Ebb Tide: Book 1 of the South Wind Saga

Chapter 6

I think back to that morning when I saw the sharks in the Solomons. Beautiful clear morning. Calm sea. Deep blue holding me, folding around me, wrapping me in the salty brine of the earth's womb.

Tonight is a little different. The Surefire won't work underwater. Don't want to go down there into the dark. Next best option: I've got three chemlights left, little break-n-shake glowsticks about six inches long. I grab one from the navstation. Bend it and hear the tiny glass tube inside shatter with a sound like I've stepped on a beetle. Shake it and it comes to life. Two swirls of chemicals mixing and glowing sunflower yellow, brighter than any beast made of nature. I hold it in my hands and I look at my palms and see the deep scored wounds in there, the rope burns, the ripped blisters from the flare, deep with filth and black muck and I just want to sit down and cry.

But I don't.

I hold the chemlight between my teeth to keep my hands free as I move forward. I've got a scuba mask around my neck and have stripped down. The wind is unseasonably brisk and goosepimples rise on my arms.

The bow of the boat is unnaturally still. The waves rise up and break over the deck. The groan of the roller taking the full weight of the boat on each roll brings a sympathetic echo from me. Hold in there, baby. I pat Voodoo consolingly on a stanchion. Not long until you're free. Until we can run away from this cursed place and get back to the open sea where we belong.

I run over the coming play in my mind. A way of getting my ducks in a row, calming me down. The key is to zen out - wait I've said this, haven't I? Well, it bears repeating. Relax the body, slow down my oxygen consumption rate, maximise my time down there. I'm going to drop off the bow, take the chain in my hands and pull myself down to the bottom. Keep the chemlight in my teeth, clear the chain, pop back up to the surface. Easy peasy.

Let's hope so.

I climb over the stainless steel pulpit rail. I stand, back to the ocean, feet on the toerail, ready to step back and plunge into the sea. I start my preparatory breathing, long and slow, pushing out my stomach to maximise my lung capacity. Okay. Hope it's not too cold.

Just before I step off, I glance down. A long held instinct learned from scuba. Mum and Dad taught me. Check your point of entry. Not like this is a crowded diveboat but wouldn't do to land on a log or something—

I look down into the pale leering face of a mary holding onto the chain. A wave breaks over it and water swirls and for a moment I deny what I saw, I could have imagined it, come on, but then a yellow hand, with long black fingernails, bursts from the water, stretches up to grab the chain and haul the creature up. Its face breaks free. Water pours out of its bright blazing eye sockets. Its rotting scalp is torn open and a hard scrape of skull visible. Its mouth drops wide open in a toothy agonized hateful grin. Water burst from its mouth in a powerful spray that splattered my legs as it voids its lungs in a vile scream.

I screamed right back at it. The glowstick falls from my mouth and I pitch myself forward, throwing myself over the rail. Back onto Voodoo. I feel the brush of hard nails as it swipes at me, a clawing grasp that would have ripped my calf open. I land in a heap as the boat lurches. The windlass serves me a painful knock on my shoulder.

The rifle is back in the cockpit. The magazines empty. Three hundred and twenty seven rounds, sitting useless in a tin under the stairs. I push myself up and turn as the mary's head slowly appears over the rail. The water makes it sluggish. It sees me and reaches its long rotting talons out, grasping at me through the pulpit rails.

I don't remember just how I did it but next moment I have the ratchetting handle, a three feet long stainless steel rod, in my hands and I bring it down on that grabbing hand. All my weakened paltry strength behind it. Bones shatter and grey flesh pulps against the deck. Part of me is unhinged.