A hand broke the surface. Tim immediately leaned out as far as he could without falling off the boat himself. Grabbed the hand. Hauled it toward him.
It was Cal. Tim pulled him onto the hull of the boat, which was much easier to do than it would have been only an hour before – the vessel had sunk noticeably in that time.
Cal had a large bundle under one arm. The life raft.
Tim looked around. "Where's Haeberle?"
At the same time, Sue asked, "What happened to you, Dad?"
She sounded horrified, and for a moment Raven couldn't see why. Then he realized that blood was streaming off a long cut on Cal's face.
The older man was breathless. "He tried to… tried to… kill me…."
Tim looked white. Sue didn't. She looked like she had half-expected that to happen – which marked her as the smarter of the two. No surprise there, Raven mused. Tim had always been a soft-hearted moron, surpassed in stupidity only by Jimmy J. Perhaps.
"Where is he?" asked Tim.
"Dead," said Cal. "Dead, I…." He trembled. Couldn't finish the sentence. He fell into spastic shudders, post-traumatic shock wracking his frame.
But something about it struck Raven as wrong. Forced.
He suddenly knew it hadn't happened that way.
So what had happened?
Sue held her father. Cradled him against her breast. And that was when Raven knew.
Old bastard did kill Haeberle. But he moved first.
It was fair; Raven couldn't really blame him for doing it. But it was damned inconvenient. Just one more "Screw you" from the Man Upstairs.
Not that you had any chance of treasure at this point.
"He's dead?" said Tim. Still looking shocked.
"I didn't have a choice. Didn't…." He turned his head into his daughter's embrace. Shaking, shaking.
Damn. The guy's good. Probably a hell of a lawyer.
Tim watched a moment, clearly unsure how to react to this last turn of events. Then turned to the life raft. There was a red pull tab on the side of the bundle. He yanked it.
There was an explosive hiss, and the thing unfolded – but only partway. It turned into a limp yellow slug, then even that flattened out. Slug became tapeworm, and then it was just a mass of useless plastic on the hull.
"Why is it doing that?" Raven heard his voice. Heard the pitch rising to a sharp point.
Are you laughing, God? Because this isn't funny anymore.
Tim pawed through the folds of the plastic, then finally pulled a length of yellow away from the rest of the raft.
A hole. A good three feet across, shredding its way through the separate chambers that were supposed to guarantee the life raft would remain afloat even if part of it were punctured.
"What are we going to do?" said Raven. His voice kept climbing, rising with every word. "We can't just wait here. Can't just stay here! We'll die!"
Tim looked disconsolate, just running his hands along the edges of the gaping hole, shaking his head. "We don't have much choice."
And then a sound came to them. Not the sea, not the creak of the boat as it settled deeper and deeper into the water.
Mercedes.
MOVEMENT
~^~^~^~^~
A body in the water. A loose form, drifting in blood and intestines and the offal that flooded from it in the last instants of life.
It floats.
Floats.
Floats.
There is always movement in the deep. Deep rivers, unseen currents waiting to capture the jetsam and the creatures unlucky enough to fall under their influence. Or even just the Brownian motion of the one point three billion cubic kilometers that comprise the world's oceans.
There is always motion.
Even among the dead.
The body floats, but it floats in motion. It floats in movement.
And, eventually, it floats with movement.
Black threads appear at the edges of its open eyes. Covering the whites, the irises, the dilated pupils until the orbs have become a black field. The hands grow strange, organic gloves of writhing fibrils.
The body moves.
It floats toward the door of the small room in which it had hung. But an observer – any who would have had the strength to stay, the stupid courage required to not swim away screaming into the water – would have noted that the body did not seem to be swimming. It moved as though being drawn through the water. Tugged in the direction of the door. Then through the hall. The stairs. The salon.
And down.
Down.
Down.
YOU
~^~^~^~^~
Mercedes moaned, and Tim had a moment of hope that she might come out of whatever coma held her, but after that one sound she fell silent and still again. He took his BC from Cal, stripped it of all its gear, and then used it to shield her face from the sun as much as possible.
Beyond that there was almost nothing that could be done. He dove over the bow of the boat at one point, not bothering to put on the tanks. Just hoping to see where the life jackets were stowed on the foredeck. But the area around the compartment where they were held was in the middle of a tangle of rope and detritus. Getting in there would be impossible. Suicidal. It couldn't have been more perfectly blocked if someone had tried to block it.
Something.
He came back with a few regulators. Useless without tanks to breathe from, but he grabbed them as something he could grab, as though to do nothing, to come back empty-handed, would be to admit death.
Something.
That thought kept coming back to him as the sun lowered, as night fell. The look of the tangle, the visions that Haeberle and Mercedes had had, the ships with that dark hole at their center.
Something.
Night came.
Sue crawled over and sat next to him. Her father and Mr. Raven leaned against the boat's rudder, both of them silent, either keeping their own counsel or simply asleep.
"They're not going to find us, are they?" said Sue.
He smiled. "Of course they are." A lie.
"We're going to sink before they get here."
He didn't say anything this time. Didn't want to lie to her again. And he was just too tired to pretend at hope.
"What did you find down there?" she said a moment later.
It took Tim a moment to understand what she was saying. The time on the boat, the time from when he had surfaced with Haeberle to now, had stretched out to an eternity. Thinking of ways to get through this, coming up with nothing. He hadn't even seen anything that they could use to float on when the boat went down – it all seemed one mass, one creature with tentacles fastened securely to its trunk.
"Well?"
"I, uh…." Then he remembered. Oh, yeah. I went down to get Haeberle. And what else was there? "Ships," he said. He felt tired. More than just the effects of the dive, it was everything that had happened over the past few days. He felt stretched out and emptied.
"More than one?"
"Lots," he said. "Some looked hundreds of years old, some were brand new." He said it quickly, as though hoping if he said it fast enough she wouldn't ask what he knew was coming next. But that was as ridiculous as any hope of rescue. They were going to die out here. They were going to die, and he was going to have to answer to her.
"Was...," she began. "Did you see…." She couldn't finish.
He was tempted to feign ignorance. To ignore the question until she dropped it or managed to finish it. But he knew that would only stretch things out, and would be cruel.
He nodded. "One of the boats had a Nelson Chemical logo on the side." He looked back at the ocean, the small waves lapping a bit closer to their feet with every passing second, the boat settling deeper and deeper. "I'm sorry."
She didn't answer at first. Just looked out into the darkness with him. Something clicked behind them. A light flared. The gloom brightened around them for a moment, then darkness surrounded them again as the light clicked off.
Probably Cal, Tim thought, checking on Mercedes.
"It's okay," said Sue. "I knew that's what the end would be. I just wanted to find it. Just had to know. So we found her tanks, found her boat." He felt her shrug beside him. "Now I know."
The boat groaned. Tim heard bubbling on one side. Felt his stomach drop.
"What's happening?" said Sue.
"We're sinking."
"No, not just that. I mean –"
"I know what you mean." The empty feeling intensified. Tim felt like everything he had ever experienced, everything he'd ever done, was pouring out of him. He was empty. He was nothing. Already a corpse, just waiting for the official word.
"There was something else down there," he said. "All the ships were…. They were pointed toward the center. Toward something in the center."
"What?"
Behind them, something scraped against the fiberglass hull. He thought it was just Cal or Mr. Raven shifting, but then Mercedes moaned and he realized it was her. She'd been doing that since he and Haeberle surfaced, periodically giving out a groan and thrashing around for a moment or two before settling down into her coma again.
It was deeply disconcerting, making it seem like she wasn't really comatose but rather in some deep sleep; dreaming the mother of all nightmares.
"Do you think what was down there has something to do with Mercedes and Jimmy J and the bodies that disappeared?" said Sue.
Tim frowned. She wouldn't see the expression, but she seemed to sense him reaching for words because she didn't push for an answer. Just waited.
"My dad used to take me fishing," he said. "Just off the pier at first, then he took me out for deep water fishing."
"I'm not sure what –"
"Do you know what the main difference is between fishing off the side of the pier and trying to catch big fish way offshore?"
He heard the rustle of Sue's clothes: a shake of the head, he guessed. "The boat, I guess."
"No. It's the bait. In deep water you use a small fish to catch a bigger one. And live bait is always the best."
"So?"
"So I can't help thinking…. We find a body with some gold, just enough to get us moving down to a shallow spot that shouldn't exist. And then we come back, and Haeberle has seen some woman that's got his creep-factor red-lining, Mercedes brings back a doll that belongs to her children."
"What do you mean, 'a doll that belongs to her children'?"
Tim recounted the conversation he and Mercedes had had: of the doll, the children she saw somewhere farther in the ship – a place he would have bet was closer to that strange spot between the ships.
"And you?" he continued. "You see something that belongs to your sister. Everyone saw what they wanted to see."
"You didn't."
He laughed. "I don't want anything."
She laughed back. "You must want something."
"You." The word popped out before he could stop it, and he no longer felt empty. Instead he felt like he would very much like to follow the foot he had swallowed with his leg, his body, his head, and then disappear into a tiny black hole of embarrassment.
She was silent.
Then he felt her hand. Holding his.
And for a moment, an exquisite, infinite moment, he was almost glad he had come on this trip.
BREATH
~^~^~^~^~
It felt wonderful to hold his hand. But Sue couldn't ignore Tim's words.
At least, not for too long. She allowed herself a few wonderful seconds just to feel his fingers threaded through hers, to feel his pulse in time with hers. They were both sweaty, both coated with salt from the sea and the air. Both tired, both afraid.
Both together.
Then the moment ended. Whatever curtain had drawn itself between them and the fear she felt pulled away once more. She thought of his last words.
Everyone saw what they wanted to see.
"You think those things were bait?" she said.
"Yeah," he said. "When I went down to find Haeberle…." She actually heard him gulp. "There was something down there. I could feel it. Something pulling us in, catching us, picking us off one at a time."
"But –
(but that's crazy but that's impossible but that's too terrifying to be real)
– you didn't see anything. Just that light."
Like that isn't weird enough.
"No, I mean, we all saw things we wanted, we all saw weird things. But not you. Why not you?"
"Yeah, I've been thinking about that. And the only thing I can think of is that I didn't touch anything down there. Mercedes touched the chest, you touched the tank. I thought I saw Geoffrey holding something, and heaven only knows what Haeberle did down there." He shrugged. "Or maybe it's because of what I said, because there's not anything I want. Not down there."
He sounded so hesitant, so much the opposite of when he had blurted out that he wanted her before, that she had to laugh. "Is this you asking me out on a date? Because you're terrible at it."
"Maybe. If we survive. You like fishing?"
She laughed harder. "Not much. I could be persuaded to do a nice steak dinner, though."
"I think he's right," said her dad. The sudden sound startled her so badly she probably would have slid right off the side of the boat if Tim hadn't caught hold of her arm.
"Geez, Dad!"
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you or eavesdrop." He settled down beside her. "Not a lot of room up here. And there's a little less every minute."
"I've been thinking about that, too," said Tim. He paused, waiting so long that Sue almost asked him what he meant by that. "I think I can get another life raft," he finally said.
"There's another one on this thing?" said her dad. "Why didn't we –"
Tim shook his head. "Not on this boat. But…." He drifted off, and she got the distinct impression that he didn't want to finish his sentence. Then he continued speaking, and she understood why. "But there are a lot of boats right below us. One in particular that should have something we can use."
It took a moment for that to sink in.
Another to realize that if Tim did what he was implying, she'd never get her steak dinner.
Because what he was implying was suicide.
She shook her head. "No, we can't. You can't. It's –"
A gasp. The sound was low, barely loud enough to make its way through the minute gaps in her words. But it did manage to penetrate, and it cut her off instantly. The sound was a mix of horror and revulsion, the sound of someone viewing something utterly wrong, completely evil.
Sue turned with the others. Tim shouted, a small cry, and her father cursed quietly under his breath.
Mr. Raven had turned on the dive light that had been attached to Tim's buoyancy compensator. Shone it toward them. But not at them. Instead, he aimed the light at the form that stood right behind them.
At Mercedes.
But it was barely recognizable as the woman. Her arms, bereft of flesh, now wore a thick coat of black tissue. The new flesh rippled and writhed, made of thousands of snake-like strands that twined together to form a semblance of skin.
The plaits reached out from under the neck of her blouse as well, crawling up her neck and chin, reaching tendrils into her gaping mouth. Forcing their way in.
Sue felt like vomiting as she saw the things, each pulsing grotesquely, like they were breathing or perhaps eating, push blindly into the other woman's mouth.
Mercedes' eyes were completely black. Either covered by the horrible strands, or eaten away and replaced completely by them.
Mercedes' mouth opened, wider and wider, to admit more and more of the things. As it did, she started to jitter, to dance in place. She looked like she was having a grand mal seizure. But she didn't fall. No matter how hard she shuddered, no matter how much her muscles clenched and then loosened, she remained standing.
Sue thought, insanely, of Pinocchio. A puppet held aloft by strings at first, before becoming enchanted and
able to walk without them holding him up.
In the next moment Mercedes' strings seemed to be cut. She slumped.
But not completely. Her arms remained high, as though she were being supported by invisible rescuers who had her arms over their shoulders.
She stayed that way for a time impossible to gauge. It felt like forever, but that couldn't be the case because it was still night when the strange pose ended. Still the same horrible night after the same horrible day. Mercedes' arms stayed where they were, but her head lifted so her face could be seen again.
Sue felt her hand rise of its own accord. Felt it go over her mouth, stifling the scream and the gorge that both fought to escape.
Mercedes was dead.
The black threads had peeled themselves away from her eyes, but those eyes stared straight ahead, focusing on nothing, seeing nothing.
The woman's mouth was still cranked open. Still lined by darkness that pulsed as it pushed deeper into her.
Mercedes sighed. A last breath, the final exhalation as her body released its last stores of air from lungs that would do no more.
Then Sue saw something shift under Mercedes' shirt. It compressed. Released. Shifted again.
The dead woman's mouth opened wider, and she took a breath.
GLAD
~^~^~^~^~
Raven's hand shook. He tried to stop it, tried to keep it steady, and even as he did he realized what a foolish thing that was, how stupid it was to care about whether or not his hand was steady right now.
Mercedes was dead. Dead, but alive. Dead, but moving.
The woman opened her mouth. It gaped wide, wider, then so wide that her head tilted back like the top half was affixed to the bottom by way of a single hinge.
At the final moment, the instant it seemed that the top of her head must fall behind her, tumble to the hull of the boat and from there into the black water, at that instant it snapped back forward with an audible clap. Sprays of something flew out of her mouth and Raven realized it was her teeth, shattered by the impact.
The Deep 2015.06.23 Page 22
