Nightmare Country

by Marlys Millhiser

  What looked like a puff of dust from the center of the mound, some distance away, and sand particles began to tumble instead of trickle. The entire ocean floor seemed to tremble so imperceptibly that it took Thad a moment to realize it was moving.

  10

  More sand spilled over the sub. It moved slightly, as if being nudged. Thad was aware of the string of divers making their way toward him, of sand particles floating in the water instead of settling to the bottom, of Eliseo’s arms waving in the soft, slow rhythm swimmers make underwater when they’re trying to stay in one place.

  But his consciousness concentrated on the sound and the increasing pressure against his face that forced his mask into bone, pushed his nose and jaw back, and drew the blood to his head. This gave him the feeling of suffocating, even though he still sucked in regular breaths from his regulator.

  Sound filled the water, seemed to be one with the pressure. He couldn’t liken it to anything he’d ever heard before. It wavered, became steady for a time, and resumed its wavering, a deep grating tone. The bulge below him became more pronounced. The diameter of the mound was larger than he’d thought. Dark gray patches appeared between sand ruffles now—shiny, moist-looking.

  Approaching divers veered away. Eliseo tapped him on the shoulder, and the guide’s fins rose to join the bubbles oozing from around the edges of the egg-shaped thing as it protruded more and more from the ocean floor and grew in size as it did so. It reminded Thad of a sightless eyeball, mammoth and dead.

  He turned to follow Eliseo and the others, abstracted by the thought that either something had gone radically wrong with the world or he was in one of those fantastic dreams he’d been having. The location was not at the base of that ugly mountain, and he’d usually known he was dreaming before. Perhaps those were only the dreams he remembered. This absorption slowed him enough to allow him a quick glance over his shoulder, and what he saw turned him around completely.

  Thad kicked back into the danger from which everyone else fled. This was probably just a dream. He’d awaken before things became fatal. If it wasn’t, he’d never forgive himself for playing it safe after seeing that diver in trouble.

  He considered trying to go through the egg-shaped gray mass still growing beneath him—just to test the dream theory. But he had time to admit he hadn’t the nerve. He swam over it, one fin scraping the burgeoning surface. He was on the other side, where he’d seen a diver being pulled into the sand at the rim of the emerging … whatever it was, the diver’s hands above his head, finned feet already disappearing in a suction of some kind between the sea floor and the rising … hulk? Thing? Alive? Machine? His mind balked at “space hangar.” Too Edward P. III. Too sensationalized, Devil’s Triangle type of crap.

  Thad found the diver’s air tank, mask, and attached snorkel tumbling down a sand heap, making way for still more of the giant eye. No buoyancy vest, fins. No diver. Thad found the sound and the pressure unbearable, found tears mixing with blood inside his mask and himself rising to the surface, dragging the extra equipment and unable to see through the viscous cloud between his eyes and the mask window.

  He screamed at himself to wake up, and was startled when he broke the surface. He couldn’t seem to let go of the additional gear, as if it were a lifeline to a lost diver. A tugging sucked at him from beneath, and, finally dropping the other air tank, he paddled blindly away from the thing rising in the water. This was no dream. It was death. Thad was shocked to find it so recognizable.

  Would he see Ricky again? Or was there anything of Ricky to see?

  A wave, a force, something, propelled him into the air, knocked his mask ajar so he could see again, see the blood escaping on white water near his face as he plunged, defenseless. Drowning.

  The regulator wrenched from his mouth, jerking loose teeth that had clamped around rubber tabs. He retreated into his mind. It was not filled with memories on parade to review his life, nor regret at its shortness, nor fear at its end. Merely shock. And anger that this should be happening. Rage.

  Thad slammed into something hard. Within that something, the echo of the sound of his impact was the last sound he heard before even his rage gave way to nothing.

  “Have we got everybody?”

  “Just get us the hell out of here!”

  “Can’t count heads with everybody flying around so.”

  “Engine working?”

  “Where’s Bo?” A woman’s voice, next to his ear. She held him from behind. They were both being tossed about on the deck of the boat.

  Martha Durwent. He was alive. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Throw the life preservers out. Maybe somebody’ll catch one.”

  “Where’s Bo?” Martha screamed.

  “Bo? You on board, Bo?”

  “Madre de Dios … clemencia … por favor.”

  “Aulalio, get this fuckin’ tub moving!”

  Thad doubled up in a choking spasm that ripped him from Martha’s arms and sent him into the crevice under a shelf seat, where he became lodged but then skidded out again as water washed over the boat. He slid down the deck like the watermelons had done earlier, and into Don Bodecker. The salesman pressed a rough rope into Thad’s hands, forced his fingers to clamp around it. “It’s tied to a cleat.”

  One arm of Don’s wet suit was ripped almost off and hanging behind, but his exposed flesh looked unharmed.

  The bow lunged into the air and a jumble of diving gear and Styrofoam coolers went overboard at the stern. Martha Durwent grabbed his ankle, her wet hair slicked against her head and shoulders. He pulled her up to where she could hang on to the line with him, just as the open boat nose-dived. Thad found himself staring at the giant gray eye. It swelled above an angry ocean and was outlined against the sky.

  Clouds twisted in on themselves and then expanded, darkened. Lightning jagged in odd short bursts. Rain added to the swirling wet of the sea. Maybe Thad had died.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if a flying saucer came out of that big eye over there,” he yelled at Martha, and had the urge to giggle, but not the strength. She twisted away from him, and he had to haul her back to the line. “Stay put.”

  “Greg!”

  But Greg Durwent went over the side. Martha turned limp against Thad, and he made the strength to keep them both attached to the rope. They rose again on a gigantic, endless swell, and Thad’s stomach seemed to rush to his feet. Martha nearly broke loose from his exhausted grip.

  Aulalio Paz slid backward on his stomach, eyes and mouth gaping, finger- and toenails digging into the deck like a startled cat’s. He wrapped himself around Martha’s legs.

  “Grab the line, not her,” Thad screamed over the sea’s hysteria. “Can’t hold you both!”

  They were all sliding down the rope, Thad’s hands burning, his arm—threaded under Martha’s armpits and across her chest—going numb before Aulalio got a hold on the rope and Thad felt the release of his weight. He inched himself and the woman higher up to give the guide more room as the dive boat crested the wave, bucked, and plunged.

  The descent was brutal, life preservers flung out to the ends of their rope tethers and high into the air, shining an odd luminous white against the sooty, roiling sky. Aulalio rose too on the end of their line and pounded back into the deck, narrowly missing a corner of the air-tank container.

  As they bottomed out in the deep of the trough, Thad could see huddled shapes around the deck but didn’t have time to count them before salt water slammed over the side to sting the various scraped areas on his body and threatened once again to drown him.

  He had no idea how long this torture lasted, nor exactly when the seas calmed, the sky cleared, and the squall was at an end. But eventually the sun grew hot and his skin sticky with dried salt water.

  Men moved about, their wet suits patchy and shredded, blood oozing from scrapes. Dark swellings. One limped, another held an arm tightly with the other hand. Everyone peered over the side. Except Martha Durwent. She sat on th
e bench seat with her head in her hands. A drying blood trail ran from her hair, down her neck, and across the nipple of an exposed breast.

  Other than the few air tanks still in their holes, the boat had emptied of gear. The crowded jumble of food containers, masks, fins—all had washed overboard. Harry-the-baker counted heads.

  Thad pulled himself to his knees and then to his feet, stood swaying to look out over a sea still frothy white with grains of sand. No eyeball. No Styrofoam cooler tops floating on the surface. “How many?” he asked Harry.

  “Can’t keep my wits straight long enough to remember how many we were to begin with. But if I’m counting right, we only lost four,” he said with disbelief.

  “We’re missing Bo, Abrams, Terry, and Martha’s husband.” Don pulled in a life preserver by its line, as if expecting to find a survivor.

  Eliseo tugged open a trapdoor in the deck and crawled into the pit to bail out the water around the engine with a face mask that had hung around his neck through it all. His brother watched dumbly, crossed himself, muttered under his breath.

  “Quiet! Listen.” Martha looked up, dropping her hands. Everyone else froze. A far-off cry. It could have been a bird. And it could have been human. She stood. “Greg!”

  Another faint cry. An answer? Coincidence?

  “Could be a sea gull. Don’t get your hopes up too high.” Harry put his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Over here!”

  The answer came back right away, and Thad thought he could even detect the direction.

  “That’s a man.” Don jumped into the pit to help Eliseo. “Sounded like either ‘help’ or ‘here.’”

  “So does a gull, if that’s what you want it to sound like. Coulda been an echo of my voice.”

  They called, fiddled with the engine. There were no boats on the horizon; the call must be from a survivor. Martha knelt on the bench seat and gripped the gunwales, staring in the direction of the cries, her body unnaturally stiff but shuddering in spasms paced at about one every thirty seconds.

  Thad was surprised there wasn’t more evidence of shock. Perhaps there was, and he was too far gone to recognize it. Those not trying to help with the engine sat drooping, staring inward, leaving an outward impression of blankness. Then one would shift or start at Harry’s repeated calls and remember to blink strained eyes. The movement would startle the next man into doing the same, and then the next.

  Everyone perked up when the engine coughed to life, began to strain with Aulalio’s effort to budge a stuck rudder, literally swayed with relief when it moved. But then no one could agree on the direction from which the cries had come. Aulalio headed them in the direction of Martha’s pointed finger and let the men argue. They could no longer hear the calls of the probable survivor over the engine, which seemed to be missing on about every other cylinder, but soon saw something bobbing in the water to the port side and eventually made out a man clinging to the lid of an ice chest.

  It was the man named Abrams.

  Martha’s body relaxed, and a certain expression in her eyes died.

  The wooden ladders, used by the divers to get back on board, had been lost at sea, and Abrams was too injured to help himself up on the end of a life preserver. So two men jumped in the water and helped him on board with a life preserver ringing his chest and another his legs. He groaned only once. Thad ran his hands gently down Abrams’ torso.

  “Got a drink of water, Doc?”

  “Sorry, we don’t have anything.”

  “Great,” Abrams whispered, and passed out.

  Thad calculated that almost every rib in the man’s body was broken. He bent close to Aulalio’s ear. “We’ve got some serious injuries here.” He saw broken toes and fingers, ribs, at least one broken arm, and some head cuts he didn’t like. “You’ve got to get us back fast.”

  “Can’t.” Aulalio burst into a mixture of Spanish and creole, from which Thad thought he extracted the information that the guide didn’t know the way.

  “But how did you know how to get us here?” Now Thad remembered that neither Paz had referred to chart or compass. There was no land in sight from which to sight a course. No stars. These men went out to sea almost every day during the high tourist season and always came back.

  Aulalio shouted something to his brother, and Eliseo scanned the horizon, making a complete circle, shielded his eyes to take direction from the sun. He looked confused, shrugged, and then raised a tentative finger. Aulalio shrugged an answer and headed the boat that way. The Pazes were scraped and bumped and bruised too. And uneasy.

  “How do you know how to get around on the open ocean without something to guide you?”

  “I jus’ know. Metnál’s big but very shallow some places. I can see coral or wrecks, and I know—but now I’m switched around.”

  Not that the guide’s confusion mattered greatly, because the engine stalled, sputtered, spit, and quit. Eliseo was unable to restart it.

  Carl Abrams died as they watched. He opened his eyes with a surprised expression and then just stayed that way.

  Someone suggested they try to resuscitate him. Thad vetoed the plan. “He’s all broken up inside. Must be lots of internal bleeding.”

  “The rest of us’ll probably die too,” Martha said indifferently.

  “Eliseo, just what was that thing that came up out of the water?” Don Bodecker asked.

  “I never see anything like that before, mon.” His right hand came up to his chest for the pack of cigarettes he always kept in a shirt pocket there. They were gone. So was the pocket.

  “How often do you come out here?”

  “This place, only second time. You see wrecks better when they’re not all covered by coral. More and more hear about Metnál and ask to go here, so we look for new wrecks. But this never happens before.”

  “You know, I miss Bo already?” Harry Rothnel said, as if it fit right into the pattern of the conversation. “He’d have us all cracking jokes about dyin’.” The long hairs that were supposed to be trying to cover his bald spot were wisping down in his face instead.

  Thad looked past him to where a shadow spread across the water. It was huge and moving rapidly toward the dive boat.

  11

  Jerusha Fistler returned to Iron Mountain. The mystery to Tamara was how she’d managed to leave it.

  It was the morning after they’d received her mother’s letter, and Tamara looked out to see a tall stick of a woman leaning on Vinnie Hope as they descended the wooden stairs of Jerusha’s utility porch and slowly made their way to Alice’s pen. The excited goat went through his entire repertoire of antics. The woman stretched her arms to the sun, and Tamara thought she could see the very bone and tendon under the taut skin. She hurried out to get a better look at this creature and to offer help. Her neighbor appeared frail enough to fall.

  “Here’s the new teacher.” Vinnie patted Jerusha’s bottom in warning.

  Jerusha wore a cheap nylon robe of yellow, her hair a bush of black matted curls. She turned with one hand on the girl’s shoulder and the other on a fence post.

  “I’m Tamara Whelan. My daughter and I …” Tamara almost felt an impact at the intense interest Jerusha Fistler directed toward her, and was stunned at the youthfulness of the ravaged face. Jerusha’s stiff movements had led her to expect an aging person. The bony body and sunken eyes reminded Tamara of pictures she’d seen of walking skeletons at Auschwitz.

  “Are you ill?” she said stupidly, knowing she was too late to hide her shock.

  Jerusha smiled, and her teeth were enormous in the skeletal face. “Oh, I’m going to be fine.” Her voice was surprisingly strong, low and melodic. “Just stayed a little too long, didn’t I, Vinnie? Should have knowed better, ummmm?”

  “Vinnie said you were on a research trip.”

  “It got so interesting I forgot to eat and everything.” There was an unfamiliar lilt to her speech that turned up the edges of words so each one seemed to ask a question. It wasn’t Southern, but simil
ar.

  “Where did you go to do your research, and what is it you study?” Tamara didn’t believe a word of this.

  “Alice, you’ve grown so, baby.” Jerusha turned awkwardly to the goat. “You know, he wasn’t this high when I left?”

  “When did you get back?”

  “Vinnie, I believe I’d like some more eggs. Have you had your breakfast yet, Mrs. Whelan?”

  “Tamara.”

  “Why don’t we get to know each other while we eat, Tamara?”

  Tamara would have eaten twice for a chance to see what lay on the other side of the stained partition. She suspected this woman’s “trip” was related more to drug or alcohol abuse than to scientific research.

  Jerusha’s living-room/kitchen was stuffy with damp and meager light. Tamara stood blinded after the sunshine. The whooshing sounded louder here, and as soon as her eyes adjusted, they rested on the largest vaporizer she’d ever seen. Plastic ribbed hoses sprouted from it, aimed in different directions and hanging from strings nailed to the ceiling. Mist puffed from the end of each hose with every “whoosh.” Water burbled in a giant glass jar.

  The dimness was caused by the covering of waxy-leaved plants at the windows. But it proved to be one plant—a vine growing up a pole out of a floor pot and then along the ceiling, where it was tied by thread to nails. It formed a leafy cornice all around the room and dropped down to catch the light and bunch up at every window. There were corners cut out of the bedroom doors so it could grow into these rooms without being affected by the position of the door.

  “… nosy,” Vinnie whispered to Jerusha, who was breaking eggs with shaky hands. “Just like Miss Kopecky.”

  Jerusha’s grin full of teeth was even more grotesque in the dim light. “That plant is my very first experiment, Tamara. It’s called the night-blooming cereus. It won’t grow in such a dry place, so I keep wetness in the air for it.”

  Hence the stain on the other side of the wall.

  “Still, it blooms only once a year here. Pour us coffee, please?”