They were all around us, flailing hollow forms. Ange screamed. I did not want to wait to see what they were.
“Ange back up, now!” I commanded and began to swim past the slowly forming wraiths. They must have been some kind of giant jellyfish that we had missed before. And any jellyfish that big… you don’t want that to touch you, even in scuba gear. I let out a lead line. “Grab on!” I said. She did and we began to swim up through towards the bridge. The translucent shapes were taking form. Limbs were beginning to emerge as they moved past us. None of them, to my relief seemed to want to touch us, or appeared to even notice us. We swam back up towards the bridge, dodging these strange white creatures.
“Dan,” Ange said.
“Not now, honey, just swim.”
“Dan!” she said again more forcefully.
“What?” I yelled.
“I can make out dog tags.”
I stopped swimming and looked back.Our respective lights swept across the quickly moving shapes, revealing the camo uniforms, close cropped hair. The crew of the U.S.S. Hades seemed to float by us without even swimming. It was as though they were drawn by on the current. Ange reached up to touch one. He passed right through her hand without even stopping.
“Oh God,” I croaked.
Then we were both swimming, as fast as we could back up, back into the cabin. The ghosts — that’s all I could think to call them, ghosts — swam by us without even a flicker of recognition. We were just about out of the ship. I swam through the door a little fast and I felt the lead line caught. A second later I heard a burst of scraping on Ange’s headphone mic and an “Ow!” Then a gluggy spluttering sound.
I immediately stopped and turned around, looking for Ange. “Shit, baby, are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m ok,” she said, coughing a little as she exited the vessel. “Think I might have swallowed some water there. Just give me a moment to flush my mask.”
Within a couple of seconds of pressing the purge valve she had recovered herself.
“Good now?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s just go, ok. This place is… place is… place…”
“Ange?” I said. “Are you alright?”
She shook her head dazedly.
“Ange? Talk to me Ange. Are you good?”
She turned around and swam right back into the ship. “Ange,” I said, not wanting to startled her further, but also beginning to panic. “Ange, what are you doing? We have to leave.”
Nitrogen narcosis is a condition unique to diving, as I’ve mentioned. When it starts to kick in, people start doing strange things. They might seem like they’re drunk or confused. It affects judgement, people become erratic, even angry. I’ve only seen it in earnest a couple of times. Once on a deep dive rescue mission. One of my partners started to freak out. He disconnected his air tank and swam off on his own. There’s not much you can do because if a person acts erratically there’s a good chance they’ll hurt you too. It’s the same as how you don’t try to save a drowning person because they’re just as likely to bring you down with them. But this was my wife. I wasn’t going to just leave her.
Ange was whipping down the ship at a furious rate. Like I said, she was a professional diver too so when that girl wanted, she could go fast. I followed her, calmly continuing to speak to her, “Ange, Ange, what’s going on? Are you ok? You have to stop, you’re going the wrong way.”
But she wasn’t stopping for anyone. Now I know better, I’m not sure she could have stopped if she wanted to. Within a few minutes we were back above that horrible pit. I saw her swim down there and I followed. I could see those weird translucent ghost things there as well. They were just sitting there. But now I noticed there were others. Old wrinkled folks. Young people, even children. They were all just floating there above the pit. Waiting for something.
Ange made it down there with them. I was still radioing her, “Ange, Ange. Do you read me? Ange, do you read me? Please communicate back.”
I was now right next to her, amongst the rest of them. I do mean literally amongst them. My body was actually partially obscured by two of them, my hip passing right through a torso. I felt that cold shivering feeling again.
“Ange,” I pleaded, now truly on the verge of panic, “Baby, we don’t have much oxygen left. If we don’t leave now, we won’t make it back up to the surface without getting the bends.”
Nothing. Her eyes were blank, vacant. As if whatever consciousness had been in there was absent. Then I heard it. Even underwater, I heard the sound of something coming, something huge and tenebrous rising out of that shaft. It was a swishing sound, like a propellor but slower. SWISH. SWISH. A something moving its way from somewhere far, far down. The hole must have been thirty meters across. What, I wondered, in God’s name could be that big?
I tried to grab my wife’s hand and pull her up but she wouldn’t budge. She actually hit me and nearly dislodged my mask so I was forced to let go. A few seconds later a gargantuan head rose up out of those black depths. It was an ugly, black head, with red piercing eyes and pupils that rolled around in them like a drowning man in a vat of blood. It was a massive moray eel.
“Sweet Jesus,” I gasped, nearly gagging with disgust and horror.
That thing must have torn the bottom out of the ship and sunk it. Now it was coming back for the crew. “Ange, please,” I begged, “We have to go. That thing could swallow us whole.”
She turned to me and for the first time since her mask had flooded, she acknowledged me. “Yes,” she said nodding. “And take us down to the dark place.”
“What? What are you talking about? Come on, the oxygen is nearly done!” But she wasn’t listening now. The huge creature was moving. It’s huge mouth yawned open, widening ever more. At some point it seemed to unhinge, bending back over itself until it was all mouth, making the creature look like a monstrous, gigantic lamprey. I was beyond terrified.
Then Ange and the rest of them began to swim towards it. They moved almost like a procession. There was no rush, no pushing or even excitement. The crush had the serene lassitude of people getting onto the morning train, an eerie resignedness.
I can remember the next bit so clearly. It’s etched on my psyche. I can play it back in my mind just like a movie. They piled into the creature’s mouth, crowding it in almost perfect rows. Just like sardines, I remember thinking. Packed in like sardines. Ange swam down there. I tried to reach out and grab her, to stop her but I was frozen. I just couldn’t move. I wonder about that sometimes.
I will never forget seeing her blonde hair fanning out behind her, an eel in its own right as she swam towards it. Then she was there. Right in the middle of them. Whereas the others had passed right through me, they seemed to give her space. She had about a foot’s length between the rest of them, right in the centre of all them. There she was, Ange standing there, beautiful and young, the single corporeal entity in a great mass of translucent shades.
Like the hood of a ragtop car being lowered, the creature closed its mouth over them. My wife did not even look at me as she fell out of view. The mouth closed and those horrible bloody eyes passed over me. Then, it descended back to where it had come from, slipping from view back the way it had come.
I swam after it, followed it for maybe another twenty feet. But I couldn’t go any further: it was too fast and it was going too deep. Last thing I remember was those red, rolling eyes disappearing into the deep with my Angela. That’s where my memory leaves me. Whether because of lack of oxygen, nitrogen narcosis or just plain shock, I don’t know. The next thing I remember I was at the surface, on the deck of our little, coughing and spluttering. I lay there for a couple of minutes, letting out huge gasping sobs. Then I pulled the ripcord of the little tinny we had rented and made my way back to shore.
I don’t know what other people do when their wife gets eaten by a giant sea monster, but I went to a bar to get blotto out of my mind. There was a little bar me and Ange used to go to called ‘Oi Thipseis’. They served up good ouzo and the bartenders weren’t too chatty, which was just what I wanted. I was sitting at the corner bar on about my fifth round, trying my hardest not to think of anything that had happened that day when a well dressed older gentleman sat down next to me.
“Rough day?” he asked
I must have grunted something because he nodded and ordered me another ouzo.
“You have the look,” he said consolingly to me “Of someone who has seen something terrible.” He had an accent but his English was good.
I looked at him and he did seem genuinely concerned.
“You have no idea, buddy,” I said, “Noooooo fucking idea.”
Most of me, just wanted him to piss off. But I guess some part of me, some small part of me wanted to tell my story. Or maybe I just wanted the company.
“Hey bu’y,” I slurred, “You ever seen a sea monster?”
To my surprise he nodded solemnly.
“Yes,” he said, “Just once. It was Charon.”
“Charon?” I said.
He nodded.
“I dunno what you’re talking about,” I said taking a slug of ouzo and turning away.
“Lets’s say,” the old man said, “You and I, we took a little fishing trip out on my boat. Maybe we do a little diving out past the headland. We swim down ohhhh, 70 or 80 feet? Suddenly there’s a ship.”
“The U.S.S. Hades,” I said.
The old man sighed. He nodded his head weakly, painfully. “What you saw, my friend, was the river Lethe.”
“Lethe? Like the ancient Greek river of the damned?”
“That’s right. The dark slipstream you saw? That was the river.”
“Then it wasn’t nitrogen poisoning…”
He looked right at me. In those watery blue eyes I could see a world of pain.
“I am sorry my friend. The same thing happened to my friend, twenty years ago. He drank some of the water accidentally. He forgot who he was. Then… Charon came for him.” I grabbed his shoulder, suddenly frantic.
“Please! Tell me: is there any way to get her back?”
Now it was he who turned away. He fished out a card from his pocket. “I imagine you have a lot of questions. If you want to talk, you can reach me here. I am… so sorry for your loss.”
I think the wild terror in my eyes scared him because he bustled out of the bar as soon as he could.
For a couple of months, I schemed, I planned. I tried to finagle every possible angle I could. I considered calling on that card. Could one get down into the underworld? Was it possible? You’d need a hell of a sub, and a small one at that.
But as time went on, eventually thoughts of rescue leaked from my mind like so much water. I’m no Orpheus. Ange’s death was reduced to a tragic diving accident as far as our family and friends were concerned. Tragic, but not unbelievable. I just wanted to post this here to anyone who might be going scuba diving a little way off the coast of Zakynthos. If you see a shipwreck, encased in a strange black slipstream, keep swimming. Just keep swimming.