She gave a powerful kick of her flippers, realizing she’d fallen back too far. Toby was pacing himself, but Ewan had focused on something either just in or beyond the wreck. Strangely, the darkness beyond grew closer—she became convinced of it.
Closing in, she saw something disturbing: now part of the incoming darkness had formed a large tendril of sorts. It looked maybe two or three feet thick and extended toward Ewan as if curious about him. As if with conscious intent. She wanted to scream something at Ewan—impossible at this depth and distance of course—but even more alarming, he was prodding his sample net toward it.
Even Toby seemed perplexed, as if not sure what to do. He paused in his approach, making a waving motion with his hand.
They had been on countless dives in this area and had dealt with all sorts of underwater dangers in the past, but this didn’t seem to fall under any previously known category.
Then something even more bizarre happened.
As Ewan made a short scoping motion with the aluminum handled sample net, she saw something hideous flash out of the tendril—a kind of head, a giant head, like that of a deep-sea angler shaped vaguely into human-like features. It struck out and in an instant subtracted Ewan’s arm from the elbow down, sample net and all.
Barbara registered a flash of needle-like teeth and luminescent, homicidal eyes that managed to be bright cyan, silver and dead black at the same time. Then it disappeared into the darkness. Her breath strangled in her throat, the regulator like a foreign cork. Behind the mask, her eyes went wide with horror.
This isn’t happening.
Ewan floated, stunned, the blood pouring out of his severed limb inky black at this depth. He looked about, confused, as if saying: do you believe this? A stream of bubbles exploded around him. Then his body jerked as the thing bit into him again, this time taking half his chest cavity and hip. The scuba gear hung in tatters, the tanks tumbling down. The man who had been her mentor and first true lover, a vitality-infused male in the prime of his life, had instantly and inexplicably been reduced to a savaged chunk of inert meat, floating slowly to the ocean floor. His remaining internal organs spilled away. More bubbles from his severed air-hose erupted upward.
She choked on her regulator, dimly aware of the hot, squishy feeling in her guts as her bladder loosened. Irrational thoughts blossomed up: Nopleasemommy, nomakeitstop.
Toby swam toward her, pumping his legs furiously. Around him, tendrils spread out of the dark at an alarming rate. Barbara went into shock, her heart going like a trip hammer. The shark she saw earlier darted in, then it too was struck. One second she saw it accelerating relentlessly toward Ewan, the next it was headless: Twelve feet of apex marine predator turned into chum.
Toby came within ten yards of Barbara, still swimming hard and pointing frantically with one finger: up! He jerked, then stopped, trying to process why he’d lost momentum.
Both his legs were withered, blackened stumps below the knee, the feet and flippers flaking apart as if flash-burned. The last thing Barbara saw were his eyes flaring briefly in shock, then going half-closed as the lassitude of inevitable death rushed in.
Barbara completely lost it.
Ripping off her weight belt, she released her emergency float and kicking furiously, signed her own death warrant: she shot straight up 160 feet.
Doogie was relaxing half-drunk on the back deck with a cigarette and his fifth beer of the day, figuring he had another idle hour ahead of him, when Barbara broke the surface twenty yards from the boat.
He knew he wasn’t supposed to drink on the job, but things hadn’t exactly been going super-duper with his finances since the recession. A lot of people in Montauk might be enjoying the substantial financial windfall with the incredible upsurge in tourism these past few years, but Doogie Stilwell wasn’t a member of that club. His obsessive Lotto gambling habit hadn’t helped either, though he somehow managed to scrape together enough to buy a few packs of cigarettes a week.
Inebriated or not, one thing he became instantly aware of: something terrible had happened below the water on his watch and he would be in deep shit. Serious deep shit if it came out he’d violated his parole, even though it was minor felony. Besides, he’d never gotten this drunk before on a job (well, almost never) but something about the warm sun on his face and a calm lapping of the ocean had triggered an urge to cut loose a little...
A few minutes later, he manhandled her onto the dive deck.
“Shitfuck, this ain’t good!” he kept mumbling to himself. “Shitfuck shitfuck!”
She looked bad. Really bad. He ripped the regulator out of her mouth and saw that it was all chewed up and bloody. He’d seen cases of the bends before, but nothing like this. And where were Ewan and Toby? What the hell happened down there? It was supposed to be a routine dive.
Doogie knew he should get on the radio and notify the Coast Guard, just as he knew nothing on God’s Earth would save her now. Her face was a hideously bloated patchwork of bright red, with gaseous blisters.
Barbara gasped a single word. Seconds later, blood erupted out of her mouth as her internal organs ruptured. She died, writhing in agony.
Doogie stood there, crouched over her a moment. Except for the lapping of waves against the hull and the hiss of compressed air from her regulator, it was eerily quiet.
Then Doogie leaned over, shut off the valve on her tank. He quietly stood up, took a step to the side and vomited into the ocean.
Neptune’s Reckoning is available from Amazon here!
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