Deeper (30 page)

Charlie went
into spasms.
 
The strap on the left side
had broken and the tank was stuck on his right, freshly dislocated
shoulder.
 
He tried to turn his body but
the thing on his arm wouldn’t let him.
 
If the one on his back hadn't eased off, he would have probably been
torn apart by the pressure.

Charlie did
what anyone does after they’ve screamed.
 
He tried to breathe.
 
It doesn't
work so well underwater.
 
He bucked and
immediately coughed water and oxygen out of his lungs.

What choice
did I have?
 
I couldn’t leave one of my
best friends to die in the water, not after all he had done for me.
 
I dropped my knives and swam for Charlie, and
the fish men let me.
 
They moved out of
my way and made more of their barking sounds as I reached for him and took the
regulator from my tank and slapped it against Charlie's lips.

He took the
hint and breathed in, still coughing, until he could catch his breath.
 
I took it back from him and took a breath of
my own as I headed back the way we had come.

And they let
us go.

They parted
before us and closed ranks as we passed.
 
A few of them followed us from a distance as we took turns breathing
from the one remaining tank.

I swam
carefully, slowly, needing the oxygen to last for the entire trip up to the
surface and having to remember how deadly rising too fast could be.

By the time we
reached the surface we were on the last few pounds of pressure in the
tank.
 
I had to call Jacob over to help
me get Charlie on board.

The moon was
rising when we headed for the docks, with Charlie in a state of shock and my
entire body feeling like someone had worked me over with a baseball bat.

We limped
home.

Without Belle.

There was
little remaining hope in my heart or mind that I would ever see her again.
 
The ghostly captain's words came back to
haunt me:
 
"They'll never give her back to you.
 
She's as good as dead, or possibly
worse.
 
You will not win this."

18

I barely slept
after we got into the harbor.
 
Oh, I
tossed and turned and did a lot of moaning, but I didn't really sleep.
 
I was exhausted, and I was stressed to the
point where going on a random shooting spree didn't seem like a bad idea.
 
My body ached in places I never knew it had
and I was soul sick.
 
So, no, I can't say
I had a very relaxing night.

Instead, I did
what I always do when my life goes to absolute hell:
 
I tried to take care of business.

Certain things
have to be done, no matter how shitty you might feel.
 
I was numb and defeated, so I guess you could
say I was working on autopilot when I called the Coast Guard to report two
missing people.
 
The first was Belle; the
second was Davey.

There were
questions, of course.
 
Where were
we?
 
Why didn't we report the incident
earlier?
 
Was there any sign that they
might have been wearing safety equipment,
etc.

Now, I suppose
at this point you're wondering why I called the Coast Guard when I already knew
what had happened to my wife.
 
I can
answer that easily enough.
 
I needed to
take every measure that I could, for one thing.
 
It was also easier to lie to them and ask for help than it was to
explain that my wife had been taken by mutant tuna fish with grabby fingers.

"But,
Joe, you had evidence, didn't you?"

No.
 
Actually, I had word of mouth and a murder
scene being investigated by the Golden Cove PD.
 
Aside from that, I had nothing.
 
And even if I'd had videotaped footage of the entire thing, in this day
and age there would have been a hundred people calling the footage a fake and a
thousand demanding
to see the creature in the pursuit
of science.
 
Somewhere along the way,
they'd have forgotten about Belle.
 
That
wasn't acceptable to me.

So I
lied.
 
In the same circumstances, I'd lie
again.

But the Coast
Guard let me know something I hadn't expected.
 
They told me they knew all about the storm and that it had been a very
isolated event.
 
Though there had been
reports of the horrific winds and waves, they stopped about twenty miles up and
down the coast.

Jacob and Mary
Parsons were right there with me.
 
At
least they were after they made sure Charlie wasn't going to die.
 
After a trip to the clinic he was fine, but
like me, he spent about twenty minutes in absolute misery after getting out of
the water.
 
I hadn't seen him fighting
with any of the things under the water, except from the corner of my
half-blinded eye, but I'd been a little busy right then.

I appreciated
their attempts to make me feel better, but there was nothing they or anyone
else could do for me.

Turned out I
was right, by the way.
 
I looked over the
radio array and found out it had been knocked loose during the storm.
 
It took me all of five minutes to reattach
it.
 
That was five minutes when I wasn't
ready to go into a panic attack or try my luck with diving again.

Belle wouldn't
have been very proud of me.
 
I should
have been calling Davey's parents and calling my own kids to explain about the
missing people.
 
Instead I paced the deck
and thought about it, picked up my cell phone a few hundred times and got ready
to dial, and then stopped myself.
 
If I
made the calls, the problems would be real.
 
I didn't want them to be that concrete.

Jacob came up
to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
 
"We're going to take some time off, Joe."

"What?"
 
I have to be honest.
 
I hadn't even thought about their damned
expedition.

"You need
the break.
 
Martin is getting stitches
from whatever happened last night and Charlie isn't up to a dive.
 
So we're taking a few days off."

I nodded my
thanks.
 
I couldn't quite make myself
talk.

Jacob climbed
down the gangplank with his overnight bag and laptop, heading for his rental
car.

Mary came up
to me next.

"Are you
all right, Joe?"
 
She looked at me
with wide, concerned eyes.
 
I got the
impression, however wrong it might
be,
that she could
read my mind with ease.

That didn't
stop me from lying through my teeth.
 
"I'm fine, Mary.
 
Go get
yourselves some rest.
 
It's been stressful
enough around here; I think we all earned it."

She stared
into my eyes for a few seconds, and then slowly nodded her head.
 
A moment later she followed her husband off
the
Isabella
and I turned away before
I did something incredibly stupid, like collapse on the ground and start crying
my eyes out.
 
It's hard to maintain a
proper illusion of being a macho sea captain when you're reverting into an
infant in front of the people around you.

I finally
decided to do the right thing and explain the facts of life to Davey's
parents.
 
They were justifiably
upset.
 
I took the name-calling and the
questions in stride.

I still wussed
out on calling my own kids, because, damn it, I was hoping for a miracle.

The phone call
came a little after noon.
 
I was giving
the entire deck a good swabbing, while Charlie remained out cold in his
cabin.
 
As soon as the phone rang, I felt
a knot form in my chest.
 
The caller ID
told me it was the Golden Cove Police Department.
 
The man on the phone explained he was calling
in conjunction with the Coast Guard.

"Hello?"
 
I swear to you, my voice cracked like I was a
teenager.

"May I
speak to Joseph Bierden, please?"
 
The voice was deep and calm and I hated it.

"You've
got him."

"Mr.
Bierden, this is John Booth of the Golden Cove PD.
 
Sir, I'm sorry to inform you, but we believe
we've found the body of your wife, Isabella Bierden.

Have you ever
heard words that absolutely ruined you?
 
I heard the man continuing to speak, but what came through the phone was
just noise.
 
My eyes wandered out to the
water, to the Devil's Reef off in the distance, and my ability to do more than
stare at that damned black rock became a thing of the past.
 
I could hear the wind blowing across the
deck, cutting and cold, as it passed me by.

I could see
every single glint of light that came down and bounced off the waves as they
moved slowly toward the shore.

I could smell
the ocean and the cleaning solution I used to swab the decks.

My eyes caught
the seagulls as they drifted lazily in the wind, effortlessly skimming the
water as they looked for something to eat.

I saw and
heard and tasted everything as clearly as I ever have in my entire life.

And not a
goddamned bit of it mattered to me.

Belle was
dead.

That was all I
cared about in the entire universe.

My wife, my
reason for getting up every day and going through whatever life might throw my
way, was gone; killed by the damned things that crouched in their vile caves
and watched the surface world with more than passing curiosity.

"Sir?
 
Are you
still there?"

"Yes.
 
I'm here."

"Sir,
we'll need you to identify... to make sure that we've made a proper
identification.
 
Do you need someone to
pick you up?
 
We can arrange for
transportation."

"No.
 
No.
 
It's all right.
 
I know where you
are.
 
I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Sir, I
wish that I could make this easier for you..."

"I'll be
there soon."
 
I ended the call and
folded my cell phone closed.

I didn't wake
Charlie.
 
I just started walking, every
step a beat of the funeral drum as I headed for the Golden Cove police station.

I don't
remember much of the long walk over to the station.
 
The whole trip just blurred until I actually
got to the morgue on the basement level.
 
The officer that helped me was very calm and very polite.
 
I remember his eyes were brown, but I'll be
damned if I can remember anything else about him.

They slid the
sheet-covered body out of a cooler and I looked at that draped white cloth as
if it were the most horrible thing I had ever seen.

As bad as the
phone call was, it was nothing in comparison to looking at Belle's lifeless
face.
 
She was as beautiful as ever, as
calm as I had ever seen her, and yet her body was a cold, dead thing.

I would never
touch her again, or hear her laughter, or feel her breath on my neck while we
hugged.
 
Or look into her eyes and marvel
at the way she looked when she smiled.
 
Or kiss her again.
 
Or hear her
gripe about the fucking Red Sox when they blew a game.
 
Or taste her cooking, or hear her gripe
good-naturedly about the fact that she'd married a slob.
 
She would never surprise me with breakfast in
bed again, or pretend to be surprised
herself
after
I'd made a mess of the kitchen while trying to return the favor.
 
She would never wake me from a doze and lead
me to the bedroom on a cold winter's night when I sat too damned close to the
fire and I was going stir-crazy from a month of not working every single day
for more three or more months.
 
She would
never again keep me at bay and fend off a much-needed hug because she was still
frying another pan of potatoes and ham.
 
She would never, ever kiss me awake again.

Dear Lord, the
list of things she would never do again was endless, almost as vast as the gulf
that separated us as I stared down at her refrigerated corpse, unmarked but
still so very, very dead.

I know I talked,
eventually.
 
I know I did things.
 
I took care of matters, because, really,
that's what you're supposed to do.
 
I
made arrangements to have her body transported back to our little town, and I
called the priest at our church and the insurance company, and a hundred other
numbers.
 
I know I spoke to my kids and
listened to them cry, listened to their slow realization that it wasn't just a
social call because I missed them.

I remember all
of it in a distant way, like it happened to somebody else.
 
Because for
all the
world, the only thing that mattered to me was that Belle was dead.