The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  It could suck down a good-sized boat, he was sure. Anything the size of this craft caught in that relentless gyration would without question be drawn down into it and swallowed.

  And there was no noise now. At the turbulent outer edge of the aberration the sea had snarled and hissed as it was forced to begin spinning. Here, nothing. The silence was uncanny, though the bore grew larger every moment. It was fifty feet across now. The lip of the funnel at its top was four times that. Just over the edge of the lip and beginning to slide down its spinning slope, the army boat dipped at an ever more perilous cant.

  Not fair, George thought with a bitterness he could taste. After all Dannie and he had been through, this wasn't fair. Damn them. Whatever they were, wherever they came from, damn their slimy souls to hell!

  He heard something and looked up. The plane he had noticed before was low over the water, only a little distance away now. A quarter mile, maybe. Coming toward them.

  Oh, Christ. If only it were a whirlybird, able to hover over them and lower a ladder. If, if, if. But its pilot must have seen the disturbance, at least, and was coming to investigate. Had seen them, or would in a moment, and would tell what he had seen. That was something. They would not be just another baffling mystery.

  Unless, of course, the plane were somehow trapped, too. Many had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

  The others aboard the boat watched the oncoming aircraft as George did. Etienne and Dion at the wheel. Steve Spence in the cabin doorway. Even Dannie, in George's embrace, turned her head and looked up.

  "Your navy," Etienne said. "Torpedo plane, looks like. Probably from Guantanamo." In the unreal stillness his voice and the whine of the plane's jet engines were abnormally loud. He said something else but the boat's rate of inclination sharpened at that moment and George, losing his footing, went sprawling to the deck, dragging Dannie with him.

  From his position on the deck he could still watch the plane as it entered the sky-space above the hole, however. Not fifty feet above that awesome funnel it came boring in. It had a crew of two, George saw, and was a U.S. Navy plane as Etienne had said—but as it suddenly banked, tipping its cockpit, he saw that the pilot wore a shirt of life-jacket orange.

  Its course adjusted, the craft flattened out again. And suddenly from its belly something dropped. Something shaped like a barrel and not very large, though it was hard to be sure because the object turned as it descended and had a surface that flashed in the sunlight, blinding the eye to details.

  The men in the plane were good at what they did, though. The object went straight to the mark, losing its forward momentum at precisely the proper moment and dropping squarely into the whirlpool's throat. But even before it disappeared down that glittering bore, the plane was past and gone.

  Still sprawled on the boat's deck, George Benson looked across at Steve Spence and saw the doctor's lips moving. A prayer? Why not? Struggling to his feet, drawing Dannie up with him, George found himself fighting for balance on a slanting deck that became more difficult every second. He was looking straight down into a funnel of inky darkness.

  Suddenly the sea coughed.

  It was no more than that: a cough at the base of the funnel, a clearing of the whirlpool's throat. A minor convulsion.

  But up from the depths came a shock wave that stopped the whirling and sped to the surface, closing the hole as it came.

  There was a terrifying moment when the new turbulence boiling up under the boat stood it on end. A moment when George had to lock an arm around Dannie and cling with his other hand to the boat's rail or both of them would have been flung into a sea gone mad. A moment when Lieutenant Etienne and his man Dion all but tore the wheel from its shaft as they clung to it, and Steve Spence survived the tumult only because he could brace himself in the cabin's narrow doorway.

  Then the fury passed and the sea slowly subsided. The hole was gone. The boat, its engine miraculously still chugging, slowly achieved a forward motion.

  "Depth charge," Etienne said. "One of those new hellers, most likely. God in heaven, what was down there, Benson? You were there. You must know."

  The lieutenant could have answered his own question—in part, at least—had he stepped to the rail at that moment and looked over the side as George and Dannie were already doing and Steve Spence did a few seconds later after striding from the cabin doorway. Only briefly was the solitary thing visible, though, and even then not clearly. Only long enough for it to be identified as something part human, part monster, weirdly green and frightening by human standards. The explosion must have brought it up from the level where Paul Henninger had been fighting off so many of them, and where, when they became aware of the boat above, they must have banded together to suck it down. Slowly the horror sank from sight.

  Had the depth charge reached the cave, too? Had all the sea things been destroyed by it? But, of course, the base here off the coast of St. Joseph was but one of several, according to what they had told Mendoza. Even if all here were dead now, there were others in other parts of the planet's oceans to carry on the program, no?

  They would be heard from again, George thought. Even in this part of the Atlantic they would probably establish another base, all the more eager for a human inclusion now that they knew humans, even very ordinary humans, were so resourceful.

  Time would tell.

  George Benson caught hold of the woman beside him and said to her very quietly, "Come, Dannie." He led her over to where Dr. Steve Spence now stood at the stern of the boat, gazing without expression at a placid sea. And as the boat turned toward Dame Marie, he touched Steve's arm.

  Steve came to with a start. "Yes?"

  "We want to tell you what your Paul Henninger did for us down there," George said. "For all of us, I mean—not just for Dannie and me. He was a very brave man, Doctor."

  33

  To the lovely young woman lying beside him on the bed in her room, Dr. Stephen Spence spoke very gently, yet with a distinct note of apprehension in his voice.

  "It's time, you know, darling. No more excuses. All the other problems are behind us."

  Moving in his embrace just enough to brush her lips against his, Nadine Palmer murmured, "Time for what, Steve?"

  "For you to come clean with me. Tell me what happened during those five days when I was absent from this world."

  "Are you sure you want to know, Steve?" She was not joking, not even smiling.

  "I'm sure, no matter what the cost. I can't go on like this."

  "We can't just forget it?" she begged.

  "No," he said firmly, "we can't just forget it. Damn it, woman, you and I were in love with each other. We had something very special going—a lasting thing, the real thing. Then I went to that blasted voodoo service and left when I was told not to, and five days of my life just disappeared."

  "Yes," Nadine whispered. "Five days."

  "I want to know what happened. What I did that turned you against me. You and Tom Driscoll took care of me and brought me out of it, but by then you were a different woman and I'd lost you. Do you realize you wouldn't even open your door to let me say good-bye when I left for the States?"

  He had to wait a moment before Nadine moved again. This time she slid out of his embrace and lifted herself up on one elbow to peer at his face. "All right, Steve. But first tell me something. Who is Gèdé Cinq Jours?"

  "What?"

  "Who is Gèdé Cinq Jours? I know there are many Gèdé loa in voodoo, and as a group they're involved with death, but which one is called Cinq Jours?"

  Recalling his talk with Ti-Jean Lazaire, and what had happened outside the door of Tom Driscoll's room later, Steve frowned at her in silence for a few seconds. Then he said slowly, "You're leaving something out, Nadine. There's one more word to that Gèdé's name. Malheur. It's Gèdé Cinq Jours Malheur—Gèdé of the Five Days of Misfortune."

  She nodded. "Do you believe in possession, Steve?"

  Only briefly did he hesitate. "As a medical ma
n I'd like not to. But we've both seen people possessed at voodoo rites, haven't we?" And I, he thought, was damn near killed just a little while ago by a middle-aged St. Joe cook who almost certainly was possessed by this Gèdé Cinq Jours Malheur we're talking about.

  Even now he could close his eyes and see Lazaire with the butcher knife—an ordinary St. Joe peasant repeatedly transformed into a raging fury that looked and acted like nothing human.

  "Very well." Nadine was still on one elbow, still gazing down at him. "When you came to after blacking out there at La Souvenance, you were possessed by this Gedé of the five days misfortune. Off and on for the whole five days you were out, you were Gedé Cinq Jours Malheur. Now must I tell you why I wouldn't open the door to you when you left?"

  Again Steve remembered the thing he had fought with in the hall: the thing that probably would have killed him if Tom Driscoll, saving his life for the second time, had not driven it back with the silver letter opener. Dreading the answer and tempted to let the matter drop forever now, he nevertheless said grimly, "Tell me, woman. I have to know!"

  "You're going to hate yourself. Maybe you'll even hate me for telling you. That's what I've been so afraid of, you know—that you might hate me."

  "Tell me."

  "All right." She put her mouth to his first, as if to draw courage from kissing him again. "I was a total mess when you got through with me, darling. My face looked like something in a horror movie and my body was black and blue all over. The fact is, you nearly killed me."

  "My God," Steve whispered.

  "Or Gèdé did. If half the hospital staff hadn't answered my calls for help, you might have done me in."

  Steve clung to her for long moments of silence. Then when the first shock had worn off and he could speak again, he drew back and looked at her. "I guess we know what happened now, don't we?" he said. "He was punishing me for leaving that ceremony when I was told not to. Lazaire actually expected me to die when I walked through that gate, you know. He as much as told me so. But you didn't let it happen, and they sought revenge by turning me against you." He felt his eyes filling with tears as he gazed at her. That these healing hands of his could have abused this woman he so loved was more than he could bear to accept. "Dear God, Nadine, I didn't do it to you. He did. You have to believe that, just as we have to believe that Paul Henninger could never have done what he did down there in the cave without the help of his Agoué. There's good and bad in voodoo. We both know that."

  She nodded.

  "Forgive me?"

  "I did that long ago, even before you came back to St. Joe." Again her lips brushed his. "Tom Driscoll and I talked about it for days and thought we had a pretty good idea of why you turned against me. I did wonder about that Gèdé Cinq Jours, of course. Nobody we asked seemed to know about that particular loa." She shrugged and smiled at the same time. "We just didn't know anyone that well versed in voodoo."

  "There are so many loa. Did I use his name when I was—when I turned on you?"

  "That you did, dear heart. Over and over you yelled at me in Creole. Most of what you were saying I couldn't even translate, because even now we don't speak the language that well, either of us. Every little while you'd become a different person—one I hardly recognized—and keep screaming that you were this Gèdé. I can hear you now, love. 'Mwen Gèdé Cinq Jours! M'Gèdé Cinq Jours! Ma touyé ou!"

  "Ma touyé ou." Steve winced. "Means 'I'm going to kill you.'" He began to shiver and for a moment could not stop. When he did stop, he drew Nadine to him again and wrapped both arms around her. "All right, love. I'm not Gèdé now. I'm Steve Spence again for good, and I've loved you a long, long time. And now—would you consider marrying me?"

  "I considered it quite a while ago and decided I would if you ever asked me."

  "I'm asking you."

  "Then I will. Oh, yes, darling, I want to!"

  When they had made love and Steve had come down off his cloud nine a little, he said, "Shall we get dressed and go tell Tom about us?"

  "I'd like that. He's a wonderful man, really. Of all the doctors I've known—next to you, of course—I think I admire Tom and Louis Clermont the most."

  Together they went to Tom Driscoll's room. It was after ten P.M. but Driscoll had not yet retired.

  Wearing pajamas and a robe, he sat at his desk, going over staff reports on some of the Azagon's patients.

  Here, Steve thought, was a perfect example of what the Azagon was essentially all about: a man reborn through a restoration of his old self-confidence. This was rehabilitation with a capital R.

  "Things are creeping back to normal, as you can see." Tom's smile was wry, but still it was a smile. "By the way, Lazaire was released from the Sacré Coeur today. He's back here."

  "At his old job?" Steve frowned.

  "No, he's not up to that. Just staying the night, then he'll be going to his lady friend on the plantation for some tender loving care. If we can't promote one of the kitchen crew to be head cook, we'll have to advertise again." Tom's gaze shifted to Nadine. "What's on your mind, you two? You look very happy tonight."

  "We've decided we ought to be married," Nadine said, reaching for Steve's hand.

  "Wonderful! When?"

  "As soon as possible," Steve said.

  "Here in St. Joe?"

  "Why not, unless you object to having members of your staff sleeping together."

  "Lord, no." Driscoll extended a hand to each of them. "Go talk to Louis Clermont, why don't you? He's a—what do they call them here? Notaire? Juge de Paix? Anyway, he can marry people. You'd like that, no?"

  "We would indeed," Nadine said.

  At a knock on his door Tom Driscoll released their hands and called out, "Come in!" The institution's former chef, Ti-Jean Lazaire, entered with a tray on which were a stack of sandwiches and a cup of steaming chocolate. To Steve and Nadine he murmured, "Good evening."

  "Good evening, Ti-Jean," Steve replied. Did the man remember what he had done when possessed? He seemed not to. But then, the mind of a certain Dr. Stephen Spence had also gone blank under similar circumstances, hadn't it?

  He recalled, too, having spoken to people at various voodoo ceremonies after they were possessed, one of them a small boy who couldn't possibly have been pretending. They hadn't remembered, either.

  Lazaire arranged a small table for Driscoll before speaking again. Then he said with a look of sadness on his middle-aged St. Joseph face, "I am sorry about M'sié Henninger, Doctor."

  "You did everything you could to help him, Ti-Jean," Steve said.

  "But not enough."

  "Nevertheless, he was sure in his heart you had helped him. According to George Benson, he felt he was not alone at the end. Your Agoué was with him."

  The cook's face brightened. "And do you also believe that, Doctor?"

  "Well, I wasn't there. I mean I was not in the sea with him but on the boat, as you must have heard by now. But yes, I believe it."

  "Thank you, Doctor," Lazaire said with dignity. "I am glad." Murmuring "Good night, good night all," he departed.

  "A good man," Tom Driscoll said, "in spite of what happened outside my door here." The look he directed at Steve was an impish one that told Steve a healthy healing was in progress. "Just as you're a pretty decent fellow, too, in spite of what you tried to do to Nadine at the Brightman. You know about that now, of course. She wouldn't be marrying you if you didn't."

  "Yes, Tom, I know about it."

  Tom Driscoll's old-time grin was aimed at Nadine now. "And, of course, you've forgiven the bounder."

  "If I had known then what I know now," Nadine said, "I never would have let him go. I would have understood what happened to him." A touch of sadness flickered across her face as she reached again for Steve's hand. "When you take time to think about it, we know so little about such a lot of things, don't we?"

  Dr. Louis Clermont had spent most of that evening with the parents of Ginny Jourdan, telling them the truth about what had happened
to their daughter, but pledging them to secrecy. On returning home he found the army jeep parked in front of his house and Roger Etienne in it, waiting for him.

  "Just want to ask a few questions to complete my report," Etienne said. "Do you mind, Doctor?"

  Clermont was almost talked out, but decided he had better take his caller inside and cooperate. He would not, of course, tell Etienne about the tiny creature he and Dr. Beliard had removed from Ginny Jourdan's womb. Anything like that, appearing in the lieutenant's report to his superiors, might stand this primitive island country on its ear. But, yes, he would answer any other questions the lieutenant might ask.

  He did so—they seemed to him mostly routine—then Etienne departed and Clermont's phone rang. The caller was Commander Norman Morris, in Guantanamo.

  "Just checking to make sure the boat got away all right," Morris said. "For some pretty good reasons, we thought we'd better hightail it out of there in a hurry and couldn't be sure."

  "It did, Commander. Yes. And I've been told by some very grateful people about the part you played in its escape. What was that thing you dropped, may I ask?"

  "Doctor, we didn't drop anything. We weren't even there."

  "I see."

  "I'm sure you do. Anything new on Paul? Has he turned up yet?"

  Louis Clermont recounted what George Benson and Dannie André had told him about the last few moments in the life of the commander's brother-in-law.

  There was a long silence.

  "Well, Doctor, I'll say good night," Morris said. "One of these days I'll drop in on you and maybe you'll be good enough to let me talk to Benson about all this."

  "Of course."

  "Till then, so long. And thanks."

  "We should thank you," St. Joseph's Abe Lincoln said fervently. "Every last one of us here, and perhaps others we don't even know about." The phone clicked.

  Clermont leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, and allowed himself to think about those who had died. Of Ginny Jourdan, with a monster inside her. Of Dr. Juan Mendoza and George Benson's wife, Alice. Of Lawton Lindo. Of the three on the Ti Maman. But most of all of Paul Henninger.