Wraith

by Shane Smithers

  James and Aureole looked at each other and then, without uttering a word, darted in opposite directions.

  The engine room was large enough to conceal their whereabouts for a short time, but with only one exit it was impossible to leave while the sailor stood blocking the hatch.

  James didn’t see where Aureole had disappeared to and just hoped she was closer to the door than he was. They had to get out before more men arrived.

  ‘Hey, I’m over here,’ yelled James, hoping to divert the angry sailor from the exit.

  He heard the man run along the side of the engine, his steel-capped boots making the metal deck ring out. James squeezed through a small gap between a shaft and some pipes and popped out the other side. Then, with the engine between him and the sailor, he sprinted towards the door. It was obvious the man was cursing James for having tricked him.

  James felt a moment of triumph, but only a moment, because in front of him another sailor, much taller than the first, suddenly appeared. James screeched to a halt, nearly falling backwards. The new sailor lunged, but James jumped to one side, felt the breeze from the man’s hand brush his arm. James darted back the way he had come, half running, half stumbling, only to find it blocked by the first sailor. He looked to his left, looked to his right, stood frozen, breathing fast.

  ‘Fly up,’ screamed Aureole, appearing in the doorway. ‘Get on top of the engine. They cannot reach you there.’

  James propelled himself into the air, leaving the two sailors gasping in amazement.

  ‘Come and get me,’ yelled Aureole, waving her hands in the air, the severed finger still in her grasp.

  The taller of the two sailors ran at Aureole with arms outstretched, but she turned quickly, disappeared out the door, her long hair swishing behind her. The sailor followed her.

  On her way out, Aureole must have flicked off the engine-room light because James was now in complete darkness. He inched his way along the top of the engine towards the hatch, listening to the first sailor cursing as he bumped into various metal objects that rang out like bells in the blackness.

  When James was within a few metres of the hatch, he knew this was his chance. Without making a sound, he slid down a pipe and made a beeline for the exit. The sailor, seemingly from nowhere, ran in an attempt to cut him off, but James took a flying leap through the opening, his arms outstretched. He heard the sailor smash against something metal, but didn’t look back until he had reached the stairs. The sailor staggered out of the engine room. He glared at James, screwed up his fist and slammed a red button near the hatch. Deafening alarm bells sounded all over the ship.

  James bounded up the ladder, made it to the third level, covering his ears with both hands as he raced along the passageway. The stairs to the next deck were in sight. He grabbed the handrails, ready to fly, and then, looking up, felt his heart skip a beat – three burly crewmembers blocked the way. He swivelled on the spot and ran back the way he’d come, hoping to find another exit. The sailor from the engine room emerged at the other end of the passageway, a devilish grin on his face when he saw his three crewmates. James’s heart sank; he had nowhere left to run.

  Within seconds, they had James by both arms and were dragging him to the far end of the corridor.

  ‘Come on, fellas,’ pleaded James, struggling in vain. These men were much stronger than he was. ‘It was only a joke . . . a dare. I was dared to come on board. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  His pleas fell on deaf ears. They opened a door and threw him heavily to the floor. With a groan, he got to his feet, turning just in time to see the hatch close and hear the lock click. He raced over and started pounding on the door. ‘You’re not going to leave me in here, are you? I’m an Australian citizen! You can’t do this to me!’ He turned, pressed his back against the door and groaned.

  The room was cold and completely black. Once again, the night-vision sunglasses were useless. He pushed himself away from the door and started waving his hands out in front of him, feeling his way around. The walls were smooth and not made of metal, more like fibreglass.

  ‘No, please, not again,’ he whispered in the dark, inching his way along one wall and then another. Horrible memories of the ASU came flooding back to him, and his breathing became ragged. He was going to faint.

  Smack! Smack!

  James’s head had hit a heavy piece of metal hanging from the ceiling, which had then swung and hit him again. ‘What the . . . ?’ he moaned, rubbing two instant lumps. He reached out and examined the metallic object with his hands. A hook? He thought for a moment, then groped in the dark, searching for more. He found another and then another, and it became obvious what this room was: a coolroom for hanging meat.

  He knelt down, mainly to avoid being hit again, but also to investigate the deck. He needed to find something to pry the hatch open with. He couldn’t use the hooks, which were firmly attached to the ceiling. When he reached the middle of the room, he came across a scattering of broken fibreglass and metal, quickly realised their significance and started blindly feeling along the floor. He found what he was searching for. ‘You little ripper,’ he said, his fingers curling around the jagged edge of a hole.

  His spirits lifted: the SAFFIRE had fallen through here. Below him was the engine room. Above him was freedom.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Whaling Ship, Repair Bay, Port River, Adelaide, South Australia

  Not wasting any time, James levitated to the opening made by the SAFFIRE. He found a piece of ply covering the hole, quickly pushed it aside and popped his head through. The compartment above was completely empty. He squeezed his shoulders and then his hips through, with a bit of wiggling. A thin ray of light seeped from under the door and across the floor. Outside, the alarm bells were still blaring, and James realised that this would give him a solid advantage. It would be hard for the crew to hear him and, with any luck, they would be confused as to what all the fuss was about, since most had been sound asleep only a short time ago.

  Opening the door a notch, James peered out to see if anyone was coming. His heart pounded in his chest and his hands trembled, but his head was clear. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  He took a deep breath, swung the door open and sprinted up the empty passageway, straight for the stairs. He guessed most of the crew would be up on deck searching for Aureole. It should be a piece of cake to reach the top level unhindered, and once on deck he would be as free as a bird, with any luck.

  He could smell the fresh air even before he saw the ladder leading up. It felt like tiny tentacles, curling and probing at his nostrils, teasing his senses. At the bottom of the steps he hesitated. A crewmember ran past the exit, talking excitedly on a walkie-talkie.

  James took the steps three at a time, clambered out and onto the ship’s deck. Two sailors spotted him, their faces a mixture of surprise and fury. Another sailor, only a few metres away, blocked access to the side rail. James fled towards a stack crates but several sailors were quick to cut him off. He skidded to a halt when he realised he was surrounded. The crew, smirks on their faces, slowly closed in.

  James clenched his fists. He wasn’t going to give in without a fight. Sizing up the smallest man, he ran at him, screaming. The sailor stood there, stunned. James flexed his muscles and knocked him down like a bowling pin, then sidestepped another sailor and sprinted towards the railing. Three enraged sailors raced after him, narrowly missing him as he leapt with all his might. He cleared the handrail with ease, dropped several metres and then flew off in a wide arc. A loud cry rang out behind him and he glanced back. One of the sailors had toppled over the rail and was now plunging, headfirst, into the murky water below.

  James didn’t allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief until he’d touched down a few hundred metres away on dry land. In their haste, neither he nor Aureole had said where to meet if they were separated, but the place was obvious – the hopper. When he arrived, the little wharf was dark and deserted. No Aureole. He felt a knot form in hi
s throat. What if she had been caught? Or hurt? I shouldn’t have left her. I should have searched the ship to make sure she was gone.

  For ten long minutes James paced backwards and forwards, silently kicking himself. In the distance he could still hear the sirens blaring. Then, just when he had decided that he had better go back to the ship, footsteps echoed down the wooden walkway behind him. He spun around, half expecting it to be a sailor from the ship. The figure stopped short, still hidden in the shadows. James could hear a faint dripping sound. ‘Aureole?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, it is me,’ she said, moving out of the shadows. She dragged a strand of wet hair off her face.

  James rushed over to her, wanting to give her a hug but thinking better of it when he saw how drenched she was. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d escaped. And when I got to the hopper and you weren’t here . . .’

  Aureole tilted her head, began wringing out her hair. ‘They turned on all the lights. It nearly blinded me. I had still been in night vision mode,’ she said. ‘I could not see anything for ages.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Did you know that most of those crates on board are empty?’ James shook his head, but it made sense if they were only for show. ‘I hid in one until I regained my sight.’

  ‘How’d you get off the ship? Did you jump overboard? Is that why you’re all wet?’

  ‘Sort of. There were so many men. There was no way I could just walk down the gangplank. When I climbed out of the crate, one of the sailors spotted me and chased me to the stern of the ship. My only chance was to slide down that ramp where they drag up those poor whales. I am sure I lost several layers of skin.’ Aureole took a sharp breath and then sneezed. She waited a second and then continued, ‘I swam out to a buoy and just watched. When I saw you do that swan dive over the side and knew you were safe, I swam back to shore and came straight here.’

  James felt a stab of guilt. He hadn’t really thought about her until he’d arrived at the wharf. But . . . he had been just a tiny bit preoccupied. ‘They caught me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Aureole jerked her head up quickly to look at him. ‘How did you escape? Did they hurt you?’

  James shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine. They locked me in one of the rooms the SAFFIRE fell through.’ Aureole sneezed again, flicking water from her hair all over his front.. ‘You need to get into some dry clothes before you catch a cold,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘I have some in the hopper.’ She held out a closed hand. ‘Could you hold this while I get changed?’ she said and handed him the severed finger.

  James reluctantly took it. ‘You kept it?’ he said.

  ‘Actually, I forgot I was holding it in all the excitement. But now I think of it, it might come in handy.’

  James couldn’t imagine how anything so gross could be useful in their search for the SAFFIRE. ‘How?’

  ‘We find the person that owns the severed finger.’ Aureole’s eyes sparkled. ‘We find what happened to the SAFFIRE.’

  James’s eyebrows drew together. ‘Huh?’

  Aureole sighed. ‘I’ll explain later. First, I need to change out of these clothes.’ Then she sneezed again.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Erebus’s Lair, Adelaide, South Australia

  There was a single short, sharp knock at the door – silence – and then two more knocks sounded in rapid succession.

  Erebus quickly closed his laptop and stowed it under the leather lounge. At the door, he peered through the peephole and saw a distorted, but very recognisable, long nose and beady eyes gazing back at him. He unlocked half-a-dozen padlocks and opened the door. ‘Where’s Collins?’ he asked, glancing down the hallway.

  ‘Parkin’ the car. This place is worse than Fort Knox,’ Wilson muttered as he wandered in. He strolled over to an armchair and flopped down. ‘The day I’ve had.’

  Erebus closed the door, heaved a painful sigh. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘I nearly fell into a crate full of fish.’

  Erebus sniffed the air. ‘Are you sure you didn’t?’

  ‘Collins only just grabbed me in time. Mind you, it was his fault in the first place.’

  ‘Fascinating story. You must tell me about it sometime,’ said Erebus. ‘Did you find anything out?’

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ said Wilson, leaning forward eagerly in his chair, which squeaked under his shifting weight. ‘Lobster’s only $10.99 a kilo if you buy it straight from the docks.’

  ‘We’ll have to remember that next time we have a dinner party and invite the king and queen around,’ replied Erebus. He paused while Wilson nodded thoughtfully at his suggestion, then said, ‘I meant, did you discover anything about the SAFFIRE?’

  ‘Oh that,’ said Wilson, leaning back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. ‘Nah . . . well, yeah.’

  Erebus clenched his jaw, closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath. He waited a few seconds, breathed out, and continued, ‘Yes or no, Wilson?’

  Wilson seemed to think hard for a moment and then said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think so.’ Erebus waited, his eyebrows raised. Wilson smiled back.

  ‘Well?’ said Erebus, his voice starting to strain. Just at that moment, the same sequence of short, sharp knocks sounded at the door. Erebus sighed. ‘Don’t move,’ he instructed Wilson. He performed his lengthy unlocking ritual and swung the door open.

  Collins lumbered in, tossing the car keys to Erebus as he passed. The stench of fish was suddenly twice as strong.

  ‘What happened to you?’ asked Erebus, eyeing several brown stains on Collins’s shirt and trousers.

  ‘While he was savin’ me from fallin’ into the crate of fish, he fell in himself,’ said Wilson, slapping his leg and laughing.

  Collins made a low, deep growling noise from somewhere in the back of his throat.

  ‘All right, enough with the fish,’ said Erebus. ‘Tell me what you found.’

  ‘We found a ship,’ said Wilson, his bristly chin protruding proudly.

  ‘You found a ship at the docks,’ said Erebus. ‘A ship,’ he repeated, then paused. ‘Let me get this straight. You found a ship . . . at the docks.’ He waited.

  Wilson blinked a couple of times as though in slow motion, then said, ‘No, no. Not just any ship. We found one with a hole in it. Just like you said there’d be.’ He looked across to Collins. ‘Didn’t we?’

  Collins grunted in agreement.

  Erebus sat down. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, we overheard one of the dockworkers sayin’ about a ship, down at the repair bay, which had some mysterious hole in her deck.’ Wilson took a breath. Clearly, he couldn’t talk and breathe at the same time. ‘Anyway we went down to check it out and we found one of the crew just standin’ there smokin’. Problem was, he was foreign and I can’t speak any languages. But it turns out,’ he continued, smiling proudly. ‘That Collins here does speak a language – Japanese.’

  Erebus turned to Collins. ‘Not just a pretty face, eh, Collins?’

  Collins gave an indifferent shrug.

  ‘So, Akihito – that’s the sailor’s name,’ said Wilson, taking another breath, ‘told Collins that some strange object had fallen from the sky when they were crossin’ the Pacific. Put a hole right through the ship, right down to the engine room. Said it went straight through his sleepin’ quarters. Gave him an awful fright. Ain’t that right, Collins?’ Collins nodded. Wilson went on, ‘So they had to dock here at Adelaide. Only port that would let ’em in to get it repaired.’ Wilson paused again. ‘Yeah, the poor fellow was pretty distraught, ’cause he also said that if that wasn’t enough, they had a couple of trespassers on the ship last night.’

  ‘Hmmm, the competition,’ said Erebus. ‘Did they catch them?’

  ‘They had one, but he got away,’ replied Wilson, shaking his head.

  Erebus sat back in his chair and put his steepled fingers to his lips. This was all sounding promising.

  ‘So, do you think th
is mysterious object is the SAFFIRE?’ asked Wilson.

  ‘Maybe . . . maybe,’ said Erebus. ‘Did he say what happened to the object?’

  Wilson grinned widely. ‘Yeah, he did.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia

  ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ asked James, gazing blearily at the sign that said Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He was feeling groggy from the night before.

  ‘We will not know until we go in,’ replied Aureole in a chirpy voice. James looked at her in awe. Their ordeal, only hours before, appeared not to have affected her at all. He, on the other hand, felt tired and his back ached from trying to sleep in the cramped hopper. He was sure she hadn’t slept either. Then this morning all he’d eaten was a couple of pieces of fruit, as Aureole had decided to ration their supply. James was hungering for some meat, something the Azuriens didn’t seem keen on. So, despite having had little breakfast and a restless sleep, there stood Aureole, bright and cheery, her hair immaculately combed and her rose-coloured glasses glinting in the late morning sunlight. She looked stunning. ‘I asked the operator for the closest hospital to the docks, and this is the one she gave,’ she continued, smiling. She pulled out her phone. ‘I can ask again, if you want.’

  James eyed Aureole’s phone, not because he wanted her to harass the operator again, but because he’d not yet had the guts to ask her if he could use it to try contacting his parents. He swallowed hard. What if they answered and were angry at him? He swallowed again. But, what if they didn’t answer?

  Aureole surprised James and held out her phone. ‘Want to use it?’ she asked.

  James gave her a small nod and took it from her. He dialled his mum’s mobile.

  ‘. . . This is Celeste. Please leave a message after the beep . . . thanks.’ James’s mother’s voice ended and a beep sounded. His mum hadn’t answered. What did that mean? Could they have had a serious accident and now be lying in hospital beds somewhere? Or worse still, could they be . . . dead?