Gigantism is common in Antarctic waters. Squid and spider crabs grow to such immense proportions it’s not surprising that legends of gargantuan sea monsters are ten-a-penny among jolly Jack Tars. Growing up in a fishing village, I heard them all, of course, and arrogantly dismissed them as nonsense; so I never imagined I would see with my own eyes what horrors lie beneath the waves. Despite all the tall tales and superstitious nonsense you hear from coastal folk, I know for a fact there is something down there so foul, so unspeakable, that even Richard Dawkins crosses himself when he thinks of it.
The summer in question I was killing time before Uni as a deckhand on the Rosalind, a doughty little trawler crewed by nine Poles and three eggheads – one, a girl, apparently from Cambridge University – mapping biodiversity. I stayed below decks mainly, dicing carrots for the casserole, mopping the floor and helping to sort the catch when the nets were hauled in, but the chef I worked with, Mungo, had an endless supply of dirty jokes and cigarettes which made time pass quickly enough. It was hard work, the boat stank and most of the crew only spoke Polish, but I went to sleep each night pleased with my lot, and thinking that if you discounted the temperamental weather and the variable size of the catch, life at sea was pretty much the same each day.
Or so I thought.
We were three uneventful days into the voyage when Mungo and I – sharing a cigarette up on deck – got talking about the only girl in the science team, Kate.
"Keep away from her," Mungo warned, tapping the side of his head. "She’s not carrying a full load, know what I mean?" I was intrigued. Troublemakers being my bag, I was just about to enquire whether she preferred Chinese or Indian when, as God is my witness, the deck pitched crazily and the calm ocean off the port bow exploded into a universe of thrashing tentacles. Gasping, Mungo and I watched as from a vortex of froth a creature of unspeakable horror rose and towered above us, at least six or seven stories high. It had a glistening, bulbous head, one unblinking eye, a gaping chasm in place of a mouth and eight spiked tentacles pockmarked with suckers that slavered incessantly at the air.
"What in Christ’s name is that?" I screamed hoarsely, spitting out my cigarette and hurling myself onto the deck – which was a good thing too, because just then a tentacle lanced out of the water, wrapped itself round Mungo’s waist and delivered him straight into the gaping maw of the beast. There followed a sound like the Forth Bridge being torn in two, and then the monster angled its single eye down at me.
I swear in that moment I thought I’d had my chips at the casino wheel. A Malboro Light one minute, eaten alive the next. Having a healthy desire to sire future generations, I figured discretion was the better part of valour and leapt, commando-style, for the nearest stairwell, only to find my passage blocked by every Pole north of Watford falling over themselves to see the spectacle. This just about took the biscuit, so I hunkered down against the bulkhead, buried my head in my hands and waited for the inevitable.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" said a voice beside me, and I looked to my right to find none other than scientist Kate herself standing there, staring at the creature and shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. "What an extraordinary feat of evolution." She drew a mobile phone out of her pocket and started snapping away at the beast off the port bow, cool as you like. I tried to blurt out a warning, explain what had happened to Mungo but then the horror of the thing overwhelmed me and I just slumped back against the bulkhead, whimpering. She flashed a look at me and arched an eyebrow. "It’s only a three hundred and fifty foot cephalopod. Would you like a Fisherman’s Friend?"
That didn’t even deserve a reply, which was lucky because suddenly a giant tentacle slapped into the water, causing the Rosalind to pitch and roll, and we both grabbed onto the railing for support. As we watched, the creature emitted a series of explosive farts from three vents along its side and slowly began submerging beneath the waves. Kate, for her part, simply slapped the rail and swore.
I swayed up onto rubbery legs, hung onto her proffered elbow for support and babbled for Britain.
"God help me. I have been to the dark side. I have seen what no man was meant to see."
"Nah. That was just a baby. Stays on the ocean floor most of the time. Fishermen fish over it because the catch is so good. Been wondering when it would show up."
I looked at her coldly. I realised then that I had never seen real madness. I’d heard of it, accused other people of it, but never really seen it up close. Mungo had been right on the money. Kate pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. "Here. Smoke this. We’re going sit here a while and see if our friend has taken the bait."
"Bait?" I folded my arms around myself and rocked to and fro. "We’re all going to die!"
"Not a bit of it. Probably evolved in a deep gouge scoured by a passing iceberg. Some weird fish down there. Sea spiders the size of dinner plates, giant worms, jelly fish with eighteen foot long tentacles. Don’t worry about Mungo. He’ll be fine when he comes out the other end, if a little fractious."
With that she radioed down to the Captain, and the Rosalind began turning in the water. I took advantage of her momentary distraction to be sick over the side, and when I turned to face her again she looked at me more sympathetically. That was when she told me her plan.
They were going to lead it out to sea, Kate explained. The reason Newsnight was always sarcastic about reports of giant squid was because the MOD had slapped a D-Notice on any straight reports, in case they sparked a coastal exodus and scared off investment in wind farms and oilrigs. They couldn’t blow it up, the seagulls would have a field day, so they were going to transmit the reciprocal waveform to its cry next time it showed and take it back to the open sea. Job done.
The way she told it, it all seemed perfectly natural. It’s funny, just when you think you’ve got the world worked out, a giant squid bobs up out of nowhere and only an unflappable chain smoker can set things right.
With Kate in deep discussions with the Captain, and Mungo familiarising himself with the digestive tract of the cephalopod, it was down to me to feed the crew, which kept me fairly run off my feet the rest of the day. The few times I took a break were when Kate passed the open door of the galley, raised her eyebrows and mimed smoking at me.
"It’s going well," she said, transcendentally calm. "You’ll see."
I suppose it was the confined space and the uniqueness of the situation, but I quickly developed a sneaking regard for that girl – which was funny, because she was dressed in bright yellow waterproofs most the time and I tend to like girls who don’t take snaps when a giant squid has just eaten my line manager. Yet what chance did I stand? She was a lecturer in cryptozoology at King’s College, Cambridge; I was the guy who ladled out the mash. My father used to say "Tough times never last but tough people do" but that, I think, was the morphine kicking in.
Nevertheless, as afternoon set in and the Rosalind bobbed patiently in the water, I had just about plucked up the courage to ask Kate whether she had a Facebook account, and if so could I poke her when we got back to dry land, when two columns of water shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up into the air and the sea started churning ominously.
"Here we go," cried Kate, jumping up and down on the deck and the Rosalind surged forward at top speed, sending out a high pitched call sign. I wish more people could have seen it, our tiny boat pursued by that marauding, tentacled horror, but after three hours of tense pursuit during which the gap between us narrowed and widened, Kate turned off the transmitter, the Rosalind pitched hard to starboard and before my disbelieving eyes that grotesque creature continued on past us until soon it was merely a sinking island on the horizon, leaving nothing behind but a spluttering Mungo.
So you see, I wasn’t quite so dismissive about local legends after that little episode, and nodded my head understandingly when toothless old men started banging on about strange islands that appeared and disappeared overnight. The rest of my time on the Rosalind passed uneventfully enough that summer – apart from the mute girl we rescued from a raft, and the uncharted island we heard the drumming from – but all in all, I count my lucky stars to have had Kate around when I did.
Out of my league, of course, and I never saw her again after we docked, but she taught me some valuable lessons anyway. Stay calm in a crisis, for one thing, don’t fret when the odds seem insurmountable; but mainly, whenever I think of her smoking a cigarette while all around her hell broke loose, I know there are no such things as legends – just women you haven’t met yet.
© Anthony Malone, 2008
Deep Trouble was read by Silas Hawkins at the Liars’ League "Lore & Legend" event on Tuesday 11th March 2008.
Anthony Malone is 34 and has lived and travelled widely in South London. His fiction has appeared on the Guardian Online website, performed at the London Writloud and Tales of the Decongested events, and recorded for London Link Radio. He once appeared on Jim’ll Fix It but, sadly, wasn’t fixed.
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