(artwork courtesy of Ray O'Bannon, @ 1997)

The Devil In The Deep

by Klaus D. Yurk

There is a beautiful lake in a western state which is set like a misplaced jewel in the midst of a wild and desolate landscape. Long ages before the white man came into this savage country, the Indians knew about the lake. In the dim times so long ago that not even the oldest of the story tellers still speak of it, a tribe had sacrificed their fairest maidens to the one who lives in the deep.

But in time new tribes came and fought the old ones, and drove them ever to the south. The new people made the wild and barren country their home, for they too had been driven from their ancient place by a bitter and powerful enemy. They did not believe in the sacrifice of maidens, but they knew that the lake was sacred. They made it a forbidden place where only the medicine man might go when his days were ended to seek the face of the great spirit.

When the white man came he dismissed such tales as primitive superstitions. Yet somehow, over the many years, the area has retained its bad reputation and the dark blue waters eventually became known, first in common parlance, then officially, as Bottomless Lake.

***

The rain was coming down in great wild torrents. A cold wind howled across the desolate landscape, whipped the dark surface of Bottomless Lake, and shrieked across the lonely strip of highway that snaked along the shoreline. A single set of headlights appeared from around a bend and slowly made their way along the road as if they were fighting the wind and the rain for every inch of forward progress. Some time later they revealed themselves to be the leading lights of a large yellow school bus.

Inside the bus, the twenty-five junior high students who were returning home from a full day at a regional music competition felt the buffeting of the wind and the drumming of the rain only as distant forces that were powerless to inconvenience them. Their rolling shelter was a safe and warm little world unto itself. They had that casual indifference to the forces of Nature that only those who have been sheltered from them within the cocoon of our technological society all their lives could possibly have. They chatted and laughed and flirted, or simply listened to music on their headphones as they stared out the windows into the endless darkness, a darkness that was lit only occasionally by a particularly spectacular lightning bolt. A few were trying to sleep.

Those who worried about such things knew they should be arriving home in about an hour.

The bus driver, a slightly built blonde in her late twenties who was usually thought of as being in her early twenties, drove with the mechanical ease of long practice. She had been driving a bus for more than four years now, and she still enjoyed it. At the moment, however, her mind was not on her driving. The cozy warmth of the heater, the metronomic beat of the windshield wipers, the boring, endless black ribbon of highway, all had combined to reduce her alertness and put her mind into a state of almost dreamlike wakefulness. It was a creeping, lovely drowsiness.

She was wondering if she should go ahead and marry the man she had been living with for over a year now. She was certain that he loved her and that she loved him. She would probably never find anyone better suited to fulfill her wants and needs. Yet when he had asked her to be his wife, she had hesitated. So many marriages failed these days. To have and to hold till death do us part had always seemed unrealistic somehow. People changed. It was a big risk.

It was at that instant that a huge gust of wind and rain caught the broad side of the bus like a sail and slammed it aside. The driver's hand reacted automatically to correct for the pressure. Then she felt the loss of all pressure on the wheel which meant that the bus was sliding. She became instantly alert as the sensation of danger shot through her, only to recognize that it was already too late. She had time to cringe.

The bus sheared through the old and useless single-rail barrier without even slowing down. It fell through the air for slightly more than three seconds. Then it hit the water with an enormous splash. But there was no one to hear it. And even if there had been, it was a mere murmur in the night compared to the infernal drumbeat of the rain, the howl of the wind, and the boom of the rolling thunder.

The bus rolled over on its side and sank like a mortally wounded animal. No windows opened. No one clamored to get out. It went down very quickly and was gone. Spurlos versenkt. Lost without a trace. There was only the wail of the wind that cried over the bubbles that appeared briefly on the turbulent surface and then were gone.

***

Christ, what a mess, thought Howard Phillips.

It was a scene from a surrealistic hell. There was a mass of police cars, wreckers, and ambulances, all standing around flashing their lights futilely. There were red lights and blue lights and yellow lights and white lights, a chaotic jumble of spasmodic colored lights. A thin red line of smoking flares stood like guardians along the borders of all the activity. Inside the area, hooded, shiny black and yellow figures were scurrying to and fro frantically. Presiding over the scene, its black steeple raised high, a huge crane was crawling from the back of a flatbed with a chorus of growls and screeches. Shouts and curses and the constant crackling and squawking peculiar to police radios added to the tumult.

The rain had stopped, but a heavy drizzle was still coming down. Everything was dripping wet, and reflecting light, and adding a sense of unreality to everything else. And for every light, for every motion which took place on shore, there was an equal blink, an equal movement in the water. It was as if a nightmare had crawled half out of the water, and lay, gasping, on the only beach on this side of Bottomless Lake. From a distance, the entire scene was as one continuous creature, moving its multitude of appendages in a confused, jerky frenzy that was as uncoordinated as the last spasms of an animal with its back broken.

Howard Phillips slowed down his van and looked at the gaping hole in the twisted metal of the guardrail, then sped up and drove the half mile or so down to the beach area. A policeman stopping traffic recognized him and waved him through. As he pulled his van off the road and parked it next to a police car, he told himself again that there was no real reason to hurry. As usual, this was strictly a body bag operation. That's what he and the other diver were here for--to bring up the dead bodies. In this case, dead children.

He slammed his fist on the steering wheel in anger. He hated Bottomless Lake. Far too many people died here and vanished here. They disappeared forever into this stinking, god awful deep pit. Of course, it couldn't be bottomless. Everything had to have a bottom, didn't it? But no one knew how deep this lake was. An unbidden thought came to his mind: maybe Arnold knows. He shuddered and stared out the wet window at the black water of the lake.

Somewhere out there was his younger brother. Fifteen years ago he and Arnold had gone fishing here because of a stupid dare. It was so dumb. A nineteen year-old and a seventeen year old-old trying to prove to the other guys that they had "balls." And neither of them even knew how to swim at the time. For some reason Arnold stood up in the boat. And fell overboard. Howard had watched in petrified horror as his little brother went under, still yelling and desperately clutching for help that never came. As if in a trance, he whispered, for the thousandth time since the accident, "I'm sorry, Mom. I couldn't move. I just couldn't move. It wasn't my fault. I'm so sorry, Mom." Howard shuddered from head to toe, shook his head as if to clear it, and slowly got out of the van.

The rain was coming down again. A dark, hooded figure came hurrying towards him from down by the shore where they were still trying to unload the crane. Howard recognized the Sheriff despite the gleaming black plastic poncho he had draped over him. They always met at the scene of tragedies.

"Hi, Mac," he called out.

"Hi, Howard. Got a real mess for you this time. "

"Are you sure it's the school bus?"

The Sheriff mopped his face with a wet handkerchief. "Yeah. A car about a quarter mile behind them saw it happen, saw the lights go over the side. Christ almighty, twenty-five kids!" He took a deep breath. "Must have gone down like a rock. Nobody got out."

Howard shook his head. "Who was driving?"

"A young lady by the name of Patty Lincoln. Real nice gal. Experienced driver too. I don't know if you ever met her. She was living with that English teacher guy over in Corona. Larry something or other. Heard they were going to get married. Now I suppose I'll have to run over there and tell him before he hears it on the news. Dammitalltohell!" He wiped his face again. "Well, you got all your stuff? Need anything?"

"Nah. Just give me ten minutes to put on my suit. Say, who's the other diver?"

"A guy by the name of Bill Hariss. He's suiting up right now. Borrowed him from the State Patrol. He just happened to be in the area. What with Jack out, you're lucky I got this guy or you'd be going down there alone tonight."

Howard shook his head. "Uh, uh. Never. Any place but here." He took a deep breath. "Well, guess I'd better get ready."

The Sheriff turned to go, then stopped. "Howard. You've been down there before. What are the chances of recovery? I mean, this place, ahm...we hardly ever recover bodies here. It's weird."

At that moment a long drawn out scream cut through the wind and the rain. It died down slowly into a wail of anguish, then to almost inaudible sobs.

The Sheriff listened in silence for a moment, then said softly, " Parents."

Howard swallowed hard. "Yeah. Well, I've only been down there a couple times. Didn't stay long. You've got almost a straight drop down to fifty-five, sixty feet. There you've got this shelf, kind of like a plateau. It's real flat , and clean, and sandy. It extends out maybe a hundred, hundred fifty, two hundred feet in some places. If the bus is there, we'll have no problem. We'll hook up the crane line and you'll have it out of there in a couple hours. But if it went towards the center, and for some reason most things down there tend to go out that way...well, that's where you find that godamm pit. Like the crater of a volcano. It goes down...down." He shrugged his shoulders.

The Sheriff wiped his hand over his eyes, nodded, and walked off down towards the shore.

***

Howard Phillips splashed into the cold, dark water and felt goose bumps begin to crawl all over his body.

There was a stench in the water such as he had never experienced before. His stomach surged at the terrible sickly taste of death that filtered into his mouth. It was a taste which would have driven a shark to insane frenzies. But there was something else besides.

A sense of ancient rotting evil hung in the water like a shimmering cloudiness, a miasma of living dread that was not quite definable, yet was as real and nerve grating as fingernails raking across a blackboard. There was a breath of hostility in the darkness, such as one can sometimes feel in graveyards on stormy nights, that feeling that something does not want you to be there, that feeling that drives the cold shivers up and down your spine.

Without warning, Howard felt an excuriating pain shoot through his head. He put his hands to his face mask and grimaced, thereby accidentally swallowing a bit of the fowl water. It burned like acid in his mouth. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain disappeared.

Howard looked about him and wondered what had happened. The inky blackness of the water made it impossible to see anything. Except for the dancing motes of light which would not go away. He wondered if they were real, or if his eyes were playing tricks on him, trying so hard to see into the malignant darkness that they had begun to imagine things. Night diving had never scared him before, but this was different. This was Bottomless Lake.

It was then that he had noticed a misty vision coming towards him out of the blackness. It was a vision from his past, from the very first recovery mission he had ever been on. Because of dangerous snakes and fish in the water, they did not dive that night. Instead, they had used the hooks. And the very first dead body he had ever seen floated towards him now. It was a dark haired young girl. She had fallen into the river while attending a college party. She had probably never been what people would call beautiful--her face was too round and her nose was slightly crooked from a childhood accident--but now death had robbed her of everything. The hooks had mangled her. One of the curved pieces of steel had entered her open mouth and come out near her ear. Several small fish were nibbling there, but that was not the worst. She was incomplete, and it was obvious that every biter in the sea had taken a piece. Harold swallowed hard as the line suddenly went taut and dragged the body back into the darkness from which it had come.

But a new, more horrible apparition appeared. Out of the darkness came a drowning boy. Howard recognized him instantly. His brother Arnold had not been changed by the passing years. After fifteen years he still looked the same, and he was still drowning! He was paddling and flailing his arms wildly in a desperate attempt to get to the surface. But it was all in vain. Arnold Phillips was sinking instead of rising. Then he spotted Howard. Instantly an expression of hope came over his still boyish face. He held out his hands, clutching, pleading, helpless hands. His eyes begged, and his lips mouthed a silent, "Help Me." He was dying. Howard wanted to scream, but again, he could only watch his brother die, too petrified to move. He could not have moved a muscle to save life. Arnold's face distorted hideously into a death grimace as he fought for the last precious seconds. Then it was over. The eyes were open, but life had gone. The still begging hands relaxed. The limp body, only a few feet from Howard now, began to sink. As it fell slowly, leisurely because it had all the time in the world now, past Howard, the flesh melted away until there was nothing left but the skeleton. The empty eye holes stared at him unforgivingly as they sank into the blackness, down, down, down, and then were gone.

There was a powerful splash beside him and Howard knew instantly that it was the other diver entering the water. He shook his head to clear it and realized that he himself had only been in the water a few seconds. Yet it felt like he had been here for half an hour. He had already seen things that could not be. There was something terrible here, something down below in the deep. Every nerve in his body tingled and signaled that there was danger here. It was so dammed wrong here. He had a sudden dizzying sensation of tottering on the edge of a cliff with the endless pit yawning before him; one slip and he would fall almost forever. Until he met the horror that lived in the pit! And he knew he was going to slip.

Bill Hariss lit his torch and the sudden glare in the water shook Howard back to reality. He closed his eyes and tried to get his emotions under control. He told himself that this was his job, no matter what the circumstances. The Coast Guard had trained him for this. He had even saved several people's lives. He knew how to do this. He had made countless dives in the service, and even more since then for the county Sheriff's department. It was his job to go down there and get those kids. They would all be dead, but he knew that an hour ago when he got the call. It was his job, so he steeled himself and lit his torch. He gave Hariss the "ready " signal, and noticed that the State Patrolman's eyes were wide and frightened. He was scared too, but he nodded. Together they began the long descent into darkness.

They noticed the increase in pressure immediately. It was an abnormal increase, as if the water here was twice as heavy as it should be. There was a stifling, overpowering sensation in the water, almost a vibration, that made the divers' limbs tremble and their hearts race. It grew worse with each foot of descent, and after only twenty feet both men felt the need to stop and rest.

Now the water had a slick, oily feel to it. There were strange currents and invisible movements within it, and several times Howard felt something brush against his legs, but saw nothing. Once he could have sworn that something nipped and pulled at one of his flippers, but when he looked , whatever it had been was gone.

The stench had gotten worse. The pungent odor of rotting death innumerable was mingled with the scorching bitterness of a palpable, hungry evil that had been and always will be. The scent seemed to creep in through the respirator, through the plugs, through the wet suit itself, and soak into his body. It made Howard feel unclean inside, as if he had swallowed something unimaginably fowl and repugnant which would live and grow within him from now on. He looked at Hariss, saw his eyes wide and white behind the goggles, and knew he felt the same thing. Howard saw that the patrolman was breathing much too fast so he patted him on the arm and signaled him to slow down. After a moment Bill nodded. His breathing slowly returned to normal.

They continued their descent. Oddly enough the going became easier now. It was as if they had passed through a barrier and whatever had been repelling them before was now attracting them, pulling them down. They sank quickly. Thirty feet. Forty feet. Fifty feet. Then they saw the false bottom of the lake, the plateau.

They found what they were looking for almost immediately.

The yellow bus was lying on its side only a few feet from the pit. In the dim glow of the torches Howard could only see a small part of the pit closest to him, but he knew from prior experience that it formed roughly a circle in the center of Bottomless Lake. It was as if, after the lake had been formed, some monstrous force had taken up a Herculean drill press and bored out the center until there was nothing but an endless hole. Or maybe an incredibly dense meteor had sliced through the earth's crust and created a hole that went down to...where? He remembered when, several years ago, two scientists from the state university had come here with a lot of electronic equipment to measure the depth of the lake. They took a boat out one morning, played with their sonar instruments a while, then left in a hurry. They said their equipment was faulty. But they never returned. Howard wondered again if their machines had really been out of order. Or if they had perhaps discovered something that made them want to be somewhere else. How deep was the pit? What was down there--besides the bones of Arnold? Howard Phillips felt his flesh crawl in anticipation of the terrible.

Holding their torches ahead of them, the two divers swam out to where the bus lay on the edge of the precipice. As they came closer they slowed, and when they were over it they stopped and treaded water. They could only stare. For long moments Howard forgot to breathe. He heard but did not notice the constant rush of bubbles coming from his companion.

The top of the bus had been ripped open as if it had been made of tin foil. All the windows were broken out. The sides were bent and mangled and in some places just gone. Were it not yellow, it would be hard to identify what kind of vehicle this had been.

The interior was empty save for a few shards of twisted metal which might once have been seats.

Suddenly, a shattering bellow ripped through the depths of Bottomless Lake. It came from the pit. Like the thunder of all the gods in the universe arising and howling for vengeance. Slowly, it waned and changed into a continuous clamoring screeching that was expelled noxiously from ten thousand unhuman throats.

The surface of the earth had not heard the voice from the pit since before the giant lizards plodded through the warm slime of a young land. Both divers turned to the pit and stared into the darkness. Then they saw it! Something was moving, rising from the pit. Even dimly, it was a sight no sane mind could behold for long.

Hariss, who was closest to the pit, uttered something like a death gurgle and dropped his torch in panic. Howard grabbed Bill's arm and launched himself upward, pulling the patrolman along with him. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of motion in the water. Something hit Hariss with a force that nearly sent both men tumbling. He went limp instantly. Howard ignored it, tightened his grip on his partner, and kept pushing upwards.

The water was churning and seething all around him now. A rushing roar fought with the endless screeching to fill the deep with horror. Fowl black shapes snapped at him out of the cloud of bubbles, then slithered over him,trailing a phosphorescent slime from their jowls. Something bit one of his flippers, tugged for a moment, then darted away with half its prize. A fanged little horror screeched in his face. It struck at him, missed his face, but buried itself in his shoulder. There it hung for a moment, sucking his blood in great slurping gulps. Howard flailed at it with his torch.

After what seemed an eternity the thing released him, and with a strong kick he was suddenly in the clear. The thing did not seem to be following him up any longer. But it didn't matter. Howard Phillips had been tainted for life. He wanted to scream, or cry like a baby, or shout in rage. How many twisted, slimy nightmare hydra heads had he seen? Hundreds? Thousands? Oh, God! Some of them were still dripping gore that was recognizable as having been human once. If only he had gone blind the instant before he saw that chaos of churning, writhing, screeching, fanged nightmares so that he might never know that such things really existed!

There was nothing but pain now. He knew that he was going up much too fast, but that didn't matter. His arms and legs felt like dead weight, far too heavy to move without great effort. But still he struggled upwards.

The water seemed red now. One shoulder was numb from holding onto Bill and dragging him along, the other was burning as if acid had been injected into his wound. His blood was on fire. Huge colored spots danced before his eyes. But nothing mattered except getting to the surface.

At last his head broke the water. He would have cried if he had the strength. He half spit, half yanked the respirator out of his mouth and gasped the cool night air. His whole body cried out in pain. He hurt deep inside. He vaguely remembered Hariss and pulled him to the surface.

Now a blinding light shone on them. It came from somewhere towards the shore. From the same direction came the sound of an boat engine gurgling to life. Howard laughed breathlessly, drunkenly. "We made it," he coughed. "Hey, we made it." He shook Hariss by the shoulders, then turned him around to see if he was alright.

It was a mistake. For Bill Hariss, who last month had become the proud father of a baby girl, and who had gone down into the deep dark to do his duty despite overwhelming fear, had no face left.

Howard Phillips was still screaming when strong hands pulled him from the water.

***

A week after he was released from Saint Elizabeth Hospital, Howard Phillips was committed to the State Center for the Criminally Insane. He died there less than six months later.

There are now large signs posted every few hundred yards along the shores of Bottomless Lake. The signs read: LAKE CLOSED! No Boating. No Fishing. No Swimming. By order of the Newt County Sheriff.

Beneath one of these signs, someone who had seen only a dim vision of the truth had written: "Here Arnold Phillips sleeps with the Devil. May God have mercy on our souls."

***

There is a lake in distant Zan,

Beyond the wonted haunts of man,

Where broods alone in hideous state

A spirit dead and desolate;

A spirit ancient and unholy,

Heavy with fearsome melancholy,

Which from the waters dull and dense

Draws vapours curst with pestilence.

Around the banks, a mire of clay,

Sprawl things offensive in decay,

And curious birds that reach that shore

Are seen by mortals nevermore.

(The opening lines of "The Nightmare Lake" by H.P. Lovecraft)

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