by Greig Beck
“I bet if I fed you, you’d be eating out of my hand in a week.”
Ben looked along the breakwater and mentally mapped out a route along the jagged rocks that separated the lagoon from the sea. It could be navigated, and he planned to try and circle the entire lagoon one day. But for now, even the lagoon depths were an unknown place, and out beyond it, the deep, dark ocean was far too forbidding to even contemplate.
Save that for later, he thought.
The sun had risen a little more and lit the shallows. Golden sand, beneath only about two feet of water—he waded in. It was warm, and he smiled, enjoying it. Fish darted by him. They were only about eight inches long and like silver streaks of mercury.
A little further out, something bobbed mid-water, and he moved toward it. He reached in and lifted it. It was a coiled seashell—striped in brown and ivory, and also occupied. Tentacles emerged and one large eye regarded him with disdain.
“Nautilus, nautiloid, or something like that, right?” He held it up, turning it one way then the other. His stomach rumbled, and he’d eaten worse things, but he had other fare on his mind. He let it plonk back into the water, where it hovered for a moment, and then motored away backward.
He shuffled further out, coming to where the natural edge of sand fell away into deepening water. It was still extremely clear, but it was about three feet there, and then must have dropped to three or four times that further out.
Ben got down on his knees first, and then ducked under the surface and opened his eyes. The water felt glorious on the skin of his face and was so clear he almost didn’t need goggles. Holding his breath, he was always amazed at the sounds of the ocean. He could just make out the clicks, pops, and grainy movements of sand as the sea life went about its business.
He surfaced, flicked his long hair back, and rubbed his face. His heart told him to swim further out. But his brain urged caution and listening to his logical self was what kept him alive so far. He decided that until he knew the waters a little better, he’d take his investigations slowly.
Ben got to his feet and continued his exploration along the edge of the sandbank.
He spun; spear up.
His sixth sense told him he was being watched. He let his eyes move over the water, and peering below the surface, he could see for hundreds of feet below as well. But there wasn’t any dark shape lurking there. There were only lumps of rock or patches of weed gently billowing on the bottom.
After many minutes, he managed to tear his eyes away and walked back into the shallows where he spotted a large conch shell on the bottom. He reached in and lifted it.
“Nice; I would have loved you on my desk back home.” He turned it in his hand for a moment more and then stuck it in his pack.
Ben had almost finished his search by moving back and forth in the shallows. And then, movement, plate-sized, and along the bottom. He raced after it and jabbed down with his spear, receiving a satisfying crunch.
“Yes.” Ben lifted his spear. The large crab came up and he strained to hold it. It was a big one with blue tips on its legs and large claws. It must have weighed in at about five pounds. “You’ll do.”
He walked up the sand and jabbed the spear hilt into the sand. Then he removed the large conch and placed it atop a large rock, like a cap.
“The first of my collection.” He looked at it, and then turned to the splayed crab. “Man’s gotta have a hobby, right?”
Ben feasted that night. But raw crab was a little harder to remove from the shell than cooked crab so a lot was left behind. Still, the claws each held a fistful of meat.
Ben kept the shells with shreds of meat to use as bait for the next day’s hunt. He slept soundly, safely, and his mind relaxed and took him back to a little rib joint in Ohio.
He smiled in his sleep as a dark-haired girl with luminous green eyes and a spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose put a hand over his.
I love you, she mouthed.
I love you too, he said and lifted her hand to kiss the knuckles.
Her expression became sad. I came, but you weren’t there.
What? Ben asked, frowning.
You weren’t there, Ben.
No, no, I was, he beseeched.
You weren’t there, you weren’t there, you weren’t there—her voice became shrill, loud, and squabbling.
Ben opened his eyes and blinked. The pterodons were fighting over the remains of meat in his crab shells.
“Hey! Piss off.” He shooed them away, and then rubbed his face. He picked up a shard of shell and tossed it at a few that were still bickering. “And thanks for fucking up my dream.” He scowled. “It’s gonna cost you a few eggs for breakfast.”
He turned back to the sunrise over the perfect ocean. He sighed as the sight immediately calmed him. He’d stay here for as long as he could. It was safer than the jungle and a hundred times safer than the plateau. Ben headed down to the water to start his new day.
First job was placing the broken crab shells in the lagoon water, and then that day, he decided to walk down along the beach, scouring the tide line, but remaining wary. The open beach had no cliffs at its back, so any hungry or fleet-footed theropods might have run him down if he wasn’t careful.
He found some driftwood he could use, and also another shell for his collection. In the late afternoon, he also speared another crab in his lagoon, albeit a smaller one that had come to sample the contents of its kin’s broken shells. It was another good day.
But the next day, he had no luck at all for food. The only thing he found was another large shell in the water. It was huge conch, spiny and a foot long.
Standing knee-deep in the water, he admired its beauty. But it was odd as the shell hadn’t been there before, and as it was empty, it certainly hadn’t crawled there. Also, the night had been calm and no waves entered his lagoon to wash it there. Must have been the tide…somehow, he thought.
“Another beauty.” He added it to his collection.
The next day was the same, no crabs, and only a few fish in his shallows, but once again, another magnificent specimen of a shell, although this one even further out and closer to the edge of the sandbank.
Ben reached in to lift it. Again, it was a fantastic shell, but instead of looking at it, his eyes never left the water. The drop-off still was fairly shallow here, and crystal clear, so he didn’t see anything other than the clumps of weed and patches of corals and sponges. But today, his sixth sense alarms were going off.
He squinted. At the bottom of the sandbank slope, there were two more shells; big, unique ones. He wanted them, and he stared for a moment. There was nothing close by, and the water was clear and warm.
But he just couldn’t bring himself to wade in or dive into the deeper water.
“Nah, not today.” He turned and shuffled back to the shoreline.
The next day, Ben woke extremely hungry. He’d dined again on pterodon eggs, but his large frame craved protein. The sky was just turning an azure blue and was cloudless to the horizon. The air was still and the morning sea mist was rapidly burning off. He could see from his cave perch the large torpedo shapes of fish out at the breakwater in his lagoon. He wanted them. His hunger demanded them.
Today’s the day, he thought.
Ben climbed down, looked once again up and down the sand, and then hefted his spear and crossed to the rocks and then headed out along the breakwater. It took him 15 minutes to make it toward one of the deeper ends of his ocean pool. The rocks formed a barrier but were more like broken teeth in that they let the tide run through between them, and on high tides obviously also let in good-sized fish, without anything larger gaining access.
On the inner side was the lagoon, and on the other, the vast ocean. He leaned forward on one of the rocks to stare out at the magnificent sea. Where he was, it looked deep. So deep, he couldn’t see the bottom, and it was dark indigo that might have been 20 feet deep or 100.
Ben leaned further forward and looked nort
hward. He could see another jutting promontory several miles up the coast. He wondered what it would be like if he went there, keeping along the coastline until he came to America. Would it feel like home? He doubted it.
He pulled in a deep drought of warm sea air, flooding his lungs, and scanned the horizon. Oddly, there were no plesiosaurs anymore—gone home or chasing schools of fish somewhere else. Or for all he knew, they were there, just diving deep.
Ben continued to watch for a few more moments; it made him feel uneasy. One thing he knew was that the ocean was just as dangerous as any jungle and staring into the deep-dark blue might mean that something was staring right back at him and he’d never even know.
Ben turned back to the calm of his lagoon. On this side, the water was like a massive swimming pool. But even though the water looked inviting and the sun already warm on his shoulders, he couldn’t quite bring himself to dive in—yet.
He liked the idea of having his own personal swimming pool and aquarium. But he needed to be cautious—it was what kept him alive so far, and looking down, the water was deeper here and the weed could hide a multitude of things he had no idea even existed. He read somewhere once that it was a one in a million chance that an animal became fossilized. That meant there could be thousands of creatures that evolution tried out that we didn’t even know about.
As Ben stared into the lagoon’s depths, silver fish longer than his arm skimmed back and forth along the surface. There were oysters on the water’s edge, and he used the butt of his spear to break a few free and extract their meat. He was tempted to eat the pulpy, grey meat then and there, but today, he had other plans. He mashed them in his hand and tossed the remains onto the surface before him. He hoisted his spear and eased down a little closer to the water.
In seconds, silver torpedoes rocketed through the cloud of debris, picking off the larger portions, and then literally swarming to then look like knots of boiling mercury.
Ben only had to jab into the center of the cauldron of feeding fish to feel his spear strike flesh. He then hoisted a good eight-pounder from the water.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”
He brought it to him, and then lowered it to the rocks beside him where he carefully pushed it off the blade of his spear and used the sharp edge to sever its neck to kill it.
By the size, Ben thought two fish would make a nice meal, and probably breakfast. He rinsed the blood from his hands and left his first catch on the rock close by, bleeding out, and turned back to the water. The oyster debris had gone, save for a milky cloud that a few fish glided through sensing the food, but not finding any.
Ben eased a little bit closer to the water but saw that the fish were thinning out rapidly as they lost interest now that the food was gone. He kept his spear ready, but in a flash, the fish vanished. He could smash another few oysters open or maybe use the head of the fish he’d just caught as bait. He turned to look at it.
“What the fuck?”
It was gone.
The rock was still smeared with blood, and he was certainly high enough not to have had any waves wash it off, but there was no sign. He had left it on a flat rock, just between two boulders that created the barrier between the lagoon and the ocean. Blood had leaked down the side of the rock that washed between the two bodies of water.
He looked up, checking for any pterodons, but though there were a few, even the small ones’ wings flapping sounded like you were shaking out a wet towel, so no way they could creep up on him.
Ben stared hard back into the water of the lagoon. The fish was as dead as they come, and there was no silver body floating on the surface. He stepped lower, peering deeper into the water—it was impossible to see the bottom because of the weed, but he was sure there was no silver shape down there.
Ben was furious and for a few seconds, contemplated diving down to feel around at the base of the weed—somehow, the fish must have slipped off the rock and glided down in amongst that forest of weed. All his work was wasted—crap, he fumed, as he had been proud of his success.
“Fuck it,” he muttered. The sun was getting hotter, but for some reason, he felt a chill run up his spine and he looked one way then the other. He didn’t see any threats, but he was spooked now, and his Special Forces intuition was setting off a warning.
“Okay, maybe just one fish today, and then I head home,” he whispered, squinting out over the lagoon. He began to step down closer to the water, planning on cracking open another few oysters when what felt like a wet glove latched onto his ankle…and then stuck there.
“Wha…?”
He spun and looked down.
“Shit!”
A jolt of fear rocketed through him—there was a tentacle, thick as his wrist, coming up out of the water beside the rock, and in the few seconds, he was frozen watching it as it inched a little more up his calf to grip on.
Ben leaped to the side, but the thing held on tight, and looking down into the water, he finally realized where his fish had gone, and horrifyingly, what was lurking there.
Its camouflage was so effective that even so close, Ben had to concentrate to make it out. The massive creature was spread out like an enormous rug beneath the water, and the bulbous bag of a head had two plate-sized eyes staring dispassionately up at him. It was easily 30 feet across and as he watched, it changed color, flaring red and becoming brilliantly visible from its camouflage in amongst the weed beds.
As part of his Special Forces training, Ben had dived in deep water where the giant Pacific octopus dwelled and knew they could get to 150 pounds with an arm span of 12 feet. They were smart, curious, and strong as hell. But this thing was three times that size and might have been one of its ancestors.
Maybe it was just curious, and maybe it was hungry. But Ben had no intention of letting the thing drag him into the water, as he knew underneath the massive cephalopod’s body would be a horned beak, probably a foot across on this monster, that would sever limbs and crack his skull open like an egg.
Ben also realized that this must have been the thing that had been gifting him the shells. It scared the shit out of him knowing that it had been watching him probably since he arrived. And it was baiting him, trying to lure him to deeper and deeper water. And when that failed, it had decided to come get him itself.
“Fuck you.”
Ben brought his spear around and jabbed at it, and then began to hack with all his might as the head began to breach the surface. It ignored him and started to bring more arms to bear on its task.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Ben continued to stab, but it was like trying to put holes in a soft and super tough rubber blanket, as the limbs or boneless bag refused to be penetrated. There were tentacles around both his legs now, and his feet began to skid on the rocks…toward the water.
“No. Fucking. Way.” Ben lunged with the spear, this time catching the edge of one eye, and blue blood spurted from its side. The tentacles curled back up for a few moments, a little like a boxer protecting its head in the ring.
Ben backed away. Would it stay in the lagoon? he wondered, or rather, he hoped. He remembered seeing a nature program once that showed an octopus leaving a rock pool to chase down a crab. It was fast and ruthless, and once it had caught its prey, it hauled it back into the water to dine at its leisure. Ben didn’t want to find out if the bigger variety could do the same.
Ben used the moment to clamber higher on the rock and scale down onto the ocean side. He peered back between the boulders, spear held ready, and saw the bulbous thing start to heave itself from the water. The large disc-like eyes caught sight of him, and the body flared a fire engine red—if ever there was the color of anger, this was it, he thought.
Perhaps the lagoon belonged to it, and the monstrous octopus was about to show the soft two-legged creature that it was boss around here. He bet he knew who’d win that fight.
Ben looked up and down the breakwater. The rocks on the ocean side looked slippery and
also covered in oysters closer to the deep, dark water—he didn’t like his chances of moving quickly. At worst, he’d slip and hurt himself, but at least he’d end up in the ocean. Though he desperately wanted to avoid those bottomless-looking depths, if need be, he’d damn well swim for it.
He considered his options; he could go south and try and swim around the octopus, and all the way back to the beach. Or swim to his north, where the breakwater met the cliff face? Though he doubted he’d be able to scale the sheer edifice, he might have been able to at least get up and out of the water, and perhaps higher than the heavy creature could climb.
He grimaced with indecision. How long would he have? How long would it take him to climb with that big bastard in the water, throwing sticky tentacles at him while he slipped and slid on the rock face?
Ben glanced between the rocks again and saw the huge muscular body launching more tentacles from below to latch onto the rocks and haul itself out. Its body now undulated in stripes of red, green, and brown, and he knew it wasn’t going to give up and just go away. His time was up—the beach or the cliff? He chose—the beach it was—and he ran for it.
Skipping across jagged rocks in bare feet meant he’d be crippled for days, but he had no choice. Back between the huge stones, he saw the octopus now fully out of the water and pulling itself up to the top of the border rocks. Thick tentacles were thrown like climbing ropes over the jagged stones and the bag-like head began to appear.
Ben knew he’d never get past now, and worse, the thing had the high ground. He had one chance left. He gripped his spear and dove into the ocean.
He swam hard and fast, knowing he had seconds to get around the huge beast before it was fully over. If it decided to launch itself into the water, it’d have him in seconds. Ben knew his one chance was to get around it, clamber back onto the rocks and then, damn his feet, just freaking run like a mountain goat over the rocks and back to the beach.
Ben swam, almost right beside the huge cephalopod and past it, and then flicked over onto his back for a quick glance back. It was moving fast, but maybe it had decided to stay out of the ocean. The huge body was all writhing tentacles like a coiling bag of snakes and flaring redness as it perched high on the rocks.