What Lurks Beneath (2 page)

T
he disturbance was close now.

Alert, the enormous organism's brain processed the unfamiliar sounds of activity—muffled thumps and scrapes produced by the approach of something solid moving through the dark caverns, sending vibrations into a saclike organ in its body.

It had never before encountered any animals of significant size in this refuge; only the smaller creatures that perpetually dwelled within it. Nothing large enough to be of concern, as either predator or prey, ever entered these submarine caverns. Only the great beast itself was able to manipulate its nebulous bulk into almost any shape to allow passage through narrow tunnels.

But something was coming now.

It tested the water again. The taste was vaguely familiar. This was not its typical prey. But it was ravenous.

Its eyes began to detect movement. A dim light was moving erratically in an opening at the far end of the cavern. It again considered a retreat back toward the ocean, but its instincts stopped it. No potential threat existed in its refuge. In the daytime, it was safer here than in the open ocean. And now its innate curiosity overwhelmed it.

It would remain. But it would not be seen.

It slowly pressed its immense body against the wall of the cavern, drawing its branching limbs under it, flattening its bulk to shape itself into the cavern wall itself. Fully immersed into the contours of rock, it ceased moving.

Narrow rays of light appeared through the opening in the cavern and struck its flesh. Its skin quickly began to change color, to exactly match the drab hues of the cavern. Its eyes narrowed to slits.

It became the wall.

Sure of its invisibility, it calmly watched as the disturbance entered its lair.

 

 

In the beam of his dive light, Breck could see that several feet ahead the narrow shaft opened into some sort of larger room. A good thing, because the passage had narrowed enough in a few places that he'd been worried the heavier Pelletier might not pass. But the Frenchman had proven amazingly capable of squeezing his thick belly through tighter tunnels.

Breck released a breath of air to reduce his buoyancy, then pressed his body against the hard limestone beneath him and guided himself forward, kicking lightly to prevent stirring up ancient sediments. His scuba tank bumped against the convoluted rock above as he squeezed through the last few feet of the final restriction.

He felt a familiar sense of wonder as he entered the upper corner of a vast chamber. The artificial light revealed a considerable space spreading outward and downward, filled entirely with clear seawater, long enough that even in the powerful light the distance to the far wall was difficult to assess and distorted by lack of perspective. There was simply nothing to use for scale. He would need to be sure to get Pelletier into some of the shots.

He tied off their primary safety line, and then with his dive knife cut the line to free the spool. From a smaller spool clasped to his vest, he then affixed a new, secondary line to the primary line. He entered the chamber.

Breck raised his camera toward the ceiling and heard the faint click as its flash lit the silent cavern. Creeping along the rock above was an inverted reddish shrimp the size of his finger, with oversized antennae swaying in the current as it crept along the rough surface. As Breck gripped the camera, he noticed that his hand had stopped hurting. The mostly sterile seawater in here was probably cleansing the wound.

He snapped another image, this time directed into the open chamber. In the bright light he noticed that this cavern, which appeared to be at least seventy feet long and half as wide, was much broader than the others he and Pelletier had encountered in this network. This was by no means the largest chamber he had ever seen, but it was impressively large nonetheless. And there was something very unique about it. Nearly all the others this size had exhibited a beautiful natural architecture of stalactites, stalagmites, and other cave formations, but this one was different.
Barren
. Almost as though something had worn the sides smooth over the centuries—or cleared the space out. The lack of calcite formations made the chamber seem all the larger, giving it a lonely, empty feel.

Like a tomb.

He thought again of his friend Mack. He would love this place. But the last time he'd seen him, he'd thrown in the towel, finally fed up with the handicap he'd brought home from Iraq.

Breck glanced at his depth gauge as he attained neutral buoyancy near mid-water in the space. Two-hundred twenty-five feet down. Deep, indeed. And they were two or three times farther back than that laterally. He looked back to make sure his safety line—like Hansel's fabled trail of bread crumbs—was still affixed near the opening from which he had come, and saw Pelletier's (
Gretel's
, he thought, smiling) light appear in the dark cavity as he too arrived at the chamber. After Pelletier tied off and entered, Breck pointed out the shrimp suspended from the ceiling above, and the Frenchman nodded and moved toward it.

They had passed through a long, claustrophobic corridor in the cave system to get here. It hadn't been overly tight by cave standards—maybe five or six feet across for most of its distance—until the slightly narrower restriction here at the end. On the way, they'd encountered two other large grottos. The first one, three hundred feet in from the main entry shaft, had an enchanting ballroom feel, with a high ceiling and hundreds of conical stalagmites rising from the floor—graceful dancers frozen a thousand years ago as they twirled past one another. The other chamber was long and low and lined with hundreds of straws—calcite formations that spanned from floor to ceiling like prison bars, which had made passage difficult.

As Breck raised his camera again and continued to document this third chamber, he thought about his sister back in Philly. Deanna was going to love these pictures, and his nephew, Lucas, would like them even more. They already displayed several of his amateur shots, blown up and framed in her home office—all of images taken inside caverns from around the world. But none like this.

Deanna hated tight spaces. She would've freaked out back in those tunnels, in knowing how far he was from the surface now. She'd always been a phenomenal athlete, especially before she'd had kids, but had never had the guts to do what he did. Not only because of the diving part, but also the squeezing-through-impossibly-tight-passages part. Few people did. But he had never been scared. And he didn't have kids. Never would. His independence was too important, and his profession too dangerous.

But this was the reward.

Pelletier tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to the Frenchman and saw that he was signaling a familiar message, as he did every three minutes. Time to assess their air supplies. Breck looked at his gauges and relayed the number via hand signals. They still had plenty of air. But to be safe, they would have to turn back in less than five minutes. Even on the low-nitrogen Trimix blend of gasses—which included helium in addition to oxygen—this far down they were already pushing the limits, and they knew it. When caving, it always paid to err on the side of caution.

Breck kicked into the center of the broad chamber and scanned its walls with his light. This chamber truly was different from all the others they had previously mapped—much more open. The surface rock here was much smoother than any other they had thus far encountered.

As he snapped another photo, he noticed something else. Something that bothered him.

A fine sprinkling of silt swirled in the open volume of the chamber, churning in the motion of Breck's fins. Too much silt for the men to have brought with them as they entered its expanse. Underwater, suspended sediment was evidence of recent motion. And like in the other chambers, the water in this one should have been absolutely still before their arrival.

Unless something had stirred it.

Although they might be kicking up
some
sediment now, the particles spanned as far as his dive light could reach. Something had disrupted the still water in this chamber before they arrived. And recently.

Perhaps with the tidal shifts there was a stronger ocean current in here, which caused an eddy over the rubble at the bottom of the chamber. That might release a few finer particles into the room. On the far side of the chamber, he noticed several large, dark cavities that might lead to the depths of the ocean. They would have to be especially vigilant. If they were forced to fight a current on their return, that might cause serious complications.

Just then, Breck felt a slight movement of water against his face. He nodded to himself.
Yes.
There was some sort of current flowing through here. This passage must link directly to the open ocean, and probably was heavily influenced by moving water. That might also explain the smoother chamber walls, which could have eroded over time.

Pelletier, who looked ghostly pale in the artificial light, nodded at him, acknowledging the current. The Frenchman began to turn away. As his light struck the wall of the chamber, the rock suddenly appeared to move.

To
bulge.

Breck shook his head to clear it and looked again at the cavern wall. It did bulge out toward the center, as though swollen, but no longer seemed to be moving. Had Pelletier noticed anything? If so, he wasn't reacting to it.

Breck realized he must be seeing things. That was a bad sign down here, but didn't make any sense since his air mixture was low in nitrogen. Narcosis was highly unlikely. But if it happened again, it would be wise to begin their exit immediately.

He glanced at his dive computer.
Better hurry, John.
Breck rapped on the Frenchman's tank with his knuckles to get his attention. When Pelletier looked back at him, Breck motioned for the biologist to move toward the bulging chamber wall. Having a person framed in some images would later provide them with crucial perspective to describe the geological formations and size of each cavern. And unlike Breck's drab blue wet suit, which hardly stood out underwater, the Frenchman's black-and-yellow neoprene made for sharp contrast to the muted background.

Once Pelletier had neared to within an arm's reach of the curving wall, he turned back to Breck. Breck raised the camera, and another flash silently lit the chamber. There. He saw it again.

The wall
had
moved—hadn't it? He took a deep breath.

He swam closer to Pelletier, shining his dive light past the Frenchman at the pale rock, which up close appeared to be textured by low, fist-size bumps. Almost directly behind Pelletier was a small crease on the wall. Was it his imagination, or was the rock there now taking on a shade of Pelletier's yellow wetsuit?

Breck moved closer and this time directed the camera past his partner, toward the odd crease, which was the length of his arm. He realized it was actually two small parallel ridges, forming a seam rising several inches off the wall. He depressed the shutter release and the flash went off. In the bright light, the seam momentarily looked more distinct. Almost like lips, or . . .

The seam parted.

Breck was looking into an eye.

He flinched backward and squeezed the camera reflexively, its bright flash illuminating the cavern. The huge catlike eye narrowed, and suddenly the walls of the cave itself seemed to be collapsing. Breck felt the rush of moving water all around him and watched in horror as the side of the chamber began to change shape. The entire wall was separating itself from the cavern.

Detaching itself.

Something as long as the cavern. Something
living.

The camera flashed again. Breck dropped it and began to kick frantically away from the huge mass that continued to swell into the space. Pelletier, sensing the movement behind him, quickly followed. Other parts of the cavern face seemed to break free and squiggle into the water. Breck saw something dart up toward Pelletier. An instant later, the Frenchman was ripped backward so forcefully his regulator popped free of his mouth, releasing a cloud of bubbles.

He reached desperately for Breck, the whites of his eyes visible even in the dim light as twin snakes of rust-colored flesh coiled around his thighs. His face contorted in pain as the coils pulled in opposite directions, bending his legs sideways at impossible angles. A dark seam appeared at the groin of his splitting wetsuit. There was a muted pop as one leg came free in a dark cloud of blood.

Breck spun away. He spied the dark entrance hole near the cavern's ceiling and kicked with everything he had, then forced his way into the hole. His tank clanged against the rock as he struggled farther into the narrowing cave system.

Something touched his thigh and began to adhere to it, and he swung a fist at the taut, fleshy thing, beating at it. He felt a jerk as it pulled at him, at his equipment, and then he was free again as some of his gear fell away. He did not look back.

A minute passed. Two.
Keep going.

He lost track of time as he fled the monstrosity, pushing away thoughts of despair as he again began to think about his air. He was a long way from the surface. There would be no turning back.

The tunnel branched, and he paused to scan his options. One tunnel appeared to end almost immediately, so he went the other way. Ten yards later, he ran into a restriction. He glanced back and saw that, at least for the moment, he was alone. And that his safety line no longer trailed behind him. He touched his belt and realized the spool was missing. It didn't matter. He wasn't going back anyway.

He began to wriggle into the oppressive opening that offered his only remaining hope. It was only a few feet across, and he was forced to slide along on his belly. He listened to his tank scrape along the rock above, but he was making progress. He thought he felt something touch his foot and then there was a surge of adrenaline and he was through the restriction. He started to kick again, then stopped.