Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

I notice I’m shaking as we do our buddy check in the water. He grasps my hand and holds it tight against his chest for a second. My heart rate slows. The waves are big and rolling us high today. There’s a strong breeze but Mark promises it’ll be placid once we’re underwater. As we finish up he takes my arm.

“Erin, you don’t have to do this, you know. I can go down alone. You can stay on the boat and I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes. That’s all it’ll take, honey.” He pushes a wet strand of hair behind my ear.

“No, it’s okay. I’m fine.” I smile. “I can do this. And if I don’t see for myself, I’ll be imagining worse anyway,” I say, my voice distant, slightly off-key again.

He nods. He knows me too well to disagree. I’m coming.

He slides on his mask, signals descend, and slips beneath the surface. I place my mask on slowly, securely, letting it suck hard against my cheeks. I can’t afford any mishaps today. I take my last breath of sweet fresh air and follow him under.

It’s clearer down here than it was the last time. Crystal-clear blue. High-definition blue. Mark is waiting for me just below the surface, picked out in nature-program resolution, a living thing suspended in an ocean of nothing. He gestures to descend. And we let out our buoyance.

Our descent is steady. I look up at the huge waves crashing above us; it’s so eerily still down here. Seen from underneath, the cresting waves appear forged from metal as they glint in the sun. Huge sheets of burnished aluminum.

Everything is fine. Everything is fine up until we hit ten meters.

Mark jerkily stops and signals for me to hold position. I freeze.

Something’s wrong.

Blood suddenly bursts through my veins at a rate of knots, pumping faster than ever around my body. Why are we stopping?

Is there something in the water? I’m careful not to move, but my eyes search in every direction for what it could be. I can’t see it. Should we get back up to the boat? Or is it fine?

Mark signals It’s okay back to me.

Okay? Then what? Why hold?

He signals it to me again: hold . Then he signals be calm . Be calm is never a good sign.

Then he signals look down .

Oh God.

Oh Goddy, God, God. Why look down? Why? I don’t want to look down. I don’t want to look down, Mark. I shake my head.

No. No, not doing it.

He reaches out and takes my arm. He signals It’s okay again.

His eyes. It’s fine, Erin.

I nod, I’m calm. All right. I can do this. I can do this.

I breathe in deep, a cool crisp chemical breath, and look down.

It’s beautiful. Papers caught in a slow-motion dance hang in the water all around us. Half sunk, half floating, beautiful.

Then through the gaps between papers…I see it below us.

About thirty meters below us on the seabed. A plane. Not a commercial plane. A small plane. A private jet perhaps. I see it clearly below. One wing disconnected, broken off in the sand beneath. A great gaping breach in its main hull. And darkness within. I breathe out, hanging motionless in the water.

I breathe in slow, calm. I look to the door, the airplane’s door. It’s sealed. The door is sealed. Oh. Oh shit. I feel the panic rise. I feel it fizz through my muscles, through my arms, through my heart, the clenching, the seizing. Fuck. Oh my fucking God. There are people in there.

The trapdoor in my mind bursts wide open and the panic spills out all over me. Images flash through my mind. I can see rows of silent people safely strapped in, in the dark, deep below us. Their faces. Jaws broken mid-scream. Stop! I command myself.

This is not real. Stop.

But it is, though, isn’t it? It is real. They’ll be in there; I know they will. They can’t have got out. They didn’t even try. Why didn’t they even try?

I realize I’ve stopped breathing.

I gasp in a breath. The gasps come fast in quick succession, panicked pulls on life. Grasping. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I look up. The sun dancing silver above. Ten meters up. I have to get out of the water. Now.

I flail out of Mark’s grasp, kicking as hard as I can, up. Up and away from the plane. From the death.

A hand grabs my ankle and I jolt to a stop as it pulls hard, yanks me down. I can’t get away. It’s Mark. Mark holding me down in the water. Protecting me from rising too fast, from hurting myself. I know it’s for my own good but I don’t want it. I need to get out of the fucking water, right now.

The surface is still about eight meters above us. I suck in breaths as I struggle to get free. Free from him. He clambers up me to eye level and seizes me by my shoulders, strong and steady. Trying to muffle the panic. Stanch it. He catches my gaze. Stop, Erin. Stop, his eyes say.

Breathe.

He’s got me. It’s okay. He’s got me. I’m okay. I breathe. I relax into his hold. Calm. Calm.

I’m okay.

The panic sucks back into its hole and the trapdoor slams shut behind it.

Stillness. I breathe. I signal okay . Mark nods, satisfied. He loosens his grip.

I’m okay. But I’m not going down there. There’s no way on earth I’m going down there.

I signal up . I’m going up.

He looks at me for a while before he replies. He signals okay. Then, You, up .

He’s still going down. Alone.

I squeeze his arms and he releases me. I watch him descend as I kick up slowly. A controlled ascent, now the panic has dissipated. He disappears into the murky darkness as I rise.

Once I hit the surface I remove my tank immediately in the water and haul it onto the boat. I strip off my suit and leave it like a husked skin on the floor. I slump there shivering and wheezing, struggling to catch my breath, elbows on my knees as the tears start to well in my eyes.

Images flash across the backs of my closed eyelids. Their faces. The passengers’. Distorted, distended. The terror. I slam my fists down hard onto my legs. Pain flashes through my body. Anything to stop the images.

I get up and pace the deck. Think about something else. What does it mean, Erin? Yes, think about that, concentrate on that. What does it mean?

It means the bag was on a plane and the plane crashed. A storm in the South Pacific. Something happened and they had nowhere to land. We’re about one hour by air to Tahiti. I guess they couldn’t make it there. Or maybe they didn’t want to land in Tahiti. It’s obviously a private plane. A private jet. They had money. Other than the money in the bag, obviously. Perhaps they wanted to stay away from public airports. I think about the diamonds, the money, the gun.

Perhaps they thought they could outrun the storm. But they didn’t. I look at my watch. Mark must be in there by now. With them. Stop it, Erin.

I turn my mind to the logistics of the flight. Where were they going? I’m going to need to look some stuff up once we’re back. I rummage through the boat locker until I find what I’m looking for. A pad and pencil. Right, I know what I need to do, what I need to focus on. Not the plane down there. Mark’s got that covered.

I note down: Flight paths over French Polynesia?? God, I wish I’d noted down a tail number or something from down there. I’m sure Mark will.

I jot down: Plane type, aircraft tail number, max speed, & distance achievable nonstop??

Planes can only travel so far without refueling. We can try to work out where they might have been heading. I doubt the flight was logged, but we can search online and see if anyone is missing.

At least now our question has been answered. What we have found is flotsam. Our bag was most certainly not deliberately jettisoned. Somehow that canvas bag made its way, along with those bundles of papers, out of the plane’s breached hull and up into the Polynesian sunshine. But—and this is a big one—technically, what we have is neither flotsam nor jetsam. This is not a shipwreck. This is a plane crash. What we have is a big bag of evidence from an underwater aviation incident. I take a shuddery breath of cool tropical air.