What Lurks Beneath

by Ryan Lockwood

  They had passed through a long, claustrophobic corridor in the cave system to get here. It hadn’t been overly tight by cave standards—maybe five or six feet across for most of its distance—until the slightly narrower restriction here at the end. On the way, they’d encountered two other large grottos. The first one, three hundred feet in from the main entry shaft, had an enchanting ballroom feel, with a high ceiling and hundreds of conical stalagmites rising from the floor—graceful dancers frozen a thousand years ago as they twirled past one another. The other chamber was long and low and lined with hundreds of straws—calcite formations that spanned from floor to ceiling like prison bars, which had made passage difficult.

  As Breck raised his camera again and continued to document this third chamber, he thought about his sister back in Philly. Deanna was going to love these pictures, and his nephew, Lucas, would like them even more. They already displayed several of his amateur shots, blown up and framed in her home office—all of images taken inside caverns from around the world. But none like this.

  Deanna hated tight spaces. She would’ve freaked out back in those tunnels, in knowing how far he was from the surface now. She’d always been a phenomenal athlete, especially before she’d had kids, but had never had the guts to do what he did. Not only because of the diving part, but also the squeezing-through-impossibly-tight-passages part. Few people did. But he had never been scared. And he didn’t have kids. Never would. His independence was too important, and his profession too dangerous.

  But this was the reward.

  Pelletier tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to the Frenchman and saw that he was signaling a familiar message, as he did every three minutes. Time to assess their air supplies. Breck looked at his gauges and relayed the number via hand signals. They still had plenty of air. But to be safe, they would have to turn back in less than five minutes. Even on the low-nitrogen Trimix blend of gasses—which included helium in addition to oxygen—this far down they were already pushing the limits, and they knew it. When caving, it always paid to err on the side of caution.

  Breck kicked into the center of the broad chamber and scanned its walls with his light. This chamber truly was different from all the others they had previously mapped—much more open. The surface rock here was much smoother than any other they had thus far encountered.

  As he snapped another photo, he noticed something else. Something that bothered him.

  A fine sprinkling of silt swirled in the open volume of the chamber, churning in the motion of Breck’s fins. Too much silt for the men to have brought with them as they entered its expanse. Underwater, suspended sediment was evidence of recent motion. And like in the other chambers, the water in this one should have been absolutely still before their arrival.

  Unless something had stirred it.

  Although they might be kicking up some sediment now, the particles spanned as far as his dive light could reach. Something had disrupted the still water in this chamber before they arrived. And recently.

  Perhaps with the tidal shifts there was a stronger ocean current in here, which caused an eddy over the rubble at the bottom of the chamber. That might release a few finer particles into the room. On the far side of the chamber, he noticed several large, dark cavities that might lead to the depths of the ocean. They would have to be especially vigilant. If they were forced to fight a current on their return, that might cause serious complications.

  Just then, Breck felt a slight movement of water against his face. He nodded to himself. Yes. There was some sort of current flowing through here. This passage must link directly to the open ocean, and probably was heavily influenced by moving water. That might also explain the smoother chamber walls, which could have eroded over time.

  Pelletier, who looked ghostly pale in the artificial light, nodded at him, acknowledging the current. The Frenchman began to turn away. As his light struck the wall of the chamber, the rock suddenly appeared to move.

  To bulge.

  Breck shook his head to clear it and looked again at the cavern wall. It did bulge out toward the center, as though swollen, but no longer seemed to be moving. Had Pelletier noticed anything? If so, he wasn’t reacting to it.

  Breck realized he must be seeing things. That was a bad sign down here, but didn’t make any sense since his air mixture was low in nitrogen. Narcosis was highly unlikely. But if it happened again, it would be wise to begin their exit immediately.

  He glanced at his dive computer. Better hurry, John. Breck rapped on the Frenchman’s tank with his knuckles to get his attention. When Pelletier looked back at him, Breck motioned for the biologist to move toward the bulging chamber wall. Having a person framed in some images would later provide them with crucial perspective to describe the geological formations and size of each cavern. And unlike Breck’s drab blue wet suit, which hardly stood out underwater, the Frenchman’s black-and-yellow neoprene made for sharp contrast to the muted background.

  Once Pelletier had neared to within an arm’s reach of the curving wall, he turned back to Breck. Breck raised the camera, and another flash silently lit the chamber. There. He saw it again.

  The wall had moved—hadn’t it? He took a deep breath.

  He swam closer to Pelletier, shining his dive light past the Frenchman at the pale rock, which up close appeared to be textured by low, fist-size bumps. Almost directly behind Pelletier was a small crease on the wall. Was it his imagination, or was the rock there now taking on a shade of Pelletier’s yellow wetsuit?

  Breck moved closer and this time directed the camera past his partner, toward the odd crease, which was the length of his arm. He realized it was actually two small parallel ridges, forming a seam rising several inches off the wall. He depressed the shutter release and the flash went off. In the bright light, the seam momentarily looked more distinct. Almost like lips, or . . .

  The seam parted.

  Breck was looking into an eye.

  He flinched backward and squeezed the camera reflexively, its bright flash illuminating the cavern. The huge catlike eye narrowed, and suddenly the walls of the cave itself seemed to be collapsing. Breck felt the rush of moving water all around him and watched in horror as the side of the chamber began to change shape. The entire wall was separating itself from the cavern.

  Detaching itself.

  Something as long as the cavern. Something living.

  The camera flashed again. Breck dropped it and began to kick frantically away from the huge mass that continued to swell into the space. Pelletier, sensing the movement behind him, quickly followed. Other parts of the cavern face seemed to break free and squiggle into the water. Breck saw something dart up toward Pelletier. An instant later, the Frenchman was ripped backward so forcefully his regulator popped free of his mouth, releasing a cloud of bubbles.

  He reached desperately for Breck, the whites of his eyes visible even in the dim light as twin snakes of rust-colored flesh coiled around his thighs. His face contorted in pain as the coils pulled in opposite directions, bending his legs sideways at impossible angles. A dark seam appeared at the groin of his splitting wetsuit. There was a muted pop as one leg came free in a dark cloud of blood.

  Breck spun away. He spied the dark entrance hole near the cavern’s ceiling and kicked with everything he had, then forced his way into the hole. His tank clanged against the rock as he struggled farther into the narrowing cave system.

  Something touched his thigh and began to adhere to it, and he swung a fist at the taut, fleshy thing, beating at it. He felt a jerk as it pulled at him, at his equipment, and then he was free again as some of his gear fell away. He did not look back.

  A minute passed. Two. Keep going.

  He lost track of time as he fled the monstrosity, pushing away thoughts of despair as he again began to think about his air. He was a long way from the surface. There would be no turning back.

  The tunnel branched, and he paused to scan his options. One tunnel appeared to end almost immediately, so he
went the other way. Ten yards later, he ran into a restriction. He glanced back and saw that, at least for the moment, he was alone. And that his safety line no longer trailed behind him. He touched his belt and realized the spool was missing. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going back anyway.

  He began to wriggle into the oppressive opening that offered his only remaining hope. It was only a few feet across, and he was forced to slide along on his belly. He listened to his tank scrape along the rock above, but he was making progress. He thought he felt something touch his foot and then there was a surge of adrenaline and he was through the restriction. He started to kick again, then stopped.

  A dead end.

  Fifteen feet ahead, the tunnel tapered to a hole no larger than his fist. He moved to examine it, but was only able to confirm what he already knew. There was nowhere to go. He felt an overwhelming despair.

  He turned around and came to rest in a sitting position, looking back into the shifting clouds of silt. Preparing himself. But after a few moments, nothing appeared. He glanced at his air. Maybe ten minutes left. Maybe less.

  So this is it. He began to tremble.

  He sat at the end of the tunnel, his light pointed into blackness, as he waited for the thing to reappear and claim him.

  CHAPTER 4

  He was dead.

  Confined to the small space, the specimen simply had given up. The arrow-like male squid had settled to the bottom of the tank, where his arms had relaxed into a beautiful fanlike pattern below his mantle, but any appealing coloration he had once been capable of had faded from his body.

  Dr. Valerie Martell sat on a stool beside the two-hundred-gallon tank, staring at the dead cephalopod. The latest batch of Dosidicus gigas—ten juvenile specimens in all, each about the size of a large lamp—had been relatively healthy. All were now gone. This little guy had been the last holdout.

  She wasn’t surprised. All along, she had disagreed with the aquarium director’s insistence to continue trying to raise this species in captivity. They were animals that belonged in the open ocean. Still, she had hoped that maybe, just maybe, this one would survive. He had seemed tougher than the rest. But now he was gone too.

  She sighed. This squid was just her latest failure.

  Outside the lab, it was gray and raining in Moss Landing. January along the Central California coastline often brought slow-moving systems that yielded most of the year’s precipitation, turning the hillsides a brilliant green. Despite the weather, Val knew that she should be doing something outside today. Getting some exercise. Going for a drive. Or even trying to catch a matinee. It was a Saturday, and she hadn’t really taken a day off in a month. She glanced at her running shoes beside the door, where she kept them for when she needed to blow off steam, but didn’t get up.

  Looking back at the juvenile squid, she thought about Will. Her research on these squid had brought them together. So much had changed in the last year, though.

  He probably had left home by now. When she’d departed early in the morning, he’d still been snoring on the couch, the blinds closed to the daylight. She had gotten him a job doing maintenance at the nearby shipyard, as he planned the next career move. It was only supposed to be a temporary job. But he wasn’t moving forward. Just as she had done lately, he’d been immersing himself in his work. Avoiding her.

  And then there was his drinking.

  Val picked up a set of metal forceps and poked at the squid in the tank. Three days ago, Specimen Number Forty-four had been captured right here in Monterey Bay, where a resident population had established itself over the past decade. Hooked by an old fisherman who knew of the squid’s value and thus brought the live specimens in.

  Like this squid, her partner didn’t seem to thrive in a sedentary life. After he’d almost died two years ago, he’d needed to undergo months of physical therapy. And his life had been in disarray. They’d been in love, though, and things had been wonderful. There had even been talk of marriage, which neither of them had expected. For the first time since junior high, Val had stopped focusing on her work. They had filled voids in each other’s lives, and she had released a remarkable passion in him.

  But that was more than a year ago.

  She’d waited patiently for him to get back on his feet. He’d done quite well for the first year, although she knew inside he’d never fully recover from some of the losses he’d suffered.

  And then, such a scary but wonderful thing had happened. Right before the bad thing happened.

  Since that day, she had watched helplessly as he slowly self-destructed over the past six months. As he started drinking again, slowly at first. Just a few beers. Then, not long after, more frequently. And then he bought the first bottle of rum. He said it was to quell the nightmares, as it had in the past, and to deal with the constant pain in his shoulder. Although she voiced her concern, she put up with it, perhaps out of guilt. She knew that his shoulder, and many of his scars, still represented sacrifices made out of his love for her.

  And then he had started to become dark. Angry. He was never abusive, but frightening, his temper simmering beneath his cowboy hat like a pot about to boil over.

  Val shook the thought away as she watched the raindrops spatter against the window. She wondered if she too was dying from being in captivity. She had lost any trace of the tan she had worn for years when doing fieldwork in Mexico. Her thick, dark hair had grown much longer, since she no longer needed to keep it out of her dive mask. But it had made sense to stop the field research. She had made significant progress in understanding how these squid communicated, and the directors of the Point Lobos Aquarium Research Group had decided it would be too much of a liability for her to continue her fieldwork.

  Two of her papers on Dosidicus gigas had recently been published, which made PLARG’s leadership very happy. But her last big project in Mexico had ended long ago. She’d considered applying for more funding to study the shoals of invasive squid emerging off the California coast, but as soon as the huge numbers had arrived, they’d suddenly disappeared. Since then, only a few smaller resident squid had appeared offshore here in the Bay. The creatures were very dependent on ocean patterns, and as climate shifts occurred and food sources rose and fell, so did their populations and migration patterns. They would be back, but for now they were gone.

  The next obvious challenge had been to study live specimens here at PLARG. Val’s employer was happy to fund her in the safety of a lab, studying the animals ex situ, but was no longer comfortable with the risks of funding her research of the animals in their deepwater environment. Besides the obvious dangers in working with Dosidicus in its natural environment, there was the opportunity of money to be made if her employers could display the alien creatures to the public, so Humboldt squid husbandry had become the focus at deep-sea-oriented PLARG.

  The latest live squid had all been immediately separated, placed in their own tanks so they wouldn’t attack and kill one another. Yet every one they had brought into captivity had become anxious, ramming at the walls of the large tanks. One had even managed to hurl itself out and splatter onto the floor one night, where it later died. None of the squid had eaten. And the bioluminescent communication the animals used in the wild, which had been the previous focus of her research, did not occur in the lab. Few natural behaviors did.

  All had now died.

  But Val admired their persistence. Unlike her, they hadn’t been brought under the yoke. They had fought their captivity until they faded away.

  She thought about the evening to come. Her presentation. The aquarium heads required all their researchers to prepare a quarterly PowerPoint presentation to the public on their latest research. To put on a smile and talk about how wonderful things were going. To make a passionate plea for their research, for the aquarium, to inspire its donors. But she wasn’t feeling it today.

  Eric Watson would also be presenting tonight. She would be opening, but he was getting the coveted final presentation. The precocio
us kid was getting all the funding now. He and his fancy unmanned underwater vehicles. But he’d been helpful with her own research. And she had to hand it to him: He knew how to follow the money.

  Her lack of motivation wasn’t just about playing second fiddle. Or even about her failures to keep captive squid alive, or make breakthroughs in her research. Setbacks were all part of science. But she had also felt self-conscious presenting lately. Although still quite lithe, she’d gained ten pounds over the last several months. And in the mirror she had started to really notice the tiny, sun-furrowed wrinkles near her eyes. She knew that she was just being hard on herself, and that she was still young and skinny, but it still bothered her.

  She sighed again. She knew it was time for a change.

  She felt like she might cry. Instead, she took a deep breath and turned away from the tank, searching for her black backpack. In it she had packed her workout clothes. She changed and laced up her still-damp running shoes, and then she pulled the hood of a waterproof jacket over her head, and stepped out into the rain.

  CHAPTER 5

  Like impatient children, its own limbs aroused it from its slumber as daylight faded far above. They were already stirring when it woke, busy snaking into dark cracks running off the low chamber around their master. But signals sent from the mindless appendages to the creature’s brain reported no success in finding sustenance—only inedible bits of bone and other waste deposited from previous meals.

  It needed to hunt.

  The organism extended its limbs away from its body and, affixing them to the smooth walls of the underwater cavern, silently squeezed its bulk through the narrow cavity in a series of undulations. It soon arrived at the bottom of a funnel-shaped submarine pit, where it paused to peer outward from its concealed position. Then gradually, patiently, the beast slid its great form from within the deep recess in the carbonate platform and into the fading light at the mouth of the pit. There it stopped moving again.