Deeper (29 page)

Charlie was
there and waiting for me, pacing
like
a worried hen
looking for her chicks.
 
Much as I wanted
to be angry with him for everything that had happened, I couldn’t be.
 
It wasn't his fault, but he was an available
scapegoat.

"Everybody gone for the day, Charlie?"

"Uh,
yeah, I think so."

"Good.
 
Start ‘er up.
 
We're going back out."

"What?"

"We're
going back out, Charlie.
 
I'd like to
find my wife now."

He didn't
question me a second time.
 
I guess the
look on my face was enough for him.

That didn't
stop Jacob, who came over to me as I was lifting the gangplank and asked what
was happening.

"I'm
going back out, Jacob.
 
If you and Mary
want to get off, that's fine."

"What
happened at the studio?"

"Fish man
got free and mauled everyone there.
 
I
think a couple of them are dead.
 
I
called an ambulance.
"
I was doing my best to stay
calm, which I have to admit wasn't very good.

"Jesus,
Joe!
 
Who was there?"

"Diana's
kid brother, I don't think he made it, and four or five other people, I can't
remember."
 
I brushed past him
heading toward the diving supplies.
 
I
needed Belle back and I aimed to get her, no matter what it took.

"Joe!
 
You can't be serious."
 
He was screaming a bit, but I don't think he
knew it.

"Where's
your wife, Jacob?"

"What?"

"I said,
‘where's you wife?’"

"She's in
the cabin..."

"Now
where's my wife?"
 
I did my best to
look a few bullets through his head, because I wanted to make my point known
and I didn't want to argue with him.
 
I
know my limits well enough to know that I would gleefully pound the crap out of
the next person that crossed my path.
 
I
didn’t know if I should scream, cry or just start swinging, but all of them
were looking like good options.

"What are
you going to do, Joe?
 
Go diving into
that cave and hope they bring her back to you?"

"That was
the deal I made when I was down there before.
 
They get their fish man back and I get my wife."
 
I moved past Jacob again — he was very good
at becoming an obstacle, which was maybe not the best way for him to stay
healthy — and started putting on a dry suit.

"Joe, you
keep saying you talked to those things.
 
No one else has talked to them, so I'm wondering if maybe it's all in
your head."
 
Now, up until that
point, Jacob had never questioned my sanity.
 
Maybe he was just being polite and maybe he thought I was crazier than
when I left the yacht an hour earlier.
 
I
didn't much care either way.

"It
talked to me and I heard it, Jacob."

"But what
if you didn't?"

"What?
 
You think I went crazy inside a couple of
hours?"
 
I actually stopped putting
on my suit and looked at him again.

"Charlie
called it ‘nitrogen narcosis.’
 
He said
sometimes divers see things, and you were down there a long time, Joe."

I laughed, but
I didn’t think it was all that funny.
 
"Yeah, sometimes people get all delusional down there, Jacob.
 
But you know what?
 
The first time one of those things
communicated with me it was right here, on the yacht, while I was breathing
good old-fashioned surface air.
 
I didn't
get stoned on nitro.
 
I had a fish man
talk inside my head!"

"Calm
down, Joe.
 
I'm just saying you should
explore all the possibilities."

I stood up and
jabbed Jacob Parsons in the chest with my finger.
 
He flinched but he didn't back down.
 
"Maybe I'm nuts!
 
Maybe I dreamed the whole thing, Jacob.
 
But you answer me this, what would you do if
it was your Mary instead of my Belle that had been taken by those
monsters?"

He stepped
back and shook his head.
 
"Just as
long as you're sure you know what you're doing, Joe."

"I don't
have any fucking idea what I'm doing."
 
My body was trembling again, the
adrenaline
 
kicking
the crap out of me and when it
faded I was going to be useless.
 
The
only good news was that it didn't seem like it was going to go anywhere for a
while.
 
"I'm winging it, Jacob.
 
But I have to have Belle back.
 
That's all that matters to me right
now."
 
I looked past him and
bellowed for Charlie to get us moving.
 
A
few moments later, I felt the yacht lurch gently back away from the docks and I
finished putting on my suit.

Jacob was good
enough to help me into a new oxygen tank, and after that was all set, I grabbed
more supplies.
 
I got the biggest
waterproof flashlight on board, and I reloaded my harpoon gun from
earlier.
 
I also grabbed my skinning
knife and a few extra spears for the gun.

When that was
all done, I set up and activated the tracker that was set for the device I'd
left on the fish man.
 
I needed to know
where he went.
 
I needed to know if he
went to the caves, and whether or not that was where I had to start looking for
Belle.

The indicator
showed that the signal was somewhere near the cave.
 
I took that as a positive sign.

By the time
Charlie had set anchor, I was ready for the dive.
 
That fear crept back into my belly and tried
to pull away what little courage I had left.
 
For Belle, I would ignore the fear.
 
She was now more important to me than anything else in the world.

Charlie came
out on the deck and told me to wait.
 
"I'll go with you, Joe.
 
Just
give me five minutes."

Despite
myself, I listened.
 
Those five minutes
seemed to crawl on forever, but finally he was ready and we went down.
 
It went faster with Charlie in the lead.
 
I think by that point he probably could have
found the cave without even looking.

If I thought
the cave was dark before, I was wrong.
 
The two of us kept our lights ahead of us and moved down to the entrance
and with every single stroke of my legs, I expected to see Deep Ones coming
toward us, claws flashing from webbed hands and mouths full of sharp teeth
ready to tear into flesh.

Whatever
happened down below over the last few days had riled the hell out of the fish
people, and I didn't expect to find the place empty of guards, or at least
lookouts to keep a watch for strangers.
 
The thing is, I expected to see them, but I never really took much time
to look.
 
I knew where we were going and
that was all that mattered to me.

Charlie moved
through the water ahead of me and I kept track of where he was more than I did
where we were going.
 
The darkness around
us was thick and foggy as the night above.
 
The earlier storm had stirred the waters and lifted the silt, making it
almost impossible to see more than twenty feet ahead.

We made it to
the cave entrance and I felt the hairs on my arms stand up.
 
I knew, just knew that there would be
something there to greet us.

Instead, there
was only the dark cave.
 
Charlie moved
quickly, his light scanning everywhere around us, but there was nothing to see
but the chamber under the water.
 
It was
clearer here, too, because the turbulent waters never made it down this far.

We went for
the narrow entrance to the second, deeper chamber and Charlie swam hard enough
to leave me winded.
 
He wanted this done
as much as I did.
 
The cave went down
farther than I would have guessed before it opened up into another, wider area.

It was there
that they were waiting.
 
I barely had a
chance to realize that the area opened wider before the Deep Ones made
themselves
known.
 
They came from all directions, a wave of amphibious flesh that blocked
our way.
 
The beams from the flashlights
ran across the bodies and faces, revealing alien forms that hung suspended in
the waters, each of them staring with unblinking eyes.

There were
easily fifty of them in the area.
 
They
didn't move to attack, but they stopped us from going any farther.
 
Charlie dove low in an effort to get past
them and they immediately blocked his path again.

I didn't see
much beyond that, because I was trying to make progress myself.
 
I braced my feet on the wall next to the
tunnel's entrance and then kicked off, trying to push my way past the living
obstacles in front of me.

Pallid, gray
flesh blocked my way and one of the more toad-like creatures shook its head in
a very human warning to stop where I was.
 
I didn't listen.
 
Instead, I
brandished the harpoon gun and kept going.

The hands of
the creatures grabbed at my arms and my body and I felt the claws sliding over
my suit.
 
Several of the things let out a
thrumming noise, deep and loud, as they moved around me.
 
While I did my best to focus on saving Belle,
I was very, very aware of the creatures and how deadly they could be.
 
The first thing I noticed aside from the fact
that they weren't tearing me apart was that most of them were larger than the
one that had been on the yacht.

The second
thing I noticed was that they didn't look quite alike.
 
I'd said before that their faces were all a
little different and I saw now how true that really was.
 
Some of them almost had toad faces, with wide
mouths that curled downward.
 
Others bore
a stronger resemblance to sharks, or catfish.
 
Some of them had tentacles on their faces, replacing the lower aspects
of their mouths.
 
I saw their faces in
quick flashes as they blocked my way — a living wall of flesh that refused to
let me get past them.

God, if only I
could explain the rage and frustration.
 
I wanted my wife, and I wanted to leave the damned area forever.
 
If I could have made that clear, maybe
everything would have worked out better than it did.
 
I don't know.
 
I may never know.

One of the
things grabbed the harpoon gun and yanked it away from me hard enough to snap
the connector that held it around my wrist.
 
I felt the skin under the dry suit scrape and bruise from the sudden,
powerful tug.

I let out a
scream, but all that came out was a blast of air from my mouth that spilled
from the regulator of my mask.
 
A second
later, one of the clawed hands pulled the mask away from my face and reminded
me that man was not meant to breathe beneath the sea.
 
Cold water slapped against my skin and
blinded my eyes.
 
I kept the regulator in
place, but only out of blind luck.
 
The
mask was torn away from my head and I felt the hair on my scalp ripped loose
along with the straps.

It's possible
to see under the water without a mask, but it's painful, too.
 
The salt in the water, the impurities of the
silt, they all get in your eyes and they burn like mad.

Half blinded
by the monsters around us and deprived of my one solid weapon, I grabbed the
knives from my belt and prepared to fight them as best I could.

But they
didn't attack again.
 
They weren't out to
kill us; I believe that.
 
I think they
were toying with us, instead.
 
They were
showing us the strength of their numbers and letting me know that they could
kill us at any time.

Once, when I
was a kid, around ten or so, I had a bully a few grades older than me who sat
on my chest and slapped me around a few hundred times in the face.
 
Oh, I fought, but he was much bigger and far
too strong for me to hurt him.
 
The slaps
weren't hard, but they stung.
 
When it
was over with, I was humiliated and infuriated.
 
What the Deep Ones did felt a lot like that.

I might have
actually fought back, might even have lost my mind a little and killed a few of
them, but they did something to stop me without laying a hand on me.

They ripped
the tank right off of Charlie's back.
 
It
took three of them, but they were fast and strong and had the home field
advantage.
 
One of them swam up fast on
Charlie and grabbed his face.
 
I thought
for sure it would tear his skin wide open with its claws, but instead it just
held him.

Another
grabbed his right arm and swam hard, pulling his arm straight out, and I heard
the sound of his shoulder dislocating and I heard the muffled scream that
escaped his mouth when he spit out the regulator and cried out in pain.
 
The third one yanked back on the tank and
braced against his back.
 
I swear if the
damned tank hadn't come off it would have broken his spine.