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  CREEP FROM THE DEEP

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  ENTER HORRORLAND

  The Invitation

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  TEASER

  FEAR FILE #2

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  My name is William Deep, Jr. I’m from Baltimore, Maryland, and I live for adventure.

  The people who think I’m a normal twelve-year-old call me Billy.

  But the few who really know me call me by my secret name — the Undersea Mutant.

  For me, danger is like breakfast. I can’t start my day without a healthy, balanced bowl of danger.

  Here I am in the middle of the ocean. Sure, it’s dark and dangerous. But what do I call it?

  Home.

  I’m swimming off the island of Careebo, a tiny sand field in the Caribbean Sea. I peer straight ahead through my infrared snorkel mask. My laser-guided razor fins cut through the waves.

  I follow a school of silvery angelfish, sparkling like diamonds in the sunlit waters. They don’t seem to realize the danger nearby.

  But my mutant senses are alert. No underwater villain can escape me.

  You may remember some of my adventures.

  I’m the one who defeated Sandy the Squid. He called himself the Cephalopod of Steel. Sandy liked to tickle swimmers to death — until I tied his tentacles in a knot.

  Remember the Ragin’ Ray of Honolulu Bay? He’s not ragin’ anymore. How about Joe, the Great White Stingray? After a smackdown with the Undersea Mutant, he floundered off with his stinger between his fins!

  The Snapping Tortoise of Terror? After our three-day underwater battle, I tossed him into a soup bowl. His new name was Delicious!

  Yeah, I’m tough. But these are tough waters.

  And now I’m about to face my most dangerous foe. The Albino Electric Eel. The only one in the known universe.

  I see him waiting for me behind a bank of red and yellow coral. To your eyes, he’s just a long string of seaweed. That’s because you don’t have Mutant Vision.

  I lower my 4-D hi-def mask into the water and kick harder. I glide toward my foe. I don’t hesitate. I grab him bare-handed and begin to apply my famous Eel Squeeze.

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

  Two hundred thousand volts of electricity shoot through my body. Enough power to electrocute a dozen men. But to me, it’s only a slight itch.

  I thrash and kick, wrestling with this Eel of Evil. Another jolt of electricity makes the churning water start to boil.

  Yes, it’s getting hot down here. But the only one who’s in real hot water is my wriggling enemy!

  I hear a voice … a distant voice, calling my human name. “Billy? Billy?”

  A desperate cry for help. Someone is in danger.

  I let go of the eel. Catch you later! I think. I fight my way to the surface.

  Someone needs me!

  “Billy? Billy?”

  I bobbed up to the surface, pulled off my snorkel, and raised the mask. I stared into the sunlight.

  I saw my uncle. He was leaning over the rail of his boat, the Cassandra. He stared down at me.

  “Billy? What are you doing down there?” he called.

  “Uh … just pretending stuff,” I said.

  “Was that seaweed you were fighting?” he asked.

  I didn’t know he was watching. “I thought maybe it was an eel,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Well, you gave it a beating it won’t forget!”

  Dr. D thinks my superhero fantasies are funny. “Climb up here,” he shouted. “You’ve been pestering me for weeks to teach you how to use the fishing spear. This seems like a good time.”

  “Awesome!” I cried. I turned and kicked my way toward the ladder at the stern of the boat.

  The Cassandra is a long white boat, the size of a small house. It’s actually a sea lab, three decks tall.

  The lower deck has sleeping cabins for us and the crew, storage compartments, and the galley, where we cook our meals and eat together.

  The main deck is filled with research cabins and study labs and all kinds of radar and computer equipment. At the front of the top deck is the pilot’s cabin, with the wheel and other controls. Behind that is an observation deck with even more electronic equipment.

  My uncle is a marine biologist. He studies tropical fish and undersea plants. He spends a lot of time looking for fish and plants that haven’t been discovered yet.

  Dr. D helped pull me onto the deck. He laughed when I splashed water over the front of his white lab coat.

  I tossed my snorkel, mask, and fins into the metal bin near the rail. Then I pulled off the wet suit and tossed it in, too.

  My uncle’s name is George Deep, but everybody calls him Dr. D. Even my dad — his brother — calls him Dr. D.

  Dad says everyone called George that back when he was ten years old. That’s because he was always studying bugs and dirt and tree leaves and stuff, even when he was just a kid.

  Dr. D is short and thin. He wears thick black-rimmed glasses, he has curly brown hair and a bald spot on top of his head, and the expression on his face is almost always serious.

  He wears a long white lab coat with a dozen pockets. He looks just the way a scientist should look.

  He put a hand on my shoulder and led me along the side of the deck. “How was the water?” he asked.

  “Kinda wet,” I said.

  He chuckled. It was a little joke we shared.

  He raised the long metal fishing spear. “Know what this is?” he said.

  “A toothpick for a whale?” I replied.

  He laughed again. “Let’s get serious, Billy. This is a very dangerous weapon.” He wrapped my hand around the end. “Hold it like this.”

  Yes! I thought. The Undersea Mutant raises the Pulverizer — my Death Spear made of super-charged lightning!

  Dr. D took the spear from me. He wrapped his hand around it and raised it over his head. “Billy, watch carefully. This is how you throw it. See how I have it balanced?”

  He pulled back — and heaved the spear into the water. I watched it cut through the surface without making a splash.

  Dr. D had attached a long rope to the back of the spear. He used it to pull the spear onto the boat.

  “It takes a while to get the feel of it,” he told me. “Get the right balance first. Then aiming it will be a lot easier.”

  He handed the spear to me. “It’s heavier than you thought, isn’t it?”

  It’s light as a feather to the Undersea Mutant.

  “Yeah. Kinda heavy,” I said.

  He slid my hand closer to the middle of the shaft. “Hold it here,” he said. “Go ahead. Get it balanced, then give it a try.”

  I gripped the spear tightly. I stared over the rail, into the sparkling water.

  I took a deep breath. I pulled my arm back as far as it would go — and I heaved the spear with all my might.

  “HELLLLLP!” a shrill voice shrieked from the water.

  My little sister, Sheena!

  “HELLLP! You HIT me!”

 
My heart skipped a beat. I let out a horrified cry — and gripped the railing with both hands.

  No. Please. Tell me I didn’t do it.

  Gasping for breath, I stared down over the rail.

  Sheena’s black hair spread out like a limp jellyfish on the surface of the ocean. Was she floating facedown?

  No. She tilted her head up. “Hope I didn’t scare you, Billy!” She raised the spear in one hand and waved it over her head, laughing.

  “Sheena, that’s not a good joke,” Dr. D said, shaking his head.

  “Sure it was!” Sheena replied. “It worked!”

  What a brat.

  “You didn’t scare me at all,” I said. My voice cracked. I hoped she didn’t notice.

  Sheena is ten, and she likes to prove that she’s the bold, brave one in the family. Maybe she is a little braver than me. But mainly she’s just loud and annoying.

  “Dr. D,” Sheena shouted, “you shouldn’t let Billy play with sharp things. He’ll poke his eye out.”

  I groaned. “Ha-ha. Toss up the spear and wait right there. I need the target practice.”

  “You couldn’t hit the ocean from there!” she cried. Then she laughed at her own dumb joke.

  “Come up here,” Dr. D called to her. “I need to talk to you both.”

  Sheena climbed onto the deck. She pulled off her mask and her wet suit, straightened her red swimsuit, and shook out her hair.

  We look a lot alike. We both have straight black hair. Mine is short, and hers comes down past her shoulders.

  We’re both tall and kinda skinny. We both have dark blue eyes and heavy dark eyebrows that make us look serious, even when we’re not.

  Sometimes people say, “You two must be twins.” That makes me stick my finger down my throat and gag. Because first, I’m a whole two years older than she is and second, we’re not alike at all.

  Sheena doesn’t like to pretend. She would stare at the Albino Electric Eel and say, “That’s just a clump of seaweed.”

  No way she could share the amazing adventures of the Undersea Mutant. She only likes things that are real. How boring is that?

  Sheena carried the spear across the deck and dropped it on my bare foot.

  “OWWWW!” I screamed, hopping up and down.

  “I told you to be careful with that thing,” Sheena said.

  “Maybe next summer, I’ll invite my other niece and nephew to join me,” Dr. D said. “They get along.”

  “We get along fine,” Sheena said. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and gave me a big fake hug. “Don’t we, Billy-Willy?”

  Totally annoying, right?

  “No more target practice for today,” Dr. D said. “Take your places. It’s time to move. I just got the okay over the radio. And the navigation maps I’ve been waiting for arrived today via satellite. So we are ready for action!”

  He turned and headed up to the pilot’s cabin.

  “Where are we going?” I called after him.

  “Deep waters,” he said. He looked back and frowned at us. “Very deep waters.”

  The engines roared. Dr. D turned the wheel, and the Cassandra edged sharply into the waves.

  Sheena and I took our places on a bench against the cabin wall. The boat rocked hard, and a strong spray washed over the railing.

  Soon, we were crashing over the sparkling waves. A red-orange sun floated on the horizon. I turned back and saw the tiny island of Careebo vanish, a speck of yellow on the blue water.

  About an hour later, Dr. D locked the wheel. Then he led the way down to the galley for some lunch.

  Normally, the Cassandra has a crew of three or four. But when Sheena and I visit in the summer, Dr. D likes to give them time off.

  He pulled out the grilled bluefish left over from last night’s dinner and some sandwich rolls, and we sat around the small white table and ate fish sandwiches and drank papaya juice.

  After lunch, Dr. D pulled off his glasses and cleaned them with his napkin. “I’ll tell you what we’re doing,” he said. “But you probably won’t believe me.”

  He chuckled. “I’m not sure I believe it myself. But we’re going to try to track down a sunken pirate ship.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You mean like real pirates?” I said.

  Dr. D nodded and slid his glasses back on. “People have been searching for this ship for over two hundred years,” he said. “My workers back on the mainland think they have located it using acoustic imaging and laser mapping. They just e-mailed me all the info.”

  Dr. D’s eyes flashed. “Here’s the amazing thing,” he said. “If the sonar image is correct, we’re actually not too far from where the ship went down.”

  Sheena and I nodded and waited for him to tell us more.

  “The ship is called the Scarlet Skull,” he said. “Perfect name for a pirate ship, right?”

  He took a long sip of papaya juice. “According to legend, the ship sank in the late 1780s,” he said. “And it took millions of dollars of jewels and gold treasure down with it.”

  “And we’re going to find the treasure and be billionaires!” I cried. I jumped up and pumped my fists in the air.

  Sheena grabbed me and pulled me back down. “Billy, were you born immature?”

  “If we find the treasure, it will all go to the Careebo Dolphin Rescue Fund,” Dr. D said. “I’d be thrilled to find it. But I’m a scientist — not a treasure hunter.”

  “This is totally cool!” I said. I was so excited, I could barely sit still.

  “How did the pirate ship go down?” Sheena asked.

  Dr. D scratched his head. “This is where the story gets weird,” he said. “And this is what I want to investigate. The reports at the time said there were two pirate ships. They were sailing in view of each other. It was a calm, clear day. The ocean waves were flat and gentle. And suddenly, a swirling black cloud swept over the water. The Scarlet Skull sailed into the cloud — and disappeared.”

  “Huh? It just disappeared?” I said.

  Dr. D nodded. “I told you it was weird. The black cloud passed, and the pirate ship had vanished. The pirates on the other ship stood staring, waiting for it to reappear. But … it was never seen again.”

  Sheena and I stared at him. Neither of us spoke.

  Dr. D opened a file of papers he had brought to lunch and scanned them quickly. “The Scarlet Skull belonged to a notorious captain named Long Ben One-Leg,” he said. “Long Ben was very bad news.”

  I felt a shiver at the back of my neck. “How bad?” I asked.

  “Well, some people believe that he was so evil, the sea just swallowed him up. Swallowed him and his entire ship to protect the world from his evil.”

  Dr. D continued to skim the papers. “Here’s a story that will give you a good idea of what Captain Ben was like. It seems he kept a big tub of hungry rats on the ship. When one of his men did something to make him angry, he tossed the guy into the tub. Then he sat back and watched the rats make lunch of him.”

  Sheena grabbed her throat and groaned. “Ohhh, that’s way sick!”

  “Sometimes when he was bored,” Dr. D continued, “he threw someone in the rat tub just for entertainment.”

  “They didn’t have TV in those days, right?” I joked.

  But when I pictured the hungry rats gnawing on some poor guy, I felt a little sick.

  “So all the pirates drowned when the ship went down?” Sheena asked.

  Dr. D nodded. “The pirates drowned. The rats drowned. And the treasure sank with them.”

  He set the papers on the table and squeezed Sheena’s hand. “And there’s one more part to the story. A very creepy part.”

  He stopped as if he didn’t want to tell us.

  We waited, our eyes locked on his. “Tell us,” I said. “Please. Tell us!”

  Dr. D hesitated. I could see he was thinking hard.

  “Well …” he said finally. “According to legend, the Scarlet Skull is haunted. Long Ben prowls the sunken ship — always
awake, always alert — to protect the treasure.”

  I gasped.

  But Sheena laughed. “Uncle George, you don’t believe in ghosts — do you?”

  Dr. D gazed back at her through his thick glasses. He didn’t reply.

  “Do you?” Sheena insisted. “Do you really believe in ghosts?”

  “He … he’s not a ghost,” Dr. D muttered. “According to the legend, he’s a zombie.”

  And suddenly in my mind, sounding so distant, so far away, I heard a soft, evil whisper: “I’m waiting for you … I’m waiting.”

  Did Sheena and Dr. D see me shiver?

  I don’t think they noticed.

  Of course, the whispered voice was only in my mind. My wild imagination taking off again. I was sitting there scaring MYSELF!

  This is the perfect mission for the Undersea Mutant, I told myself. Zombie pirates in a sunken treasure ship. Awesome!

  So why did my stomach suddenly feel as if I’d swallowed a huge rock?

  “Tell us the truth,” my sister said, pressing our uncle. “Zombies — true or false?”

  That made Dr. D smile. “I’m a scientist,” he said. “I study the real world. I don’t believe in zombie pirates.”

  The Cassandra bounced hard on the waves. We tilted forward, then back. I gripped the edge of the table to steady myself.

  I glanced out the galley porthole. In the distance, I could see islands of dark, craggy rocks and tall purple cliffs.

  “I don’t believe in zombies,” Dr. D repeated. “But I have been fascinated by this mystery for years. And if we can find the ship, I can study the natural causes. I can determine what really made that ship go down.”

  Dr. D jumped up. He collected our plastic dishes and dropped them into the tiny galley sink. “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  He led us up to the main deck and around to the starboard side. Normally, he keeps a small dinghy tethered to the side — a little boat for going onshore on islands.

  “Whoa!” I let out a startled cry. In place of the dinghy, a tiny submarine floated beside the Cassandra.

  “It’s my own design,” Dr. D said. “Cute, huh? I call it the Deep Diver.”

  My heart was racing. Were we really going down to the bottom of the ocean in this little sub?

  I leaned over the rail and studied it. It looked like a toy. Shaped like a real submarine. Bright yellow metal with a narrow hatch on top, big enough for only one person at a time.