That was real, he thought. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
"Very well, sir," the clerk with the dancing mouth said. "We've been having some issues with...food poisoning...and we wanted to make sure everyone had eaten." He shook his head. "What everyone had eaten. Excuse me." He looked like he wanted to giggle.
It wasn't the clerk's eyes staring at him, but the clerk's Bozo the Clown grin. Riley couldn't look away from it. That scream, he wanted to say, aren't you supposed to check on things like that?
"Me no hungry," Riley repeated, pulling his head back in. "You go away." He closed the door and latched it.
He thought the clerk might've yelled, "Everyone must eat, sir!" but another scream went off--or maybe went off. Riley was out of the alcove, and his pulse had again fallen into rhythm with the ocean current. That's the key to fear—become it. Like Batman. His blood was one with the ocean.
His eyes fell upon the vial of pills. His friends. Counting them individually—even pairs!—along with his buddies’ vertigo and nausea, he had quite the shindig on his hands.
"Party down," he muttered, scooping up another two pills. He dry-swallowed them.
His feet tripped over themselves and he fell onto the bed. The comfiest rabbit hole ever, he thought, and passed out.
* * *
This time, knocking did wake him up, but it was not the ever-professional, ever-consistent knock of room service, but a drunken wham.
"Riley!" Andrea's voice, a near-scream. "Riley, open up!"
He fell off the bed, his arms and legs freshly-stitched parts of him he could barely control. Just call me Raggedy Andy.
"Riley, please!"
He knee-walked into the alcove. Gone was the acid-trip fever dream, but his thoughts were cotton candy, teased apart and spinning in the churn.
"Riley!"
He used the handle to heave himself up, threw himself against the door to keep his balance, and looked through the peephole.
Andrea leaned against the door, her hair a mess, mascara raccoon-circles around her shocked, red-ringed eyes. In the distorted fisheye, she looked like an alien, a nightmare E.T. The strap of her evening gown had fallen into the crook of her elbow and one breast, shockingly pale, was exposed. A bloody handprint painted the nipple. He couldn't see her hands.
"The Great and Terrible Invisible Wife of Oz!" he cried. "How in the hell are ya?"
She flattened her face against the peephole. "Lemme in, Riley! It's dangerous out here!"
"Which is why I am in here, partying down."
Her exhale fogged the peephole and he frowned. "You have to help me!"
Anger, an old, forgotten part of him, flickered in the back of his head. "Like you're helping me, right? Right, Wife of Oz?"
She pounded at the door with her invisible hands. Did he hear metal clang? Was she a cyborg? "Help me, you bastard!"
"Show me your hands."
She didn't move.
"Show me, you bitch!"
She threw herself off the door and weaved on her feet like a boxer about to drop. She didn't raise her hands, but she didn't need to.
She held a carving knife, bloody and dripping. "Let me in!" she cried. "People are attacking out here!"
Riley, frowning, pushed himself away. "Should've picked a better cruise. Go away."
Andrea pounded and kicked at the door. "You bastard! Let me in! LEMME IN RIGHT NOW!"
"Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin."
He fell against the wall, but didn't feel nearly stoned enough. It was still night, the lights were on, but the colors were dull, washed with gray. Vertigo and nausea had flown the coop. Where were his friends?
He went to his knees next to the desk, knocking the open vial over, and spilling pills across the top.
Andrea shrieked and pounded. "LEMME IN! I'LL KILL YOU, RILEY! LEMME IN LEMME IN LEMME IN!"
Riley scooped a handful of pills into his mouth and swallowed. What a dull party, really. For good measure, he scooped and swallowed another handful.
"HEARTLESS BASTARD! UNFEELING PRICK!"
Darkness clouded his vision. I feel nothing, he agreed and fell onto his face.
* * *
A scream forced him awake and what felt like spun glass in all his joints forced him to scream back.
He clawed his way to the bed and thrashed himself slowly into a sitting position. He felt like he'd fought World War II, both theaters, single-handedly. His skull pulsed, heavy whams against his forehead and ears. The crotch of his jeans was bunched and cool against his skin. He'd pissed himself at some point.
His sightline met the surface of the desk, where he saw the empty vial and three lonely pills.
He massaged his forehead. "Did I fuckin' take all of that? How am I not dead?" He looked underneath the desk and saw a pile of crusty puke. Well, that explained that.
How long had he been out? The gap in the drapes, cold grey daylight fought for space against the nightstand lamps. It could've been hours. Or days.
Why was he up now, then?
Another scream erupted outside, distant, and he remembered.
He used the desk to pull himself to his feet and shambled into the alcove, a hand on the wall for balance. He collapsed against the door with a grunt and looked through the peephole.
The body of an elderly man lay in a pool of blood against the opposite wall of the hallway.
Riley jerked away from the door, the migraine shoved forcefully onto the backburner. "Christ!"
He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand and looked again.
Same image.
He was shivering as he opened the door, but couldn't stop.
The old man looked as if he'd once had a face, but what was left resembled something shoved into a Mixmaster. This guy hadn't screamed recently. The blood he lay in had dried.
How can you be cold? A part of him scolded. This is a body, for God's sake!
He looked down the hall. Doors marched away to his left and right, dwindling to points on the horizon. Blood smeared the walls, dried to brown smears.
He was the only living thing in sight. The only sound was his leaden heart and shallow breath.
"Jesus," he muttered.
He stepped back inside, closed the door and went to the room phone. According to the directory, just picking up the phone connected it to the front desk.
He got nothing but dead air. He hit zero for the operator and the line rang and rang. He dropped the phone back into the cradle and didn't bother fixing it when it landed askew.
His mind wanted to drift to the corpse, and he forced it to stop. He had to think.
Where had everyone gone? Who was screaming and why hadn't anyone done something about the old man?
There's no one to do something.
He remembered the nightmare clerk saying people were suffering from food poisoning, and that he should eat.
He remembered Andrea, blood-streaked and raving, pounding on the door. Dream or real? Live or Memorex?
The body outside isn't Memorex, he thought.
What if everyone's gone? What if they're all dead? Who's driving the ship?
"Bullshit," he muttered.
You have to find someone.
His shivering worsened. How could he leave this for...that? He hugged himself, but the shivering didn't lessen.
If there's no one here, who's controlling the ship?
The potential answer—no one—made him shiver harder.
No, he couldn't stay here, if only to find out what was happening.
He changed into clean clothes, shutting his mind down, working on automatic. He forced himself back into the hall, checking the number on the door as he left. 9.040, the brass plate read. He hadn't even known what his room number had been.
He turned left, following a sign which stated that he was on DECK 9 and that elevators were this way. The silence reminded him of libraries. The carpet so thick, his footfalls were silent. Nothing but the roar of his own blood in his templ
es.
He came to an open door two rooms down—9.036—and made himself stop.
"Hello?" He flicked the switch plate on the left. Peeking out from around the corner were feet. He entered, recognizing the shoes, and thought of Andrea again.
He looked around and the air left him. "Jesus."
Andrea lay sprawled on the floor between the bed and the bathroom, the skirt of her evening gown hiked up to reveal cotton panties. Her head, smeared with blood, was cocked up and away.
Hogan's open mouth lay on her torn throat. Riley could see purple-gray intestine underneath his shirtless belly. The bloody carving knife lay nearby. The coppery stink of spilled blood and dried shit clogged his nose.
People are attacking out here, she'd said before screaming that she'd kill him. His eyes falling on the knife to avoid the view of the mutual murder, he thought, couldn't help thinking, If I'd opened the door...
He bolted and leaned against the hallway wall, closing his eyes. His stomach threatened, threatened...but didn't have anything to throw up. He coughed, his spit thick and disgusting, and slumped against the wall.
I don't think Andrea expected this, he thought and clapped his hands to his mouth to stifle the scream.
Breathe. Calm down. You can do this. He didn't believe that—how much could he do if he'd almost overdosed like an idiot on pills?—but it calmed the scream that wanted to jump from his mouth. Who knew who might hear?
He looked longingly down the hall, back toward his room, but it didn't even have the comfort of familiarity for him.
The rabbit hole spit me back out, he thought.
* * *
He came across the body of a boy of nine sprawled in an open doorway further down. His eyes had been gouged out, leaving bloody sockets crying blood. Riley glanced behind him, sure that the eye-gouger was creeping forward with bloody fingers, but he had the hallway to himself. His pulse was its own raging ocean current.
Suites named after English Queens met him at the end. Just before these was an archway opening to the stairway and lifts. Inside, another archway led to the opposite hallway, but he had no interest in seeing that carnage. He considered taking a lift, but God knew what he might find in them.
The ship was silent. He didn't even hear the piped-in Muzak that a lot of hotels played in the hallway. It was just his breathing, his heartbeat. His sign of life. He wondered how many rooms there were, how many people in them, all of them as silent as the old man and the little boy. His wife. Dr. Hogan.
Riley turned towards the expansive, carpeted stairs. He kept his eyes glued forward as he descended, his shoulder brushing the far wall.
The body of a young, blonde clerk lay sprawled on the landing of Deck 8, his chest cavity opened up like a peapod, his insides bulging against the ragged edges, and Riley stopped on the last few stairs.
Unlike the old man, the clerk's blood hadn't dried into the carpet.
If Riley touched him, his body would not be cold.
He glanced behind him. There was nothing up there.
He came down slowly, eyes cutting to the archways. A fire-axe lay against the bottom step, the blade wetly smeared with pieces of the clerk.
The spit in his mouth felt viscous and snotty. He swallowed, but it didn't help. He needed a weapon, but, Jesus, what if the handle was still warm from whoever had killed the clerk?
Stop the weak-sister routine and take it, a part of him chided. He crouched down, his fingertips touching wood, and his hand curled around the axe. Something wet fell off and landed with a squish.
He closed his eyes. His stomach would never forgive him.
A scream erupted, high and yodeling from the left hallway, then cut off abruptly. A cackling laugh followed it. His testicles shrunk into tight little balls.
Having a weapon didn't mean he wanted to use it. He went down the next flight two at a time, not looking back.
* * *
He didn't bother with the rest of the rooming floors. Although he saw no more bodies, he heard running footsteps and jerky panting. He didn't want to meet their owners. He thought of all those bodies, and his mind wanted to shut down. How? How?
On Deck 3, someone's bellowing roar enveloped him, and the stairwell ended with a hallway curving right. He inched forward, the sound boxing his ears, wrapped him in an audio cocoon. His skin tightened with gooseflesh. He felt like every idiot in every horror movie who goes deeper into the haunted house, but what other choice did he have?
The hallway curved outward, until he imagined it reached the perimeter of the ship. He could imagine the waves crashing into him, separating only by steel and insulation.
Keep your mind off that. You have bigger concerns. Understatement of the still-fresh millennium.
The hallway curved inward again, and the bellow grew louder in volume, but maintained pitch and tone, the words distorted nearly to fare-thee-well. A recording.
Near the end, someone had written with blood-smeared hands I LOVE YOU over and over along the wall. A body with a great chunk of throat torn away lay beneath this declaration.
I'm on the ship of the dead. This isn't the Atlantic. It's the River Styx. Not surprisingly, this didn't make him feel any better.
The hallway opened up onto the oval-shaped Grand Lobby. The marble floors were awash with blood and bodily fluids. Torn bodies lay in piles. Some draped the circular front desk in the center like trophies. Who could've done this? A part of his mind screamed, but the bigger question was, still, how could someone—or someones, since a group made infinitely more sense—do this? The stench was like Hogan and Andrea, jacked to the tenth degree.
The other end of the Grand Lobby led into a shop concourse. On the left of the hallway was a darkened wine bar called Sir Elliot's. Bar stools littered the opening. On the right was a trashed newsstand.
The recording boomed from hidden speakers.
"…YOUR LUXURIANT VACATIONS," the voice bellowed. Static obliterated its sex. "WHILE MILLIONS STARVE AND DIE UNDER WESTERN IMPERIALISM, YOU FILL YOUR FACE WITH FOOD ON BILLION-DOLLAR ROWBOATS. HOW DOES IT TASTE NOW? HOW—"
Feedback screamed and Riley screamed with it. The recording died, and the silence deafened him with its completeness. He looked around, as if to see why the recording had ended. His heartbeat echoed in the stillness.
A diminutive man in a chef's smock staggered out of the wine bar, meat cleaver in hand, and Riley froze. Blood stained his hairy arms to the elbow. His red-ringed eyes twinkled.
"Messy," he said conversationally. He sprinted forward, raising the cleaver. "Messy, messy, MESSY! NO WAY TO SERVE CUISINE! NOT AT ALL!"
The man brought the cleaver down, and Riley thrust the axe out, blade turned away, as if he were bunting. The axe-head crashed against the man's inner forearm. The impact drove the cook backward.
Riley swung the side of the axe, and it slammed into the side of the man's face with enough force to vibrate up Riley's arms. The man's eyes rolled up into his head, and he dropped with a grain sack thud, the meat cleaver clattering.
Riley staggered into the front desk. The axe shook in his hands. His breath hitched in and out of his mouth. "Oh shit, oh Jesus, oh hell."
He couldn't remember the last physical confrontation he'd had, probably not since he was a teenager, and adrenaline skimmed through his blood, his nerves flashing like Christmas lights.
Anger filled him. This was ridiculous. This was all...so...ridiculous. This...this wasn't right. What in hell's name had happened here?
"Hey!" he screamed. His voice echoed back, and that only made him angrier. This was an ocean liner, for God's sake. "Anyone here? Where are you? C'mon! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?"
"Everyone's dead," a woman said behind him. "Or insane."
He spun, and the boy and girl, maybe six, cringed behind the woman's legs. Their eyes ate up their pale, cherubic faces. The woman stared at him, a hand on the backs of their heads, fingers smoothing their blonde hair.
"We'd been hiding in the newsstand." Her dark ha
ir shined in the lobby light. Blood smeared her summer dress. "He'd been looking for us."
"What happened here?"
"Don't you know?" she asked. Her eyes shined with shock, but weren't red-ringed. Was that how you could tell? He thought of the clerk, Andrea, this cook.
He lowered the axe. "I was...sick."
"Have you eaten anything?" Her tone added weight to the question.
He shook his head. "I haven't eaten since..." He looked at her. "...how long have we been at sea? I was unconscious. I..." He looked away. "...I don't handle water too well."
She studied him, and he couldn't meet her eyes. "We've been at sea for five days. It started getting bad the second day."
I'm a drugged Rip Van Winkle. "Was this an attack?"
She shrugged, a frustrated gesture. "I guess so. They did it through the meals." She shook her head. "God, you're the first person we've seen who's still sane."
"I'm Riley."
"Sheila." She looked down. "This is Dylan and Sara. I don't know where their parents are. I couldn't leave them, though."
Riley nodded. "What do you want to do?"
Sheila's face screwed up into a strange expression. "Everyone's dead and nothing's steering this monster except maybe a boat version of autopilot. The only thing to do is get off."
* * *
They went back into the newsstand while Riley kept lookout. His chest felt decidedly hollow as the main question hovered over him: How can I get off?
When they returned, Sheila's hands held onto the children and two bulging plastic bags.
"How can we leave?" he asked, taking one of the bags. He opened it—bottles of water, single-serving packages of pretzels. He pulled out one of each and opened them. His stomach roiled, but it roiled over a sucking pit of nothing.
"Find one of the tenders—those boats we used to cross from the dock to the ship." Her tone suggested he should know this, and he chased pretzels with water, not pointing out he'd been stoned to a fare-thee-well at the time. "There are four openings and we need to launch it without killing ourselves." She frowned, as if realizing how unlikely that last part was.
He kept his voice even. "Can you drive a boat?"
"I can try. My husband used to own a boat in the 1990s." She looked away, biting her lip. "I gotta do something. I can't just...stay here."
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 44