Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

Mark and I share a glance, the silence thick around us. It’s eerie. Suddenly I have this crazy idea that we died. Maybe we died and this is purgatory. Or a dream.

The silence is broken by a thunk against the side of the boat. And another. Thunk. Thunk . The waves are knocking something repeatedly into the side of the hull. We look toward the noise; whatever it is, we can’t see it over the rim. Thunk, thunk . Mark frowns at me.

I shrug. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is either.

But there’s something in his demeanor, something in the set of his shoulders, that makes my blood freeze. Something bad is happening. Mark thinks something very bad is happening.

Thunk, thunk . Insistent now. Thunk, thunk. Mark steps toward the noise. Thunk thunk . He braces himself against the boat, arms spread, then he inhales sharply and leans over the side.

He doesn’t move now. Thunk thunk . He’s looking down at whatever it is, frozen. Thunk thunk . And then he shifts, and he ever so carefully lowers a hand overboard. It disappears from view. Thunk thu —

With a grunt Mark heaves a waterlogged object onto the deck between us. It lands with a wet suck on the floor. A few bits of soggy paper stick to it. We stand and stare at it. It’s a black canvas duffel bag just under a meter in length. It’s too big for a gym bag but too small for a holiday suitcase.

It’s clearly good quality but there don’t seem to be any labels, no writing. Mark bends to inspect it. No tag. No handy address label. He looks for the zip, hidden black on black, and finds it. The zip is padlocked to the fastening of the bag by a matte black combination lock. Huh.

Okay. Obviously valuable. It’s obviously not garbage, right? Mark glances up at me.

Should he try to open it?

I nod.

He tries to force the zipper, padlock and all. It won’t budge. He tries again.

He looks up. I shrug. I want to open it too but…

He tries the fabric around the zip. Pulls at it. It doesn’t give. He partially lifts the bag as he wrestles with it, the wet fabric smacking against the fiberglass deck as he struggles.

The bag has things in it. I can make out hard, angular shapes moving around inside as Mark tries to force a way in. He stops abruptly.

“Maybe we should wait,” Mark says. His voice is taut, concerned. “Whoever owns it definitely doesn’t want anyone getting into it. Right?”

I guess not. But the allure of finding out what’s inside is pretty fucking strong right now. He’s right, though. He’s definitely right. It’s not ours to open, is it?

“Can I?” I gesture toward it.

I just want to hold it, feel it. Maybe I’ll know what’s in it by weight, by shape. Like a Christmas present.

“Sure, go ahead.” He stands back, giving me room.

“It’s heavier than it looks,” he adds, just as I lift the handles. And it is. Deceptively heavy. I pick it up slowly and it hangs around my calves. Wet and weighted. It feels like…It feels like…

I drop it immediately and it hits the fiberglass with a familiar thunk . Mark stares at me. Shakes his head.

“It’s not.” He knows what I’m thinking.

“It’s not, Erin. They’d have eaten it. They’d have smelled it and eaten it. Especially the grays. It’s not,” he insists, but it’s the way he says it. I know he was thinking it too.

Of course he’s right, if it was a body the sharks would have had it by now. It’s not organic; it’s just some things in a bag.

Probably just someone’s business accounts or something, judging by all the paper around. Maybe some dodgy bookkeeping. Just accounting, at the end of the day. I’m sure it’s really not that interesting. Right? Just some stuff in a bag.

In a padlocked bag, Erin. Floating in the middle of the South Pacific. Surrounded by ten meters of illegible papers.

“What should we do?” I ask. “Should we even do anything? Should we put it back in the water and just leave it?”

Mark looks at his watch. It’s getting late now; the sun will be setting in the next half hour or so and we’ve still got a forty-five-minute journey back. I do not want to be out in the middle of nowhere when it gets dark. Mark doesn’t either.

“We need to get going. I’ll note the coordinates and we’ll take the bag back with us. Hand it in or something. Okay, Erin? We let someone know about this mess. Whatever happened here.” He finds a pad and pencil in a locker under the seat. Jots down the location on the GPS.

I look out across the water at the papers, searching for some other clue to what this strange situation could be. But there’s just that familiar blue, all around. Nothing else bobbing in the water. Nothing drifting on the waves. Just paper and blue. I turn back to Mark.

“Yes, okay. We’ll hand it in at the hotel and they can sort it out.” I sit back down.

It’s none of our business really. Someone probably just dumped it.

Mark turns back to the wheel and we’re off again. Speeding back toward the hotel and dinner. I watch the bag slide across the decking and lodge under a seat.

I curl up on the bench cushions behind Mark and put on his sweater, pulling the sleeves down over my cold hands. Hair whipping across my face, I close my eyes.

We bounce out of bed early this morning. All the exercise and fresh air is knocking us out by ten most nights, and I feel great.

We handed the bag in last night when we docked at the hotel. Mark gave it to a porter and we explained that it had been found in the water. Mark didn’t think it was worth telling the guy on the dock about the coordinates, or the papers. Best to have a chat with the dive guy about it today instead—he seems a bit more on it and he might actually look into it.

We breakfast in the main restaurant today; it’s the Four Seasons Sunday buffet. It’s ridiculously opulent, everything you could ever want to eat: whole lobsters, pancakes with syrup, exotic fruit, full English breakfast, sushi, rainbow cake. Ludicrous. That’s another great thing about all this exercise: I can pretty much eat whatever I want right now and it’ll make no difference.

We’ve got exciting plans for today, 4x4 off-roading in the forest on the main island, followed by a hike up Mount Otemanu to the Sacred Cave, then back to the hotel for the Sunday evening torchlit dinner on the beach. The boat will be collecting us right after breakfast from the jetty. There’s no sign of the dive guy yet. And I need to nip back to the room to quickly grab my bag and sunscreen, so I leave Mark at the restaurant and run back to our room.

I don’t see it at first.

As I come out of our bathroom, toothbrush in my mouth, mid-stroke, there it is. Sitting neatly on the floor at the end of our bed. The bag. Someone put it back in our room. It’s dry now. Chalky salt tidemarks crust the black canvas. Padlock still safely fastened. They must have misunderstood what Mark was saying last night. And now it’s back.

I think of the thunk thunk against the side of the boat. The insistence. I wouldn’t have ever thought that a bag could be creepy, but there you go. You live and learn.

I’ll have to sort it out later. No time now. I finish brushing my teeth, grab my bag, and dash for the jetty. I’ll tell Mark later.

—

After the quick boat trip across the lagoon, we pile into an off-road vehicle. There are four of us as well as the guide in the 4x4. Us and another young couple. Sally and Daniel. We set off. Snapshots of jungle, the edge of a Jeep wing mirror, blurry smiling faces, hot black leather car seats against thighs, the smell of warm forest in the air, wind along the hairs of my arm, bumping hard over steep rugged hills, cool air and warmth.