In Too Deep

by Andreas Oertel

  This one’s for the Bruces—

  Bruce Klock and Bruce Webb

  CHAPTER

  1

  IT WAS 3:30 in the morning, and we were about to break the law.

  “We better hurry,” Eric said. “The sun will be up in an hour.”

  I stopped staring at Smoke Lake and turned to the east, where a hint of pink was already visible on the horizon. We’d waited too long to sneak away from home, and now we didn’t have much time left to conduct our criminal activities.

  “Are you sure you still want to do this?” I mumbled.

  “Well, yeah,” Eric said, then quickly added, “This was your idea.”

  “But if we get caught . . . we’ve had it,” I whispered.

  I didn’t need to whisper, by the way—there was no one around for kilometres—but it seemed like the proper way to communicate at the time.

  “Don’t worry,” Eric said, trying to soothe my fears. “We’ll be gone long before anyone shows up.”

  My best friend groped around for the insect repellent that was wedged near the front of the wagon—the wagon we’d been pulling behind our bikes for the past hour. He squeezed a quarter of the bottle in his hand, then smeared the stuff over his perspiring arms, legs, and face.

  “What if they have security guards?” I asked, staring again at the dark lake.

  Now, if it sounds like I was looking for an excuse to not do what we were planning to do, you’re probably right. But if you recall our previous shenanigans, you can understand my concern. I mean, trouble really did seem to find us, like . . . like the mosquitos that were now covering my arms.

  “It’s a golf course, Cody,” Eric said, poking me with the bug juice bottle. “It’s not a bank.”

  I took the insect repellent from him and wiped some of the oily liquid on my skin. I tossed the container back into the wagon and resumed staring at the lake like a dummy.

  Eric probably knew I wouldn’t make the first move—so he did. He took a deep breath of humid August air and started unloading our gear.

  I snapped out of it a moment later and helped him. Together, we shuffled the wetsuits and snorkelling gear from our cart and arranged everything near the fence. The fence marked the perimeter of the Smoke Lake Golf and Country Club. But lucky for us, the fence wasn’t much of a barrier—just three strands of rusty barbed wire stapled to half-rotten posts.

  The lights of a car suddenly came at us from down the highway. We both froze.

  Eric’s pale features lit up momentarily as the headlights swung across the field like searchlights. His blond hair was plastered with sweat against his forehead. The car continued to follow the bend in the road, heading away from Sultana, toward Pine Falls.

  “That was close,” Eric said, sweeping his wrist across his forehead like a windshield wiper blade.

  I nodded; my throat was too dry to talk.

  Eric put one hand on a fence post and vaulted over the top wire. While the mosquitoes droned around us in frustration, I passed him the gear—first our ugly wetsuits (ten dollars at a garage sale), then the flippers, masks, and snorkels, and finally the mesh goody bags for holding our treasure. I looked in the back of the wagon to make sure we didn’t forget anything and followed Eric over the fence.

  My eyes stung from sweat and insect repellent. “Let’s see if we can get everything to the water in one trip,” I said.

  Eric scooped up as much as he could carry and headed across the fairway to Smoke Lake. We’d chosen the closest route from the fence to the lake, but we still had to cross fifty metres of mowed grass. I trailed behind him carrying the rest of the equipment, finally catching up to him at the edge of the lake, where he dropped what he was carrying.

  “Yikes!” I said, glancing at my watch. “It’s ten to four. Let’s get in before we’re spotted.”

  We took off our shoes and T-shirts, and then raced to get inside the wetsuits before the bugs could find our unprotected backs. The water would be warm enough near the top, but on the bottom, you needed a wetsuit. I read somewhere that even warm water would eventually suck the heat from your body, potentially causing hypothermia.

  Once I was in my ill-fitting neoprene shell, I began to relax—but only a bit.

  “Ahrrr,” Eric grumbled. “I wish I could see what I’m doing.” He was still fumbling with the zipper on the chest of his wetsuit jacket.

  I knocked his hand out of the way. “Move your fingers and let me see.” He’d pinched the zipper, and now it wasn’t going up or down. “Forget about it,” I said. “If you get cold, just pee in your wetsuit.”

  Eric considered my advice for a few seconds. “You know,” he said, “that would probably work.”

  “That would definitely be gross,” I said, reminding myself not to swim behind him, in case he did get cold.

  We walked into the water carrying our flippers. It was easier putting them on wet. I watched Eric spit into his mask and rub saliva carefully around the lens. I know it sounds disgusting, but it stops the inside of the lens from fogging. I’m not sure why exactly, but it works. The thing is, Eric always took forever to prepare his mask. It was like his pre-snorkelling ritual or something.

  I waited patiently and thought about how much easier all this would have been if Mr. Scolletti, the head greenskeeper, had just let us swim in the lake during the day. All we wanted was permission to recover some of the thousands of golf balls from the bottom. Smoke Lake was a huge water hazard for four of the holes on the golf course, and it swallowed up dozens of balls every day.

  Last week, Eric and I had sat for three hours on the other side of the fairway, where the wagon and our bikes were now parked, watching ball after ball splash into the lake. We estimated that at least ten golf balls disappeared every hour. And we wanted them.

  Well, to be honest, we couldn’t care less about golf balls or golfing. Golf was for retired dentists. What we really wanted was the money for the balls. It didn’t matter to us if we sold them, or if Scolletti paid us for each ball we recovered. We liked snorkelling and we wanted to make some money, and we thought our offer was good for everyone. That’s why we couldn’t believe his reaction. I could still see his narrow, pockmarked face in my mind. “He looks like an asteroid,” Eric had said later.

  Anyway, Scolletti told us he’d never let us swim in the lake, and if he ever found out we had, he’d prosecute us to the fullest extent of the law. We didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.

  “Are you coming or what?” Eric said, pulling me back to the present.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I’m just waiting for you to finish spreading gob on your goggles.” I laughed and flicked on my Pelican dive light, making sure the powerful beam stayed under the water. Eric did the same with his Nautica light.

  “Let’s stay close to each other down there,” I said.

  Eric nodded.

  We didn’t know what to expect beneath the surface, and I wanted us to be close in case we ran into trouble. It would be easy to get tangled in weeds, cables, and irrigation hoses, especially in the dark.

  I popped the snorkel into my mouth, took a deep breath, and slipped below the inky surface of Smoke Lake. It was always fun when Eric and I went swimming and snorkelling, but this was different. It was 4:00 in the morning, and we could see almost nothing beyond the beams of our lights. And did I mention we were breaking the law?

  As soon as we went under, we began to see golf balls. They glowed like hundreds of tiny eyes as our light beams passed over them. First just a few balls here and there, then as we got deeper, more and more balls. And as fast as we could, we scooped them into our mesh goody bags, always being careful not to stir the fine bottom sediment. A minute later, I rose to the surface and blew hard on my snorkel to clear it. I
sucked in some fresh air and headed right back down.

  The plan was working perfectly. So far, anyway.

  After several minutes of collecting, I paused topside and waited for Eric. He emerged beside me a few seconds later—and just like he always did, he turned his head and cleared his snorkel so that the water blasted me right in the face. I didn’t flinch or even bother looking away, since my mask covered half my face.

  Eric spit his snorkel out and laughed. “This is awesome, Code!”

  I nodded. “Yeah, there are thousands down there. Just like we figured.”

  “Let’s go a bit deeper,” he suggested. “We’ve cleaned up this area pretty good.”

  I nodded, replaced my snorkel, took a deep breath, and headed back down.

  Sure enough, as we moved away from shore, the number of golf balls increased. We were now far beyond the reach of the telescopic ball-scoopers that golfers use to recover sunken balls. In a few areas, there were actually mounds of balls, as if they had been squirrelled away by some underwater creature. This was going to be easy-peasy money for Cody Lint and Eric Summers.

  The only problem now was that Eric’s dive cycles were taking longer. The deeper we went, the more time it took him to resurface for fresh air and then go back down again. I should explain that I can hold my breath longer than Eric can. I’m not bragging—well, maybe I am a bit—but for some reason I have a natural ability to hold my breath for a really long time.

  I sensed Eric heading up for air again, so I did some quick math in my head. If we each pulled out four hundred balls and sold them for twenty-five cents each, we’d have—

  Eric tapped my head to get my attention.

  I looked up at him. What?

  Aiming his dive light at his mouth, he removed his snorkel and showed me his white, grinning teeth. I laughed into my snorkel, bubbles gurgling all around my head. Eric was clearly having fun.

  I grabbed twenty more balls and struggled for the surface. My bag, now filled with over two hundred golf balls, was getting pretty heavy, and hauling it to the surface was becoming exhausting. Plus, the bag kept hitting the silt-covered lake bottom, making a mess of the visibility. I had to keep swimming through these cloudy areas before I could resume collecting.

  At the surface, I was contemplating one last trip down, when suddenly, off to my right, Eric’s light flashed wildly through the water. A chill shot down my spine.

  Something was wrong!

  Eric popped out of the water three metres from me. With four frantic kicks, I was next to him. I grabbed his arm and pulled him close.

  I spat out my snorkel. “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  Eric ignored me. His mask was half-flooded, and he was shaking like he’d seen the creature from the Black Lagoon.

  I wanted to hold him—to calm him down—but he was already kicking violently for land. I’m sure he would have set an Olympic record, but the bag wrapped around his wrist slowed him down.

  I raced after Eric, setting an equally frantic pace. If something in the lake had spooked my friend, why should I stay behind to be eaten by it—right? I caught up with Eric as he scrambled up the bank nearour clothes.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded, flopping my bag of golf balls down next to him on the grass. “What happened down there? Did you see something? Tell me!”

  But he wouldn’t even look at me. His head kept turning to the left, then to the right—his eyes darting all around. He was really scared!

  The eastern sky brightened at an alarming rate, and I glanced at my wrist. It was 4:25. Crap! The sun would be up soon. We had to get out of there.

  “What’s going on, Eric?” I pleaded. “Tell me what happened. You’re freaking me out.”

  “A body,” he said, staring blankly at the horizon. “There’s a body down there on the bottom.”

  “A what?” I knew what he’d said, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  “In the middle of the lake,” he muttered, still looking off to the east, refusing to even look at the water. “Where it was the deepest. I saw a body.”

  “What—like just lying there?” I asked. It sounded like a stupid question, but I couldn’t think straight, either.

  “No.” He shook his head. “It was wrapped in a blanket, or a carpet, or. . . or something.”

  I stared at Eric, not sure what to say.

  “I’m not making it up, either,” he said defensively. “I saw the feet sticking out.” He untied his goody bag from his wrist. “Let’s get out of here, Cody.”

  My head was spinning. How could there be a body in the lake? If there was a body in the lake, that meant that somebody had killed someone. People don’t die of natural causes and end up at the bottom of Smoke Lake. This was too much for one night.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said. “It’s getting really light out now, anyway.”

  I sat on the grass facing the lake and pulled off one of my flippers. Something in the water made me suddenly freeze. The middle of the lake was glowing like a street-light in a thick fog.

  I spun around. “Eric! Where’s your dive light?”

  “Right here . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked at his wrist in disbelief. The strap was hanging in the air without the light attached to it.

  We both knew what had happened. In his struggle to get to the surface, the strap broke and the light sank to the bottom. Now the Nautica’s powerful LED bulbs were casting a spotlight straight up to the surface.

  “Shoot!” Eric mumbled.

  “We have to get it back,” I said, speaking more to myself than to Eric. All our equipment had our initials on it. If someone found that dive light down there, they could easily figure out who owned it, and then we’d have to answer some tough questions. Plus, the stupid thing was expensive.

  “Come on, Code, let’s go,” Eric pleaded. “Just forget about the dive light.” His face was speckled with feeding mosquitoes, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  I looked over at our empty wagon, then at the lake, then at the sky. Finally, I turned to Eric. “You get everything put away, and by the time you’re done, I’ll be back with the light.”

  Eric seemed relieved that I didn’t ask him to come too. He nodded and began gathering equipment.

  I didn’t like the idea of going back down alone—especially after what Eric claimed to have seen—but I couldn’t risk our light being discovered. It was evidence the police could use to accuse us of trespassing and who knows what else. And with a fully charged battery, those LEDS could shine for days before fading. That was how I justified going back to get the light. But I think I also needed to know what Eric saw.

  I slid down the muddy bank and began wedging my feet back into the flippers.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “HEY, CODY!”

  I was about to swim for the light when I heard Eric behind me.

  “Take this.”

  I turned and looked at his outstretched hand. He was holding the Manta dive knife he normally had strapped to his leg. He’d never used it during a snorkelling swim, but Eric thought it made him look cool—“Like a Navy SEAL,” he said. In the dim light of dawn, the knife looked pretty scary. I didn’t think I needed it, and I was about to shake my head, but a part of me said, “Take it.” So I did. It sounds stupid, but I felt safer just gripping the thick rubberized handle.

  I swam on my back until I neared the middle. Then I rolled over and looked around. Bingo! Five metres ahead, the surface rippled eerily over the lost light. I had to hurry. As the night vanished, so would the glow in the water—which meant if I didn’t find the light soon, I’d probably never find it. Unless . . . unless we came back again at night. But I sure didn’t want to do that.

  I kicked my way closer. Seconds later, I was floating over the light and whatever it was that had terrified my friend. Here we go.

  I took several slow, deep breaths and dove below the surface. A metre down, I began to feel the water pressure building in my ears, so I pinch
ed my nose and blew. My ears gave an equalizing squeak, and the annoying discomfort vanished. The beam from Eric’s light drew me ever closer, like a moth to a streetlight. Seconds later, I saw Eric’s light resting against a section of silt-covered irrigation pipe. The beam pointed to the surface at a sinister angle.

  I drifted over to the light and picked it up. It was brighter than my dive light, so I jammed mine inside my wetsuit and hung onto Eric’s.

  Floating half a metre above the lake bottom, I wondered what to do next. I knew I should leave—Eric would be waiting—but I still wanted to know what he had seen. I mean, he must have seen something. Eric wasn’t a liar.

  I swam a circle around the spot where Eric’s dive light had landed. Following the beam cast by my light—actually, his light—I nervously moved through the water. There were still plenty of golf balls, but nothing out of the ordinary—certainly no body. Oh, well, at least I’d tried to confirm Eric’s story.

  My lungs began to burn, badly needing air, when something off to the right caught my eye. I swung the light two metres over.

  There it is! But what is it? I swam closer. Eric was right. There was something wrapped in a carpet. One more kick . . . closer now. . . Were those boots sticking out? Yikes! It was a body.

  But wait! That doesn’t look right!

  My lungs were on fire now, so I kicked for the surface—I simply had to. As I gulped fresh air, I realized there was something weird about the feet I’d seen poking out of the carpet.

  Excited now, I filled my lungs again and dove back down. I found the body quickly. Using the dive knife, I reached out and tapped a boot protruding from under the carpet. The steel blade made a clang sound that echoed all around me in the water. Huh? The unexpected impact of metal against metal sent a shockwave down my spine. Getting bolder, I swam even closer.

  This time with the butt end of my knife, I struck the boot again. The same thing happened—a big, hollow clang vibrated through the lake. This thing that Eric thought was a body was actually a statue of a person. Nobody had been murdered. But still . . . what was it doing wrapped in a carpet at the bottom of Smoke Lake?