Deeper (39 page)

Still too
dazed to do much of anything, I felt the ship move and turn against the tide,
and was aware that we were going somewhere, but couldn't have guessed where.

Was I
afraid?
 
No.
 
I think I was too surprised to be alive for
that.

I did not see
the captain of the ghost ship, but I hard him as he spoke and felt his hand on
my chest.
 
"You’ve done well,
Captain.
 
Better than I
would have hoped.
 
The Devil Reef
has long been a bane to us.
 
The water
devils prevented our coming closer with their magic.
 
Their sorceries have been our curse for over
a hundred years.
 
We could not pass the
Devil Reef, nor even touch its stone.
 
Deep below the waters, where you and yours have traveled,
the
land was marked by their spells.
 
Whatever sorcery you used to destroy your
vessel has ruined that for them."

I tried to speak
but couldn't, and I think it was then I began to suspect my paralysis was from
something other than my injuries.
 
I
couldn't open my eyes or even lift one finger, but there wasn't enough pain for
me to believe that I was physically unable to react.

"Sleep,
if you would, Captain.
 
We'll have you to
shore soon enough.
 
We have had our fill
of the sea demons and their constant interferences.
 
We shall do what we can to guard against them
in the future."

I slept.
 
I really don't think I was given a choice.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

When I woke up
I was on the
Isabella
, in my
bed.
 
The sun wasn't up yet, but I could
see the dawn's light creeping from the edge of the ocean in the distance.
 
Between that light and the edge of the yacht,
I could see what was left of the Devil's Reef — or I guess more properly the
Devil Reef — and that the shape of it had been changed by the explosion.

I didn't think
for even a second that anything that had happened to me was a dream.
 
My body hurt too much and I was still covered
in the foul stink from the fish men.

If anything, I
thought my still being alive was a dream.

I moved with
all the speed of a geriatric paraplegic.
 
I don't think I ever hurt that much in my entire life, physically
anyway.

I had a
thousand questions I wanted answered, but didn't have the initiative to get up
yet.
 
Diana was gone, I was sure of that,
and I hoped for her sake that she was dead.
 
I didn't much want to think of the alternative.

Charlie was
dead.
 
That knowledge sapped me of
strength, and left me almost as cold and empty as the knowledge that Belle was
gone forever.

Buddy.
 
I had no idea where he was.

That was what
finally got me to move.
 
I stood up and
walked from my cabin, slowing working the stiffness from my shoulders and
legs.
 
The face I saw in the mirror
looked only a little familiar.
 
My
reflection had more lines and wrinkles than I wanted to think about, even if
they were hidden under some serious bruises and scratches.

I found buddy
unconscious on Charlie's bed and left him there.
 
Then I went to my cabin again, stripped out
of my clothes and took a long shower, careful to examine the deep cuts in my
chest from the claws that had torn my clothes and skin alike.

When I was
done I dressed as calmly as I could and made breakfast.
 
I knew the divers would be around soon
enough.
 
I really, really hoped Ward
would be with them.

The professor
and
me
needed to have a long talk or maybe a short
one.
 
I guess that depended on him.

Buddy woke up
by the time breakfast was finished.
 
The
way he moved made me feel better about my own aches and pains.
 
His hands had swollen from all the weapons
he'd fired the night before and despite his normally calm exterior, I could see
that he was still shaken by what had happened.

Neither of us
said a word about it at first.
 
After a
few minutes of eating and drinking coffee, he was the one who broke the
silence.
 
"Why are we still
alive?"

"Dumb luck, apparently."
 
I told him what I remembered from the night
before and he confirmed my own beliefs.
 
He'd
been up and moving before the ghosts came along and dropped him in the same way
they'd put me down.

I got out a
set of binoculars to look over the Devil's Reef, trying to find any signs of
what had happened the night before.
 
I
found plenty of them.
 
Though the
Marianne
was properly scuttled, there
were fragments of wood and bits of debris still floating in the water.

The part that
actually threw me was when I realized there were no police vessels out
there.
 
Even that early in the day I'd
expected some sort of response from the noise of the explosion alone.

The college
kids didn't show up to distract me from my thoughts.
 
Neither did Ward.
 
But the Parsonses did.
 
Jacob and Mary climbed the gangplank and
called out to let us know they were there.

One look at
our faces was all it took for them to know that something was wrong, but I
learned soon enough that they'd already guessed that.

"Martin
is in the hospital," Jacob explained.
 
"He said one of the Deep Ones bit his ear off."

"He's
lying."
 
I poured them each a cup of
coffee and repressed the urge to head straight for the hospital.
 
"I shot his ear off."

"What in
the name of God happened last night, Joe?"

It took about
twenty minutes for Buddy and I to fill them in, and fifteen more to answer all
of their questions.
 
They were horrified,
of course, but both of them listened as calmly as they could.
 
I guess when you've done the sort of work
they do you get used to things not being what they seem at first.

"I
checked Martin's room this morning, Joe.
 
I found all of the notes he's made and I'm taking them with me."

"Not
worried about breaking and entering laws, Jacob?"

"It's
hard to prove, especially since all of the rooms are in my name and the
contracts we signed before this started give me full rights to all
research."
 
He smiled, but it wasn't
a happy expression.
 
Jacob was bitter,
and I suppose he had every right to be.
 
He was especially shocked by the news that Ward had given the Deep One
that had been his ‘guest’ permission to choose a sacrifice from the people
aboard the
Isabella
.
 
I imagine he figured it was the luck of the
draw that had ended Belle's life instead of Mary's.
 
Or maybe the thing that had been in the
shower had somehow told the other fish men who to grab.
 
I don't think I'll ever really know the
answer to that.

For her part
Mary sipped at her coffee and listened to us talking, her eyes moving from one
speaker to the next as she absorbed every word that was spoken.

She finally
spoke up after the conversation died down.
 
"Obviously the expedition is done."
 
Her words were strictly
business
,
but her tone also carried a hint of apology and maybe regret.
 
"We never meant for any of this to
happen, Joe.
 
Please believe that."

I looked at
Jacob and then at Mary and nodded.
 
"I know.
 
I don't hold you
accountable for anything that happened here, guys.
 
Not one bit of it."

"Maybe
you should."
 
I looked over at Mary
as she said that, puzzled by her response.
 
"We were the ones that agreed to this.
 
We were the ones that funded it."

"You've
been friends with Ward for years, right?
 
Did he ever come across as a fanatic?"

Mary shook her
head.
 
"Eccentric, maybe, but he
never really talked much about the studies he did until he came to us for
funding.
 
We thought he was looking for
signs of a dead race, and it was a good excuse to get out here and see if we
could find any truth behind all the rumors about ghosts."

Jacob nodded
his head in agreement.

"So why
would I blame you?
 
The way I figure it,
as far as he was concerned everyone on the yacht was a potential
sacrifice.
 
I've been thinking about it a
lot, too, believe me.
 
The man came on at
least two expeditions out here and the only person who survived both of them
was him.
 
That tells me he's either very
lucky or he was up to something.
 
After
what happened last night, there's really not much doubt about which answer is
right."

"What are
you going to do about it, Joe?"
 
Mary's voice was small and weak, barely even a whisper.

Buddy answered
before I could.
 
"He's not going to
do a thing."
 
I looked at him and he
shrugged.
 
"All he has to work with
are allegations and guesses.
 
All that
could happen to him is he could get himself in a lot of trouble with the law,
and one of the reasons I'm here is to make sure that doesn't happen."

I stared at
him for what had to be half a minute and he stared back.
 
Finally I nodded my head.
 
"What he said."
 
I wasn't happy about it, but what else was
there for me to do?

We talked for
a while longer and Jacob came up with a theory about the ghosts.
 
He mentioned it out loud after we left the
docks to take one last look at the Devil's Reef.
 
Not so much because we wanted to see how much
damage was done, but because I wanted to pay my last respects to Charlie, who I
was certain would never be found.

The damage was
much more impressive than I'd expected.
 
While I could see what had happened to the reef with binoculars when I
was onshore, most of the real impact had happened on the far side, facing the
ocean, not Golden Cove.
 
A good fifty
feet of the black rock had been shattered in the explosion, and the crater was
easily fifteen feet in from where the edge had been before.
 
If there were any bullet casings or firearms
out there we couldn't see them and I have to be honest here — I wasn't willing
to look around for very long.

While the
ghosts had apparently done one hell of a job slaughtering the fish men, I
wasn't exactly willing to bet my life on all of them being gone.

We left after
I spent a couple of minutes looking over the damage.

Around an hour
later, the Parsonses had gathered all of their belongings from the hotel and
told the college kids that it was finished.
 
I didn't bother leaving the
Isabella
or trying to file a police report.
 
Let's
be honest here, I had every reason to believe that Jacob was right about the
police in that town.
 
I didn't see any
reason to push any buttons with the locals.

How did I feel
as I left Golden Cove?
 
I don't really
know.
 
Numb, I guess.
 
After everything that I'd been through, I
just didn't have it in me to care about the damned place.
 
I was alive, which was more than I expected,
and I hurt in both my body and my soul.

I went
home.
 
I piloted the
Isabella
back to her proper place at Bowden's Point, and I said my
goodbyes to the Parsonses.
 
They promised
to keep in touch and I promised the same.
 
Maybe we will, but I think we all have a lot to recover from.

Buddy said
he'd let Demetrius know what had happened and I thanked him for that.

I cleaned up
the
Isabella
as best I could, washing
her down and shutting her down.
 
It was
late enough in autumn that if anyone had wanted to go out on the water I'd have
just laughed at them.
 
If I'd been
starving and desperate, I still wouldn't have considered taking her out.
 
Of course, after what I'd been through that
wasn't even a possibility.

I went
home.
 
To my empty house, my empty life,
and I started the process of mourning properly.

Did I ever
think about the Deep Ones and Golden Cove?
 
Yes, every day.
 
Mostly I locked
myself away in my house and stayed there like a hermit and let myself think
about Belle and Charlie and everyone else.

And I let
myself heal as best I could.

By the spring
thaw I was mostly myself again.
 
When the
weather finally started getting warmer, I went back to the docks and cleaned up
my girl, grateful for the chance to escape from the house I'd made a prison for
a while.