Candle in the Attic Window Part 30

The exercise does have a purpose, though. It's an appetizer for the main course, preparation for the real dives into black water. Those trips are another game, completely. There, you stand on a sled, a slim metal frame with a tank of air connected to two balloons, bright yellow for visibility in low-light conditions, wrapped shut. The sled moves along a thick wire, of the kind that's used in sailing, and plunges into the deep to a predetermined depth. The sled uses its own gravity and your weight to fall into the blue. All you need to do is hang on, equalize the raging pressure in your ears by using a little of your own breath from a plastic bottle tied to your leg, tolerate the increasing cold and darkness, and refrain from screaming. After less than two minutes, the sled reaches the bottom of the line. Then you just need to be lucid enough to pull the strap that opens the tank and the main balloon, wait until the balloon has inflated and hang on hard while the sled rushes you up to the air and the light.

Some people think using a sled is cheating compared with swimming down yourself and then back up again, which requires considerably more energy and strength. But with the sled and a brief decompression at ten meters on the way up, you can go deeper than 200 meters and up again in one breath. For you, the purest challenge is not the swimming or the climbing, but withstanding the depth and the darkness and the l.u.s.t for oxygen as long as possible. To go as deeply as humanly possible. The fight against the pressure and the water is an addiction to you and your over-developed diving reflex.

It's for real, now, a new-record attempt at what is called "No Limits Diving". No limits. The sled takes you down much faster than your body alone can. After just a minute, you're down deeper than most divers go with air on their backs, the sled shrieking along the wire. You start in bright daylight in tropical waters and end up in a temperate dusk, where the water is cold enough to bite your hands and stiffen your cheeks. Together with the weight of the water that bears mercilessly down on you, it's only just tolerable, even for the brief time it lasts. As you plummet down, the deep makes your heart slow and the blood to retreat from your arms and legs. Your organs squeeze up against your spine and your lungs fill with blood plasma to avoid damage.

Beyond the whirr of the sled as it falls on the wire, the deep is always quiet. It's so quiet it sometimes feels like the building pressure in your ears is caused by the silence and not just the weight of the water. Riding the sled down is a little like lying at the bottom of the pool, only now you need to clench one hand around a handle, the other around the plastic bottle, and wriggle your lower jaw back and forth so your ears pop to equalize the brutal pressure. The cold makes certain you don't go fully into that silent breath-hold s.p.a.ce of the bottom of the pool. You reach the edges of it but not further. That's why you can hold your breath for more than eleven minutes in a warm and brightly lit pool, but only for seven, or so, on the sled. There is also another thing. An ancient instinct refuses to let you close your eyes in the deep. Some divers fear sharks or eels or jellyfish while they're down. But there are scuba divers at the top part of the wire and they look out for dangerous animals. If they see one, the compet.i.tion is delayed until the animal has pa.s.sed.

No, your fear is much older and more primitive than that. It's the true fear of the deep. You have dived in many places of the world, from Arctic to tropical waters and everything in between. But everywhere, the deep looks and feels the same. It's devouringly dark, jealously cold and crushingly heavy. It doesn't need to strike or bite or poison you, like other dangerous things do. No, the deep simply uses its own weight to pacify you. It sits on you until you give up and leave, or stop flailing your arms and legs. Fortunately, the deep is mindless and doesn't know you're there. You regard that as a blessing. Still, you always keep a knife in a sheath on your thigh. Other divers laugh at you, ask if you plan to catch some fish while you're down there, and wonder if you're going to bring a harpoon at the same time? You say it's for cutting yourself free if you get tangled in the wire or the balloons, but you know better. It's for the ancient fear of the deep.

The sled and you reach the end of the wire. You're doing fine, not feeling too cold or anoxic. No fainting in sight, the spiders stay away from your eyes, the trip up should be fine. You pull the cord on the tank. Then it is quiet for a few seconds as the air streams into the balloon and the yellow plastic starts to fill up. This is the worst part of the journey. There is nothing to do but take in the view of the hollow gloom around you and the gaping dark below you. On the way down, you fight against the cold current of descent and the increasing pressure. On the way up, you enjoy the view of the flood of bubbles from the balloon and the increasing light as you ascend. Then the depth releases its hold on you, and you are born again into the air and the sun. But that's more than two hundred and ten meters away in the vertical, a long climb with a merciless angle of ninety degrees. You are literally in too deep. If the main and the back-up balloon don't inflate, you haven't got enough air or power in your body to climb back up the pressure well. Then your only hope is the scuba divers watching you further up.

Finally, the balloon plumps up and the sled starts whirring in reverse. You hold on to the thin handles and rise along the wire, relieved to have escaped the deep once again. But this afternoon, against what is possible, against what is natural, the deep senses you, and acts.

Something terribly fast rushes out of the darkness below, blurs past you and curls around the inflated balloon. The current of the sudden motion slams against your body, almost takes you away from the sled. Whatever it is swats the ocean's weight like a fly. You can only imagine the power needed to move at that speed at this depth.

What looks like a giant coil of maroon rope, as thick as your thigh, curls around the yellow plastic. Pale suction cups the size of your fist squeeze out of the red like jellyfish. They look soft and smooth, but you know they hide a circle of knife-like cartilage, nature's own v.a.g.i.n.a dentata. If those bowls kiss you, it's goodbye. Now you want to scream, but you can't. You can only stare in terror as the arm pulls at the balloon and shakes the sled, stopping your ascent to the light. The coils curl sinuously, almost sensuously, around the balloon, increasing their hold on it.

In the horribly slow thinking of the deep, you realize the arm wants to pull the entire sled into the abyss. You pull out your knife and start sawing at the neck of the balloon to release it. All movement is heavy and painful. Your muscles are not built to fight against the deep. Your heart is blasting and your lungs are on fire. You have no air left for the way up, but the only thing you can think about is getting the sled free.

The yellow plastic rips, releasing a torrent of tiny bubbles into the dusky water. The sled tilts back to the wire. You pull the cord for the backup-balloon. It fills quickly and, with the hold of the tentacle gone, the sled starts screaming up the cord. You hang on and feel the speed take you away; you're on your way up. But then something cold and ancient wraps itself around your leg and takes hold like a giant anaconda. You don't have to look to see what it is. You can feel the suction cups dig through your wetsuit and into your leg. The sled bounces and swings. You hold onto the handles as hard as you can and slowly, slowly bury your knife into the red flesh. You really want to scream, but you can't. The diving reflex is too strong. Your throat and epiglottis have closed shut. All you can see are the black spiders scuttling quickly over your eyes.

Some say screaming is embarra.s.sing and shameful, but under the right circ.u.mstances, or perhaps the wrong circ.u.mstances, screaming is actually liberating. Because there are times and places when you would really like to scream, when you would absolutely love to scream, and feel a great and pressing need to do it, but you can't.

One of those places is in a coma after terror. If you're lucky, you're still breathing on your own, and can gasp and hyperventilate and heave your breast as much as you like, while whatever it is that makes you feel like screaming plays out in your vegetative mind.

If you're unlucky, however, the centres in your brain responsible for breathing have shut down, been shocked into silence. So, while your mind is screaming loudly, the machine that's pushing air into your inert lungs and body, thinks breathing steadily and calmly takes precedence over self-expression, and keeps moving in an entirely too-slow pace. Then you can't scream, however much you want to. You can only stare in horror at whatever is coming at you, stare paralyzed and helpless, and let it happen to you, again and again. But finally, the breathing centers in your brain come back online, you ignore the slow breathing of the machine that's kept you alive for three weeks, cut yourself free from the net of tubes and wires and needles that are tangling you, and scream and scream! And it is very, very liberating.

Berit Ellingsen is a Norwegian literary and speculative fiction author. She is also a science journalist and has a dark past as a game, film and music reviewer. Her fiction has or will appear in various online literary journals and in print anthologies, most recently in The Subterranean Literary Journal, OverClock Zine and Zouch Magazine. Berit admits to pining for the fjords when abroad. Her debut novel, The Empty City, is inspired by the philosophy of nonduality.

Nightmare.

By Wenona Napolitano.

Darkness gripped me like a ferocious lion,

ripping and shredding apart helpless prey.

Reaching out, I begged you to stay.

But you left and my soul started crying.

My fears slowly took me over.

Nightmares set in, taking over sweet dreams.

My heart stops when I wake and drown in screams,

Lonely without a comforting lover.

Once, I drank in the dreams and dreamed the wine

that flowed over satiny cherubs' wings.

I could hear my guardian angels sing.

Sweet voices soared to eternity's time.

Now I can no longer feel my own soul.

I just hear the wind blowing in my mind.

My sweet seraphim are no longer kind.

Angry devils tear me, leaving a hole.

With trembling hands, I drink the poisoned wine

That will forever stop bad dreams in time.

Wenona Napolitano is a freelance writer, poet and the author of The Everything Green Wedding Book. Her specialty areas include: natural health, green living, gardening, crafts, and wedding planning. When not writing, Wenona loves to spend time with her family, craft, garden, and go on treasure hunts at local antique stores, flea markets and yard sales. To relax, she loves nothing better than to curl up with a good book. Contact her at: [email protected]

Copyright Acknowledgments.

Amanda C. Davis, "A Fixer Upper". Copyright 2011 Amanda C. Davis.

Orrin Grey, "Seventh Picture". Copyright 2011 Orrin Grey.

Don D'Amma.s.sa "Housebound". Copyright 2011 Don D'Amma.s.sa.

Paul Jessup "Stone Dogs". First published in Gla.s.s Coffin Girls, 2009. Copyright 2009 Paul Jessup. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Bobby Cranestone, "The of City Melted Iron". Copyright 2011 Bobby Cranestone.

Ryan Harvey, "The Shredded Tapestry". Copyright 2011 Ryan Harvey.

Colleen Anderson,"Obsessions". First published in Ancient Deaths, Grand Deaths & Past Lives and the 2001 World Fantasy Convention CD ROM anthology, both 2001. Copyright 2001 Colleen Anderson. Reprinted with permission from author.

Gina Flores, "Desideratum". Copyright 2011 Gina Flores.

James S. Dorr, "Victorians". First published in Gothic Ghosts, 1997. Copyright 1997 James S. Dorr. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Desmond Warzel, "New Archangel". First published in Shroud, 2009. Copyright 2009 Desmond Warzel. Reprinted with permission from the author.

E. Catherine Tobler, "The Snow Man". Copyright 2011 E. Catherine Tobler.

Alexis Brooks de Vita, "In His Arms in the Attic". Copyright 2011 Alexis Brooks de Vita.

Ann K. Schwader, "The Ba-Curse". Copyright 2011 Ann K. Schwader.

Nelly Geraldine Garcia Rosas, "Hitomi". Copyright 2011 Nelly Geraldine Garcia Rosas.