The Devil and the Deep

by Ellen Datlow

  If not tonight then in time. For Will and his daughter Maggie it had just been the whispering. For me it had been a string of dreams over nearly forty years in which a skull—this skull quite likely!—had tried to tell me something. Somehow it meant everything.

  I woke several times, first at 12:02 when Solly jumped off the bed (I hadn’t even known he’d paid a visit), then again at 12:55 and at 1:23 for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.

  Maybe it was Solly fussing about again, chasing insects in the balmy night, though I’d heard nothing. Each time, I’d check the green numerals of the clock, then lay considering the different sound and spatial signatures of the house, tracking the obvious things—how everything felt larger, higher, older, dustier, redolent of years of waxing and polishing—trying to fathom others far more elusive, far harder to put into words.

  Each time I listened for the skull sounding, wondering if it might have done so just now, enough to waken me, but that I had missed what it had to say.

  It didn’t happen like that. Rather it came on a dream. At 2:18, I was startled awake by the terrifying certainty that the skull was looming over me, poised there with jaws hideously agape and about to bite. It took a while to free myself from that terrible image, but finally I did manage to sleep again.

  There was no such image when I woke a short time later, lathered in sweat, heart pounding, just the familiar night sounds through the partly open windows. But there was the chilling sense that it had been there, that any breathing, any whispering, that now came would be laden with suppressed screams, thwarted spite, ancient mischief.

  The jaws are glued shut, I told myself as the panic ebbed. No possibility of biting. Or screaming. Or whispering, for that matter. It’s the mind playing tricks.

  But there! Did I imagine it? I kept absolutely still, tried to calm my heart.

  Like escaping gas? The hiss of a snake?

  A sibilance.

  There was. There was. From across the room. I didn’t dare switch on the light lest it stop.

  A far rush of surf up an impossible shore.

  “… sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss …”

  It came and fell away, exactly like the sea.

  “… ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh …”

  The curtains lifted and settled. Leaves stirred in the night. The sibilance grew stronger.

  “Thissssssssssss …”

  I had the word, as easily as that. This.

  “… chanssssssssss …”

  Chance.

  “… ourssssssssss …”

  Ours.

  I’d never forget this moment. Such words. I remembered to grab my notebook and pen from the side-stand, made myself write them down.

  “… adlarsssssssss …”

  What it sounded like.

  But no. No.

  At last!

  This chance ours at last.

  Then grasped what I’d heard.

  Not “Our chance at last” but “This chance ours at last.” The odd syntax. The contrived quaintness of it.

  It wanted the s’s for dramatic effect. No, needed them most likely, needed them to slide along, exactly like the sea running up the strand. Economies of delivery. Working with what it had.

  “I’m listening.” It sounded silly to say it, melodramatic, and part of me resolved to check for wires, a relay or receiver when this was done, some kind of set-up.

  Better yet, do it now, I told myself. While it’s sounding.

  I pushed back the covers, swung my feet to the floor, waited for the next word to begin. I’d move on the next word.

  It came with the same rush of ocean on sand.

  “… essssss-oarrrr …” The ocean slid away.

  “What’s that?” I said, and moved the short distance to the skull, leant over it. “I don’t understand.”

  “… essssss-oarrrr …” it said again, not even a foot from me, the force of it adding the sense of consonants it could not manage. And this time I was able to lay two fingers atop the cranium before it stopped sounding, felt a deep thrumming as it ebbed, like a real wave sliding back.

  And understood.

  Restore.

  Spoke it, fingers still carefully in place. “Restore?”

  “… eeeessssssssssssss …”

  Which had to be “Yes.” And with the thrumming again, though quickly fading.

  “Restore you where?” I asked, but knew the answer. “The room upstairs? Where you once were! Why up there?”

  But nothing. Nothing now.

  Just the night at the windows. The troubling image of those jaws spread wide, ready to bite.

  Over breakfast, I asked if I could come back that night, not wait the whole week. Will was equally keen now he knew the skull had spoken.

  What surprised him most was my request that we move both bed and skull to the floor above.

  “You think that’s what ‘restore’ means?”

  “Can’t say. But it used to be in the room above the one I’m in. Why was it brought down?”

  “No idea. Mum or Dad would have done that, probably when my grandparents passed. This has been the family home for five generations.”

  “Then your grandparents had it facing out like that. The way I saw it as a kid.”

  “Can’t be sure. Why do you ask?”

  “The dream before I woke. The skull was angry, Will. Fiercely angry. It wanted to bite.”

  “You were open to suggestion, Dave. That talk about skull stories—”

  “Just saying how it felt. Maybe they had it facing out for a reason. Otherwise why do that?”

  “Frighten the local kids.”

  I had to smile. “But it draws too much attention.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Put it back where it was. One floor up, right window facing out. Same angle, same height. I’ll carry the bed up now.”

  “Maggie will be here around ten. You draw a quick sketch of how you remember it. We’ll do the rest.”

  My darling Marta was good about it on the phone, asking a dozen questions about my new role as ghost-breaker for the neighbours and making me promise to keep her up to date on what developed. She admitted that she was being pressured to stay on as on-site consultant for the Quinn-Elliot mall project anyway.

  After dinner, I locked the house and wandered along to 1A, but stood for a moment at the front gate admiring the modest but impressive two-storey Victorian mansion that had always been such a part of my life. In the last golden light of evening, I traced the line of the tower up from the front door to the room at the very top, below the railing and flagpole. There at the uppermost left window the skull sat in its old spot, just as I’d seen it all those years ago.

  Right height, right angle now. Fiercely grinning as all complete skulls did. And facing northwest, I realized for the first time, given how Abelard Street was aligned.

  Northwest. Such a simple thing to realize. Never watching me at all, really, rather scanning the horizon. The trees would have been smaller then, the view less obstructed.

  It’s all about having a better view!

  As I reached to unlatch the gate, I swung my gaze from the top floor down past the windows of the room I’d occupied the night before. There was something in the left-hand pane, I was certain, a smudge pressed to the glass like a thumb-print, indistinct but peering out. There may not have been eyes, but I’d been so taken with the skull that I easily imagined them.

  I did an immediate double take, but there was nothing.

  Just eye trickery then. Though another thought came. Ancient mischief.

  After a final glance at the trickster skull looking down—no, out, northwest!—I went in to resume my vigil.

  The uppermost tower room was identical to the one below it, but considerably less by way of a bedroom. My bed was there, the side table and lamp, all my things from the night before, even the chamber pot, but this room was still a storage space. Several cupboards and boxes had been pushed to the side, and the chamber
needed a more thorough dusting than time had allowed.

  The skull was perched at chest height on the edge of a narrow bookcase in the north-western corner, angled so it peered out the right-hand window just as depicted in my drawing. Maggie had done a great job.

  Will and I spent a pleasant two hours at the spacious kitchen table enjoying the delicious casserole Maggie had left for us in the slow cooker and sharing a bottle of his vintage merlot. We talked about everything from his family’s extensive property holdings to his collection of limited editions of Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs, anything but the skull waiting for me upstairs. We agreed that this was best, though it remained the unseen guest in the room.

  I went up to bed at ten o’clock, making my way up into the tower wondering what new trials the night would bring, an odd way to think about it—burdens, trials—but that’s how it was. I read for a while, but soon fell into sleep so easily that I would later wonder if the skull played any part in that as well.

  I was sure that it would wake me when the time was right.

  Again it came on a dream—this time of a wild storm at sea, of waves crashing against a reef, great swells lifting and falling over hard stone ridges, beating themselves into vast swathes of whitewater and foam.

  Lots of s’s to make it easier, I told myself in the dream, self-aware as dreamers sometimes are.

  At least there was no skull with jaws agape this time, just these ocean swells being torn into whitewater.

  “Trial!” the word came, strikingly clear, known as much as heard.

  No s’s now, I told myself. The skull uses dreams for the words it cannot say!

  “Trial!” it came again, above the wind-lashed breakwater of the reef.

  I woke with a start, instantly aware that Solly had paid another visit and now sat perched upon my chest.

  No, no, way too light for Solly!

  I reached for the side light, pressed the switch, saw with a shock that the skull sat there, eye cavities staring, teeth grinning fiercely, rising and falling with every rapid breath.

  I would’ve leapt up, but terror locked me in place, kept me there long enough for the silver glinting against lacquered bone to make me think: Fragile and Protect!

  Will is doing this! I immediately thought. Or Maggie. How else could it move?

  Then the sea came from inside the skull, rushing as it had the previous night.

  “… sssssssssssssssss …”

  With words carried along, nothing as hard to say as “trial.”

  “… see-venssss-eyessss … see-venssss-eyessss …”

  It couldn’t say “Will.” Like “trial,” that name was too much.

  Stevens lies!

  Could it be?

  And more.

  “… or-essssss … or-essssss … or-essssss …”

  The silver on the cheekbones glinted. The rounded hollows where eyes once sat stared, fully lit. I could see the small holes at the back where the nerves and blood vessels had gone in, was more aware than ever that this was the setting for the jewel of the person it had once carried, someone’s only life.

  Northwest, of course! I spoke it aloud. “Northwest!”

  “… sssssssssssssssss!”

  Such urgent affirmation, harsh with emotion. And more.

  “… essssss-oar! … essssss-oar!”

  Northwest. Restore.

  “Trial. Northwest. Restore.”

  The inner ocean rushed up the shore one last time.

  “… sssssssssssssssss!”

  Such determination, such relief.

  I instinctively looked to where the skull had been atop its bookcase facing northwest. There were two smudges there now, two thumb-print faces, one pressed to the left-hand window pane, one to the right. Not one, two!

  I had not cried out when I’d found the skull on my chest, but now a frantic yelling filled the house. It truly took moments to realize that I was the one yelling, mine the only skull screaming!

  When Will hurried in and learned what the skull had said, he accepted my accusations with “Please, Dave. We’ll talk about all this in the morning,” and urged me to try and settle again.

  I was more surprised than relieved that I could do so. There were no more communications, no further dream messages or nightmares, though I tossed and turned for the rest of the night and came down to breakfast feeling leaden and headachy, as if with a serious hangover.

  At least I didn’t need to rush home and do a Google search—Will was immediately forthcoming with the real facts about the skull—though I resolved that I would do a net search later, do my best to verify everything away from 1A when this was done.

  Will said very little until he’d served us a cooked breakfast and freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Dave,” he said, taking his place at the table. “There were things we needed you to confirm without prior knowledge before we went any further. You have to understand.”

  “You said you never knew what the skull was saying.”

  “We never have. It’s the back-story material we misled you about.”

  “Misled. Much better than lied.” I was feeling terrible from lack of sleep, the events of the previous night. “What does ‘trial’ mean?”

  “It’s the Tryal. Spelt T-R-Y-A-L or T-R-Y-A-L-L, sometimes even the way we spell it now. Australia’s first recorded shipwreck. An East Indiaman taking the new Brouwer route to the East Indies. Back in May 1622, she strayed off course on her way to Batavia—Jakarta in Indonesia. Struck what we now call the Tryal Rocks near the Montebello Islands.”

  “Where are they?”

  Will topped up my coffee cup. “Off Barrow Island, close by Exmouth and Dampier on the coast of Western Australia. It’s said Captain Brooke abandoned ship prematurely, cast off in a half-full skiff with the silver they were carrying for trade. He reached safety, lived to be absolved of blame and command another ship. But more than half the crew were left to drown. Think of it, Dave. The ship’s only surviving longboat was already overcrowded and wallowing. Brooke and the skiff were nowhere to be seen. He reached Jakarta, reported the Tryal breaking up four hours after impact. Accounts from those in the longboat said this didn’t happen till the following morning. He lied about what happened.”

  “You’ve lied about what happened! And not just about Farday being a dealer and selling it on. Was Lucas Farday the original owner? Is this his skull?”

  “We can’t know for certain. He may have gone down with the Tryal. But he may have clung to wreckage, made it to the Montebello group of islands. They’re barren, hardly anything there, and it has to be another thirty miles at least to the coast. But the currents are strong. There’s a good chance that his body was washed ashore and found. Identified later from jewelry, remains of clothing. The skull came into our family, however that happened. You have to understand. We wanted to believe.”

  “So what do you know about the skull?”

  “It’s what’s called an attract. An object that draws things to it. There’s usually one at the site of any haunting: a chair, a book, a hairbrush, the house itself.”

  “I mean genetically.”

  “My grandfather called it the Farday Skull. Told us it belonged to our ancestor from the Tryal, that he was lost in the wreck on the Tryal Rocks. But, living or dead, he may have reached shore. He may have been the first Englishman to set foot in Australia.”

  “Will, what did DNA tests show? You must have had it done.”

  “Negative for a direct link from one. Inconclusive from another. But if it’s an attract, it can protect itself. Manage deflection.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  Will set down his cup. “Those dreams you’ve had.”

  “A way of communicating—”

  “But of warning too, yes? Even defending?”

  Biting! I thought, but kept that to myself. “I still hear wishful thinking.”

  “You may be right. But, Dave, it came to us. Stayed with us. In our family. Called to
you. Why?”

  “You think I might be a relation too?”

  “Dave, I have to ask. Is there anything?”

  “Not much. A great-great-great uncle was a convict on a prison hulk, the Phoenix, moored in Lavender Bay in the early 1800s. That’s about it. Though at some point there would have been long sea voyages to Australia before it. Some contact with Brooke’s or Farday’s descendants may have been possible. We can never know.”

  “We can’t,” my elderly neighbour agreed. “So what do we do?”

  “Those shadows at the windows. Something’s happening, Will. So no more lies.”

  “No point. It’s told you everything we were withholding. The Tryal Rocks are northwest of here, on the other side of the continent.”

  “And it must be furious about that. You’ve been thwarting it. You cost it years.”

  “Dave, it never spoke to us. How were we to know? What do you say? One more night?”

  “One more night.”

  I knew better than to make any special arrangements. The skull would do whatever it needed, whatever it could manage to do, so I left it atop its bookcase, angled out, watching the night, the far distances, as it once had for so many years.

  I still felt wretched from the previous night’s events, and so, settling into welcome sleep, I was able to allow that nothing else would happen, that everything had been clarified.

  I was wrong, of course, but, feeling headachy and strange, there was resignation rather than panic when I became aware that the skull was in bed with me, clutched in my arms beneath the covers, angled so its sealed teeth were pressed hard against my throat.

  I did not scream, did not yell. Not this time. There was even a touch of gallows humour about the whole thing.

  “Do your worst,” I said, accepting other needs, this other reality, all the while asking myself, what now? What can possibly remain to be done?

  I barely remembered the charter flights across the continent to Broome, then down to Dampier. There were the vaguest recollections of a motel room at Cable Beach and another at the Mermaid Hotel, but little else. Finally, on a mild Monday afternoon, after a long-haul helicopter charter out across the Montebello group, we hovered above that roiling point of shipwreck and heartbreak, betrayal and despair, and those deadly rocks broke the surface forty metres below our skids.