Deep Shadow

from?

As if on cue, Will heard a grinding, clanking noise from outside—faint, but it was the unmistakable sound of the biologist doing something, digging again possibly. Tomlinson held a palm up—Stop— and then attempted to signal Ford, but there was no response.

Seconds later, though, Will was startled by a muted roaring, a mechanized sound, like a cross between a leaf blower and heavy rain. It seemed to be coming from above them but far away.

Tomlinson explained the noise by scribbling Jet dredge on his slate.

Will nodded.

Less than a minute later, though, the thing stopped, and they heard Ford signaling. The hippie responded, banging his flashlight against his tank in a deliberate three-beat rhythm. An SOS maybe?

Possibly so, or maybe it meant nothing, but Will suspected it did because when the jet dredge started again Tomlinson grabbed his dive slate and wrote, Got to move now!

Move? There was nowhere to go!

Tomlinson made his case by shining the light on the ceiling, reminding Will about the stalagmites or the stalactites hanging down, their points sharpened by a couple thousand years of dripping water.

Crap!

If the ceiling collapsed on them, getting crushed was the least of their worries. Those stone stilettos could skewer them both.

Will nodded his head rapidly, saying, “Esss eely ’ucks.”

Yes, it did really suck. The cavern ceiling was covered with stone daggers. Where the hell could they go?

Up, as it turned out. Stay close to the ceiling, the stalactites couldn’t build up speed if they fell. Which was smart, Will had to admit.

Tomlinson was writing again and then held the slate up for him to read. Do what I do!

Will nodded.

Holding the flashlight in his left hand, Tomlinson let the dive slate swing to his side, then exaggerated his movements as he opened the weight pockets on his BC vest. He removed four rubber-covered chunks of lead and dropped them, one by one, at his feet, then pantomimed how to inflate his vest manually instead of using the valve connected to his tank.

Conserving air. That made sense, too. And they sure as hell didn’t need a bunch of lead to keep them on the bottom now.

Up. That’s where they wanted to go. Damn right, that’s where they wanted to go. The vibration of the jet dredge could cause those stone daggers to fall at any moment.

After Will had jettisoned his weights, Tomlinson used his thumb to signal toward the ceiling, then began inflating his own vest for real. The man became weightless, drifting upward as if levitating, and Will followed, allowing the image of astronauts to come into his head, lights piercing the blackness. It was the same tableau that had filled his mind while traveling I-75 with Hayes, in the backseat of the Lincoln.

Will remembered wondering, Why? It was a sensation so powerful that he had lost himself in the fantasy of being in a submerged cave, darkness all around. Now here he was, and it was all too real.

Outside, the leaf-blower sound of the dredge stopped once again. By then, though, Tomlinson was using one hand to fend off the rocky ceiling of the cavern while using the light to follow the path of their own bubbles.

Will gave the man room to work, first trying to steady himself by clinging to a spike of limestone—the thing broke off in his hand—then by purging air from his vest until he was less buoyant. He hovered below and behind the hippie, eight feet above the cavern floor, reminding himself, Stay calm, breathe slo-o- owly, as he watched Tomlinson move to the highest part of the cave.

Will was thinking Where the hell is Ford? when the sound of the jet dredge began again, then stopped seconds later. From beneath them came a random clanking noise, as if something was being dragged along the rocks under them, followed by a momentary silence.

Will thought, Why is Ford under us now?

Jesus Christ, what was the man doing? Didn’t he realize that they were almost out of air?

Tomlinson was tapping on his tank to get Will’s attention, waving for him to move closer, when they both heard a shuddering rumble that sounded like distant thunder. The sound grew progressively louder, vibrating through the cave walls. Soon, stalactites began dropping to the floor, the sharp stones clanking hard when they hit. The rumbling sound peaked, then faded, as if a train were passing. Then the rumbling stopped.

Scary.

A minute later, it got scarier. Tomlinson was using his flashlight to show Will what appeared to be a vent in the highest section of the cavern when a chunk of ceiling above them collapsed, brushing past Tomlinson’s shoulder as it fell. In that same instant, Will ran out of air.

It wasn’t gradual, as Will had expected. One second, he was breathing normally. The next second, the mouthpiece of his regulator felt as if it had been abruptly sealed shut. Will continued trying to suck air from the thing as his hands found the pony canister inside his BC. Use the largest bottle first, that seemed like the smart thing to do—and, besides, Tomlinson’s Spare Air bottle was clipped to a D ring, which would require more time to free.

Will was thinking, Stay calm . . . don’t rush . . . that’s how people screw up.

As he tried to remove the little tank, though, the knob caught inside his vest. Fumbling in the darkness, Will tried to free the thing, but he yanked too hard. The tank went spinning out of his hands before he could take a breath . . .

TWELVE

WHEN THE LIMESTONE OVERHANG COLLAPSED, I LET go of the jet dredge hose and tried to swim free of the chaos, but there was no escaping what followed.

Water, displaced by tons of rock, pushed a descending ridge of pressure that was stronger than any squall I had ever experienced. I felt like a seed being ejected from a grape. The shock wave hit me, tumbled me, then jettisoned me downward but also toward the concave wall of the lake and out of the path of the largest limestone slabs.

Smaller rocks caught me as I descended. I covered my head with my arms and kicked hard, riding the expanding pressure away from the worst of it, surfing the shock wave toward what I hoped was safety. The hiss of my regulator added a rhythmic counterbeat to the random clatter of rock colliding with rock and clanking off my air bottle. I continued swimming hard until the noise had ceased.

When I was safe within the great hollowed convexity of the lake’s northern wall, I stopped and turned, straining to see through the silt. I hadn’t intended to bring the entire overhang crashing down, only the midsection, but maybe the strategy had worked. Will and Tomlinson had been trapped somewhere inside the porous outcrop. It seemed likely that now, for better or worse, they were free. But where?

I checked my gauges. I was at forty-five feet and still had three-quarters of a tank of air. I had plenty of time to wait for visibility to improve, but my partners did not. They had now been underwater for one hour and seven minutes. If the collapse hadn’t freed them, and if they were not already swimming toward the surface, it seemed probable that Will was dead. And Tomlinson . . . ?

The possibility of Tomlinson being dead—actually dead—was beyond my grasp. It refused to take root in my brain. The man had the sensibilities and instincts of a cat—the morals, too—which added credibility, however perverse, to the expectation that he was entitled to more than just one life. Even our history argued against the inevitability that Tomlinson would in fact one day die.

“There are ghosts at this marina,” he was fond of saying, particularly after blending some illegal stew of weed and fungi, then chasing it with state-licensed rum.

Ghosts—ghosts at the marina, ghosts at home in Dinkin’s Bay. He spoke of the things fondly as if they actually existed. I didn’t believe it, of course, but at least the setting was acceptable. The marina was home. His boat and my lab were simply extensions of Dinkin’s Bay, familiar outposts that would be suitable places for our