Beast by Peter Benchley
Well … he didn’t know, he was pretty busy.
They’d make it worth his while.
He had to be honest with them, he said, he had a charter party on hold for tomorrow. (Charter party! Where had he come up with that? He’d never taken a charter party out in his life; he had no idea what you did with one or how much you charged them.) He wished he could help them, they seemed like nice kids and all, but he couldn’t sacrifice that charter fee.
And how much was that?
Well … full day … fifteen hundred (a fat figure, plucked out of the air).
No problem. In fact, if he could guarantee to put them on the shipwreck, they’d pay two thousand. But if he didn’t find it (Scott was playing Mr. Big-Time Hard-Nose), they’d ride for free.
Fair enough, but Lucas had to ask, were they sure they were up to a two-hundred-foot dive? Ever done it before? Did they know about the bends, which could cripple or kill them; about nitrogen narcosis, the notorious “rapture” that could cause them to lose their bearings … about all the other stuff that happened at depth?
Oh sure, they were supercareful, they knew all the chemistry and physics. And if they hadn’t actually gone to two hundred feet before, they’d both been down well over a hundred (Scott was positive, Susie pretty sure), and there wasn’t really that much difference, was there, only nine or ten stories of an office building.
And three more atmospheres of pressure, Lucas thought—three steps up on the squeeze ladder, three times the chance of a mishap that could end in a funeral. But he didn’t say anything because by now he was convinced Susie had eyes for him, and besides, Scott was running on about their expertise.
Scott listed all the places they’d dived and in what kinds of weather. They brandished their C-cards and logbooks listing every time they’d gotten their feet wet.
Okay, then, he’d take them, but he’d have to send them down the anchor line alone, he couldn’t go with them ‘cause he didn’t have a mate and he couldn’t leave the boat unmanned—safety was his first concern, he had a reputation around the island. ‘Cause if the boat should happen to break away, they didn’t want to have to swim to shore after a two-hundred-foot dive … unless they cared to spring for another couple of hundred to hire a mate for the day.
Susie said, Gosh, they didn’t need a nursemaid, they’d swim right down the old anchor line, take a lot of pictures and be back before he knew it.
Scott said, So let’s raise a glass to the dive of a lifetime.
And they had done just that, several glasses, in fact, until the time came when Lucas decided to make his move on Susie and suggested they slip away for a quiet dinner somewhere.
She had laughed at him—not a nasty laugh but a kind of sweet motherly laugh that he couldn’t get mad at— and ruffled his hair and said, See you tomorrow.
Lucas gave Southwest Breaker a wide berth. There was no breeze to speak of, just a light sou’westerly, but the sea still boiled around the treacherous fang of rock sticking up from the bottom, yearning to puncture pass-ersby.
Fresh air cleared Lucas’s head, a handful of peppermints killed the taste of rot in his mouth and a breakfast beer restored him to where he could look on the bright side of things.
Two thousand dollars was more than he could make in a month netting flying fish or helping a chummy haul water.
Maybe the kids had done some bragging, maybe they had too much faith in all their Mickey Mouse gear, but they certainly were being careful, checking and rechecking every hose and fitting.
He could tell, looking down at them, that they were nervous, which was healthy. They might eat up air so fast they’d never get near the bottom, but that wasn’t his worry.
The day was looking promising, after all. With luck, he could be back at the dock by lunchtime. If they were successful, if he gave them the dive of a lifetime, Susie might yet come around. You never knew.
The reef line was close on the South Shore, deep water came fast, so it wasn’t long before Lucas started looking to array his landmarks. He had written them down—no reason, but now a piece of good luck—the one and only time he’d been out to this wreck, which had to be ten years ago.
There was a purple house with twin tall casuarinas directly behind it. His eye was supposed to line up those trees straight as a rifle sight, at the same time triangulating so that the main building of the peach-colored cottage colony to the westward sat at the feet of Gibbs Hill Lighthouse.
The tide was running offshore, so Lucas drove a little bit to sea, then turned and pointed the bow at the shore while he powered slowly up and adjusted the landmarks.
Landmarks weren’t foolproof, though, with a shipwreck this deep. You couldn’t see it from the surface, you had to take your marks after you’d swum up from it, and maybe by then the boat had swung at anchor.
And close wasn’t good enough with the Admiral Durham. The light was dim down there, visibility probably no more than thirty or forty feet at best, and with five minutes’ bottom time—which meant five minutes from the time you left the surface till the time you started up from the bottom—you didn’t have leisure to go hunting around. Lucas had to anchor on it, drop the hook on the deck and let it drag along till it found a purchase on a rail or some chain or maybe even that rusty old commode that squatted on the foredeck, the one he’d had his picture taken sitting on.
He switched on his fish-finder and set the depth of its read and shaded the screen with his hand. The readout of lines and lumps showed nothing, a void, between the surface and the bottom. He turned the wheel, nosing the boat a couple of points to port, then a couple to starboard, and suddenly it was there, a giant hulk rising up from the bottom.
Lucas jockeyed the boat until the hulk was dead center on the screen. Then he nudged forward a hair, enough to compensate for the current gripping the anchor and bowing the line, and pushed the button that released the anchor.
He closed his eyes and wished the anchor all the way down, seeing it in his mind dropping through the darkening blue and striking steel with a hearty clang.
11
THE CREATURE WAS in a state close to hibernation. Its respiration—the ingestion and expulsion of water—had slowed to fifteen cycles per minute. Its color had dulled to a grayish brown. Its arms and whips floated freely, like gigantic snakes.
And it was gaining strength, as if sucking sustenance from the cool and silent darkness.
Suddenly the silence was broken by sound vibrations, which showered down upon it and were amplified by the salt water. To a human ear, the sound would have been thick, resonant, metallic, the sound of solid steel striking hollow steel with weight and velocity.
To the creature, the sound was unknown … alien and alarming, and so its respiration increased, quickly doubled. Its arms curled, its whips cocked. Its color changed, brightened, brown hues vanishing, replaced by purples and reds.
It located the noise as coming from above, so it began to rise up the slope toward the large and unnatural and lifeless thing it had sensed there earlier.
The sound began again, but altered, a series of short staccato bumps. Then it stopped altogether.
The creature moved toward the unnatural thing, then hovered over it, searching for the source of the sound. Any sound, any change whatever in the normal rhythms of the sea, could mean prey.
And the need that was overwhelming it, now that it was moving and consuming energy, was hunger.
12
LUCAS STOOD ON the bow and let the anchor rope run through his hands until he saw the piece of tape marking fifty fathoms. Then he took a turn around a cleat and watched the swing of the bow and the angle of the rope. If he gave it too little scope, there was a risk that it would pull the anchor free; too much, and traveling time for the divers would be too long and they’d run out of air.
Might as well give them a sporting chance, he thought, now that the two thousand dollars was as good as in his pocket.
When he was satisfied with the set, he cleated
They were wearing matching wetsuits, blue with yellow chevrons the color of their blond hair, and strapped to their legs were red-handled knives big enough to fell a buffalo. Their Italian flippers were so long that the kids looked like some kind of weird mutant ducks. Both of them were lashed up with straps, buckles and snaps.
“You’re sure you found the Durham?” said Scott.
“You didn’t hear the anchor bong on the deck down there?”
They didn’t know whether to believe him or not, so they just smiled, both looking antsy.
Lucas ushered them down onto the swim step off the stern. Susie’s tan seemed to have faded, and her face had taken on an ashy hue.
“You okay?” Lucas asked, touching her arm.
“Yes … I guess.”
“You don’t have to go. There’s no shame.”
“We’re going,” Scott said. “She’ll be fine.”
Lucas looked at Susie, who nodded.
“It’s your party.” Serious now, Lucas said, “Swim on the surface up to the anchor line. Get a grip on it and check everything out and wait till you’re all calm and cool. I don’t care if it takes a week, there’s no rush, I don’t want you going down there all anxious. When you’re ready, one of you go first, the other right behind, and I tell you, fire for the bottom, don’t dally. You got precious little time as it is. Any spare time you got, use it to come up nice and slow.”
They nodded and cleaned their masks and put them on. Lucas passed them their cameras: a video in a housing for Scott, a Nikonos V for Susie.
They gave one another the thumbs-up sign.
“Hey!” said Lucas, and they looked up at him. “One last thing: Don’t go frightening anything down there.” He smiled, to show he was making a little joke.
They didn’t smile back.
As soon as they hit the water, they inflated their vests and lay on their backs and kicked against the tide toward the bow of the boat.
Lucas walked forward and stood looking down as they gathered at the anchor line. They fiddled with this and checked that and said something back and forth. Then they put their mouthpieces in, vented their vests and dropped beneath the surface.
Lucas looked at his watch: 10:52. By eleven o’clock he’d either be two thousand dollars richer or in a mess he didn’t want to think about.
The creature had twice covered the length and breadth of the large, unnatural thing. The sound vibrations had ceased, and no other signs of prey had followed.
Its eyes registered faint light above. Here the cool water was blending with warmer, so it moved away from the unnatural thing and began to drop back into the darkness.
But then it sensed movement again, something coming closer, and a sound that signaled a life form.
It dropped back atop the unnatural thing, its great body resting in shadows, waiting.
As the movement drew near and the rasping sound of living things respiring grew louder, the creature’s color began to change.
Scott pulled himself down the anchor rope hand over hand, the video camera snapped to his weight belt trailing behind him. He was in dim nothingness now, surrounded by blue. He paused to check his air gauge—2,500 pounds, plenty—and his depth gauge—120 feet. He saw no shipwreck below him, no bottom.
The feeling was eerie, lonely, but not frightening, for there was solace in the tautness of the anchor line. Something was down there; the anchor had caught in it. If it was the shipwreck, fine; if not, well … they’d save two thousand dollars. He still hadn’t figured out how to explain to the old man the thousand-dollar cash advances he and Susie had each taken on their credit cards.
Where was Susie?
Scott turned and looked back up the anchor line. She was way above, hanging on the rope at fifty or sixty feet—afraid, maybe, or having trouble with her ears.
There was nothing he could do for her. As long as she was above him, she’d be okay. Coven could look after her.
He rinsed a patch of fog from his mask, tipped downward and kicked for the bottom.
At 160 feet he saw it, and his breath caught. It was exactly as Coven had described it—a ghost ship seeming to sail right up at him, enormous beyond imagining. And lying on the bottom beside the starboard bow, like a wounded behemoth staring blankly with its cyclopean eye, was the blunt face of a locomotive.
Fantastic!
He wanted to stop his descent long enough to unsnap the video camera from his belt, switch on its light and adjust its settings. But though he kicked hard, thrusting upward with his flipper blades, he felt himself continuing to sink. He was overweighted for this depth: His neoprene suit had compressed, lost its buoyancy, and he was too heavy, descending too fast. He pressed the button that shot air into his vest, and once again he was nearly neutral in the water. He checked his air gauge—1,800 pounds—and told himself to control his breathing.
Then he aimed his camera at the bow of the ship, pressed the trigger and let himself drift gradually downward.
It was alive, whatever this thing was, and slow and clumsy.
And it was coming.
The creature cocked its whips and fluttered its tail fins and, very slowly, began to move out of the shadows toward the prey.
Scott dropped down onto the bow of the ship. He was still breathing too fast, he could hear his heart, but he didn’t care. This was incredible! The size of it!
He found something to wrap his legs around, to steady himself—it was a toilet, for God’s sake, right here on the deck!—and he brought the camera’s viewfinder up to his mask, trying somehow to get it all in frame.
His world became a tiny square with a green light in one corner and some numbers on the bottom.
He felt a change in the rhythm of the water around him, but he didn’t turn to look: It had to be a blip in the current, or perhaps Susie arriving nearby.
He saw a vague, shadowy movement at the farthest left edge of the frame, but he assumed it was an illusion caused by the dappled light.
Something touched him. He jerked, turned, but all he could see was a blur of purple.
And then the something had him around the chest and was squeezing.
He dropped the camera, twisted around, but the something kept squeezing. Now there were stabbing things in it, like knives. He heard a crack—his ribs, breaking like sticks of kindling.
The last thing he saw, in his mask, was a bubble of blood.
Susie could see nothing above, nothing below. She was fighting to stay in control, not to panic. Why hadn’t Scott waited for her? They were supposed to go down together. Lucas had insisted; they had agreed. But no, Scott had gone off on his own. Impatient, selfish. As usual.
She checked her air gauge—1,500 pounds—and her depth gauge—110 feet. She’d never make it. She was gasping, and she could envision air disappearing with every breath. She felt surrounded, compressed, imprisoned. She couldn’t even make it to the surface. She was going to die!
Stop it! she told herself. Everything’s fine. You’re fine.
She clung to the anchor line and closed her eyes, willing herself to take slow, deep breaths. Oxygen nourished her, her brain cleared, panic subsided.
She opened her eyes and looked at her air gauge again: 1,450 pounds.
She decided to drop down the line another fifty feet. Maybe she could at least see the shipwreck from there. Then she’d start up.
Still clutching the rope, she let herself fall. A hundred and twenty feet, 130, 140, then … what was that? Something was moving below. Something was coming up at her.
It had to be Scott. He had seen the wreck and taken his pictures and was already on the way back.
She’d never get to see it. She’d have to settle for Scott’s description—endlessly repeated, inevitably embellished. She’d have to endure his sly asides about this being a “man’s dive, too tough for the girls.”
Too bad, but …
This moving thing, this purplish thing, it wasn’t Scott rising at her. It was huge, so huge it couldn’t possibly be alive. But what was it? What could it— Her last sensation was surprise.
Lucas looked at his watch: 10:59. They’d better be on their way up in the next sixty seconds. If not, he’d have to get on the radio and find out where the nearest decompression chamber was. Because these two were gonna be bent up like corkscrews.
That is, unless they never got there at all, chickened out, maybe hung at 150 feet or so, from where they could just see the shipwreck. It was common enough: Big ships underwater freak a lot of people.
That was it, had to be. They’d gotten halfway down and decided this was out of their league after all. They were at 125, 150. They could stay another five minutes.
11:02.
He lay on the bow and shaded his eyes and stared hard down the anchor line, looking for even a glimmer of one of those snazzy wetsuits.
He heard a noise down aft. Jesus! Stupid bastards had come up away from the anchor line, probably run out of air and shot for the surface. Be lucky if one of them didn’t have an embolism.
Or maybe they’d been decompressing at ten or twenty feet, then come up under the boat. Sure. Made sense.
But why hadn’t he seen them? The water was clear as gin.
He stood up and started aft. The noise was still going on, a weird noise, a wet, sucking kind of noise.
Now he smelled something.
Ammonia. Ammonia? Here?
As he edged along the side of the cabin, the boat suddenly heaved sharply to starboard.