by Finch, Paul
That brought a small sense of relief, even though it was several hundred metres to the other side. We struck out gamely; in the far corner, faint aqua-blue light rippled on the water. There had to be an exit to daylight of some sort, even if only a cleft in the rocks. But our limbs were leaden, our joints stiffening with cramp. Several times we had to stop and hang onto each other, gasping, simply floating there. We weren’t half way across when my flare began to burn down. Karen struck one of hers. She was physically fitter than I was, and now that her early panic had subsided, was more her steely, reliable self. She suddenly gave a cry of joy and pointed across the water. I turned, and saw what looked like the hump of a sand-bar perhaps only fifty yards away.
“At least … we can rest,” she stammered, swimming tiredly towards it.
I was about to follow, when something occurred to me. I grabbed her ankle to stop her. I don’t know much about oceanography, but I do know that sand-bars don’t rise and fall with the swell .
It struck us simultaneously that what we were looking at was the octopus. Idling there, biding its time. I imagined two baleful eyes just above the surface, riveted on us.
With a whoosh of spray, it went under.
Hysteria seized us. We began floundering towards the light, still an impossible distance away.
Only seconds passed before a tentacle tip broke the water ten yards to our left, rising slowly, cutting a V-wash behind it. With shrieks, we veered away. It followed, and with a titanic surge of water, the beast passed right under our bellies, at a depth of no more than fifteen feet. I had a vague impression of it, spread out starfish-like, skimming below us and vanishing into the opaque depths.
Then suddenly, blackness was all around us.
I called out to Karen, screamed at her to keep swimming. I received no answer, and with mounting horror, pulled up and looked around.
I was alone.
I dragged my goggles up over my eyes and plunged under. And there – far below, by the light of her receding flare, I had a last glimpse of my wife’s despairing face as the horror hauled her down into the shadows. A split second before she vanished, she placed the spear-gun under her chin – and crimson flowers bloomed around her.
I crashed back up through the surface, wailing, but determined that her sacrifice would not be in vain. I swam feverishly for the light. I was close enough to it not to need another flare, which was a relief as I only had one left. By her death Karen had bought me vital time. I was certain I could make it, though I still couldn’t see an exit.
Soon the light was all around me; that shimmering blue light so typical of Mediterranean sea grottos. But where was its source? Only a solid rock wall faced me. No cave mouth had come into view, no cleft or high natural window. Then I realised the truth … and my heart sank.
It came from below.
As I neared that farthest wall, I saw a great curve of rock numerous fathoms down; a huge arch from beneath which daylight was streaming, illuminating the sand and weeds on the seabed. It was a tantalising sight – so tempting to imagine that on the other side of that arch, only a minute away, there was open air and freedom. The reality of course, was that it probably led into an underwater tunnel, which might run for hundreds of yards.
I trod water frantically, tearing my hair with consternation. The only way to truly know was to try, but to try and be proved wrong was unthinkable. My problem was solved a half-second later, when a seething wave burst over me from behind.
It was the octopus.
I swam down and away as hard as I could. But it was no use. The brute was so big it seemed to fill the lagoon, and it bore down remorselessly, pressing me further and further under. Its limbs coiling around my legs and torso – one minute like soft, oozing muscle, the next like flexible iron, crushing flesh and bone with terrible force, the suckers fastening to and ripping skin so that blood was soon billowing around me.
I writhed madly, but to no avail. Its strength was awesome and unrelenting. Fleetingly I saw a white, palpitating underside, and in the middle of it a beak, an immense bird-like beak with serrated edges. But there was still something else. Something even more horrible, something which proved I was in a world of nightmares rather than reality. For an immense glassy eye opened beside me – a huge and perfect sphere, filled with opaque liquid, blinking repeatedly at me as I drowned.
And then inspiration struck. Seemingly from nowhere.
I pulled the last sodium-flare from my trunks and struck it. The glare was blinding even to me, who’d expected it. But to the giant mollusc, which normally dwelt in a world of near blackness …
That huge alien eye rolled white with shock. And I jammed the blazing torch straight into it. The sphere burst, but I rammed the flare in all the harder, grinding it into the socket. A second later I was flung high into the air, spinning like a top, my head almost bursting with the pressure change. Below me, the monster thrashed around in an orgy of pain and bewilderment. I slammed back into the water hard, the wind knocked from me, but I was free of it. Free of it.
Without a second thought, I filled my lungs with air and dived down, kicking hard for the undersea arch. I have never swum harder in my life. I could feel the beast raging blindly behind me, its tentacles swarming around it. But it wouldn’t catch me now, I told myself over and over. Not this time. I had foxed it.
And it seemed that I had, for in less than a minute I had passed under that great vault of rock and was arrowing upward towards a rippling surface sparkling with sunlight.
However, I was not out of the Cathedral yet. Not quite.
I broke into the air, drinking it avidly, the sounds of gulls and breakers singing in my waterlogged ears. But when I looked, I found that I was in the entrance cave, and there was no immediate escape from it. Coming in through the triangular gateway, perhaps thirty yards in front of me, was Carlo. He had cut his motor and was drifting.
I rode the swell exhausted, watching him warily. He was standing up in the prow, legs apart, scanning the surface and brandishing a long boat-hook. Scouring for incriminating evidence, I realised; shreds of bathing costume, maybe the odd snorkel or oxygen tank.
At that moment, I felt a unique kind of hatred for him. He had just condemned four people he didn’t even know to an unimaginably horrible fate, and now here he was, calmly clearing up, as though it were all in a day’s work.
My wife … a day’s work!
I plunged across the cavern towards him at a fast crawl, my weariness forgotten. He looked round sharply, then threw the boat-hook aside and reached down to his feet. To my horror, I saw him pick up a pump-action shotgun. I recognised the model from my shooting club days back home. A Winchester twelve-gauge. In the traditional Sicilian style, it had been cut down to half its length and fastened with a shoulder strap. Such a weapon would pack devastating firepower.
He trained it on me, but I pulled my goggles up and dived under the surface, intending to swim beneath the boat and capsize it. The breakers on the cliffs thundered in my ears, so I don’t know whether he fired or not, but in any case a far more terrible danger was now presenting itself. A few fathoms below me, a black shadow was spreading over the seafloor, and I saw the giant, gelatinous bulk of the octopus sliding under the arch, its tentacles still thrashing the water in a frenzy of pain.
I turned about and kicked for the open sea, acutely aware that I’d first have to pass close by Carlo’s boat. My lungs were already fit to burst, but there was a terrific swell and progress was even slower than before. Having made hardly any distance, I was forced up to breathe. I emerged ten yards to the side of the outboard, gasping. Even in the echoing cave mouth, the boatman heard me and glanced around, taking aim immediately.
I ducked wildly under, knowing that from this range only immediate depth would save me, but in that same instant I found an unlikely ally. The octopus was wheeling up towards the boat, a vortex of sand and bubbles swirling around it.
I broke the surface just in time to see the treacherous
Sicilian screaming and flailing as the sea began boiling around him. His flimsy vessel was knocked sideways, and he staggered and dropped the shotgun, before toppling backward over the gunwales. Mesmerised, I dived beneath and saw his fragile form kicking frantically as the monster’s thick, muscular coils rolled around it.
Which meant the boat was free.
I surfaced and swam towards it, swinging myself up and over the side. Our hamper and various items of clothing and equipment were still in there. I threw them overboard for purposes of speed, before yanking several times at the ripcord of the motor. At last it churned into life, and, leaning on the tiller, I swung the outboard around. I chugged laboriously into the cave mouth, seeing sunlight, sky and blue luxurious waves beyond it. I hardly dared to believe that I had really escaped.
Which was a good thing.
For I hadn’t.
I was still hanging on the tiller, willing myself to go faster, when I felt a mammoth surge in the volume of water underneath. Then the octopus struck the boat – with terrifying force, lifting it bodily into the air. Flinging it twenty or thirty yards out over the waves. It landed with a deafening splash, but miraculously stayed upright, rocking wildly. With a crack and sputter, the motor died. I was thrown down hard into the bilge, but at least I was still aboard.
To my immediate left, a great fleshy mass of tentacles went soaring past under the surface and down into the gloom. They seemed to go on forever. Fleetingly, I saw Carlo’s broken corpse tangled up in them. I knew another attack was only seconds away, and scrabbled desperately for a weapon – an oar, the boat-hook, any kind of weapon. It was only by divine grace that my hand closed on the cold, smooth barrel of the shotgun.
I grabbed it and clambered to my feet, bracing my legs against the gunwales. Thanks to Carlo, the gun was already fully loaded and I pumped a shell into the breach – just as the monstrosity came ballooning up again. The turbulence threw me off-balance, and a huge rubbery head, bulbous and shining with sea-water, broke the surface. Three sinewy tentacles fell across the outboard.
I got off one good shot immediately, the barrel-load crashing clean through the first tentacle, severing it in half. Black-yellow ichor spurted from the stump, but more of the hideous arms swung up to engulf me. Timbers cracked and the boat tipped precariously, sending me heavily onto my knees. I’d pumped in another cartridge however, and this time jammed the barrel hard into the slippery, spongy mass of the creature’s head. From that range the red hot payload had a ruinous effect, blowing out a huge crater of flesh, perhaps a foot across, spattering me with meat and sickly fluids.
The thing literally convulsed away, its tentacles writhing madly. When it submerged, it left a cloud of ochre fluid behind it.
I knelt there, panting, the boat still swaying in the chopping waters. A second passed, before I scrambled back astern to see if I could start her up again – only to find the motor and its blades a mangled wreck.
For several minutes I was unsure what to do. Around me, the sea had gone eerily quiet. Had I killed it? I didn’t know. By my understanding, I’d blown a hole clean through its brainpan; but did an octopus even have a brain? I had certainly wounded it. Even if I hadn’t killed it, perhaps I’d incapacitated it to such an extent that the battle was over. Maybe even as I sat there, tilting on the gory waves, the monster was slithering painfully back into the depths of the Cathedral.
It wasn’t.
A second later, it exploded out of the surf right in front of me, flopping its massive bulk onto the prow of the outboard, almost up-ending it in a single motion. As I fell headlong towards it, I opened fire with the shotgun again and again. Tentacles were torn to fragments; the sole-remaining globular eye shattered like glass; the gross, sac-like body shuddered at the repeated impact of shot, the black, rubbery hide shredding open like rotten fruit. The stench of foul fish was overpowering, but I knew that I was winning.
The boat righted itself again as the dying creature slid heavily off it, leaking vital fluids from a dozen livid wounds, each one the size of a dinner plate. I cracked the shotgun open and shoveled more cartridges into it. When I looked up again, the octopus was drifting away like a mass of pulsing seaweed, the stumps of its tentacles twitching feebly. I didn’t care. I slammed several more barrel-loads into it – pulping it, eviscerating it, splattering it literally to mush.
When I’d finished and the smoke cleared, the unrecognisable heap of tattered flesh was sinking slowly from sight, trailing a gray fog of guts and blood behind it.
*
I am now adrift on the southern straits of Sicily, my vessel listing badly.
My body is covered in circular wounds from the creature’s sucker pads, many of which are so deep they are still bleeding. There’s the distinct possibility of blood-poisoning. Did it inject me with some sort of venom? I don’t know. But that would certainly explain my exhausted, listless state. It’s funny how after triumphing over inconceivable odds, in a battle for my very survival, I feel no sense of exultation or even relief. If anything, my main emotion is disgust … self-loathing for being the only survivor. My wife Karen and those other poor wretches went to deaths more horrible than a normal human could even imagine. No amount of rejoicing will change that, or expunge the ghastly memory from my mind.
And so here I am … in my flimsy, leaking boat, watching the sun descend in embers, and darkness creep on the wine-coloured sea, and I’m unsure what to do next or even how to do it. And, for the moment at least, I couldn’t care less.
THE BALEFUL DEAD
You could easily be forgiven for thinking that, with a name like Troy Tooley, he was a rock star. But though he’d spent all his working life in the music industry, you’d be wrong. You could also assume that it wasn’t his real name. But again, you’d be way off.
To answer the second question first, he came from blue-collar origins in Dartford, his mother a checkout girl, his father a diesel fitter, though both were fanatical movie fans and from the outset they’d been determined to give their children exotic and glamorous-sounding names. On the subject of his long-term showbiz involvement, Troy wasn’t a performer (though I suppose you could argue that point when he took the floor in front of a lounge filled with record company execs); he was a professional manager. He might have had a string of successes to his name – from his days as a columnist for various 1960s music-press publications, to his emergence as chief UK talent-scout for Atlantic – but essentially his skills were of the cold, Philistine variety. He was accountant, agent and lawyer all rolled into one. A rare and valuable combination to be sure, even if he didn’t have a musical bone in his entire body. In truth, he didn’t even look like he was involved in the rock business, being thin and gawky, with lank, unfashionable hair and a penchant for narrow ties, cheap suits and large round glasses; looking, in fact, rather ‘dweebish’, a plastikit Woody Allen if you like, minus the wit. But who were we to complain? Because Troy Tooley made us.
And when I say that, I mean it. He had literally made us.
And now he intended to make us all over again.
1
“Course, I’m not saying you’ll all be capable of going the distance,” Troy said over his G&T. “Putting an album like this together requires a lot of effort and discipline. Normally it would take years, but we’ve only got months. Which means it’s going to be intense. Like really intense.”
Rob sniffed. He’d been the least willing to attend this so-called reunion, and was so far proving the hardest to sell the new project to. “No-one here’s actually broke, Troy. What makes you think we want to go the distance?”
Troy smiled and leaned back against the coach window. Blossoming hedgerows sped by outside. “Never knew you to turn down a challenge, Rob.”
“Who’s talking about me?” Rob nodded across the aisle to where Luke was slumped in a foetal bundle, snoring loudly.
Troy smiled again. “Let Luke be for the moment. It’s not as if we’re going to need any lyrics about orcs and ringwraiths
, is it.”
“Amen to that,” Charlie said, going back to his copy of The Times . “At least some things about the industry have grown up.”
We gazed through the windows at the passing countryside. The South Downs are very scenic in late spring: a rolling succession of long, green uplands interspersed with dry coombes and lush low valleys where myriad freshly-bloomed flowers sparkle in the cottage gardens. I hadn’t been in this part of the country for five years at least, but then I hadn’t been with the rest of the guys – not all at the same time – for several years longer than that. In fact, the truth is that I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a full get-together like this. Okay, Wolfbane – the band, our band – had never officially broken up. We were ‘inert’, I suppose would be one way to describe us. Part of that ageing bunch of formerly mega-sized hard rock outfits, now perceived as dinosaurs, who had gradually drifted to the wings as musical tastes changed, and then, when they thought nobody was looking, made a quick, relieved exit. Most of us, to be honest, preferred it that way. Better to gradually ease your way out of the public consciousness than to visibly crash and burn the way so many others had.
Not that this latest meet-up was anything to do with producing a hard rock album, though Troy was hoping that we’d be able to draw on the influence of one; namely Eagle Road – an LP we’d released way back in 1975, which had instantly gone stratospheric, though, oddly, possibly because it was so ‘non-rock’ in many of its lengthy compositions, which had just as quickly vanished from the charts and now was remembered by no-one.
