What Lurks Beneath (8 page)

W
ill Sturman sat on a bench in the dim light of the public aquarium, on the visitor's side. He was hunched into the black wool peacoat he'd again started wearing since moving north up the coast. In front of him was one of the aquarium's mid-size tanks, maybe a few thousand gallons, its volume about that of a bathroom. It was dark inside the tank, and it appeared empty except for the rocky structure built into it, and a few shells on the bottom.

But this was his favorite tank.

And it wasn't empty.

Over speakers built into the walls, he heard the final announcement that the aquarium was now closed, asking anyone still in the building to leave. A moment later, two young boys ran past him, laughing, chased by their mom. Sturman grinned. Close behind them was Chuck, the security guard. He was a big guy, about Sturman's height, but thicker in the middle.

“Hi, Sturman.”

“Evenin', Chuck.”

“Back here again, huh? You must really like this one.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“You stickin' around for a while?”

“That okay?”

“Sure. Just let yourself out through the back. I gotta catch these people—”

“I know. Night, Chuck.”

Chuck hurried around the corner, and Sturman was again alone. He removed his dark blue beanie and rubbed his stubbly head. In Monterey, in winter, the beanie suited him better than his cowboy hat. And fewer people looked at him funny. He never used to care, but lately he didn't want people looking at him.

He moved his hand down to gingerly touch his face. To remind himself why he needed to be here, and not at the bar. He still had a shiner under his left eye, but he'd had worse. A couple of fishermen had roughed him up a few nights ago. He'd probably deserved it. He couldn't really remember.

Val hadn't even asked where he had gotten the bruise. She had just glanced at him, as she was packing clothes into a suitcase, smiled sadly, and said,
Again?
Then she had gone back to her packing.

And now she was gone. There was a part of him that felt relief. If she wasn't in his life, he wouldn't ever feel the pain of losing her.

He knew he probably needed some sort of help. But asking for it? Accepting it? That was another thing. He could sort this out on his own.

Off work now and showered, he'd decided to linger at the aquarium. It was raining outside, and he didn't have the energy to go to the boxing gym he used to frequent. He hadn't for a while. With Bud dead now, the animal in the tank in front of him was the closest thing he had to a friend. His dog had died so unexpectedly. He'd been getting a little older, and had a little white under his chin, but was still so spry and muscular. He'd loved running with Val and their trips to the dog beach. He'd been Sturman's best friend for years, and had never once judged him. And now he was gone, leaving a huge void.

Sturman stared into the tank, imagining himself floating inside. This was the best time of day to see this one, even if his keepers weren't feeding him yet. As if on cue, Sturman thought he saw something move in the darkness of the tank.

“Hi there, Oscar.”

He stood and walked over to the aquarium, bent down to look into the tank. He tapped the tank lightly. It looked empty again, except for the rocks on which clung a few colorful anemones, and a section of pipe.

“You awake yet, amigo?” Sturman said quietly.

He waited. He wasn't positive he had seen the animal move before, but he was sure he was hiding somewhere in the tank. Not likely he'd escaped again. After the last time, they'd made adjustments to the lid of the tank. Sturman looked around to make sure he was still alone.

“I got into a fight again. I knocked one of those fellas down, but there were two of 'em. Got my ass kicked this time. But nowhere near as bad as that number your cousins did on me a few years ago.” He rolled his shoulder around, checking its stiffness. He still had chronic pain from those injuries.

He leaned his head forward, against the cold glass. “Hopefully, I didn't hurt that other guy too bad. The one I took out. I think I mighta started the whole thing.”

He remembered, as kid, how it felt to tell his dad about when he'd gotten in a scrap. How his dad would be upset, but he could tell he was also a little bit proud. Especially if Will had stood up to a bully. Maybe he'd gotten some respect for the family. He'd been a fighter his whole life. Except for when he was with Maria. She had calmed him.

Sturman tapped the tank again, searching for Oscar. He usually only became active at night. And when they fed him.

He remembered the
Superfriends
poster on the wall over a fish tank he'd had in his room as a kid. His mom had given it to him for Christmas, before she'd died, since it was the only one she could find with Aquaman on it. He had known the other kids didn't much like Aquaman, and his orange and green costume
was
kind of goofy. But Sturman had thought he had the coolest powers of all. He could breathe underwater, and he could control all the animals in the ocean without even talking. That suited the quiet country boy, whose favorite book was
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
, just fine.

“What do you think, Oscar? If I was a superhero, would you wanna be my sidekick? 'Cept then I'd need to call you Tonto—”

“Who you talking to, Sturman?”

Sturman started. Chuck was standing behind him.

“Nobody.” Sturman put his beanie back on and moved over to the bench.

Chuck looked at him a moment, then walked off.

Sturman spied movement at the top of the tank. Feeding time. He smiled.

He heard a quiet
tap-tap-tap
as the keeper on the other side rapped the tank three times, as he always did before feeding Oscar. He watched as a thawed shrimp plunged into the water, waved around on the end of a skewer near the end of the narrow pipe. After a minute, Sturman saw Oscar start to appear. He made sure nobody was around before speaking toward the tank again.

“You get to eat early today, huh?”

Something wriggled out of the end of the pipe, and Sturman smiled.

This animal was
always
hungry.

C
icadas chorused in the warm night as the four teenagers hurried through the bush. The narrow, rough path wended over the crumbled rock surface through the scrubby brush, cutting the shadows of tall pines, before it finally opened as they reached the last few yards of trail.

Moonlight gleamed off the elevated, rocky rim circling the dark pool of water, and illuminated the sentry-like pine trees ringing the broad hole. But there were no artificial lights on this part of the island, no dwellings.

There were other blue holes frequented by tourists, closer to the road and with wooden walkways running out to them, ladders built into the rock to make it easier to get out of them. Why couldn't they just go there?

But Selena already knew why the boys had wanted to come here, to this remote spot. For the same reason that motivated everything boys did.

She watched as Timothy tossed a blanket down near a clump of brush. He grabbed her friend Reghan's hand and pulled her down next to him, and she giggled as he rolled on top of her.

“Ouch!” she protested. “Dem rocks is pokin' me.”

“Ain't da rocks pokin' ya, girl.”

Selena rolled her eyes and looked at her own boyfriend, Daniel. He was smiling at her.

“Wanna go in the water?” he asked. He was tall and lean, his hair long and coiled into matted dreadlocks.

“I don't know, Daniel. Is it cold?” she said. She suddenly felt scared. Maybe they shouldn't have come here.

Daniel looked down at her, his dark eyes shining in the pale light. “No. It'll feel good.”

But she wasn't hot, even after the short hike and despite it being an unusually warm February night. Like almost every night had been since New Year's.

“Haven't you ever swam here?” he said.

“No.”

He reached his hand out. “C'mon, girl. We should at least give my homeboy some privacy.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “My nana always said not to swim here. That it's dangerous.”

When she was growing up, Story Time legends often were about creatures living on the island. Ground-dwelling owls three feet tall that ran through the forest, other animals that stole things from careless children or reported bad deeds to parents. And of things much worse than that, dwelling in its blue holes.

But they all were ridiculous. Just tales to scare children. Still . . .

“Your nana says
I'm
dangerous.” His white teeth flashed as he smiled. “You're not really scared, are you? C'mon.”

She hesitated. She didn't want to disappoint him. “Maybe for just a minute,” she said.

They stripped down to their underwear, dropping their clothes in two piles on the porous stone that formed a ledge rising several feet over the water. She hesitated as she watched Daniel tiptoe over the jagged rock and leap eagerly out over the pool, making a loud splash as he entered. He must have already known it was deep enough here. Or else he was just taking stupid risks to impress her.

He was treading water, waiting.

“How will we get back out?” she said. She didn't think she could pull herself up the steep, sharp-edged rock. The water level looked to be almost ten feet below.

“There's a spot right over here where it's easy to climb out,” he shouted. “I promise, Selena. It feels good.”

She glanced back toward their friends, but quickly looked away. They were already very busy. Shameless. Reghan would be big up soon if she wasn't careful, and then she'd have to marry the boy. She wondered if Daniel expected the same of her tonight.

She looked back at the water and realized he had kicked farther away from her.

“Wait, Daniel!”

She winced as she crossed the sharp rocks in bare feet, then found a notch in the rocky ledge and eased herself down closer to the water. Beneath her feet the rock dropped straight down another few feet before disappearing into water.

“Are you sure it's safe?” she whispered.

“Except for the sharks,” he laughed.

“Shut up, Daniel!” She looked down into the blackness. “There aren't really sharks in here, right?”

“It's mostly freshwater. No sharks here.”

She jumped into the water. It was cool enough to give her goose bumps. She swam toward Daniel.

He moved toward her and kissed her lightly. “I'll keep you safe. C'mon, let's swim to the other side.”

“But it's so far away . . .”

“It's not as far as it looks. There's a nice beach on the other side.”

She doubted there was any beach by this remote inland pool, where the landscape was composed of only exposed rock and clumped vegetation.

He said, “Follow me.”

She swam after him, toward the middle of the pool.

 

 

It had not eaten for days.

It slid its great bulk through the narrow submarine tunnels, the water around it acting as a lubricant for its tons of flesh to pass. Methodically, patiently, like an earthworm tunneling through soft soil, it forced the front end of its body into the tunnel ahead, then anchored itself in the rock to drag the trailing end of its body and remaining limbs forward before repeating the process.

The quality of the water was different here, becoming slightly more toxic. This was no longer ocean water. It was becoming something else: the water that burned.

The huge organism would not be able to proceed much farther, as its gills and organs would begin to absorb too much of this strange water, bloating it and diluting its own internal chemistry, eventually killing it. But its ravenous need and innate curiosity drove it to examine the branching tunnel until it was forced to turn back.

For many hours, it had moved deeper into the caverns, away from the sea. Exploring. Resting. Exploring again.

And now, hunting.

It relied on taste, on touch. Its eyesight was functional but often ineffective when and where it was most active—in the darkness of the deep ocean—and in the lairs where it slept during the daylight hours. Rarely was it able to find food within these caverns, but the open sea had not provided. So it had entered the caverns. At times, they had led to unexpectedly productive nooks elsewhere on the reef. And it had been successful when prey had entered its own lair recently. Possibly there was more of this prey in the tunnels under the island.

Something moved past its eye.

The organism realized it had only noticed its own slithering arm. But it had
seen
it. Its eyes were beginning to detect dim light trickling into the tunnel from somewhere ahead.

The passageway soon began to expand, faint light filtering down from above to reveal the vertical contours of a broad pool. The organism spread its extensive appendages into the chamber, each wriggling in the darkness along the rough rock surfaces in a mindless search for prey.

Something in the water above. A taste, a vibration, a
signal
. This was the same unusual prey it recently had fed upon. Reaching silently upward, it slowly guided its appendages into the pool, toward the surface, seeking. Feeling.

Tasting.

 

 

“We're almost there,” Daniel said.

Selena felt uneasy so far from shore. The hole was much bigger than she had thought, and despite Daniel's encouragement, the other shore was still a short distance away. She knew the blue holes of Andros could also be very deep, and nobody really knew what was down in them. And she was starting to feel cold.

“I don't like this, Daniel.” She was breathing hard, but not from exertion.

“Look. The beach is right there.”

“I'm gonna head back.”

She stopped swimming, began treading water, unsure of what to do. They were close to the other side of the pool now, but she wasn't feeling very romantic anymore. Daniel
was
really sweet. He had been good to her. But, like the other boys, she knew he would have only one thing on his mind once they were alone on shore. She wasn't sure if she was ready.

Daniel turned and started swimming back toward her. She looked away from him, gauging the distance back toward where her clothes were.

“Selena, if you're worried about—” His last word was cut off by a small splash.

She turned around. He was gone.

“Daniel, stop it.” She looked around, waiting for him to surface. She bit her lip. “I mean it. This isn't funny.”

Daniel was a prankster. She looked down, wondering if he was planning to swim toward her and grab her. She could make out her legs in the light of the waxing moon, scissoring underneath her. But otherwise it was dark, too deep to see anything. She waited, but Daniel didn't grab her legs. Didn't surface. Could he have swum to the near shore? Maybe he was hiding by the rock ledge there.

“I'm going back,” she shouted.

She knew he wouldn't be able to hear her underwater, but he had been under for thirty seconds now. Maybe longer.

“I mean it! Daniel? Daniel!”

After a minute, he still didn't surface. She began to feel sick. He couldn't hold his breath this long, could he? And something bothered her, almost as much as not being able to see Daniel anywhere. A feeling.

She felt panic rising in her, and tried to calm herself. To fight the suddenly overwhelming urge to swim to shore. Any shore. To get out of the water. But was he stuck underwater? Trapped? She took a deep breath and swam tentatively toward where she had last seen him, looked down again.
There.
She could finally see the bottom rising up. It was still quite deep.

She scanned the bottom beneath her. Had it been this shallow all along? The moonlight glowed off the textured surface. It looked sort of like—

Selena felt a sense of vertigo, her mind trying to process how she was somehow moving.
No
. It was the bottom that had moved.

The entire surface beneath her shifted sideways. Glided. Something was again moving under the water. Rising. Something impossibly big.

There was a great churning in the pool beside her, and in it a dark mass floated to the surface and swirled toward her. Dreadlocks. Several of them, seemingly still attached to a piece of scalp, but nothing more.

She gasped and kicked wildly away, then turned facedown and swam for shore, not coming up for air, fighting harder than she ever had in her life. Because she knew. Knew what had done this to Daniel and what was coming for her now. It was the demon of her childhood nightmares.

It was the
lusca
.