Primordial

by David Wood

  “No offense, but if it’s your idea, why am I the one stuck doing it?” Joaquin’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. The guy clearly didn’t like doing what he considered grunt work.

  “Efficiency, my man. I’ve got some places along the shore I want to inspect. Possible feeding spots, good places for a large creature to come ashore unmolested, the usual stuff. What’s more,” he clapped Joaquin on the shoulder, “I have complete faith in your abilities. There’s no one else on this ship I’d trust to do this job to my satisfaction.”

  Joaquin laughed and flipped him the finger. “Whatever. Just don’t get yourself lost. We’re already down a crew member. If we lose any more, Holloway’s cheerful attitude is going to disappear.”

  “You’re not afraid of him, are you?” Aston jibed.

  “The hell with that. I’m afraid of losing my paycheck. If you’re loyal to him and, more importantly, if you get results, he’ll treat you very well. Let him down…” He didn’t need to finish the statement.

  “Understood. Well, I’ll be off. I’m looking forward to seeing your results when I get back.”

  “Yeah, and I’m looking forward to you kissing my ass.” Now the smile was genuine. “Bon voyage, Aussie.”

  “See you, Septic.” Joaquin’s brows knitted and Aston laughed. “Aussie rhyming slang. Septic tank. Yank.”

  Despite the brightness of the day, a dark cloud of trepidation hung over Aston as he rowed to shore. He’d lied about his purpose. He wasn’t checking out any sites, though he’d be sure to snap a few photos of random spots before returning, just to cover his ass. He still wasn’t certain he was doing the right thing, but he was going to talk with Superintendent Rinne because that’s what he’d promised he would do.

  At present, Holloway was blinded by the thrill of potential discovery, and God only knew what Slater was thinking from one minute to the next, but Aston had mulled things over for the better part of the night and come away convinced that Dave hadn’t just taken off. Something must have happened to him, and if they wanted the help of law enforcement, they needed to be honest. At least as honest as they could be. He had a decent row in front of him, and then a long walk to consider how best to construct his story.

  He hauled at the oars, taking pleasure in the simple task of propelling the boat across the water. The sun beat down on his skin, but a refreshing breeze kept him cool. The mundane nature of the task afforded his mind the opportunity to run free, weighing options, considering variables, and predicting consequences.

  But by the time he arrived at the police headquarters, he still wasn’t certain how to approach the conversation. Did he begin at the beginning, and tell the officer about the monster hunt and the discovery of the severed foot? Or, did he stick to the missing person’s report? He had already decided to only talk about Dave, and not Gazsi. That guy had been gone even longer, and Carly had been right to mention him, but it was more likely he had just run off. Though as things progressed that seemed increasingly questionable. Regardless, Aston decided to concentrate on Dave, but how much did he tell?

  The police station sat at the end of town. If its neat lines and solid brick structure served as a counterpoint to the local architecture, its diminutive size assured that it blended right in. It wasn’t much larger than the shops sat on either side. He pushed open the glass door and found himself in a waiting area. It was a spartan place, yellowed tiles beneath his feet, a sagging drop ceiling above his head, and a cracked Formica counter barring his path. A bare bulletin board hung from the block wall to his left. Three metal folding chairs backed up to the wall behind him. Aston had paid a couple of visits to jails in his youth, but this one was, by far, the least impressive.

  There was no bell to ring and no one answered his loud “Hello?” so he lounged against the counter until a uniformed officer came in the front door, the aroma of bacon from the bag he carried preceding him.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Sam Aston to see Superintendent Rinne. I don’t have an appointment.”

  The officer frowned, peering at him through dark eyes. “He’s busy, but I’ll let him know someone wants to see him.”

  Aston selected the least suspect of the chairs by the wall and settled in. Rinne kept him waiting for ten minutes, though Aston was certain the man couldn’t possibly have a lot on his plate. How much enforcing did one really have to do in such a tiny place? The longer he sat, the angrier he grew, until he resolved to only tell the bare minimum. By the time he entered the superintendent’s office, he had half-decided he should head back to the boat, but not before telling Rinne to fuck off.

  The superintendent sat behind a large desk in a swivel chair, with his back to the door, an unlit cigarette in his hand resting on one plastic arm. His desk was neatly organized and adorned with a telephone, desk calendar, a single pen, and two framed photographs. One was a wedding photo of Rinne and a surprisingly attractive woman; the other an old, black and white number of a man who could have been Rinne’s double. His father, Aston supposed.

  “Please sit,” he said, not turning around. He rolled the cigarette back and forth in his fingertips, shifted in his seat, and let out several agitated grunts. Finally, he turned to regard Aston with faraway eyes and a bored expression on his face. “How can I help?” His tone said he could not care less about being helpful.

  Aston took a deep breath and barreled forward. “We’re missing a crew member. He disappeared a couple of days ago and no one’s heard from him since.”

  He’d considered a few ways in which Rinne might react: anger at not being told sooner, perhaps a cold yet professional attention to the details, but he was unprepared for utter apathy. Rinne stared at him, his heavy lids almost closed, still fiddling with that bloody cigarette.

  “We asked after him in town,” Aston continued. “We thought maybe he’d just decided to have himself a night off, so we talked to all sorts of folk. But no one’s seen him.”

  Still no reaction from Rinne. It was as if the man were staring right through him.

  “Well?” Aston asked after an uncomfortable pause.

  “I beg your pardon?” So the man was awake.

  “Are you going to take down a missing person’s report, or whatever you call it here? I mean, the man is missing.”

  Rinne puffed out his cheeks, straightened in his chair, and laid the cigarette on his desk. “Perhaps your friend grew tired of working for that buffoon, Holloway, and decided to leave?”

  “He doesn’t work for Holloway. He works for Slater.”

  “And she works for Holloway.” Rinne grinned as if he’d scored a point. “How well do you know this… what is his name?”

  “Dave.”

  Rinne paused and fixed Aston with an expectant look. “Dave what?” he finally prompted.

  Aston frowned, embarrassed. “I don’t know actually,” he admitted at last. “Slater knows, obviously. I can get the name for you.” He felt suddenly foolish. Nothing like destroying your own credibility with someone from whom you wanted assistance and a measure of respect.

  Rinne raised one eyebrow. “So I’m guessing you haven’t known this Dave very long?”

  “No, but he’s worked with some of our team members for a long time and they say it’s not like him just to fuck off like this. Sorry, I mean, leave.”

  Rinne arched the other eyebrow. “And yet it is you who is here making the report. How very odd.”

  Aston felt heat rising on the back of his neck. “Does it really matter who makes the report? The others are busy. The man is missing and we need your help to find him, or to find out what happened to him.”

  Aston saw something flicker in Rinne’s eyes. Perhaps a flash of curiosity?

  “What makes you think something happened to him?”

  “I just told you. He left and never came back. It’s out of character. And Holloway might be,” he
paused right on the precipice of calling the billionaire a ‘colossal asshole’, “overbearing at times, but he pays well and is no more demanding than most of the bosses I’ve had.”

  Rinne smirked, picked up his cigarette again, and held it in front of his face. “I quit smoking years ago, but I keep one of these in my desk at all times. I like to take it out and hold it just to remind myself I have the will to resist.” He lapsed into silence for a span of five seconds and then gave his head a shake as if trying to wake from a dream. “We will ask around after your friend, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. After all, there isn’t much to do here except drink. This town is small, but we have plenty of lonely wives with ample free time on their hands while their husbands are off working on fishing boats and the like. He probably fell in with one of them and is embarrassed to face you all again. Or, he’s still enjoying himself. It’s happened before.”

  “I don’t think so.” Aston bit off each word.

  “Of course you don’t. Now, unless you have anything more to tell me, I have work to do.”

  Aston knew a dismissal when he heard one. He sprang from his seat a bit too fast, upending his chair. He didn’t bother picking it up; he was angry with Rinne for not taking Dave’s disappearance seriously and furious with himself for having bothered. He stalked from the room, stopped just outside the doorway, and turned around.

  “There is one more thing. Dave rowed to shore, but when we got to town, his dinghy wasn’t there. We’ve also been all over the lake and haven’t found it anywhere along the shore or floating on the water. If he got here safely, wouldn’t his boat be somewhere nearby?”

  Now he had Rinne’s attention. The superintendent rose halfway to his feet, palms flat on the desk. His flinty eyes bored into Aston. Finally, he sank back into his chair.

  “Thank you for that. I’ll look into it. Please close the door behind you.”

  Aston complied. It took all his willpower not to slam it, but he managed. What the hell, he wondered, was Rinne’s problem?

  Chapter 22

  Aston took his time returning to Merenneito. He told himself he was merely maintaining the illusion that he’d gone out to do some thorough inspection of promising spots along the shoreline. The truth was, he was in no hurry to get back to the ship. Holloway was insufferable, Laine an oddball, and Slater an enigma. He couldn’t escape the feeling there was something suspicious about her late-night wandering.

  When he drew within sight of the ship, he saw Holloway out on the deck. The man was excitedly doing a piece to camera, waving his hands about and talking rapidly. Though Aston couldn’t make out the words, he could tell the tone was upbeat, bordering on manic. Just the sound of Holloway’s voice set his teeth on edge.

  “Think about the paycheck,” he told himself. “He’s paying you to put up with his crap. You can do that.” He hoped it was true.

  He stopped rowing some ten feet out so as not to ruin the take with splashing and watched as his momentum carried him in. Carly moved along the side and turned the camera to him as he bumped up against the Merenneito’s dive platform and hopped aboard.

  “Did you get any good shots?” Slater called down, presumably keeping up the ruse for Holloway’s benefit. She rested her arms on the deck rail and, as she leaned forward, Aston couldn’t help but notice the curve of her breasts. The memory of the night they’d spent together stirred something deep within him, but he forced it down.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked. “Any results from your work on shore?”

  Aston couldn’t bring himself to play along, still furious at the bemusing reception he’d got from Rinne. He managed a shake of his head, a wave of his camera, and a tight smile before heading up to the deck. What did it matter how he came across? Slater’s production people would edit the footage to craft each person’s image just so. He wondered if he’d even recognize himself when the program aired.

  “Okay, everybody, let’s head to the bridge!” Holloway called out. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  Carly moved at the periphery, filming the crew as they gathered around the table. Holloway’s enthusiasm grated on Aston’s nerves, but he tried to ignore it. Slater cast him a sidelong glance and raised an eyebrow. Aston shook his head slightly, mouthed, later.

  “So Joaquin has found something very interesting,” Holloway said, after ensuring the camera was on him. “It took several hours of painstaking searching, all morning in fact, but we’ve located a part of the lake here where the salinity is sky high!” He jabbed a finger at their map.

  “Sky high?” Aston asked. “Really?” Even if they did find a connection with the sea, the salinity should be noticeably higher than that of the lake water in other spots, but not substantial by any stretch.

  “Hardly,” Joaquin admitted. “But it’s high, especially as this should all be fresh water.”

  “And not far from where you spotted those skates,” Makkonen put in.

  “You’re taking a renewed interest in our endeavor here,” Aston said to the old captain. “And here I thought we were just an annoyance to you.”

  Makkonen grinned. “I’ve been ferrying all kinds of people around this lake for decades and they’ve all largely bored me. For the first time, you lot are presenting me with something I’ve never seen before.”

  “A man is never too old for surprises,” Holloway declared, like it was some great wisdom.

  Joaquin broke the moment of uncomfortable silence. “I’ve compared the salinity in several locations and there are quite a few spots where it’s not entirely fresh water. But this location is positively brackish. We’re about to do some close sonar to see if we can spot the channel.”

  “That’s what I was just explaining on camera,” Holloway said. He turned to Makkonen. “Captain, if you please.”

  The Merenneito rumbled into life and Makkonen started the familiar grid pattern to get a detailed sonar map. The crew busied themselves, gathering the data, making print outs, but generally killing time until the results were in. It took less than an hour.

  “That’s a pretty big space.” Laine’s flat tone hid his emotions. Did he consider the size of the channel a good thing or bad?

  The printout showed a three-dimensional representation of the lake bed, with a wide channel like a deep scar in the bedrock heading in toward the shore. Several other channels and grooves in the rock ran nearby, but the central chasm was impossible to ignore.

  “Must be twenty meters… sixty feet deep at least as it carves into the bedrock there,” Aston said, pointing. “And probably the same width, getting deeper as it goes back.”

  “Then it channels away underground,” Slater said. “How far out is that, where the channel goes under?”

  Laine made some measurements. “One hundred and eighty-three feet from the shoreline,” he said. “Starting at a depth of seventy-two feet before it drops away.”

  “And we’re right in the middle of the high-salinity area Joaquin found,” Holloway said. “So it’s fair to assume that underwater cave leads to a passage that itself leads all the way to the Gulf of Bothnia.”

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Aston said. “Geology is a fickle thing. It’s almost certainly not a single passage to the ocean.” He held up a hand to stay any argument and went on. “It could be, but it’s more likely to be a whole network of fissures and caverns, some possibly rising up above the water level, others branching into dead ends or running deeper and rejoining different chasms.”

  “Rising above the water level?” Slater asked.

  “Sure. This area is hilly. It’s entirely possible there are caves out there, far from the lake, that lead down to underwater passages that would eventually, should you be able to follow them, lead you into the water somewhere around here. Maybe even right out in the middle of the lake.” At the raised eyebrows around the table he tried to explain fu
rther. “Imagine a complicated three-dimensional piece of lace, all thin, interlocking filaments. Underground cave systems are like that, going up and down, back and forth. Often the passages become nothing more than cracks in bedrock, sometimes they open out into huge caverns, either dry or water-filled. Sometimes the fissures or caves collapse and change their own geography, and so on.”

  “But you don’t see many the size of what we’ve got here, do you?” Holloway’s implication was clear – if the creature were real, there must be at least one passage large enough for it to traverse.

  Aston nodded, tapped the map again. “This is a big channel, no question. And there’s salinity, so somewhere it must connect with the ocean. Also, the salinity is high, as you noted, so it seems it’s unlikely to be too convoluted a route. But it might not be as simple as following some underwater highway directly out to the sea.”

  “But it might be that simple,” Holloway said, with a wide grin. “Right? It could be exactly that. You know, the simplest explanation, as they say.”

  Aston sighed. “Yes, it could be.” He was weary of reminding Holloway that the scientific method didn’t stop with hypothesis.

  “So we need to find out,” Laine said. “Who’s up for a dive?”

  Silence descended and Laine laughed. “I don’t blame you. Me either!”

  “I’d like to know more about what we’re getting into before we consider diving,” Aston said. “Underwater channels like we’re hypothesizing can be particularly dangerous. You can get lost or stuck, damage your equipment, or a dozen other things.” He paused and forced a grin. “Besides, if we are getting close to where some giant monster with loads of sharp teeth lives, I certainly don’t want to swim into its mouth. But we absolutely do need to learn more.”