Shadows of shadows passing. Shadows on the flickering white limestone of a cave’s wall.

You were there, weren’t you? Can’t you remember?

[Ray La Montagne \\ I Still Care For You]

C1.8

Two of the police department’s rescue divers stood in knee deep water just a few meters from the steep stone steps closest to the St Francis Yacht Club’s main parking lot, waiting for Callahan and Bullitt – and their instructor – to suit up. They looked tired, almost bored, and probably because they knew the afternoon was going to turn into yet another one of Homicide’s wild goose chases.

And by now there had been hundreds of sightings of the glistening black ‘sea monster’ – ever since word of the two gruesome homicides had hit the front page of the San Francisco Examiner, with dozens more fresh sightings coming in almost every day since publication. There were now overloaded excursion boats taking madras-clad tourists on Monster Hunts around Fisherman’s Wharf, and The National Enquirer had posted ‘rewards’ for anyone getting a clear photograph of the beast. After almost two weeks not a single verified sighting had been officially recorded, and the two police divers were looking forward to another unpleasant afternoon in the chilly water.

Bullitt was still fiddling with his regulator, fixing it to his 80 pound tank incorrectly before he remembered the correct way. Callahan looked on and shook his head, then lugged his gear down to the water’s edge. Harry thought the five-eighths neoprene wetsuit felt stiff as a board as he waded into waist deep water, and once his tank and vest were secured he knelt a little and pulled his fins on, only then walking into deeper water. Once Bullitt waded out to join Callahan, they walked over to their instructor and talked over the dive plan one more time.

“Okay,” Dave Mackay said, “we’re going to surface swim on snorkels out to the end of the breakwater. That’s about 700 yards but we’re at slack tide so it shouldn’t be too hard…”

“What exactly are we looking for,” Dan O’Malley, the lead police diver asked.

“You read the reports,” Callahan grumbled. “A glowing green ball – or a fucking sea monster,” he added, after spitting out some raw sea water.

The group slipped their masks over their faces and cleared their snorkels then turned and, side by side, swam out into the marina’s lone fairway and on towards the tip of the long stone breakwater. 

And no one saw a thing.

The group stopped and gathered around Mackay once they arrived at the point. “Okay, the bottom drops off rapidly from here, so let’s head down to the bottom and we’ll use 80 degrees as our primary compass heading.”

“How far we going?” O’Malley asked.

“It’s about 700 yards to the East Marina. We’ll surface there and compare tank pressures; hopefully we’ll have enough to check out the warehouse pilings.”

“Oh, crap,” Bullitt’s eyes rolled as he mumbled, “that sounds just fuckin’ great.”

“Are there sharks out here?” Callahan asked.

O’Malley just shook his head at that one, and he had to look away.

“Oh, not too many,” Mackay said, but every now and then Great Whites and Blues come in on the tide.”

Bullitt looked down and growled “What the fuckin’ hell am I doing out here,” before he put his regulator in his mouth and followed Callahan and Mackay down into the gloomy gray-black water. At eight feet they passed through the first gentle thermocline and the water temperature dropped suddenly from 62 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit; and twenty feet the temp dropped another four degrees and Frank remembered to piss in his wetsuit. The warmth from his urine passed along to the torso, warming him for a few minutes, but after a minute passed his pee had been pushed completely out of his wetsuit as he swam along, and the chilly water surrounded him again. At thirty feet it was so dark they needed flashlights, and visibility couldn’t have been more than twenty feet in any direction, but the water was colder still.

A motorboat buzzed by overhead, and Bullitt was sure he could make out the deep thrumming sound of a large diesel motor, the type that powered huge, ocean going freighters. 

At 52 feet they came to the mud and sand bottom and, after double checking compass headings the group swam off to the east – side-by-side again but now about ten feet apart.

Bullitt saw something metallic ahead and aimed his flashlight at a discarded can of Pennzoil motor oil and he almost laughed out loud…because why wouldn’t a Pennzoil Monster need quart every now and then…

…but then that feeling returned…

‘This is wrong. You shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Turn back.’

The words kept repeating and repeating. Then the words changed, became more emphatic.

“You should turn back – now. You don’t belong here.”

But these words didn’t form and come from inside his mind. He heard them.

Bullitt stopped and looked off to his left – into deeper water, and then he realized that Harry and the others were gathered next to him.

Mackay picked up his dive slate and scribbled out a note: “Did you hear that?”

Bullitt nodded and fingered the ‘Okay’ sign by bringing his thumb and index finger together; Callahan and the police divers did too. Bullitt pointed at his ears, then off into the darkness to their north. His meaning was clear: ‘The voice is over there.’

Mackay reluctantly nodded agreement; the two police divers looked unsure of themselves but nodded. Mackay picked up his pressure gauge and then had everyone hold up their gauge so he could verify readings, then the group took off, swimming along the bottom into deeper, darker, and much colder water to their north.

The same thrumming sound grew deeper and Bullitt sensed it was coming nearer, and when he looked up he saw the huge silhouette of an outbound freighter heading for the Golden Gate, its single cavitating screw leaving a raucous swishing sound as it passed – and he also noted the arcing silhouette of a large shark following along behind the freighter, perhaps hoping for some scraps of food from the ship’s galley.

He checked his depth gauge again and found they were approaching 70 feet, and his tank pressure was down to fifteen hundred pounds – and he knew at this depth the pressure would start to fall rapidly. He wished he could pee again because the layer of water in his wetsuit was getting cooler the deeper they went, but he shook it off and kicked onward…

…until just ahead Frank saw a faint cobalt blue glow…

Mackay and O’Malley stopped, then Callahan and the other diver did as well.

But Bullitt did not.

He kept swimming towards the glow so Callahan followed, then the other three fell in behind Callahan.

The source of the glow wasn’t far away now, though Bullitt was the first to see what made the water glow.

From about fifty feet away he could just make out the top half of a large blue sphere, and as he swam closer he saw that the structure was half buried in the muddy bottom.

From thirty feet away he could tell that the sphere was completely translucent.

When he swam closer he saw movement inside the sphere. Closer still and he could make out individual figures moving about, almost as if they too were floating in a liquid medium.

He felt someone by his side and turned to see Harry’s wide-eyed astonishment – then he felt Mackay’s growing trepidation…

…and then one of the creatures inside the sphere noticed the divers…

…it swam – or flew – or glided – across to the curved wall of the sphere…

…and Callahan could see it’s pale blue body was birdlike, almost completely covered in feathers, and it’s face was owl-like, with massive amber eyes staring into his own…

…then several more of the creatures came to the edge of the orb; some were blue-feathered, others green, but only one was pinkish-feathered – and this pink one, androgynously female, pushed aside the others as ‘she’ came to the wall of the sphere and looked at Bullitt for a moment – before her eyes shifted and settled on Callahan’s…

…then she turned and motioned at one of the others…

…and in the next instant the group was standing in the knee deep waters adjacent to the yacht club…

…and Callahan could see Devlin and Jimmy, the boy who had responded to Devlin’s screams, and the first to be murdered by the creature; then Callahan realized that Devlin was screaming at him as he walked out of the water with Frank and the other divers…

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he thought. ‘What is she screaming at?’

And when she realized her mistake she stood watching the divers walk out of the black water, and Jimmy walked back to the parking lot to wait for his ride home and instinctively Callahan and Bullitt knew the impossible had happened. This was the scene as it had been almost a month before, only now there had been a different outcome.

“It was wrong,” Bullitt whispered, suddenly remembering what the pink creature had said to him. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”

“What are you talking about?” Callahan said, now staring at the girl up on the sidewalk.

“Harry? What are we doing out here?”

“I have no idea,” Callahan sighed. He took off his gear and stopped once when he tried to remember what day it was, then he walked up to the girl under the street light because he couldn’t stop staring at her.

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[Neil Young \\ Old Man]