Ryan Lockwood - Below

She reappeared.

Below Val, though still in front of her, her subject again rose. No, this one definitely wasn’t the same individual. It was much smaller. Maybe three and a half, four feet long. Probably a male in the same shoal. The smaller animal moved up toward her and did what she had been hoping it would do.

In a gentle burst of soft bioluminescent light, it flashed once at Val.

She smiled awkwardly around her thick rubber mouthpiece, and turned her light on again, then off almost immediately. The alien creature’s body glowed again in response.

They were communicating.

Okay , Val thought, let’s see if hundreds of hours studying tape will finally pay off. With her modified flashlight, Val sent out several brief flashes in slow succession. She paused. Nothing. The small male simply hovered in front of her. Next, Val attempted longer flashes of light, in more rapid succession. Still nothing.

Over the next few minutes, Val continued a series of simple flashes of various intensities, durations, and frequencies. The attempts weren’t random patterns, but predetermined sequences she had rehearsed after studying her previous tapes of this species’ behavior—her own attempt at mollusk Morse code. After several minutes, the smallish male never responded again. He appeared to lose interest and slowly descended into the darkness below her.

Val cursed into her regulator.

She decided to ad-lib. Pointing her light down toward where the male had disappeared, she emitted an erratic series of flashes. Still nothing… no, wait. A distant glow. Then the water all around Val lit up as the shoal responded with bursts of light, revealing a multitude of the creatures nearby. Val’s heart leapt at the unexpected spectacle. She felt as though she were surrounded by a swarm of giant fireflies.

Then something rushed toward her.

Before Val could react, the creature closed on her. It shot out its two long tentacles like twin pistons and struck her violently in the chest, knocking the air out of her lungs. As she struggled to inhale, something wrapped around her calf. Then it began to pull downward.

She had somehow provoked an attack.

Val tried in vain to kick at the two or more animals now clinging to her legs. She felt one of her fins get jerked off her foot. Using her camera to fight off the predatory advances of the large individual in front of her, Val didn’t realize how quickly she was being pulled down until the tether at her waist grew very taut, cutting into her abdomen.

Valerie Martell was not a woman who panicked. On the contrary, she was more than accustomed to hair-raising situations. She prided herself on her ability to remain level-headed and slip out of each and every potentially dangerous situation unharmed by thinking clearly and objectively, putting her emotions aside. It was time for that sort of thinking.

Although the animals were pulling down on her with incredible force, she was tethered to the boat with a thick nylon rope. The tether should hold. Just don’t panic .

Suddenly the animals released her and she felt herself drawn upward as the strain left the rope. Val drew a deep breath from her regulator. That was close. She had witnessed random instances of aggression in the past, but this hadn’t been random. She had somehow triggered it with the light. I need to watch the footage and figure out what I did.

A ring of powerful arms wrenched the camera from Val’s grasp. She watched helplessly as the latex tubing that attached the camera to her wrist tore free and followed the camera, which was now being assailed by several members of the shoal. It vanished in the darkness below Val as it and the animals clinging to it left the range of the bright surface lights, far above.

Val hovered in the darkness for a minute, straining to see if the camera would float back up. It was time to surface. She hadn’t seen it reappear, or any of its abductors. She looked above her to the lights of the boat and kicked toward it.

Finally, a breakthrough in her research, and the bastards steal her camera. Something Val had done tonight had worked. But what? If she’d only been able to recover the footage…

She left the bathroom of her hotel room and put on a dry bra and panties. She hadn’t even bothered to dry her shoulder-length, dark hair. It was warm in the room, so it didn’t matter. And she was feeling an incredible urge to sleep.

Her crew had searched for the camera for hours over the rest of the night, since it should theoretically float. She needed it to figure out what had provoked the shoal. Somehow she had effectively communicated with the animals, but not in the way she had planned. Finally, at dawn, her crew had insisted they give up and head in. Back at her hotel, having eaten and showered, Val was now feeling utterly drained.

She yawned. It was early in the morning in La Paz, Mexico, but she was accustomed to working at night. It was her bedtime now. Safely in her room, the familiar morning fatigue was grappling her willpower into submission.

She padded across the broad, rust-colored tiles on the floor, flopped down on the bed, and buried her head in the cool pillows. They smelled clean, like bleach. The room was dark, thanks to the thick curtains hiding the sliding glass door, and mercifully quiet. The bed felt good. Soft. She began to relax, feeling sleep setting in.

The phone rang, and Val’s heart jumped. Dammit .

She reached over and grabbed her cell phone off the nightstand, glancing at the display. It was PLARG. She pushed the green answer button.

“Hello, Mark.”

“Hola, Val. Buenos dee-az!” Mark’s Spanish was shit.

“Cut the crap, Mark. I’m tired. Why are you calling?”

“Tough Monday morning, huh? At least you’re in sunny Baja California. I get to spend the day in a cold, windowless lab in cheery Moss Landing. There’s even summertime fog outside, if I decide to go look out a window.”

“I’m sorry, Mark. I had a really rough night and I was trying to get some sleep. What’s going on?”

“Well, I’m sorry to bother you, but this is pretty big. Someone called about one of your tags.”

“That’s nice. Couldn’t you call me later? You know I’m usually asleep this late in the morning.”

“Val… this is big.”

There was a silence. “Okay, Mark. What’s so big about this?”

“Drumroll, please… it’s where he’s calling from. This guy isn’t in Mexico.”

“What?” She sat up on the edge of the bed. “What are you talking about?”

“Apparently, your squid took a trip to San Diego.”

“Humboldt squid.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“That tag came off a Humboldt squid, Mr. Sturman.”

“So lady, you’re saying this here tag isn’t from a fish? It’s from a giant squid?”

Sturman heard the woman sigh into the phone. “Not a giant squid. The tag was on a Dosidicus gigas , or Humboldt squid. You may have heard of them before. They’re also called ‘jumbo squid’ or ‘flying squid.’ Down here, they’re called los diablos rojos —‘red devils. ’ ”

Sturman turned the orange and white tag over in his hands. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of those before. I’ve seen a few articles in the paper over the last couple years, talking about them washing up dead around here.”

“Right. That’s them. We’re starting to think that periodic El Niño events bring them north from Mexico.”

“So this big tag fell off some little Mexican squid?”

The woman sighed again. “All anyone cares about are giant squid. Look, Mr. Sturman—can I call you Will?”