THE ANCIENT

by Muriel Gray

  But since the fluidity with such a specialist weapon as Skinner was displaying was not exactly an appropriate skill for a captain of an old tub that hauled iron ore from one dead-beat country to another, his subconscious mind did not dismiss it. Renato drew in a large breath of air through his nostrils and turned his attention back to Esther, who was looking at Skinner without interest.

  “You threw the ring your mother left you into the sea. Just off the coast of Nigeria. Emerald surrounded by diamonds. That was the last thing of theirs that you owned. It’s thirteen feet below silt now.”

  Skinner pointed the gun at her. His face had lost its composure. “Shut the fuck up, you freak.”

  Esther laughed and closed her eyes. “The combination on the aluminium case in which the mine detonators are hidden is contained in the dog-tag numbers round the handle. They’re not your dog-tags. They belonged to Samuel Denton Mendez, the man you murdered. His family thought you tried to save him. They sent you the tags after the funeral. You keep them because you like to remind yourself about stupidity and hate. You reckoned that your positioning of the mines will sink this ship in less than ten minutes. Know what? You’re better than you think. It’ll take less than eight.”

  She looked across at Renato as if he’d just joined them, her eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “He’s going to kill you.”

  Skinner moved quickly across to her and pressed the barrel of the gun against her temple. “I said, shut the fuck up!”

  Renato took a step forward, his hands out. “Lloyd, please.”

  It was a name Lhoon never used, and it made the captain look up. Skinner took very little time to realize how he looked and he wrestled his facial contortions back into the calmer façade of a trustworthy human being.

  “I’ve had enough of this drug-crazed shit to last me a lifetime.” With a glare at Esther that was shielded from his first officer’s view, he lowered the gun and stepped back to Matthew Cotton’s slumped form. “We need to get this psycho secured down below with the men. The crew can take care of him. Take his arm.”

  Renato bent and wrapped Cotton’s arm over his neck. Big, well-fed American bones always weighed heavily on Renato’s slighter Filipino frame, and although he was used to guiding the drunken Matthew along corridors to his cabin, the one thing he had never managed to achieve was to carry Cotton when he was completely unconscious. The difference in their builds was simply too great. When that happened Renato would either drag him somewhere safe or leave him until he could at least bear his own weight. Although he knew it, the situation here was pretty different from the simplicity of a passed-out drunk, and so Renato gave it his best shot, grunting to get the body upright. It had never worked before. It wasn’t going to work now.

  “I don’t think I can manage him on my own, Captain.”

  Skinner made an irritable noise between his teeth, transferred the gun to his other hip and grabbed Matthew’s left arm.

  She moved quicker than either man would have thought possible. Before Skinner could drop Cotton and point the gun, Esther was already well shielded by the row of holds leading to the accommodation block.

  “Fuck.”

  Skinner narrowed his eyes. She was gone. He took stock for a moment and then made the decision that Esther Mulholland was old news. He had both the guns. Cotton was out of the picture. She could go tell the world its fucking weird secrets for all he cared. It was time to wrap this thing up. He motioned to Renato, and together they dragged Matthew Cotton along the deck to join the others.

  19

  As its powerful jaws worked on the piece of Pasqual’s upper arm it had chosen to consume, a finger poked lazily at the last two lesions in its own skin that were still to close. It was a finger that consisted mainly of bone, but the fleshy lumps that spiralled around the digit were growing on to it rather than peeling off, giving it the pallor of a wound that had been coated in yellowing, waxy fat. The thing that crouched over the half-eaten body of Pasqual Sanquiloa was almost ready, but its gratification in that state had been sullied. Hatred boiled in its borrowed veins as it ate. This was not how it had planned the moments before the final consecration. Scavenging to repair itself was not fit for a creature that was to become a god. The mix of magic. That was the weakness. It had been too tempting to use both the mastery of the powers of the Sun God priest that it had once been, and those more pungent ones bestowed upon a dark master of the soil that it would soon be again, to bring about the unholy glory of this living, breathing state. But soon the darker of the two would dominate. The toying finger moved down to the long penis which hung from a blood-encrusted, scabbed crotch. It stroked itself and closed its new eyelids as it stirred the organ. But not yet. Not yet.

  The thing swallowed Pasqual’s flesh and moved its face closer to the corpse to choose another morsel. A hand that was still partially constructed from the metal of an oil drum, ripped at the soft throat and deftly removed a piece of muscle the size of a small pigeon breast. It could feel her. It had called her and she was ready. But there were complications that fermented in the dark hollows of its soul. It bit into the red wet muscle. The food was also giving it little pleasure. This was scavenging.

  To have any kind of piquancy, flesh consumed had to be from creatures that were still living, still suffering, aware of what was happening to them.

  It chewed mechanically on the tasteless dead sustenance and ruminated on the irritations of ceremony. The handmaiden was no different from the other offerings. All sacrifices were granted a knowingness by the Sun God’s magic that even it as a priest, as maker and bestower of the gift, could not be privy to, and barely understood. That had always torn at its soul when it was a man. How dare the prey be more aware than the hunter, even though in their innocence they could do nothing with it but sweat in an ecstasy in preparation to die, spouting their uncontrolled verbiage for anyone wise enough to know, to listen, and act on the morsels that fell from such a random and unpredictable table? His darker side would rectify that. It had other powers now, other gifts that were far in excess of the simple gift of knowing too much. Had it not foiled death itself? When had the Sun God performed such a miracle? Soon, not only would it possess that same gift of truth possessed by the sacrificed, but it would have a timeless, changeable, endlessly powerful and agile body that could sustain the physical demands that such knowledge laid on a mortal frame. But until then it must be wary. The man who was with her, the one who had dared to tear its flesh with the weapon that shot fire, he had already caused it harm. It was not to happen again.

  It stopped chewing. The flesh on its back that had skin prickled with electricity, and the flesh that had not yet fused with skin oozed instead with lymph. It was the most primordial of warnings. It craned its neck round, an animal disturbed at the feed. She was there, standing in the doorway, hands at her side looking at it with longing and love as it crouched over the corpse. It gazed back, drool spilling from the corner of its gaping mouth. But its pleasure was undermined. She was here. It was time. But since it had not yet called her, it had not been searching for her clean, repugnant smell as it ate, not scanning with its senses to know where she was. His handmaiden was here, but there was a brooding and hungry rage in its soul that it had not felt her approach. Her smell always told it where she was, but how could she mask her thoughts so successfully as to approach unannounced? For that, amongst many other things, there would have to be retribution. The grin widened at the thought and the chewed remains of its hasty meal fell to the floor with a soft slap.

  His headache was worse than any hangover Matthew had ever experienced. For several minutes he lay perfectly still, teeth bared in agony, breathing hard as he fought back nausea and tried to work out where he was. There were low voices all around him, and as his vision returned he realized he was looking at the shiny curve of a turbine.

  Matthew took a breath and pushed himself into a sitting position. Sohn Haro was sitting on a bench next to him, and Cotton rubbed the wound on
the back of his head and looked at the engineer.

  “What’s going on, Mattu?”

  Matthew coughed, the reverberation shooting white-hot rods into his skull, and then looked solemnly at the man. “You tell me.”

  “They say to keep you here prisoner. That you done bad things up there.”

  Matthew straightened up further and held his forehead, trying desperately not to cough again. “They’re lying.”

  Sohn nodded. “So what going on?”

  “Stuff that would make me sound crazy if I told you.”

  Sohn shook his head. “I know you ain’t crazy. I think I going crazy when Chelito tell me some things before he die. Things I can’t tell nobody. But I not crazy. You neither.”

  Matthew looked at the little man’s wizened face with relief and affection. He looked round at the other men who were sitting in groups around the room, at Felix Chadin trying to retain his men’s trust and calm. Some of them looked up at Cotton, but it was not with hostility. They looked scared.

  “Do they think I’m a killer?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I’m sure Skinner did a good job of persuading them.”

  Sohn looked out into the big room that was more his home than anywhere else on earth. “ ‘Cos you don’t say to someone like me to keep a man prisoner. Don’t say ‘keep him here real careful and no one leave the room.’ You don’t say all that if you tell the truth, and then lock the doors from the outside.”

  “Shit. They’ve locked us in?”

  Sohn nodded. “I tell the men it’s okay. Stop them panicking. But I reckon it ain’t all right. Is that so?”

  “That’s so. We’re fucked.”

  Sohn sighed as though Matthew had said the soup on the lunchtime menu was finished. “Something got Fen. Got him in the cofferdams. We hear it taking him.”

  Sohn shook his head remembering the horror of those screams. “Maybe it come for us next.”

  Matthew closed his eyes as he thought about how Fen might have met his end at the hands of the thing he’d glimpsed so briefly. It had left its repulsive image forever adhered to his soul. And then he opened them again.

  “When did that happen?”

  “About an hour ago. Seem like a lifetime.”

  Matthew looked across at the door that led to the cofferdams and then back out into the room. He was thinking hard. Thinking about the manhole cover to hold two that Esther had unbolted and left open. Thinking about how that escape route was clearly for the monster to leave the hold by. Thinking that if it could come and go only from the hold, then how could it cross the engine room to get into the cofferdams with the room full of crew members?

  “There must be a hole in the hold.” He said it softly, as though to himself.

  Sohn looked at him wearily. The blow to the head Matthew had received was not doing him any favours. Sohn’s voice was gentle when he replied. No one was in good shape. It was the least he could do to humour him. “What hold, Matthew?”

  “Hold number two.”

  “Yeah? Captain checked the cofferdams two days ago. Don’t think there’s no holes. Don’t worry now.”

  Sohn wasn’t getting the point. And why should he? He knew something strange was up but he didn’t know how bad it was. If the beast could make its way through the garbage in the hold down through a hole into the cofferdams, then maybe a man could do it in reverse. If the manhole cover was still off. If he could find enough air to breathe in forty square feet of stinking trash.

  Matthew stood up.

  “Sohn. You got fire-fighting equipment down here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Breathing apparatus?”

  “Sure. You know we have.” Sohn pointed a finger at Cotton’s chest. “You responsible for checking it.”

  A wave of hot shame broke over Matthew’s face. Sure. He would have been responsible. And he would have been blind drunk when that check was supposed to have been done. “I’m going to need it, Sohn. A flashlight too.”

  Sohn looked at him. “What for, Mattu?”

  “I’m going to get us out.”

  The engineer looked around the room at the remaining crew of the doomed Lysicrates, felt a stirring from his own death sentence deep in his belly and winced. Sohn thought about how much he wanted to see his squabbling daughters again, his hard-working wife and his untidy yard full of machines that needed fixing. How he wanted to die in his own bed and not gulping freezing water in a sealed metal room that was headed for the ocean floor. He nodded.

  “Thank you, Mattu. That would be good.”

  Being a man possessed of highly-tuned intuition and watchfulness, it would have been unlikely that Skinner could have missed the evidence of Renato’s doubts. He watched him sizing up the situation, his anxiety as naked as a child’s, and once again Skinner despised the stupidity that made Renato’s mental processes so visible that an observer could practically see rusty wheels turning. The captain was going to make very sure that his newly-promoted first officer didn’t leave his side until it was time for him to do his party trick of climbing aboard that fishing boat. He walked a step behind Lhoon as they made their way in silence to the bridge.

  There was such comfort in having his own gun-strap over his shoulder and the barrel by his hip. Part of him wanted that thing to come again. It would feel good to blast it open with twenty rounds and see it get up after that. But there would be plenty of time to use up his ammunition. There was a whole boatload of ignorant peasant fishermen who needed to be removed quickly and without fuss. It was going to be a busy night.

  They reached the bridge and Renato walked over to the long bank of windows, crossed his arms and looked out to the hold deck.

  Skinner watched him carefully as he picked up the hand set of the VHF and hailed the fishing boat. He hadn’t wanted to do this in Renato’s hearing, but there was no way the man was parting from him. He would just have to be careful with what he said. They were being careful anyway. Just in case another unseen boat was picking up their transmissions. It might not look good at the wreck enquiry if some passing sailboat could quote a conversation about how the plans were coming along to sink a bulk carrier. No, he was sure no confidence would be breached.

  “This is Fishing Fancy. Calling Lucky Lad.”

  Renato stayed still, staring out at the tiny lights of the boat that was being hailed. There was a delay and then a reply.

  “This is Lucky Lad. Go ahead Fishing Fancy. Channel 23.”

  Skinner retuned. He glanced at Renato and cleared his throat. “Fishing completed. Ready to launch and come aboard. Over.”

  There was a longer delay than the first and then the crackle of the American voice. “Looking forward to welcoming you, Captain. Over.”

  Renato turned round and faced the captain. Skinner shot him a vanning smile that was undermined a little by the grip he kept on the handle of the AK47. “Nearly there, Renato.”

  “Why are you not using the Lysicrates name, Captain?”

  Skinner sighed, thinking fast, then using a tone of conspiracy held his new first officer with a stern look. “Can I trust you, Renato?”

  Lhoon nodded.

  The captain nodded back. “I didn’t just come across the fishing boat. It has a company man on board. He has the orders from Hong Kong concerning why we’re meeting another boat all in order and legal and I’m sure it will be explained, but it’s company orders. I don’t know why any more than you do. I guess the skipper will make everything clear when we get aboard.”

  Renato looked doubtful. “And the fishing you just completed?”

  Skinner controlled the urge to pin Lhoon to the wall with bullets and instead sighed. “Sonstar are sticklers for procedure, Renato. You know as well as I do that if the two senior officers leave the vessel we have to make sure there are officers on watch and in charge. The fishing code was to tell them that had been done without alerting any listeners to the fact.”

  “But there’s no one on watch.”


  “I think, given the circumstances, that will be forgiven when we tell them what we’ve been through.”

  “Is someone from Sonstar on that boat?”

  “Yes,” replied Skinner truthfully, then added, “We need to go now.”

  Renato leant forward onto the instrument panel and bent his head. “Captain. I’m having a really bad time with all this. Can you just give me a minute to get my head together?”

  “We don’t have a minute, Renato.”

  Renato rubbed his eyebrows. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Skinner tightened. “If it’s relevant.”

  Renato looked as deeply into Skinner’s eyes as he could. “Did you really take your mother’s ring and drop it into the sea, just where the girl said?”

  Skinner looked down at his feet and when he looked back up, he had softened his eyes. He gazed steadily back at the man with the kindest and most compassionate expression that was in his repertoire. It was a good one. It was full of sadness and stoicism. “I never knew my mother, Renato. I was raised by Jesuits in an orphanage in New Jersey. Those gentlemen of the cloth took great delight in telling me that she was an alcoholic, abandoned single mother who choked to death on her vomit in a one-roomed apartment above a real estate office in Queens. The only thing she left me was a desire to stamp out religion and save drunks.”

  Renato swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “The girl is crazy. Don’t let it get to you.”

  Renato held his gaze. “She was right, though. About me.”

  Skinner was getting bored with this. “So maybe she heard talk from the crew. Who knows?”

  “There was no talk. No one knew.”

  “Then I can’t help you. I don’t know how she could have guessed such a thing.”