The Recovery

As he finishes removing his gear, drying off, and taking in his hand the hot cup of coffee, he walks across towards the dimly lit tent to begin what he does after every dive: detailing every aspect that he could remember. It is late into the night, the cool winds blowing in from the east, the insects of the air making their songs, and the intersperse voices of medical professionals, divers, and news reporters chatting of the events that just took place. His thoughts are occupied with questions like "what just happened?” and "did I suffer the worst gas narcosis of my life?" He needs to know. The only way for him to do this is to put it into words that he can see, feel, and to study each sentence so that he does not miss any detail. For him, talking it out helps little, words in the air some would say, and all they do is hang there to be blown away by the wind. So, he leaves the small crowd of people to debrief in solitude. He enters the tent that is propped up close to the water’s edge. It is a large, shaded area with a few picnic tables under it mostly filled with gear of all kinds such as camera’s, scuba equipment, food, and coffee. Still damp, cold, and mind boggy with thoughts racing, he grabs his notebook out of his black messenger bag. It is a small leather-bound black book that feels soft in his hands, sturdy, and contained within its pages are his experiences throughout his diving career. Yet this dive was unlike any he had experienced before.

He finds a small area on a table that has barely enough room to place his coffee down, he takes a seat, unties the cord keeping his notebook locked away, turns to the next available page and begins writing. It is routine for him, first the number of the dive, where it was, how deep, how long, the name of his buddy. Standard procedure. Then begins the accounting of the dive starting with the gear, the preparation, the night before the dive, the food he ate, the amount of water consumed measured to the last milliliter, the intricacies of each step and instance leading into and through the dive. He searched through each page of the plan that contained the algorithm of the dive, the maps, and the what if scenarios. Two of these latter parts are gas narcosis, or as divers call it, being “narced,” and the other being a silt out, where the sediment of a cave obscures all visibility. Both instances can be deadly.

He wrote, "…as I descended to the entrance of the mine, I placed my bottles of nitrox for my return decompression stop. I entered and made my way through the labyrinth. I had a general idea of where I might find the missing diver, since I used to frequent these mines in my younger cave diving years. It was easy to get lost, and easier to disrupt the silt on the ceiling and floors. From what I gathered from family and friends of the lost diver, they mentioned that he was working on moving rocks to enter an unexplored part of the mine. I had an idea of which part this was since there was a famous collapse that occurred shortly before the mine was decommissioned. I used my arm slate to superimpose an old map that I had made years ago on where I believe this diver went missing and was going to make a bee line for that area. I lead the way and my buddy, Frank, followed close behind. It was easy to get to the spot, no incidents, no difficult maneuvers required, but there was something odd in the water. Even as I looked at Frank, he had a feeling of uneasiness too, but both of us were collected enough to be able to finish our objective. The maximum depth for us was only 40m on closed circuit rebreathers, which gave us plenty of wiggle room for bottom time. Our goals were to first locate the body then gauge if recovery was capable at that time. We quickly came upon the collapsed part of the cave and discovered a spare cylinder among the rocks. We were in the right place. I began looking for any openings in the rubble. Frank signaled to me to look at the wall behind me. I saw something that was never there before, even as I study my old maps, it was not there. It was a new, jagged looking, opening in the wall.

As I investigated this new entrance, we noticed a faint light towards the back. I decided to go first. As I approached the light, I found a loan flashlight lying in the sediment. As I inspected the area, there seemed to be long lines in the silt, which I found peculiar. I ignored this and went deeper into this unknown and seemingly unnatural tunnel. I checked my dive watch periodically to gauge my time, depth, partial pressure of oxygen, and decompression time. Nothing worth of note. I turned my head around a corner, and I was met with a blank wide-eyed man staring directly into my eyes. Pale skin, regulator still in his mouth, hands outstretched in front of him and dug into the dirt and rock of the tunnel. At first glance it seemed like he had run out of air early and was desperately clawing his way back to his spare cylinder at the mouth of this tunnel. I looked at my time and depth and everything was within conservative dive limits. I decided to bring the diver out.

He was covered in silt and sediment, probably due to his panic of running out of air, or maybe it was the silt out that caused the panic. We will never know. I was removing the gear on his back when I felt something reach from behind this man’s body and grab the tip of my glove and yanked me forward. I was startled. "what was that?", I thought to myself. But I figured that it was my mind playing tricks on me because as soon as it happened it had stopped. Possibly getting a little narced. I slowed myself down a little to get the job done. I successfully removed his gear and started to bring the diver towards me with much ease. Easier than I expected. I figured that his tank must have been caught on something as well. Seemed that he had a lot of things go wrong for him. I continued to bring him back from where I came. Suddenly, I felt a claw like hand grip the top of mine and rip me and the body deeper into the tunnel. I don't know what happened next because I suffered a silt out but was able to get free, and began to move out of the tunnel once again with the body in tow. I experienced one more of these events but then I made it to the mouth where my buddy was waiting. Relieved to see him I pulled the body out and in front of him. We were both shocked at what we saw…"

"Jimmy," interrupted Paul, "how are you holding up?" Paul was the chief of the fire department of the area and the one in charge of organizing the recovery of the missing diver.

"I have no idea. I honestly don't have a clue what just happened."

"Frank told us that the body was really messed up."

"Yeah, messed up is a word for it."

"Can you tell me what happened? He was pretty spooked and didn’t make much sense."

"The body was missing both legs and the wetsuit from the waist down was in strips, like it was ripped a part."

"Damn. That doesn’t make sense. They’ve loaded the body bag in the ambulance and are leaving in a moment. Hopefully they know what happened when the autopsy is finished. I came over to give you your money. Also, the family wanted to give you this as well. It's their way of saying thank you."

As he reached out to take the envelope of money, Paul noticed that Jimmy was bleeding. "you should get that checked by the medical team. Looks pretty bad and you wouldn't want to ruin that nice notebook that you have there. How’d that happen?"

Jimmy looked and saw that there was a constant stream of blood coming from a gaping laceration on the back of his hand. Exactly where the hand had grabbed him while in the tunnel.

Jimmy responded softly after a long moment, “I don’t know.”

Instead of going to the medical tent, he crudely wrapped his hand with paper towels, and walked towards the water’s edge with his dive light in hand. As he went to where the water met the dry ground, he opened the envelope, and counted a grand total of 20,000$. He was deep in thought through the events of that day, from the decent down to the body, the recovery, the silt out, and the horrid discovery of the state of the body. He was confused.

While he was standing there, Frank approached him and said brashly, “what do you think?”

“Like I told Paul, I don’t know. I thought I was narced but that body is telling me a different story…Frank, something was fighting me for his body. Something was in that cave.”

“Seems like you’re still narced.” Paul replied.

“Don’t mock me. The stories of the mine and why that tunnel was destroyed are starting to make sense now. They were hiding something…something evil and that poor bastard of a diver discovered it. He found that thing that was digging its way out of a watery grave. His damn curiosity killed him by entering that cave.”

“That sounds crazy, Jimmy. We were both deep and suffering from at least a mild form of narcosis. With the added stress of the recovery, the body, and the fact we got there so fast. It all adds to an increased risk of it and I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.”

“Tell me then, what happened to his legs?”

“I don’t know.”

“This place is evil. I knew it every time that I dove here. I mapped all the passages and the only one not mapped is past that rubble and now there is a connecting passage that goes around it. It was never there before.”

They both stood in silence. Allowing the cool breeze of the night to chill them to the bone. There was an uneasiness in the air that everyone felt. From the reporters to the medical personal, not a single person made a joke, no congratulations for a successful recovery, not even a word was spoken into the universe.

With his flashlight, he starts scanning the surface of the water. It was still, no movement, no ripple despite the wind, nothing. It was completely motionless. The waters that took a man’s life were sleeping from the horrors that they had done and the evil that they contained. In his heart he knew that the beast of the stories of old, when the harshest of winters caused men to eat men and their sins created the monster, that has now come back to life.

At that moment, a short distance away from him and Frank, the light shown two dark red circles. He dropped his light immediately. Hands shaking violently as the fear of what he saw engulfed his entire body. He looked at Frank whose face grew ashen and his mouth opened. They looked at each other in that moment in silence for they had just seen the eyes of a monster released from it’s prison.

Jimmy says aloud, “Time to go. Grab your bags, Frank!” All of this was said as Jimmy hastily turned and walked away, never to return.