The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (howl and other poems TXT) 📕

The morning of the dive was placid and windless. The sea over the wreck was motionless and ideal for camera work. The two divers rolled off the dive boat and approached the wreck and its spilled cargo of marble slabs with caution. Ten feet beneath them on the approach lay a formation of smooth, weed-encrusted rocks. The divers assumed they were rocks, reached the wreck lying on its side and the scientist started his photography work. He was interested particularly in the growth of the Pinna nobilis shells. On the wrecked hull the shells were the size of large edible mussels. On the marble slab farthest from the wreck and close to the smooth rocks, the shells were a full metre long, their full size. The scientist blinked. Even closer to the smooth rocks, some shells were two metres long, totally abnormal. He made a wrong move. It dawned on him the smooth rocks were Pinna nobilis shells three metres long, a mutation not known in the marine world. They were lying in a close formation platen without a space between them. He pulled off some weed to get a full-length picture of a three-metre shell. The underwater silence was broken by his buddy diver banging his knife on his air bottle, the recognised alarm.

A ring of shell-shaped bubbles had risen out of the platen and was approaching the scientist at some speed. He had time to make out the wide-open shape of a transparent Pinna nobilis before its three-metre top shell shut on him like a Venus fly trap. His buddy diver grabbed a flipper and prevented one leg from being trapped. The Pinna nobilis relaxed its grip, ejected the scientist, turned and swallowed the buddy diver.

In horror and too shocked to move, the scientist watched the bubble ring around the transparent ‘coffin’ undulate its way toward the wreck. The straight and rigid buddy diver, stripped of his diving equipment, was deposited on a marble slab. A diamond hard coating tightened around him. In full blown horror, the scientist realised four straight rigid bodies had preceded him, the crew of the Sardinian trot boat, still in pristine condition after twenty years.

The mind-numbed scientist rose to the surface to be hauled aboard the dive boat, incoherent.

 The Post-Mortem

There were now five victims in a Stone Man condition. In a sombre mood, the marine scientists and biologists met to plan a way forward. Retrieving the four trot boat bodies was the agreed first stage. They needed to know what mechanism was killing and preserving them. One photograph showed the bodies attached to the marble slab by beards, mussel-like beards.

“Pulling the bodies free of the beards would damage the flesh. We could send volunteer divers down to chip the beards away from the slab but that may agitate the transparent attacker. Raising the slab complete with bodies is the only way to achieve an accurate post-mortem and to find the function of the beards.”

A view was put forward by a biologist: “These bodies are being stored and preserved for food. The beards are supplying enough nutrients to keep the body just above the death level. Despite being twenty years under the sea, these coated and preserved bodies are medically alive! In the insect world, spiders trap a wasp in the web, spin a tight coating around it and return later to eat it.”

Silence and cries of ‘not so’ greeted the biologist’s singular view, but no one could explain how the bodies had remained pristine without any outward sign of bloating or decay. The internal organs must have remained functional. A decisive post-mortem was essential.

The problem of raising the slab was solved by a Falmouth salvage company offering to put a floatation collar around it and towing it away from the reef. Manipulating the collar into position was done from the surface. Divers were not put at risk.

It was the first time the autopsy department had received a ten-foot square marble slab with four bodies attached to it, and, as an added surprise, an Irish Setter dog fixed on one edge. The technicians were able to chip away the marble and roll the bodies over. The beards were integrated into a square inch of skin at the back of the neck. Any attempt to gently prise the beard away produced specks of blood. Blood after twenty years under the sea was astonishing, if not impossible. The medical technicians were happy, rewarded with an entry through the diamond hard coating to get a blood sample. After working a catheter under X-ray to the jugular vein, they received a free-flowing sample without applying any suction, yet another impossibility.

Their joy turned to dismay. Within seconds the blood sample tube was empty, clean and sparkling. The second sample was more than firmly stoppered. To their amazement the sample slipped past the stopper into the tray, climbed over the tray wall in one piece, flowed along the mortuary table down to the floor and disappeared through the floor tile joints without leaving a mark.

Dr Emlyn Jones, the marine scientist was awestruck.

“That was the finest demonstration of a super-fluid I have ever seen. In physics that can only happen at absolute zero, minus 273 degrees Kelvin. To happen at room temperature defies the laws of physics, unbelievable. We have to capture a sample of that blood and find out why it behaves as a super-fluid.”

The words of Chiara Vigo came to mind: “You are dealing with the Soul of the Sea. Pray.”

Praying did not feature in the minds of technicians. They devised a mechanism to capture the runaway blood sample and freeze it solid on impact with the collecting vial. A brilliant addition separated the yellow blood plasma from the red corpuscles as the sample melted. The plasma became a super-fluid immediately upon melting. The red corpuscles did