Beneath

  BENEATH

  By:

  Maureen A. Miller

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2018 Maureen A. Miller

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781977087423

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  PROLOGUE

  She was going to vomit.

  Stella Gullaksen looped her arm through the tuna tower ladder. The LED spotlights cut through the storm, revealing a pool of seawater on the cockpit floor of the sport fishing boat. The brine was creeping up to her calves now. Across from her, Col, her best friend’s brother, wrapped a rope around his arm like a boa constrictor. Dark hair was pasted to his forehead and his eyes were lost in the night, but the bright red coil in his free hand was visible enough. He nodded at her and tossed it.

  Stella clawed at the darkness, squinting against the blinding fusion of rain and saltwater. The rope unraveled, winding through the water, eluding her grappling hand. Finally, she latched onto it and read his encouraging nod to secure it around herself. Trembling fingers attempted the task, but another black wave smashed into the hull, cascading against her hip and nearly tossing her over. She clung to the aluminum rigging.

  This was to have been a weekend fishing jaunt, a last respite before her freshman year in college. Stella’s best friend, Jill Wexler, was also a freshman at the same college. They met each other as freshmen in high school when Stella moved to Monmouth County from Pennsylvania. They were polar opposites in personality, but somehow it worked, and they had been attached at the hip since.

  Jill’s parents owned the STARKISSED, a 32’ Topaz Express saltwater fishing boat. It was a tight squeeze to fit Donald and Anne Wexler, their eighteen-year-old daughter, Jill, their twenty-year-old son, Colin, along with Stella. It was only for a night, though. It took too long to reach the New Jersey underwater canyons, where yellowfin tuna fishing was at its best. They had to spend the night out at sea and were due back into port late tomorrow evening.

  Inside the cockpit she saw Don Wexler hunched over the steering wheel, smacking the radar display. His curses were loud enough to carry over the maelstrom.

  “I checked with the Coast Guard. I checked the satellite. The weather was clear!”

  The defense seemed lame given their current predicament. Did it matter what the weather report claimed? They were over a hundred miles off the coast of New Jersey in the center of a mean tropical storm. The fact that it was the middle of the night was just a cruel bonus.

  Stella cast a frantic look at the cabin hatch now submerged under several inches of water. Jill was down there, along with her mother. Only a few moments ago Stella had been with them. When the storm struck, her stomach was the first to protest. She rushed up to the cockpit in search of air, and instead, emerged into chaos.

  The hatch burst open and the blonde head of Anne Wexler cracked through. She held her hand over her eyes to shield against nature’s assault. Water poured into the cabin. The blonde head disappeared, replaced by Jill’s tawny ponytail. She tripped up the small staircase and crawled through the pooling water until her brother’s arm latched onto her. Anne’s head reappeared as she climbed out of the cabin, hauling an armful of life vests. To Stella’s horror, Don hollered out something to the effect of, it’s too late.

  Another wave came. This one taller than the fourteen-foot tuna tower. It struck with the force of a speeding tractor trailer.

  Stella no longer dwelled on her nausea. She was the first to enter the sea as the STARKISSED slapped onto its side, surrendering to the force of the breaker.

  Stella surfaced, reaching for the slick hull. It was nearly inverted now, and she kicked back away from it, afraid it might drag her down.

  An eerie glow from the submerged lights wrapped around her legs. She watched in horrified fascination as they twitched frantically.

  “Help!” she choked.

  Saltwater slapped her in the face. There was no sound other than the angry stream of the ocean.

  “Jill? Mr. Wexler?”

  She coughed and tried to blink the sting of salt from her eyes. The storm had come on so suddenly that no one had time to put on their life vests. As the lights from the boat faded into the depths Stella took stock of her grim predicament. She was in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, being pummeled by a rogue gale with only the waning strength in her muscles to keep her afloat.

  Before the notion of her demise even formed, another shadowy wave towered above. It seemed to labor, toying with its prey before it drilled down upon her.

  Under its force, Stella plunged down–down–down–into the obscurity beneath.

  CHAPTER1

  Tumbling.

  It felt like a free fall from a passing jet, yet that was impossible. Water was resistant. Still, down she went, a suction so strong overruling all her attempts to claw to the surface.

  The surface.

  There was no delineation of sea and sky. Everything was black. The lights from the STARKISSED were long gone. All that remained was the disorienting gorge of oblivion that now tugged Stella deeper until her chest began to ache and her limbs grew numb.

  It felt as if a beast had crawled into her ear and was swelling inside her head. She was conscious enough to pinch her nose and blow out, which offered minimal relief.

  How long had she held her breath?

  Any moment now her lungs would overrule her brain and demand nourishment. Any moment now the reflex to breathe would yield water rather than oxygen. The end would soon follow.

  Down.

  Down.

  She had hopped an express elevator to the bottom of the sea.

  Jill.

  Her best friend was likely dead already. Was there an afterlife? Would they meet again? Would it be soon because they had perished in such close proximity?

  Death had not claimed Stella yet, though. The pressure remained in her lungs and ears, but the feeling of free-falling persisted. How long had she been underwater? Ten minutes? Ten seconds?

  Down.

  Down.

  She felt a tug.

  Not the persistent force that dragged her down. This tow hauled her sideways. It was vigorous enough that her arms and legs dangled helplessly before her as if a hook had latched around her waist.

  Breathe.

  There it was. The first all-out demand to draw air into her lungs. Why did she fight it? Simply to last a few more seconds? There was no hope. The deep sea currents were having their way with her.

  Breathe.

  Stella felt the drag of the undercurrent, but she couldn’t see anything. She tried to pry her eyes open. The water was so cold that she thought she might freeze to death before her lungs gave out. Hypothermia. That’s right. Her heart was just going to stop. Wasn’t that an easier way to go?

  Oxygen deprivation was taking its toll. She swore she saw light. Was it the end? The tunnel? The path to the afterlife?

  It sure wasn’t what she had imagined. They spoke of a bright light–so beautiful–so beguiling–something you were drawn towards–an undeniable euphoria.

  This was not so magnetic. It was subtle. A soft glow that she couldn’t really focus on as she was yanked like a dog toy, powerless to swim against the pull.

  Vaguely aware o
f passing through a narrow channel, Stella felt the pressure begin to ease. The force dragging her tapered. For the first time she regained use of her arms and legs, flailing them in a desperate attempt to rise.

  Breathe, her lungs and brain commanded.

  Wrinkling her nose, she struggled not to inhale.

  Something slithered by her. A fish? An eel? Disoriented, she tried to find it again in the murky water.

  There!

  Stella’s body jerked in surprise. She swore she saw the red rope that Colin had been holding. Confident that she now suffered brain damage, she reached out, expecting to connect with the tentacle of a squid. Her fingers wrapped around the coarse material and she instinctively tugged. It might have tugged back, but she lost consciousness, finally surrendering to the sea.

  Stella jerked awake.

  It was the racking cough that threatened to split her chest open that roused her. A firm hand clutched her shoulder, easing her onto her side. The position offered relief and soon the cough tempered into a soft wheeze.

  Shaking feverishly, she cracked open her eyelids, but the view didn’t stem her confusion. Everything was dark. Not black, but heavily laced with shadows. The walls looked dank, cave-like, lined with salivating teeth. Stella blinked. No, not teeth. Icicles. Rock icicles. Think. Think. There was a word for it, but her brain was so fuzzy.

  Stalactites.

  Stalactites?

  Stella pried her face off the gritty floor. Pebbles stuck to her cheek. She swatted at them, puzzled by the granular surface. Planting her palm on the sandy bedrock she searched the low, barbed ceiling. The cave was long with a narrow ledge that she now rested on. A few feet away, shadowy water lapped with deceptive innocence. Stella yanked her feet away from it.

  She was about to climb onto her knees when she remembered there had been a touch on her shoulder. Flipping back onto her butt, she gaped up at the drenched figure kneeling behind her.

  “Colin!” she croaked.

  Colin Wexler looked daunting in the shadows. Dark hair clung to his temples, and the muscles along his jaw clenched in resolve. The wet t-shirt clung to his chest, which hefted under each labored breath. His anxious gaze roved over her.

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it,” he rasped. “You weren’t breathing. You weren’t responding to CPR.”

  “You–you had to do CPR on me?”

  The situation was too dire, and she was too shaken to imagine Colin’s hands on her chest. Instead, she focused on his words. “I wasn’t breathing?”

  “No.” He shook his head, his gaze shifting towards the water.

  Stella followed his eyes. Together they watched the ripples, hearing the soft splashes reverberate under the low ceiling. The sound was overpowered by the pounding inside her ears as she struggled to regulate her breathing. Another cough bubbled up in her throat.

  “Where are we?” she whispered hoarsely.

  Colin climbed to his feet. He had to be just over six-feet tall, and his head nearly collided with the limestone daggers that clung to the roof of the cave.

  “As best I can guess,” he dipped at the waist to peer down the tunnel, “we might have been caught in a downwelling current.” He read her confused expression and added, “A descending current. Or, at least I’ve heard of such a thing. It could have happened down in the canyon. We must have–” he glanced around incredulously, “–we must have been sucked into a cave.”

  “A sea cave?” she tested the theory out. “Do you realize how deep it would have to be if we’re in a canyon? Wasn’t the depth finder reading something like 500 feet when we were fishing?”

  “Yeah,” he stared at the water, “the canyon would be much deeper. At least a thousand feet deeper.”

  Out of boredom Stella usually studied the depth finder when she went on fishing trips with the Wexlers. It was like following the signs as you drove up a mountain–2000 feet above sea level. 3000 feet above sea level–except, in reverse.

  She knew about submarine canyons because she had researched them the first time Jill’s father mentioned taking them out fishing there. As you start to leave the coast behind, the ocean floor descends into what they call the continental slope. Submarine canyons are like deep valleys cut into that slope. They cut deep. Real deep. They’re also the home of some mighty fine tuna fishing, as Don Wexler would say.

  “So then–”

  “How are we alive, and how is there oxygen 2000 feet below the ocean surface?” Colin voiced her unspoken questions. “I don’t know yet.”

  Stella swallowed down the next obvious query of, how is there light in this cave? He was already agitated, and heck, he had just saved her life. Why rile him?

  “I’d like to figure out where the hell we are,” he continued, “but we can’t go investigating yet. If two people from the same boat were caught in the same current, then–”

  “Then Jill–“ she cried. “Your parents. They could end up here!”

  Scrambling to the edge of the rock shelf Stella tried to detect anything in the murky pool. Colin knelt beside her. They stared in silence, willing the water to offer up another victim. All that could be heard was their labored breaths and the steady drops of water that fell from the jagged ceiling.

  Could it be true?

  Could they be deep down in one of the Atlantic canyons?

  It had to be. They were a hundred miles off the coast. There was no land in sight and the ocean floor had been 500 feet beneath them. The ocean floor would not have an oxygen-sustaining cave. So where else could they be?

  Stella eyed the swollen drops of water at the tip of many of the bulbous mineral daggers. On cue, one fell and splattered against her soggy sandals.

  One drop.

  How many more would there be when the entire Atlantic Ocean was above you?

  CHAPTER 2

  “How far back does this cave go?” Stella asked.

  They sat side by side, staring at the water, willing it to produce Colin’s family.

  “Maybe they’re inside already,” she suggested in a soft voice.

  Colin’s shoulder flinched. She wanted to reach out and touch it–to offer some form of comfort. He was mourning the loss of his family, and he was doing it stoically. There was little emotion revealed in his profile–just the sharp line of his chin, as if he was grinding his teeth. All the muscles in his body were taut, prepping to dive into the subterranean lagoon.

  “I wanted to say–” she hesitated, “–I wanted to say, thank you. Thank you for saving me.”

  Colin looked at her and his full lips twisted. “You shouldn’t thank me. I just prolonged your agony.” He jerked his chin towards the black pool. “They were the lucky ones. They aren’t going to suffocate in a cave deep beneath the Atlantic.”

  Stella gasped. Anxious, she eyed the low ceiling. It closed in on her with grisly fangs ready to gnash.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Colin whispered. “We’ll–we’ll figure something out.”

  Empty words, but she appreciated the sentiment.

  After a shared silence, she cleared her throat and offered, “Why don’t you stay here in case someone else–” she paused, “–appears. I’ll go investigate a little deeper. I mean, there seems to be light coming from somewhere–”

  Colin rose and crossed over to a pockmarked boulder the size of a couch. He stooped behind it and retrieved an aluminum cylinder, the illuminated end casting a tempered glow.

  “I had this strapped to my wrist when I fell overboard. It cut out at some point. It’s supposed to work up to 300 meters. I was surprised to see it turn back on inside this cave.”

  Stella jumped on any nibble. “Then maybe we’re not that far from the surface.”

  Colin shook his head. “There’s no pressure in this cave–that’s why it’s working. But the batteries are dying out.”

  “The light coming from it is so weak, and yet this cave seems to glow–”

  A nearby splash made them both jolt. Colin rushed towards the roc
k ledge, getting down on his knees and peering over the edge into the dark water. A hand shot up from the pool, groping the slick shelf and slipping back into the depths.

  “Colin!” Stella screamed.

  Colin launched into the water and disappeared beneath the surface. Stella sank to her knees, searching for any sign of him, but it was like looking into a tar pit. The surface rippled in agitation and Colin’s dark hair cracked through. He reached for the ledge and Stella grabbed onto his arm. At that moment another figure surfaced, coughing and moaning. It was Don Wexler, Colin’s father. Colin grasped him around the chest and hauled him tight against the rock shelf.

  “Get him,” Colin sputtered.

  Stella scrambled closer, clasping her hands around Don’s upper arm.

  “Okay,” she said. “I have a hold of him.”

  Colin clambered up onto the ledge and grabbed the other arm as they hoisted the man out of the water and sprawled him chest-down on the rigid surface. Don’s cheek rested on the rock floor, water dribbling from his pale lips.

  One trait Stella had always associated with Jill and Colin’s father was his perpetual tan. The man was tan year-round. If he wasn’t out on the STARKISSED, he was standing on a pier with a fishing pole in his hand. In the other hand was his cell phone where he’d stay on top of his financial advisor duties.

  “Dad!”

  Colin flipped Don Wexler over. His face looked swollen with puffy eyelids. Stella feared the worst as Colin hunched over him, adroitly applying CPR. She crawled to join him.

  “How can I help?”

  “Put your fingers under his neck and tilt his head back.”

  With shaking hands she complied, wondering if her flesh felt as cold and clammy as the skin she touched.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught motion. A slim white arm shot out of the water. It reached up into the air, fingers clawing futilely at the void.