Quarries Are Super Deep
Come on in, the water's fine.
Aubrey stood at the edge of a golden cliff, her pale, bare toes in the warm sand. Below, a drowned quarry sparkled blue in the late fall sun.
It was November, but in Southern California November could be as warm as June. A fresh, herbaceous scent hung in the baby blue sky, the perfume of California bay trees, pine needles, eucalyptus, and hot sun on a dusty trail.
Her pedicure was leftover from Labor Day weekend, but the off-white polish Aubrey favored could hide a lot of damage. Still, when she heard Paul behind her, making his way up the crunchy gravel trail, she scrunched her imperfect toes down into the sand.
“Not a bad view if you can get up here, eh slowpoke?” She called down to him.
His broad smile emerged from the thicket of pines on the trail. He looked at her, stripped to her underwear, her clothes neatly folded under a tree.
“Ohhh you have plans for us!” He said, reaching for her.
Aubrey swatted his hands away.
“Ewww. I’m not having sex with you in the dirt. Gross. No, I’m jumping. And you are too.”
Paul’s smile didn’t waver, but his eyes landed on the cliff’s edge.
“Not all of us were on the swim team, Aubrey.”
“Paul! You grew up in California! You’re supposed to be, like, outdoorsy and stuff. Anyway, swim team did not train us in cliff jumping. I’m just cool like that.”
“Does nothing scare you?”
“Tons of stuff. Spiders, serial killers, return-to-office requirements,” she replied with a laugh. “Having sex in the dirt. But not water.”
Aubrey was fearless in water. She hadn’t only been a swimmer, she was the best swimmer at her high school, then the best in the state. It had been years since she raced, but the urge to jump in was always with her.
“How do you know it’s deep enough?” Paul asked, kicking scattered gravel over the edge and watching it fall.
“Quarries are super deep.”
“Quarries?”
“Read the sign,” she motioned to a little black sign, raised letters on a thin stake in the ground. At the base of the sign sat an old pair of sneakers, coated in dust.
“Sunset Rock Quarry,” he read aloud. “Abandoned in 1941, when the Sunset Sand & Rock Co. shifted its operations to defense contracting. Rock from this quarry was used to build the famed NBC back lot bungalows. Huh.” He paused. “Who would leave their shoes up here?”
“Maybe he got a blister,” said Aubrey. “I can’t believe you don’t know about this place, Paul. We’re like ten minutes from your house.”
“You’re right. It’s shocking I’ve never googled the nearest ledge from which to kill myself.”
Aubrey looked over the edge.
“Dude, look how deep that water is,” she said. “You can tell it’s deep enough. And see that graffiti over there?” She pointed at sprawling letters on a silvery rock face. They read NO LIFEGUARD. “People obviously swim here.”
Paul followed her gaze. As they looked, two teenage girls emerged from a trail above the painted rock in bathing suits. With barely a moment’s hesitation, the girls leapt from the rock and splashed into the blue water, shrieking from the cold. The bright sun illuminated the spray off their bodies, and a tiny rainbow wavered above them for an instant before disappearing.
“Oh, you hired extras?” Paul joked.
Aubrey laughed.
“Yeah, I knew it was going to be hard to convince you, so I hired some actors to pretend to have fun. They came right on cue, guess I have to pay up.”
“Why don’t we jump where they did? This is a little high.”
“You can jump from wherever you want, Paul. I’m going from here.”
Aubrey inched to the edge of the cliff and spread her arms. She closed her eyes and felt the warm sun on her skin.
“Wait! Stop. Let me go first.” Paul snapped.
Aubrey turned and looked at him, already halfway out of his pants.
“Just in case,” he added.
“In case?”
“Yeah, let me go first.”
Aubrey racked her brain for a circumstance where Paul jumping in first would be helpful. She was absolutely the better swimmer.
“My hero,” she smiled at him.
“Chivalry is not dead,” Paul said, as he approached the cliff’s edge in his boxer briefs. He pinched his nose and jumped without pause.
Aubrey watched him fall through the air like a pencil. She nodded, impressed with the form and the guts.
Perfect ten, she thought, as she waited for him to come up. He was a keeper.
A second passed, then another, and the tiniest twinge of doubt crept up on her. She felt her pulse pick up, as she peered over the edge. Maybe I should have gone first.
And then his head popped out of the pool. He shook the water out of his hair and the sunlight glinted on the drops. She waved.
“Aubrey it’s freezing!” He yelled up at her. “You’re going to hate this!” But he was smiling, all his perfect teeth shining in the sun.
Aubrey did hate being cold. But she hated being boring more.
“I’ll be warm when I’m dead!” She shouted, stepping into empty air. But just as she left the cliff’s edge, something caught her eye— a stack of clothes, neatly folded, sitting on a ledge.
She barely had time to register the clothes, to wonder if they also belonged to the shoeless man, as she dropped off the cliff. She windmilled her arms once, and when she felt them go around a second time she realized how high the jump had actually been. At the last second, she pulled her arms in and pointed her toes, driving into the dark water like a dart, plunging far below the surface.
At the bottom of her descent, a wall of bubbles surrounded her and the cold quiet of deep water pushed in on her eardrums. She hovered in the dusky blue for a few moments, easily holding her breath, appreciating the light dancing through the water column. It was always a little sad for her that she felt so completely at home underwater, the one place on earth she couldn’t stay.
Far below, the water shimmered into blackness, and she had the urge to dive into it. She let out some of her air, the stream of bubbles allowing her to sink a bit deeper. She closed her eyes, felt her arms drift, felt the hair on her scalp floating like a halo.
Behind her, the water pressure changed. Cold water drifted across her back like a breeze. She turned around, expecting to see Paul, but there was nothing there.
Aubrey kicked languidly, pushing toward the surface just as her lungs began to squeeze. She emerged with a loud gasp, realizing how cold the pool really was.
“It’s freezing!” She cried out to Paul, but he wasn’t in front of her.
She turned a circle. “Paul?”
I knew that was him. Probably trying to swim up and grab my legs, she thought. She tread in place, anticipating him pulling her under or grabbing a toe in a misguided attempt to scare her. But after a few seconds she started to get nervous.
She ducked her head under but she didn’t see him. She scissor kicked her feet, trying to get higher up in the water, spinning in circles. Then she saw movement on the surface about ten feet away.
“Paul!” She yelled as she swam towards the spot. “This isn’t funny!” Her panic growing, Aubrey took in a lungful of air and dived under, swimming in a spiral, searching for a sign of Paul.
“Paul!” She shouted when her head emerged.
“Hello?!” She shouted again, hoping the teenagers were still in earshot. “I need help! Someone please call for help!”
She swam under, pulling herself as deep as she could, her shoulders burning with the effort. But the bottom remained well out of sight, retreating away into nothing.
Quarries are super deep, she heard herself say.
She kicked back to the surface, gasping for air. Tears pushed the water out of her eyes.
Is Paul dead?
She started to shiver, shaking so hard the water rippled out from her body in circles. She noticed the rings moving away from her and felt the incredible loneliness of her situation. She was a pebble in a pond. A lone speck in a black lagoon.
She swam back and forth at the surface, watching underwater for any sign of movement, any sheen of bright skin. But she found nothing. Not even a twig or a leaf floated by. The quarry was silent.
As the initial adrenaline dissipated, her legs began to tire and she felt herself sink lower in the water. She rolled onto her back, giving her muscles time to relax.
Floating, she felt tears stream down the sides of her face. Her chest and arms were covered in goosebumps. When she exhaled, her body dipped below the surface. Her pale skin looked ghostly through the water’s tint.
She thought of bloated, discolored drowning victims being dragged out of dirty ponds on TV. Their pallid skin sloughing off in sheets, their blue lips and bulging eyes. She had never, ever considered that she could drown. She started to sob.
Aubrey, you are not going to drown, she said to herself. Just inhale and exhale. You have to figure something out.
Then she heard a scream and bolted up, swimming towards the sound without ever stopping to think. Her strong stroke got her across the pool in seconds.
It was one of the teenagers. She was much younger than Aubrey had thought at first, probably no more than twelve. Her round face was drained of color, wet hair plastered to her forehead.
“Are you ok?” Aubrey asked, approaching her.
The girl’s breath was coming in gasps and she flailed her arms. Aubrey could tell she was in danger of going under.
“Calm down, ok? I’ll help you, just breathe. Is it your friend? Where is she?” The girl’s eyes were red and wild. Aubrey stopped. She had heard stories of drowning people pushing their rescuers under to try to stay afloat.
“…the…water…,” was all the girl said between jerking sobs.
“Are you hurt?”
“WATER!” The girl screamed. “THE WATER!”
Behind the girl, Aubrey saw the water move, a rolling ridge cutting the surface like something was swimming through. An atavistic horror rose inside her, the product of thousands of lifetimes of evolution. Humans who passed down their genes were the ones who stayed out of dark pools.
Aubrey pushed herself back, away from the girl.
“Where do we get out?!” Aubrey yelled to her. Part of her wanted to slap the girl, to get her to say something sensible. But the bigger part only wanted to get away. “Please, listen to me! Is there a ladder somewhere? We have to get out!”
Audrey backed against the wall, and began sliding her hands around, searching for a finger hold.
“THE WATER!” The girl screeched again. Aubrey watched in terror as another wave took shape, this one in between them. Her pulse shot up. She found herself clawing at the wall, desperately trying to climb it.
“WE HAVE TO GET OUT!” She yelled back at the girl.
Aubrey watched as the surface of the water cleaved and collapsed in on itself, like a drain had opened up. In an instant, the little girl was gone, pulled under by an unseen force. The swirling gap in the surface frothed, then closed over like it had never been there.
Aubrey was sobbing, her breath coming in tiny, rapid gasps, which echoed back at her from the stone, creating a panicked cacophony. The waterlogged skin on her fingers peeled away on the rocks. Something big was in the pool.
She yelled again for Paul, a wretched, rasping scream that carried all the ragged terror and desperation out of her lungs. Her scream echoed off the quarry walls like the cry of a wounded animal.
In answer, the water went mirror still.
Aubrey hovered by the wall as the minutes passed, afraid to move more than was absolutely necessary to keep her head above water. Her body temperature dropped, and her shivering sent ripples across the glassy surface. She knew she had to move or she would freeze, but she struggled to make herself do anything that would disturb the water.
The sky darkened and Aubrey looked up, expecting to see a cloud pass across the sun, but there was no cloud. Instead, a burnt butter sunset was tinting everything golden. The day was ending. She began to wonder how she could last the night.
Whatever was out there hadn’t surfaced in a long time. She decided she could swim the perimeter, methodically feeling with her hands and feet for a way out, and hopefully build up some body heat. She would not think about Paul, or the monster, or the drowned or chewed bodies underneath her— only of dry land, of fluffy towels, of clean, warm socks. She wouldn’t stay still and die of hypothermia.
Lengthening shadows played tricks on her. What she perceived as rock cuts, possible places to find a foothold or connect a ladder turned out to be striations in the stone. She paddled from cliff to cliff, but every wall was smooth, rising away in impossible verticals. Her icy fingers dug into each stony groove without success.
Every time she looked up, the day seemed to leak away a little more. The sky was purpling, the tall pines silhouetted against the sky. Aubrey’s teeth began to chatter, their clicking ricocheting off the cliff walls back at her, a reminder of her solitude. Her tired body bobbed and sunk with each breath.
Her jaw ached and her muscles had begun to cramp from swimming without a rest. Her throat was dry. She lowered her lips to the water, just to wet them, and tasted metal on her tongue. She couldn’t bring herself to swallow it.
She needed to float, to take a break, but doing so would expose her to whatever was swimming around under her. Rather than a vague shape against the rock, she would be announcing herself, a flag unfurled in the rising moonlight, the silhouette of surface-dwelling prey, with dozens or hundreds of feet of water below.
She would never see it coming.
But as her blood sugar depleted, cramps shot through her feet and calves. Her shoulders burned and her fingers ached. She had to take the chance on floating. Using the tiny rock ridges, she pulled herself flush with the wall, then inflated her lungs and let her feet rise to the surface. Her skin was so cold underwater, and even colder in the air.
The night sky was as black as the water below, and Aubrey felt completely lost, bobbing in an endless sea. She shivered and sputtered, mist puffing from her nose and mouth, as she drifted into the center of the pool.
She felt the water underneath her swish. Once, twice. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for something to happen.
This is it, she thought, and she felt the tiniest bit of relief. At least it was ending.
But nothing swam up to bump against her or to try a nibble. Nothing moved at all, except the current driving the cold water below.
After a few seconds waiting, she couldn’t take it anymore. She sat up, plunging her legs down into the current. She immediately realized the water down there was different— it was thicker, more urgent. Rather than sliding over and around her skin, it wrapped around her like a rope.
As she felt it tugging, she shot her long arm through the air, clawing for the wall, kicking hard, but it had her. A long ridge rose up from the surface, moving fast toward her, just as before. The moving water held her in place.
The water.
That’s what the little girl was saying. There was no animal below, devouring hapless humans. It was the water.
The surface once again opened like a drain, this time sucking Aubrey down. She kicked and thrashed, but there was no beast to fight against, no face to respond to her blows.
This roiling, viscous, boundless monster made no sense. It couldn’t be.
But it was. The water seemed somehow sentient, its black depths organized into a great heaving shape that rippled as it rose from below, undulating in heavy, icy waves that grasped at her like tentacles.
She was pulled through a swirling eddy into a submerged whirlpool. The water swallowed her, dragging her body through colder and colder layers, while the dark pool above folded over top, smothering her like a thick blanket.
Breath squeezed from Aubrey’s chest in a burst of bubbles, and she watched them rise with an ache. They were out of her sight long before they reached the surface, and Aubrey knew that the air remaining in her lungs was sand in an hourglass, the last she would ever have.
She thrashed against the whirlpool, fury pumping through her veins. She was a swimmer. The best swimmer. She would not die in water. Her first friend, her safe place, her superhero’s lair. She fought with everything she had, gaining a few inches with each stroke before being pulled down again.
Water was never supposed to come for her.
But it did, over and over, relentless and overwhelming. The liquid evil that pulled her down could never love her back. It cast itself into a thousand shapes and each one was a torment: a rippling swarm that felt like it would tear the skin from her bones, a blunt surge of power that tossed her like a rag doll, a funnel, a vice, a straightjacket, and finally, the inescapable drain.
Her heart broke. The betrayal was too much to bear.
In her last seconds of life, with spasms racking her chest, Aubrey realized she was searching the dark water. Not for Paul, but for a reason. She was looking for a flesh and blood monster, red in tooth and claw, for the cold comfort of belonging to a food chain instead of this incomprehensible, terrible weight bearing on her without purpose. It couldn’t be water. It couldn’t.
The pressure cracked her ribs and she felt herself folding inward, crumpling like a discarded can. Her air was gone. Still, she searched.
She begged for the eye of a great beast to stare back at her from the deep, a golden-rimmed pupil dilating along with her own, in some acknowledgement that life mattered. There had to be something down there. There couldn’t be nothing.
But all that arrived was the cold and the quiet. Underwater, Aubrey finally got to stay.
This is a Custom Subscriber Story. Elite subscribers to Age of Aquarius get to star in their own tailored tale of woe. Are you brave enough?
Oof. This hit hard. Awed by your skill, EJ. Deep and cold in all the best ways.
Damn! So good.