Dead Level

by Sarah Graves

  “Wait,” Sam panted, catching up for the second time that day with the slim, dark-haired girl running toward her brother’s vessel. Now she was pulling her sneakers off, hopping first on one foot and then the other, the little pink bobbles on her socklets bouncing.

  “I already called,” he told her. The second battery and pump were coming. Either they would save Courtesan or they wouldn’t; Sam still thought it was time for the crane.

  But Carol wasn’t listening. Instead she was scouring the surface of the water with her eyes. “Do something, for God’s sake. He’s down there!”

  Then, without waiting for his reply, and just as it suddenly occurred to Sam that in fact he hadn’t seen Richard in a while, she dove, kicking hard and disappearing under the waves.

  Oh, holy criminy, Sam thought, and was pulling his own dock shoes off when brother and sister surfaced together.

  “Go!” Richard shouted at his sister, and without even looking at Sam, Carol scrambled up the dock ladder, yanked her sneakers back on, and ran uphill toward the boatyard’s parking lot. Not only was she beautiful, Sam thought, but he couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman so athletic before, at least not in real life.

  “Back the trailer down here!” Richard yelled after her. “Do it now, Carol, I haven’t got much time!”

  It was worse even than he’d thought, Sam realized; just as Richard finished shouting out instructions, Courtesan heeled over sharply, as if at any moment the vessel might capsize right onto Richard’s head.

  Richard, though, seemed oblivious to the danger his boat now posed to his own safety, or maybe he was past caring. Instead he seemed to be trying to walk her in, up to his neck in the salt water with his shoulder hard against her, inch by hard-won inch.

  A pickup truck pulling a boat trailer roared over the crest of the hill, charging down at them. At the bottom it swung around, slammed into reverse, and began backing the trailer down the boat ramp a lot faster than Sam ever liked seeing.

  Well, except for right now, because apparently this girl really knew how to back up a boat trailer; bing, bang, boom and it was hubs-deep in the murky shallows at the foot of the ramp. The brake lights flashed and she leaned out the truck’s driver’s-side door, questioningly.

  “A little more!” Richard yelled. For a guy who hadn’t seemed to have a clue what to do half an hour ago, he was a dynamo now. Back then he hadn’t had a plan, though, and now he clearly did.

  But what? Sam wondered as Carol kept backing the truck up until little wavelets began kissing the tread in the vehicle’s oversized rear tires. The brake lights flared again, and the truck belched exhaust; Courtesan shivered minutely, as if she were deciding whether or not she had the will to go on floating at all any longer.

  For the moment, the answer seemed to be yes. And the truck was no dinky little Bondo-and-baling-wire vehicle, either, but a brand-new Silverado HD, the one with the Duramax diesel V8 and ten tons of towing power. Even that wasn’t big enough to pull a twenty-four-foot boat out of the cove, though, when she was full of water.

  Just getting her onto the trailer at all looked impossible. You could float an ordinary boat partway on, and crank her the rest of the way; people did it all the time. But Courtesan was so nearly capsized, her rail came within inches of the waves. By this time she was as heavy as the equivalent volume of concrete.

  Thinking this, Sam glimpsed a sledgehammer in Richard’s hand, and where had that come from? Richard must’ve scrambled back aboard his vessel, grabbed the tool, and jumped into the water again. He had an inner tube with him now, too, the kind little kids floated on; the big water toy had the words River Rat painted on it, and Richard was sitting in it, kicking his feet and paddling determinedly toward Courtesan’s stern.

  What the hell was he up to? “Wait,” Sam began, hoping to hell the crew he’d summoned to come down from the boatyard office and help would hurry up and get here. Richard looked cold, his hands and feet fishbelly-white, his face reddened with exertion.

  But he also looked angry, his teeth gritted in a blue-lipped snarl that said he’d get Courtesan out of the trouble she was in or die trying, which if he stayed in that cold water much longer was also a possibility.

  And what was the sledgehammer for? Sam wondered again, but before he could ask, two more guys from the boatyard sprinted over the hilltop: Nathan Brown and Nathan Durrell. One lugged a fresh battery, the other a portable bilge pump. After that, Nathan Frank appeared with a coil of hose on his shoulder; “the three Nathans,” everyone called them, like “the Three Musketeers.”

  Or in their case more like the Three Blind Mice; none of the Nathans was exactly known for smarts or efficiency. What they did have, though, was strength. Reaching the dock, the trio of burly men threw down their loads and craned their muscular necks around as if searching for concrete blocks to head-butt into fragments, or some walnuts to crack in their bowling-ball-shaped biceps.

  “Hey, guys, over here!” Sam waved, directing two Nathans into the water where Richard floated on the River Rat, then sending Nathan Frank onto the dock.

  Two big splashes and a couple of very Nathan-like wolf howls at the cold water later, they were all in position. The men in the water with Richard shoved ham-sized hands against Courtesan’s listing side, trying to help hold her upright.

  On the dock, the third Nathan waited while Sam hopped aboard the ailing vessel. Swiftly he fastened the thick lines to her bow and stern and scampered back over onto the dock, where he tossed one of the lines to his muscle-bound helper while keeping the other.

  Then on Sam’s signal they pulled, trying to keep the boat level while the water inside her sloshed around trying to capsize her. The line tore Sam’s hands as waves buffeted Courtesan. He fought for his grip and his balance while the ocean shoved the boat this way and that; out of sight on the far side of the boat, the other men cursed in alarm as Courtesan leaned … then somehow righted herself once more.

  “Okay!” Richard shouted to Carol as, madly paddling and then jumping entirely out of the River Rat, he ran up the boat ramp to the truck, grabbed the winch hook on the trailer, and hauled the winch line out by dragging the hook down to the boat again.

  Moments later he’d snapped it to her bow. “Okay, now, when I tell you to, hit the winch switch, but leave it on ‘low’!”

  She stuck her head out the truck’s window. “But don’t you want to get her out of there as fast as …?”

  “Do what I say!” He threw himself back onto the inner tube. “Now heave!” he yelled at the Nathans, and in response, the two in the water put the flats of their hands to her hull, their big shoulder muscles bulging, while the one above hauled.

  Sam jumped aboard once more, meaning to take her mast down. But Richard had something else in mind. “Below!” he ordered, his voice now thinned nearly to a whisper with cold and exertion.

  And desperation. “Put your ear down by the bilge, tell me if you hear any water running out,” Richard yelled. Then with a painful-sounding whoop of a gasped-in breath, he swung the big hammer.

  “Richard, no!” Sam yelled, realizing suddenly what Richard had in mind, but too late. When the hammer hit Courtesan’s stern, a sickening crunch of fracturing fiberglass reverberated through the boat, up through the soles of Sam’s wet boat shoes. Courtesan inched forward, reluctant as a tub of mud, at the urging of the Nathans; as her prow nosed up to the trailer, they muscled her on center relative to the trailer’s wheels; even if that was as far as they ever got her, Sam thought, it was a miracle.

  But the hardest part was still to come. “Now!” Richard yelled to the girl in the truck. “Easy, easy …”

  The winch engaged, reeling slack out of the line. But when Courtesan’s weight hit the motor, it began screaming with strain.

  “Stop, stop!” Richard yelled through the motor’s howl. It cut off sharply, the winch’s heavy cable thrumming with tautness. Courtesan wallowed like a way-too-big fish on a too-light line, unable to free herself but still too he
avy to be reeled in.

  From out of sight below the stern came the crash of Richard’s hammer smashing into the fiberglass again, then his shout: “Push! Push! If we can get her aimed uphill …”

  Richard’s plan was simple, Sam realized, but desperately risky. With her prow hauled up onto the trailer, which itself was perched on the slanted ramp, Courtesan’s prow would be angled up enough so that water could drain downhill, out the holes Richard put in her stern.

  It wasn’t an elegant rescue method, and not one Sam would’ve advised. But it was too late now, and—

  Sam, someone said. He looked around. No one was there but the muscle-bound man hauling on a second line, up toward the prow.

  “Sam!” Richard’s voice this time. “Do you hear …?”

  By now Richard Stedman looked as if he needed saving even more than his vessel did. His face was milk-white with a slash of blue lips cut into it as if with a scalpel; the hands sticking out from his black wet-suit sleeves were purplish red from cold.

  Sam jumped down through the hatch to the below-decks cabin. He leaned down over the hole in the floor that Richard had rammed the fatal iron rod into while trying to free the centerboard. The hole, awash in black, oily water, looked as if the wet, scaly arm of a science-fiction monster might shoot suddenly up out of it.

  Sam. That voice again. But—his gaze flickered around the cabin’s neglected interior—there wasn’t anyone here, either.

  What the …? Sam backed up the three rubber-treaded hatchway steps to the deck. He could lean over from there and hear better, without the waves slap-slapping the outside of the hull on either side of him.

  Richard hit the boat with his hammer yet again; in response the stern dropped noticeably, way too fast for Sam’s taste. The whole idea was for water to run out of the boat, not in. But if Richard wasn’t careful, he’d sink Courtesan while trying to save her.

  And then, astonishingly: Sam. How they hangin’, buddy?

  Which was when he knew he was losing it. Brain-damaged, the way his mother always said he would be if he kept on drinking and drugging. Or maybe he had a tumor, just like …

  The phrase had always been his dad’s weird, awkward way of trying to be a buddy to Sam. But there’s no such thing as ghosts, he thought, and even if there were, why here?

  Why now? Disbelievingly, he crept forward toward the hatch leading to the hole in the cabin floor, roiling with dark water.

  Somewhere above, outside, far away, Richard bashed his boat again with the sledgehammer; Carol revved the truck’s engine; a winch motor whined. The Nathans groaned, heaving the vessel forward; Sam felt it tilt up beneath him, its prow lifting as the Nathans shoved it and the winch howled its distress.

  “Sam? What’s happening? Talk to me, pal, can you hear any water going out?”

  Richard’s rasping voice hauled Sam back to himself. A loud gushing sound was indeed coming from Courtesan’s punctured stern; she’d gotten up onto the trailer enough so gravity was emptying her at least a little bit, as Richard had hoped. Turning from the gurgle of flowing water, Sam shouted encouragingly.

  “Yeah! Keep her stern low, let it run awhile before you—”

  Winch it anymore, he’d been about to say, because the motor with all that weight on the winch line still sounded overloaded. Once Courtesan was lighter, they could pull her higher onto the trailer, let even more of what she’d taken on drain out.

  Or that was the plan, anyway. Out of the blue, though, Sam recalled his own thought of earlier, that a boat always had some new curve to throw at you. No sense getting too confident …

  Sam. Down here. A thrill of real fear went through him: the voice wasn’t in his head anymore.

  No, it was coming up out of that hole in the cabin’s floor, definitely. A familiar voice … but that was impossible. That was crazy.…

  His dad’s voice. Slowly, Sam turned from the hatch opening where he’d been about to go back up on deck. Instead he’d venture another look down into the hole, just to prove to himself that …

  Goddammit, Sam, you get over here right this minute.

  Sam obeyed, certain he was hallucinating. But the force of the command, the implied but very strong or else he heard in it nearly levitated him to the edge of the hole.

  He leaned over, peered in, and—

  No. Can’t be. But there in the wet depths under the filthy bilge water floated his father’s face: long lantern jaw, cleft chin, and full mouth. And the eyes …

  Oh, those were his father’s eyes, all right, only now they were pure white, as if soaked for a long time in salt water. Eyes like a couple of pearl onions staring at him.

  Sam bent down into the hole, trying to see better, to find any sanity-saving scrap of evidence at all to tell him that this was an optical illusion or hallucination of some kind, and not his dead father barking orders at him from inside the hull of a sinking sailboat.

  “Dad?” he whispered. The face smiled.…

  And then a lot of things happened at once: the scream of the overloaded winch motor, a bang like a gunshot, Richard’s shout of dismay. An instant later something smashed fast through the wall of the sailboat’s cabin, just missing Sam’s bent head as it flew by with a hot, deadly-sounding zzzt!

  It smashed out again through the aft porthole, ripping away a chunk of the teak trim as it exited. Seconds later Richard scrambled aboard, nearly weeping.

  “Jesus, oh, Jesus. Sam, are you okay? Are you—”

  Sam straightened. He could feel Courtesan sliding down off the trailer she’d been half perched on, back into the water. But not floating; with all those holes bashed into her, she couldn’t. Instead, she was settling fast, in a swift, decisively straight-down fashion that would put her keel on the bottom in—

  Less than a minute. He grabbed Richard’s slick, wet-suit-covered arm, dragged him along behind him as he scrambled out the hatchway opening. “Come on, we’ve got to—”

  Because she wasn’t going to sit keel-down, he could feel it in the way she wallowed beneath him. She was sly, this vessel, so she would try to trick them into thinking she was stable, but at the last moment she would …

  “Come on!” Already the deck slanted a good thirty degrees to port. “Go, go, go …”

  The mast dipped to forty-five degrees. Sam shoved Richard up over the rail, forcing him to clamber onto the dock. Right behind him, Sam put a foot on the rail, too, meaning to follow. But at that moment, Courtesan gave a mighty shudder, unbalancing him.

  Oh, hell, he thought very clearly as his foot slipped from the wet rail. Then both his feet were in the air; past them, he could see a seagull, just one, afloat in the cold, blue sky.

  Then the back of his head hit the deck very hard, and he saw no more.

  It took a couple of hours to get the lumber sorted out, it being a rule that lumber-delivery guys always stack boards in the opposite order from the one in which they will be needed.

  “I should go soon,” Ellie said when we’d finished piling the boards for the railings, the ones for the steps, and at last the narrower planks that the floor would be made of, already cut to the lengths I’d specified. “But …”

  I took a wild guess. “But let’s drain the culvert first?”

  She nodded. “Otherwise, if we get more rain …”

  “Ellie, the storm’s gone by.” Even as I said it, though, I could feel the air cooling, wisps of clouds over the sun hinting at more rain to come. And the water in the pond was very high.…

  “But what if something happened,” Ellie persisted, “and you tried calling someone on your cellphone for help, only no one could get here to rescue you? Or—”

  By “something,” I knew she must mean an accident with the chain saw. Out here with no electricity—the solar panels didn’t provide enough juice to run power tools—it was a necessity, and she was nervous about my arm maybe getting cut off, and then no one being able to get out here over the flooded-out road to help me apply a tourniquet.

  “Loo
k,” Ellie wheedled, “let’s just drive out to the culvert with a couple of crowbars. Maybe a little encouragement is all it needs.”

  In my experience, a beaver-dammed culvert generally needs more than sweet talk, even if it’s teamed with crowbars. An atom bomb might do the trick. Or maybe a missile strike. But Ellie was going to be disappointed if we didn’t at least try, and she had put that lovely bath bag together for me.

  So after a little more grumbling, I gave in. Minutes later, following another brief, bumpy ride, the two of us were hopping out of the truck onto the dirt road bisecting the pond, still way too full—nearly overflowing, in fact—on one side, and muck-empty on the other.

  “Oh,” Ellie breathed, looking around happily, and I had to agree. It was a really glorious autumn afternoon, the kind Mother Nature doles out every once in a while between her more usual offerings of blizzards and typhoons.

  Flame-red leaves fluttered like danger flags on the azure sky. Russet-hued cattails thrust up from grassy thickets, platelike green lily pads overlapped on the water’s surface, and hawks sailed with wings outspread, spying out the whisker-twitchings of rabbits they could swoop down on and devour.

  The birds reminded me that despite its beauty, this remote wilderness really was a kill-or-be-killed kind of place, however cozy I might manage to make it inside the cottage. An unprepared or merely unlucky person could perish; just a week earlier, one hunter apparently had, walking into the woods before dawn with a gun on his shoulder and not walking out again. His body had still not been found. And I would be all alone here, so the road could indeed be a safety issue just as Ellie had suggested.

  But I still didn’t think the culvert-clearing project was urgent. I wanted to start working on the deck, not on a job that hadn’t even been on my to-do list a few hours ago.