Joe turned and felt the body. Finn’s face was a frozen mask.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Yes,” Joe whispered. “But how?”
“You saw him come up,” I said. “If you ask me, I think he died of fright.”
Fright? What was there to be afraid of. Arrachtach? What did that mean? I turned to the Bos’n. “What’s arrachtach?”
Jack Finn shook his head, avoiding my eyes.
“Monster,” he whispered.
Chapter 3
About an hour later we’d pulled the Triton in to the dock, and I was working on a sheared deck plate bolt with a torch in my hands and a welding visor on when I heard someone call my name from the dock. “Mr. Slade! Mr. Slade!”
I looked down at the battered planking and saw Sean McCartin’s freckled face and wide green eyes. He was watching me with a serious, unblinking expression.
I flipped the torch off, laid it down, and lifted the visor of the welding mask. “Hi kid,” I grinned. “What’s up?”
“I wish to speak to you,” he said. “Alone.”
I glanced around. “Shoot.”
He shook his head. “I may be overheard.”
Shaking my head at his tenacity, I walked to the rail and leaned over toward him. “Okay,” I whispered loudly. “Nobody can hear us now. What is it?”
He cupped his mouth so no one could read his lips. “My sister Moira wants to talk to you.”
I stared. “Moira?”
“Yes. This afternoon. Quickly before you sail.”
I shrugged. Moira? A tryst? I hid my grin. Probably wanted me to dive for three pairs of nylons in Macy’s.
“Where?”
“The cove beyond the lighthouse.” Sean gestured across the harbor past the neck of rock that shot out into the sea. “It is not seen from our cottage.”
“I should hope so,” I said, with feeling. I glanced around. It was still foggy. “Any particular spot?”
Sean gave me the details.
“Tell her four-thirty,” I said. “Sixteen-thirty, Irish style.”
I took the launch and pointed the prow toward the lighthouse. The fog was in heavier than ever and as I pushed through the ghostly mist, I could see dim phantom shapes of masts and rigging moving aimlessly by me. Dead silence hung over the sea. The harbor stank of death. Gulls swooped down for pecks at the floating, bloated corpses of fish cast up by the tidal wave.
I passed the rocky point, and steered in close to the cliffs on the side away from the harbor. There was nothing in sight—nothing but rolling fog and the choppy waters of the inlet ahead of me. The hum of the launch engine bounced back at me from the cliff’s face. I kept going.
I saw the little beach. It was just as Sean had described it to me. Narrow, white and secluded. From here, even without the screen of convenient fog, nobody could see us. It was the perfect spot for a rendezvous. A steep cliff rose abruptly at the back of the sand strip. Through the fog I could see several vague black openings in the rock. Caves?
I beached the launch and secured it to a jogged rock. Then I crunched through the sand to the cliff. This was where Moira would be waiting.
But she was not there.
I sat down, lit a cigarette and stared into the fog. An eerie silence permeated the atmosphere, and the fact that I could not see more than six or eight feet in front of me began to work on my nerves. I suspected shapes of being people. The constant rumble of the surf assumed foreign sounds and became crunching footsteps, a human cough, a throat clearing.
Was the message actually from Moira? Or was this McCartin’s little trick to ambush me? And if so, why? I shivered. My imagination was running away with me. Think sharp, Sam!
Then she was there. Like the wraith she was, she came out of the fog as if she had materialized out of nothing. I recalled the way she had confronted us on the cliff path. Was she really human, I wondered, or was she the sea sprite I had first imaged her? Lord, the fog was really getting to me!
“Hello, Moira,” I said.
“Mr. Slade,” she said, approaching me, glancing about her. She held up a finger for silence. She cocked her head, then nodded. “There is no one. We are alone.”
I tugged on my cigarette and watched the smoke curl up in front of me. It never occurred to me to offer her a smoke. “What’s on your mind?”
She came over and sat down beside me. I could detect the fresh, outdoor, oceanic smell of her. She was beautiful in the swilling fog, her flaming red hair dew-flecked, her clear white skin moist and cool.
“I have come to ask a favor of you,” she said softly, her voice husky and burred with a melodious brogue.
“Line forms to the right,” I said with a laugh.
She turned her face to me, and her sea-green eyes were round and serious. “I do not joke, Mr. Slade,” she said. “To you, nor anyone. You must promise me you will never let my father know I came to you.”
“Rest assured,” I said wryly. “And call me Sam.”
“I am awkward with the English tongue,” she said haltingly. “But ’tis the truth I must be telling. There is a heaviness in my heart that I must stay on Nara.” She looked at me pleadingly.
“I get it. You don’t like it here and you want to get away.” I shook my head in disgust. I might have known it! Just another dame wanting water-taxi service!
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I went on, my voice beginning to rise. “You think we’re running a passenger service to the mainland. Right, my charming colleen?”
Her mouth dropped open. She stared at me in astonishment.
But I was mad. Everybody who knows a guy with a boat invariably wants to hook a cheap ride. This broad with the wonderful body and the flaming red hair seemed to think she could buy a ride to the moon with a lift of the eyebrow and a rise of the breasts. Probably scented a short pleasure cruise to Galway Bay. The hell with that. I’d been suckered by enough dames in the past to know every angle of that game.
“Sorry, honey,” I said. “No sale, like we say in the States.”
The girl’s cheeks flushed, and her eyes burned. Her breasts rose and fell angrily. She was Irish and she was quick-tempered, and now she was mad. I’d really riled her. That’s me, Old Sam Smooth with the dames.
“ ’Tis a cheap hussy you think I am!” she cried. “I’m willing to pay my way, Mr. Slade. ’Tis no favor I’m asking. What do you take me for—a charity case?” Her eyes blazing, she jumped to her feet. “For your information, I would ask your captain, but I know exactly what he wants from me!” Her cheeks crimsoned again. “I thought you were a gentleman, anyway. A worse mistake I never made!”
She wheeled from me and started running through the sand.
I moved fast. I spun her around, holding her stiffly in front of me. I had to laugh.
“Calm down, Moira. I keep forgetting you’re Irish. I have a wee bit of the ould sod in me, too. Come on, now. Sit you down. Let’s talk it out, shall we?”
She dropped her eyes and moved away from me, but she was calm again. She sat down. I joined her.
“ ’Tis a long story,” she said softly. “And I won’t bother you with it. But I will tell you this: I must get of this devil’s island before it’s too late!” She closed her eyes and rocked back. “Or maybe, in truth, ’tis already too late. I don’t know.”
The fog, the loneliness, the wind, the sea. I nodded. I knew what she meant. She was lonely for a normal life, a life among real live people, a life with young men about, not an island of ignorant villagers and indigent fishermen. Her father was an intelligent, educated man, and he had obviously tried to teach her all he could. She was a misfit here on Nara.
“Okay, so you want to see the world.”
She turned her sea-green eyes to me. “ ’Tis not just curiosity, Samuel,” she said, saying my name for the first time. Or, at least something that sounded like it. In Gaelic it’s Somhairle.
I grinned. “What is it, then?”
“ ’Tis my father.” She squi
nted through the fog, trying to pierce the veil of tiny droplets, trying to see something out in the watery cove. “A madman, he is, Somhairle,” she whispered. “ ’Tis his mind that is affected. Ever since the—” her voice lowered,—“the drowning of my own mother.”
“Drowning?” I stared at Moira. “I’m sorry.”
“She walked into the sea, Somhairle, of her own accord, from right where we are sitting. Fifteen years ago, it was, when first we arrived. Walked into the sea in search of him. Dórach Dolan.” She closed her eyes and crossed herself. “Her lover, he was.”
Hanky-panky, I translated. McCartin’s wife fools around with another man, McCartin’s finds out about it and sends his wife to her death. Or was that it exactly?
“Suicide, you say? Are you sure?”
“She wanted to join Dórach,” she said, turning her cool glance to me again. “Don’t you see? My father—” her voice choked—“he knew what was going on between them. But once Dórach was dead, he could do nought to prevent her from going to join him.”
“Dórach was killed at sea?” I asked, trying to fill in the story.
“Yes. Killed.”
“Shipwreck? Fishing?”
She shook her head. “Diving. ’Twas the monster.”
I had to laugh. “The Loch Ness monster?”
Her sea-green eyes regarded me levelly. “Ogra. The Monster of Nara.”
I stared. I remember Sean’s words. Ogra. The sea god.
“Some say,” Moira went on, “that ’twas not the monster Ogra at all who carried off Dórach so that his body was never found. Some say ’twas Kevin McCartin who did him in down under the surface of the sea—with his diving equipment, no less—but whatever they say, they all know that ’twas, indeed, a monster of some variety who destroyed Dórach, and then my own mother. Whether it be the monster Ogra, or the monster Kevin, if you would.”
“What about Sean? Is he your half-brother? If all this happened fifteen years ago . . .”
Moira nodded. “My father took up with another woman. Sean’s mother, Maigréad. But she could not stand him either. She stowed away in a supply freighter.” The sea-green eyes moved over my face. “You’re the first ones here who haven’t been thrown bodily off the island by my father.” She looked down. “He is afraid we will follow the rest of them, you see.”
She stared out to sea.
“And we will, you know. One way or another.” She turned, and her eyes were misted with tears. “Will it be you, Somhairle? Or must I wait forever?”
There was little more to our talk, really, and after explaining as gently as I could that there was no chance of her going with us, I climbed into the launch and sailed back to the Triton. I was afraid of what might happen to this strange, clean, true girl if she ever got on board with Joe Ryan near. It was a bad situation. I wanted to help her, but I could not.
As I climbed on board, Joe met me on the foredeck.
“After chow we do some more looking,” he told me. “I want to find out the truth about those gold coins.”
He winked at me and slapped me on the back.
It was dark when we finally got in the launch and headed for the spot where the divers had dived that afternoon. I cut the engine and turned to Joe.
“This is about it, isn’t it?”
He nodded. I couldn’t help shivering, not so much from the fact I was in my bathing suit in the night air which had suddenly turned clear and cold, but also from the fact I wasn’t sure what we were going to come up with. Frankly, I didn’t like it one bit. But I knew we needed the money, Joe and I. If we could get it here in some sunken wreak, why not?
We lowered two weighted containers to the bottom of the cove from the edge of the launch, and got into our lungs, fins, and face plates. Joe turned to me, indicating the big magnesium flare in the bottom of the launch. I nodded and picked it up.
“All set?” Joe asked, cradling the harpoon gun in his arm.
I nodded. I lit the magnesium flare and it whooshed into flame immediately. I plunged it down into the water to shield it from any prying eyes, and lowered myself after it. Joe followed.
The submarine world slipped eerily by us as we moved down through it. Weird shadows writhed in the distance among the kelp and fish. The strange illumination of the flare reached out about us, painting a warped, surrealist picture of a maritime graveyard. Imbedded between rocky formations, the stripped wooden ribs of ancient ships loomed up like reconstructions of dinosaur skeletons.
I could see a carved wooden figurehead close by me, and I swam toward it. It was a gargoyle, similar to the one decorating McCartin’s storeroom. But it wasn’t Ogra. It was a Viking representation of the same thing—a Norse god of the sea.
As I studied the grinning, hideous distorted face, I was aware of a sudden darkening of the water directly above me, as though a huge shadow of some kind were passing by.
I stopped. So did Joe.
We looked up. It was a familiar sight—a killer whale, what scientists call Orcinus, the most aggressive and dangerous of aquatic mammals.
I held by breath. The killer whale could sense our presence, but it could tell exactly where we were. It passed over us, then gracefully arched back, moving warily and cautiously. It knew it could attack us, but it did not know how dangerous we were.
Joe moved toward me, and we both watched the big mammal. We had a problem: should we fight it with the harpoon gun, or just wait for it to go away? The shadow moved across us gain, and I could see Joe sidling over to the edge of the nearest rock-formation, still watching above. I backed up too, and felt the flat face of a rock comfortingly against my back; I stood there, keeping my eyes on the killer whale.
And then, before I could move, I felt something else—a clammy, rubbery tentacle slithering across my chest from behind. I looked down in horror. Somewhere in the rock formation behind me an octopus was hiding, waiting for one of us to move within range of its powerful tentacles.
I waved the flare about energetically, trying to attract Joe’s attention. At the same time I slid my knife out of my belt and tried to angle it around so I could use it on the massive tentacle. As I fought to turn it, another rubbery tentacle slid out from behind the big rock and whipped around me. I could feel the tremendous power of the beast’s vise-like grip. The rock edge pressed into my back.
My flare went spinning into the sand at my feet. Joe turned and started toward me. As he did so a third tentacle looped out to meet him, coiling around his body, rolling him in closer. He fought to keep his arms and harpoon gun free, riding in with the snake-like arm, intent only on getting in close enough for a killing shot.
I could not breathe now. I could only fight with the knife, dragging its cutting edge impotently across the tough flexible hide of the tentacle. But now my arm was half imprisoned by the pressure against it, and I could only manipulate the blade with my wrist and fingers. It was like trying to cut through a truck tire with a dull hackknife. The air was completely squeezed out of my chest. Blackness began seeping in at the edges of my brain. I struggled to keep my consciousness, knowing I would die if I passed out, but the continual pressure was like the weight of a building crushing me.
I saw Joe’s face behind his plate, anxious and pop-eyed, as the fourth tentacle coiled about him, pulling him in closer to me in a two-way death embrace. It’s all over, I thought. All over but the keening.
Then I heard the dull, muffled explosion as the tip of the harpoon went off. The shaft sank up to the hilt in the creature’s gelatinous body. At the instant of explosion, I was suddenly aware of the sweet breath pouring into my chest again, of the slow ebbing of the pressure from my battered body, of the release of the monstrous grip on my flesh and bones.
Sobbing to get my breath, I reeled backward to the ocean floor, and saw the great octopus for the first time. Even as I landed on the sand, it shuddered violently, and the color of its body changed from a dirty-green to a spreading reddish brown. The dangerous, powerful tentacles colla
psed and became limp like deflated sausage balloons.
In its death agony the beast emitted a massive, jetting cloud of black ink-like fluid which flooded around us, obscuring everything the flare had illuminated, and blacking out Joe’s body.
I moved through the murk, stumbling.
The next thing I knew, I was staring into Joe’s faceplate. He had lifted me from the sandy floor and carried me some distance. Beside us the flare burned its shimmering illumination. I could see the worried, concerned expression in Joe’s yellowish eyes as they peered through the mask front.
I waved to him that I was okay, and pointed upward.
Joe nodded, and started to ascend. Then he turned and immediately gave me a signal for caution.
I glanced up. There, in the dirty, gradually clearing waters, the shadow of the killer whale passed over us again. It had still not forgotten the two of us.
Joe pulled another harpoon out of his belt and loaded the gun. I looked down across the rock formation close by and I could see the magnesium flare lying in the sand where I had dropped it still sending out its light.
Before I could move a foot toward it, the water around us shuddered violently, and a tremendous pulsating turmoil jolted everything. Schools of fish turned and fled into the darkness. The sand shifted on the ocean floor.
I stared into the murky, turbulent water above us. I could see something—not a whale, not an octopus, but something else—something fantastically huge and vague, like a great thunderhead, looming over us.
I backed up to the rock and hung on. The water about me swirled and ebbed, shuddering with the impact of the big thing moving about up there. Joe crept beside me, grasping for a handhold on a rock.
As we waited, the water about us whipped into a fury, and all at once there was a great jetting gush of blood as the thing attacked the killer whale. The entire sea around us turned a brilliant carmine, blotting out everything in a pinwheeling red haze.
Weakly we clung to the rock and gazed up at the red cloud. Then we looked at each other, and I hope never again see such a scared, awed, absolutely unbelieving expression on anybody’s face as I saw on Joe’s at that moment.
Gorgo Page 3
