Chapter 3
Fighting Back
Kelly screamed into her regulator, blowing out anguished bubbles around her as she trod water. She screamed again, unable to stop herself, the sight of Darren floating away from the shark in a plume of red all too much. Either her kicking or the noise she made transmitted itself to the animal and it turned
in her direction. Pain and fear gripped her heart – like it was stuck in a vice – almost ready to stop. Suddenly Crackers was very obviously gone, her love, the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with had been snatched away.
Her breathing was rapid and shallow, eyes wide, blowing off bubbles in a cloud around her. Frenzied with blood and curious as to the source of the disturbance in the water, the shark was coming – and maybe she should let it. Perhaps she should let this devil from the sea take her, take her away to be with Darren. She was facing insurmountable odds to escape the monster – she was in its environment after all – it’s back yard – what chance did she have?
But what about everyone at home. They would need to know. They would want her to fight, to go back to them. Darren would want that – would expect that of her. She couldn’t give up. She had to at least try.
As Kelly made her decision her breathing slowed. She was still gulping air and it wouldn’t last but she thought she’d have enough to get back to the surface even without checking her gauge, which would be meaningless to her.
Not today, you don’t, she thought, and kicked for the relative safety of the reef, her legs driving powerfully as the shark changed course to intercept. There was a large outcropping of rock, covered in corals and anemones, and she managed to duck behind that just as the shark passed a few feet overhead, scrambling around the buttress, crawling along the sea bed, stirring up debris, shells and detritus, leaving a cloud of disturbed sand behind her. Daring to look up, around her, the shark was nowhere to be seen, but she knew it would be back. The fucker wasn’t gonna let her get away like that. The sea bed rose up to meet the rock and coral of the reef ahead and she saw several channels through the rock, like coral canyons, probably narrow enough for her to fit between but maybe not the shark. Maybe she could wait in one of those for a while until it got bored and went away? Closely following the rise of the sea bed she swam in an upward direction until she rounded the end of the first canyon, gaining height over the lip of rock before turning in, seeing a narrow valley that dropped deep down in the centre to what looked like a series of caves at the bottom. Then the shark hit her from above, ramming against her yellow oxygen cylinder, teeth scraping against the cold, hard metal to get a purchase and sliding off to tear at the mesh
pouch in which it sat in her stab jacket. The force of the beast propelled Kelly forward, shoving her further down into the rocky valley. It shook its head violently and tore free of the mesh, ripping it so the cylinder was hanging out, and throwing Kelly hard against the sharp rock of the wall.
To avoid getting pinned to the bottom, regardless of how it might expose her abdomen, she spun around to face her tormentor. The thing was massive – the width of an armchair, but weighing as much as a car. She was swimming down, deeper into the cavern, her cylinder bouncing along the slope of the sand bed. It flicked its tail in pursuit but became jammed between the rock walls, the huge girth stopping further advance, jaws stopping inches from her belly, the point of the snout butting into her chest.
Kelly froze – eye to eye with Darren’s killer. This must be the end, she thought, trapped in this watery grave. Then she remembered the knife, strapped to her calf. Stretching her arm down her side her fingers desperately sought out the weapon, but the wriggling behemoth above pinned her to the ocean floor. She couldn’t reach. Pushing her hands against the grey snout, trying to give herself some space to move, some leverage, anything, she brought her knee upwards, pressing into the underside of the head of the beast. If she couldn’t reach down to the knife, maybe she could bring it within reach. Shoving hard against its nose again, she bent her knee, bringing her leg up behind her. Once more reaching down, past her knee, her face mask pressed tightly against the soulless eye of the shark as it lunged for her, battering her backwards and forwards, she walked her fingers down to the clip holding the knife in its sheath, pulling once, twice and finally releasing the restraint on the third attempt. Violently shaking its head sideways to inch closer to its prey, the shark caught her arm as she pulled the knife free, the razor-sharp teeth at the side of its maw gashing her flesh, sending more blood into the water, creating renewed impetus for the beast. It had managed to drive itself inches further into the canyon, mouth snapping at her just inches away. Gripping the knife firmly with her fingers, Kelly brought it round to stab at the side of the head, but the blade didn’t even penetrate the rough skin. Screaming into her regulator again, yelling at it, shouting her defiance, she stabbed the knife once and twice more, but to no avail, as good a blade as it was it was no match for shark skin. Like two people brawling outside a pub, they were locked in an embrace on the floor, each trying to land a blow on the other. Drawing the knife back again, wondering if she could stab at the mouth, the great head turned to the side and they made eye contact once more. And Kelly had her target. Raising her arm for one more strike, she tensed, mustering every muscle fibre to generate the force she needed and thrust the blade down with all her anger and fear. The knife hit the centre of the cold, black eye which exploded with blood and gunk. The shark immediately withdrew, shaking violently from left to right, this time to extricate itself from the rock. It pulled free and turned 180 degrees like a car reversing at speed in a heist movie that spins around and accelerates away into the distance.
Crying and shouting and still waving the knife at anything that should dare come her way, no matter what it was, Kelly began to realise that the shark was gone. She checked her air – it looked like she had about an eighth of a tank left – but had no idea how long that gave her. She knew she needed to get to the surface as quickly as possible, to get away from this place and away from the monster. But she also knew that she needed to make decompression stops – but when and for how long was a mystery to her.
Tightening her jacket, she added a small burst of air into the buoyancy chamber and rose steadily out of the rocky trench, half expecting a toothy welcoming committee. Keeping an eye on her depth gauge she ascended eight metres, then purged some air so she stopped. She was surrounded by the deep blue. Stillness and noiseless. Maintaining her upright position in the water by slow gentle kicks with her flippers. Calm and serene. It was like she was in a flotation chamber where nothing was real. And yet just below her the nightmare had occurred and who knew if the shark would come back? Every second she waited felt like an hour, felt like she could feel the jaws sink into her leg from beneath. After three minutes she could wait no longer – playing an invisible game of chicken with a killer shark was not for her. More air hissed into the jacket and she ascended once again, the cut on her arm sending more blood into the water, the only remnant of her passing.
Sunbeams shot down all around her once again, glittering and changing with the ripples at the surface. The deep blue became turquoise and she felt the temperature increase, as if the sun was already on her back. Ascending in a steady stream of bubbles she felt invisible to all around her, looking up to the roof of the watery world just a few metres above.
Chapter 4
The Safety of the Surface
The sun shone down on the calm water, diamonds glistening off the ripples, as if nothing else had changed and Kelly broke through the surface like a cork. She took in the beauty of the sky, the criss- crossed white vapour trails where aircraft had passed overhead. Back above the water, the idyllic
perfection made her forget about the monster below, like it was all a dream, now she’d switched back to surface mode rationality would prevail. She forgot about her urgency, forgot about the need to get to the boat, forgot about the teeth, the blood and the horror, forgot about her wound, a fragrant red beacon to the carnivore somewhere below in the deep, because now, away from those depths, surely nothing bad could happen? Throwing her head back and dropping the regulator from her mouth, Kelly took the biggest, sweetest breath she’d taken since her first. The surface and beneath were two diametrically opposed worlds – one life-giving and one totally alien, with creatures that we could barely understand. One could sustain life, the other could not. The only predators up here were two-legged, but beneath they were many. The sun gave life and warmth but, in the depths, there was none. Surely, she was safe now? She’d avoided the monster – fought it off, been lucky and made her escape, whilst the shark searched for her on the reef. She focused on the dome of blue above, the warmth on her face and the dive boat eighty yards away, blocking out everything else. She needed to get back on board, assess her wounds and tell someone what had happened before she could think or grieve about Darren. She inflated her jacket a little more to keep her buoyant and so she knew she was safe, now that her mouthpiece was out.
‘Hey,’ she called to the boat and waved an arm. ‘Hey!’ she insisted, and Eddie turned on the deck, waving in return, approaching the console to fire up the engine and bring the boat around. Within a few moments she would be climbing out of the water and the nightmare would be over. She blocked out any thoughts of the heartache to come in the ensuing days. Reaching out a tentative hand she made a weak crawl stroke, nervous of putting anything back in the water in case it was immediately bitten off. When she realised there was no longer anything to fear, she stroked out more confidently, wanting to get to the boat as soon as she could. She was on the surface planet now, and nothing bad could happen to her, and she even began to hum Just Keep Swimming to herself as she kicked hard, the blood from her arm like a vapour trail from an aircraft. She didn’t care because she was safe and every stroke distanced her further from the nightmare below, as the grey shape of the monster shark loomed up from beneath.
The End
Author’s Note
When someone asks you to write a story about the summer, someone like me isn’t going to write about ice creams, the sand between your toes and volcano-hot chips eaten with a two-pronged wooden fork from a polystyrene tray. It was nice to give a nod to Llangrannog, however, where my
wife and her family spent every summer growing up, and still spend time there today. No, a summer holiday story for me was always going to be about sharks.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love sharks. I think they are amazing, wonderful creatures, but it is their cold, clinical edge that is the most interest part of their psyche. In fiction, it is almost exclusively the great white shark that is the protagonist, and yet both tiger and bull sharks are also classed as ‘man eaters’ with the bull shark responsible for probably more attacks on humans than the other two. Tiger sharks can grow to a similar size as great whites, and there is a suggestion that there might be some very big specimens out there – in excess of twenty feet – but perhaps they are not studied as much as the white shark is. And as Matt Hooper says to Chief Brody in Jaws, the tiger shark is ‘like a garbage can, it will eat anything.’
So, I had my summer story and my ‘villain’, and then Kelly came along as my strong female lead – I needed my heroine. All of my books have featured strong female characters, or even no strong male characters at all. This isn’t something that is deliberate or pre-meditated, but I do like the trend – women seem to carry or tell the story of my novels.
Beneath is a short story about a big shark, but it’s really about fear and grief. I hope you liked it!
Mark Brownless has published three novels – The Hand of an Angel, The Shadow Man and Witch, along with several short stories. The idea for Beneath came to him when thinking about how to write a nice happy summer read…
Mark divides his time between ‘the day job’ and working on future writing projects, which seem to be featuring an increasing amount of music and audio recordings to support them. He lives with his wife and kids, along with an ever-growing menagerie of fish and mammals in Carmarthenshire, West Wales.
By Mark Brownless
Visit: www.markbrownlessauthor.com
Facebook: @markbrownlessauthor
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