The Devil's Deep

by Michael Wallace

  “Just a little,” Wes lied.

  “My son doesn’t speak much English, yet, but he’s learning.” He looked at Tomás. “No hablan español.”

  Tomás shrugged and gave a friendly smile. “I try English.”

  “Let’s load up,” Wes said, “and we can figure out where to go.”

  Ernesto nodded. “Tomás can help with your gear. You can park down here. It’ll be easier.”

  “Good, I’ll get the truck.”

  “What’s all that about?” Becca asked as soon as they got out of earshot of the two men.

  “You mean the Spanish? You never know when it might be useful to overhear a conversation. Anyway, remember I want to get on the boat before asking about Rosa or my Uncle Davis. Don’t want to give him a chance to call anyone. Know what I mean?”

  “Okay, I’ll play along. But he seems like a decent enough guy, and he might be worried about Rosa.”

  “So much so that he might not be happy if we tell him something happened to her. Would suck to be on a boat with a couple of pissed off Ticos. Especially when we’re diving.”

  “Point taken. I’ll follow your lead.”

  They pulled the truck to the docks and helped Tomás with their gear while Ernesto readied the boat. They pulled away a few minutes later, chopping against the surf as the shore retreated to their back. The green mountains of the Corcovado stretched behind them. Wes put on his sunglasses against the glare of sun on water.

  Ernesto opened up the engine. The wake split the water behind the boat. There were a handful of other boats, some with fishing lines in the water, others headed for open water like they were. About ten minutes later, they passed someone fighting a marlin or swordfish that launched itself into the air. Tomás pointed and said something to his father. A yellow speedboat paced them off starboard.

  Becca took off her shorts and t-shirt. She wore a bikini underneath. “Come on,” she said. “I feel like I’m sitting here in my underwear with you all dressed.”

  “You know those dead fish that wash up on the shores of Lake Champlain when the ice melts in spring?” Wes asked. “That’s what my skin looks like under here.”

  She’d opened the bottle of sun block, the heavy SPF 45 stuff for protecting bleached Vermont winter bodies. She slathered it on her skin. “Yeah, well take a look at me.”

  “Why do you think I’ve got these sunglasses on? I’ve seen darker ski trails.”

  “Strip, buddy,” she said and tossed him the sun block. “Or your view will get a lot less interesting when I put my clothes back on.”

  “I’ll strip.” He peeled off his shirt, then squirted sun block onto his hands. He and Becca ended up doing each other’s backs.

  Ernesto sat at the wheel and chatted in Spanish with his son. The engine drowned out their words. Wes got the impression, though, they were happy to be doing the tourist bit instead of fishing. Change of pace, he guessed, and probably paid better than the average day’s catch.

  When they were maybe a mile off shore, Ernesto throttled back the engine and called back, “You know where you want to go, yet?”

  “I do,” Wes said. He fished into the pocket of his shorts. “I want you to take me to my uncle’s last dive.”

  Ernesto looked back with a frown. “What? Your uncle? Where did he go?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.” He walked up and handed Ernesto the receipt.

  The man looked it over. “This doesn’t tell me anything. I give this to everyone who pre-pays for a tour.”

  “I’ll bet you remember this dive. My uncle was Davis Carter.”

  Ernesto let the engine die to an idle and stared at the receipt. He looked at Wes with a new intensity.

  “Que te pasa?” Tomás asked. What’s the matter?

  But Ernesto didn’t answer his son. “What’s this about, Mr…Carter?”

  “Last name is Pilson. Davis was my mother’s brother.” He kept his voice firm, but not hostile. “You were with my uncle on his last dive. Where was that?”

  Ernesto gave a suspiciously long pause. “He dove at Bajo del Diablo. Off Caño Island.”

  “Tell me about the dive,” Wes said. “Advanced?”

  “High intermediate. Underwater volcanic hills and canyons. Lots of fish, rays, sharks.”

  Wes nodded. A person suffering nitrogen narcosis, caught in the so-called rapture of the deep, could get lost in underwater canyons. “How deep?”

  Ernesto considered. “Sixty, eighty feet.”

  And that’s what made it an intermediate dive. Deep, but not excessively so. In fact, it was too shallow for nitrogen narcosis. Rapture of the deep was the cousin of the bends. At depth, under pressure, the body could absorb more nitrogen than on the surface. The bends happened when you surfaced too quickly and all those nitrogen bubbles expanded. Nitrogen narcosis, however, was the drunk/mellow feeling that came from all that nitrogen when you were still underwater. Just like alcohol, some people felt it earlier than others. At 150 feet it was almost inevitable; many felt it at 100 feet. But at sixty or eighty? Not likely.

  He kept his suspicions to himself. “And you’re sure that this is where Davis took his last dive? Bajo del Diablo?”

  Ernesto nodded grimly. He still didn’t meet his son’s questioning gaze. “Absolutely certain, Mr. Pilson. Very popular dive. Huge manta rays, schools of barracudas, jacks, snappers, and lots and lots of sharks. White tips and bull sharks.”

  “Take us there. I want to dive it.”

  “Of course. It won’t take long.” He throttled up the engine.

  Wes went back to sit with Becca. Now that it was noisy again, he figured they could talk in low voices. “That was an interesting reaction. Notice how he started calling me Mr. all of a sudden? He’s guilty as hell about what happened.”

  “Or scared because of your family,” she offered.

  “There’s that,” he admitted.

  “But how deep did he say it was?”

  “Eighty, max.”

  “That’s what I thought. You said your uncle drowned after suffering nitrogen narcosis. That doesn’t happen at eighty feet.”

  “No. And Ernesto was sure that this was the dive. Of course,” he said, as something occurred to him, “they don’t go in the water themselves. Just take experienced divers out to dive on their own. What I’m thinking is that there’s a deeper part.”

  “Maybe,” Becca said. She didn’t sound convinced. “Why don’t you get the rest of the story, see where else Ernesto disagrees with your Aunt Charlotte.”

  “Good idea. But let’s check out this dive first. If it really is sixty or eighty feet, we’ll grill Ernesto some more once we’re back on the boat.”

  The wind caught Becca’s hair and blew it across her face and she flicked it to one side. “Or better yet, when we reach dry land. Case it gets ugly.”

  “Bajo del Diablo,” Wes said. “That’s the name of the dive. Means the Devil’s Deep or Devil’s Depth. Ernesto says there are lots of sharks. Bulls and white tips, mostly.”

  She looked nervous at that. “Sharks? Is he just trying to scare us?”

  “There’ll be sharks, all right. But don’t worry. Just don’t start bleeding into the water and you’ll be fine.”

  “So, no open wounds. Check.”

  Wes and Becca reviewed underwater hand signals: come here, go that way, ears won’t clear, going up, low on air, etc. He’d never used most of the signals, but heaven help you if your equipment failed and you needed to buddy breathe but couldn’t remember the sign. Becca knew them better than he did; seems she’d already reviewed them the night before their flight out of Burlington.

  Isla del Caño came into sight. It was a small island with trees climbing the steep hillsides and palm trees to the edges of its beaches. Rocky islets grew into the ocean, making an approach from this side difficult. A few minutes later, Ernesto throttled back the engine. The boat rocked on the swells while the two men came back to where Wes and Becca sat.

  Wes was suddenl
y conscious that they were in a boat in the Pacific Ocean, a dozen miles from the mainland, with two men who’d been with his uncle when he’d died. Just what happened on that last dive?

  “This is it,” Ernesto said. “You sure you want to go down?”

  “I was with my uncle that last trip to Costa Rica. We dived together just a couple of days before he died. I’ve never come to grips with it. I need to go down. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure,” the man said. “Maybe. But it’s your life and your dive. Just be careful. It was an ugly day. I think about it a lot. And I don’t want something like that to happen again. So be careful.”

  “We will,” Becca said.

  The boat rocked in the water. Tomás flipped open the storage chests and hauled out their air tanks and the duffel bag holding their smaller gear.

  Becca had bought a dive skin at Tropical Adventures in Puerto Jiménez. It cut off at the thighs and just past the shoulders and was green with splashes of pink and neon orange. Basic black for Wes. Unlike Becca, he had to take off his swim trunks to get into it, which he did in the cabin.

  “Tell me,” Becca said as she squirmed into her skin. “Does a dive skin smell like old socks after a few dives?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. They’re a lot cheaper than dive suits, though, so when it gets funky, you can toss it.”

  She finished and looked down at herself appraisingly. “This is a hell of a lot better fitting than a dive suit. I might actually look good in this.”

  Wes eyed the bright, swirling colors. “Good as in tasty. Like a sea turtle. All those white tip sharks…”

  “Nice try,” she said. “You’re not scaring me out of this.”

  Wes checked the equipment. He secured their tanks to their BCs—the buoyancy compensators—then attached the first-stage regulators to the tanks, hooked up the inflator hoses, turned on the air from both tanks, and then hit the purge buttons on the second-stage regulators. Becca helped with this last step, taking a couple of breaths from her second-stage regulator.

  And then they suited up, BC first, then mask, snorkel, and fins. Becca tucked the disposable underwater camera into a pouch on her belt next to her dive computer. They turned each other around, inspecting to make sure hoses weren’t pinned beneath straps. They reviewed the releases on each other’s equipment, then checked the pressure gauges one last time. Two okay signals.

  Wes secured his mask and regulator with his left hand and collected the hanging stuff in front with his other and then took a big stride into the water. He brought his legs together in a kick as he entered to bring him back to the surface. Then he turned around, swam backwards a few feet and gave Becca the okay sign. She followed him in.

  And a moment later they faced the boat and the two men who stood on its swaying surface. The water came up and down on their masks and they gave another okay to the men on the boat, then gave each other thumbs down. Time to visit the deep.

  Wes purged the air from his BC and went under. Gone was the growl of the boat motor and the sound of waves slapping the hull, replaced by the sound of his own breath and bubbles venting from the mouthpiece and streaming around his face. Pressure. He equalized his ears. The warm water gave way to ropes of cooler and warmer water that wrapped around him and eased him down.

  The sunlit world disappeared overhead, replaced by the glimmering diffusion of light that penetrated the darkness below.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  The water was warm as a bath. He drifted, weightless, while bubbles swirled beside his head and he breathed the cool, neutral air of the tank.

  A sapphire devil swam in front of his mask, flashed its brilliant blues, then was gone. An enormous dog-toothed snapper moved past, languid, mouth gaping. To his right, sea anemones waved against the current.

  And he could move. His limbs, his head, turning to watch a school of salmon-colored horseye jacks. He kicked his fins and followed the jacks as they swirled around the reef. He could move, but his body seemed to do so of its own volition. A tap on the shoulder.

  Chad Lett turned around. There was another diver there. Who? His mind searched for the answer, but stuck as it was several years in the future, away from this body and this moment, he couldn’t find the answer.

  The other diver pointed and gave the closed fist. Danger.

  You never took the danger sign for granted at fifty feet. He looked where the other diver pointed. Hammerhead sharks. Somehow, in the last few minutes, while he’d been preoccupied with the reef. An awesome sight.

  His dive buddy was young. Chad gave him the okay sign. Nevertheless, butterflies churned in his own stomach. He reached for his camera.

  Before he snapped the first picture he knew they would be great. As his dive buddy floated above him, he took one picture, then another. God, these would be great; he’d have to go to Puerto Jiménez to get them developed at the first opportunity. This one, he thought as he took another. This one I’ll blow up and send to my nephew.

  “Wrong dive,” a voice said in his ear. “Come back. We have to keep searching.”

  He knew the voice. Abbé Faria. Chad returned to the present like a man rising too quickly from the depths, shedding his mask, belt, tanks, even flippers. A moment later and he was in his body. The prison.

  He was strapped into his chair, sometime after lunch, when the higher-functioning residents had already left for work. The television droned.

  The host tested several men to see which had fathered the baby of the agitated woman on stage. The woman was young, black, and unprepared for the hostile, bleeped jeers of the audience. She looked to the host for comfort, but he was playing her, feigning sympathy while he let her paint herself as a slut.

  Thanks, Chad said. For a minute there I was diving in Costa Rica. I’d have hated to miss the big reveal. I just have to know who fathered that baby.

  “Knock it off,” Faria said. He was all business today. “You can’t just immerse yourself in whatever memory you come across.”

  It was close. I could feel it. Just a few days from the beginning of the coma.

  “Maybe close, but not close enough. You’ve got to push right up to the moment.”

  I can’t. Even that last memory, I can’t remember where I was or who I was with.

  “Not true. That boy was your nephew. That’s something.”

  But not enough.

  “Exactly. That’s why you have to keep digging. What about your wife? Where was she?”

  Yes, what about his wife? What had happened? His memories of emerging from the coma were, if anything, more hazy than those leading up to the accident. An image here, and snippet of remembered conversation. And yet he could not remember ever seeing his wife. She must have died, too. Or abandoned him.

  Chad retreated further and further into his head. Further into his memories. He focused on his breathing, even though he had no more control of it than of his heartbeat. The television faded into the background. He heard Faria’s voice, but far in the distance. “Your wife. Think about your wife.”

  #

  Wes had never gone down so far that he’d felt the rapture of the deep, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell the difference between that and the euphoria that washed over him as he dropped into the water.

  He’d never been afraid of water. He’d sucked at baseball, been of average height and weight and thus unsuited for long-term success in basketball or football, and had only played soccer casually. But he had good stamina, a lean body type, and the kind of focus that made for a good swimmer. His first years on the swim team he’d collected a few ribbons at the lesser, dual meets, or piggybacked on stronger teammates to place in relays at the invitationals.

  But as time went on, the other swimmers grew lazy or dropped out while Wes kept at it. He developed his technique, his stamina, and his focus. And he started to win. By the time he was sixteen he was one of the strongest AAU swimmers in Vermont and had a shelf of trophies, medals, and plaques that his mother still dusted and arr
anged in his room, even when he was away at college.

  He’d quit after his junior year of high school. To reach the next level would have taken another degree of dedication, and swimming had become work. After so many trophies, ribbons, and medals, even the thrill of winning wore thin.

  When his mother had reconciled enough with the Carters to gain use of Casa Guacamaya, she’d signed Wes up for diving lessons.

  He’d been cocky his first dive lesson. They’d done drills at the swimming pool, including collecting objects from the bottom, controlled breathing, and the like. His impatience, both at his fellow, nervous students, and at the sluggish pacing of the instructor, continued into his second lesson, where they went over the equipment about five times in ten different ways.

  The third lesson they went down. It was just a pool, but it changed everything. Underwater, you were something different. You relied on your equipment. On your dive buddy. On your wits. And if things went wrong, you couldn’t just swim to safety. You had to think about your buddy, about nitrogen levels in the blood, about tank pressure.

  And now, enveloped in the warm water of the Pacific, surrounded by fish, he felt that mix of comfort and vulnerability. And the beauty: the diffuse light, the colors of fish, the volcanic spires and boulders, coated with coral and anemones. Dark canyons and underwater caves fissured between the rock. Here and there, a glimpse of sandy bottom. A white gorgonia grew in the gap between two rocks; its spreading branches looked like the calcified roots of an uprooted tree.

  Becca floated just ahead of him, flippers kicking gently. She froze as a young white tip shark cruised past—maybe five, six feet long—then gave him the “come here” sign. It was a moray eel gulping from its hole in the rock.

  And then she turned to watch a school of barracuda torpedo through the water. Wes gestured for her to follow. He wanted to seek out the deep part. You should always do the depths first, then rise to shallower water to let the body purge itself of dissolved nitrogen. Otherwise, it meant a boring, timed ascent.

  They cruised the area for a few minutes before Becca pointed him to a jagged gap between two angled black rocks. A cave, maybe eight feet across. It was already deeper around the edges of these rocks, and the bottom of the cave looked deeper still. He flashed an okay and followed her down.