Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  Christ, Christ, calm down. A shipboard crime, a vivid imagination, and maybe they’d gone for help with the kittens. Get some towels, milk. Yeah, ’cuz the phones were out and the steward couldn’t fetch and carry for them. That made sense. Her guys weren’t in danger, ’cuz that made sense.

  She shuddered hard. She didn’t care if it made sense. Pulled herself away from the door and ran down the companionway, bellowing, “Phil! Elise! John! Captain Reade!”

  Shouted, looked, turned corners, went on.

  “Matt!”

  Marched into the reception area, the foyer with the horse mosaics and the ship mural and—

  there was no one there. No one.

  No one.

  She stopped so abruptly she stumbled. Flew around in a circle.

  No one.

  Her stomach grabbed. Cautiously, she walked over to the registration counter and dinged the bell. No one came.

  “Hello!” she shouted.

  No one answered.

  Swearing, she left the foyer and headed for the elevator. Punched the button, but when it came, she found she couldn’t go inside it. She thought of the fuses in the captain’s ready room, just from a blender for God’s sake; what if something bigger blew, had already blown?

  “Damn it.” She unconsciously moved her hands to smooth her dress, felt the fingers of the mittens and yanked them out and tossed them on the floor.

  She ran a hand through her hair. Saw the stairway sign, and took it. Where she lands, nobody knows, she thought, but suddenly and sharply, she felt herself running as fast as she could,

  for the museum.

  27

  Glass-bottomed

  Boat

  Panting, Curry staggered into the companionway. Beneath the pounding of his heart, he heard a ping, ping, ping, almost plaintive, almost a great distance away. But he wasn’t fooled; as he wrestled with his claustrophobia, he watched a green glow sicken the walls. The wreckage of the submarine was there, beneath the camouflage of the hurricane lamps and the sturdy, upright walls. He remembered how Reade had maneuvered that one: made the sub crew believe they were diving, and they rammed whatever the Pandora had been at the time. Whatever Reade had made them think it was.

  Then he salvaged—how?—part of it and added it to the floating graveyard that now paraded as the Pandora. That’s all the Pandora was, a mishmash of the vessels that Captain Reade had destroyed. Bits and pieces of them clung to each other, somehow adhering, the material foundation of a surreal vision. Was even that a delusion? Was there something else beneath the pieces of wreckage? How did Reade make it all change? How did he keep it from sinking?

  The captain had laughed at those early questions, never deigning to enlighten him.

  Curry heard the ping again. But all he saw was the Pandora companionway near the museum, and—

  —he walked closer to a shape on the floor. Shut his eyes for a moment, forced them open.

  “Oh, holy God, I’m so sorry,” Curry whispered. He recognized the features, distorted as they swam in a heap of gristle and bone. The face was battened down from a storm of blows; the arms and legs gashed and cut.

  It was the man he had tried to warn, the Spanish one.

  He looked away. And incredibly, horribly the heap of flesh shifted. He heard the squish, the sigh. His stomach turned and he made himself look back at it. Put both hands over his mouth. Acid flooded his mouth at the sight, though he had seen piles of fresh … meat … many times. Rendered men, many, many times.

  Curry bent down. The eyes in the pile stared at him. He didn’t see the mouth.

  “Oh, man, are you alive?” Curry asked, revolted. “Is the captain using you? Are you real?”

  Pieces gleamed like snake scales as they moved. “Dead,” came a voice.

  “What?” Curry leaned over it. Steam rose from the entrails and the heavy odor of blood assaulted him. He fought to keep from retching. “What, man?”

  Silence. Curry considered looking for a pulse. Couldn’t decide where, and what good it would do. Then something went out of the eyes.

  With a deep, steadying breath, he stood. He stepped around the pieces, the blood. Was this some trick of the captain’s? Or was the man finally, blissfully, forever dead?

  And what was that, dead? Curry was almost afraid to know.

  Almost. The alternatives that he knew about were too horrible to endure.

  * * *

  In the freezer, Matt’s lids closed and he stirred weakly. How could it be warm when it was so cold? How could it feel good?

  “Daddy,” he whispered. “Daddy.”

  He lay on stiff, lumpy things that poked his back and neck. Buffalo steaks, he thought vaguely.

  Rest, Mattman. Rest. You are my choicest prize, and I shall save the best for last.

  He scowled. Who was that? Who kept talking? Who kept sounding crazy?

  Rest.

  “Fu-fuck you,” Matt said.

  Something laughed.

  The tears on Matt’s cheeks froze.

  Unchallenged, Donna rounded a corner and started down the companionway that led to the museum. She had found no one on the ship. No John, no Matt, no steward, no crewman. No other passengers. She was

  alone, alone, all, all alone.

  And if she didn’t figure out why real quick, she was going to lose her fucking mind.

  The mittens had taken on additional significance: a pair of gauntlets, a challenge, a dare. Some kind of lure.

  Damn it to hell, what was going on?

  She kept walking, senses alert, back stiff with nerves, and then she saw it.

  The captain’s special green bottle, in the middle of the hall.

  She touched it with her foot as if it might detonate. It tipped over and described an arc like a needle in a compass. Eeenie, meenie, out goes you.

  It pointed directly at her. She took a step back and reached automatically for her gun. For where her gun should be.

  The yellow light from the hurricane lamps gleamed on the green glass and the chunks of red and green stone. Donna moved toward it and crouched down.

  Son of a bitch, it was uncorked. She poked at the cold, hard glass with her finger. Nothing special. Ah, but there was something inside.

  With an unconscious breath, she slid two fingers into the neck and caught the object between her middle and forefingers. It was a very thick, clothlike piece of paper, same stationery as the invitation to the Captain’s Table. Folded several times, and then rolled into a scroll. Cautiously, she unrolled and unfolded it.

  There was a skull and crossbones—no, an anchor, her mistake—engraved in black at the top. Below it, in shiny, embossed script, were the words:

  The Captain, H.M.S. Pandora,

  cordially invites you

  Nearer, my God, to thee.

  Donna glanced up at the sound of the faint music. “Yes?” she called. Waited. There was nothing more. She read on:

  to a shipwreck party

  in honor of our newest shipmates:

  Ruth Hamilton

  John and Matthew Fielder

  and Our Special Guest of Honor,

  Donna Lynn Almond

  on the Titanic

  now

  “Holy shit,” she said, examining the paper, turning it over in her hands, What the hell kind of game was this? Had the captain knocked her out, taken her gun?

  And what was this about the Titanic? Her “favorite ship,” as Reade had put it. She read the invitation again. No mention of Phil or Elise, and what about Ramón? The people who were missing weren’t mentioned.

  She held the bottle to the light, examining it. Had they been left all over the ship, like Easter eggs, with invitations crammed inside? Why was she the guest of honor? ’Cuz he’d hit on her, or hit her, more like?

  Nearer to Thee—

  She almost dropped the bottle. Then she realized how enclosed she felt. Claustrophobic. And she heard a strange ping, ping, ping. She considered it, found herself thinking of submarine m
ovies.

  She looked to the left, and she had the strangest sense that something was there, near the wall, but she couldn’t see it. A shadow of a shadow. A smell of a smell,

  of a smell that was Death.

  And the echo of wind, blowing fierce and far away. Shhhooooo, a gale, a hurricane, but muffled.

  Then gone.

  Slowly she rose, cradling the bottle and the note. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Goose bumps coated her, outside and in. Holy shit.

  Okay, make it work: the captain was nuts. He’d started picking off the Morris survivors—oh, God, let that be wrong—and he was rounding up the ones who were left. And he had somehow gotten rid of everyone else. Yeah, right. He just stashed them somewhere, Donna. Right. That all made sense.

  Nearer, my God, to Thee.

  Shhhoooooo.

  Make it work: a tape. Someone was rehearsing a play. A music system, heretofore unused.

  With feet like lead weights, she walked toward the museum. Make it work. Jesus. It didn’t work. None of it.

  Low, nasty laughter jittered down the hall, the kind a boy made when he snuck-read a dirty magazine or a little girl saw her big brother with his girlfriend: a sexual, titillated laugh, kiddie-porn night with the guys.

  Her hair stood on end. It was loud, as though amplified through a sound system; and it was off-center, the laughter of someone who wants not to laugh, but can’t help it.

  “Hey. Who’s there?” she demanded in a strong cop voice.

  It rose half a note, faltered, then trilled hysterically up the scales, bass to alto to a falsetto high C. Donna scratched her knuckles and kept walking. Someone was out of control. No shit, Sherlock.

  And the Special Guest of Honor was going to bust him. Or her.

  Had to be the captain. But why? How?

  She turned the corner. The museum door was open. All the lights were off. The place was dark as a cave.

  And the laughter flew out of it, like a winged thing, and swooped down on her. Donna ducked as if something were really coming at her, straightened as soon as she realized it was only noise.

  “Okay, come out,” she called. Waited, chewing the inside of first her left cheek, then right. Her heartbeat revved; the tips of her fingers tingled. Her stomach started to pull into itself. Her senses grew sharp, alert, poised, the old fight or flight response. Blood pressure up, vein in her forehead doing the chimichanga.

  The laughter rang forward, ebbed, crashed closer, ebbed, like a tide.

  “That’s real neat,” she said. “I’m impressed. You could get a job in Hollywood. But if you’re finished—”

  A harsh white light focused on her, flicked off her, beamed at the scores of bottles overhead. They were swinging back and forth, and their surfaces sent out sparks of light. Back and forth, back, forth, rhythmically, out on the open sea. Out on the—

  on

  the

  lake; trying to save that kid, trying to stop everything from happening. The lake was liquid ice, so absolutely draining. It just sucked the will out of you, the strength and the power; you were nothing in that lake, just a fucking corpse in suspended animation, dreaming as you went down down,

  down;

  moving on in your head to a future you were not going to have. Moving on, as you drifted in the ice, rocked gently as death curled around you and tried to get inside you before all your warmth evaporated; Death is cold and so very alone; Death is lonely for you and what else do you have, anyway? No family, no man, no talent, no life. And you’re too dumb, too slow, powerless.

  Let him grab your ankle and pull. Let him do it, now, and you’ll go

  down

  down

  “Good morning, heartache,” Billy sang, really, in Donna’s ears, and it was that that jerked her out of her stupor.

  Shit, was somebody trying to hypnotize her? Was that it? Some kind of Mission Impossible group hypnosis tripping them all out?

  Slowly, the light descended, bringing with it the bottles. They lowered en masse, eye level, revealing a flotilla of pitching miniature vessels inside them. Battleships and schooners and subs and sailboats. Luxury liners, tankers, barges, steamboats.

  The Titanic.

  The Normandie.

  The Robert E. Lee.

  The Bismarck.

  The ships in bottles floated around her like bubbles. They rode on seas that seemed to froth and swell: an illusion, she told herself. Caused by the lights.

  She grabbed the nearest one, a model of a tug. It vibrated in her grasp, shooting a charge into her forearm. Her hair stood on end as she released it and it hovered, connected to nothing, hanging in the air of its own accord. A magic trick. She passed her hand over the nearest ship, under it. No wires, no transparent filaments.

  Cautiously, she drew back her hand and stared at the bottles.

  “Cute. Real cute,” she said at the light.

  The laugh was successfully muffled this time. She took a step forward. Another. Another. Walked halfway into the museum.

  The light jerked from her to a case on her right. The case where the green bottle usually lay, cloaked with a velvet cape.

  She slid her glance toward it. Inhaled sharply.

  The drape had been removed, and a bottle identical to the one she held in her hands rested in the case.

  Stay calm, she told herself. That didn’t mean anything. So there were two bottles. For all she knew, there were fifty of them. He bought them in Hong Kong.

  There was a note inside the second bottle, too. It practically glowed, some Alice in Wonderland magic: Read Me. Donna strode to it, deliberately making a lot of noise, because creeping made you look frightened and frightened made you vulnerable to attack, and reached inside.

  A tidal wave of maniacal laughter, half screams, half hissing, rose around her, crashing, foaming along her spine. Ignoring it, she stuck her hand in—

  —and a low, visceral terror spread across her skin like a layer of gellid paste, contracting, constricting, pulling the hairs on her arms, her legs, her head. Get your hand out of there, she commanded herself. Get it out or you’re going to lose it—

  —oh, God—

  and because of the terror, because of it, goddamn it, she had to pick that fucking bottle up and read the fucking note.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath. The laughter caromed around the room. When she found that asshole, she was going to cram the damn bottle down his throat.

  She hesitated one more second, forcing herself to keep her eyes open. They watered from the strain. Unknowingly, she drew back her lips. God, here goes. Here goes.

  She picked it up.

  Every time I close my eyes, I jerk awake … Donna came by to ask for a sleeping pill …

  … we never did find anything …

  This fog …

  Ulcer …

  John. John Fielder had written this. What the hell was it doing here?

  There were more pages:

  … Everybody thinks Cha-cha’s a harmless old guy, but he’s scary, man. Only thing in that net were some fish and some damn shark or something, the one who chomped my finger off, practically.

  The lady cop is right about one thing: if something does happen, like if King Neptune tells Cha-cha to go for it, I don’t think the crew will be any help at all.

  That sounded like Kevin. She read the last page, a fragment from a lined, bound book:

  15 April 0900

  … my God, my God, I never believed Cha-cha was dangerous, but he’s butchered them! Sweet Jesus, when I came on deck, and saw what he’d done … and then I realized they’d taken him into the lifeboat. They’re alone out there with that maniac, and there’s no way I can warn them.

  This is my last entry. We’re taking on too much water. I’m amazed we haven’t gone down yet.

  Wait! What’s that? I hear another ship!

  Thank God, we’re saved!

  Cha-cha? Oh, God, not Cha-cha. She thought about the missing people. Before or after he came on boar
d? Think, Donna, missing before or after?

  But how come Reade had told them there’d been a false alarm aboard the Morris? If it hadn’t gone down, would Esposito have warned Reade about Cha-cha?

  At a noise, she glanced up from the pages. Captain Reade stepped into the glow from the hallway. He angled the flashlight under his chin; it shot his face with harsh, ghoulish streaks of white. He was dressed in a ship’s officer’s uniform from another time, dark blue coat and white trousers. His eye stared at her and his mouth was drawn back in a wild, fierce grimace. His skin was shiny with sweat; in the light it looked as if it had been varnished, as if he’d been made of wood. A six-foot-tall nutcracker, the features painted on with a less than steady stroke. His head tremored like an old man’s. His teeth clicked together and he blinked rapidly.

  “What does this mean?” she asked evenly. Christ, he was totally insane. What the hell was she going to do?

  The captain shook his head. “You are so thick. What do you think it means? Or can you think, you bitch?” He raised the flashlight above his head, brought it down in an arc and hit his open hand. “Are you capable of thought?”

  She breathed through her mouth. She said, “I think these are papers from the lifeboat.”

  He sneered at her. Took two steps forward, hit his hand with the flashlight again. “Do you? Do you really?” His mouth twitched; he covered it with a gloved hand, and a high-pitched giggle, almost a squeak, erupted from behind his white fingers. The flashlight beam cut a jag through the blackness as he fought for control.

  “You know they’re from the Morris.”

  “Cha-cha brought them in his lifeboat,” she insisted. Did he cut up everybody? Jesus, Jesus.

  The flashlight flew upward, down. Up, down. His hand was beginning to swell. He advanced on her, smiling. Cawing noises spurted out of him, sea gull laughter. He lowered his head and peered coyly at her through his lashes.

  “Oh, yes? Did you, Cha-cha?”

  She watched, stunned, as Cha-cha bobbed into the light. His face and clothes were clotted with blood. He looked featherlight, wan, terrified.