by Robert Bloch
“No,” Juan told him.
“Well, he ought to give the first signal soon.”
We watched the rope, but it remained taut.
“Fifteen minutes,” Don muttered to himself.
But it wasn’t fifteen minutes. It was less than one minute later that Juan shouted, “Here he come!” and he wasn’t pointing along the shot-line either, but far offside, beyond the rail.
“You’re crazy!” Don grunted. “That’s some damn fish, surfacing.”
“No—is Roberto!” Juan said.
I stared. What broke water certainly wasn’t a fish, for fish lack arms and legs, and they do not wear apparatus on their backs.
“Madre de Dios!” Juan cried. “Is Roberto!”
It was Roberto, all right, but I’d never have recognized him floating there in the water, his body swollen and distorted grotesquely by the change in pressure. Nor was that the worst of it.
Roberto’s body had come up from the wreck below. But it no longer had a head . . .
“Of course it wasn’t a shark,” Don said. “No shark could bite like that. Besides, the way it was sheared off—”
He kept his voice low, even though Dena had gone below to her bunk.
“How about a squid?” I asked. “I’ve read about the way the big ones hole up in wrecks down there.”
“You’ve read!” He gave me a pitying look. “Maybe you’d better read a little more. A squid isn’t the answer, either. There isn’t any kind of marine creature that could take a man’s head off clean at the shoulders. And that includes whales, in case you also happen to have read Moby Dick.” Don glanced at the body lying on the deck, covered with a tarpaulin. “No, the answer’s not a fish or an animal, either. Roberto must have left the line and gone off to explore the wreck. And my guess about the fish is probably right. There is no solid hull left, only a framework. When Roberto reached the wreck, the fish swam off. My guess is that he tried to enter what’s left of the ship, swimming between the ribs. And then—”
He drew a finger across his throat. It wasn’t a pleasant gesture, but it was extremely graphic.
“But how could that do it?” I persisted. “I don’t pretend to know the way those old boats were put together, but if they used iron, surely it was in big pieces. There wouldn’t be any razor edges to worry about.”
Don shrugged. “Do you know what happens to metal after it’s been under water for a few hundred years? It wears down, eventually just crumbles away. Gold wouldn’t, but old iron—”
“Then how could it be so sharp, and how would it hold up to slice a man’s head from his shoulders just because he swam against it?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find out tomorrow. Juan and I will go down.”
He was only partially correct.
They buried Roberto at sunset, and I didn’t stick around after the simple ceremony. That’s just as well, because I heard about it the next morning.
If the sharks hadn’t taken Roberto’s head, they got their consolation prize. Even though the body had been carefully wrapped and weighted down with shot, they must have found him, because they had been swimming around the yacht all night, their long cold bodies gleaming as they surfaced and snapped their teeth in the moonlight. It hadn’t been a pleasant evening.
I could tell that when I looked at Dena’s face the next day, and the crew’s reaction was even more apparent.
As for Don, he was agitated only by anger.
“They’re grumbling,” he murmured, as he led me down into the cabin, out of earshot of those on deck. “Want me to turn back, chuck the whole thing. I don’t know who started it, but then these niggers are like children. Giving me a lot of crap about curses and hoodoos.” He sighed. “But that’s not the worst of it. Juan won’t dive any more. He absolutely refuses to go down.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Do? I can turn back, the way they want me to, and come here again with a fresh crew. But that’s a waste of time and money. Dammit, I found the wreck! A few more trips down and I’ll have all the data I need on what it’ll take to bring up the treasure.”
“If it’s really there.”
“That’s just the point—I intend to find out. This is no time to stop.”
“You can still dive yourself.”
“Yes, but it isn’t a good idea to do it alone, at that depth, unless there’s someone else standing by in case of emergencies. Not that there’ll be any; now that I know what to expect, I won’t get caught the way Roberto was. Still, I need some one to rely on.”
“Have you tried offering Juan more money?”
“Certainly! I told him I’d pay him Roberto’s wages in addition to his own. But he’s scared spitless.”
Dena clambered down the ladder. “So what’s the story?” she asked, listlessly. “We leaving Nature’s wonderland?”
“Looks as though we’ll have to,” Don told her. “Unless—” He paused, eyeing me. “Unless you could help out.”
“Me?”
“Why not? You could learn to dive. I could teach you in three days. Nothing to it, with a regulator, and we’ve got all of Roberto’s equipment. I’d make it worth your while—”
“No thanks,” I said. “Don’t mention money. I’ve got a poor head for figures, but at least it’s still on my shoulders. Which is more than you can say for Roberto’s.”
“I’d cut you in on the salvage,” Don said. “We’d split the gold. Think of it, a solid gold altar, and a golden chest so big it took half a dozen men to carry it.”
Dena smiled. “Never mind the sales talk,” she said. “Can’t you see he just isn’t the outdoor type?”
I don’t know if it was that that did it, or the realization that unless I agreed she’d be sailing away. But all at once I heard myself saying, “Why not? At least I can give it a try.”
That shut her up in a hurry, and it made Don start talking. Within a matter of minutes it was all arranged. He’d abandon his project for the next few days and devote all his time to instructing me. We’d start inland, near the beach at the Cove, and then I’d get into deeper water. First with the shot-line and then alone, gradually learning how to handle myself in the depths.
And that’s just the way it worked out.
There’s no need to give a detailed account of what it’s like to learn skin diving. The sea holds a lot of surprises, but your own body holds still more. I’d never have believed I could undergo the amount of pressure I experienced in the increasing scope of my descents, or endure the cold. I learned how to accomplish the necessary decompression, how to walk and swim and handle my limbs under weird gravitational alterations. And I learned, still more importantly, that I was not afraid. For the first time I really understood the fascination of skin diving as a hobby, or as the avocation or vocation of men like Clarke and Cousteau.
Don was a good, if impatient instructor. And more than his grudging praise, I relished the reluctant admiration of Dena. Thus stimulated, I underwent a rapid apprenticeship.
By the morning of the fifth day, I was ready to stand by and handle the line while Don dived. The crew seemed to have settled down into a state of morose resignation once more, and there were no difficulties.
I watched Don adjust his helmet and fins and clamber over the side. Dena leaned over the rail at my elbow and we traced the trail of bubbles rising through the translucent water. Then we waited.
Almost an hour passed before Don reappeared on the line at the twenty-foot decompression stage. He stayed so long that I went down myself, gesturing to him in the water. He signaled for me to leave, with a wave of his hand. I came up again.
“Is he all right?” Dena asked.
“I guess so. But he’s certainly in no hurry to come up.”
Finally, though, he emerged. The fins, the tanks, the helmet came off. He took a towel, sank into a deck chair, and his usually ruddy face was unnaturally pale in the midday sun.
“What’s the matter?” I muttered.
I nodded. He’d explained it to me—the nitrogen intoxication which sometimes affects the central nervous system after one relies on the air supply from the tanks during long dives to great depths. It brings on anaesthesia, hallucinations, and all sorts of odd reactions, but disappears when the diver decompresses.
“Took a long time to wear off,” Don continued. “Hit me so suddenly I wasn’t really aware of it. At first I thought the men were right about their squid, or whatever they think is down there in the wreck.”
“You reached it?”
“Yes. And there is no hull, as I suspected; just masses of fish clustering almost solidly around the crevice where the ship settled. Inside there’s bits of wood and metal still leaving a partial skeleton, but all the heavy stuff—the guns and the spars—is sunken into the sand. Over at one side there’s a big bulge. I’d swear it’s the altar and the chest we’re looking for, but I never got to examine them.
“Because that’s when I began to feel funny. The water seemed to be turning black. The first idea I had was about the squid, so I scuttled out of there. And when I turned around to take a look, the whole area seemed to be not only black, but boiling. Clouds of bubbles. Fish, of course, returning to the spot. And they’d churned up the silt. But at the time I would have sworn there was some big animal coming up from under the wreckage. Then, when I saw Roberto’s head bobbing around in the center of the black stuff, I realized what was wrong with me. I was drunk as a coot. So I came back up on the rope. I was so woozy I almost forgot to let go of the weights.”
“Did you find the place where Roberto had his accident?”
“No, I didn’t. Maybe you can when you go down.”
“You mean—?”
“Why not? No reason why you shouldn’t get used to it. I won’t tackle it again today, so it’s your turn. Maybe you can get closer than I did. Just remember to watch out for the nitrogen when it hits you. Chances are it won’t, though.”
Dena shook her head. “He shouldn’t risk it,” she said. “After all, he’s just learning, and it’s over two hundred feet. You told me yourself it calls for an experienced diver—”
“Only one way to get experience, isn’t there?” I said. “I’m ready.”
And I was, the moment I heard the veiled concern in Dena’s voice.
I lowered my mask over the side, dipping it in the water so that no mist would cloud the inner surface of the goggles. Juan strapped the cylinder blocks of the regulator to my back and looped the hose over my head as I fitted the rubber mask until it moulded tightly to my face. I gripped the mouthpiece between my lips as Juan hung ten pounds in weights to my belt. I adjusted my fins, picked up a spear, then went over the side, grasping the rope with my left hand as I lowered myself into the water.
It was cold. Gradually I felt my body adjusting to the temperature and the pressure, just as my eyes adjusted to the deeper gloom. Bubbles burst around me and fish swam past. My lungs ached. I straightened to a horizontal position so that intake and exhaust were equalized at the same pressure level and the regulator would function properly. It was hard not to panic; to remember, in effect, that the demand regulator was doing my breathing for me, or at least supplying the air which my constricted lungs needed as I flailed my way down. The pressure grew stronger, my movements correspondingly slower. Here in the deeper darkness I began to feel drunk—nitrogen narcosis was not the cause, merely the gravitational change. My ears and sinuses ached, and I swallowed until the pain eased. A school of small fish glided by. I was tempted to abandon the shot-line and follow them. But no, the line was my guide to the treasure below. I went down, deeper into the darkness.
Not enough nitrogen had entered my blood-stream to produce any side effects. All I had to worry about was the pressure. How far down was I? Close to two hundred feet, probably. It was hard to move, now; hard to hold the spear. I wanted to rest for a while, to float.
The water here was dark. Only the bubbles from the regulator retained any color—they were round and yellowish, like beads of amber strung endlessly upwards from here to the surface. So far to the surface up there. So cold down here.
And getting colder now. Because I was descending again. Deeper and deeper. Darker and darker. Colder and colder. Down went McGinty—
Drunk. All right, so I was drunk. But that was good, because I couldn’t feel the pain any more. My ears had stopped hurting. The cold didn’t bother me, now. And it was easy to continue, to go all the way down. All the way down to where the treasure lay—the golden altar.
And then I saw the rock crevice, saw the great solid swarm of fish packed in a writhing mass and rising up like the dim drowned outline of a ghostly galleon. And I left the line and wriggled forward, moving like a fish myself. A swordfish, with a spear. They fled before me, these little ones. I was Neptune, scattering my subjects. Make way for the king! King of the Sea.
Drunken diver, rather. Or was it drunken driver? Could they arrest you for drunken diving? Fine you twenty clams?
I tried to clear my mind. Mustn’t go on like that. Had to be careful, avoid running into whatever it was that sheared off poor Roberto’s head. Funny way to die. Most men lost their heads over a woman—
And then I saw her.
I saw the woman.
She was standing perhaps fifty feet to my left, away from the crevice and the wreck. It was the glint of light that first caught my eye; a reflection brighter than anything else here in the murky dimness. I thought it might be the sunlight glinting from the scales of a large fish, and I turned my head, and I saw her.
Saw the black hair floating free in a mane that masked the face. Saw the sudden movement of her body as she turned and waved the cutlass. The gleaming cutlass, razor-sharp—
Women do not walk the ocean floor brandishing cutlasses. I realized that, but my awareness was only partial. Because another part of me was whispering, now you know. Now you know what cut off Roberto’s head.
And then she saw me, and the black mane whipped back, revealing her face. It was a blob of greenish-white gristle with four gaping holes; two black sockets; a jagged nasal septum, and a grinning maw that parted now as a tiny fish wriggled out.
And it wasn’t the skull that frightened me, it wasn’t the sight of a corpse walking here at the bottom of the sea. It was just the hideous, grotesque inconsequence of the little fish swimming out of the dead mouth.
That’s what I was afraid of, and that’s what I remembered as I pulled in panic for the shot-line. As I struggled to release the weights I dropped my spear and stared. The figure wavered off in the distance, disappearing into the crevice where the ship lay. And now the black bubbles were rising, cascading in clouds from the spot. Through the turbulence I could see the skull face melting and blending, and I saw another face that could have been Roberto’s and yet other—brown, bearded, grimacing faces that formed out of bubbling blackness and disappeared in inky incoherence.
Then I was going up the line, not remembering to move slowly, but propelled by the panic, flailing forward in frantic fear.
At the fifty-foot level I forced myself to stop and wait. The water below was clear and no inchoate ichor rose about me. I counted slowly, then climbed again. Twenty feet now—another five minutes and I’d be free. Free and safe. But what if I waited, and something came after me? What if it was following me, crawling along the line?
My lungs were bursting. My head was bursting. Not with pressure, but with fright. I couldn’t wait any more, I couldn’t stand it, I had to get out, I had to—
I kicked and released myself, straining upwards, striving for the sun. My head broke water and I could see the light, feel it all about me.
Then it dissolved into darkness and I went down again, down into the black bubbles . . .
It was Don who hauled me out. I learned it later, when I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the deck.
“Don’t try to talk,” Dena said.
I nodde
d. I had neither the strength nor the desire. It was a good twenty minutes and two shots of rum later before I was able to sit in a deck chair and tell my story.
Don shook his head. “Nitrogen narcosis,” he said. “You had it worse than I.”
“But the corpse with the cutlass—Roberto’s head—”
“Hallucinations.”
“Yes, but how?” I thought about it for a moment. “Was it the manuscript that set me off? The part about the pirates? Did I subconsciously remember Mary Read and Anne Bonney and the other females who sailed in Blackbeard’s day?”
“You must have,” Don told me.
“But we both saw Roberto.”
“We were both thinking about him, and what happened down there.”
“Well, what did happen, do you suppose?”
Don sighed. “Perhaps we can find out tomorrow.”
“You’re not going down again?” Dena asked.
“Of course I am. One more trip and I should be able to locate that altar, and the chest. A few fish churning up the silt aren’t going to scare me away.” He grinned at me. “Tell you what. If you’re so concerned about my welfare, I’ll take Howard along tomorrow for a guardian. We’ll both go down. Whatd’ya say?”
What could I say, with Dena watching me? I nodded, reluctantly. I didn’t really want to go down into that deeper darkness again.
And that night, when the dreams came, I was left with still less desire to return to the wreck.
The dreams came, and I lay tossing in my bed in the old house on the hillside above the winding waterfront of Santa Rita. I knew I was there, in my bed, but at the same time I was once again writhing in deep waters.
In my dreams I swam down to the wreckage, wriggled into the crevice where the black bubbles churned, and scraped at the sand with my spear until the point wedged against a solid object. It was the chest, of course, and I could detect the outline of the heavy lid set solid on the massive golden container. I sought to brush away the encrustation of corrosion and fungoid growth and gaze upon the gold beneath, but as I reached out the lid began to rise. It swung open slowly, and the blackness seeped out; the black bubbles burst like bloating blossoms. And they were not bubbles, but heads, and each head had a face, and each face had a mouth, and each mouth was gaping wide to greet me with a grotesque grimace. Yet these were only smoky bubbles, ghost faces floating there in the water—the broad, flat faces of savages, the bearded faces of hidalgos and Spanish mariners, the seamed and pitted countenances of corsairs; yes, and here was Roberto again, and the woman. The dark cloud floated forth, and it was like a great black bush bearing heads for fruit; a strange undersea growth waving there in the dim depths, growing before my eyes. And now the bush put forth fresh branches, and the branches were long and waving; a writhing mass of titanic tentacles. Still the smoke poured out, and billowed forth, and now I perceived that there was a body beneath the nightmare nebulosity of faces and feelers; a black body that was like a squid, a sea-serpent, a reptilian monster spawned in the dawn of pre-history when Nature shaped strange simulacra from primeval slime. And beneath the seething, shifting smokiness of that amorphous and polymorphous presence there were real eyes—real eyes that glowed and glared and glinted at me. But they were more than eyes; they were mouths as well. Yes, they were mouths, for I could see the pupils gape and the lids rolled back like lips, and I knew that the eyes would devour me, they would ingest me in their hunger, incorporate my essence into the black being of that incredible body so that I too would take my place as one of the scores of shifting shapes in the smoke which emanated from it.
