Takaashigani Page 4

  “Why?” Clive asked.

  “Because you know about the monster,” Shiro said. “You know about the crab.” Clive looked shocked. Shiro was the last person he thought would have spoken up at this time. He thought that Shiro was from out of town like himself. He sure acted as if he was. Shiro had that who-gives-a-fuck attitude wherever he went in town, throwing his money around, having fun and sneering at every local he came across. Clive realized that he actually never knew where Shiro really lived and he guessed that it was possible that he was a local, but damn if it wasn’t a surprise.

  “You live here?” he said, already knowing the answer, but he wanted Shiro to spill whatever was on his chest.

  “Born and raised,” Shiro said. “My father owns the local fishery. The local economy depends on him and he delivers.”

  “Keeping everyone in poverty,” Susan said.

  “The fuck he does,” Shiro said, incensed. “Without my father, there would be no town.”

  “No slaves to the crab,” Susan said.

  “Shut up and let him talk,” Clive said. “Or this time I’m really going to actually hit you.” Susan shut up.

  “Nobody lives in poverty unless they don’t feel like working,” Shiro said. “Like this whore here and her dying whore friend in the water. You can have a good job, or just hang around waiting for the weekend for some dick to ride into town and feed you for some play. That’s your choice. Not my problem. You can’t tell me that everyone lives in poverty. Everyone has a decent car. Most people have a boat or another water toy. Everyone who wants a fishing boat can easily get on a team or get one from the fishery to use. Nobody goes hungry who doesn’t want to.”

  “I want to leave,” Susan said. “It’s not about being hungry or a whore or whatever. I don’t have anything to live for. I have no choice.”

  “What the hell is she talking about?” Clive said.

  “She’s talking about the Japanese spider crab,” Shiro said. “They breed here on the coast of California and only in this small area. My father discovered them and makes most of his money off of them.”

  “I didn’t see any of those on shore or being stocked ever,” Clive said.

  “You won’t,” Shiro said. “We don’t want anyone else to know that they’re here. All the other fishing we do is really just icing over a big hunk of spider crab cake. The spider crab pods are picked up at night and run through by a select crew. They make a lot more than anyone else and they keep their mouths shut. We are talking about a huge take. Tons of money. Japanese spider crabs are a delicacy and we don’t have to pay to shit them from the fucking orient.”

  “Why are they here through?” Clive asked.

  “Not sure,” Shiro said, “but it has something to do with that beast.” Shiro gestured to the giant. “That huge monster calls them and they come here to spawn. There are so many that we could fish twenty four hours straight and never pull a weak pod. My father likes his money and so does the town. We don’t want anyone fucking with our business. This place would be overrun in a month and there go all our profits. Try and leave town with this knowledge and you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  “And if someone tries to leave?” Clive asked.

  “Crab food,” Shiro said. Claire’s moans turned into screams as a crab climbed up on to the giant crab’s claw and tore out her right eye. It stared at her absently as it brought the mushy orb to its mandibles and began to feed.

  Chapter - 11

  “Where the fuck do you think the diver is?” Billy Bartelle was getting pissed. Nothing about the arching blue sky dotted with intermittent clouds the size of a man’s fist had a calming effect on him. He wasn’t one to spend too much time on the water. He had no sea legs to speak of. Vertigo and sea sickness he had in spades. There was nothing he wanted more than to get this search over with so that he could get back and put his legs on dry land like God had intended.

  “Relax,” Marty Bartelle said. “We’ve got about a mile before we get to where the GPS says he is. Just sit tight and try not to throw up.” Billy grumbled and sat down on the back bench seat next to Duke. Duke was sitting easily. His hands folded in his lap and staring off into the sky.

  “You don’t get sick?” Billy asked.

  “No,” Duke said. “Never have. Do you think that the sea monster will be around where we find the diver?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said, leaning over the side of the boat and vomiting a chunky pink stream of breakfast and stomach acid. Duke put his hand up to his nose. It was a rough time to be downwind. Billy sat back limply on the bench seat. His skin was pale with a slight tinge of green. “I know what I saw in the video. I know it’s down there and I think that guy was either looking for it or he found it. There’s no other reason that the guy would want to get himself hurt for screwing us over.”

  “Science isn’t enough?”

  “Fuck science,” Billy said. “Everything’s about money.”

  “I can see the boat up ahead,” Mary said. “Looks pretty stripped to me.” Marty turned the steering wheel to the right and cut down on the throttle. He pulled up to the boat slow. The teal hull of the diver’s research boat had been ill kempt. The paint was flecked in several areas. The whole ship could have used a real thorough wash. It looked empty. Duke thought that Marty was right about the boat looking stripped. It looked like every piece that wasn’t necessary to float or drive had been removed and sold. It gave the boat the appearance of being a hollow plastic kid’s bathtub toy. Billy swung over the teal boat’s railing as soon as their boat was close enough. Marty and Duke secured the boats together with ropes. Billy was moving along the ship with fury as he overturned everything that was left aboard, cursing and rampaging the whole time. Duke took a cue from Marty and waited to board when Billy had calmed down a bit.

  “Everything’s gone,” Billy said. “Just some food, a radio, and paperwork is all that’s left. Anything else he must have taken down with him on the dive.”

  “Well then all we have to do is wait for him,” Marty said.

  “He’s been gone a long time,” Duke said. “There’s no way he had that much oxygen down there with him.”

  “You think he’s hurt?” Marty asked.

  “I don’t know. Do you have any other way of tracking him? Did you put a bug on his suit?”

  “No,” Billy said. “But he did leave us an easy way to follow him.” He walked over to the far side of the ship and tugged at the oxygen line. “We just have to reel him in.” Marty went to the oxygen line and pulled. The line wouldn’t give. Billy looked over the winch mechanism and frowned.

  “The line is off this thing,” Billy said.

  “What do you mean?” Duke asked.

  “We can’t just bring him up,” Billy said. “It’s messed up. I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “That means he’s probably dead down there,” Marty said. “Like Duke said, he’s been down there too long. We could cut the line and take it up on our boat and follow it to where he’s at. It’ll be easier to bring up if we’re right over him.”

  “Yeah,” Duke said, “and slice him up on the propeller.”

  “Who gives a shit,” Billy said. “Let’s get this line cut and get a move on. He might not be dead. There’s a shit ton of underground caves around here. He might be trapped up under one of them, waiting to be rescued.” Billy smiled. “After what I’m going to do to him, he’s going to wish he died down there.”

  The men got to work.

  Chapter - 12

  The men wasted no time in cutting the line and affixing it to a tie down on their own boat. Marty drove slowly, allowing Duke to pull in the line a foot at a time and twisting it in a large circle on the small deck in front of the back bench seat. Billy scanned the waters ahead to make sure the diver didn’t surface and get cut down by their boat. The line was coming in easy now, but there was a slight enough pull on the immersed end to tell them that they were coming up on something. Duke looked behind him and saw the
y had gone about a hundred yards from the teal ship. He didn’t care what the Bartelle brothers did to the diver; he needed that ship brought back to shore so he could bring it across state and get his money. He wouldn’t let Billy or Marty go back without it.

  “Careful, Marty,” Billy said. “We’re coming up on some rocks.”

  “I see them,” Marty said. “We’re slow enough that clipping one shouldn’t mess us up too bad. Just watch in case one of them will gut the boat from underwater. We’ve got to be getting close to that diver now. His cable can’t be much longer.” Duke tugged on the line but it wouldn’t come up further into the boat. He tapped Billy on the shoulder and pointed down to the stuck cable.

  “Shut it off,” Billy said. Marty did and the boat drifted in a slight circle around the cable. Duke tied the cable off looked at the brothers to see what they thought to do next. There wasn’t dive equipment on board and none of them were the skin diving types. Duke lit a cigar.

  “Just like I thought,” Billy said. “All these rocks here, this is where a lot of people come and do some diving, tourists and stuff. These are where those caves I was talking about are. You go up under these rocks and you’ve got these open pockets. Some of them I heard are pretty big. The only problem is a couple people have died down there from getting lost in the maze of rocks and running out of air, or tearing their gear on the cave walls. Shit like that.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Marty asked. The men couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. None of them wanted to wait it out, especially if the diver was a corpse stuck under some underwater cave.

  “Suppose you just want to get out of here,” Billy said to Duke.

  “I have what I’m looking for,” Duke said. “I do want to get going, but it would have taken me a lot longer to find the boat without your help. I could stay a bit and help you find the diver.”

  “We’ve been followed,” Marty said, pointing to a small fishing boat that was coming towards them, chugging along with a motor that kicked in an out.

  “Relax. It’s Fred,” Billy said. It was indeed the sheriff, who looked the worse for wear. His clothes were soaked from the waist down. He had taken the care to remove his belt and gun and put it up to keep it dry. He cursed softly as he cranked the dying engine hard, forcing it back to life and making the last fifty feet to pull up alongside the Bartelle’s boat.

  “Looks like you need to commandeer a better vessel next time,” Billy said, chortling thickly.

  “Just let me come aboard,” Fred said. Marty and Duke pulled him up and tied off his boat to theirs. Fred looked around at all the guns aboard. “I’m sure you have permits for all of these,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Are you expecting to have to fight off an army out here?”

  “We just like to be prepared,” Marty said.

  “Looks like you found your diver,” Fred said.

  “What’s left of him,” Billy said. “He’s most likely dead.”

  “Yeah,” Fred agreed. “The boat I have may be shit, but I have a damn good diver’s suit in it. If you guys can keep watch from up here, I’ll go down and take a look. Won’t be the first body I’ve picked up out of those caves.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Marty asked.

  “Well, for starters, you don’t shoot me and throw me overboard. It doesn’t look like you wanted company for whatever you had planned out here,” Fred laughed and nobody joined him. “I’ve heard I have a very poor sense of humor.”

  “You do,” Billy said.

  “Look, I know that the feds are going to be here soon enough and that you guys are looking to split town. If you have anything to settle before you go, I wish you good fortune and all speed. I don’t want federal agents here anymore than you do. It’s not that I have anything to hide. I just don’t like dealing with them. They’re a pain in the ass. Since you’ve been here, you’ve been a pain in the ass. I want you to be long gone before they get here. I want to see you gone and then send them right along after you when they get here. The town will be quiet. Just how I like it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Billy said. “You want to be paid off.”

  “Nope,” Fred said. “I’ve been policing this little town for twenty years. I plan on doing it for twenty more and retiring with a nice little pension. Keep the peace and keep the vote.”

  “He’s okay,” Marty reassured Billy. “He’s left us pretty much alone since we got here. Let’s just let him get in the water, find the guy and get out of here.”

  “Alright,” Billy relented. Duke went over the side of the boat and into Fred’s fishing boat. He got the suit and handed it up a piece at a time.

  Chapter - 13

  Fred jumped off the side of the boat and into the water. Even in his wetsuit, the coldness of the ocean chilled his bones. His thoughts immediately returned to his warm office and the cup of coffee he left on his desk. Fred was a man for comfort and this was anything but. He was honest about wanting the Bartelle brothers gone, along with that odd-looking repo man who turned up in town that morning. Anyone who took up with those pawn shop guys must be into something illegal. Fred would be happy to see the back of both of them. If he had to wrest up a dead diver to move them on, so be it. Fred kept one hand on the line that would lead him to the diver, the other held a large light which he held directly in front of him to light up the devouring darkness of the ocean deep. Fred took his time on the descent, making a deliberate way to the rocks ahead. He didn’t like going into the caves, which he only did on police business. The scuba gear and training were a part of the job. The caves were tricky. It was all too easy to get hurt or even dead, but Fred was comforted by the easy to follow line that did head straight for the rocks and caves below. Fred knew all about the open pockets within the caves and held out a small amount of hope that the diver was actually alive and trapped in one of those.

  Fred followed the line thirty feet deep to a wide black cave entrance. Wide was putting it lightly. Fred was impressed beyond measure with the large open maw of the hole, which was so big that a semi-truck could pass through without a scratch. The rock surrounding the entrance was rough, scarred and covered with living organisms; colorful and waving gently along with the rippling water. Fred went into the cave slowly, flashing his light in every direction, not wanting to be frightened by anything large and irritable that might be making the cave its home. The cave forked into a large chasm. The smaller avenue went nearly vertically down and Fred was thankful that the diver’s cord went the larger way. He wasn’t scared of much, but going down into the closed-in darkness wasn’t something he would have enjoyed to say the least. The sharks he was afraid of weren’t present, but soon enough he saw life in the cave. They moved gracefully in the water. At first in twos and threes, but then the number increased so dramatically that Fred didn’t have time to think of turning around before he was immersed in a teeming throng of Japanese spider crabs.

  Fred wasn’t worried about the creatures harming him. They looked menacing, but he knew they were completely harmless and scavenged their way through life. Their minute claws didn’t look like they could do much damage. It was their size that usually bothered people. He wasn’t even that surprised to see them since he knew about the town’s quiet annual windfall harvest they made of the crustaceans. He was paid a nice sum of money to let things go as they did, which he took gladly. He didn’t think it was harming anyone any that this secret trade was going on, and it didn’t cost him a red cent to keep quiet. He was sure that blabbing about the crabs would bring a bunch of scientists to study their migration habits, wildlife protection agencies and maybe even members of the Japanese government who would want their piece of the pie or to mess the operation up. Fred wasn’t about that kind of hassle at all. Why the crabs were here didn’t matter to him in the slightest, but considering where this line was headed, he was pretty certain that the diver was interested the matter. Maybe the guy was alive after all.

  Fred let go of the line and sunk a couple f
eet to the center of the chasm. He could follow the diver’s line by sight now and the crabs were so thick that they covered every square inch of the wall space. He wasn’t afraid of the creatures, but he didn’t think he was beyond panicking if they began crawling all over him. The light was interesting. The further he swam in the cave, the lighter it was becoming and he could swear that he was moving upward, but he couldn’t be sure as his place in space became ambiguous in the twisting cave tunnels; up could just as easily be down. The light was a certainty. Fred shut off his flashlight and hooked it to a ring on his belt. He would need both arms for swimming since he wasn’t using the diver’s line to pull him anymore. The enormous chasm turned sharply vertical and Fred drifted easily up the shaft toward the light.

  That was when he saw the tip of the giant crab claw.

  Looming before him, looking at first like an ancient tree trunk, cut down by loggers from a century ago, the end of the crab leg spiked into the side of the cave. It made him take a hard left which almost brought him into contact with the genuflecting wall of spider crabs. He hovered in place in the water, gazing upward as the other legs came into view. The crab was so large that Fred couldn’t take in the whole creature at once. The shadows and light, playing off the myriad of moving creatures around the bulk of the giant, couldn’t be deciphered correctly from behind his mask. The giant crab didn’t seem to even realize that he was there, but something else was dropping down the cave tunnel towards him. A shadow, both thin and thick, changing shape with every moment was coming at him, drifting and slowing down like a jellyfish floats; keen on direction but without rational thought.

  Fred was trapped in place. Judging by the level of descent, he wouldn’t be able to turn fast enough to swim back out of the cave in time to get away from the falling bulk. He didn’t want to swim upwards any further because of the giant crab before him. Impossible though the creature was, Fred didn’t have time to marvel. Anything that large would surely think on him as food. Fred didn’t want to be food. All these problems of what he should do stunned him and he did nothing. He let the shadow fall to him until it bumped into him. He breathed hard, sending a large stream of bubbles upward as he pushed the thing away. It was white and grey with torn shreds of matter attached to it. The thing blocked the light and Fred had a hard time pushing it away. His left arm flailed upward and caught onto a part of it and pulled. A mass of blonde hair covered his mask like descending locks of an angel. Then the girl’s dead face, her eyes missing from their sockets, her skin torn off in several small strips revealing the stringy face of muscles underneath. For Fred, the shadow came to life in an instant. The head was connected to a skeleton, with bits of flesh and muscle still clinging to bone.