Under The Surface

Galey's ear itched relentlessly. The diving suit must have had a thread loose. Styles's fluorescent flippers undulated in the murk ahead. The trio had long since departed the shallows in favour of the gaping maw that led into the abyssal night. Perhaps hardly "in favour" - Croft's serenity was not contagious, whereas Styles's urgency was. Which was why Croft, gliding ponderously, was untroubled that he had lost sight of Galey's own garish flippers at least two passages ago.

The gentle current rippled down Croft's arms. His feet swayed gently, propelling him with angelic grace through the water. He nosed through the dark, his puddle of light tracking the guideline as it wound between rocky outcrops. It was a special kind of silence that pressed against his ears. The kind that forced his thoughts to bounce against his eardrums back into his head.

Styles could not hear his own thoughts. His heartbeat was too loud, thumping against the inside of his ears against the thick, cold silence that pressed through the dark. The silence seemed to be thickening into a tangible sludge. It was pressing against his light, he thought, as its beam did less and less to illuminate the walls and track the guideline. He slowed as, for a moment, the walls vanished into the blackness.

Galey drifted to a halt against Style's flippers. He cast his beam into the gap between Styles and the wall. Styles's mask mirrored the light. Styles held his fist into the beam of his own lamp - "stop". Galey motioned back to move aside and reached ahead to shimmy against the rocks alongside Styles.

Styles watched Galey's slow, measured movements as he dragged himself along the rocks to fit into the space beside him. He turned ahead again, throwing his weakening beam into the dark. His heart caught in his throat and his limbs turned to ice. Something had disappeared from the very fringes of the light a mere instant before he could make it out.

Galey edged up alongside Styles, turning his lamp into the space in front of them. The limits of his beam illuminated a pillar that split the cave. A sign, once pinned to the pillar, lay strewn across the cave floor. Galey tapped Styles's arm. He recoiled. The dull thunk of his tank hitting the ceiling rang moments before the plume of silt billowed about them, casting them into perfect blackness. Light glimmered between the smoke-like rolls, but he couldn't even see his arm connecting him to his lamp.

Croft's languid progress was stalled by the erupting cloud that was swirling down the passage towards him. He made a grab for the guideline before it was obscured. Croft peered hopelessly through the murk. He could feel the guideline though, and if he was going to catch up and see what the trouble was, he would need to hurry. He reached another hand towards the guideline, feeling his way along, until it shuddered.

Styles's head spun as he tried to deepen his breaths. "It was Galey. It was just Galey." He reassured himself, demanded of himself that he be calm. He couldn't see. Eddies swirled about him, dragging silt from the cave floor into the agitated water. Something slithered around his ankle. "That was NOT Galey!" He jerked away, knee crunching into rock.

Galey felt currents drag around him. They were new. Strong. Directed. The clouds of silt weren't hanging in the water, they were being pulled away from him, and he was moving with it. He snatched at the walls, but his fingers scrabbled over featureless rock, dislodging more congealed clay. "What was Styles doing?" He groped at the water, searching for Styles, trying to stop any panicked escape. The beam of his lamp suddenly cut through the clouds, and for an instant the passage that he was being drawn down was clear.

As the stars cleared from Styles's vision, he caught the glimmer of a flailing lamp disappearing ahead of him. He pushed off the wall after it.

The guideline's movement was so abrupt that Croft was unsure whether he had imagined it. The silt was clearing but the passage ahead remained impenetrable. He willed himself into the pitch blackness.

Galey wanted, needed, to turn around, to get out of this passage. Panic blinded his eyes with tears and constricted his throat. Something was lit for that minutest moment that his beam passed over it, and for the moment that he had seen it, it had seen him. His beam whipped over the walls before being extinguished. He felt the jarring crack in his hand as it happened, plunging him into black.

Styles lost sight of Galey's lamp. His own dimming lamp was all that remained. That, and his throbbing knee. He swept his lamp side to side across the passage as he edged forward. He stole a glance back, throwing his beam as far as it would go. Without Styles's light ahead and no sign of Croft following he had never felt so isolated. His heart was pounding out of his chest from the sickening terror bubbling up from his gut. He turned ahead and screamed. Bubbles streamed out of the mouthpiece and water rushed, salty, into his crying mouth. Hanging in the water, in the dying beam of his lamp, was Galey's flipper.

Croft stopped. The cave was cleft in two ahead of him. In his hand he held the severed end of the guideline, twisted ends frayed and torn. His light passed from one passage to the other, but both were as black and unyielding as each other. He floated towards the pillar, searching each passage.

Something glittered in his beam. Croft held his light on it, transfixed. It was drifting towards him. His ears were pounding. He blinked away the sweat beading near his mask's seal. It was coming closer, twisting lazily in the gloom. His breath froze in his chest, as if a lump of air had condensed there. A diver's mask was twirling towards him, its strap snagged on a rubber mouthpiece and hose, visor split. The metal canister at the end of the hose was torn open.

Croft did not wait to see what else it was attached to. He spun, taking hold of the guideline that was now his lifeline as water began to pull past him, into the yawning maw of the black passage. He hauled himself hand over fist up the guideline, blind, the water's silence pressing his terrified screams back into his head. The guideline shuddered. It was moving. It was moving backwards. He cried into his mask as he kicked through the water, abandoning the line. He cried as the passages stretched ahead of him. He cried as the light of the shallows began twinkling out of the abyssal night.