Demon Spirit, Devil Sea
Page 25
Humming, I paddled quickly as my seventeen-foot-long, twenty-inch-wide sea kayak sliced through the water like an arrow. Not bad for a thirty-one-year-old who spent way too much time in front of her computer. My spirits always soar when I’m on the water, but today they skyrocketed. September is my favorite month on the Maine coast. The water’s plenty warm for paddling and days perfect for a hike. Along the roads and on the hills, maple and oak leaves tipped with red and gold foretell a fall riot of color.
I wondered what Harvey thought about a revelation so out of character for get-up-and-go me. I hadn’t told her—or even Angelo, my godfather and only family—that I’d been meditating on the word “gratitude” as I picked my way along the beach in front of my house or leaned against the granite boulder on top of Spruce Harbor hill to take in the sunset. The practice grew out of a harrowing event. A month earlier, I’d been kidnapped and left for dead in an archipelago called Haida Gwaii way out in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver. After I’d figured out how to make a fire, keep warm, and cook mussels, my panic subsided.
I felt instead that I was not alone. Something or someone was watching over me.
As a scientist who believes every so-called mystical experience has a physical explanation, the Haida Gwaii experience was unnerving. So I’d translated what happened into something I could understand. National Institute of Health research shows that gratitude fostered feelings of wellbeing and connectedness. I had put aside my anger and hurt toward Ted and focused instead on my good fortune—Angelo, Harvey, Gordy, a career I was passionate about.
The tactic was succeeding. My ire toward Ted for dumping me had made working on our shared research projects awkward, to say the least. When I admitted to myself that I, not Ted, was to blame because commitment scared the crap out of me, the anger turned inward. Finally, I let that go as well and took each day as it came. A few days earlier, I’d even dropped by Ted’s office to go over some water temperature data. The exchange had gone well.
Thank goodness angst was a thing of the past.
Gordy had anchored his raft between two islands where fast-flowing current carried an abundance of microscopic plankton to the filter-feeding mussels. The kayak slid to a stop just as the tide turned slack. Up close, Gordy’s contraption was pretty impressive. Fifty-odd-foot square with a steel I-beam frame, wooden cross-members, and oversized polyethylene floats, the thing could easily weather a major blow.
I circled the raft a few times, looking for a way to explore beneath the platform. That’s where the excitement was—for a marine ecologist, that is. I had all sorts of questions. What were the mussels attached to? Were they big or small? How many were there?
One place looked as good as another to begin my investigation. So I maneuvered my boat parallel with the raft and secured the paddle under my deck bungee. Still in the kayak, I leaned over and peered into the gloom below the platform. Slits of light from above danced across row after row of swaying rope that looked creepily alive. The rope was attached to the underside of the platform, and I could just make out a foot of exposed line before it plunged down into the water out of sight. Seawater sloshed over mussels the size of my fist that encased the exposed rope. Hand over hand, I traveled down one side of the raft, stopped at intervals, flattened myself across my deck, and peered into the gloom for a better look. Water slapped against the platform—and my face.
At the corner I straightened up, ran a hand across my eyes, patted the raft, and said aloud, “Gotta give it to you, Gordy, this is one wicked piece of engineering.”
I really, really wanted to examine the mussels. Maybe they were bigger on the outside edge because they grew more quickly there with better access to seawater. Or maybe the inner ones were fouled with barnacles or invasive sea squirts—not so good for an aquaculture business. I blinked at the sky. There’d be more light on the opposite western side. I tried the same flatten, crank my neck, squint routine over there but still could see squat.
I pushed back from the raft to consider a different maneuver. “Time for a frontal attack,” I announced to gulls overhead. A couple of quick strokes sent me bow first under the platform. The skinny boat slipped between two rows of drop lines. Leaning over the front of my vessel, I plowed further in. Surrounded by a tapestry of dangling, dancing mussel-rope, I closed my eyes and let over senses take over. Pop, slosh, and gurgle enhanced the slap-slap-slap melody. Sharp, briny perfume tickled my nose, sea life exhaling.
I reached out to gauge the thickness of mussel growth. Stacked atop one another, they completely surrounded the lines, so many that my two encircled hands didn’t come close to touching. Hardly any barnacles or other encrusting critter disfigured the mussel monopoly.
Just beyond the tip of my bow, something out of place bobbed in the water. Squinting, I tried to make out what it was. An errant lobster buoy? Cast-off bucket? The bulky object didn’t belong in the middle of a mussel farm, that was for sure. Gordy would want it out of there. I released the paddle from its bungee hold, reached out, and tapped the object. It felt bulky, big. I pushed harder. The thing submerged out of sight. Peering into the murk, I scanned the spot where it’d been. Where was the goddamn thing?
Suddenly, like a sea monster from the depths, the sunken mystery bobbed straight up out of the water. Its eyes held mine for a moment before the head slipped back down into the black.
My scream ricocheted off the platform into an uncaring sea.