Mercedes looked at each of them in turn. Only that wasn't exactly true. Her face turned toward them, but her eyes remained sightless. The eyes of someone long dead and happier for that fact.
The corners of her mouth curled up in a grin. Not a normal smile, with muscles doing the pulling to create a familiar, safe expression. This smile was caused by the snake-things at the corners of her mouth, drawing back, pulling in on themselves. A death-grimace created by things that Raven didn't understand, but that made him want to scream and run until he fell off the boat himself.
Only… only what was beyond the boat? What was down there?
He no longer cared for the idea of gold. No longer wanted treasure or riches or fame.
Just let me live, just a little longer.
That was what he wanted now. All that he wanted. To live. To breathe in every time he breathed out, just a few more decades, years – even days at this point.
He could hear the air wheezing in and out of Mercedes' body. But he got the impression that it wasn't real breathing – at least, not the kind of respiration he and Cal and Tim and Sue were engaged in. It was more a clever imitation. A pretense.
And what was behind the façade?
He didn't know. Was terrified that he might have to find out.
After looking from each of them to the next, her face tilted sightlessly them, Mercedes spoke. Her voice came in quick gasps, regularly spaced inhalations breaking the words at junctions where normal speech would not pause. The effect was mechanical, like she had been replaced by an audioanimatronic version of herself.
"You should… come in… and see… what's down… below."
Raven didn't know whether to scream or laugh at that. One might well lead to the other.
Does she expect us to just dive off? To just jump in and find whatever's down there? Whatever's doing this?
(Why not? It's going to happen eventually. You know it is.)
The small voice in the back of his mind terrified him. Not least because it was appealing. Something that beckoned him with the immediacy of an inevitable outcome.
(Just go.)
No. NO.
The thing that had been Mercedes took a step toward Sue. That was good. Maybe it wouldn't do anything to him. Maybe it –
Mercedes stopped. Her head tilted back as though she were smelling the sea air. Sniffing for prey.
Go. Just go. Take Sue if you want.
Take any of them.
The thing turned toward him. Took a step toward him.
He moved back. A step. Another. Another.
Mercedes followed. Kept perfect pace, maintaining distance between him and her –
(it)
– as he drew further away from her.
No one else moved. Everyone else stunned to silence and immobility by the impossibility of what was happening.
Raven stepped back again.
Mercedes' smile widened further. Pulled back by black strands until he thought he could hear the bones of her skull shifting and breaking. The mouth opened until the corners nearly touched her earlobes.
"Don't you… want to… see what's… down here? Don't you… want to… get the… treasure?"
And against his will, it came again. Just a fraction of an instant. A flash-image of gold, of treasure, of fame and women and the return to what he had once been and more. Greatness long-deserved and longer-denied.
He reached out. Barely a twitch in her direction. And at the same instant felt something burning his palm. He looked at it. A perfect circle of black shimmered there. Moving, writhing.
What's that what's THAT?
But at the same time his mind shrieked the question, it also – with a strange calm – voiced the answer.
Where you held the gold. Where you first had the thought.
Where you first wanted more.
The black disc on his hand erupted. A sticky, oozing strand shot across the gap separating him from the Mercedes-thing. It slammed into her mouth, which once again gaped in that horrible, too-wide grimace.
He heard a crunch. Saw something leap up. Her hair, a puff of red.
Realized that the thing that had come from his hand had just…
… just punched a hole in her head, oh dear God, please save me it punched a hole in her head and she's still standing how is she standing?
The grin on the face of the thing – not Mercedes, not at all anymore – just widened. Then a black strand seemed to flow around her neck, tightening like a noose, and Raven realized it was the same one that went through her skull, the same one that led from his hand to her mouth and beyond.
He tried to pull away. Yanked back with his hand. It felt like he was putting a hot poker to raw nerve. He screamed.
The thing's smile widened for a second. Then her mouth closed around the strand. He saw it was pulsing, just like the things that led into her mouth. Throbbing, a grotesque umbilicus tethering him to the creature at the other end.
The mouth opened. Closed. Opened. Closed.
The thing was eating the strand. Eating its way toward him.
He thought of the scene from Lady and the Tramp. The two dogs, eating a spaghetti dinner, finding opposite ends of the same spaghetti strand and eating their way to a surprising kiss.
He didn't want to find out what kind of kiss this thing would offer him.
He pulled away. The pain came again. Worse this time, and when he looked down he saw that the disc had widened. His hand was now covered in black, with those same writhing flagella he had seen on Mercedes flickering back and forth under the skin of his wrist.
Then forearm.
Then biceps.
"Oh, oh, oh, oh," he said in a low voice, not knowing what it meant, helpless to stop. "Oh, oh, oh."
No one moved to help him. Not Cal, not Sue, not Tim. They remained motionless, either too terrified to move, or simply unwilling to put themselves on the line for him.
"Oh, oh, oh."
The thing was closer. Chewing the cord that separated them. Each up-and-down motion of its jaws pulled them a few inches closer.
"Oh, oh."
He started to cry. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Not fair, not fair at all. He was supposed to be rich, supposed to be famous, supposed to be everything good and not….
"Oh."
His hand jerked upward as the thing bit away at the last inches of cord.
Its mouth opened wide.
Raven shrieked. "OH!"
Then Sue was there. Slashing away at the strands with a knife. The steel parted the strands, and for a moment Raven hoped.
Tim joined her. He hoped still more.
Then he saw new fibers whip out of his skin. Dozens of them, and each one a spear-tip of agony as it pierced him. They flew out of his hand, his arm, his shoulder. Passing through the air and piercing the thing that had been Mercedes in its face and chest. Each a miniature version of the ropy growth that had come from his hand.
Tim and Sue started hacking at the new threads. A few parted. Then the Mercedes-thing shoved him away. What had once been a petite woman now was something not just different, but more. Because the shove sent them rocketing across the hull of the boat; almost sent them completely over the side and into the water.
The strings twined together. Shot back into Mercedes' mouth.
She kept eating.
She got to him.
He screamed.
UNKNOWN
~^~^~^~^~
Tim didn't know he had stepped away from –
(no it can't happen can't be happening)
– Raven until he felt his left foot plunge into water and realized he had backed so far that he had reached the edge of the hull. Had almost panicked his way into the water.
And what's down there? What's waiting for us?
Can it be worse than what's here?
Mercedes –
(Not her. Not Mercedes. Not anymore.)
– had… chewed was the only word he had for it… her way t
o Mr. Raven. To the older man's face. Then continued chewing. Mr. Raven's screams grew in volume, in pitch, in terror. Rising and rising into the starlit night and then being swallowed somewhere high above them.
And none of it helped.
A sucking sound came from the place where Mercedes' flesh joined to Mr. Raven's. From the seam where her mouth had split into a nearly perfect one-hundred-eighty-degree angle, so wide it engulfed the other person's head.
Mr. Raven's scream grew muffled. It quieted.
It was gone.
The sucking grew louder. Mixed with a noise that Tim could not define. It sounded almost like the noise a kid might make when getting to the bottom of a milkshake. But different. Heavier. Meatier.
Mr. Raven went limp. But he didn't fall. He hung from the junction where he joined Mercedes. Where his face disappeared into her.
Someone was screaming. Tim thought it was Mr. Raven for a moment, then realized it was Cal, screaming "No it can't no it can't no it can't!" over and over until his voice grew ragged and raw as that bloodless seam between two bodies that were becoming somehow one in the night.
Mercedes swung around, the body of Mr. Raven swinging with her like a grotesque phallus.
She ran to the edge of the hull.
Jumped off.
There was barely any splash. The water seemed simply to open around her, close soundlessly behind her.
Then there was only the slap of water on fiberglass, the sound of Cal's petering screams, the sound of his and Sue's jagged gasps.
Mr. Raven was gone.
The sea was deep.
The unknown had come to call, completely and openly.
ANCIENT
~^~^~^~^~
Sue felt empty.
She suspected they all did.
When the impossible becomes real, when something utterly upends your version and vision of reality, there is a moment when all must be questioned, when all is viewed with suspicion. When all knowledge leaves, and leaves behind only confusion, skepticism, fear.
She sat down. More fell. Her knees weakened and she let them, rolling to her side and barely managing to remain partially upright.
Tim came and joined her. He sat beside her.
Her father came a moment later. Sat on the other side.
Humans crave the comfort of company when in the darkness. Not darkness of vision, which they have trained themselves over long centuries and millennia to endure and overcome. But the darkness of soul. The darkness of spirit which cries out for help, for assurance that there is brightness in the dark, even if that brightness is only the spark of another human life.
For where there is life there is always a small measure of hope.
Still, in this place that hope was so dim, so hidden behind what had just happened, that Sue could barely feel it. Her dad put his arm around her, and she could barely feel that either. She shivered, and the shiver became a series of tremors that rocked her just as what she had seen had rocked her understanding of the world, the universe, Creation.
Tim leaned in. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.
After a while – she didn't know how long – the shudders slowed and stopped. Not that she felt any better. Her body simply ran out of energy. The emptiness she felt in mind and spirit had reached black threads into her body, had emptied it as well.
Black threads….
Like what pulled Mr. Raven. Like what came out of Mercedes.
How long until something like that comes for us?
"What was that?" she said. And it turned out that she still had at least a small store of energy. Enough to tremble a bit. Enough for her voice to shake, to quiver, to become the sonic embodiment of her fear.
"I don't know," said her dad. His voice came out flat and used-up. Empty like her.
Tim spoke. His voice sounded only barely more lively. Perhaps because he only had to say a single word: "Stonefish."
"What?" said her dad.
"It's the most venomous fish in the world," said Tim.
Emotion crept into her dad's voice. Anger filling the empty vessel of his terror. "I know what it is. I meant what do you mean by saying it?"
"You know how it hunts?"
"It buries itself in the sand and waits for fish to pass by, then it sucks them into its mouth," said Sue. The words wearied her. All she could hear was the sound Mercedes had made when she… joined with Mr. Raven. All she could think of was him saying "no, no, no" over and over like the word might have some power to save him.
"Yeah. In the sand. And sucks them in. Some of them even secrete a substance that encourages plant growth on their backs," said Tim.
"So?" said Sue's dad. He sounded even more irritated. If unchecked, she thought he might turn to rage as a preferable substitute to his terror.
Finding ourselves alone in the dark, we often strike out against the night. And if we strike out also against another huddling soul, so be it.
"So he buries himself, and what you have is a lump, covered by sand. And a predator, waiting to suck in anything it can."
"I'm still not getting it." Irritation rising in her father's voice.
But Sue got it. Suddenly and completely. Wished she didn't. "You think there's something under the ground."
She felt Tim move. Felt the nod ripple through his shoulder, his trunk. "I think that's why the ocean floor rose up. I think there's something down there – something huge – and it's luring us in with things we want. Things we love."
"That's ridiculous," sputtered her father. "Ridiculous." The second word came out so hard and fast she knew it was his fear that Tim spoke true. "Something like that… we'd know about it."
"Why?" said Tim. He sounded calm.
No. Not calm. Resigned. Like he knows we're going to die.
"We know less about the ocean than we do about the moon. The deepest parts are all but completely uncharted. No satellite imagery can penetrate them, and there's no reason to even bother looking at most of it without some particular reason." He shrugged. Again she felt the movement, again she felt resignation in his whole being. "Ambush predators have lived in the ocean forever. Why not one more?"
"But this one… it knows what we're thinking," said her father. And now he sounded like he was nearly crying. "It knows what we want." The desperation in his voice was heartbreaking.
She knew what he meant, the reason for his despair. If the thing – whatever it was – knew them so completely, then how would they escape it?
Answer: we won't.
"What about the ships?" said Sue. "You said there are all those ships down there, pointed toward something at the center. And if that's true, then whatever it is has the power to drag things way bigger than us down there. And…." She pointed at the spot where Mr. Raven had been dragged under. "We just saw that it come for one of us, so it obviously doesn't need to wait for us to come to it."
"I don't know," said Tim. "Maybe there's some critical mass, some level of desire. Maybe part of what it eats is our thoughts themselves, and it needs to feel us wanting something, so bad it starts to consume us… and then it can feed. And once the ships are empty, it pulls them down. It hides again."
Sue felt something writhe inside her. A thing long-buried in her subconscious, a knowledge carried down through eons and epochs, from times before people walked on two legs, from times before we left the deep.
Times when we were hunted. By things spiny, things bony. Things toothed and tentacular.
And more. Something greater. Something at the forever-apex of a food chain of infinite variety.
"You're right," she whispered.
At the same time, her father said, "Ah, God," and it wasn't an oath, but a prayer. Another blind search for light in the dark.
"What do we do?" her dad said a moment later.
Tim didn't shrug when he spoke. Didn't shake his head, didn't nod. He remained motionless as prey caught in the power of the predator.
"We die."
CHILD
~^~^~^
~^~
There are things people are not made to experience. Contrary to popular wisdom, our own death is not one of them. We are born to die, and on the day of our birth we begin the inexorable process of preparation that will end in the ground.
But we are not – cannot be – able to properly prepare for or face the death of our children. Though born to die, our deaths make sense only in the face of new life. And so when we see our children into the ground before us, it makes a mockery of the process, it cuts the circle off mid-arc.
Cal had not seen Debi die, but there was no doubt she had. He would not see Sue die, would not watch her pass away before him the way her mother and sister had done.
He was not made or destined to be the last branch of a horribly mutilated family tree.
He had already killed to avoid that fate.
He felt like giving up. But he knew in his bones that to give up would be worse than death. It would be damnation. It would be death with a side helping of insanity. An impossible destiny.
"We have to get off this boat," he said.
"No way to do that," said Tim. "Nothing to float on."
"Not here," said Cal. He didn't know where the words came from, didn't even really have a plan in mind when he said it. But as he said it, an idea began to form.
It was stupid.
It was insane.
It was the only possible thing to do. The only possible way to save Sue.
He had already killed a man to save her.
What was left but to die?
PLANNING
~^~^~^~^~
Sue shook her head the whole time her dad told them his plan. But shaking her head didn't change the fact that she knew what he wanted to do was the only way.
"So, we have Tim's three tanks," he said.
"Almost empty," she interrupted.
He shrugged. "So we drop like rocks. No slow descent. Just grab the anchor line and dirt-dart it." He looked at Tim. "You remember where the Nelson Chem boat is? Can you get back there?"
Tim nodded. "Yeah. I think.... Yeah."
"And that's another thing. We only have one go-home line," said Sue. "And just Tim's wetsuit."
"No, actually we have two lines, six tanks, and two wetsuits," he said with a snap of his fingers.
The Deep 2015.06.23 Page 23
