THE ANCIENT

by Muriel Gray

  Sohn was now leaning fully against the drive shaft casement, the sweat on his brow almost as profuse as his assistant’s. As though it had been prompted by the horrific encounter, the familiar pain started to gnaw in his gut, and he ground his back teeth together, waiting for it to subside before he could even try to rationalize the horror of the last few moments.

  The chief engineer had learned over the last few months, that if he concentrated hard, he could usually bear the secret agony that writhed into life in his lower abdomen at unexpected and increasingly frequent times, until it eased off. All he had to do was to focus and stay still. But right now, although he remained perfectly motionless in a semi-crouch trying hard to find that focus, all that Sohn could think of was the madness in his assistant’s eyes, the impossibility of his knowledge, and much more importantly, the size of the circular shape that Chelito had made with his thin brown fingers.

  “For Christ’s sake calm down.”

  Chadin was close to slapping the deck cadet, but the audience of half a dozen crew stopped him as much as his own professional self-control. Instead, he gripped the whimpering man firmly by the shoulders and tried again to get him to make sense.

  “Listen to me, Antonio. This is really important. How can you be sure he fell in the hold?”

  Antonio gripped one of his bosun’s wrists like a baby wrapping a fist round a mother’s finger, and waved at the hatch cover once more with his other hand. “He was up there when I thought I heard him call. I know he was. I know. I know.”

  “For the last time, is there any chance he could have gone overboard?”

  Antonio shook his head, glancing feverishly from the bosun’s face to those of his fellow crew. “No. No. He couldn’t have. He’s in one of the holds. I’m telling you. We got to get him out.”

  Chadin let his hands fall from the man’s shoulders and looked round at the row of open hatch covers.

  When he looked back again and met the terrified man’s darting gaze, there was no mistaking the implication and weight in his next question. “Which one, Antonio?”

  The deck cadet shrank from those eyes and his panting turned to sobs. He shook his head violently and covered his eyes with a hand. “Don’t know. Five, six or seven maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Chadin looked at his feet and then turned to the waiting men. “Unchain the derricks. And two of you start checking the surface right now.” He regarded Antonio as he continued.

  “All nine holds.”

  At least the light was still on. Matthew had allowed himself only one fleeting moment of hypothesis concerning how it would be in this frozen box if the light was not on, with only a skinned corpse for company, and then sensibly put the thought away. The rest of the time had been spent between the practicality of trying to figure a way out, and a disturbing speculation on who had closed the door.

  The two were not unrelated, since given the circumstances, gaining a release might not necessarily result in his deliverance from danger. Whoever had closed the door had done it with intent, and who was to say they might not still be out there? His first and immediate option had been to bang and shout, but the silence that greeted his noise only confirmed the non-accidental nature of his captivity.

  So now he paced back and forth between the skinned, frosted remains of the boy and the locked door while he thought, his breath blasting out in clouds around his face.

  Unsurprisingly, the safety handle on the inside of the door had been rendered inoperative by whoever closed the door from the outside, simply by slipping the bolt. Matthew was faced with the reality that the steel door was not an object that could be persuaded to give way to force, and since there was no other portal to the outside from the refrigerator than that immovable metal lozenge, his options had come down to the only possible one left. Survive the biting cold, and wait for help.

  It had only been around thirty minutes, but already he was chilled to the core in his thin tropical shirt, the back of his hair beginning to bead with tiny balls of ice.

  It wouldn’t be long before someone came back to the galley, surely. After all, the crew would have to eat sometime. He slapped at his bare arms and scratched the ice particles away from the back of his neck. If his skin was chilled, then it was matched by the cold band of fear that was tightening around his heart. Whoever, whatever, had closed the door on him was out there, freely roaming amongst the crew. And had Jose persuaded the captain to close the holds? Even if he had, what difference would it make? There was madness in Matthew Cotton’s soul right now. It was a madness that was making him believe the unbelievable, and fear the unknowable, in a way he had never done in his entire life. He knew fear. He knew one particular version of it better than most. But not this kind. The half-glimpsed image he had witnessed on the hold deck had not only stayed with him, it had fleshed itself out in his imagination, and was haunting him here in this dimly-lit ice-box as he visualized what might be waiting on the other side of the door.

  Salvo Acambra’s deathly grin, leering up at Matthew from a face that was not so very different from the racks of frozen meat hanging on hooks above it, was almost comforting in comparison to the creature that Cotton’s mind had constructed. Against his will, it forced him to contemplate the ugly death at his feet. But there was nothing to fear from the dead.

  The dead didn’t have the power to harm you. The dead didn’t have the power to surprise you, or pursue you. Matthew stopped walking, stared at the boy’s remains and slumped against a drum of frozen fries. But it wasn’t the boy he was seeing any more. It was someone else entirely. The dead, above all, thought Matthew Cotton, didn’t have the power to forgive you. He screwed his eyes shut and bit his cheek to lose the thought.

  There was a noise. He opened his eyes. A small and hesitant noise, but he had heard it clearly. It had come from the storeroom on the other side of the door. Cotton stayed deathly still, frozen this time by instinct instead of temperature. He waited, his breath escaping in tiny bursts from his nostrils. There was silence, but there was a quality to the silence, perhaps its timing, perhaps simply the contrast to the initial noise which had given the impression of being a clumsy mistake instead of an unselfconscious announcement, that made him sure that someone or something was listening on the galley side of the door, as hard as he was on this side of it.

  The temperature in the freezer was such that Matthew Cotton, dressed as he was, realistically had only a few hours left before parts of body and brain would start to shut down. But now there was someone out there. He should shout, bang on the door, scream at the top of his voice. Of course he should. But Matthew stayed quiet.

  It seemed like an age, but in reality it was probably less than a minute. As he watched, the safety bolt was slipped back into its casing, and very slowly the big round wheel that accommodated the outside handle began to turn.

  Matthew let go his breath, and looked around quickly for a weapon. His choices would have been comedic had it not been for the considerable lack of comedy that the situation presented. A tub of fries, a side of beef, cartons of frozen juice and a stack of frozen vegetables piled high in their plastic bags. Nothing came immediately to mind as having the efficacy of a gun. Matthew moved to the frozen meat and tore at a packet of ribs.

  He grabbed the biggest he could he find, holding the bone like a caveman in a cartoon, and tried to ready himself for whatever came through the doorway. The metal wheel made the other half revolution it required to pull the handle fully down and break the seal on the door, and then stopped moving. Matthew licked at dry, frozen lips, waiting and watching as silently as his trembling body would allow.

  The freezer door must have weighed at least four hundred pounds, so the pull that made it bang open was impressive. The sudden rush of warm air to cold made the atmosphere fog, and it was a second or two before Matthew made out the form that had ended his entombment so abruptly.

  So youthful a female should have looked ridiculous, standing as she was with a large meat
cleaver held at her shoulder, but Esther Mulholland did not look ridiculous. She looked dangerous.

  If anyone looked foolish, it was Matthew, pale with cold, tight with fear, and clutching his barbecue rib. Very slowly she relaxed her position and lowered the weapon.

  First officer and passenger looked at each other for what seemed like a long time and Matthew watched as conflicting emotions vied for dominance on Esther’s face. Quickly, visible relief, and what looked just a little like pleasure in seeing him, gave way to naked contempt.

  “One question. Were you locked in, or did ten stiff Jack Daniels make you think you were in a bar instead of an ice-box?”

  Cotton, who had been on the verge of thanking her, scowled back. “Never been more sober.”

  She nodded. “How long?”

  “Sober, or locked in here?” He threw the rib to one side and walked out of the freezer, pushing past her without making eye contact.

  Esther ignored the snub and repeated the question to his back. “I said, how long?”

  Cotton stopped in the door frame of the storeroom, shivering involuntarily as the delicious change in temperature played over his skin. His eyes flicked to the circuit breaker on the outside of the door that made the freezer stay on an emergency battery even if the power was cut. He put his hand out and cancelled it, then flicked the big black power switch to “off.” Who gave a shit if the meat went off? Salvo wasn’t exactly going to complain if it got hot in there. Help was on its way.

  Until then, Matthew Cotton wanted to make certain that no one was going to get locked in that death trap again. He looked to Esther. “What exactly brought you down here anyway?”

  She held his contemptuous gaze. “I needed to see the body again more closely.”

  “Shouldn’t you be back in the mess room with the crew instead of playing Kay Scarpetta?”

  She looked back at him without emotion. “Shouldn’t you?”

  Matthew leant against the door frame and allowed himself a sarcastic laugh. He gestured at the cleaver that now hung loosely at her side. “Oh yeah, like that’s going to keep you safe from whatever did that to Salvo.”

  Esther glanced briefly into the freezer and then back at him, this time with a change of expression, although one equally as impenetrable as the last. “Yeah, you’re right. A bunch of unarmed deck cadets drinking coffee are going to do that job so much better.”

  Matthew watched her face for a moment, then rubbed at his freezing arms and looked at the ground. “About thirty minutes, I reckon. Maybe more. Only thought to look at my watch after I’d realized there was no way out.”

  Esther nodded and they remained silent for a moment, until Cotton’s gaze strayed to the slime trail that still glinted faintly on the ceiling. Esther watched him without following the path of his gaze, and when he looked back down at her and found her still staring at him, he intuitively knew why. She had seen it too. There was a curious kind of relief on First Officer Cotton’s face as he nodded at her.

  “I think we should talk.”

  She nodded back and then indicated the open freezer door with a small shrug. “I want to look at him one more time.”

  If one went, then they all had to go. That was the rule. And the bosun needed Rapadas to help with the derricks. Fen had seemed nervous when he heard they were being called away from the cabin. His eyes darted shiftily around the room, coming to rest nearly always, the youngest of the ABSS noticed, on the edge of a shoebox that stuck out from under his bunk. His mood, however, picked up enormously when he found they were headed for the hold deck. The three men who had been keeping Fen such uncomfortable company in his cabin, were now completely absorbed in the new alarm that had gripped the ocean’s unluckiest ship, and Fen’s unwanted presence amongst them went largely ignored, free from the confines of the small, hot room.

  Thomas had fallen into the holds of trash. None could articulate the horror that information held for them, and so their arrival and subsequent carrying out of instructions was silent to a man.

  As they worked, all kept the same thought hidden in their hearts, a thought that was shared by those who had kicked the derricks into life, and were already swinging the first one over the hatch of hold five ready to claw uselessly at the surface of garbage. If Thomas had really fallen in there, it was already way too late.

  They went about their tasks, and Fen Sahg watched them with gimlet eyes.

  Lloyd Skinner and Renato Lhoon had joined Chadin on top of the hatch cover of hold five, and two of the men were staring into the dark pit that lay impassively below them. Only Skinner kept his gaze higher, looking out into the blackness of the ocean around them, not like an anxious seaman checking the seas, but with the air of a retired industrialist searching for the lights of land from a romantic cocktail cruise. Chadin ignored his superior officer’s distracted demeanour.

  “Like I say, Captain, it’s different. If it was grain or salt, then we could dig and unload the surplus overboard. But in this…” the bosun gestured with a limp hand “… we run the risk of not even seeing his body if we find him. We could lift him and drop him overboard without knowing it.”

  Renato Lhoon ran a hand over the back of his hot neck and looked from Chadin’s face to Skinner’s. He had no solution. And more acutely than any time before, he desperately wanted his superior officer to offer one. This was the time when he needed Lloyd Skinner to sparkle with inspiration, to comfort their fears out of a well of experience and maturity of leadership. He ached for it, and he stared into the man’s face, waiting to see if he would be rewarded.

  Skinner tore his gaze from the invisible horizon for a moment, and glanced briefly down into the hold before looking up at the two men as if seeing them for the first time. He divided his attention equally between the two faces, before settling on Renato’s. “Did First Officer Cotton convey any order to you about closing the hatches with some urgency?”

  Lhoon bristled. “No.”

  The reply was unnecessarily staccato, and it was intended to be so.

  Skinner nodded, apparently indifferent to his tone. “Where is he now, do we know?”

  Neither man answered. The question seemed so rhetorical, the manner in which it was asked so casual. Skinner, unperturbed by their silence, looked back out to sea.

  “So what do we do, Captain?” asked the bosun, voicing the helplessness than Renato was sharing but not revealing.

  Skinner cleared his throat and put one hand in a trouser pocket. “Carry on.”

  Neither the bosun nor the second officer exchanged glances. To do so would have been a two-fold disaster. Firstly, it would have revealed that they were scared, and neither man would want that exposed. But secondly, it would have been nakedly obvious, one to the other, that their unshakeable belief in duty, rank and orders, the lifeblood of survival at sea, was at this moment hanging precariously in the balance.

  Instead, both gazed across the tops of the hatches and considered a great many things in their private thoughts, only a very few of which concerned Thomas Inlatta and his fate.

  The sensation was so powerful, so overwhelming, that any description of it stood outside the boundaries of language. But if he were forced to use the inadequate tool of his vocabulary, then the closest word Chelito could find was ecstasy. He could not even recall when this state of grace had begun, or indeed if he had always been part of it. It was timeless, rendering his own memory of self an irrelevance.

  To know everything, to understand all from the complexity of the atoms that made the matter of the universe, the path of the planets, the feral thrust of life in every form, right down to the weak secrets held in the hearts of men, was intoxicating almost beyond what he could bear.

  But his body was suffering. The effort of containing this new level of consciousness was already hating a physical impact. Chelito sweated profusely as he moved around the engine room, seeing as much with his mind as with his watering eyes. Sohn was crouching where he’d left him, racked with a pain that Chelit
o knew had only a few minutes more of attack before it gave his chief some respite.

  How he could know such things was the only knowledge gap in an understanding that seemed to have no limits. It was simply a fact to be known, just as he knew with equal certainty that his own body was under strain, that his heart was pounding to keep up with a metabolism that it would be impossible to sustain for much longer. And yet the ecstasy of knowing continued.

  He wiped at his neck again with the cloth he clutched, and tried to catch a fleeting truth that had slowly begun to present itself as more prominent than the others.

  It concerned the one who had granted him this state. Just glimpses to begin with, and then gradually, more. It nagged at him, prodding at him for attention in the cacophony of information that swamped him. And how well he understood it when he focused. It was so simple, so obvious.

  Chelito was not repulsed in the way the others had been. He could smell their fear, even though he knew it was the fear of those who had lived many thousands of years in the past. They had been so very wrong. His crime was not a crime. Their punishment a folly. And the consequence…?

  He laughed out loud, a maniac’s giggle.

  He tried to speak the name of the knowledge-giver, and found that though it was huge in his mind, he could not form it on his lips. The boy frowned, tried again and failed. No matter. The beatific smile returned as he allowed himself to continue viewing the past, with a complete understanding of how his own destiny was a part. Soon he would fulfil it, and what was left of Chelito’s simple human ego, the part that was not godlike, swelled with the pride of having been chosen. It was because he was beautiful. Because he was special. Because he was pure.

  And then suddenly, there came more of the knowledge-giver. More than he wanted to see. There was no way to turn off this stream of enlightenment. It could not be ignored or filtered out. It was like blood through the veins.

  Chelito could no longer be sure if it was the giver, or Chelito himself who was on the temple steps. But it was real. He, it, someone, was there, feeling it, seeing it, tasting and living it. The smell of spices and burning incense was overwhelming as he was dragged up the rough stone, his captors not caring if the skin ripped from his flesh. There was fear in the air. Fear of the sun that should rise in only a few moments. Fear of the figure whose being he seemed to be occupying, both felt by himself for the ordeal that was to come, and from the captors who held his manacled arms so tightly. But above all, there was the stench of human effluent from the settlement below the temple, the sewage and rotten food that he could smell so acutely through the incense, that he knew was nothing more than a familiar irritant to his captors.