Graham Masterton - Death Trance

Thrashing, panicking, I began to sink slowly to the seabed, the corpse embracing me like a long-lost lover. Is that what Mictantecutli wanted after all? I thought to myself. Did he really want me, and me alone, because my unborn son had cheated him of the chance to feast on my heart? I sucked desperately at my mouthpiece, but my oxygen was completely exhausted, and my lungs began to feel as if they were going to collapse from lack of air.

It was then that the corpse shuddered, and suddenly whirled away. The shroud was dragged off me, and my arms and legs were disentangled. My face-mask clear, I saw Quamus rolling away from me in the murky water, brandishing his iron shaft. On the end of it, deeply impaled, was the blue-skinned, half-decayed body of Mrs Goult, chunks of flesh flaking off her like rotting tuna. Quamus gave her one last twist, and then sent her sinking slowly down to the bottom, the shaft still sticking out of her bare-ribbed chest. He swam back a little way, seized my arm, and urgently pointed upwards. I nodded. I needed no second bidding. I was almost blacking out from oxygen starvation.

Back on the lugger, shaken as both of us were, we said nothing to Walcott or his daughter about what we had seen. Laurie made us each a cup of hot black coffee, and we rested for another 15 minutes while Walcott prepared the dynamite. Each of the two crates was heavily weighted so that it would sink directly to the bottom; and then, once we had maneuvered it into position, it would sink just as quickly into our 20-foot hole.

‘Think the weather's going to hold?' I asked Walcott, finishing my coffee.

'Could be,' he remarked.

As I shouldered my next two oxygen tanks, I thought briefly of Anne Putnam: the witch who had sacrificed herself so that I would not feel obliged to let Mictantecutli go free. Well, I thought to myself, I still don't have to make a final decision, not until the copper vessel has been brought ashore; and even then I'll have time to think it over. I believed what old man Evelith had told me, about the malevolent power that Mictantecutli could wreak; but I was still strongly tempted to let the Fleshless One go free, and recover the wife and son-to-be whom I so dearly loved:

Yet how much was I kidding myself? How much of this desire to restore Jane to life was real conviction, and how much of it was ridiculous romantic bravado? I had already accepted Jane's death more than I would have thought possible. What was making love to Gilly, but an acceptance that I would never be making love to Jane again? If I had left on a six-weeks' business trip, I wouldn't have been unfaithful: I wouldn't even have thought of it. Yet Jane had been dead now for very little longer than that, and here I was going to bed with another woman.

More than that: what kind of relationship was I going to be able to have with Jane, once and if she was restored to life? What do you say to somebody who's been dead and buried?

I was still thinking about this when Quamus gripped my arm, and said, 'Time to go, Mr Trenton. Second-to-last dive.'

Planting the dynamite proved to be the easiest job of all. All we had to do was tumble it end over end until it was perched on the brink of the hole we had excavated, connect the fuses, and let it sink slowly down. When both cases had disappeared into the darkness, Quamus and I packed as much grit and shell and debris as we could into the hole, to make sure that the full force of the explosion would be directed towards the hull of the David Dark . As we swam back to the surface, paying out fuse from a small reel, I thought of Edward, and what he would have said if he had known what we were doing. I actually felt sorry for him. In a minute or two, we would be shattering the dream of his life.

Think of the devil, however: when we broke the surface of the water, and began to splash our way back towards Walcott's lugger, what should appear around the bow of the lugger but the Diogenes, with Edward and Forrest and Jimmy standing on the foredeck, and Dan Bass at the wheel.

Quamus glanced at me, and I made a rotating action with my hand to indicate that he should continue to pay out the fuse. We reached the lugger and heaved ourselves up the side. Laurie and Walcott helped us on to the foredeck, and for a moment we lay there like two landed sealions, gasping for breath; but it was obvious that Edward wasn't going to give us any rest. He beckoned Dan to guide the Diogenes right in close to Walcott's lugger, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

'Mr Walcott!' he shouted. 'John! What's going on here? What are you up to?'

'Just showing Quamus the David Dark , that's all,' I shouted back.

'In a salvage boat? And what's all that waterjet and airlift gear doing on deck?'

'Mind your own business,' I told him. 'This wreck doesn't belong to anybody. It's unregistered. If we want to do a little excavation of our own, that's up to us.'

'The David Dark is registered now,' Edward shouted. 'I just registered her this morning. Gilly called me up from Tewksbury and said that you'd gone off early with a whole lot of equipment.'

Thanks, Gilly, I thought to myself. Judas in linen and lace.

'Well, registered or not, we still have a perfect right to be here,' I told Edward.

'You want me to prove you wrong?' demanded Edward. 'You want me to call the coastguard and have you moved away? This wreck is private property now, and part-owned by the city of Salem. Any vessel suspected of carrying out diving or unauthorized salvage anywhere in the vicinity is liable to be impounded, and the owners fined. So move out.'

'Edward,' I said, 'I thought you and I were friends.'

'Apparently we made a mistake,' said Edward. And without saying anything else, he turned away, and directed Dan Bass to turn the Diogenes about.

'Quamus,' I said, without moving. 'Light the fuse. Mr Walcott, start your engines and get us the hell out of here.'

Quamus said, 'You will not warn your colleagues?'

'My ex-colleagues, you mean? Sure I'll warn them. But get that fuse lit first.'

Quamus struck a match, cupped his hands over the end of the fuse, and held the flame against the fabric until the explosive core of the fuse ignited. It was a fast-burning fuse, 120 cm a minute, and it quickly sparkled over the side of the lugger and disappeared under the surface of the sea. There was a light cloud of smoke, and a rush of bubbles, and then it was gone.

Walcott gunned the lugger's engines, and it was then that I yelled out to Edward: 'Get going! Move! Fast as you can! Explosives!'

I saw Edward, Forrest and Jimmy stare across at me, startled. They looked at each other in amazement, and then they looked back at me.

Edward shouted: 'What did you say? Explosives?'

'Going off now!' I screamed at him, as the lugger heeled off towards the Granitehead shore. 'Get out of there quick!'

There was a moment's silence; then the Diogenes' engine blared into life, and the little boat began to move away, slowly at first, but quickly building up speed. It had only travelled about 50 yards, however, when there was a curious shaking in the ocean, a sensation quite unlike anything that I had ever felt before. It was like an earthquake, only more vertiginous, as if the world were falling into separate pieces, as if sky were becoming detached from ocean, and ocean were becoming detached from land. I felt as if we were all going to fly weightless into the air, boats, compressors, flags, diving-suits, and everything.

Then, the surface of the sea burst apart. With a thunderous roar, an immense cliff of solid water rose into the air, 50 or 100 feet, and hung there in the morning air. A shock-wave pressed against my ears, suppressing the clatter of tons of brine as it collapsed back into the sea, but my ears cleared again in time to hear the echo coming back from the Granitehead Hills, as clear as a cannon-shot.