Deeper

I ran down that hill for all I was worth, cursing every cigarette I’d smoked in the last week and hating that my body was getting older and weaker. The ground was slick from condensation and the fog wasn’t making it any easier to see.

None of that meant a damned thing. I pushed myself harder, ignoring the stitch in my side that was threatening to rupture. Up ahead I could just make out the thing moving toward the water. There were still a few blocks to go to let me catch up. I ran faster, until I wasn’t so much running down the hill as putting my feet forward to stop from falling on my face.

The Deep One was just reaching the water when I got to him. I don’t know what was going through my mind. That I would grab him and hold him until they returned Belle? That I would dive with him and somehow manage not to drown? Whatever it was, it didn’t work out the way I’d have liked.

The fish man spun around fast and opened its mouth wide. The tongue that came out of its mouth was just as long and nasty as I’d heard and it slapped across my face like a wet slab of meat thrown from a speeding car. My face stayed where it was and the rest of me kept going. I only barely remember hitting the ground near the docks.

By the time I was back up and shaking off the blow to the face, the damned thing was diving into the water. I could just see it as it descended into the depths and swam out toward the reef.

There’s an old question that goes with doing the limbo: how low can you go? Gotta be honest, I’d never been lower. I made it back to the yacht on leftover adrenaline alone. I was wiped out. My hands were twitching and my body ached everywhere.

Charlie was there and waiting for me, pacing like a worried hen looking for her chicks. Much as I wanted to be angry with him for everything that had happened, I couldn’t be. It wasn’t his fault, but he was an available scapegoat.

“Fish man got free and mauled everyone there. I think a couple of them are dead. I called an ambulance.” I was doing my very best to stay calm, which I have to admit wasn’t very good.

“Diana’s kid brother, I don’t think he made it, and four or five other people. I can’t remember.” I brushed past him heading toward the diving supplies. I needed Belle back and I aimed to get her, no matter what it took.

“Now where’s my wife?” I did my best to look a few bullets through his head, because I wanted to make my point known and I didn’t want to argue with him. I knew my limits well enough to know that I would gleefully pound the crap out of the next person that crossed my path. I didn’t know if I should scream, cry or just start swinging, but all of them were looking like good options.

“That was the deal I made when I was down there before. They get their fish man back and I get my wife.” I moved past Jacob again—he was very good at becoming an obstacle, which was maybe not the best way for him to stay healthy—and started putting on a dry suit.

“Joe, you keep saying you talked to those things. No one else has talked to them, so I’m wondering if maybe it’s all in your head.” Now, up until that point, Jacob had never questioned my sanity. Maybe he was just being polite and maybe he thought I was crazier than when I left the yacht an hour earlier. I didn’t much care either way.

“What? You think I went crazy inside of a couple of hours?” I actually stopped putting on my suit and looked at him again.

“Charlie called it ‘nitrogen narcosis.’ He said sometimes divers see things, and you were down there a long time, Joe.”

I laughed, but I didn’t think it was at all funny. “Yeah, sometimes people get all delusional down there, Jacob. But you know what? The first time one of those fucking things communicated with me it was right here, on the yacht, while I was breathing good old-fashioned surface air. I didn’t get stoned on nitro. I had a fish man talk inside my head!”

I stood up and jabbed Jacob Parsons in the chest with my finger. He flinched but he didn’t back down. “Maybe I’m nuts! Maybe I dreamed the whole thing, Jacob. But you answer me this, what would you do if it was your Mary instead of my Belle that had been taken by those monsters?”

“I don’t have any fucking idea what I’m doing.” My body was trembling again, the adrenaline was kicking the crap out of me and when it faded I was going to be useless. The only good news was that it didn’t seem like it was going to go anywhere for a while. “I’m winging it, Jacob. But I have to have Belle back. That’s all that matters to me right now.” I looked past him and bellowed for Charlie to get us moving. A few moments later, I felt the yacht lurch gently back away from the docks and I finished putting on my suit.

Jacob was good enough to help me into a new oxygen tank, and after that was all set, I grabbed more supplies. I got the biggest waterproof flashlight on board, and I reloaded my harpoon gun from earlier. I also grabbed my skinning knife and a few extra spears for the gun.

When that was all done, I set up and activated the tracker that was set for the device I’d left on the fish man. I needed to know where he went. I needed to know if he went to the caves, and whether or not that was where I had to start looking for Belle.

By the time Charlie had set anchor, I was ready for the dive. That fear crept back into my belly and tried to pull away what little courage I had left. For Belle, I would ignore the fear. She was more important to me than anything else in the world.

Despite myself, I listened. Those five minutes seemed to crawl on forever, but finally he was ready and we went down. It went faster with Charlie in the lead. I think by that point he probably could have found the cave without even looking.

If I thought the cave was dark before, I was wrong. The two of us kept our lights ahead of us and moved down to the entrance and with every single stroke of my legs, I expected to see Deep Ones coming toward us, claws flashing from webbed hands and mouths full of sharp teeth ready to tear into flesh.

Whatever had happened down below over the last few days had riled the hell out of the fish people, and I didn’t expect to find the place empty of guards, or at least look-outs keeping a watch for strangers. The thing is, I expected to see them, but I never really took much time to look. I knew where we were going and that was all that mattered to me.

Charlie moved through the water ahead of me and I kept track of where he was more than I did where we were going. The darkness around us was thick and as foggy as the night above. The earlier storm had stirred the waters and lifted the silt, making it almost impossible to see more than twenty feet ahead.

We made it to the cave entrance and I felt the hairs on my arms stand up. I knew, just knew that there would be something there to greet us.

Instead, there was only the dark cave. Charlie moved quickly, his light scanning everywhere around us, but there was nothing to see but the chamber under the water. It was clearer here, too, because the turbulent waters never made it down this far.

We went for the narrow entrance to the second, deeper chamber and Charlie swam hard enough to leave me winded. He wanted this done as much as I did. The cave went down farther than I would have guessed before it opened up into another, wider area.

It was there that they were waiting. I barely had a chance to realize that the area opened wider before the Deep Ones made themselves known. They came from all directions, a wave of amphibious flesh that blocked our way. The beams from the flashlights ran across the bodies and faces, revealing alien forms that hung suspended in the waters, each of them staring with unblinking eyes.

There were easily fifty of them in the area. They didn’t move to attack, but they stopped us from going any farther. Charlie dove low in an effort to get past them and they immediately blocked his path again.

I didn’t see much beyond that, because I was trying to make progress myself. I braced my feet on the wall next to the tunnel’s entrance and then kicked off, trying to push my way past the living obstacles in front of me.

Pallid, gray flesh blocked my way and one of the more toad-like creatures shook its head in a very human warning to stop where I was. I didn’t listen. Instead, I brandished the harpoon gun and kept going.

The hands of the creatures grabbed at my arms and my body and I felt the claws sliding over my suit. Several of the things let out a thrumming noise, deep and loud, as they moved around me. While I did my best to focus on saving Belle, I was very, very aware of the creatures and how deadly they could be. The first thing I noticed aside from the fact that they weren’t tearing me apart was that most of them were larger than the one that had been on the yacht.

The second thing I noticed was that they didn’t look quite alike. I’d said before that their faces were all a little different and I saw now how true that really was. Some of them almost had toad faces, with wide mouths that curled downward. Others bore a stronger resemblance to sharks, or catfish. Some of them had tentacles on their faces, replacing the lower aspects of their mouths. I saw their faces in quick flashes as they blocked my way—a living wall of flesh that refused to let me get past them.

God, if only I could explain the rage and frustration. I wanted my wife, and I wanted to leave the damned area forever. If I could have made that clear, maybe everything would have worked out better than it did. I don’t know. I may never know.

One of the things grabbed the harpoon gun and yanked it away from me hard enough to snap the connector that held it around my wrist. I felt the skin under the dry suit scrape and bruise from the sudden, powerful tug.

I let out a scream, but all that came out was a blast of air from my mouth that spilled from the regulator of my mask. A second later, one of the clawed hands pulled the mask away from my face and reminded me that man was not meant to breathe beneath the sea. Cold water slapped against my skin and blinded my eyes. I kept the regulator in place, but only out of blind luck. The mask was torn away from my head and I felt the hair on my scalp ripped loose along with the straps.

It’s possible to see under the water without a mask, but it’s painful, too. The salt in the water, the impurities of the silt, they all get into your eyes and they burn like mad.

Half blinded by the monsters around us and deprived of my one solid weapon, I grabbed the knives from my belt and prepared to fight them as best I could.

But they didn’t attack again. They weren’t out to kill us; I believe that. I think they were toying with us, instead. They were showing us the strength of their numbers and letting me know that they could kill us at any time.

Once, when I was a kid, around ten or so, I had a bully a few grades older than me who sat on my chest and slapped me around a few hundred times in the face. Oh, I fought, but he was much bigger and far too strong for me to hurt him. The slaps weren’t hard, but they stung. When it was over with, I was humiliated and infuriated. What the Deep Ones did felt a lot like that.

I might have actually fought back, might have even lost my mind a little and killed a few of them, but they did something to stop me without laying a hand on me.

They ripped the tank right off of Charlie’s back. It took three of them, but they were fast and strong and had the home field advantage. One of them swam up fast on Charlie and grabbed his face. I thought for sure it would tear his skin wide open with its claws, but instead it just held him.

Another grabbed his right arm and swam hard, pulling his arm straight out, and I heard the sound of his shoulder dislocating and I heard the muffled scream that escaped his mouth when he spit out the regulator and cried out in pain. The third one yanked back on the tank and braced against his back. I swear if the damned tank hadn’t come off it would have broken his spine.

Charlie went into spasms. The strap on the left side had broken and the tank was stuck on his right, freshly dislocated shoulder. He tried to turn his body but the thing on his arm wouldn’t let him. If the one on his back hadn’t eased off, he would have probably been torn apart by the pressure.

Charlie did what anyone does after they’ve screamed. He tried to breathe. It doesn’t work so well underwater. He bucked and immediately coughed water and oxygen out of his lungs.

What choice did I have? I couldn’t leave one of my best friends to die in the water, not after all he had done for me. I dropped my knives and swam for Charlie, and the fish men let me. They moved out of my way and made more of their barking sounds as I reached for him and took the regulator from my tank and slapped it against Charlie’s lips.

He took the hint and breathed in, still coughing, until he could catch his breath. I took it back from him and took a breath of my own as I headed back the way we had come.

They parted before us and closed ranks as we passed. A few of them followed us from a distance as we took turns breathing from the one remaining tank.

I swam carefully, slowly, needing the oxygen to last for the entire trip to the surface and having to remember how deadly rising too fast could be.

By the time we reached the surface we were on the last few pounds of pressure in the tank. I had to call Jacob over to help me get Charlie on board.

The moon was rising when we headed for the docks, with Charlie in a state of shock and my entire body feeling like someone had worked me over with a baseball bat.

There was little remaining hope in my heart or mind that I would ever see her again. The ghostly captain’s words came back to haunt me: “They’ll never give her back to you. She’s as good as dead, or possibly worse. You will not win this.”