llan White sat on the edge of his gently rocking boat. He was staring at the water below him as the black polished surface revealed it's eerie depths. It was times like this that Allan remembered what his father had always told him. "Allan, don't look down, boy! If you look down, you're going to be sick." But Allan had never been sea sick in his life.

He tested the purge valve and nodded his head in approval. Everything seemed to be in working order. The morning had been strangely calmer than usual. Allan stopped himself in mid thought. That didn't make sense, all mornings were calm; at least most of the mornings he chose to be out here. Or did it? Since early in the morning he'd been feeling rather serene, as if he'd never felt as good as he felt now. Allan was not one for idle philosophy, and so he didn't look too deeply for an answer to this change in him.

Allan always looked down before the dive. There was something about deep water that intrigued him. He struggled for a word to describe it, and the closest he could come up with was 'mysterious'. But it was something more powerful to him. Mysterious, sure, but mysterious could not possibly conjure up what he was thinking and feeling now as he stared at the surface of the water below him, lapping calmly at the sides of the boat. The sound was peaceful, with an undertone of timelessness. But the surface revealed something that had always made the skin on his arms go a little numb. Darkness portrayed depth, and depth was staring back at him now, and it looked "alien". That's it, he thought. That's the word I've been trying to find this morning.

Even as a child Allan had been obsessed with depth. The surface of the water can only hint at depth because it's a barrier to sight much like the front door to an unknown, dark, rickety house on top of an uninhabited hill in the middle of the night. You're curious to know what's behind it, but you always wonder if you'd like what you might find inside. He had always looked at the surface and wondered what was going on underneath it, beyond his ability to see. As a youngster, this used to scare him more than a bit. Allan had lived with the sea all his life, and as a youngster he'd remember that sometimes, free-floating in deep water he would have this overwhelming sensation that something was passing below him, unseen. Something big and something ... alien. Always, he'd been aware of the depth below him. This awareness caused a sensation of fear. But as Allan had grown older, he had conquered his fear of depth and it had turned into fascination.

He checked his buoyancy compensator, straps, and weight-belt and rinsed his mask in the water; the morning air was cool on the back of his exposed neck. As he did the latter he remembered how as a boy he'd hated doing that. As a youngster he'd always half expected something to come charging out of the unseen watery void below and snap at his hands. It had never happened, but Allan had never forgotten to think about it.

As he had grown older Allan had taken to diving on his own despite the danger and in defiance of the heavy criticism from others. It was the ultimate thrill for him. Other divers dived reefs and shipwrecks. Allan preferred to dive the depths. Nothing gave him quite the same sensation as being surrounded by deep blackness. During the day it was an infinite blue, and during the early morning the darkness was so profound that it was more than a little spooky. And darkness always emphasised the eerie vastness of it all. This morning he was early, and he knew the sunlight wouldn't penetrate too far beyond the surface. He was going to enjoy this, and the adrenaline was already beginning to pulsate through his veins. He took a moment to look around him. He was far out; there was no land in sight. The horizon was a dark black line surrounding him split by myriad shards of colour in the east. The rest of this blackness undulated lazily around him, like the shudders of some insanely massive beast experiencing some sort of quiet, continuous orgasm. He had chosen this spot because it was isolated, unexplored, and because it had drawn him here. He had chosen this spot because he knew it was deep.

Allan put his mask on, the smell of stale salt and silicon and the touch of cold droplets of water trickling down the sides of his face made him shiver. This was the worst part, the most difficult part. The water would be cold; the air was chilly, and a wetsuit warmed only in time. Turning around so that his back faced the water he put on his fins, fitted the demand valve to his mouth, set his stopwatch, and rolled over the side.

The water sucked him into its freezing womb, and closed over him. He'd banged open the door and it had shut automatically behind him and bubbles and darkness surrounded him as the ocean engulfed him. Darkness, vastness... the coldness bit hard at him, and then accepted him. And he experienced that familiar alien fear that he had learned to enjoy. His first inhalation came as a gasp, and the mechanical sound of compressed air being regulated and controlled was amplified by the dense, watery medium surrounding him. He expired, and felt better, bubbles cascading around him.

His legs slowly and calmly kicked at the black nothingness to steady himself. Reversing his position, he looked straight into unbounded nothingness and flicking his fins in small lazy spurts he descended into the void below him. All should have been quiet around him except that his compressed breathing seemed to shatter through this strange world, so loud that he fought the urge to stop for fear of waking something up in the darkness around him, something that might come looking for him.

Down he went, despite his anxiety. He was in control: an experienced visitor in this estranged world. Darker it became. His eardrums popped as he equalised and he let out miniature sneezes of air into his mask to stop it tightened around his face. He checked his depth gauge… 20m.

It seemed fine for the meantime, so he stopped and flipped himself around slowly surveying the darkness that encircled him. Nothing but depth and mystery. If there was something out there, it was beyond his ability to see and that thought renewed the rush of adrenaline already coursing through his body.

Allan used his BC to establish a nice medium with his environment and hung there suspended in dark space, relaxing and revelling in it. There was nothing out here. And why would there be? In a sense the ocean was not unlike the land, it also had its vast deserts where nothing preferred to inhabit. It was very uncommon to see anything down here, the only things that moved through this place were normally on their way somewhere else, and often they were very large and built for slow and tedious journeys. Allan thought it strange, that he would find such a place a playground for his unique fascination.

He's father had taught him this. "Boy, the only way to overcome fear is to confront it. So get back on that horse and ride!" Allan almost physically laughed through his valve. That damn horse! He'd hated it. It was the largest, meanest horse that he had ever seen, and his father had been determined to make him ride it. He had been thrown of its back more than once. He remembered that fateful Saturday when the hated animal had taken off with him. He'd finally been planted headfirst in a shallow stream not too far away from where he had once lived. Thank God the horse didn't like water; Allan had this weird concept in his head that he'd probably still be fighting to stop its mad charge. It had been an illogical charge with no purpose, its destination unknown. Allan feared that most of all, something unknown. He was grasping for the name of the horse now, and strangely enough, it just wouldn't come to him. No matter how many times he'd been forced to ride it, he had never overcome his fear of it. Because in a way Allan could still imagine himself on the horse, trapped on its back, in a mad journey through the twisting passageways of fate on course bound for an unknown destination.

Something outlined itself in front of him, small but solid, and faded with distance. Allan suddenly tensed and peered suspiciously into the dark world ahead of him. The shape got rapidly larger, and it became clear that it was living. It also became disturbingly clear that it was growing in size because it was approaching him. Allan froze... all sorts of possibilities running through his head. Illogical possibilities awakened within his mind as his imagination played tricks with what he feared most.... the unknown.

Shark? No that was impossible. Whatever was coming towards him was a lot.... bigger. Allan felt the water chill around him and realised it was not the water, but his own blood freezing. He grew scared and looked up. No way he could make it to the surface before this 'thing' reached him. Too many feet above him he could see the hull of his boat, small with distance, a dark shape in the light reflection of the surface of the water....

Too many God damned feet above him.

He dropped his head and looked around him, there was no where to hide. He was a beacon suspended in open darkness.

Panic creates different reactions in many people. Allan had learned that to panic could be costly, very costly. To panic under water was to open oneself up to mortal danger. There was no where to go and whatever was headed straight towards him didn't seem to be particularly interested in him. Its actions were almost lazy as it propelled itself closer to him. Allan used to panic in deep water, it was a medium well suited to helping the mind create some funny illusions about any possible, and impossible situation. In this place, often, when Allan was not thinking with a clear mind, the impossible could distort its self and seem to become very possible indeed. Maybe that's why he liked it down here so much.

Finally, Allan believed that he'd identified the creature finning its way towards him. It was a fish; in fact it was a shark. This shark, however, would not find it possible to make Allan part of its daily diet. It preferred smaller prey, plankton. Allan recognised the mammoth shape of a Whale Shark. It was still too far away to tell for sure, but it looked like it.

And that was when Allan saw the tentacles.

From relief to horror is no small jump for any person. For those not suited to extreme shock, insanity can easily win through. Although Allan had been taught that to panic in deep water was dangerous, this was like no other crisis he had ever experienced. Whatever was coming towards him, was quite plainly no whale shark. It was something that Allan had actually seen before, in his dreams, and in his mind.

Allan panicked. His whole body convulsed into action as he blindly finned for the surface, far, far above him. He wouldn't make it, he knew he wouldn't make it, and yet he had to try. The sound echoing through the exhaust bubbles around him, he recognised as his own, for he was screaming in terror. He couldn't bring himself to look behind him, and so blessedly he saved himself from watching the monster lazily change its trajectory to intercept him. Allan knew it though; he didn't have to see it. As a kid he'd known, as a young man he'd known... it had come to take him down.

Allan's best case scenario was a bad case of the bends; to panic was to die down here. But he would never experience it because he felt something grab his ankle and he was jerked down. He didn't stop screaming, but for the first time he looked down. A mountain of fate pulled him towards it. It had no eyes, the body much like a large whale, with 30-ft tentacles on all sides of it, snaking up towards him, engulfing him and trapping him. It's mouth was no where to be seen. It was the kind of thing Allan had experienced in his wildest nightmares. Crazily, he wondered if this again was some sadistic dream that his mind had conjured up. He wondered if he would wake up with relief in his bed sweating. Someone was laughing in the back of his mind; the laughter was familiar. "Face your fear, boy!"

But then in horror, he watched as the creature began its dive. And he knew it was real…

Allan followed, powerless and enfolded in its clutches. The descent was rapid, and his ears sang and clicked with the pressure until finally the pain was unbearable. He could not move his hand to equalise, thus giving him temporary comfort. Finally the pain ended with a popping sound and he knew that both his eardrums had ruptured. Icy cold water seemed to fill his head, drowning his brain. Looking up he could not see the surface anymore, and looking down he could not see the creature, the tentacles disappeared into darkness. The pressure built up around his mask, and he knew that the small blood vessels around his face had imploded.

Drunk with depth, what a mind-freak! Soon, he too, would implode.