Deeper (24 page)

Jacob and
Belle found me a few minutes later.
 
I
was still clutching the rail and looking down into the water, trying in vain to
find some sign of Tommy.
 
He was gone and
so were the fish men.

"Joe,
Honey?"

"Tommy
was here.
 
He said we have to
leave."

"Tommy?
 
He was here?"
 
Her voice went from softly worried to
desperate and urgent.

"He's
gone now, Belle.
 
They took him."

"Who took
him?"

The Deep Ones.
 
They
took him with them!
 
I wanted to be
coherent, to make everything clear as fast as I could so we could be out of
here, but my mouth said what it wanted, still held by the shock.
 
"The fish men.
 
I guess he was talking too much.
 
Dead people shouldn’t talk.
 
It's a little disgusting."

"Joe?
 
What are you talking about?"
 
Belle had a hand on my shoulder and was
trying to urge me away from the edge of the boat.

Jacob lightly
brushed her aside, turned me to face him, and slapped me across the face.
 
Not hard enough to hurt me much, but definitely
with enough force to get my attention.
 
Just to make sure he had it, he did it again.

"Joe!
 
Come on, man, make sense!"

I shook him
off of me and actually took in a deep breath for what seemed like the first
time since I got hit by the water.

"We heard
you screaming, Joe.
 
What happened?"

I looked from
Jacob to Belle and then back again and shook my head.
 
"We have to get the hell out of the
water.
 
We have to get to shore."

"Joe, you
said something about Tommy."
 
Belle
was tugging at my wet sleeve.

"Tommy's
dead.
 
I saw him in the water."
 
I was moving now, heading for the cabin.
 
I wanted us out of there immediately.

Jacob spoke
softly, but clearly.
 
"Joe, we can't
leave yet.
 
The divers haven't come
up."

That one
stopped me cold.
 
I was afraid.
 
No, I was terrified, but I couldn't leave the
divers out there.
 
The waves were too
rough and the tide was rising.
 
They'd
never be able to stay afloat and they'd get torn all to hell if they tried
staying on the reef.
 
The waves were
almost cresting the damned thing now, and the top of hit would be underwater
and covered with enough water to knock them down again and again in a very
short time.

"Goddamn
it!"
 
I didn't want to be on the
water anymore.
 
Not in Golden Cove, not
anywhere
near
it.
 
I thought of the things I'd seen take Tommy away and of the cold eyes
that looked at me, studying me like a bug, and I wanted to be far, far away.

"How much
longer before they're supposed to come up, Jacob?"

"Any time
now, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes."

I shrugged off
my coat and headed down to Davy's territory, where he was probably working on
the engines and fine-tuning everything.
 
He was obsessive about his engines and that was one of the things I
loved about him.

Belle watched
me go and left it alone because she knows me.
 
She knew as well as anyone could that I'd be back up when I was done
telling Davey what I had to say.
 
Jacob
followed after me instead.

"Davey!"

"Yeah, Joe?"

"Warm us
up and get everything ready.
 
The second
the divers are back, we're out of here."

"You got
it."

Jacob followed
too closely behind me and I almost knocked him over when I turned around.
 
We both apologized and I pushed past
him.
 
I had a ton of nervous energy going
nowhere fast and I was feeling jittery.

"Joe,
what did you see?"

"I saw Tommy
out there.
 
He came on board and he told
me that there are more of those things and they were going to come for their
little friend.
 
We have to get the divers
up and we have to get the hell out of here.
 
And if you're very smart, you'll get Ward to let go of his fish and call
it done."

"But you
were just saying that Tommy's dead..."

"That's
right, Jacob, I did."
 
I turned and
faced him and he didn't even flinch when I stared hard at him.
 
He was dead.
 
It wasn't makeup and it wasn't my imagination.
 
I sniffed my hands and shoved them at his
face so he could get a good whiff of what was left on me from touching
Tommy.
 
"He's dead.
 
And he was talking to me.
 
Looks like you got your ghosts, too."

If he was
happy about what I'd just told him, he did a great job of hiding it.
 
He also didn't
so
much as flinch when my hands were in his face.

"Joe.
 
Calm down.
 
You're not going to do yourself anyone else any good if you're
panicking."

"I'm not
panicking."

"Yes, you
are.
 
You had a scare.
 
It's a natural response.
 
Now calm down and take a few more deep
breaths.
 
Calm.
 
Down."

I don't
normally like being told what to do, but I also know when what I'm being told
makes sense.
 
I drew in a few good
lungfuls, in through the nose, and out through the mouth.
 
I nodded to let him know I was calming down.

"Joe, I
believe you.
 
I believe you did see
Tommy.
 
But you have to tell me what he
said, word for word, or we might be in trouble here."

"He said
we have to leave.
 
He said they're going
to come for us."
 
I told him everything
I could remember, and I made sure he knew I was serious when it came to them
taking his body back down.
 
Jacob got a
little nervous, but he kept his cool.

"So,
we'll talk to Martin when he comes back and see about releasing his special
guest.
 
He may not like it, but he'll
listen."

I could feel
the tension crawl out of me when I heard those words, like someone had lifted a
weight off my chest.

"I hope
you're right."

I was about to
say something else when I heard Belle scream.
 
The sound was distant, but after twenty-four years of marriage, I knew
damned near every sound my wife could make.
 
Jacob was fast on my heels when I reached the deck, scanning everywhere
and looking for her.
 
Instead of my wife,
I saw Mary Parsons, staring at the waters and shaking her head, a look of pure
horror on her face.

"Mary?
 
Where is Belle?"
 
The words came from Jacob and mirrored what I
was thinking.
 
I was looking at the
water, where Mary stared.

"Jacob?"
 
Her voice was so small, so very faint, and I
could hear it with crystal clarity, as if the wind and the waves and everything
else in the entire universe had faded away.
 
"Jacob?
 
They took her.
 
One of those things took her.
 
I saw it."

I couldn't
feel my own legs.
 
I couldn’t catch a
breath.
 
All I could think about was
Belle in the water, dragged down as fast as Tommy's corpse had been taken.

15

There was
plenty of equipment on board waiting and ready to replace the spent tanks the
divers were using.
 
I didn't bother
waiting myself.
 
Instead, I stripped down
to my underwear and climbed into a dry suit as fast as I could.

I worked
quickly, because I didn't want to give myself time to think.
 
If I let myself dwell on anything, I thought
I might just go crazy.
 
I as about to do
something I'd sworn off a long time ago, something that scared me, but not as
much as the idea of losing Belle.
 
I
couldn't afford to lose time to anything but the need to find Belle.
 
Somewhere under the water, by wife was
waiting, dead or alive, and I needed to find her more than I needed anything
else in the universe.
 
If I took time to
think about the fact that she might already be dead from drowning or the
extreme cold, I might have let myself panic and I couldn't afford that.
 
So instead I focused on getting into the
equipment and grabbing whatever I could find to use as a weapon.
 
Jacob was along with me, and looking like he
wanted to help.
 
I didn't think there was
anything he could do, but the gesture helped me focus.
 
I didn't ask if he knew anything about
diving.
 
I just went about taking care of
what I could.

I don't know
if I broke any records, but I tried.
 
I
grabbed a harpoon gun and three extra spears.
 
I made sure I had my knife in easy reach and tested the blade for
sharpness.
 
And then, forcing the dread
out of my system and practically breathing in rage to take its place, I went
for my first dive in years.

The water was
cold.
 
It tore at me and drained the heat
away from my exposed hands and face in a matter of seconds.
 
I didn't let myself stop and think about
that.
 
I just went down as quickly as I
could, weighted down with the gun in one hand and a waterproof flashlight in
the other.

I needed to
find Belle before it was too late, before she drowned in the ocean or was torn
apart by one of the freakish things that lived in the waters off the reef.
 
Stupid, I know; there was no way she could be
alive still.
 
There was nothing to stop
them from tearing her apart or feeding on her like sharks going after a
goldfish, but I had to believe there was a chance, or I would have gone insane
right then and there.

They had every
advantage.
 
Even if there was only one of
them involved in stealing away Belle, that single creature was in its natural
environment and didn't need to rely on a mask to see.
 
It could use both eyes and have peripheral
vision that I lost because of my mask.
 
It didn't need to come up for air sooner or later and if it was
cold-blooded like most fish, the freezing temperature would barely phase it.
 
Whatever effects the chill had on the thing
were already in effect and would do no more to slow it down.

I knew where
the cave was supposed to be, and I went in that direction.
 
I got lucky:
 
the divers had a lead rope running down to the entrance.
 
I don't think I'd have seen it otherwise.

I made it to
the entrance without any problem and then I pushed into the darkness of the
cave with an unsettling sense of déjà vu.
 
Damned if it didn't look just like it had in my dream.
 
The are
was dark as
midnight and the flashlight barely seemed to cut through the murk at all.

I looked
around the area as carefully as I could, but saw nothing moving despite my
hopes.
 
My mind kept trying to tell me I
was being suicidal, reminding me of what happened the last time I decided to go
diving alone.
 
I didn't let myself
listen, at least not enough to make me turn back.

It took me
almost two minutes to find the entrance to the secondary cave.
 
If it had been possible I'd have been
screaming the entire time.
 
Belle didn't
have two minutes unless they gave her air.
 
Even as I started down into the long passageway, I was already starting
to think along the lines of revenge instead of rescue.
 
Much as it hurt me, I didn't give my wife the
best odds of being alive when I found her.
 
Not if, because I knew I wouldn't stop looking until I found her one way
or the other.

I almost cut
loose with the speargun when I saw something coming my way.
 
Like I said, the flashlight worked, but only
so well, and when I saw motion my first thought was of the damned things I'd
seen in this very spot in my dream.
 
Happily,
I controlled my reaction and managed not to shoot Diana in the chest.

She was
followed by the rest of the team, all of them swimming carefully and two of
them carrying something that looked like chains wrapped in muck.
 
In my haste, I forgot all about them needing
to come up and get new air tanks.
 
I
stayed to one side and they had to swim past me.
 
Most of them were used to the idea of close
quarters, I suppose.
 
Only Charlie looked
at me with a stupid expression on his face, because only Charlie knew I didn't
dive anymore for very personal reasons.
 
I shook my head and urged him on.
 
I didn't have time to explain and there was no way in hell I could even
if I wanted to.
 
He nodded and kept
going.