Old School Pt. 01

Britt's short greying hair buffeted in the breeze as she sped southward through the Florida Keys, her Mets cap long blown off and lying somewhere on the blacktop of U. S. 1. Splurging the few extra bucks to rent a Mustang convertible at the MIA car rental counter was just the ticket for an amazing spring afternoon in the sun.

She could've programmed the location of her late mother's beach house into the GPS but already had a vague idea where it was located and opted for silence and the whirring sound of tires on the road.

Initially, Britt was disappointed that that her mom had bequeathed her the rundown, hurricane-battered property a good two-hour push southwest of Miami. It was the booby prize of the estate while Britt's elder sisters gleefully picked off the Manhattan condo and Long Island cottage. Phyll misread her love of scuba diving and assumed her little girl would love the cozy pile on the sand a few fin strokes from a lovely reef.

Wrong again, Mom.

Still, escaping New York's shitty weather for a few days in the sun wasn't a horrible prospect. She'd poke around the property, talk to the local real estate agent she'd already contacted, then chill out on the beach and tan her blindingly pale white skin before migrating back north.

Britt was a few weeks away from the big 5-0 and a year out from her divorce. She was also stalled in the middle of her third novel and her publisher, while sympathetic to the deaths of both her marriage and mom, was getting antsy for the first draft. Britt had no idea where the novel was headed any more than she had a notion on a direction for her life.

She was pretty sure, though, that she wouldn't find it in Aunt Maggie's squat on Magnolia Key. That's how the family still referred to the joint coming up on 40 years since the woman disappeared and was eventually pronounced dead in the absence of a body. There was a lengthy investigation by the state police and later Phyll hired an investigator to continuing hunting for the 29-year-old single woman, to no avail.

The logical first place to look was the turquoise blue expanse of sea at her doorstep. A marine biologist, Aunt Maggie would often dive solo just offshore, sometimes venturing into deeper waters on the wall offshore, but a thorough sweep by the police marine unit found no traces of her. Working out of the University of Miami, her intimate acquaintances all seemed to be subaquatic, with a dry social life and just the one human friend topside.

She was just gone -- and eventually the ownership of the home was passed to Phyllis Perry, Maggie's rumored college flame, who remained a bud after graduation. The inheritance was unexpected and Britt's family rarely used the premises. After Britt's father passed, Phyll hired a local realtor to rent it out to vacationers who did more damage than hurricanes Floyd, Andrew, Irene and Charley combined. On the few occasions Britt came her with her ex, they'd scuba dive, beachcomb and fuck in Maggie's four-poster. Decent memories of a love that disappeared as mysteriously as Maggie. One day it was just gone too.

Britt lifted her shades to check herself in the rear-view and spotted a couple more crow's feet as she squinted in the sun. Her face was a little fuller these days and she cursed herself for not bothering to try on her t-shirts before discovering in the airport washroom that her beach body had added a few dunes since she'd last worn them. She muttered under her breath and recalled a t-shirt emporium connected to the dive shop about half a mile from the house -- she'd have to restock her wardrobe tomorrow. Hardly her fault that Haagen Dazs was still cheaper than marriage counselling.

She pulled into the gravel driveway just as the sun began its early evening plunge into the gulf. Britt grabbed her duffel bag out of the trunk and braced for the worst as she strolled up the door but was delighted to find the agent had straightened things up, replaced a few shattered windowpanes and tidied the kitchen and living room. He even left a basket of fruit -- "Welcome Home!" the card said. She snorted and grabbed a banana. Dinner. Then she saw a few swigs left in a dusty and sticky bottle of tequila on the counter next to the rusty fridge. Dessert.

After polishing that off, Britt eventually poked into the three bedrooms and quickly decided to take the master with the four-poster, history be damned. The beating sun on the drive down and the early flight conspired to drain her energy and an early evening was decided. She shucked her clothes, grimaced as she caught her near-Rubenesque figure in the full-length mirror by the bed, and climbed in.

Sleep came quickly, followed by dreams --full-colour, detailed midnight movies of dreaded events and silly encounters with grade school teachers and Hollywood stars. It was typical nocturnal theatre until she found herself underwater, communing with dense schools of fish. She was naked, of course, and even asleep she worried about getting harpooned by a Japanese whaling ship. She recognized the grand coral heads as underwater landmarks about a hundred yards offshore in real life. Which this wasn't.

It was then that Britt heard the voice for the first time. Half-asleep the urgent whispers lifted Britt from her deep slumber and her eyes opened. "Who's there?" she grunted. She sat up and heard nothing. She looked over at the mirror and in the half light considered her full, sagging breasts. She lifted them then playfully released them like an avalanche unleashed on a mountain village, killing everyone in sight. "Jesus," she muttered.

Britt lowered her head and then the voices resumed. Now she could understand what they were telling her:

"Come to me! Come to me!"

Britt leapt out of bed, wondering if she were somehow still asleep and that this was some high-definition dream. She felt her body lock into automatic pilot and went along for the ride, her feet leading her into the kitchen and then to a cabinet in the corner. Her hands gripped the termite-pitted wood and tugged it away from the wall and there she found a small doorway, tall enough for a hunchback munchkin. Amazed at her unexplained perception, she leaned over and pushed the door open and saw a stone stairway descend into the foundation of the house. She flicked a cobwebbed light switch and was relieved when a ceiling bulb stuttered to life below.

At the bottom of the short stairway she found a second door and wondered if she'd become Alice in Wonderland. This door was stuck in its frame, swollen from salt air and apparent decades of disuse. She leaned into it with a shoulder until it gave way with a complaining creak. The basement yawned open before her--cooler than the house above, the air thick with the musk of old salt, mildew, and rusted tools.

Barefoot, she entered the room, every creak of the boards beneath her seeming too loud. She soon paused as she detected something strange in the air. Not just the scent of damp wood and the sea -- but something sharp, chemical, and oddly sweet.

Rubber.

Against a limestone wall under another dangling bulb that cast a cone of yellow light, stood a dented, olive green metal locker. Her hand found the latch before she realized she'd moved. It popped open with a heavy clunk.

Inside, the contents were arranged with care: a black wetsuit hanging from a hook, its arms slightly bent as if it recalled a body, long yellow fins stacked neatly below and, resting on the floor of the locker, an ancient set of steel scuba cylinders along with a Voit Swimaster double hose reg assembly. All in pristine condition.

But her eyes then turned to the yellow U. S. Divers oval mask, suspended from another hook at eye level.

The moment Britt saw it, her chest tightened. The scent of the old neoprene and rubber hit her full in the face. It was ancient, alive with memory. Without hesitation, she reached for the mask. Her fingers trembled. She drew it toward her face and, with a sudden, hungry motion, pressed it to her skin.

It sealed against her face with a hiss, snug and perfect. The rubber skirt clung to her cheeks and nose, cool and thrilling. Her pulse spiked.

She tore the mask away, gasping--not from fear, but from exhilaration. She could still smell the rubber in her nostrils, and it made her dizzy. She started hyperventilating, her nipples hardened, her pussy wet and pleading for attention.

Britt bolted from the low-ceilinged underground cell, up the stone stairs and then back to her bedroom. Once there she stopped in front of the mirror and shuddered as she watched herself press the oval mask to her face again and gingerly pull the straps over the back of her head.

She faced the mirror again and gasped to see a naked woman diver, this one young, slender and writhing before her, her long black hair flowing above her head, seemingly trapped and bubbling frantically. For reasons unknown to herself, Britt gently reached out to the glass and felt her hand enter the cool water and touch the smooth skin of the diver within.

Suddenly the wide-eyed woman diver pulled Britt into her dimension. Britt yelped bubbles as she was transported deep underwater and she felt the pressure in her ears and her now fogging mask push into her shocked face. Terrified, Britt tried to back away from the smaller and more muscular diver but soon surrendered to a lust she'd never experienced before.

The woman grasped Britt's head in her hands and sealed their lips together, first in a passionate kiss and then to express air into Britt's starving lungs, all the while grinding her hard and engorged clit against hers. Britt was soon groaning torrents of bubbles and before long needed another breath, and then another refill from the willing masked mermaid. "This has to be a dream," she thought as the diver sucked her tits, "a very wet one."

Her cunt ached and begged relief as the divers continued frotting furiously and soon her lungs craved relief again. To that point the woman seemed to know when she needed a hit before she craved it but now but now Britt needed to point to her trembling lips. The diver shook her head and soon her voice, the whisper that initially wakened Britt, returned to her head.

A chilling message. "We are drowning." And then she did.

Britt's eyes opened. It was morning and she was spread eagled across her bed, soaked with sweat, the mask lying beside her. She sat up and groaned, her chest sore and throat burning.

The last thing she could remember was sucking the ocean into her lungs and she began shivering from the memory. It seemed so real. She turned to the full-length mirror, no longer a portal to a parallel universe of undersea sapphic pleasure, and instead of the hard-bodied mermaid of her midnight rendezvous, she saw instead her puzzled face, stringy wet hair and glowing pale body. She felt like she'd dogpaddled all the way from Cuba.

"Fucking tequila on an empty stomach," she growled. A shower was in order. A cold one.

That was the only temperature on offer when she entered the stall a moment later. While lathering up, Britt remembered the dive locker in the cellar, a space she didn't recall from the sales brochure the real estate agent had prepared on the property. Was that a dream, too?

Afterwards she threw on another ill-fitting tee and some shorts and returned to the kitchen to find the cabinet still pulled away from the wall, and the tiny door still open a crack. Britt's heart began thumping again as she retraced her path down the stairs into the small room, back to the locker. Inside she found the vintage scuba gear and with clearer waking perception marvelled at the condition of the rubber suit and hoses and the gleam of steel in the equipment.

Britt gathered up the reg and tanks and recalled the dive shop a short distance from the beach house. She wanted to understand what she was looking at. A few minutes later she was standing at the counter of Down Under, which was still operated by the pair of aging Aussie brothers she'd met years before on an earlier vacation. The younger of the two, Bruce, a short wiry man with leathered skin and sun-bleached hair, whistled as he handled the breathing assembly.

"Sister, this is grouse!" he said enthusiastically as he lovingly traced the corrugated rubber of the hoses.

Britt frowned. Gross? "Come again?"

He laughed and remembered he was addressing a Yank. "I mean awesome. This is real old school kit, love. You've really taken good care of this. It must be 60, 70 years old. Immaculate, straight out of the box like."

Britt quickly explained she had nothing to do with the immaculate upkeep, that it had belonged to a late friend of her mom and that she'd found it carefully stored in a locker. When she uttered Maggie's name, she sensed the man tense up and saw his crinkled smile disappear like a cloud passing in front of the sun.

"You're telling me this was Maggie's?"

"You knew her?"

Bruce nodded. "Long, long time ago, love. Big mystery. Place was lousy with rozzers -- police. Lots of questions. You know, she used to dive with us sometimes, she'd bring some of her students down from Miami and go out with my big brother on group trips to the wrecks. So long ago, with gear probably like this."

Suddenly Britt felt a wave a dizziness and leaned into the counter just a bit so she wouldn't betray her weakness. Yet she continued to speak and became a fly on the wall to her own conversation with the divemaster.

"Is it diveworthy?" she heard herself say. "And can I get a fill?"

Bruce puffed his cheeks and gaped at the museum quality gear. "Really? You want to dive with this? Do you even know how?"

No, she did not. "Oh for sure. I'm familiar with the Trieste two stage reg and twin manifold valves. You'll have to do a VIP on the tanks and a hydrostat, but they're dry and I'm betting clean as a whistle inside. I'm pretty sure you'll find them up for it."

That was a mouthful, she thought, and had no idea which department in her brain that it hailed from. There was a noise in the room behind Bruce and he called over his shoulder. "Hey Ted, got a minute?"

A curtain parted and out stepped another old Aussie coot, this one taller, bearded and built like a bloke you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Britt felt fear prickle through her, none of it her own. Seemed like a harmless fellow but something within her was screaming to get away.

"Afternoon, love," he said before he beheld the heirlooms on the store counter, and it was his turn to whistle. "Hel-lo! Is this yours?"

"I've inherited it," Britt said tightly, temporarily resuming control.

"She says she wants to DIVE with it!" Bruce added incredulously.

Ted shook his head. "Oh, no no no no no, love! That would be sinful! Hey Bruce, we ought to mount it on the wall over there, yes? How much you looking for, miss?"

Inside, Britt pondered the proposition and wasn't averse to picking up a few bucks to help defray some of the costs of her visit. "Sorry, it's not for sale," she said instead, once again benched.

The old boys looked at each other and shrugged. A price was agreed to inspect the reg assembly and tanks, and she quickly turned on her heel and headed for the Mustang. Safely outside, and back in the car, Britt resumed motor control of her body and wondered out loud what the hell was up with that. She watched the men inside the shop in animated conversation while checking out the equipment but there was something about the big one that nearly paralyzed her.

"Who are you Ted?" she whispered to herself. "And why am I so fucking afraid of you?"

A couple days passed and things returned to semi-normal. Britt busied herself with cleaning up the joint, filled the fridge with food from the local grocer and lay on the beach, all the while thinking about the steamy night she arrived and the ghost diver who fucked and drowned her.

She wanted to put it down to booze-fueled hyperdream and wished she could channel some of that imagination into her languishing book. But that didn't explain her performance in the diveshop as the bride of Jacques Cousteau. She had no idea where that came from.

That damned haunted mask was tucked safely on the dresser and she didn't dare press it to her face. Not yet, anyway. Not until she understood what happened and what might still be happening to her.

On the morning of the third day she got a call from Bruce at the shop and she returned to pick up the equipment. She was relieved to find Ted absent from the shop and again declined an offer to sell the gear. Bruce pointed out the obvious -- pressure gauges weren't part of the deal back in the day and she'd have to depend on the "J" valve to let her know that her tanks were nearly dry.

Come again? she thought. "All part of the charm, Bruce," popped from her lips. "I understand everybody used the rule of 120 back then -- 120 minus max depth equals safe bottom time. Don't worry, I'll be staying shallow and I'll be cheating with this 21st century dive watch."

Bruce shrugged and rang up the sale. Britt returned the gear to the car and sat there for a moment. She had no idea why she went to the trouble, and expense, of having the equipment serviced when she fully intended to return it all to that basement locker.

She grinned to think of pushing the cabinet back into place and keeping the underground space a secret to be uncovered in another generation. She thought of the old Looney Tunes short of the construction worker who opens the cornerstone of a demolished building to discover a box containing a singing frog which only brings him misery.

Same deal here, she thought as she put the car in gear. Except instead of Michigan J. Frog leaping out to croon Hello My Baby, there'd be a dive mask, a disembodied voice and a terminal tryst in the deep. Looney, indeed.

And Britt did just that: she carefully restocked the locker with the breathing equipment as well as the mask, tempting as it was to keep it. She fingered the smooth rubber wetsuit and drew a sleeve to her face for a deep breath. Mmmmmm, she thought. Too fucking bad it was created for a woman six inches shorter and probably 50 pounds lighter than her. She sighed and sealed the locker, its contents fated to more darkness.

There was work left to do. The agent would be dropping by in the morning with paperwork to sign and there was a meeting with a lawyer in Marathon the following afternoon. She set to work on preparing the cottage for the photographer who would be joining the agent, and swept the sand out of the living room and front porch before plopping down on the old weather-beaten couch facing the water.

She tried not to think of the nonsense and bodily fluids that had been secreted on it over the years but the four-poster could tell tales too. None as erotic as hers, though.

Britt fell asleep and when she awoke it was night. She lifted her weary bones off the couch and heard creaking springs report below. It would have to go, she sighed, and she made a point of adding it to the list of "additions by subtraction" she would suggest to the agent. She grabbed a beer from the fridge and after she cracked it open, she checked her phone. Two more calls and a text from her agent. "Fuck my life," she muttered to herself.

She returned to the porch and saw an orange moon reflected on the glass-smooth surface of the gulf. There was no breeze and no sound. Not even the buzz of insects. For once silence would have a shot of being deafening. Huh, she thought. This is weird.

The voice returned. Quiet at first, then growing in volume, harsh and insistent.

"Come to me! Come to me!"

You're fucking kidding me, Britt replied. She checked out the beer bottle. Corona. Can't blame the brew, she concluded.

She poured the dregs into the sink and went to her bedroom. The voice followed her within. "Forget the lawyer," she thought with growing alarm. "I need a bloody shrink." But it was too late for intervention. Again, like the first night and during her two visits to the dive shop, she had ceded control and could only watch with both fear and fascination.

Britt hurried back to the kitchen and unsealed the passageway to the cellar, her heart racing as she descended the stairs. She stepped in front of the locker and ripped it open.

She didn't question what came next. She stripped with urgency, pulling her shirt over her head, shoving her jeans down. She stepped out of her underwear and reached for the wetsuit.

It shouldn't have fit. But it did. It slid up her legs like she was being wrapped in memory. As the zipper glided up her chest it locked into place with a satisfying snap. She paused, breathless. She tugged on the hood -- it too, inexplicably, fit comfortably. Ditto the boots, the gloves.

The yellow mask.

Britt turned. There was an old mirror hanging on the wall beside the locker, mottled with age. She stepped in front of it--and stared.

The woman looking back at her stood straighter than she had in years. Shoulders squared. Chin lifted. It was the woman from that torrid dream except she now literally embodied her. Her eyes gleamed strangely behind the yellow mask, now settled over her face again. She didn't recognize her own posture--but it fit. Like the suit. Like the moment.

Her gaze dropped to the regulator. She hadn't even noticed herself reach for it. A twin-hose design, long obsolete. She should have hesitated. But her fingers knew what to do. She connected reg assembly to the tank without pause. No pressure gauge. No computer. No buoyancy control. Like Bruce said: Old school.

She slid the regulator between her lips, biting down on the rubber mouthpiece. The taste hit her--faintly metallic, but mostly rubber and salt. The flavor of old breath, of sunken time.

Some part of her said: Where the hell am I going?

But the rest of her--the part that was already kneeling beside the steel tank on the bench--was calm. She stood and lifted the tank -- heavy, but manageable. She slung it onto her back in one fluid motion, straps sliding into place. The hoses curled around her like old friends.

Her breath came fast now--not from fear, but anticipation.

The stairs beckoned. Beyond them: the beach, the surf and the reef. She didn't know where she was going. But her legs carried her like they did. Past the porch, past the scrub and sea oats, her bare feet hit the sand. She was diving tonight.

And somehow, she knew exactly where to enter the water.

The surf met her like a dream--cool, heavy, and alive with moonlight. She stepped in without hesitation. The waves tugged at her legs, pulling her gently, like hands urging her home. With practiced ease--though she hadn't dived in years--she sealed her lips around the mouthpiece and slipped beneath the surface.

The hiss and sigh of her first breath through the old double-hose rig filled her ears. It tasted thick, warm, and strangely intimate, like breathing through a memory. The world shifted--flattened, bluish, made otherworldly by the glass lens. Above, the moon rippled. Below, darkness opened wide. She engaged the torch, scattering some fish, distracting others. A tarpon suddenly roared over her shoulder swallowed one of them.

She kicked out slowly, fins slicing through the water. Her body moved with uncanny grace, the wetsuit flexing like it had been made for her. Her heavy tits had disappeared and she didn't miss them. Air rolled from her regulator in soft bursts. She descended steadily, a column of bubbles rising behind her like breadcrumbs in reverse.

The reef emerged from the gloom like a submerged cathedral--spires of coral, shadowed ledges, darting fish that scattered at her approach. But she didn't stop to admire it. She was on a mission -- Britt only wished she knew what it was.

Her hand brushed a ledge. She tilted right, dropped deeper. Her ears popped; she equalized without thinking. She powered her way downward. She cleared her ears again and again.

Then she saw it. A slit in the rock face, half-obscured by swaying fronds of seaweed: the entrance to a cavern. No marker. But her heart leapt. She recognized it.

Britt hovered at the mouth, hand braced against the stone. She checked her watch -- 75 feet! The opening yawned wide enough for a diver to slip through with care. The light faded to black beyond the threshold.

And that's when the voice returned --not heard this time, but felt, like a memory rising behind her eyes.

"You found me. Oh God, you found me! Keep going Britt!"

It had been years since she'd heard the rasping voice, not since she was a little girl. It couldn't be, but it was. Of course it was Aunt Maggie.

"Keep going, Britt. You don't have much time. Don't stop. Don't fight it."

Inside the cavern, silt drifted like ash. Britt engaged the torch and theharsh light beam revealed columns of stone, pocked with growth, where parrotfish scattered in flashes of neon blue. The walls pulsed with hidden color--mauves, greens, and silvers that only appeared under the torch beam.

But it wasn't just a cavern. She had been summoned to a tomb.

Britt finned slowly, her bubbles rolling along the roof of the cavern behind her. Her heart pounded, the only real sound besides her bubbles. The deeper she went, the more images flooded into her memories. Someone else's. A flicker of the Maggie's last moments: the regulator slipping from her mouth, a frantic scramble to escape a tight space. Rusted metal. A ship's hold, perhaps? Sucking in seawater.

Britt shone the light around the chamber, relieved that her careful entry hadn't stirred up silt that would doom her chances of getting out alive. If that was the plan. The voice had gone silent and suddenly Britt feared there was no plan, beyond stranding her deep underwater with an emptying tank.

And then Maggie returned. "Just a little further, sweetheart."

She pushed deeper.

A sudden stillness fell, as if the ocean itself had paused to watch. The beam of her light found it: a pile of rocks and other debris on the floor of the chamber. An unnatural formation. Britt hovered there, her breath shallow, bubbles rising like prayers.

She pulled the rocks away, one by one, and found they were concealing a shallow pit. Her eyes widened as her gloved fingers tugged on unearthed fabric. A woman's one-piece suit. Her heart hammered. Bones. A lot of them. She couldn't stop now.

Then a skull. Aunt Maggie. It had to be.

Britt squealed into her reg. Still, she took the skull in her hands. An odd relief shuddered through her.

"You found me! You found me!"

Britt remembered to breathe. Okay, I found you, Britt thought with irritation, trying to keep it together. Now what the fuck do I do? Start performing Hamlet? Alas, poor Maggie, I knew her well. But not as well as I thought.

The mirth soon vanished. There was a final message. "Avenge me."

And then voice was gone. Almost on cue the light dimmed. The current stilled.

Britt lungs drew in, and the next breath was harder. She blinked behind her mask. Again, she inhaled--and this time, there was nothing but vacuum and silence. Shit, she thought.

Pull the J valve. She remembered that much from the dive store talk. She tugged it and hurried out of the cavern, realizing she had a tiny amount of air left in the cylinder before she was totally screwed. Thanks to her old dead Aunt Maggie, Britt was forced to cut it close, passing a few her bubbles lazily rising on as she hurried back to the surface -- no time to play by the book and follow them up. Hell, the entire dive could be logged later as Don't Do This Shit, and she broke the surface with a couple breaths to spare.

Britt struggled to shore and pulled off her mask. She waded in, shedding the tank in the surf, the old gear clunking into the sand. She kept the mask, though. She tucked into her wetsuit jacket, warm against her skin. It appeared to be her cellphone to the great beyond. Aunt Maggie had a lot of explaining to do.

When she reached the back porch, she caught her reflection in the kitchen window.

She stopped. She stared.

The face was hers--but not just hers.

The cheekbones were sharper. The lips--fuller, more familiar in a way she couldn't place until she remembered the framed photos on the mantle inside. Maggie, all those years ago. Sunlight, long black hair, diving gear slung over one shoulder.

Britt's fingers reached up and touched her own face.

Not just resemblance. Recognition.

She stumbled inside, peeling off the suit with trembling hands. The house smelled the same--salt, cedar, old books--but it was like smelling it for the first time again.

She walked down the hall. Her footsteps fell into the rhythm of the creaking boards like they'd never stopped.

In the bathroom mirror she saw it fully. It wasn't her face anymore.

It was Maggie's.

The eyes were still becoming. They watched her with an expression she couldn't read. Not joy. Not fear. Something deeper.

She gripped the sink and leaned toward the mirror. A smile began to curl on her lips.

"I'm coming for you, Ted."

-30-