Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala (52 page)

Jeff was struggling to phrase a question from the cascade of thoughts that filled his head, but he was drawing a blank. He wanted to believe that Pappy—as always—was talking out of his ass, but thinking about that corpse’s eyes made him wonder if there might not be something to what the old man was saying.

Before he could get out his first question, Pappy straightened up and said, “Well, I’ll be damned, but a powerful thirst has taken ahold ‘a me. Nice chattin’ with’cha, boy-o.”

Without another word, he turned and walked back into
The Local
, the screen door slamming shut behind him. Jeff realized Pappy didn’t really know if that was Old Man Crowther he’d found or if he’d had done what he said. He decided that the old man had just been speculating … spit-ballin’.

Jeff stayed on the back deck for a while longer, staring down at the harbor and trying not to let his gaze shift further out to sea. Silver splinters of moonlight glittered on the dark water. It was a beautiful view, but all he could picture was the dead man—
whoever the hell he is!
—sitting down there on the ocean floor in the total darkness.

* * *

The moment he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window, Jeff winced. A hot, needle-sharp pain slipped behind his eyes as he rolled over in bed. Disengaging himself from Marcie, who was still sound asleep, he moaned softly, bringing both hands to his forehead as he swung his feet from under the covers and onto the floor. Marcie’s eyelids fluttered for a moment, but then she rolled over onto her side away from him and the morning sunlight, and heaved a sigh.

“Do you
really
have to go?” she said, addressing the wall.

“Yeah.”

“This early?”

“Gotta … I have to work.”

“On a freakin’ Sunday?”

“Uh-huh … even on a freakin’ Sunday.”

Marcie sighed and then was silent for a long stretch as Jeff leveraged himself off the bed and scooped up the jeans and socks he’d worn the day before that were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor beside the bed. After he finished getting dressed without a shower—he’d need one for sure
after
today’s dive—he leaned over Marcie and kissed her on the shoulder.

She didn’t respond.

He knew she couldn’t have fallen back asleep that fast, but he wasn’t going to stir things up just now. She could be mad at him all she wanted. It wasn’t just that he had a job to do today. He
had
to go back down so he could find out exactly who that man was and how he’d come to be at the bottom of the sea.

By the time he arrived at the dock, the place was already a media circus. Reporters, TV camera crews, and assorted rubberneckers lined the stone wharf and dock, making it all but impossible for Jeff to make his way with his diving equipment down the gangplank to the waiting Coast Guard patrol boat. A couple of reporters shouted out questions to him, but he pushed past them, staring straight ahead, ignoring their questions.

“Word got out quick, huh?” Jeff said as he heaved his air tanks onto the boat.

Mark Curtis, one of the Coast Guardsmen, frowned and shook his head.

“Wouldn’t be so bad,” he said, “if someone had kept his goddamned mouth shut at
The Local
last night.”

“I didn’t talk to no reporters last night.”

“You talked to Pappy … Same thing.”

Chastened, Jeff climbed aboard.

The captain—a guy from Belfast named Harvey Thompson—revved the engine. Mark and the other crewmen cast off, and the boat started out, leaving behind a heavy, curling wake that rocked the floating docks.

* * *

After they got to the diver’s marker Jeff had left yesterday, he made one final check of his equipment in preparation for going overboard. His diving partner today—as usual when he was on the job—was Wesley Evans. Wes was married and lived in Tenant’s Harbor. He and Jeff had dived together for more than ten years, now. Perhaps because they were so used to communicating with each other by hand gestures below water, they hardly ever spoke above water. But they trusted that each of them knew intuitively what the other was thinking or going to do underwater. They were a good team even though it struck Jeff as peculiar that they didn’t hang out together when they were off duty.

Once he and Wes were ready, after nodding to each other, they plunged overboard. Even in June, the ocean water was chilly, but Jeff’s drysuit protected him from the initial cold shock. A wave splashed him full in the face, sending a bracing chill through him. After making sure his regulator was working properly, he swam out to the diver’s marker and grasped the rope he’d tied off yesterday. Running it through one rubber-gloved hand, he kicked and went under, sinking into the embracing darkness with Wes not far behind. The daylight shimmering above them quickly collapsed, plunging them into a preternatural gloom that gradually blended into an inky darkness below. Jeff and Wes switched on their flashlights, illuminating the water below with a diffused glow.

Down … down they went, and the deeper they went, the more a nameless apprehension filled Jeff. He knew what he was going to see when he got to the end of the rope, and he was dreading it. He was wondering if he could handle seeing the dead man’s empty gaze again. Overnight—especially after talking to Pappy—his memory of what he had found had gotten magnified by his imagination. He was surprised he hadn’t had nightmares. Now, he was trying to prepare himself mentally for what he was about to see, but he still wasn’t ready for it when the drowned man’s figure came into view.

Jeff hesitated, treading water several feet above the ocean floor. Wes stopped swimming, too, and they looked at each other for a lengthening moment, neither one of them indicating what they should do next. Jeff saw a cloud of confusion in his diving partner’s eyes, and he experienced a sudden, urgent desire to go back to the surface and talk to Wes about this before they proceeded. He wished he had more fully prepared Wes for what they were dealing with.

The moment passed without any communication between them, and they continued on down to the ocean floor. Their movements raised silt from the seabed, causing swirls of sand to rise like billowing clouds that shimmered with flakes of silica in the beams of their flashlights.

Jeff willed his pulse to slow down as he swept his light over the drowned man until it came to rest on the chain wrapped around the man’s waist. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the man’s eyes.

Not yet.

With a nod and a quick hand gesture, Jeff indicated to Wes that removing the chain from the block should be their first order of business, but for some reason, Jeff couldn’t force himself to move any closer to the corpse. He couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the man’s dead eyes were staring at him.

Jeff jerked back when he swung his flashlight around to illuminate the man’s face. He told himself it
had
to be a trick of the light and shadow … or the way the man’s head was moving ever so slightly in the deep currents … or … or
something
. Whatever it was, Jeff was convinced that as he moved, so, too, the dead man’s eyes had moved as though he was tracking him with a dull, blank stare.

Wes had swum away from the body and was leaning over, inspecting the cement block tied to one end of the chain. It was sunk deep in the sand and draped with seaweed and slime. As he lifted the chain and shook it, the dull clanking sounds the links made were transmitted through the water. Jeff glanced at his diving partner but then couldn’t help but look back at the drowned man.

His dread was steadily winding up into a feeling of outright fear bordering on panic. He reminded himself that losing focus underwater was
always
dangerous. He had to get his shit together—
and fast
—or else both he and Wes could end up in some real trouble. It didn’t help to remind himself that he had a simple job to do. All he had to do was release this drowned man from the chain holding him down and bring him up to the surface. Let the authorities handle it from there. He had done this too many times to count, but never …
never
he had experienced such feelings as he was having now.

He was still desperate to talk to Wes if only to calm his own irrational fears. Should he motion to his partner that they should surface so they could plan their next steps?

Jeff knew that would be foolish.

This was a simple dive and recovery. Nothing more. Wes and everyone onboard the Coast Guard boat would think he was losing his nerve.

He had to get a grip on himself—
now!

Wes had his back to the corpse as he worked the chain, trying to release it from the cement block. The dead man’s arms were still extended, waving gently from side to side in the tidal surge, but it looked for all the world like he was straining forward against his restraints, reaching out to catch hold of Wes from behind while his back was turned.

Jesus, stop it!
Jeff cautioned himself.

He should have been helping Wes loosen up the chain, not hanging back like this, letting his imagination get carried away with such foolish fears. Once that end of the chain was free, it would be a simple matter to unwind it from around the corpse’s waist and then, slowly, very carefully, bring him up to the surface. After this long underwater, he had to be so rotten he might fall apart..

It’s easy … a simple, clean job even a rookie could do blindfolded
, Jeff told himself.

He was ashamed that—for whatever reason—he was allowing his fear to take such firm hold of him. With a new determination, he moved over to Wes who had just about finished working the chain free. With Jeff’s help, it was only a matter of a few more seconds before they finished untying the cement block.

While they worked together, though, Jeff wasn’t able to shake the feeling that any time their backs were turned to the corpse, the dead man was staring at them, watching them … studying their every move.

And Jeff couldn’t stop wondering if the drowned man, whoever he was—whether he was Old Man Crowther or some other luckless fool who had decided to end it all because of a broken heart or trouble with the IRS—might be angry at them for disturbing his final resting place. The chain and cement block certainly indicated how much he wanted to stay down here on the bottom of the ocean.

What Pappy had told him last night about the strange plague that had afflicted the town years ago came back to Jeff. He wondered if it was possible that this man had been infected by—whatever the disease was—and had drowned himself to end it all … for himself and, possibly, for his family and the entire town.

Like a mummy’s curse
, Jeff thought, surprised the thought occurred to him,
some things are best left undisturbed.

But he couldn’t leave now, not once the state was involved.

He never should have told anyone—not even Biz—about what he had found.

He should have left well enough alone.

If he hadn’t been so startled and—yes, maybe even a bit scared yesterday, he might have thought it through and kept his goddamned mouth shut.

But now, no matter what else happened, he and Wes had to bring this guy back to the surface so the Maine State Medical Examiner could determine how he had died.

Drowning
, Jeff thought with a grim smile.
P. F. O. … pretty fucking obvious
.

With apprehension winding up in his gut like a coiled steel spring, Jeff turned back to the victim’s body. Wes approached it as if there was nothing unusual going on here, but Jeff was hanging back, determined to be cautious.

When Wes came up close to the drowned man, his upraised arms swung around to the left side … toward him. They moved like dual needles of a compass being drawn to true North. Wes seemed not to notice. He was bending down, unwinding the length of chain from around the corpse’s waist. Silt swirled in thick clouds, mixing with the bubbles coming from his respirator. The heavy chain clinked faintly as the links, long rusted into place, shifted free. Jeff could see that Wes was struggling with it, but he didn’t move to help.

He couldn’t.

The beam of his flashlight was trained on the dead man’s face, and he was gazing steadily into the drowned man’s eyes.

They were moving.

They jerked spastically from side to side, glaring with a cold, glassy stare that was fixed on the back of Wes’ bowed head.

“Look out!” Jeff yelled, but all that came out was an explosion of bubbles that spewed from around his regulator.

As the corpse’s hands reached out and grabbed Wes by the back of the neck, hooked fingers dug like hawk’s talons into Wes’ shoulders. They dimpled the material of his drysuit for a second or two and then raked down, ripping into it.

Wes reacted instantly, but Jeff knew it was already too late.

The yellowed fingernails swept across Wes’ back like a scythe, shredding the drysuit and cutting it into ragged black ribbons. Red billows of blood spewed forth, looking like the sudden eruption of an underwater volcano. Wes started thrashing around, flipping over as he tried to get away from whatever had attacked him..