FICTION BY ANDREW WESTERMANN

Andrew Westermann lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter and two too many cats. His fiction explores the edges of consciousness and identity, imagining the strange futures we build when we forget what we used to be. Find his short fiction in magazines such as The Horror Zine, with more stories on the horizon.

SUBMERSION
by Andrew Westermann

There is a certain sickness that overtakes you in the deep night, at the moment you wake from a nightmare, and for half a second, the false still feels more real than the true. Most people forget it. But the world you're reborn into is alien…and the terror you felt—still feel—is whole. Solid.

Her name was Yunji. I hadn’t known her long, but I’ll never forget the way her light went out when the wraith came.

We were on a scuba dive; Yunji’s last dive. I watched her die.

Millions of phantom fireflies scattered as the wraith passed through her, all that remained of her right arm and shoulder. Red-gold lightning arced through the murky water. The sickness hit full force—a crippling repulsion. I tore off my diving mask and vomited into the water around my head. By the time I could see again, she was gone. A gentle current swept a swirl of luminescent particles through an empty, half-collapsed bookshelf. They twirled a hypnotic dance as they cooled—now no more than meaningless dust in the dark water—and settled on the submerged shelf. The silence of the sunken library enveloped us, thick as the cloud of darkness that obscured the walls of that ancient tomb.

Chaos erupted around me. The other divers fled in search of the distant surface. But the cold depths seemed to press down on me, paralyzing me while I watched my oncoming death. The body of the approaching wraith had no definite shape, the contours of its form constantly changing, shifting, creeping forward without seeming to move. The water began to bubble where it met the wraith, boiling into steam lit from the inside by flickering red-gold light. It reached out one thin, arm-like limb, drawing nearer.

A great, sweeping rush of ocean swelled behind me and I drifted toward the radiant creature, still powerless to move under its gaze.

Then something in my mind broke. The nauseating repulsion I had felt upon seeing Yunji come apart drained from me, replaced by a rising sense of calm. I should run, I thought…but I didn’t.Months of training, preparing to meet the unknown, were suddenly all forgotten. Strangely, I grew content and lost myself in the wraith’s eyes as they opened: two pure white orbs. Slits at first, but they widened as they drew nearer.

Wider. Brighter. Until nothing remained but blazing white eyes.

*****

The day began in beauty; the sun was shining brightly and the ocean was calm despite the depth of the water. The few small waves in the water sparkled like diamonds. I felt this would be an easy dive. Everyone in the diving community knew that buildings were submerged when the levee broke a century ago.

It was a “virgin” ruin; at least, no one I talked to had explored it yet.

Soon I would plunge into the drowned city. But for now, the sun warmed my skin. I straightened the straps on my shoulders with shaking hands. The others were still gearing up throughout the boat. I forced myself to sit down and practice some semblance of patience. That was not easy. A spray of cold water dappled my face and my heart sang.

Renard looked up at me as he hefted his tank. Laughing, he said, “Relax, we’ll be down there all day. Why don’t you double-check Moko’s kit so we can get going?”

Yunji and Isira helped each other stand up, both girls breaking into laughter as their eyes met behind thick masks.  It was their first dive, too. Yunji caught me looking and smiled, her eyes brilliant in the light.

Moko stood apart. His father never returned from a dive last year, and I saw that memory in his downcast eyes as he pretended to check the shift-lens device he grasped—a thick metal frame enclosing scratched glass, wired to a battery on his back. No one knew why it worked, only that it could detect places where old, useful things lay. Over his shoulder the barren coast sat flat and featureless, like the exposed skull of what had died beneath the waves.

The great ancient mysteries of the Old World lay just below, thinly veiled beneath inviting waters…forgotten memories waiting to be rediscovered.

The nightmarish wraiths would not scare us off. We weren’t amateurs who were afraid of our own shadows. Besides, at this point I was not sure if the wraiths were real or myths.

And so I plunged backwards over the gunwale, falling away from the cloudless sky and crashing into the waves with a smile on my face and a heart full of purpose. The other three followed one by one, bursting through the surface and drifting downward below the boat to group up. Above, the surface shimmered in thousands of fractured flashes, like a lighthouse through a shattered glass.

Below, only empty ocean—so clear it seemed endless. Only a few minute particles drifted by; the seas were almost as dead as the lifeless land on which we lived.

Shafts of light breached the surface and reached many meters down, but eventually surrendered to the unquenchable dark below. Up here the water felt warm and the surface was comfortably close. But for the first time, dread crept up from that bottomless, secretive void falling away below my feet. Looking down into that abyss, I shuddered at the inescapable sense that something lay just beyond the light, watching me.

Nonsense, I thought. There are no such things as wraiths.

I nervously glanced at Renard, perhaps looking to siphon a measure of bravery from him, and dumbly signed, it’s deep. His palm wagged in the universal sign for laughter. He motioned for us all to start our descent.

It would take only seventeen minutes to drop down to the city. I made some encouraging words at Moko but I wasn’t sure he saw. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the emptiness below us. I, on the other hand, locked my eyes on the underside of the waves retreating above us, anchoring myself to the familiar as we took this leap into the unknown.

My curiosity began to smolder, giving ground to fear. I deliberately slowed my breathing as I was taught in the months leading up to this day, and thought heavily, I do this for the survival of my people. Even then I knew it sounded foolish, despite my dutiful intent.

We dropped faster and the darkness slid up, closing us off from the surface.

Soon the currents stilled and we entered what we called ‘the veil’—the depths where signs of ancient human life began: crumbled towns and cities, great bridges and roads tunneling in and out of the silt…sometimes impossibly tall towers reaching up like giant fingers grasping for the surface. The open tomb of the Old World was near.

Just when the steady pressure in my ears built beyond my ability (and comfort) to ignore, Renard motioned us to stop and equilibrate. All four of us clicked our flashlights on. I aimed mine between my feet. The darkness was absolute, but my light revealed more particles in the water, kicked up from the ocean floor or drifting along on currents, giving shape to the world. The resulting dust cloud hanging in the water around us felt sinister, like a bend in the path that may hide predators.

My heart jerked—I saw movement to my right. I could tell Isira screamed inside her mask from the rush of bubbles expelled. We all focused on the movement, merging our light beams into one, and saw our stalkers; a school of medium-sized fish flitted by fifty feet from us, not risking a closer encounter, granting me only a glimpse of dark, ovoid shapes. Yunji and I shared a relieved smile.

A deep echoing explosion rocked the world around me, so sudden my breath caught in my throat. It instantly reminded me of standing on a beach, listening to thunder clash over the distant sea. I actually felt a vibration in the water on my skin. A rush of anxiety stormed through my limbs, my breath rapid.

What was that...? I looked around frantically expecting some massive sea monster charging toward me. Seeing no imminent demise, I looked back at Renard. The other three first-time seekers did the same, but Renard was already making a calm, calm gesture even as the terrifying sound died, fading back into the drowning warble of the ocean.

It took me one frightening moment to realize what it was: the veil drum. I had been told about the strange phenomenon, but I was never warned how intense it would be. No one knew what caused it—only that it was unnatural…it sometimes boomed steadily at regular intervals for minutes at a time, a slow deafening drum beat again and again and again.

What could possibly make that sound? I sat lost in thought long enough for the rest of my team to descend ten feet below me. Moko waved his arm like a madman, finally breaking my trance. I followed the others deeper into the veil, undoubtedly (in my mind, anyway) toward the source of the drum.

*****

I hung over the others for several minutes as we sank into the great empty dark. A strange dizziness came over me as I looked down on Yunji, her hair tied in a loose knot, trailing above her like the tail of a comet traversing the void. I felt like I floated motionless in empty space, while the ocean rushed past me to fall into the sky. The disorientation startled me, but I did my best to shake it off—confusion could be fatal down here.

Just then our lights revealed a shape looming up from below, rushing out of the dark to meet us: a broken tower. It was my first sight of the sunken city…This is it! My head was packed with dreams of digging up some lost device that could restore our world.

The spire was torn open, exposing decaying innards blanketed in slimy green algae, but everything else inside had been swept away by time. The tower’s exterior walls stretched down into dark oblivion. We aimed our heads toward the hidden ocean floor and kicked, following the walls to their roots.

The sunken ruins below emerged from the dark. I marveled at these crumbling hulks that had withstood centuries at the bottom of the ocean—a feat far beyond our level of engineering.

Isira waved at us until we all looked, then signed: Wraiths around?

Renard frowned. Don’t talk about the wraiths, he expertly signed back. We won’t see any here. They’re not real.

Gesturing sharply, Moko signed back. Wraiths are real, and they are here. Somewhere.

With an apologetic nod, Renard turned away. The conversation had done nothing to ease Isira; she swept her flashlight anxiously across the ruins.

The corpse of a gigantic metal winged machine rested in pieces between two buildings. Awestruck, we swam past with a watchful Renard (on his third dive through the city) leading us and began our search for food and tools to drag back to land.

Some time later we had accrued a pitiful haul of remnants—some intact packages of food (questionably edible) and a few useful parts—and were on our way back across the city. Each of us dragged a mesh bag holding our findings behind us, except Moko, who held the shift-lens device. He had been panning it around as we swam, and now he stopped suddenly.

Peering through the shift-lens, Moko looked off to our left. Hanging there motionless above the rooftops with open water on all sides, the hair on my arms started to straighten. My attention was pulled back to Moko and Renard who were having a discussion using hand signs. Yunji and Isira swam toward them, and I followed.

Getting late, Moko signed. Not worth it.

Renard nodded.

I swam up and signed a question. Yunji and Isira were having their own enthusiastic side conversation.

Shift-lens picked up a reading, Renard signed. He pointed east. That way.

Impulsive desires flooded me. I craved the chance to do something meaningful…and, I’m ashamed to say, to make a name for myself.

I signed in quick, sloppy gestures, We can’t go up now. This is our chance. Find something useful.

Next to me, Yunji nodded emphatically. Agree. Have time. I could tell she was as excited as I was.

Moko turned eastward and hoisted the shift-lens. I crowded in behind him to look, and saw a fuzzy crimson halo illuminating the glass.

How far? Isira signed, but there was no way to tell.

No one said anything for a time. Our eyes met behind the clear masks one by one, and I grinned in triumph…despite the splinter of fear solidly burrowed in me.

The shift-lens led us to a sprawling four-story building made up of three long wings around a huge central dome. From above it looked like a great broken wheel rising out of the ocean floor. The roof of the dome had suffered damage and now tilted downward. The others scoured the rooftops with their lights, but I hurried down to a small breach in the top of the nearest wing. Halfway there, I hesitated.

My light exposed the gray pitted stone but did not penetrate the breach. Only darkness lay inside, stark against illuminated ocean debris. I stared down into one opening of a slumbering, many-mouthed monster. My body screamed to flee, but the unknown still had me by the throat.

I was already on the way inside when the other three caught up.

A thick dullness hung in the water inside the small room. For some reason my light seemed to lose effectiveness, or else some translucent uniform dust blackened the space around me, slightly obscuring the walls and objects throughout.

Wavering fronds of plant life rose from chairs and tables, dense green algae coated what must have once been a rug. Some smaller items—I recognized ancient vases, a stringed instrument snapped in half—lay heaped in the corner as if hoarded there by some ocean-dwelling maniac. Dozens of books were scattered about the floor. Some lay open on their backs, pages fluttering in the currents. The pages were blank mush dissolving under the destructive force of the ocean, the ink meaningless dark spots.

The room brightened further as the others squeezed through, their lights swinging from frayed nerves.

Nothing, I signed. I paused for a moment, looking over my shoulder. A singular door led out of this room, pointing toward the central building.

Moko looked through the shift-lens. That way. He pointed at the door. I could see unshielded fear in his eyes, and perhaps the memory of his father’s demise.

I led us on.

The door led to a long hallway, though again my light seemed to die off fifteen feet in front of me, well before its effective limit. Broken statues littered the floor, and I had to pick my way over several large ones—even pressing the air tank on my back against the ceiling at one point to squeeze through a gap, made tighter by rubble fallen from above. I paused after emerging from the other side and turned to help the others.

Yunji plunged through without so much as touching an edge, and Isira followed her neatly. Renard was the largest of us and became lodged at the exit, his air tank pinning him between bricks. He glanced at me, his nervous amusement thinly veiling the panic rising beneath. He began to flail, trying to escape his restraint. Planting my finned feet on the rubble, I grabbed his wrist and tugged. Beside me, the girls watched with visible anxiety.

Finally, he shot forward. The metal of his tank screeched where stone scratched it. Not fun, he signed. I laughed, relieved, and began examining his air tank for punctures.

A thunderous crash startled me. Veil drum was my first thought, but then Yunji started screaming so loudly inside her mask I could hear it through the water.

Moko was pinned, thrashing in pain and terror. While we were all distracted, he had tried to fit through and toppled a chunk of statue—a massive, featureless human head—which had settled on his back, crushing his air tank. The white stone face held him there, lidless eyes drilling into his neck. One arm was unhindered, and he reached out toward us in pointless, deluded hope.

There was only one outcome, and it was immediately obvious to us all. Renard grasped Moko’s hand. Isira wept. I only waited there dumbly, thinking of Moko’s mother—someone would have to tell her she was all alone now. And his father... had the wraith come to him in a similar place as this? I looked over my shoulder, down the darkened hall. Regret exploded in me like a bomb.

Moko died quickly.

Renard let fall his hand and surveyed the collapsed rubble. Then he stripped the shift-lens device from our friend’s corpse.

I was the last to leave Moko. A glance at my air gauge showed nineteen percent—past the point where we should have started our ascent. I turned away from his body, but the image of the blank, staring face that killed him followed me down the hall.

Boom. The veil drum again.

Boom.

I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from this nightmare as possible.

The girls ahead jumped every time the drum came, covering their ears.

Renard pulled his air gauge around and, reading it close to his face, picked up the pace. Move! he signed frantically.

I gently pushed on Isira’s back to urge her forward, not wanting to frighten her more. We hurried down the hall.

Boom. Boom. The veil drum came quicker now, the tempo rising with every blow. The sound was monstrous, every beat shaking the water, and I was terrified. As the drum quickened and we raced to swim down the hall, the blows grew stronger and began to run over each other.

Renard brought up the shift-lens, trying to hide its glass from us—but I saw it for a short moment as he aimed it down our path. The crimson halo devoured the entire lens.

A shape manifested from the darkness, a door frame at the end of the hall. As I pulled myself through, I got the sense of a large empty space on the other side.

Again the veil drum pounded. Faster.

Yunji flew into the depths of the room, while the rest of us hesitated to look around. We floated at the top of a massive library. The slant in the building I had seen from outside was more pronounced in here—ten feet from the door, a great crack ran through the stone ceiling from end to end, across our path. Beyond it, the entire structure bent downward by thirty degrees, leaning into darkness on the other side. The thundering veil drum shook the building, shaking loose a cascade of dirt and stone from the rend in the ceiling with each beat.

My breath caught as I stared down into the vast, broken chamber. Long winding walkways with smooth stone guardrails crisscrossed over four floors, through wide atriums. Bookshelves ten feet tall lined every floor in maze-like patterns, casting deep shadows behind our lights. My eye jumped between human figures looming in the aisles, but they were only weathered statues standing guard for centuries in their abandoned tomb.

By then Yunji was well ahead of us. From this far, each time the veil drum beat her body seemed to ripple in the vibrating water. The downward slant of the library had forced her to swim deeper, hunting for an exit or a breach in the ceiling.

Isira swam after her.

Renard grabbed my arm and we rushed forward in the girls’ wakes.

I struggled not to cover my ears against the thundering veil drum and instead fight through the water with everything I had.

Gasping for breath, I slammed into Renard and bounced back. When I steadied myself, I looked beyond him to find the reason for his abrupt stop. I saw Yunji and Isira both floating stationary, staring toward the ground four stories below. Renard’s gaze was locked in the same direction. I looked that way.

We have to go topside, I signed. We’re almost out of air. All of us.

Boom.

There, beneath the corpse of the Old World, entombed in this crumbling library, lay a jagged tear in the floor…in the earth beneath the floor.

Boom.

Every drum beat breathed light into the fissure. Red-gold light.

Boom. Another beat.

Boom. The tempo rose.

Boom.

…Silence.

Two heartbeats passed. The fissure darkened again as the final drum beat died. No one moved.

An explosion of light filled the library, blinding us all half from shock. When I opened my eyes again, my heart dropped and my final ounce of hope evaporated, ghosting up to the surface without me.

Hundreds of wraiths! They were real. Why hadn’t I believed? And now it was too late. Forms of red-gold lightning illuminated the library in a hellish fire.

The glare was jarring after hours spent in darkness, completely drowning out our flashlights, and all I could do was stare with wide eyes. Panic raced through me. My heart about to burst in my chest. I had heard many stories about the wraiths, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could have prepared me for that moment. My hands shook.

The otherworldly creatures sat motionless all around us.

Waiting.

Lining walkways and stairwells, floating atop bookcases.

Watching.

The silence was a tourniquet holding me in place. I couldn't move for fear of triggering the onslaught waiting to devour me.

Finally, Renard broke the spell. He kicked toward Isira and Yunji, dropping the shift-lens device which sank like a brick. I don’t know what he hoped to accomplish, for there were no visible exits unguarded by wraiths, but he only made it five feet.

The light winked out instantly. We were plunged into darkness again. I fumbled for my forgotten flashlight, aimed it toward the others. Yunji swam back toward Renard and me with terror-driven haste. Behind her, Isira still floated motionless, looking stupefied.

With another hurried look at my air gauge—eleven percent—I rushed to regroup with the others. Somehow we had to surface right now. Would the wraiths allow us to do so?

Yunji was suddenly swallowed by a reddish light. Her face was twisted in horror and she stopped. I waited a few feet from her, Renard at my side, before realizing what lit her face in that awful glow. A wraith floated between us, its flickering light encompassing Yunji, barring her path.

She made one desperate sign at us—Help—and the wraith moved closer. For a split second, I saw a new emotion that I couldn’t quite place brighten her face inside that flickering light: relief? Wonder?

Yunji disintegrated. Gently, silently, she scattered into glowing sparks that slowly drifted down to join the ruined bookshelves. I tore off my mask to vomit.

Renard and Isira flew in opposite directions frantically searching for an exit. But I felt a strange pressure on me, inside me. Weighing me to the spot as the flickering phantom centered on me, its shapeless form unreadable, its intent an infinite mystery.

Terror became tranquility. A warm calmness slid over me like a blanket, smothering my repulsion, my fear, drawing me into complacency. To either side, Renard and Isira burst into light, obliterated by appearing wraiths.

The being of light before me birthed white opal eyes. They blazed with beautiful light and undeniable life.

What had we hoped to find? A panacea to the disease of time that crushed us? A testimony to what we once were? Proof of what we could be again?

None of that exists down here—only a remembrance of what has been forgotten.

What happened next is as much a mystery to me as the demise of the Old World. Above, people would stagger on toward their ending, drifting on waves of time.

But my new people waited down below. In the fissure between worlds.

I made a decision. There was nothing waiting for me on land, and everything waited in the other world. I swam down to join the others.