by Jack Lance
His voice sounded slurred, as if he had taken medication. Aaron had changed during the night. He was no longer the man he had been before the lift-off of Flight 582.
Jim scooted closer to them. ‘Sharlene, we now know there are other passengers who experienced the same kind of phenomenon …’ He hesitated. ‘… Including myself.’
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
‘I distinctly heard a woman’s voice in the cockpit,’ he said som-berly. ‘It was Jody, my wife. She was talking about a destination … I …’
He cast his eyes briefly down. ‘I thought we were going to disappear into thin air. Just like you, it made me doubt my own sanity.’
Sharlene nodded knowingly.
‘What did you do?’ she asked after a moment.
‘I prayed,’ Jim whispered.
Aaron did the same, she thought.
‘And now we’re here,’ Jim said. ‘Someone will come to our rescue. I have to keep believing that. We’ll talk about all that other stuff later, once we’re out of here. Whatever it was that happened last night, we have to push it aside. Right now there’s not a lot we can do, except make the best of our situation. And help those who are looking to us for their salvation.’
‘I understand, Jim,’ Sharlene assured him. ‘You can count on me.’
‘I always have,’ he replied.
She stared out across the vast ocean, fearing there was no one out there to respond to their beacon signals, just as had happened with their onboard equipment.
She was overcome by a suspicion – no, a conviction – that the bright sun and the blue sky were nothing but illusions. None of this was real. They were lost, in every sense of the word, in a place they weren’t supposed to be. In another world. In a different zone.
Hours elapsed. The heat became oppressive and there was inadequate protection from the effects of the scorching sun. Passengers crawled into what scant shade the tarp shelters provided in the boats. Especially for the injured, finding shade had become a matter of life and death.
Sharlene thought about Cassie, the woman with the sunglasses, and the Latino. She searched for them, and finally spotted both Cassie and the lady with the Ray-Bans in another boat. She hoped the Latino had also made it safely out of the aircraft, just as he’d escaped the Grim Reaper after the other crash he’d survived.
For her and these other three passengers, the door to the other world was open. Apparently, the same was true for Aaron and Jim. She thought she knew what had caused it in Aaron’s case. He had lived through the tragedy with Pamela. But what kind of scar was on Jim’s soul? She didn’t know, but it apparently had something to do with Jody, his wife.
They had revealed themselves to those who could see them, assuming the characteristics of their deep-seated anxieties. In the end, in the upper-deck galley, she had seen the demonic-looking black figure. What was the meaning of that?
It seemed obvious to her – now.
It showed itself to me as death, my greatest fear.
What could their real faces look like? What did they want from the survivors of this ill-fated flight? Why had the plane and its passengers been brought here?
Maybe time would tell.
The survivors exchanged stories, and the stories traveled from boat to boat. The most poignant was the story of a mother grieving for her lost baby.
For hours, Sharlene sat staring out across the ocean. Aaron, sitting beside her, did the same. Beneath the burning sun, she remembered their hotel room at the Tokyo Grand Hotel, room 534. They had fallen in love that night, and she had hoped their love would close the door to her past, permanently. She had wished for everything to be better for her and for them in the future.
It seemed she would be denied her wish.
The boat starts rocking more violently. She sits up and looks out across an utterly flat ocean. Night has fallen again. Everybody is asleep. Aaron, Jim, the passengers.
How is this possible? There is no wind, the surface of the sea is smooth, but still the boat rocks as if pushed by choppy waves. She realizes there’s something moving below in the water.
A few yards ahead, a black claw breaks the surface. She can see it very clearly in the moonlight. The claw cuts through the water like a shark fin, coming toward the small boat. Sharp talons bury themselves deep in the thick rubber.
A black figure, death itself, levers itself up and slithers across the bulbous rim, like a snake.
‘Sharlene …’ it growls.
She woke up screaming, sitting bolt upright.
It was still dark. She flailed her arms wildly, in full-blown panic, until she heard Aaron’s voice and felt his arms around her.
‘Sharlene! Jesus, darling, what’s wrong?’
She stared at him wild-eyed. ‘These things,’ she said, shivering. ‘They’re still on board and they’re coming back for us.’
Jim had been awakened by her screams, as had everyone else on their boat. He shuffled over on his knees to her and Aaron. ‘That Boeing is staying at the bottom of the sea,’ he promised. ‘I’ll make sure it will never, ever be salvaged.’
Tears ran freely down Sharlene’s cheeks. She pressed her face into Aaron’s chest.
The night passed without further incident, and a new day dawned.
During the next few hours the air turned stifling in the desert-like heat, just as it had the day before. Sharlene’s face felt hot and she was deathly thirsty. Jim Nichols had ordered strict rationing of water, no exceptions.
Two passengers on another boat, both well into their seventies, complained of feeling ill. Some of the injured were in bad shape. A few were approaching a critical condition.
Sharlene had no doubt that more people would die during the next twenty-four hours. And none of them would last several more days, especially if the water supply ran out. The weakest would be the first to go – one of the harsh laws of nature. All that the others on board could do was hope and pray.
But then, when the sun was at its zenith, it happened.
They suddenly heard a rumbling high above them. At first Sharlene thought there was a storm brewing. Then she spotted a tiny dark dot in the sky.
THIRTY-FOUR
Butterfly
The rumbling intensified and the dark spot in the sky grew larger. Sharlene peered at it, unable to believe it was a helicopter until she could see the machine clearly. It hovered over the life rafts, and then slowly descended to just above the glassy surface of the ocean. The chopper rotors fashioned circles on the water. The helicopter door slid open and a man tossed down a rope ladder.
The survivors of Flight 582 stared up open-mouthed, as if witnessing a visit from aliens in a mysterious spacecraft.
Sharlene’s boat was rocking violently. Around her, people started shouting.
‘It’s going to capsize, we’ll drown!’ a man cried.
‘Here! Here! Help us!’ another screamed.
Their desperate cries were drowned out by the deafening noise of the helicopter blades. Sharlene herself was exhausted. She let it all happen with utmost calm, as though she was going through motions in a dream. She hardly heard the chomp-chomp of the helicopter engine.
They were being rescued. Incredibly, against all odds, everyone in the boats was going to survive this ordeal.
The man in the helicopter climbed down the rope ladder, stretching out an arm to the first survivor he reached. It was a woman and he pulled her in. Then the next one. And the next.
When maybe two dozen passengers were on board, the helicopter left and silence returned.
But not for long. Some two hours later the helicopter came back. Sharlene saw the aircraft reappear as a giant black insect in the sky. More passengers were taken aboard and flown away, to wherever the helicopter base was.
The machine came back for the third time, and again, and again after that. The rescue lasted all day – until after the blood-red evening sun had dipped into the ocean and the last fiery remnants of daylight had disappeared – an
d well into the night.
Aaron never let go of her, and together with Jim they were the last ones to be picked up. When the helicopter with her in it lifted off, Sharlene looked at the sea spray and for the last time stared at the spot where the Boeing had gone down. It seemed as if the nightly ocean was blacker there; a grave for dark forces.
Sharlene snuggled close to Aaron as the helicopter conveyed them away from this cursed place.
There was more out there than just everyday reality, she thought. She had known this ever since she crossed its boundaries the first time.
This near catastrophe marked the second time she was leaving the other zone behind. She devoutly hoped the evil that existed there would remain forever locked up inside the wreckage of the Princess of the Pacific.
She worried, nonetheless, that her hopes and prayers would be in vain. Last time, she had returned to the realm of the living alone. This time they had come with her. The metal shell of the Boeing would not be able to keep them inside forever, if the nightmare Sharlene had the previous night on the raft was any indication.
But she had gained something in return: a renewed faith. Maybe Jim and Aaron’s prayers had made the difference between life and death, between that other world and this one.
Faith was something she could hold on to. Maybe, just maybe, she would discover a world of hope she didn’t yet know existed.
Maybe she and Aaron could discover that world together.
Sharlene squeezed his hand and wished she was a butterfly.