The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  "So, Doctor?" Commander Morris's gaze had not left Clermont's face.

  "Meaning what do I think?"

  Morris nodded.

  Clermont hesitated. "Well, as I've said—or have I?—Paul described these things to me and told me about the undersea cave you mentioned. So what do I think? Afraid I don't have any simple answer."

  "You must have some idea," the navy man said.

  "An idea, nothing more. For a long time now your brother-in-law has been having a hard time distinguishing dreams from reality. I've been treating him and I know how big a problem it has become. So these undersea creatures he claims to have encountered could be merely an invention of his imagination. Yet how can we be sure?" Clermont started to hand the painting back, then changed his mind. "May I keep this awhile?"

  "Why not?" The commander stood up, obviously disappointed. "Suppose I leave you my Guantanamo phone number, too, just in case. Then if you come up with anything, or there is any change—"

  "Do that, Commander." Louis Clermont reached for a pad of paper. "Please. Just in case."

  That night, reflecting on his encounter with Paul Henninger and his talk with Paul's brother-in-law, Clermont found himself unable to sleep. Too much to think about. What the hell, he suddenly decided in typical Louis Clermont style, why don't I have a drink and read the damned article?

  He poured himself half a glass of his country's famed rum, filled the glass with club soda from his refrigerator, got back into bed with his drink and the newspaper, and began reading.

  The article opened with an overly dramatic account of the Ti Maman's disappearance, based on an interview with Elizabeth Langer. Then in bold type the writer asked, "Is it possible we have a second Bermuda Triangle off our own north coast?

  "As anyone able to read must know by now," the story continued, "the Bermuda or Devil's Triangle is a reputedly perilous patch of ocean off the coast of Florida, extending roughly through the Bahamas to the Puerto Rico Trench, then north to Bermuda and back to Florida. Within that area seemingly inexplicable disasters have been occurring for years.

  "The records show that scores of ships and planes have disappeared without explanation. A thousand or more lives have been lost.

  "The sea claims many victims, of course, but there can be no doubt whatever that this particular area claims more than its share. For example . . ." Here followed a long list of ships and planes that had disappeared in the Triangle, with dates and details.

  "And now this government boat, used in teaching our island fishermen how to improve their methods, has vanished off our northern coast in an equally mysterious manner," the story went on. "Was she a victim of the 'time warp' or 'space warp' that certain researchers believe exists within the Triangle? Or could she have fallen prey to the 'force of evil' believed in by others? Or even, to let the imagination run unchecked, was she destroyed by some fantastic power source that was let loose in the sea when the fabled continent of Atlantis was submerged by a cataclysm?

  "Time, perhaps, will supply an answer. Meanwhile, we can but wait."

  In an outburst of disgust, Dr. Louis Clermont hurled the newspaper across his bedroom. "Blasted yellow rag!" he shouted after it. "There ought to be a law against such garbage!"

  Then with the light out he lay awake for another hour, unable to stop thinking about the sketch the navy pilot from Guantanamo had shown him that afternoon.

  25

  All that morning George Benson had been tormented by one of his headaches—which, as he had been insisting to Dr. Clermont lately, were not ordinary headaches but were like a penetration of the mind by some outside influence. As though, for example, he were being subjected to sounds, even commands, that he could not actually hear, like those dog-training whistles dogs could hear but humans could not.

  Not wanting to go home for lunch—why should he?—he had brought a couple of corned beef sandwiches with him, but gave them to a hungry kid at the Pointe Pierre pier because he felt too miserable to eat them. At three-thirty, hoping Dannie André would be home from school, he quit and walked up through the town to her house. To hell with it if anyone saw him.

  After all, there was not much more he could do to help his fishermen without a boat, and the government had not yet kept its promise to replace his lost Ti Maman. He had been working with his guys on modern ways of making nets and traps, what bait to use and how to use it, that kind of thing. Had even made a stab at trying out his "short long line" theory, with some success. New projects would have to wait.

  One thing was encouraging. His most eager pupil had come in yesterday with a boatload of big red snapper. Had caught them by using some of the new techniques in real deep water off an outer reef where Dame Marie fishermen had had no special luck before.

  George found himself telling Dannie André about that even before he closed her door behind him and took her into his arms. Then he said unhappily, "This is going to be a lousy visit, hon. My head's full of hammers again."

  They clung to each other, not even trying to kiss, and Dannie murmured at last, "Mine, too."

  "What?"

  "My head is pounding, too, darling. It began in school this morning, and nothing I've done has seemed to help." With a wan smile she stepped back and looked at him. "Let's go lie down, shall we?"

  They went into her bedroom, which she had gone all out to make pretty after it had become a special kind of room to them. The pale blue curtains at the window were new, and she had painted the bed and bureau white with a pale blue trim and found some matching rugs for the old hardwood floor. Without undressing or even talking much at first, they lay in each other's arms, Dannie with her head on George's shoulder.

  More and more he needed this woman, George knew, and not just to make love to her. He needed her to talk to about his messed-up life, his hopes for the future . . . even just to hold like this, saying nothing but feeling the nearness of her and knowing she cared. There would have to be a divorce, even if Alice and he hadn't reached the point of talking about one. Then he would marry Dannie and take her to the States. Or if she wanted to stay here in St. Joseph for the rest of her life, the island would become his home, too. He could be happy anywhere with her.

  She was asleep, he guessed from the evenness of her breathing. Easing her head from his shoulder, he turned himself to look at her. Yes, those expressive dark brown eyes were closed now, and if she still had the headache, her face in repose didn't show it.

  He studied her, wanting for some reason to be sure he would never forget a single detail of what she looked like. Her soft, full lips, the special golden glow that seemed to come from just under the surface of her smooth skin. The certainty she would smile if she suddenly opened her eyes and found him staring at her. Good God, how could he ever have thought Alice was beautiful? How blind could a man be?

  Her eyes did open. She did smile at him. "Hi," she said. "I fell asleep, didn't I?"

  "How's your headache?"

  The smile flickered and went out, like a failing light bulb. "Awful," she said. Then, with a frown, "It's worse today than I can ever remember, George. What's happening?"

  "Have you taken anything for it?"

  "Well, some aspirin at school."

  "Doc Clermont gave me something he said is stronger." Sliding off the bed, George produced a plastic vial of tablets from his pocket. "Let me get you some water."

  Returning from the kitchen, he handed her two of the tablets and a glass of water, and thought again how much he loved this woman, how much he needed her. When they were together, everything worked for him. Even the pounding in his head, right now, no longer frightened him.

  She took the tablets and said, "Come hold me again, huh? Just a little longer?"

  He did that, and she fell asleep again, and then so did he. When they awoke, it was dark out and with great reluctance he got up to go home.

  At the door Dannie did not kiss him good-bye as she usually did. She only clung to him for a moment.

  He wondered w
hy her heart beat so fast and hard against his chest was it the headache? Was something else troubling her? All the way home he thought about it and was uneasy. His own head was thudding unmercifully again, and with only a nod to Alice, who was in the kitchen, he went to his room and shut the door.

  A little later, Alice came into his room to ask if he was all right. "Really, George, you ought to eat something even if you don't feel up to it," she said. "Going hungry won't help."

  He wondered why the sudden interest in him, but when he got up and went to the table, the answer was obvious. For some reason she had prepared a good meal. Roast pork, vegetables, a mango pie . . . she didn't often go to all that trouble.

  He forced himself to eat. Forced himself to thank her. Then he went back to his room, undressed, and went to bed for the night.

  And awoke in a blaze of pain after biting his tongue.

  This time his wife was standing beside his bed, smiling down at him.

  "Get up, George," she said. "We're going somewhere."

  George was still sufficiently master of his movements to look at the bedroom clock. The time was half past four, he perceived vaguely. Half past four in the morning? It must be. His room was aglow with moonlight.

  "George, please," Alice said impatiently. She was fully dressed, wearing her blue pantsuit. And there was something strange about her eyes or the way she was using them. They glowed a little. They were green, like seawater.

  "George!" she said again. Ominously this time, as though running out of patience and threatening him.

  "All right, all right." But he found it hard to swing his legs out of bed because his body no longer seemed to belong to him.

  "That's better, George. Now get dressed."

  "To do what? What shall I wear?"

  "It doesn't matter what you wear."

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  George realized he was taking off his pajamas in front of her, a thing he had not done in a long time. It was all right, however. She was silently telling him what to do; he no longer had a will of his own. Naked, he carefully hung up the pajamas and made the bed. Had he been directing his own movements he never would have made the bed, he realized. Then, not bothering with underwear, he put on slacks, a shirt, and sneakers. Nothing else.

  His headache was less severe now. That was a thing to be thankful for, at least, no matter what else was happening. His sneaker laces tied, he waited for Alice to tell him what to do next.

  "Follow me," she ordered.

  The moon was quite bright, George noticed as he trailed her out of the house and down the steps to Dame Marie's main street. Not so bright, though, as the night Dannie André and he had gone swimming at Anse Douce and he had been forced to put forth his best effort to catch Dannie when she set out for some unknown destination. Odd, his remembering that now when his mind no longer belonged to him.

  He looked at Alice as they walked along together. Was she causing him to remember that night? Did she want him to, for some reason?

  Half past four. Nearly five now. And this was a country town on the north coast of the island of St. Joseph, in the West Indies. He could hear drums throbbing. There was a voodoo service in progress somewhere, probably in that section of the town known as The Hounfor. Some of his fishermen insisted you could tell what kind of service it was by the drumming. A small family ceremony called for one kind of beat; kanzo, with its seven pots of boiling oil for initiation, was more complex; prise du mort, the calling of dead spirits from a graveyard, involved still other rhythms. There were dozens of different services. Maybe hundreds.

  And even without such a backdrop of sound, this was still St. Joseph. You sweated because of the heat and humidity. You recognized the gutter smells and the garbage smells and the stink of donkey shit. You heard the rats scurrying and—always a shock—heard roosters crowing at the top of their rooster lungs even though the dawn was still a long way off.

  Why did St. Joe roosters crow all through the night, anyway? Civilized fowl didn't, did they? And why did all St. Joe dogs, even in the capital, feel they had to answer when a single stupid mutt somewhere awakened from sleep or got bored with prowling and voiced a yelp of complaint? Jesus. Let one single dog in this country sound off at night, and for half an hour no one within a mile could get any sleep.

  "George." Alice smiled again as she had in his bedroom. "Do you still believe I went to visit a boyfriend the times I left you at night?"

  "Or boyfriends. Plural."

  "I didn't, you know. I don't have a boyfriend. Not even one. Not the kind you've imagined anyway."

  "What kind do you have?"

  She laughed softly, and when George turned to look at her, he noticed the greenish glow in her eyes again. It scared him now. A cold chill caused him to start trembling, and he couldn't stop.

  "Are you aware that I've been coming into your room at night, George?" his wife said.

  George was more aware of what was happening now, and did not think it wise to answer her. They were walking down toward the fishing village at Pointe Pierre, and she had him by the hand, and they were in the middle of the street. On both sides were shops, all of them dark and shuttered for the night, some with wooden doors that swung shut and others with drop-down iron fronts that looked like drawbridges in movies of old England. It was a weird way to live, he thought, and the truth was, these shopkeepers had less to fear from nighttime invaders than their counterparts in, say, New York or Chicago. Crazy.

  But there it was, and as Alice and he walked on down the middle of the street to the shore, he felt he was in a kind of wood-and-steel tunnel from which there was no escape. He had to go where she was taking him. His apprehension swiftly increased.

  "Are you, George? Are you aware that I've been coming into your room at night?" Alice said.

  He had better answer her, after all. There was no telling what she might do to him if she became angry. "Yeah, sure," he mumbled. "Of course."

  "And do you know what for?"

  "I think so. You came to hypnotize me." Suddenly his fear changed to anger and he refused to give her that much satisfaction. "I mean," he snarled, "you have some crazy idea you can hypnotize me. Some delusion. I caught you trying to do it one night."

  "Delusion?" Her voice again laughed at him. "You don't believe you're doing what I want you to right now, George? You think you're just out for a walk through town in the moonlight, maybe to find some relief from one of your headaches?"

  She was right, George knew. Tonight she had at last succeeded in hypnotizing him, if that was the word for the full control she had achieved. At any rate, she was now fully in command. He could no longer fight back.

  "You gave me the headaches?" he asked as they walked past some of the town's better homes now. Jesus God, how he wished he were in one of those homes instead of being led like a lamb to the slaughter down this deserted moon-weird street to the sea! He knew some of the people in those houses, too, and they liked him for what he was doing here. Just let him get away from Alice for a minute and he could knock on almost any door, even at this ungodly hour, and say he was tired, drunk, sick or whatever, and would they help him? They would probably give him some strong St. Joseph coffee, which next to Jamaica's Blue Mountain was the best in the Caribbean and maybe the world, then walk him into a bedroom with a fancy double bed of mahogany or even more expensive taverneau—though layered with coats of varnish that would hide all the natural beauty of the wood—and then they . . . oh, hell, oh, hell . . .

  "The headaches were not inflicted on you deliberately, George," his wife was saying. "They were merely a by-product. A side effect, if you like."

  "But you did cause them."

  "Oh, yes. Certainly. I caused them."

  "Are you responsible for what's been happening to others here as well? And at the Azagon? Are you?"

  "Some of it, George."

  "For what's happened to Ginny Jourdan? Did you make that happen, too?"

  "Ge
orge, be patient. You'll know everything soon. No, I'm not responsible for everything that's happened to Ginny. I did take her to where she went when she disappeared for eight days, just as I'm taking you now."

  Once more George's anger erupted through his terror. "Damn you, Alice! You—" Shock waves of pain stopped him in midshout and with both hands pressed to his temples he stood swaying in the middle of the street. For a moment he thought the pain would destroy him, then it gradually subsided. Lowering his hands, he looked at Alice and saw her eyes fade from a brilliant sea-green to their former pale green glow.

  "Don't become violent, George," his wife said. "Unless you want me to show you what I can really do now. I don't think you'd like that."

  Feeling as though he had been slowly lowered into a tank of ice water, George could not make his body stop shivering.

  "Come." She took hold of his right arm. "We still have a way to go. And in case you're wondering why we didn't use the Jeep tonight, it's because I'm not sure when we may come back."

  "Back from where?" George asked meekly. "Why can't you tell me, for God's sake?"

  "I'd rather let you wonder. You've been very difficult, you know. I've had to work on you much longer and harder than I expected. I think it must be because you dislike me so much. Or because you're so fond of Danielle André."

  Oh, God, George thought. She knows about Dannie. But Dannie was safe at home, where he had left her, not part of this nightmare he was caught up in. If she were part of it, he would lose his mind entirely. Even the slight control he still retained over it.

  With Alice at his side he trudged on, letting her lead him because he could not help himself. And again, for some reason that eluded him, he became acutely aware of the sound of drumming in that part of Dame Marie where the voodoo people held their ceremonies.

  Was the one now taking place a part of what was happening to him? Had Alice visited The Hounfor on some of those occasions when he thought she was with a boyfriend? That would explain some of this, wouldn't it? Or would it?