Episode 33: Watch the Blue

Narrator: Welcome to Ghost Wax, a Far and Tall Tales Production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. 

[Intro Music]

Episode 33, Watch the Blue

Recorder clicks on

VONCID: So that’s the painting?

LUCA: Yep. One of them, at least. Mr Marigliano has been quite productive these past months. There’s a dozen more in that box here. 

VONCID: I see. 

LUCA: His wife said he’ll want them back, but she said it with a look in her eye, you know?

VONCID : I imagine. She has been having the dreams, hasn’t she?

LUCA: Yes. So far, we’ve got her, six neighbors who came over recently, and the twenty-four who attended his little exhibition last week.

VONCID, darkly: Wonderful. 

LUCA: Do you think all of them are going to drown? 

VONCID: I have no idea, Luca. But I’d say four people choking on invisible water while sleeping is enough to warrant not taking any risks. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all potential victims, and Mr Marigliano’s opus is the only thing tying them together.

LUCA : Fits the theme, too. What do you think they are looking at? 

VONCID: The fishes in the painting? I have no idea. Whatever it is, it’s been purposefully kept out of the frame. It’s quite a striking composition, I must admit. And the brushwork is splendid. 

LUCA: It’s very… blue.

[Small silence]

LUCA: Look, not all of us are proficient in the arcanas of painting analysis. Call me back when we’ve got a haunted indie rock song on our hands. 

VONCID: Do not jinx us. Please. [I can’t go through that again.]

LUCA: So, if you think these paintings are cursed… Why aren’t we just confiscating the painter’s brushes? Or, I don’t know. Gently breaking his thumbs?

VONCID: I don’t think Mr Marigliano is the source of the problem. Interviewing him revealed as much, at least. You heard the record. Nothing surnatural surrounds him. [This time I’ve been suitably thorough I assure you. It’s] Just… grief, in my opinion. 

LUCA: Didn’t it seem suspicious to you that he doesn’t have the dreams? And that he didn’t say a word during the entire interview? 

VONCID: His wife mentioned that he has been [largely] nonverbal since the loss of his diving partner. Conrad…

LUCA: Callaway. 

VONCID: Yes. And apparently, he didn’t talk much beforehand, either. I am inclined to put the mutism on trauma.

LUCA: Yeah. Right. 

VONCID: What? 

LUCA: Seems a tad convenient, doesn’t it? His diving pal dies in a mysterious accident, no witness, no explanation, no body to be found. Meanwhile, our [guy] comes up unscathed, and proceeds to stop talking. 

VONCID: Our “guy” certainly proceeds to express himself through painting only, and attracts something in his creations that drowns onlookers in their dreams… I know what you mean. It could well be that something happened down there that tied the [drowning] of Mr Callaway to the creations of his former friend. 

LUCA: Wait. That’s… Huh. I’m no painting expert, but… Here, help me hold these up for a second?

VONCID: Do you want to get them all out?

LUCA: Yeah. Did you notice it’s always the same scene? 

VONCID: What? 

LUCA, excited: Look. That rock here, that’s the same one as in this painting. And that fish there… 

VONCID: It sure is a fish. 

LUCA: They’re the same scene, [I’m telling] you! From different angles. All of them. 

VONCID: Not the shark, surely. Nor that landscape of algae. 

LUCA: Hmm… OK, maybe not, no. The water is a different blue. They’re older, aren’t they? That shark is dated July 2021. But all the new ones? Look. Here, and here, and here. Same shade, same lighting. Same rock. Same blue. Can you see? He’s been painting the same thing. Over and over. That salmon here is looking outside the frame, too. 

VONCID: Tuna. It’s a tuna. 

LUCA: …sure

VONCID, thoughtful: You know, Luca, I believe you are right. And that certainly points in favor of your theory. 

LUCA: Yeah. Hell, that’s what it is, isn’t it? He’s been painting…

VONCID: ...the death of Conrad Callaway. Well, leaving it out of frame, I suppose. 

LUCA: With fishes as sole witness. 

VONCID: Hmm. 

LUCA: Sole. Get it? 

VONCID: Yes, very funny. An obsessive recreation of the incident that caused his friend’s disappearance… Let’s see if we can get anything from it.

[LUCA: from the painting?

VONCID, excited, power flowing: yes, there it is… I have a hold of it… the lines of powerful emotion connecting across great distance.  

We hear very liquid magic and splashing as Voncid reaching within the painting, blue paint is spattering out, bleeding from within the frame.

A resonance is here, something trapped in these pigments and brushstrokes just as our stories become trapped within our selves, stand back the painting is bleeding blue…

LUCA: well then don’t reach into it!

VONCID: oh no, this is exhilarating, I have not worked magic like this in ages, not protocol, not allowed, “too many ripples” and all that hogwash… let me ply some power here.  Some real power for once.

[VONCID incantates. Does the ghost wax work to make paintings speak? I sure hope so. Amidst the weird ghostly sounds of water gurgling and diving bubbles, a raspy voice is heard.]

We hear Voncid chant words of magic and pulls a ghost made of paint and memory from the frame.]

THE GHOST: Wrong. Wrong. 

VONCID: There you are. 

THE GHOST: It’s wrong. Watch the blue. WATCH!

we hear the ghost yell, monstrous, wet and drowned, but then it vanishes

[VONCID: I couldn’t hold it long over such a distance, but that was certainly the drowned raving ghost of Conrad Calloway.  We’ve found the source of our anomalous drownings.]

LUCA, once the echo has vanished: Told you. It’s the same blue in all his last ones.  

VONCID: You win this round of artistic analysis, Luca. I’ll get you back on the independant rock-n-roll, I was personal friends with many early luminaries of the scene. 

LUCA, resigned: So… [Mr. Marigliano] definitely killed him down there, didn’t he? 

VONCID, hesitant: I’m not sure. If it was Mr Marigliano who caused his death, then… why has he been spared? [Not the usual drowned revenant’s modus operandi] If the goal is to make him suffer, why hasn’t his wife drowned yet? No, I think something else is happening. And there is only one man who can give us answers. See if you manage to get the coordinates of Mr Marigliano and Mr Callaway’s last fateful dive. 

LUCA: You think he’ll comply this time? He’s kept his little act of “shocked mute who has no idea what happened” for the past six months. 

VONCID: [We shall inform him] if he doesn’t tell us where we can find the body, he will have thirty more deaths on his conscience. Including his wife. And let’s hope there is a shred of decency in him. [Sighing] I suspect we shall have a little bit of fishing on our hands. 

LUCA: I’ll get my yellow raincoat. 

[Later, over the sound of a creaking boat with waves lapping at it. A heavy object is dropped, drenched, on the deck.]

VONCID: We will take it from here. If you could just inform your superiors that we finally dredged him up? And that it will be a closed casket affair for the family, I’m afraid. 

LUCA, a hand over his nose: ugh. The state of him… 

VONCID: Yes. The sealife certainly has taken a taste in our late diver. 

LUCA: Will he even be able to speak without a jaw? 

VONCID: I’ll manage something… [I brought my prosthetic kit for just such an eventuality] Besides, it’s not so much a case of reclaiming a corpse as rejoining it with his ghost. [Unsettled spirits have a way of being heard… ]Could you go and get the paintings? 

LUCA: Happily. I don’t like… [yelping] The hell was that?

VONCID: Not me. I haven’t started the reclamation process yet. 

Coming closer, then chucking as a noise of arthropods moving around is heard

Oh, it’s just the crabs moving about. We have disturbed their home. 

LUCA: And buffet. Bed and breakfast all in one. Ugh. Here are the paintings. Do you mind if I step away from this one? I’m feeling this newfound shellfish allergy grow, every second I look at him.

VONCID: No problem. Now, this won’t be pleasant for you, Mr Callaway. But given that your restlessness has already claimed six lives and stands to endanger thirty more, I am not exceedingly inclined to compassion. I compel thee, Conrad Callaway, to enter again your mortal coil. Let your vengeful mind with your bloated flesh be reunited, let your name anchor you to this world, and let your voice truthfully carry your tale to me! 

[The ghost rasps and gurgles and lets out a choked scream. Bubbles can be heard beneath his voice when he talks.]

CONRAD: The blue. Watch the blue. 

VONCID: I did. We noticed, Mr Callaway. We noticed the blue. Your body is found now. 

CONRAD: So what? 

VONCID: Hum. So, be at peace? 

CONRAD: No, no. The blue. It’s wrong. 

VONCID: Please do not tell me you have been drowning dreamers out of artistic differences with Mr Marigliano’s renditions. 

CONRAD: Joe? 

VONCID: Yes. Your friend, Joe Marigliano - 

CONRAD: Not my friend. 

VONCID: Ah. So, he did… 

CONRAD: My diving buddy. Friendship is nothing compared to that. 

VONCID: Al… right. Well, your diving partner… 

CONRAD, aggressive: Buddy. Do you dive, stranger? 

VONCID: I have found myself underwater, [on occasion]. 

CONRAD: Not recreationally, though. 

VONCID: No… [not since a coast long ago in a land that no longer exists.]

CONRAD: Land-dweller. 

VONCID: That’s a fact more than an insult, really. 

CONRAD: It’s a fact that means you don’t know. You can’t know. 

VONCID: Enlighten me, then. Tell me about your diving… buddy. 

CONRAD: There’s friendship. There’s love. And then there’s that. See, you never dive alone. Ever. It’s a bonded affair. Your buddy - that’s the one who double checks your equipment, and plans the itinerary with you, and rescues you if you have a problem below. And you do the same for them. That’s the one you signal when you see something, the one you wait for, the one who waits for you. That’s the one you trust. With your life. At first, when you don’t know anyone yet, you’ll go in pairs with whoever is available. Like sex. But then - then you meet someone and you can’t imagine doing it with anyone else, ever again. 

VONCID, snorting: Like sex. 

CONRAD: Exactly. Joe and me, we’ve been buddies for ten years. Ten years, stranger. Hundreds of dives. Most of them uneventful, but I’ve carried him up on my spare regulator when he got sick from a bad bottle mix. And he’s held me in his arms when I started panicking in front of a fidgety tiger shark down in the Caribbeans. I’ve saved his life. He’s saved my life. And mostly, we’ve made sure that there wouldn’t be life-saving needed, hundreds of times. I know what he thinks, from a single look. I can read him in the way he swims, in  the energy of his body and the angle of his head. I know when he is cold, when he is tired, when he is focused. He was never the talker, but that doesn’t matter below. There’s the bond. And for all the rest, there’s the signals. We even made up our own, for the things that were just us.

VONCID: The… hand gestures, right? I know this one. The circle with your thumb and forefinger. 

CONRAD: Yeah. Means “OK”. We had this one, for “painting”. He’s an artist, you know. Always on the lookout for the exciting scene, the majestic angle. Me, I’m more of a contemplative dude. We made it work fine. He’d signal me, and then he could spend minutes taking reference pictures and trying to capture the essence of a scene, while I’d just be floating around looking at the little guys.

VONCID: Sounds like you were quite close. 

CONRAD: Euphemism. 

VONCID: It’s just, his wife barely mentioned you. 

CONRAD: No shit. I told her, once. You can get the making-out and the cuddling in front of the TV. I’ll have the unbreakable bond of trust, and the soul-altering, life-changing understanding at a molecular level. 

VONCID: I’m assuming she didn’t find it very funny. 

CONRAD: Wasn’t a joke. 

VONCID: Is that why you’ve been sparing him? He has not been dreaming of death, despite being the hand behind the paintings. 

CONRAD: Wouldn’t hurt him. He’s my buddy. 

VONCID: But you have been hurting others. 

CONRAD: … yes. 

VONCID: Can you tell me why? You seem… angry. 

CONRAD, slipping back into his ghastly voice: I am. I am! They’re not seeing. They have to watch. Watch the blue. We had a signal for that as well. 

VONCID: For watching the blue? 

CONRAD: Yeah. Like this. Fingers to the eyes, then palm flat in front of you. 

VONCID: What does it mean? 

CONRAD: It means “watch the blue”. You have to watch the blue. 

VONCID, patiently: Conrad, I am trying to help you.

CONRAD: I know. I can feel it. I am sorry. It’s hard. Watch the blue, usually… usually it means something else. Depending on the water and the time of day, you’ve got about fifty feet of visibility down there. More if it’s a quiet day in clear waters. Less if the seafloor is silty, or there are currents stirring up the sand. Less still as you go down. After that, it’s all just a blue wall. The things beyond, they’re like silhouettes in the fog. And so there can be something just out of view, not far at all, behind the blue. 

VONCID: Like sharks? 

CONRAD: Sometimes. They’re fast little buggers, and they can sense you further than a man can see. They feel heartbeats, you know that? And the nervous impulses in your body. They’ve got these electrosensitive sensors in their snouts. Man, I always loved sharks. You’ve got to be careful around them, for sure. Same as moray eels, barracudas, hell, even dolphins and turtles. But they’re not monsters. You don’t watch the blue out of fear. You watch it so you don’t miss out. You don’t want to be the chump who was chuckling at a pufferfish ignoring the rules of underwater circulation, and who didn’t see the huge-ass eagle ray flying just behind him. 

VONCID: Sounds like you speak from experience. 

CONRAD: I do. It happened just like that. Joe painted it, too. That one’s above my bed, back home. Me making fun of the puffer swimming straight through a school of wrasses like that scene with Mulan’s grandma in the street. And just behind me, a fifteen-foot wide ray flying above while I’m completely oblivious. After that, he was always gesturing at me to watch the blue. Not that I really minded missing things, you know. Never was one for FOMO. Joe was all about the great and the beautiful, I was excited when I spotted a new nudibranch. You know what that is? 

VONCID: Isn’t it a type of seaslug? 

CONRAD: Bingo. There’s only seasoned divers who get intense about these little lads. They’re slugs. They’re not exactly as popular on Instagram as dolphins. Still, there’s hundreds of species of them, all strange, all unique. Like Pokemon. With shiny spots here, little wings there… My favorite one was that Spanish Dancer I spotted in the Red Sea. Red and pretty and frilly, and rare, so rare. I dubbed her Antonia, after that girl I knew in college. Joe painted her for me. The slug, not the girl. Still, he was right. You’ve got to watch the blue. It’s not good to let yourself be surprised when you’re diving. 

VONCID: So… You weren’t watching the blue that fateful day, I imagine?

CONRAD, darkly again: Oh, yes, I was. I was, and that’s how I knew. See, there is something you must understand. The thing that matters most in diving. I got it, Joe got it. Maybe you can get it too. You feel like you could. 

VONCID, flatly: I’m flattered. 

CONRAD: You can be. It’s not everyone who understands. Joe’s wife never did. Diving is not just putting on an air backpack to go and fool around under the sea.You are visiting another world. One that you disturb by your very presence. One that you can harm, too, without even meaning to. 

VONCID: How so? 

CONRAD: That’s how you spot the bad divers, really. You’ll have some snotty prick with a high-tech diving computer, wallet dangling with more certification cards than an FBI agent, and then you see them underwater. And they give fin kicks so low to the seafloor that they’re stirring up a whole fucking sirocco behind them, or swimming so close to the reefs that they’ll brush up on the corals, or they go night-diving with a spotlight that illuminates the entire ocean like a Taylor Swift concert. Botherers. Intruders. They don’t care. They don’t realize. They don’t understand what we are supposed to be. 

VONCID: Quiet observers. 

CONRAD: Aliens. We are alien to the underwaters. We are these strange creatures from the Above, who invited themselves into the Below. We are visitors into this beautiful other world, whose touch can corrupt everything it reaches if we are not careful. You poke a coral, you might fuck up its pH and make it wither and die two weeks later. You stroke a fish, it rubs the protective slime off of it and it’s gonna get scales falling from necrosis at the first scratch. You move a rock, the tunnel shrimp who lived under it dies choking in the sand. We are guests. And we are dangerous. The extent of your interventions should never be more than to fix the interventions of others. Pick up trash. Collect broken coral and set it up further so it can provide a new home for baby fishes. Remove fallen nets from algae fields. And sure, you want to observe the fishes, and sometimes they look back. They’re smart, you know? Smarter than they’re given credit for. Not just the big ones, either. Sometimes they play in the bubbles. Sometimes they hang out with you for a while because there’s a barracuda on the run and they reckon you’re good protection. Sometimes you’re looking at an anemone, and suddenly you’ve got a little blenny swimming right up to your mask and looking in. And you blink, and move your head, and it follows, staring at you like it’s having an Encounter of the Third Kind moment, and it’s trying to read your soul. And then, I don’t know. It goes home to its wife and kids and goes “Janice, you would not believe the day I’ve had, they’re out there, I’m telling you”. They know we don’t belong, you know? They know we are other. But they can allow us around. If you’re chill and respectful, and you behave like what you are - a quiet observer, like you said - then they can simply… let you be. And that’s the most beautiful gift they can give you. Just… ignoring you, and being themselves, as unconcerned and unbothered by your presence as they are unconcerned and unbothered by the rest. And sure, it’s not as sexy as those pseudo fish-whisperers who tell you all teary-eyed about their turtle best friend or the dolphin that saved their life, but it’s more honest. 

VONCID, hesitant: I see.  

CONRAD, surprisingly gently: You do, don’t you? I can feel that you do. You’re the same. You don’t quite belong here, huh? But I never knew of corpse-talkers when I lived, so I suppose you’ve been doing something right. Quietly observing. Fixing what needs to be fixed.

VONCID: I try to.  [I understand the need for a light touch]

CONRAD: Good. Then you understand that joy of stealing a moment when you belong. Neither predator nor prey. Just… presence. 

VONCID: Yes. I admit I do. 

CONRAD: And so you’ll understand why I died. There was a wreck. Unmarked on the diving maps, but we got information from some bird I hooked up with at a beach party. She was doing a thesis on the old trade routes of the coast, and she had this list of sunken vessels. And there was a painting of this galleon. Not a very good one. Not every painter is as good as Joe. Some paint what they see. He paints what things are. 

The blue of the sea around that galleon was… Well. I’ll come back to the blue. Let’s just say it felt flawed. Like whoever had painted it had never seen a boat in their life, let alone the sea. Still, Joe and I figured it was worth a look. The seafloor is at a good hundred-sixty feet at that point, so the plan was to head there along the reef, dive down to hundred-thirty, map what we could find, and head back up. Maybe it would be too deep to be seen, maybe we’d be lucky. If we did find it, we’d notify the authorities and do things proper. I’ll tell you right now, I have no idea if it was down there or not. We did the dive. We went down, no problem. And when we reached the reef where we expected the wreck… Things went wrong. The blue went wrong. 

VONCID: Something beyond it?

CONRAD: No. The blue itself. You lose colors as you go down, did you know that? Drop a red object fifteen feet down, it will look grey. Then you lose orange, and yellow. Green around ninety feet - the algae just look blue and black then. I know at some point, you even lose the blue. Hundred fifty feet under the surface, you only get these dark shades of purple and grey, in the faint slither of light that you’ve still got from above. That’s why some bring a torch in the daytime. If you want to see the true colors of what’s around you, you need to light it up. I never did, though. I like watching the gradient change. I can tell you how deep I am with a margin of error of ten feet or less, just watching the blue. You’ve got to understand, my friend. I knew the blue. I knew what color the water was supposed to be. And as we dove down to the supposed wreck, and we came back up, the blue didn’t change. It was that same wrong shade as in the painting. Both too deep and too bright. Like… like it didn’t know what color it was supposed to be. I watched the blue. And I swear to you, the blue wasn’t right. 

VONCID: Hmm. Maybe that painting wasn’t as bad as you first believed. 

CONRAD: I don’t know. I didn’t know how it was possible. I turned to Joe and I signaled him. Watch the blue, watch the blue. And he watched, and then he stared back at me, and I don’t even know if he noticed what I meant. I think he did, eventually. He paints it exactly like it was, in those paintings he does now. I told you, didn’t I? He doesn’t paint what he sees. He paints what things are. 

VONCID: A dangerous skill, for sure. 

CONRAD: Maybe. I kept watching it as we came up to the reef. And then, I knew for sure. Because every single fish, every moray eel in their holes, every school of babies and every wrasse and grouper, and even an entire fucking tuna - and let me tell you, tunas don’t stop for anyone or anything - every. Single. Fish. Was watching the blue. All of them, floating still, barely moving above the reef and turned towards the horizon. All of them watching. Waiting. I knew, then. And it got me absolutely furious.

VONCID: Furious?

CONRAD: Yeah. Are you ever so angry that you don’t even have time to be afraid? I was, then. I knew for sure that there was something else down there with us. Something in the blue. Something alien, just like me, except it didn’t have the common fucking curtesy not to bother the fishes. [With increasing despair] They were all just floating there, man. Staring into the blue like they were under a spell or something. Not swimming, not eating, not living. It was wrong. Wrong. We’re not meant to trouble them. We’re… Silent, quiet observers. Harmless.  Unnoticed. That thing… I hated it. I couldn’t bear the idea of it. So I went. 

VONCID: Into the blue. 

CONRAD: Into the blue. I swam out, flailing, cursing, kicking my fins. I even brought out my knife, and the only time I’d done that before was to open a poaching net. I think I may have screamed in my regulator. Didn’t even look back at Joe. That’s the one thing I regret. 

VONCID: And then? 

CONRAD: Then, I died. It was all blue. All that nasty, wrong blue, bright and so thick I could barely see my own hands. I remember something broke through my mask. I think I was dragged down by the jaw. That’s all. 

VONCID: The state of your skull certainly suggests something of that kind. 

CONRAD: I don’t mind. The little ones are always looking for quiet places where the bigger ones can’t reach them. 

VONCID: You… don’t mind the crabs? 

CONRAD: Squat lobsters. 

VONCID: Pardon? 

CONRAD: Common mistake. And no, I don’t mind. I’ve fed on enough sealife in my life not to raise a fuss at the idea of giving back. 

VONCID: That sounds very …reasonable. 

CONRAD: So. Do you know what killed me? Do you know what that wrong blue was? 

VONCID: Not yet. I’ll have to look into that wreckage you mentioned. It could be a creature able to mimic its environment, albeit imperfectly. It could be that the painting of that galleon was actually entirely correct, or even premonitory. There are also records of ship-shaped entities luring sailors into their bowels, so maybe this one just met an unfortunate ending. Or maybe it was a regular ship transporting some irregular artifact. I’ll need to investigate. 

CONRAD: Alright. 

VONCID, after a small silence: I assume you’ll want an answer before I send you back. 

CONRAD: Oh, yeah. I’m not going anywhere. You wouldn’t happen to have a deck of cards or something to kill the time? 

VONCID: I’ll see what I can do. May I ask you to stop the killings in the meantime? 

CONRAD: Sure. Sorry. Didn’t mean to… Well. That’s not true. I did mean to. I was… am… angry. It’s that fucking blue, you know? I needed them to see. To watch the blue. 

VONCID: Yes, yes. Well, I’ll let Mr Marigliano know that it would do everyone a great amount of good if he picked another shade for his next magnum opus. 

CONRAD, affectionate: He can’t do that. I told you. He paints things how they are. Don’t worry. I can… I can calm down. I think. I just want that blue gone. I need it gone. It’s not something from the sea, I can feel it. I wouldn’t be mad if I had gotten got by a ghost shark with unfinished business, you know? It’s just…

VONCID: It’s bothering the little guys. Believe it or not, I know the feeling. Luca, can you head us back to the coast, please? And see if you can find a deck of cards. 

[Later, with the sound of cards being flipped, and book pages being turned in the background.]

CONRAD: Uno. 

LUCA: Like hell. draw four. 

CONRAD: I’ll rip you limb from limb and fill your lungs with seawater, you filthy land-dweller. 

VONCID: Conrad. 

CONRAD: Sorry. 

VONCID: I have bad news, I’m afraid. The galleon San Jose that supposedly sank in 1676 has been found last year, fifty miles south of the point indicated on your “old trade route”. Besides, there is no mention of a Maria working on a thesis on this topic, in any university of the state. 

CONRAD: So, what? She fooled us? She was, what? Working for the blue?

VONCID: Probably. I think she sent you there as a sacrifice of sorts. Beast or altar, I’m still unsure. And I’m not keen to find out. 

CONRAD: What do you mean? 

VONCID: You said yourself that diving below a hundred-thirty feet is not recommended. I think we should just leave that thing where it is. Issue a warning to divers that the area is not safe, and…

CONRAD: Owen. You are not leaving that thing down there. I won’t allow it. 

VONCID: Investigating that wreckage is only going to bring more deaths. 

CONRAD: Leaving it be is going to bring more deaths. Because if you give it up, I will drown every single fucker who ever laid an eye on that blue. They will die screaming, just like I did. How does that sound? 

LUCA: Needlessly antagonistic. 

VONCID: Quite. Conrad, be reasonable. I can’t just ask somebody to head down there and see what’s what. And I can’t have that wreck dredged up to the surface either, where its power might be unleashed on the people of the land. I can’t…

CONRAD: You can send me back. 

LUCA: To the otherside? 

CONRAD: To the blue. To the below. To that thing. Tell me what I am looking for. Teach me how to destroy it. I’ll rip it to shreds. And then the blue will be right again. What’s it gonna do, kill me? 

VONCID: I… You would be forsaking your chance at an afterlife. I’ve already kept you here for longer than I should have. [If I give you that kind of power… it has to anchor to something and it needs fuel… your soul Conrad.  You will be anchored to this.]

CONRAD: That afterlife’s fine by me. Send me back. 

[LUCA: Master Voncid, can we talk for a moment?  This doesn’t seem like…

VONCID: Like something The Order allows.  It isn’t, well not in ages… but how are we supposed to protect this vessel if all our strongest tools are locked away. composing himself The Order could use an underwater subsidiary. 

LUCA: Your family? We told them that a body had been found.

CONRAD: Let them bury rocks. They're expecting a closed casket anyway. And they have mourned me already. Can you just… can you tell Joe I’m sorry? I shouldn’t have abandoned him like that. I left him behind, without even thinking. It wasn’t right. He was the best man I ever knew. I want him to be happy. I want him to go diving again. He's allowed. He can… he can find another buddy. I'll keep an eye on them both. They'll never have any trouble down there, ever again. 

LUCA: That's sweet. 

CONRAD: Just, let him know, if he picks one of these dicks who kick up sand when they swim, I'll rip their fins off. 

VONCID: That sounds acceptable. 

CONRAD, lower: And their legs too. 

VONCID: What was that?

CONRAD: Nothing. So. Where do we start? 

We hear the weather begin to change.  The wind picks up, water laps more noticeably, distant thunder rumbles as Voncid begins to call up magic.

LUCA: Owen… 

VONCID: I appreciate your concern Luca, but I have caged myself quite long enough.  We have people, a world, to protect, perhaps it's time to employ more drastic methods, even if they are unsavory.  

Tell the captain we are heading east and that the weather will take a sudden and inexplicable turn for the worse...  This will whip up quite a storm.