Aberration at 150ft
A Hunter and Their Treasure
Theo told me to mind the empty spaces down there. He always said that, as if I hadn’t done this hundreds of times, as if I was easily spooked. But I knew he just meant “be careful.” Don’t get caught off guard, and don’t panic.
After one final check, we gave each other a thumbs up. I back-rolled into the dark blue water. This deep, where there weren’t any corals to draw tourists, the gradient between warm, turquoise water and deep blue depths is stark. Bubbles pulsed by my ears as I let myself fall, kicking when I needed to. The darkness grew lighter in spots, the rest coalescing into an unnatural shape.
A barnacle-crusted comms tower rose to greet me, a stiff, sun-bleached flag hanging off it like a cape. A rush of adrenaline shot through my arms as I touched it. But I couldn’t get too excited yet. Theo’s words rang in my ears, and I did a slow three-sixty.
The bottom here was sandy and rocky. There was no plant life. It was cold. My eyes locked onto a dark shape, either not too large, or very far away, lingering in the deeper shades of blue. I didn’t panic. I held my breath and listened. A series of whoops and chirps, a familiar song, though faint, pulsed through the water. I exhaled. Just a humpback. Maybe it would come and say hello.
One hand on the railing, I guided myself down to what remained of the main deck. My fins made quick work of clearing some of the silt and sand away from the crusty metal. Somehow the green things that had refused to grow in the raw silt were sprouting out of the ship’s cracks, staking their claim. That was fine. It would be all theirs soon.
A metal door leading to the main cabins had been wrenched free of the rust and crustaceans. Likely the work of the body recovery crew or scavengers that had beaten me to it. I knew that by the time I got here, there would be no personal effects or obvious valuables left to harvest. But I was a hunter. I had a specific target, and unless they’d smuggled it out without realizing its true value, my prize wasn’t far from me now.
I clicked on my flashlight. A few small fish scattered, quick as lightning. The corridor was relatively intact, although cluttered with floating debris, now-worthless papers and knickknacks. I couldn’t hear much over the sound of my own breathing and bubbles, but the current’s push and pull elicited occasional creaks and moans from the dead hull. I laid a palm on the metal frame of the open door. Hush now. You can rest.
As I stood in the doorway, a sudden darkness passed over me. I looked up, where Theo’s boat, a small liveaboard, should have been floating. Instead, I saw the silhouette of another diver drifting down. I sighed and spoke into my transceiver.
“I have a permit for this wreck for the day. You’ll have to come back later.”
Bubbles floated up from the other diver’s head. They seemed to be turning away from me. It was hard to tell with the sunlight behind them. I tapped on my tank. The clank was jarring in this cold stillness, even to me.
“You hear me? You can’t dive here today. Go away.”
The other diver drew closer still. In frustration, I turned my light on them. It wasn’t a diver. My eyes, the odd light, the routine of it all—I had been lulled into complacency, and I was only just realizing how grave my error had been.
No, the figure drifting towards me wasn’t a diver. They weren’t wearing fins, or a tank. It was just a man, sinking, bubbles escaping from his lungs as water rushed in. A man I recognized. That old Cardinals t-shirt and khaki shorts. No. I cried out. No.
I pushed off the deck hard, reaching for him, but then I heard it. A rumble like a train. High-pitched clicks. Something wooshed behind me, spinning me, but I couldn’t see it. I was completely disoriented, and there was only one guiding star I had to cling to: the boat. I had to grab Theo and get to the boat.
I looked up at the sparkling white of the surface. It was gone. The boat was gone. No. I dropped my gaze. It was there, sinking, snapped into pieces. I felt and heard the rumble grow louder again. I looked at Theo, reaching to him still, but I fought down my grief. He was dead. Sinking this far down, he’d been dead a while. Dead. No use dying for the dead.
I kicked as fast as I could back down to the open door of the ship and sped deep into the hull, knocking into floating clipboards and fragments of metal as I navigated its labyrinthine halls. Inside the sunken metal chambers, the rumbling and clicking magnified. I swam up a ladder to a locked hatch. My back to it, facing down, I took a few long shuddering breaths.
I was 150 feet down. Over a mile offshore. No boat. An unknown predator.
The sound of tearing metal distracted me. The chamber I was in suddenly jerked sideways, slamming me against the metal ladder. Pain burst through my back. Shrieks and clacks reverberated around me.
As the shaking died down, I reached for the cutting torch strapped to my chest and turned it on the hinges of the door above me.
Whatever this creature was, its sounds elicited a primal fear in my body. I knew when I was being stalked. I’d been followed by barracuda and sea snakes, but those minded themselves as long as I ignored them. So did sharks. I didn’t think whatever hunted me now would play by the same rules. I just hoped it was dumb enough to wait at the entrance to the ship while I found my own exit.
Once I had the door off, I swam up, my light leading the way. I discovered what had caused all of the shaking and noise. Halfway across the room, some kind of common space, the floor disappeared. I saw, maybe twenty feet past that, the other half of the ship. It had been torn apart, just now. I quickly turned off my light and held my breath.
I saw something, in the gap torn into the ship. It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t some gigantic kraken or mythical sea monster either, just get that out of your head.
I know it’s important to leave an accurate record. That’s the whole point of me wasting my oxygen here. But I can’t—I don’t want anyone to listen to this and think I finally lost it. It would be easier if it was some sharp-toothed, tentacled monstrosity, if it had a knowable psychology. Predator. Hunter. Territorial. Mother. All I got from it was dread. Not that panicked dread of being consumed, but the somber peace of recognizing your death.
The way the beams of sunlight hit it, wove through it, seemed to feed it, was actually quite beautiful. Like a sacred dance human eyes were never intended to witness. It had kicked up all the sand and silt, and as the clouds of particles began to settle, I saw what lay at its heart: emptiness. This was a one-sided encounter. It couldn’t look back at me, it couldn’t give back to me. But it could take.
I knew then it would kill me. Not because it was hunting me, or agitated, or afraid. No, I think it was above all of those things, it had no wants, or needs. It just…wasn’t compatible with life.
I was still holding my breath. Slowly, quietly, I tried to slip back down the ladder. My body shook as I fought my own lungs, but it didn’t matter. I heard the rumbling again as soon as I moved. I let the bubbles billow out of my mouth, creating a kind of cloud as I dove back down the way I came.
Metal screamed against itself, the sound driving into my ears like knives. I swam down, down to the lowest corridor as a wave of pressure propelled me forward. I glanced back. The chamber around the ladder was collapsing, squeezed together as if it were an empty aluminum can. I kicked my fins harder and burst into a new room.
All quiet, suddenly. And dark. I didn’t want to click on my light, I didn’t want to move at all for fear of the aberration twisting and collapsing this room too. It seemed like it could do anything.
I took the risk. It looked like I’d stumbled into crew quarters. In the murky blue-white of my beam, the sheets of the beds floated like childish ghosts. I almost laughed. The chests and boxes underneath the bunk frames had already been pulled out, opened, looted. I still checked under the mattresses. Nothing.
I wondered whether anyone had died in here when the ship sank. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be the lone spirit haunting this room or if I’d finally crave some company in death. I shook off the thought. I could still complete my hunt—my prize was on this half of the ship. I just had to find another way out of the room.
I swam up to the ceiling and combed every inch of it with my light. There. And there. Two gashes, places the metal had been twisted and punctured. I took out my cutting torch and started working on the metal between them. The rumbling came again, but I didn’t stop. Once I’d sliced between the two gashes, I started cutting perpendicularly, until I’d made a V-shape in the metal. It was malleable enough that, with the heat of the torch, I could slowly bend it upwards from there. I swam through the new opening.
It was a storage room. Boxes were everywhere, and small fish nibbled at rotten food on the floor and the counters. Surfaces were coated in a thin, green slime, including the door handle. My hand kept slipping, so I took off my glove. It was so cold. My skin turned blue as I squeezed the door handle and pulled, bracing myself against the frame. It jolted open, and a horrible grating sound reverberated through the hull. The rumbling and clicking grew louder.
As I swam and sliced my way up through the ship, these sounds shifted, becoming distorted, perverted. I heard the whistling chirps again, now recognizing their poor mimicry of actual whale song. And I heard screams. Sometimes it sounded like Theo. Sometimes it sounded like a hundred other men and women. I blew extra bubbles to drown them out.
Now sweating in my suit, I took my gloves off again. Heat leaves the body quickly in water. I felt the chill run up my arms. Gloves back on. I put the torch away too. I was where I needed to be.
The CO’s quarters weren’t huge, but they had a real window. Open blue outside. I floated over to his desk. The papers were gone. They were probably taken by the recovery crew to keep them confidential, even if they were drenched and ruined.
I tugged the drawers until I found one with a false back. I made quick work of it and felt around for the chain. The screams had stopped, and I dared to hope, briefly, that I might make it out alive.
My fingers found the loops of metal, and I pulled it out. It had rusted some, of course, but it still shone silver. And, on the end of it, there was a waterproof case. I didn’t dare open it here, but I squeezed it, feeling the shape of a memory stick inside. Relief washed over my tired body. I laughed.
It laughed too. So many voices, not all human, in unison. Laughing. I stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I could not think to move an arm or a leg. A needle of fear had dug itself into my spinal cord, and after all this, I finally panicked.
My mind was completely blank, ringing with the unholy chorus of laughter. That sense of emptiness slowly settled in my chest again, reminding me that my life would ultimately slip into something I did not understand. That bothered me more than simply drowning—the idea my existence might become part of, or made null by, this aberration. I let myself sink to the floor, following the thought, reaching a conclusion I hope you will understand if I am found.
I swam back down all the way to the storage room. There had been some heavy chains there. I took them up, one by one, to the CO’s quarters. Every trip, more and more of the green slime had turned to ash. Pink blobs floated past my hands, inverted fish guts. I swam faster.
The CO’s desk and bed frame were heavy. I began chaining my body down to them. I started with my legs, then wrapped myself thoroughly around the torso, loosely around the neck, head, and arms.
I wasn’t sure if more scavengers would come, or if someone would stumble upon the wreck and my body. If you’re hearing this, I suppose someone did. Maybe you. Maybe you found a fresh corpse or just hair and bones. I couldn’t know. I had to tie everything down, capture every part of myself and hold it steady against the waves of decay.
But I want to make my intentions clear. I am not asking for pity or the dignity of a burial. I hope no one comes. I hope no living thing encounters this place again.
I don’t know what it is. It’s not alive. It’s not a thing or entity or natural phenomenon. And if it takes me, I won’t be anything either. But it won’t. Do you hear that rumbling? The clicks? It’s here, it’s right outside. And it won’t have me. I’m going to exist as long as this ship exists, as long as these chains exist. I am going to take off my mask and swallow my prize. No one gets that either. Everything that I am, everything that I have, stays.
I’m ending this recording now. I am going to die. Yes. But on my own terms, with my treasure in my mouth.
Thank you for reading Every Nook Uncanny. If you liked what you read, please share and comment. The audio version of this story will be available this Friday. You can follow Mae on Twitter.