Deeper (19 page)

The thing
turned its head a little more and then closed its mouth very abruptly.
 
Nothing like a threat of physical deformity
to get most intelligent creatures to behave; with that simple gesture it
convinced me that it understood everything I was saying.

"Good.
 
We understand each other.
 
Can you speak English?"

The thing
looked at me and blinked its eyes, but otherwise did nothing.

"I have a
crewman missing from my yacht.
 
His name
is Tom.
 
He disappeared last night.
 
If I don't find him, and I decide that you
had anything to do with his vanishing, I'm going to kill you."
 
I walked even closer as I spoke and once
again it opened its mouth.
 
I saw the tip
of its pale tongue lick across its thick lips and I reached for the gutting
knife I kept on my belt.

Roger started
to say something, but Davey shushed him.

I moved closer
still, knowing all too well that I was risking getting myself cut into ribbons
if it got out of the netting.
 
"I've
been fishing these waters for a lot of years, you smelly bastard.
 
I can clean a tuna inside of three
minutes.
 
Want to test
me,
you'll let that tongue of yours move out a few more inches.
 
I don't much care for you and I don't care if
you're alive or dead.
 
But I want to know
about my shipmate.
 
You understand
me?"

Roger left the
room, calling for Professor Ward.
 
In
front of me, the fish man closed its mouth again.

"I don't
much care what language you speak.
 
You
can nod your head if you have to.
 
Did
you do anything to Tom?"

And damn me if
the thing didn't shake its head from side to side in a very human gesture that
said no.

Then it looked
at me and stared hard and I learned a thing or two that I wasn't expecting to
learn.
 
First and foremost, I discovered
that some forms of communication have nothing to do with speech.

They say the
brain doesn't have any nerves, that it can't actually feel anything.
 
But I'm here to say that they just might be
wrong.
 
Maybe I imagined what I felt and
maybe it really happened, but the wide dark pupils of the fish man's eyes
seemed to flare even wider and I felt something like a cold pressure inside my
head, deep beneath the skull.
 
An instant
later, I saw an image form, one that superimposed itself over what my eyes were
seeing.
 
I heard and felt and smelled
things I shouldn't have, and all the time it was happening, I still saw the
thing in front of me as it looked into my eyes.

I saw the Isabella from a new perspective,
from a distance away, as if I were in the water.
 
It was dark outside and the waters were cool
and soothing.
 
I felt my webbed hands and
feet kicking at the sea around me, keeping me afloat, and I felt the fluids
breathed out of my gills and opened my mouth to fill my almost dormant lungs
with fresh air.

I almost
staggered
back,
almost lost the contact I was
experiencing, but made myself stay where I was.
 
I could see the fish man, could tell that he hadn't moved at all, even
as I watched Tom moving along the side of the
Isabella
, staring out at the waters and in the direction of the
Devil's Reef.

Faintly, off in the far distance, I heard a
girl crying for help, heard her splashing in the water.
 
I turned my head and saw her, a frail,
desperate form that splashed in the sea and struggled to swim toward the shore
beyond where I treaded the surface of the water.

And I saw Tom, poor, stupid Tom, grab one of
the life preservers and dive off the side with the reckless skill that seems to
be granted to the young.

How can I
explain this properly?
 
I knew it was Tom
I was seeing.
 
I knew him as well as I
ever had, but at the same time, the memories, or images that I received looked
at him differently, as if he were an alien creature.
 
I saw him as ugly, deformed and pale and
weak, even as he dove into the water.
 
I
watched this imaginary Tom as he cut across the waves, seeking to reach the
girl in the water, the same girl I'd seen my first night in the cove as she
swam toward the
Isabella
.

The images
disappeared in an instant, and I shook them off, even as the fish man in front
of me pushed itself against the tile of the shower stall and let out a bleating
protest.

Professor Ward
was standing next to me, putting something in his pocket.
 
I didn't have time to think about that, but
instead could only focus on what I'd almost learned.
 
Somehow the thing in front of me had reached
into my mind and spoken to me without ever saying a thing.
 
Telepathy?
 
Sure, I'd heard of it, but like ghosts and
fish men, I'd assumed it was all a crock of delusions.

Ward pulled a
piece of paper from his pocket and I saw a long list of gibberish words,
phrases of some kind that had been spelled out in block letters, but that made no
sense.
 
Ward opened his mouth and then
started making noises that strained his vocal cords.
 
It sounded like he was trying to belch out
the Russian alphabet or something.

When he was
done making odd faces and odder sounds, the fish man looked at him and bobbed
its head enthusiastically.
 
It let out a
series of barks and grunts that sounded a bit like what Ward had just tried to
recite.

Ward held up a
tape recorder, one of the little ones you sometimes see people using to make
notes to themselves, and recorded everything that came out of the fish man's
throat.

They had a few
interchanges, with Ward speaking and then recording what was said.
 
When it was over with, the professor turned
off his recorder and nodded his head.

"What did
you just do?"
 
I wanted to shake
him, wanted to rattle his smug expression clean off his face for ruining the
communication I'd been having with the fish man.

"I saved
your life, I suspect."

"What do
you mean?"

Ward looked at
me, and instead of being smug, he looked troubled.
 
"I don't know what was happening between
you and the Deep One, but you looked like you were about to pass out."

"I think
he was talking to me.
 
With
his head.
 
You
know,
telepathy."

Ward looked at
me and nodded, not seeming to doubt a word I was saying.
 
"I've heard of them doing that.
 
Be careful if it tries again, Captain.
 
I can't say for sure it was trying to hurt
you, but there are always risks when dealing with new life-forms."

"What are
you talking about?"

Instead of
trying to explain it to me, he pointed away from the fish man toward the sink
along the far wall.
 
I looked where he
was pointing and then looked again, almost certain that I had to be dreaming.

My reflection
in the mirror looked back at me with wide eyes.
 
Eyes that were suffering from several burst blood vessels,
apparently.
 
The whites of my eyes were
crimson, and I could see streaks of red running down my face from my tear
ducts.
 
My skin was pale and wet, and now
that I could see the wound, I could feel that I had chewed halfway through my
lower lip.

"If young
Roger and then Davey hadn't come to get me, Captain, you might well be dead by
now."
 
Ward sounded smug enough, but
didn't look it.
 
He looked shaken.

"What the
hell did it do?"

"I know
it sounds strange coming from me, of all people, Captain, but believe me.
 
There are some things we aren't meant to
know.
 
I recorded what it said and I
asked it a few questions in what I'm hoping
is
its
language.
 
Try not to look it in the eyes
again.
 
Deep Ones are supposedly very
cunning."

I left the
room before I could do something very stupid, like ram my knife through the
creature's brain pan.
 
My hands were
shaking and my head was beginning to ache.

Much as I
hated to admit it, the professor was probably right.
 
He'd probably just saved my life.
 
Unfortunately, he'd also left me wondering
exactly what the hell had happened to poor Tom.

12

The tension
stayed thick on the yacht.
 
There were a
lot of people who were under a lot of stress and most of them were just stewing
in their own thoughts.
 
I felt like, if I
wanted to, I could have just stopped and listened and heard everything they
were thinking.
 
It was a soft noise
inside my head, but I thought I could make it louder.
 
I was afraid to try.
 
Maybe it was a side effect of whatever that
thing had done to me or maybe it was my imagination, I can't really say.
 
Eventually, I calmed myself down.
 
The catch was to look at this the same way I
would any other job.
 
The bosses paid the
bills and they were right.
 
So the fish
had legs.
 
Not their fault.
 
Professor Ward went looking for some
underwater pottery and came back with an actual fish man.
 
It wasn't expected, and that meant he had to
make arrangements.
 
I could make myself
see their point when he wasn't in my face.
 
I could accept it if I had to.

It was only a
few hours until the sun set, but damn, those hours seemed to crawl.
 
Instead of going stir-crazy I found Charlie
to keep me occupied.
 
He was still
grinning
the same sort of smile normally reserved for
fishermen who caught a big fish and hunters who bagged a ten-point buck.

There was work
to be done on the
Isabella
and he was
already doing it.
 
I decided to help
him.
 
In this case, the work was mostly
cleaning up after the divers and getting everything ready for tomorrow when
they went out again.

"You
gonna get a picture with your fish over there, Charlie?"

He shrugged
his shoulders and winked.
 
"Can you
imagine that thing being stuffed and mounted over a fireplace?"

"Well,
it'd be an interesting conversation starter.
 
Or stopper, but I get the idea Diana wouldn’t be thrilled."

"Yeah, I
heard about that."
 
He looked away
for a second and his face got stormy.
 
"She's got issues around here."

"How so?"

Charlie
stopped working, looked around to make sure no one was listening in on us, and
then stepped closer.
 
From a lot of
people, I would have thought that was extra drama.
 
Not from Charlie.
 
He was deadly serious when he came closer to
me.

"Remember,
she was here before and the expedition went sour.
 
She hasn't said it, but I think those things
in the water killed off the crew she was with."

"Jesus.
 
How did she get away?"

"She
didn't dive that day.
 
She wasn't feeling
up to it.
 
They went in cold season last
time, too, and she got herself a bug."

"So how
does she know what happened?"

"She
doesn't for sure, but she said some of the divers said they felt like they were
being watched under the water."

"You
think it's all that smart, her coming out here again?"

Charlie
shrugged.
 
"She's a big girl,
Joe.
 
You know what it's like.
 
She decided she had to do this again to prove
something to herself."

He might have
said more, but right around then, we heard Diana's voice calling out to someone
else.
 
She sounded like she was coming
closer.
 
A few seconds later she wound up
where we were, smiling at Charlie as she came up.

"Beat me
to it.
 
I was just going to start setting
everything up."
 
She nodded to me
and gave Charlie a hug around his waist.

Diana was a
muscular girl, but next to Charlie she looked like skin and bones.
 
He leaned down and kissed her on the
forehead.
 
"We were just finishing
up."

"Yeah.
 
Charlie
was telling me how he's gonna get his catch of the day mounted over the
fireplace."
 
I swear to you the
words just came out of my mouth.
 
I had
been thinking them, sure, but I didn't expect to say them.

Diana looked
my way and smiled.
 
I was glad.
 
I didn't want to start any troubles for her
and we were already on thin ice after the great licking incident earlier.
 
The smile fell away from her features when
she got a look at my eyes.
 
Hey were
still bloodshot as all hell and felt like someone had been at them with sandpaper.