Richard was pinned against the far wall. His dry suit was in ribbons. The monster’s central mouth—a vertical slit running the length of its belly—had opened. And Richard Mann was being pulled into it. Not swallowed whole. Split open. The creature’s inner jaws extended like a second skull, cracking his ribcage outward with a sound like breaking kindling.

“Thirty minutes,” he said. “If I’m not back, pull the line.”

Bella Bare never married again. She sold the property and moved to the desert, where the ground is dry and nothing can hide in the water.

“Bella… there’s a chamber. It’s huge. And there’s something… moving.”