The Night Dive— by Ben Thomas

Caitlin had been on enough deep-water dives to think of the ocean as she would any other wild place. Unpredictable, sure. Potentially dangerous, of course. But all the more alluring for that.

Her first open-water dive this spring had felt like a step off a precipice – which it was, in more ways than one. She, Silvia, and Valerie had swum out beyond the edge of the Cabo Pulmo Reef, where the familiar shelf of brightly colored corals receded before the blue chasm of the open ocean.

Vertigo overwhelmed her, seven miles above the lightless abyssal plain, with nothing between her and the unknown deep except a column of open water. Here was the abode of the giant squid and the great white, an azure vastness that she could visit only as a foreigner: a tiny, fragile mammal suspended in a universe of hostile brine.

But then she’d caught sight of Valerie and Silvia swimming out beneath her toward a school of slow-moving manta rays, black pectoral fins pumping lazily as they passed amid shafts of dancing sunlight. A solemn procession of gentle wanderers attended by throngs of tiny darting fish. In that moment, Caitlin’s sense of wonder had overthrown her fear, and she’d swum out to join her friends in the unbounded blue.

Since spring, Caitlin had accompanied Val and Silv on a succession of open-water dives--plunging backward off boats to visit a pod of dolphins, a rookery of sea lions, even a titan whale shark, whose dappled back Caitlin had dared to reach down and stroke with her bare fingers.

Over the course of those dives, she’d come to trust the open water and its denizens – not to be friendly, necessarily, or even harmless, but not malicious, either.

“If I had to put it into words,” she told Val and Silv over margaritas one night in Cabo, after a euphoric afternoon swimming with bottlenose dolphins, “I’d say I trust the ocean to be completely unknown.”

Both women stared back at her through a haze of tequila, Val’s full lips twisting into a wry grin, as Silv ran a hand through her short black hair and said, “That sounds very poetic. And as with most poetry, I have no idea what it means.”

That sent all three of them into peals of laughter, which drew the attention of three ruggedly handsome fishermen (or maybe they were tourist guides; not that it really mattered) who bought them another round of shots. Then the men dragged them onto the dance floor amid halfhearted protests that they were too drunk. It was too late, and they had a boat to catch early tomorrow morning – and then a muscled body was pressed tightly against hers, rough lips and stubble against the softness of her skin, a smoky-tasting tongue in her mouth. Later that night, as he brought her to climax atop a straw-stuffed mattress, all she could think was This is just like being out in the open water. I trust this, too, to be completely unknown.

But despite all she’d learned of the sea, there was one boundary she still feared to cross: the night dive. An utterly different beast from that of the daytime. Vibrant colors replaced by impenetrable blackness; sunlight filter-feeders giving way to bioluminescent plankton, glassy-eye sharks, and predatory squid.

In some back corner of her mind, Caitlin knew that she’d cross that boundary someday. But that was where it always lived: in the land of Someday, along with getting married, having kids, and tripping on ayahuasca in the Amazon. She was perfectly content to keep strictly to daytime dives and let her first-night dive remain on that comfortably distant list of someday things.

Until the day Val came back from visiting her boyfriend’s village and announced that she’d planned a night dive for all three of them this weekend.

And just like that, it wasn’t a someday thing anymore.

*

Raul’s brother Javier owned a boat, Val explained, and knew the exact spot where the squid came to feed. Javier also had full-body chain-mail suits, full-face masks with lamps, and stainless steel cables to keep them attached to his boat. 

“Um.” Caitlin interrupted with a raised finger. “How strong are these squid, exactly?”

Val’s grin widened. “They can dislocate your arm out of its socket.”

“You had me at ‘dislocate,’” Caitlin replied drily.

Like all divers who made their way down to Baja, she’d heard stories about the carnivorous nocturnal squid that hunted in these waters. Local fishermen called them diablos rojos, “red devils” – a nod both to their color and their notoriously aggressive temperament. Divers who’d braved their hunting grounds at night reported being enveloped in clouds of brown ink, caressed and tickled by tentacles whose suckers were lined with tiny teeth.

If Caitlin was happy to keep night dives in general on the someday list, she was even happier relegating nighttime encounters with predatory squid to the never list.

But Valerie and Silvia were smiling and clapping, talking through the details as if they were planning a brunch. The whole thing felt so damned normal, even if it looked like a nightmare in Caitlin’s imagination. 

And after all, Val and Silv had talked her into swimming out beyond the reef that first day. She’d trusted them, taken the risk, and in the months since, she’d swam with whale sharks and giant manta rays--gentle titans that few humans had ever seen or touched in the flesh.

Maybe they’re right, she told herself. Maybe I should just suck it up and do the damned thing.

*

Two nights later, they were bouncing over choppy waves in Javier’s motorboat. Val and Raul shouted excitedly over the roar of the outboard motor. The reggaeton beat thumped from tinny speakers – dummmmm-tss dum-tss, dummmmm-tss dum-tss – while Raul’s brother Javier lazily gripped the tiller, steering them toward a horizon where countless stars sank into the ink-black waters of the Gulf.

Caitlin shifted uneasily in her chain-mail diving suit. She locked eyes with Silvia, who was watching her with a look of concern. 

“You all right?” the other woman asked.

Caitlin wasn’t sure how to answer that. Everything about this seemed so ordinary: the salty air, the bouncing boat, the thumping music, the excited shouting over a roaring motor. But something felt off. Something simmering just beneath the surface of it all, which she wasn’t quite perceptive enough to discern clearly.

She glanced at Javier, who was staring off into the middle distance over the endless rolling blackness of the sea. He briefly caught her eye; looked away.

Caitlin forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

Silvia smiled back. “It’s going to be incredible,” she shouted over the motor and the music. “I promise.”

“I believe you,” Caitlin shouted back.

Val scooted away from Raul; threw a wetsuited arm around Caitlin’s shoulders. “The only thing we’re going to regret is not doing this sooner. Right, Raul? Deseamos, uh – ” she fumbled with the Spanish. “Deseamos que lo hicimos antes!”

Raul nodded enthusiastically, flashing his movie-star smile. “Eso que ni que,” he agreed. “You never gonna forget this, I promise.”

Javier tossed Caitlin a grin. “La neta,” he shouted over the motor: Count on it.

None of this helped Caitlin feel any calmer. Her heart thumped harder when Javier checked the electronic compass, cut the motor down to a soft purr, and mimed a neck chop to Raul, who reached down and switched off the pounding beat. 

The soft crash-and-spray of the waves rushed in around them, running off for miles in every direction and only trillions of stars above. And for the first time since she’d swum out over the edge of the reef, Caitlin felt small and frail, a mote of life suspended in an unknowable chasm. But here, there was no rush of rapture, no enchantment beckoning her deeper. Just a cold void in which her presence meant nothing at all.

Val bobbed with excitement. “We’re here!”

Silvia was already pulling up the hood of her chain-mail dive suit as Raul shone a flashlight on the valves of Val’s air tank, double-checking the gauges. Javier cut off the engine, letting the boat drift and rock on the waves.

Caitlin spoke up. “I don’t want to go.”

They all looked about as she’d expected they would: Valerie incredulous, Silvia sympathetic, Raul genuinely surprised, Javier concealing his derision behind a mask of impassivity.

Silvia put a hand on Caitlin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to go.”

But Val was already talking over her. “What do you mean, you don’t want to go? This is some bucket-list shit right here, Caty. And I pulled some major strings to make it happen.” She gestured at Raul and his brother as evidence.

Silvia shook her head. “Not helpful, Val.” She placed her hands on Caitlin’s shoulders. “If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to, okay? But ask yourself: are you in control, or is it the fear?”

It was the fear, Caitlin knew. But this time, she felt certain the fear was right. She needed to listen to it.

“Que onda?” Javier wanted to know. Raul answered in rapid-fire Spanish, adding an outburst of incredulity at Caitlin’s behavior.

Javier gestured at the three women, barking out a torrent of invective whose meaning Caitlin didn’t have to guess. But among the whirl of words she didn’t recognize, she caught one phrase that turned her stomach: “Deben ser las tres.” It has to be three. It has to be the three of them.

Valerie slipped on her hood and her blue-bordered face mask. “You don’t want to come? Fine.” She clicked her red strobe light on and off. “Next time, I won’t call you. How’s that?”

“Val!” Silvia pulled a sour face. “She doesn’t have to do it. I’ll come with you. We’ll swim with some amazing squid, and then we’ll tell Caty all about it over margaritas. Deal?”

Val shook her head. “Whatever.”

“It’s really totally safe,” said Raul.

Caitlin gave him a flat look. “Thanks. Very reassuring. I’m not going.”

Raul turned to his brother, who glared back: Handle this.

“I’m not going,” Caitlin repeated. “And what did he mean, deben ser las tres? What has to be three of us? What’s going on?”

“You,” said Val, lowering her plastic mask, “have lost your damn mind. Órale!” Her mouth clamped down on the breathing valve, then she tipped back and plunged into the dark water.

Silvia locked eyes with Caitlin. “You sure?” she asked.

Caitlin swallowed hard. “Something’s wrong, Silv,” she said, so quietly she could hardly hear her own voice over the lapping waves. She glanced at Raul, whose gaze darted nervously between her and Javier. Something was definitely off.

Silvia pulled her goggles down, pumped her regulator, and clicked her red strobe on and off. “See you on the other side, caralinda.” She blew Caitlin a kiss, lowered her green face mask into place, and tipped backward off the boat.

Caitlin looked from Raul to Javier. Both watched her expectantly. “I told you,” she said. “I’m staying here.”

Raul’s expression turned pleading. “Nothing gonna hurt you down there. We go all the time. You gonna love it.”

Javier remained mute, his hand tight around the tiller. Except it wasn’t the tiller – it was an iron anchor, and he swung it up hard, leaping toward her, anger flashing in his eyes; Raul’s arms suddenly wrapped around her, strong and immovable, his elbow around her neck. 

She screamed, knowing no one would hear, and there was nowhere to go, just miles of open black water. Raul’s arm tightened, cutting off her air. The world was going dark.

Javier was tying the anchor around her ankle, checking and securing the knot. She kicked against him; pushed against Raul, but they were too strong, too sure in each movement. As if they’d done this before.

No breath in her lungs. She choked, convulsed, and slipped down into darkness, wondering why in the hell Javier was strapping an oxygen tank to her back.

*

Caitlin awoke suspended in darkness, bathed in the dim red glow of her headlamp. She gasped; felt the inrushing of cool air from the valve in her mouth. Bubbles and small particles danced in the red light; beyond that, she floated in a void without shape or limit.

At the edges of her red lantern light, she glimpsed flashes of sinuous motion: predatory squid, some five feet in length, hurtling backward through the dark water, writhing, twisting, lashing out with tooth-lined tentacles. This was their world, not hers. A world of lightless brine and invertebrate hunger.

She was sinking, tugged downward by something heavy around her ankle. A memory surfaced: Javier tightening the rope. She reached down and worked at the knots with rubber-gloved hands, but they were expertly tied, and the rope had swelled with water, tightening the knots.

A few squids probed closer to her, lancing through the red lamplight, whipping out tentacles to snatch at her feet and calves. Testing her. Sampling her. A big male darted in close from the side, wrapped tentacles around her arm, and yanked so hard she felt the muscle tear. 

The fear was on her now, within her, knotting her stomach, stabbing icily in her arms and legs. Images flashed in her mind: documentary shots of carnivorous squid devouring a tuna and tentacles wrapping around chain-mailed divers in the dark. Footage from a camera attached to the head of a sperm whale--plunging down and down, into depths beyond the reach of light, where nameless things hungered.

She breathed deep, trying not to think of how long she'd been unconscious, and how little oxygen she might have left. The fear overpowered her, consumed her, devoured her – then passed through her, leaving her breathing evenly, devoid of feeling, conscious of no other impulse but the urge to rise and breach the surface.

The anchor told her which way was down. That was a start. Calmly--more calmly than she would've believed possible--she raised her ankle and began working at the knot again. Her fingers felt its weave; she knew how it was tied. A few seconds more, and she'd loosened one of the loops, just enough to begin paying another loop out through it. She knew this knot well now. She felt almost as if she and the knot were one organism, working together to set her ankle free from the anchor. 

A squid darted toward the dangling anchor, snapped at it, then cast it away – just as a larger male lunged out of the darkness, wrapping the smaller squid in its tentacles. The predator released a cloud of dark brown ink to conceal its catch, then jetted backward into the dark.

Caitlin worked another inch of rope free, and suddenly the anchor was a part of her no more. It vanished from the red glow around her, hurtling down into the depths, trailing frayed rope behind it. 

Caitlin kicked; reveling in the freedom of two unencumbered legs. With a warm rush of hope, she clamped her arms tight against her sides and pumped her legs smoothly, in practiced rhythm, rising toward the surface. Careful of the bends, she reminded herself. You don't know how deep you are. If you feel a cramp, stop and wait.

Sensing a knot in her leg, she paused a moment, even as ravenous squid swarmed around her, dashing in to nip and tug at her limbs. The tickling of their boneless limbs enwrapping hers was intolerable, but she knew a case of the bends could cripple her here--left utterly at the mercy of these alien carnivores. She forced herself to wait and breathe, willing the cramp to fade.

Glancing up toward the surface, she glimpsed a glimmering human form swimming above her. She gasped: it must be Val or Ines. At least one of them had survived. If she could reach the other woman, she could warn her of what had happened on the boat. They could protect each other, surface, and make a plan.

Caitlin shook off the last dregs of the leg cramp and kicked as hard as she could toward the steel-suited woman. Her friend didn't seem to be in a hurry; she paddled leisurely among the darting squid, pausing now and then to cast her dim red headlamp beam around in the darkness.

As Caitlin drew closer to the other woman, she caught a glimpse of what her friend was searching for: a third glimmering human figure, swimming deeper into the darkness, also surrounded by the red glow of a strobe light. 

Even as curious squid darted in to nip at Caitlin and the other woman, they dodged sinuously around this third chain-mailed swimmer. Had Val coated herself in some kind of squid repellent before jumping off the boat? The idea made no sense – Caitlin had never heard of such a chemical, and besides, she would've noticed. Val would've said something about it.

But as she narrowed the distance between herself and the second woman, Caitlin watched even the most aggressive squid fly out of the third swimmer's way, obscuring the water with brown ink as they fled.

At last, she drew close enough to make out details: the second woman wore a green face mask, which meant it had to be Silvia. She'd almost reached Val, who still swam on, apparently oblivious of the swarming squid that darted out of her way.

Caitlin kicked harder, reaching out to grasp one of Silvia's rubber flippers. She was just a few arms' lengths behind now. If she could just get the other woman's attention, this nightmare could end. They'd rise to the surface together. They'd talk about how wrong everything had gone and figure out a plan. A way to ditch Raul and Javier and get back to shore. They'd call the police, get the men arrested, and make it back to the hostel, where they'd cuddle with warm, dry blankets. 

Caitlin's aching legs pumped in the frigid water. All she had to do was make it another few feet; just get hold of Silvia's flipper – 

What happened next was too fast to make sense of. Silvia reached Val; stretched out a gloved hand to grasp the other woman's arm; then Val unfolded, turned inside-out, unwrapped vast tentacles that swept Silvia into an invertebrate embrace. There had been no Val at all, no chain-mail diving suit--just a dancing of incoherent color across the hide of a pulsing tentacled mass. A thing that clenched and convulsed as it swallowed Silvia whole. Red lights glimmered along its surface, strobing in the blackness.

Caitlin screamed a muffled roar inside her mask. She flipped her feet out in front of her. She kicked hard and fast, jetting backward away from the beast, like the frightened squid that swarmed around her. She was one of many: dozens of fleeing squid as long as her body swam on all sides, hurtling aside, concealing their flight in brown clouds.

A mimic! a voice in her head was shrieked. Just as an octopus becomes a rock by shifting color and form. A predator god. That's what they brought us out here to feed.

As she kicked furiously away from the pulsing mass of luminescent color, she realized she wouldn't find Val down here. The two brothers were probably long-gone, too. A scene flashed in her mind: Javier on the boat, raising an octopod idol to the stars while Raul chanted litanies in a dead language. Absurd. As absurd as the thing that devoured Silvia.

Far above her, shafts of white moonlight played beneath the water's surface. She kicked toward them, shaking off the squid that swept in to pluck at her hands and feet with eager tentacles. 

The higher she swam, the fewer squid kept pace with her. The water grew lighter until at last, she approached the shimmering undersides of undulating waves, and the tentacled carnivores jetted back into the deep in search of easier prey.

She broke the surface. The vault of stars loomed above. She ripped off her face mask and inhaled lungfuls of salty sea air while a cool wind caressed her cheeks.

A sound escaped her throat--something between a sob and a shout of triumph. She blinked, feeling hot tears rise in her eyes. She bobbed on the waves, a doll in the current. The boat was gone, and the land was miles away.

But she was breathing real air, floating under an open sky. How long she floated there, she couldn't have said. When had they set out in the boat? When had they arrived? When did Javier tie the weight around her ankle? It had all happened after nightfall, but memory found no anchor to mark time within that night.

*

She had no compass to plot her way to land. She scanned the heavens; found Orion, the Big Dipper, the North Star. All right, north. So that way was north, and she was off the west coast of Mexico. The land was east. That was this direction. If that star was, in fact, the actual North Star.

Churning dark water behind her, she kicked until her legs cramped and refused to keep pumping. Then she floated, face skyward, hoping with all her might that the current wasn't dragging her further out to sea.

She might have slept and dreamed--she could not remember. The waves bore her where they would. At least she was on the surface and not down there in the dark.

Hours slipped by, and the star-speckled black softened to dark blue, then to light. She opened her eyes again. Hints of rose now tinged the horizon. The night was over, and the morning was coming. Soon she'd be able to see.

*

The sun crept above the waves at last: a pale disc among flat gray clouds, streaking amber and red across the sky. The waves lost their blackness; turned pale blue, whitecaps standing out sharp against the colors of the dawn.

Caitlin floated, motionless but for the motion all around her. The only sound was the wind in her ears and the soft lapping of the waves.

Cries rang out, cracking, high-pitched. White-winged seagulls circled; dipped down to snap for morsels in the waves. Seagulls. She must not be too far from land. But which direction? Now she had no star to tell her. She'd dozed too many times; lost the heading.

A shadowy form approached over the horizon. A boat drawing nearer. In abrupt wakefulness, she scanned the waves, images of Raul and Javier playing across her mind, even as another flash burst through: fishermen, frightened and sympathetic, lifting her onboard and conveying her to shore, to safety, to home. Which image was right? She had only seconds to decide.

Slipping her mask over her face, she dove beneath the waves, fighting a wave of vertigo at the blue immensity that yawned below her. No squid remained this close to the sunlit surface; only a school of glimmering silver minnows, and a few black manta rays, gliding serenely in the darker blue below.

She swam deeper, too low for anyone on the approaching boat to spy her as she scouted them out. Gazing up, she watched its hull draw nearer, an ovular shadow skimming along the surface.

It looked smaller than Javier's boat, not that she had any clear memory to compare scale. But surely they couldn't all have fit in a vessel so tiny. Sunlight and shadows danced along the slats of its underbelly. It was slowing to a stop now, rocking gently on the waves. Strange, she couldn't hear the motor. Maybe she'd dived too deep.

She watched the little boat for a long moment, battling within herself for any clear sign that might tell her it was safe to surface. She might have called herself paranoid had it not been for the hell she'd survived over the past night: attacked, half-drowned, assaulted by predatory squid, and – the other thing. The thing that had taken Silvia, which she still suspected might be the product of a terrified imagination, deprived of light and oxygen, scrambling for survival in a world that wanted her dead.

No point delaying it. She couldn't stay down here forever, and the boat lay still, rocking placidly just twenty feet above. Its owner must have come to fish. The men must be baiting their hooks, talking of what they'd catch today. She'd break the surface, startling them – but she'd explain what had happened in her fumbling Spanish, and at last, they'd understand. They'd sympathize. Take her back to land. She could call somebody; file a report about Raul and Javier. There'd be questions, of course. She'd have to omit the parts that sounded crazy. But the facts would come out. The brothers might be brought to justice. At the very least, she'd be back on dry land.

Legs pumping, she rose toward the little boat. Sunlight shimmered on the undersides of the waves, growing brighter as she approached the surface, already rehearsing her cries for help.

The boat shifted, the wood slats on its underside running like wet paint. 

It dipped beneath the waves, colors and shape distorting as it arced toward her, impossibly quick. Its shape unfolded, tentacles erupting, surrounding her. At the center yawned a throat lined with jagged teeth.

No, she had time to think. It can't be.

It enveloped her, casting out a cloud of dark brown ink to conceal its kill.

AUTHOR BIO:

Ben Thomas's fiction has appeared in Weird Tales and Hinnom Magazine — and will be featured in the upcoming Greek-mythological anthology Musings of the Muses.