Michael Anderson

damaca

1977, six kilometers south off the coast of Taso Beach, Liberia.

The rhythmic ticking and breathing of the resting steel soothed the vessel and often sent my deckhand Path Evans and I to sleep. Barings rolling from one end of the small vessel's cabin to the other with the floating of the waves beneath the hull, scraping along familiar grooves and hooks. Walking back and forth, Path and I heard every single beat of every single noise, but once we turned the lights off we didn’t speak a single word to each other. Time for reflection. We hear the anchor’s chain drag back and forth along the mouth of where it’s expelled from. Each night the anchor was set farther and farther from the coast, scanning along a six mile long area (east to west) in a raking pattern. But for the past two miles out we’ve encountered the sand bank that we were looking for, and for the past three weeks we’ve been combing through the oceans floor, on the bank, looking for the rotted remains of ‘The Lodge’, an old African fishing vessel that was sunk in 1855. Rumors of its location tickled the corners of history books, bleeding through the next page, but never quite there.

I’d decided, seven years ago, that I was to dedicate my life to finding the wreckage and recovering its fabled contents.

‘The Transmogrifying Stone’, or the ‘Sailor’s Heart’ was the prized treasure of the crew of The Lodge, and they sailed around the Liberian coast, only returning to land in small boats for supplies to sustain their off-coast life. The stone, in legend, has the capability to generate organic life, alter the state of one’s own biology to create the perfect aquatic being. It can give one the ability to breathe underwater, speak with the marine life, transform the self. It has the capability to change my life.

The Lodge was observed by a smaller fishing vessel that was floating one hundred feet to The Lodge’s south to have, on a night in the summer of 1855, ‘an unusual amount of commotion erupting from the vessel's lower deck’ .. Pierce Mann, the man giving the account, stated that ‘the howling and shrieking emanating from the vessel was so deafening that you could not even barely hear the waves .. It was an absolute roar .. There were lights, flashing lights, piercing through the slivers in the boat’s siding .. Then, suddenly, a deafening sob from the entire crew and fireball the size of the boat’s lower-half which almost instantly capsized the entire vessel .. Fish, squid, eels started springing out of the sinking vessel. Thousands in quantity .. It was a miracle, there is nothing more to it. The boat sank the rest of the way quietly and we rowed back to shore’

Pierce Mann, a British man living in Liberia, spent the rest of his life collecting anything that he could find on The Lodge and its crew. It drove him mad, and he was never able to locate any single remnant of the vessel. Then, in 1867, he walked out to the coast, into the water, and vanished. Leaving behind the ash of a scorched home and a manuscript of his work on The Lodge, and that work became my life. Eventually, most of the discourse around Pierce Mann and The Lodge floated into obscurity, and the prospect of ever finding The Lodge vanished beneath the waves. Those very waves brushed the side of my vessel. Tickled the bottom of the vessel, swimming just beneath the boat's resting breath. Graced fish swim up along the boat’s underbelly, kissing ever-so softly. It creaks and I feel it in the cavity of my chest, each tick pushing my heart deeper and deeper in slumber on the graceful waves. Somewhere, beneath us now, the drum of The Lodge beats softly. Sensual lure.

The next morning, Path Evans awakes me with a tap on the shoulder, electric lamp dim and dying hanging in his hand. The waves were so tame that I could barely feel them. The deck was dry, the sun was scorching. Brief flashes of the ocean's reflection set on my eyes, seabirds resting within that, they’re not diving. They’re still, I’m still. The boat neatly rocks and for the first few hours of the day, Path and I dangle our feet in the water and discuss today’s dive.

“I woke up early this morning when the sun was coming up, before I woke you, I took a long look at the map, our path, your measurements,” Path said, looking out farther into the ocean south. “The sand bank ends another mile south, the Bythemetric map says after that it's a six-hundred foot dropoff. We don’t have the equipment for that.”

“Then we best hope that it's on the sand bank,” I say.

“You’re confident nobody has ever looked here?”

I meet Path with a glare.. “I’m sure,” no efforts in the past hundred years had the equipment to hit the bottom of the water to the sand bank. I was first. It was beautiful. If it’s past the sand bank, in the drop off, I will come back. I know I will .. I know I won’t have to. I feel it shivering beneath me now. My brother kissed me on the forehead when I left home for this, and since then, I have been in Liberia for a year and a half. I stopped receiving letters eventually. I stopped responding before that. A week ago I penned a letter to my family, it sat tucked behind the bar support in the cabin above my bed. I’d send it eventually. I thought perhaps I’d retire in Liberia if the stone evades me. It won’t evade me. I won’t let it. I am the stone and have transformed my life into it. The stone is, at this point, within me. When wishing hard enough, I see it faintly appear in my hands. It’s wonderful.

It’s like skin, my wetsuit rips the few hairs I have left on my body from their places. Stretching, turning, ripping, limits reached. It clenches to my skin like a glove. It is a glove. It becomes my body and all my imperfections get outlined in blue neoprene.

Three rhythmic, meaningful tugs on the lifeline meant to reel me back up to the boat. No matter when. If it happens, you lift.

“Do we need to go over safety protocol?” I ask Path. He’s amused. This is the twenty-fourth dive in a row. All previous dives last about an hour and a half. The lifeline has an oxygen tube surrounded by nylon thread. A length of about one-thousand feet. I’d get pulled up, sail onward, drop again. Sometimes multiple times a day.

“This is going to be our last dive, Path. I feel it this time.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nod at him. He’s young. The Liberian sun graces his young face. I picked him up in Gro Town. He was a fisherman, fishing along the coast for his family, and he had good English. He graduated from my assistant to my Deckhand when I bought the boat, and I plan on dedicating my book to him once I have found and wrote about the stone.

It’s pressure, and only pressure. I feel the waves, drifting past the braces on my boots, I feel them whisper about something just beneath the visible.

Path Evans puts his hands on my back, placing the strap along it, peeling in, and pulling back. The straps for the lifeline get tied around my waist then secured on my shoulders. He doesn’t speak when he helps me put my suit on and I like it that way. Just like when we sleep at night. It’s a totally silent and respectful synergy. We can hear each other's thoughts and feel each other's powerful presence.

Pierce Mann, in an excerpt from what was later titled The Lodge; A Memoir, states that the most haunting aspect of The Lodge prior to its destruction was the fact that none of its rumored twenty-one man crew ever went on the deck aside from when they went to shore to buy supplies. The captain, the suspected Captain Amos (of The Lodge), was only ever tangible in written accounts. He barely existed.

“The waves are awfully still today, captain,” Path Evans says just behind me to the right, rifling through the interior of the deckbag.

“They’re like the day we first came out here, do you remember that?”

“Of course,” Path says. He grabs the base of the lifeline on my back, takes a screwdriver to the baseplate, he screws on the headpiece and leads the oxygen line up to the base of the headpiece. Walking to my front, he lowers the facegate and presses in the spacers. It's airtight. Industrial. I look like a machine. Dry, I dip my feet in the water and feel nothing but notions of passing.

Path takes the lever and switches it down, locking the backplate cover in place, the seal is airtight, and he turns the open valve on at the midpoint of the boat-end of the lifeline. I breathe, I breathe good. He takes the lubricant jelly and rubs it on the wheel that holds the coiled lifeline, rolls it for a moment to ensure its fluidity. A beautiful machine. He looks at me, certain that I am ready to go.

“Ready captain?” .. I nod. “Three tugs and I hoist you up, once you're at maximum distance, you’ll know. A two-hundred foot descent takes three minutes.” .. That's a long time. The water is clear, I will be able to see everything.

“I’m going to push you in now.” .. These are such beautiful moments.

So dry.

I’m falling. Near the midpoint of the descent, when looking up or down, there is very little. It’s a limitless space, the extent of your vision is realized by the illusion of an endless sea. The beautiful ocean swallows you whole. Fish swim past my body, bronze descent, warrior, fighter, diver, man. Whispers of discarding, I watch as matter passes my faceplate, curious to the length of its journey. So horribly I wish to follow it. Every spec. Yet the brutal fate is that I could not pick it out, half seconds later, from its contemporaries. There are too many, and the descent is filled with billions of them. In some cases, lives. One cell. Some life, my life, to wonder about these things. Then, at the height of this thought, I hit the sand bank's soft floor. Completely limitless, the floor is like a carpet, the still current has painted a beautiful picture in the sand. Dunes the height of flat plains pepper the soft bed. There are sparse inclusions, but at their acknowledgment, they are stark. Fish season the plains, they see me completely for what I am .. and for what I am is out of my element. So badly I wish I was in it. Beautiful ocean floor solitude. There is still light here, my home. This is my home.

Some lone shells, pearlescent in tone, scatter sparingly along the sand bank. The light that hits the bottom of the bank hits them, and they shine to my eyes a beautiful reminder of light’s distant journey. Then, in a moment as I travel slowly along all corners of the bank, I see a wooden pillar briefly pierce the shadow it exists within. On the edge of the sand bank, it teeters on existence. The Lodge. Placed upon the ocean's ledge, it overlooks absolute annihilation. Steepness, a descent into the shadow. It appears there is nothing, for on the smooth bank it resides, beyond is death. Death appears as a hole, and in perhaps a year's time, what remains of the sunken Lodge gets consumed absolutely into it. A descent into the cliff is a descent into the intangible non-existence. Yet, there it sits, on the edge of existence. Completely. Within the last seeming moments of The Lodge’s life, I stand in-suit before it weeping into my faceplate.

With some courage I approach the decaying vessel. What remains of it is a home for fish, rotten drowned wood, what remains of the crew. The remains of the crew, sleeping nicely among the scattered remnants of the discarded and forgotten supplies of the ship, and in the midst of the sunken chaos, a small overturned wooden box glows silently with a hopeful shimmer. Almost unnoticeable. Peeking its fingers just around the box’s edges. With a kick, the box is dislodged, and with a pull, I move it. Beneath it, at last, a hand-sized stone with purple accents rests. Shining, within itself, very quietly. Found. My life appears before me, it’s dull, it’s full and beautiful. I grab it and I wish. I wish simply. I wish I was accepted here.

♰

The backplate burst at the seams. The house windows open and close and open and slam shut. The windows shatter. The faceplate explodes, the pressure is too much. The wetsuit disintegrates, the lifeline tugs hundreds of times, unconsciously. It's a movement. A brutal tearing, the shifting and reassembly of flesh.. Reassigning itself to new locations. All clothing, all protection vanishes in the blink of an eye. Lungs fill with water, expelled with blood. The still fully living soul contorts, feeling every piece. Knots, untied, reassembled. A birth, a death, the creation of the pile of all things. This is the transformation of the human. The naked human. The legs fuse together, the skin sticks to itself, eats itself, one leg into another, a complete fusion. The creation of a tail. The skin, now dry, now scaley, peels and bends and allows the man to swim. Removal and flattening of the foot, the tying and twisting of veins. The new purpose. Clouds of sand, the plain disrupted. Craters. Blood, spilling from all orifices. A cloud of smoke. A scream, a heard one, a real one, and underwater impossibility. Except, and only except, for a sea creature.

Hair scorched off, one quick burst of light. Fire. The expelling of teeth, the regrowth of fangs. This beast grows gills, ripping of flesh along the chest, the growth of gaps. Arms, ripping, reforming, bloody fins form in the creature's infancy. This thing, once man, now a creature emerges from the cloud of sand, sadness, blood and tears and sets itself along the sand in a crying heap. It looks upward, and cries.

Path Evans scrambles to answer the furious bout of tugs, pulling with his entire might. Reeling it in, once the end of the lifeline resurfaces, nothing is on the end of it but a screw. Beneath it, nothing but the sad dark depths of the ocean as the sun sets on the water. As he, panicked, wades through the water, the sun sets on the ocean. Still as the wind, the day comes to a close.

The letter

“My most dear family,

I write to you today from the coast of Liberia on the sands of Taso Beach. Apologies for the inconsistencies in the letters I send to you, you must understand that navigating these letters back home is considerably difficult. I am close to a discovery, and therefore, am close to creation. I miss you, but am hopeful for the future's beautiful gifts. Stay graced, by god, stay graced.”

Then, one week later.

Path Evans cried for six days straight, wept. He reported to local authorities that his captain had been swallowed by a sea monster. His claims were largely ignored, and even if they had been acknowledged there was not much that the local authorities could do. Vengeance courses through his brain, expanding his veins and opening his eyes wide. Placing his hands down on the table in his family room, Path Evans wages a war with this creature. Ambition sweeps beneath the waves, he seeks, only, to draw the creature's blood.

Brandishing his father’s 76’ beretta, Path Evans purchases a tin-drum single-man fishing speeder. One where each step threatens to capsize the vessel. He purchases, as well, an overwhelming six boxes of ammunition. Imagining that the fight with the beast will call for a state of all out war. He considered making bombs, but relented. He places his hands along the rim of the speeder, wedging his fingers in the lip of it. There is practically blood dripping from his finger tips. He smells victory, and absolute kind. A violent kind. He wraps his finger around the beretta's trigger, marrying it to his flesh practically fusing it with his bones. He’s prepared to shoot to kill. He is the gun. Path Evans transforms.

His dad spills out of their coastal home, unsure of which limb to lead with, calling for his son to turn the boat around. His dad, only now, sees the seriousness and the conviction of his son. He’s afraid he is going to be eaten by the monster too .. whatever the monster is. Path Evans, at the peak of his adrenaline, responds to his father with a yell and a holler, firing off two celebratory rounds into the southern sea. He’s surely to return with a trophy, or at the very least, a prideful story to tell with a smile. Nothing short of that occupies his mind. It’s all vengeance, success, and triumph. He loves his captain and misses him, this was an attempt at absolute loyalty. Damned beast, taker of work. Of friends. Surely Path Evans would do this in the name of friendship? Could any captain ever be as unique? Perhaps. But for now, to Path, no.

One hour out into the boat ride, he reaches the sand bank. The sun is forty-five minutes from setting and it shines golden on the water. Path Evans turns the engine off and listens to the still sound of the peaceful waves. The ocean was sleeping, he could even vaguely see the brightest hints of the bottom of the sand bank. The raised parts. The beast was lurking around here, surely, Evans thought. He thought of ways to draw the beast out. He had loaded some of his captain's remaining equipment onto the boat, reaching its weight capacity in a margin of a few pounds, thinking if dropped, they would lure the beast at the sea-scent of its prior meal. A surefire way to lure out the creature.

Path Evans ties a bit of rope to a since-used oxygen canister that his captain had inscribed his initials onto, he wrapped the valve in one of his captain's shirts. He cocked his beretta.

The boat rocks side to side, the tin is so thin that the small impacts of invisible waves reverberate throughout the essence of the entire one-man vessel. The backup of gasoline tied near the engine sloshes around quietly with the waves. For a few moments, while Path builds up the courage to start his battle, he tosses some rocks that collected in the boat's bottom into the water, watching them sink completely into obscurity. Once they reach a certain point, they vanish beyond the eye’s limits, and once hitting the bank, are covered by sand and forgotten forever. He would not allow that fate to fall on his captain, he would never forget. He would mount the beast on his wall and chant his captain's name to it every night. Folklore. He realizes that fantasy involves catching the beast, so he prepares for turbulence.

A thrust, the canister peaks in the sun and falls to the water.

Path ties the other end of the rope to the front of the boat to prevent it from tipping. He draws his beretta, sitting alertly for any sense of movement among the water. Any noise causes a pivot. His eyes wide, he’s in a frenzy, it’s bloodlust. But, for twenty minutes, its silence .. vacant still silence. He grows impatient. His pivots become violent, paranoia slips into his movements, he swings left to right. Grip tightening. He grabs the rope and begins to tug it back and forth to dangle the lure for the beast. He does so for several long minutes.

And then. Something taps it. He feels it in the rope.

Something taps it again. Then again, the tapping becomes as rhythmic as the waves. Not a violent tapping, but an inspecting notion. It's gentle and not violent. It continues. Path lets go of the rope, aiming his beretta down the rope’s spine. There it is. The beast. It’s long. He’s unable to distinguish any of its violent details, but its long, two colors, two long fleshy fins. It swims awkwardly, it’s not sure what it is. Just knowing it's a beast. Hideous thing, it would be lucky to die. The foul thing. Think of it as putting down a sick dog, a hurt ape. He shoots, he waits, he misses. The creature looks, disappointed, in Path’s eyes. There is something there, Path does not recognize it. He is frozen, scared. The beast darts off violently and Path takes, quickly, another potshot at it. Bullet zipping through the water. Several more, bullets spraying in every direction.

There is anger in his brain, he’s swimming in it. He wants to be rid of it, but each thrash sinks him deeper and deeper in the depths of it. Inevitability. In movements, roars make waves, noise in passion. He reloads the beretta, swiftly, and returns with shots in rapid succession. Reloading again, he prepares to shoot. He scans the bleeding water. The decelerated bullets sink to the oceans floor, and echoes of shots reach the shore. Glistening, falling deadly pearls, they dance and jump to the bottom. Some unfortunate bystanders, crustaceans, caught in the mess get swept over by sand and turn to diamonds. The water is stained with the seeking of vengeance, full of holes, the ocean gleams a red hue.

There are some silent moments as the sun begins its final minutes above the water, skimming the top catching every perforation of the stillness. Nothing goes unseen. Then, suddenly, thirty feet out, a tail breaks the surface and kicks. Path takes aim at the hideous creature. The grotesque beast peers at him, eyes lurking thinly beneath the waves. Rancid creature, this thing. It’s fleshy tail kicks awkwardly behind it as it slowly crawls through the water towards Path. It's sick, sad looking. Path sees the whites of its sad eyes. Surrendering, a shot must have hit it, a lingering trail of blood. The finger grips tighter on the trigger, pressing, hurting, itching. These are to be the last breath of Path as a clean man. He seeks to take life, and now is his moment. Now. The trigger goes, a flash, pushing the bullet out of the barrel. No turning back at this point, it's complete. Path sees a look in the creature's regretful eyes, something kind. It strikes its head. As the creature sinks, blood and tears being washed away by the ocean, soft waves tap the edge of Path’s boat. As the sun sets on the water, disappearing forever beneath the waves is that strange fish.