Ryan Lockwood - Below

The small green light winked on, very close now. The large female moved toward the light that had drawn her focus. The moving light.

Tentatively, she touched it.

Something brushed Miguel’s wrist.

He quickly pulled his arm back, against his ribs, and watched in horror as some thing withdrew in the light of his watch. The light went out again.

Instantly Miguel was alert, his heart drumming in his chest. The thing that had touched him had been smooth, but firm. It had touched him gently, the way his grandmother rubbed his head. But it had not been human.

In the green wristwatch light, the thing had looked like some gigantic outstretched hand. A grotesque hand with impossibly huge, thick fingers wriggling away from the glowing watch face. Miguel began to breathe even faster as his adrenaline surged, and his heart pounded blood through his ears. He turned on his flashlight and swung it around beneath him, but saw nothing.

“Something touched me , mano !” He wanted to shout but could only muster a loud whisper. “It touched my skin.”

His brother looked at him in alarm. “What touched you, manito ?”

“There!” Miguel shouted, drawing everyone’s attention.

“ Tiburón !” The men began shouting at one man’s mention of a shark.

Something moved again at the edge of the flashlight beam, but it dodged the direct shaft of light so he couldn’t get a good look. It wasn’t a shark. No, not a shark or any other fish, even though Miguel thought he saw a fin.

It was big, like the sharks he’d seen dead on the beach, but it moved in an unfamiliar way. No, not it. They . As he redirected his flashlight, he saw more than one large shape moving at the outer limit cast by the artificial light. The shapes advanced, withdrew again. For several long moments, he stared down, not wanting to see anything, but even more afraid now that he couldn’t see anything in the beam.

The flashlight went out.

Miguel shook it, but it remained off. He pressed the button on the side of his watch and directed it toward his legs again. Nothing.

Just before the watch light went off, something darted toward him.

Pain shot up his arm as the thing gripped his wrist and released it, and he knew he was bleeding.

And then panic seized him.

She gripped the object and tugged, tiny teeth cutting into soft flesh as she squeezed and pulled. Then, abruptly, she released the object, assessing. Fat. Blood. Flesh. This was food.

The painfully brighter light that had appeared on the object moments ago had frightened her away briefly, but had now attracted the focused attention of many more in the shoal. Now the light had gone out, replaced again by the light of prey.

As the hungry one-eyed female eagerly moved to grip the fleshy body again, the others in the shoal sensed her excitement, were stirred by the thrashing prey, the blood now entering the water.

She advanced with the shoal and lashed out again, seizing the object, pulling it down. Two others quickly joined her, grasping and hooking the object, overwhelming it. With powerful thrusts, the hungry mass of writhing beasts began to pull the prey downward in the darkness.

For a split second, Miguel saw a large, pale shape glowing in the darkened water below him as he turned to swim away. As he kicked frantically toward his brother, the thing seized his foot.

This time, it did not let go.

He realized he was being dragged under when his screams were drowned by the water flooding his mouth. As his head went beneath the surface, he felt a powerful grasping on his legs, his arms. Grasping everywhere. Something sharp cut through his clothing and into his skin. He struggled to free himself, but had the terrible realization that he was being overwhelmed.

Miguel looked up in desperation and watched as several lights turned on above him. He was being pulled deeper. The lights rapidly dimmed as, impossibly fast, he was dragged down. More shapes rocketed toward him, clung to him, dug into him, covering his body. His ears protested loudly, painfully, as his eardrums ruptured suddenly in the mounting water pressure. The tiny flashlights had vanished far above him. Despite his pain and confusion, all he could think about was swimming up for air.

He was aware of something large and meaty wrapping around the side of his face, biting deeply into his neck.

Eating him.

A greenish light flashed near his face, and in the brief glow he saw a large, lidless eye. Then the thing on his face wrapped cold flesh around his head, enveloping it, mercifully covering his eyes.

He was still descending when everything went black.

The small pop-up window on the marine GPS appeared with a beep, displaying a familiar message: Arriving at destination . Travis eased back on the throttle to slow the sleek inboard and scanned the water. The sea was fairly calm, so he shouldn’t have trouble finding the group. He didn’t want to run over any of them accidentally, so he slowed to a few knots and watched the waves ahead for lights on the water.

Ahead, he saw one light appear, maybe a hundred and fifty yards off the bow. But that was it. Maybe one guy was signaling for the whole group. Then he saw another light, farther away, way off to his right. Too far to his right. Something was wrong here. He waited to see other lights appear, but only a few more appeared between the first two lights, and none of them were directed at him. They seemed to be pointed in all directions.

Travis noticed another light now, much closer and directly in front of him. He eased the Whaler toward the light, steering so that he would pass just to the right of the person in the water. As he neared it, Travis stepped over to the port side for a better look. He realized the light wasn’t held above the water, as it should be. It was bobbing on the surface.

Something was definitely wrong.

The boat drifted past the floating light, just missing it, when something else bumped gently against the hull. Travis looked toward the bow and, for a moment, he saw what appeared to be a person floating in the dark water next to the boat, being pulled beneath it as it drifted past.

Someone was going under the boat.

Travis dashed back to the driver’s seat and yanked the throttle into neutral. He leapt to the stern, grabbing a life preserver, looking for the person to pop up. There. He saw the man again. He was still floating face-up in the water, drifting down the side of the boat. Bobbing like the flashlight. Travis squatted on the transom for a better look, and realized why. He stopped breathing.

This man wasn’t moving. Even in the dim light, Travis could see that the man’s dark T-shirt was torn, as was his stomach. Fuck, this dude’s dead. The boat’s momentum continued to carry it past the man, preventing Travis from getting a clear look at him.

Travis tried to assimilate what he was seeing, not wanting to believe he may have just seen a dead body. He needed to turn the boat around and check. But where the fuck was everyone else? There was a noise.

A cough.

The dead man had coughed as the boat moved away from him. He was alive?

Travis spoke. “Hey, amigo… can you hear me?”

The man remained silent as the boat drifted farther away. Travis put the boat in reverse and let it idle once again as he neared the motionless figure on the water.

Travis reached out with a long-handled fishing net and placed it over the man’s head, since it was the only part of the man he could reach. As he dragged the man closer, the net forced his head underwater. The inert man came to life, sputtering as he inhaled water, then coughed as he weakly fought at the net with his hands.