Black Tide (13 page)

A blinding flash of light exploded through the murky depths.

Simultaneously, a tremendous thud of sound shook the water.

All around me the creatures began to burn. The water became a sizzling froth as the things combusted and writhed and shrieked in the airless void beneath the waves. Instantly I was free. I shot to the surface and drew in a huge gasp of air, then dropped below the surface and forced myself up again. It took me several breaths to get myself oriented. I couldn't see the raft, which had disappeared in the rain, but the channel marker was only a few metres ahead. One of the creosote-soaked posts was smoking.

Lightning. It had been struck by lightning.

I managed a feeble, one-armed breast stroke, which is all the energy I had remaining, and crossed the distance to the structure. A wooden ladder hung down into the water. A sign warned, ‘Property of the US Coast Guard. No trespassing!' and never was a rebuke more welcoming. I hung there a moment, simply gathering my wits. Then, with my good arm wrapped around the rung, I hauled myself out of the stinking water.

 

I did not know where to begin this story.

I strike a match.

I know where it will end.

 

The storm moved out a few minutes after I reached the top of the channel marker. There, a light blinked somnolently, warning non-existent barges and boaters of the shallow water only a few metres north. The light and its batteries were housed in a nonconductive plastic manifold that protected it from the lightning. But its light was cold and vague, and I knew it would not be enough.

The storm played itself out in a spreading veil of cirrus that began to unravel as the late afternoon sun burned through. Angled bars of light swept across the horizon. It was the stuff of church frescoes.

By that time the pain in my shoulder had subsided to a dull throb. I don't think any permanent damage was done – maybe some disturbance to the connective tissue, but no broken bones.

When the rain let up I began searching for the raft. Finally I spotted it far off down the sound. It lay firmly in the westward current's grasp. But I could not see Heather. My initial thought was the raft had swept into the shallow water north of the channel and she had jumped off to walk ashore – maybe not so much of a thought as a hope. Perhaps when I slipped from the raft the creatures followed me, abandoning her. Maybe they'd been destroyed by the lightning. I couldn't know. But my hope was she'd made it to shore and was searching for help.

But of course, another explanation was possible.

I didn't want to think about it.

At the time I believed I could stay here. It couldn't be long until somebody came through here to see what had happened. If DeVries were able to drive his boat from Niceville, only a few miles north and east of here, the Coast Guard or Marine Patrol would surely follow. Tonight or tomorrow. I could survive until then.

But that's not the way it worked out.

 

Which brings me to this moment.

It seems years have passed since we stepped off the boat and onto the island. Much has changed in the last three days.

I once believed I knew what was important, but now I am not sure. I know that I am a man, and I am alive. But that is not enough. It is the struggle that defines the life, not the life itself. And I have struggled –
we
have struggled – and the waging of that struggle rises above the common qualities of love, and hate, and maybe even death itself. I saw it in DeVries as he grappled with the thing that brought him down. I saw it in Scotty as he stood dying on the beach. I saw it in Heather as she fought to protect me. Maybe I will see it in myself.

That night on the dune, after Scotty was killed, Heather asked if we were evil. Had we brought ourselves to ruin with our manipulations and schemes?

As I gaze into the water below me, I see them. They are down deep, away from the fading sunlight. I see their pale bodies as far as the depths reveal them to me. Each one is curled into a foetal position and is drifting with the current. Do they think, I wonder? Do they dream? One cold winter morning my father and I snuggled into our warmest clothes and launched our tiny aluminium boat from a nearby ramp and went sputtering across a bay very much like the one that adjoins this sound. We had a baitwell full of live shrimp and our quarry was the elusive speckled trout. As we crossed the water, the tiny Golden Jet motor struggling to push us through the waves, I idly glanced over the side. Below I saw something that caused me to take in my breath and hold it – an infinite layer of jellyfish. They were large, each about the size of a cantaloupe, and they were the colour of long-dead flesh, a bluish white that struck me as unearthly and inexplicably terrifying. They swam in schools of tens of thousands, moving through the water with the slow, languid pulsing of things that exist for no other reason than to frighten little boys. Moon jellies, I would come to learn later, although at some point I began calling them ‘moonstars.' A galaxy of moonstars below us. And how awful it would be, I mused as I watched them, a shuddery creepiness slithering up my spine, to fall overboard and be sucked into those depths and drown in that sea of translucent alien flesh. It would be worse than dying. It would be a fate reserved for somebody who was bad – a very bad person indeed. It would be a fate reserved for somebody who was evil.

The moonstars are below me now, slumbering in their abyss. Every so often one of them turns and gazes up at me. Then it moves in the slow, languid pulsing of a thing meant to frighten little boys, toward the surface. It scrabbles up the ladder, dripping water as it climbs higher, and as it draws near I strike a match so that my visitor shudders and drops like a dead weight into the fetid depths. Right now only a few dare this effort. By deepest night it will be many.

And among them, dear God. Among that sea of pallid flesh.

I see her.

She is watching me. I see the lust in her eyes, and I feel the horrible certainty I have earned that hungry, adoring gaze.

In half an hour dusk will give way to dark. I know I cannot make it to the shallows. Too many of them lurk in the rancid depths that separate me from escape. So when darkness falls I will remain here, hoarding my matches, until they are gone.

We are not evil beings, I tell myself. Selfish, perhaps. Short-sighted. And sometimes afraid. Which makes us nothing more than alive.

But not evil.

I hope that is true. I am about to find out. Another is scaling the ladder, grinning up at me with a bloodless leer and whited eyes.

Heather has yet to stir from her staring slumber.

The struggle is unfinished.

I strike a match.

 

The following people and institutions provided guidance in the research and writing of this story, and to them I extend my thanks: Dr Debbie Miller of the University of Florida horticultural centre in Milton, Fla; Dr Curtis Burney of Nova University; Phillip Kilty; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Biotoxins Program; the National Centre for Environmental Research, Red Tide Update web site; professors Kris Herzog and Charles Gramlich; and artist Dave Dorman.

 

Del Stone Jr is an SF/dark fiction writer. His work has appeared in
Amazing Stories
; Penguin-Putnam's
Live Without a Net
; Bantam's
Full Spectrum
;
The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII
;
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
; the Pocket Books anthology
More Phobias
; numerous Barnes & Noble anthologies; the HWA anthology
Psychos
; and other venues like
Blood Muse
, and
Sex Macabre
. Del's comic book debut was in Clive Barker's
Hellraiser
from Marvel/Epic. He's also appeared in books published by Dark Horse, Image, and Penthouse Comix. Del's novel,
Dead Heat
, won the International Horror Guild's award and was a runnerup for the Bram Stoker Award. He has had stories in anthologies that have won the World Fantasy Award and Stoker Award. His novella
Black Tide
has been optioned for a film.