Free-Diving in Turtle Canyon

By Ann Mumaw

Sharon first saw the figure at 2:30 one morning. She had gradually become awake and hadn’t even opened her eyes yet. In the dark bedroom, she could hear her husband snoring softly beside her. However, she sensed that someone else was in the room. Naturally she thought it was just a boogeyman fantasy. She had always been the type to feel uneasy after a scary movie or reading a ghost story. She tried to return to sleep but instead became more and more awake. I’ll check it out, she decided. Dane is right here and I’m sure it’s nothing. 

She opened her eyes and scanned the room. In the doorway stood a figure. It was tall enough to fill the opening. The hair was shoulder length and shaggy. It had big, sloping shoulders, and its arms hung straight down. It seemed solid, not shadowy. In the darkness, it seemed to look at her but she could not see its face. 

Instead of screaming, she waited. Then suddenly it was halfway across the room by the window. She hadn’t exactly seen it move. It was like watching a video that someone fast forwarded for a few frames. Yet she was certain its legs didn't move. She tried to scream, but all that came out were muffled grunts. Dane turned over and shook her shoulder. “You were dreaming,” he said. She looked over to the window, but the figure was gone. 

The next morning at breakfast she described her encounter to Dane. He gently suggested that it was another dream. “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately.” It was true. She was getting ready for the holidays--shopping for a big Thanksgiving lunch that would be at her house and cleaning neglected areas for the party. And she still had not been sleeping well since the incident in the summer.

Dane was referring to dreams she had been having of diving. In these dreams she hovered weightless in a blue world. She could see a reef below her, where schools of small, yellow fish flitted between mounds of greenish coral. A group of turtles, flying like a squadron, passed her to the right and left. It was beautiful, but she felt uneasy. As if something waited for her in the murky distance beyond her visibility. She knew for certain this spot was Turtle Canyon.

Sharon would know. She managed a dive shop in Waikiki on the island of Oahu that belonged to her ex-husband. In July, a group of three men came in and rented scuba gear. Sharon was out of the shop and never actually saw them. The old coffee maker in the back room had given out that morning, so she had gone to a nearby shop to pick up a new one. She also stopped to pick up some doughnuts to go with her overdue cup of coffee so the errand was longer than planned, but she wasn’t too concerned. The worker she left in charge had been with her for almost a year. 

The young man recalled that the group of men seemed experienced, confident, and very friendly. They teased one member of the group who had a hard time finding a large enough wetsuit. “Like a walrus,” they said he looked. It was procedure to photocopy their IDs and diving certificates and to review operation of the gear. The worker claimed to have done both. 

The men went half a mile off shore from Waikiki to dive Turtle Canyon. One man, whose name she later learned was Tom, was found floating in 30 feet of clear water. His friends struggled to get the big man onto the boat. They radioed the coast guard, but they couldn’t resuscitate him. He was dead already. 

The investigation that followed turned up two things. First, the man’s diving license actually belonged to his brother. Second, his cause of death was carbon dioxide poisoning due to an overly tight wetsuit. He most likely felt difficulty getting enough air and hyperventilated, allowing carbon dioxide to build up in his lungs. The family sued the shop. Insurance covered the liability, but the shop had to be shut down. Sharon’s ex-husband, who owned several other shops, blamed her and said so at every opportunity. 

What a difference a little bit of chatting and inattention and a broken coffee maker had made. The difference between Tom having a drink in a bar while waiting for his friends to get back, and Tom on his back on the deck of the boat with his eyes wide open, flopping spasmodically as the dive-boat operator pounded on his chest. How could a moment go so wrong?

Sharon eventually moved on and found a new job, but she felt empty inside. Like she had also died and was just waiting to be taken away. Then the figure. After the first encounter, she saw it twice more, always similar to the first time. Then one day, as she washed dishes in the kitchen, she sensed it was near and watching her. She didn’t turn around and eventually it went away. In the corner of the kitchen she found a puddle of water. Too afraid to touch it, she just waited for it to dry. 

Two days before Thanksgiving Sharon stayed home from work to clean windows before the party. She waved Dane off to work and got started. With a bucket and squeegee, she cleaned the outsides of the glass doors. The sun was bright and warm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone standing at the beginning of her long driveway which was lined with red ginger. At first she thought it was a neighbor out for a walk. But it just stood there in the center of the driveway and looked at her. From a distance she could see its black hair, but its face remained in the shadows. She watched it out of the corner of her eye, afraid to engage it. Then she slowly put down her squeegee, went into the house, and locked the door.

She sat on the couch in the middle of the living room away from windows and doors. She could feel her heart pounding. She could call Dane, but she knew it was already in the house. It stood in the living room in front of her, backlit from the picture window, water dripping down features that were gray and deeply creased. It advanced with its dark mouth open and loomed over her. She opened her mouth to scream but was drowned out by desperate gasps that pounded in her head and shook the room.

#

Dane received the call at work and rushed home. What he saw when he arrived didn’t even look like his home. Emergency vehicles were pulled up everywhere and lights were flashing. A neighbor had found Sharon bloody in the driveway. She had jumped from the roof of the second story. 

In the days that followed, investigators interviewed Dane. “What was her state of mind? Did anyone want to hurt her?” 

“I think she killed herself,” he replied.

“We thought so too, but how did she get on the roof? There were no ladders set up.”

#

Within two months Dane had put the house on the market and moved to Las Vegas. The house was too big, he told a neighbor. The neighborhood too wet.