by Jack Heath
This seemed pretty dumb to Sarah. It was as if he had taken a single bite of asparagus and then decided that he hated food.
Mrs Aberzombie froze Ryan with her wide-eyed glare. As usual, she looked halfway between terrified and furious.
Ryan shut his mouth.
‘—a short story,’ Mrs Aberzombie continued, ‘about R’lyeh, a lost city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where Cthulhu is imprisoned.’
‘Is Cthulhu a squid?’ someone asked.
‘More like a man with an octopus for a head. But it’s hundreds of metres tall and has wings.’
‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Ryan muttered. ‘Why would it need wings if it lives under the sea?’
‘Because one day it will rise.’ Mrs Aberzombie’s eyes glittered. ‘That is the premise of this tale, in any case. The first chapter is called The Horror in Clay, and I expect you to have read it by the end of the week.’
She wrote the entire title—The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Phillips Lovecraft on the board.
‘The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Phillips Lovecraft influenced a great many other writers,’ she said. ‘But this isn’t to say that it was the first story of its type. The Kraken, an 1830 poem by Alfred Tennyson, also describes a giant monster asleep for centuries on the ocean floor. In fact, descriptions of an enormous tentacled sea monster date back to Icelandic stories of the late fourteenth century.’
Sarah raised her hand. She couldn’t help herself.
‘Sarah,’ Mrs Aberzombie said.
‘Since there are so many different accounts,’ she said, ‘does that mean it could be real?’
Ryan snorted.
‘No,’ Mrs Aberzombie said.
Sarah wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m not a zoologist. I don’t know if it’s biologically possible for a creature to live for hundreds of years or grow to hundreds of metres in length. But as an English teacher, I can tell you that human beings adore stories, and they have the most extraordinary imaginations.’
Sarah noticed that she said ‘they’, not ‘we’.
‘Just because people claim to have spotted a skyscraper-sized beast in the sea,’ Mrs Aberzombie continued, ‘that doesn’t mean such a thing exists. After all, people claim to have spotted ghosts and zombies as well.’
Nervous laughter filled the class. Sarah wasn’t the only one who called their teacher Mrs Aberzombie.
A plan was forming in Sarah’s mind. Mrs Aberzombie might be right about the giant monsters, but she was wrong about the ghosts.
They were down there, and Sarah was going to prove it.
EXAGGERATIONS
‘Hey, Sarah.’
A male voice.
Sarah looked up. It was lunchtime. She’d been examining her website on her phone, wondering why it looked wrong. The title was too big and the buttons were in the wrong place. Some of the photos of the clothes weren’t loading.
Sarah had always been tortured by the question: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ People had been asking her ever since she was a little girl. The more times she heard the words, the more frightened she became. She had no idea what she wanted to be. ‘Ghost hunter’ wasn’t a real job. Nor was ‘free diver’ or ‘book reader’ or any of the other things she was good at.
This uncertainty about the future didn’t seem to bother her friends, but it terrified her. In a state of panic, she decided she would open an online clothes store. She liked clothes, sort of—not just choosing them, but figuring out how they worked. Checking which seams were structural and which were aesthetic. Finding out what different wash cycles did to different fabrics.
She soon found that making clothes was hard, but making a website to sell them was pretty easy. Ever since then, whenever she started to freak out about her eventual career, she would fiddle with her website until the feeling passed.
‘Hello? Sarah?’
The phone had melted her eyeballs. She blinked and waited for the real world to come into focus. When it did, Josh was standing on the grass in front of her.
‘I heard you nearly got eaten by a giant squid yesterday,’ he said.
‘Colossal squid,’ Sarah said. ‘Yvette told you?’
Josh was Yvette’s brother. He was quieter than Yvette, and more cautious, but Sarah liked him. When she went over to Yvette’s house, Josh was often drawing surprisingly good sketches in his room. Her own drawing skills were poor, which was one of the reasons that designing clothes was so hard.
It suddenly occurred to her that she should be considering him as a potential business partner. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of that before.
‘In Yvette’s version of the story,’ Josh said, ‘she saved your life by harpooning the squid. I wanted to hear your side.’
This was a nice change. Usually people didn’t believe Sarah, they went to Yvette for confirmation, not the other way around.
‘My uncle shot the squid,’ Sarah said. ‘But yes, technically, Yvette got there first.’
‘With a harpoon?’
‘A flagpole, used like a harpoon. The squid had already swallowed me by that point, but she crawled right into its beak and pulled me out. Your sister’s a hero.’
Josh looked suspicious. ‘She didn’t mention that part.’
‘Of course not. She’s way too modest.’
‘Uh-huh. And if I talked to your uncle, he’d confirm all this?’
‘You should.’ Sarah knew Josh was scared of Claude. ‘He could probably even show you the video footage.’
‘Hey, Yvette,’ Josh said. ‘Did you pull Sarah out of the squid’s mouth?’
Sarah turned to see Yvette approaching.
‘I did,’ Yvette said casually. She knew Sarah well enough to know what was going on and relished any opportunity to mess with her brother.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Josh demanded.
‘I’m just way too modest,’ Yvette said.
Sarah burst out laughing as Josh looked from her to Yvette in suspicious bafflement. Yvette knew her really well.
The rest of the school day dragged by. Sarah struggled to focus. The sleepless night was catching up with her. Several times per lesson she realised she was concentrating so hard on listening that she hadn’t understood any of the words. Reading from the whiteboard was basically impossible—by the time she reached the end of each sentence she had forgotten how it began.
Her thoughts kept drifting back to the strange lights under the ocean.
Will they be back again tonight?
If they are, will they show up on camera?
Eventually the bell rang and she was out in the sunshine, sucking the summer air into her lungs and stretching her sore neck.
Sarah walked slowly through the crowd of kids to the bike racks, where she could see Yvette was back fiddling with her bike again. She seemed to have almost finished putting it back together.
‘Hey, Yvette. Want to go for a swim?’
Yvette thought about it.
‘You got something else on?’ Sarah asked.
‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ Yvette said. She stood her bike upright. ‘Get on.’
Sarah blinked. The bike wasn’t designed for two people.
Except it was, now. Two short poles were screwed to the rear axle. Foot rests.
‘That was what you were doing this morning?’ Sarah asked.
‘For you.’ Yvette smiled. ‘You like it?’
‘I love it! Thanks so much!’
Yvette shrugged. ‘Well, I got sick of waiting for you all the time.’
‘Ha, ha.’
Yvette pulled a second helmet out of her bag and tossed it over. Sarah caught it, put it on and tightened the straps under her chin. Then she stepped on the back of the bike while Yvette held it still.
The poles were remarkably sturdy. Yvette climbed onto the seat and Sarah crouched down to hold on to Yvette’s waist.
‘You’re a genius,’ she said.
OFF KILTER
The trip to the bay took no time at all. The sun flickered between the trees and the tyres hummed on the concrete as the bike hurtled down the path.
Sarah delighted in the feeling of the sun on her arms and the wind blowing her hair around her ears. She wished it were possible to store this sensation—it was easy to snap a photo or record a sound, but it was impossible to capture the way something felt. Maybe someday she would be able to plug a device into her brain and backup her memories so they could later be relived or shared.
‘We’ll have to go past my place to get my swimmers,’ Yvette shouted.
‘You can borrow some of mine,’ Sarah replied. Yvette nodded and swerved the bike sideways, heading to the north end of the bay, where the docks were. Sarah clung desperately to Yvette as she half-stood, half-crouched behind her. She had no control over the direction or speed of the bike. An unexpected turn or brake could throw her off.
She had been Yvette’s best friend for so long that they sometimes joked about being able to read one another’s minds. Now Sarah’s life literally depended on it. She had to correctly predict which way Yvette would swerve each time. If she leaned the wrong way, they could both fall off.
The bike hit the pier with a series of rattling jolts. After a minute, Yvette squeezed the brakes and they rolled to a stop in front of Sarah’s houseboat. Sarah exhaled and stepped off the bike. Her legs were wobbly.
‘Hey,’ Yvette said. ‘Is it a little crooked?’
‘Is what crooked?’
‘Your house.’
Sarah frowned at it. She didn’t think so.
Yvette pointed. ‘Right there. See? There are seven weatherboards above the waterline on that side, and only five over there.’
Sarah counted. ‘You’re a freak! How did you notice that?’
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Yvette was good at noticing stuff. Every time she walked through a field she spotted at least one four-leaf clover, earning her a reputation as the luckiest girl in the world. Whenever Sarah was hanging out at Yvette’s place, her parents were always coming into the room to see if Yvette had seen their sunglasses, their phones, their keys. Yvette would think about it and say, ‘Under the coffee table’ or, ‘Next to the computer’. She was always right.
‘Probably nothing to worry about,’ Sarah said. ‘Mum must have put something heavy in the corner of the living room.’
‘Well,’ Yvette said doubtfully. ‘Just so long as you’re sure it’s not sinking.’
Sarah laughed. ‘I’m sure.’ She unlocked the door and led Yvette inside. ‘Why don’t you lean your bike against the wall over there? Maybe it’ll straighten out the house. Mum?’
There was no answer. Mum must not be home from work yet.
Sarah couldn’t see anything heavy in the corner. She frowned. That was weird. What could be causing the boat to tilt?
‘Where are your swimmers?’ Yvette asked.
Sarah grabbed two sets of brightly coloured swimmers out of the wardrobe in her bedroom. She tossed the red ones to Yvette and kept the glow-in-the-dark green ones for herself. ‘I’ll change in the bathroom,’ she said.
A few minutes later she was in her one-piece and board shorts, waiting for Yvette on the back porch. The water was clear as glass. She couldn’t see anything abnormal in the depths. No colossal squids, no sleeping Cthulhu, and no drowned gold miner.
Had there really been a ghost down there last night? Or was Mum right, and she had imagined it?
A hand fell on her shoulder. Sarah yelped.
‘Relax,’ Yvette said. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah. Just thinking.’
‘About what?’
Sarah gestured at the two scuba tanks. ‘About whether I can be bothered to use one of these.’ It would take forever to put them on and do all the safety checks.
‘Just snorkels, maybe?’ Yvette suggested.
‘Good idea.’ Sarah was keen to get in the water but she also wanted to be able to see. The masks attached to the snorkels would be a good compromise.
She grabbed two out of the dive bag and threw one to Yvette. ‘See you in there,’ she said, and jumped over the railing.
DEEP BREATH
As always, the water was colder than Sarah expected. She had once made her own ice-cream in chemistry class—it had been gooey, but still tastier than the pre-packaged stuff—and part of the process had involved dissolving ice cubes with salt. This worked because salt water froze at a lower temperature than pure water.
The sea water always seemed cold in Axe Falls, even in summer. Without the salt, she wondered if it would turn to ice.
As usual, Sarah got used to the temperature quickly. Treading water, she stretched the rubber strap of the snorkel over her head. She took a few deep, fast breaths.
Yvette splashed down into the water beside her. ‘Don’t go too deep,’ she said, adjusting her snorkel. ‘You know I can’t hold my breath as long as you.’
When Sarah was a little girl, someone told her that germs filled the air in bathrooms and toilets. She had become scared to breathe whenever she went to the bathroom, and had learned to take a deep breath before she went in.
At first, that breath only lasted about thirty seconds. Later she could handle a whole minute. As a ten-year-old, she got over her fear of bathrooms, but found that her lung capacity was useful when she dived. Now she could go almost four minutes without breathing.
‘You could learn,’ Sarah said. ‘It just takes practice.’
‘You cheat. Your blood doesn’t turn acidic as fast as mine. Mr Fink says that happens with regular divers.’
Mr Fink was their science teacher. He gave Sarah the creeps. ‘That doesn’t count as cheating,’ she said. ‘Let’s go!’
Sarah slipped under the water before Yvette could argue. The ocean stretched out in all directions, a seemingly limitless expanse of mysterious blue.
She had always loved the sea. The way the waves were suddenly silenced as soon as her head went under. The way her body—so awkward on land—became a weightless, graceful thing.
Sarah blew some bubbles out of her snorkel and watched them dance away towards the surface.
A school of shimmering blue fish darted past, swerving in unison. The green slime which coated the pylons holding up the dock—’the pier support group’, Mum called them—must be edible, because fish were dancing around them.
The two girls swam away from the pier and out to deeper water. The ocean opened up around them, impossibly vast. Soon the seabed was a long way down. Sarah felt like an astronaut on a space walk, floating kilometres above the earth’s surface.
When they were far enough away from the reefs, different kinds of life started to appear. Fat eels slithered into dark tunnels. Crabs scuttled along the ocean floor. Not just the little ones, either—some had bodies as big as tennis balls.
The water was so clear that Sarah felt like she could see for kilometres. In fact, there was a dark shape in the distance. Something massive, lying still on the seabed.
Yvette was swimming back towards the surface. Sarah followed her.
Sarah’s head came out into the air again and all the noise of the world rushed back in at her. She blew all the water out of her snorkel and spat it out.
‘Hey,’ she puffed. ‘Did you see that thing in the way off in the distance?’
‘What thing?’
‘Something big. That way.’ Sarah jerked her head sideways.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’
Yvette looked nervous. ‘Another squid?’
Sarah flinched. ‘No, nothing like that. It was resting on the seabed. Like a building.’
‘An underwater building? Like part of a sunken city?’
That was exactly what Sarah had been thinking. Mrs Aberzombie’s voice echoed through her mind: R’lyeh, a lost city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where
Cthulhu is imprisoned.
There’s no such thing as Cthulhu, Sarah told herself. ‘Let’s check it out.’
‘I don’t know.’ Yvette looked back longingly in the direction of the houseboat.
Sarah understood her unease. Colossal squids weren’t the only threats in the ocean. There could be great white sharks. Giant jellyfish. Saltwater crocodiles.
But it was an underwater building right near Axe Falls! They couldn’t just leave without taking a peek.
‘Come on,’ Sarah said. ‘Think how famous we’ll be if it turns out to be the lost city of Atlantis.’
‘Atlantis isn’t lost, it’s fictional,’ Yvette said. ‘Plato made it up.’
‘Says you,’ Sarah said.
She put her snorkel back in and swam towards deeper waters. Yvette followed.
As Sarah travelled away from the coast, the ocean floor receded further and further down. Normally this was where she’d start seeing bigger creatures below. Rays, little reef sharks—even a whale, once. But today there was nothing. Just a few rotting husks on the distant seabed, too far gone to identify.
Maybe something had scared all the fish away. Perhaps the same thing which had chased one colossal squid out of the ocean and killed so many others. The squid slayer.
Sarah swam deeper and took a look around. No sea monsters. She and Yvette were safe. There was just that massive silhouette, angular and mysterious. Strange spires rose from the top like smoke. And were those windows?
She had underestimated the building’s size. The closer she got, the bigger it looked. The shape grew larger. It was impossibly big—it must have been further away than she thought. It might have been an underwater mountain, except for the perfect angles and the smooth surface. It leaned slightly, as though about to collapse.
They swam closer. Yvette had to break off and surface for a breath, but Sarah was lured on by the imminent discovery. Just as she was running out of air, she realised what she was looking at.
It wasn’t a building.
It was a sunken ship.
SHIPWRECK
It was probably the biggest vessel Sarah had ever seen. Her houseboat would fit inside it hundreds of times over. Anemones swayed on the decks. Grime caked the massive black hull. The Quirin logo—a quarter-moon shape with a signal tower superimposed onto it—had almost entirely flaked away. The ship had been down there a long, long time. But Sarah still recognised the distinctive emblem on sight.
