Echoes

by Ellen Datlow

  “I know.” I smile and manage to mean it. Manage to hide my dread behind it. Squeeze just as hard back. Because even though everything is getting undeniably worse: him, the house, the frequency and power of those dark and twisting down nights, he’s still as strong as an ox. We all know he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. And of the four of us, I’m maybe the only one who’s glad.

  • • •

  When it’s worse, the house doesn’t just clank and rattle and groan and breathe wet dark. It screams. It moves. And even in bed, I’m tossed and shaken like one of Mum’s bad vodka cocktails. Like there’s a fault line right beneath our house and it’s getting bigger, wider, cracking open. Even when it slows, quietens, I have to cling onto the pillars of my headboard as we drop too fast and too long through endless nauseating fathoms.

  What used to be claustrophobia is now suffocation. Asphyxiation. Everything dims except my panic, my need to breathe, to run, to escape, even though I know I can’t. The house won’t let me. I try to hold on to holding on, and I try to breathe, to calm down, to see, but everything squeezes down to the smallest of pinholes: a prick of light in the dark. And when it goes quiet, except for my heartbeat, which is thundering hard enough to hurt, someone sits down heavy on my chest and pours wet concrete into my lungs.

  I shake, I sweat. I choke. Sometimes I puke. Sometimes I pass out. Sometimes I scream. And Gramps and Mum and Brian and the house scream back at me.

  No one else hears it. No one else sees it. The noise alone is enough to make our heads and ears ring for days, but no one has ever come knocking, no one has ever reported us to anyone else. Because they’re outside. And we’re inside. Because fear is like a virus. Fear is in the stinking air you breathe, and you can’t escape it because it’s the only fucking air you’ve got.

  • • •

  When it’s worse, the boat lists quick like the planesman’s lost the bubble, and we’re dropping, dropping, too sharp and too fast, the trim angle too big. A crash dive. We stagger to our stations; me to the After Ends and all its panels: the angles and dangles and gauges that tell me nothing I cannae already hear. The pressure hull stressing, creaking. Fixing to scream.

  The lights go on and off. Stay off, come on. Go off again. The heat is wet enough to sting and blur. The angle is bad enough to have away anything no’ screwed down. I grab hold ae the bulkhead frame as Dogs and Tug try to grab hold ae me. The floor grates are slick. No’ a crash dive. We’re going down too fast, too quick, too wrong.

  I can hear the propeller, the rudder, and stabilisers even past the roar ae the turbines and the shouts and screams ae the amidships crew. I’ve time enough to feel uncommon bad for the front cunts in the quicker sinking bow, with only torpedoes and flooding tanks for company, and then I’m on my knees, ears popping, joints twisting, slamming into the starboard engine shaft, the heat exchangers, as we keep on going, keep on dropping, keep on angling down, the pressure gauges spinning wild just like a bad American war movie, just like my belly, those creaking screams slowing to louder, badder bangs, and I think, I’m going to die here. This is where I’m going to die.

  And then we hit the bottom.

  • • •

  “The first rule ae Alzheimer’s Club is dinnae talk about Chess Club.”

  It’s not as cold today. There is no crow in the gnarly tree.

  “You don’t have Alzheimer’s.”

  He snorts, sounds nearly sorry. “I ken.”

  We both have coffees, strong ones. Behind us, the house feels like a wall of water instead of red sandstone. A forty-foot high wave about to break over our aching heads. Cold. Black. Impatient.

  He’s bound to have heard this morning’s fight—about the clanking, shaking, choking horror of last night. About money, about putting Gramps in a bloody home. But there’s no way. Because this is his fucking home. And as much as I hate this house—as he hates this house—there’s no fucking way we’re pushing him out of it.

  “Maybe they’ve got a point, hen,” he says now, and his voice is hoarse, just like mine, just like Mum’s and Brian’s. Too much screaming.

  He turns to look at me properly, and the horror, the guilt, the shame in his face is too much on top of everything else. When he reaches out a hand to stroke my face, its tremor is much worse too. “My God, lassie. Look at you. I’m so sor—”

  “Stop it.” Because we all look like I do. We all have headaches and tremors and dark purple shadows under our eyes. We’ve all forgotten what a good nights’ sleep feels like.

  “It’s me, Pinky. It’s not this house.”

  But I think it’s both. I think of Mum and Brian always telling me I have to earn my keep, while I don’t know what the fuck they do to earn theirs. I think of Brian scowling at me this morning and saying then he’s your bloody responsibility, as if he wasn’t already. But that’s fucking fine. I think without me, without someone giving a shit, trying to help, even if it’s just to take the edge off whatever the fuck this is, we’d be suffering a lot more than just terrifying nights and near asphyxia. Yes, it’s getting worse, I know it’s getting worse. And I’ve thought about running away many, many times. But sometimes a fever has to get hotter and hotter before it breaks. And here’s the thing. Despite all their talk and their threats, Mum and Brian aren’t about to leave either.

  “I just want you to be safe,” Gramps says, and I know it’s not just for me. Ever since I’ve known him his back has been bowed under the weight of so much guilt I’m always surprised he manages even to get out of bed in the morning. I’ve paid attention to it. That guilt is my only working theory.

  “Then tell me.”

  “It doesnae—”

  “Yes it does.” I look at the high red walls of the house beyond the end of our garden, and I think, it has to.

  “I had a girl once,” he says. And I can’t object, can’t give into my impatience, because I know this is the only way he can do it.

  I lean back, nurse my coffee. “You can’t call us girls.”

  “Eh?” His frown makes me want to smile. It makes me remember the Belgian art student whom Gramps christened Axel Le Big Bad-Ass, and neat shots of Navy Rum when he dumped me on Christmas Eve. Gramps’s grin when I told him it was the worst day of my life. The stroke of his hand against my cheek. Hen. It’s only the worst day ae your life so far.

  “Or ladies. Or lassies. Or hens.”

  “Well whit the bloody hell is it I can call you then?”

  “Women. We’re women.”

  “They’re just words mean the same thing,” he says, but he’s smiling too. “All right. I had a woman.”

  “When did you meet her?”

  “When I tried to sign up for the Royal Scots. She was one ae the nurses doing medicals up at the Royal Infirmary on Little France. Her hair was black like Hartwood coal, and her eyes were the blue horizon over the firth. Full ae sky and freedom.” He shows me his teeth. “Told me I had a pigeon chest and flat feet, and would have to join the navy instead.”

  “What was her name?”

  His smile changes, and I don’t miss the small glance he gives behind us. “That’s just for me, hen.”

  And I nod, nod, nod, because he’s never told me any of this before.

  “We spent just about the best weekend ae my life in a tin can van in North Berwick afore I got that first post up north. When I left, she gave me this little wooden box same colour as her eyes, full ae letters she’d written for me. So no’ even the BFP could keep us apart.”

  Something stings behind my eyes, and for a moment it’s far bigger, stronger, than the pain, the worry, the fear. Even than the cold, black, impatient wave. She is why he has never married, never had children. Why he’s alone. Why he let us move into his big, empty house. She is why he loves me. “She died.”

  He nods, studies the palms of his hands. “Bad shit always has to happen, hen. It’s life’s one guarantee. But good shit, that’s a lottery, and some folk just ain’t born lucky. She died a year afore the e
nd ae the war. Second influenza epidemic.”

  I give him a brief hard hug which he doesn’t respond to beyond letting out a sigh and an ugly choked laugh. “Bloody hell, this hasnae helped at all, Pinky.”

  And I know he isn’t only referring to that still growing shadow behind and above us. The hands in his lap have become fists and their tremor is back.

  “It was just a test dive,” he says, his eyes faraway, voice dull. “That was all. No’ even that: just a tank water survey. The Fore Endies had to open the test cocks, check the internal torpedo tubes were flooded. One was blocked, some brass hat said later, and the Fore Endies didnae see it, didnae use prickers to clear it. Bow cap indicator panel was laid out like it had been designed by a kid hopped up on lemon sherbets.” He stops, and when he forces open his fists, a few nails have broken through skin. “No idea whose fucking fault it was. Maybe the Fore Endies. Maybe the shipbuilders left something blocking the valve. Those upstanding brass hats invoked the old get out ae Crown Privilege, so guess we’ll never ken.” He shrugs. “Doesnae matter much, I guess, to the folk it killed.”

  I put down my coffee, press my hands over his. “Tell it like it was. What it felt like.” He has never told me any of this either. I don’t want to push him too hard, even though I’m certain that I have to. This flat monologue won’t mollify that black waiting wave. And I’m trying not to act like this is any big thing: him telling me—finally telling me—what he hasn’t, what he’s refused to tell me for months. Because he has to tell me. And it has to help; it has to make a difference. I already know what happened to the HMS Torque, of course. It has its own wiki page. But knowing hasn’t helped at all. If anything, it’s only scared me shitless. The horror of it.

  “The inner tube ae number five opened,” Gramps says, and now his voice shakes. “And that’s when the water came in. We sunk and sunk fast. First I kenned ae it, we were already going down. Steep. Bow first. The alarms were too late. Scurs’s and Dogs’s screaming orders were too late. It was too late to do anything but hold on and hope I didnae get smashed against anything could kill me afore we hit bottom.

  “That happened fast enough too: Seabed was maybe only hundred and thirty, forty feet down. The bow hit first and hard. Fore Endies didnae stand much ae a chance. And then the ones ae us in the stern that hadnae already been shaken loose were left dangling, hanging on, and fuck it was hot, hen. Hot like Hell on a June day. The boat was shrieking blue murder, her head stuck right and deep in the bottom I could tell, and behind me I could hear the propeller and rudder, churning nothing but air.

  “I was holding onto the handwheel for the outboard exhaust and hydraulics—and I’m telling you, you’ve no idea how heavy you are till you’re dangling from a wee fucking metal wheel over a drop that could kill you in about a dozen different ways. A mech called Happy—dinnae remember much more about him than that—was hanging off the metal frame of the elbows, maybe only a couple feet lower down, and he looked right up at me when the boat settled back some and he lost his grip, bounced off just about everything nailed down and no’, till I heard his back go in this one big crack.

  “We moved quick, ’cause you cannae give yourself too much time to think about your situation. You do that, you start asking yourself how the fuck anyone could ever get out ae something like this, and that’s when you panic, that’s when you willnae. I started climbing down to the donkshop hatch. Maybe half a dozen jacks were already there, standing on the compartment bulkhead, looking up at the rest ae us, ducking or moving out ae the way every time one ae us let go and bounced. Scurs was yelling, pulled me down the last few feet, but I could see he was banged up pretty bad, a snapped bone was pushing up through his forearm and his nose was busted near flat; the rest ae him was a bad white-grey. Hibee came down right after me. By the time we got the hatch open, there were nine ae us climbing through it, and that’s how we kept on doing it: dogging down the hatches, scrambling down every passageway, using every handhold, collecting off-watch jacks like Tug as we went, trying no’ to look too long at jacks like Happy.

  “We got to the escape chamber afore anyone else. Didnae ken how till a fifth hand said the captain and sig were trapped between brokedick auxiliary panels and the busted-up overhead to the conning tower. So we waited. The angle was maybe fifty-five degrees by then. Already the heat was getting worse and the air was getting bad. Everyone was coughing, shouting. It’s never no oxygen you need to worry about in a boat. Unless it’s full ae fucking water. Most times, it’s whit you breathe out that’ll kill you.

  “Most everyone survived up to that point. Even a few ae the Fore Endies turned up after a while. The captain was pretty out ae it—his head was bashed up enough that he couldnae speak right—so the CO, some fancy boy from the BRNC, took over command, made us sit tight, wait till we were discovered. No’ many ae us were up for that—Dogs ’specially: He got right up in that CO’s face and told him plain that the only folk would rescue us was us, but that kind ae cagg never goes down well with fancy boys. Never has, didnae then.

  “Ten hours it was in the end we waited, and by then there wasnae one ae us no’ feeling like we were going to die just like that: wedged up against bulkhead hatches or each other; burning, choking, drowning in air. When the CO pipes up he thinks he can hear a skimmer upstairs, Dogs finally snaps and gets up, screams ‘Shit in it!’ just about loud enough for some ae us to stop being deaf, and he knocks that fancy boy clean out, eyes all the other officers like he wants them to have an opinion too.

  “‘We’re going now,’ he says. ‘My guys first.’

  “And even though that’s never how it’s supposed to go, pound to a penny it wasn’t the first time it did. He got us all up, but in the sudden-quick rammy, only him, me, Tug, Hibee, and a wrecker—might have been called Banjo or Pony—made it to the chamber’s inner hatch ahead ae anyone else. I never saw Scurs at all; remembered after about that ugly bone sticking up out ae his arm, and the big hard turns ae the escape chamber’s outer door. There was plenty more bobbery—even some more punches—afore something like an evacuation line was made. Everyone was sweating neaters again by then. Always the way it is on a boat, remember? Feast or fucking famine. Soon as you stop thinking you’re a dead man, you turn into Roadrunner on speed.

  “There was only ever room for one person at a time in escape chambers back then. I went up third, after Tug and Banjo-or-Pony. Hibee wouldnae go afore me; we argued back and forth long enough for Dogs to start yelling ‘Shit in it!’ again. His eyes were wild mad and blinking sweat, but they couldnae find us. Most ae us had started going blind by then, but he was already there, I’m about as sure ae that as anything else.

  “And I was fucking scared. Of everything between me and freedom: the crew, the air, the pressure hull, ballast tanks, outer hull, hatches, the sea. The fear. So I went next. I left Hibee without even a good-bye—Hibee, who used to sing ‘Mist Covered Mountains of Home’ in his sleep and was getting married to Jenny Ann Cunningham during the Glasgow Fair—and I climbed into the escape chamber, shut the inner hatch on him and all those other white-grey faces, secured it. Looked across at the hatch to all that outside, looked down at my fingers, twitching, itching to open it, and prayed like a brown job waiting to go over the fucking top.

  “And that wait was the longest wait ae all. The water started coming in and I couldnae stay still, couldnae catch my breath, even though I kenned the compartment was supposed to flood, had to flood. And my fingers kept on jumping, twitching, itching towards that outer hatch even though I kenned I couldnae open it till all the air was gone. Even though I kenned I had to get ready to blow and go, had to fill up my chest with just about as much ae that bad air as I could stand. But all I could see was outside, all I could see was escape, even if it meant I had to die to get it. Doesnae make no sense to anyone except the you at the time, but that’s whit the fear inside a boat does to you. It’s just about the worse possible thing you cannae stand.

  “When the water closed over my f
ace, my head, I had to fist my hands under my armpits to keep them from opening that outer hatch; had to turn my nearly blind eyes straight onto the go light and nothing else. And when the light finally went out, I pushed open the hatch, pushed right out through, and secured it behind me again so quick it felt like I couldnae have—that I had to still be trapped inside that chamber, waiting with my fists. The cold and space ae all that outside shocked me enough that I wanted to let go ae all my air straightaway, but when I looked up I could see the sun, I could see freedom, and I swam for it fast and exhaled slow till my lungs flattened out and the dark shadows in my eyes became big black spots. And then I broke up above the surface like a fucking humpback, smacking back down again, choking on waves and wind, squinting up at the spindrift and sky.”

  He’s been staring fixedly at the gnarly tree and the back fence beyond it, but now he turns slow towards me and blinks. His eyes are red and dry. “I was the last jack to escape HMS Torque. No one else ever came up after me.”

  My heart sinks, even though I was expecting it. When I read the wiki entry and the three survivor names, I hoped he wasn’t the last, and knew he probably was.

  “That couldn’t have been your fault,” I say. “You secured the outer hatch.”

  “It is my fault Hibee never got to marry Jenny Ann Cunningham, and no one can tell me different, no’ even you.” He waves my objection away before I can even get it out. “Whichever jack got into the chamber after me was the one fucked it for everyone else. Maybe it was Hibee, maybe the fancy boy, maybe Dogs—he was fixing to go postal all right—but whoever it was, they had a bigger dose ae the fear than me, Tug, or that wrecker called Banjo or Pony, ’cause they never managed to stand it, to stop their fingers. They never managed to wait. They opened that outer hatch afore they should have, and it did for everyone else in that boat, ’cause the escape chamber would’ve been fucked after that. They’d have drowned quick, but every other jack would have had hours to think about dying from carbon dioxide poisoning afore they did. Deafness, blindness, headache, dizziness, confusion, palpitations, shortness ae breath, tremors, sweating.” When he looks at me again, his eyes are sad sorry again. “Guess I dinnae have to tell you whit all that feels like, lassie. And at the end, convulsions and pain so bad it makes you go mad. Fifty-four men.” He closes his eyes, pinches the skin between them. “They salvaged her a few months later, and brought the bodies out, full naval honours.” He snorts, and it turns into an ugly cough. “Ran her aground at Uig the day war was declared.”