Sail (Haunted Stars Book 1)

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “I should have helped you clean up, James,” Captain Glenn said.

  I just shook my head. For years, it had seemed like all I did was clean up my destroyed bedroom day after day. I’d grown used to the cleaning up part.

  As a ghost magnet, I knew exactly what was happening on this ship, but I realized as James, I didn’t. I needed to start playing the part, and if I found more iron and stayed on this ship, I needed to know what lurked here with us.

  “What happened this morning?” I asked.

  Doctor Daryl picked invisible fuzz from his red scarf. Captain Glenn scrubbed his hands over his eyes. Nesbit drummed his fingers on the table while Mase glared at the annoying sound they made.

  “I don’t want to frighten you, but…” Captain Glenn started and then cleared his throat. “Well…”

  “There’s something else on this ship with us,” Mase finished for him. He looked at me as if to gauge my reaction. “Lots of somethings. Violent somethings hell-bent on making our lives shitty.”

  I tried to make my face blank, like I had no idea what he was talking about, but the sharp fear in his tone made me swallow hard.

  All of them stared at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to puzzle it out myself, waiting for me to say the word so they didn’t have to.

  “Ghosts,” I said, like it had finally clicked into place.

  Doctor Daryl nodded. “If you don’t believe in them, you will soon.”

  Oh, I believed in them alright.

  “It’s the worst around seven o’clock at night,” Captain Glenn said, crossing his arms. “Banging, howling, seeing things that can’t be real, but running from them anyway because it feels real.”

  Nesbit chewed his lip with his crooked tooth and stared at the ceiling from his seated position on the floor. “They hate us. They want us off this ship for some reason.”

  “Then why don’t you leave?” I asked.

  “Nobody else is leaving,” Captain Glenn snapped. “The old chef slowed us down when he started waving his gun in the air and demanded to be dropped off. We can’t miss our delivery of the teralinguas.” He looked at each of the crew members, a hard edge to his gaze I’d never seen before. “We just can’t.”

  “There isn’t any other place to go,” Doctor Daryl said, tapping a stray crumb on the table until it stuck to his skin. He flicked it onto his plate. “The money I make from writing in medical journals isn’t enough, and no one else will hire someone like me.”

  Someone like him. Did he mean his OCD? An image of him entering an interview room for a brilliant doctor position popped into my head. Instead of shaking hands after polite introductions, he circled the entire room to tap things. A rush of sympathy for him swept through me.

  I glanced at the others, but no one else seemed to want to divulge why they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, leave this ship. It was interesting that they all seemed to see the ghosts, or at least see something. Ellison and Pop never could. They could just see me being dragged from my bed or hurtled across the room.

  “We could tell someone though,” Doctor Daryl said. “If we keep disposing the evidence, we can’t document it as proof that something is on this ship with us.”

  “No.” Captain Glenn put his plate down on the table and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “If we tell the Ring Guild, they’ll make us turn this ship around. They’ll think we’ve all been in space too long and that we’ve gone stir crazy. You know what happens if we don’t make our delivery? We don’t get paid. I have a family, and they depend on me. I can’t afford to buy another ship, and no other job pays as well as teralingua delivery because they’re such a pain in the ass to take care of.”

  “Captain, with all due respect, if you’re dead as a result of what’s on this ship with us, you won’t be able to provide for your family,” Doctor Daryl said.

  Captain Glenn shot him a heated look that made me shudder. “I don’t remember anyone dying. Do you?”

  “The doc’s hurt though,” Nesbit mumbled.

  Mase narrowed his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Nesbit.” He’d been leaning against the counter through the entire conversation with his arms crossed, but that simple statement was enough to clue me in to which side he was on.

  “So…” Nesbit looked at a spot on the floor. “We’re not telling anyone?”

  Captain Glenn stared him down, something fierce flashing in his eyes. “That’s right, Nesbit. We’re not telling anyone. And we’re not stopping again either. For anything. Is that clear?”

  “Yeah,” Nesbit muttered, rubbing his hands briskly up and down his face. “Crystal.”

  “Things started to get better anyway, up until today,” Mase said. “Yesterday it was thirty or forty degrees warmer in the dining room than the rest of the ship. I actually took off my coat, and I’ve lived in that thing for months. And after seven last night, we didn’t hear the usual banging in the hallway.”

  I froze, sure that his next words would implicate me as a big fake since those mismatched eyes seemed to see right through everything. Did he somehow know about my constant metal companion? Or was he just so smart that he’d figured out I had something to do with it?

  “But this morning, we did,” Nesbit said, nodding.

  “It doesn’t fit the usual pattern,” Doctor Daryl agreed.

  If they figured out I had something to do with it, they’d ask questions and maybe even poke around my identity and learn that I wasn’t who I said I was. They’d learn I was a fugitive, and depending on the size of the bounty on my head, the captain would likely change his mind about stopping the ship. I white-knuckled my soup spoon and pretended fascination with a noodle stuck to the side of the bowl.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Mase leaned over the table and splayed his fingers apart, flicking his sharp gaze at me. “Something changed.”

  Ice surged through my veins under the power of his stare. What did he see when he looked at me with those strange eyes?

  Everyone followed his lead and turned toward me. A drop of sweat traced down my side. I didn’t move for fear I’d give something away.

  “When that one, James,” Mase said with a curl of his lip, “is in the room with us, nothing happens. The room heats up, and it’s like everything is normal. But the second he leaves…” He took a step toward me, and it took everything I had not to step back from the weight of his accusing gaze.

  “Where did you go?” Captain Glenn asked, stepping up beside Mase.

  I ticked my gaze at him, then pointed a burning hatred at Mase. They couldn’t know the truth. They couldn’t turn me in before I found Ellison. I nudged a hand closer to my back pocket and the ice pick. “Nowhere.”

  Mase slid me a condescending smile. “And what did you mean when you opened the dining room door this morning and said you’re sorry?”

  At the time, I was sorry they had to suffer through the haunting. Now? Not so much. “Nothing,” I said, and it held an edge of wintry steel.

  “Really,” Mase said, lifting an eyebrow. “Did you know something would happen?”

  Doctor Daryl narrowed his eyes. Nesbit snaked a hand over the edge of the table and pulled himself up, his pointed gaze never leaving me.

  “James, are you doing something to stop it?” Captain Glenn took steps toward me around the table. “My crew has had enough. You need to tell me what you know.”

  I really didn’t. None of them were armed, at least that I could see. I might be able to take one of them with the ice pick and demand to be dropped off somewhere like the previous chef had. But if they all ganged up on me like it already felt like they were doing, I didn’t stand a chance. They would figure me out, and then Ellison would be gone for good.

  The only thing I could think to do was lie. “It’s not me. It’s my goddess, F—”

  The ship gave a slight tremble. The lights snapped off and pitched the room into darkness before buzzing on again.

  The crew searched the ceiling for answers. Mase’s body went rigid and he jerked his gaze
to the captain.

  “Space trash,” he said, then he and the captain raced out the double doors.

  Nesbit’s lanky legs bit at their heels. “Put up the shields!”

  I stared at the flapping doors while my heart tried to beat out of my chest to follow them. If we’d already flew into a bunch of trash without shields, we were dead. No ship could withstand even the smallest fleck of floating paint without them. It could eat right through the walls and muck up the engine or mess with the oxygen supply system.

  An angry fire burned through my body. What were they thinking? How could they just hang out in the kitchen and jab me with their distrust when junk threatened to flick this piece of metal out of space? All their sleepless nights had eroded their brains of rational thought.

  The doctor glanced at me on his way out. “The ship won’t sink.”

  “Better not,” I said.

  “All of them are seasoned space men. They know what they’re doing, even if we are distracted.” He shrugged, and the informal gesture from someone normally so proper formed a crease on my forehead. “I’ll go check on Randolph,” he said with a sigh, but ended it on a sharp wince as he limped to the door.

  “Feozva, help me,” I whispered after he’d gone. I needed more iron, or otherwise I’d magnetize whatever haunted this ship right to me so I could relive my fucked up childhood aboard a spaceship with a bunch of rusted out men. If they could keep it in the air long enough.

  I’d scour the ship from top to bottom. I’d even repel the ghosts from the crew if they wouldn’t ask too many questions. If I’d known that leaving them that morning would turn out to be so disastrous, I wouldn’t have. The ghosts used to never attack Pop and Ellison. Only me.

  I texted Moon for some suggestions for dinner, but she never answered me back. Whatever the BIG PROBLEM was must’ve been pretty epic for her not to message me. But surely she’d message me back soon.

  Just as I was unclumping a bit of lasagna noodle from my eyelash—don’t ask—the Doctor Daryl wandered in holding the hip where he’d been wounded. Sweat beaded down his carefully groomed blond sideburns, but he made his tapping rounds anyway.

  “He’s not answering, and his door won’t open,” he said once he’d finished. “If I force my way into it, I’m afraid I’ll break my stitches more than I already have.”

  Anxiety unfurled in my gut in glacial waves. Was Randolph suffering from a hangover, or was it something else? Had he seen something last night?

  “I wonder why he’s not answering,” I said.

  “It’s hard to say why. I can’t do a physical examination of him through a door, of course, so I’ll have the rest of the men help me open it when they get a chance.”

  I nodded as he staggered out, then I threw the rest of the ruined noodles away with a wet splat. While fresh ones boiled in a new pot, I wandered out to the empty dining room and put my ear next to the wall that separated me from Randolph’s room. I didn’t expect to hear anything, but I rapped lightly anyway just to hear the sound break over the wall from the tips of my knuckles.

  With a sigh, I turned toward the opposite wall where Esmerelda the Space Vixen should’ve been smirking. She hung in tatters with only a single boob, a neck, and a chin still stuck to the wall. No one was where they were supposed to be. Randolph, Ellison, Esmerelda—they’d all abandoned their posts. I could easily put one of them back, though.

  A quick twirl of the spatula through the rising noodles and several pieces of tape later, Esmerelda the Space Vixen was whole again, or as much as she could be. Yes, I washed my hands afterward just in case Mase’s comment about Nesbit’s splooge was true.

  By the time dinner was ready, the strange sour tobacco smell from earlier had faded, and normal, hopefully delicious, food smells had taken its place.

  Three minutes until six o’clock, Doctor Daryl and Captain Glenn had a gurney flipped on its side, half in the dining room, half in the hallway. While the captain patiently waited for Doctor Daryl to make his tapping rounds around the room, they hauled it in the rest of the way and righted it. Then Doctor Daryl maneuvered it to the exact center of the room.

  At my questioning gaze, Doctor Daryl smoothed his slick hair that didn’t need any straightening. “It’s the only thing I could think of.”

  Hopefully eating from a gurney wasn’t indicative of how dinner would go.

  Once Mase and Nesbit arrived, everyone settled themselves onto the mismatched stools and benches the doctor and the captain brought that were of varying heights. Nesbit sat with his chin level to the table for ease of shoveling, I supposed. A large grin aimed at the Space Vixen showed his crooked tooth.

  “Esmerelda, you came back to us,” he said.

  “Has anyone seen Randolph?” Doctor Daryl asked as I leaned over him with the mashed potatoes. “The door to his quarters still won’t open.”

  “Are we sure he’s even in there?” the captain asked. “He could be anywhere on this ship.”

  Doctor Daryl shook his head. “We haven’t seen him in nearly twenty-four hours. If he is somewhere other than his quarters, he’ll have to come out for food and water eventually.”

  Maybe they were right. Maybe he wasn’t even in his room but had gotten himself lost on the ship in a drunken stupor. That didn’t make me any less worried.

  “Did the space trash situation work itself out, captain?” Doctor Daryl asked.

  Captain Glenn looked at him with a tired, hollow look. “Oh, yes. No damage since we got the shields up in time. Everything’s fine.”

  “Very good.” Doctor Daryl offered me a tight smile then blinked his eyes hard to activate his Mind-I.

  I gave the good doctor an extra dollop of potatoes for making me feel a bit better.

  “We’ll be entering deep space soon, which means we need to have our heads in the game,” Captain Glenn said. “We can’t let whatever’s on this ship with us dictate how we run things. Space travel is dangerous enough as it is. Agreed?”

  I slammed the spoonful of potatoes on Mase’s plate with a touch too much force.

  He turned in his seat to stare at me, brows drawn over those probing eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Finally, he said, “Agreed.”

  I allowed myself a small sigh of relief. Maybe if they could stay focused on keeping us in the air, they wouldn’t bother me as much with endless allegations.

  Grunts, groans, chatter, and even some of Nesbit’s weird laughter lifted the mood despite what happened this morning. These men were resilient. I’d give them that.

  Mase’s hands had been bandaged but that didn’t stop him from eating two helpings of mashed potatoes, three pieces of lasagna, a quarter of the loaf of bread, three cupcakes, and a whole pitcher of milk.

  “If the rest of those birthday presents were any smaller, I’d stuff them all in my pocket,” he said.

  Nesbit snorted. “Did you just say birthday presents?”

  “Birthday presents. Birthday cakes. Same difference.” He leaned back in his chair and slid a hand up under his shirt, revealing his stomach.

  My buttered bread didn’t quite make it to my mouth. Tanned ridges bumped across his skin in smooth waves. A path of dark blond curls led down past the top of his pants. When he brushed his fingers over the button and popped it open, my heartbeat stuttered. I looked away so quickly, butter smeared across my cheek. What was he doing? Undressing? At the dinner gurney?

  I couldn’t look at him anymore. I was supposed to be a fourteen-year-old boy, and he was what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? My mission was to keep myself alive long enough on a haunted ship to find Ellison, not drool over some pilot’s perfect body. Still, I found my gaze wandering over to him while a faint smile turned up the corners of his lips. He looked like he was succumbing to an inevitable food coma.

  After Nesbit’s last laugh petered out and seven o’clock came and went without any commotion, one by one the crew dropped off to sleep with their heads and arms on the gurney. I dragged in my mattress and blankets from near
the pantry to keep them safe while I replaced the piece of iron in my mouth. The eighth one. Eighth. I’d never dissolved that many in a day, and I only had fourteen left.

  One by one, my small stash of iron was running out.

  Chapter 8

  Water ran down my body in steaming, soothing sheets. I could’ve stood there for hours if I didn’t have a ham in the oven. It’d been days, or it seemed like it anyway, since my last shower. I smelled like burnt pancakes soaked in a bucket of sweat. The kitchen was so hot now with the combination of cooking, baking, and my metallic ability to sweep the cold from the room, that I could barely stand it anymore. Plus, kneading my scalp under the hot water would hopefully trigger some hair growth.

  And hope it grows some moresies.

  The crew had stayed in the dining room that morning until well past breakfast. The dining room magnetized its promise of safety to them, and they always seemed beyond hesitant to leave. They must have bought my lie about my goddess repelling the spirits. But when they’d slipped away after lunch, I found a flashlight, took the ice pick, and headed to the iron-eating sink in the basement. Lucky I was right in my assumption of where there was a sink, there might also be a shower.

  No doors had opened or closed on the way there, other than by my own hand as I searched for Randolph and anything iron-related, though admittedly I didn’t stray too far from the dining room. The only thing I found were two stripped nails in a pile of wooden planks.

  With a reluctant sigh, I fumbled for the off lever in the shower. The first floor lights had been turned on, and I had no trouble finding the light switch in the bathroom. I hadn’t even needed the flashlight, but only an old gossamer curtain separated the view of my very naked, completely female body from someone who might walk in the door. Not like they could because I’d locked it, but still. So I’d showered in the dark, which hid me well and made for a unique showering experience. Plus, this way, I wouldn’t have to see my ugly, nearly bald head in the mirror above the sink.