Shadow Of The Abyss

by Edward J. McFadden III

  What would happen if Splinter’s name hit the news and some intrepid journalist dug up his past? There would be police interviews, the Coast Guard would want to talk to him. They’d want an ID, an address. It all made Splinter feel sick. He’d come to Florida to get away from his past. To get away from people and all the bullshit they toted with them. Instead of expressing his feelings, he said, “Sal’s right, as much as I hate to admit it.”

  “Have you lost what’s left of your mind? You saw what was left of the shark. The shadow,” she said. She was pleading, but Splinter could tell by the tone of her voice that she was already starting to see things his way.

  “I’d prefer not to have my name in the news,” Sal said. “And what would telling the police achieve? What? They gonna come here and look for the thing? A street light has been out on my block for two years.”

  “They could at least put out a warning,” Lenah said.

  “A warning for what? A decapitated shark head? A shadow?” Sal said.

  Splinter said, “And certain police might take an interest in your licenses when they find out you cater to a certain clientele.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sal said.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” Splinter said.

  As Splinter and Sal tried to persuade Lenah, Will stood by silently. The old cop shifted back and forth on his feet, his sunburned face twisted. Seeing his frustration, Splinter said, “What’s the matter, Will?”

  Will just shook his head.

  Splinter relied on Will for all kinds of things. He was his connection to the real world, the person he went to when he needed help.

  Will said, “I’m torn. I agree with Lenah one hundred percent, yet you fellas have a point. I’ve been trying to work out what my statement would say, and it’s pretty damn thin.”

  “What are you saying?” Lenah asked.

  “I don’t know what I saw,” Will said. “Sorry, Lenah.”

  “Couple all that with we have no proof,” Sal said.

  “Should have taken a picture or two with your fancy phone,” Splinter said. He didn’t own a cellphone, and never would.

  Sal harrumphed, and when Brownie snickered, Sal punched him on the shoulder.

  “So we do nothing?” Lenah said.

  Splinter knew this was one of those moments that would come back to haunt him no matter what he did. A no-win scenario. If they tried to report what they’d seen, a shit-storm would ensue. They’d be called liars. Lenah would be accused of pimping her charter business. Their entire story would be considered questionable because two of the witnesses were wannabe criminals, and the cop on board wasn’t prepared to say what he saw.

  Then there was Splinter’s past coming back at him like an incoming tide: slow, persistent, and never ending. He’d have to move. Disappear again. If they stayed quiet all that could be avoided, but what if someone went to the cops and the others didn’t? They needed to make a pact, like he and his sister Jasmine used to. Sadness washed over him at the thought of his sister. He hadn’t seen her or the kids in years. They lived up north.

  “We need to agree not to say anything. Make a pact like me and my sis used to. Anyone have a problem with that?” Splinter said.

  Lenah’s eyes went wide. “You have a sister?”

  “And two nephews. They could walk by me and I wouldn’t know them,” he said. “I stay away because I don’t want—”

  “Fine,” Lenah said. “But we’re heading in and I’m keeping the money.”

  Splinter went out on deck and stowed the poles and hosed everything down. Lenah brought the Parker up on plane, and the sea spray sent a thin mist across the boat. The sun had started its descent to the horizon, and to the south a thin band of dark clouds marched across the sky. The boat pitched and rolled in the surf, but they were still making twenty-five knots, and would be back at the dock by three o’clock.

  Splinter stared down the fishtails that shot out fifteen feet from the propellers. He didn’t see the shadow. He didn’t expect to. The nerves in his neck tensed, and pain danced down his back. Whatever the thing was hung out in the deep water, and that’s where it would stay. Most fish didn’t leave their comfort zone if they didn’t have to. Then the obvious smacked him.

  The tsunami.

  4

  The tsunami sank and destroyed many boats, and the back bay of Snake River was littered with wrecks. The Coast Guard and local authorities said it would take several years to haul and dispose of all the boats. This was fine by Splinter. He’d found a half-sunk twenty-eight-foot sailboat, its bow firmly lodged in the mud on the bay bottom. The craft’s deck tilted at a twenty-degree angle, but Splinter didn’t mind. He’d gotten used to it.

  The rear half of the boat was dry, and this was where Splinter lived. The master cabin was intact, and he’d dried out the mattress and stowed his meager belongings in the quarter’s built-in armoire. He’d found an old gas camp grill wedged in the bows of a fallen tree in the mangroves, and he’d claimed it as his stove. His newly purchased ten-foot Zodiac with its 15HP Johnson beater was tethered to a cleat on the forward deck. He’d bought the craft from a fisherman who’d used his insurance money to buy a new boat with a new tender. Splinter still had his bank card, so he had a few bucks and could’ve stayed at a hotel, but that just wasn’t his style. Too many rules and people.

  Water crept up the half-submerged deck toward Splinter as the tide came in. He sat topside drinking beer and listening to the marine channels for news. The main topics of discussion the last six months had been fish and detritus. Cars, chunks of buildings, and bodies still washed-up on shore, and it wasn’t unheard of for a fishing charter to come back to port with a haul of fish and a corpse or two.

  The radio chattered, and Splinter took a long pull of beer. He hadn’t seen Lenah for a week, and he wondered why she hadn’t asked him to help again. He guessed her deck hand, Raul, who Splinter thought had more on his mind than fishing, must be over his bout of flu.

  Splinter turned up the radio when he heard a report about a whale washing up on the beach at Fort Pierce Inlet State Park. He finished his beer, tossed the can down an open hatch into the flooded hold, and turned off the radio.

  He wore camouflage cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a Miami Dolphins t-shirt that had more holes than fabric. He’d found the shirt in his sunken home, balled up in a corner. Most likely it had been tossed there after a big fins lose.

  He grabbed the disposable waterproof camera he’d found floating in the jetsam. He’d kept it because it had four pictures on it, and if he ever saw the mystic shadow again, he’d be prepared to document the event.

  He tossed the camera in the Zodiac and jumped in. He untied the lead line from its cleat and let the boat drift away from his half-sunken home with the current. The Johnson was old. So old he had to hand wind a cord around the flywheel before he could start the engine. He wound the cord and pulled but got nothing but a choke and wheeze. He repeated this process six times before the tiny outboard sputtered to life. He toggled the throttle switch, pulled the control arm to center, and headed north for Fort Pierce Inlet.

  A light chop danced across the green water, mangrove trees filling in the banks on both sides of the bay. Snake River separated the mainland from the seashore, which was a meandering vacation paradise that stretched from Miami to Cape Canaveral. A1A ran its length, and Splinter saw cars racing past the beautiful scenery. He just didn’t understand people anymore, if he ever had. They were always in a rush, pushing to be someplace they didn’t want to be. Even on vacation.

  Tiny shiners leapt from the water as the Zodiac skipped over the sea, spray coating Splinter’s face. He smiled, closing his eyes and remembering when his father would take him fishing on lake Nicatous in Maine as a kid. He had those mental pictures firmly fixed in his mind, postcards that he referred to when sadness and anger washed over him. His dad had been dead for years, stricken down by diabetes. He’d been a pro football player that never got his shot bec
ause of an early career ending injury, and he was forced to spend his life selling cars and wondering what if? This never sat well with him, but Splinter remembered him as a loving father, if a bit sad.

  To starboard, a wide opening appeared in the mangroves, and houses lined the shore like dominoes. Splinter passed the opening for Fort Pierce Inlet and arced the dinghy toward Boot Toe Point. Several boats drifted in the inlet, tall trolling outriggers bent by the motion. The Zodiac passed into the mangroves and civilization was lost from view. The dorsal fins of two dolphins appeared to port, and he slowed the outboard, searching for calves. Nothing pissed Splinter off more than boats running over animals.

  The outdoors center was coming up fast, and Splinter jerked the control arm left, and the boat arced right, screaming toward shore. The mid-day sun baked everything, heat washing over the white Florida sand. Sand was big business, and he’d heard sand was being shipped in from Cuba to restore the erosion caused by the tsunami, but not everyone wanted the beach fixed. The fishermen argued that nature caused the problem, and nature should be given time to fix it. Never did any of these soldiers of the rod and reel speak of their real fears; fixing the beach might scare away their treasure trove of fish.

  Splinter killed the Johnson, tilted it up and clicked it in place as the Zodiac pushed onto shore with the sound of rubber scraping on sand and shells. He put his disposable camera in a shorts pocket, pulled the boat into the mangroves, kicked his flip-flops into the dinghy, and headed for the path that led to the ocean.

  It was a gorgeous day, and Splinter sighed when he felt the sand between his toes. As he approached the beach parking lot, the faint sound of reggae music carried on the breeze. He didn’t see anyone, and when the dune loomed up before him, he stopped to listen.

  Waves lapped gently on shore, a faint breeze whistled, and a crowd of people talked. He couldn’t hear what they said, so he inched his way to the top of the dune.

  Twenty or so people surrounded a whale carcass. They were mostly beach goers, but Splinter spotted Will in the crowd, speaking to someone dressed in the blue work uniform of the Coast Guard.

  His anxiety fled at the sight of Will. He always had Splinter’s back.

  He walked confidently over the dune, striding up to the dead animal like he had every right to be there, which he did. He’d learned in his military days that all you needed to do was look like you belong, and nobody questions you.

  The stench of rot and decay overwhelmed Splinter as he approached the fallen beast, and anger rose in him. The creature’s large curved mouth hung open, revealing two hundred-plus baleen hairs that helped the beast eat. Blood dripped down the whale’s side from its two rectangular blowholes, and as Splinter came around the corpse his mouth fell open.

  “Hey, Will, what the hell happened here?” Splinter said.

  Will seemed surprised to see him. “Where you been laying your head?”

  “Old boat out on the bay.” He stepped forward, hand outstretched, as if he was going to caress the dead animal. “This don’t look good.”

  It was a right whale, and it hadn’t been dead long, but the cause of death was obvious. Its slick gray skin glistened in the sunlight, and white patches randomly covered the corpse like clouds. The beast’s tail fin had been completely severed, and red meat and gristle hung from the end of the torpedo shaped torso. One of the whale’s flippers was gone, and the other was half missing. It looked to Splinter like the tail and flipper had been bitten off, because the jagged edges of the wound looked like a shark’s work.

  The beast’s dark eyes had gone pasty, and its white beard of lice was already turning brown from air exposure. Bloody gashes covered the carcass, as if something had bitten the animal multiple times during their fight, but a shark wouldn’t attack a large whale. Sometimes they went after calves, but unless there were multiple sharks and the whale had been on its own, the attack didn’t make sense. He didn’t want to think about what did make sense.

  Even in its state of repose, blood covering the sand beneath it, the majestic creature looked peaceful. A tear slipped down Splinter’s face, and he made no move to wipe it away. There weren’t many of these creatures left, and every whale lost was a tragic waste.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Will said.

  Splinter nodded, but said nothing.

  5

  “So you told Lenah where I was?” Splinter said.

  Jessie laughed. “She’s a persuasive woman,” the bartender said. “And I thought you could use the dough. What with your outstanding tab and all.”

  “Yeah,” Splinter said. He took a long pull of his pint.

  He sat on a stool at Seaside Sam’s, a restaurant bar on the walkway that ran along the beach. The front doors that allowed the restaurant to be open air when desired hadn’t been replaced, and wind pushed sand across the floor and tables. Most of the interior had been renovated, but here and there signs of the tsunami remained. A staircase missing its handrail. The bar itself no longer had shelves behind it and all the liquor bottles were lined up on a folding table. The kitchen was fixed, but Jessie was still waiting for the Board of Health to complete their inspection. With all the renovations and repairs they were two months behind on commercial properties. Thankfully his liquor license didn’t require any further inspections.

  “Hey, what am I? Dirt?” It was Kyle Grape, a local shithead Splinter couldn’t stand. The guy always tried to get him to talk about his military days.

  “I’ll have a Bud. Tap.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  Splinter drained his pint and pushed the empty glass across the bar. A TV mounted in the corner played a Marlins game, but nobody was paying attention to it. Splinter gazed out at the Atlantic Ocean, then closed his eyes, enjoying the warm sea breeze and the fresh air.

  “Another one?” Jessie said.

  “Sure,” Splinter said.

  “I’ll get that one,” Kyle said. “And set up two shots of scotch. Shit. Make it three. One for you too, Jessie.”

  Splinter said nothing.

  “Yes, sir,” Jessie said, a little too exuberantly.

  “What the hell are you so happy about?” Kyle asked.

  “Life man. L-i-v-i-n,” Jessie said, doing his best Wooderson imitation.

  “That movie sucked,” Kyle said.

  “Bite your tongue. Dazed and Confused is a classic,” Jessie said.

  “Maybe for you hippies,” he said. “Don’t you agree, Splinter?”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Splinter said. His beer had arrived, and he took a long pull.

  Kyle made a face and buried his nose in his bud.

  Splinter stared at himself in the cracked mirror behind the bar. His graying black hair was pulled-back in a ponytail, and it shined with five days grease. His fishhook scar was deep red, and his eyes burned like cinders. He looked older than his forty-two years. He’d upgraded his t-shirt, but it was smudged with dirt, obscuring the University of Texas logo.

  Disgusted with his appearance, Splinter spun on his stool and stared out at Main Street through a window with no glass. Cars and work trucks snaked around piles of debris, and a thick coating of sand covered most of the blacktop. The stone buildings still stood, though they had to be completely gutted before they could be used again. Smaller, less stable structures had been swept away, and the town looked like a mouth missing several teeth. It would take years for Sailfish Haven to get back to full strength, if it ever did. Splinter felt the town’s fate fell squarely on the back of the fish. If they kept coming, the town might make it, if they didn’t it wouldn’t, and recently fishermen had been seeing a decline in their bounty.

  Nine days had slipped away since the right whale had washed-up on the beach, and in that time the fish seemed to have left.

  “Any word from the big heads?” Splinter asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Jessie said. “But all the fishermen have been bitching. They’re starting to lose charters. W
ord’s getting around that our fish rush might be over.”

  Jessie held up his shot. “Cheers.” The three men touched glasses and drank.

  “Splinter, you saw Lenah?” Kyle asked.

  He spun back around on his stool and looked the annoying man in the eye. “Don’t you worry about Lenah. She can take care of herself. Trust me.”

  “Sure. Just wondering if she’s brought anything in the last few days.”

  “No idea,” Splinter said. “Haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “What is it with you? You know how hot she is, right? Every guy from here to Ocala wants a piece of her, but you, no. You’ve got better things to do,” Kyle said.

  Heat flushed over Splinter’s face as anger rose in him. He closed his eyes and breathed. In and out. In and out. Splinter said nothing. He watched a homeless person digging through the garbage can on the walkway.

  It was an old woman. Her gray hair fell in slimy strands over her face, and her red flannel shirt was dirty and timeworn. Her cart was parked behind her and was filled with an assortment of objects that had no apparent use.

  Without warning the woman teetered and grabbed the side of the pail she was rummaging through.

  Splinter moved fast and sure. He slipped from his stool, crossed the walkway, and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Do you need help?”

  The woman’s head whipped around, but when she saw Splinter, her eyes widened but her expression softened. “Just a little dizzy.” Her knees gave out and she collapsed.

  Splinter caught her and eased her to the ground and propped her against the trashcan. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “Yes, now I am. Thank you so much. God bless you,” the woman said.

  “God? You believe in God?”

  “Of course. You don’t?”

  “Why does he let you live on the street if he loves you?” Splinter asked, though he knew what her response would be.

  “Who am I but a simple servant, and I don’t know God’s plan, but I know he has one.”