Deep, Deep Ocean

by Carter Bowman

  Deep, Deep Ocean

  Carter Bowman

  Ghost Pepper Press LLC

  Contents

  A Note From the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Acknowledgments

  Upcoming Title:

  Prologue

  Also by Carter Bowman

  A Note From the Author

  A Note From the Author

  The original plan was to dive directly into the sequel of my first novel, Part-Timers, upon its completion in late 2017. Sequels sell, and it made sense to build on an already existing world. Then I found myself deep into Silas’s story, which grew from the simple premise of a child finding a monster in his home. Everything else was put on hold to write this book that became one of the most personal I’ve ever written. Deep, Deep Ocean is also a love letter to the stories and authors that shaped my childhood, many of which have been woven into this book.

  I would love to hear your thoughts about Deep, Deep Ocean. Please leave a review wherever you picked this book up, and connect through CarterBowmanBooks.com or on social media.

  Best,

  Carter

  Twitter + Instagram: @CarterMBowman

  Facebook: CarterBowmanBooks

  CarterBowmanBooks.com

  Copyright Page

  Deep, Deep Ocean

  Copyright © 2018 Carter Bowman

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Ghost Pepper Press LLC 2018

  Bucks County, Pennsylvania

  ISBN-13: 978-1719529051

  ISBN-10: 1719529051

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied or reproduced for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Cover Art from Jake Caleb, JCalebDesign.com

  Formatting and Editing by Josiah Davis, jdbookservices.com

  To Dad

  Chapter One

  Summer had overstayed its welcome. There was, after all, a correct order of things, an order that even the weather was inclined to follow. September 1st meant the coming of Fall, leaves maturing to a crispy brown, and school beginning its cycle once again. Only, it didn’t seem to be happening that way this year. For one, school wouldn’t start on September 1st like it should, but was to begin on September 8th — an eternity later.

  I had asked my mother about this predicament — about why an entire week of summer had been tacked on before I could take my fresh binders and books with me to the fourth grade. I was ready, anxious even, to begin this important life step. After all, fourth grade marked the year that students were allowed to start writing in pen. Third graders had to use number two pencils. They may have been given colorful erasers to decorate with, but this was just a distraction from the dream of using real, permanent ink. Mom had been busy changing Christopher when I brought this problem to her attention, only offering a distracted reply about teachers’ unions stretching taxpayers.

  The fact that school would not start for another week was only one of the many problems with September, however. What made the days drag so painfully, simply put, was that I had finished with them. The books had been read, the villains of my video games laid waste by my superior skill. Mom and Dad had packed up Christopher, my older sister Margaret, and myself in the family minivan to visit Peanut Amusement Park not once, but twice. Margaret had complained the entire two hour drive on the first trip, declaring that Peanut Park was for kids and that, as a teenager she should be allowed to stay home with her friends. Since turning thirteen, Margaret had demanded we stop calling her Maggie, preferring the full name that I thought sounded like a librarian’s.

  The librarian at C. L. Johnson Elementary School was a kind, cottonball-haired woman named Bernice. She was old enough to be my grandmother, if I’d had one, and never minded when I brought books back late. Bernice was one of the many things I liked about school, which the more I thought about seemed a lifetime away.

  Seven whole days.

  That was too much time with nothing to do.

  Maybe I would convince my father to visit the beach this week, a day trip we used to take more regularly. I had been born on October 24th in Port Christie General Hospital and had lived my entire life passing the ocean in the backseat of one car or another. This meant I saw the ocean far more than I was able to visit it, which was never often enough. Mom and Dad used to take me to the shore all the time, where I would chase sand crabs and schools of minnows in the tide pools. There were so many, all in a cluster, like bugs that swarmed in front of my face on hot evenings. I would try to catch the darting fish in my hands, but, like the bugs they always escaped at the last moment. Dad had taken me almost weekly until Christopher had been born. After that, the trips had stopped.

  Mom and Dad had worked hard to get us excited about having another person at the dinner table. Maggie had already been through the experience, meaning she was not nearly as thrilled as I was. I had been promised that big brotherhood would be fun, that I would have someone else to discuss action figures and gross people in The Guinness Book of World Records. But I didn’t even get to meet Christopher until almost a month after he was born. Mom had to stay at the hospital for a long time after she and Dad had rushed away in the middle of the night before Thanksgiving, only coming home once every day or so looking tired and with her hair in a messy clump. She had not looked like my Mom then, even with her stomach back to its normal size.

  I had asked her when I was going to meet my baby brother.

  “Not quite yet, Silas,” she had said while packing clothes into a bag I’d only seen used for vacations. On those trips, she’d packed my clothes in the bag as well. This time, she only packed her own.

  When Christopher came home, Mom and Dad warned us to be especially careful with him, and to always ask before touching. The clear soap Mom forced me to use made my hangnails sting.

  Holding Christopher back then had been less than exciting. When Jackie Pollard had a baby brother, he had been fun — he wiggled a lot, and when he cried, it didn’t last long before his toothless grin returned. Christopher didn’t move much. He would not giggle when I tickled him, and there was no gummy smile. I tried to line my eyes with his so he could recognize his big brother, but even then, it was as though he looked straight through me.

  Tired Mom was the one who stuck around after the hospital. Her words were usually kind, but she always answered as though she had more important things to think about. Dad remained the same for the most part, but he became busier and busier after Christopher came home. He worked more weekends, taking more trips for his job, which meant less time for tide pools.

  Less trips to the beach should have meant more time to go on adventures of my own, but this too had turned out to be a disappointment. There were only so many adventures to be had in a neighborhood. I had climbed every tree, jumped every fence, and counted how many st
eps I could take towards the Fullman’s dog before it started barking. The ocean was where real adventures happened anyways. Once I came to this conclusion, every other adventure, real or imaginary, became boring by comparison.

  But boring adventures were the only ones that a nine-year-old could have. Resigned to this, I had taken a few of the picture books from my shelf, zipped them into my new backpack, and climbed the knobby trunk of my yard’s largest tree. My limbs had grown over the summer, and I could now climb the branches with almost no trouble. There was one particular branch resting at a perfect angle to lean my back against, the shade always at the perfect angle to keep the sun off my face. Having completed my summer reading weeks ago, I was free to peruse whichever books struck my interest, which was good because there was only one real choice.

  Big and Small Fish of the Ocean had been my favorite title since the day Dad bought it for me on a trip to the Camden aquarium. I had fallen in love with every different kind of fish in the tanks, even the plain-colored ones the other kids moved past on their way to the gift shop. The way they all moved together despite being unable to talk, it was as though they operated by a completely different set of senses. There had been one tank, easily the size of a movie screen, that the two of us watched for a long while, mesmerized by the sharks and octopuses swimming inside their glass world.

  Every fish I had seen that day was in that book, plus even more that I had never heard of — tropical fish, all different types of crustaceans, even the jellyfish who I learned did not have brains but only a stringy nervous system. The book contained one section of fish who would never be found in any aquarium, whose pages had become worn with constant flipping. Near the back of Big and Small Fish of the Ocean was a chapter on fish who lived deep in the blackest sea where even light could not reach. According to the chapter’s introduction, these fish of the deep, deep ocean had adjusted to intense pressure over millions of years, and could only survive properly in this desolate environment. Most appeared fragile and skeletal, as though their home had reduced them over centuries to the most basic forms of living things.

  It was in these pages I learned about the chimera, with its venomous fins and zombie-like patchwork of flesh. After the chimera came the bobbit worm, who grew up to ten feet in length and sliced fish in half with its sharp teeth. The last page of this mysterious chapter though was my absolute favorite — a two page spread of the massive mold-colored anglerfish. Supporting a mouth as large as its body, the eerie fish’s eye looked back at me from the depths of the page. I loved how the anglerfish existed at total odds with every other fish in the book. Whereas each preceding chapter bounced with cheerful colors, the anglerfish looked as though it was the only one to truly belong to the deep sea world of blues and blacks. The picture always sent a shiver of nervous excitement down the back of my neck, a restless nettling hinting that I had discovered some secret not meant to be found. Of course, I knew this was silly — if it was in a book, then it wasn’t a secret. But the fish had been a secret until someone found it.

  I sat beneath the shade of the tree, rereading the passage beneath the fish for the hundredth time, its contents already committed to memory.

  A fish of the teleost order, the anglerfish exists in the deep sea as well as the continental shelf. Notable for extreme sexual dimorphism and symbiosis, the female fish (featured above) is a carnivorous predator. The anglerfish is estimated to be between 100 and 130 million years old. Female anglerfish possess a luminescent organ called an esca on top of a modified dorsal fin that is used to lure prey in the dark of the ocean floor. The esca is also used to call for male partners. The anglerfish is capable of distending its jaw, allowing the fish to consume prey close to twice its own size.

  I didn’t know what sexual dimorphism was, and did not want to ask an adult because that would inevitably involve me showing whoever I asked the last chapter of my book. I did not want to share it with anyone, just as I was sure the creatures hiding at the bottom of the sea did not want to be shared.

  It may have been the laziness of the breeze through the leaves, but I was having trouble concentrating on the normally engrossing pictures. There was a narrow parting in the branches I had found myself drawn to instead, creating a dim crease between the leaves my eyes couldn’t seem to line up properly. I watched the optical illusion absently, thinking about schools of fish and wanting my own school to return.

  “Silas!” The sound of my mother’s voice found me through the canopy of leaves, signaling it was time for dinner. I hadn’t heard Dad’s car pull up, but it would not be the first time I had drifted away from the outside world so completely.

  “Coming!”

  After packing my book of secrets away, I was careful to balance myself on only the branches I knew to be the sturdiest. Landing on the ground moments later, the impact kicked up a puddle of mud, throwing brown splotches all over my new-for-school sneakers.

  Mom isn’t going to like that, I thought, trying to wipe away the dirt. The mush only spread across the white nylon, looking like poorly mixed finger paint.

  “Silas?” Mom’s voice came again. I gave up trying to clean my shoes and ran, backpack slapping through my t-shirt.

  It was not until I was inside the house, taking my shoes off in the mudroom that I realized there hadn’t been any rain since the day we came back from Peanut Park. I remembered the clouds building on the drive back and Dad commenting on how lucky we had been. The next day, all excitement of the trip had been washed away by unending rain pattering against the windows. Since then, there had only been passing clouds and sunny days. So where had the mud at the base of the trunk come from? I tried to remember if I had stepped in the puddle on my way up the tree, but the noise of my family in the kitchen managed to derail my train of thought.

  Determined not to become a television-during-dinner-family, Mom had taken up the cause of situating each member at one of the four kitchen table sides every night promptly at 6:30. This had become an increasingly difficult mission with Dad’s work, and Margaret’s newfound interest in something called model U.N. I had asked Margaret what model U.N. was, imagining a club for putting together robots and airplanes. Having assembled a Mobile Suit Gundam model from the nearby hobby shop piece by piece, I had found the endeavor surprisingly interesting. Though the robot at the end had been fragile, and the sticker on his faceplate had not lined up perfectly, I’d made it myself and stood it proudly on my dresser, gun in hand. It turned out model U.N. had nothing to do with models or robots, but instead had kids like my sister pretending to be countries that solved pretend world issues. I thought the idea of pretending to be the government sounded especially boring.

  Tonight was a good night though, all four of us — plus Christopher — were present in our assigned seats. Mom attempted without success to spoon-feed the baby from a jar of mashed sweet potatoes. His high chair was set at the corner of the table — the fifth member of our family creating a disjointed angle in the usually perfect square. He did not seem concerned with eating, instead transfixing on the small silver heart dangling from Mom’s neck.

  “Here we go, Angel,” Mom muttered, tired from the effort. Christopher gurgled by way of response.

  “Dad, I am going to need thirty-five dollars for Junior Homecoming,” said Margaret between rushed mouthfuls of mashed potatoes.

  “I thought homecoming didn’t start until you got to high school,” responded my father.

  “It’s Junior Homecoming. Sophia and Courtney already got their tickets. If I don’t get mine soon, then they’re going to run out and I won’t be able to go at all.”

  Dad looked at Mom for help, maybe to give a warning about the attitude both were always telling Margaret to check. She was engrossed in feeding Christopher though and did not seem interested in adding to the conversation.

  “Maybe some boy will ask you?” said Dad.

  “We aren’t allowed to go with a date,” said Margaret, the attitude beginning to surface. “No one gets to go wi
th a date until the ninth grade.”

  I thought about the bobbit worm, who hid in the sand before jumping out at any moment to cut an unsuspecting fish clean in two before dragging it to a sandy grave. I thought that my sister replicated the strategy of the worm perfectly — hiding in the illusion of safety until she struck. Dad was smart though, and knew he was swimming in dangerous waters. My mother had not turned her attention from Christopher, but had paused with the spoon at her son’s lip, ear cocked.

  “Which is the way it’s supposed to be of course,” said my father, face flushed. “I will pay for your ticket, but you will have to babysit Christopher for two evenings, no complaints.”

  Margaret groaned while looking at her brother, weighing the pros and cons of the offer.

  “Fine,” she conceded as Christopher finally took a bite of the sweet potatoes, which he promptly drooled onto his bib.

  Satisfied with his victory, my father dug back into his dinner, probably regretting that he dared to breach a subject as delicate as my thirteen-year-old sister dating.

  My father’s appearance had gone largely unchanged for the entirety of my life. There were baby photos in my parents’ room with both Mom and Dad holding my sister and me. In each passing photo, they appeared a little more tired, my father’s hair becoming a little thinner. He wasn’t bald, not exactly, but I could see the skin beneath his brown hair now, the same shade as my own. People claimed that I took after my Dad, an idea that I remained proud of. My Dad was tall, easily over six feet, and had broad shoulders. He was strong and able to pick me up even at age nine. In the daytime he was a roofing salesman, which meant that every once in a while, he would point out the window to say that he put the roof on that house or store as we drove past. I didn’t think I wanted to put roofs on people’s houses when I grew up, but I liked the idea that other people were better because of my Dad.