The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  Questions, he thought as he began the long walk back to the Azagon.

  So many questions.

  13

  For the third time in as many nights, George Benson found himself walking by the sea at Anse Douce. But this time there was a difference. This time he was not alone. Danielle André walked at his side.

  He had no idea what time it was. Back at the house, Alice and he had sat up until eleven or so, he with his reports for the government people who employed him, she with her schoolwork, and then had retired to their separate rooms. He remembered hearing her in the bathroom, going through her pre-bed routine. He could recall nothing else.

  Nothing.

  There was a moon in the sky now, and he wished he were well enough versed in that sort of thing to judge the time by it, but he was not. It was just a moon, or part of one, and by its light the beach was beautiful but strange, as though it were part of some alien world.

  Small shells gleamed like jewels in the moon's pale glow. Clumps of washed-up seaweed looked like nameless sea creatures that might at any moment come to life and leap into action—perhaps to attack anyone who dared intrude upon their domain. Live crabs and their weirdly elongated shadows actually did dart into motion when disturbed—not to attack, but to flee.

  The fact that Dannie and he were both naked as they walked hand in hand along the hard, wet sand at the water's edge only made the situation even more improbable. He did not remember going to her place to pick her up, even.

  In fact, he did not recall leaving his own house. Or even his bed.

  He was the one responsible for their being here, though; of that he was reasonably certain. It had been his idea, not hers. And he was still the one calling the signals as he halted and turned to face her.

  "Ready, darling?"

  "Yes, George."

  "Not afraid?"

  She leaned forward to touch her lips to his. "Not with you to show me how."

  George folded her lovely nude body in his arms, pressing her close against him for a moment, then stepped back and looked deep into her expressive, dark chocolate eyes. "Remember," he warned. "You may think you can't do it, but you can. You only have to believe."

  "I believe, George."

  "Let's go."

  Turning from his contemplation of her, he walked slowly into the sea. There was no hurry, he told himself. The journey ahead was long, but there was nothing to fear from the distance. Both of them were mentally and physically prepared for it now. All they had to do was swim out slowly, without effort, and await instructions.

  What form the instructions would take he was not sure, but he would recognize them when the time came. Meanwhile the sea was comfortably warm and quiet. When he had slowly waded in up to his waist, he let himself fall gently forward and began stroking.

  It was really quite easy to swim without tiring if you were mentally and physically prepared for it. For weeks now he had been training for tonight's venture, he reminded himself. Night after night he had worked on his breathing, especially. If your mind said you could hold your breath a long time, you could do it. It was all mental. Man had evolved from creatures that lived in the water. He had only to relearn forgotten techniques.

  He slowed a little and looked back. Dannie was having no trouble keeping up with him. As he trod water she came alongside, pale and pretty in the moonlight, and he reached out to touch her, letting his hand slide into the hollow of her back and over the familiar swell of her bottom.

  "Everything okay, darling?"

  "Of course, George."

  "Shall we try going down?"

  "Whatever you say, George."

  He took in a slow, deep breath and left the misty glow of moonlight behind him. It was not really dark in the depths, he discovered. Whoever said it was dark was mistaken. His eyes quickly adjusting, he soon saw that he was swimming through a kind of undersea forest of coral formations and ferny, waving things that sensuously stroked his body. Looking back, he saw Dannie gliding through the same undulating caresses.

  Beautiful, he thought. Both the woman and the watery forest. Like something in a dream. Under him was a sea floor as white—or was it black?—as the velvety substance in a jeweler's showcase, on which all kinds of shell-shaped gems and glittering star things lay only inches below his eyes. A Salvador Dali world of dreams and magic. Bright, small fishes swam playfully along with him.

  It was all so lovely, time meant nothing. But at last, reluctantly, he reminded himself this was just a test, and he was not supposed to overdo it.

  Slowing to a stop, he pointed upward as Dannie came gliding to his side. "Need some air," he told her. At least, his mind formed the words and she seemed to understand, for after a longing last look at the enchanted world they had been exploring, she nodded.

  He led the way back up, stretching his arms straight out before him and cleaving the surface of the moonlit sea like a dolphin at play. With a smile at Dannie he opened his mouth, sucked in a huge gulp of air, and closed it again.

  Then in a blaze of pain George Benson awoke from his dream to find himself once again bolt upright in bed, clutching a mouth filling with blood from a bitten tongue.

  The torment slowly subsided and he realized his room was gray with daylight. The clock on the bureau said seven-ten.

  The dream again. For three successive nights he'd had it—almost the same dream each time except that tonight, for the first time, Dannie had accompanied him on his undersea journey.

  In this house of small bedrooms, George's bed was snug against the wall, and he began to slide out of it on the only side such a maneuver was possible. Then he remembered what he had done last night before retiring.

  Without touching his feet to the carpet, he drew back and leaned over to examine its pale gray surface for telltale signs.

  He could see none. Never mind; he hadn't really expected anything definitive. Wriggling to the foot of the bed, he got out that way, stretching to touch his feet to the floor as far from the bed as he could. Then he dressed and went into the kitchen, where he had heard Alice moving about, probably gathering up her books and papers before leaving for school.

  Would she be surprised to learn he had bitten his tongue again?

  She seemed to be. Turning from the kitchen counter to frown at him as he entered, she spoke in a voice full of what certainly could have passed for compassion. "Oh, George! Not again!"

  He sank onto a chair. What he ought to do, he supposed, was go to the bathroom and wash the blood from his mouth. But it seemed important not to interrupt what was happening here.

  "George—really—hasn't Dr. Clermont been able to do anything for you?" Alice's show of indignation was bigger than life.

  He shrugged. "Doesn't seem so, does it?"

  "But you say you're not having the nightmares anymore. Are you sure?"

  "That's right. Nothing but the tongue-biting." Since the night she had stood by his bed telling him to dream, George had been careful to hide the truth from her. No, he wasn't having the nightmares anymore. No, he wasn't even dreaming. In fact, he was sleeping better than he had in a long time.

  Because, of course, she seemed entirely too interested. Why, when she cared about him in no other way, should she keep questioning him about his dreams?

  "I just don't understand it," she said.

  The hell you don't, George thought.

  Alice left for school then, and he watched from a window as she walked briskly down the town's main street to disappear around a distant corner.

  He made himself wait five minutes more to be sure she would not suddenly return saying she'd forgotten something—she was certainly clever enough to do that. When convinced it was safe, he went into her bedroom.

  Even before he was over the threshold, his gaze was darting from side to side in search of her slippers.

  They were not by the bed where she usually kept them. He jerked open the closet door and saw them in a shoe bag suspended there, coyly peeking out at him in their fluf
finess like a pair of infant kangaroos in their mother's pouch.

  His hand trembled as he lifted them out, turned them over, and peered at their soles.

  Nothing.

  He put his nose to them and sniffed.

  Again nothing.

  Damn. If she had come into his room and stood by his bed, as he suspected, she must have come on bare feet.

  But wait. He strode to her bed. She always made it when she got up in the morning, and it was made now. He must be careful. Must study it before disturbing it. If it were not made her way when she saw it again, the cat would be out of the bag.

  He memorized each turn and fold of the spread before removing it, then turned the top sheet back to where her bare feet would have rubbed against it. Bending over, he sniffed again.

  Yes. Ah, yes! She would not have noticed the odor because she had a notoriously weak sense of smell—a blessing, she insisted, to anyone who had to live in a miserable St. Joseph country town where the most prominent odor along the roads was that of donkey shit. But to George this particular odor was unmistakable.

  When you spent a lot of time in the huts of peasant fishermen, you ran the risk of being nipped by certain crawlies that lived in their dirt floors. Said beasties, called chigres, could navigate up your shoes to your ankles and, without causing pain enough to alert you, burrow under your skin and lay their eggs. The infection that followed could cost you a foot if you were not careful, Doc Clermont had warned him while removing two of the little monsters one day. So for protection he had been using on his legs a powder that was said to discourage such attacks.

  Before retiring last night he had shaken some of that powder onto his carpet. And now, sniffing where the sheets would have rubbed against his wife's feet, he instantly detected the musky smell of it.

  So, then—Alice had come into his room during the night and stood beside his bed while he slept. Probably she had done so the night before, too. And the night before that, when he had first dreamed about exploring the sea's depths.

  Why? What for? To reach into his mind somehow and bring on the dream?

  But why, for Christ's sake, would she want to do that? And why that particular nightmare, if indeed she was advanced enough in her mind-control technique to dictate what he dreamed about?

  There was something else. Only yesterday he had discussed with Dr. Clermont the bewildering clarity of these recent dream adventures. And Clermont, looking unusually weary, had talked about the people at the Azagon place and the puzzling, tragic disappearance of the Ti Maman with the Abrys and Jan Langer on board. All somehow connected, Clermont seemed to think, though he could not say in what way.

  Surely Alice could not be involved in all that. Could she?

  He would have to talk to Clermont about this latest development, this creepy business of her coming into his room every night now to perform some kind of witchcraft on him.

  It seemed that Dr. Clermont and Dr. Steve Spence, the new man at the alcoholics' place, had become friends and were working together on all this. Well, then, the twosome had better become a trio.

  Because it wasn't only Alice now, and the tongue-biting. Something equally unnatural, God damn it, had caused his beloved boat to disappear, and he wanted some answers.

  14

  With the light in the Hounfor beginning to fade, Steve Spence drove more slowly lest he become confused and take a wrong turn in his borrowed Jeep. For some reason he was getting a wretched headache, as though this particular part of Dame Marie were determined to make things unpleasant for him.

  At least he could have the Jeep for his personal use as long as he might need it, and people wouldn't be saying they had seen an Azagon vehicle in voodoo town. His old friend, Dr. Edouard Beliard, in charge of that good private hospital in Cap Matelot, had assured him of that when delivering the last of his long-delayed luggage this afternoon. On being shown around the Azagon, Beliard had shaken his head in a show of commiseration.

  "Great God, Steve. Whyever did you let yourself be talked into taking charge of a lost-soul place like this? Keep the Jeep, man! Any day now you may have to flee for your life in it!"

  At Steve's side, handsome young Juan Mendoza said with a scowl, "Will you remember the place, do you think?"

  "I'll remember it."

  But would he? Blast this headache he was getting. He almost never suffered from such things—certainly not from the kind that felt as though an iron cap had been slapped on his head and was being pounded with hammers.

  Slowing the Jeep to a crawl, he leaned forward to peer through its dusty windshield. Why was he having so much trouble this evening with his sense of direction?

  After all, he'd been here to The Hounfor twice before, first when trailing the cook that night and again when showing Lieutenant Roger Etienne the house into which the cook had disappeared. The house where the ceremony to the sea god had begun. It shouldn't be so hard to find the place now.

  If his head would only stop throbbing.

  "Ah, here we are!" Recognizing the old wooden fence, he eased his foot off the gas pedal, and as the Jeep shivered to a halt, he pointed. "There on the left, Juan. Lazaire went through that break in the fence, though a little farther on there's a gate big enough for a truck, as you can see. I suppose it was closed that time of night. I didn't see it until I came by with Etienne."

  Mendoza shook his head. "This isn't where Paul Henninger disappeared, Steve."

  "You're sure?" Steve did not try to hide his disappointment.

  "Positive. I lost track of him at least half a mile from here. In, as I told you, a lane of cathouses."

  Steve waited for the latest wave of pain to pass. Damn it, there'd been nothing at all wrong with him when Juan and he left the Azagon. The feeling of pressure, which was all it had been at first, had begun when they arrived on the edge of this voodoo district called The Hounfor. Was something in the district trying to repel him? If not, why did he have such an urge now to turn the Jeep around and gun it out of here?

  He forced himself to speak quietly. "As I told you, Juan, Etienne came back here by himself and did some sleuthing. This house and yard belong to a man named Auxian Ramses. He's a voodoo houngan. Also, he's a carpenter who specializes in making coffins."

  Young Mendoza leaned back and clasped his hands behind his neck, somehow managing to make the gesture look like a ballet movement. "We're supposed to think our chef ordered a coffin?"

  "Come on, now. We don't know what he came for—of course we don't. And it may have been just a coincidence that the people in that house began a ceremony to Agoué just after he arrived." Steve felt a touch of impatience at the younger man's attitude. "I was only hoping you'd tell me this is where Henninger came, and we might work something out from there."

  "Such as they're both meddling in voodoo?"

  "Perhaps. For starters."

  Mendoza shook his head. "Lazaire may be into voodoo. He's a native. But—well, I've already told you what I think our overweight manager came at night to this part of town for."

  Turning his head, Steve gazed at his companion for a moment in silence while the pounding above his eyes became almost unbearable. "But is Paul that sort?" he asked at last.

  An elaborate shrug prefaced Mendoza's reply. "Look at it this way. You'd like me to say Paul came here, wouldn't you? To this particular house, I mean. Why? Because then you could say he either came for something in voodoo or to buy a coffin. But why should he be interested in voodoo? He's not a St. Joe native or the scholarly type. And why would he want a coffin, for Pete's sake? And if he did want a coffin for some outlandish reason, why come at night, in his pajamas?"

  "Yes—I suppose you're right. I was hoping for a tidy explanation."

  "There are women to be had in this district, Steve, and Paul Henninger is a man. Anyway, he didn't come near this house. That I know."

  Oh, God, Steve thought as the pounding in his head became pure torment. A patient of ours is missing. A boat with three persons aboard ha
s vanished. Others at the Azagon are obviously deep in trouble, and at least a dozen of Tom Driscoll's patients are threatening to leave. Now this. Feeling acutely disappointed at getting so little in return for so much trouble, and wanting very badly to take some aspirin and lie down, he put the Jeep in motion again and headed back to the Azagon.

  Should he call on Louis Clermont for help? It wasn't late, and maybe a St. Joe medic—one versed in the ways of St. Joe cooks and voodoo practitioners—would be able to put a more informed finger on what was wrong with him. Then again he, Steve Spence, was supposed to know something about voodoo himself, wasn't he? At least, he had witnessed all those ceremonies in Fond des Pintards, including part of the all but forbidden La Souvenance.

  Stop it! he mentally snapped at himself. For God's sake, forget what happened at La Souvenance! Concentrate on what's going on here and now!

  But maybe what was happening here and now was somehow tied in with that La Souvenance nightmare and the five lost days. How could he be sure it wasn't? And why did the idea keep nagging him?

  At the Azagon he said good night to Mendoza in the lobby and climbed the stairs to his room. To his surprise he found Tom Driscoll waiting there to question him. Perhaps unwisely, he had told the older man where Juan and he were going.

  "Well?" Driscoll eagerly demanded.

  Shaking his head in defeat, Steve sank onto the bed. "Nothing, Tom. We found nothing."

  "You didn't feel anything?"

  "Feel? I'm not sure I—"

  Seated stiffly on the room's one chair, the frail medic flapped his hands in apparent frustration. "You don't understand. Why, why can't you understand? Evil doesn't exist in a vacuum, Steve! It has to originate somewhere. In this case it could be coming from that house. Look at what's happened to Paul Henninger since he went there!"

  "Tom, we don't know for sure that Paul went there. Mendoza says he didn't."

  "No, no, I insist—"

  Steve got off the bed and began pacing. "Damn it, Tom, when you come right down to it, we're not really sure of anything. Juan says he followed Henninger to The Hounfor that night, but not to the house Lazaire went to. All Henninger admits to remembering is that he woke up naked in the sea, so far out he didn't even know where the shore was until he heard voodoo drums. Why in hell don't we stop pussyfooting around with all this and demand an explanation from our cook?" Realizing he was shouting, Steve pulled himself up short with a sucked-in breath.