"6 years and 32 days", the glass told him. He gulped down the remaining rum it contained and put the glass back on the table, hoping that would shut it up.
"6 years and 32 days", he mumbled back to himself. A large heave made the glass slide to the far end of the table where it was stopped in its tracks by the protruding edge.
"The "Ophelia", yacht of entrepeneur Richard Abraham Matthews, lost at sea", the headline had read. The paper had speculated there were no survivors. But he was found 6 days afterwards, through sheer chance, or so it was thought, about 40 knots from the last recorded distress signal. He was out of his mind when they picked him up. Delusional with dehydration and the infections that festered in the remnants of his right lower leg. It had taken him four months to recover from the brink of dead, and that's when the bad times began; he started to remember.
A gentle knock on the cabin door woke him from a restless half-sleep. "Yes", he shouted louder
than he had intended to.
A lank dark figure stepped inside. "Skip, we sighted a large whale carcass.", it said with an
unmistakable kiwi-accent. Richard's face changed, and his eyes started to light up like blue fire, as they usually did when such news arrived.
A harsh biting wind cut through their clothes as they stepped outside. Winter on the southern
hemisphere was approaching quickly. Several men had gathered on the forecastle. He hurried over as the crew shrunk away from the dread he perpetually seemed to emanate.
After a brief look in the distance he beckoned upwards to the helm to move the ship in closer.
Slowly, after his dismissal from the hospital, the events had started to come back to him in
dreams. Cryptic at first, but over time the memories virulently started clawing at his mind, causinghim to wake up screaming every night, drenched in sweat. And then, one night, he remembered the eye; the malevolent unblinking eye. He had given up on sleeping after that.
The bosun who fetched him handed him binoculars. There was no mistake, a dead sperm whale.
Its body covered with bloody marks of infinite suckers, but otherwise intact.
"How long has it been since the last one ?", Richard asked. "About one and a half week, skip", the bosun said tentatively. Richard stared at him, eyes still aflame, "We're closing in. I can feel it." The bosun tried to supress the cold shiver that ran down his spine.
Richard resumed looking over the railing at the lifeless corpse floating next to the ship.
It had started out as a leisure trip. Business was going well and a holiday was long overdue.
The Ophelia had been freshly refurbished and repainted and he decided he would take her for a
blue-water spin.
It had carried a fine and capable crew with which he was on a first name basis, and most
importantly it carried his beloved wife Lianna. For the first time ever he had managed to
convince her to join him. Up until that time she had always refused to come along because of what she called "The Deep". A feeling she had described as vertigo; the knowledge of this vast distance to the ground on the open ocean. An abyss of several miles deep on every side, except you can't even see it's there, only feel it.
On day four the wind was fair and the skies were clear. It was a strong bout of keeling that had led him above deck. "What's wrong" he asked the helmsman, as he looked at the now fluttering
sails. "I don't know. We seemed to have picked up some drag", he shrugged.
The other crewmembers including Lianna had now gathered on deck. That's when the ship came to a full stop. Many tons of steel stopped in its track as if it were a toy in a badtub. As they picked themselves up, it started
"6 years and 46 days", the glass told him. He gulped down the remaining scotch it contained and put the glass back on the table, hoping that would shut it up.
"6 years and 46 days", he mumbled back to himself. A large heave made the glass slide to the far end of the table where it was stopped in its tracks by the protruding edge.
A gentle knock on the cabin door woke him from a restless half-sleep. "Yes", he shouted louder
than he had intended to. The lank dark figure stepped inside. "Skip, you might want to come and see this.", it said.
A hole appeared in the middle of the fluorescent green screen of the echosounder. A hole, uncharted, in the bottom of the ocean. The opposite of the ultrasonograph of the unborn child. But there was no life there, only death. And deathhe had come to find.
The green light carved deep shadows in his weathered face as he seemed to stare down into the hole. "Prepare the 'scaph", he ordered.
The rain whipped into a frenzy by the gale lashed into them as the ship began to capsize.
Inch by inch the splintering deck disappeared under the waterline as gigantic tentacles turned the Ophelia sideways like a pig on a spit. He was no longer aware of the rest of the crew as he deperately tried to cling to the opposite railing, his eyes frantically trying to locate Lianna through the frenzied foam the waves washed over the remainder of the ship. The roar of the ocean silenced his screams. The cold salty water drained him of his strength.
The depth gauge was creeping slowly into the red at 18000 feet. The interior of the scaph reflected the intermittent green light of the sonar. Just visible through the spherical glass
in the outside lights was a large straight wall. It must have been over an hour now since he passed the rim. The wall he used to guide his descent was clearly demarcated on the screen. But somewhere in the depths something answered, always just out of range; not a solid body but leaving a ghostly trace on the edge of the screen.
Contrained by the bulging tendril, he bungled in front of an eye the size of a manhole as it seemed to observe him. Now aware of his surroundings he heard a woman scream
his name.
Lianna! He squirmed in the creatures grasp to be able to cast a glance in her direction.
There she hung suspended above the dark water, firmly entangled in another tentacle. "Lianna!",
he said.
As it watched him watching her, he could hear bones splinter over her frantic screaming.
After an eternity the screams died down. He stared at the bloody ragdoll that mere moment
ago was his wife. Staring eyes, her head lolled listlessly in the wind.
He felt the creature's eye boring into him, but he was already empty. "Death", he thought, "sweet death".
He remembered smiling when the arm that held him started to squeeze him, crush him, replace his anguish with physical pain, and ultimately, relieve him of his suffering.
But he had not died, and the suffering had not stopped.
The infinite tons of water above him seemed to manifest themselves inside of the vessel.
Along with the pressure the temperature had increased, and sweat was pouring down Richard's face. He had almost reached the end; the bottom of the hole.
On the screen the ghost signal became alive all around him. The metal hull made a shearing noise in its attempt to the fight off the pressure from the outside. Rivets richoched; metal unto metal, and a hiss of entering water stripped the paint on the opposite side of the spherical chamber. Richard winced as one of the bolts struck him and spread a red mist throughout the cabin.
He watched the eye through the inches thick glass sphere.
It lived, had fed off of his suffering. It's why the behemoth had made him watch and it's why he had been allowed to live on; as living sustenance to the beast. But no longer. Wearily he closed his eyes. "Lianna", he whispered.