Murdock

I was alone in the night. It was a rare occasion that both of my friends were called home in the evening. While Maya’s parents did what they could to keep her away from us, Jake was slightly more free-range. He only left us when he had to, and this was one of those days; he had to work his father’s trawler in the morning. 

Without them, no sleep would come on the porch. With companionship came a great comfort which could turn anything or anyplace into paradise. Without them, I retreated to my dark and desolate room, accompanied only by the intolerable thoughts inside my head.  

My father’s letter played on my mind. How had the police not found it? How were we to even know that the police had not found it? They were one of the corruptors that he wrote of, were they not?  

I was held in a constant state of intrigue. The artefact. What was it? Why did it have to be buried?  

It must have been dangerous; it led to the Tawa Gold. 

The gold – the tales were true. In my volatile imagination, I saw one hand reach for that endless wealth and the other discard it. This was an unwanted fantasy, given to me without my asking. Yet what a fantasy it was; I could not quite shake it. 

Before dawn, I awoke. I left Nana a letter on the kitchen table, and then I made my way down to the cove – to the Wild Harlock.  

Soon, I was at Jake’s family-run dock. He lived with his father in the old building beside the dock. It was both an office and a home, and therefore it did a poor job of being either. Despite the impoverished look of this locale, Jake’s father was not without money – nor was he overly rich – but he was certainly wealthier than he made out to be. The truth was that Jake and his father were poor in other means; their once happy household was broken when his mother was lost to a travelling Panama salesman, exposing the preexisting familial cracks, and thus undermining any previous pleasant memories. That was the extent of Jake’s loss; he lost not only his mother, but the credibility of her past love. At least my parents were whole when they died, with no startling revelations to undermine what I once knew.  

Jake’s past had left its scars; I saw them in him, as he saw mine in me. We shared in the fact that we were both broken, and this was a bond that Maya could not hold – the raw knowledge of the other’s vulnerability, like a pried open rib-cage, heart beating and exposed. I knew Jake’s fear – his deepest fear; it was loss. He was incredibly scared of losing those he was close to. He would be overbearing at times, and then distant at other times to make up for it, but no matter how close or afar, he would follow with an uncompromising loyalty.  

There was a constant dance inside his head. Was he being too much, or too little? Was he pushing you away, or suffocating you? This was the fear that came after seeing the woman, who should have given him complete love, leave him. The truth was that he could never do anything to lose me. We were bound together. We held each other’s flaws, so that we did not have to carry them ourselves. If we dropped each other’s burdens, then we would both fall. He knew exactly how to rescue me from my anger, a dark pain; I felt it now – a macabre dance of excitability, chills from fingertips to the crown of my head. I carried it with me always. It mingled with my other emotions, always present, ever seeking nihilistic glory; it was something that I just assumed everyone felt. 

Even now, the drum of my heart pounded as I saw a set of strangers stare at me on my boat. I saw their ill intent, yet when I saw Jake on the trawler, readying the ice for the catch, my habit of anger faded. I looked back to the strangers; they were but dockworkers; they had barely even noticed me. 

I accepted that I had issues; that’s why the therapists liked me. I just disagreed with their diagnosis.  

Jake saw me, and he helped to secure the Harlock. He was preparing to scout new fishing spots, or at least that was what his father thought… 

At the end of the dock, he walked – a burly man. His plain shirt carried many stains, and his beard was neglected and scruffy in appearance. He shared the same blonde hair as his son, but it was starting to grey, and actually if anyone deserved the name, ‘Wild Harlock,’ it would probably be him. He marched towards us. Jake was quiet as he came. 

“Morning, Mr Lacey,” I shouted with great enthusiasm, the kind of enthusiasm you always used on your friends’ families. I noticed it with both Jake and Maya on Nana. They were sounded different around their own families. 

The man stared back at me, maintaining his gruff appearance. “I wasn’t expecting you, Cal?” 

“Just thought I would help Jake out.” 

He paused for a while; he examined us. “Well, two pairs of eyes are better than one…” His eyes were suddenly loosed beyond me. “I see, you’ve got the Harlock back. Looks a little different than when I saw her last… I suppose you want to take her with the trawler?” 

“Actually, sir. Mind if I leave her here? 

The man took a slow step back, as if to better evaluate the situation. He scratched his beard, and put his chin to his chest; he crossed his arms. You see, this man once knew my father as I knew Jake now. There were pictures of them together, and he was a different man in those pictures. He reminded me of Jake actually. My boat would have brought back those memories, and I saw that something in him had been stirred. He accepted my request with a masked reluctance. “That will be fine,” he said. Yet as I saw him look at the Harlock now, I saw nothing but the eyes of caution. He turned to Jake and spoke with a different voice; it was but a slight change of tone, yet it made for a much less forgiving utterance. “Boy, I want you back by noon, and I want results.” Yet then he looked to me. “And the same goes for you, Cal. I appreciate your helping, but I need this job done, so if you say you’ll do it, I’ll hold you to your word. Is that clear for the both of you?”  

Jake nodded, and released a quiet, “Yes, dad.” 

My voice was bolder. “Yes, sir,” I said with enough energy to accompany a military salute. 

The man stared at us once more, before he sighed his stamp of approval. “Happy birthday, Cal – for yesterday,” he said, as he turned away and walked back up the dock. 

The dockyard was away in the distance, and the once turquoise shallows had crept to deep sapphire. “Do you have the kit?” I asked.  

Jake patted a large trunk behind him, “All here,” he replied. “Got it in before the old man woke up. Avoided the cameras too.” I nodded my approval. “Still know how to use it?” he asked.  

“Should do… And you? You used to go…” 

“Lionfish hunting, yeah – back in the old days…” his voice trailed away. 

“Well, to the old days,” I said. “But hey, things aren’t so bad now. We got Nana. Maya. The secret of the Tawa Gold in our grasp!” I saw Jake bite down a smile at the gold’s mention. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He finally smirked.  

We prepared to dive. We took off our shirts and put the scuba apparatus over our skin. Jake checked and double-checked our gear. It was perhaps a slight peril that I had no idea what he was doing, whilst he fiddled with the pipes, dials, and so forth… Then as we sat upon the boat’s edge, he took out his mouthpiece and made some motion with his hands. After a moment’s blank stare, he sighed and removed my mouthpiece with his own hands.  

“Before we dive, we should recap on some basic rules,” he said. 

“Rules?” 

“Wait… You know the rules? Don’t you?” He looked to me with a kind of shock. “Descend and ascend slowly. No more than thirty feet per minute. Just take your time, please! And do not, whatever you do, at any point, hold your breath. Breathe continuously. Just stay calm, otherwise you will probably die.” 

“Well, that’s good to know, Jake. Thanks for finally telling me,” I voiced my annoyance; then I looked down into the dark water below our feet, the ever-murky sapphire. Twenty-four feet of this cold liquid lay between me and my quarry. My spine started to tingle, and I could feel a fearful apprehension creep over me. It was not the fear of diving, but of the water itself and what lay in its midst. “Hey Jake, perhaps you don’t need me… I mean, you would probably be better off without me.” 

“Next rule! Dive alone, die alone. You’re with me, Cal.” I saw a twisted smile disfigure his face. 

“Oh yeah, what about dive together, die together?” 

“Just stick with me. You’ll be fine. Then on the way back up, we’ll stop halfway – to be safe! Oh, and don’t forget to equalise the pressure in your ears, otherwise they will explode…” He put his mouthpiece back in and rolled into the water. I followed his lead, thinking I understood his last comment. I bit into the device and heard my new mechanical breaths. I stared into the sudden abyssal face of the water, before I silenced my mind, denying its objections, and fell fast into the deep. 

My body was smothered in cold water which had not yet basked in the day’s sun. I felt the onset of an underwater conflict. Currents tumulted me from side to side and upside down. I held my nose as I felt the frozen burn of the salt encroaching up my nostrils. My goggled face stared up at the inside-out waves above, lapping at the dilapidated blue hull of the trawler. Then I turned and looked down. A great drop was below me, and my mind pained itself to even think that I was floating twenty feet high – and I was suddenly reminded that I did not belong in here – in this new medium – in this other world. Perhaps, Maya was right in her fear of the sea.  

Jake motioned for me to follow, yet my eyes were hypnotised by the swaying anchor lines – the chain and accompanying ropes that trailed off into oblivion; I could not see their ends, but they were stretched wide, outwards from the boat, outwards into the unknown. The unknown – the host of danger, of fear, and all the twisted mystification of the ocean deep. 

My friend was far below me now. I swam to reach him. My legs pounded and my body writhed; the water was wrestled from my arms. Yet then a fearful twinge was set loose in my brain. Too fast! Was I going too fast?  

I reduced my descent to a painfully slow pace. Yet it was not so painful because of the speed, but because I was forced to stare long and hard at the haunting land below, with water-swept desert planes over there, and alien forests of kelp and coral over there. Haunting it was, but beauty I saw. Fish of many folds danced amongst this other world; they made for an intricate display. Those that moved in shoals, moved as one – as a great slender and unending beast. Then I saw the predator to this social serpent, and flailing from its tail was a black tip. I followed its body, and then I saw its cut-throat gills, two dark pearls, and a mean, ravenous, toothy grin. A blacktip shark! I had swum with many over the years on the surf, but never had I dared to trespass into its world. It would leave us alone though. Jake was not scared of it. It would only attack if given a reason. Then I looked to my damaged hand and knuckle, and I found its reason. Damn my rage! I should have let that Jeremiah be…  

The sea bed was at my fingertips; I stirred the soft sand into a cloud. 

Jake signaled for me to start the search. Now, the boat had drifted from the coordinates when we anchored, but we knew that the artefact would be somewhere in between the distant hull and the anchor; we just had to keep below the chain. My friend went to start from the anchor, whilst I searched from my current position. I watched him swim into the distance, until the sea haze swallowed him up. I knew that he was not far away, but that did nothing to stop my creeping fear, and I asked myself in this moment – will this be the last time that I see Jake Lacey again? 

My eyes swept from side to side as a hammerhead would. Every ten seconds came a nervous glance, down to the dials, watching the air from my tank slowly depart. I cautiously moved rocks and parted kelp and other sea grasses. I did not know what I was looking for. The letter said ‘hidden,’ but if there was something hidden down here, then I did not know how I could ever find it – not in the time permitted by the oxygen tanks. Were we overzealous in thinking we could just dive down and find this thing in just a fragment of a morning? 

We had both covered an extensive amount of the anchor’s line. We could see each other now, and almost all sense of fear had fled from me. Rather, I was ruled by a dogged determination, and a slight red touch of anger. I was annoyed like anyone would be in this position, searching everywhere, but getting nowhere. I saw it in Jake too. His movements were heavy and jagged. Our underwater breaths were pacing. 

Yet, then something silver struck my eye. It was just a glint – then gone. I swam towards what I had seen. It came again – a speckled light. A thin loop of chain waved in the deep currents; attached to it was an algae rich pendant. The necklace was held in place by a rock, and when I reached it, I could not believe my eyes. 

In my hands were a pair of angel wings. Jake glided towards me. He slowly looked at what I had found, and then he latched on to it, as a predator to its prey. He looked up to me and his eyes were wide, so wide, so fearful. He looked down to his chest – to his phantom necklace that Jeremiah had tossed away only the other day. It was the same pendant that he now held in his hands.  

We shifted the rock and Jake clutched the necklace tight to his skin, and there below was a container. A cylinder of metal, airtight and sealed. I wrenched it from the ground, and a great cloud of sand and seabed debris arose. It smothered us. The artefact was ours. I reached out to the shadow of Jake; I grasped his arm. Yet then, we were interrupted. My arm was forced away by something heavy, something rough to the touch, something ancient and smiling. It was the waterborne warmonger; it was the reef tip. 

Now was the moment that my soul betrayed me and fled to the surface, leaving my body empty and incapable of movement or breath. As I watched the beast pass, my eyes became lost with the rhythm of that black-tipped fin, swaying atop the beast. I felt it push and pull the water around us. 

When the dust cleared. Jake found me, and he was in a strange mood. It was not the shark he feared, but something else. He motioned to the water around him. I looked, but I did not see. Again, he whirled his hands, now with fingers out-splayed, all waving like the dancing bubbles of his breath. Breath… Breathe! 

I took in a single shallow breath, hoping to convince my body that I had not been holding any in. Then I released, and the bubbles returned. Another breath in, deeper now. My lungs pained slightly. Out again. My limbs had a delicate trembling – needle-like jolts.  

The shark slowly began to circle us. Jake motioned with his hands a steady pace to which I could breathe, and then he pointed upwards. He pushed off from the sand, and he rose with a steady grace. I leapt up after him, eager to escape the black tip’s reach. Another cloud of sand plumed below, as I ascended. 

I quickly caught up to Jake, and then I overtook him. Suddenly, there was constriction around my ankle. My entire body weight was countered, and my ascension was reduced to a measly pace. I looked down, and I saw a portrait of annoyance amongst the landscape deep. Jake angrily pointed to his altimeter. Minus fifteen feet. Safety stop. 

“Some diver you are!” Jake rubbed his forehead as if he had some sort of headache; I think I was that headache. 

I held my hands up. “Okay, I admit I should have warned you that I am not exactly experienced…” 

“It’s fine, Cal… Just – how’s your head?”  

I gave him an okay sign – the only diving sign that I actually understood. Jake shook his head incredulously.  

“Well, at least we found that!” He pointed to my metal canister. “And – and this…” He held his new pair of angel wings up to his eyes. “This necklace is exactly the same as mine, before that bastard…” 

“Strange,” I spoke. “The chances of the person, who hid this artefact, having bought the same necklace…” 

He looked to me with conflicted eyes. One glimmered with intrigue; the other spoke of a great trouble. “No, Cal. You don’t understand. There is an old forge by the dock, dating all the way back to the first colonists. My dad made my pendant; it was one of a kind. This one now is not only designed the same, but it’s made the same, and yet it’s slightly different too. It’s not like the cheap stuff you get from China… My dad made this; this was his, and he left it down there too. He hid the artefact!” 

My breath started to dissipate. “But Jake… if that’s true then your dad would have known that my dad was going to be killed. He could know the truth about my parents. He could help me prove that they were murdered!” My sentences blurred into one, and my voice turned into a frantic thing, devoid of any rationality. “Jake. The treasure. My father. Your father. It’s all linked. We need to know! We need to find out!” 

“Hey, Cal! Calm down… The letter only said, ‘if,’ your father died, would the artefact be hidden. We don’t know that my dad knows anything more about your parents than the rest of us.” 

“He knows about the treasure! We have to ask him for help…” 

Suddenly Jake snapped at me. “NO,” he shouted, before he cowered into his seat and his eyes started to water; they soon turned red. 

It was now my turn to help him now. “Wait! Why? Jake… what’s the matter?” I put the canister down and sat next to him. “What’s wrong?” 

“You – you don’t know him – not like I do. He’s changed – since your father died – since my mum left us. That man – he isn’t my father – not anymore.” 

Suddenly, everything about my friend changed. The marks on his arm now appeared to me as deep bruises. His wet hair, messy from the dive, now failed to hide another dark mark. 

As the tears fell, I was overwhelmed by the sudden urge to either protect him… or hide with him.