Ryan Lockwood - Below

She began to weave through the inedible vertical obstructions, followed closely by the others. Soon the water became uncomfortably shallow. Yet the lights were now much closer and her curious nature only amplified her hunger. One of the beams shined in her direction, blinding her remaining eye and sending a jolt of pain toward her nerve center. She spun and darted away from the stimulus, her retreat mirrored by nearby members of the shoal.

Their alarm was brief. The painful lights soon were again focused away from the shoal. Once again it moved toward them.

Steve waited patiently for the tentacle to reappear.

The Jackson family was gathered tightly around and above him in the ink-black water, eager to see what their divemaster was trying to show them. The novice divers struggled to stay in place in the light current sweeping across the pinnacle, managing to maintain neutral buoyancy but occasionally bumping against Steve’s scuba tank. He never did think black people could swim all that well. Undistracted by the other divers, he continued to wiggle his index finger in front of a dark recess in the reef.

In a brightly illuminated patch of rock under the dive lights, the tip of a tentacle reappeared. Inquisitively, the red-orange appendage slithered out farther from under the rough slab of dark rock and stroked Steve’s finger with small, white suckers. The animal finally drew itself out of its hole and flitted along the rock on eight arms. Its body was about the size of a softball, with arms the length of a man’s hand. A typical California two-spot octopus.

Steve had always thought octopi were fascinating animals, and much smarter than many people realized. Normally on night dives, the inquisitive creatures were visible everywhere on this rocky reef, staying in the open unless agitated. Steve wondered why he was having to coax them out tonight.

He wriggled his fingers again, and the curious animal wrapped its arms around his hand, enveloping his gloved fingers with its smooth, muscular body. Steve looked over his shoulder toward the family, directly into Jennifer’s mask. Even in the dim illumination of their dive lights, he could see her delighted expression. He extended his arm toward her, offering the octopus, but she drew her hand away, shaking her head. Another hand appeared from the right side of Steve’s field of view. Curtis. Her brother was apparently a little bolder. Steve held the animal next to the boy’s hand, and after a few moments it gently pulled itself over to the boy’s wrist and latched on to its new perch, flattening its soft body.

Suddenly the octopus grew redder in color and released the boy’s arm, disappearing back into its hole in a swirl of shell fragments. Jumpy little guy. Steve directed his light away from the octopus, along the surface of the rocky pinnacle. He drew in a lungful of air to increase his buoyancy and began lifting off the bottom. Time to head off in search of more attractions. He knew he could find the Jackson family plenty of lobster down here, and some of the huge local sea stars. He panned the light upward into the open water, and something darted across it.

Something big.

Steve’s heart leapt against his ribs. He exhaled a cloud of bubbles and scanned the water. Probably a sea lion or blue shark. It hadn’t been a truly massive animal, no bigger than himself. Too small to be a great white or mako. Nothing to worry about.

He swept the light all around, hoping to see the mystery visitor again. As his beam of light hit the dark green kelp fronds off to his left, Steve glimpsed two more pale shapes, which withdrew almost immediately from the powerful beam.

Those weren’t sharks. And they certainly didn’t move like fish. Harbor seals? If the other divers hadn’t noticed these animals yet, they would soon. Steve hoped none of them would panic.

He turned to face the group and waited for the family to assemble near him. He swam over to Mrs. Jackson first, looking into her eyes from a few feet away as he touched his own air gauge directly in front of her mask: How much air do you have left?

She glanced at her gauges under her flashlight and then held up one finger, then three. Thirteen-hundred psi . Most important to Steve, she looked calm. He proceeded to each family member in turn, checking their air—and their expressions. Nobody seemed anxious.

Steve turned and swam over the reef with measured kicks, staying several feet above its rough surface. This pinnacle was always teeming with life, covered with crevasses for animals to find refuge in. It offered an island of shallower water away from the human disturbance near shore. Along its surface, he noticed a multitude of orange sea stars as large as serving platters, spiny purple urchins in the thousands, and other motionless critters affixed to the rock face. But where were the fish, the octopi, the other more mobile residents ? Everything seemed to be hiding. Maybe they were avoiding—

Steve’s light revealed a dead man’s face, regarding him with empty black eyes from within a dark recess in the reef.

His heart, already racing, lurched again as he swung the light back to reveal the face’s features, less than ten feet away. The head swayed gently within the opening in the rock, eyes unblinking and unobstructed by a dive mask. With a thick jaw and flat nose, this was the face of an ancient, drowned prizefighter. This man couldn’t be alive, with lidless dark eyes and mottled gray skin....

As recognition dawned on him, Steve released the breath he had been holding into his regulator, sending out a burst of bubbles. Of course. It was only a big wolf eel, curled within a crevasse of the reef. He had often thought these eels looked like very old men without noses. Despite block-like heads shaped by muscles in their powerful jaws, from a distance they seemed very human.

Steve turned away from the reef and the beam from his light caught another large shape. Just as the gleam found the animal, it twisted its body and spun gracefully, vanishing into the darkness once again. Near the middle of its form, Steve had distinctly seen a round, dark spot.

An eye.

Few animals had eyes near the center of their bodies. Steve immediately realized what he had seen. He knew a couple divers who had encountered jumbo flying squid before, but he himself had never seen them before. Until tonight.

They were much bigger than he had imagined.

He remembered that the deepwater animals were sensitive to light and directed his beam downward, making it difficult to see more than a few feet into the water in front of him. He indicated to the others to redirect their lights as well. They probably had no idea what a treat they were in for. Steve looked out into the darkness.

And waited.

Moments later, the first of the squid showed itself. It was uncomfortably close when Steve first noticed it—fifteen feet or less. Although a little on edge, he smiled as he got his first good look at a live jumbo squid.

Built like a torpedo, but with its fins at the front instead of the rear, the pale apparition hung almost motionless in the blackness. It peered at Steve with twitching ebony eyes much bigger than his own, fluttering the broad fins as it held its position. One fin appeared to be damaged at the tip, and scars covered its body. The squid’s arms and tentacles, drawn seamlessly together, slowly separated and it began to move toward Steve. He saw that it was missing an arm.

He had seen flying squid in pictures before—fishermen liked to brag—but those had probably never been more than three or four feet long. The old warrior he was looking at now was far bigger—maybe eight feet. He began backing away from it until his tank bumped into the other divers.