Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  The lights lowered, throwing her into sudden shadows. A thrill of anticipation made her shiver once—goose walking over her grave—and she took a couple casual steps forward, to make the game more interesting.

  The soft, sure tread of footsteps in the gloom advanced. She lowered her head and tried to peer out of the corner of her eye without giving away that she knew he was there—

  —and the carpet moved.

  She blinked. It moved. The vinelike traces eddied and whirled, and whirled, and the red shapes floated among them, and a

  face

  She cried out just as a hand cupped her mouth. Then she whirled around and the captain stood before her, laughing silently.

  “Got you,” he chortled quietly.

  “God!” She took two steps backward. “I—I saw—” She jabbed her finger downward. “I saw—”

  “What?” He followed the direction of her hand. “A spot?”

  She thought for a moment. What had she seen? She could no longer remember. What had frightened her?

  “I creep in on little cat feet,” he whispered, nuzzling her under the chin. His hands stole around her waist. Rolling, liquid warmth circled her thighs and her sex. Her nipples hardened, and she gasped when he pulled her against his body.

  He kissed the nape of her neck, pulled her around to face him, and opened his mouth.

  Something moved behind him, at the end of the corridor. A tall shadow? Her gaze flickered past his ear—

  —and then there was nothing, and he was kissing her. His breath was hot and his tongue probing and thick; his erection pushed into her belly and she became very, very wet.

  “Come on,” he whispered, grabbing her hand. He hurried her down the corridor.

  “Where are we going?”

  He smiled though he looked straight ahead. “To play spin the bottle.”

  Together they hurried down the passage. He had a death grip on her hand that was painful, but they moved at such a breathless pace she couldn’t manage to tell him. He was strong—she could tell he didn’t mince around, but took what he wanted—and all her icy shame melted away. She was built for more than Phil could give. Love was giving you what you wanted. Fulfilling your needs. Ergo, Phil did not love her.

  So there was no need to be faithful to him.

  The captain’s grip was an iron band over the back of her hand, and it clamped down hard, making her cry out. They were practically running. She put her other hand on his wrist, started to ask him to slow down, ease up, when he whipped her around the corner and the—

  —the difference—

  —struck her mute.

  It was the same ship, wasn’t it? She had walked down this same section of hallway a dozen times. But she had never noticed—never seen—the royal red carpet, the flocked walls, the elaborate crystal lamps hanging from the ceiling. She had never seen how dirty it was, with cobwebs dripping like diamonds from the teardrop coronas of the fixtures; the green mold on the thick oak baseboards.

  A mirror, splattered with raised, round bumps—

  —barnacles?

  “Captain,” she said, “what …?”

  Around another corner. Now she halted, throwing him off balance, and turned violently left, right.

  The walls, the ceiling, the floor, were made of dull gray metal, low and slick with moisture. Papers were strewn on the floor, and they were wet; and everything smelled rotten and dead; and something gritted beneath her shoes: sand, and shells, and the skeleton of a large fish. The spine curved around her left foot and the skull crunched beneath her heel as she jumped back.

  “What?” she cried.

  He frowned at her. “What’s wrong?”

  And the room—the metal, the papers, the fish skull. Her knees turned to jelly and she grabbed hold of his shoulder to keep herself from falling to the filthy deck.

  “Don’t you see it?” she asked, raising a trembling hand to take it all in. But it wouldn’t go in; her brain refused to process the images she knew she was seeing. She looked, looked hard; and then—

  —the white walls, the ugly carpet, the hurricane lamps.

  “But,” she said stupidly. She covered her mouth. “But I saw—”

  He stared at her. Stepped backward. “What?” he asked, and his voice was low, dangerous. “What did you see?”

  She pointed. “The room. The whole place! It was … it’s …”

  He looked at her with a wild grimace, showing all his teeth, like a fish she’d seen in the museum, something long and dark and wicked—a viper fish, all head and tail, and sharp, sharp fangs.

  “Thomas!” she cried.

  “You saw what?” he shouted. “What? Tell me!”

  “I—I thought I saw, that I was somewhere else.” She licked her lips. “I don’t know, I had a hallucination.”

  He was silent. He looked away for a moment. His head averted, he caressed her cheek with his nails, trailing them down her neck, her chest. With great care, he enfolded her in his arms and held her.

  “Forgive me for being short with you. Now,” he said against her hair, “Elise”—his voice was honey—“what did you see?”

  She thought for a moment. Her heart pounded wildly as she realized she could no longer remember what she’d seen. What she thought she’d seen. It had been a mistake anyway, whatever it had been, for here they were, where they should be.

  “I’m all right now,” she whispered.

  “Of course you are.” He kissed the crown of her head. “Do you think I’d let anything happen to you?”

  She closed her eyes, and felt him trembling.

  * * *

  “Hey, let me out!”

  In the dark, Ramón pounded on the door. He’d been in there for hours, maybe days, without food or water, without the chance to use the head, orale, and with the setting of the sun he’d realized they hadn’t turned on any lights for him, and he couldn’t find the switch.

  “Hey!” He pummeled with both fists, kicked the jamb for extra measure. Shit, they couldn’t do this! He was an American citizen! This was, like, violating his civil rights.

  “He-eyy!” His voice grew shrill, cracked.

  “Don’t,” said a voice behind him. “Being feared is his desire.”

  Ramón whipped around. “Who said that? Where are you?” There must be another door, one he hadn’t noticed. All right, and now they’d let him out and—

  “It’s his sustenance,” the voice continued.

  Ramón reached out his hand. “Hey, where are you, man?”

  “At the bottom of the sea, I pray to Christ and all the angels.” The sound of weeping. “SOS, this is Trinity. Curry, SOS. Mayday.”

  Ramón burst out a nervous laugh. “Cha-cha?” He shook his head. No, not Cha-cha. But someone else who wasn’t put together too good, maybe, or just some sailor who liked to talk in riddles.

  The weeping grew faint.

  “C’mon, man, you freaking me out, bro,” Ramón said, his accent thickening with his unease. “Did you come to let me out?”

  There was a long sigh. Then nothing. Ramón waited.

  Nothing.

  “Ové, oyé, amigo!” he called, stepping to the center of the cabin. He ran into the cot and almost lost his balance. Moving away from it with his arms outstretched, he looked like a kid ready to whack a piñata. “You still here?”

  Silence.

  “Hey, man, c’mon!” He found the opposite wall of the cabin and began to feel along it for the other door. The guy must have left.

  “Hey, I’m an American citizen!” Hand over hand, he slid his fingers over the walls, cried out when he touched a knob, then understood it was the original door. There was only one.

  The guy could not have gotten in, nor left, through any other.

  A trapdoor, then? A hole in the ceiling?

  “Hey, goddamn it!” Ramón bellowed, getting mad now, because he was getting frightened.

  Then someone else said, “Diaz?”

  It was the voice of
Captain Esposito, skipper of the Morris, who should be in Hawaii.

  Who should not be here.

  In the Proteus stateroom, Donna looked up from her book and stared into space.

  Lorentz Creutz was the name of the captain of the Kronen, a Swedish warship that sank in 1676. It was also the name of the Pandora’s staff captain.

  She tapped the page. Maybe she remembered his name wrong. Or maybe he was a descendant. Things like that happened. She’d ask.

  Shut the book, and turned out the light.

  Ignoring the prickles that skittered over her body, and the urge to look under the bed, and the funny feeling that she was being … not watched, but …

  not watched. Time for sleep.

  She turned on her side and fluffed her pillow. Thought: Dufus, no one can be descended from a dead man.

  As they grappled in the deserted cavern of the indoor swimming hall, the captain cupped Elise’s breasts and saw Nathaniel’s sweet face, and sent out his thoughts:

  Consider this, Donna, my beautiful whore, my slut, my temptress, my siren:

  Ajax the Greek lost his ship and in the tempest swam to the cliffs. He would have lived had he not in his arrogance cried out that he was the one man Poseidon could not drown. The god was furious—as he should have been, Donna, as he should have been—and he broke off the rock Ajax clung to. Ajax fell; the waves swept him away, to his death.

  It would do well for you to find some humility. For soon, I promise, I will break off the reality you cling to. And then I will break you, before I drown you.

  And I will drown you. I swear it.

  You are the only one who does not let me in. You have fought me, and for that, I will make you pay, a thousand times a thousand.

  And as for this woman, who had seen … how had she seen? He would let her see a little more, before he crushed her.

  He smiled, and kissed her, raging inside because Donna would not hear him.

  But Elise would.

  Oh, yes.

  Oh, yes; Elise knew she had done the right thing; and the guilt evaporated and so did the odd memory of something gone wrong, as she and the captain writhed in a tiled Jacuzzi beside the indoor swimming pool. The air was cool and smelled of chemicals, but the champagne was delicious. He had planted an ice bucket and glasses before he had come to fetch her. A man thought of these things. A real man, that is.

  In the center of the high plaster ceiling, a single, low-watt bulb struggled inside a white metal cage. Shadows did the hula on the white plaster, and on the diamond-shaped tiles of blue and green that bubbled in the boiling pot of sprays, jets, arms, and legs.

  The water moved like a solid oval with the subtle roll of the ship and spilled into the pool; steam rose from the pool like jets of champagne bubbles. The heat and the bubbles made her dizzy; and she vaguely recalled that something had frightened her, terribly, but now everything was more than fine. Poor girls learned much of sex and a bit about shame, oh, yes.

  His body was rich; and they slapped together, making waves, long and hard and tight and hot. He was inside her, thrusting, and Elise gasped and dug her nails into his buttocks. He was unending; he was the biggest man she’d ever had, so big it hurt, but it hurt sublimely, and she stretched her legs open as wide as they could go.

  “The snake is a friend,” he said huskily, and she laughed and threw back her head.

  She was getting close to coming, everything constricted, quivering, juicy; she was almost there, and she hadn’t had an orgasm in months that wasn’t self-induced—she’d been faithful since Phil had found out about Hunter—and she teetered on the brink of ecstasy with a full-out hunger that made her feel like she was drowning. Clinging, clinging to him, riding with him, up, up to the crest of the wave—

  languidly, she rolled her head to the side—

  —the snake is a friend

  —and through the steam, saw faces.

  She screamed and jerked backward, but he kept at her, pushing and thrusting.

  Withered faces, eyeless and slack, and unseeing. The faces of skulls, bleached, pitted; barnacles on strips of flesh; an eel trailing through a jaw. Blackened, charred faces; and with them, the face of a child, smiling wickedly. Their eyes met and the child sniggered.

  “Look!” she shrieked, pounding on his back, flailing her arms and legs in blind panic. But he ignored her, or couldn’t hear her—how couldn’t he hear her?—as he pushed and pushed and pushed.

  And suddenly he hurt her; his cock was no longer a cock, but something that sliced into her womb. Screaming, arched backward, toward the faces. He had a bottle between his hands, a green bottle, and he was ramming it into her, over and over and deeper and deeper—

  —the faces opened their jaws, and they had teeth,

  barbs,

  harpoons

  —and the boy crouched at the edge of the tub now, behind the captain. He laughed low and cruel and delighted; and his face broke apart and slid into the tub, chunks of flesh and gouts of blood; his nose, his lips, plopping into the boiling fleshpot. His face throbbed raw and glistening, and it laughed; a thing watched her, a thing laughed, with no nose, no jaw, but rows of gleaming ivory teeth.

  She struggled wildly, smacking the captain’s hips with her thighs, shrieking, screaming, pleading—

  —and the captain shouted with pleasure and plunged into her.

  He was cutting her open, rendering her down. In a haze of unendurable agony, she started to black out.

  Then he chortled and said in a mocking voice, “That’s how we play spin the bottle, Ms. van Buren-Hadley. That’s how we win.”

  The boy-thing’s laughter joined his, the child cartwheeling around the tub, his face bobbing around her in a bloody stew. For a moment, the wind whipped around her, and she was freezing, and the cold was almost worse than the pain, but that could never, ever be.

  Elise woke up in her own bed, beside her clean-shaven, sweet-smelling, mild-tempered husband.

  She was unhurt. Untouched.

  She was in her nightgown, and there was no note anywhere.

  She went into the bathroom and vomited, and when she came back to bed, Phil rolled over and slung an arm over her hips. She lay there, shaking, and tried to convince herself it had all been a dream.

  Elise.

  Phil.

  John.

  Ramón.

  Ruth.

  Cha-cha.

  Cracked in six places; and when it’s full of water, it will go down,

  down,

  down,

  ah, Nathaniel, how I loved you, child! How it hurt me, to hurt you!

  Down,

  down,

  down,

  and it won’t be airtight.

  19

  Bottling Plant

  The door to the museum gaped open. A woman in a white dress and jacket sat at a card table, reading a book. Donna cleared her throat and the woman glanced up.

  “Are you open?” Donna asked. It was noon of the third day aboard the Pandora, and this was the first time she’d seen anyone inside the museum. The door was always shut.

  “Yes. Please come in. I’ll be happy to give you a tour.” The woman half stood; Donna indicated that she should stay seated.

  “I came in here the other night with the captain,” Donna explained.

  “Oh, with the Captain?” the woman echoed. Capital C Captain. “Oh, but of course. You’re one of the survivors.”

  Jesus. That’s what John should make them call his movie. The Survivors.

  “I was in the lifeboat, yes.”

  “Oh, my.” The woman stood. “My. And the Captain has been showing you around.”

  “Mmm-hm.” She wandered toward the nearest aisle. The woman trailed after her.

  “What is it like?” Her eyes shone with excitement and she clasped her hands over her chest.

  “Not that much fun,” Donna retorted. She made a point of staring hard at the objects in the case before her. Cups and saucers. The typed card said they
were from the Bismarck. She cast back; there’d been something about that in the Flotsam book. That guy who found the Titanic, he’d found the Bismarck, too. She turned to the woman—

  —whose face was strangely blank. She stared straight ahead, as if Donna weren’t there, a robot turned off. Wooden, Donna thought, and cleared her throat. The woman jumped, hiccuping a nervous laugh.

  “I’m sorry. I …”

  “I didn’t know they salvaged anything off the Bismarck,” Donna said.

  The woman grimaced. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t here then.”

  Say what? Donna hid a smile. She nodded and walked on. Irritatingly, the woman continued to follow her.

  “If you have any questions,” she ventured.

  Donna stopped at the case containing the captain’s bottle. The cloth had been redraped, a dramatic, if silly touch.

  “Is it true it’s never been opened?” Or weren’t you here then? she added silently.

  To Donna’s surprise, the woman took a step backward. She shook her head vigorously, jaw set, fists clenched at her sides. “Absolutely not. Never. It’s never been opened. It—”

  “Donna?”

  John and Matt stood just inside the door. Donna sidled away from the woman, who was still swearing on her mother’s grave that the bottle had never, ever, ever been uncorked (and who was supposed to really give a shit, Donna wanted to know), and came up to them.

  “Hi.” She made Groucho eyes at Matt. “Hey, big guy, you’re looking good.”

  Matt’s eyes widened and he gazed at her very hard, very hungrily. He was holding his green dinosaur, practically folding it in half in some kind of urgency. John put his arm around his shoulder. Matt stepped close to him.

  “What’s up?” Donna asked. Her first thought was that maybe they’d heard about the lifeboat; from the looks of them, it would be bad news.

  “We were wondering if you’d like to have lunch with us.”

  Matt moved away and walked to the back of the museum, toward the balcony where the figureheads perched. John’s eyes followed him.

  “He looks terrible, doesn’t he,” John murmured, the agony in his voice an agony to hear.

  Donna scratched her shoulder. “Are you kidding? He looks terrific.”

  His smile was grateful, martyred. Obviously he didn’t believe her.