Filaria - Brent Hayward [25]
He sighed.
Not often had he been so far from the shore before. The air actually smelled a little like he remembered air smelling when he was a child. As he looked down at the crab, it immediately ceased its futile attempt at escape.
“We going the right way?”
Muttering a curse, the crab pointed its claw in the direction they were heading.
“How deep is the water here?”
“Me swim? Come back? Tell man?”
Smiling, Tran so shook his head. To starboard, a bloated corpse floated facedown in the water. A man. Tran so sang a song under his breath, one he had not sung in ages, a song from his youth, and he pushed at the corpse with his stick; pustuled flesh fell loosely off the yellow bones.
The crab, meanwhile, splashed noisily from the recess in the deck; Tran so pulled up the net.
“Here god. Let swim? Let free?”
Tran so shook his head again. “Not yet.” With his knife, he cut a length of fishing line, tying one end to a loop in the waistband of his shorts and the other around the squirming crustacean.
“No no no,” the crab said. “Let free! Let free!”
“Me and you are going for a swim. Together.”
Tran so Phengh stepped over the side of the raft, plunging into the tepid water of Lake Seven. He surfaced, one hand grasping the plastic float, and shook water from his hair. He drew several deep breaths. The crab found occasion to angrily pinch Tran so’s fist with its claws but Tran so was merely steeled by the sensation and he flung the weak creature to the end of its tether.
“I am a good swimmer,” he told it. “I can dive and hold my breath for a long time. You will be tied to my side until I encounter this lake god. Don’t underestimate me. I have nothing to lose.”
Turning in the water, he dove, kicking with powerful strokes. The crab dragged behind, helpless on the line. All around was murky. The water hurt Tran so’s eyes. He saw very little. Not much light penetrated the water, and dark sediment clouded his vision. He continued swimming downward until his lungs and legs hurt. He could not distinguish a thing, could not see the bottom, no forms at all.
Returning to the surface, he breached, gasping, twenty metres or so from the raft. Treading water, he flung snot from his lip, struggling to regain his breath. He did not know what he would say to the lake god if he ever encountered it, nor how he would communicate with the deity, but these questions seemed almost irrelevant now. He pulled the crab up by the fishing line and shook it.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“More down. But god not know. Man sleep. Many more down. More dow — ”
On the second dive, Tran so changed his trajectory, passing on his descent long, twisting fronds that meant, to him, the bottom could not be far off. Still, he saw no detail. He forced himself to go deeper and deeper but the ache in his lungs caused him to turn around once more and reluctantly resurface.
Several attempts, with similar results, and his gut was churning, his thighs cramping. His chest constricted with bands of pain. He could hardly see, even when he lifted his head above the surface. He had swallowed water and knew there would be a price to pay for doing that — people had died drinking from Lake Seven.
Clambering atop the raft, he rested on all fours, panting, then collapsed onto his side, contracting into the fetal position. There were leeches on the skin of his stomach and groin that left bleeding ulcers when he tore them off. The brief-lived euphoria, buoying him prior to taking his first dive, had certainly vanished.
Nearby, the crab floated on the surface, feeling cocky as it mocked and derided Tran so; through clenched teeth, Tran so vowed to kill the beast, but instead vomited seawater and mucus over the edge of the raft, his stomach roiling as if waves churned Lake Seven