The Devil's Triangle

by Mark Robson

  Callum watched as Sam pulled out a penknife and cut the silver lure free and dropped it into a plastic drawer under the main console. The multicoloured monstrosity he then lifted out of the same drawer looked nothing like any fish Callum had ever seen.

  ‘I thought a lure was supposed to fool a fish into thinking it was attacking another smaller fish,’ he observed.

  ‘That’s the basic idea,’ Sam agreed. ‘But this lure uses bright colours and movement to attract attention. A large predatory fish will attack anything small that moves. Some colours attract attention better than others. I like to cover a good spread.’

  ‘You’re not kidding!’ Callum said, looking at the bright orange, yellow, blue and white contraption that Sam was expertly tying onto the line.

  ‘There you go. Now let me just cast it out for you and we’ll get going again.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  Sam took the rod from Callum, released the clutch on the reel and flicked the lure a good distance out to the side of the boat.

  ‘Right, now just hold onto this and let the line run out until I call, then flick the clutch lever this way,’ Sam instructed, demonstrating how the reel worked. ‘Then hold the rod upright, hang on tight and wait.’

  ‘How will I know if a fish is biting?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll know!’ Sam laughed, turning and taking control of the boat again. He gently throttled up the engines until the boat was moving at a sensible trolling speed. ‘And whatever you do, please don’t let go of the rod. If we lose it, we really will be in big trouble.’

  Sam swung the boat gently round to run parallel to the coast before glancing over his shoulder. Callum looked as if Sam had just handed him a lit stick of dynamite. He was holding the rod all wrong, but he seemed to have a good grip on it so Sam decided not to say anything until it mattered. He counted slowly to forty.

  ‘That should do,’ Sam called over his shoulder. ‘Engage the clutch and lift the rod up until it’s vertical. That’s it. Great. Now hold on tight and wait for your first fish.’

  For the next ten minutes they drove slowly south and west along the coast towards Key West. The bite, when it came, seemed to take his friend completely by surprise. Sam knew from experience that it was all too easy to become used to the steady pull of the lure as it zipped through the water.

  ‘Whoa!’ Callum yelled suddenly. Sam throttled back and looked over his shoulder. Callum’s rod tip dipped hard towards the back of the boat.

  ‘Keep the rod up and start winding in,’ he called. ‘You’ve got to keep the tension on the line or you’ll lose it.’

  Callum did as he was told.

  ‘Good. That’s it. Nice and steady. Don’t rush it. As you wind, gradually lower the rod tip while keeping the tension, then you can pull the fish towards you by raising the rod again. Think of it like a pumping action.’

  ‘The line’s going slack,’ Callum called, his voice sounding panicked.

  ‘Wind faster! The fish is making a run towards us.’

  Callum wound frantically for about ten seconds before the rod tip suddenly lurched down again.

  ‘Excellent! He’s still on,’ Sam said, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘From the bend on the rod, I’d say it’s a good size.’

  ‘Feels like it weighs a bloody ton!’ Callum exclaimed, the muscles on his arms looking pumped as he strained to pull the rod up again.

  ‘Keep at it. You’re doing well.’

  It took several minutes before Callum got the fish close enough to the boat for Sam to see it. The long torpedo shape he spied in the water was unmistakable.

  ‘It’s a wahoo!’ he exclaimed. ‘Looks like a good one too.’

  ‘A wahoo! You’re havin’ a laugh! Conk? Wahoo? You sure it isn’t a “hoorah” ?’

  Sam laughed. ‘A wahoo’s sort of like a giant barracuda,’ he explained. ‘They’re ugly sods with big teeth, but they taste amazing. Shame we can’t take it back. Looks like about a forty pounder to me. Nice fish. Pass me the rod a mo and take a look.’

  Callum was more than happy to pass the rod over. He leaned over the side to look at the fish.

  ‘Bloody hell! It’s gotta be over a metre long!’

  ‘Yep. Like I said – nice fish. Now all we’ve got to do is let it go without hurting it. That might be quite tricky. I don’t really want to put my hand near that fella’s mouth unless he’s too knackered to care. We’re going to have to let him run himself out.’

  No sooner had Sam finished speaking than the fish charged off at speed, stripping line from the reel. Sam held the rod upright and concentrated on keeping the line taut. Once the fish turned, Sam handed the rod back to Callum.

  ‘There you go, matey,’ he said. ‘It’s all yours again.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Exactly what you did before,’ Sam replied. ‘Get him back to the boatside. He’ll probably run another couple of times before he gives up. When he rolls over and goes limp, then ease him alongside and I’ll try to get the hook out of his mouth.’

  For the next six or seven minutes, Callum played the fish. Sam offered occasional advice, but for the most part sat back and watched his friend enjoy the thrill of the catch. As they planned to let the fish go eventually, he wasn’t too worried if Callum made mistakes. It gave the fish more of a sporting chance to make its own break for freedom. In the end it did just that, making a sudden turn right next to the boat that took Callum by surprise. One sudden powerful kick of the fish’s tail and the lure pinged free from its mouth. One more flash of silver and the fish was gone.

  Sam laughed.

  ‘Not to worry, Cal,’ he said, noting the disappointment on his friend’s face. ‘I could have gaffed him a couple of times if we’d been looking to keep him. You did fine. Shall we try for another?’

  ‘Can we? That would be great. But can we take a break for a couple of minutes first? My arms feel like jelly after that.’

  ‘What a wimp!’ Sam taunted. ‘Worn out by a little fish.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe I am,’ Callum replied, not rising to the bait. ‘Though it didn’t look that little to me, and I’d rather not drop the rod, Sam.’

  ‘Good point. OK, we’ll just . . .’ Sam’s voice trailed off as he turned to face the front of the boat. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, a strange note in his voice as he stared ahead.

  ‘What’s what?’ Callum asked, climbing to his feet and moving to stand beside Sam in the cuddy.

  ‘There, just ahead of us,’ Sam said, pointing. ‘The sea looks strange . . . wrong somehow.’

  ‘What do you mean? The water’s a slightly different shade, but that’s not unusual, is it? Don’t you get that when the depth changes?’

  ‘Not when you’re this deep.’ Sam eased the throttles forward, taking the boat slowly closer. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s weird.’ He looked up at the sky, but there were no clouds to cast shadows. He looked back at the sea ahead. ‘The water’s not just a different colour. It seems to be moving differently. Look. The wave pattern’s all screwed up.’

  ‘Oh, yeah! Spooky.’

  Callum stood up, fishing rod in hand, and looked round the side of the cuddy to see if it was a trick of the light playing through the perspex screen. No. The sea definitely looked different.

  ‘There’s nothing unusual showing on the sonar,’ Sam observed, running his top teeth back and forth over his lower lip as he considered the strange phenomenon. He went suddenly still and sniffed the air. ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘Smell what?’

  Callum sniffed the air a couple of times, testing it like a dog.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sam said warily. ‘I thought I caught a whiff of sulphur.’

  ‘I can’t smell anything. Are you trying to freak me out or something, Sam? Stop messing around. Let’s do some more fishing or go home.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Fishing. Sure thing. But first I just want to . . .’

  As the boat crossed into the strange wat
er, Sam suddenly felt as if he was going to pass out. His head spun and for a bizarre moment he could have sworn he heard Niamh’s voice screaming his name inside his head. She sounded terrified. Callum staggered backwards and sat down on one of the side seats with a thump. The boat rocked alarmingly and Sam grabbed hold of the steering wheel to keep from falling. The wave of disorientation lasted no more than an instant, but Sam knew from the second they crossed into the dark, churning water that he had made a huge mistake. The boat began to dance on the choppy waves that peaked and fell in a strangely unpredictable fashion.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Callum exclaimed. ‘Get us back into the calmer waters, Sam. I think I’m going to puke.’

  Sam didn’t need asking twice. He swung the boat in a tight arc and opened the throttles slightly to power into the turn. As he spun the wheel, he looked around and a tight knot of icy coldness hardened in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘That might be a problem,’ he said.

  Impossible though it seemed, the strange boundary on the water had vanished. And so had all sign of the Florida Keys.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Niamh couldn’t settle. She felt tight with anger at her brother’s pig-headedness. Why did he always have to push the boundaries? What was he thinking, taking the boat out without permission?

  ‘Dad’s going to do his nut!’ she muttered, shaking her head again.

  She put her book down on the coffee table. It was no use. The words were just meaningless blurs of ink across the page. She had read the same paragraph at least five times and still couldn’t have said what it was about. She needed to do something to release the tension creeping through her shoulders and down her back. A swim was the obvious answer.

  She crossed the living area and slid open the glass door to the deck. As she left the pleasant air-conditioned environment, a wall of heavy heat mugged her. For an instant, it felt as though all the air had been stolen from her lungs.

  ‘Phew!’ she breathed, closing the door and sweeping her hair back from her forehead. Grabbing a large towel from the wall cabinet on the patio, Niamh stepped quickly across the hot white surface to the nearest sunbed. Seconds later, she had shed her T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops and was standing on the edge of the pool in her white bikini. If anything, she felt hotter for the lack of clothing.

  Niamh hesitated on the brink. She dipped the toes of her left foot into the water, trailing them around in a quick arc. The air temperature was so hot that the water was never going to feel warm. Getting in slowly would only prolong the agony. She took a deep breath.

  Geroni— she thought as she prepared to jump. Her lips tightened in a hard line as she cut the word off midway in her mind. ‘Geronimo!’ was what Sam normally yelled as he leapt into the pool. ‘Stuff you and your stupidity, Sam!’ she muttered aloud.

  She stepped off the side, tucking into a tight ball as she hit the water. The shock was not as bad as she had anticipated. The water felt cool, but not unpleasant. Pushing up from the bottom, Niamh stretched out and began to swim.

  The pool was not long enough to do any more than a few strokes in each direction, but the physical exertion was enough to warm her and disperse some of the tightness in her back and shoulders. After racing back and forth for several minutes, she stopped. Her heart was pumping fast and she was breathing hard.

  Closing her eyes, she laid her head back in the water and tried to imagine her heart and lungs purging the tension from her body. It didn’t work. Rather than relaxing, Niamh could feel muscles throughout her body tightening still further. She hadn’t felt this sort of nervous anticipation since . . . a shudder rippled through her body . . . since she couldn’t remember when. She’d been angry with Sam plenty of times, but her anger had never made her feel like this before.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, spinning suddenly in the water to scan the area immediately surrounding the pool. Was she missing something? Was her body instinctively reacting to a danger she wasn’t consciously aware of? There were some dangers in the Florida Keys. The worst normally came in human form, though there were a few animals that could pose a threat. Niamh scoured the poolside and nearby bushes and trees. The chance of a dangerous animal threatening her here at the house was remote, but she couldn’t imagine much else that would bring her this close to outright panic.

  The barest breath of a breeze was playing gently with the palm fronds overhanging the deck at either end of the pool. A gecko skittered across the poolside, head bobbing as it went, and feet moving impossibly fast. The ever-present chirruping of the cicadas was the only obvious sound. Niamh concentrated, listening hard. The distant sound of cars travelling along the Overseas Highway was just audible, but there were no signs or sounds of anything threatening.

  ‘This is crazy!’ she exclaimed aloud. ‘I’m getting paranoid!’

  She checked her watch. How long had the boys been gone? About an hour? If Sam kept his word, it would be roughly another hour before she could expect them to return. She turned, intending to push off and scull the length of the pool on her back when a sudden overwhelming terror enveloped her.

  Niamh wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. It felt as though her chest was crumpling like a paper bag sucked empty of air. There was a surreal moment as her mind seemed to separate and the part that had become detached looked down at her body in the pool. Then, for the briefest instant, she seemed to be looking at Callum holding a fishing rod. It wasn’t a dream. There was too much detail and texture to the vision. And it couldn’t be a memory, because she had always declined to go on fishing trips, preferring instead to spend the time sunbathing.

  A pulling sensation inside her head suddenly ripped with such terrible violence that it felt as though her brain was being torn in two. Her hands flew to her temples, fingertips spread and pressing hard against her skull as if she could somehow push them through the bone and hold everything in place. It was agony. It was ecstasy. It was an eternity of torture in an instant. Without warning the pain vanished. And with it, the vision – cut off as if someone had hit the power button on the TV. She could breathe again. Her fingers relaxed the pressure against her scalp, but she didn’t remove them. She felt empty. As if a part of her was missing.

  She screamed something: a single word. All strength deserted her legs and Niamh fell backwards into the water. The surface closed over her and for a moment she lay under the water watching streams of bubbles from her body wriggling up towards the surface in dancing silver columns. Slowly, her natural buoyancy lifted her, and as soon as her face surfaced, she began to gasp in great mouthfuls of air. Tears mingled with the streams of pool water tracking across her cheeks as she panted, her heart thumping with urgent rhythm against her ribcage.

  Gone! Gone! Gone! The word repeated over and over in her mind. What was gone? She didn’t know. Something. A part of her was missing. The hole gaped in her mind and inside her chest. Emptiness. Void. It felt wrong. That was as much as she could rationalise.

  With a supreme effort, she regained enough control of her body to get to the side of the pool and haul herself out of the water. Despite the heat of the Florida sun and the hot surface of the pool deck, she felt cold. Goose pimples raised the skin on her arms and legs. She began to shiver. Intense muscle spasms began to run up and down her body, causing her to moan as one cramp overtook another. She wanted to cover herself, to wrap a towel round her shoulders and feel the comfort of the soft material squeeze her arms and body, but the thought of crossing the deck to where her towel was slung over the back of a sunbed made her feel sick.

  Her mind replayed the image of Callum holding the fishing rod. His face had worn an expression of curiosity. Then had come the moment of separation.

  The word Niamh had screamed as her strength had deserted her was her brother’s name. The feeling of emptiness – of being incomplete – suddenly made horrifying sense. Something had happened to Sam. Was he dead? Was that why she had felt the tearing sensation?

  Niamh had always shared a cl
ose empathic bond with her twin brother. Even when they were apart, there had been occasions when she had known Sam was experiencing particularly intense emotions. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she could predict his moods with uncanny accuracy when she rang him. He had confessed to similar experiences, though from what he had told her, Sam’s perception of her was not as strong. The only times he had ever felt her was when her emotions were particularly powerful. Instinctively, she knew that the hole inside her was something to do with the strange link they shared. Panic gripped her tighter. Could Sam feel her now? She had never had such a strong sensation of fear before. She had to tell Dad.

  Forcing herself up onto her hands and knees, Niamh crawled to the nearest chair and used it to help get to her feet. Her head was still spinning as she crossed the deck to the glass door. It took every ounce of energy she could muster to slide it open. The telephone was on the breakfast bar, just a few short steps away.

  Now she was on her feet and into the air-conditioned living area, her head was clearing fast. Her strength was returning and she crossed to the breakfast bar with relative ease.

  What if I’m wrong and the boys are fine? she asked herself as she picked up the handset. She paused. They’ll be livid that I’ve ratted on them to Dad.

  The hollow feeling of loss and emptiness denied that possibility. She knew she had to make the call. Without further thought, she punched in the number and lifted the handset to her ear. It seemed to take an eternity for the line to connect.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ she urged, hugging her spare hand round her body and rubbing at her other arm. Her shivering was getting worse again and her teeth had begun chattering, but this time from genuine cold. The cool air from the nearby overhead air-conditioning unit played across her wet body.

  ‘We are sorry, but the person you are calling is not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone . . .’