Deeper (25 page)

I knew he'd be
back after me ten minutes after he climbed on board the
Isabella
.
 
I didn't have time
to wait.
 
I kept going deeper into the
tunnel.

What can I
tell you about it?
 
The passage was dark
and cramped, and made me remember that I can be a little claustrophobic.
 
I just couldn’t spare the energy to think
about my personal fears.
 
I only had room
in my head to worry about Belle's safety or killing whatever had hurt her.

There are a
lot of things you forget when you haven't been diving for a while — like that
the human body doesn't handle extreme pressure changes very well.
 
I don't know how deep I went, but it wasn't
too long before I started feeling like someone was trying to crush my eardrums
into my brain.
 
I didn't let it stop
me.
 
I had to keep going.

When I saw
movement coming from below me the second time, I took careful aim.
 
The divers were all above me, maybe.
 
It was always possible that someone held on
for a few more minutes.

What came at
me was not a straggler from the team.
 
One of the fish men tore up through the passage like a guided missile,
heading straight for me.
 
The first thing
I realized about it was that it was much, much bigger than the one we'd had on
the
Isabella
.
 
The second thing I registered was that in
intended to tear me apart.

I fired the
spear when it was within ten feet of me; the gas-powered lance met the monster
head-on and ripped through its eye.
 
The
thing reeled back from me, and spun in a half circle trying, I suppose, to
protect itself from the shaft that was sticking in its face.
 
I'd hit it, yes, but other than skewering its
eyeball, I'd failed.
 
I'd been hoping to
kill it and instead I'd left it wounded.

Wounded, and
very, very pissed off.

I had roughly
two seconds of being satisfied with my aim before the thing turned back around
and let out a roar, even as it knocked the spear away from the thick ridge
above the eye where it had landed and stuck.
 
It might not have been using its lungs, but it definitely knew how to
let loose with a sound underwater.
 
I was
stunned by the sound, not because it was so loud, but because it was
unexpected.

You ever see a
man get mauled by an animal?
 
I got to
see it up close and personal.
 
If it had
been a little better at judging distances with only one eye, I probably would
have died then and there.
 
Instead, I got
lucky and the webbed hand that raked my chest only peeled back a few layers of
skin as it ripped through my suit.
 
The
pain was a series of hot needles, but they were drowned out by the sudden,
numbing cold that washed over me.
 
Dry
suits keep the water away from you, and as cold as it was under the water, when
the moisture hit me it leeched away my body heat like a vampire sucks at blood.

I didn't make
as much noise.
 
My screams were cut off
by the regulator I was using to breathe.

I didn't think
well enough to draw the knife on my belt.
 
Instead, I used the speargun again.
 
I shoved it toward the thing's face and pressed down the trigger, blasting
a thick plume of compressed gases into the butt-ugly fish face that was coming
closer to mine.

I got blindly,
stupidly lucky.

The expanding
gases caught the fish man in the ruin of its eye and blasted the rest of the
torn organ free from where it belonged, leaving a cloud of red between us as
the wound expanded.
 
Instead of tearing
me apart, the Deep One pulled back, letting out a high, keening sound and tried
to protect the open wound on its face.

I released the
speargun and let it drop on its tether.
 
I needed the flashlight to see and I needed a weapon that did more than
inconvenience the thing in front of me.
 
My skinning knife came out fast, and I swam backward, only slowing down
when the side of the tunnel got in my way.

The thing
turned toward me a second time, bleeding heavily from the ripped open eye
socket.
 
It fixed me with its one good
eye and like an idiot I looked back... and saw the images it forced into my
head just as the one on the
Isabella
had done before.
 
This wasn't just a
memory; it was a warning.
 
I could still
see the wounded thing in front of me, but transposed over that image was Belle,
struggling in the waters, surrounded by the Deep Ones and drowning in the cold
ocean as they circled her like hungry sharks.
 
I knew as soon as I saw it that the image wasn't an event that had
happened.
 
Belle was wearing the wrong
clothes:
 
she was dressed as I most often
saw her, in her favorite pair of jeans and a T-
shirt
 
she'd
stolen from me right after we
got married.
 
Her hair was wrong, too,
and I understood that it wanted to tell me something, wanted me to understand
the implied threat of what it showed.

The image changed,
and Belle transformed into a much clearer replica of the fish man that Ward and
his people had taken from the
Isabella
.
 
The size was perfect, the depth of detail
much richer than the image of my wife.
 
In the new image the captive fish man was diving into the ocean,
escaping the land and swimming toward the caves hidden on the distant reef.

The image
changed again, to one of Belle alive and healthy, unmarred as she climbed from
the waters and swam toward the
Isabella
.
 
The communication was crude, but
effective.
 
I could have Belle back if
they could have their fish man back:
 
a
trade-off.

The one-eyed
fish man turned away from me and was suddenly swimming back down into the
tunnel, still moving at insane speeds as it dove deeper.

My head felt
like it would explode and my body felt frozen with an arctic chill as my dry
wet suit filled with water.
 
Light
spilled across my arms and body form behind and I turned in time to see four
figures swimming my way.
 
They were
wearing diving masks.
 
They were human.

I stared at
them, barely able to move, as the world around me started to fade out.
 
I nodded my head as Charlie swam close enough
for me to see his face.
 
Moments later he
was moving me, pulling on my arm and hauling me away from the darkness in front
of me.

I barely
remember the trip back to the surface.
 
I
know we paused a few times to let our bodies adjust to the difference in water
pressure.
 
You don't handle depths with a
little respect and your blood becomes a toxic mess:
 
nitrogen bubbles get out of control in your
system and you're stuck with nitrogen narcosis, which often causes dementia and
death.
 
We had to go slowly to avoid a
bad case of the bends.
 
Other than that,
I only remember glimpses of the cave walls and the sight of the other divers
looking at me every now and then, and hitting me with the high intensity beams
from their flashlights.

I didn't
struggle.
 
I couldn't.
 
My oxygen was almost completely
depleted.
 
Somehow, I had lost over an
hour of my time under the water.
 
I guess
the process of making me see things took more time than I realized.

By the time I
was back on my yacht I was shivering violently.
 
Charlie and two of the college kids helped me out of my suit and into my
bed.
 
That's all I remember of the trip
back.

That, and darkness as deep and complete as I have ever encountered.

16

About an hour
later I woke up to a headache that was trying its best to crack my skull.
 
I could feel the pressure in my head beating
to a different tempo than my pulse, and it hurt like hell.
 
I was in my cabin and my clothes were dry,
but my hair was damp.
 
It took me only a
second or two to remember all of the details of what had happened and that was
enough to get me up and moving.
 
My eyes
burned and my balance was off when I stood up.

I didn't
care.
 
I wanted to find my wife.

Charlie was
waiting for me, his face set in a grim, worried expression that didn't seem
right on him.

"Joe,
what the hell happened?"

"Those
fish things took Belle."
 
I put my
hand on the edge of the bed and steadied myself.
 
Seemed it wasn't just my sense of balance
that was out of whack, so was the whole yacht.
 
I understood why when lightning flashed outside of the window and I had
a chance to see how turbulent the ocean was around us.
 
Anything smaller than the vessel we were in
would have probably been thrown into the reef or just knocked over by the
waves.
 
I was lucky enough to have a good
crew and they were smart enough to know how to keep a boat facing the waves and
cutting through them instead of letting us get thrown over by the first big one
that came along.

There comes a
point in a storm where you're better off not trying to reach land and judging
by what was going on outside, I guessed we'd reached it.
 
The cove wasn't the roughest waters I'd ever
been in, but it was close.
 
One
miscalculation when you're in the wrong area and a sixty-foot yacht becomes
toothpicks.
 
Put another way, if you're
heading for the docks and a wave catches you the wrong way on a turbulent sea,
you might well ram the concrete moorings and break apart on impact.
 
I hated that we were stuck out in the waters,
but even worried about
Belle,
I knew the
Isabella
was in a bad situation.

"How long
has this been going on?"
 
I didn't
really have to explain what I was asking to Charlie.
 
He knew me and understood what I was asking
about the storm.

"It
started around the same time we got out of the water.
 
Hit all at once and wasn't playing any
games."
 
He shook his head.
 
"Joe, there was no way I was going to
leave you down there."

"Good.
 
I didn't feel much like drowning today."

"What the
hell was going on down there, Joe?
 
You
were just staring at that thing when we found you."

"It
was...
 
It was talking to me."
 
Charlie looked embarrassed, and he was doing
his best to look like he believed me, but it wasn't working out very well.
 
"Charlie, it told me I need to give back
the fish man or Belle is dead."

"How
could it, Joe?"

"I don't
know, damn it!"
 
Charlie flinched a
little.
 
I wish I could say I felt bad
about that, but my mind was on one goal.
 
"But I know what it said and I know that if I want Belle back in
one piece that fish thing has to be set free."

"Martin
isn't going to like that."
 
I know —
deep inside my heart — he didn't mean it to come out like it did.
 
He was thinking aloud, something he'd done
for years.

If looks could
actually kill, I'd have vaporized him right then and there.
 
"Do I look like I give a good goddamn
what ‘Martin’ wants?"

"I didn't
mean—"

"Belle is
missing because you caught one of those things, Charlie.
 
Not your fault.
 
I'd have done the same thing I guess, but now
that it's gone wrong, I need to get my wife back."
 
I stood up and steadied myself against the
rocking of the boat and the spinning pressure between my ears.

Charlie shook
his head.
 
"You're right, of course,
Joe.
 
Of course we're gonna do anything
we can to get her back."
 
He held
out placating hands.
 
"I just opened
my mouth and it came out."

"Don't
apologize to me, Charlie.
 
Just get me to
Ward or Ward to me so we can talk this over."
 
Charlie nodded and then left my cabin.
 
As soon as he did, I sat back down on the bed
and waited for my legs to feel like they could hold me.
 
I ached all over and most of the muscles in
my body were protesting the abuse I'd given them.

I didn't even
notice the bandages on my chest until I went to scratch at the persistent itch
I'd been ignoring.
 
I looked under my
shirt and saw a layer of gauze with white medical tape.
 
I had no idea who'd worked on me, but they'd
done an excellent job based on the outside of the package.

The scratches
ached, but not enough for me to examine the wound.
 
I was still fixated on Belle.