Deeper (32 page)

"You want
to pull up over here?
 
I can get it
unloaded in no time."
 
What can I
say?
 
I was in a hurry to get where I
needed to be, and I figured if I pushed it, I could get there well before dawn
and be done with everything.

He moved the
truck in as close as he could to the dock and parked it.
 
Before I even reached the back of his
vehicle, he was unloading the packages from the rear of the truck.
 
The muscles in his arms corded with the
weight, but he hauled the bulky cases with nearly manic speed.
 
After I joined in on the process we were done
in just under five minutes.

"Well,
thanks for your help."
 
I looked at
the man and smiled.
 
Were you supposed to
tip hired muscle?
 
I didn't know but I
was willing to find out if it got him off the boat a little faster.

The man just
stood there, looking back at my street and my house and finally looked over at
me.
 
"I'm sensing you might not have
all the details.
 
I'm going with
you."

"Excuse
me?"

"Demetrius
said I was to bring you your supplies and go with you.
 
Said you would need
backup."

"Yeah?
 
Well he's
wrong."
 
I walked toward the
captain's deck and nodded in the direction of the gangplank.
 
"I appreciate the offer but I've got
everything under control."

"How long
have you known Demetrius, Joe?"
 
I
knew where this was going and pretty much resigned
myself
to it.

"Little over twenty years."

"Ever
known him to like it when he asks you to do something and you don't do
it?"

"Can't say as it's a wise thing to do."

"So you
can understand when I tell you to just start going.
 
I'm not here to report to him or any of that
shit.
 
I'm here to make sure his
son-in-law comes back in one piece."

"Fine.
 
You can
lift the gangplank."

He did and I
did.
 
Not much later, we were on our way
back to Golden Cove and I was trying to talk myself out of pushing the stranger
who worked for my father-in-law off the side of the
Marianne Winston
.
 
He would
have probably made me into chum for the fish before I'd managed to push him
over, so I let it go.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

We didn't
become friends.
 
I was too busy piloting
my crab boat and he was too busy looking at the water like it was a foreign
thing.
 
Maybe he was looking for Deep
Ones.
 
I don't doubt poor Demetrius told
him everything that I had said.

As it turns
out my new bodyguard's name was Buddy Fisk.
 
I can't imagine that Buddy was his real name, but it was good enough for
me.
 
He didn't smoke, he didn't drink and
he didn't talk, so the travel time was smooth and easy.

I pulled into
the docks and took care of getting myself a second spot to park one of my
vessels.
 
I didn't think I'd be there for
very long, but I went ahead and rented space for a week.

The guy who
took my money expressed his condolences, but he did it with a look on his face
that made me think I was supposed to be a local celebrity of some kind.
 
I guess it's not every day you find a corpse
on the shore, even in Golden Cove.

Once business
was taken care of I looked out toward the reef and saw my yacht sitting in the
same place where it had been for the last two weeks.
 
Two weeks to completely turn my life into
shit.
 
It didn't take long to knock the
foundations out from under my world.

I took the
Marianne
out to the reef myself, with
Buddy along for the ride.
 
He still
wasn't much of a talker and that suited me just fine.
 
I didn't feel much like chitchat to pass the
time.
 
The only people on deck when I
dropped anchor were Jacob and Mary Parsons.
 
They seemed a little surprised to see me, but helped me climb from one
boat to the other anyway.

I had to climb
the ladder on the port side, as the starboard was being left for the divers to
come back on board.
 
Damnedest
thing:
 
climbing aboard that yacht felt
like coming home.
 
Even with everything
that had gone to hell lately with everything I was planning, it was nice to set
my foot on the
Isabella
.

The heart
almost never makes as much sense as it should.
 
I guess that's the only way I can put it.

"Joe, I
wish I knew what to say to make it better."
 
Jacob looked positively miserable.
 
I knew the feeling very well.

"Not much
you could say, Jacob, but thanks."

He shook my
hand and nodded his head.
 
Mary was a
little more straightforward.
 
She moved
over and hugged herself to me, looking at me with tears in her eyes.
 
"She was a special lady, Joe.
 
I barely had a chance to meet her, but she was
something special."

Damn, but I
didn't want to cry.
 
I felt like that was
all I'd been doing.

"So, why
don't you guys catch me up on what's been going on around here."
 
I didn't want to talk about Belle.
 
I didn't want to hear any condolences.
 
I wanted to know what I might be facing.

"Well,
Martin has filled us in on what happened when you and he got to the
lab."
 
Jacob didn't look at me as he
spoke.
 
"That was after he went to
the emergency room.
 
He got lucky.
 
He only needed around forty stitches to sew
up his head from where that thing got him."

"Yeah,
well, we weren't really expecting it to already be loose."
 
I felt bad about what had happened to
him.
 
Not bad enough to let him off the
hook for what he'd done, but a little guilty for not being more prepared when
the damned thing charged.

"He said
you saved his life."

"Scuse me?"

"Seriously.
 
He
said if you hadn't distracted that beast it would have taken his head off his
shoulders."

"That
wasn't the way I saw it, but okay.
 
What
did the police do?"

"What
could they do?
 
They took the bodies and
took their pictures and now there's an ongoing investigation."

I didn't think
the cops would have much luck finding the fish man and said as much.

"They'll
never solve the case, but I don't think they'll try very hard, either."

"Why's
that?"
 
It was Buddy who asked the
question this time.

Jacob eyed him
for a second, taking his measure, maybe, and then answered anyway.
 
"Because a lot of the
officers in this area bear the "Innsmouth Look."

"Bullshit."
 
I couldn't stop my mouth from opening.
 
My protest had as much to do with shock at
the notion as the thought that he was wrong.

"Is it,
Joe?
 
You saw the police officers that
were on the docks, pulling out their paperwork.
 
You dealt with a few more of them when you went to the station.
 
I'm not saying that they're monsters.
 
I'm saying there's a chance that they are
more than they seem and that they were placed there by their relatives."

The very
notion made me seethe.
 
I had reported
people missing to the police in town, reported my wife missing, hoping and
praying that she would be returned to me safely.
 
Instead, I got a call from the police — who
according to Jacob were part of a much bigger problem — saying they'd found her
body.

"Okay.
 
What else is going on?
 
I thought you guys were going to take a few
days off?"

"We did,
Joe.
 
But, with everything that happened,
with poor Belle..."
 
He stopped
talking and looked to his wife.

Mary spoke
softly, but I heard her.
 
"Martin
had some tests run on the samples while you were gone."

"Samples?"

"DNA
tests, genetic profiles, everything he could think of.
 
He went to a couple of different
labs
 
and
told them he
needed to identify a species.
 
The
results were sort of cloudy."

I kept looking
at her, trying to absorb what she said.
 
When I didn't stop her, she continued.
 
"Martin says the results proved what he expected.
 
He said the Deep Ones are genetic
chimeras."

"Which
means?"

"They can
breed with other species, Joe.
 
They can
mate with a human being or with an octopus and still produce viable
offspring.
 
There's evidence in the DNA
from that one specimen that shows dormant genetic information from several
different species, including human DNA and I think even some shark."

"How very
nice for them, I'm sure."
 
I knew it
was a big thing.
 
Like I've said before,
I'm a reader, not a scientist, but I knew enough to understand that what she
was talking about was the sort of thing that would make genetic scientists
go
bug-shit crazy.

"I know
this isn't exactly what you want to hear about, Joe.
 
But it is significant."

"I get
that they're a big deal.
 
Unexplained
phenomena and genetic chimera and all sorts of new studies will come from
them.
 
I get that, Mary.
 
But all I care about is that those things
down there killed my wife and they're dangerous."

It was Jacob
that answered me.
 
"Martin also said
he'd managed to break the code of how they speak."

"Excuse
me?"

"He said
he could communicate with them."

"Yeah?
 
How about
he passes a few messages on for me?"
 
I felt my temper rising and tried to bite it back.

"You
never can tell, Joe.
 
He's down there
right now, trying to work out a way to have a meaningful conversation with at
least one or two of them."

"I don't
believe this."
 
I stopped myself
from saying anything else.

The Parsonses
looked away from me, at a loss for words.
 
I looked away from them, too.
 
I
looked down at the water where it lapped against the side of the Devil's Reef.
 
Martin Ward was trying to talk with monsters
somewhere down below that rock.
 
He
wanted to have a meaningful conversation with them.
 
He wanted to learn from them, and who knows,
maybe learn the secrets of the universe from the damned things.

I hoped it was
a good conversation.
 
I really hoped he
had a wonderful time learning what they could teach him, because as far as I
was concerned, it would be his last chance to talk with the things.

I meant to see
them ruined for what they had done, and I wasn't going to wait to make sure he
got what he wanted.

As far as I
was concerned, Ward was talking to dead things.
 
They just didn't know it yet.

20

I was in my
cabin asleep when the divers came back on board.
 
I stayed that way for most of the night.
 
Buddy took one of the other cabins.
 
What he did I do not want or need to know.

When I woke up
it was just after three in the morning.
 
I'd slept for close to eighteen hours.

What woke me
was the sound of people arguing.
 
Well
that and maybe the crick I'd developed in my neck from sleeping too damned
much.

I recognized
the voices.
 
Charlie was having it out with
Diana.
 
I stood up and walked to the door
of my cabin, having no trouble at all hearing every word they said.

"It's not
like that Diana.
 
This was your project,
your dream.
 
I was trying to help
you."

"It was
never my idea to try talking to those goddamned things.
 
They're monsters!"
 
Her voice sounded like she'd been
crying.
 
Charlie's sounded like he was
trying to calm her down.

"Well
then why were you out here?
 
What made
you come back here if it wasn’t to learn about them?"
 
Okay, maybe he wasn't trying to calm her
down, but he was certainly trying to stay calm himself.

"Because Martin asked me to come back.
 
He needed a diver."