by Laird Barron
He don’t look like anything special. Just a guy. T-shirt and jeans. No shoes. Enough beard to tell me he shaved a day or two before he started drifting. His skin is so burned it’s blistered, and his lips are pale, desiccated things. I don’t like the look in his dead, open eyes. There’s fear there. Terror, but not the look of someone who’s afraid to die. I’ve seen that enough to know this is something else. Whatever it was, he thought it was a whole lot worse than just dying.
The press of a button pops my switchblade. I lean down to stab the raft a few times, send it all sinking, but then something catches my eye. Metal glinting under the burning sky. A chain hangs from the dead man’s neck, and tracing its path leads to a strange bulge under his shirt.
“What are you waiting for?” Boss Wilburn asks. “Sink the prick!” His voice rides a line of irritation. Probably because he has other lines waiting back in his cabin. The chain tugs at my attention, though.
“He’s got something on him,” I say.
“Like I give a shit.”
I watch Wilburn disappear from my sight, and then I get back to work. With two fingers, I thread the chain around his neck until I find the clasp. A few seconds of clumsy pinching unhooks the works, and then I pull everything free.
The medallion attached to the chain sure as hell ain’t what I expected. As I inspect it, the sound of the ocean against the yacht’s hull recedes, a strange, heavy silence replacing it. I feel lost, floating, the world melting away for a second as I look closer. It’s made of a dark metal, maybe iron or pewter, and looks like a crazy hybrid of a bat and a shark. Wings folded back, the thing’s head is bullet-shaped, mouth pulled back to reveal teeth like needles. A line of three green gems—emeralds, maybe—creates a strange row of eyes. I ain’t a jewel guy, but I can see why Mr. Corpse didn’t want to part with his little bauble. What I can’t figure out is why it both feels and sounds like I’m in a vacuum.
When I stuff the amulet into my pocket, the world returns in a sudden rush. Interesting. Maybe I should take that as a bad sign, but I don’t spend a lot of time considering it. Mostly, I want off the damn ladder, so I give the raft a quartet of quick stabs and then start climbing.
I reach the deck, and Gregory wastes no time in letting me know he was watching me the entire time. “What was it?”
“What was what?”
“Whatever you pulled off the body.”
“Right.” I fish the medallion from my pocket, and the world pulls away again. I don’t like the feeling much, so I hand it over even though I know it ain’t a good idea. Gregory slips his fingers through the chain and inspects the slowly spinning amulet. His eyes narrow, appraising, and I almost ask if he feels the same thing I did, but then he slips the entire works into a pocket, and I figure it ain’t a question worth asking. Let the lawyer have his jewelry. I figure I’ll see it on Ericka’s neck in a day or two. If Wilburn is straight enough to put two with two, Gregory will sort himself out, most likely handcuffed to something heavy and tossed over the side, services no longer required.
“I’ll look into it,” Gregory says. He walks away. A moment later, the bored deckhands do the same, and then I’m alone at the rail.
I look out at the ocean, the vast, slate gray thing I’m forced to call home. Goddamn international waters. Not for the first time, I spend a couple of minutes regretting every choice I’ve made. Then, I tuck away all of those regrets. Because they don’t do a damn thing to help.
My eyes drift down, searching for any sign of the raft or its passenger, but there’s nothing. Burial at sea. Better than nothing. I wonder where the man came from and how long he lasted before death took hold, but then I decide questions like that are above my paygrade.
~
A week—pretty sure it’s a week, but time moves strange on the ocean—passes without seeing the medallion on Ericka, and I can’t say it makes any sense. Then again, I don’t see much of her or Gregory, either. Boss Wilburn don’t leave his bunk a whole lot. I do my job, patrol the boat to make sure…I don’t know. Something.
The sky grows dark, turning gray and then black. Five days pass without the sun appearing, the ocean getting more restless each day. White crests decorate its surface, and I feel the yacht react beneath my feet. I spend less and less time above decks, where I can see the water and the sky and the way they shift as the boat rocks. Instead, I wander the halls, listening at doors. The ship’s gone isolated and strange, everyone hiding away. Cynthia talks to herself. Sometimes she sings. Boss Wilburn rants and curses and makes great snorting noises. The chorus of lust pouring from Gregory’s room tells me he and Ericka don’t care about discretion no more. I consider delivering a few good slaps to them both, let them know it’s a lot easier than what Wilburn’ll do when he finally hears, but I can’t bring myself to care.
~
Ten days later, I see Ericka again. The yacht pitches back and forth as a storm batters us. I patrol below decks with a hand on the wall, breathing deep as my stomach twists. Back in her cabin, Cynthia heaves her breakfast into the toilet. I wonder if she remembers me telling her she’ll feel okay once it’s all up and out.
When I first see Ericka, I wonder how the stranger got on board. She looks like a different person, someone who climbed out of the sea. Her skin is the color of ashes, and her hair is soaked, plastered to her face and shoulders. She wears a soaked black T-shirt that covers her like a dress. I see wet prints where her bare feet have stepped. As she shuffles down the hallway, her eyes don’t shift toward me. She mutters something I can’t hear.
“You okay?” I ask. Way with people, right here.
She pays no attention. Her hands ball into fists and then shake loose again, and her head ticks to the side once, twice. I reach out, touch her shoulder, and jerk my hand back when she flinches.
“Hey.” I try to keep my voice calming. “Sorry. Are you sick?”
“It won’t be long now,” she says. “It’s almost here.”
All my alarms sound at once. I squash the part of me that wants to slam her against the wall and demand answers. Instead, I touch her chin, turning her face to mine. Her skin is cold and wet, and a shudder moves through me. I pray she’s just high as a kite and crazy, but she’s not acting like any cokehead I’ve ever seen.
“Who’s coming?” I ask. “Ericka, did you contact someone you shouldn’t have? It’s okay, just tell me so I can fix it.”
She laughs. No, that’s not right. What she does is open her mouth and spit a series of angry cackles in my face. She brays laughter like a threat, and I don’t know whether to feel angry or frightened. Her breath smells like saltwater, and her teeth have gone black. Tongue, too.
“You don’t matter,” she says. “None of us do. There’s something else, and it’s coming, and your strong arms and big dick won’t mean anything. Gregory’s seen to it.”
“What did he do?”
Should I ask Wilburn how he wants me to kill the lawyer or just go ahead and do it?
“He learned things. So many things. He told me some of them, but not nearly all. The Three Eye knows more than most of us can handle.”
The Three Eye. I think about a trio of emeralds on a medallion of pewter or maybe iron. I think about the world shrinking away. For a terrible moment, I remember that vacuum, how it felt like I could let the entire universe vanish if I let it. Then, I remember the horrified expression on the corpse in the raft, and I wonder what The Three Eye showed him before he died.
Ericka continues down the tilting hallway, and I let her go. Other matters need my attention. I head the opposite direction, toward Gregory’s cabin. Figure the best defense is a good offense. Something like that.
I smell his room before I reach it. The door hangs open, but that doesn’t explain the rotten stink floating into the hall. I think of mildew and wet garbage, fish in a pail left to decompose. Awful scents form a fist with the ship’s motion and slam into my gut. I double over and grit my teeth, lean against the wall as I cover my mouth and n
ose with both hands and fight to keep a couple days’ worth of seafood in my belly. A moment passes, the boat stills some, and I manage to stand up and enter the cabin.
Gregory’s trashed the place, but it ain’t like any kind of tossing I’ve ever seen. The bed is soaked, and dark mold covers the walls and carpets, which squishes under my feet. The ceiling sags, water dripping. He’s torn apart everything he can find.
Three X’s mark the wall across from me, carved into wood and mold, both. Picturing them as emeralds doesn’t take much imagination.
The scream is a distant sound, barely a whisper above the storm pummeling the yacht, but I hear it. Terror and pain twist and amplify it so that I can’t tell from which direction it’s coming or even who’s making the awful noise. All I know is I need to do something.
~
Gregory’s cabin and Ericka and the scream leave me spooked. I pull my 9mm and start down the hall, trying to decide if I want to check on Wilburn or Cynthia first. My paycheck tells me one answer, but something I don’t like to think about tells me my Clue partner needs me more. She lives a deck below while my boss waits a deck above. I hesitate a second, looking up and down one of the yacht’s spiral staircases, and it’s probably a second too long.
“Sorry, Boss.” I rush down the stairs.
No water in the hallway one deck below, and I figure that’s a good sign. I almost laugh as I realize how quickly I’ve grown comfortable with this new, strange logic. Moving as quickly as my unsteady legs will allow, I bite down on my lip and try to bring everything back into focus. I need some kind of plan. Doesn’t matter that I’ve never encountered a situation like this. First order of business is to make sure the scream didn’t come from Cynthia. At some point, I’ll have to deal with Wilburn’s anger when he finds out I checked on one of the girls instead of him. I’ll think of something.
Cynthia peeks out from around the corner, and something in my chest skips.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Was that a scream?”
I lower my weapon and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t know yet. Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Get in your bunk and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in until I get back. No one. Especially Ericka. Got me?”
She nods, her eyes wet with fear. I want to kiss her but decide I’ve already made enough bad decisions.
Once I hear the lock click, I head back to the stairs, make it almost halfway before the storm rocks the boat hard enough to slam me against the wall. I hit one knee and stop myself before sprawling onto the carpet. When I try focusing on the end of the hallway to regain my equilibrium, something hooks my attention and pours ice water down my back. Maybe I could miss the blood if it was simply dripping, but a thin stream of crimson is a lot harder to miss. I watch it for a moment, creeping closer and hoping I can somehow attribute it to an accident but I know that won’t be the case.
By the time I reach the staircase, the flow has slowed to a steady plink, pattering into the puddle of red that marks the hallway carpet. I shift to one side, raise the handgun, and follow it up the stairwell.
The deckhand lays sprawled over the staircase’s center, two decks up. A ragged tear across his throat tells me his death was no accident, not some fall from the ship’s most recent listing. I think of Gregory and his room and its rotten stink. An instant passes before I remember Boss Wilburn is on the same deck as the dead sailor, and I curse myself for having feelings. They never help.
~
I give the slaughtered deckhand a single glance as I step over him. Can’t say the fact that he’s waterlogged surprises me. The smell hovers in the air, reminds me of the fish market on Saturday mornings.
Something inside me sinks as I approach Wilburn’s cabin. I know I’m too late, that I screwed up and won’t like what I find, but I know I can’t turn back.
A quick glance through the doorway tells me everything. Well, most. What I don’t know is if Gregory cuffed him to the bedframe or if Ericka did that part. Maybe she lulled him in, made him think Betty Numero Uno was back to play. It doesn’t matter. Once they shackled his wrists in steel bracelets, they went to town. The way the covers have been kicked to the floor says it hurt, but I can guess that from the ruined cavity Gregory or Ericka or both made of his torso. From the looks of it, no one bothered to sharpen the blade they used. Ragged tears line a crater of ruined flesh. The kind of butchery real world butchers are too skilled to commit. Details reveal themselves to me one after the other: the empty cavity that tells me someone took most of Wilburn’s organs, the seawater that’s soaked the mattress and washed the sheets pink, the keys to the cuffs discarded on the sopping carpet, the not so small pile of blow on the nightstand. What Wilburn’s blood hasn’t ruined, the thick sea air has turned to paste. I drag two fingers through it and suck them clean. The charge hits me moments later, chasing away the delirium as I unlock both sets of steel bracelets and pocket them.
I give Wilburn’s face a final look. The expression frozen there tells me the source of the scream that got me moving in the first place.
I think about my cabin one deck below, about the over/under boomstick I call Mr. Mossberg waiting for me there. As I leave the room, I mentally run through the places where Gregory and Ericka could be hiding. I’m unemployed, so I can’t go to work. War, though? I can go there all day.
~
Thunder crashes, and the waves lashing at the yacht roar from all directions. The hallway pitches back and forth, but I gather Mr. Mossberg and two pockets of shells without falling, so I figure I’m doing okay. Pretty sure the blow helps. My nervous system crackles, reflexes riding razor wire.
I check Cynthia’s deck first, Mr. Mossberg’s stock against my shoulder, barrels sweeping the hallway in front of me. No salt taste in the air, so I dare to dream she might be alive.
Three knocks on her door. “Cynthia. It’s Mike.”
The door opens, and she looks at me with fearful eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Bad shit. That’s…best I got. Here.” I hand her the 9mm. “Safety’s off, okay? Be careful. If anybody other than me gets through this door—I don’t give a shit who—you shove the barrel right here.” I hold the weapon against my heart. “Pull the trigger until it clicks. Understand?”
She nods.
“Tell me. Please.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Something flashes in her eyes, and I kiss her before I can decide it’s another in a long string of bad ideas. Arms encircle me and pull me close. Her mouth tastes like a night of cigarettes and regret. Sweetest thing ever.
~
I find the rest of the crew spread across the upper decks. Looks like some of them tried to fight, but most of them show all the signs of attempted escape. Captain Ross went down especially hard, his left arm discarded a dozen feet from the rest of him. Blood and sea water leave a trail to their murderers, and I follow it with grim determination, telling myself there’s nothing left to do but kill.
Gregory and Ericka sit naked in the center of the sun deck. Torrential rain batters them, but they don’t appear to care. Ericka bucks on top of the lawyer, and their faces tilt toward the sky, mouths open like they’re seeing God. A part of me envies them. The sort of madness that’s taken hold must feel amazing. Or maybe they don’t know what they’re doing, too twisted on coke and boredom to realize they’ve slaughtered fifteen people.
Seeing the medallion around Gregory’s neck erases that idea. Getting a good look at him destroys a few other theories. In his open mouth I spot teeth like rusty needles. His eyes have gone milk white. If it wasn’t pissing rain, I know I’d see the saltwater pouring off him.
I think they might be speaking. Chanting. The howling wind makes it difficult to be sure. Even at the sun deck’s edge, I’m soaked, but I step closer, Mr. Mossberg up and ready to roar. A touch of narcotics keeps the horror at bay, but the look of the pair fucking—the blood I see washing off their slick, gray skin
—does its best to turn my knees to rubber. I move slow and steady, hoping they’re too wrapped up in each other to notice me. A few more feet, and I can take off Gregory’s head, no sweat.
But then he looks at me. A grin splits his face, and his eyes shine with a strange kind of pleasure. For her part, Ericka never stops, doesn’t even slow. As Gregory’s smile widens, I see a strange pair of slits on his neck spread open, spraying foam pink with blood. Jesus Christ, the bastard’s grown gills.
“Mike!” His voice is wet. “I wondered when you’d come. You probably have questions.”
I don’t. What I have is a trigger, and I pull it. One barrel booms, but Gregory’s too fast. He yanks Ericka into the shot’s path, and I watch her back erupt even as I’m pulling the trigger again and unloading the second barrel. When Gregory tosses Ericka aside, her body is mostly pulp. A second later, she spills across the deck, nothing more than water, and the narcotics don’t do a damn thing to keep me from feeling cold and wet and terrified.
“It’s okay,” he says. “She wasn’t going to last much longer, anyway. If you’re not chosen, you just fall apart.”
I refuse to speak. The rain keeps me from popping the spent shells and loading two more. Instead, I back toward the yacht’s interior. Gregory climbs to his feet and follows, and I struggle to keep my eyes locked on his.
“It was this,” he says. One hand snakes across his chest and lifts the medallion. “The Three Eye is ancient, here long before any of us were so much as tickles in our fathers’ balls. It sees everything, and it whispers things. So many things. You wouldn’t believe.”
The rain disappears as I make it under the roof, replaced by a fine mist that seems to be everywhere at once. Gregory closes on me, and I decide I need to act. Two spent shells hit the deck, and I fumble in my pocket, produce another pair. My hands shake, fingers numb, and I drop one of them to roll across the floor. The other goes in the under, and I start searching for a third.