BURIED TREASURE

IF ANYONE HAD TOLD BRODY FAWKES that he would get a good, long taste of Hell that day, he would have laughed and hurried to greet it. Brody was that kind of guy. 

    He’d spent much of his childhood defending himself against bullies and smartasses who liked to make fun of his last name—Brody Fucks! Brody Fucks!—and those years of bruises and black eyes had taught him to never turn his back on a challenge, even if it scared the hell out of him. So when a girlfriend had suggested they do some underwater diving in the ocean a few years ago, Brody had swallowed whatever claustrophobic-fear-of-drowning-watch-out-for-those-goddamned-sharks thoughts that filled his head, put on his best you-got-it-sweetie smile and drove them out to the first diving place they saw along the coast. 

    That day had been a real eye-opener for Brody Fawkes. His girlfriend, Tina, had bitched about the cold weather during the drive out there, bitched about which equipment to wear—everything was too heavy—and bitched about the choppy seas on the boat ride out to the diving area just a few hundred yards from shore. By the time Brody’s head had sunk beneath the waves, he had been grateful for the weight of all that water: it had forced Tina to shut the hell up for the next half hour. And those thirty minutes had been crucial, for in that brief span of time, Brody Fawkes, who had spent his whole life on dry land and hated the beach because of his fair skin, suddenly fell in love. Not with Tina, of course. She was gone from his life by the time they got back to his car. But diving...like a virgin thrusting into a vagina for the first time, Brody had never experienced anything like it. He was entranced. If Tina hadn’t been there to tap him on the shoulder and point the way back to the surface, he might have stayed down there forever. It was a whole new world, one of floating fish and dancing plants, a land where gravity meant nothing and silence embraced him. 

    I’m as close to heaven as I’m ever likely to get, he had thought at the time. He’d been with many women who had promised it, but their paradise had only lasted a few seconds. Here, though, under tons of water, floating near naked like some sort of goddamned pixy, Brody found his nirvana. There was plenty to see down there, yet for several minutes at a time Brody would just suspend himself above the sandy bottom, arms and legs spread out, and close his eyes. Listen to the quiet. Feel the caress of the giant ocean. Wonder if this was what it had been like to be a babe inside his mother’s womb...

    “Damn!”His own reflexive curse woke him from his daydream. He’d gone too far. The GPS indicated he’d driven the boat at least a hundred yards east of the wreck. “Waste of gas,” he grumbled. No one heard him. Against all warnings and any reasonable sense of caution, he’d come out here alone to dive. As he always did. Tina had been the last one to go diving with him, and that had been enough company for an entire lifetime.

    He managed to work his small boat back to the right place. He let the anchor drop and waited for the little shift beneath his feet that told him the boat was still. Then he got suited up.

    Some dark part of him wanted to go diving without a tank and flippers, only his own lungs and lumpy feet to work him into the cold depths of the Atlantic. But he was not yet ready to conquer that fear. He had to admit that the tank made him feel secure, and the flippers gave him more strength. He was a goddamned Aquaman with this gear. No need to dawdle around like a helpless child. Not when there was some exploring to do.

    Today he had reached the coast of North Carolina to find some buried treasure. A ship, actually. Long dead, forgotten except for the occasional explorer. Brody had been told the tale by a fisherman at a bar he frequented before heading out to dive. (Drinking alcohol before a dive was another big no-no, but Brody had managed to shrug off any such concerns with a few beers and his usual to-hell-with-it attitude.)

    Brody hadn’t caught the entire story—some guy behind the fisherman was telling a joke about a circus performer and a donkey that Brody hadn’t heard before—but he figured he had taken in the essentials. Like the location. And how old it was: about two hundred years. And, of course, the best part, what kind of ship it was. 

    A pirate ship.

    It had been sunk by a British frigate in the days when pirates battled the government for rule of the seas. Brody could imagine the cannons blazing, shattering wood, the men aboard cringing at the sudden torrent of cold ocean water swirling around their feet, then their waists, then their heads...

    Gotta see this thing, he thought. The plan zipped through his head: go in, dive down, take a look around at the ship, then back up with fifteen minutes to spare so he could float lazily in the water, arms and legs stretched out, communing with the whole damned ocean. Paradise on Earth.

    The shock of cold water managed to focus him when he fell backwards into the Atlantic. He wasn’t sure why divers went into the water like a drunk man who had leaned back too far trying to get the last dregs from his bottle, but he’d seen in on TV enough to know that that was how it was done by the pros. And Brody certainly considered himself a pro by now.

    A thousand pins pricked his body. His diving teacher a year ago had warned him to always wear a wet suit, that to go into the ocean with naked skin was dangerous, practically insane. Brody had worn a wet suit just that one time with Tina—he hadn’t wanted her to bitch about that, too—but since then he’d always gone in with just swim trunks and his air tank. Brody enjoyed the icy embrace of the water. It woke him up, widened his eyes, his perspective, demanded his attention. His flippers kicked at air for the first few seconds, then he was moving down, fast, his strong legs propelling him into the depths. Light dimmed around him. He was diving into the unknown, into space without stars. It should have terrified him. He grinned around his breather. 

    He turned on the flashlight attached to his arm. A few minutes passed before the light touched on something—sand and rock, the bottom of the ocean. He paused, waiting to see if any life would show itself. Sometimes a crab. Sometimes a strange-looking fish. But there was nothing this time. Barren as the moon. He moved on, glancing now and then at his GPS display.

    There. 

    Light danced across the expanse of the ship—what was left of it. The sea had been eating at the carcass for centuries. Currents flowed around the old wood, stealing little bits of it, weakening its bones and drenching all color from it. The ship had made countless journeys across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean, fleeing and chasing, prey and predator. Alive. Cannons roared, biting at their victims. Challenging, attacking, the violent dance of dominance that all creatures followed. Until the day it had been wounded. The day it had bled its life into the cold sea, the ocean sensing a new prey, opening its depths to the dying bulk as it slowly slipped into darkness...

    Christ, I’m getting melodramatic. But Brody smiled despite his embarrassment. He couldn’t be this honest with his feelings if he’d been down here with someone else. Only alone. Only as a sole witness to the bones rising around him.

    The sharp bow of the ship peeked from the sand. The foredeck was buried, but the remains of three masts still punched their way through the earth, still attested to the length of this once-powerful creature. Beyond the main mast a wooden building seemed to sit on the ground: the quarterdeck, then the rising aft, where the ship was steered, where the anchor was hauled. The brain of the creature.

    Brody floated for a moment, one hand holding the rock-like wood of the main mast, as he surveyed the entire ship. His light broke through the darkness with a sharpness that ignored the thick water around him. He might have been floating in space, having discovered a pirate ship ingrained in the surface of a meteor. He moved the light around, curious as to why the illusion seemed so real. Then he realized: there was no life to disturb the image. No fish. No tangle of seaweed. No scuttling crabs. It truly was barren down here. 

    A glance at his watch told him time was wasting. He kicked, kicked, propelled himself for a closer look at the quarterdeck. He wanted to see if the big wheel that controlled the rudder was still...

    He froze, his body slowed by the pressure of the water. He kept his light on the object below. He twisted his head. Peered through narrowing eyes.

    What the hell is that?

    It looked like a black box. He might have mistaken it for a shadow, one of the countless black daggers that appeared wherever his light settled, giving this ship the look of an old negative. But the shadows moved when he adjusted the light; this black cube remained the same no matter where he turned the beam. 

    Something more, though...

    Yes, something more than just its solid shape. It was... darker somehow. Deeper than the shadows around it. It stuck out. 

    Brody took a moment to control his breathing. Getting a little too excited—he could feel his heart beat faster, a steady thrum within his throat. 

    Look at his watch: he had about ten minutes of air left. How could that be? He’d checked the time just a little while ago and he’d had a good twenty minutes left. Had he really been floating here watching that black cube for ten minutes? 

    A little voice in Brody’s head told him he should head for the surface. He’d still have time to float for a while with his eyes closed, enjoy the beat of the ocean. But that careful voice was one Brody usually ignored. This was a challenge. This was danger.

    He kicked himself forward, the light steady on the box now.

    It was nestled against the starboard railing of the quarterdeck. It wasn’t very big, just a few feet to a side. But the closer he got, the stranger it looked. Brody tempered his unease with a quiet joke: I’ve heard of airplanes having a black box, but an old pirate ship.... It didn’t help. A lump grew in his throat the more he saw of this thing.

    His light touched it, and he was startled now to see something happen to the beam as it passed over the cube’s surface. It didn’t illuminate the box, didn’t lighten the darkness. The box seemed to...eat the light. Brody felt sure that this was not some object painted black. It was blackness itself, a darkness with a depth far beyond what the cube’s dimensions could hold. 

    About ten feet from the object, he came to a stop. One of his flippers absently touched the ground and kicked up sand. Brody watched, amazed, as the grains skittered up, began to descend in slow motion—and then moved towards the box before coming to rest on the ground again.

    Brody anchored himself against a stony railing. He picked up a handful of sand and tossed it forward, high over the deck. As the grains drifted back down, they again spiraled towards the cube. Brody played his light around the object, trying for different angles. He finally found one that best illuminated the tiny particles that filled the ocean. Around him, these particles—made up of sand, salt, bits of rock, even organic material, the detritus of the sea—rained down as he expected them to. But near the box...near the box they spiraled inward, touching the cube’s sides, moving into the cube, beyond the darkness...

    “Oh, Christ.” The words came out as bubbles. 

    They were followed by an explosion of air and his own muffled scream as something cold, something bony and strong, grabbed his ankle. He instinctively kicked away, but the grip held him firm. He brought the light beam down fast, aimed it at whatever held him, wanting to fry the sucker with its beam.

    It was a human hand, scoured of flesh. A skeleton hand. It had punched through the sand and now had a firm grip on his foot. Brody kicked at it, used his fingers to try to pry it loose, but the skeleton wouldn’t give up its prize. Brody might have thought to break the bones at the wrist if he’d had time to think, but the eruption of another hand from the earth—and several more all along the buried deck of the ship—pushed all rational thoughts from his mind. The primitive part of his brain took over. He panicked. He sputtered and choked as his body twisted, his fingers clawed at the water around him, his legs kicked, kicked hard, jumped up and down, accompanied by his screams as the skeleton’s hand rose and pulled from the sand a bony arm and shoulder and—

    And then Brody was free! He swam hard, ignoring the pain in his leg that told him his ankle was broken, kicked his way to the surface, faster, leaving the darkness behind, the water around him growing lighter, green, then blue, his fingers still grasping at the water as he climbed his way to the top—

    Hey! Breathe out! Breathe out!

    Some part of his sensible mind reclaimed its territory. He breathed out, forcing air from his lungs as he rose to the surface, trying to prevent what his diving instructor had called the bends and what the fisherman at the bar had called “a nitrogen fix.” But he didn’t slow his ascent. No way. He wanted back on the surface, back in the daylight, back in his boat which he solemnly hoped would grow wings and lift him high into the sky, far away from that hand trying to pull him down into the darkness.

    Something hit his head, his shoulders. He screamed out again, his fists pinioning the air, punching, clawing—

    The air. He’d reached the surface. A quick jerk of his head: there was his boat. Pain flared up his leg, but he kicked hard anyway, fast as a dolphin, cutting through the ocean. He tore off his mask, spit out his air tube. He wanted to see the sky, breathe it, smell it. His hands hit the side of his boat. The ladder was on the other side. He couldn’t take the time to get there; he could feel something beneath him, rising fast, reaching for him. The water around him was bulging. He pulled himself up over the gunwale, dropped heavily onto the deck. Gasping for breath now, his lungs too small for the air he needed. His arms ached, his legs convulsed. Too much. They’d been strained too far. But he managed to rise, get to the engine key, turn it, laugh when he heard the engine sputter and die.

    Fuck, what a day.

    Another turn. More sputtering. He forced himself into the seat behind the wheel, turned that son-of-a-bitch key again, kept it turned, the engine cracking now like gunfire.

    “Goddamn it! Turn over!”

    He turned the key again when something caught his eye. Lightning. He looked around him. Clouds had drifted in from the horizon, so dark he hadn’t noticed them until their tendrils had reached overhead. Thunder rumbled, seeming to come from beneath the ocean waters, some deep seismic disturbance, like footfalls, that only now could be felt. The waters still bulged around his little boat, like massive bubbles bursting beneath him. Lightning flashed its teeth again. The day had turned into a beast, howling with its sudden wind, clawing with its sudden rain.

    And then, just as quickly, everything went still. The clouds themselves seemed to freeze in the sky, a bird of prey anticipating some movement down below. 

    Then the waters around Brody’s boat roiled, the waves turning on themselves, coiling, as if a giant hand stirred them from beneath. From high above, lightning licked at the whirlpool, tasting what boiled there. 

    Brody’s eyes never left the ocean as his hand tried the engine again and again. He saw the waters twist around his boat. He thought about breaking out the oars. Then the ocean suddenly bulged again, off his bow, the stirring hand now a fist forcing its way upward into the night. This time a thin line rose from the bulge, growing taller, carrying with it material that resembled tattered flesh. Brody’s heart froze, a block of ice just hanging in his chest. But the object was too big to be a hand or even a whole skeleton. So what the fuck is it?

    More lines appeared around the larger one. Creaking wood screamed out, released from its compression into the excited air. Brody covered his face as lightning clawed at the object, grasped it, helped it rise. 

    Brody’s eyes grew large as marbles as the lightning illuminated the monster. 

    Thick masts rose from the waves, torn sails waving from their crossbeams. As they touched the air, gray mist shot off the surfaces. Melting? Oxidation? Brody didn’t give a damn. The question of the moment was: What’s making them rise? 

    For a moment he thought they might have broken off from the ship and floated to the surface. Maybe some underwater earthquake had loosened the bodies while cracking the ancient wood still sticking above the sand. But he instantly knew this was wrong. The masts were still rising. They didn’t topple over once they reached the ocean surface, but remained erect as they rose and rose into the dark clouds. 

    It’s intact. Not broken. 

    He stared around him. Two masts in front, the main and the mizzen.

    Where’s the foremast?

    Silly, really. He couldn’t expect all of them to make it to the surface. In fact, the mizzenmast had been broken when he’d explored the ship earlier, yet now...

    Brody whirled, sensing something behind him. Something big. He wasn’t wrong.

    There, pushing up from the cauldron of steam and sea water, rose the foremast and the bowsprit, the long wood beam that formed the head of the ship, like a finger pointing the way—except Brody remembered that finger had been missing from the forecastle. How could it be there now, strong and erect...and the various crossbeams on all the masts...and the solid line of planks that made up the quarterdeck wall, where before there had been holes and the rot of a decayed carcass...

    He knew then what was happening. Not why. No one would ever figure out why. But he understood the what of it.

    Too late, though. Far too late.

    His boat rocked beneath him, throwing him against the window on his right. Metal scraped against wood, crying out in a cringing whine. Brody recovered in time to feel himself rising, he and his entire boat.

    The masts hesitated in their ascent. Then something gave, and the bulge flattened. Water roared around him, pouring off the decks of the ancient ship. Gray mists erupted off of every exposed surface now, like geysers, creating a ghostly cloud that enshrouded the ship. A cloak for the lady’s nakedness, Brody thought strangely. The weight of the ocean was gone now; all the masts rose steadily, bringing with them the cracked hull of the frigate. As Brody watched, terrified, the lightning repeatedly struck the ship, seeming to cauterize its wounds, repair its tatters, its decay, even its wooden spine. Eventually, the mighty ship settled back into the water, though it did not sink. The lightning diminished. The winds eased.

    In the calm, a final burst of reason jolted Brody’s brain. He twisted the engine key one last time, but he knew it was a worthless attempt: his boat had been lifted completely from the water now, rocking gently on its hull in the cradle of the pirate ship’s main deck. Brody decided he was better off just jumping out and running for the gangway. Hell, he didn’t care what his agonized arms and legs told him, he’d swim all the way to North Carolina if he had to. 

    He started to get up, fighting for balance as his boat rocked beneath him, when a new sight froze him to the spot. 

    He wasn’t alone on the deck.

    The mist had turned to heavy fog around him. Sea water still rained down from the masts, cold against Brody’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut. What could you say to the dead?

    Skeletal creatures stood around the deck, surrounding Brody’s stranded boat. More appeared from the quarterdeck. One in particular he focused on: not quite a skeleton, but not a man either, more like a drained husk dressed in a thick jacket, elaborate sash and wide-brimmed hat. A sword dangled from a scabbard at the creature’s side. It stopped and seemed to look Brody over, though it had no eyes, only hollow darkness behind its wrinkled lids. 

    Darkness like that cube, trying to suck me in...

    Brody stammered. Speech had left him, along with the use of his legs. He cowered lower in his boat, hoping to blot out any sight of these creatures, praying they would disappear when he looked over the edge again. But they grew closer, rising all around him. Their fleshy skulls smiled, and a few managed gargled laughter. The captain came closest, the creature rubbing its chin in thought as it stared down at the shivering shell of a man once named Brody Fawkes. The fear that he’d spent his whole life defying now swallowed him whole, chewing his ragged body to bits.

    “What’ll we do about the boat?” asked the hulking figure of a corpse behind the captain.

    “Heave it over the side.”

    “And the man?”

    The skull’s teeth split through tattered lips. “Plenty of blood for everyone, lads. But just this one. Just to give us strength. The rest are for our sponsor.”

    The grunts of agreement rumbled around the entire ship. The captain moved closer to the small boat, peering down at Brody. 

    “Better open him fast, Taggle, before he dies on us.”

    The giant creature revealed a dagger, as sharp as it had been when it was last used two centuries ago. The giant easily stepped over the edge of Brody’s boat as the captain watched admiringly.

    Brody closed his eyes. The darkness was comforting. But he couldn’t cut out the approaching thud of the giant’s feet. Or the triumphant cheer of the creatures all around him. Or his own high-pitched screams.