Challenger Deep

by Neal Shusterman

  139. The Rest Is Silence

  If you want to talk to anyone about mental misfirings, Raoul’s got the right idea. Talk to Shakespeare.

  My brain fries when I try to read Shakespeare, but my English teacher would not accept “my hound hath eaten my volume” as an acceptable excuse for avoiding Hamlet. Funny thing, after reading for a while, I actually started to understand it.

  The doomed prince of Denmark is a dude faced with an impossible choice. The ghost of Hamlet’s dead father tells him to avenge his murder by killing his uncle. For the rest of the play, Hamlet agonizes. Should I kill my uncle? Should I ignore the ghost? Is the ghost real? Am I insane? If I’m not insane, should I pretend to be insane? Should I end the agony of impossible choices by ending my life? Will I dream if I kill myself? And will those dreams be any better than the nightmare of my dead father telling me to kill my uncle, who, by the way, is now married to my mother? He agonizes, and ponders, and talks to himself until he’s stabbed by a poisoned blade, and all his tormented self-analysis gives way to eternal silence.

  Shakespeare had a thing about death. And poison. And insanity. Hamlet’s beloved Ophelia really does go insane and drowns. King Lear loses his mind with what we, in modern times, would call Alzheimer’s. Macbeth is totally delusional and has hallucinations of ghosts and a pesky floating dagger. It’s all so on target, it makes me wonder if Shakespeare was writing from experience.

  Regardless, I’m sure people accused him of being “on something,” too.

  140. The Time of Words Is Over

  I have yet to follow the captain’s order to kill the parrot. I have yet to take the parrot’s dire warning that I must kill the captain. I am paralyzed by my inability to act, one way or the other.

  But everything changes the day we face our next threat from the deep.

  It begins with a disturbance off the port bow; a patch of bubbling white water marking something beneath the surface.

  The captain orders quiet on deck, but it’s hard to order quiet when you have to whisper, so he sends Carlyle to tell the seamen on deck individually to hold their tongues, and whatever other parts of their anatomy are making noise.

  “Turn us twenty degrees starboard,” the captain whispers to me.

  I turn the tiller. We are riding a swift tailwind today, and the ship veers starboard quickly, moving us away from the disturbance.

  “What was that out there?” I ask.

  “Shhh,” the captain says. “It’ll be fine as long as they don’t hear our passage.”

  Then, to our starboard side, I see another patch of churning water even closer to the ship than the first. The captain takes a deep breath and whispers, “Hard to port.”

  I do as I’m told, but I crank the tiller too quickly, and the rudder creaks. I can feel the vibration amplified in the belly of the ship, like the menacing tone of a cello. The captain grimaces.

  The ship veers away from the strange patch of sea, and for a moment I think we’re out of danger, but then, directly in front of us, the water begins to froth, and in that churning foam, I catch a glimpse of something I wish I hadn’t. A barnacle-covered creature as pale as a corpse, and the dark, oily tentacle of a second creature gripping on to the first. The monstrosities dive, and the water settles.

  “Were those . . . what I think they were?” I ask the captain.

  “Aye,” the captain says. “We trespass now in the realm of the Nemesi.”

  We sail in silence waiting . . . waiting—then suddenly the whale, wrapped by the clinging body of the squid, does a full breach, barely fifty yards to starboard. The creatures are massive. Together they are more than double the size of our ship. The whale writhes, its fluke beating powerfully against the air as it leaves the water, revealing how completely the squid’s tentacles envelop it, squeezing the whale with life-crushing force. They plunge back into the sea, creating an enormous wave that hits the ship broadside, and tips us within inches of capsizing.

  While the rest of us slide along the tilting deck, the captain never loses his footing. He grabs me as the ship rights itself, and puts me back at the tiller. “Steer us clear of these beasts,” he tells me. “Feel their presence and steer us clear.”

  And although I can sense great malevolence beneath us, the feeling has no direction. It’s as if they’re everywhere, and there’s no way for me to know which way to turn.

  “They are too consumed with each other to notice our presence,” the captain says. “Only if they hear us will their attention be turned. Guide us true, and we’ll pass through unscathed.”

  I think back to the captain’s tale of the Nemesi. “But if their quarrel is with each other, why would they attack us?” I ask.

  The captain whispers into my ear. “The whale abhors chaos; the squid detests order. Is this ship not the bastard child of both?”

  His words give me a glimmer of understanding. Although the Nemesi might sense a bit of themselves reflected in the ship, they see only that which they loathe. It makes us the mortal enemy of two mortal enemies.

  “We might be able to sustain the wake of a close breach,” the captain says. “But if they hear us, we’re done for.”

  The next breach is off our port bow. The whale comes only partially out of the water this time, so its wake is less severe than before. Just as the captain said, the whale doesn’t see us. Its eyes are rolled back into its head, seeing nothing. It thrashes back and forth, biting a tentacle the girth of a redwood. The squid lets loose an earsplitting screech. I crank the tiller to turn us away from them—but slowly this time so that the rudder won’t moan.

  And then from up above I hear a screeching almost as loud as the squid’s.

  “Over here!” the parrot yells. “Over here! We’re over here.”

  And just before the whale sinks beneath the surface its eyes roll from sightless white to shiny black, and I swear it locks its gaze on me.

  Our stealth destroyed, the captain now rages in venomous fury at the parrot. “The feathered demon would sink the ship rather than see me victorious! Do away with him now, Caden!” the captain orders. “Before he does away with us!”

  I reach down to feel the flintlock pistol still in my belt, but silencing the parrot will do no good. It’s too late—the creatures know we’re here. When the captain sees me make no move to apprehend the parrot, he grabs me and hurls me from the helm to the main deck. “Do your duty, boy! Unless you want to be in the belly of one of those beasts!”

  The parrot perches high on the foremast, squawking at a volume far too loud for such a small bird. I climb the ratlines toward him. When he sees me, he smiles. At least I think it’s a smile. It’s so hard to tell.

  “Come see! Come see!” he calls to me. “The view is better from up here!”

  He doesn’t know I’m here to kill him. I still don’t know if I can.

  “Perspective! Perspective!” the parrot hoots. “Now do you understand?”

  When I look down, I can see the situation with much greater clarity. From up here, I can see that the two beasts have separated. They circle the ship on opposite sides—for the moment the two enemies are united in purpose.

  “The Nemesi will end this voyage. The captain will go down with the ship,” the parrot says. “As it should be. As it should be.”

  Just then, the squid shoots a tentacle out of the water, grabbing on to the bow. The ship lurches. I hold on to the ropes for my life. The dark creature curls a second tentacle around the bowsprit in a powerful grasp, and tears the bowsprit right off the bow. Had Calliope still been there, she would have been torn in half.

  A violent shudder nearly knocks me from the ropes. I look down to see that the whale has battered our starboard side, nearly buckling it. The captain orders the master-at-arms to fire the cannon, but the whale submerges too quickly to be fired upon. The squid has now pulled itself completely out of the water and onto the bow, its tentacles wrapping around the lower half of the foremast like black vines. The bow dips low from its weigh
t, and crewmen scream and scramble. I climb higher to get away from the seeking tip of the highest tentacle.

  On deck, Carlyle jabs at the squid with a mop handle sharpened into a harpoon, but the creature’s flesh is too thick for him to do much damage.

  “Grab my talons,” the parrot says. “I’ll carry us away from here.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “Their fate is not yours!”

  “We’re too far from land.”

  “My wings are strong!”

  His voice is almost convincing, but I still can’t believe. He’s small. He seems powerless compared to the captain.

  “Trust me,” the parrot says. “You have to trust me!”

  But I can’t. I just can’t.

  And then I see the navigator. He’s come up from below, racing toward the captain, oblivious to the battle that rages around him. Even from this far away I can see he’s in worse shape than before. His pale skin peels with the wind. It comes off in page-like layers that flutter behind him to the deck, and are pulled in by the hungry pitch. He grabs one of the peeling pages, and shows it to the captain—a new navigational chart—but the captain pushes him aside, navigation being the furthest thing from his mind.

  The whale rams us again, and finally the navigator looks around him to see the big picture. There’s an expression on his face that chills me. A look of steely determination—and I think parchment, judgment, sacrament, sacrifice. I know what he’s going to do even before he begins climbing the mainmast. He’s going to the crow’s nest. And he’s going to jump.

  “Not good,” says the parrot, seeing what I see. “Not good, not good, not good.”

  “If you want to save someone, save him!”

  “Too late,” says the parrot. “Ours is not an exact science, but we do what we can do.”

  I will not accept that. The navigator is halfway up the mainmast now. A tentacle whips toward him but misses, grasping one of his trailing pages instead, crumbling it. The navigator never takes his eyes off the crow’s nest, just above him. I have to save him!

  The distance between the foremast and the mainmast is too far for me to jump, and if I climb down, I’ll be climbing right into the gaping maw of the squid. But there might be a way to safely cross the distance. I turn to the parrot.

  “Take me to the navigator!”

  The parrot shakes his head. “Better if I don’t.”

  And although I have no idea where I rank in the scheme of things, I muster my most authoritative voice and say, “That’s an order!”

  The parrot sighs, digs his talons painfully into my shoulders, beats his wings, and lifts me away from the ratlines of the foremast. He spoke the truth; even with wings so small, he has the strength to bear my weight. We sail above the battle, and he drops me into the crow’s nest, just moments after the navigator gets there.

  It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the deceptive dimensions of the crow’s nest; tiny from the outside, huge on the inside. I look around. The place is devoid of crewmen. There’s nothing but shattered glass around the empty bar. Finally I spot the navigator at the far side, climbing to the leapers’ ledge. I barely recognize him, so much of him has peeled away.

  “No!” I shout. “Stop! You don’t have to do this!” I try to get to him, but the broken glass beneath my feet slows me down.

  The look of determination on his face has dissolved into a faint grin of acceptance. “You have your destination, and I have mine,” he says. Even his voice now has the semblance of rustling paper. “Destination, violation, violence . . . silence.” And before I can reach him, he hurls himself into the wind.

  “No!” I grab for him, but it’s too late. He falls toward the sea, layers of parchment peeling away as he falls, page after page until there’s nothing left of him. He’s completely gone before he ever reaches the water. All that remains are a thousand pages wafting in the wind like confetti, settling piece by piece into the sea.

  I stare at the flurry of parchment, unable to believe that he’s gone. The parrot tries to bring a wing over my eyes. “Don’t look, don’t look.” I push the parrot away in disgust.

  Down below, the squid’s passion for destruction is suddenly quelled. It releases its hold on the ship, and slithers back into the water. The whale, on a ramming run, dives under the ship instead of ramming it. In a few moments the creatures breach far off our port bow, once more intertwined in their familiar hateful embrace, forgetting us completely. The Nemesi have their sacrifice. The ship is saved.

  “Unexpected,” says the parrot. “Very unexpected.”

  I turn to him in fury. “You could have stopped him!” I shout. “You could have saved him!”

  The parrot bows his head in mock reverence and gives off a low whistle. “We do what we can.”

  The things I feel cannot be put into words. Once more my emotions are talking in tongues. But that’s all right—because the time of words is over. Now is the time of action. I give voice to my tumultuous fury by pulling the pistol from my belt. It’s already loaded. I don’t remember loading it, yet I know that it is. I press the pistol to the parrot’s breast. I pull the trigger. The shot rings out as loud as a cannon blast, tearing through the parrot’s chest. His single seeing eye locks on mine with the shocked gaze of the betrayed, and he offers me his final testimony.

  “You’ve seen the captain before,” the parrot says, his voice weaker with each word. “You’ve seen him before. He’s not . . . what you think . . . he is.” The parrot wheezes one final breath and goes limp. The time of words is over for both of us now. I grab the parrot’s limp body and hurl it from the crow’s nest, watching it arc across the sky like a feathery fireball, until it is taken by the sea.

  141. Like He Never Existed

  My parents are beside themselves when they hear about Hal. I wish no one had told them. Talking to them about it is just reliving it, and unlike Alexa, I don’t have a need to relive nightmares if I can help it.

  I sit in the Vista Lounge staring out of the window like Callie used to, not wanting to be on this side of the glass, but not wanting to be on the other side either. I’m numb. I can’t think clearly. Part of it is the meds, and part of it isn’t.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” my mother says.

  “What I want to know is how it could even happen,” says my father. They sit on either side of me, trying to comfort me, but I’m already cocooned in invisible bubble wrap. Comfort isn’t the issue.

  “He took my plastic pencil sharpener,” I tell them. “He pried the little blade off the plastic part, and slit his wrists with it.”

  “I know what happened,” my father says, getting up to pace the way I often do. “But it shouldn’t have. There are cameras, aren’t there? And there are nurses up the wazoo. What the hell were they doing? Twiddling their thumbs?”

  The commotion is over now, but the waves haven’t settled. It will be a while before the sea is calm.

  “You have to know, Caden, that it wasn’t your fault,” my father says. But somehow the only words that stand out to me are your and fault. “If he didn’t use that sharpener, he would have found something else.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I say. I know my father speaks logic, but I think the logical part of my brain is still scurrying around belowdecks.

  My mom shakes her head sadly, and purses her lips. “When I think of that poor boy . . .”

  So don’t I want to say to her, but I stay quiet.

  “I understand his mother plans to sue the hospital.”

  “His mother? She’s part of why he did it!” I tell them. “The hospital should be suing her!”

  My parents, who have no context for that discussion, have no comment.

  “Well,” says my dad. “One way or another, heads will roll, that’s for sure. Someone’s got to be held accountable.”

  Then my mother tries to lighten the conversation with talk of my sister’s dance recital, successfully filling the time with non-morbid talk until visiting
hour is over.

  I wasn’t the one who found Hal. Angry Arms of Death did. I caught a glimpse of the bathroom when they hurried Hal away, though. It looked like someone slaughtered an elephant in there.

  And now it’s back to business as usual. The staff puts on cheery faces and won’t talk about it. Best not to upset the patients. Pretend like it never happened. Like he never existed.

  Only Carlyle is human enough to talk about it in group.

  “The good news,” Carlyle tells us, “is that it happened in a hospital. They rushed him straight to emergency.”

  “Is Hal dead?” asks Skye.

  “He lost a lot of blood,” Carlyle tells us. “He’s in intensive care.”

  “Would you even tell us if he died?” I challenge.

  Carlyle doesn’t answer right away. “It wouldn’t be my place,” he finally says.

  And then Alexa touches her neck and compares and contrasts this to her own suicide attempt, as usual, making it all about her.

  142. Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been?

  My parents have wondered if I am, or have ever been, suicidal. My doctors wonder. The insurance questionnaires wonder. It’s not like I haven’t idly thought about it—especially when depression digs in its nasty claws—but have I ever actually crossed the line and been suicidal? I don’t think so. Whenever those thoughts spring up, my sister is the fail-safe. Mackenzie would be screwed up for the rest of her life if she had a brother who killed himself. True, my continued existence could make her life miserable, but misery is the lesser of two evils. A brother who is a problem is easier to deal with than a brother who was a problem.

  I still can’t figure out if it’s bravery or cowardice to take your own life. I can’t figure out whether it’s being selfish, or selfless. Is it the ultimate act of letting go of oneself, or a cheap act of self-possession? People say a failed attempt is a cry for help. I guess that’s true if the person meant it to be unsuccessful. But then, I guess most failed attempts aren’t entirely sincere, because, let’s face it, if you want to off yourself, there are plenty of ways to make sure it works.