Down Below Where the Water Goes Deep

A heavy fog hovers over the murky lake.

A single pontoon rocks.

Glenn unfolds a map and sets it on the table. Clint and Garrett stand shoulder-to-shoulder beside their older brother. “Just think, boys, somewhere below Lake Ventrue lies our chance to strike fifteen-k a piece. Just imagine what you could do with that sorta dough.” He looks to Garrett, “You can pay off all those loans to college you took out.” He nods to Clint, “You can get that nice four-by-four you were eyeing.”

“Righteous,” Clint grins.

Garrett strikes them both an uncertain glance. “I still don’t know about this… Sounds like a swindle. They say you can’t trust Major Stratham further that you can throw him.”

“That’s ex-Major Stratham, mind you…” Glenn certifies, “He is a very reputable member of the Army. You heard him telling you the stories about how he saved those two-hundred orphans from that one village in Cambodia all by himself, hijacked a chopper, and bombed the place to smithereens, single-handedly. An All-American Hero, he is.”

“All-American Hero,” Clint parrots with a toothy grin.

“It’s our responsibility as citizens to respect any soldier who would put their lives on the line to defend this great nation. Anything less of respect is treason.”

Garrett eyes both brothers: while Clint wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box his ignorance is forgivable, but he still questions Glenn’s own sanity. Garrett plays along, “Yes, Major Stratham should have a statue made, a marching-band play, and the whole-nine-yards in his honor.”

“You’re finally on the same level. Took long enough, Bud.” He examines the grid. “Okay, so we reached coordinates x-283 by y-697. That would make us right above where the submarine is submerged. All we gotta do is comb this wreckage for--” he procures an unfolded sheet of paper and fans his fingers to examine it. “T’Hetha X’ulta. Lost icon of the indigenous South American tribe.” Garrett eyes the black statue, a squat emperor with eagle feathers fanned to represent the sun and an opened mouth from which a snake creeps out like a serpentine tongue.

“Tribe got a name?” Garrett asks.

“Who cares?” Glenn scoffs.

Garrett loves when the gears begin to spin. “Are we to believe a submarine just happens to lie in this lake? And if it does contain the priceless relic, as you say, what makes you think it’s still down there?”

“You’re not thinking fourth-dimensionally, Garrett!” Glenn expresses stark annoyance when explaining, “Lake Ventrue is very deceptive. It looks like a normal lake to the naked eye, but in its center goes down for a few hundred miles. The submarine could have easily ended up there easily if a plane transported it over the lake and whoops! the submarine drops. Lost forever. Then there’s the Creature of Lake Ventrue.”

“Okay, Glenn. It’s one thing about this submarine, but when you throw in a mythical creature used to as a prop for campfire tales, that’s when I call it quits.”

“You can’t leave, Garrett.” Glenn assures, “There is a great treasure down there that will make us rich. You know it just as well as I. Besides, you don’t want to piss off Major Stratham. He is quite the collector of rare relics.”

Garrett cannot possibly believe the extent to which his older brother would go at justifying such a ridiculous prospect. Then again, Glenn was always had this compulsion about himself to never think things completely through. Garrett was always cleaning his mess. No more.

“This’ll be the last excursion I take on your escapades to idiocy. Got it?”


Glenn claps both hands, rubbing them together. “When we grab the score, I won’t need anymore favors from you.”


Garrett knew better than to hold his breath. “Mark my words, any favor you ask of me will be like asking the wind to cease.” Garrett doubts Glenn even understands the metaphor.

“You can still count on me.” Clint says, smiling, in an unpromising sort of way.

Suited up, Glenn perches back against railing. “Here’s how it’s going to go down: I take the lead, Garrett takes in second, and Clint you stay up to manage the air. Time us at thirty minutes, then reel us in. Anything happens, one of us will tug this cord three times,” tug-tug-tug “reel us in. Got it?” Clint nods. “Showtime!”

He fastens his mask and drops backward in a big splash below the murk.

“Crazed-assed-loon.” Garrett shakes his head, swings around, leans against the rail, thumb-ups Clint, and plunges.

Clint sits back, watching the measurements of the underwater reel roll downward.

***

Bubbles rise up around Garrett as he swerves through the cool gloom. Kicking fins, he follows Glenn’s lead. A beam from the flashlight ahead guides their way.

Fish jet away in different directions. Glenn, a seasoned deep-sea diver, spent the better half of his life combing beaches for treasures. Garrett, on the other hand, had little experience for comfort. Closest he’s come to deep-sea diving was swimming at the public pool.

Blues fade the oppressive purple deeper below. The pressure is beginning to get to Garrett; swimming is more of a chore, ears feel like popping.

Glenn curves around a bend; Garrett races to follow him. At the apex, Garrett stops but for a second’s-worth of surprise. A submarine lays, sideways, on the edge of a cliff and before a bottomless pit.

Glenn pushes his way through a side hole and Garrett follows.

When inside, Glenn signals commands in sign language. “We split. You take right, I take left. We round back. Meet in ten minutes.”

Garrett thumbs-ups and banks right, turning on his flashlight.

Little can be seen outside the solitary orb that bounces from here to there. He swims past computers and other machinery into deeper reaches.

He checks his waterproof wrist-watch. Four minutes have passed. Plenty of time.

Garrett notices an aperture peeking to the sublevel below and squeezes through the steel grating.

He scans the perimeter of what looks like an infirmary. Pushing his way bedrail-by-bedrail, Garrett scopes the room.

Mindlessly he grasps the edge of a blanket and jerks it back. A skeleton leaps out at him in an undulating embrace. Garrett bolts back, fighting against the corpse; wisps of dead hair float off the top of its skull. He pushes it away. The skeleton swirls and twirls, landing against a rail, its left arm breaks off.

Garrett checks his watch. Four minutes. Long to explore this room and round back to the rendezvous point.

He looks left. An open office shows a desk turned over, drawers spilled over. He directs the beam to an odd obstruction leaning partly upward. Using the rim of the threshold, Garrett propels himself toward it. He wraps his hand around a black statue, matching the perfect description.

Garrett follows his path back to the rendezvous point.

No Glenn. He idles for half-a-minute. Eight-minute ascent to surface, ten-minute oxygen supply.

A blackness shoots left of him. Garrett swings the light that direction. Glenn better not be playing one of his sick jokes.

He creeps leftward, following Glenn’s cord. Tension rising. No use shouting out for him when nothing can be heard.

He swims deeper. Suddenly, Glenn’s rope goes slack. Garrett slowly pulls the cord back to him, inch-by-inch. Left-arm-right-arm moving fast, Garrett comes to the end of the rope and squirms back. Garrett’s eyes look back at him in frozen terror, the decapitated head bobbing every which way.

Tug-tug-tug!

Clint, sitting back on pontoon, listens to guitars shred through headphones.

Tug-tug-tug!

Nothing.

The metallic ceiling crashes down before Garrett as if a tree fell upon a house. Only this is no tree. It is an enormous tentacle. “Shit!!!” Garrett grunts and races back to the hollow. The tentacle retreats upward.

Get-up!Get-up!Get-up! Garrett scambles up the gap and pulls himself out.

A twenty-foot tentacle wraps around the submarine, yanking it to the pit below. Curiosity rears Garrett’s gaze downward to see hundreds of black, slimy eyes. Dozens of tentacles swings crazily around like a lawn sprinkler bent on destruction. The Creature of Lake Ventrue studies Garrett with all eyes.

In a frenzy, Garrett fights for his rope, the relic slipping from his grasp, falling down to the endless abyss from where the creature arises.

Tug-tug-tug-tug-tug!tug!tug!TUG!!!TUG!!!!!!!

The reel clinks frantically against the wall of the pontoon. Clint throws aside the headphones and reels them in. First comes an empty rope. Second takes a while longer.

In stark confusion, Clint hunches over the side to observe. “What the?”

The water boils rapidly. Out shoots a huge mass before him. Clint jumps aside as the dark mass crashes onto the starboard side.

Garrett pulls off his mask, coughing out water. He gasps. “Go! Go! Now!”

“What about Glenn?”

The water rumbles around them. Garrett crosses the gunwale, cranks the engine, and clears the scene.

The water subsides and grows still.

A heavy fog hovers over the murky lake.