“I knew that one day on some isolated point in the South Pacific, I’d find you. You were always one tough little monkey.” The stranger stared at John Henry.
“Looking for me, really?” she replied.
“Well, almost half-way, to be truthful,” he said.
“If we are being truthful, I have never spent one moment looking for you,” she replied.
“We were friends—once,” he said.
“No, we were never friends,” she retorted.
“You have spent too much time in the water and, to be truthful, that sand and smell of the ocean is not really a good look on you,” he said.
“Thanks. If you do not like the way that I look, then I know that I look perfect. For how is it possible for a stone figurine such as you to have vision, I ask you?” she said.
The stranger walked out.
I saw and heard it all and I was pleased.
Not wanting to show my smile, I walked back to J-14A. and flipped on the black light. There was something atypical in the illumination but it was not the illumination at all—it was the substrate that had changed. I was just looking, but with rejuvenated curiosity.
“Vaughnie, come over here, please,” Manta called to me.
The illuminated substrate was one thing, but respecting Manta was more important. I turned off the black light and went to my desk at LION where Manta was fitted in a very cramped position.
Manta showed me the pictures from the dive into the black and they were dreadful.
“Manta, these are a zero-minus-one in quality. What went wrong?”
The earth man was shaken. Failure was not part of his life.
“Don’t know, Vaughnie. Don’t know.”
There was no use asking if he had checked his equipment. I knew he had done so. There was no need for asking about technique, or settings, or anything else. The images to the last were just bad.
“They are all bad in the same fashion. Notice, Vaughnie. Whatever was in the black did it.”
It was no use, but I was trying to make conversation.
“Was it the plankton, or the night light, or bad exposure?” I tried suggesting.
He looked at me as if I was a sand flea. I knew it was none of these things for Manta would not have been duped by such things and, even if he had, he would know it now. I was out of words.
“Vaughnie, something or somebody is in the water.” Manta said.
“Something maybe, but not someone.” I spoke aloud and most openly and foolishly to Manta.
Manta never got mad and, with a most gracious smile, looked at me. “Well, then I guess we have to chalk it up to aliens. Welcome to Area 51 of the South Pacific, Vaughnie.”
Manta smiled.
Upon a revisited thought, I had just seen that illumination. It was different in quantity, but was the same in quality. That was what I had seen in J-14A as the stranger peered into its hydrospheric soul. And, that light was not a reflection at all. It, the illumination, was what I had seen as I peered into J-14A when the black light was illuminating the tank. I was secretive about my insight.
“The spirits, demons, and devils of the sea have come alive from the depth of death, Vaughnie,” Manta said.
“Did you say death or depth, Manta?” I asked.
“Alive from death in the depth, Vaughnie,“ Manta repeated.
14
John Henry, Manta, and I were all in the LION, but each in his own cell. The Deacon was beginning to visit the LION with greater frequency. It was as if time was becoming compressed, as if he were in one of those Twilight T.V. shows in which a lifetime is played out in a day. Everything was the same except that everything was speeded up for him.
He was making concentrated observations of the tank. He never recorded anything; neither a piece of paper nor a computer was able to hold the thoughts of his mind. As he passed J-14A, he stopped. He had seen in passing what the stranger and I needed time and devices to heed. He did not say a word but his eyes and a stiff lip howled a soul-rending silence.
Whatever it was, it caused the Deacon to hold his breath.
“Hey, Deac, look at these pictures that I shot.”
Manta requested his attention in the familiar and handed the pictures to the Deacon.
In the gulp of a glance, the Deacon viewed the pictures.
“You took these pictures above that sunken U-Boat and old slaver.”
The Deacon announced the site with a very sure certainty. Then he arranged the pictures in some sort of order.
“You are correct. How did you know where and how did you know the sequence? Those are just fogged-up pictures with no detail,” Manta said, amazed.
I was horrified, I was scared, and I was mystified—how could he have known? I had seen the pictures and had answered as a simpleton.
As Manta and I looked at each other, the Deacon stopped in mid-stride, then turned and faced us with an expressionless expression upon his face.
“What you captured on your photographs is the cloud of the miasma. It is his expiration.”
The Deacon walked to the tank and stared.
I felt a shiver of fear run over me.
“Him? Him—who? Or him—what?” Manta asked.
“No it’s in the sea, Big Boy. It ain’t a devil, demon, or sea monster. Unless you want to classify him as one or the other or all three,” the Deacon replied.
“Him?” Manta questioned the Deacon again.
There was no return reply from the Deacon.
My fear accelerated—inside where it counts.
Here the two most principled people were talking about horrible and ungodly life forms and giving life to horrible and ungodly evil.
I back-peddled until, without seeing John Henry, I was upon her.
“You know, Vaughnie, I have become free but those two are trapped. The Deacon is the brick-throwing mind of reality and Manta is a mirror of reality. One wants to let it be and the other wants to kill it,” John Henry said.
“Kill a what? Kill a sea spirit or kill a drowned man?” I said.
“One or the other or both, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter, does it?” John Henry said.
I had known of The Deacon’s and of Manta’s pointillistic philosophies, one the polar of the other, but now John Henry had turned and gone round the corner of reality too.
“Have you all gone island-happy?” I questioned in a strong voice.
The answer was silence.
The simplicity and symmetry was so perfect on the surface of it all. The blue of the sea, the white of the sand, and transparency of the air but, looking again, the symmetry was not so simple. The sea was not blue; it started green and went to black at the horizon. The sand started white and went to black at the horizon. The air started transparent and went to black in the distance. They had their sights on the horizon and my sight had been at my feet. But now I was viewing the world through their eyes.
John Henry came and asked, “What do you think, Vaughnie?”
“Bad vibe, bad mojo—something freaky happening, that’s all I know.”
“You know Manta and the Deacon both know their stuff. They look at the same thing but see different stuff; I wish I knew which one is correct,” she said.
“Both,” I replied.
15