Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

She had earned her reputation as a killjoy early on in the expedition. Of the seven-man team, she was the only one who refused to play along with the in-jokes about the island where they had been based for the first fortnight, insisting on using its Greenlandic title, Qeqertarsuaq, rather than the anglicised Disko Island. She had asked for the Earth, Wind and Fire to be turned down during the jeep ride from the airport. She had complained to Nils when someone had scrawled DISKO SUCKS in Tippex on one arm of her wetsuit. And when, on the first day of work proper, her first hard drive of sound recordings had been replaced with another containing only one track, a repeated twenty-second loop of the Bee Gees singing “Staying Alive,” she had thrown a tantrum that would have awed her six-year-old son.

She didn’t care then and she didn’t care now. She had the files.

She hooked up the most recent hard drive and selected the first track, labelled 14Sep16_001 . Her two glasses of wine had left her a little drunk. She raised her hands like a conductor as the track played.

It began with a gulp. The sound of her own body slipping into the water, probably. She shivered now. Hadn’t the thought passed through her mind, at that moment, of Peter’s fate if she were to freeze there in Baffin Bay? Even at the time, she had recognised the thought as uncharacteristic. If she was being honest, she hadn’t thought about Peter a great deal, up to that point in the expedition. But being alone in icy water, far from assistance, might make anyone behave oddly. From underwater she had looked up at the towering iceberg above, its edges knife-sharp from its recent calving from the Jakobshavn glacier. Refraction had made it bend towards her. She had felt impossibly fragile.

Bubbling sounds followed. Her last exhalation before she had settled herself into position. As the bubbles ceased, the background sounds became more easily audible. Lea leant forward to turn up the amp.

The creaking sound reminded her of her grandmother’s rocking chair against wooden floorboards. Except there were layers beneath, too. A sighing, a throb of life. The quiet belch of bubbles released from somewhere in the depths and pushing along the underside of the iceberg before finding freedom at the water’s surface. The rumble and snap of the iceberg itself as its regions thawed or refroze. An embrace of womblike warmth that eclipsed the physical memory of the water’s icy chill.

It was good. A beautiful, living sound in its own right, as well as fulfilling producer Nils’ brief of demonstrating the rate of thaw for the TV documentary. Lea sipped wine and conducted the orchestra of creaks and burbles. It was good.

Even back then, floating twenty feet down, she had had the distinct thought, This is the best yet . Then, as she had stifled her shivers in order to hold the microphone tight and to track the fast-moving iceberg, This is the best work I might ever do .

At the time.

By lunchtime, during the team meeting at the tiny base situated north of Ilulissat, a new opportunity had presented itself. An achievement that might easily surpass the glacier groans.

The second camerawoman, Reeta, was first to notice the change in the Inuit guide, Sighna. She interrupted Nils’ summary of footage gathered that morning to rush over to Sighna and steady him, preventing him from toppling into the open brazier in the centre of the hut. Lea and the others watched on in silence as Reeta tried to grasp Sighna’s hands. He wrenched them away and pressed them to either side of his head. He shook as though he were trying to squeeze his skull. He hissed a word, again and again and again. Eqalussuaq .

Nils tried to speak to Reeta, but she waved him away. He returned to stand next to Lea, his arms folded. He had never been good at inaction. Some other members of the team moved away from Sighna and Reeta, too, similarly embarrassed.

“Eqalussuaq,” Nils whispered.

“What does it mean?” Lea asked.

“It’s a name,” Nils said. “Or two names, depending how you think about it.”

They watched as Reeta helped Sighna to sit and gathered rucksacks to make a cushioned throne.

Nils continued, “I read the name first in a book of Greenlandic legends. Kind of a cute one. Some old woman washed her hair in urine—I know, go figure—then dried it with a cloth, which then sailed away on the wind, into the ocean. It became Ekalugsuak, and its descendants, Eqalussuaq.”

The first-unit director, Terence, was listening. He stuck out his tongue. “So what’s the significance of this progeny of a piss-cloth, then?”

“It’ll be of interest to you, Terry, professionally speaking,” Nis replied. “Eqalussuaq is an animal. The Greenland shark.”

Lea saw Terence’s eyes widen. He turned to Reeta, still kneeling beside the Inuit guide, whose lips were moving even though his voice had quietened. “Hey. Hey. Ask him why he’s saying that word.”

Sighna looked up blearily as Reeta asked the question in Greenlandic. He lifted his hands from his ears, only for a moment. He spoke in a voice too low for Lea to hear.

Reeta turned. “He says it’s close. No, that’s not quite the word. I don’t know. Exalted? High up.”

“Shitting hell,” Terence said. “Meaning the Greenland shark is close? Does he know that for a fact?”

The guide was still speaking to Reeta, his lips trembling as he spoke. Reeta frowned and nodded, her palm raised to the man, perhaps as a signal for him to remain calm.

“What’s the deal?” Lea whispered to Nils. “What’s so exciting?”

Nils pressed his hand on his face, drawing it downwards until his jowls bounced. “It’s the biggest bastard out there. Twenty-plus feet and with the oldest living to two hundred years. It’s notorious, but partly that’s just because of the toxicity of the flesh—remember in the port bar last night, I told you the natives use the phrase ‘shark-sick’ to mean drunk?”

Reeta stood up. She glanced at Sighna, who had slumped back into the pile of rucksacks. “It’s all a bit of a jumble. My translation skills—” She blinked, perhaps registering the expressions of her team members. “Sighna says the shark coming close always affects him in this way. Says his head hurts, it’s hard to concentrate. I’m not sure I’m getting this right, but he’s complaining about something loud. Shouting. Maybe screaming.”

Terence held her by the shoulders. “And the shark? He thinks it’s nearby?”

“He’s positive. Although I don’t know why you’d treat that as—”

“Where?” Terence was already packing gear into a bag. He whistled to get the attention of the assistant director and another of the cameramen, who were deep in conversation at the far side of the hut.

“All the way back where Lea was this morning,” Reeta said. “Right at the foot of the Jakobshavn glacier.”

Terence and Nils exchanged glances. After a few moments, Nils shrugged his approval. “I’ll buzz the boat crew. We’ll meet them as close as we can get.”

Lea started gathering her kit, too. “I’ll show you the way down to the water.” She turned to Nils. “So this shark’s a catch, right? A rarity?”

Nils’ face had turned pale. “Like you wouldn’t believe. They almost never show their ugly faces. If one’s come close to the surface—”

She was first in the jeep, turning over the engine and gesticulating orders for the other team members to hurry.

Lea pulled off her headphones and listened for Peter. Still no sound. She scrolled down the filenames on the hard drive. The file size of the final track was enormous. Whoever had been operating it remotely from the boat must have let the recording run on, afterward, while she was being hauled out of the sea. Her index finger paused over the mouse button. She turned in her swivel chair and lifted the phone.