by Tim Curran
Jammed between the metal floor grating and the lines snaking from an electrical junction box, he found something. Using a screwdriver, he dug it out.
At first Gosling thought it was a horn. It was a small, three-inch section of hard, chitinous flesh. Mottled brown, dead, covered with tiny sharp spines. It had been cut from something. Severed. It ran from the thickness of a cigar to a pointy little tip. It was no horn. Neither was it some discarded length of rubber hose or plastic tubing like he had also first thought. It was a piece of something. Like the tail end of a snake or some other animal.
Gosling prodded it with the blade of the screwdriver.
He couldn’t bring himself to actually touch it. Something about it was revolting.
It was slimed in strands of some snotty, gluey material like transparent silicone caulk.
It’s nothing, he told himself. Nothing to be concerned about. If you’re thinking this might have something to do with Stokes, then I would have to say you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree here. You’re simply assuming too much, my friend.
But was he?
He wrapped the section carefully in a rag and, even more carefully, stuffed it into the pocket of his pea coat. It could’ve been nothing, but it could’ve been everything. He had never seen anything quite like it. But that meant nothing in of itself. The sea was full of strange creatures and new ones were discovered all the time.
Was this part of the thing that had bit Stokes? Was that even feasible? Had it got at him and he sliced it in half?
Because, regardless of whether that scenario made sense or not, it looked like a knife had done the job.
20
Marx, the chief engineer, had it wrapped in a handkerchief. Just a garden variety lockblade knife. Lot of the crew members carried them in sheaths at their belt. Gosling carried one himself.
“Found it about an hour ago,” Marx said to the first mate. “Got kicked under a boiler coupling… maybe by Stokes, maybe someone else.”
Sitting there with the Chief in the Engine Control Room, Gosling was looking at that knife. There was something on the blade. Something crusty and dark. Could have been blood… or rust. Maybe it had been lying under the coupling for the past two or three voyages… but Gosling didn’t think so.
Looking at it, thinking of what was wrapped up in his pocket, he felt his mouth go very dry. “You suppose… you suppose Stokes sliced himself open with it?” he asked, though he did not believe it for a moment. Not now and maybe not before.
“Dunno,” Marx said. “Could be. Could be how it happened.”
Marx was a big fellow with a head bald as a mountaintop and a thick gray beard, ZZ Top style, that hung down to his chest. There was a Harley tattoo on his left forearm and an old Molly Hatchet insignia on his right. He looked very much like a biker and very little like a freighter engineer. But he was the Chief and he was the best.
Hupp, the first assistant engineer, was the only other person in the Engine Control Room. Years ago, there might have been a dozen men, but these days with advanced computer controls and desktop interfaces, it didn’t take many men to man the station. The room was pretty much wall to wall video screens and computer terminals, monitors featuring displays of various systems. Most engine room functions could be manipulated by merely selecting the diagram of the system via touch screen and highlighting it, bringing up its menu.
Morse came through the door. He nodded to Gosling and Marx, went over to Hupp at his console. “You went in that tank with Stokes and the other man. What happened?”
Hupp went through it all for what seemed the fiftieth time in the past few hours. “I cleaned some weeds out of the intake… Stokes, he was behind me, he said there was something in the water. Fish, I figured. We’re always sucking fish through the screens, Sir, nothing new there. Well, we must have pulled in a lot of weeds because the mud box was full of them…”
Gosling just listened, hearing it now for the second or third time himself. The ballast intake was fitted with a grid to filter out large objects and a finer screen in the mudbox for the removal of smaller objects.
“… I replaced the screen and… well, Stokes said something brushed his leg. Something like that. I didn’t think much of it. Well, he took out his knife and slashed at something in the water… I don’t know what… and I told him to quit fooling around and lend a hand. We were replacing the second screen. You know how they rot away. Anyway, Stokes cut himself with his goddamn knife and… well, couldn’t have been more than a few moments later he started screaming and thrashing. He yanked off his coat and threw it at us, then he stumbled into the water, thrashing around. Before we could get to him, he was up and out of there. That’s all I know.”
Morse just nodded. He turned to Gosling and Marx. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go have a look in that tank.”
Down to the pump deck they went, pausing before the service hatch to the starboard aft ballast tank. There was a strong smell of stagnation and dank saltwater about it. The hatch was secured with a couple dozen bolts. Marx put a ratchet on them and they creaked at first, his muscles bulging, then they came loose easily. It hadn’t been that easy when Hupp had removed it. The bolts had been rusted in place since the last time the ship was serviced and they had to use an air ratchet to get them loose.
When Marx was down to the last few bolts, Morse said, “I’m thinking about what Hupp said. About how Stokes had cut himself. Maybe he got blood in the water and maybe it attracted something.”
It was a leap, but considering what had happened and what was happening, not much of one. Gosling thought it over, his brain churning up nasty images of creatures that could smell blood in the water: sharks, piranhas, other things he didn’t want to think about.
Marx loosened the last two bolts and Gosling helped him lift the hatch free. The stench of stagnation and cloying wetness was stronger now, wafting up from the depths of the ballast tank. It reminded Gosling of tidal pools and stranded marine life. Morse and he donned the rubber chest waders Marx had set out for them, yellow hardhats with highpower halogen lights strapped to them.
“You hear any funny business down there, Chief,” Morse said. “Feel free to send in the Marines.”
Marx offered him a sly grin and handed both men gaffs, being it was the only thing resembling a weapon that engineering could come up with on such short notice. They were basically meat hooks screwed onto the ends of broom handles.
Without further ado, Morse clicked on his light and slid through the manway, his rubber boots finding an uneasy purchase on the slimy iron rungs leading down. One step at a time he descended into the murk and Gosling was right behind him. The ballast tank was huge, about the size of a basketball court. At the bottom of the service ladder, Morse’s boots slipped into the brown, stinking water. It came up past his hips.
Gosling eased into it, feeling the dank chill of it wafting around him.
“How’s the water down there?” Marx called from above.
“Nice,” Morse called up to him. “Strip down to your skivvies and take a dip with us.” Marx chuckled from the hatch above, his voice echoing around with an eerie resonance.
No, there was nothing funny about the sound of that laughter and standing in the sluicing brown water, it was even worse. Gosling hadn’t been down in a ballast tank in years. Not since he was a deckhand and had to clean them out. Even when they were drained, there was still a foot of oozing sediment that had to be hosed out. And right then, Gosling could feel the muck with each step he took. Every movement made was amplified by the cavernous tank, coming back at them with volume. The darkness was thick down there, a mist wafting off that filthy water. A few dead fish and bits of weed floated on the oily surface.
They played their helmet lights around and there was nothing to see but water and silt built up on the walls.
The stench was stronger now, almost overpowering. Like decay and brackish swamps, putrescent mud. Water was dripping. The air close and clammy.
> They started off and Gosling could feel the breath in his lungs, the papery rustle of his heart. He’d never been prone to claustrophobia… but he was feeling it today. The tank was like some immense, submerged casket, the air thin and moist, all that brown, smelling water like some heady organic soup drained from a primordial, subterranean sea.
Morse led them forward, the beams of their headlamps bobbing and jumping, creating vast shadows and murky forms that rose from the mildewed water.
“See anything?” Morse asked and his voice sounded dry, airless.
“Not a damn thing,” Gosling said, panning his light looking for. .. he did not know what he was looking for. But maybe something that could smell blood in the water, something with teeth.
Morse stopped. “You hear something?” he said.
Gosling just shook his head, sucking that charnel mist into his lungs. He listened and heard only the drip of water from some intake pipe. He scanned his light back and forth. Grotesque, huge shadows crawled around them. Clots of weeds drifted past, a stray cigarette butt.
“What did you hear?”
Morse just shrugged, looked like he wasn’t going to say anything at all and then, almost in a whisper, he said, “Funny… sound. A sliding, swishing sound… but just for a second there. Behind us maybe.”
They put their lights back there and there was nothing but a few stray fish floating belly up. Morse motioned with his gaff and they moved forward, stepping carefully now. The water had been calm before, but now there were ripples and secret currents. Gosling was wound-up tight and he figured Morse was about the same.
“There,” Gosling said. “What the hell is that?”
It was something floating in the water, just beneath the surface. It could have been a large patch of weeds or maybe a scum of filth, but neither man thought so. They stood there looking at it, then at each other, then slowly – very slowly – they moved toward it. Whatever it was, it began to move and bob in the wake they created. Morse reached out with his gaff, his hands so tight on the handle that Gosling could hear his knuckles popping. In the splash of light from the first mate’s helmet, Morse’s face was sallow and lined with shadow. He looked confused, frightened maybe. There was no reason for it, not yet, but it was in both of them, chewing away at something vital and important within them.
“Let’s see,” Morse said, wielding his hook with a fixed, deadly intensity. “Let’s see what… this… is…”
He caught it with the gaff and Gosling tensed, made ready to swing his hook… was certain that it would begin flapping and writhing, but it did neither. It was nothing alive. As Morse brought it up from the water, they both saw it was only a denim work jacket.
“Stokes’?” Morse wondered aloud.
He told Gosling to get rid of it, knowing something like that could easily plug one of the lines. Gosling took hold of it and brought it back to the ladder. He went up half way and Marx caught the jacket with his own gaff and hauled it up.
Gosling went back down.
He was beginning to feel very ridiculous. Ridiculous because he wasn’t the high-strung sort. Fear, real fear, wasn’t something he had much truck with or use for. The ballast tank was just a ballast tank, not the home of some flesh-eating monster. It was time to start acting like a man here. There was a job to be done.
His chest inflated, heat burning where there’d only been a cold trembling before, he started back to Morse. Made it most of the way and then stopped. Stopped cold as if someone had taken hold of him.
Stopped there, he breathed slowly, waiting.
The sound.
It came again. A sort of muffled splashing noise, like something large had just dipped beneath the surface. Gosling panned his light over near the far side and, yes, there were ripples moving gently in his direction. They were too far away to have been caused by either himself or Morse. Then, he heard it again… this time from over near the captain. That same, almost hissing splash of something submerging.
More ripples, this time from behind him.
He felt something in his chest unwind, open like a flower. Yes, there was something in the tank with them. Something moving through that dirty water and moving with great stealth, playing a demented game of hide and seek. And all Gosling could think was that it sounded large and as he thought this, his flesh went tight and rigid as if his skin was preparing to be attacked. He stood there, waiting for whatever it was, waiting for something to take hold of his ankle or loop around his throat.
Another splash, then another. Finally, the worst sound of all.. . a snaking, sliding sound like something thick and wet brushing against the steel bulkhead.
And Gosling thought: It doesn’t know exactly where we are… it’s casting for us like a hound for a scent…
Morse started back. Coming fast. He held his gaff tightly in his hands, was ready to use it as the sounds came from just behind him. There was a look of abject terror on his face and if he had something to say, his lips were pressed so tightly even a breath couldn’t get out. Gosling turned and made for the ladder, splashing wildly forward, afraid he would go on his ass. But he made that ladder and started going up it.
There were more sounds in the water now.
Morse just said, “Climb! For the love of Christ, climb!”
It seemed to take a long time to fight his way up the ladder. The waders he wore were wet and heavy, the boots slipping on the ladder rungs, his hands gripping tightly. He had dropped his gaff and did not remember doing so. All he could remember as he reached up for the light, for Marx’s outstretched hands, was catching a quick glimpse of something as Morse started splashing toward him. A strange, convoluting form moving just behind the captain. Whatever it was, it was big. Very big.
When he was up, both he and Marx yanked Morse up through the manway and the three of them sat on the deck, not saying a word. Morse and Gosling were panting and thinking things and not honestly knowing if they’d overreacted or not. But were pretty sure they hadn’t.
Morse wiped water from his face. “Put that fucking hatch back on,” he said and it was not a suggestion.
Gosling helped the engineer put it in place.
Marx grabbed a bolt and was about to screw it in, but then he stopped. “What… what in the hell?” he said.
By then they were all looking.
Looking at what they assumed – and correctly – to be Stokes’ work jacket. It was laying on the steel deck not four feet away, rank-smelling water draining from it in little streams. What caught their eye was that the jacket was moving.
Or something in it was.
Marx stood up, grabbed his own gaff, said, “Something inside there
… you see that? There’s something inside there…”
Gosling just stared. Not scared or even nervous at this new revelation, just oddly amused. Thinking that there was a fish or something in there and it was nothing to worry about.
Marx hooked a sleeve with his gaff and lifted the coat up a few feet.
Water rained from it to the deck. Water that just smelled foul. Too foul for even ballast water. This was worse… it was rich and organic and almost gamy. Marx shook the coat and it moved again. Inside, maybe from a sleeve or the lining itself, there was something. Something white and fat and coiling, hanging on like a leech.
Marx shook the coat and it dropped to the deck.
It was bleached, bloated white, oozing with slime. Some sort of marine worm about the thickness of a garden hose and not more than a foot in length. It was winding and curling on the deck, trembling fatly, making slopping, slapping sounds. The outer layer of its flesh was nearly transparent and you could see a tracery of blue veins in there… but not for long. As it coiled, more of that slime bubbled forth, inundating it in a pool of mucus.
They all saw it.
They all stared dumbly at it, repulsed by its form, by its very existence.
Morse took his gaff and smashed it, cutting it in half. A gout of brown fluid spilled to the deck, lookin
g much like spider blood and stinking like a corpse pulled from a river. It made a wet, gulping sound and on one of its ends, something like a puckered, black mouth opened and they could all see something in there… something like a tongue. And then Morse kept smashing it with his gaff hook until it was in five or six pieces and still, floating in a bile of that slimy jelly and brown blood.
Morse was breathing hard, sweat beaded on his brow. “Ain’t right,” he said. “Ain’t right, something like that.”
And all Gosling could think was that it had been in the coat all the time. Hiding in a sleeve or fold. Standing on the ladder, he’d used the gaff to hold it high above his head until Marx hooked it. And at any time, that horror could have dropped down onto his face.
Gosling would have been disgusted, but there was no time.
For something hit the service hatch from below and then hit it again and all he could think of was those bolts laying on the deck, the bolts Marx hadn’t had time yet to screw into the hatch flange. Something hit against it from below and Marx grabbed a bolt, dove on the hatch cover and managed to start a bolt and then the hatch exploded open and both he and the hatch were pitched aside.
What came slithering out of there was not the thickness of a garden hose, but probably big around as a man’s thigh. A worm. But the mother of all marine worms, something mottled gray above and dripping white below, loops of transparent slime hanging from the puckered black mouth like drool.
Marx made a sound and Gosling didn’t have the wind to.
“Oh my God,” Morse said under his breath.
About four feet of it came up through the hatch. It was wet and slimy and stinking, undulating repulsively under the electric lights. Its black, puckered mouth shriveled away from what was inside. A tongue. A tongue that was shaped like a corkscrew, something designed to drill into its victim’s flesh. Like an abyssal hagfish, a slime eel, this monstrosity – like the dead one on the deck – would bore into its victim’s flesh and devour it from the inside out.
At least this is what crossed through Gosling’s mind and he was pretty certain it was close to the truth.