Dead Sea

by Tim Curran

  “The anchor will keep us moving in pretty much a straight line,” he said. “Because… yeah, we’re moving, all right… there’s tension on the line. We’re being dragged somewhere.”

  George was at the doorway with him, watching the mist out there, moving around them. Patches of red were reflected against it from the flashing beacon atop the raft. Other than that, sometimes the mist was dim and other times brighter. The illumination it threw was about what you got at twilight… things were visible, just not terribly distinct.

  Gosling took up a handful of water, examined it by the light of the stick. It was not water as such, but a slime of liquid jelly and sediment in an aqueous suspension. And it was pink in color, almost red it seemed. It smelled like rotten eggs up close.

  “That’s not right,” George said. “I’ve never seen water like that.”

  Gosling admitted he hadn’t either, but said it reminded him of “red tide”, when patches of ocean went crimson from dense concentrations of microscopic algae. “I don’t recommend drinking it.”

  It was the first time George had seen the stuff by true light. And it made him remember that when they’d righted the raft, he’d gotten a mouthful. But he hadn’t swallowed any… he didn’t think so, anyway.

  “Fucking place,” he said.

  Gosling laughed. “You got that right.”

  George cleared his throat, remembering the taste of that slop in his mouth. “I wonder if the others-”

  He never finished that, for out of the fog there came a high, keening wail that was strident and ear-piercing. It rose up sharp and whining like a cicada in a summer field, then faded away just as quickly.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, digging at his left ear with a finger. “What the fuck was that?”

  Gosling just shook his head.

  They sat there in silence, waiting for it to come again, but it never did. There was something about the quality of that wail that was alarming, that got right inside of them and made them want to hold on tight. It reminded George of some high-pitched version of an air raid siren… except he didn’t think it was a mechanical device. He had the crazy, frightening idea that something living had made it. But what that could be, he did not know. Regardless, it left him feeling numb, helpless, wanting to cry out, but not daring to.

  “Well,” Gosling said. “Well.”

  That pretty much summed it up, for what else was there really to say?

  And maybe, given time and peace, they would have tried to figure it out, tried to come up with something rational that would have wrapped it up nicely, but there was no time. For something thudded into the bottom of the raft. Something big, for it lifted the raft up five or six inches and dropped it back down again. George cried out in surprise, maybe it was more of a scream than a cry for Gosling grabbed him by the arm and his grip was like a clamp.

  Again, they were waiting.

  Whatever it was, it did not strike the raft again. But it passed beneath several times and its wake made the raft bob and sway, sent that jellied sea to rolling in slow, slushy undulations like ripples in a mud hole. George could barely breathe, could barely pull a breath past his lips they were pressed so tight. Gosling’s hand was still on his arm, tight and crushing.

  Five minutes later, it had not returned.

  “Must have been big,” Gosling finally said, releasing George’s arm. “Must have been goddamn real big.”

  Which was exactly what George was thinking. Except the word bouncing through his head was colossal. It was the only one that satisfied his runaway imagination. He was thinking something like a whale or the mother of all sharks. Jesus.

  “It’s gone,” Gosling said, his voice a little forced. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

  “But-”

  “But nothing. It didn’t attack us, so the hell with it. Just because something’s big, don’t mean it’s nasty.”

  George supposed there was logic to that.

  He stayed by the doorway, watching, guarding against he did not know what. Gosling went back to his radio and George was glad of it. For what was there to say? What could they possibly manufacture to explain that one?

  But he got to thinking: Still don’t mean shit and you know it. Still don’t mean you’re lost in the Bermuda fucking Triangle or something like that. It could have been a whale for chrissake. Quit panicking already.

  George started going through every whale he’d ever seen on every nature documentary on the Discovery Channel. He tried to remember their names and what they looked with. For reasons he wasn’t even sure of, this calmed him. This put something to bed in his imagination and locked the beasts of childhood terror in their respective cages.

  He looked at the sea anchor line. It was clotted with weeds and green nets of something like an aquatic moss.

  “Scrape it off,” Gosling told him, handing him one of the little rubberized oars.

  George took it, leaned over, started peeling the stuff away, a big and heavy clump of it was tangled on the oar. It smelled rank. He tossed it aside, heard it splash, and then saw that there was something still stuck on the blade of the oar. It was about the size of a shoe. In the dim light he could see it was a clot of something. .. something odd. He pulled the oar in, made to brush the mass aside with his fingers.

  The mass moved.

  George cried out in shock, dropped the oar. It floated just behind the raft, the mass still intact. Gosling was there by then, he cursed George for dropping the oar and brought the lightstick out so he could grab it.

  But he didn’t grab it.

  He didn’t dare.

  George saw it and just stared. Sitting on the end of the oar was something like a round, thick spiderish body, ringed by dozens and dozens of legs. They were segmented and dirty-brown in color. Two of them were up in the air, shuddering. From the top of its body there was a cluster of things like yellow grapes that he realized must have been eyes. As Gosling brought the light closer, a pink membrane slid over them.

  George wasn’t sure if it was an insect or a crustacean or a mollusk for that matter. Only that it was disgusting and he had a mad desire to smash it.

  “What in the Christ?” Gosling said.

  It just sat there, looking oddly grotesque and comical at the same time with all those eyes. George could see that they were set on stalks and jerked slightly as it looked about.

  Carefully, Gosling grabbed the end of the oar, tried to shake that beastie off, but it held on tenaciously. Taking up another of the oars, he swatted at it and it moved. George had a nightmarish image in his mind of the thing running up the oar and wrapping itself around Gosling’s arm, but it didn’t happen.

  Gosling swatted it again, this time making contact.

  It made a weird, almost birdlike peeping sound and ran off. Actually ran over the surface of the water, skimming along easily like a water strider. Then it vanished in the fog.

  “What do you suppose that was?” George asked, more amused than anything. The idea of it being on you was offensive, but he didn’t really think it was dangerous. “What sort of critter is that? And please tell me you’ve seen one before, Paul, or I’m going to start thinking hard on that Sargasso-shit you told me”

  “No, never seen a critter like that before. Like a sea spider gone all crazy,” was all he would say.

  He went back to his radio and George sat there, wishing he had a cigarette or a drink, just about anything to pass the time with. Because with that ever-present fog, time was distorted and he just couldn’t seem to get his internal clock moving.

  Again he waited, wondering what the next thing would be and whether it would amuse him or scare the shit out of him. Gosling was suddenly very talkative, going on and on about an old Chevy Bel-Air he was fixing up.

  But George wasn’t paying attention.

  He was seeing something out in the fog… or thought he was. He kept watching it, his skin feeling so tight it felt like it might split open. His eyes would not blink. Yes, there it was agai
n. A huge amorphous shadow, passing deeper into the mist.

  “There’s something out there,” he said, his voice dry as sand.

  “Could be another raft,” Gosling said, grabbing a flare pistol to signal with. He got up by George and watched, saw something vague out there, but just for an instant

  “It’s not a raft,” George said.

  “It’s too far, you can’t tell.”

  “Oh,” he breathed, “I could tell.”

  Gosling just looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is unless rafts have big green eyes that shine in the dark, that was no raft.”

  6

  “Hey, Fabrini,” Saks said, “what’s the difference between your mother and a refrigerator?”

  “Just fuck off,” Fabrini said.

  “Wrong. The difference is that your meat don’t fart when you pull it out of a refrigerator.”

  Menhaus giggled. “That’s a good one, Saks. I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Yeah, you remember it, dipshit.”

  Saks was figuring, according to the luminous dial of his watch, that the sun would be up in an hour or so. And maybe when that happened, it would burn off the damn fog. But he had his doubts. He had doubts about a lot of things, only he wasn’t voicing them. These two… Menhaus and Fabrini… they weren’t much. They were both scared white and maybe, inside, Saks was, too. But he couldn’t let them see that. Way he was figuring things, he was in charge and he had to set an example for those two wet-ends. He started telling them what he was really thinking about all this, that it was the mother of all clusterfucks, and those two pussies would be pissing themselves and calling for their mothers.

  No, somebody had to exhibit some balls here and Saks figured the mantle had fallen to him.

  What he was really thinking about this whole mess was not good. Maybe they were still in the Atlantic and maybe they’d been vomited somewhere else. Didn’t much matter when you came down to it. What mattered is how they handled it and how they were going to stay alive.

  Fabrini was the real problem here. He kept saying things that were getting Menhaus all worked up. And Saks couldn’t have that. Couldn’t have him going on about sea monsters and shit like that. Sure, they’d all heard those sounds out in the fog, the sounds of men being eaten, but if they were going to keep their heads out here, they couldn’t be dwelling on those things.

  That’s why Saks was riding Fabrini all the time. Keep him in line, keep him on edge so he couldn’t spend his time undermining authority here. That and the fact that he didn’t like Fabrini, him and his Mediterranean good looks and muscles. Kind of guy women went for. Kind of guy that, down deep, maybe Saks felt threatened by.

  Fabrini kept muttering something under his breath. Saks could hear him. Figured maybe he was losing it. That happened, Saks figured he’d feed his dumb wop ass to the fishies… or whatever else might be out there.

  “Fabrini? What the hell are you doing? Whispering sweet nothings to Menhaus or what?”

  “I think he’s praying,” Menhaus said.

  “Are you praying, Fabrini?”

  “What the hell’s it to ya?”

  “Maybe,” Menhaus began, choking on his words, “we should just leave him alone, Saks. You don’t wanna bother a guy when-”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right, Menhaus. I’d sure as hell hate to interrupt John the Fucking Bapist in his daily devotion.”

  Fabrini kept mumbling. He was making a conscious effort to ignore Saks and the world in general. Not that Saks was going to put up with it.

  “Maybe we should pray too, Menhaus. Whaddya say?”

  “I’m not much on that.”

  “Oh, come on, let’s. Me and you and shit-fer-brains here can hold hands and pray to God and when we’re done hail-Marying we can have a nice little circle jerk, just the three of us.” He laughed shallowly. “How’s that sound, Fagbrini? Maybe we can work our way up on this crate and have a clusterfuck.”

  Fabrini kept praying, his eyes squeezed tight, his ears all but shut to the insults being directed at him. He hadn’t prayed since he was boy. He’d pretty much written off God and religion as a bullshit sedative for the masses. But like any man in crisis, he was willing to try anything.

  In the gloom, Saks was keeping an eye on Menhaus. They’d both started losing it after those sounds in the fog, but Menhaus more than Fabrini because Fabrini had some balls and Menhaus was the sort that needed to be led. He was the sort that needed someone to hold his dick for him, show him where to piss and what to wipe. He wanted somebody to make his decisions for him, tell him what he was supposed to think and how he was supposed to feel about things.

  Guy like that, you could lead real easy.

  Right then, Menhaus wasn’t doing so good. That business in the fog, those sounds, it was unraveling him.

  “Listen to Fabrini there, Menhaus, what a fucking waste. Lucky you got me here. You got any good jokes so I don’t have to listen to Fagbrini praying for a bigger rod?”

  Menhaus could fire one off after another most days. He was a repository of dirty jokes and salty anecdotes. Right then, though, he was having trouble. Staring into the fog and having trouble with a lot of things. “Um… let me think here… I… oh yeah, what did one condom say to the other condom when they passed by the gay bar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s go in there and get shitfaced.”

  Saks laughed until he started coughing. “I gotta better one. What does a sunken ship and Fabrini’s asshole have in common?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Dead sea-men.”

  Menhaus started chuckling and stopped.

  “Listen, motherfucker,” Fabrini growled, snapped out of his devotions, “you better knock this shit off. I’m warning you, fatass. I’m not in the mood for yer crap.”

  “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Saks said.

  “He’s just kidding you,” Menhaus said.

  Saks sighed. “Sure I am, Fabrini. You know I’d never do anything to hurt your feelings. You mean too much to me, sweetheart.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I would but you’d get all excited.”

  Fabrini resumed praying.

  “Hey, Menhaus,” Saks said. “You hear about the time Fagbrini got VD? He goes to the doctor and the doctor tells him, yeah, you got the clap. ‘You know who gave it you?’ the doc says. Fabrini says, ‘No, silly, I never saw his face, he was behind me all the time.’”

  Menhaus couldn’t keep from laughing at that one. He could feel Fabrini glaring at him, yet he couldn’t stop laughing. He laughed and laughed and then he stopped because he got to thinking maybe was laughing too much. Maybe it wasn’t that funny after all. Maybe, maybe-

  “Jesus Christ, Saks, what the hell is this all about? I think I’m losing my mind or something. Where are we?”

  “He don’t know, Menhaus,” Fabrini said, his words full of dread. “Nobody knows where we are. This place… this is where all those ships go, the ones that disappear. Sometimes they drift back out, but there ain’t no people on ‘em.”

  “Shut the hell up, fuckhead,” Saks snapped at him. “You don’t know shit. Goddamn moron.”

  All Fabrini did was laugh. And that laughter was bitter and haunted, filled with cynicism and a hint of stark madness. “You still think we’re on earth, Saks? That what you think? Well, guess again, because we got sucked into some dark closet just this side of hell and we ain’t ever getting out.”

  “Shit,” Menhaus said. “Oh, shit…”

  “Don’t listen to him, Menhaus. Don’t let him get to you. See? That’s what he wants. He wants to tear your guts out, wants to bring you down to his level,” Saks said, trying to sound smart and urbane and sympathetic, maybe more than a little superior. “Guys like Fabrini, they don’t have any balls. They wander through their pathetic, empty lives trying to make up for their little dicks-”

  “Go fuck yourself, Saks, you goddamn idiot,” Fabrini
said, derailed by the master once again.

  Menhaus looked from one to the other in the gloom as they traded insults, ran down each other’s manhood and mothers. He felt like a metal filing caught between two magnets. And down deep, he was starting to really wonder which of them was the craziest.

  “My watch is reading almost eight in the morning,” Fabrini said. “If you’re so smart, Saks, then why ain’t the sun coming up?”

  “You’re watch is fucked,” he lied. “Besides, in this pea soup, you won’t even see the sun.”

  That got Fabrini laughing. “Oh really? Why don’t you just admit it, Saks, the sun don’t come up in this place. It’s always dark and foggy and out there, out in that damn fog, there’s things that’ll chew your insides out…”

  Menhaus was trying not to listen, but it was all bouncing around inside his head, tearing things up. “It’ll come up… the sun has to come up, don’t it, Saks?”

  “Sure. Sure it will. Once it burns this fog off, then we’ll be able to see where we are. The others’ll be able to see us, too.”

  Fabrini barked that cynical laugh again. “Yeah, and so will whatever got the other boat…”

  7

  Thing was, nobody knew where they were.

  They thought things and they said things and they repeated maritime horror tales, but not a one of them could truly guess the severity of their situation or how far it was they were from home.

  Yet, each man hoped against hope. Each one carried a vision of the gleaming ship that would whisk them away to civilization. They would be given dry clothes. Beds. There would be mugs of coffee and cool water. Tables piled abundantly with eggs and pancakes, ham and bacon, bread and fruit, steak and potatoes, pie and cake.

  They hoped, but none of them really expected it to happen.

  They expected torment and death. They expected thirst and drowning. They expected starvation. They expected suffering in all its guises and, yes, they expected things to come at them out of the mist, the sort of things that had crawled alive and breathing from nightmares and cellars and dank, dark places.