Dead Sea

by Tim Curran

  And what broke off all the fun and games was Makowski getting up and walking over to the porthole and saying, “None of you belong here. None of you. Tonight… tonight she’ll come… and you can’t be here.”

  “Who?” Cook said, chilled now.

  Makowski turned and looked at them, a sick yellow smile on his face. His eyes were dark and empty like drained ponds. “You know who. .. and she won’t want you here…” Saks wasn’t smiling now.

  If it was possible for him to be scared, he was now.

  14

  So, in the raft, they waited.

  They waited for small terrors and big ones, they waited for madness in every color of the rainbow… and some out of it. For although the talk was light as they rowed deeper into the weed, they fully expected death in their hearts. They expected it from the sea or the mist and possibly both. They did not know what form it might take, only that it would be terrible and immense when it showed itself.

  Gosling and George were rowing while Cushing kept watch for trouble.

  Gosling was worried about them, even though he would never have said this aloud. He worried about their flesh and blood, certainly, but more so, he worried about their minds. Because there was only so much the human mind could be expected to take. Only so much a man could drink down and hold in his belly before it all came back up. The camel’s back could only hold so many straws. And right then, he was thinking that those straws they were carrying were getting real damn heavy.

  Cushing seemed to be taking it pretty well.

  He had a well-disciplined scientific sort of mind. Regardless of how horrible the things in the mist were, he seemed to be able to rationalize their existence with a counterpart back home. For after all, he argued, even that big ugly jellyfish was really just a jellyfish. It was not some monster from hell.

  Then there was George.

  George was tough in Gosling’s book, he was sensible. He was the sort of guy who could take a lot because he pretty much had an optimistic turn of mind to him. But that was wearing. A little at a time it was wearing, just as it was wearing on Gosling himself.

  And maybe George wouldn’t admit it, but he was beginning to fray around the edges.

  Gosling didn’t blame him, for he felt the same.

  The mist, the sea, those goddamn weeds… they seemed to go on forever. It was all bad enough, of course, but the ever-present billowing fog definitely was not helping matters. How long could you be trapped in a raft in that thick, pissing fog before you lost it? There was something about fog that played havoc with men’s minds. Gosling had seen it countless times at sea. The thicker the fog got, the thicker men’s fears got. They became silent and morose and brooding. It was eerie and oppressive, claustrophobic and suffocating. It squeezed the soul out of a man a drop at a time. And when the fog cleared – as it always did at sea, sooner or later – men’s minds cleared with it. They began to talk and laugh, clap each other on the backs, maybe feeling foolish for how the fog had gripped them, locked them down in a black, sightless box.

  But what about in this godawful place?

  What about here where the fog did not lift? Where it was always steaming and misting and haunted? How long could the human mind hold itself intact in that maze of bleeding mist?

  There were times in these past few days… and even Gosling was no longer sure how long it had been now… when he had wanted to scream at that goddamn fog. Would have sold his soul just to part it like the Red Sea even for a few moments of clarity. It was just… everywhere. And it got so you could not only see it pressing in like a shroud, but feel it and smell it and taste it. And there were times when Gosling was almost certain it was inside of him, coiling in his belly or filling his skull with gray, nebulous ropes.

  These were things you could not think on.

  But these were the things Gosling worried about.

  And that was one reason he had them rowing. The physical exertion would be good for them. It would give them a sense of purpose, the feeling that they were not just drifting aimlessly, but in charge of their fates. And something like that was very necessary to the human spirit.

  It needed something to cling to.

  Something to struggle against.

  But there was more to it than that. The weed was very thick now, impenetrable in spots. But there were channels cut through it and Gosling was just enough of an optimist to believe that those channels were taking them somewhere. Maybe it would be somewhere they’d wish to God they’d never seen when they got there and maybe there would be deliverance.

  So they kept rowing, spelling each other.

  Looking and watching and waiting.

  And it was while they were doing this that Cushing suddenly said, “Something… there’s something coming out of the mist.”

  15

  Saks waited, too.

  He waited for the ultimate breakdown of Cook’s little command here. Because like death, taxes, and Fabrini’s ass getting wet, it was only a matter of time. Some things were inevitable. You could hide your head in the sand or stick it up your own ass, but the bottom line was, they were going to happen. And the real question was: were you going to be ready to face them like a man… or were you going to be like Cook’s little crew of ass cowboys and shit monkeys and have yourself a group hug and a good fucking cry?

  He’d never in his life seen a more incompetent bunch than the four stooges here – Fab-rini, Cook, Menhaus, and Crycek. And don’t forget their new sidekick, Makowski, a.k.a. Slim Loony.

  What a crew.

  Outside of the Keystone Cops, you weren’t going to find a bigger bunch of morons. It was pathetic. Sickening, even. There was no doubt in Saks’s mind that they’d all spawned in the shallow end of the gene pool… and in Fabrini’s case, the side with the frilly curtains and oiled-up cabana boys giving back-rubs and sucking sugar plums out of each other’s mouths.

  Jesus, it was like some kind of fucked-up reality show.

  Cook, of course, claimed to be in charge. But, Saks figured, Elton John also claimed to be a man.

  And if he was in charge, what exactly was he in charge of?

  That was the real question. Because his crew wouldn’t make anybody’s top ten list. Crycek was crazy. Menhaus was a goddamn mama’s boy. And Fabrini? Shit, Saks had heard of guys coming out of the closet, but Fabrini was the only one he’d ever heard of going back in. And then there was the new guy, Slim Loony, who had more kinks in his rope than a squareknot.

  And then, of course, there was also Cook, like the poster boy for inbreeding, sitting atop this heap like a circus ape hoarding turds.

  What it all came down to was that it was every man for himself and that spelled death on a spit in a survival situation like this. When Saks picked these numbnuts for the job back in Norfolk, he’d never imagined what sort of goddamn useless, sewer-sucking shitrats they would turn out to be. The biggest collection of limp-wrists he’d seen since the Village People reunion.

  He found himself laughing at them.

  At everything.

  And he was the crazy one, they said.

  They thought he was the real danger. Of all things. Saks figured he was their only true salvation. The only hope they had of surviving in this goddamn place. Because, the way things were going, they were all dead men in search of a grave. Cook had no leadership ability. Neither did any of the others. Given time – and they had plenty of that, now didn’t they? – it was all going to come apart around them with Cook at the helm. He was the sort of guy that was all right for shining shoes and cleaning toilets, but you didn’t want him at the wheel. No sir.

  If Cook was smart, if he had the rudimentary smarts that God gave a dog’s dick, he would have organized and did some planning. Every man should have been armed. Watches should have been set up. And that was just for starters. Because Saks might have been hard-nosed and practical, but he knew one thing for sure: they were not alone on the ship. Something was there with them. And that something was not just another
nutjob like Slim Loony, but something else, something dangerous.

  Something… evil.

  Yeah, the way Saks was looking at things, it was only a matter of time before they wanted him to take charge again. He just wondered how many were going to be left by then.

  16

  Crycek woke to the sound of scratching.

  Right away he started thinking rats. Started thinking big rats. Because the sound he was hearing at the door was not a little sound, but a big sound, the sort of scratching noise that goes up your spine and scrapes around in your skull. The cabin was dim, though not exactly dark. Cook and Fabrini were sleeping. Everyone was sleeping. Except for Crycek and what was outside the door.

  Saks had said there were rats on the ship and he also said that was a good thing, because when the food ran out… and it was going to, yes sir… then rats could keep a man alive. Some parts of the world, he said, rats are considered a delicacy. But listening to that metallic scratching out there, like tenpenny nails drawn over rusty iron, Crycek wasn’t so sure about rats.

  You know better than anyone else that this ship is not empty, a chill voice said in his head. There’s something here listening and watching and waiting. Not the Other from the fog, the devil-thing.. . no, not that. That was big, gigantic, cosmic… this was localized. What waited here was… was… more of an echo, a sentient lunatic echo… something starving for company…

  It was not a scratching at the door now.

  It was a tapping. A gentle rapping, tapping like in that poem by Poe Crycek had to memorize in tenth grade. Tap, tap, tap. Yes. And who exactly was that tapping at the chamber door? Crycek did not want to know, not really, yet he swung his legs off his bunk and sat there, wondering and willing whoever or whatever it was to just go away. Go scratch at Saks’s door. Go anywhere but here.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  See, now it wasn’t sounding so much like a harmless tapping, now it was sounding like fingers drumming impatiently. And if it was fingers, then it had to be a person… didn’t it? But who would be out there now? And if they wanted to come in, why didn’t they just use their voice?

  Yes, fingers drumming now. Whoever owned them was not going away because they knew Crycek was in there and they knew Crycek was awake. That he could hear what it was they were doing. Come out and play. Come out, come out, wherever you are…

  Crycek licked his lips and his tongue felt thick, ungainly. “Cook,” he said in a whisper. “Cook…”

  But Cook was sleeping and that’s the way it had to be, Crycek knew. For whatever was out there wanted it that way. It would have it no other way. What waited beyond that door was for him and him alone. And the very idea of that filled him with a numb, white silence. The terror on him and in him was so extreme, so marrow-deep, that he thought he would have slit his wrists if a razor had been handy.

  He thought: I’ll go back to sleep because I’m probably not even awake.

  And outside the door, those fingers kept tapping and drumming. They were getting impatient. For some reason – and Crycek could not begin to imagine what it might be – whoever or whatever was out there, could not just burst in, they needed to be invited in. Like a vampire scratching at your window or clawing at your door, you had to let them in. But why? Crycek did not know, but maybe it was just the politics of this particular virus of madness.

  Crycek got up, stood over Fabrini for a moment, but Fabrini was lost in a deep, almost narcotic slumber from which there was no waking. Cook was stretched out like a body on a slab and was pretty much lost to the world.

  Crycek turned to the door.

  He stopped two or three feet away, balling his hands into fists so they wouldn’t inadvertently reach up and pull the latch, let that clutch of creeping shadows come whispering in. Because it was there: a need to open that door. That crazy, suicidal urge the human animal has at times, to destroy itself completely just for the morbid thrill of it. Like having a gun in your hand and wanting to feel the cold steel of the barrel against your temple or wondering what it might be like to dive out a tenth-story window. The urge was there. And at times of great stress or confusion, it became active, wanted to assert itself. Such a time was now for Crycek. His fingertips were actually tingling, wanting to feel the latch beneath them. Wanting to know it. Just as his ears wanted to hear the creak of that latch, his eyes wanted see that grinning malignancy on the other side, just for one shivering second before his mind blew apart from the sheer horror of it-

  “What the hell are you doing, Crycek?” a voice on the other side of the door wanted to know. “Why are you just standing there, you goddamn idiot? What aren’t your hands opening this door and letting me in?”

  That voice… maybe not real at all, maybe just echoing through the silent corridors of his brain… it was human, or nearly so. But funny. Like it was full of wet sand. Crycek recognized the voice: it was Morse. Captain Morse. The skipper of the Mara Corday and Crycek’s boss.

  He wanted to come in. He sounded pissed-off and desperate.

  But was it Morse? Maybe Morse had survived and maybe he hadn’t. Maybe there was only this voice and nothing corporeal to go with it.

  “Crycek? Crycek, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Morse said with that thick, slopping voice. “Don’t you know what I’ve been through? Stuck out in the darkness where there’s nothing to touch and nothing to feel? Open this door, boy. Open it right now. That’s a goddamn order…”

  Crycek felt tears welling his eyes.

  Felt his hand going up to the latch, his fingers brushing it, something on the other side of that door getting excited, breathing hard, almost panting now with a wet, drooling sound. Oh yes, it was happy, so very happy.

  “Crycek.”

  It was Cook. He was sitting up in his bunk. His eyes were shining black bb’s. “What the hell are you doing over there?”

  Crycek started to say something, but stopped… he honestly wasn’t sure what he had been doing. “There was someone… someone at the door. They wanted to come in”

  Cook’s voice was thin, dry. “Who? Who was at the door?”

  “It… it was Morse,” he said. “Captain Morse.”

  “Morse is dead, Crycek.”

  Crycek nodded. “Yes, he is… but he wanted to come in anyway.”

  With that he went back and laid on his bunk, something like a distant scream sounding in his head.

  17

  Maybe they were expecting a sea monster.

  Maybe they were expecting something worse. Truth was, in that goddamn place, they wouldn’t have been truly surprised to see Santa and his reindeer come winging out of the mist with the Easter Bunny bringing up the back door. Got so you were willing to believe anything in that place. It was easier that way.

  But what they got was another lifeboat from the Mara Corday.

  “Hey, you bums over there!” a voice called. “You got any damn beer?”

  “Yeah,” Cushing said, “we got a keg we just tapped.”

  “Don’t forget to tell ‘em about the strippers,” Gosling said.

  They rowed over to the lifeboat and saw that Marx, the chief engineer, from the ship was on board. He had two deckhands with him, Pollard and Chesbro, both kids that hadn’t yet seen twenty-five. When introductions were made, George saw that while Marx – biker-bearded and bald, tough as lizardhide – seemed okay with all of it, the two deckhands were not. Pollard looked shellshocked, like he’d just crawled from the trenches. His eyes were glazed and staring, looking into the mist at something no one else could see. And Chesbro… he kept saying how it was all God’s will.

  George liked that.

  He wasn’t big on religion, but he didn’t have a problem with faith, figured it could be a good thing if you were leading it and it wasn’t leading you. Problem was, you said something was God’s will, it was just another way of throwing up your hands and giving up. And looking at Chesbro, you could see he’d definitely given up. He was a thin kid with sparse red hair and frec
kles, like Richie Cunningham with dead gray eyes, despair clinging to him like lichen to a rock.

  It was almost heartbreaking looking at these two.

  So young and so… empty.

  Not that George himself was exactly full. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was these days. It was hard to be sure. Sometimes he was filled with a nagging hope and at other times, bleak with pessimism wondering what in Christ they were going to do when the food and water ran out. When he thought about it, he could not be honestly sure how long they had been in the fog now. A few days probably… no more than three or four, but, dammit, sometimes it seemed like it must have been a week or a month or a year. And when he tried to remember life before the Dead Sea, life back in the real world… he had trouble. It all seemed blurry and indistinct like a photo of a flying saucer or bigfoot. Purposely out of focus. Like trying to recall a dream clearly half way through the day. Seemed that maybe he’d never been anywhere else but here and the rest of it was just something he’d dreamed about.

  And Christ, he knew that sort of thinking was trouble.

  But he thought it all the same.

  He kept thinking: I got a wife and a kid out there somewhere, light years from this place probably. Somehow, some way I got to see them again. I just have to. I can’t die in this hellhole, I just can’t. The idea of them spending their life with some half-baked idea that I was lost at sea is unthinkable. I gotta get out of here… if only for them and not for myself.

  Marx was talking about the supplies in the lifeboat and how if they pooled everything they had, they could survive well over a month. “By then, First,” he said to Gosling, “we had better come up with something.”