In Deep

In Deep is a scary horror comic about a man and his wife who are lost at sea. It was written by Bruce Jones and the art is by Richard Corben. This story appeared in Creepy #83 (October 1976).

A man is out sailing with his wife when they run into trouble. Their boat sinks and disappears beneath the waves, leaving them stranded and floating aimlessly in the middle of the vast ocean.

As they cling onto a life-ring, the man tells his wife, “They’ll find us,” but he doesn’t really believe it. The hot sun is beating down on them and they have nothing to drink. He wonders how long they can last.

They scan the horizon, hoping for a ship to appear, but all they see is water, water everywhere. When night comes, they are so tired and worn-out that they fall asleep.

When the man wakes up, he is horrified to find his wife lying face-down in the water. He desperately tries to revive her, but it’s no use. She’s dead.

The man is devastated and starts crying. He can’t bring himself to cut her dead body free from the life-ring. Instead of abandoning her, he decides to keep her with him until he is rescued, so he can give her a proper burial.

Overcome by grief, he slips into a delirium and imagines his wife talking to him. When he snaps out of it, he is horrified to see a seagull perched on his dead wife’s head, pecking out one of her eyes.

Later, he notices a dark shadow in the water below and his heart is gripped by terror. It’s a shark.

He grabs a paddle and tries to beat the shark off, but other sharks come. He jams the paddle into one shark’s mouth, but it bites it in half. Then, he notices that one of his wife’s legs is missing. It has been bitten off, just below the knee.

Eventually, the sharks go away. When night falls, he finally dozes off and as he sleeps, he has a dream about his wife. She tells him how much she loves him and tells him to always keep her in his heart.

In the morning, he is awoken by a piercing screech. When he opens his eyes, he sees a flock of seagulls feasting on his wife’s corpse, picking the flesh from her bones. Half of her face is gone.

Sickened, he grabs the paddle and beats off the seagulls, but when he looks down, he sees that the sharks have returned. He tries to use the broken paddle to fend them off, but it’s futile.

They attack again and again, biting off pieces of his wife’s dead body and the sea turns red around him. Slowly, he slips into unconsciousness.

A ship appears on the horizon and spots the man floating in his life-ring. He is barely alive and they transport him to hospital in a catatonic state.

As he lies in a hospital bed, clutching something in his hands, the doctors try to get him to relax.

“Sir, can you hear me?” asks one doctor. “We need you to relax your arms. You’re not in danger anymore. You’re in hospital. You’re safe now.”

When the doctors pry apart his hands, they are horrified by what they find.

He is clutching all that remains of his wife… a bloody human heart.