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Dark Waters
By Connor White
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Waves churn below him, crashing into the crusted seawalls of the Shawl Canal Bridge. A lonely car hums across the steel grating of the road level far above. Traffic is light in the deepest hours of the night. The smell here is harsh. Decaying life saturates the air with an acrid reek that coats the tongue and attacks the nose. Winter breezes gust, pulling spray from the cresting whitecaps and driving it into Eric’s face as he stares into the darkness below.
She is still down there.
It has been five years. How the time passes us by so quickly, he muses to himself. He nudges a small bit of mortar over the edge of the fishing platform and watches it disappear into the murky depths. My dear Cynthia you must be so very, very cold. He smiles, bearing glittering white teeth. Darkness is my gift for you my love. He spits into the water. You’re no longer safe where you sleep Cynthia, they are coming, and they will find you.
“Do you remember?” He whispers. “The sea was so angry that night.”
Eric unzips two large gym bags. “Why were you frightened? Was it the storm, or did you know, even then?”
He pulls out a large yellow tank and stands it upright on the concrete, then empties the rest of the bag’s contents onto the platform.
Eric straps a buoyancy compensator to the tank and screws a regulator into the cylinder valve. After carefully checking all the connections he twists the valve knob and there is a brief hiss as compressed air fills the rubber hoses.
“I only wanted to talk to you about the two of us. Did you know I had learned about the affair? Is that why you were afraid? You hurt me Cynthia. Your betrayal darkened my soul and ate away my insides. I was your husband and I loved you more than anything. I swear I never wanted to hurt you.”
He steps into a dry-suit and zips it up over his middle-aged body and then pulls a neoprene hood over his graying hair.
“You shouldn’t have panicked. I was your husband. I loved you and yet you still panicked. You wouldn’t even listen! Can you blame me for getting angry?”
Eric dons his weight belt and hefts the air tank and vest to his back, where he straps it into place. Using the guardrail as a support he pulls on his fins. When they are strapped snugly to his feet he pulls on a pair of neoprene gloves.
“It was your own fault Cynthia. You never should have hit me. That’s not what good wives do. You never should have screamed. I only grabbed your neck because that was the only way I could make you shut up. I had to quiet you down Cynthia. Someone might have heard your crazy talk. I didn’t mean to squeeze you so hard.”
He grits his teeth in anger and smacks a closed fist into the open palm of his other hand.
“Damn it, why’d you make me kill you? God, and why’d you have to make that awful face in the end? You slut bitch, I couldn’t sleep for days.”
Eric shuffles to the concrete ledge of the fishing deck and sits down with his back to the churning water. He places his diving mask over his face and puts the regulator into his mouth. The dry air from the tank is a welcomed change from the stink of decay that surrounds him. He rolls backward and tips off of the ledge, plunging into the water a couple of feet below. The world goes dark and cold.
Eric begins to methodically kick down through the inky depths. He flicks on his dive light. The water is surprisingly clear for this time of year. He can see the submerged portions of the floating sections of the huge bridge that spans the canal. They are covered with a layer of churning life, but he pays no attention. He is not concerned with the portions of the bridge that are still afloat.
* * *
Once Cynthia stopped shuddering under his grip Eric let her slump to the concrete. He was shocked at what he had just done and stared in awe at her wide, glazed eyes. Never again would they stare at him in that mocking, knowing way. She was dead. Good. The Unfaithful slut had it coming for a long time. Who did she think she was sneaking around behind his back?
He tried to think of a way to dispose of her body. He was afraid to bring her back to the car because someone might see him, and he couldn’t just dump her into the water. Floating bodies always seem to get themselves found.
Huge floating watertight sections of reinforced concrete supported the central span of the bridge. Several maintenance hatches dotted the sections to allow crews to do repair work on the bridge. The hatches were located just above the water line and when the storm-spawned waves hit the section wall water would rush over and momentarily cover the hatches. Between wave strikes Eric dashed to one of these steel hatches and found it had carelessly been left unlocked by that morning’s construction crew. He lifted the heavy cover and peered inside where he saw only darkness. Just then a wave crashed against the section wall and water rushed over the concrete almost knocking Eric off his feet. The water poured down the hatch into the chasm below.
An idea forming in his head, Eric ran back to where his wife lay and grabbed one of her ankles. He pulled her to the platform ledge and pushed her to the concrete below, and then dragged her limp body to the maintenance hatch. He looked into her staring dead eyes one last time and then dropped her body into the depths, where a sickening crunch echoed up from below. Eric then ran from hatch to hatch opening each one to let the sea pour in.
He stood on the fishing platform and watched as wave after wave crashed over the section and poured into its hollow depths. Soon the section filled enough so that it sank below the water line where there was a rush of air as water inundated the structure. A deep rumbling moan shook through the bridge as the flooded section began to sink. The thick cables that held the sections to one another groaned under the new weight. There were whistling snaps as loud as rifle fire as the cable fibers began to break. Finally, with a shriek of tearing metal the flooded section broke free from the bridge and plunged into the depths.
In the end it was cheaper for the State to build a new section instead of raising the old one. It was determined that the previous day’ maintenance crew had neglected to close the hatches on the section and the night’s storm had sent it to the bottom.
* * *
That was five yeas ago. Now he is going back. Not because he wants to, he would just as soon forget his whore wife and let her rot through eternity, but because the goddamn civil engineers want to expand the bridge so they need to clear the old sunken section away to make room for the new construction. The paper said that a team would be surveying the site early next week. Eric has to work fast to hide any evidence of his wife’s body.
The tidal current that usually rips beneath the bridge is non-existent as the tide is in ebb. Small fish are attracted to his light. He swats at them as he continues to dive deeper. The floating bridge fades into the darkness above him as he continues to descend into the frigid blackness.
A few minutes later Eric can fool himself no longer. I’m scared, he realizes. His mind is starting to play tricks on him. Huge shadows cruise around him, just out of reach of his insignificant light. Here in the ocean anything can come up at you from the depths. You’re never sure what you’re sharing the darkness with.
No monsters come for Eric tonight. A single four-foot sand shark cruises within a few feet of him giving him a fright and then disappears, looking for more suitable prey. After his heart slows to a mild hammering Eric begins to make his descent once again. The rocky bottom blessedly comes into view and Eric lets out a sigh of relief. The empty space was starting to get to him and he is glad to finally have a plane of reference.
Life clings to the rocks in a spectrum of fire. Night creatures, completely alien to our terrestrial world, glide about looking for a meal. Huge brown tubeworms sway in the darkness to the eternal beat of the ocean. Eric is concerned with none of this. He is irritated that the sunken section is not in sight. He looks at the compass on the dive computer that is strapped to his arm and begins to kick in the general direction of where the section hopefully was.
Even though he wears one of the newest and best dry suits on the market, Eric could swear that the water is getting colder the further he goes. The life is getting thicker too. The rocks are now almost completely hidden by organic growth.
A dark, hulking shape looms out of the darkness in front of him. It is the bridge section, although it looks nothing like he remembers it. En explosion of sea life completely hides the concrete beneath. He notes that it has settled right side up and it still looks to be intact, no holes or cracks are visible. Thick schools of silver fish slowly cruise around the man made object, reflecting Eric’s flashlight in bright flashes. Eric stops for a moment and gazes at the section. How could it have been overgrown so quickly? He wonders. You must have fed them well my dear.
Eric checks his dive computer and sees he still has plenty of air left in his tank. He begins to kick toward the life-covered mass. The bottom of the section has completely fused with the sea floor. The once rectangular piece of concrete now looks like a knoll in the sea-bed. He wonders if the hatches will even be visible under all the sea life.
It doesn’t take Eric long to find the hatches once he reaches the top of the section. Surprisingly, they have not even been touched by sea life. They are slightly rusted but not even a single barnacle clings to them. Five of the six hatches are closed. The water rushing past while the section had been sinking must have forced them shut. He now floats over the only open hatch and peers inside. He sees only darkness. Even when he points the dive light into the hole he can’t make out the floor of the section, which is about twenty feet below him. All he sees is a faint gray blur of reflected light.
The opening is just wide enough for Eric to squeeze himself and his gear through. For a brief moment his air tank is wedged against the side of the hatch and he is stuck upside down with his head pointed into the pitch darkness. He nearly panics before he is able to work himself free. Goddamn bitch! He curses to himself. Look what you’re making me go through. Cynthia, you always had to make it hard for me didn’t you?
Eric uses the corroded rungs of the service ladder that drops to the floor of the section to pull himself downward for a few feet before righting himself.
He is stunned at what he sees. Eric had expected the walls of the section to be barren. No light reaches into this cavern and the only inflow and outflow of water comes through the one open hatch. There is no way that the few nutrients that drift through that small hole could ever sustain what he is now looking at. A sea of white shimmers under his flashlight beam. Anemones the color of snow blanket the concrete walls. They ripple in impossible patterns as Eric plays the light over them, completely awe struck by the beauty that surrounds him. Billions of silken arms seem to reach toward the passing light. He begins to notice faint specs of blue light that dance and flicker above the anemones. They are some sort of phosphorescent microorganism, a kind he has never before seen in these waters.
The flashlight begins to flicker for a moment but then returns to its former brightness. He is not overly concerned. He put brand new batteries in the light before he dove. They are supposed to have a life of over six hours – plenty of time. Eric allows himself to sink toward the bottom of the white-lined chasm. He cannot forget why he is here. He has a job to finish. There is no time for distractions.
Eric’s knees sink into the soft carpet of anemones as he comes to rest on the floor of the section. He plays the flashlight over their fragile bodies looking for any sign of irregularity in the uniform carpet of whiteness that could show where Cynthia’s remains – if there are even any left, which is doubtful by the look of things – might be hidden. He glides to the nearest mound and begins to rip away the anemones to see what they hide. They flash a brief moment as they are torn from their perches and tossed to the side. Eric uncovers a small chunk of concrete that had fallen from the ceiling when the section was flooding. He moves about the chasm floor tearing up areas of anemones for several minutes, but finds no sign of his wife’s remains. The water could have pushed them anywhere. He begins to kick toward the far end of the section, which is about fifty feet away, scanning the carpeted bottom.
Eric reaches the far end of the chasm without finding any sign of Cynthia. He turns back the way he came. A faint squeaking groan fills the cavern, followed by a clang. For a moment he is puzzled, and then he realizes what it was he heard. It sounded like a rusted hatch closing. Eric begins to frantically swim toward the opposite side of the section. When he gets there his fears are realized as he sees that the hatch has indeed closed. How? He thinks to himself. He grabs the rusted turn-wheel but knows it won’t budge even before he twists it with all of his might. He kicks to the next hatch and tries it as well. It is corroded even worse than the first. There is no way he can get it open. Desperate now, he swims from hatch to hatch trying to open one of them. None of them budge.
Eric swims back to the hatch he came in through and sets to work on it with his diving knife. He rams the blunt ended blade again and again into the rim of the hatch, trying to somehow break it loose.
His flashlight flickers a moment, goes out and then comes back on. The water is colder now, much colder than it was when he came in here. His hands are becoming numb and he is beginning to shiver. The flashlight goes out again. It is not completely dark in here. The walls glow a faint green. The blue flickers of light are beginning to swirl faster now. Eric shakes the flashlight and it comes back on. He plays the light across the walls and into the darkness of the far end of the chasm. All he can see is white-lined walls. He is breathing hard now, too hard. His air is getting low. Calm down! He shouts in his mind. You have to be rational, you don’t want to end up like sweet Cynthia now do you?
But he can’t calm down now, not while watching what is going on around him. The anemones have gone wild. They are having a collective seizure, wildly jerking back and forth at an impossible speed. The blue flickers are swirling madly about one another. Eric pounds the knife into the hatch with all his strength. The flashlight goes out again, but not before illuminating something that makes his blood run as cold as the water surrounding him. A figure floats in the far depths of the chasm, arms floating at its sides.
Oh my god! Eric is gasping now. Adrenaline coursing through his body, Eric slams the knife repeatedly into the hatch. It suddenly snaps in his hand and he is left holding a plastic hilt.
The water thrums around him as thousands upon thousands of anemones beat themselves together in a frenzied rage.
My love.
A voice pierces through his head.
You came back.
Eric pushes himself away from the hatch and begins kicking frantically toward the bottom and away from…her. Jesus Cynthia, how?
As he nears the bottom he looks up and screams through his regulator. A dim shape is descending upon him. He kicks his legs with the force that only the terrified can muster and begins a desperate flight toward the opposite end of the section. He is breathing in panicked gasps and his air is being consumed quickly. An alarm begins to go off on his dive computer, he is almost out of air, but he does not pay any notice. Eric continues his flight.
The air suddenly stops flowing. He draws in nothing. Dread sweeps over him in a violent torrent. He can run no more. The ice-cold hand of fear grips his racing heart as he comes to the realization that he is about to die. The water thrums in a morbid applause of anticipation.
A hand gently grips his arm and turns him around. He wants to shut his eyes, but he cannot, they are frozen open. The dark silhouette of a woman floats in front of him. The blue flashing creatures swarm about her. She drifts closer.
I’ve waited so long for you.
The flashlight Eric had forgotten he was carrying suddenly flickers into life again for a moment, revealing the apparition before him. Her hair obscures her face from view, but Eric knows that it is Cynthia. She draws nearer and reaches out the flesh eaten hands of a corpse and grasps his arms.
It’s so cold here Eric.
Her face is revealed as her hair drifts apart. Eric screams the last of the air of his lungs into the water. Her lips are mostly gone, they hang in strips about her mouth. Her nose is still the same it always was but her eyes, God her eyes. They are nothing but sockets, dark as the water that surrounds them.
There is no peace.
The flashlight goes out and drops from Eric’s numb hands. Cold fingers brush across his cheek. His regulator is gently taken from his mouth and then moments later his mask is pulled from his head, allowing frigid water to flood his eyes. He tries to fight her off but all of his strength is gone. Lungs aching, he desperately tries to take a breath. Cold water rushes down his throat, choking him. He is beyond panic.
We’ll rest together.
Tattered lips press against his, and the dark waters swirl around him as his life drains away.
