Deeper (11 page)

It didn't help
that I couldn't get the thing I'd seen the night before out of my mind.
 
Only a quick glimpse and I was convinced that
there was something going on at Golden Cove, and not necessarily something that
would make me sleep better at night.

The absolute
worst part of my little trip into town was the certainty that I was being
watched.
 
Paranoid,
right?
 
Who the hell cares about a
boat captain taking a walk?
 
The most
frustrating part of the situation was that there were plenty of people around,
walking on the streets and minding their own business, and I wanted to look at
each one of them to see if I caught them giving me a hard stare.

By the time I
got back to the
Isabella
, the team
from Ward's expedition had returned and Tommy had started the water for boiling
up the lobsters.
 
He'd also managed to
work up a decent macaroni salad and a few extras.

Diana had
brought her little brother back with her and the kid looked like crap.
 
His skin was pasty and his eyes were
surrounded by dark bags.
 
I saw that the
wound he'd gotten on his leg had been treated, and when I asked about it, Diana
told me he was on antibiotics.
 
I told
her she needed to check with the doctor again, because whatever he was taking,
it didn't seem like enough to handle the job.

It's possible
she would have listened to me a little better if Charlie hadn't come along just
then and distracted her.

So instead of
talking with the head of the diving team, I spoke to her brother.
 
"How you doing,
Jan?"

"Doctor
says I got blood poisoning from the bite."
 
He looked at me and then back at the deck as if moving his head was too
much of an effort to sustain.

"Ouch.
 
They put you on any antibiotics?"

"Yeah.
 
But
they
 
aren't
doing any
good as far as I can tell."

"Well,
sometimes they take a while to work."
 
What else could I say?
 
That I
thought he was right?
 
The kid wasn't
looking good and he seemed to feel even worse than he looked.
 
"You have any appetite?
 
Fresh lobster for
dinner."

He nodded and
smiled.
 
"I wouldn't miss it.
 
I love lobster."

"I love
seafood.
 
I don't even care what kind it
is."
 
I looked at his leg, and even
through the jeans he was wearing, I could see the thick layer of bandages and
gauze over the wound site.

"Seven
stitches."
 
He pointed with his
right hand and I nodded.

"When did
you see the doctor?"

"We went
to the emergency clinic right after we got off the boat."
 
He pointed in the direction that I assumed
was the emergency clinic.
 
"Gotta
say, that was the ugliest doctor I've ever seen."

"That bad?"

"Three miles of roadkill ugly.
 
If his eyes were bugging out any more, I
think they would have just fallen straight out of his face."

""So
when can you dive again?"

"Not for a week or so, at least.
 
I have to let the wounds heal up completely
and even when that's done I have to beg Diana."

"She's
your sister?"

"Yeah."
 
He
looked away from the ground long enough to spot her where she was standing with
Charlie and another couple that looked like they should still be in high
school.
 
Seemed like every year the kids
that went to college looked younger.
 
I'm
guessing it was just my age showing.
 
I
don't remember ever being that young.
 
I'm not bothered by that so much as I'm amused by it.
 
Just a different world
after a certain point, if you get my meaning.

"So what
has your sister said about the expedition?
 
Is it going well?"

"She's
excited.
 
Said they
didn't get this far the last time before everything went wrong."

"Did she
ever tell you what happened last time?"
 
I was making conversation.
 
I
figured Jan would get bored to tears being stuck on the yacht with no one to
talk to, and all of the college kids looked like they planned on tossing back a
few drinks and having a party.
 
Diana was
busy making time with Charlie and that left her little brother to tend to himself.

What I didn't
expect was the answer I got from the kid.
 
He looked away from me and shook his head.
 
"I'm not allowed to tell anyone about
that."
 
His voice was defensive and
a little angry, like I'd asked him to tell me all about his sister's sexual encounters
instead of a previous dive.

I held up my
hands to show my willingness to just let it go.
 
"Don't mean to cause problems, Jan.
 
I was just making conversation."

He looked down
at his feet again and I stoop up to leave him in peace.
 
I'd tried to be nice, but I learned a long
time ago that not every person wants to have a conversation.

"It's
just... she doesn't talk about it.
 
Whatever happened, I mean."
 
His voice was very soft, almost a sigh.

"Don't
sweat it.
 
Some things are private.
 
I can respect that."

"No, I
mean you should know, but I can't tell you out here, where everyone can hear
us."

I was
intrigued, but decided not to push it.
 
"You tell me when you feel comfortable, if it's important.
 
No rush."
 
I gave the kid another smile and then moved
off to help Tommy with the dinner preparations.

It was over an
hour later, after damned near every lobster we'd pulled from the water had been
cooked, shelled, and drowned in butter and devoured, that Jan pulled me aside
to have that little chat.

I was feeling
particularly pleased with myself, having killed off two of the finest lobsters
I'd ever consumed, when Jan moved over to where I was sitting and sat down
facing me.
 
His knees were almost close
enough to brush my own and he leaned in so no one could possibly hear him
without him wanting them to.

"No one
knows what killed the other diving team.
 
Everyone says they got lost inside the caves down there.
 
There were no bodies, see?
 
None.
 
No one ever found them and people tried,
believe me.
 
They had the Coast Guard
down in those caves and everything."

"According
to Charlie, those caves are mighty deep, Jan."

The kind shook
his head, once again looking at the deck between his feet.
 
"That's just it.
 
My whole family came here when everyone
disappeared.
 
We were worried sick about
Diana, but she was the only survivor of that last dive.
 
I was with her in the clinic when some men in
uniforms came and asked her questions.
 
She told them about the mapping project and all of that stuff, and she
said the bodies could be anywhere, because the caves go on just about
forever."

He looked
around the room making sure that no one at all was listening in and then spoke
again, softly.
 
"The
guys from the Coast Guard?
 
They
told her she had to be wrong, because they'd looked over the entire cave down
there and they said it only went in around twenty feet before it closed
off."

"Excuse
me?"
 
I had to be hearing him
wrong.
 
"Jan, your sister and half a
dozen other people were in those caves all day long.
 
It doesn't take that long to map out a
twenty-foot cave."
 
The kind had to
have misheard the conversation.

"I know
that."
 
He raised his voice a little
when he started and lowered it again when he realized how loud he was.
 
"I know that.
 
And so does Diana.
 
But the guys that went in looking for the
rest of the divers, they do this sort of thing all the time, right?
 
So I don't think they would have missed the
sort of caves Diana was talking about."

"Jan,
caves don't disappear or grow smaller."

"No, but
maybe they can be hidden."

"How?"

"I don't
know."
 
He sighed and shook his
head.
 
When he moved his legs around to
get more comfortable, I saw him wince as he bumped his wounded calf against the
edge of his seat.

"So maybe
there's more than one cave."
 
I
shrugged, at a loss for what else to say.

"No."
 
He shook his head.
 
"I was down there
.
  
There's only one cave in the reef,
only one cave entrance.
 
What I saw was a
lot bigger than what the rescue team saw.
 
You know what I think?"

"Tell
me."

"I think
something down there doesn't want to be seen and whatever it is, it has a way
of hiding the size of the cave."

"You
thing there's fish down there that can hide the cave?
 
What?
 
A smart sand shark with good camouflage netting?"
 
I shook my head and stared at the kid.
 
He was thinking way too hard about
this."

"I don't
know what to think."
 
He finally
looked at me again and this time he looked at me hard, like he wanted to know
if he could trust me.
 
"But I know
one thing for sure, and that's that it wasn't a shark that pulled me down the
other day."

"No?
 
What was it then?"

"I don't
know.
 
But unless it had one tooth on the
bottom of its mouth and four on the top, it wasn't a shark."
 
He looked at me again and his eyes narrowed
just a bit.
 
He pulled up his baggy jeans
pant leg and quickly
unwrapped
the bandage covering
his wounds.
 
They were red and angry and
obviously infected.
 
"Looks like a
handprint, doesn't it?"

"You'd
know better than me, Jan.
 
You were there
when it happened.
 
I just tried to treat
it."

I left him
alone after that, unsettled because he was right.
 
I could see the red marks where his skin was
cut and festering and I could see the dark bruises where his leg had been held
by what looked a lot like a hand.
 
Only,
the person leaving a print like that would have to be enormous or at least have
paws the size of a polar bear's.
 
Yeah,
he was young and he was even a little skinny, but the hand that held his leg
and pulled him down —if it was a hand and not my mind playing tricks — would
have to be very powerful to leave those marks and at least a few inches wider
and longer than my own.

I didn't want
to think about whatever might be underwater and capable of using that much
force.

8

Have I
mentioned how much I hate nightmares?
 
Dreams are easy; they may not make sense when you wake up, but at least
when they're done you know it was a dream.
 
Nightmares don't seem to play by the same rules.

Maybe I had a
bit too much to drink.
 
Normally I limit
myself to a shot or two.
 
I broke that
little rule and had a total of five drinks before I hit the sack.

Belle always
says that rich food can give you strange dreams, so maybe it was the lobster,
or something in the macaroni salad.
 
Whatever the case, I got myself one hell of a nightmare for my troubles.

In my dream I
was underwater, diving, breathing recycled air and looking at the underworld
through a mask.
 
The damnedest thing was
I knew I shouldn't be going down into the waters; even in the dream I knew I
didn't dive anymore.

The water was
murky and dark, but I could make out the details of the rocky surface on my
right and I knew that I was at the Devil's Reef, searching for the cave that
was supposed to be there.
 
I didn't see
anyone else at first, but I knew that there were other people diving with
me.
 
In the dream I knew as sure as I was
diving against my own better judgment that Charlie was there, to my left,
coming closer.
 
All I had to do was look
over my shoulder and I'd see him and a few others, too.
 
Dream logic, I guess.
 
He was supposed to be there, and so was Diana
and her brother Jan.

The entrance
to the cave was a black pit far enough down that I felt the pressure in my ears
and temples.
 
Deep enough down that no
one would ever see the damned thing unless they were actively looking for it.
 
The edges were rough and almost looked like
they'd been expanded by someone using a pickax.