From below, p.39
From Below, page 39
Cove adjusted her grip on Aidan. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw cupboards creaking open. Shadowed eyes flickered in her light. One hand flopped free.
Move fast. They’re still waking. Don’t give them a chance to leave their holes.
She barely paused to check through the open doorway. It seemed clear, but with how low her lights had fallen, it was far from a certainty. They were out of time to hesitate. She moved through.
The stairs carried them up and ended on a short landing with a narrow door. Cove had to pass Aidan back to Roy as she worked on the handle, jostling it open.
They spilled into one of the passenger hallways. It was either third- or second-class. The familiar half-wall paneling was present, but the wallpaper above had a pattern she didn’t recognize. They hadn’t been in that part of the ship before.
Cove’s light struggled to see any distance, but she couldn’t hear the clicking noise behind them any longer. She felt a small spark of hope that the plan to move fast might actually be working.
“We’ll look for the stairs and aim to find the dining room,” Cove said. “It had a body inside of it, but only one. I think that gives us better odds than the hospital. Hestie, we just took the stairs leading up from the kitchens.”
“Oh!” She sounded miles away, and Cove strained to hear her. “Okay, try turning right and take two flights up. You’re close. Really close.”
Please. Behind her, Roy’s light died. Cove tried to keep one eye on him while also watching the hall ahead. Let us just get to the dining hall. Please.
The ship shuddered deeply beneath them. Cove pressed her tongue between her teeth, but focused on the pathway ahead even as cracks spread across the peeling plaster ceiling.
Just a little farther. Please.
The hallway had an intersecting hall to the left. As she moved around the corner, Cove’s light hit the aged wood bannisters marking the stairwell.
She moved toward it before a distant shimmer of movement froze her. Opposite was the port-side hallway. A tall figure floated there like a lone sentinel, barely touching the farthest reaches of her light, its arms wrapped around a shredded officer uniform, its face unreadable except for two sharp, flashing eyes.
Don’t hesitate. Don’t give them even a second. Cove reached behind herself and grabbed Vanna’s shoulder. “Fast,” she hissed, and moved forward, toward the stairs.
The distant click of flexing neck bones warned Cove that they’d been seen. She pushed her way through the water, clawing for ground as fast as she could. The figure tilted its head with a hideous crackling noise. Cove hit the stairwell’s bannister and put her body between the stairs and the approaching form, using herself as a barrier as Vanna and Roy moved Aidan up.
Her headlight’s beam flickered, then vanished entirely. Cove pulled out her handheld spare, but it wouldn’t even turn on. They were reduced to just Vanna’s light.
Move fast. Don’t stop. That’s the only way this will work.
She held her position until Vanna and Roy had reached the higher level, then turned after them. The sediment was growing thicker. Their furious pace kicked it up and worsened visibility, but at that moment, Cove was only grateful. Extra sediment meant they were approaching their exit.
They pulled around the final turn in the stairs and emerged into the hall. There, ahead, were the open dining room doors.
Vanna, the only one of them that still had a light, moved first. She reached one arm behind herself to keep a hold on Aidan as she extended her head through the narrow opening. Her light was entirely swallowed by the room beyond, leaving Cove and Roy close to blind in the hallway.
The clicking was growing closer, rising along the stairwell. It wasn’t rushing but moved with the slow confidence of something that knew this encounter could only culminate in one kind of conclusion. Cove clenched her teeth until her jaw ached.
Vanna turned back to them, gave a sharp nod, and shifted inside the dining hall. Cove followed last, her eyes still fixed on the dark pit of stairs below them.
They had barely made it past the threshold when the static worsened. It grew thicker and louder until it was impossible to hear anything except the pure rush of white noise that bordered on deafening. Vanna’s headlight began to stutter. Cove, guessing what was about to happen, reached out and grasped both Roy’s and Vanna’s arms. The light vanished.
Cove strained to hear through the static. Without the headlights, they were blind. She was free floating. She tightened her grip, afraid of losing Roy and Vanna in the world of nothingness.
And then, abruptly, the static vanished. It was like turning a light switch—one second Cove could barely think through the onslaught; the next, the hollow silence pressed so intensely that she felt as though she couldn’t breathe through it.
She wet her lips. “Roy? Vanna?”
“I can hear you.” That came from Roy. He was whispering, as though the sudden quiet had pushed him to reverence. His arm shifted minutely under her hand. “I’ve still got Aidan.”
Vanna said, “I’m here.”
“Okay.” Cove found herself matching their whispers as she tilted her head up. The ceiling had to be above her somewhere. “We’re going to begin rising. No decompression stops until we’re outside the ship.”
She didn’t love the idea of feeling her way through the old metal and remaining shards of glass to find one of the open skylights, but every second she spent inside the Arcadia made her heart feel closer to collapsing from the strain. Cove, still not letting go of the others, began to rise.
The clicking noise sounded from behind her, warning her that the stairwell figure had caught up to the door. She fought the impulse to turn toward it. She wouldn’t have been able to see it either way.
Keep moving. They’re slow; if you keep the pace fast, they won’t be able to catch up.
Another click rang through the dead air. This time, it came from the opposite side of the room.
Cove’s mouth was achingly dry. She kept her head tilted up, blind eyes searching the empty dark ahead for any sign of the ceiling. With no visual cues, it was impossible to tell how far they had risen.
Another cracking sound and then a series of soft clicks, this time closer, coming from what felt like right behind Cove’s ear.
“Hold still a second,” Vanna said. The arm Cove was holding moved as she felt for something in her belt. Another muffled rattle sounded, this time on Cove’s other side.
And then, abruptly, a dim blue glow formed. Vanna raised one of the glowsticks Hestie had gifted them. It was pale, its light better suited to being seen in the dark instead of seeing, its glow diffusing quickly. It washed about them, coloring Vanna’s face and suit in an eerie tinge of blue.
She raised the stick as it brightened in fractions. The wan light spread outward, across their surroundings, highlighting the rows of gaunt, expressionless faces poised just over her shoulder.
60
The Skipjack’s lounge
The night after the first dive
The lights were dimmed. Vanna kept her eyes cast down, toward her own loosely folded hands.
“You understand why I have to ask,” Cove said. Normally, she had a habit of making herself cozy in chairs: legs folded up, arms wrapped around herself, reclined as deeply as she could. Now, though, she sat with both feet planted on the floor, forearms braced on her knees as she leaned forward. Her vivid green eyes shone in the muffled lamplight. The posture wasn’t hostile, but it was formal.
Vanna’s throat ached. The room was too loud. Cove’s laptop hummed at her side. The lamp’s electric hiss seemed louder than normal. And the stabbing, whistling wind, normally a calming presence, cut across her nerves. “I would rather not talk about it.”
Cove drew a slow breath, her hands flexing. She appeared to be taking pains to choose her words carefully. “Sean was adamant. And from this outside perspective, what he claims he saw is a very concerning accusation. But he doesn’t know your motivations. None of us do. That’s why I want to hear your perspective. Help me understand.”
For a beat, they were lost in a world of hissing lamps and humming laptop fans. Vanna said, “Please don’t tell the others.”
Cove didn’t respond. She simply kept staring at Vanna, her cutting eyes impossible to escape.
Impossible to escape. This was always going to come back to you eventually.
The shame, the fear, and the pain were rising in tandem through her, like knives slicing through muscle and fat until there was nothing but a sick pulp inside of her. Vanna knew her face wouldn’t betray it. A small mercy. “You would have looked me up online before hiring me.”
“Of course,” Cove said. “That’s why I want to hear your perspective. Because every newspaper article and association profile talked about your professionalism and conscientiousness.”
“Then you didn’t try searching within the last three weeks.”
Cove’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Should I?”
“Yes. Look up the name Abby Freeman.”
The winds intensified, battering against the ship’s side. Cove’s eyes continued to flick over her, scrutinizing, before she dragged her laptop up to her side. Fingers clicked across keys. The pale artificial light washed across Cove’s face as a page opened.
Vanna waited. Cove lifted one hand to press across her mouth, her eyes hard as she scrolled. Vanna couldn’t see the screen, but she could almost see the words reflected in Cove’s eyes.
Diver perishes in cave.
Cove leaned back from the screen a fraction, her tongue running across her teeth. She was forming questions. Vanna cut over her before she could speak them.
“Abby was my dive partner. And my life partner. My…everything.”
The words almost choked her. She pushed through before Cove could hear the catch in her voice.
“Eighteen days ago, we scheduled a dive to explore Arch Creek’s cave system. A recreational dive, no students.”
Eighteen days. She counted each new dawn and each new nightfall. The clock on the wall told her it was around one in the morning, which meant a new day, which meant she was at nineteen. Nineteen days without her other half.
Cove didn’t press. She just waited, her hand still held over her mouth as the questioning eyes bore into her.
“We were navigating a narrow section that opened back into the main system. I went first. Abby’s oxygen tube became caught on a rock. When she tried to pull through the opening, it tore. I tried to get back to her. Get her some of my air. I couldn’t reach far enough.”
Only enough to hold her hand. Vanna continued to stare at her long, pale fingers. She’d felt the spasms. It had happened so, so quickly, but in the moment, it also felt as though it had lasted a lifetime.
Her throat was sore. She pushed through, back to more neutral grounds, back to the topic that would hurt less. “I’ve been seeing a professional. They suggested I write down my nightmares in a journal. A way to address them in a safe environment. It helps—a little.”
The silence, filled with the cutting wind and hissing lamp, seemed impossibly loud.
“Why did you still come on this trip?” Cove asked.
Vanna didn’t know how she was expected to answer. “I signed a contract.”
“Yes, but…” Cove’s voice caught. “No one would have expected you to—”
“You needed an experienced diver,” Vanna said, her eyes fixed on the floor. “I needed to be somewhere other than my home. And I had made a commitment.”
Cove finally shifted, her legs turning at a more comfortable angle as she rubbed her hands over her knees. “I’m sorry.”
Vanna shrugged. “My skills aren’t compromised. I can still perform my duties as safety officer.”
“You’re sure you really want to go back down tomorrow?”
“Yes.” What else was there to do? Living above the water hurt. Living below the water hurt as well, but slightly less. Under the water, she was compartmentalized. The phone calls, the bills, the mundanity of life couldn’t reach her when she was under the waves. For the few hours she was below, she had clarity again.
“Okay.” Cove rose slowly. One hand moved out, as though wanting to touch Vanna. She pulled away from it. Since Abby, everyone had wanted to touch her: hugs, pats, squeezes. They felt like sandpaper across her skin. Cove withdrew her hand, then cleared her throat. “If you need anything…”
“Don’t tell the others.” Vanna’s thumb dug at a sliver of scraped skin on her palm. “I would prefer if they didn’t know.”
“Sure. Yeah. That’s the least I can do.” Cove hesitated again, then cleared her throat. One hand rose to point to her eyes. “They’re implants, you know.”
Vanna frowned slightly. “I’m sorry?”
“The eyes. My natural ones are brown. But my agent thought I needed something memorable, and…I got green implants. No one else knows.” She rubbed the back of her neck, seeming uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, that sounds completely frivolous compared to what you just told me, but…I know one of your secrets. And I thought it might help if you knew one of mine.”
In a strange way, it did. Vanna didn’t respond, but when Cove left the room, she found it just slightly easier to get air into her lungs.
61
The glowstick shimmered in the cold water. Vanna was frozen, trapped staring at the blue-washed shapes behind their team leader.
“Vanna.” Cove’s voice was lower than a whisper: no more than a breath. “Behind you—”
“Behind you as well.” Her stomach coiled on itself as raw panic burned in her veins. They were surrounded. The forms created a ring. Not just one layer deep either; the glowstick’s light barely reached the closest sets of pale, flashing eyes and gaunt, mottled cheeks, but a shimmer of moving hair and the quiet click of flexing bones warned her that there were more. How many, she couldn’t say, and she didn’t want to know the answer.
They were out of lights, and the glowsticks weren’t strong enough to force back the pressing walls of bodies. Vanna’s elbow moved as she adjusted her position and it bumped something firm.
The ceiling and its promised escape were so close. The bodies clustered uncomfortably near, but nothing blocked the water above. And the bodies weren’t acting. It was almost as though they were waiting for some signal…from the dive team?
Vanna’s mind flashed to earlier encounters. The mass of twining bodies in the boiler room must have had Aidan in their grasp for upward of an hour, but they only buried him inside their form when the dive team tried to remove him.
They didn’t want to attack the divers. They simply wanted them to stay. Inside the Arcadia. Forever. And as long as the crew didn’t appear to be struggling, the drowned figures around them would remain placid.
“Rise,” she whispered, and gave her feet a very soft, experimental kick. “No sudden movements. No struggling. Move slowly. Carefully.”
Her fins pushed against the water in minute increments. Neither Cove nor Roy made any sound, but by the slight shimmer to their bodies she knew they were swimming too. Their faces were invisible behind the masks, but she could hear their breathing: tight, tense, painfully measured.
The ring of the dead pulled fractionally closer. One bumped Vanna’s back, and it took all of her self-control not to shove it away.
No resistance. No fighting. We just need to gain whatever ground we can.
They were moving higher, she knew—but it was impossible to tell by how much. The grim, shadowed faces around them dogged them with perfect synchronization: their heads all level with Vanna’s own, their heavy-lidded eyes staring blindly at the divers. It gave the unnerving illusion that, no matter how many times she pushed the fins through the cold water, she never gained ground.
Vanna tilted her head up, trying to read the inky depths above. She very slowly raised the arm holding the glowstick. As it lifted above the clustering passengers of the Arcadia, she saw their mass went far farther than she had first hoped. Shimmers of blue light caught across endless fields of gently drifting hair and unblinking, staring eyes. She looked away, refusing to let them fill her vision for a second longer, as she searched the dark above.
At the farthest edges of her light, she thought she saw something. She tried to swallow through the tight ache in her throat. At that distance, it could have just been her eyes playing tricks: forcing images into the darkness to give her something to process. She didn’t think so though. She was almost certain she was looking at the metal frame holding the skylights, no more than fifteen feet above.
If we can reach it…if we can make it that far, then surely…
Then surely they could find some way to break free. Aidan, still limp, was in the center of their formation. It would make it harder to fight past the circling monsters without letting go of him, but they had to find a way. Surely, after making it so far, after getting so close to the end, she couldn’t fall short.
Not like I failed Abby.
They were gaining on the ceiling an inch at a time. Vanna’s eyes hadn’t deceived her. Blue-tinted glints of light marked the remaining shards of glass. She kicked slightly harder, pushing her luck, as she raised the glowstick higher.
The clicking noises increased in frequency and intensity. Vanna’s skin prickled as every hair on her arms rose. She couldn’t so much as blink as she stared up.
The ceiling was covered with the dead. They tangled across each other, a thick matt of twining flesh and blue-tinted clothes. They were packed so densely that there was no sign of the skylights behind them. The glints of light she’d seen were reflected off countless eyes.
She was still rising, and as she grew closer, the bodies reached their hands toward her. Like limp stalactites hanging from a cave’s roof, the arms stretched down, crooked fingers quivering at the expectation of impact.
