Notes Found Under Still Water

The Gulf felt warm against my skin even at dawn. I dropped backward off the dive platform and the water closed over me like it had been waiting. My tanks settled into place against my shoulders, and the familiar weight pulled me down through the green murk. Genny had already run the sonar line twice before I suited up. She said the readings kept jumping around like something was interfering, but she let me go anyway. We both needed the paycheck.

The sunken barge showed up on the second pass, half buried in silt and listing hard to starboard. I followed the line down, equalizing every few meters, watching the pressure gauge climb. At sixty feet the light thinned out to a dull gray, and the hull loomed ahead as a vast, black curve that swallowed what little illumination remained, distorting the green-gray water around it like a heavy weight pressing down on a sheet of silk. I worked my way along the deck, checking for salvage points, when the sonar in my earpiece started giving off static instead of pings.

I switched it off and kept moving. Something felt off about the bottom contour. The charts said flat sand and scattered wreckage, but my light picked up a limestone ridge that shouldn't have been there. It rose out of the silt like a broken rib, cracked and dark. I drifted closer and found a narrow fissure cutting straight through the rock. It looked artificial. Too straight. Too clean.

The opening was just wide enough for my tanks. I angled sideways and pushed through, scraping metal against stone. The current tugged at my fins, then vanished all at once. I floated into empty space and the pressure on my suit disappeared like someone had flipped a switch. My depth gauge read zero. The water was gone.

I landed on dry stone hard enough to knock the breath out of me. The chamber stretched out in both directions, vaulted and ribbed like the inside of something that had once been alive. Black silt covered the floor in thick patches, and pillars rose at odd angles that made my stomach turn if I looked at them too long. The air tasted metallic and carried the smell of wet paper left too long in the dark.

My regulator hissed as I pulled it from my mouth. The pressure membrane held the water back like a sheet of glass, shimmering where my light touched it. I checked my gauges again. Everything read normal except the depth, which refused to settle on any number. I clipped the regulator back in place and started forward, boots sinking into the silt.

The journals lay in a loose pile against one of the pillars. Leather covers dark with age, pages swollen and fused together in places. I knelt and brushed silt from the top book. The moment my glove touched the binding, cold shot up my arm and straight into my chest. For one second I stood at a carnival gate, small hands sticky with cotton candy, watching colored lights spin above a crowd that didn't include me. The memory felt wrong in every detail. I wasn't that person. I had never been that person.

I yanked my hand back and the image faded. My heart hammered against the inside of my chest so hard it hurt. I forced myself to breathe slow and steady through the regulator, counting the seconds between each inhale. The feeling passed, but the taste of spun sugar stayed on my tongue like it had soaked into my mask.

I pulled a mesh bag from my harness and started loading the journals one at a time. They weighed more than they should have, like the water had never fully left them. I worked fast, not wanting to touch them any longer than necessary. When the last book went into the bag I sealed it and slung it over my shoulder. The chamber felt smaller now. The pillars seemed to lean inward.

Getting back through the membrane took longer than it should have. The surface tension fought me, stretching around my body before finally letting go. I tumbled into cold water and the pressure returned all at once, crushing against my suit like a closing fist. I oriented myself and kicked for the surface, following the safety line Genny had dropped.

She was waiting on deck when I broke the surface. The sun sat higher than it should have, and the radio in her hand looked like she had been gripping it for hours. She grabbed my tanks the second I reached the ladder and hauled me up with both hands.

"Three hours," she said. Her voice came out flat. "You went down on a twenty minute tank and stayed under for three hours."

I sat on the bench and started stripping off my gear, my fingers thick and clumsy inside the neoprene. "The sonar was acting up. I found a cave."

"You don't stay down three hours on a twenty-minute tank, John." She stood over me, her shadow cutting off the morning sun.

"The pressure changed. It went away inside the cave." I unclipped my regulator, the metal cold against my bare hand.

She stared at me like I had started speaking another language. Water dripped from her hair onto the deck between us. She looked smaller than usual, shoulders tight under her coveralls.

"I found these," I said, and set the mesh bag down. The journals shifted inside like something alive.

Genny didn't move to open it. She kept her hands on her hips, watching my face instead. "You look like you saw something down there."

"Just books."

"Bullshit."

The word hung between us for a second. I focused on unlatching my harness and setting the tanks upright against the rail. My legs felt unsteady on solid deck after the strange gravity of the chamber. Every movement took more effort than it should have.

"You need to get checked out. That kind of time underwater does things to people. You know that."

"I'm fine."

"Your eyes are wrong."

I rubbed at them with the heel of my hand. Salt stung the corners. "It's just the mask seal."

She didn't answer right away. The boat rocked beneath us, gentle and familiar, nothing like the chamber floor. I could still feel the dry stone under my boots even though I stood on wet fiberglass. The sensation made my stomach roll.

"We should head in." She turned back to the console, her shoulders rigid under her coveralls. "Get those things looked at before they fall apart."

"They're sealed up pretty tight."

"Doesn't matter. They're from down there. They don't belong up here."

I nodded and started coiling the safety line. My hands moved on their own while my mind kept circling back to the carnival lights and the small hands that weren't mine. The memory sat in my head like a splinter working deeper every time I tried to ignore it.

Genny took the wheel and pointed us toward the marina. The engine rumbled up through the deck and into my legs. I sat on the bench with the bag of journals between my feet, watching the water trail off the mesh. Every drop that fell left a dark stain on the fiberglass that took too long to dry.

The sun climbed higher. My skin dried in patches under the wetsuit. I kept tasting cotton candy even though I hadn't eaten anything sweet in days. The journals pressed against my ankle through the mesh, heavier than leather and paper had any right to be.

Genny glanced back once. Her expression stayed hard, but her hands gripped the wheel tighter than necessary. She didn't ask any more questions. That scared me more than the memory itself. She always asked questions when she was worried. The silence meant she had already decided something was wrong and didn't want to hear the answer.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the barge instead. The listing deck, the silt, the salvage points I had marked before the fissure caught my attention. Those details stayed solid. Everything else from the last three hours felt like it belonged to someone else entirely.

The marina appeared on the horizon, low buildings and white hulls catching the morning light. I stood up and shouldered the bag again. The journals shifted inside, pages sliding against each other with a sound like breathing. I told myself it was just the motion of the boat. I almost believed it.