Up From The Deep by Vaughn Jackson (highly recommended books txt) 📕

was underwater—forgot herself even—as she became hyper-focused on her subject. The movement and colors were entrancing, hypnotic.

To be so free of worry and anxiety, she thought, I bet that sucker is just living completely in the moment, thinking only of—

Toby jarred her out of her thoughts, swimming right in front of her while tapping his wrist clock followed by the “okay?” universal finger sign.

She blinked, realizing she’d been sliding into a diver’s cardinal mistake: letting her attention wander. She gave the “Okay” back, checking first her dive computer then the camera. Everything looked good. Then she realized she’d made yet another mistake: assuming everything was okay before actually checking it.

Toby studied her a moment, his eyes oddly magnified from the water and face mask, then nodded and gave the thumbs down, signaling they should continue.

As he always did, after alerting her to a shot, Ewan had already gone on to the next thing and worked his way down into the darkness. And as always, Barbara found this disconcerting—his way of pushing the ‘buddy’ system (and everything else for that matter) to the limits.

Today, however, she found it particularly disturbing. Fear seeped in around her thoughts.

Something’s about to go wrong...can we call this off? Just go home?

The ocean continued to transition into deeper shades of green-blue. Down they went—100, 120, 140 feet...and there it was, emerging out of the gloom: the rotting, shattered hull of an old frigate, and past that, the WWII Destroyer half-trapped in a crevasse that ran southward twenty or thirty yards toward the edge of submerged shelf where the sea floor fell away into the deeper abyss of the Atlantic.

The top of the Hyborian Canyon.

It was a confusing scene at first. In addition to the shipwrecks, there was a trailing debris field of garbage, junk and most disturbing, piles of what appeared to be blue toxic-waste barrels—the current reason for their trip.

Someone had been doing some highly illegal dumping.

Further confusing the scene, several fishing nets had caught on the wrecks, lending the illusion the whole site had been snagged by the web of some giant underwater spider.

This was the first time Barbara had seen it—the day before it had strictly been Ewan and Toby. Nearby, the bottom was mostly sand except for the garbage and debris. More disconcerting was how the ocean past the wrecks deepened into a twilight horizon of deep blue-black.

A random thought popped into Barbara’s head: Beyond here be dragons.

On the tail of that a flashing image of those nightmare angler fish swimming amidst larger, scarier predators.

The descent line had been secured to a spot fifty yards away from the wreck, just outside the restricted zone. The brightly colored ties showed a strong current coming in from the east, which made it easier to get to the remains of the ships—but harder to get back. Fortunately, however, a granny line had been rigged further up that would take them to a secondary line trailing off the boat as a safety precaution.

Ewan had been cagey about having Barbara along this time as she’d never been on a dive below 120 feet, but she’d persisted the night before, ribbing him how she needed to “get her feet wet” someday.

“Are you sure?” he’d asked, sitting in their room the night before.

“Abso-positively,” she’d replied, one of her ‘Barbarisms’.

But now, she wasn’t so sure.

Something struck her as hinky about the whole scene. For starters, there was no record of an 18th century frigate going down at this location.

Nor a WWII Destroyer.

“It has to be a newer wreck, one that somehow isn’t on the books,” he’d insisted.

Ewan wasn’t swayed. “Once we get the ship’s bell, I’m going to prove you wrong, buck-o. That rig is old. I can’t explain it, but my gut tells me so. We’re not just going to nail this toxic dump assignment, we are about to make headline news!”

“There’s nothing on any of the charts, dude,” Toby had shot back. “This doesn’t smell right. Whoever set up the restricted perimeter knows those ships are there. No way these were missed. No. Freaking. Way.”

Ewan had patted his friend affectionately on the chin. “Yes way, dudette. You got to lay off the negative vibes!”

Barbara didn’t know that much about sunken ships, but her hunches were with Toby.

Today’s dive plan was twofold: document the illegal dumping going on here off the shoals and capture evidence of this new discovery.

Barbara re-checked the dive gauge on her wrist and forced herself to continue taking relaxed, controlled breaths. The increase in pressure at this depth gave her a headache, and she was beginning to regret that last extra glass of wine and bravado about her readiness for this. As they drew closer, she felt a growing sense of dread.

Stay calm. You can do this.

Ewan was already halfway to the destroyer, the high beam of his ScubaPro dive light probing through the tangled netting.

She also noted something else that struck her as odd: it was as if the darkness beyond the shelf drop-off had grown. Come closer in fact. It had to be an optical illusion.

She felt her teeth clenching tightly around the regulator in her mouth and for a split second she had a weird thought: what if she were sucking on the orifice of some strange sea-creature, like some hardened sea anemone...trying to force its tentacle down her throat?

She brought the camera up and took a sweeping shot of the wreck, zooming in on the stern, then slow-panning the scattered junk and garbage around it. It appeared someone had been dumping old electronics here: TVs and computer monitors, keyboards and stereo components. And more recently, those ominous-looking heavy duty blue barrels.

The same kind used to dispose toxic chemicals in. Ewan had figured that one out by scraping off the gray paint someone had covered the warning labels with.

So, the rumors were true.

No wonder Ewan and Toby had been outraged. And yet, they’d also been uncharacteristically quiet around her about it. In the past couple of weeks, she’d heard them arguing over