“But they didn’t find his body either?” he asked.
Val shook her head.
“Check this out,” Eric said. The download was complete. He turned the laptop toward them.
On the screen was a colorful three-dimensional image of what looked like a tunnel.
“Is that where we just were?” Val asked.
“Yep. The different colors depict surface hardness, or density. Things like algae and silt appear lighter than solid rock.” The image changed as he zoomed out, reorienting the view so that they were looking at the entire image from the side. The tunnel now appeared as a long, jagged yellow line, running out of a much thicker yellowish column—a vertical stack of pancakes that had to be the main shaft of the hole—all on a field of black.
Mack said, “Huh. Pretty cool, actually. But you still really believe we can rely on that thing to do this job?”
Val said, “We have to, Mack. None of this is worth anyone else dying.”
CHAPTER 22
An urge.
It felt compelled to move. To seek. But this was an unfamiliar impulse.
A current of water pressed against its skin. There. Again, it sensed something in the water. She sensed something. A taste, or a smell.
A faint cocktail of some chemical. Perhaps from another of her kind. Perhaps a male. And the urge increased. The organism slowly uncoiled her thick arms and began to slither out of the structure on the seafloor.
At dawn, she had not retreated under the island, into the labyrinthine caverns, as she so often now did. Instead, she had spent the day resting in this great mass partially buried in the ocean floor. This object that did not belong here.
She had returned to the decomposing structure from the deep ocean plain, having fed little. The only meal she’d found was the rotting flesh still clinging to whale bones resting on the bottom, and the hapless shark scavenging there.
Here, where the object rested, the water was much shallower than the abyss, but still too deep for her eyes to make out much more than its curved outline rising from the sediments, the right angles defining its other side. But she could form a mental picture of the object through touch. The massive structure was even larger than she herself, and on one end opened in a jagged, rusting maw that had been more than large enough to allow her entry. It had provided her shelter before.
In her advanced age, she required a steady intake of vast quantities of food. Her size had doubled in a relatively short time, and now, fully mature, she possessed a hunger which she had been unsuccessful at satisfying. This had made her sluggish, as she sought to preserve energy. Seeking refuge here had allowed her to rest. To expend less energy for locomotion—
Whump.
She felt the deep, familiar pulses, vibrating in her beak, between her eyes.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
The silent pulses hurt. Similar sounds, emitted from the seafloor and objects above it, had almost always been a part of her life. But these were emitted from very close by. Much more powerful here than elsewhere in her range. The pulses continued for several minutes, and then they were gone.
She emerged from the skeletal remains. Sensing she was alone, she raised her arms into the water column, tasting.
She moved a short distance across the soft bottom, sending billowing clouds of sediment into the water as she pushed off with each writhing appendage. She came across a protrusion on the ocean floor, and ran the suckers of one arm over it. It was hard, inedible. Frustrated, she coiled the powerful arm around the hard object and crushed it.
She extended her arms and tasted again.
But the faint chemical in the water had dissipated. The urge to mate slowly faded, replaced by the urge to—
Click-click.
She tensed at the sudden sound, a new sound very different than the others. A sound her instincts insisted she fear. It had come from very close by. Her arms splayed themselves instantly, prepared to defend.
Click-click-click-cliiiiccckkk. CLICK.
The sounds boomed into her. Sounds emitted from the enemy. Why had she not sensed its presence before?
She drew her arms together and darted back toward the structure on the bottom, and, finding a hole in its side, desperately forced her soft body back into it.
The clicks continued in the darkness outside the makeshift lair, seeming to come from all directions, and although she knew she should be safe here, her arms remained reared toward the opening in defensive posture.
But the enemy never drew any closer, never appeared.
And then, as quickly as they had begun, the clicking sounds ceased.
CHAPTER 23
Sturman sat in his truck in the parking lot at the aquarium, the engine running, staring at his cell phone. On the screen was Val’s name. All he had to do was hit send.
He remembered a time back in high school, when he tried getting into rodeo with his best friend, and got bucked into the dirt by a bronco. Had the wind knocked out of him. Ached all over. He knew he was lying in the dirt now.
But this time, he didn’t know how to get up. Or even if he wanted to get up.
He sighed and put the phone down on the seat next to him. What the hell would he say to her? Happy Valentine’s Day? He probably owed her an apology for his verbal attack the other night, when she’d called to ask how he was, and tell him what she was up to, then scolded him for being at a bar.
Funny thing was he missed her anyway.
He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home. He rubbed his temples. His head hurt from all the thinking he’d been doing. He’d pretty much been thinking all day at work. Or maybe his head still hurt from last night. Either way, he had a headache. He neared the turn to the Pelican and thought about heading in, for a little hair of the dog, but decided against it.
Instead, he pulled into a McDonald’s drive-through and ordered a chicken sandwich, then got back on the road. At a stoplight, as he was reaching in the bag for a handful of French fries, he saw a promotional billboard for the armed forces, and suddenly thought of an old friend. One of the few he had left. He picked up the phone again and found the number. Tom “Wits” Rabinowitz had always been a good listener, back when Sturman had first joined the Navy and was always getting into trouble. The phone rang, and there was a click as someone answered.
“Rabinowitz.”
“Hey, amigo.”
“Sturman? You sorry son of a bitch! What’s going on?”
“I was just thinking about how cute you are, it being Valentine’s Day and all.”
“That’s funny. I was just jerkin’ off to an old picture of you . . . hang on.”
Someone in the background started yelling at Rabinowitz, and Sturman laughed. Same old Wits. Dumbass was a lifer in the Navy, but he would be done with his twenty in a few more years. A horn honked and Sturman realized the light was green. He pulled forward and got into the merge lane for northbound Highway 1.
Rabinowitz got back on the line. “My wife just heard my jerkoff comment. She’s sending me outta the room, so the kids can’t hear.... All right, I’m going, Barb!”
“How’s the family?” Sturman said.
“They’re good. Kids are getting old fast. You ever marry that chick? The marine biologist?”
“Val? No. We’re kinda on the rocks.”
“No shit? You stickin’ your dick where it doesn’t belong?”
“No. We’re just . . . well, you know. She’s out of town now. Went down to the Bahamas to do some research.”
“Down here, huh? Have her stop by the base,” Rabinowitz said. “I’ll set her straight.”
Sturman sat up. “What do you mean? I thought you were in Norfolk.”
“No, man. I’m stationed in the Bahamas now. Uncle Sam moved us down here a year ago. I thought you knew that.”
“I guess it’s been a while. What are you doing down there?”
“More tech stuff. Has to do with sonar research we’ve been doing down here for decades. Ever hear abou
t the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center? The Tongue of the Ocean?”
“Wasn’t that the name of a whore you met back in Thailand?” Sturman said, smiling.
“Funny, asshole.”
“Really. So what are you doing there?” Sturman said.
“You know I can’t talk about that, man.”
“I’m not asking for classified information. Are you blowing shit up, or seeing how deep people can dive, or what? What’s this tongue thing you’re talking about?”
“It’s a deepwater trench, in the middle of the Bahama Bank. All surrounded by shallow water. Navy’s tested here since the sixties, because the Commies couldn’t listen in from across the Atlantic.”
“So you’re testing sonar? Weapons?”
“I’m not telling you anything. I mean it. What’s your woman doing down here?”
“Looking into some sort of unknown squid or something. You know anything about something like that?”
Wits was silent.
Sturman frowned. “Wits? You still there?”
“Sturman, I gotta run. My wife’s yelling at me, and my daughter’s screaming. Can I call you back?”
“Sure. Take it easy, man.”
“You too. But seriously, let me know if you want me to meet up with your lady friend. I could always use another wife.”
Sturman heard Rabinowitz’s wife hollering at him as he ended the call. He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex, shut the truck off. Opened the paper bag containing his Valentine’s Day dinner.
Then ate in the cab, alone.
CHAPTER 24
Across from Eric at the splintered wooden table, on the back patio at the Twin Palms, sat Ashley Campbell. In the candlelight, she looked to him like a young Halle Berry, but taller and less delicate. Her long, straight hair was pulled tightly back in a ponytail. Her smile had a gap in the middle, but her teeth were a brilliant white. She wore a small gold cross around her neck.
On either side of them sat Val and Mack. They were eating a Valentine’s Day meal Val had put together, of steamed grouper with a tomato-caper sauce and canned yams. In the middle of the table, beside a mostly empty wine bottle, a candle burned inside a cracked glass jar. The stars were out, and the night was pleasant. Tiki torches burned along the coral-rock wall ringing the patio, to ward off biting insects
Eric found himself staring at Ashley. He couldn’t help it.
Between bites, she said, “It’s hard to believe this guesthouse is still here. You know this area was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.”
“In 2012?” Eric said.
“Yes. You have a good memory. That one came late in the season. Damaged the reefs, flooded all these coastal buildings. This one was filled with sand until the owner got back to cleaning it.”
“That must have been hard for everyone here,” Val said.
Ashley said, “Yes. But this is Andros. Here in the Bahamas we take it as it comes.”
“About Andros,” Val said. “I wanted to ask you about that boy who went missing in the blue hole. You didn’t know him, did you?”
“Only of him.”
“Apparently there was a witness, right? A girl, who claimed she saw a monster under the island kill her boyfriend. . . .”
Mack grunted and shook his head, then took another bite of fish.
Ashley told them what she knew about the teenager, who had vanished the previous week. Apparently, the whole story had been relayed by his girlfriend, who had been found half-naked on a roadside miles away the next morning, still in shock, her bare feet raw and bloody from running through the jungle. Two other teenagers there had only heard her scream. Nobody had seen anything. No body had been found.
Ashley traced the top of her glass with her finger. Her neatly painted fingernails were lime green, a few shades lighter than her eyes.
She said, “In some ways, this island is very different from other islands in the Bahamas. There are legends here. But I don’t believe most of them.”
“What sort of legends?” Eric said.
“Stories about monsters, sometimes related to accidents in the blue holes. About Obeah witchcraft.” She smiled at Eric. “About naked Arawaks who still hide in the bush, stealing from the unwary. There’s more mythology here than where I grew up.”
“And where’s that?” Eric felt emboldened by the wine.
“On a small island in the Abacos. North of here.”
“Mack lived there for a time, you know,” Val said.
Ashley leaned forward. “Really? Where?”
“Great Abaco.” Mack leaned back in his chair. “Moved there after my wife left me. Guess I wasn’t any good without a leg.”
Ashley regarded Mack. “She didn’t really leave you for that, did she?”
Mack shrugged. “Never figured her out, or why she left. I still had my dick, didn’t I?”
Eric thought of saying something, but Ashley only laughed.
“Mack . . .” Val said.
He said, “Anyway, we never had kids. Probably a good thing. So I decided to go where I used to love diving so much. The Bahamas are unbelievable.”
Ashley said, “Why did you leave, then?”
He lifted his prosthetic leg up off the floor and dropped it onto the edge of the table. He rapped the titanium rod with his knuckles. “Because of this goddammed thing. Couldn’t dive where I wanted to anymore, inside the holes, and I had too many medical issues.”
“But you are a hero, Mack. You should be proud.”
“Whatever.” He looked away from her.
Ashley said, “I had to leave the Abacos too. For work. I started taking seasonal jobs in Nassau when I was sixteen, then I moved there a few years later for full-time work. When they built Oceanus, I came here. But I try to visit my family whenever I can.”
“Are they still where you grew up?” Eric said.
She nodded. “On Two Finger Cay. My dad’s a fisherman. A good man. Mom still stays home with the youngest. I’m the oldest, ya know. I send them a little money to help them get by.”
Val said, “You said something about monsters, Ashley. Why are there more monster stories here, on Andros?” Val raised the wine bottle to refill Ashley’s glass, but she covered it politely with her hand. Mack gestured at his own, and Val poured him the rest.
“This is a very big island,” Ashley said. “A hundred miles long. With very few people. And with the number of blue holes, the swash on the west side, the Tongue of the Ocean, there are lots of legends.”
Val said, “And when people go missing on a place like Andros, like that boy . . .”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “It leads to more stories.”
“What was that thing you mentioned? That creature the girl said she saw?”
Ashley laughed, her brilliant teeth lit momentarily by a distant flash of lightning offshore. It was going to rain soon.
She said, “Something some locals call the lusca. It’s a mythical creature. Half octopus, half shark, half as big as Oceanus.”
“Sounds like bullshit,” Mack said, then downed his wine. Eric figured he’d drunk more than a bottle by himself by now.
“Mack, there’s a lady here,” Eric said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake—” Mack started, but Ashley touched his hand and he stopped.
“Mack’s right,” Ashley said. “Of course it isn’t real.”
“Maybe,” Val said. “But it intrigues me. We’re looking for some sort of undiscovered animal. Something that might live in the blue holes. We’re not sure how big it would be.”
They had run DORA through an easier oceanic blue hole for a few days, one that was broader and more accessible than The Staircase. They had returned to The Staircase today. Eric was getting much better at guiding the ROV through its tunnels. But not good enough. DORA still couldn’t even go as far in as Breck and Pelletier had, let alone the rescue divers who had gone in after them, due to a restriction too narrow for Eric to risk running DORA through. For now, they
would have to look for Val’s new cephalopod species somewhere else.
Ashley said, “From what I hear, nothing much lives in those holes. They’re dangerous, and the water’s sometimes poisonous, right?”
“Hang on,” Val said. “Let me show you something.” She went inside and came back with the printout of the blurry image taken in The Staircase. She handed it to Ashley. “This is why we’re here.”
“What is it?”
“We think it might be a tentacle, or the arm of some cephalopod.”
“A what?”
“A cephalopod. A squid or octopus,” Val said. “What you say about the island’s holes is right. Many of them are toxic, and dangerous. That’s why it would be such a find to observe a new species of megafauna living in them. Do you know anyone that is very familiar with this island? The waters offshore?”
“One man. You should come and meet Clive. He might be able to help.”
“Clive?” Eric said.
“He’s a sculptor. He sells his work at the resort, at the end of the beach. He used to be a fisherman like my dad. He worked these waters for years. A lot of people say he’s crazy, for the stories he tells. But I think he’s an honest man.”
“We’d love to visit,” Eric said. He heard Mack snort. Looking at Ashley, he found himself struggling for something else to say. He realized he was leaning toward her and sat up as a rumble of thunder passed by.
“We’ll certainly come by,” Val said. “We need a lead. So far we haven’t had much luck.”
After dinner, Val thanked Ashley for coming by to talk to them.
“Thank you for the dinner,” Ashley said. “You grill a mean grouper. And it was lovely meeting you both.” She smiled at Eric and Mack.
“Can we give you a ride back?” Eric asked. “It looks like it might rain.”
“You don’t even have a car, Romeo,” Mack said. “What you gonna do? Carry her?”
“I thought maybe we could call her a taxi—”
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