he slowly sank, and felt the first hints of pressure on his ears.

It was very dark.

B
rightness.

Rising along the small seamount from darker, deeper water, the fading illumination from above was still unpleasant, but no longer painfully bright to the eyes in the shoal. Yet now there were other, more intense lights in the distance ahead of it. The lights moved erratically, and when directed toward the animals’ powerful eyes, they caused discomfort. The squid nonetheless obeyed their urge to move upward and toward the source, in search of sustenance.

The shoal had found adequate food for several nights now. Safe from predators in the shallower waters and finding abundant prey, its members had remained in the same area, retreating to the depths at night but no longer migrating farther from their birthplace. The quarry in this environment was unfamiliar, but each aggressive attempt at new food sources had been met with success.

Still, the shoal had grown hungrier.

Slower than the nimble, younger members of the shoal, the largest females in particular had struggled to capture enough of the small local fishes to fuel their formidable bodies. Several had together devoured a smaller sibling the previous night, but it was not enough. There was not sufficient food.

Because they were growing.

Already much bigger than the mature adults in other shoals, many of the animals in this gathering nonetheless grew larger with each passing day. But they were also getting slower, hungrier—and more aggressive.

The large females near the front of the shoal did not contemplate these changes, nor plan to attack other members in their group. They simply reacted to their instinctual urges, which at the moment were not driving them to cannibalism. The urges simply pulled them toward the distant lights, followed closely by the other members of the shoal.

With the lights, they sensed something else. Running through and bouncing off the soft bodies of their brothers and sisters around them, a faint vibration coursed through the water just before the first bright light had appeared. The aggressive females had sensed this vibration recently—a distant impact on the surface as something entered the water.

Potential prey.

When they sensed several more vibrations emitted from the surface above, they turned and glided toward the origin. A thousand others followed.

As they drew closer to the lights, the large females began to make out very long, slender shapes silhouetted against the lights. The kelp, running in a series of uneven lines toward the surface, bore many leafy fronds that drifted in the ocean surge. Hesitating at first, the shoal slowly moved toward the unfamiliar underwater forest. The large, one-eyed female curiously extended a tentacle toward a waving frond attached to one of the stalks. The frond moved freely in the water, away from her touch. She eased both tentacles out, closing them around it. The soft suckers on her arms caressed its slick surface, tasting it. The kelp was living, but cold and bitter, and she quickly released it. This was not food.

She began to weave through the inedible vertical obstructions, followed closely by the others. Soon the water became uncomfortably shallow. Yet the lights were now much closer and her curious nature only amplified her hunger. One of the beams shined in her direction, blinding her remaining eye and sending a jolt of pain toward her nerve center. She spun and darted away from the stimulus, her retreat mirrored by nearby members of the shoal.

Their alarm was brief. The painful lights soon were again focused away from the shoal. Once again it moved toward them.

S
teve waited patiently for the tentacle to reappear.

The Jackson family was gathered tightly around and above him in the ink-black water, eager to see what their divemaster was trying to show them. The novice divers struggled to stay in place in the light current sweeping across the pinnacle, managing to maintain neutral buoyancy but occasionally bumping against Steve’s scuba tank. He never did think black people could swim all that well. Undistracted by the other divers, he continued to wiggle his index finger in front of a dark recess in the reef.

In a brightly illuminated patch of rock under the dive lights, the tip of a tentacle reappeared. Inquisitively, the red-orange appendage slithered out farther from under the rough slab of dark rock and stroked Steve’s finger with small, white suckers. The animal finally drew itself out of its hole and flitted along the rock on eight arms. Its body was about the size of a softball, with arms the length of a man’s hand. A typical California two-spot octopus.

Steve had always thought octopi were fascinating animals, and much smarter than many people realized. Normally on night dives, the inquisitive creatures were visible everywhere on this rocky reef, staying in the open unless agitated. Steve wondered why he was having to coax them out tonight.

He wriggled his fingers again, and the curious animal wrapped its arms around his hand, enveloping his gloved fingers with its smooth, muscular body. Steve looked over his shoulder toward the family, directly into Jennifer’s mask. Even in the dim illumination of their dive lights, he could see her delighted expression. He extended his arm toward her, offering the octopus, but she drew her hand away, shaking her head. Another hand appeared from the right side of Steve’s field of view.
Curtis.
Her brother was apparently a little bolder. Steve held the animal next to the boy’s hand, and after a few moments it gently pulled itself over to the boy’s wrist and latched on to its new perch, flattening its soft body.

Suddenly the octopus grew redder in color and released the boy’s arm, disappearing back into its hole in a swirl of shell fragments.
Jumpy little guy.
Steve directed his light away from the octopus, along the surface of the rocky pinnacle. He drew in a lungful of air to increase his buoyancy and began lifting off the bottom. Time to head off in search of more attractions. He knew he could find the Jackson family plenty of lobster down here, and some of the huge local sea stars. He panned the light upward into the open water, and something darted across it.

Something big.

Steve’s heart leapt against his ribs. He exhaled a cloud of bubbles and scanned the water. Probably a sea lion or blue shark. It hadn’t been a truly massive animal, no bigger than himself. Too small to be a great white or mako. Nothing to worry about.

He swept the light all around, hoping to see the mystery visitor again. As his beam of light hit the dark green kelp fronds off to his left, Steve glimpsed two more pale shapes, which withdrew almost immediately from the powerful beam.

Those weren’t sharks. And they certainly didn’t move like fish. Harbor seals? If the other divers hadn’t noticed these animals yet, they would soon. Steve hoped none of them would panic.

He turned to face the group and waited for the family to assemble near him. He swam over to Mrs. Jackson first, looking into her eyes from a few feet away as he touched his own air gauge directly in front of her mask:
How much air do you have left?

She glanced at her gauges under her flashlight and then held up one finger, then three.
Thirteen-hundred psi
. Most important to Steve, she looked calm. He proceeded to each family member in turn, checking their air—and their expressions. Nobody seemed anxious.

Steve turned and swam over the reef with measured kicks, staying several feet above its rough surface. This pinnacle was always teeming with life, covered with crevasses for animals to find refuge in. It offered an island of shallower water away from the human disturbance near shore. Along its surface, he noticed a multitude of orange sea stars as large as serving platters, spiny purple urchins in the thousands, and other motionless critters affixed to the rock face. But where were the fish, the octopi, the other more mobile residents ? Everything seemed to be hiding. Maybe they were avoiding—

Steve’s light revealed a dead man’s face, regarding him with empty black eyes from within a dark recess in the reef.

His heart, already racing, lurched again as he swung the light back to reveal the face’s features, less than ten feet away. The head swayed gently within the opening in the rock, eyes unblinking and unobstructed by a dive mask. With a thick jaw and flat nose, this was the face of an ancient, drowned prizefighter. This man couldn’t be alive, with lidless dark eyes and mottled gray skin....

As recognition dawned on him, Steve released the breath he had been holding into his regulator, sending out a burst of bubbles.
Of course.
It was only a big wolf eel, curled within a crevasse of the reef. He had often thought these eels looked like very old men without noses. Despite block-like heads shaped by muscles in their powerful jaws, from a distance they seemed very human.

Steve turned away from the reef and the beam from his light caught another large shape. Just as the gleam found the animal, it twisted its body and spun gracefully, vanishing into the darkness once again. Near the middle of its form, Steve had distinctly seen a round, dark spot.

An eye.

Few animals had eyes near the center of their bodies. Steve immediately realized what he had seen. He knew a couple divers who had encountered jumbo flying squid before, but he himself had never seen them before. Until tonight.

They were much bigger than he had imagined.

He remembered that the deepwater animals were sensitive to light and directed his beam downward, making it difficult to see more than a few feet into the water in front of him. He indicated to the others to redirect their lights as well. They probably had no idea what a treat they were in for. Steve looked out into the darkness.

And waited.

Moments later, the first of the squid showed itself. It was uncomfortably close when Steve first noticed it—fifteen feet or less. Although a little on edge, he smiled as he got his first good look at a live jumbo squid.

Built like a torpedo, but with its fins at the front instead of the rear, the pale apparition hung almost motionless in the blackness. It peered at Steve with twitching ebony eyes much bigger than his own, fluttering the broad fins as it held its position. One fin appeared to be damaged at the tip, and scars covered its body. The squid’s arms and tentacles, drawn seamlessly together, slowly separated and it began to move toward Steve. He saw that it was missing an arm.

He had seen flying squid in pictures before—fishermen liked to brag—but those had probably never been more than three or four feet long. The old warrior he was looking at now was far bigger—maybe eight feet. He began backing away from it until his tank bumped into the other divers.

He could tell the squid was assessing him, its dark, animated eyes rolling in deep sockets. They resembled the expressive eyes of a doe, Steve thought, but had an alien quality to them. Unsure of how he should interact with the large animal, or what it might do, he remained motionless. The squid drew closer and he raised his left arm to maintain distance.

When it was near enough, it reached out and explored Steve’s outstretched hand with its tentacles. He could scarcely feel the gentle touch through his neoprene glove. Its body, covered in scars, rotated and he caught a glimpse of the dark beak, nestled in sphincter-like muscle at the axis of its meaty arms. Steve turned to smile at the other divers, but quickly realized that with all their lights aimed downward they wouldn’t be able to see his expression anyway. Apparently this squid wasn’t much different from an octopus. With one exception.

If this thing wanted to, it could really do a number on him. Steve had no doubt about that.

The animal suddenly pulled back and its entire pale body emitted a shimmer of light. A moment later, a similar incandescence lit the water all around the divers. There were more nearby. A lot more.

Steve Black had logged thousands of dives, but he had never seen anything like this. He figured there had to be hundreds of other squid around him. He should have brought his camera.

Steve recalled something else other divers had said about their encounters with these squid. While the animals hadn’t actually harmed anyone, they had showed some aggressive behavior, pulling at one of the divers, forcefully gripping her air hoses and limbs. He better keep a close eye on the Jacksons. He hadn’t checked on them for a few minutes, entranced by the strange animal hovering before them.

He turned to face the other divers. Curtis was right behind him, his sister Jennifer at the boy’s side. They were holding on to one another. He raised the light over them to check on their parents.

Mr. Jackson was just behind his kids, looking delighted. And his wife . . .

Steve scanned the water all around. Nothing but blackness.

Steve swept the area again with his light, startling a few more squid. Mrs. Jackson was gone. He turned to face her family. They were looking back at him, clearly unaware of her absence. He held his palm up toward them, looking them in the eyes.
Stay put.
The boy nodded. His sister just stared back, wide-eyed.

Steve looked at their father, who was turning his head side to side. Steve saw the recognition dawn in his eyes. He lifted off the bottom and started to swim into the darkness.

Steve grabbed at him in an effort to hold him back. He needed to maintain calm in the group. As he struggled to maintain his grip on the flailing man, one of the children made a break for the surface, kicking toward the boat in a cloud of bubbles. Jackson struck Steve’s mask, instantly filling it with seawater. As he struggled to readjust the mask on his face, he felt Jackson slip past him in the water as he went after his wife.

Steve tilted his head back and held the top of the mask in place, then exhaled through his nose to force air inside it. The water drained and his vision restored, he realized he had dropped his dive light. He kicked down a few feet to the bottom and retrieved it, then began to sweep the beam up and around him.

They were everywhere.

In his light, an impossible number of squid revealed themselves, the closest just a few feet from his face. The enormous shoal dispersed explosively and in all directions as soon as the light hit them, as if Steve had detonated a depth charge. He flinched backward and exhaled all his air, sinking down into the rocks. Obviously, these animals were afraid of his light. He shined it above him protectively, hoping that like vampires faced with a crucifix they would keep their distance. He had to regain control of the situation.

He had seen one of them ascend a minute ago, but where had the other one gone? He scanned the reef where they had been before the struggle and saw nothing. That
was
where he had been before, wasn’t it? In the dark water he had totally lost his bearings. He spun around, searching, and finally saw a dive light a short distance away. He pushed himself off the bottom and kicked toward it.

When Steve neared the light, he saw that it was resting on the rocky reef. There was nobody around. Okay, so the kids must have surfaced.

A powerful urge to head for the boat overcame him.
Don’t think,
some part of his brain urged him
, just go.
He fought off the impulse. This family was his responsibility, and he was merely letting his imagination get the best of him now. The Jackson family had predictably panicked when they saw the school of huge squid so close to them. It made sense. If he couldn’t find the two kids, he would surface, to make sure they’d made it back to the boat. Then he would come back down for the two parents if necessary. Everyone still had plenty of air left—

Something struck Steve in the back of the head, hard.

Dazed, he turned to face his aggressor, but as he spun something tore at his air hose and wrenched the regulator from his mouth. He jerked the backup regulator free from a clip on his vest and shoved it into his mouth, gulping in air to calm the sudden burning in his lungs. Adrenaline flooded his body and he couldn’t get enough air, drawing it in faster than the regulator would release it. Whatever was gripping his hose began dragging him backward.

Helpless against the powerful pull, Steve tumbled over the reef, striking his hip on the rock as he tried to roll over onto his stomach.
The light. They’re afraid of the light.
He aimed the beam over his shoulder where he thought the squid must be. A moment later, it released him and he rolled over in the water, no longer sure which way was up. His rear end struck the rocky bottom and he found himself tank-down, like a helpless turtle. He scanned the water above him before he attempted to turn over, and caught a glimpse of three large shapes passing by in the narrow beam of light.
Squid.
These fuckers were actually attacking him.

One of the other divers came into view behind the three enormous squid, and appeared to be following them. Steve shook his head to clear it. The diver—was that Jennifer?—was moving oddly after the squid, though, somehow swimming sideways. No. She wasn’t swimming at all.

They were dragging her.

One of the squid towed the girl’s limp body along with some white ropy thing. As they neared Steve, he got a better view in the dive light, and he felt bile creep into his mouth. It wasn’t a rope.

Jennifer looked desperately at him through her fogged mask as she passed, dragged by her own entrails. A fourth squid appeared and wrapped its arms around her elbow. It began to pull her body in the other direction.