Dream Eyes

One
    T he dead diver was wedged like a bone in the stone throat of the underwater cave they called the Monster. The body—still clad in a tank and regulator, fins, buoyancy compensator and mask—shifted gently in the subtle current. One gloved hand rose and fell in spectral warning.
    Turn back
.
    But for Judson Coppersmith there was no going back.
    The locals on the island claimed that the flooded cave beast swallowed divers whole. The adrenaline junkies who were foolish enough to ignore the signs outside at the entrance never got far inside the uncharted labyrinth of underwater passages. The smart ones turned back in time. But the explosion in the dry section of the cavern had sealed the aboveground exit and canceled that option. His only hope was to try to swim out to the sea through the Monster.
    There was no darkness as dense and relentless as that of the interior of an underwater cave. But the clarity of the water was surreal. The beam of the flashlight sliced through the deep night like a laser, pinning the body.
    He swam closer and took stock of the dead man’s equipment. Relief swept through him when he saw that the killers had not bothered to drain the victim’s air tank. He stripped it off the bloated body, tucked it under one arm and helped himself to the diver’s flashlight as well. Throughout the process, the dead eyes stared at him reproachfully through the mask.
    Sorry, pal, but your gear is of no use to you now. Not sure it will do me any good, either, but it will buy me a little time
.
    He eased past the body and focused the sharp light on the twisted rock passage. The urge to swim forward as quickly as possible was almost overwhelming. But impulsive decisions would kill him as surely as running out of air. He forced himself to drift for a few seconds.
    There it was, the faint but steady pull of the current. It would either be his lifeline or the false lure that drew him to his death. He slipped into the stream of the ultra-clear water and allowed it to guide him deeper into the maze.
    The islanders claimed that there was an exit to the sea. That had been proven years ago by a simple dye test. A coloring agent poured into the cavern pool had emerged a short distance offshore. But the island was riddled with caves, and no one had been able to find the underwater exit point. Divers had died trying.
    It was getting hard to breathe off the first tank of air, the one he had grabbed when he had been forced into the water. It was almost empty. He took it off and set it down on a rocky ledge with great care. The last thing he needed now was to stir up the sediment on the floor of the cave. If that happened, he would be forced to waste precious time waiting for the current to clear out the storm of debris. Time meant air usage. He had none to spare. There was, in fact, a staggeringly high probability that he would not have enough air regardless of how carefully he managed the one commodity that meant life or death.
    He slipped on the dead man’s tank and waited a beat, drifting upward a little. Sometimes in a flooded cave the current was stronger toward the roof of the tunnel.
    Once again he sensed it, the faint, invisible tug that urged him deeper into the flooded labyrinth.
    Sometime later—he refused to look at his watch because there was no point—the flashlight began to go dark. He used it as long as possible, but the beam faded rapidly. The endless night closed in around him. Until now he had never had a problem with darkness. His paranormal night vision allowed him to navigate without the aid of normal light. In other circumstances, the natural para-radiation in the rocks would have been sufficient to illuminate his surroundings. But the strange aurora that had appeared in the cavern and the explosion that had followed had seared his senses, rendering him psychically blind. There was no way to know if the effects would be permanent and not much point in worrying about it now. The loss of his talent would not matter if he did not make it out of the flooded catacombs alive.
    He fumbled with the flashlight that he had taken off the body, nearly dropping it in the process of switching it on. The chill of the water was making him clumsy. The thin 3mm suit he wore provided only limited protection. Although the island was in the Caribbean, he was in freshwater here in the cave, and the temperature at this depth was unpleasantly cold.
    Ten minutes later, he rounded a bend and saw that the rocky