Geoffrey cut again, and it was only the fact that his arm was slowed by the water's drag that allowed Tim to get away. Even so, the knife passed by so close that he nearly slashed one of Tim's hoses.
What do I do?
The smart money would be to run. To turn tail so that there was nothing Geoffrey could cut but Tim's flippers. He knew he could outswim the guy. Could leave him behind.
That would be the smart thing to do. And no one would blame him for it.
He didn't do it.
He waved at Geoffrey, screamed at him. Tried to shatter the panic and the drugging effect of the sea. Felt his own thoughts growing muddy and wondered how long before he made a mistake.
Then Geoffrey did something Tim didn't expect. He reached to his left. Moved something behind his back.
Two things happened: first, his tanks released, plummeting to the sea floor. Then, in the next instant there was a loud hisssss and Geoffrey rocketed straight up.
Tim knew what had happened in an instant: the guy had a bailout tank. A small cylinder attached to his back, ready to fill his BC up with enough air to cause massive buoyancy. Some recreational divers had them for emergency. Deep water divers didn't use them. Because a bailout tank could be accidentally triggered, sending the diver straight to the surface without deco stops. Death.
Geoffrey moved again as he shot upward. Blocks dumped away from him. His weights.
Tim lunged for the man. Grabbed at his rear fin.
It came off in his hands.
Then Geoffrey was moving beyond him.
Tim swam up. Knowing it was hopeless.
Knowing he had to try.
CARESSED
~^~^~^~^~
Air where's air need air need to breathe need need need needneedneedneed….
The thoughts fluttered through Geoffrey's brain. No cohesion to them. Needing air. Wondering what had happened. Wondering where he was. Darkness pressing in so completely that his life contracted to a small circle of brightness directly in front of him.
What's wrong with my dive light?
Sonofabitchbastard who sold it to me said it was the best.
LIAR!
Air air air need need need.
He felt himself start convulsing. Curving in, thrashing out. Bending side to side, the water in his lungs a tidal wave inside him.
The darkness around him encroached on his vision still further.
He was seeing things. The darkness moving. Reaching for him.
He felt something touch his leg.
Got me. It's got me air air need what's got me air what's touching me need need WHAT'S TOUCHING ME?
Something touched him again. The quivering caress of a lover.
What what what need need air air air air.
The pinpoint of light in front of his eyes flickered. Dark, light, dark, light. Strobes of lightning in the black sky of the deep.
Breaking my light's breaking why how it's supposed to be –
What's touching me what's TOUCHING ME?
It's killing my light….
A fish darted out of the void. A shark. Five feet long. More.
Geoffrey managed to flinch, but it wasn't headed for him. Not directly. It veered at the last second. A course correction that brought it to Geoffrey's shoulder. The creature bumped him. He felt something yank.
The light disappeared.
Ate it he ate my light.
Air air need.
The air was gone.
The light was gone.
Geoffrey felt himself stop convulsing. Felt his body loosen. Muscles limp.
Something fell from his hand. Knife.
A moment later his other hand opened. Something else fell. Swallowed instantly by the formless dark all around.
His last thought: My diamond. Something's touching me. Where's my diamond? Sonofabi –
FLOAT
~^~^~^~^~
Mercedes wanted to panic. Wanted to thrash and shriek into the nothing of the sandy world that was her only existence.
But she didn't. Her mind slipped to the one thing that was always razor sharp. Always a thought that cut her deep, made her mind feel like it was being hacked to painful pieces.
She thought of what she had lost. Not Bill. Better that the bastard was gone.
No, it was all the rest. Especially….
She shook her head. The momentary jabs from her past sharpened her, brought her back to herself.
What did that dive instructor say? The pretty one?
Long as there's air, there's hope.
But I'm out of air.
No. No, please, no.
As if to taunt her, a single bubble appeared before her mask. Probably caught under her mask when she last exhaled. A thing sent from Hell – or maybe from Bill, they were much the same – to let her know what was forever out of her grasp.
Just like everything else I ever loved. Floated away and gone.
Floated.
An idea began to tickle her brain. Not one of the lightbulb variety, where all the lights go on and you scream "Eureka!" No, she was too deep in terror for that. But it was a candle. An ember of hope.
What is it?
Floated.
What?
Float.
And she knew. She kicked up – somehow remembering to keep her hand on the wall since it would do no good to survive this moment and then get lost in the next.
Her head hit the ceiling. Hard. Her vision spun and she almost inhaled. Didn't. But it was hard, so hard not to. She wanted to breathe. Desperate. Knew that in the next second she would inhale no matter what.
She shined her light. Not in front of her, into the dense murk she had created for herself. She looked up.
Sand.
More sand.
Silver.
She leaned back. Ripped off her mask and tilted her head back. She kicked up slightly until her face was pressed against the ceiling. Until she was kissing it.
Then she opened her mouth. Crossed mental fingers and… inhaled.
Air. Sweet, sweet air. The air that she had breathed out with every breath in, escaping from her regulator and bubbling upward where it was trapped against the ceiling in bubble-pockets that looked like silver in her light. Each had more CO2 than normal tank air, but still enough oxygen to survive.
She took in one breath. One breath of the air that had escaped from her regulator before her tank ran dry. She crawled along the ceiling. Inhaling, then shining her light to look for more silver. More precious than any silver you could find on land, this was a silver that bought her a single breath each time she found it – a single moment of existence.
Not just because she was breathing again. But because the bubbles marked the way she had come. Breadcrumbs leading her back home, back to the tanks she had left at the opening to this place.
The terror, the muddled feelings, the pain in her hand, even the shock at what she had seen in this place… it all faded. She existed only to follow the trail.
Then it ran out.
She couldn't see more. No more air. Nothing. Just sand floating in the murk.
Again, she forced herself to hang still, to let her thoughts work. It was hard. The air she'd breathed for what felt like an eternity was barely enough to keep going. She was already feeling the loss in her lungs. Panic burgeoned.
Where'd it go? Where did the air go? Where –
She felt like hitting herself. She pushed out a hand. Felt a wall.
No, not a wall. The wall.
She dropped along its length. Felt wall, wall, wall… and then nothing.
She followed the void. Pushed forward.
Pushed her head out of the hole through which she had come.
Her ascent tanks were there. She couldn't see them well, not without the mask she still held in her hand, but there was a dark blur in the spot she remembered putting the tanks.
She pushed out of the hole, lungs burning so much she felt like all the air bubbles had been some kind of dream; sur
ely it had been hours since her last breath?
She got to the tanks. Switched over from her dry one to these by feel. Air flooded her regulator.
She breathed in, and it was the most exquisite sensation she had ever experienced. Oxygen blasting in, rejuvenating her not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. For one blessed instant the fog that had accompanied her throughout the entirety of this dive was gone; blown away by that first puff of air.
It settled back in again, along with the pounding in her ears and the beast trapped in her ribcage. But none were so terrifying, none so daunting.
She had air. She could make it.
She put her mask back on. It was full of water, of course, so she held the top and leaned her head back. Inhaled through the regulator, then blew out steadily through her nose. Repeated the process several times, and each time the water level in her mask dropped as the air pressure forced it out. Soon she was blinking seawater free from her eyes and lashes, focusing once more on her surroundings.
The joy that she had felt with the first breath was something incomparable. An emotion so powerful she didn't know if she'd ever match it. Still, what she saw next made her feel like dancing, right there at fifteen stories below the surface.
Her go-home line.
She grabbed it. Started to pull/swim her way to the anchor line. She was using up her ascent air, but if she got to the anchor line fast enough, she might just make it.
But what did I see down here?
How was it even possible?
NOTHING
~^~^~^~^~
Tim pounded his way up. Feeling his legs burn like he had swum miles and miles – though he knew it was only ten or fifteen feet. But he had thrashed so hard, whipped his legs and feet so fast, that the burn of overexertion had prickled its way in almost immediately.
Geoffrey was a globe above him. A small brightness that diminished in size and intensity with every passing moment.
Tim stopped kicking. Heard something in the background: the distant beep beep beep of his dive computer.
Five minutes.
He hung where he was, torn. He wanted with everything he was to go after Geoffrey. To grab him and rescue him from his fatal ascent. But he knew that there was no way for him to catch up. Even if he had had his own bailout tank and felt like committing an extremely painful suicide by rocketing his way after the man, there was no way he could catch up. Not now.
Not ever.
He turned. His go-home line still trailed after. Still led the way – appropriately – home. Or what had seemed like a home before all this began. Now, with people dying and the deep spewing impossibilities up, everything seemed alien. He was no longer in a place of comfort, a place he understood. He drifted in strange currents.
He held the go-home line. Tugged it. Began to follow it to the anchor.
There was nothing else he could do.
ONE
~^~^~^~^~
Many creatures moved in this place. The reef – the impossible, inexplicable reef – housed many fish, many coral, and a few beings that did not belong to the deep.
Yet.
Among all the life, there were many things dead. Rocks and sand and things once above the waves that now lay below.
And an eel. Mottled green, the color of flesh long-rotted. Its body swayed like a thick seaweed in the current. Its head rested nearby, wedged between seabed and a rock.
Gradually the body of the eel settled. Its tail still disappeared into the crevice from which it had sprung, but its body drifted down, touched the seabed very near to where its head was anchored.
The body twitched. An observer would have wondered if the body had somehow been touched by electricity. A current that stiffened the creature. Lengthened it suddenly. It lurched up, standing nearly vertically in the water.
The head moved, too. The skin around its mouth tightened, exposing needle-teeth and a dark throat. The mouth opened wide, then snapped shut as though attempting to capture some unseen prey.
The body swept down. Not in the current, moving against the water's movement as it bent in a graceful arc that brought it near the head once again.
Strands reached from the body. Red and stringy, looking like thin tendon and gristle lined with tiny spines that promised pain. The fleshy lines snaked across the distance between head and trunk. Punched into the short stump behind the eel's head.
They retracted. Pulling back toward the body, drawing the head with them.
The head and body pulled together. Not perfectly: the head hung off the body at a grotesque angle. But the eyes moved, the mouth opened and closed in a semblance of life.
The eel reached upward again. Body straightening. And if there had been any observers, they might have seen that the eel had been eviscerated. Its body hollow as an abandoned shell on the beach.
The eel that was not really an eel at all – not anymore – swayed. Waited to act should action be necessary.
Waited. Alive-not-alive and waiting for the moment it would be needed, as it had been needed when it bit down on the man, when it pulled and pulled from hoped-for light to inevitable dark.
It had failed then. But that was, in the end, all right. Because the man had been claimed. He was One as the not-eel was One.
As all would soon be One.
HOPE
~^~^~^~^~
Tim made it to the anchor line just as Mercedes and Haeberle approached. Mercedes' eyes were huge behind her mask, but there was no time to begin a cumbersome conversation. Up top there would be time to ask each person what they had experienced. Time aplenty, since the Navy was so far off.
Time for recounting… and recriminations.
There would be no search for Geoffrey. And Tim felt a pang, repeating the image of the fin coming off in his hand, a permanent loop that he suspected would haunt him until he died. Geoffrey was a jerk. A terrible passenger and a prize prick. But he was human, he deserved better than to die alone and in pain.
Haeberle looked calm. Creepy as always, but ready to ascend.
Tim looked at them. At their lines. Those plus the one that led to his own gear made three. One more led up and away at a diagonal angle: Geoffrey's. His body hanging in the nowhere, dragged up by his bailout tank, and out by the underwater current. A grisly image: the picture of a corpse in the dark. But it was also good news in that Geoffrey's body would not be lost. He could be retrieved. His relatives and friends – if he had any – could properly grieve and have the closure that helped that grief.
And there was one more line. Hanging motionless in the water, a spool hanging off the anchor-line but not leading to anything.
Oh, no.
He turned to Haeberle and Mercedes. He wrote, "Sue?" on his slate and showed it to both of them.
Haeberle shook his head and then without a backward glance began his ascent.
Tim looked to Mercedes. She shook her head, then motioned at his slate. He rubbed it clean and handed her the pen. She wrote on it: "HOW I HELP?"
Tim shook his head and pointed up. Then rubbed the slate again and wrote: "GO up. I Look."
Mercedes hesitated. Then shook her head and pointed at his dive computer. The meaning was clear: there wasn't air enough to spend time here. Not without risking decompression sickness.
Tim knew that. He also knew that he had lost Geoffrey and was not about to come up with another body floating in the depths.
Especially not Sue.
Mercedes was still hanging there. Not moving, just waiting, and he noticed that she had switched over to her ascent tanks. He gestured up with as much ferocity as he could manage.
Mercedes' shoulders slumped. She began to swim up.
Two people were going up. Two that had a reasonable chance of making it to the boat.
Now… Sue. Where was she? He was keenly aware of the fact that he had to ascend, should have done so a few seconds ago. But he also knew he would die down here rather than leave her behind. Because it was his job. And because –<
br />
(face it)
– Sue meant more to him than the other passengers. Maybe a lot more.
But where to find her? Her go-home line wasn't attached, and he had no way of knowing where to go.
He looked around, hoping he would see her nearby. Knowing that hope was a ridiculous one, unable to stop it from surging through him in desperate waves.
No, no Sue. No fish, either. Which seemed strange given how plentiful – freakishly so – they had been on this dive.
It was just him and the coral. And that was what gave him his only chance. The current that made them dance, acting like blades of grass dropped on a golf course, giving him his only hint as to where to go.
He oriented himself. Pushed away from the anchor line. Into the current.
Hoping.
SHELL
~^~^~^~^~
Sue was still engaged in the strange combination of swimming and crawling, still trying to outrun the current.
And still knowing that it was a ridiculous attempt. There was no way she could get to the anchor line in time – even assuming she was going in the right direction, which was doubtful.
Something batted her side. She kept moving forward. Didn't have time to look or energy to spare. Just forward, forward.
The sensation returned. On the other side now.
This time she did look. Turned her head to look back while continuing her imitation of an insane crab.
Fish. Two. About the size of her arm, each ran at her, slammed into with the force of a light punch, then turned back far enough to get up some speed and come at her again.
She didn't understand that. It wasn't like fish that size to go after strange intruders.
What…?
Before she could complete the thought, three more fish joined the original two. Then three more.
And then the shaft of her light, the halo that surrounded her, darkened suddenly as a thousand fish came at her. They flitted against her body and each individual touch was barely tangible to her beneath her gear and her wetsuit. But together….
The Deep 2015.06.23 Page 14
