The Deep 2015.06.23 Read online

  His duty to whatever unfortunate diver this would prove to be.

  He pushed the body forward, timing his motion so that the swells didn't push him too far – he didn't want to end up under the dive platform, either.

  Jimmy J reached out. Snagged the corpse by its left arm.

  "Got it," he said. "Easy… here…."

  Jimmy J pulled, but didn't make much headway getting the corpse out of the water. Tim figured that between the weight of the body itself, the extra drag of the ocean, and its gear, it was probably an impossible task.

  Jimmy J must have come to the same conclusion. He looked at the closest passenger. Haeberle. The big man just watched, arms crossed over a barrel chest and making no move to help. "No, don't worry," Jimmy J said. "Stay there. I got this."

  Movement behind Haeberle. Sue darted forward, followed by Cal. "Sue, don't –" began the woman's father.

  "Do you see the logo?" she nearly shouted. "Nelson Chemical."

  And with that he felt the weight stop dragging at him. Felt the corpse begin to lift.

  It was only thirty seconds until his world would explode.

  IMPACT

  ~^~^~^~^~

  Perceval Raven – now known only as Mr. Raven to friend and foe alike – had once been great, and would be great again.

  That was the thought he clung to, the belief that was so deep it approached personal ideology.

  I have been great.

  I will be again.

  Perceval Raven had been bullied in school. Beaten by his father. Abused by his mother.

  He had risen above it. Risen above by falling below.

  When he was eighteen he escaped. Left home after finally taking one hit too many, realizing at last that he was actually bigger than the old man. What had been a beating became a fight. What was a fight became a one-sided pummeling. Giving his father back one punch for every single one he had ever received. With interest.

  After breaking both the man's arms, pulling one from its socket, fracturing ribs, blowing apart one of his eye sockets with the force of his blows… after all that, Perceval kept going.

  "Stop, Perceval! Stop, Percie!" His mother screamed from a corner in the room as the beating – this time with Perceval on the right side of the fists –

  (My idiot Sunday School teacher was right! It is better to give than receive!)

  – continued. The sound shifted from hard smacks to sick, meaty thuds. Bones became powder. Mother screamed.

  "Stop, Percie!" She didn't seem to realize how many times she had borne the brunt of the old man's attacks. She was trying to get her son to stop get him to stop stop stop stop!

  She ran at him. Grabbed his upraised fist. "Stop, Percie!"

  He threw her off. "Don't call me that! Don't ever call me that again!"

  Perceval. The lamest, queerest, most pansy-ass name possible. No wonder he got beat up as a kid – not just by the old man, but by everyone.

  Not again. Never again.

  She glailed at him, hands reaching for him. "Percie!"

  He punched her. Right in the face, right in the center of the nose. Punched her so hard she just fell over. He saw the lights – the fevered, strange lights that had visited him in the darkness so many times as he grew – go out. Dead, dark eyes. She fell forward, body limp, smashing down nose-first with a CRACK! on the cheap linoleum floor.

  "Don't call me Perceval."

  Crying. His father was crying.

  For some reason that took the air out of him. Tired him. He didn't want to hit anyone anymore. Hadn't wanted to in the first place. They had made it happen. Them, not him. With their touches – some hard, some soft and all the worse for that – their taunts, their goddam naming him Perceval.

  He would never go by that again. Would never let anyone know his name again. He would go by Raven – it was a comic book character he liked, and he thought it fit him. Dark, dangerous.

  He washed the blood off his hands.

  Left his home.

  Did not look back. Did not check to see if his father could make it to a phone. Did not feel for a pulse on his mother's neck. He just didn't care.

  Raven was born.

  He ended up on the docks. Ended up doing heavy work. Ended up laboring with the strength of his back, earning a subsistence by the sweat of his face. Whatever jobs he could get, whatever rough work was offered.

  He met a low-level pimp and drug dealer who needed someone strong. Raven began to break bones on the side. It paid better.

  Then he learned to dive.

  A year later, he was a legend. More than that, he was great. Twenty-one, barely a year after his first dive, and he was already making a name as one of the great deep sea divers. He dove the Andrea Doria, and did it before Trimix became widespread, before divers could go down three hundred feet and more without nearly the risk of getting bent. Dove the Doria and brought up the captain's log book, a sign from a galley long thought unreachable, and a China tea set that was nearly untouched by age.

  He dove the Blue Hole, the Devil's Cave. He went from caves to wrecks with ease and skill. Brought back ships' bells from two hundred feet, porcelain from beneath Asian waves.

  He was great. Only in his twenties, and beyond mortal understanding. He was a God of the deep.

  Then, somehow, it changed. A series of romances that went awry, a string of dives that went wrong – several of them accompanied by diver fatalities that earned him a reputation as bad luck.

  He began to drink.

  Suddenly he was forty. He owned a dive boat, he brought others to dive sites, but he resented them. He resented the dilettantes for their disgusting lack of knowhow. For their inability to understand the mysteries and the appeal of the deep.

  And he hated the few who truly understood – the ones who were as he was, as he had been once upon a time – even more. Because they were climbing heights untouched, and he wasn't on the mountain with them. He was just watching. Sitting at the bottom and wishing he could do what they could do, knowing he couldn't and never would again.

  But still – he would be great again. He knew it. It was inevitable. Because he had been born to greatness, and the universe would turn itself to him, would bend to accommodate that fact.

  And when he heard the cries, heard the shouts of crew and passengers alike… he knew.

  This is my chance. This is where I become Great again.

  He left the wheelhouse and climbed down the ladder on the side. Took in the scene quickly, efficiently – the way great men always do.

  Tim in the water. Jimmy J wrestling with something, along with the father-daughter fares. Geoffrey – an insolent prick who thought greatness was something you bought, something you earned instead of something you were simply born to – was sprawled on the deck. A fishing rod near him, pointed at whatever the others were wrestling with.

  Mercedes kept hitching in breaths then letting out raspy gasps. She was one of those people Raven's father would have called "lambs in insects' clothing." Someone meant to be used and abused, then tossed aside when whatever entertainment or purpose she could give was used up.

  The last man, Haeberle. He stood near the dive platform, watching. He was a man whom Raven couldn't quite pin down. He was dark, massive. Someone that Raven wouldn't have wanted to get in a bar fight with, even in the days when he regularly did such things.

  He might – might – be Great. Time would tell.

  Raven took it all in, even as that thrill continued up and down his back. This was something big. Something that would return him to his rightful place in the sun.

  Mercedes took in another of those ragged gasps. She looked green. "Vomit over the side if you have to, sweetie," said Raven. "Less to clean."

  She looked a shade greener, but nodded. Visibly got control of herself. Looked away from the dive platform.

  Raven nudged Geoffrey with his toe. "What have you found for us, Geoffrey?"

  The twit opened his mouth to answer, but instead of words out sp
ewed a torrent of vomit. That morning's half-digested breakfast, the odd sausage bit poking up here and there.

  Raven's face twisted. "Good God," he said. He was about to tell Jimmy J to clean it up, but before he could Jimmy J spoke to him. Irritating. One more thing that impeded his progress in life. A small thing, true, but every tiny moment, every minute obstacle in Raven's path – unacceptable.

  "We found a body, Mr. Raven," said Jimmy J. "Floating free."

  That almost made Jimmy J's impertinence worth it. "How interesting," said Raven. He scanned the horizon. Looking for where the body had come from and seeing nothing. That meant… "I wonder if there's any salvage to be had."

  The body was probably new enough that any sunken boat it belonged to – if there was a sunken boat – probably wasn't up for grabs. It would have to be returned, and even if it were available for the taking, it was under eight hundred feet of water.

  But Raven knew people who purchased such information. Locations of wrecks. And they weren't particularly picky about the wreck's age. There was profit to be had for men who knew how to sweep in and strip the carcasses of dead boats. To take all that was of worth and leave only a skeleton of once-value, once-greatness.

  All things great would someday be once-great. All but Raven himself.

  The body made its way to the dive platform, hauled up in a dripping mess by Jimmy J, Sue, and Cal.

  Raven moved toward the body, intent on inspecting it. He saw a logo and a name on one of the arms: Nelson Chem. That was interesting. Could mean a research vessel, could mean something considerably bigger.

  He had to restrain himself from licking his lips. This was it. He could feel it.

  Tim was still in the water; now moved toward the port ladder to pull himself up.

  WHUD.

  Something like muffled thunder sounded. Only no, thunder came from above. And this was a sound – muffled, yes, but powerful, nearly frightening – that came from below.

  He saw Tim, still reaching for the ladder.

  And then a huge wave slammed into Raven's employee, and The Celeste herself.

  The wave didn't roll across the horizon, didn't hump up from somewhere far away and push into them. Nor was it a normal swell, but a twenty-foot monster that could well destroy the boat.

  And it had simply appeared. Not during a massive storm or any kind of inclement weather. The skies were clear, the sea had been calm.

  Raven had a moment to think, Impossible!

  Another moment to see Tim fly into the ladder, to see it catch him on the jaw with a force Raven could nearly feel from the deck.

  Jimmy J, Sue, and Cal all rocketed back, skidding across the deck toward the front of the boat. Sue and Cal caught each other in a knot of tangled limbs, hands and feet and legs and arms wrapping around one another like a two-headed octopus curling in on itself in the face of danger.

  Jimmy J kept his hold on the corpse. It plowed into him, driving him back. Dead weight slamming on him almost as hard as the wave itself.

  Haeberle took a huge step and seemed for a moment like he might – impossibly – retain his balance. Then he, too, flew toward the wheelhouse. He slammed into Geoffrey, who was screaming again. Geoffrey bit out a panicked, "Bastardbitch!" before both of them went down. Geoffrey slammed face-first into the deck. A crunch that reminded Raven of the sound his mother made when she hit the floor. That cheap linoleum floor.

  Mercedes. Useless woman, always cringing ever-so-slightly when you spoke to her. A beaten dog, a bitch with no bite. But she was a paying customer so when she tipped half over the starboard side of the ship, tipping with the roll of The Celeste, Raven reached out a hand and managed to snag a handful of her shorts.

  She probably won't even thank me for it.

  He braced himself against a pipe on the side of the wheelhouse structure, holding fast while the wave tipped everyone off their feet. Remaining upright and heroic while even The Celeste herself nearly spilled over, went nearly perpendicular to the sea. Of course. He was destined to stand when others fell.

  Then, abruptly, the wave was gone. It didn't curl its way across the surface and disappear from sight. One minute it simply was, another it simply wasn't.

  All was calm again.

  "What the hell was that?" growled Haeberle. He stood, disentangling himself from Geoffrey's panic-hold. He left the other man curled on the deck. Stepped away from him as one might step away from a pile of dogshit.

  Raven approved.

  "Forget what it was, get this stiff off me!" Jimmy J was struggling with the corpse, which had inexplicably managed to land crotch-first against the diver's face. It was funny. Raven didn't giggle – giggling was for fools and homosexuals – but only through force of will. Another ability of the great: to control themselves and their emotions in the face of anything.

  Then he saw something that nearly made him lose his composure. Not the body's face, not its mangled wetsuit – he had seen both, and worse, in his long years at sea.

  No, for an instant it appeared as though the diver moved. Not like it was regaining some impossible form of life; not like it was going to stand up and begin ambling around the deck and shooting the breeze.

  The body… writhed. Something under the suit moved, like there was a snake beneath the neoprene. Like a serpent had taken up residence in the corpse and eventually eaten it away to nothing.

  "Ow!" Jimmy J wailed.

  Cal and Sue managed to pull themselves apart, the two-headed octopus becoming father and daughter once more. Cal hurried to Jimmy J and tried to help him out from under the corpse.

  "You okay?" said Cal. "What happened?"

  "Dead guy bit my arm!"

  For a moment Raven felt a thrill of fear. Just a moment, a frisson that ran up and down his spine.

  Did I see something?

  No. Not possible. Just water escaping the suit.

  Just water.

  Sue spoke as Cal and Jimmy J kept wrestling the corpse. "Where's Tim?'

  Then she ran. Raven's gaze tracked her – not merely out of curiosity, but because she was a fine bit of tail. Someone that would have thrown herself at him a few years ago.

  Time'll come again, Rave.

  She dove off the back of the dive platform with a splash. Raven wasn't sure why at first, then he saw Tim, face down in the water and a spreading blot of his own blood surrounding him.

  Cal watched his daughter go, shouting, "Sue!" He left Jimmy J to deal with the –

  (moving? writhing?)

  – corpse of the unknown diver on his own. Ran after his daughter as she grabbed Tim under his chin and yanked him toward the boat.

  A moment later another splash signaled someone else joining her. Jimmy J helped her manhandle Tim's limp body toward the dive platform.

  Raven thought he heard Sue say, "Thanks," but the word was consumed in the sea and the splashing as the two of them pushed Tim forward.

  "Like I'm gonna let Timmy get felt up by a pretty girl without getting a piece of the action," Jimmy J said, the words coming out in jagged exhalations as he pushed Tim the rest of the way onto the platform. Cal helped pull, and a moment later Raven joined them – wouldn't do to have the paying customers think he wasn't willing to help should one of them go over.

  Sue pulled herself up. "He going to be all right?"

  Tim's eyes fluttered at the same moment. "What happened?" he mumbled. A cut on his chin – the only one, as far as Raven could see – welled up. Head wounds could be nasty, even when superficial. Raven didn't think the wound would need more than a bit of gauze, maybe some liquid bandage from the first-aid kit.

  That was good. He didn't need some workman's comp claim. Or the hassle of finding another dive leader.

  "Ladder hit you, man," said Jimmy J as he pulled himself onto the dive platform as well. He squeezed Tim's shoulder. "Glad you're still with us."

  Tim groaned. "Feels like I got kissed by your big fat girlfriend."

  Jimmy J's shoulder squeeze turned int
o a punch. "Impossible. My girlfriend has no lips. 'Ol' Snakeface' is what I call her."

  Tim rolled his eyes. Winced. "Gross," he said.

  Raven rolled his eyes as well. "He's fine," he said.

  He went to the more interesting of the two objects laying on the deck: the body. Cal was already there, looking at the corpse with Haeberle. Cal looked at it with the interest of a detective who has found an important clue. Haeberle stared at it with a look that Raven didn't understand, couldn't quite place. It was almost… hungry. But more than that, too. Something dark. Disconcerting.

  Raven shifted his attention to the body itself. Strangely relieved to look away from Haeberle.

  The body was on its back. Waxy brown un-face. Teeth grimacing through chewed-away lips.

  "What the hell happened to him? Or her?" said Haeberle. His voice trembled, but Raven didn't think it was fear he heard. It was –

  (hunger)

  – something else.

  "It's not a her," said Cal. He spoke quickly, sharply. Raven remembered the extra money he had been paid to come to this particular area. Remembered reports of the boat that had gone missing here a few weeks ago. Realized they must be looking for someone. So when he said, "It's not a her," he really meant to say, "It's not the 'her' we're looking for."

  Raven glanced at Sue. She was looking at her father, but with the pronouncement she looked back to Tim, holding a cloth to his chin.

  Raven's lip curled as he looked at the body. He wasn't interested in such grotesquerie, other than as a means to an end.

  "I'm more interested in just what happened on the sea than what happened to a corpse some time ago."

  And that was the truth. Even though the corpse signaled an opportunity for money – something Raven was always on the lookout for, especially when it was easy – he felt more than a little discomfited by an event he had never seen or felt or even heard of before.

  Where did that wave come from?

  Where did it go?

  He climbed up the ladder that led from the deck to the small balcony behind the wheelhouse, then went in.

  The wheelhouse was small, nothing fancy needed to pilot a boat of this size. Pilot's and navigator's chairs. Radio. A few consoles, a computer terminal hooked up to the bottom finder, GPS chartplotter, a printer that he used to print out invoices. When he had started there had barely seemed to be enough room for all the electronics. Now it took up little space – everything was getting smaller. The world included.