Grave Doubts

by John Moss

  Miranda brought the light back to Rachel, tracing down her body until she saw that Rachel’s ankle was shackled to another iron rail, effectively enchaining them both to the ship. A series of throttled spasms caught at her throat, yet Miranda’s mind seemed clear, as if she were an observer, a sympathetic witness to her own imponderable predicament. She shook her manacled arm and felt a strange surge of affection as she realized Rachel was dying.

  Suddenly, her gut seized in a series of lacerating convulsions; a maelstrom of razor-sharp images raked the inside of her head. She too was dying. Survival instinct kicked in and panic gave way to shock and then she felt almost disengaged, again, as if it were all happening to someone else. And again reality took hold and her blood turned to ice, a jagged shaft of pain fibrillated between her lungs and her throat, her jaw and teeth, behind her eyes and into her temples. The pain helped her focus. She let the light zigzag across the bulkhead beneath them and discovered, close together, the other two flashlights, both turned off. Rachel must have intentionally dropped hers, then borrowed Alexander’s to retrieve it and, instead, secured him to the wall in the darkness. Miranda had the only light. Clearly, whatever was happening, it was not important to Rachel that they see each other. If this was a tableau of death, it was to be enacted in murky obscurity.

  Rachel hovered beside her, very still. Miranda looked again at her face through her mask. There was a flicker of recognition, but neither terror nor pleasure. When Rachel turned to spill the glare from the glass, Miranda could see what might have been tears, and yet her features appeared oddly serene, as if her face were slowly turning into a death mask, changing from flesh into sculptured stone.

  Miranda reached for the hose with her gauges attached. Their dive had been almost thirty minutes to this point. More than half her air was gone. She would breathe slowly and eke out the rest as best she could. Then she would die. She was surprised by her own composure. There was nothing to do, there were no options. She was cold. The icy tremor along her spine was a reassuring reminder that she was still alive. She breathed slowly, inhaling long deep drafts, releasing short bursts, a bit at a time until she was depleted, and then again, slowly, and again, and again. She turned out her light. To save the batteries. She thought she would like to have light at the end.

  Morgan and Peter Singh stormed into the dive shop. A chill ran through Morgan’s entire body when the young man told them three cops had gone out on their own. Grave doubts about Miranda’s safety turned to gut-wrenching fear. Without understanding the urgency, the young man scrambled to get Morgan outfitted with dive gear, not even bothering to ask for his certification, while Peter Singh, flashing his Owen Sound Police identification, commandeered a boat from a couple of startled American tourists setting out to go fishing.

  “You want me to come with you?” the young diver offered, excited by the prospect.

  “No,” said Morgan. “Call the OPP, tell them what’s happening. Come after us pronto.”

  “I don’t really know what’s happening. Is the Coast Guard okay?”

  “Do it!” said Officer Singh. “Come out in their boat. We’ll need underwater backup. Morgan, do you know what Miranda’s boat looks like?”

  “Yeah, and what direction it went. Let’s go!”

  They skimmed over the water in the direction they had been told. There were a number of boats in the offing. They scanned for the trawler, then Morgan realized they might easily have set out in one direction and switched course out of sight of the harbour. He gazed along the coast and in the distance could make out a boat on its own. It was a gamble. If it wasn’t them, they would waste precious time, perhaps the minutes of struggle before death. He was certain, now, that Miranda would die if they did not get to her soon.

  chapter eighteen

  The Wreck

  Miranda could feel Rachel floating in limbo at the end of their tether beneath them. She switched on her light and checked her gauges. The pressure-gauge needle was grazing the red zone. She had fewer than fifteen minutes left. She sighed into her mask. The depth gauge remained constant. She was hovering at forty-five feet, fifteen metres; the higher the better, the less air consumed. She smiled to herself, despite shivering from the cold. She struggled to remain fully aware, keeping a delicate balance between panic and shock. She gazed about in the shadowy chambers of her mind but found nothing of interest. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes. She felt cheated. She wanted to be solemn, to die with grace and dignity, but small jokes kept intruding.

  She lifted her manacled wrist into the murky light in front of her mask. When she turned the flashlight beam toward herself, it was Rachel’s hand that dangled lifelessly in front of her eyes. My God, she thought, she’s dead! But she could hear the echoing rumble of her breathing beside her. She would finish her air soon. Miranda worked their joined arms around and contemplated chewing through her wrist. Better yet, chewing through Rachel’s. Is it cannibalism if you chew and don’t swallow? And what if the flesh is your own? She realized that she had not thought about why Rachel was doing this. Rachel was her friend. She couldn’t bite Rachel.

  Miranda reached about, inside her skull, looking for clarity. It hadn’t occurred to her before. There was a dive knife attached to her BCD. She withdrew the knife. It was titanium with a serrated edge. She could saw off her hand. She held the knife out in front of her, then extended her wrist. She would have to cut close to the joint and pry through the cartilage and ligaments. There was no way bone would yield in the time remaining. She tried to think of how she could staunch the blood flow. Tying off a tourniquet might be possible with her remaining hand. She had nothing to use, no accessible strap except for her weight belt and if she removed that, she would soar upwards and maybe be pinioned against the steel overhead. Possibly she could jam the bleeding stump into her BCD harness and bind against it, but then could she swim with sufficient dexterity to avoid getting hung up on or torn apart by twisted railings and shear metal edges?

  She could feel Rachel shift her position. She grasped the knife more firmly, afraid Rachel might try to interfere, but then she realized Rachel was leaning down and away and she suddenly grasped what was happening. Even as she felt the clasp of rigid steel around her ankle, she knew it was too late. Rachel had drawn another pair of cuffs from her bag and secured Miranda’s ankle to the same iron rail she had shackled herself to Miranda opened her fingers and let the knife slip away. It hit the steel beneath them with a resonant twang. She twitched at the finality of the sound. She shone her light down on Alexander Pope. When the beam caught his eyes, his mask suddenly burst into an explosive balloon of wasted air that immediately expired, drawing a thin stream of bubbles in its wake, and then only a few random beads trickled from his gaping mouth as the mouthpiece fell uselessly into the darkness. Miranda turned her light out, shaken to witness his death, desperate to isolate herself from his hovering body.

  The two women swung this way and that, as if they were caught in a haphazard current, but the movement came from their bodies turning gently together against the pain of their manacled ankles. They crashed lightly against a looming bulkhead, tanks clanging, and drifted away, twisting slowly, crashing again. Reverberations like the sound of shook metal filled the room, flooded her head. Miranda, irritated, manoeuvred until they were still, binding against the pain where the cuffs bit into her flesh. She felt Rachel running a hand up the back of her neck. Miranda flinched, realizing it was a gesture of affection. They would die with their bodies conjoined in an enduring embrace.

  By the time their commandeered boat pulled alongside the trawler with Peter Singh at the helm, Morgan had set up his regulator and tank, which was large and heavy, attached them to his BCD, and was in his thick wetsuit, with boots and fins on, no gloves — he had come without gloves. Peter tied off to the other boat, then assisted Morgan with the weight belt and gear. Morgan pressed the mouthpiece between his lips and took a test breath.

  “Okay,” he said, backing against the gunnel
so he could flip over into the water as he had done on Easter Island. “Do you see their bubbles?”

  “What bubbles?” Peter handed Morgan his mask, which he had thoughtfully spit in and rinsed, as he understood from the movies was required. He then began tugging at the BCD fasteners with meticulous care.

  “Damn it, Peter, stop fussing. Look around. There should be bubbles breaking the surface.”

  “I don’t see anything, Morgan. The water’s like glass, there’s nothing.”

  “Damn it,” Morgan repeated. “Sit tight, I’ll be back.”

  “I hope so,” said Peter as Morgan clasped mask to face, regulator to his mouth, and sprawled backward head over heels, disappearing under the surface, leaving his own trail of bubbles behind him.

  Morgan dropped uncomfortably fast; he was wearing too much weight. He struggled to get his fins underneath him so that he could slow his descent. Once he had a chance to pop his ears, he looked around, descending through layers of pain, repeatedly blowing into his pinched nose to equalize the pressure in his head. Below him was the wreck, standing clear on its side in the cold pristine water. When he settled heavily to the bottom beside the hull, he unclasped his weight belt and slid one of the lead weights off, dropping it among the rocks, at the same time remembering that his BCD was a flotation vest attached to his air tank, which he could have inflated with a few bursts of air to slow his freefall descent. He gave a brief squeeze to the inflator button and levitated, hovering uneasily just off the bottom. His training was recent; this gear was unfamiliar but the procedures were the same. He deflated a brief burst and sank, then inflated again until he achieved neutral buoyancy.

  Even while feeling a certain satisfaction at attaining weightlessness, horror mounted as he realized he had seen no air columns rising while on his way down. The water was freezing against his hands and the exposed flesh of his face, but there was an almost tropical clarity. As he turned a slow pirouette, gazing out in all directions, he saw no sign of their bubbles. Fluttering gently up and over the ship, he looked for bubble traces indicating the divers were inside. Or, if they were, would their exhalations be trapped? He swam the length of the upper side, passing along a series of portholes midship, and down over a gaping hole at the ship’s waterline mark, just off the front quarter.

  He decided to make another methodical sweep along the uppermost side of the hull. He had turned icily calm after breathing far too heavily, consuming valuable air at a reckless rate. Maybe they had decided wreck-diving was too dangerous. Maybe they were having a recreational tour close by, with no nefarious intent. He would stay close, assuming they would come back to the mooring line before surfacing. Their air must be running low. How strange it will seem, as Miranda swims by, to see me.

  Morgan drifted around the stern and back over the upper deck that slanted at a precarious angle against the lucent horizon, gazing in all directions into the distant opacity, searching for movement.

  He glanced down as he passed over a row of portholes and caught in one what he took to be a spear of sunlight cast by the prism of a wave overhead. With a slight acceleration he coasted back down over the portholes before passing on to examine the breach in the hull gaping ahead. He directed the beam of his light into the dark cavity in the ship’s side.

  They must have surfaced — their air supply would be depleted by now. Suddenly, he heard a sharp metallic clanking reverberate from the darkness inside the hull. It was impossible to determine the direction of its source. He remembered the flash against glass like a shaft of sunlight. There were no waves overhead. He withdrew from the cavernous shadow where he had been hovering, bewildered by the sound, and swam back along the side of the ship.

  Miranda flashed her light against the glass of the middle porthole and it glared back in a mirror image of their watery crypt. Alarmed by the image, she dowsed the light. And yet several times she repeated the sequence, mesmerized by how the luminescent world outside the ship was extinguished and then reappeared, as if she had transformative powers. Once, she thought a shadow passed by, but when she flashed her light it had vanished.

  She inhaled in slow, shallow breaths and slowly exhaled, tilting her head and watching the bubbles rise in front of her mask and gather against the bulkhead above. She switched on her flashlight with the beam directed downwards to soften the glare, and turned her head to see if Rachel was alive. Rachel stared out at her with what Miranda perceived as serenity. Miranda’s eyelids dropped interrogatively.

  What had Alexander done to deserve such a miserable death? How had Miranda so completely misunderstood their relationship? What terrible things swarmed through a mind driven to murders so contrived and cruel and seemingly arbitrary — without even the satisfaction of knowing her victims understood? Perhaps that is the point, Miranda thought: love as a prelude to death, a prologue to absolute power. Some things are beyond understanding.

  Or perhaps Alexander understood his own death. Surely Rachel understood hers. And understanding for Miranda was not important — it would neither console nor redeem, and it would not compensate. Dead is dead. She felt life surge inside her and for the briefest moment she was angry, but anger made her colder. She tried to think of sunlight and fires. But when warmth began to creep through her body, she knew hypothermia was setting in as she shivered in spasms.

  Rachel twisted their manacled wrists, and grasped Miranda’s hand. She gave it a slow and gentle squeeze — what might have been intended as a meaningful gesture. Miranda turned her light directly on Rachel. Rachel gave an almost imperceptible shrug, then took her mouthpiece from her mouth and held it up over her head.

  There was a sudden rush of bubbles, then nothing. Her air was gone. She shrugged again, but instead of inhaling water she seemed to be holding her breath, as if she were determined to be in control to the end, to die by asphyxiation rather than drowning.

  Miranda’s mask was filling with water, rising above her nostrils and splashing into her eyes. She felt panic tighten inside her. She took a slow breath and, tilting her head upward, exhaled through her nose, feeling the precious air stream out the top of her mask, driving the invasive water with it. Her mask cleared and the panic subsided.

  She drew Rachel close. Reaching down to her side she freed up her octopus, which was tangled with her primary regulator hose, and pressed the auxiliary mouthpiece against Rachel’s pursed lips. After a moment of resistance, Rachel opened her mouth and grasped it between her teeth, but seemed not to breathe. Calmly, Miranda reached over and pressed the diaphragm on the front of the reg, forcing a burst of air into Rachel’s mouth. Rachel took a deep involuntary breath and began to hyperventilate. Miranda pressed against Rachel’s chest with her hand, urging her to slow down. They would share her air to the end. Miranda did not want to die alone. But she would prolong the process as long as possible. She would savour every last moment of consciousness.

  Morgan swooped down on three portholes that had deliberately been scraped clean of algae from the inside. He tried to peer in but could see nothing. Grasping a steel flange with his fingertips, he pressed his flashlight against the glass to eliminate the reflection. He was sure there were human-shaped forms in the shadowy darkness. He banged on the window but there was no response. He turned and swam back to the breach in the hull, plunged into the depths of the ship, and was swallowed whole, with only the thread of his light beam to draw him through the bizarre angles of darkness.

  Miranda drew in her last full breath and held it until her lungs burst and the residual air spewed out in a violent shudder. Her flashlight was on. She looked into Rachel’s mask, surprised to see fear in her final moment. She shone the light around their murky prison, calmly conscious of inscribing in her mind her final perceptions. Overhead, there was a pearly sheen where their exhaled air had gathered against the steel. She reached up and discovered she could break the surface and her fingers disappeared into a shallow pocket of air. She leaned down and drew Rachel toward her, then stretched upwards, kicking aga
inst the cuff around her ankle, forcing it to slide along the iron rail to gain a few inches of height.

  Arching her neck, her face was less than a hand’s width away from the air. When she grasped to cup air with her hand, it slipped through her fingers. She needed to press into the pocket with her lips. Her mask hit steel, she tore it off and stretched again, until she could feel the flesh of her ankle break open against the restraining shackle. Still beyond reach. She dipped her fingertips into the eerily beautiful opalescence and pulled back to watch as it broke like shattered mercury. Her mind wavered; carbon dioxide tore into the walls of her lungs and trachea and larynx with innumerable edges; her chest and windpipe collapsed in a paroxysm of agony.

  As her mask drifted away, Miranda felt the snorkel attached to its band brush against her leg. She grabbed down at it, but it slipped from her reach. Dropping her flashlight, she tore Rachel’s mask from her face and, after releasing the snorkel, let her mask drop as well. With a jarring heave she tried to twist the stiff plastic into a straight shaft. Briefly asphyxia took hold and her vision flashed black. She stopped, she clasped the snorkel with her manacled hand, reached out, groping, found Rachel’s knife, grasped the release, squeezed, turned the razor-sharp edge against the plastic, incised around the shaft a continuous line. The knife slipped from her fingers. Struggling to remain conscious, she twisted the snorkel with all her remaining strength. It refused, shivered, gave way, the valve end detached and slipped into the murk beneath them.

  Miranda pressed the mouthpiece into her mouth and guided the sheared upper end into the pocket of air. She blew out, sucking residual air from cavities of pain to clear the shaft, and took in a slow, deep breath to replenish her screaming lungs.