What Lurks Beneath (18 page)

M
oving silently through the dark water, she sensed a change in the water. A taste. She slowed, testing the currents.

She had been unwilling to venture into the abyss. The terrifying vibrations were constant, the sounds of her one enemy pulsing from points everywhere, and if she descended the vibrations brought pain. So she had hunted higher up, just below the reef crest, for the early part of the night. Prowling the offshore depths near her new den, moving in a large circle.

But she had been unsuccessful. Returning to the den now, from a different direction, she pulsed through the water in slow, powerful bursts. As she had moved along the rim of the mile-high escarpment soaring above the undersea canyon, still seeking food, her impulse to hunt had been overcome. By an urge to return to her nearby lair, to continue clearing it, arranging it. The urge to feed had faded.

Until now.

She pulled herself over the top of the steep wall, dislodging a hunk of coral that sank past her into the darkness. Moving over the deep reef, she passed through a groove in the reef crest, feeling the waves crashing into the shallow ridge above, and paused. These shallows were not her usual habitat. But the taste of flesh was strong. She entered the lagoon.

In the shallow water, her eyes began to make out a pale, sandy bottom broken by dark coral and, closer to shore, beds of sea grass. The taste grew stronger.

Rarely had she ever ventured into shallow lagoons such as these. And never recently. But there was something here, now, closer to the shore.

A surge of water ran past her and the sensation became more distinct. She slowed. In the water, the scent was suddenly very strong.
Sour.
The smell only emitted by carrion.

She was not always a scavenger. Like her smaller cousins, she was designed to capture living prey, subdue it. Her organs were not best suited to digesting decomposing flesh, or deal with microorganisms amassing within it. But to accommodate such a large size at maturity, her kind had evolved to become highly opportunistic.

She continued forward into the sandy flats.

The bottom sloped steadily upward, and soon it was no longer deep enough for her to move freely. Small schools of fish in her path darted away from her shadow. But they were of no interest to her. Flattening her body, she slid her great form along the bottom, her mantle only feet below the surface now, the motion of the waves above caressing her skin. As one long arm groped along the bottom, she suddenly sensed something else.

Vibrations. Slow, rhythmic. Faint. But they were there.

Then, in the water, she began to taste something else. Something alive.

It was not something on which she often fed, but it was familiar. She had fed on this prey recently. Further flattening her immense, muscular body against the sandy bottom, until her entire body was no thicker than one of her arms, she slithered forward. The vibrations grew louder. Off to one side.

She turned, and dragged herself into the surf. Toward the vibrations.

To intercept whatever was making them.

 

 

The dark spot in the surf was a dead whale. At least, Gloria thought it was dead. In the water near her, it wasn't moving, and the
stench
. . . just awful. It was definitely too big, too dark to be a dolphin. Even if it was the smallest whale she had ever seen. She looked down the beach, toward the three other dark shapes they had now spotted.

“Do you think they're all dead?” she whispered.

“I don't know about the others,” Beth said. “But the smell . . . I doubt they stink like this when they're alive.”

“What do you think killed them?”

“I have no idea.”

Gloria suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to leave the whale. To get out of the water. “We should go back. Maybe somebody at the resort will know what to do.”

“What's the point, babe? Even if a few of them aren't dead yet, there's nothing we can do.”

“How do you know? Maybe we can help them.”

Beth looked back toward the lit towers of the hotel, which rose defiantly into the night sky. They were a good ten-minute walk away. She looked back at Gloria.

“Please?” Gloria said.

Beth sighed. “All right. But hang on.”

She waded farther into the water, now up to her thighs. She leaned down toward the front end of the motionless animal. Poked it with her hand. “It's cold,” she said.

“Be careful,” Gloria said. She moved deeper, next to Beth. She thought she felt something lightly brush her calf.

“I
am
being careful. There's nothing a dead—”

Gloria suddenly felt herself plunging downward, into the water. Her face went under. She instinctively struggled to stand, to raise her head above the water. She pushed off the bottom, feeling soft sand against her hands and knees. And she felt something else, and she knew.

Something was holding on to her. Wrapping itself tightly around her ankle.

Desperately, she forced her face out of the water. Looked at Beth, who was splashing toward her, wide-eyed in horror.

The thing encasing her ankle squeezed.
Hard.

“Beth,” she gasped.

The last thing she saw was her lover reaching for her. Then she was jerked violently under.

 

 

Her chemical receptors tested the writhing creature. Tasted it.

The desperate prey writhed in the organism's grasp as she dragged it along the bottom, methodically coiling more of her arm around the flailing appendages. She was dimly aware that one of her other arms was trailing the other small creature now clumsily splashing away, toward the beach, but her focus quickly returned to the prize already wriggling in her clutches. She rolled another arm out to further ensnare the creature to ensure that it would not escape. Two other arms snaked hungrily into the surf line and wrapped themselves around the dead whale, and began to drag it into the lagoon.

Clutching her two prizes, she quickly began to move away from the beach.

As she neared the cleft in the reef and the drop-off to the abyss, the still-living prey began to flail wildly in her grasp. She brought it to her beak and pierced its soft flesh, injecting toxins from her salivary glands. A tactic she used on larger prey. With a final tremble, the prey ceased moving.

She pushed through the gap where the coral-encrusted bottom fell away and began to slowly turn her body in the deeper water. Once it was deep enough, she again maneuvered the meal toward her mouth. Her own bulk blocked her view of the prey, her eyes being on the other side of her body. But she did not need to see in order to feed.

She felt the prey enter her maw. As her beak began to close on the creature, it suddenly tensed a final time. Somehow, it was still alive.

Her jaw clenched, and there was a muffled crack as the creature's hard, round head split between her jaws, like the thick shells that protected many of her other prey. She continued to force the food farther into her beak, quickly consuming the small animal. Then she turned her focus to the dead whale, still clasped in her other arms. Methodically, she began to scrape the ribbon of her hundreds of teeth against the carcass, each time removing large, ragged hunks of flesh.

She moved out past the vertical wall, continuing to feed as she slowly sank into the depths. Back into the darkness.

W
hen they reached the beachfront, Val leaned on a heavy rope railing to remove her tennis shoes and zipped them into her daypack. A morning breeze off the ocean brought a clean salt smell and the sound of rustling palms. Over a delectable lunch of blackened grouper, which Ashley had gotten them free from the kitchen, they had talked quite a lot about Val's struggles with Will, and about Eric. Val could tell Ashley was interested in him.

They had just walked from the Oceanus lobby all the way through the resort, a walk that had taken nearly ten minutes. The place was huge, and it appeared to be still growing. A yellow crane towered over the far side of the resort, where they were apparently constructing another hotel wing.

Ashley, removing her own shoes, said, “If Clive didn't have any information last time you met, what makes you think he will now?”

“Maybe he was hiding something.”

“I don't think he would lie to you. He's a decent man.”

“It's not that I think he was
lying
,” Val said. “I just think he didn't trust us. With you there, maybe he'll open up a little more.”

Val had come today by taxi, ostensibly only to have lunch with her new friend. But upon arrival she had felt compelled to speak again with the old sculptor. This time, with Ashley beside her. And this time, with the last image taken by John Breck.

“Like I said, he may not be there,” Ashley said, as they started onto the beach. “Sundays are holy days, and many Bahamians don't work.”

Last night, back at the house, Val had repeatedly watched the video of the Bottomless Hole. She'd become more convinced that the piles of rubble bore the right characteristics to be enormous middens—of some sort or another. Octopuses usually made them when cleaning out their dens. Mack had scoffed at the notion, saying that no octopus was that big. Even Eric had admitted that he too was surprised Val was considering such a theory. They were both justified, based on what she knew. No cephalopod, no
animal
was that big, except for a whale. Still . . .

She was supposed to be a scientist. Yet she was actually considering some enormous new species, unknown to humanity, living within underwater caves right off a crowded tourist area. Was that even possible?

It certainly didn't seem very likely. But being a scientist, she needed to follow the evidence. And right now, the only evidence she had was a dim photograph, reports of attacking krakens, and what appeared to be oversized middens.

“What if Clive does help you find something?” Ashley said. “What do you think it will be?”

Val thought for a moment. “I don't know. But new species of cephalopods are actually discovered all the time. Sometimes even really big ones, ones that have been here all along, but spend most of their time in the deep. The colossal squid, off Antarctica. More recently, the seven-arm octopus, first in the Atlantic and then off New Zealand.”

“But nothing as large as what you're looking for here?”

“No.”

“How could something even get so big?”

“Squid and octopus grow very fast. Did you know that in just three or four months, a newborn Caribbean reef octopus grows from just a centimeter to a foot-anda-half long?”

“Really? That fast?”

“The speed is one thing, but the relative change in size is another. As long as there's enough food, their mass increases by thousands of times, like an acorn becoming an oak. But reef octopuses stay small because they live in warm, shallow water.”

“What do you mean?” Ashley said.

“Usually animals living in low-oxygen, deep-ocean zones, under higher pressure, are the ones that reach impressive sizes.”

Val figured the best chance she had of getting information from Clive was if she brought Ashley. And not the men. Especially not Mack, as confrontational as he was. She thought again of his request last night. To get DORA back in The Staircase, to go even deeper. He needed to know what had happened to Breck, and seemed even more bothered now that they had found the midden-like piles deep in the offshore blue hole. She couldn't blame him. The two men had been friends, of the sort only soldiers and adventure-sports partners might understand. He wanted answers.

So she'd finally agreed to go back, but not until the day after tomorrow, because Eric wanted a little more practice and a chance to tinker with DORA if he was to somehow pilot her even farther into the cavern. Val had conceded mostly to prevent her uncle from doing anything stupid. Still, they could justify the excursion as the second sweep of that cavern, to see if anything had changed.

As they approached Clive, Val could see that the weathered old man was sitting in the same place as before, on the same handmade green blanket. A rolled cigarette dangled from his mouth as he carved into a huge piece of wood. It appeared to be the stump that had been under the sheet last time. As they got closer, the sculpture started to look like something. Some sort of inverted tree, or . . .

Val felt her arm hairs stand up.

Ashley said, “Hello, love. How are you this fine day?”

He looked up from his carving. “I have no complaints, my Lady Ashley. Good day to ya.” He squinted at Val. “I see ya brought your friend. Hello, dear.”

“Good to see you again,” Val said. She pointed at the mass of wood. “Can I ask what you're carving there?”

He regarded her for a moment, taking a puff of his cigarette. “Miss Ashley here says you still goin' into dem holes.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Not a good idea.”

“Why?”

His eyes narrowed. “You already know why, don't ya?”

Val swallowed. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

He stubbed the cigarette out in the sand, and dropped the butt inside his leather pouch. “It's called a
lusca
.”

“Go on.” Val couldn't believe her ears.

Clive grasped the sculpture, hefting it with surprising strength. “Dis here. What I'm carvin'. You ever hear of it?”

Val sighed. “Ashley said something about it. Some myth. Is that what it looks like?”

“Dey hide in da blue holes”—he spread his arms high and gathered the air, pulling it back down toward him with his hands—“and suck down passin' ships.” He laughed.

Ashley said, “It's just a sailors' legend. A Story Time tale, told to scare bad children.” She looked at Val. “Right?”

The carving, for which Clive had used the tree stump, was far from finished. But the overall form was clear. It was a frightening thing, a monstrosity with a shark's head—carved into the remaining foot or so of trunk—that merged into a squid-like body with long tentacles, which the sculptor had cleverly fashioned from the roots. She could see that the tip of one mostly finished tentacle ended in a barbed point, like a spear.

Val said, “Yes. That definitely would give children nightmares.”

Clive said, “Dis how tourists think it should look, so I make it dat way.”

“But maybe you know what it
really
looks like?”

Clive smiled. “How would I know, dear? It don't exist.”

Val reached into her day pack, pulled out the printout of Breck's image taken in The Staircase. “Please, Clive, tell me . . . what do you make of this?”

He took the image, looked at it. “What we got here?”

“A picture taken in an inland hole. Look in the upper right corner.” She pointed. “We think that may be a tentacle.”

Clive shook his head. “I'm sorry. It don't look like anything to these ol' eyes.”

“Are you sure? Look closer.”

He brought the image to his face. “I just see some circles. Could be anything.”

Val took the picture back. “Maybe you're right.” What was she doing? She'd come down here looking for a legitimate new species, or perhaps just to get away from a messy love life. Instead, she was following the trail of a mythical monster.

She said, “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. . . .”

“Just Clive, dear.” He was smiling, but behind his eyes was what looked like concern.

“Thank you, Clive.” Val stood to leave.

Ashley hugged the old sculptor and he hunched over and went back to carving. Val and Ashley turned away and started back down the beach.

“I'm sorry this didn't help you,” Ashley said. “But I'm worried that he's—”

Behind them, Clive was shouting. They turned back to him.

“Wait, wait,” he said. He gestured for them to return.

As they neared, Val saw that Clive's face looked pained, as if having some internal struggle. When their eyes met, he looked down at his feet.

He said, “I can't let another woman disappear. Like da one last night.” He looked back at Val. “Not you, dear.”

Ashley said, “How do you know about that?”

“I know.”

“What are you two talking about?” Val said.

Ashley said, “A tourist has been missing since last night. She may have drowned at the beach.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“We're keeping it quiet, so we don't upset the guests. I didn't see how it could relate to what you're doing.”

Clive put his hand on Val's shoulder, his grip strong. “Nevamind dat. You need to talk to the Obeah woman.”

“What? Who's that?”

“She live back in da bush. She know things.”

“How can we find this woman?”

“I take you to her tomorrow.”

 

 

Back in the hotel lobby, Val said good-bye to Ashley and headed for the wall of glass doors that led to taxis waiting at the curb. Ashley had explained that all she knew was that a newlywed woman had gone missing last night, at the beach. The hotel's security staff and police were speaking with the missing woman's spouse today, and looking into possible foul play.

As she reached the doors, to her right Val saw a young man get up from a bank of computers on the far wall. She stopped. Only one of the other four computers was being used by a guest. Like most hotels, she guessed, Oceanus probably provided free computer access to guests with a passcode. She walked over to the computer the young tourist had just left. He'd forgotten to log out.

She sat on the stool in front of the computer and opened an Internet browser, brought up Google. She typed in five letters: L-U-S-C-A. Clicked the search key.

A moment later, on the screen appeared a list of websites about the mythical sea monster, and sample images gathered from the web, some of which looked very similar to Clive's sculpture. She knew what he meant now, about carving what the tourists expected to see.

She opened a second site and read about the creature, then browsed another. She stumbled across information for a 2010 B-movie called
Sharktopus
and shook her head. Ridiculous.

She went back to the first site and read:

Walking. At night.
She continued reading:

She stopped. They couldn't be verified because it was all nonsense. There were no valid references here to substantiate any of these claims. But the Saint Augustine Monster mention intrigued her. She remembered hearing about it as a kid in Florida, and then later having her professors dismiss the myth in college as the remains of a whale. She scrolled down and read about reported attacks, with a few artist renderings of the beast appearing on the page. She clicked on some of the links, scanned them. It was all unsubstantiated garbage. At the bottom, it read:

References were listed, but none were valid except those for the blue holes. Clearly, this mythical beast was some sort of joke. Half-fish, half-mollusk: a biological impossibility. She closed the browser, but remained on the stool. She stared at the desktop image on the monitor: a photograph of a sailboat cutting through turquoise waters at sunset.

The
lusca
couldn't possibly exist. It defied the laws of nature. But a colossal octopus . . .

The Tongue of the Ocean, just offshore, offered a true deep-sea environment, largely cut off from the rest of the world's deep oceans and near what had been until recently a sparsely populated island. The sort of place where abyssal gigantism, and a species going unnoticed, were both certainly possible.