Around the corner of the barnacled wall was an open doorway, or the facsimile of one. A rotted wooden panel rested against the corroded metal. Etienne pushed it aside and light spilled onto the granular floor. Stella looked up, but Etienne’s silhouette now filled the gap as he dipped his head and stepped inside. She followed, able to stand upright inside the improvised hut. It looked like a section from a cabin. Not a cruise ship cabin, but something more utilitarian, like a naval vessel. It was as if the berth had been severed, losing one wall to some unknown fate. The remainder was lodged tight against the rock face of the peak, and along that earthen wall a desk sat with an oil lamp that warmly lit the quarters. A metal bunk jutted from the façade.
On the inside, all barnacles had been shaved off meticulously by hand. A burlap bag rested atop the metal bunk, serving as either a mattress or blanket. A few crates were stacked in the corners and atop these were some maritime gadgets that she couldn’t identify.
A warped painting of an old clipper ship hung from a spike hammered into the bedrock wall. As bizarre as that touch was, everything paled compared to the daunting figure now rising from the desk.
“Welcome,” the man extended his hand.
He was tall–not as tall as Colin, but he towered over Etienne. Thinning pale blond hair mixed with silvery strands ran slightly long. It flared around the collar of his tattered jacket. He wore a uniform of sorts, navy pants and jacket where a gap in the wool revealed a stained white t-shirt. On the open lapel of the jacket Stella could make out some of the stitching. N-I-C-H-O
“My name is Frederic. Frederic Nichols,” he offered, his sinewy hand still hovering in empty space.
To spare the discomfort, Colin finally reached forward to shake it. Stella noticed the muscle in his forearm spasm on contact.
“Colin Wexler,” he stated flatly.
“Nice to meet you, Colin.” Frederic cocked his head to the side, and Stella felt herself under a penetrating gaze.
Frederic appeared to be slightly younger than Etienne, but both had such a gaunt expression it was hard to gauge age. Cerulean eyes stared at her from under hooded lids. Blue veins scored paths down each temple and disappeared back into the hairline. There was a sharp angle to his cheekbones and his chin was very pointed. Still, there was something vaguely appealing about him, as if at some point in his life he had been very handsome. Before her now was a ghostly version of that long-forgotten youth.
“I’m Stella,” she declared, and then cleared the frog in her throat. “Stella Gullaksen.”
“Swedish?” His blond eyebrows raised.
“My father was Swedish,” she mumbled.
Naturally, her father was alive and kicking, but somewhere along the line she had begun referring to him in the past tense. “Two generations ago,” she added.
“Of course.” He nodded with a fascinated smile.
Seeking a break from Frederic’s sharp eyes, her glance probed the lodging. A wooden collapsible chaise lounge was folded up in the corner. Next to it was a bucket of water with a clean cloth hung from a spike in the wall.
“You are the children of the woman we found earlier?” Frederic asked.
His tone was deep, with a strange inflection. Subtle, but definitely distinctive.
“I am her son,” Colin affirmed.
“I’m just a friend,” she muttered.
“Do you have any medical experience?” Colin asked. “Can you help her?”
Frederic’s lips thinned, but there was compassion in his steady gaze.
“Sarah is best equipped to care for your mother. She is a medic,” he assured. “It appears your mother went a long time without oxygen–”
“We all went a long time without oxygen,” Colin interrupted.
“She did not emerge from the water as quickly as you all did. And we did not notice her immediately. She surfaced in one of the back caverns.”
“You noticed us?” Stella asked, thinking of Colin’s mouth pressing life into her.
“We heard both of you,” Frederic’s eyes shifted between them.
“And you didn’t come to help when my father surfaced?” Colin accused.
Stella touched his arm. His gaze dropped down to that connection and he collected himself.
“You were all in a mild state of shock from the trauma of waking up in here,” Etienne spoke up. “If we were to suddenly appear it would have been too much for you to assimilate.”
“I can assimilate a lot.” Colin’s voice deepened. “I can assimilate that you have yet to tell us where we are, how we survived, and how we’re going to get back to the surface.”
Stella executed a mental fist pump.
Etienne and Frederic exchanged a long glance and then the shorter man sighed.
“Let’s step outside,” Etienne suggested.
The quarters were a little cramped for the four of them.
As they filed out onto the earthen path, he reasoned, “Remember, we were once as bewildered as you. Frederic, Sarah, and I were aboard the DONOVAN, a trawler owned by the Fisheries and Research Board of Canada.”
Following out of the cabin, Colin hesitated and held out his hand, prompting Stella in front of him. They approached the rope railing at the edge of the plateau and looked down at the cavern floor.
A thin stream of black water curled past the crude abodes and around the base of the very peak they stood on. Mist hung in the air, trapping the smoke from the torches to create a low, hazy ceiling.
“What happened?” Stella asked, dragging her eyes from the gutted military plane below.
“We were at sea pretty late in the fall–probably too late. We were trying to get in some last-minute lab work,” Frederic explained. “I was the hydrographic equipment handler.”
Stella searched Colin’s face for a translation. She knew he was more familiar with the sea and its sciences than she would ever be.
“Hydrography–” he read her questioning gaze. “They basically map out the sea floor.”
He turned to Frederic for verification.
Frederic nodded, pleased. “Yes. We measure depths, search for obstacles.”
“Then you would have known the depth you were at when–”
“Just before we sank,” Frederic filled in. “Yes, I was in the lab. The continental shelf was at about 150 meters there,” he paused and explained, “about 500 feet.”
“500 feet!” Stella exclaimed. “If we had oxygen, we could possibly survive an ascent.”
The grim faces around her stole some of her enthusiasm.
“True,” Frederic agreed, “but, that is not where we are. When the abandon ship alarm sounded on the DONOVAN, I was literally charting the floor beneath us for a map I had to submit. We were crossing over a canyon at the time. I recall it vividly because I was working with the Hydroplot system and it was passing back data that confirmed the canyon’s existence. I had been trying to plot the canyon depth, which was growing deeper by the minute. At the time of the abandon ship we were at 1840 meters, or about 6000 feet.”
“Well over a mile,” Colin calculated.
“Whoa.” Stella’s hand snapped out. “You think we’re over a mile under the ocean surface?”
Frederic shrugged. “Close to it. The storm was fierce. The DONOVAN was tossed around by the waves. Some life rafts made it into the water. The labs were on the second to the last deck. Etienne was across the hall from me, and Sarah was on the same level, in the first aid center. We tried to reach the main deck, but by then the DONOVAN had started listing too far for us to climb.”
Despite the heat and humidity, Stella clasped her arms about herself as she listened intently.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We made it astern,” Etienne filled in with his hoarse voice, “but a wave came–it knocked us over the railing.”
That sensation was all too real for her. She recalled the surf crashing down and tossing her into the ocean like she was chum for the tuna.
“I tried
to hold onto Sarah, but the churn of the wave yanked us apart. And then I was caught in a current that hauled me down no matter how hard I kicked against it.” Gray eyes looked haunted. “I knew I was going to die. I knew I’d never see my wife again.”
“But you didn’t die,” Stella offered feebly.
Etienne’s pale lips twitched. “True. I was caught–” he looked towards Frederic, “we were all caught in this strong down-current. We descended so fast.”
Frederic interrupted. “Even in the confusion of darkness, I knew we had traveled well greater than 150 meters. There was nowhere else for us to go. We had to have been dragged down into the canyon. No one had done any studies on the currents there yet. Whatever we were experiencing was something undocumented.”
“No shit,” Colin mumbled.
Stella shot him a glare, but he remained resigned.
“And you all surfaced in the same cave we did?” he asked.
“I did,” Frederic stated. “Sarah and Etienne surfaced in the cavern where your mother emerged. You can imagine our surprise when we found each other.”
“Yes, I can imagine your surprise,” Colin replied with a hint of cynicism. “Can you imagine our shock at seeing this?” His arm swept at the peculiar village below.
Stella was studying Frederic and Etienne’s faces. Etienne followed the sweep of Colin’s arm and an expression of near contentment passed over his gaunt features.
“This is the product of years of salvage. That siphon had dragged more than us down here. Wreckage from a host of ocean disasters has turned up in our pools.”
Our pools.
Still scrutinizing his expression, Stella thought Etienne seemed awfully possessive. And honestly, downright creepy. He kind of looked like a rodent. Small face. Upturned nose. Sunken eyes. Fuzzy hair. Gray.
Frederic, by comparison seemed slightly more refined, but no less disturbing.
“Some of this seems really old,” Colin observed. “Like the airplane chassis that is serving as your infirmary. That looks like it’s from World War II. Was some of this here before you arrived?”
Frederic nodded. “Indeed. We spent a long time just scavenging what was already here, but flotsam keeps streaming in. This place is like a vacuum. It sucks in everything that passes by above.”
“And how long have you been down here?” Colin asked.
Stella’s gaze clung to his face. It was so vivid. So strong. So alive compared to the ghostly visages of Etienne and Frederic.
“It’s very hard to keep track of time. There is a single wind-up clock that still functions. Using that we’ve been able to calculate that it must be getting close to the year 2000 now.”
“2000!” Stella spurted.
“Yeah, you’re close,” Colin replied flatly. “Only off by twenty years. It’s 2019.”
He acknowledged their raised eyebrows and didn’t wait for them to comment. “When did your ship sink?”
Etienne and Frederic stared at each other until Frederic finally cleared his throat.
“November,” he asserted.
“1978.”
CHAPTER 6
Stella gasped. “Forty years?”
As soon as the initial shock wore off, she frowned. Colin didn’t look too happy either.
Contemplating the two men in front of him, his eyebrows dipped in challenge. “How old were you when your ship sank?”
She knew what he was getting at. Yes, Etienne had some gray hair. Yes, Frederic had some silver woven in his pale hair. Yes, their faces were malnourished, which aged their appearance…but they did not look like senior citizens. Heck, they looked like an anemic, but younger version of Don Wexler.
“I was thirty-one,” Etienne replied, shaking his head, with a reminiscing grin. “Fred was twenty-eight. A couple of young Canucks ready to prove ourselves.”
“So you’re telling me that you’re seventy-one-years-old?” Colin crossed his arms.
Etienne raised a graying eyebrow. “Based on what you’ve revealed, I guess so.”
His amusement seemed to irk Colin. Stella understood his annoyance. The cavalier attitude of these two oddities was exasperating.
“You don’t look seventy-one,” Colin observed in a guarded tone.
Etienne and Frederic exchanged another glance.
“Thank you,” Etienne chuckled. “Any mirrors down here are tarnished. I haven’t seen a clear reflection in quite some time.”
The quip did not amuse Colin. Stella could sense his aggravation mounting. It honed in on her as well. The overwhelming need to fist her hands around the collar of Etienne’s wool sweater and shake him, demanding to know how any of this was possible. Answers, dammit. They needed answers.
But they were not in a position to make demands. They needed to find a way to reach the surface, and in order to do so they had to remain civil. They had to accept the help of these two perplexing mariners, and they had to bide their time.
“Tell me more about this canyon,” Stella probed, putting on her interviewer hat.
Keep them engaged. Broach a subject that will keep them talking. From Frederic’s satisfied smile she gauged that he was pleased with her curiosity.
“A submarine canyon,” Frederic explained. “I actually have it charted out in my cabin. I’ll have to show you later.”
“You can show us later,” Colin injected with a scowl that Stella couldn’t quite decipher.
“Right.” Frederic raised his eyebrows. “Well, anyway, a submarine canyon is like a steep valley or chasm in the ocean floor. Very similar to your Grand Canyon. They’re created from a host of reasons. Erosion. Currents. Mudslides. Rivers from long ago when the ocean was at a much lower level. They start out as shallow valleys in the continental shelf, and then they are carved deep into the continental slope.”
“And we’re in one of them? A deep one?”
“Yes.”
“How?” Colin inserted. “How could we survive that descent–one that should have caused a stroke or paralysis long before we hit the bottom?”
“I agree. Death was certain.” Frederic hooked a finger around his chin in consideration. “It could be a rogue eddy–a black hole in the ocean, so to speak. The current in the funnel was so fast–too fast for the physical effects to occur–as if the natural phenomenon was a protective sheath.”
Stella searched Colin’s face for a reaction. With his better understanding of the ocean, he still appeared skeptical, but held his tongue.
Right. Because, did it really matter how they got down here? The big question–the elephant in this freak netherworld was, how do we get back?
Colin’s head tipped back as he searched the black expanse above. Shadows obscured the ceiling in this giant arena, a haunting cloak to charge the imagination into overdrive.
“How can this place exist? I mean, with oxygen like this?” His chin dropped and he addressed Frederic. “And how have you fed yourselves for forty years?”
Frederic’s crisp blue eyes scoped the roof of the cave. “As for the existence of this place, all we can do is speculate. An ancient earthquake–a meteor–something to cause a crack in the continental slope. A gap that was sealed by a similar natural phenomena.”
“But any oxygen trapped inside would have been temporary,” Colin countered. “You’ve been down here forty years.”
Etienne held his hand up. Stella noticed an apparent wedding band around his middle finger. It bounced up to his knuckle as he moved.
“The tunnel system that I pointed out before. It leads to some active underwater vents. Hydrothermal vents, right Fred?”
Frederic nodded. “Right, think of them as underwater geysers or hot springs. They occur when tectonic plates spread apart and magma rises, clashing with the cold sea water. The gasses from those vents should not be breathable, but all we can guess is that the high temperature is boiling the water, which is extracting the oxygen from it and channeling it through the cave system. This, of course, is only a theory because we can’t g
et close enough to the vents to understand them.”
Colin’s throat bobbed slowly. His full lips were pressed tight in consideration. “If you can’t get to these vents, how do you know of their existence?”
“By the overwhelming heat, and its effects. This oxygen. Some of our food supply–”
On cue, Stella’s stomach let loose a growl that had them all turning to look at her. Despite all the trauma, she was feeling hunger pangs. Her last meal was a hot dog on the boat, but she couldn’t remember when. She was one of those people who needed to eat something the second she woke up–regardless of the hour. In her opinion, dinner should be the first meal of the day, and then she’d be content with little snacks to tide her over.
But here there would be no big breakfasts. No hot dogs. No snacking on Raisinets.
“There’s a host of little creatures living around the vents. Crabs, Mollusks, tube worms–”
Not exactly Raisinets.
All growling ceased in her abdomen.
Etienne read her expression and grinned. “Don’t worry. We have a pretty extensive supply of non-perishables. As a matter of fact, why don’t you settle into your quarters and meet us in the cafe for dinner? It will give you a chance to get acquainted with the others.”
Stella snagged Colin’s glance. He raised his eyebrow, as baffled as she.
“The cafe?” he asked, peering down at the avenue of bizarre architecture.
Etienne took a few steps back down the sloped trail and pointed to a spot on the bank of the small stream. An ensemble of benches and chairs flanked four tarnished tables like the twisted version of an outdoor bistro.
“We try to make it a habit to eat together once a day rather than staying reclusive in our cabins.”
Sharpen up on the old social skills, huh? Stella thought.
Colin’s frown seemed to grow by the minute. She tried to remember his attractive smile. An image of him on the deck of the STARKISSED with his dark hair ruffling in the wind and his arms bulging as he tried to reel in the giant tuna popped in her mind. His eyes flashed. His white teeth gleamed. Enthusiastic and content were the two traits she witnessed as the sun was setting behind him. Oh yeah, and drop-dead gorgeous.
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