The Quarry

I grab my gear from the back of the truck as the sheriff pulls into the little cutaway beside the road.

“Howdy,” he says, and I reciprocate. His ruddy, mustached face is grim. Another officer, young and broad, gets out from the passenger-side vehicle and we too exchange terse greetings.

“Scott should be here any minute,” the sheriff says, looking at his watch.

Sure enough, an ancient-looking black van comes around the bend and pulls into the cutaway behind the police cruiser. The county coroner steps out. He isn’t old, early fifties, maybe, but he’s had the job since he was my age, and he seems about a quarter corpse himself, with stiff movements and unblinking eyes.

“This is the crew, today,” the sheriff says. He leads the way, then the other officer, me, and the coroner, carrying a stretcher under his arm, pulling up the rear, into the brush along a narrow foot-trail. Branches scratch and catch on my wet-bag. As far as I know, I’m the only certified diver in Lester County. My girlfriend’s mom is the police secretary – she called me this morning and said the sheriff needed someone to pull a body from a quarry, if I could do it. I just moved to the area and haven’t found work yet, so here we are.

“Ever been out here, you youngsters?” the sheriff asks.

“Couple times back in high school,” the other officer says.

“Drinking, partying?”

“Yep. Never got in the water though. Creeped me out, personally.”

“Good instincts,” the sheriff says before sighing. “I wish they’d do something about that damn quarry. The mining company left a bunch of equipment down there under the water. It’s been a death trap since before I was born. This boy ain’t the first to go into that quarry and not come back up,” he laments. “Poor kid.”

After a moment of silence, I ask, “What kind of equipment?”

“Drilling, tunnelling, hauling. There’s a bulldozer on the service road out of the quarry you can see from the surface, drill tower, too,” the sheriff replies.

“They just left it?”

He shrugs. “I suppose they were in a hurry.”

There’s a chain-link fence ahead in the brush, plastered with “PRIVATE PROPERTY” signs. A few posts to our left, the fence is cut and bent away from the post, leaving a space big enough for someone to crawl through. The sheriff, though, pulls an enormous key ring from his pocket and slides one into the lock through the chain around the gate. It creaks loudly as he pulls it open. Vines growing through the hinges snap. Pavement is visible around the fence, but the rest of the path is almost entirely overgrown.

We ascend a small rise and then emerge from the brush overlooking the quarry, filled to about forty feet from the top with dark green water reflecting the overcast sky. The rock walls surrounding the water are gray and jagged. The place looks like a gaping wound in the forest, framed against the rolling hills.

“Looks murky,” I mutter to myself.

“What you think?” the sheriff asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“How deep is it?”

“Wish I could tell you. Deep enough to submerge a crane. Hundred feet? Doubt it could be much more than that, but don’t quote me.”

“Okay.”.

“Listen,” the sheriff says, “this is for his family. Closure. They’ll appreciate it, son. So do I.”

The sheriff leads us around the rim. At certain angles, I can make out the bulldozer the sheriff mentioned, dangerously close to the rim. I shudder, imagining someone jumping in and hitting it, just a few feet beneath the surface, looking as though it’s suspended in the water.

We reach a fire pit. Some of the coals are still smoking. The other officer grunts and points down the embankment. Two-dozen beer cans were tossed down into the brush.

“This is where they were at,” the sheriff mutters. “The others said he jumped in right around here. On a dare – ain’t that how it goes?” We walk to the edge and gaze down at the water below. It’s still as glass.

Nearby is the top of the old service road down into the mine, curving down away from the fire pit. We trudge along it and stop at the edge of the water. I drop and unzip my bag, lining up everything on the rock before I undress down to nothing but underwear. The others politely look away until I’ve stepped into my wetsuit.

“Like I mentioned,” the sheriff says, “lot of stuff down there that was never meant to be underwater. Be careful. If you get stuck, I can’t breaststroke down and pull you out.” I snort but when I look over at him, he isn’t smiling.

“So I suppose he’d be caught on something down there,” I say, zipping up. “Otherwise he’d have floated to the surface, right?”

“No,” the coroner says. I realize I hadn’t heard him speak yet – he exchanged no greetings when he arrived. “Once the lungs fill with water, bodies tend to sink.” His voice is soft and distant, as though it comes from a point a few feet behind his mouth.

“I thought bodies floated too,” the young officer replies. “I saw one, once, floating.”

“It is only after bacteria inside the gut and organs release sufficient gas that the body floats back to the surface,” the coroner informs us. His face is unblinking and he stares down into the quarry. “In cold water such as this, that would take weeks.”

“Oh,” I say.

I test the tank. It pressurizes the regulator and I open it fully, before strapping it onto my back. So the body could be all the way at the bottom. I eye my depth gauge, hoping the sheriff’s right about one hundred feet deep, max.

“My guess is he either hit his head when he jumped in,” the sheriff says, “or his clothes got snagged. All that damn metal down there.”

“Didn’t the one kid say,” the other officer interjected, “that he... came back up?”

“That is normal,” the coroner replies. “The body tends to float until the lungs fill with water.”

“No, she said,” the young officer continues, “she said he came up, and he was swimming back towards the edge perfectly fine, and then he went under again... and that was when he didn’t come back up.”

“She was hysterical,” the sheriff says. “And drunk.”

The other officer shrugs. “That she was.”

I look from one to the other as they kick at the stone road with their boots. They say nothing more. I finish gearing up with my mouthpiece, goggles and headlamp, then nod at the others to indicate I’m ready to go.

“Make sure that light works,” the sheriff instructs. I’d put in new batteries as soon as I got the call. I flick it on, facing him, and he gives a thumbs-up. “Good. Just get him to the edge, and we’ll take him from there.” I nod and turn to face the water.

I take a few awkward steps in my fins, disturbing the glassy surface, until I’m waist-deep. I take a few breathes through the mask, taking in that somewhat sweet-tasting compressed air, then dive in.

It’s warm at first, but as I descend it rapidly chills. The water is foggy with mineral powder. I gaze around, rotating slowly as I sink. The drill tower provides an eerie centerpiece – a cylindrical lattice of steel around metal tubes and cables, some of them flayed outside of the lattice, looking sinister, like underwater snares. The tower vanishes downwards into the complete darkness below. I get slightly dizzy looking down at it. My depth gauge reads twenty feet. Above, the surface still ripples from my entry.

I swim towards the wall below the fire pit. There doesn’t seem to be anything the boy could’ve hit. No pernicious rocks dangerously close to the surface, no jagged machinery which could snag a pair of trunks. Just dark, chilly water.

I rotate again. I can just barely see the bulldozer, level with its track, sitting upon the service road, which vanishes down in a gentle slope. Then an open, murky expanse, headlamp illuminating the countless particulates in the water, fine as dust.

I descend again, aiming the light downwards, straining to see further into the blackness below, the sheer rock wall of the quarry on one side, emptiness on the other. I stop at forty feet and repeat my process – rotate, swim along the wall, rotate. I see the top of the crane, vanishing like the drill tower into the depths below, a solitary cable hanging. There’s some scaffolding built against the quarry wall, orange paint flaking off. I take a few more deep breathes through my mouth, constantly assuring myself of my trust in the equipment. I aim the headlamp back down and drop.

As I near sixty feet, I see something beneath, emerging suddenly from the black depths. I freeze and scan with the headlamp. It’s a massive dump truck, sitting upon the next level of the service road. Its bed is full of stone. Cautiously, I drop further. Seventy feet, eighty, just over the bed of the truck now. I swim out over the front of the truck, and I see it’s nearly off the service road – the front-left tire dangles out over the depths as though someone almost drove it right off the edge. Strange – the road’s plenty wide enough even for a truck of this size.

I turn and swim over the back of the truck. My beam of light only illuminates a faint, ten-foot circle upon the road, outside of which I can see nothing. With each kick of my fins, I expect suddenly for the body to appear. Instead, I see only scattered equipment and pieces of scaffolding against the gray bottom, deformed by rust.

The service road is vanishing into the depths as I maintain at eighty feet. How much deeper can this quarry be? I look again at the sheer wall. Am I still beneath the fire pit? I suddenly feel disoriented, uncertain which side of the quarry I’m even on. I scan for the bulldozer, but I’m too deep now to see it. I turn towards the drill tower in the center. It’s still there, disappearing now in both directions, into the murky light above, and the murky dark below. I feel my shoulder rub against something – the cable from the crane. It pendulates. I shine my gaze down along the cable, watching it sway down beneath where it vanishes.

I stare into the depths. Relax, I tell myself. This is easy. You’re probably near the bottom already, and you’ve still got forty feet before you even need to worry about decompression stops on the way back up. There’s not even a current. I consciously slow and deepen my breaths, then descend again.

I watch the numbers rise in the blue glow of my depth gauge. Eighty-five feet, ninety. The headlamp fights impotently against the ever-thickening darkness. The water is so cold, I’m not going to be able to stay down here long. I flex my fingers, making sure they haven’t gone numb. Ninety-five feet. I should be able to see the bottom soon, surely. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight. Then... there’s something. Not just absolute blackness, something solid. I strain my eyes, still descending, ever-so-slowly. Is that the bottom? It must be. It doesn’t look like more mining equipment.

Something bumps against the back of my arm and I lurch, whipping around. It’s a fish, perfectly white and no more than a foot long. Its small mouth opens and shuts repeatedly. It doesn’t seem to have eyes. The fish turns away from the headlamp and disappears away into the shadowy distance.

My heart is racing. My goggles take a slight fogginess – I’d lost control of my breathing and exhaled out my nose. As if visibility isn’t bad enough down here. At least I’m almost all the way down. Check the depth gauge – one-hundred-and-one feet. Aim the headlamp back down at the... bottom? I blink, trying to stare through the fog from my own breath and the murkiness. It isn’t there anymore. All I see are watery depths.

I drop a few more feet. One-hundred-and-four, one-hundred-and-five. Still nothing. I just saw the bottom, why can’t I now? I rotate, taking another look around. There’s the enormous drill tower, the edge of the service road, a pile of rusting scaffold pieces upon it, the crane cable, still vanishing into the depths below. I swim along the service road again. Everything’s a bit foggier now through my goggles. Shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows appear in my headlamp. With each sweep of the light I expect to see the body, hope to see it, wanting to get out of this cold. The dump truck’s enormous tires are up ahead.

A construction helmet appears in my light upon the service road as I turn around. A chill goes down my spine, realizing what I’d seen. The helmet was occupied and surrounded by matching pale bones. A quarry worker. "I suppose they were in a hurry," the sheriff had said.

I glance back then swim away, not wanting to be near the bones. It’s getting so cold down here – I need to find this body, quickly, I need to get out. I go back down to one-hundred-and-five feet, one-hundred-and-ten, hurrying now, gazing into the depths, seeing nothing but darkness. Had I tricked myself into believing I saw the bottom? I shiver and look up. Everything’s murky above, too.

As I aim the headlamp down again, the light catches a shape against the drill tower. I look back – there, hanging on the hook dropped from the crane. The body. Compressed air catches in my chest. I kick towards it, half elated, half confused. How had I missed it before? I’d been nearly this deep and not seen the hook, just the cable, dropping into blackness. I would have... right? But now, it’s... oh God. Through my fogged goggles, I see the point of the hook coming straight through the pale, skinny, bloodless stomach, like the fang of some enormous beast. The boy’s dead eyes are open. In the headlamp I see nothing but the body, the hook, a few feet of cable, and darkness. Just get him off the hook, just get him to the surface. My pulse thumps so loudly it seems to echo in the water as I cradle the corpse in my arms. I kick, trying to pull it off that terrible hook, jutting menacingly from the punctured gut. My thigh touches the bottom of the hook and my stomach squirms. Slowly the body slides upwards, making a squelching sound that sends a shiver down my spine. My goggles fog further as I kick and yank, struggling to free the corpse, working desperately through the disbelief in my mind... how did it end up like this?

With a final pull, I rip the body from the hook, its head lolling. Without meaning to, I look into the eyes – can pupils dilate after death? His eyes seem frozen with horror, fading reflections of the depths still beneath us caught inside.

I aim my gaze up towards the surface and kick... but we don’t move. I look back at the cable, at the hook. We’re not touching it. We’re not touching anything. I kick and kick but we don’t move. The hook is rising above my line of sight – we’re being pulled down further. The body must be caught on something else. I try one final time, kicking with abandon, with fury, screaming into my mouthpiece, but still, we continue to sink. I can’t do it, I can’t keep falling, goggles fogging, legs screaming, heart pounding. I let go of the body, and for one terrible second, I think, it isn’t the body that’s caught on something, it’s me... but then I’m rising, shooting upwards, and I glance down to see the pale form swallowed by the endless darkness below.

I kick through the burning pain in my legs, everything growing brighter until I burst through the surface, spit out the mouthpiece, and tear the goggles from my face. I see the others and swim towards them until I’m walking out of the water.

“Didn’t find him?” the sheriff asks.

“I did. He was... on the crane.”

“Stuck?”

“Yes... I got him off... Off the hook. But...”

“Drop him?”

“I... yes, I dropped him, he was...”

“Alright,” the sheriff sighs, “can you go back down and get him, then?”

“I... um...” I shiver again. The water had been so cold down there. They’re all staring at me. The sheriff thumbs his belt. What had happened down there? It already feels like a fading dream. I’d spooked and dropped the boy, blown it. He’s still down there.

Nothing had happened, not really, but my throat feels clutched in ice. They’re all staring at me, wondering if this had all been a waste of time. I turn back towards the water, trying to steady myself, to go again.

“What the hell?” the young officer says, stepping towards me, crouching, brows furrowed. The others do the same. I glance over my shoulder but can’t see what they’re looking at until I remove my tank. Along the bottom of the solid aluminum are four indentations, like fingers might make in a soda can. I look up at the others, eyes wide.

A sound comes from the center of the quarry, like guttural laughter from the bowels of the earth.