The Ocean Dark

by Christopher Golden

  Bone had died the same way Mitchell had, dragged down into a blossoming pool of his own blood. A goddamned shame. Bone had been a decent guy.

  Now all five of them were stranded, but at least the captain and the others were together. Boggs was on his own, separated from them by a gap way too wide to even think about swimming while those things were in the water. And what about them? What are they, anyway? Boggs pushed the questions away, saving them for another time. He didn’t want to think about it, because the few answers that danced at the periphery of his thoughts only frightened him more.

  The wreck he’d swum to lay at an angle in the water, maybe forty-five degrees, and he crouched inside, looking down through the open window frame at the water below. He might have been better off on top of the lopsided ship, but from here he had a better view of the island and of the others, stranded across from him.

  Little shards of glass still in the window frame crunched under his shoes as Boggs straightened up, careful with his footing. If he fell, he would tumble into the water, and though he could see no disturbance on the water, he thought he could feel them there, waiting down in the dark.

  He studied the arrangement of the wrecks near his position, as well as those on the other side of the alley they had sailed through to get to the beach. He needed to get to a higher vantage point to take a look at the sunken ships that were nearest to him. One of these boats must still have a working lifeboat on it, and much as he didn’t want to risk it, that might be his only shot at getting out to the Antoinette. The container ship’s draft was much too deep to get in this close.

  Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, he saw something odd out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see that the Antoinette had begun to turn. Though slowly, the ship had begun to move toward shore.

  “What the hell?” Boggs muttered to himself.

  Then he got it. The Antoinette couldn’t come and get them, but Miguel could sure as hell get her closer, giving them all a better shot at reaching the ship alive.

  A terrible thought filled him. Miguel wasn’t coming for Hank Boggs—he was coming for his brother, the goddamned captain. Whatever rescue efforts the crew of the Antoinette would be making, they were going to be focused on the other side of the gulf that separated his position from the others.

  Panic flared in his chest. Boggs hadn’t been scared of much in his adult life, but the thought of being out here alone when the sun went down filled him with a terror so profound that for several long seconds he could not move. He had heard people talk about getting a chill, but had never felt anything like the sudden, icy cold that enveloped him. For a few moments, he felt as though he’d been locked in a freezer.

  When the chill passed, the panic remained.

  They might not leave him behind, but Boggs knew he wasn’t their priority. They weren’t hurrying to get to him, and weren’t likely to reach him before nightfall. Keenly aware of the dark water below, he looked over at the fishing trawler and at the double-masted schooner that lay on its side. Gabe and Tori and the others were on the move now, looking for a way to cross to the schooner.

  Boggs looked up. Above him and to the left, a thick tangle of netting and rope had been stretched from the bow of the cabin cruiser all the way to the broken mast of the schooner. In places, curtains of net hung down, but the central line was fairly taut. Even where it sagged in the middle, it must still have been at least thirty feet above the water.

  He had known it was there, of course. They had all noticed it on the way in, and wondered at its use and origin. Mitchell had said it looked like some kid’s idea of a pirate treehouse, the way some of the ships were tethered together. But Boggs wasn’t some circus tightrope walker. He had the strength to shimmy out along the rope and netting and hang on, but ninety feet? Could he make it that far? Once, maybe, when he was younger. But he was older, now, and heavier, and as taut as it looked, there was no way of telling how well the rope had been tied off on either side, or how much the sun and salt might have rotted it.

  Boggs closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them, he gazed at the western horizon. How many hours before dark? Three? Four? Best not to count on four.

  Which meant he had to get started.

  The cabin cruiser sat, half-submerged, canted sideways in the water. The angle wasn’t so extreme that he couldn’t manage, but still he was really beneath the wheelhouse. He’d never be able to climb up to the bow from down there. One missed grip or a slip of the foot and he’d fall. It made a hell of a lot more sense to go up through the wheelhouse and get on top of the cruiser. Up there he could scale the port side railing like a jungle gym, all the way to the bow.

  Boggs glanced at the Antoinette, sliding nearer to the reef of ruined ships, and then at the horizon one more time. The whole ship creaked and the breeze coming through the broken windows whistled softly. He slid down the inner wall of the wheelhouse to the V where the wall met the floor. On his hands and knees, he began to climb the slanted floor like Spider-Man, the toes of his shoes finding traction, hands giving him balance. Boggs picked his way across the wheelhouse, scaling the tilted floor, headed for the broken windows on the port side—the high side, now.

  His left foot slipped and went out from under him. His knee slammed down, and he slid toward the water at the submerged rear of the wheelhouse. His heart raced as his hands scrabbled for purchase. He shoved his right foot out, flat on his belly, slowing down, turning sideways, slipping toward the water.

  It’s not deep, he told himself. A couple of feet. If anything was there, I’d see it.

  His left hand caught the upright balustrade fixed to the floor around the stairs that led down into the cabin below. Hope filled him, but momentum slid him further, and first his left foot and then his right plunged into the water. His shoes struck the back wall of the wheelhouse, and he was in water up to his knees. The way the ship sat, tipped over in the water like that, the sun struck the roof, and only ambient daylight made it through the windows. Down there where the water had flooded in, all was in shadow.

  “Please, no,” he gasped, tightening his grip on the balustrade and—now that his feet had purchase—pulling himself up to the stairs that led belowdecks. He straddled the top stair, which was a peak, of sorts, like the top of a roof. He thought of sitting on his roof back when he was a boy, up on hot tar shingles, drinking grape soda and waiting for his mother to come home from work.

  The thought calmed him. The water that had collected at the rear of the wheelhouse was only that—water. And not very deep. The floor sloped down in front of him; the stairs did the same behind him. But the railings around the stairs would give him a good head start for climbing again, making his way up to the port side where it stuck out of the water. He just had to reach a broken window and get out of the wheelhouse on top, and then it would be easy climbing the outside of the ship.

  He caught his breath, taking a moment. The sound of the sea lapping the sides of the ship—so close now that he was near the water line—made him uneasy. And he could hear, down in the cabin belowdecks, the slosh of the water that had filled the sunken portion of the cruiser.

  Bracing himself, he grabbed the railing—more like a ladder at this angle—and stood upon the peak of the top, tilted stair. With his right hand he tugged on the balustrade, testing its strength.

  Boggs paused, frowning, then cocked his head. He heard singing, like a far-off lullaby. Could that be Tori, all the way over on the trawler or the schooner? The sound comforted him, relaxing his thundering heart.

  But then it grew louder, and he realized that it did not come from outside the cruiser, but from within. From below him, down those stairs, inside the flooded cabin.

  An awful sorrow filled him—not fear, but profound sadness. As Boggs glanced down into the darkness of the cabin, he began to weep, as he had not done in the better part of thirty years.

  Three sets of black eyes gazed up at him from the throat of the stairwell. A single hand slid
upward, fingers wrapping around his ankle. He hung his head in surrender.

  Only when they began to pull him down the stairs did Boggs begin, at last, to scream.

  ~50~

  Tired but grateful to be home, Alena Boudreau unlocked the door to the brick-front rowhouse on M Street. It had been her residence since 1975, when her father had passed away and she had taken the money from the sale of her parents’ house in New Hampshire, given up her apartment, and decided to make a permanent home for herself and her daughter in Washington, D.C. A decade or so later, Marie had graduated college and had a child of her own, and the two women had raised the boy, David, together.

  Marie lived in California, now, where she worked for a green energy company, and she kept in touch only sporadically. When she did bother to call or e-mail, Marie always made sure to express her disapproval of David’s choice to work with his grandmother. Even as a teenager, she had never been able to accept that her education, her clothes, even her meals, had been paid for by money her mother earned in the employ of the U.S. government, and the idea that her son now used his brilliance toiling for the same paymasters got under Marie’s skin. Sometimes Alena thought his mother’s irritation was what kept David working for the D.O.D.

  From the time Marie had been ten or eleven years old, Alena had understood that she and her daughter were wired differently, and she had spent years trying to find a common ground between them so that they could enjoy each other’s company instead of grating on each other’s nerves. Alena still hadn’t found that common ground, and it hurt her heart, but so much time had gone by that she tried her best not to think about it, now.

  She had David. Or she had him as much as anyone did. They were very much alike, she and her grandson, but that also meant that they were two people of very solitary nature still living under the same roof. He would go, eventually; Alena was resigned to that. David could not live in the shelter of his family forever. When the day came, it would be bittersweet. But for now, Alena liked having her grandson around almost as much as she appreciated having someone of his intellect with whom she could share ideas and theories.

  She stepped into the house, set down her travel bag, and dropped her keys on the little table at the bottom of the stairs. As she closed the door, she frowned—there were lights on, which meant David was home, but not the slightest scent of cooking lingered in the house.

  Alena smiled indulgently and shook her head. In many ways, she and David were alike. They both lost themselves in work far too frequently, and much too completely. But Alena rarely became so distracted that her growling stomach couldn’t budge her, while David often had to be reminded to eat.

  She climbed the stairs, passing by her own quarters on the second floor. They had arranged the house this way when David had been an infant, he and his mother taking the third floor and Alena the second, each with their own bedrooms, bathrooms, sitting rooms and offices. The first floor consisted of a kitchen, a dining room, and an old-fashioned parlor, where grandmother and grandson often played cards with the news on in the background. When they were wrestling with an intriguing puzzle, trying to make sense of what their research had discovered, the rhythm of poker often eased their minds, let their subconscious thoughts consider the puzzle at hand.

  Their real offices were elsewhere, of course, but much of the contemplation that went into their investigations happened when they weren’t surrounded by other people, bright lights, and ringing phones.

  Outside the windows, the wan light of early evening had begun to retreat. Night would fall soon, but David would not have noticed. She reached the third floor and turned right, knowing exactly where to find him. The door to his office stood open, a pile of books stacked against it to keep the breeze from the open windows from blowing it shut. David’s office seemed to get the least sunlight of any room in the house, and she thought he liked it that way. The shade on the single window always hung halfway down. He kept a green glass banker’s lamp on his desk and two brass floor lamps with hand-painted rose crystal globes around the bulbs. They looked almost like gas lamps.

  David wasn’t at his cluttered desk. The computer screen, dormant and unattended, showed fish swimming back and forth. Rather, he stood over a long oak table on the other side of the room, examining maps spread out beneath a hanging, stained-glass lamp that would have looked more at home in a pool hall. The only thing it shared in common with the others was its antique status; David had little room in his life for material things, but had somehow acquired a love for antique glass lamps.

  Though he dressed impeccably in crisp jeans and a tailored shirt, her grandson kept himself stylishly ungroomed, his hair artfully ruffled and his chin stubble trimmed so short it seemed almost the ghost of a beard. That he cared about such things always surprised her, particularly when he wouldn’t take the time to eat.

  The wall beyond the table looked like something from a police detective’s squad room, covered with newspaper clippings whose headlines announced missing boats and vanished travelers. She recognized pages and photographs from the files of two cases from her own past, one off the coast of Africa and the other a remote island in the South Pacific. David had been along with her for the latter, at the age of seventeen, and had never quite recovered from the things he had seen. Alena understood the reaction; she had felt much the same after that African case. The details remained fresh in her mind even though the events had occurred in September of 1967.

  The original discovery, in the sixties, had been unsettling enough. Far more so when a second, similar site had been found on an uncharted South Pacific island just eight years ago. The coincidence had been too much for David, and now he spent every spare moment scouring news reports and maritime journals for evidence of further related sites, even as they both prayed he would never find one.

  “I’m sure you haven’t eaten. Why don’t we get some dinner?” Alena said. “Il Bacio. My treat.”

  As if waking from a trance, David blinked and turned to look at her. Then he smiled in that disarming way he had perfected as a child. Turned away from the lamp, his blue eyes seemed almost luminescent in the gathering gloom.

  “Alena, how did you get here?”

  “Teleported,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “What do you think? Airplane. They fly, you know.”

  “Don’t tell me the General rushed you home to look at hobbit weaponry.”

  She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  He smiled in return, finally seeming to become aware of his surroundings, then pulled away from the items he had unrolled on the table. Alena saw now that they were not maps but maritime charts.

  “Never mind,” David said, waving the comment away. He came over and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Looks like you’ve been avoiding the office,” she observed.

  He nodded, gaze drifting back to the charts. He often lost himself in them, and his brow grew troubled every time. David reached out and picked up a small rock, no larger than a baseball, that had been holding down one side of a chart. The paper curled up when he lifted the weight off of it.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked, placing it in her hand.

  Alena got a little queasy feeling in her belly as she went to the table to examine the rock in the light, turned it over in her hands, ran her fingers over the smooth, glassy black surface.

  “I think it’s exactly what you think it is. Where did it come from?”

  “A Dominican fisherman dragged that and some larger pieces up in nets he wasn’t supposed to be using, somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ve only got a vague idea of where they were found.”

  “When was this?”

  David looked sheepish. “1982.”

  Alena sighed and nodded. “Decades ago.” She set the rock back down on the table and reached out to touch his cheek. “Your eyes are red and I can practically hear your stomach shrinking. You need rest and food, and I would really like a nice veal saltimbocca and a glass of
red at Il Bacio. Come, have dinner with your grandmother. I’ll tell you about the Donika Cave.”

  “I am a little hungry, but…” He hesitated and looked back at the charts on the table.

  “1982, David. If there’s a third island there, it’s waited this long to be discovered. One more night won’t make a difference.”

  ~51~

  The day had metamorphosed into a nightmare. The dead crew of the Mariposa and the missing guns were no more than a nuisance, now, after the horrors of that ancient, crumbling grotto, and the things Gabe believed had come from deep within the glassy black, volcanic rock that lined the cavern within. He imagined a hellish tunnel, straight down through the water, and things still swimming in unknown depths. But even those images were not the worst part of his nightmare. The worst came when he heard Hank Boggs begin to scream.

  It wasn’t the screams that got him—they weren’t the day’s first—nor the death of Chief Boggs. The most heinous moment for Gabe came when he recognized the feeling rising up inside him as relief. With Boggs dead, things were simpler. They didn’t have to worry about retrieving him, didn’t have to risk any foolish heroics beyond saving their own skins.

  The realization staggered him and he faltered, standing on the precipitous edge of the trawler’s nose. Tori grabbed his arm to steady him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Watch it. You okay?”

  He peered at her. She was frightened, but rock steady and determined. Gabe wondered where this woman had come from, because the smart, pretty, flirty girl from the offices back in Miami had vanished completely.

  “There’s nothing you could have done for him,” Tori said.

  She thought he’d been upset, or grieving for Boggs, when in truth he had been glad the man was no longer his problem. Gabe gently tugged his arm free of her touch, unworthy of her concern.