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Chapter One

Tyler Matthews looked at the woman standing at the entrance to his apartment and realised she was a stranger. She looked and sounded almost the same as the woman he had fallen in love with seven years earlier, but the edges were harder on this iteration, the eyes harsh, lips without a smile and turned into a disapproving sneer. This version of Amy was an impostor, a cold thing in an Amy mask.

‘You realise this will be it, don’t you? Our marriage will be over if you do this.’ The impostor Amy crossed her arms to emphasise the point, one of her many bad habits that he had grown to detest.

‘Yeah, I know that,’ Tyler said, and it was true. He knew it was over and didn’t care. It had been a while since he had felt anything that could have been taken for love. First, there was frustration and tolerance which, over time, had grown into bitter indifference and longing to be free of the shackles he had married into.

‘And you’re going to do it anyway? What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you even want to fight for this? For us?’

He sighed and stared at his bare feet, curling his toes in the carpet, wondering if he should invite her in then deciding against it. ‘I don’t want to get into this again. We both know this is for the best. The sooner you come to terms with it, the better.’

‘Best for you. Not best for me. There’s a difference and you know it.’

A few years ago, a comment like that would have sparked a furious and passionate argument which would culminate in spectacular make-up sex later. Not anymore, though; now there was no room for desire. Only hatred. He badly wanted her to go away and leave him alone and wondered why she had come over. He had made it clear enough that whatever they once had was over, and yet she was stubborn in her refusal to play along. Her presence was putting a black cloud over his day, the negative energy hanging thick and heavy over the threshold to the house. ‘You chose to leave, Amy. Not me. You went and decided to move in with Tim.’

She flinched and looked away. ‘You forced me into that. I’d tried to keep us going by myself for so long and couldn’t do it anymore. Tim was there for me when you weren’t. He was there when I needed somebody. I realise now it was a mistake. I’ve changed my mind.’

He shook his head and flashed her a cynical grin. ‘That makes it alright then. You decide the affair wasn’t going to grow into something more like you hoped it would then think it’s okay to come back because you changed your mind. I’m done letting you walk all over me. Things have changed.’

‘You drove me to it.’

‘Don’t try to put this on me. I stuck to the vows of our marriage.’ He hated that she was getting him angry. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let that happen and hated her a little bit more for it.

‘Don’t you dare try to claim this was all one sided. You neglected me. You forced me to look elsewhere. This is as much your fault as it is mine.’

She had a point. He had neglected her. He had grown bored and started to feel trapped by the cocoon she had built. Steady and unspectacular job. A circle of friends who he had nothing in common with as they were mostly hers (especially Tim. She knew Tim really well). He had been manipulated into a boring existence, a cycle of meaningless days melting into each other which she expected him to do for the rest of his life. ‘Yeah, well, I suppose we’re both to blame,’ he muttered, wishing there was an easier way to do things like this.

Amy was frustrated and angry; he could see it in the way her lip curled down at the corner. ‘Jesus, Tyler, you mean to go through with this, don’t you?’

Typical Amy. Thinking the world revolved around her and never expecting that someone else might have plans that didn’t involve her. ‘Yeah,’ he said again, keeping with the answer that had served him well so far.

‘You know it’s insane, right? Giving up your job, a good job, a well-paid job. Selling the house to move into this shitty apartment.’

‘The apartment is temporary. It’s better that walking around that tomb of a house and being constantly reminded of you and what happened. And for the record, I hated that job.’

‘My brother got you that job, you ungrateful asshole.’

‘Exactly. You chose it. You asked your brother to put the word in without asking how I felt. You bullied me into taking it even though I didn’t want to. That was never my job, it was yours. I was just the puppet expected to bring home the money.’

‘Jesus, Tyler, someone had to help you. It’s not like you were making waves on your own. A year unemployed. If I didn’t push you, it would have never happened. I can’t believe how ungrateful you are. I made sure we survived and didn’t look like idiot paupers to our friends.’

He could feel the anger starting to swell. Once she was able to bring out a sense of love and need to protect her. Now he associated her with rage and stubbornness. ‘Let’s get this right. They were your friends you were trying to keep up appearances for. Not mine. Mine were all made to feel unwelcome. You made me push them out.’

‘Your friends were pigs. Common and beneath us.’

‘Bullshit. They were my friends and would do anything for me. If there is one thing I regret, it’s letting you push them out without stopping you. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with you anymore. It’s done. I’ve made my decision.’

She glared at him, balling her hands into fists at her side. ‘And that’s it. You’re just going to leave? Quit your job, sell the house, and go. What about the furniture? What about the possessions?’

‘I’m selling everything. I want a clean break.’ He was going to add again how everything in the house was associated with her and he didn’t want any reminders but decided it would be cruel to keep hammering home the point, and despite his dislike of the woman he once thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with, he didn’t want to make it any harder on either of them than it had to be. It was true, though. Her fingerprints were all over that house. She had picked the furniture and decided the layout of each room. What they could have, what they couldn’t, and he had gone along with it.

‘You do know you’re not a twenty-year-old kid anymore? What are you going to do with yourself one you are free from the shackles of responsibility?’

‘You talk like I’m old,’ he snapped, hurt by her tone.

‘You’ll be forty in a couple of years. Too old to sell everything you own and go travelling the world on a whim. Where the hell do you plan on going? How will you support yourself?’

‘The money from the house sale will keep me going. I suppose that’s one thing I’m fortunate about, that I kept that in my name without transferring half to you.’

She flinched again, and for a split second, he felt remorse, then ashamed that he was letting things get nasty. He took a deep breath and tried to regain his composure.

‘I’m not sure where I’ll go yet. Maybe Thailand to start then go from there. Wherever my head takes me. It will be nice to be free of the rat race for a while.’

She exhaled, shoulders slumping. He knew this routine. She was about to try and reason with him and make him feel guilty, a tactic used to great effect in the past.

‘Look,’ she said, taking a half step towards the open door. He could smell her perfume and in the back of his mind wondered if he had bought her it or if Tim had. ‘I get that you feel like this is the right thing to do, but think about what you will be throwing away. You’re literally selling your life. What will you be left with?’

‘I don’t need anything. Not from here. Too many bad memories around here, Amy. You. Tim, this house. All blame aside I need a clean break.’

‘Then have one. Stay in the city, I’ll give you the space you need, we can talk in a few weeks, I’ll talk to Robert and see if he can get your job back i—’

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘Doing what?’ she snapped.

‘Trying to run my life for me. I’m not a kid, Amy. I don’t need someone to tell me when to go to sleep, what to eat, what to wear. Jesus, why can’t you accept that this is over? I don’t want to try again. I don’t want to fix our marriage. I want to be by myself. Maybe one day we can be friends, but that’s all it will ever be.’

‘You would really throw all this away?’ She was giving him that look, trying to be seductive. He saw through it, though and wondered how it had ever swayed him in the past.

He almost laughed but managed to keep a straight face at the way she had said all this as if his life had been anything other than as an extension of her. ‘I don’t know how many more times I have to tell you. It’s done. We’re finished. Nothing you can say or do will change my mind.’

‘No, it can’t be. I made a mistake with Tim, I get that, and I regret it every day. I’ll never forgive myself. That’s all over now, I want to come back to you, I want us to fix this situation.’

If it were a movie or a book, Tyler would have glared at her and said something dramatic. Maybe something like ‘I’ll never forgive you either,’ or something equally damaging that would make him feel good. Instead, he decided to avoid any further confrontation and settled for the least inflammatory response he could.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I refuse to believe it’s over. I’ll fight as long as I have to I’ll do it until you see sense i—’ She froze, staring at the brown envelope he was holding towards her. ‘What’s that?’

He didn’t answer. She knew what they were. She had to know they had been coming.

‘Divorce papers?’ she said, for the first time realising he was serious.

Bingo, baby, his cool inner self said. The actual Tyler made fists with his toes in the carpet ala John MacLaine and waited for her to take the envelope.

She shook her head and stepped back, taking the scent of her perfume with her. ‘No. I won’t take those.’

‘That’s up to you. My lawyer can always mail them to you. It just needs your signature.’

‘I won’t let you do this, I won’t throw our marriage away,’ she said, but she took the envelope, clutching it to her chest.

‘The sooner you accept it’s over, the sooner we can both move on.’ Maybe Tim will have you back. He wanted to add that at the end and congratulated himself for holding back. He was about to close the door when she lurched towards him and grabbed his face, kissing him hard, probing her tongue into his mouth.

‘Let me make it up to you. Let me show you how much I love you,’ she panted, reaching for the clasp on his belt.

Uh-oh. This was bad. He was mentally strong and determined to do what he wanted, but the fact remained that his soon to be ex-wife was still incredibly attractive. Long red hair and green eyes, pale skin with a dash of freckles across her nose. Up close, he could smell her sweet scent of perfume and soap. She smelled clean, she smelled amazing. He was strong, but he wasn’t Superman. Like most men, it wasn’t always his brain that did the thinking. He started to kiss her back, pulling her towards him and thinking about what was to follow. A spectacular time in the bedroom no doubt, then… Then it would be back to how it was before. Back to a life he hated; he was nothing but a puppet to her.

He pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length. ‘No, I won’t do this. It’s not right.’

She glanced at the front of his jeans, still trying to use her body to win him over. ‘That says otherwise,’ she whispered, half-smiling.

‘No, I’m sorry. I’ve made my decision. I don’t need you. I don’t deserve this.’

He saw her hope fade and melt back into the impostor he had grown to know. It was remarkable. The sneer, the hardness around the edges came back and he realised that as beautiful as she was externally, inside she was still black and rotten. ‘It’s over, Amy.’

‘What makes you think you can last out there by yourself?’ she hissed at him, tears streaming, lip trembling. She wasn’t used to not getting her own way and he wasn’t sure if it was genuine or part of the act but didn’t care either way. ‘You alone in the world. It’ not a safe place, Tyler. There are crimes, murders. Fucking terrorists. You can live a safe life here. We can build something together. I’ll change if that’s what it takes.’

He shook his head. He had heard all this before. Things always seemed better for a week or so, then reverted to their old ways. ‘No. I need to be alone. I have issues I need to work out.’

‘Issues? You mean the drinking? Well, I’ve told you before, Tyler. You can’t run away from it. No matter where you go, you’ll still find yourself lost in the bottom of a bottle or propping up a bar somewhere.’

‘Maybe so, but that’s my decision to make. I’ll fix things my way, without your help.’

‘And how many years have you been saying that? Two? Three? You can’t stop. That’s what drove us apart. You can’t leave the drink alone.’

He didn’t want to get into that topic again, mostly because he knew she had a point. He was a borderline alcoholic, and maybe borderline was leaning on the optimistic side. He drank every day, most of the time heavily, and it was starting to take its toll. As if reading his thoughts, she went on. ‘I mean look at you, Jesus, have a shave, clean yourself up. You’ve got fat. Look at that stomach.’

He knew she was saying it to hurt him. This was her way when things didn’t go to plan, but he couldn’t deny that either.

He looked at his T-shirt and the paunch that strained against the material. ‘Look, are you going to sign the papers or not? I’m leaving in a couple of weeks and I want this all sorted out by then.’

‘I don’t want to sign the fucking papers.’ She rarely shouted, swore even less and he knew he had struck a chord. He waited as she took a breath and composed herself. ‘How am I supposed to find you if I have questions? You should at least stay until this is resolved.’

‘My lawyer is dealing with it. My side of the papers is already signed. It’s just waiting for you to do your part.’

She looked at the envelope, then at Tyler. ‘You’re not changing your mind, are you?’

He shook his head, and she seemed to deflate. ‘That surprises you, doesn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘This isn’t like you, Tyler. You were never so…’

‘Adventurous.’

‘I was going to say impulsive, but it serves the same purpose. Why can’t you see that this is a huge mistake? I know you, this isn’t you.’

‘I know me, too, and I know it is me. This is what I want. This is what has to happen. Like it or not, we’ve both changed over the years. Even without the whole Tim situation, I think this would have been inevitable eventually.’

She sighed, giving up the fight and giving him the rarest of things: A victory. ‘So what now?’ she asked.

‘Sign the papers once you’ve had them looked over and send them back to my lawyer. His contact info is in the envelope with the documents.’

‘Please tell me you’ve at least kept the savings account, something to fall back on.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m all in on this. I’ve lived safe for too long. I don’t want something to fall back on. All I want to do is enjoy life for a while. Everything else is just stuff.’

She had grown cold again, and that sneer was reappearing as she spoke. ‘At least tell the truth, Tyler. We both know you will piss all the money away on booze and will be back here within a few weeks with nothing to show for it. You might hate me and I get it, but I’m trying to help you. You need someone in your life to tell you what to do. You can’t do it by yourself.’

He looked at her, searching to see if the woman he once loved was there, even a small part of her. If he could find it, then he might consider staying. He knew though, as he looked into her eyes, that anything they once had was dead. Whatever was once there had fizzled away to the point that they may as well have been strangers.

‘I’m done talking about this, Amy. Sign the papers or don’t. Either way, I’m leaving in a couple of weeks. I’d hoped we could do this in a civil way with minimal fuss. I can’t do any more than that.’

‘You’re going to end up drinking yourself to death in some foreign country and nobody will know about it. You need me in your life, Tyler. You can’t function without me.’

‘Sign the papers,’ he said, gently ushering her out of the door. They looked at each other, those few seconds seeming to last a lifetime and say more than words ever could, then Tyler closed the door and felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Chapter Two

NEPTUNE’S FOLLY — five miles off the coast of Devil’s Island, Australia.

‘You’ve heard of the shark, right?’

Scott looked at his friend, smiled and then took a drink of his beer. ‘What shark?’

‘Come on, man, you must have heard of it,’ Karl said, taking a drag on the joint and handing it over.

Scott inhaled, blowing smoke into the warm air. The sun was low, an orange ball balanced on the horizon throwing out an undulating golden carpet on the water. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Karl grinned and shifted position. ‘This area we’re in now is like Australia’s answer to the Bermuda Triangle.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Scott said.

‘No, it’s true. People have known about it for years but nobody says anything because they don’t want idiots swarming over here and killing the tourist trade.’

Scott looked at his friend, assessed his skinny features, and saw there was no sign of a lie in his words. ‘Alright, I’ll humour you. Tell me about it.’

Karl took a sip of his beer and ran a hand through his blond hair. ‘Word is that there’s this area where boats go missing but nobody really knows why. Legend says there is a monster shark down there that attacks and sinks any boat that ventures into its territory.’

‘And yet here we are. Unharmed and alive,’ Scott fired back, disappointed that his friend couldn’t at least be creative. Sensing that Scott was losing interest, Karl went on.

‘It’s not just that. There’s more.’

‘There always is,’ Scott sighed.

‘No, listen. A couple of years ago, rumour has it that a drug runner was on its way to make a delivery of gold bars that had been stolen from this cartel. It was supposed to drop off in one of the little island coves here on the coast but it never arrived at the destination. Most people say the cartel found their stash and intercepted it before it could be delivered. The other story is that it strayed into the shark’s territory and it sank his boat, gold and all.’

‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Someone would have been down there and brought it up, shark or not.’

‘They did,’ Karl said. ‘A guy who my brother knows said he dived down there and there was gold all over the sea floor. Bars of it just waiting to be found.’

‘And still, nobody has bothered to go get it?’

Karl shook his head. ‘People are too scared. People go down there and never come back up.’

‘And this friend of yours.’

‘My brother’s friend.’

‘Yeah him. Did he come up with gold? Is he rich now?’

‘Nah, he said he got spooked. Feels like you’re being watched down there so he came back to the surface.’

‘Convenient,’ Scott said.

‘I’m telling you, there’s money to be had if you have the guts.’

The combination of bravado and alcohol took over Scott’s rationale, and he stood. ‘Alright.’

‘Alright, what?’

‘I’ve got a tank and wet suit in the galley. I’ll go take a look and see if this gold stash is down there.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Karl said, sipping his drink. Scott went below and started rummaging around in the galley. ‘Wait, you’re serious?’

Scott returned with the oxygen tank and goggles and a pair of flippers under his arm. ‘Why not? If there’s gold down there just waiting to be claimed, I’m up for it. Everyone wants to be rich, right?’

‘Yeah but… Come on, this is stupid. I was just messing with you, man.’ Karl waited for Scott to laugh it off and open another beer, then realised he had no intention of doing either. Instead, he was checking the regulator of his air tanks and slipping his feet into the diving fins. ‘You’re actually going down there?’

‘Why not? I’ve been diving for years. I’ll disprove this legend one way or the other or I’ll get rich trying. You coming?’

Karl shook his head. ‘No. I’m too drunk and so are you. Besides, it will be full dark soon.’

Scott grinned and showed Karl the underwater torch. ‘Any other objections?’

Karl shrugged. ‘Suppose not.’ He didn’t believe the legends either, not really. Part of what he had said had been with the intention of getting a rise out of his friend. He never imagined he would go through with it and actually dive down there, which itself made him nervous. There was the whole ‘what if’ scenario. What if it were true? What if the legend was based on reality? Also, what if the gold was down there? He wasn’t rich by any means and maybe if they did find gold, he could get a little bit of money, maybe a few girls and local fame to go with it all by sitting on the boat and waiting for his friend to go and have a look. It was a win-win situation for him.

Scott finished getting ready, taking a test breath on his regulator and putting the goggles over his head.

‘What the hell am I supposed to do when you’re down there?’

Scott moved to the transom and sat on it, grinning at his friend as he secured the tank on his back. ‘Just wait here for me. Oh, and keep an eye out for sharks.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Karl muttered, glancing at the ever dipping sun. ‘Hey, don’t forget this.’

Karl crossed the deck and grabbed the torch and handed it to Scott.

‘Thanks,’ he said as he attached it to his diving belt. ‘Who knows? Maybe this time tomorrow we’ll be millionaires.’

Karl could see it now in the dusk light. Shadow of uncertainty in his friend’s face.

‘Look, Scott, forget this idea. Let’s head back in, maybe go out for a few beers.’

‘Sounds good. After I’ve checked.’

Karl opened his mouth to say more but knew there was little point. Scott put his eye mask on, put his regulator into his mouth then gave the thumbs up. Karl watched as he fell backwards over the side and disappeared into the black depths of the ocean.

It was like an alien world. No matter how many times he dived, Scott always felt a sense of wonder and amazement at being alone in the ocean. Even with dark approaching, the clear waters allowed him to see better than he could have hoped. Fish darted in front of his torch beam, every conceivable species and colour. He angled towards the bottom, enjoying his surroundings. A glorious coral reef undulated with the currents. As he swept his torch beam, he was treated to more spectacular sights as he made his way deeper, the only sound to break the silence the rhythm of his breath and the bubbles ejected from the regulator. A turtle swam across his field of vision and disappeared out of sight as he passed deeper than the natural light allowed, meaning only what was in the beam of his torch was visible to him. He didn’t know how deep the waters were here and remembered to stay within his limitations. He wasn’t too drunk yet but still knew that without the lowering of his inhibitions, he likely wouldn’t have attempted such a dive. Something caught his eye, something huge and slate-coloured below him, a tapered body in his torch beam. It was only as the torch beam settled on the object did Scott realise that it wasn’t the giant shark Karl had told him about, but the overturned hull of a boat. Scott kicked towards it, enjoying the burn in his lungs as the sandy ocean floor revealed itself to him. The boat he had seen was a fishing trawler. It lay on its side, its surface covered in rust and coral as the ocean reclaimed it. He stopped swimming, kicking in place and shining the torch beam all around him and wishing he had dived during the day when visibility would have been better. He could spot at least three other wrecks in his immediate vicinity, which at least made some part of the story true in that for whatever reason, ships sank in that particular area of the ocean. On the seabed, there was, as expected a wide debris field from the wrecks. With the idea that the stories about gold a little bit less far-fetched, he skimmed his torch across the ground and started to explore the debris. Most of it was garbage. Petrified wood or broken pieces of hull. He saw rusty cutlery, old cans and plates. A long-abandoned crab pot thick with rust. An uneasy feeling came over him as he scoured the debris, but he wasn’t sure if there was a reason for it or if it was just the story his friend had told him. He forced himself to remain calm and focus on his job. He poked around some more in the debris. He found a plastic chair. A broken television. A cracked toilet seat. No treasure. Nothing he would consider valuable. He realised then what it was that making him so paranoid. There were no other fish around. Often where there were wrecks, there were fish. The broken hulls of the boats made perfect environments for them, and yet there was nothing but him. He was sure something was moving, out on the edge of his peripheral vision. Scott stared into the dark, realising just how vulnerable he was then dismissing the idea. The story Karl had told him was making him jumpy for no reason at all. He turned his attention back to the seabed and poked around the debris a little more, and was about to give up when something caught his eye in the shadow of the overturned fishing trawler’s hull. He swam to it, unable to help glancing behind him before returning his attention to the object he had seen. It was partially buried in the Sand. He set his torch on the sand and started to dig with both hands to free the object, unable to believe what he was seeing. The gold bar was around ten inches long and much heavier than he anticipated. He held it, rotating the bar in the light of the torch beam. If there was one, there would be more. That he was sure of. There was no way he could carry the bar back to the surface, as it was far too heavy. He set it on the sand and considered his options, the excitement hindering rational thought. Something happened then. A change in the current, a rush of water pressing against him as if something big had moved close by. Scott spun around, back to the overturned hull, and stared out into the dark. Nothing moved, and yet that made it worse. The black depths betrayed no secrets, and the silence reminded him again how isolated he was. One thing he did know was that he didn’t want to stay there any longer. The gold was going nowhere. He would resurface and think about what to do then come back later when it was lighter. He didn’t like to admit he was afraid, but the stories Karl had told him were at the forefront of his mind and he badly wanted to be back on the surface. He started to ascend, forcing himself not to rush but also unable to shake the feeling he was being observed. He realised he had left his torch and could see its dull light illuminating the side of the overturned hull, then it was gone. He stopped swimming, confused that the light had gone out. Then it was back just as it was. He tried to convince himself that it had simply failed and lost power for a second and that what he thought he had seen was simply impossible. It looked, at a glance, that something had passed in front of the torch. Something so large that it had completely blocked out the light. That, he knew, was impossible. There was nothing big enough to do that, nothing he knew of that lived in those waters. He turned his attention back to reaching the surface, no longer enjoying the alien underwater world as he had just minutes earlier. It occurred to him that he was the alien. He was the stranger and didn’t belong. Each passing moment, he wondered if something was going to come at him, a shape from the darkness, a hellish ring of jagged teeth. But he surfaced without harm, startling Karl who was sitting on the transom waiting for him.

‘Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,’ Karl said as he helped Scott onto the boat.

Still shaken, Scott took off his regulator and goggles, catching his breath and grateful to be back on the boat.

‘Hey, you okay, man? You don’t look too good.’

Scott nodded. ‘I’m fine. It was cold down there.’

‘You find anything?’ Karl asked.

Without missing a beat, Scott shook his head. ‘Not a thing. Whatever legend you’ve heard is bullshit. Nothing there but rocks and sand.’

Karl looked disappointed and grabbed another beer from the cool box. ‘There goes the get rich quick idea.’

‘Yeah,’ Scott said as he dried his hair with a towel. ‘Shit happens, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Anyway, it’s getting cold. Let’s go in,’ Scott said, moving into the warmth of the cabin and starting the engines. Before they set off, he made a note of the coordinates on his GPS for later when he intended to come back and make himself a very rich man. He steered the boat towards the scattering of lights on the mainland, leaving the gold and boat graveyard behind.

Chapter Three

Nash knew that when even getting out of bed hurt, Father Time was really starting to put the boot in. He rolled to a sitting position, grunting and squinting against the sun which was obtrusive in its probing between the curtains. Once upon a time, the forty-five year old only felt this bad in the aftermath of one of his amateur boxing bouts, but now it took nothing but a night sleeping in the same position to fill him with aches and pains. He flexed his hands, muscles in his tanned forearms rippling beneath the fluff of hair which was now as white as that on his head. He grunted at the sun again, and rubbed his stubble-covered cheeks, knowing the day ahead wasn’t going to be good. Usually, if he woke up with pain, it would stay with him until he tried to sleep again later. He found he could medicate it with drink, but didn’t want to get into such a mug’s game as that. Addiction was something he’d seen too much of back in his Army days. Addiction to alcohol or drugs was the breaking of many a good man, and so he avoided both.

He walked towards the bathroom, stifling a yawn and wondering if there was any way he could get out of going on the boat. Fishing used to be something he enjoyed until it was how he was forced to make a living. Now he hated it, the smell, the monotony, the uncertainty about if they would catch anything and be able to survive another day. Plus, there was the other thing to worry about. His plague, his nightmare. The curse he couldn’t shake. He paused on his way to the bathroom as he did most mornings and looked at the folder on his dresser. He opened it, leafing through the papers inside. Reports. Sightings. Speculation. All about something that most people laughed off. Something he knew for a fact was true and that he had seen up close. His hand started to tremble, and a tear fell from his one remaining functional tear duct. He had tried to warn people about what he had seen, but when he told them what had happened to him, they laughed him off like he was some kind of crazy man. He could understand that. Even to him, the story seemed like it couldn’t be true. He had asked himself if he had exaggerated what he had seen, if the terror and fear of death had skewed things in his mind, but he didn’t think so. What he had experienced was as fresh now almost thirty years after the fact and was exactly as he remembered it. He closed the folder and continued on to the bathroom. It was still dim, the sun not yet reaching that side of the house. He pulled the string for the light, waiting until it flickered into life and bathed the room in its sterile artificial glow. The abomination in the mirror had long ago stopped frightening him. Now it just terrified others and made any hope of a social life next to impossible. He stood and started to brush the teeth he had left on the right side of his mouth. The left side had been pulverised during the attack to the point where he should have died. This, he mused, should have been his evidence. If they had measured the wounds, they would have been able to tell how big the teeth were of the thing that had done this to him. Instead, they told him he was imagining things and that it was just a large shark that had attacked and decided for whatever reason to let him live. They told him he was lucky and he should be grateful. He spat in the sink and rinsed his mouth, then put his half denture in, filling the hollow, sunken look that filled half his face. The eye on that side was sightless, a milky orb which still saw the horrors that had happened to him that day. No hair grew on the right side of his head. His natural scalp had been removed during the attack. The skin that replaced it was grafted from the rest of his body, leaving a bumpy alien landscape filled with ruts and scars. His lower lip had been lost, and the resulting graft made him look as if he was melting. Granted, the doctors had done a remarkable job to put him back together, but sometimes, when he was at his loneliest and trying to figure out what the point of his existence was, he sometimes wished he had died instead of being saved. It would have been better than such a lonely existence where it was just him and his scrapbook, a collection of sightings and speculation which only made him question if things had been as he recalled them or if, as the authorities suggested, his frightened mind had simply exaggerated it and made it into something impossible. He didn’t think so. As broken down as his body may be, his mind was still sharp when it came to that day. The smell of salt and blood in the water. The fire licking at the overturned hull and spewing black smoke against the pale blue sky as the ocean prepared to take another victim. The fin, huge and scarred, a slate grey wedge of terror as it cut towards the stranded crew. Watching as it took them not one at a time from beneath, but in twos or threes at once. The pull of the water as it moved underneath him, the wake pushing him back twenty feet as it claimed more victims. Then the waiting. Waiting for his turn, waiting to be taken. And yes, being lucky. Because as devastating as the injuries to his face and shoulders were, as bad as the shattered bones had been, it was a glancing blow. It surfaced without warning. It’s mouth a pink maw, a cavernous passage straight to hell. The two men in front of him may have screamed or it may have been him. The beast’s jaw closed, the two men pulverised in a bloody froth of bone and flesh, but he suffered only a glancing blow, the serrated teeth closing in him and doing damage but not taking him down, not into the depths with the others. Bobbing there waiting to die, face hanging off and dripping into the warm waters, bones shattered in their shredded skin coverings. Smoke, salt, and blood burning his nostrils, his tongue lolling out of the gaping hole where his cheek once was. Then the waiting. Waiting to be taken waiting to be next. A dull explosion as the boat went under, water rushing to swallow it as its distressed hill creaked in protest. Then nothing. Silence. Darkness until he woke in the hospital, a rearranged, man-shaped jigsaw puzzle. Then, it was just snatches. Hazy memories. Someone giving him the last rights. A man saying how he had pulled him onto a lifeboat. A group of doctors by his bedside sure he wouldn’t last the night.

Nash gripped the edge of the sink and looked away from his reflection, the face of a dead man who somehow survived against the odds. Unable to stand looking at it any longer, he went back into his bedroom and dressed.

#

Across town, just as Nash was battling his demons and preparing to face another day, Tyler Matthews was waking up, face buried in the carpet of a cheap motel. His mouth had the unmistakable aftertaste of another night of debauchery, and he could feel his head pulsing with the familiar rhythm of a hangover. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around the room. At least he had made it to the bedroom this time, if not the bed itself. He was still in last night’s clothes, and only then realised the awful smell was him. He saw the empty Jack Daniels bottle by the bed and then the overstuffed ashtray and realised Amy had been right. No matter how far he went, his problems would just follow him. It had been two years since he walked out on his life. He had travelled across America, exploring the small towns and drifting wherever his instinct told him to go, invariably a place where he could get a drink. That, at least, hadn’t changed. Although he tried to convince himself that he was on a journey of exploration and self-discovery, in reality, it was just a huge tour of the bars and dives of the world, each smoky, sweaty watering hole leading him to the next. New Orleans had been particularly eventful; the drinks were cool and the weather and women were hot. He thought that when it eventually came to settling down and getting some kind of life in order, that was the place he would like to go. Once he had finished his lazy jaunt across America, he had moved over to Europe, which he didn’t like as much. After the joys of the Deep South, the hospitality and friendliness to strangers in Europe was lacking. Most treated him with a cold sense of indifference, especially when the drink took over and he became the foul-mouthed violent demon he kept locked away most of the time. Some parts of Europe were better. Spain and Italy were nice. Switzerland was beautiful and relaxed, Russia large and intimidating. Despite Amy’s misgivings, he had taken to life on the road well and was thrilled to be out of the rat race. There was a simple sense of joy of knowing everything he owned was in his backpack and he didn’t know where he would be resting his head until he arrived there. He had lost weight and grown a beard. Back in his old life, he used to dye his hair black to hide the onset of age. Now he had a shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper style. During his journey, he had met some wonderful people with amazing stories to tell. He had experienced tragedy and joy, seen violence and compassion. There were no regrets apart from wishing he had done it sooner. His body felt old, that much was true, no doubt in part to his constant alcohol abuse which had escalated now that he didn’t have to fit it around a nine-to-five day job. When there was nothing else to do, it was never too early for a drink. He glanced at his watch, squinting to see the display. It was a little after ten in the morning which meant the bars would be open. Pushing himself up off the floor, he staggered to the window and looked out at another crisp Australian morning. Of everywhere he had been, he was starting to think Australia was a close contender with New Orleans for where he might like to settle when the time came. He liked the heat, and the people were as friendly as those in the Mid-South. People, though, were not what he needed right now. His body craved alcohol and he had learned that denying it was pointless. He considered showering but settled instead for throwing on a different T-shirt from the pile in the corner, spraying a little deodorant, and heading out to find somewhere to feed his craving.

Chapter Four

NEPTUNE’S FOLLY — five miles off the coast of Devil’s Island, Australia.

Scott brought the boat to a halt then looked at his older brother. ‘Alright, this is it.’

‘You sure?’ Paul said, standing at the stern and peering into the sun-dappled waters.

Scott double checked the coordinates. ‘Yeah. This is it.’

‘You better not be wasting my fucking time, Scotty.’

‘You think I’d go this far on a prank?’

‘No, I suppose not. Come on, let’s suit up.’

Paul was Scott’s sibling, and at thirty-one, was older than him by seven years. The last five of those years he had spent in jail for hiding a friend who had committed an armed robbery in his house. One of the bank tellers had been shot in the robbery, and although he made it to the hospital, died later. Paul didn’t realise it was a murder his friend was wanted for until it was too late, and so got caught up in the fallout. He met some bad people when he was locked up and had come out a tougher, more cynical man than when he went in. It had also ruined his potential career in engineering. With a criminal record, work was impossible to come by which increased the bitterness he felt towards society. Where Scott was slender and athletic with well-defined muscles and an even tan, Paul was shorter and more muscular, his arms like concrete, his neck a tree trunk. For their physical differences, the two brothers had come together united by the one thing that was the curse of mankind and the cause of countless problems around the globe.

Money.

Scott had told him of the discovery he had made, about the legend and the gold. To his surprise, Paul knew of the legend. He said kids used to call it the Devil’s Triangle when he was younger but had always assumed it was another urban legend like the Samsonite scarecrows, the supermarket run by vampires, or the story about the Slenderman. With no job and no prospects, it hadn’t taken Scott much convincing to get his brother to go with him to the spot to take a look. Scott wanted to come back at night under cover of darkness, but Paul had refused, saying it would look suspicious if they were out there at night. It was better, he said, to go during the day so that if anyone did query them, they could say they were just enjoying the sun and doing a little snorkelling.

Scott moved to the stern, helping Paul unpack the bag he had brought on board.

‘What are these for again?’ he asked as he pulled the heavy plastic out of the bag.

‘Flotation balloons. If there is gold down there, it’s going to be too hard to carry.’

‘There is gold down there and it is heavy,’ Scott said as they lay the contents of the bag out on the rear deck.

‘Relax, Scotty. I wasn’t doubting you. I’m here, aren’t I?

‘Yeah, sorry, I just… this could change our lives, you know?’

‘Yeah, it could,’ Paul said, looking out over the gloriously crisp blue waters. ‘Anyway, to finish answering your question, these flotation balloons will be how we get the haul to the surface. They’re weighted and go down with us deflated like this. There’s a net underneath that we put our haul into on the seabed. All we do then is activate the inflator here.’ He pointed to a pulley on the side of the deflated red bag. ‘The unit then auto-inflates and floats our haul to the surface. We follow it up all the way. Easy.’

Scott nodded. ‘Alright, I can get on board with that.’

‘Good. Then help me get everything ready so we can stop wasting daylight and get down there.’

II

Half an hour later, the two brothers were in the water. They had already sunk the flotation balloons, dropping them overboard and watching them sink into the ocean depths. They now followed, swimming in tandem. Scott had neglected to tell his brother about the uneasy feeling he’d had in the boat graveyard, and supposed that if he was aware of the legend, then he knew what was said to be down there. Fortunately for Scott, the entire scene felt a lot less intimidating in full daylight. The visibility was superb, the sun filtering through in undulating golden shafts, reminding Scott of the joys of this secret world beneath the waves. Schools of multi-coloured fish swam around them, moving to accommodate the much bigger lifeforms as they descended into the dark. It was only when they had descended beyond the reach of the sun’s rays and had to activate their head-mounted underwater lamps did the joy Scott had felt transform back into the creeping sense of dread and the unshakable feeling that something was watching them from the periphery of their vision. There was something below them. Scott saw it and pointed. It looked like blood, like something had been attacked below. Scenarios raced through Scott’s mind about the truth behind the legend and how they were about to become part of it forever. He could imagine years from now people sitting around a camp fire discussing urban legends and asking if anyone had heard the story of the two treasure-hunting brothers who had met their end diving for gold in Devil’s Triangle and were never to be seen again. It was only as he fully allowed his light to shine on it that he realized it wasn’t blood, but the flotation balloon they had sunk. It was half-folded over in the debris field, the waterproof material swaying in the currents, the air canisters on their side on the seabed. He gestured to Scott and pointed, and the two dived for the balloon. As they neared the seabed, the graveyard of ships bones became visible. Barnacle-encrusted relics scattered across a much wider area than Scott had first thought during his last dive. He immediately recognized the overturned fishing vessel on its side. They had come in at a slightly different angle to the one he had on his last dive, and he was able to see the upper structure of the boat half-buried in the sand. He was amazed to see that despite the damaged caused during its sinking, some of the wheelhouse windows were unbroken, reflecting his torch beam as he passed it over the hull. He motioned for Paul to follow, heading back to the area where he had found the gold bar. As before, there were no fish that he could see. They were in a void, a wide open expanse of water in which they appeared to be the only living creatures. Pushing it aside and thinking of the end goal, he approached the hull, relieved to see his torch where he had left it, its battery dead. He also saw the gold bar beside it. He increased his speed, excited to show his brother that his find was real. He picked up the bar and turned to face Paul, who was lagging behind and dragging the flotation balloon behind him. Elated, Scott held up the bar. Paul swam over and took it from him, turning the heavy bar over in his hands. They eyes met, the thrill and excitement of what would be a life-changing experience shared between them. Paul put the bar in the net under the flotation balloons then started to sift through the debris on the ocean floor. Following the lead of his brother, Scott did the same. Moving aside broken wood and scrabbling through the loose sand in an effort to uncover whatever treasures lurked beneath. He moved a splintered sheet of carbon fibre hull aside and was about to search beneath it when he flicked his head towards the darkness of the ocean beyond. He had sensed something moving. More than that, he had felt it. A current tugging against him as something big moved close by. He let the sheet of carbon fibre fall back to the ocean floor and stared out into the void, once again filled with that same sense of being watched or worse — stalked. He looked to his brother, wishing he could shout to him or suggest they leave, but Paul was focused on searching for more gold, tossing aside wreckage in his efforts to better his life. Scott was watching him, wondering how to communicate that he wanted to surface when he saw it. At first, he thought it was a submarine coming towards them, then he saw the curvature of the snout as the creature came from the dark heading straight for Paul. He had seen sharks before, of course. They had seen them in the aquarium where they swam around the sunken Perspex tunnels. Nothing comparable to the behemoth that came towards them. Scott tried to put it into context, to compare it to something he had seen in the real world to give some kind of rationality to how big it was and could think of nothing. It was almost leisurely as it came out of the darkness, a flick of the tail moving it within ten feet of Paul who was so preoccupied with his search he hadn’t seen it. Its skin was the color of slate and pocked with scars, old and new. Black emotionless dolls eyes the size of a basketball watched its prey, mouth partially open to allow the water to flow through, the tips of its twelve inch serrated teeth visible. An old harpoon was embedded in its side, trailing a frayed trail of rope behind it, the skin around the wound healed and making the harpoon part of the giant shark’s anatomy. It was at this point, as Scott looked on unable to move, that Paul saw it. He lurched back as the shark approached, kicking up loose sand from the sea floor. Scott was sure the shark was going to attack, but instead it circled Paul, dump truck-sized head swaying back and forth as it assessed this new creature which had encroached on its territory. As it moved around his brother, Scott could see the full scale of the behemoth. Paul watched, knowing he was powerless to do anything but wait and see what would happen next. The creature moved closer and Scott was sure they were about to die, but the shark seemed uncertain, and backed away, continuing to circle Paul. Scott knew he had to do something to distract the shark and help his brother. His eyes went to the flotation balloon which was ten feet away from him and a further twenty feet away from the huge shark circling his brother. Although every instinct screamed at him and told him he was crazy, he moved towards the balloon, keeping low and close to the seabed. Still the shark circled, trying to decide if such small prey was worth bothering with. Scott reached the flotation balloon, looking at the cylinders of gas. The device was simple enough to use. There was a chord attached to the tanks which would break the interior seal and fill the balloons with air and send it on its slow ascent to the surface. He hoped it would distract the shark into giving chase so he and his brother could escape. For Scott, the gold could stay in the graveyard of boats. He didn’t care anymore. Now all he wanted was to survive. Hands trembling, he waited for the shark to circle away from him then pulled the chord. The balloons inflated a pneumatic hiss as the air was released into them sending a torrent of bubbles towards the surface. Scott swam to the hull of the nearest overturned vessel, pressing himself against it as the balloons started to ascend. The shark changed course to investigate, circling the balloons as they rose. Scott watched it go, unable to take in the size of it. He turned his attention to Paul, hoping to signal for him that they should leave, but Paul was already swimming, angling up and away from the shark back towards the boat. For a while, Scott didn’t think he would be able to follow. He was so terrified that he couldn’t move. It was only the idea of the shark coming back and crushing him in its massive jaws that made him move. He followed his brother, closing the distance between them. On the surface, his brother’s bulk helped him. Underwater, Scott’s smaller, more athletic frame was better for moving through the water. He closed the distance, looking for the shark but unable to see it. The two siblings swam in tandem, the water growing lighter as they neared the surface and the dark shadow of the boat, desperate for the safety it would provide. Paul was starting to slow, and Scott moved ahead. He checked behind him and saw Paul still coming, his eyes wide and filled with something Scott had never seen before.

Fear.

Scott couldn’t see the shark and thought they might just make it. He broke the surface, the hull of the boat appearing as an impassable white tower of carbon fibre. He swam to the steel rungs of the ladder and started to pull himself out just as Scott broke the surface and tore his regulator out of his mouth.

‘Hurry up, Scotty, climb quicker. Get the hell out,’ he shrieked. Distracted, Scott slipped on the rung and fell back into the water. He started to climb again but Paul was too terrified to be rational. He pulled his brother aside and started to climb up himself, scrabbling to get out of the water. Scott dipped his head beneath the waves, unable to resist looking and wishing he hadn’t. That bus-sized head was beneath them, ascending at speed, mouth open to reveal the abyss beyond and the death it would bring. He knew he could never climb out in time. He was tired, the terror compelling him to kick in place and watch it come for him. He wondered how it would feel when those jaws closed around him. He wondered if he would feel his bones splinter or his guts eject themselves from his body as he was devoured. Something grabbed him, but it wasn’t the shark. Strong hands from the surface pulling him clear out of the water. His brother, his blessed brother, who after spending all of his jail time bulking up in the gym, could easily lift a hundred and seventy pounds of dead weight sibling out of the water. Paul grunted as he lifted Scott free of the water, both of them collapsing onto the deck. Scott spat out his regulator, wanting to say so much. He was angry, scared, elated, and grateful. He turned to his brother, unsure if he wanted to thank him or hit him for pulling him off the ladder when the forty foot vessel exploded from beneath as the seventy-seven-foot shark smashed into the bottom of the hull, shattering the boat and throwing both Scott and Paul back into the water. Scott breathed in, taking sea water into his lungs. He coughed and spluttered, trying not to panic. The boat looked as if it had been hit by a missile and was already sinking beneath the waves, a fine carpet of debris bobbing on the surface. Scott knew it was bad. They were miles from land, and apart from the small scattering of uninhabited islands, there was nobody close who could help. He looked around for Paul but couldn’t see him. He saw the fin break the surface out of his peripheral vision. He turned to face it, watching as it came towards him, a six-foot-tall triangle of death as it cut through the water. In the movies, people always escaped situations like this. But he knew it was over. There was no help. No way to escape the grim reaper as it breathed its cold breath on his neck. The shark broke the surface, mouth opening ready to take him, its teeth covered in chunks of bloody meat.

‘So that’s where Paul went.’

It was the last thought he had before his body was pulverised, taken in one bite by the mammoth creature which knew only its instinct to feed. Silence fell over the debris field, the splintered boat remains bobbing on the surface. Ten feet away, the red flotation balloon broke the surface and waited to be retrieved.

Chapter Five

Tyler had learned during the course of his travels to avoid the tourist spots. Although he was technically in that category himself, he had found that not only were the spots the locals drank in cheaper, they were also less rowdy and without the drunk holidaymakers who didn’t care about those who had serious drinking to do. He was certain that the current watering hole he was in, aptly named Roaches, wouldn’t be troubled by tourists. It was dark, the shadows heavy against the baking Australian heat which was kept at bay by the air conditioning. This was a spot for the people who lived in the area. The ones who worked nights and might have come in for a quick post-work drink before slipping away to get some sleep, or those who were without work and had nothing to do. It was also a place for people like him — professional drinkers with a habit to feed — something which he had learned people in every country he had visited had learned to spot. He wondered if he really looked that shitty and his ex-wife’s words echoed in his brain. He was aware of the consequences of heavy drinking. His father had died from alcoholism as had his father before him. Tyler supposed it was a family trait, something he had inherited along with the hooked nose and dry sense of humour. It wasn’t even that he was depressed and was trying to drink himself to death, he was just weak when it came to addiction and didn’t have the ability to say no.

He sat at the end of the bar, reading the previous day’s newspaper and working on his third beer with a Jack Daniels chaser and wondering if it was time to move on to a new area. Funds were starting to deplete, the money he had got for the house, his car and his possessions starting to dwindle. The idea of going back to society seemed alien to him, especially after seeing all that life had to offer outside of the grind. He wondered how it would be, to go back to his old life. To see Amy again. He supposed it would be awkward. She would be angry and remind him she was right about his inability to kick the booze.

Fuck her.

He swallowed his JD in one, closing his eyes as its warmth radiated through his body.

Screw you, Amy.

He stopped himself before his thoughts turned nasty. When that happened, the alcohol demon he carried around inside him would wake and get out of control. When that happened, he would black out and have no idea what happened next. Those incidents scared him. He would often wake up asleep in the street or in a jail cell. He knew it was only a matter of time before he did something he couldn’t shy away from when nursing a hangover. Even though he tried not to think about her, Amy was right. He needed to keep control of his habit and make sure he kept it in check. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he ordered another drink, nodding to the bartender to bring him another and making the whole notion he had any control over his addiction irrelevant. As he waited for his drink to arrive, he looked around the bar at the few drinkers scattered around the room who Tyler assumed were pro drinkers like him. Around the curve of the bar just a few feet away, two men were deep in conversation. One of them was horrifically scarred, and even with the Panama hat pulled low on his head, Tyler could see something severe had happened to him. The man next to him was in his twenties, skin tanned, black hair and blue eyes, the kind of guy women always threw themselves at. The scarred man was clearly frustrated, his hands gesticulating as he spoke to the younger man. Tyler had no intent to listen in on their conversation, it just happened as he waited for his drink. The old man kept mentioning gold, and how they could be rich to which the younger man was telling him it was likely a hoax and he shouldn’t get his hopes up. The younger of the two men caught Tyler watching them.

‘Can I help you?’ he snapped.

Tyler stammered, stumbling over his words. ‘No, sorry, I wasn’t trying to be nosy, I was just waiting for my drink and couldn’t help but overhear.’

‘See, Dad?’ the younger man said. ‘Everyone can hear you making a fool out of yourself.’

The scarred man looked at his son, then across at Tyler. ‘You’re a regular in here, aren’t you?’

Tyler nodded.

‘Thought so. I’ve seen you in here before.’

Tyler didn’t reply. He had never seen the scarred man before. He would have recognised him. The man with the scars grinned as if reading his thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not surprised you haven’t seen me. I usually sit in the corner where it’s dark and my son here, Liam, gets me my drinks. I don’t want to scare off the customers.’ He tried to smile, but with his lack of lips and facial muscle structure, it came off as a grimace. The man held his good hand out to Tyler. ‘Names Nash. Robert Nash.’

The two men shook hands. ‘Tyler. Nice to meet you.’

Nash flicked his head towards his son. ‘This short-tempered one is my son, Liam.’

Liam nodded at Tyler, showing none of the warmth or friendliness of his father

‘I’m impressed,’ Nash said.

‘Excuse me?’ Tyler said as the bartender set his drinks in front of him and took the empties away along with the money.

‘You look me in the eye when you talk to me. Most people see this and think I’m some sort of leper.’

‘I take people as I find them.’

‘That accent. You’re not a local, are you? You a yank?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Most of the tourists stick to the coastal bars, but something tells me that’s not you either.’

‘No, I’m… well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what I am. I sold everything I own and decided I wanted to travel. Been doing that for a while now and found myself here. I don’t like the tourist places.’

‘I don’t blame you, mate. Too pricey and rowdy. This is a decent spot, though, even though the draft stuff is watered-down piss.’

Tyler grinned. He liked Nash already. Living with such a disfigurement couldn’t have been easy, yet he seemed to be in good spirits.

‘We don’t have time for this, Dad,’ Liam said, giving a mistrustful glance towards Tyler.

‘Of course we do. This isn’t time limited, son. Now go get the drinks in whilst I bring our new friend up to speed and see what his opinion is on this.’

‘Dad…’

‘Another beer for me and whatever you want.’ Nash cut in.

Liam glared at his father, then at Nash before doing as he was told and heading to the bar. Nash watched him go, then turned back to Tyler. ‘He’s a good kid, just stubborn. I can’t say too much as he gets it from me.’

Tyler nodded and sipped his drink.

‘How much did you hear about what me and the boy were saying?’

Tyler shrugged. ‘Nothing really. Something about gold but no details.’

‘Right, right, well, the thing is, me and him are in a bit of disagreement about something and I thought that you, as a neutral, might be able to help us out.’

‘Sure, why not?’ Tyler said, amazed at how quickly he had got used to Nash’s horrific scars.

‘Let me ask you something, mate,’ Nash said. ‘You ever hear of the Devil’s Triangle?’

Tyler shook his head. ‘Should I have?’

‘Probably not. It’s more of a local legend.’

‘What is it?’

Nash looked around and tried to grin again, the effect ghastly. ‘Well, it’s this place about a hundred miles off the coast. An area where people don’t go.’

‘Why’s that?’ Tyler asked, thinking this was starting to sound like the start of a corny ghost story.

‘You heard of the Bermuda Triangle? Surely you know that one.’

‘Yeah, ship graveyard. They say weird things happen there. Magnetic interference or something. Causes boats to lose their way and planes to crash.’

‘Yeah, that’s the one,’ Nash said as Liam returned with the drinks. ‘Well, we got one of those here only we call it the Devil’s Triangle.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘You won’t have,’ Liam said. ‘People down here don’t talk about it. They don’t even take it seriously, which is what I’m trying to tell the old man here.’

Nash raised a gnarled, scar-crossed hand. ‘Hang on a second, you’re getting ahead of the story, son.’

Tyler waited until Nash took a sip of his drink then went on. ‘Anyway, this place, the Devil’s Triangle, people have talked for years about it. It was first reported back in 1877 as a place to avoid because it was dangerous there. Ship graveyard.’

‘Could be shallow waters. It happens.’

Liam grinned. ‘You think nobody would have bothered to check that? The waters there are deep enough. It’s shallow a few miles from the area, but not there. The water is deep.’

‘So what is it? Another magnetic hot spot?’

‘No, that’s the thing,’ Nash said, enjoying telling the story. ‘Ship instruments work fine there. In fact, unlike the one in Bermuda, planes can cross through it fine. It’s the boats that come to harm.’

‘What happens?’ Tyler asked.

‘They sink. Disappear without a trace. It’s a graveyard down there. Wreckage everywhere that has been reclaimed by the waters. Or at least, that’s what the stories say.’

‘How, though? There must be a reason for it,’ Tyler asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ Liam said, ‘although there is a story about the place which I’m sure my father is about to get to.’

‘It’s a true story. Only thing is nobody believes it, my son included,’ Nash snapped.

Tyler waited, reluctant to get involved with the tension between father and son. Both of them sipped their drinks, then Nash went on. ‘Back when I was in the Army, we were on a training exercise out there. Our route took us straight through the Devil’s Triangle. Of course, back then, I was young and brash. Didn’t care for or believe in the stories. We were near the middle of the Triangle when it happened. Explosion from below deck. The boat started to list straight away. Most of us were sleeping, and so by the time we got up, we were already ankle-deep in water.’ Nash’s good remaining eye took on a vacant glare as he recalled the events. ‘We went in the water, forty of us. Some crew went down with the ship. We could see the hole in the hull as it capsized. Something had hit the boat from underneath.’

‘What was it?’ Tyler asked, drink forgotten.

Nash didn’t answer; he stared off into space. ‘There was something in the water. Started to take us, those that were left. We didn’t know if anyone had sent out a distress call, and there were no landmasses we could get to. All we could do was cling to the wreckage and wait for help that we didn’t know was even coming, which was all well and good until we started to die.’

‘Sharks?’ Tyler asked.

‘Just one. A big one. Big enough to sink the boat anyway.’

‘Great whites can grow up to twenty feet in these waters. Even so, that’s not big enough to sink a boat of that size. You said you had forty men on board.’

‘Fifty. Forty went into the water, the rest I’m guessing went down with the ship or couldn’t get out.’

‘Fifty men, so you’d be talking about a boat that was what, a hundred and fifty, two hundred feet long? No shark could do that.’

‘You don’t need to give me the history lesson. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve dived with the whites and I know how big they can get. This thing, though… It was no great white. This thing was seventy feet, maybe even eighty.’

Tyler smirked and was about to laugh it off when he saw Nash was deadly serious. ‘That’s impossible. Something that big would have been found.’

‘Depends on how you consider big,’ Nash said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To you or me, a seventy-foot shark is big. Scaled up to the size of the ocean, seventy feet is nothing. Hell, some blue whales reach almost a hundred feet in length, and manage to go about their business. The only reason we see those is when they surface to breathe. Sharks, of course, don’t need to do that.’

‘But people would have seen one.’

‘I’ve seen one,’ Nash snapped. ‘You ever hear of Megalodon?’

Tyler shook his head.

‘It was a shark, identical in almost every way to the modern great white but much bigger. They grew up to seventy feet in length. The official story goes that the last ice age caused them to die out, the cooling of the waters making survival for them impossible. As their prey died, they starved as they were too big and slow to capture the smaller creatures that it would have been forced to feed on, but, we know that story is just not true. Fossilised teeth have been found that date to after the ice age. The Megalodon as a species survived that period.’

‘Even so, there wouldn’t have been enough food to support something so big. You said so yourself. All the bigger prey died. ‘

‘That’s not true either. There was an abundance of whales and other large sea creatures which they could feed on in deeper waters. If you accept the possibility that the colder waters slowed their metabolism so that they didn’t have to feed so often, then you have a scenario where these things can exist. True, they primarily hunted in warmer waters, but let’s just say the ice age forced them to adapt to colder oceans and live deeper where the whales and sufficient prey lived. It’s more than possible.’

‘Let’s say you’re right. You don’t have any proof.’

Nash leaned on the bar, the lights casting his face into an ugly shadow-filled wasteland. ‘This is my evidence. It did this to me. I saw it up close, so yes, I have my evidence.’

Tyler was confused. The conversation seemed to have gone off track and he had no idea where it was going. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with gold,’ he said.

Nash did his best attempt at a grin and leaned back out of the harsh light. ‘There is a story about a boat, a drug-smuggling vessel that was transporting a shipment of gold to a courier ready to be taken to a foundry and melted down by a local cartel. By all accounts, there was around thirty million dollars’ worth of it on board. The story goes that the boat never arrived at the pickup and disappeared without a trace. Some say the people driving the boat were ambushed and the cargo stolen. Others say the guys doing the drop off kept the haul, sold it on the black market and lived as rich men. Some say the cartel took it, killed the crew and claimed it never arrived.’

‘Let me guess,’ Tyler said. ‘Another version of the story is that the boat was sunk by your shark in the Devil’s Triangle and took the gold down there with it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But nobody can get to it because of this…’

‘Megalodon,’ Nash said, finishing the sentence and taking a sip of his drink.

‘Yeah, this Megalodon,’ Tyler repeated.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘No offence, but it seems a little far-fetched.’

Nash turned to Liam. ‘Show him.’

‘We don’t know this guy, are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. We need another pair of hands to do this. Show him.’

Liam flashed another mistrustful look at Tyler then took an object wrapped in cloth from the bag at his feet. ‘You’ll have to come over to see it. I can’t put this on the bar.’

Tyler was too intrigued not to go look. He slid off his bar stool and stood between the two men staring at the wrapped package in Liam’s lap.

‘Last week, Liam and I were out doing some spotting on the edge of the Triangle.’

‘Spotting?’ Tyler repeated.

‘For the Megalodon.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway, we see something floating in the water so we go and retrieve it. Turns out to be a flotation balloon just drifting along the surface along with a few pieces of debris from a boat.’

‘We don’t know that, Dad,’ Liam cut in.

‘Either way, we came across this and pulled it out of the water. There was one object in the netting under the balloon.’ Nash nodded to Liam who unwrapped the cloth.

Tyler drew a breath. The gold bar shimmered under the low-level lighting of the bar, appearing like liquid gold. Part of the bar was damaged and worn and exactly how Tyler would expect it to look if it had been submerged underwater for years. Tyler looked at the two men then at the gold.

‘Where did this come from?’ Tyler asked, finally remembering to breathe.

‘Where do you think?’ Nash said. ‘Local reports say a boat went missing last week. Two brothers, locals. They went out and didn’t come back. The floating wreckage we saw was consistent with the same type of boat they had. My guess is they were looking for the gold and found it.’

‘Then what?’ Tyler asked.

‘Then something found them.’

Tyler couldn’t take his eyes off the gold. He didn’t believe in the shark story. Something so large was impossible. The gold, however, he did believe in, and it was just a few feet away. He blinked as Liam wrapped it up and slipped it back into his bag.

‘So, you interested in helping us?’ Nash asked.

Tyler returned to his seat and drained half his beer. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Nash leaned closer, licking what remained of his lips as he spoke quietly. ‘My body is, for want of a better word, fucked, and I can’t physically dive down there anymore. Even if I could, frankly, I’m afraid that I’ll come face to face with that thing again. You and Liam will dive down to the ship graveyard in Devil’s Triangle, and I’ll provide support from the surface. For your efforts, you’ll get ten percent of the haul, however much that might be.’

‘Ten percent? You tell me there’s a monster shark down there and then expect me to risk my life for ten percent. Sorry, not happening.’

Nash frowned and glanced at Liam. ‘Looks like I said too much too soon. Alright, how does twenty percent sound? We will provide the boat as well as the equipment we need. I’m talking top of the range sonar, and diving gear with face masks that allow us to talk to each other. We will be in constant communication.’

Tyler wasn’t a greedy man, yet he knew this was an opportunity for him to permanently put off returning to his mundane life that he had walked away from so long ago if the story was true. If it wasn’t, it was another new experience for him to say he had tried. It was about security, and if it meant he had to accept Nash’s ghost stories, then he would.

‘Man, you’re breaking me here. Twenty-five percent and I won’t go any higher.’

Nash had mistaken Tyler processing his thoughts as indecision, and the higher offer made the rest easy. ‘Alright, you’re on.’

‘Good to have you on board,’ Nash said, trying again to grin.

‘Just one thing,’ Tyler said, looking at the two of them. ‘No offence, but you don’t look like you can afford all this fancy equipment you talked about.’

‘We can’t, or at least we couldn’t,’ Nash said, glancing to the bag containing the gold bar. ‘I know a guy who will exchange that gold piece there for cash no questions asked. Don’t worry, we can afford this little project.’

With far too much information already taken on board and unsure how he even got pulled into the entire thing in the first place, Tyler nodded. ‘Alright, then I guess I’m in. What happens next?’

‘It’s going to take a few days to get everything we need. In the meantime, I don’t think I need to tell you how important it is to keep this quiet. Nobody around here thinks the Devil’s Triangle is real. We need to keep it that way. We need to go in and out quick and quiet before anything finds us.’

Tyler didn’t have to ask what he meant. The fear in his good eye said enough. ‘No danger of that. I don’t know anyone to tell. Comes with the lifestyle.’

‘Good. That’s exactly what I thought and why I picked you. Liam will give you the address. Be there on Friday morning.’

He waited until Liam had scribbled the details and passed them across to him.

‘Alright, then I guess I’ll see you Friday morning,’ Tyler said, standing and shoving the address into his pocket.

‘In the meantime, do yourself a favour. Learn about the Megalodon. Make sure you read up on it. You need to know what you’re going up against. I’ve got enough blood on my hands and don’t need anymore.’

Tyler was going to crack a joke, something to lighten the mood, then saw that Nash was serious. ‘Alright, I’ll do that. See you Friday morning.’

Tyler finished his drink, slid off his seat and left the bar, realising the slight beer buzz he had before he started talking to Nash had gone. He was now sober and had a head full of questions and speculation. First and foremost, he needed a drink. Just one. Just to calm the nerves.

Chapter Six

Tyler didn’t read about the Megalodon, despite his intentions to do so. Instead, he had gotten drunk and let the demon within him roam free. The Friday morning he was supposed to meet Nash and Liam, he had woken as always on the floor of his motel room, head thundering, body filled with pain and regret at his actions. He had half-convinced himself that the whole story was just the ramblings of a drunk, perhaps a glimpse into his own future if he didn’t get control of his habit. The one thing that kept his interest was the gold. Sure enough, there was no guarantee that the bar he had been shown came from the Devil’s Triangle, but if it was a ruse, Nash was going to extreme lengths to make it seem real. As he dressed and dry swallowed aspirin to relieve the thunderstorm in his head, he supposed today would tell either way. He would go to the dock and see what happened. If there was no Nash or boat, he would move on with his life. He had learned not to try and predict too much of the future and since leaving his old life behind had become blasé about such things. Grabbing his sunglasses to protect him from his hangover, Tyler grabbed his backpack and set out to see what was going to happen next.

The heat of the day was brutal and made Tyler’s hangover feel even worse. His skin was soaked with sweat, and angry patches of perspiration had formed under the armpits and down the back of his navy polo shirt. Even so, he risked lifting the sunglasses and propping them on his forehead to look at the vessel in Dock 9.

The seventy-two-foot yacht bobbed in the azure waters, sunlight shimmering off its white hull. The windows to the wheelhouse were blacked out, the entire vessel screaming luxury. Across the bow, painted in pale blue was the ship’s name. The Sonnet. Tyler stared at it, squinting against the sun and watching Nash and Liam load supplies onto the boat.

Nash saw him and waved a scarred arm. ‘You made it.’

Tyler stood agape and thinking how Amy would have loved to have seen such a rare thing. He was lost for words. Nash saw it and laughed, fedora flapping in the breeze. ‘You thought I was full of shit, didn’t you?’ he said as he leaned on the rail around the stern of the boat.

‘Yeah, actually I did,’ Tyler replied.

‘Well, don’t just stand there, come on board. We’ve got work to do.’

Tyler tossed his bag onto the deck at the stern and climbed on board the boat. Everything felt surreal, from the gentle sway of the vessel in its berth to the slightly hops and booze smell coming off Nash as he sorted gear on the deck.

‘This must have been expensive.’

‘It was,’ Nash replied. ‘Like I said, I know a guy who didn’t ask too many questions. Told him it was for a fishing trip just to be safe.’

Tyler exhaled, doing another slow three-sixty as he took everything in. Nash chuckled as he handed a box of supplies to Liam. ‘You’re still struggling to take it all in, aren’t you?’

Tyler was caught off guard by the directness of the question and was spared having to answer by Nash’s laugh as he clapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry about it, the story is pretty unbelievable, isn’t it?’

Tyler nodded, the growing feeling of unease in his gut becoming harder to ignore. Nash checked his watch, then squinted up at the sun. ‘Well, maybe we should be on our way. Weather looks clear at least, so that’s in our favour. I want to do this during daylight hours.’

Tyler nodded. Now he was standing on the boat and everything Nash had told him was turning out to be true, he couldn’t help but think about the shark story he had been told. He still didn’t think it was possible, but he knew the more time he spent with Nash and the closer they got to their destination, the idea would grow and fester in his mind.

‘Hey,’ Liam said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a muscular forearm and then picking up another box of supplies. ‘Any chance of a little help here?’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Tyler said, grabbing another one of the boxes and following Liam into the galley. Within the hour, they were underway, Nash piloting the boat, Liam engrossed in his phone, earphones in so he didn’t have to make conversation. Tyler stood out on the back deck by the transom, staring at the white wake left by the boat as it moved into deeper waters. As he watched the land receded into a hazy smudge on the horizon, he found himself thinking about the Megalodon, now only half sure it couldn’t be real.

The initial excitement had waned. The day was hot and sticky, and because of the hangover, the sun wasn’t something Tyler wanted to become too acquainted with, especially with the constant drone of the engine making his headache worse by the hour. Liam had disappeared below decks to his cabin to sleep, and so Tyler joined Nash at the wheel, watching the bow of the boat slice through the gorgeous blue waters. The wheelhouse was wood panelled. In addition to the controls to drive the boat, there were other devices propped on the console. A bank of CCTV monitors displayed blue standby screens. Beside these was a radar screen, their vessel marked in red in the centre of the display. To Nash’s right was the fish finder, its screen a kaleidoscope of ridges and valleys as the under-hull-mounted camera mapped the sea floor. Nash glanced at him as he entered the wheelhouse, then turned back towards the water.

‘How are you finding the trip? Been sick yet?’ Nash asked. He was like a different person now that he was away from the prying eyes of society. He had shed the hat and abundance of layers and was wearing knee-length cargo shorts, a loose white shirt and brown sandals. Tyler tried not to stare at the horrific map of scars on his body, the damage even more visible in the harsh light of day.

‘I’m good, I’ve managed to keep everything on board for now,’ he said, turning his attention back to the ocean.

Nash chuckled. ‘You’re lucky it’s smooth going. If the seas were rough and we were vaulting over six-foot swells, you might be saying something else.’

Tyler approached, standing beside Nash. ‘This looks like a lot of equipment.’

‘State of the art. The very best.’ He nodded towards the blue screened CCTV monitors. ‘Those are for the live drone feeds. When we reach the Devil’s Triangle, we’ll send down the remote control drones. They are attached to the surface by fibre-optic tethers, which was what you and Liam were bringing on board earlier. Because we don’t know what’s down there, the plan is to send those in first and scan the area to see what we’re dealing with.’

‘Yeah? I thought you were just going to put me on the end of a fishing line to bait your shark.’

Tyler meant it as a joke, but Nash wasn’t amused. ‘You didn’t do the research, did you?’ Nash said, staring straight ahead.

‘I… no. I didn’t.’

‘I thought not. If you did, you wouldn’t be so… relaxed.’

‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean anything by it, it’s just… It’s a stretch.’

Nash shrugged. ‘I can’t blame you. Even my own son doesn’t believe it. Like you, he half-thinks I’m a crazy old man and half-thinks there might be some money to be made, so he tolerates my rambling.’

‘Look, it’s not—’

‘It doesn’t matter. People thinking like that isn’t new to me. You should prepare yourself though for me to be proved right. I’ve seen what’s down there, and I know what we have to potentially face.’

‘Look, I’ll be straight with you, I’m not sold on your shark story. I don’t doubt you were attacked, the evidence of that is plain to see. My doubt is your account of the size of the shark. You know, from so low in the water when you were cold and scared, it would be easy for the brain to scale this creature up to something monstrous. I didn’t read up on the Megalodon because I don’t believe it’s down there. Sharks roam, I know that much. It’s unlikely they would stick around in one place for years to protect some gold that they won’t have any awareness of. Now if we can get down there, get the gold you say is on the sea floor and get back to shore without any more shark talk, I’d appreciate it.’

Nash stared at him with his one good eye as if seeing Tyler for the first time. ‘Alright, if that’s the way you want it, that’s how it will be. I won’t mention it again. You’re the one who will be down there, not me.’

‘Exactly. Your son will be, too. I don’t think he’d appreciate hearing this either.’

‘You say it like I hope that thing is down there.’

‘That’s how it sounds,’ Tyler said, curious to see where the conversation went. ‘Seems to me it’s important for you to prove us wrong. Even more than the finding the gold.’

‘That’s not the case. I know what I saw. You think you’re the first to say it was because I was scared or because how close I was to it?’ Nash grimaced. ‘No, I know what I saw. And I’m no fool. I know about these creatures. I’ve read about them, obsessed over them for the last thirty years. I’m not so stupid to think they are guarding their gold. What I do think this Megalodon is guarding is its territory. These creatures were very territorial animals. The area we’re going to is shallow, but it sits on the edge of a deep water chasm frequented by whale pods. I suspect those whales form the basis of the diet for the Megalodon. Why should it leave the area? Its food regularly comes directly to it. It’s a perfect setup.’

‘Wait, I know a bit about whales. They are buoyant. Wouldn’t the remains float to the surface and wash up somewhere? Surely, if someone found a whale carcass that one of these mega sharks have taken a bite out of, then someone would have found one by now.’

Nash chuckled and altered the boat’s course slightly.

‘What’s so funny?’ Tyler asked.

‘How little you know about these things. You ask why the remains wouldn’t show up. Let me answer that for you. When these things have finished feeding, there are no remains left to surface. Nothing goes to waste.’ Nash walked across the wheelhouse to a cupboard. He opened it and took out some books, handing them to Tyler. ‘We’ve got a ways to go yet. It might be worth doing a little reading just so you at least know what to do if this isn’t a figment of my imagination.’

Tyler leafed through the books. They were well-thumbed volumes about prehistoric predators, shark behaviour, and the Megalodon. Tyler considered another sarcastic remark then decided to keep it to himself. He didn’t want to be thrown overboard. Instead, he tucked the books under his arm. ‘Fine, I’ll take a look. If nothing else, I might learn a few things.’

‘You do that.’

Tyler went to leave, then stopped and turned back to Nash. ‘Just one thing. When we get there, to this Devil’s Triangle, what if someone disturbs us there. A passing vessel or the Coast Guard or something. What do we say?’

‘No danger of that. No shipping lanes go where we’re going. It’s essentially out in the middle of nowhere.’ Nash took a dog-eared map and rolled it out on the console. On the map was a crudely drawn triangle in an area of open ocean. ‘This is where we’re heading,’ Nash said. ‘The shipping lanes as you can see are nowhere even close. They used to run through here up until the seventies. All the shipping lanes now run further north. We’ll be undisturbed.’

‘What about those?’ Tyler said, pointing to the two small islands to within the triangle.

‘Uninhabited. Mostly rock outcrops with a little vegetation. Waters there are shallow. Thousands of years ago, those two little islands were part of one large landmass. Now those two little islands are all that remains of it. The rest is underwater.’

‘If it’s shallow, maybe that’s why all these boats are sinking.’

Nash shook his head. ‘No. It’s only shallow in that small area around the islands. The rest of the surrounding ocean is as you expect. It’s deep. This isn’t a case of ships running aground. This is something else.’

‘Alright, you clearly know more about this than me. I just wanted to make sure we didn’t get into any trouble.’

‘Unless you think seagulls will call the Coast Guard, we’re safe,’ Nash replied.

Tyler stared at the map, frown etched on his brow. He could feel Nash staring at him.

‘What are you thinking?’ Nash asked.

‘Just that with this being so remote, if anything goes wrong, we’ll be far from help.’

Nash nodded. ‘Which is why I’ve taken all the necessary precautions. Here, let me show you.’

Nash rolled up the map and put it beside the console then turned back to the monitors that had been installed. ‘Alright, here’s how this will work. You see the monitors here?’ Nash pointed to the blue standby screens.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, each screen is linked to one of the manta drones we brought on board.’

‘You just told me that. They are going down first, right?’

Nash nodded. ‘That’s not all. Once we’ve located what we are looking for, the manta drones will be positioned in a circular formation around you and Liam. As you load up the gold, I’ll monitor the live feeds from the drone cameras. The feed is super high resolution and also has night vision and thermal imaging. I’ll be monitoring those from the surface and keeping in constant contact with you from the surface. I know you don’t believe it, but I do, and I want to be sure the both of you are safe.’

‘You can pilot all those drones by yourself?’

‘They are designed to have adjustable buoyancy, so essentially, once they are in position, I can adjust the levels and the mantas will just sit there until I move them. They will need small tweaks to account for currents, but I can handle it. Think of it like spinning plates. As long as I keep moving from one to the other to adjust them, it will be fine.’

‘Let’s hope the units work as they should.’

Nash snorted. ‘Don’t let the fact that my hand is the way it is fool you. I was a good engineer before this happened to me and I still do alright now. I’ve personally set up each manta ahead of the dive. They will work.’

‘And what about the gold? How will we find that? Looking at the map you just showed me, this Devil’s Triangle is huge.’

‘We’re heading back to the location where we found the flotation balloons and the gold bar. Seems like a good place to me. There was still a fair bit of surface debris, too, so it stands to reason that the gold was found in the general vicinity.’

‘And how will we get the gold to the surface if we find any?’

‘Seems to me the flotation balloon idea is a good one. We’ve brought some with us. Any more questions?’

Tyler could see he was getting on Nash’s nerves, and decided it would be best to leave him alone. ‘No, that’s all, thanks. I’m going to head below and look at these books.’

‘Study them, Tyler. They could save your life.’

Tyler left the wheelhouse, books in hand. The closer they got to their destination, the more he wanted to know about Nash’s shark theory. Just to be safe.

Chapter Seven

The Devil’s Triangle. 100 miles off the coast of Australia.

‘We’re here,’ Nash said as he put the boat into neutral, letting it ebb with the gentle tide. They had been sailing for almost eight hours and the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, turning the ocean into an expanse of fire. Nash walked out onto the rear deck, squinting against the sun as he surveyed the water. Tyler joined him. He had expected to see something. A marker or some other landmark to show that they were in the right place. He turned in a slow circle, scanning the waves, nervous that they were so far away from land.

‘It’s quiet,’ Tyler said as the boat creaked and swayed on the tide.

‘Yeah, nothing out here but us now.’

‘What are those?’ Tyler said, pointing at two rocky outcrops on the horizon.

‘Those islands I told you about on the map. See what I mean about them being too far away to be the cause of the sinking ships?’ Nash said. He was sweating, his eyes darting over the surface of the water.

Tyler walked to the stern, staring into the blue depths. Now he was there, everything seemed much more real. ‘Do you really think it’s down there?’

Nash grinned and joined Tyler at the stern. ‘Did some reading, I take it? Made you a believer now.’

‘I was talking about the gold, not the shark.’ He expected Nash to go into another one of his sermons, but he was too distracted. He was flexing his good hand as he stared at the water. ‘You know, I’ve been waiting to get to this stage for so long, and now that I’m here, I can’t stop shaking. Hopefully, we’ll find something otherwise, this will have been a very expensive wasted trip.’

Liam joined them on deck, already wearing his wetsuit. ‘You better get changed. We’re losing daylight.’

Tyler nodded, unable to hide the nerves that were setting in. Now, more than ever, he desperately wanted a few drinks. The inner demon was stirring and he wondered if Nash had brought any alcohol on board.

‘I’ll get the drones ready,’ Nash said. ‘The two of you will have to get them into the water for me, my arm…’ He trailed off, good hand still flexing with nerves.

Tyler felt like he was running on autopilot, somehow detached from reality. The closer he got to actually entering the water, the more aware he was that he didn’t know the people he was with and that he was trusting his life to strangers. He still couldn’t accept that there was a giant monster beneath the waves, and he had seen enough of Nash to know he was slightly unhinged. There was always the ‘what if’ though. After all, even crazy people were right sometimes and he couldn’t shake that off. With it in his mind, Tyler went below deck to change and maybe see if he could find a bottle of something to take the edge off his nerves.

II

Liam was lowering the last of the drones into the ocean as Tyler returned in his black and red wetsuit. It was a snug fit, his belly straining against the material. He had been unable to find any alcohol which had put him into a bad mood. It made him aware just how big a problem he had developed and knew he needed to fix it. Not yet, though, when there was so much stress about the pending dive. With the growing dark, the ocean no longer looked gorgeous and relaxing. Instead, it looked like the most inhospitable, uninviting place he had ever seen.

‘You okay there, big man? Not lost your nerve, have you?’

Tyler looked at Liam, wishing he had a little of the same cocky confidence. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good, because we can’t afford any mistakes down there. For the record, I wanted to do this alone but my dad insisted we bring someone else in. Just do as I tell you and everything will be fine.’

‘Good luck giving me instructions under water,’ Tyler grunted, deciding he preferred the sulky, quiet version of Nash’s son. Liam shook his head and crossed the deck to the scuba gear, then stared at Tyler. ‘Come over here, let me teach you a little something.’

Ignoring the goading tone, Tyler joined Liam by the equipment. He glanced at Nash to see if he was going to say anything to his son, but he was preoccupied calibrating the underwater mantas, lost in the controls and array of screens in front of him.

‘Hey, you listening?’ Liam said.

‘Yeah, I’m listening.’

‘These are full-face scuba masks. They pull over your head like a hood and are vacuum sealed. Take a look.’ Liam handed Tyler the facemask. It was a black neoprene hood with the regulator built into the full-face Lexan mask. The rectangular window would give excellent views of the surrounding ocean, and calmed Tyler’s nerves a little at the thought of having to bite down on a regulator for the entire duration of the dive.

‘Nice, this is impressive.’

‘There’s a microphone and speaker inside so we’ll be able to communicate when we’re under. Air gauge will attach to your wrist as normal. Both air tanks are full, though, so I wouldn’t expect it to be a problem.’

Tyler looked out at the ever approaching night. ‘What about visibility? How will we see?’

Tyler pointed to the mask. ‘See there around the edge of the mask? High-power LED lights. Better than any handheld torch. Also, the boat has powerful lights underneath the hull. My dad will illuminate as far as he can from the surface. With both combined, we’ll see better than if we were in full daylight.’

‘And what if, uh, what if something goes wrong. If there is an emergency.’

‘You mean if you see the Meg?’

‘No, of course not,’ Tyler said, hoping his lie wasn’t too transparent.

Liam snorted. ‘We’ve got the Zodiac in the water by the boat. If you get into trouble down there or there are any other issues, we can be on it and away from the danger quick as you like. Good enough?’’

Tyler nodded. His nerves had already started to recede. He had gone from expecting a horrific, claustrophobic descent in near darkness to facing a well-lit comfortable swim to the seafloor to see if Nash was crazy or right about the gold.

‘You two ready?’ Nash asked, grinning at them as he activated the exterior lights on the boat, throwing an eerie blue-green halo around the hull.

‘Yeah,’ Tyler said, unsure if he believed it or not. He wasn’t about to show he was afraid. The beast called male pride kept his emotions hidden. ‘Let’s do it,’ he added, aware of how dry his throat was and wishing again for that drink. He watched as Liam pulled the neoprene mask over his head and did the same, his hearing muffled by the material against his ears. There was a strange sense of calm as he became isolated in his own bubble, the faceplate separating him from the world. He inhaled, the clean oxygen filtering into his mask.

‘Hey, can you hear me?’

Tyler looked to Liam, his electronic-filtered voice coming through a small speaker in the face panel of the mask. Tyler nodded, wishing he could slow his heart rate.

‘You need to speak so we can check we have reception,’ Liam said, the irritation unmistakeable.

‘Yeah, I hear you fine, uh, roger.’

‘Alright, I got you. You don’t need to say roger or over and out. Just talk normally.’

‘Alright, sorry.’

‘Forget it. Just a couple of things to run through before we go down. At the bottom edge of your facemask, do you see an LED strip going left to right, red graduating to blue?’

‘I see it,’ Tyler said.

‘Good. That’s your air gauge. Both tanks are full and we will be back to the surface before we get anywhere close to running out of air, but I thought it best to tell you what it was.’

‘Got it,’ Tyler said the tempo of his heart finally starting to slow to something resembling normality.

‘Dad, are you hearing us okay?’

‘Got you both loud and clear,’ Nash said over the speaker. Tyler could see him settled in at the control console for the drones, headset over his scarred skull. ‘Mantas have scanned the area and it’s clear. Nothing down there. I do see some wrecks down there though so you both might want to get into the water. Sooner the better.’

Liam walked to the transom, sitting on the rear of the boat and putting on his flippers. Tyler joined him, the muffled sounds of the world giving him no comfort. He sat next to Liam, unable to resist a glance into the artificially lit depths. He put on his own flippers, wondering if his hands would shake and pleased to see that they were steady. Liam stood and turned to Tyler. ‘You ready?’

Tyler nodded, then remembered he was supposed to speak. ‘Yeah. Good to go.’

‘Alright. Then just remember to follow my lead. I’m pretty sure you’ve never done this before but my dad wants you out there to help. Just do as I say and everything will be fine. Got it?’

‘Yeah, I got it.’

‘Then let’s go.’

‘What about the flotation balloon?’

‘We don’t need it yet. This trip is just so we can go look and see if there is anything down there. If there is, we’ll come back for the balloon.’ Liam walked to the ladder set into the transom and climbed down it, his feet inches from the waterline. He folded his arms across his chest and pushed off backwards, disappearing into the water, his mass becoming a blurred black shape below the waterline. Tyler stared at the water, his chest drumming its higher tempo again.

‘You coming or not?’ Liam’s voice said in Tyler’s facemask. Although he couldn’t see him, Tyler could imagine the arrogant look on his face.

‘Yeah, on my way’ he said, also climbing the ladder. He looked across the deck at Nash, who was watching him intently, one good eye judging and curious. Then, with less finesse than Liam had managed, Tyler dropped into the water, ready to face whatever waited for him beyond.

#

Fear became secondary to wonder as Tyler kicked in ten feet of water. The lights from the boat illuminated his world, microscopic life drifting and undulating on the currents. Liam was ten feet below and waiting. Tyler couldn’t see his face but thought he was probably getting impatient. Tyler angled towards him, reluctant to leave the light generated by the boat.

‘I thought you’d lost your nerve,’ Liam said as Tyler fell in alongside him.

The jibes were making Tyler angry, but he managed not to react, knowing it wasn’t the time or place. The younger version of himself would have responded with sarcasm or aggression, but he wasn’t about to get drawn into petty squabbles, as they were now in a hostile environment. Instead, he focused on his surroundings, the darkness swallowing them as they made their way deeper. He saw Liam activate his exterior facemask light and realised he didn’t know how to do the same.

‘Hey, uh, how do I do that? The light,’ he said, hating that he was so needy.

‘The cuff on your wrist. Turn the dial.’

Tyler complied, turning the dial on the Velcro cuff and feeling better as the darkness was expelled by the array of LED lights in his facemask. He hoped to see fish darting around his field of vision, but instead saw only the water and the drifting tide of microscopic life within it. There was a sense of serenity beneath the surface that banished his nerves even though he was aware of just how vast his surroundings were. He was a tiny creature in a huge and thriving ecosystem, something which was both humbling and terrifying at the same time.

‘How are you both doing?’

Nash’s voice disturbed the crushing silence and reminded Tyler that he was there to do a job.

‘We’re fine. How is it looking up there?’ Liam replied.

‘All good up here. Drones are with you in a perimeter formation.’

Tyler looked around, surprised to see the drones so close. He had been completely unaware of their presence and was impressed with how silently they were able to move through the water.

‘How is visibility?’ Nash asked.

‘Not great,’ Tyler said, unsure if it was him who was being addressed. ‘I still don’t understand why we couldn’t wait until daylight to do this.’

‘I told you already, it wouldn’t have made too much difference. Sunlight will only reach so far. Just relax and focus. You should be seeing the bottom soon.’

‘There it is,’ Liam said.

Tyler couldn’t see it at first, just the black waters and microscopic life. He was about to ask what he should be looking for when the sandy bottom melted out of the darkness below him.

‘Dad, are you seeing this?’ Liam said, for once without attitude or arrogance.

‘Yeah, I see it.’

Tyler could see it, too. He had expected to see a little bit of floating debris at best, maybe some man-made rubbish that had been tossed into the ocean and forgotten. Instead, he found himself looking at what he could only describe as a boat graveyard. There was a barnacle-encrusted fishing trawler to his left on its side, half-buried in the soft sand. Ahead, the skeletal ribs were all that remained of a larger vessel. The more Tyler looked, the more he saw in the widening debris field. ‘This is incredible,’ he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

‘Hang on,’ Nash said. ‘I’ll power up the drone lights.’

Seconds later, the full scale of the debris field was fully illuminated as Nash activated each drone’s powerful spotlights, banishing the darkness and illuminating their surroundings.

‘Jesus, just look at it,’ Liam muttered.

Tyler could think of no way to reply. He licked his lips, aware of just how dry they were. The extra visibility exposed more wreckage. The shattered bow of a trawler. Rusting sheets of steel panelling on the ground which were teeming with rusticles as nature claimed the man-made waste. More than anything, they could see the gold. The powerful lights making the seabed glow like fire as the gold bars scattered across the debris field became visible.

‘You were right, Dad. There’s gold down here. A lot of it.’ Liam was breathless and excited, and Tyler couldn’t help but feel the same way.

‘There are so many wrecks down here,’ Tyler said, his voice sounding strange in the enclosed environment of his facemask.

‘You’re telling me. I never imagined there would be so many.’

It was the first time Liam had been civil with him, and Tyler hoped that the hostile attitude had been some kind of initiation and done with, or, alternatively, that the sheer thrill of discovery had made him forget the sizeable chip on his shoulder.

‘This is going to take a few trips. There is so much gold down here we can’t bring it up in one trip.’ The excitement in Liam’s voice was hard to ignore. Tyler was staring at the wrecks, some still nothing more than shadows on the periphery of the spotlights, hulking bones yet to be discovered. Tyler was staring at the outer edge when something caught his eye. He flicked his head around, staring into the distance and recalling the landscape as it had been. He was certain he had seen something move, and now one of the large shapes on the edge of the reach of the lights wasn’t there anymore. His instinct said there was definitely an object, something large and tapered at one end like—

The nose of a shark

—a bow of a large vessel, but now there was nothing. He supposed he could have been mistaken or shifted position and had lost his bearings, but even as the thoughts occurred, he knew neither of those things had happened.

‘Hey, you helping or what?’ Liam said as he kicked towards the seabed.

‘Yeah, sorry I just… I thought I saw something.’

‘Saw what? What did you see?’ The desperation in Nash’s voice made Tyler even more uncomfortable.

‘Nothing, it’s… nothing,’ he muttered as the blood pounded around his body thick in his temples. He willed himself to calm down and tried to convince himself that he had made a mistake. The problem with trying to do that was that he knew he hadn’t. He had seen something out there, something large that was now gone. He—

‘Hey. If you want a cut of this gold, you better come help me.’ Liam, it seemed, had rediscovered the shoulder chip he had lost and was now close to the floor, kicking in place and looking back at him where he floated twenty feet above him in the open water.

Exposed.

That thought scared him, and so instead of following his instinct to kick to the surface as fast as he could, he descended, joining Liam on the debris-covered seabed. Now separated by just a few feet, Tyler could see how angry his fellow diver was.

‘You need to get your shit together and help me. You’re no use just gawping at the scenery.’

‘Sorry,’ Tyler said, resisting the urge to do a full three-sixty and look at his surroundings. Every passing second raised his anxiety levels and made him long for the surface. He pushed those thoughts aside and tried to focus on the task at hand. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘We need to survey this area to see how much gold there is. I didn’t expect it to be even here, never mind in such large amounts. We need to be efficient in getting it to the surface I—’ Liam paused and looked past Tyler, his brow furrowed.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Tyler said, joining him in staring out into the black waters.

‘Nothing I… I thought I saw something.’

‘Saw what? What did you see?’ Nash blurted into their microphones. For once, Tyler didn’t mind. He wanted to know the answer to the question also.

‘It’s nothing, I thought I saw something move that’s all. Trick of the light.’

Tyler opened his mouth to speak, intending to tell Liam he too had seen something and to suggest they head back to the surface when he spoke again. His voice was an octave higher than normal.

‘Look, it’s nothing, alright? I made a mistake. Let’s just do our fucking jobs.’

And so they did.

They moved around the debris field, marking the locations of the gold by the GPS tracking system attached to their wrists. Each coordinate would be relayed to the surface where Nash could make a virtual map of the gold and make a plan to retrieve it. For Tyler, it was only pride and the fact he didn’t want to see the smug look on Liam’s face that he remained beneath the surface. He was trying to distract himself with the tedious work of marking the locations of the gold and telling himself that he was about to become a very rich man when Nash’s voice crackled over the speaker.

‘Stop moving, both of you.’

Tyler didn’t immediately acknowledge the instruction, or why it would have been said until he saw the shark swimming towards them with casual grace. Tyler froze, heart thundering as he watched the majestic creature draw near.

‘It’s huge,’ he whispered, more to himself than in communication.

‘It’s just a great white,’ Liam said, the arrogance becoming something Tyler was finding harder and harder to ignore. Liam was still working, cataloguing samples.

‘He’s right,’ Nash said, sounding almost disappointed. ‘Looks like she’s a big one, though. Fifteen footer.’

Tyler wasn’t sure about that. From his exposed position, it seemed much bigger. Its massive head swayed as it swam over them.

‘Relax, he’s not interested in us,’ Liam said as the shark increased its speed and disappeared into the dark. Tyler looked across at him and was about to say he was heading back to the surface when he saw one of the sunken boats in the distance move towards them. He blinked, and there was the split second realisation that it wasn’t a boat that was moving, but something else.

‘Jesus Christ, it’s real,’ Tyler muttered. Liam, too, was frozen in place and staring at the giant making its way towards them. It was something beyond either of their ability to comprehend. Tyler had considered the white shark as big before he saw the Megalodon. The creatures head was as large as the front of a school bus, its jaws partially open to allow the seawater to flow through as it drifted through the water. Its skin was a brownish grey, and as it came closer, Tyler could see that it was pocked with scars from a lifetime of battles. On its flank, just above the enormous dorsal fin was an old splintered remains of a wooden harpoon.

‘Nash, what do we do?’ Tyler asked, his throat dry as he watched the immense predator come out of the gloom. ‘Nash, can you hear me?’

‘Don’t do anything. Don’t react. Don’t move. Put your back against the nearest hull and wait.’

‘Wait? Are you insane?’

‘He’s likely not interested in you. He seems curious about the drones.’

‘It’s coming towards us, Dad,’ Liam said, the arrogant man replaced by a frightened boy.

‘Do as I say. Don’t move, and for Christ’s sake, stay calm. It will sense your fear.’

‘Sense our fear? It’s not a damn psychic,’ Liam blurted, close to losing control.

‘He’s right,’ Tyler said, recalling the parts of the book Nash had given him. ‘Sharks sense electromagnetic pulses in their prey when they are distressed. You don’t want this thing to see you as a viable meal.’

‘Meal? That thing would swallow us whole.’

‘Then do as I say and don’t move,’ Nash hissed, causing the microphone to crackle.

The Megalodon cruised past them, the pressure as it displaced the water pushing them back against the hull of the sunken boat. Tyler had never experienced terror in such a pure form. It surged through him, his stomach light and rolling as he waited to see if he was about to die. The giant shark opened its mouth, exposing its nine-inch serrated teeth, then, just as Tyler was sure he was about to be devoured, the Megalodon changed direction, more interested in the drones that were surrounding the scene as it played out.

Tyler turned towards Liam just in time to see him disappear as he swam for the surface. ‘Hey, what are you doing? We were told to stay still,’ he hissed as he watched the Megalodon drift towards the drones. If Liam heard him, he didn’t respond. He was already disappearing from view into the dark. The Megalodon had turned away from him now, leaving him on the edge of following Liam or doing as Nash had said. In the end, his instinct told him to flee, and so he kicked his legs, trying to remain calm as he ascended in pursuit of Liam.

‘What are you doing? I told you both to stay still damn it!’ Nash grunted through the mic. Tyler, like Liam, failed to respond. The riches hidden on the sea floor could stay there. He didn’t care about it anymore. All he wanted to do was to breathe fresh air and leave the domain of the monster shark, never to return. As he left the safety of the light cast by the drones, he was incredibly aware of everything going on around him. The immense isolation, the resistance of the black waters against his skin, the presence of the prehistoric giant that could, if it so chose, end his existence with little effort.

‘Damn you two, you’re ruining everything,’ Nash bellowed through the speakers. Tyler risked looking down into the artificial pool of light cast by the drones. The Megalodon was agitated and charged one of the drones. The manta moved toward it in response. There was an immense explosion as the shark’s jaws clamped down on the drone, sending it reeling away. The other drones were moving closer to the shark, but Tyler was aware his pace was slowing and he was desperate to get back to the surface. He turned his attention to the opaque mass above him and swam into is, legs tiring as he kicked towards the surface.

He came up twenty feet off the port side of the boat. Liam was already climbing the ladder on the transom. Tyler swam for the ladder, wanting to get there before father and son decided to leave without him. He was exhausted, his legs heavy from the exertion. He gripped the steel rung, pulling himself out of the water, his feet scrambling for purchase on the wet rungs. On the deck, Nash was pacing, clearly agitated. Liam was on all fours, breathing hard.

‘What the hell was that?’ Tyler said as he yanked off his mask and tossed it across the deck. ‘You fucking left me down there.’

Nash glared at them both then stared at the console which showed the red blip approaching. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done. It followed you, you assholes, it followed—’

The boat exploded from the rear, splintering into fragments as the prehistoric missile slammed into it from the rear. Tyler was launched into the air, arms flailing, unaware that he was screaming. An image from a nature programme he had seen some years earlier popped into his mind about killer whales and the way they would toss seals into the air before they killed them. There was no time to develop the thought, because gravity had taken over and he impacted the water, hitting the surface hard and taking an impulsive breath, he swallowed in a mouthful of sea water and starting to choke, slipping beneath the surface as debris started to rain down around him for the destroyed boat. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swim or keep his head above the surface.

This is it. This is where I die.

The thought didn’t worry him as much as he thought for the simple reason that this way was better. Better than suffering in the jaws of the monster shark which was punishing them for daring to encroach on its territory. Tyler slipped under, enveloped in the black calm of unconsciousness as the chaos and destruction continued around him.

II

Nash was, in that instant, transported back thirty years. He tread water, coughing and blinking his good eye as he watched the boat begin to list to at the stern. He knew this scene. It had played out in his mind hundreds of times. The chill bite of the water, the feeling of the eternal depths below him, the groan as the boat began its journey to its final resting place. And of course, the shark. The demon from his nightmares come to life in the real world for the second time. Its massive head was out of the water, snapping at the debris spilling from the boat. Nash was mesmerised. Even though he never doubted its existence, to see it in front of him again in all its horrific glory was something beyond his ability to comprehend. Like him, it wore scars on its body, a mark of a creature that survived against all odds. It seemed they were not too dissimilar. He wondered how it would feel when it took him. If it would hurt, if he would be aware of those huge serrated teeth shredding his flesh, or if his life would just cease to exist, snuffed out in an instant. There was no fear, no conscious thought of survival, just peace that at last the lifetime of fear would be over. The shark would finish what it started all those years ago.

‘Dad, come on,’ Liam screamed from somewhere behind him. Nash ignored it. He watched the beast, his nemesis, the monster that had plagued both every waking moment and his nightmares, too, as it attacked the boat again, hurrying its journey to join the others in the graveyard beneath the surface.

‘Dad!’ Liam screamed. Nash blinked and whatever spell that had transfixed him was broken. He looked over his shoulder at his son, who was already out of the water and in the Zodiac. He had the unconscious Tyler under the arms and was struggling to pull him out of the water. ‘Swim, you’ve got to swim over and help me. I can’t pull him out on my own.’

Nash heard him, but in his mind, he was thirty years younger. ‘Huddle together. Keep still and in a pack,’ someone had shouted. Too young to argue and too afraid to wonder if the command was right or wrong, the young Nash had complied. They all did. Even when the water turned red and they were picked off in threes and fours.

‘Dad, goddamn it,’ Liam screamed, snapping Nash back to the present. ‘I’m letting him go, I’m coming to get you.’

‘No,’ Nash screamed, paddling towards the Zodiac. ‘Don’t do that.’ He swam to the Zodiac, all the time waiting for the beast to claim him, and in doing so, close the thread of that particular story. Nash arrived at the side of the zodiac, the yellow inflatable bobbing on the surface. Nash tried to climb out, but his broken body was too weak for him to pull himself over onto the boat.

‘Let me drop him. He’s unconscious anyway, it will be quick for him. Let me help you.’

Nash ignored him. He wrapped his good arm around Tyler’s legs and pushed as Liam pulled, together the two of them able to get the dead weight out of the water. Nash risked a glance behind him, hoping to see the shark, but it had gone along with the boat, which had slipped beneath the waves.

‘Pull me out,’ he grunted, his legs tiring. Liam grabbed him and pulled, but Nash’s clothes were waterlogged, the ocean reluctant to give up its grip. Nash could sense the shark below him. He imagined he could feel the pull of displaced water as the Megalodon circled, ready to launch its attack. It was this pure fear which made his adrenaline surge, and with a roar of defiance, he managed to swing one leg over onto the nine foot inflatable, Liam underneath him. They sat there floating in the debris field, both of them unable to do anything but stare as the six foot, slate-coloured dorsal fin broke the surface. Nash stared at it as it circled the inflatable, the current made by its wake pulling them into a slow rotation so that the fin was never out of eye contact. Once again, Nash went into a trance-like state, staring at the creature he referred to as his nemesis, any doubt he had imagined or overcompensated for the size of the creature dispelled. The Megalodon’s head broke the surface, a triangular wedge of horrific proportions. Nash had heard about this in white sharks who would lift their head out of the water to spot their prey. The shark stared at them with its black, lifeless eye, and Nash’s milky eye looked right back at it, the sense of helplessness in the presence of a superior predator complete and undisputed. Time lost all sense of meaning. For Nash, nothing else existed. He wondered if the shark remembered if it was able to recall the last time they faced off. The moment was broken when Liam pulled the chord for the engine, the outboard motor spluttering to life with a whine as the water churned.

‘No, don’t do that!’ Nash screamed, but it was already too late. The vibrations of the motor reached the Megalodon in seconds, causing it to go into attack mode. Liam swung the boat away from the shark, his eyes wild with fear as the Zodiac bounced over the waves. On the horizon, almost lost as the last of the daylight faded, was the shape of one of the small islands jutting out of the water. Liam aimed for it, powering the Zodiac at full speed. Nash was mesmerised, watching the immense dorsal fin slice through the water and closing the distance to them.

‘We’re going to make it,’ Leam screamed, his hair flapping in the wind, voice high and shrill. ‘We’re going to be fine, we’re going to—’ He was cut off and the lightweight raft was hit from underneath and launched into the air, it’s passengers with it. Before he made contact with the water and faced the certain death that awaited them, Nash found a split second to be jealous of Tyler. At least he was unconscious and would feel no pain. Any further thought was cut off as he hit the water and waited for his turn to die.