Song of the Sirens (8 page)

We dove too fast, and I felt it in the
ears. We faced barotraumas if the air in our middle ears escaped. In order to
prevent this fast descent, I clamped my jaw to the point the pain in my teeth
nearly overshadowed the pain in my ears. Tears escaped clenched lids and slid
down my cheeks. I breathed faster, heavier to alleviate pain and tension.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take
anymore, that my head would detonate and spew remains throughout the vessel,
the pain gradually subsided as the submarine leveled out and slowed down.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I muttered. The
cabin’s air pressure worked fast enough to keep us from exploding.

Heaving and shaking, I opened my eyes.
My lips twitched. Perhaps I was crazy, because there was no way my eyes saw the
truth. My mouth dropped open. I gaped at the physics-defying world displayed on
the ocean floor.

I scuttled back into my seat without
losing sight of the glowing, grand city in the distance. I squinted, as if
doing this enabled better sight. Large buildings held up by massive pillars
covered in plants and aquatic flowers littered the hills. Schools of fish raced
around the illuminated kingdom in a haze of light in the murky surrounding
waters. The vision was so out of place that it was surreal and ghostly.

“The lost city of Atlantis,” I muttered.
“Ha!”

Sanity just about fled my thoughts. I
pointed at the city and looked at Dad with a double take. I didn’t expect my
father to reply, or to react, and he didn’t disappoint. He remained focused on
something else.

We headed toward the splendid city,
though Dad’s attention centered on another location. I tried to follow his
eyes. Where did he look?

He flipped up a switch. Oh, now he
turned on an outside light. I rolled my eyes.

With the newfound lighting, objects came
into view as well as movement of creatures larger than fish. They weren’t
sharks because sharks couldn’t move lazily through a narrow labyrinth like
that. Perhaps they were dolphins. But, why did dolphins swim at this depth?

As we crept along and approached the
city half a mile in the distance, the vessel angled away. Our destination was
not Atlantis, which Dad raved on about finding last night. Instead, we headed
toward more darkness, an oceanic wilderness. Only the lights around the
submarine craft illuminated the surroundings. Boulders, mud, and crevices
created an uneven ocean floor.

I placed a hand on the icy side window
and longingly watched the brilliant city fade behind boulders. When the
amazing, aquatic wonder vanished from sight, I pivoted the chair and looked
ahead.

“Where are we going?” I asked the empty
space around us, not expecting an answer from my father.

A strange obstacle appeared in the
murkiness, illuminated by the submarine lights, which concentrated on the giant
rock mass. Dad flipped up more switches. We used all exterior lights for
optimal illumination.

The jagged boulders seemed ordinary for
a rock formation. To an eye uneducated in marine biology and wildlife, the
rocks seemed normal. However, I had some knowledge about this underwater world.
Something was not right with this landscape. Unlike other rocks, nothing grew
on this formation. Fish and other aquatic creatures refused to swim around it
or hide within its crevices and cracks. The rocks stood bare, empty, and out of
place on the ocean floor.

As we neared, other details came into
view. Black, rigid rods arranged around the base of the giant boulder resembled
a gate. The rectangular stakes stood a foot wide, and rose at least ten feet
high with half a foot of space in between, creating regular intervals. The
foundations rammed deep into the rocky crust. The rods ended in claws, which
curved toward the boulder and ended in sharp points.

I shook my head. I was confused.
Man-made objects such as these couldn’t have been placed way down here, unless
this entire region had once been closer to the surface, or even above the
surface. This notion was difficult to grasp. Humans theorized water devoured
Atlantis centuries ago. Now Atlantis rested several miles below the surface.
How could the water advance so much? And how could these structures have
survived for so long intact?

Dad continued to work on the controls.
His movement gathered my attention. A frown pulled at my lips.

Since we leveled out and moved rather
slowly, I took advantage of the situation by standing and creeping to the back
without drawing Dad’s attention. I searched through the narrow and short
vessel, shoving aside the heap of orange rope. The small chest to the left held
first aide items, batteries, and other minor objects, but nothing of use to us.

I scrambled to the narrow closet and thrust
the door open. I sighed and dropped my shoulders.

Since there were three chairs in the
vessel, three researchers could fit in the cabin. In the case of extreme
emergency, the team kept diving equipment. After every excavation, they brought
the scuba gear out and on board the boat to examine. Since the last excavation
went extremely well, and the crew continued with inspections with high spirits
and hopes of having finally found Atlantis, they must have forgotten to remove
the scuba gear.

Thank goodness for overlooking a basic
duty in their enthusiasm. This simple, thoughtless act might just save our
lives. If nothing else, if Dad didn’t snap out of this trance before our air
supply ran out, we could make a swim up.

I grabbed a mask and an oxygen tank and
carefully walked to the seats. Although Dad didn’t allow me to prevent him from
taking over the vessel and diving down, I risked the repercussions of a
backlash for touching him again.

I mumbled, “Gotta get this gear on you,
Dad.”

He ignored my comment and busied himself
with the submarine arms. The mechanical sound reverberated through the vessel
with a slight hum.
What now
?

“Stop doing things,” I hissed before
lifting my gaze to the window.

The mechanical arms moved away from the
sides of the vessel, extended out, and reached toward the man-made gates.

I hurried and secured the mask over my
father’s face and adjusted the tank on his back, slipping each arm through the
belts as if he were a child, and pushed the mouthpiece past his lips. He spat
it out and continued to breathe through his nose.

He operated the mechanical arms and
opened the pincers. They widened as far as they could as he maneuvered them
around the thick gate pillars. They closed around the rods and crushed the
rocks.

He lifted the remains, turned the arms,
and opened the pincers so the debris fell to the side. The pincers returned
around the subsequent rod set. He continued this until the gates laid in a
giant pile of rubble.

I shook my head and returned to the
closet. I adjusted the second mask around my face. It covered my eyes and nose,
and forced me to breathe through the mouth. I slipped my arms through the belts
of the oxygen tank and then buckled it around my waist. I waited on inserting
the mouthpiece until the time came so I didn’t waste any of the tank air.

Weighed down by the heavy tank, I
stumbled back to seat and sat down. I devised a plan on taking the controls if
Dad didn’t go ballistic again. I swallowed. Now was a time as good as any,
right?

Acting as though my father could detect
my movements and intentions, I snuck over the controls and reversed what he
did. He remained occupied with the arms and pincers, which allowed me to
concentrate on moving the vessel as a whole.

I watched him through the corner of my
eye to seem less conspicuous as I slid my hand over the buttons and tugged back
on the wheel. Keeping the movement at a minimum, didn’t startle my father or
force him to take over. I eased the vessel away from the rocks for a solid two
minutes before the pincers struggled to get around the rods.

When he realized we were too far back,
he snapped his head toward me. I paused and stared at him.

He glared with the same absent face he’s
kept for the past hour. In a quick movement, he slapped my hand away. He jerked
the wheel forward. The entire vessel lurched ahead.

I hissed. His slap hurt and left my hand
red and sore. He promptly returned to his task as I grumbled beneath my breath.
I tried not to hate him, or get horribly upset, because this wasn’t like him. I
didn’t know what was going on, but he sure as hell wasn’t sleep-driving.

Chapter Six

The mechanical noise started again as
the robotic arms spread out from the vessel and extended toward the remainder
of the gate. Dad continued to maneuver his destruction until the gate collapsed
at the base of a large boulder. The boulder seemed misplaced, as if it acted as
a barrier to a cave or another rock surface behind it.

The pincers tried to grab onto the
boulder, but couldn’t quite grasp the large piece of rock. After several
unsuccessful tries, Dad decided to move the vessel to the lower right side of
the boulder. He clasped the pincers shut, placed them on one side of the
boulder, and pushed. Slowly but surely, the boulder budged.

I stood and leaned on my hands against
the control panel. There was movement behind that giant boulder. Tiny, frail
hands slid out between the cracks. Bony fingers clasped around the rock. I just
about gagged and inadvertently imagined what sort of human-like being prepared
to emerge. My thoughts automatically, naturally, wandered toward the
nightmares.

Recalling how the whispers left and
faded to some place beneath me in bed, I wondered if they took a hold of my
father. I glimpsed him from the side. Did they do this? Did they trap him in a trance
just as they had closed my mind off and dragged me into a nightmare?

More importantly, what did they want him
to expose?

Those talons….

I groaned, remembering the talons that
sliced through my leg, and the forked tongues that licked my wounds in my
dream.

I trembled. Mermaids were real. Worst
off, evil, flesh-eating zombie mermaids were real!

Long nails curled and scratched the
rock. More hands emerged. More claws arched for liberation.

A figure, a sudden movement at my right
startled me. I jumped and stared at the young man who floated on the other side
of the side observation window.

“Riley?” I asked.

Riley! I knew it! He knew all about my
nightmares, and he was…half-naked without scuba gear.

I glanced down the length of his body in
quick observation. His hair floated around his face. His glowing green eyes
illuminated the gills in his neck. He didn’t wear an oxygen tank and
mouthpiece, much less a mask. His naked torso tucked neatly into a glittering
green tail, which tapered off into a fan-like fin.

I placed my palms against the window.
Riley was majestic, handsome, and glimmered with the splendor of a dream. His
magnetic presence hypnotized.

He waved and gave the thumbs up sign.

I broke away from the captivation and
remembered the situation. Oh, yeah, I was moments away from dying, and my
father moments away from unleashing the terrors from my dreams.

 Giving the thumbs down, I frantically
shook my head. Tears pooled in my eyes.

“Help us,” I said, though he couldn’t
hear me through the wall.

Riley placed his palms against the
window, cushioning the window between our hands. He mouthed, “Don’t worry.”

He pushed away. His glittering tail
sparkled from the lights as he dashed one way and then another, studying the
submarine before planning.

I turned away. What was I thinking? The
lack of oxygen and the stress from recent events played tricks on my mind.
Riley couldn’t be a merman. Mermaids, or humanoids, couldn’t have survived in
caves and lured us here through telepathic song.

I sat down. I had to control these
thoughts. My body became oxygen deprived over the past half hour, and my mind
hallucinated because of it. I stared at the controls, my vision blurred by
tears.

This was it, our inevitable end. No one
could get to us in time, not before we died in shock. Waste gases built up as
oxygen deteriorated in our veins. Fatigue and hallucinations marked the
beginning of a series of unwanted, disastrous symptoms.

Heck, I might as well get comfy and wait
for death, because it lurked around the corner. Even with scuba gear on our
backs, we couldn’t exit the sub without the pressure crushing us. If we somehow
survived that, we couldn’t possibly have enough oxygen to safely swim to the
surface. Even if we did, sharks laid in wait. Hypothermia could set it. The
murky darkness could turn us around, and we could swim sideways or eventually
back toward the ocean floor.

I heaved and suppressed a whimper. We
could sit and face death in a slow descent, or open the doors to make a swim
for it and face a rather brutal but quick death. Choices, choices, huh?

My shoulders dropped when my chest
collapsed. My posture and mentality couldn’t seem more defeated. I shook my
head and wandered back to the observation window.