The Devil's Deep

by Michael Wallace

  “Her dad’s a fisherman? Doesn’t sound like the type who can send money to pay for his daughter’s apartment.”

  “No, it doesn’t. With any luck, we’ll find Rosa and she can explain it herself.”

  “So what now?” Becca asked.

  “Let’s rent some gear from Bernd so we’ll be ready first thing in the morning.” He paused. It was a great day, perfect weather, blue sky punctuated by towering white clouds that drifted across the peninsula. “That leaves the rest of the day to take advantage of this awesome weather. Anything you want to do?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” she said. She pulled out a brochure folded in her pocket. “Got this at the dive shop.”

  It was a brochure for an animal sanctuary south of Golfito. The owner rehabilitated injured birds and animals. There was a picture of a smiling tourist holding a baby two-toed sloth. Suggested donation, ten thousand colones, about twenty bucks.

  “Let’s go down to the docks and see if we can find someone to taxi us across.”

  “That would be really cool. But, uhm, just a minute,” she said. “I’ve got to find a bathroom.”

  “Too much fruit?” Wes asked.

  “Maybe.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Yeah, well it was worth it. Or, at least, I think so. Ask me again in an hour.”

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Chad’s left eyeball had turned into a torture device. Sometimes it felt like red hot ball bearing shoved into his eye socket. Other times, like someone scratched a shard of glass back and forth across his cornea. At its best, it was a spoonful of sand between his eyelid and eyeball.

  With the pain, his ability to blink that eye disappeared. In the Chateau d’If of his mind, Chad curled in his prison cell, unable to move. From the other side of the wall, he sometimes heard the abbé cry out in pain, other times babble incoherently.

  And then, relief. After Anne Wistrom met with Pardo—lying, twisted demon of a man—and the doctor pretended not to know what had caused the inflammation, he had let slip the method to relieve Chad’s suffering. She had given his eyes regular baths with artificial tears.

  And the pain receded. His eye began to heal. He knew that his torturer would return, and this time, the pain would be worse, the damage, greater. The cycle would continue until blindness ended his hopes of escape.

  Thursday night, Frank, the janitor, came into the room to talk to the temp, a girl named Kelly Ann. Temp or no, she was the perfect HT for Chad, talking to him continually as she dressed him for bed, and gentle in her touch. With the other employees, however, she turned self-conscious and shy, awkward in her short, chubby body.

  As for Frank, he was a decent guy, but always into some scheme or other and not quite as smart as he considered himself. Tonight, he was talking about how he was going to set up a web site as a rival and companion of eBay. The hook was that his site would allow people to auction items they intended to purchase from eBay.

  “So it’s like a reseller for eBay auctions,” Frank said. “You find a great deal and then make your money as the middleman. Kind of like those people who shop yard sales, buy the bargains, then hold their own sales to make a profit. And I take a very small cut of every transaction.”

  “Wow, that sounds like a great idea,” Kelly Ann said.

  Frank nodded. “All it takes is one percent of eBay’s users to come over to eBay-squared—that’s my site—and I’ll be rich beyond your dreams.”

  Right, Chad thought. And why don’t the eBay-squared buyers just go to eBay in the first place? Get the good deal themselves?

  Wasn’t that the point of eBay, to make the process completely transparent to bring together the highest paying customers and the lowest-price sellers? Not to mention that the real eBay would send Frank a cease and desist letter about twenty-four hours after he opened his site.

  Frank continued with the ever-more preposterous details of his plan and next thing Chad knew Frank and Kelly Ann were making out.

  Funny how they always choose my room.

  The abbé’s voice came from the other side of the wall. “Doesn’t seem to bother you. In fact, I think you rather like it.”

  Ah, so you’ve stopped feeling sorry for yourself.

  “For the moment, yes.”

  How did we get to the point where I’m comforting you, my dear abbé?

  “We got to that point, Mr. Lett, when even your subconscious started to go mad.”

  Insanity on top of insanity. Even the voices in his head were hearing voices. Nice.

  Well, we’re not so insane yet that we don’t recognize it. So cut the shit and help me think. There’s got to be a way out of this.

  The voice was quiet, then came the sound of shuffling on the other side of the stone wall, as if the abbé were moving himself into a more comfortable position. For a split second, Chad felt himself floating out of this body, moving about the prison cell, the wet, kissing sounds of Frank and Kelly Ann fading away. He could smell the rot, the stink of his own body, hear the rats scrabbling in the dank corner of his cell.

  “What I want to know,” the abbé said, “is why Dr. Pardo is torturing you.”

  He’s blinding me. Cutting me off from the world.

  “But why? How does he even know you?”

  The problem was, Chad hadn’t simply awakened in this cell. It had taken months of semi-consciousness to emerge from the coma. Somewhere between the trauma and the long, slow climb to awareness, he had lost his past. It was nothing but a jumble of images and half-remembered faces.

  The first time he remembered Dr. Pardo was in a hospital speaking to the doctor on call, talking over charts as Pardo was about to take custody. Chad heard grim words to describe his condition: minimally conscious, obtundation and stupor, cognitive death.

  But I’m alive in here. Somebody, please, help. I’m not dead, I’m fully conscious. I’m alive!

  And for some reason they were calling him Chad Lett.

  That’s not my name! he’d cried. That’s not me.

  “Yes,” the abbé said, dragging him back to the present. “You became prisoner number thirty-four.”

  The governor at the Chateau d’If had numbered the prisoners to erase their identities. And so had Chad received a random name, no different than a number.

  “There’s someone else,” the abbé said. “Go back. Think about that.”

  Yes, there was someone else in the hospital room. He couldn’t see the person, but heard the feet moving.

  My wife, he’d thought at the time. Is that you? Can you see me? Can you look into my eyes and see that I’m alive in here? Please, where are you?

  But it was another man. “And you’re sure,” he said in a quiet voice. “He will never waken?”

  The first doctor told Pardo and this third person, “He sustained deep brain damage in the accident. The blow penetrated straight to the brain. There was internal bleeding. He’s alive, certainly, but it helps to picture a profoundly retarded individual who does not recognize the world and cannot interact with it in any way. You might be fooled by flinches or movement, but it’s the same—if you’ll pardon the blunt analogy—as what a chicken does when you cut off its head. It might flap around for awhile, but without its brain…”

  Of course, this doctor was wrong. The fact that Chad was silently arguing every point was proof enough of that. But he did not have a voice in the conversation. And so they shipped him to Vermont, to warehouse him with the congenitally retarded residents of Riverwood Care Center.

  “You’ve got to go back farther than that,” the abbé said. “You were already imprisoned by then. What about before you became prisoner 34? Before you were Chad Lett? Think, man.”

  “You’re hot,” Frank was telling Kelly Ann between kisses. “You know that, don’t you?”

  There was rustling. Sound of clothes dropping to the floor.

  “Not here,” Kelly Ann whispered.

  “Best place fo
r it, baby.”

  “What if someone comes?”

  “Nobody is going to come,” Frank said. “Wistrom is on break. Takes her ten minutes to make a pot of coffee. Forty minutes to read her magazine and drink it all. The nurse station will be empty till then. Joel’s still folding sheets for the next hour.”

  “But what about them?”

  “Who?”

  “Them.”

  Frank snorted. “The residents? Jesus, are you kidding? These slugs don’t know shit from sherbet. They sure as hell don’t know or care what we do.”

  The lamp flicked on next to Chad’s bed. “See, this one’s awake,” Kelly Ann said. She leaned over and Chad could see heavy, free swinging breasts. She covered herself with one arm, then used the other to pull up Chad’s blanket to cover his shoulders.

  “So? Come on, turn that off.”

  “But how do you know he doesn’t know?”

  “He doesn’t know.” Frank had softened his voice. It was coaxing now. “Come on, turn it off. This guy—uhm, Chad—has an IQ of like five or something. There’s no way he could know, or even understand.”

  “Look at his eye,” she said. Her voice was tender. “They said he’s got an infection. Poor guy.”

  Frank let out a sigh that told Chad he was all but abandoning his hope of getting laid. He leaned in. “Yeah, that looks nasty.”

  From the other side of the cell wall, the abbé said urgently, “Wake up, prisoner. It’s a chance.”

  Chad blinked his left eye. Then he blinked it three times quickly, then three straight blinks, followed by three more rapid blinks.

  “You think the light is bugging him?” Kelly Ann asked. “Look how he’s blinking.”

  “Funny. Kind of like a pattern,” Frank said. “Check it out.”

  Blink-blink-blink. Pause. Blink…blink…blink. Blink-blink-blink.

  Frank chuckled. “Like Morse Code.”

  It is Morse Code, you idiot. It’s a goddamn S.O.S. He tried again. Blink-blink-blink. Blink…blink…blink. Blink-blink-blink.

  “Don’t make fun,” Kelly Ann said. “Whatever makes his eye do that it’s got to hurt.”

  “Sorry,” Frank said. A pause. “I think the light is bugging him.” He flipped it off.

  Chad’s eyelid spasmed once as he let go his concentration. He slipped back into paralysis, exhausted, defeated.

  “Jesus,” said the abbé. “And they call you the retard.”

  “You’d better get out of here,” Kelly Ann said. The sound of rustling clothes again, but this time Chad thought she was putting her clothes on instead of taking them off. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Alright.” Frank sounded surprisingly mellow about the whole thing. Probably already thinking about his eBay-squared scheme. “Come say ‘hi’ if you get bored.”

  After he left, Kelly Ann stayed behind in the darkened room. She sang to herself in a pleasant, contralto voice. It was just something silly from the radio, but it soothed Chad. As his frustration faded, he grew sleepy.

  “You know what I think?” the abbé said. “I think that was a sorry effort on your part. Why are you so complacent?”

  Shut up, Faria. You have no idea how much effort it took to blink like that. What kind of pain I’m in.

  “I do and I don’t care. You’ve been here five years and you’ve managed to twitch one goddamn muscle?”

  You’re supposed to encourage me. When did you become the petulant one?

  “When you decided you didn’t care.”

  What do you want me to do? Spend the next two years learning how to twitch another muscle? he asked the abbé. So that people can say, ‘poor guy, give him a sedative?’

  “No, I want you to figure this thing out. Who are you? Prisoner 34? Chad Lett? You’ve got to go back. Farther. Before the accident. Better yet, remember what happened.”

  I suffered a traumatic injury, remember? I lost my ability to form new memories for a long time. Still can’t even remember what happened before. Let alone how I got like this.

  “Lame, lazy excuses. You’ll have to try harder.”

  Not now. I’m too tired.

  “Ah, I thought so. You don’t want to. Because you think it will make you unhappy. You’ll find out your wife didn’t love you or your family stabbed you in the back and that will hurt. It’s easier to lie motionless in this bed night after night. That’s right, you like it here.”

  Go to hell.

  “I will. What do you think about that? I’ll go right down to hell and I’ll leave you here alone to fester in your own thoughts. A locked-in, drooling idiot. For the rest of your pathetic life. God, that could be what? Twenty years? Thirty?”

  Chad was silent for a long time and he could hear the abbé breathing heavily on the other side of the wall. For years the man had patiently encouraged him, but what had changed? The urgency of the situation had changed, that’s what. Deep inside, Chad knew he might only have one more chance to make contact with the outside world. He had to be better prepared. He had to have a plan, to take charge at once. That had been his problem with Rosa Solorio. He had let her make the plans and she had stumbled. Someone had got her.

  Truce, abbé? he asked his friend.

  “Truce,” the man agreed.

  Talk to me. Tell me what to do.

  “I’ll try, but we’re both locked in here together, remember? I don’t have any more resources than you do.”

  Okay, a course of action, then.

  “It’s your memory. That’s the key. You’ve got to remember what happened.”

  But how? I don’t have memories of that time. I was in a coma.

  “But those memories are down there somewhere,” Faria said. “You’ve got to find them. Think, man. Think.”

  How about self-hypnosis? I made this place, this prison. Surely I can take myself back, imagine myself there again. I can put myself there again. In the water. What do you think about that?

  “Perfect,” the abbé said. “Let’s get started.”

  Chapter Fifteen:

  It was a brilliant, blue tropical day. Warm, but with a breeze off the ocean. Wes and Becca drove back to Puerto Jiménez, continued north on a dirt road to Rincón at the top of the golfo, then cut across the northernmost, narrow part of the Osa Peninsula on an even rougher road to Agujitas. Becca gripped the sides of her seat during each river crossing and looked at Wes with alarm when they reached the big crossing at the Río Drake.

  Wes stopped the Land Rover at the water’s edge, not liking how deep, wide, and swift the river looked. The crossing was a beast, even by Costa Rican standards. He stepped out of the air conditioned vehicle into the thick, warm air and walked to the edge.

  He turned back to Becca who leaned out the window. “There’s a set of tracks going in, so someone must have crossed already this morning.”

  “Yeah, but do the tracks come out the other side?” she asked. “Or were they swept away to their death?”

  “Funny.”

  Still, he was nervous. The tire tracks looked bigger than his own. So he took off his sandals and waded in. The water wasn’t as deep as it looked. Keep a steady speed and he should be okay. He returned to the Land Rover and drove into the river, slow and steady. They breathed a sigh of relief when they climbed up the other side.

  The only other time that Wes had been to the Bahía Drake had been by boat during the rainy season, when the road was impassable. Now, it was merely bone-jarring. And slow.

  At last they reached Bahía Drake. Agujitas was a small village pinned between the Pacific Ocean and the mountainous wilderness of the Corcovado. There were several adventure lodges on the hillsides, but the village itself sat right against the beach. There was a pulpería, a school, and a health clinic. A soccer field, of course.

  They parked near the pulpería. A breeze came off the ocean, but it was still warm in the direct sun, and the day promised to grow hotter.

  “Thank goodness we’ll be on the water,” Becca said.

/>   There was a dock in town, with a collection of sport fishing boats and a ragged fleet of locals’ fishing boats. Two men waited on the docks, one about fifty, the other, maybe twenty. They wore shorts, sandals, and white t-shirts. Both men were shorter than Wes, but wiry.

  “Are you Mr. Gull?” the older man asked.

  “Actually, that’s my name,” Becca said. “I’m Rebecca Gull. You can call me Becca.”

  “And I’m Wes.” He held out his hand.

  “Pura vida. I’m Ernesto Solorio. This is my son, Tomás.” Both men shook his hand in turns.

  Tomás. That would be the T. Solorio from the receipt.

  “You got our message, then,” Wes said.

  “Claro. We’re happy to take you out. Fifty-five thousand for four hours. Ten thousand an hour after that. Does that sound right to you?”

  “Seems fair.” He indicated behind them. “Our gear is in the truck.”

  “And you’ve dived this area before?” Ernesto asked. His English was quite good and Wes decided this must be an active side business with plenty of contact with English speakers.

  “Not here, no. But I’ve done dives in Costa Rica before. This is Becca’s first time to the country. We’re experienced divers—I can show you our dive cards if you’d like—so we just need someone to take us out, point out a couple of places.”

  “Do you have anywhere in mind?”

  “Somewhere around Isla del Caño,” he said. He purposefully spoke the name of the island as if he were speaking English. Becca gave him a look.

  “Sure, there are lots of good places. Paraíso is very popular. Yesterday, I talked to two Canadians who went to Cueva Tiburón. They saw lots of fish but there were some strong currents, too.”

  “Cueva Tiburón. That’s…shark cave?” Becca asked.

  “Yes, you speak Spanish?”

  “No, not really. Just a few words. What’s that first place? Paraíso, you said?”

  “Paradise. It’s just a name. I don’t dive, but there are snappers, barracudas, and rays.” He turned to Wes. “Do you speak Spanish?”