by JE Gurley
2
Oct. 23, 2014, Little Cayman, Caribbean –
Josh Peterman emerged from the emerald green water, ran his fingers through his wavy, blond locks to ease them back into place, and stood, looking up and down the almost deserted beach. Hurricane Clive was still a day out, but the rough surf, the lack of sun, and the scuttling clouds had driven anyone hardy enough to brave the storm into the bars to sip pina coladas. A strong wave surged onto the beach, breaking against the back of his legs with enough force to send him reeling forward. He stumbled and caught himself before falling, but his heels began sinking as the wave retreated, eroding the sand from beneath his feet.
“Enough for today,” he muttered and headed for his towel lying on the sand.
Josh, a senior at Texas Christian University, had saved for two years to take this trip to Little Cayman, and he wasn’t about to let an impending hurricane spoil it. However, now it would be a total wash out – no sun, no diving, and no women. His anticipated weeklong stay would be shorter than he had hoped. Today, his third on the tiny island would be his last day. He was evacuating with the last batch of tourists on the last plane leaving at six p.m. Only the island’s one-hundred-and-seventy or so residents would remain, enduring the hurricane’s wrath and fury with the same serenity with which they faced daily life.
Toweling dry as he walked toward to the Sunset Cove Resort, a British Colonial-style, two-story building, he eyed the hammocks suspended between palm trees. He plopped down in one, allowing the nylon netting to enfold him, but after a few minutes, the constant swaying of the tree in the wind brought on a bout of seasickness. The thought of an early dinner on his queasy stomach didn’t appeal to him, and he really didn’t feel like drinking again so soon after last night’s epic binge. Two-for-one deals should include a warning that the bartender is not responsible for the drinker’s inability to know when he has overindulged.
A grain of sand blew into his eye. As he rubbed it out, he spotted something washing up on shore. The crashing waves rolled it over the sand. It moved. He blinked back a tear and rose from the hammock to investigate.
As he neared the object, some type of animal, the first thing he noted was the teeth, long, curved and vicious, sprouting from both the upper and lower jaws. The gills fluttered as it fought for oxygen. It was still alive. The size of the fish surprised him, nearly five feet in length. It was too dark, almost black, for a barracuda, and didn’t have the fins of a shark. It fact, it didn’t resemble any other tropical fish with which he was familiar. As he leaned over it for a closer look, the fish wriggled toward him, snapping its jaws at him. An incoming wave moved the fish toward his feet. He leaped back to avoid a bite that would probably have severed his foot.
“Damn!” he exclaimed, looking around to see if anyone saw his startled reaction.
As his mind worked overtime, trying to recall to what species the fish belonged, he noticed several more of the creatures flopping up and down the beach, brought in by the rising tide. It appeared he would have no dearth of specimens to examine. As he considered the possibility of mutations, it all finally snapped into place. His mind reeled, astounded at what he was seeing. The creature was a member of Anoplogaster comuta, the common fangtooth, also known as the Ogrefish, but instead of its usual six-inch length, this creature was ten times as large. What it was doing on a beach in the Cayman Islands rather than in the deep dark at sixteen-thousand feet, its usual habitat, feeding on plankton, he couldn’t imagine. The storm alone couldn’t have brought it up from the depths. Had the tremor that had rattled the island two days earlier disturbed the deep creatures? The news had reported a 5.4 magnitude quake with its epicenter about one-hundred twenty miles south of Little Cayman at a depth of twelve-thousand feet. That placed it in the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center, an area noted for slides and tremors.
He took a series of photos with his cell phone, laying his watch on the sand as a ruler to indicate the creature’s true size. He had to hurry before the tide swept the creature back out to sea. Satisfied with the results, he then attempted to send the photos to his professor at TCU.
“Damn, no bars.” He scanned the darkening sky to the southeast. “Must be the storm.”
As he entered the resort lobby, the manager, Nigel Hawthorne, met him at the door. Hawthorne, a middle-aged man who was much too pale for living on a tropical island, was going bald, but insisted on combing over his few remaining hairs and plastering them to his scalp. His hand repeatedly flew to his head to replace errant hairs as the wind blew them around. He reeked of patchouli oil.
“Mr., ah, Peterman, I just wanted to remind you about the plane at six p.m. tonight.” He stared at Josh with folded hands as he waited for an answer.
“Yes, I remember. I’ll be ready.”
Hawthorne dipped his head, said, “Very good,” and scuttled away.
Josh smiled at Hawthorne’s back as he was retreating. Hawthorne was much too nervous for such an easy-going climate, always rushing about, while his employees sauntered from task to task as if it working, personally assaulted their daily routine of laissez faire. With his pencil-thin moustache, Hawthorne reminded Josh of a prim and proper mortician. The lobby was deserted. In fact, only three guests remained in the resort. One was a long-time resident, and the other two were a couple from Minnesota leaving on the same plane as Josh.
Josh’s room overlooked the beach. He grabbed a cold cola from the room’s mini fridge and walked straight through the room to the veranda that all the beachside rooms shared. He plopped down in a white wicker armchair and propped his feet on the railing. The vase of flowers that had fallen from the table beside his chair and shattered during the tremor two days earlier was still there, one of the few signs of visible damage from the tremor. He was surprised the staff hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it up, but he supposed they were busy preparing for the hurricane.
He scanned the beach, but it was clear of giant Ogrefish. The tide had washed them back out to sea. He wished that he could have saved a specimen on ice, but it would never have survived the long journey back to TCU. The photos would be proof enough, and perhaps provide a basis for his thesis. Watching the tide eat away the sand, he sensed a twinge of sympathy for the island’s residents for when the storm surge arrived. The resort lobby would be flooded, as would most of the island. The island’s highest point was barely forty feet above sea level. Even if it survived the ravages of the hurricane’s winds, the island would be devastated.
Josh’s stomach rumbled, but he had no desire for a large dinner. Instead, he nibbled on fruit from a bowl beside the chair and the remains of a package of potato chips to curb his hunger, wondering how much of his stomachache was due to too much alcohol and how much from fear. He had never been so close to a hurricane before. He had seen photos of the aftermath of one and had no desire to be caught in the middle of one. He also had a fear of flying. He had fought the fear during the entire journey from Texas, tempting fate in his desire to visit the island. Thoughts of flying through the fringes of a hurricane in the dark made him more than a little uneasy.
He pulled out his cell phone and stared at the photos of the Ogrefish. He had dived with sharks and barracudas, and even had a small scar from a moray eel’s bite, but meeting giant Ogrefish in the dark depths sent a shiver up his spine. Such creatures couldn’t live in a vacuum. They had to eat something, and in turn, something larger ate them. Such was the cycle of nature. Whatever had driven them up from the deep, earth tremor or hurricane, had it also brought other deep denizens to the surface, creatures that would make Ogrefish pale in comparison? He had heard of giant squid, had seen their sucker marks on blue whales. If this was an example of sea life in the depths, what else lurked below?
A gust of wind swept across the veranda, swaying the trees, bringing with it the strong scent of rain. The day was rapidly fading into an early twilight. The surf was rising and powerful waves began to pound the beach. He thought of huddling in the dark confines of the flimsy woo
den structure of the resort during a hurricane and shuddered.
He hoped the plane would take off on time.
3
Oct. 23, 2014, eighty miles southeast of Grand Cayman Island –
Captain Ron Germaine normally wouldn’t have accepted a charter for a night dive in such rough seas with a hurricane bearing down, but the two thousand dollars the client offered would help him meet his next payment on his boat, the Miss Lucy. An unopened late-payment statement from the bank lay on an end table at home. The fifty-foot schooner was almost forty years old, just twelve years younger than he was, and had become higher maintenance than his alcoholic ex-wife. Under way, with a crew of three, the two-mast schooner required maximum effort from all hands. Now, with the jib, the fore gaff topsail, the mainsail, and the fore sail reefed and secured and the sea anchor out, they relaxed with bottles of well-earned beer.
Germaine kept one an eye on the weather, and the other on the bubbles off his starboard beam. The mass of dark clouds to the east marked the leading edge of Hurricane Clive. Already a Class Three storm, it promised quite a punch. Lightning illuminated the cloud mass like New Year’s Eve sparklers, heralding the storm’s approach. Already the twenty-knot winds were raising whitecaps that rolled the schooner like a cork in a bucket. It would be a close call to reach port before the weather worsened.
His passengers, three American adventurers from Utah who fancied themselves underwater photographers, were a hundred feet below the ship filming a school of barracuda. He hoped they didn’t get eaten, mainly because they still owed him five-hundred dollars for fuel. He had no respect for amateurs, but all three had their diving certificates and professed a hundred hours of dive time each. From their manner aboard ship and lack of sea legs, he guessed most of those hours were in dive pools back in Utah. He had always imagined Utah a desert state, like Arizona. Perhaps they practiced diving in the Great Salt Lake.
The small remote monitor sitting on the hatch cover relayed what the trio was filming. The camera lights reflected off a writhing silver wall, undulating like satin sails in a breeze. As the camera panned upward, the wall became a fifty-feet-tall whirlpool of circling barracuda. Germaine hoped the greenhorns knew that barracuda bite. He checked his watch and lifted an eyebrow to catch the attention of Chance Bodden, his first mate. Bodden set down his beer and sauntered over, moving with the cat-like grace that made him a natural on the masts.
“What up, Boss?” he asked in his island drawl.
“Those greenhorns have been down almost an hour. They might forget just how much air is in their tanks. Give McCoy a call on the walkie-talkie to remind them.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Seth McCoy was the group’s spokesman, an overbearing little man with a penchant for Jamaican rum and arguing with anyone who would listen. Germaine tried to give McCoy a wide berth, but on a fifty-foot schooner, that was difficult. He listened in as his mate called the divers.
“Miss Lucy to Mr. McCoy. Come in.”
The reply was muffled and interspersed with regulator noise as the diver breathed. The view in the monitor lost focus as McCoy jiggled the camera. “This is McCoy. What do you want, Miss Lucy?”
As usual, McCoy managed to sound put upon.
“Watch your dive time, sir. You’re almost out of air.”
“I’m well aware of our dive time, thank you. We will be up shortly. There are some strange lights below us that I want to photograph.”
Bodden shrugged. He was used to McCoy’s superciliousness. To Germaine, he said, “We could just leave them here.”
Germaine flicked the ashes from his cigarette over the side. He detested McCoy but liked his money. “Tempting as it is, they still owe me money. Give them five minutes and call them again.”
Germaine wondered what lights McCoy meant. Most of the phosphorescent sea life was down deep. The storm could be bringing them to the surface. If so, predators would follow. He didn’t want his passengers caught in the middle of a feeding frenzy. A few minutes later, he saw lights just beneath the surface off the starboard bow.
“They must be surfacing,” he said to Bodden. “Stand by to help them aboard.”
He checked the monitor, but it showed only darkness. Curious, he watched the lights off the bow for a few moments before it struck him that there were too many of them for the three divers. The walkie-talkie erupted at the same time.
“My God, it’s gigantic!” Panic filled McCoy’s voice.
Germaine checked the monitor again, and this time, he saw shadowy shapes and pulsating lights in the darkness. He rushed to the walkie-talkie. “McCoy, get back to the surface now.”
“What are those things?” McCoy yelled to one of his companions. “One just swallowed half a dozen barracuda with one gulp. I’ve got to get a picture of it.”
Killer whales? Sharks? It didn’t matter. “Negative, McCoy. Surface now.”
McCoy ignored Germaine’s command. His voice was filled with excitement as he spoke. “It must be twenty feet long. Its head is as big as a garbage can. Bigger. There are rows of lights along its sides.” Now there was awe in McCoy’s voice, but his breathing rate had increased, eating up his remaining oxygen. Germaine worried that if McCoy didn’t surface soon, he would be sucking from an empty tank.
“McCoy?” he demanded.
A second voice blared over the walkie-talkie. It sounded like Cory Radisson, the youngest of the three divers and the only one Germaine could stand. “It’s coming at me!”
“Radisson, look out!” McCoy yelled, and then, “My God, he’s gone.”
The monitor showed bright specks in the water, tiny phytoplankton reflecting the camera lights. The school of barracuda had vanished, but part of a barracuda’s tail floated by.
“Get up here fast, McCoy,” Germaine screamed, but he knew it was too late. Whatever was down there, it now considered the divers as food. With blood in the water, they didn’t have a chance.
“Boss, look.” Bodden pointed over the side. Germaine hoped to see the divers’ heads surfacing. Instead, he saw a monster.
A creature half as long as the schooner cut through the water just below the surface. Its head was large and bulbous with two massive red eyes. Its black, ribbon-like body ended in a single dorsal fin. Rows of lights running along each side gave it the appearance of a mini-submarine. He recognized the creature from one of the marine books in his small ship’s library as a Viperfish, but this one was enormous. What had brought it up from a mile deep? As he watched, several more surfaced. Then the seas came alive with lights. They were adrift in a sea of Viperfish.
McCoy was still alive, or at least the camera was operating. Germaine tried the walkie-talkie. “McCoy! Get the hell up here now.” He heard only the sound of very rapid breathing through the speaker. The angle camera swung down, catching a glimpse of McCoy’s swim fin. Something large and dark was rushing at him from below – a Viperfish. Lights pulsated behind its head. The swim fin fluttered rapidly as McCoy struggled for the surface, but he was too late. The Viperfish was much faster than he was. With a quick flick of its eel-like body, it lunged at the diver. The camera showed the bulbous head and large red eyes, the enormous mouth yawning wide like a cavern with needle-sharp teeth like stalactites. Then everything went dark. McCoy’s brief muffled scream over the walkie-talkie was followed by static. All three divers were gone.
One of the creatures thumped the side of the boat, releasing Germaine from his shock. “We have to leave,” he yelled to Bodden. A fish as large as the Viperfish could stave in the hull. Raising the sails would take too long. “Cut the anchor rope and start the engine.” Bodden cast a quick nervous glance over the side, looking for the divers. “Forget about them. They’re gone.” So was his five hundred dollars. That would be the least of his problems. Losing three divers and bringing in a tale of giant Viperfish would earn him a police inquiry and probably cost him his license. Then he remembered the extra camera McCoy had left on the deck. He grabbed it and snapped
three quick photos, hoping the black Viperfish would be distinguishable against the dark background.
The sky to the east lit up with a frenzied flurry of lightning. The sea around them pulsed with light as the Viperfish responded, an eerie sight that made Germaine’s blood run cold. He had witnessed a lot of strange things on the sea, but the Viperfish were the strangest. The Miss Lucy surged forward as Bodden shoved the throttle to full speed. Germaine offered a brief silent prayer for his lost divers and turned to the crew, who were as frightened as he was.
“Secure everything. We’re in for a rough ride back.”
Gradually, the schooner pulled ahead of the school of Viperfish. Germaine glanced back at the spot where he had lost his three passengers. The area pulsed with lights. Suddenly, a dark shape like the prow of a submarine rose from the water, engulfing dozens of the Viperfish; swallowing them as a whale devours krill. The shape sank beneath the surface, but the lights suddenly vanished. The sound of a hundred whales echoed from the depths, vibrating the Miss Lucy’s hull. Bodden glanced at Germaine. He hadn’t witnessed the dark shape rise, but he knew enough about ocean sounds to know that this sound was different. Germaine shuddered in fear. He knew that in the vicious cycle of life, big fish preyed on smaller fish. What top predator snacked on twenty-foot Viperfish?
He didn’t want to find out.
4
Oct. 23, Little Cayman Island, Caribbean –
Josh was going nowhere. No one was. He had arrived at the small airstrip at Edward Bodden Airfield in Blossom Village half an hour early. The winds had already reached gusts of forty miles per hour, and the pilot had expressed his doubts about taking off under such conditions. As badly as Josh wanted off the island, the thought of daring heavy winds disturbed him more than the approaching hurricane. One of Josh’s fellow passengers became irate upon hearing the news and loudly voiced his objections. The pilot’s concern had become a moot point when a sudden gust lifted the eight-thousand-pound de Havilland twin-engine Otter from the tarmac like a palm frond, and sent it hurdling into a nearby fuel truck. The attendant pumping fuel into the plane barely made it off the field before an enormous explosion lit up the night sky, as plane, truck, and a small nearby storage shed erupted in flames. Fire danced along the plane’s sixty-five-foot wings like a line of Vegas chorus girls. Wind whipped the flames into an inferno that quickly consumed everything it touched. All four passengers in the small terminal watched on in silence. As the flames died, so did Josh’s hopes.
