John Moss - Grave doubts

She lifted her manacled wrist into the murky light in front of her mask. When she turned the flashlight beam toward herself, it was Rachel’s hand that dangled lifelessly in front of her eyes. My God, she thought, she’s dead! But she could hear the echoing rumble of her breathing beside her. She would finish her air soon. Miranda worked their joined arms around and contemplated chewing through her wrist. Better yet, chewing through Rachel’s. Is it cannibalism if you chew and don’t swallow? And what if the flesh is your own? She realized that she had not thought about why Rachel was doing this. Rachel was her friend. She couldn’t bite Rachel.

Miranda reached about, inside her skull, looking for clarity. It hadn’t occurred to her before. There was a dive knife attached to her BCD. She withdrew the knife. It was titanium with a serrated edge. She could saw off her hand. She held the knife out in front of her, then extended her wrist. She would have to cut close to the joint and pry through the cartilage and ligaments. There was no way bone would yield in the time remaining. She tried to think of how she could staunch the blood flow. Tying off a tourniquet might be possible with her remaining hand. She had nothing to use, no accessible strap except for her weight belt and if she removed that, she would soar upwards and maybe be pinioned against the steel overhead. Possibly she could jam the bleeding stump into her BCD harness and bind against it, but then could she swim with sufficient dexterity to avoid getting hung up on or torn apart by twisted railings and shear metal edges?

She could feel Rachel shift her position. She grasped the knife more firmly, afraid Rachel might try to interfere, but then she realized Rachel was leaning down and away and she suddenly grasped what was happening. Even as she felt the clasp of rigid steel around her ankle, she knew it was too late. Rachel had drawn another pair of cuffs from her bag and secured Miranda’s ankle to the same iron rail she had shackled herself to Miranda opened her fingers and let the knife slip away. It hit the steel beneath them with a resonant twang. She twitched at the finality of the sound. She shone her light down on Alexander Pope. When the beam caught his eyes, his mask suddenly burst into an explosive balloon of wasted air that immediately expired, drawing a thin stream of bubbles in its wake, and then only a few random beads trickled from his gaping mouth as the mouthpiece fell uselessly into the darkness. Miranda turned her light out, shaken to witness his death, desperate to isolate herself from his hovering body.

The two women swung this way and that, as if they were caught in a haphazard current, but the movement came from their bodies turning gently together against the pain of their manacled ankles. They crashed lightly against a looming bulkhead, tanks clanging, and drifted away, twisting slowly, crashing again. Reverberations like the sound of shook metal filled the room, flooded her head. Miranda, irritated, manoeuvred until they were still, binding against the pain where the cuffs bit into her flesh. She felt Rachel running a hand up the back of her neck. Miranda flinched, realizing it was a gesture of affection. They would die with their bodies conjoined in an enduring embrace.

By the time their commandeered boat pulled alongside the trawler with Peter Singh at the helm, Morgan had set up his regulator and tank, which was large and heavy, attached them to his BCD, and was in his thick wetsuit, with boots and fins on, no gloves — he had come without gloves. Peter tied off to the other boat, then assisted Morgan with the weight belt and gear. Morgan pressed the mouthpiece between his lips and took a test breath.

“Okay,” he said, backing against the gunnel so he could flip over into the water as he had done on Easter Island. “Do you see their bubbles?”

“What bubbles?” Peter handed Morgan his mask, which he had thoughtfully spit in and rinsed, as he understood from the movies was required. He then began tugging at the BCD fasteners with meticulous care.

“Damn it, Peter, stop fussing. Look around. There should be bubbles breaking the surface.”

“I don’t see anything, Morgan. The water’s like glass, there’s nothing.”

“Damn it,” Morgan repeated. “Sit tight, I’ll be back.”

“I hope so,” said Peter as Morgan clasped mask to face, regulator to his mouth, and sprawled backward head over heels, disappearing under the surface, leaving his own trail of bubbles behind him.

Morgan dropped uncomfortably fast; he was wearing too much weight. He struggled to get his fins underneath him so that he could slow his descent. Once he had a chance to pop his ears, he looked around, descending through layers of pain, repeatedly blowing into his pinched nose to equalize the pressure in his head. Below him was the wreck, standing clear on its side in the cold pristine water. When he settled heavily to the bottom beside the hull, he unclasped his weight belt and slid one of the lead weights off, dropping it among the rocks, at the same time remembering that his BCD was a flotation vest attached to his air tank, which he could have inflated with a few bursts of air to slow his freefall descent. He gave a brief squeeze to the inflator button and levitated, hovering uneasily just off the bottom. His training was recent; this gear was unfamiliar but the procedures were the same. He deflated a brief burst and sank, then inflated again until he achieved neutral buoyancy.

Even while feeling a certain satisfaction at attaining weightlessness, horror mounted as he realized he had seen no air columns rising while on his way down. The water was freezing against his hands and the exposed flesh of his face, but there was an almost tropical clarity. As he turned a slow pirouette, gazing out in all directions, he saw no sign of their bubbles. Fluttering gently up and over the ship, he looked for bubble traces indicating the divers were inside. Or, if they were, would their exhalations be trapped? He swam the length of the upper side, passing along a series of portholes midship, and down over a gaping hole at the ship’s waterline mark, just off the front quarter.

He decided to make another methodical sweep along the uppermost side of the hull. He had turned icily calm after breathing far too heavily, consuming valuable air at a reckless rate. Maybe they had decided wreck-diving was too dangerous. Maybe they were having a recreational tour close by, with no nefarious intent. He would stay close, assuming they would come back to the mooring line before surfacing. Their air must be running low. How strange it will seem, as Miranda swims by, to see me.

Morgan drifted around the stern and back over the upper deck that slanted at a precarious angle against the lucent horizon, gazing in all directions into the distant opacity, searching for movement.

He glanced down as he passed over a row of portholes and caught in one what he took to be a spear of sunlight cast by the prism of a wave overhead. With a slight acceleration he coasted back down over the portholes before passing on to examine the breach in the hull gaping ahead. He directed the beam of his light into the dark cavity in the ship’s side.

They must have surfaced — their air supply would be depleted by now. Suddenly, he heard a sharp metallic clanking reverberate from the darkness inside the hull. It was impossible to determine the direction of its source. He remembered the flash against glass like a shaft of sunlight. There were no waves overhead. He withdrew from the cavernous shadow where he had been hovering, bewildered by the sound, and swam back along the side of the ship.

Miranda flashed her light against the glass of the middle porthole and it glared back in a mirror image of their watery crypt. Alarmed by the image, she dowsed the light. And yet several times she repeated the sequence, mesmerized by how the luminescent world outside the ship was extinguished and then reappeared, as if she had transformative powers. Once, she thought a shadow passed by, but when she flashed her light it had vanished.