The dark November sky cast a pall over the cove, but the sea lions are what dampened my enthusiasm. I felt their eyes boring into me the moment I set foot on the beach. Their barking cries sent shivers down my spine. Their foul stench, like a fish market gone bad, announced their presence even more clearly than their incessant voices. If this was a joke, I was not amused.
“Are you ready?” Tom asked.
I was so intent on studying the sea lions and the greasy, grey waves lapping at the beach that I didn’t hear him approach. I yelped, spun around, and nearly toppled over.
“Jesus, Dave,” Tom said. “Why are you so spooked?”
I staggered under the weight of my gear, then dropped to my knees. It wasn’t the most dignified position, and I definitely didn’t like kneeling before Tom, but it was better than doing a face plant on this rocky beach. I looked up and cringed when I saw his scowling face.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said.
“How am I sneaking?” Tom asked. “You knew I was behind you.”
Kneeling in front of him, unable to rise because the weight of my SCUBA gear had me unbalanced, I felt ridiculous. I must have looked ridiculous, but Tom didn’t laugh. He never laughed. I don’t think he had a sense of humor. He stood a few yards up the strand, hunched under the weight of his gear, staring at me with his lizard eyes. I shuddered under that scrutiny. I felt like a rabbit being assessed by a crocodile.
I fell forward and planted my hands on the gravelly shingle to ease the pressure on my back. I frowned, and looked up at Tom. “Well, are you going to help me up, or what?
He made no response. He just stared at me. The first stage regulator on his yellow air tank peaked over the top of his head. The hoses that sprouted from it and attached to the various ports and hooks on his BC—buoyancy control vest—gave him the appearance of a futuristic Quasimodo.
Who knows how long we would have stayed like that if Lisa hadn’t showed up. She strode along the trail winding down the hill from the wide spot in the dirt road where Tom parked the car. She wore the same gear Tom and I wore, but she moved with such ease one would think she wasn’t wearing anything at all. True, her gear wasn’t as heavy as ours, but she was a skinny waif of a woman. That gear should have slowed her down a little bit, at least.
She stood next to Tom, looked down at me with an expression as blank as his, then laughed. Her emerald eyes lit up when she looked at him.
“Well, isn’t this fun?” Strands of grey hair escaped from under her neoprene hood. “But we’re here to dive, not to do—” she cut off with a giggle, and waved a hand in my direction. “—whatever this is. Maybe we should help him up and get started. You know I’ve been waiting a long time for this dive.”
Tom turned to look at her. They stared at each other for a long moment. Tom’s eyes were expressionless, calculating; Lisa’s wide and hopeful. Finally, Tom shrugged and turned to me. He moved to my left side, Lisa moved to my right, and each of them grabbed an arm and pulled me to my feet.
When I was steady, I looked at Tom and gestured at the cove. “Neah Bay? Really?”
“Don’t be stupid.” He smiled, but his eyes remained blank and lizard-like. An icy wind sprang from the cove, tousled his white hair, changing his look from Quasimodo to a mad scientist in a drysuit. “This is Selkie cove. We’ll get to Neah Bay, later. We thought this was a better place for a neophyte like you. No boats. No strong currents.” His smile turned into a smirk. “You’ll have a better chance of surviving a near death experience here.”
Lisa laughed. I felt my face heat up. He was referring to my first dive after earning my open water certification. I came face to face with a sea lion and had a panic attack. I had flooded my BC with air, shot to the surface like a cork, and smacked into a rubber raft overloaded with Japanese tourists. The raft capsized, the tourists went swimming, and I had nearly been swept out to sea. Some of the tourists used me as a floatation device. It’s amazing nobody was killed or seriously injured.
“We’re supposed to dive the reef in Neah Bay.” I frowned at Tom. “That’s where the rest of the crew have gone, and that’s the dive I paid for. You don’t—”
“There’s a reef,” Tom said. His smile was gone; his eyes colder than usual. He pointed to a pale green stretch of water south of the sea lion infested rocks near the headland. “Let’s see how you handle yourself here before we try Neah Bay.”
“Are you going to refund my money?” I asked. “I don’t see how you have the right to make—”
Lisa cut me off with a burst of laughter. She smiled, stepped toward me, and put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll like this better than Neah Bay. This place is pristine. Nobody dives here. You’ll see things few people have.”
I looked out at the cove and saw that some of the sea lions were staring at me, giving me the evil eye. I looked at the grey water between them and the beach. I pictured myself submerged in those greasy-looking depths. A shudder wracked my body. It wasn’t just the sea lions, or the nasty smell of dead fish, or the idea of diving in water the color of laundry runoff that bugged me. The place just felt wrong, like there was something out there hiding under the waves waiting for me. Plus, I did pay eighty dollars for a diving excursion in Neah Bay. Who was Tom to deny me that experience? If Tom would compensate me…the thought died when I looked into Lisa’s eyes. She had such a look of expectation, of hope, that I decided to give in. After all, one reef was as good as another for diving. Wasn’t it?
“Well,” I said as I cast a glance at the sea lions. “I don’t like this place. It’s kind of creepy, but what the hell. Let’s go diving.”
Lisa and Tom exchanged a look, smiled at each other, then Tom pulled his neoprene hood up to cover his head. He put his mask on, spent a moment adjusting it, then the two of them splashed into the cove. Greasy rings of rainbow colors in the water surrounded them. I shook my head, sighed, and followed them into that nasty looking soup. I was at their mercy. It was either dive or stay on dry land. I didn’t spend eighty dollars to stay dry.
Surface swimming in SCUBA gear is a grueling experience. All that heavy, bulky equipment is useless above the waves. It takes twice the effort to move half as far, and Tom was relentless.
He led us on a marathon swim. He never varied his pace. He never checked to see if we were still with him. He kept his head above the water, his eyes focused on a spot near the headland. The only time he tore his eyes from that spot was when Lisa swam past him toward the rocks where the sea lions lounged.
When I saw how close to those beasts Tom was leading us, I slowed down and lagged behind, but Lisa picked up her pace. She swam up to those creatures and cooed to them as if they were pets. If Tom hadn’t called her back, I think she would have tried riding one.
After passing the sea lions, I picked up my pace, but I couldn’t narrow the gap between us. I struggled against the churning sea. Icy waves slapped into my face, filling my mouth with the bitter taste of brine, and some kind of oily, slimy sludge that no amount of spitting could get rid of. Once I did a face plant into a wave and was completely submerged for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. I popped to the surface, sputtering and gasping, and found myself face to face with Lisa.
She grinned at me when I clutched her shoulders to steady myself in this unsteady environment. Tom floated in the chop a few yards away, bobbing serenely on the rolling swells. He stared at me through his expressionless eyes, which were magnified behind the lenses of his mask.
“Having fun?” He gave me a half smile, which didn’t affect his eyes at all.
“You know it.” I held Lisa’s shoulders tight, turned my head to the left and spat out a mouthful of bitter, fishy brine.
Tom spent a moment studying both Lisa and me, then began his spiel.
“We should have enough air to avoid another surface swim. Just follow me and you’ll be okay, but if your air pressure drops below five hundred pounds your dive is over. If that happens, go to the surface, so pay attention to your gauges. If the dive ends for one of us, it ends for all of us, so pay attention to your buddies.” He turned his eyes on Lisa. “Understand?”
Lisa scowled at him but said nothing. Tom turned his eyes on me, stared for a moment, then continued.
“Let me know about any problems immediately. If you get separated from the group and can’t get back within a minute or two, head for the surface, but watch your speed. Don’t go up faster than your bubbles. Any questions?”
He didn’t wait for questions. He popped his mouthpiece in, dumped air from his BC, and disappeared beneath the waves. Lisa winked at me then followed him. I looked at the sea lions lounging on the rocks fifty yards away, cast a wistful glance toward the beach, and then turned my eyes back to the waves where Tom and Lisa disappeared. Let’s just get this over with, I thought, then spent a few seconds adjusting the seal on my mask.
When I could no longer find suitable reasons for delay, I dumped air from my BC, and joined my companions in the deep.
The sea greeted me with an icy embrace. She wrapped me in her waves, pulled me down into her frigid depths. I knew that if she had her way, I would never walk the earth again. The Pacific Ocean is a jealous bitch. She’s an ice water mansion filled with wonders and mysteries, but she willingly shares them with no one. Defying this mighty beast and living to tell the tale is part of the allure of diving. I’ve survived seven dives; had seven victories against her wondrous majesty. Would my eighth dive be my last?
Icy needles stabbed into the exposed skin on my face as I descended into the algae bloom just below the surface. My body stiffened when the cold cut through my wetsuit and into the flesh beneath it. Even when my body heated the water trapped between the thick neoprene and my skin, I still felt the chill deep in my bones. I shivered.
Darkness wrapped around me as I plunged through the algae. Visibility was only a few inches in front of me. Below me I saw nothing. Above me I saw light through a tunnel that grew dimmer and ever more distant as the seconds ticked by. I felt like a man descending into hell.
I shuddered, but the chill I felt ran deeper than the water temperature, or the imagery of a frozen Hades. I felt exposed. I felt vulnerable. Though darkness prevailed, I saw motion in my peripheral vision. It was probably just bubbles, or algae swirling around my head, but in my mind, I saw sea lions stalking me into the deep, and I knew the sea held terrors greater than pinnipeds. There were things that hunted pinnipeds.
That thought set my heart thundering, announcing my presence like a dinner bell. I spun in circles, searching the surrounding water for monsters that I imagined everywhere. I nearly abandoned my dive, but I passed through the algae bloom, and visibility cleared up. Not far away, maybe ten or fifteen feet, I saw my companions. Tom saw me looking at him and flashed me the ‘okay’ sign. I returned it, then made a show of examining my surroundings.
It was a world of silence. What little sound I did hear seemed muted, and it was difficult to tell which direction it came from. The most notable sounds were the bubbles rising from our expelled breaths, hissing and gurgling as they shot to the surface. I had the brief illusion of diving in a massive soda bottle.
Below the algae bloom, light once again filled the world. It was dim, but enough sunlight filtered through the suspended particles for me to see my companions quite clearly. A green murk surrounded us, and as my companions dropped, they quickly fell into shadow. I reached for the release valve on my BC and let out some air so I could match their descent. In the process, I turned my head wrong. Air exploded from my mouth piece, hit my mask and weakened its seal against my face.
Stupid, I thought as sea water flooded in, blinding me. Another amateur mistake. How can anyone take me seriously if I keep screwing up like this?
My heart beat so hard I thought it was trying to rip itself out of my chest. I closed my eyes against the sting of salt water, and drifted with the current as I spent a moment calming myself. When I regained control of my mind, I cleared my mask—a task that should have taken only a few seconds, but seemed to take hours. After I emptied my mask of the unwanted brine, I had half a second to look around before I hit the bottom. I fell sprawling. A silt cloud bloomed up, and darkness closed around me like a fist. My dive light failed against this stygian black.
I lay still, fighting against panic, willing my heart to slow down. I forced myself to stop gasping; wasting precious air. It seemed like decades passed before I dared move. I pumped air into my BC and slowly rose above the murk. Darkness still reigned, but with no silt obstructing light, my eyes adjusted. I hovered above a featureless mudflat. Anemic, reed-like stalks sprouting from the mud was the first sight that greeted my eyes. A cluster of cauliflower-like plumose anemones covered a rock to my left. Other than that, nothing. Where was the reef? Where were those things few people have seen? Where were my companions?
I searched the gloom, but found only a looming shadow in the distance to my right. I swam in that direction, gliding a few feet above the seabed like a bird flying low over an open plain. Here and there I passed kelp stalks that sprouted from the mud and spiraled into the darkness above me.
I passed through a field littered with jagged rocks and massive boulders, all padded with layers of moss that billowed up in green sheets. Some of them were home to families of plumose anemones, their cauliflower tops shrinking and retracting at the slightest touch. I swam over a particularly large boulder, a veritable mountain of rock some thirty feet tall, and found a cliff beyond it. The rough, rock wall jutted into the verdant murk above me.
I stared at that ragged wall looming over me. Cracks and crevices, and millions of potholes marred its surface. Particles of moss and algae floated in a cloud, obscuring some of the deeper fissures, but I saw enough. I saw wolf eels poking their heads out of the openings in the cliff face. Their gaping mouths, lined with hundreds of needle-like teeth, were clearly not offering me an invitation to stick around.
In spite of this cold reception, I felt a surge of elation. I found the reef. I missed it by fifty feet. My companions must be at the top. I pumped air into my BC and slowly swam up the rock wall. I kept a good distance from that stony surface, and kept my eyes on those wolf eels. Although not terribly aggressive, they packed one hell of a bite.
At the top of the cliff, I swam between two protruding ledges, and found myself in a purple kelp jungle. At least, it looked purple to me. This was a place of perpetual darkness. Some sunlight did stream in, but at this depth much of the color had been filtered out. If not for the broad swath of illumination provided by my dive light, I probably wouldn’t have seen any color at all.
Movement on the seafloor caught my attention. At the edge of the light field to my left a group of shrimps scurried into the dark. Directly below me, a dozen crabs sprang from the mud and fled into the gloom. I swung my light all around me, found life everywhere, but I didn’t find my companions. I should have surfaced then—I should have done that a lot sooner—and I was on the verge of doing so when uncrablike behavior among the crabs distracted me.
All of the crustaceans who had just fled from my light returned. They advanced on me with their claws raised like boxers preparing for a fight. Tiny bubbles rose from this army. I heard them burble and gurgle, and then I heard them curse my light.
Bubbles spewed from my mouthpiece when I burst out with laughter. I understood them. They had a heavy French accent, but they spoke English. As I watched them, laughing at their antics and wasting precious air, a wave of euphoria washed over me. All of my anxiety, my fear, just melted away. I felt alive like I never had before. I felt invulnerable. I felt as if I could ditch my air tank and breathe like a fish. Before I could put that feeling to the test, I heard a voice calling my name. It was loud in this silent world, and it seemed to come from everywhere. I looked up, confused. Who could be calling me down here? Lisa? Tom? The most puzzling question: How?
The voice called again. It still seemed to come from everywhere. I ran my eyes over the dim seascape. The voice called yet again; this time I found its source. It came from over a slight rise just beyond the kelp forest. I swam in that direction, through the remainder of the kelp, up a low hill, then down the other side. The crabs scurried ahead of me, followed behind me, taunting me in their French accented voices.
I came to a rocky ridge that sprang up from the seafloor like a wall. It effectively fenced the sloping plateau in; a solid ring of stone that ran for what seemed miles both to the left and right. As I approached this wall, I saw hundreds of crabs crowded before it. Some of them had mounted the rim of the wall and stood facing me, snapping their claws and yelling at me.
“Go back!” they said. “This is the wrong way. Go back! You don’t want to meet them!”
As amusing as I found them, they annoyed me. Who were they to tell me what I wanted? How could they possibly know this was the wrong way? They were crabs. They didn’t know anything. I wasn’t going to let a bunch of crustaceans tell me what to do. With no further thought, I swam over them. I swam beyond the wall, and gaped at what I found. The ground dropped away into darkness. I floated over an abyss and felt like a cartoon character that had just stepped off a cliff. Vertigo hit me when I looked back at the wall, and the crabs lined up along its rim.
“Here they come,” the crabs laughed and scuttled away from the ridge.
I looked back into the abyss and felt my skin crawl. A point of light sparked to life in the dizzying depths; a deep sea will-o-the-wisp. It hovered for a moment, then rose toward me. It expanded, cast a sickly green glow against the jagged rocks of the cliff face to my left, but its source was just a verdant blur.
What is that? I thought. I narrowed my eyes and adjusted my position so that I hovered belly down. Is that a shark?
My heart lurched at the image that thought invoked. My eyes popped wide open. My breath came in ragged gasps. Bubbles blasted from my mouthpiece. I reached for the inflate button on my BC. In my haste I grabbed the shoulder strap instead. I wasted a precious few seconds fumbling around until I found the button, but the source of that light came into view before I could press it, and my panic subsided. It wasn’t a shark.
I saw a woman rising from the depths. She was naked except for seaweed wrapping her body like a bikini. A nimbus surrounded her, casting the sea in a pale green glow. I thought she was a corpse rising up on a current and I wondered what I should do, but then I saw her bare feet kicking, propelling her steadily toward me. She smiled at me, and my mind went numb. Such beauty from the deep aroused my curiosity. I dumped air from my BC and dropped down to meet her.
The woman’s pale flesh cast a glow as brilliant as the full moon. It illuminated the granite cliff. I saw deep claw marks scarring that surface, but I paid little attention to that. My mind was focused on the woman. Who was she? What was she doing down here? Why wasn’t she dead? I heard the crabs on the rock wall above me laughing, but I paid no more attention to them than to the scarred cliff face.
I ran my eyes over her body and thought that my initial assessment might be right after all. Her pale skin appeared lifeless, and, really, how could a woman survive down here without air? Then she moved again, swimming toward me, smiling a toothy smile. I dumped more air from my BC and descended till I hovered face to face with her; only a few feet separated us. She laughed, but no bubbles escaped her mouth. She called my name, and I recognized the voice that lured me here.
Her familiarity made me a little uneasy. Who was she? How does she know my name? I kicked, scissored my fins and propelled myself a couple of feet further away from her. She swam forward, grabbed the strap on my BC, and started tugging me into the deep. The moment she touched me, I saw her true face, and a cold wave washed over me.
Her transformation shocked me into immobility. One moment I was staring at a woman of exceptional beauty; a heartbeat later I beheld a vision from a nightmare. She maintained the basic human form; arms, legs, torso and head, but everything was fishy. Scales covered her body in a green sheath, her hands and feet were webbed claws, and that face. Medusa looked better. She had no nose, just a pair of nostril slits above her thick rubbery lips. Two tentacle-like feelers, much like catfish whiskers, sprouted from the space between her nostrils and lips. Her eyes were huge and black. Her smile revealed rows of triangular teeth ringing a dark maw. I tried pulling away from her, but she clutched me tight and pulled me deeper.
She gripped the straps on both sides of my BC and dropped ever deeper into the abyss, pulling me with her. I felt pressure building in my ears. Darkness pressed in against her pale light. When she spoke to me again, I felt her voice vibrate into my chest.
Come with me, she said. Join us in the deep. Enjoy the endless sleep.
I tried pulling away from her. I kicked hard, pried at the claws clutching my BC, but her hands were like iron. She pulled me deeper. I flooded my BC with air, kicked harder, but she still pulled me deeper. I fumbled at my harness, searching for the buckles, so desperate for release that I was going to shuck my BC and make an airless, suicidal shot for the surface, but I found my dive knife. I drew it with a shaking hand and slashed her face with it.
She hissed, clutched at her face with both hands, and released my BC. I shot out of her pale glow like a rocket. I flew into darkness, but that soon gave way to the grey light of day. I kicked hard, ignoring the warning pain in my ears as pressure dropped. Whether I succumbed to the bends or ruptured ear drums, didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get away from her.
I looked up and felt relief when I saw the surface rippling above me. It couldn’t have been more than thirty feet away. I should have made a safety stop then; I should have done that a lot sooner, but I didn’t. I didn’t even slow down. All I wanted to do was end this dive. I wanted out of the ocean. I kicked hard, shooting up faster and faster, then something grabbed my knees. I thrashed and kicked, and tried stabbing whatever had hold of me, but something seized my arms and fumbled with the release valve on my BC. Air escaped; my ascent slowed. I looked to my right and saw Tom holding my arm. His magnified eyes glared at me. I looked down and saw Lisa holding my legs.
Our ascent slowed, and then stopped. The surface was tantalizingly close. I reached for it, struggled against the pull of the deep, but Tom and Lisa weighed me down. As the seconds dragged into minutes, my panic dissipated. Relief flooded into me as the pressure of the deep finally released its grip. After a seeming century of waiting, my companions let me loose, and we finished our ascent. As we neared the surface, I felt bubbles all around me, heard their gurgling fizzing, and again had the illusion of swimming in a giant soda bottle.
I breathed easier, and felt foolish. I couldn’t believe I had panicked. No matter how real she seemed, that creature had to be a hallucination. As we broke the surface, I wondered how real she actually was. With the light of day shining down on us, the whole incident felt like a dream.
We made our way back to the beach in silence. We repeated our marathon surface swim, but this time Tom swam behind me, goading me forward whenever I slowed down. When we finally got to the beach, he confronted me.
“What the hell happened?”
I shucked my tank onto the stoney beach and gave him a half smile. “I got lost and confused.”
“I already figured that much out,” Tom said. He dropped his tank next to mine. “When we couldn’t find you, we went to the surface and looked for you—”
Lisa snorted, interrupting Tom’s diatribe. He glared at her for a moment, then turned his attention back to me.
“The surface,” he said. “You remember what I said about the surface? If we get separated, go there and wait. Well, we couldn’t find you there. I thought for sure you were dead. I wanted to go back and call search and rescue, but Lisa insisted that we go back and look for—”
Lisa barked laughter, once again interrupting Tom. He turned a hard gaze on her. “Do you have a problem?”
She cut her laughter off and met Tom’s eyes with a flat expression. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, then Lisa shook her head and looked away.
“Okay. Don’t interrupt me again.” He eyed Lisa for another few seconds, then turned his attention back to me. “When you shot out of the deep like that, you scared the hell out of me. You nearly hit us.”
“I think—” I began, but Tom cut me off.
“You weren’t thinking. That’s the problem.” He paused for a moment. His eyes bored into me, then he shook his head and continued. “It’s like Sund Rock all over again, only this time you didn’t smack into a boat load of tourists. You know, if we hadn’t tackled you, there’s a good chance you would be dead now.”
He bent down and looked at my depth gauge. His eyes opened wide as he exclaimed, “two hundred and twenty feet! Oh, we gotta get you to Seattle. You need a compression chamber. If you don’t have the bends yet, you will soon.”
“I think I saw a mermaid,” I said.
“What?” Tom’s brows furrowed as he looked at me.
“A mermaid,” I repeated. “She came out of the deep and tried pulling me down.”
Tom smiled and looked at Lisa. They grinned at each other. Lisa nodded, and they both burst out with laughter.
“What am I missing?” I frowned at Tom. I’d never heard him laugh before. “Did I say something funny?”
“Well, not really funny,” Tom said. “Unless you think the rapture of the deep is funny, and I do.”
“Rapture of the deep?” My frown deepened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nitrogen narcosis,” Lisa said. “He thinks you were narked, but—”
“You went to deep too fast, and experienced nitrogen narcosis,” Tom said. “What you probably saw was one of those sea lions playing tag with you. Like I said, this is like Sund Rock all over again. Now enough talk, let’s get moving.”
“Those damn sea lions.” I felt like an idiot.
“But this is Selkie Cove,” Lisa said. Her eyes burned into Tom.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What does that have to do with nitrogen narcosis?”
“Nothing,” Tom said. “It’s not important. We need to get you to Seattle quick, so stop wasting time.”
“It’s not nothing,” Lisa said. “It’s important to me.”
He locked eyes with Lisa. Neither of them said a word, but I sensed a silent conversation passing between them. Finally, Tom sighed, shook his head, and looked at me. “A selkie is a type of mermaid. They’re said to live in places like this. They live among seals and sea lions, often looking like them. Sometimes they shed their skins, or change them, and look human.” He turned his eyes back to Lisa. “Now can we go?”
“Are you saying I might have actually seen a mermaid?” I looked out at the sea lions and shuddered.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said. Lisa punched him in his shoulder then walked up the hill toward the car. Tom smiled at me and shrugged. “Don’t let old legends distract you from reality. Nitrogen narcosis makes more sense. Now pack up your stuff. We gotta get you out of here.” He paused, his eyes lost focus for a second, then he said, “Forget Seattle. I think there’s a decompression chamber in Tacoma. It’s closer. Let’s go.”
Tom picked up his gear and followed Lisa. I looked out at the cove and gasped. There she was, bobbing in the mild chop halfway to the sea lion rocks. In spite of the slash across her face, the wound I had given her, she smiled at me. She beckoned me, and I felt an irrational urge to follow her. I turned away, shivering in the autumn wind. I found Lisa standing a few yards up the trail from me, watching.
“You won’t find anything like that in Neah Bay,” she said. She looked out at the cove, waved, then looked at me. “If I ever find my skin….” She shook her head, then smiled, “Tom says to hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time, so get moving.” She didn’t wait for me. She just turned around and walked up the trail toward the car.
I looked at the cove one last time. The selkie was gone, but the sea lions weren’t. Their barking cries sent shivers up my spine as I followed Lisa to the car.
K. L. Shepherd writes dark fantasy and horror that explores the eerie spaces where myth, wilderness, and fear meet in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.
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