by Paul Malmont
“Oh, no,” she said. He was hoping she’d put a hand on his, but she didn’t. Well, there was time. Since they were obviously on a snipe hunt, he could look forward to a long and leisurely sail with lots of easy time to talk with the missus while her mister was playing Wolf Larsen.
“Anyway, she’s better now, I hear. She’s been out of the hospital for about a year. But she’s never forgiven me for the divorce. And I think she never will.”
“Ahoy, Ron!” Dent interrupted from deep in the vessel, thumping on the cabin ceiling.
“Try and give us a little more warning on those wakes, Otis, all right? Some of us get banged around more than others.” Norma said it slowly and softly. Driftwood could feel her gaze on him drift away, but he felt that she hadn’t yet decided what to make of him. But she had called him Otis. The next conversation he had with her would be about her marriage, and he already knew where to start: how could someone as graceful as she be married to such a great lumbering ox and an obvious coward to boot? She’d had to practically drag him out tonight, when anyone who truly loved her would have risen to the challenge in a moment, inspiring her passions and arousing her spirits.
“What? What?” Ron’s voice was thin and strained.
“You know how you were asking on the way to the marina whether I had any tricks to writing pulps?”
“Sure. But…”
“I’ve got a little thing I call the master plot.” Lester poked his head out of the cabin vent. It was a little like watching a cuckoo pop out of a clock. Driftwood focused on a smokestack on the Queens side of the river. “It’s a formula, a blueprint for any yarn. It’s guaranteed, surefire, bulletproof, works every time, and you’re on the boat to prove it.” Then he dropped back below.
“Oh, you don’t have to go into that right this minute.”
“First.” Lester was moving back and forth, and with each trip he piled more gear onto the deck. As he moved, his voice faded, then grew louder in a rhythm which ran with the surge of the sea. “You need to come up with a different murder method for your villain, a different thing for the villain to be seeking, an exotic locale, and a menace which hangs like a cloud over your hero.”
“No, really! Les!”
“In the first line or as near thereto as possible, introduce your hero and swat him with a fistful. Just shovel that grief onto him. Something the hero has to cope with, like an incredibly difficult physical conflict.”
“Like a huge God-blasted ship?” Hubbard practically screamed. “Right in goddamn front of us! Is that enough of an incredibly difficult physical conflict for you?”
Lester dropped his gear and sprang swiftly to the forestay. Hubbard clumsily used the sheets to steady himself as he met Dent there. Driftwood stood tense at the wheel, years of naval training filling him with the preparation to instantly execute an incoming order from his senior officer.
The freighter was black, and running without lights. She rose up out of the murky waters like an ancient leviathan risen to the surface for a great gasp of air. Driftwood now realized that he had been sensing the thrumming of her engines for some little while as it had grown closer, without knowing what it was. “Her helmsman can’t see us!” From where he stood, the other ship appeared motionless in the water. Which meant that they were on a collision course.
“Ship ho!” Dent called. “Ship ho!” Even his deep voice seemed overwhelmed by the dark ship. There was no response. Hubbard shouted and waved his flashlight at the ship, to no effect.
“I’ll get on the radio,” Norma said to Driftwood and started below.
“Don’t bother,” he replied, and she paused. “Not enough time,” he said with a shrug.
“Come about!” Dent was moving quickly aft toward the rigging, Hubbard following on the port side.
“Coming about,” Driftwood rolled the wheel over, feeling the sensation of the rudder flexing against the boat’s motion. The Albatross skidded in the current like a sled which had hit an ice pond at the bottom of a steep snowy hill. The slope of the deck pitched over a few degrees and the bow began to head to starboard. Dent finished wrapping his sheet around the winch. Then he slid across the cabin roof to Hubbard’s side. He grabbed a gaff stick. “Hubbard,” he shouted. “Get behind me.” Hubbard moved behind Lester. “Get ready to fend off!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if that ship gets too close we’re going to have to use this stick to push away from her. Here, grab the end.”
“Against that?”
Lester resolutely braced himself. Holding the long shaft, prepared to plunge it against the side of the rising blackness, he appeared to Driftwood like a harpooner of old preparing to strike boldly against some giant, wrathful whale. The freighter was less than its own length out. Hubbard’s flashlight beam played upon her prow; streaks of rust and age had not entirely corroded away the letters stenciled there years before: Star of Baltimore.
“Ready!” Dent shouted to them all.
Driftwood realized that none of them, not even Norma, were wearing life vests. He could now see the motion of the freighter; the rushing gap between them was closing. Its great black hull loomed over them. Dwarfed into insignificance by its massiveness, Hubbard instinctively stepped back from the rail. Driftwood hung on to the wheel, fighting the turbulence as the Albatross thumped heavily into the Star of Baltimore’s bow wake. The sailboat shook from stem to stern; he heard the contents belowdecks slide across the galley floor.
Dent stabbed the gaff at the black hull, and as it made contact, he braced himself against the cabin. Driftwood slid the throttle of the weak engine up as high as it would go and felt the Albatross surge in response. The gap between the two vessels, measurable in inches, held steady. He had to keep the stern from sliding into the Star of Baltimore as the bow turned away. A foot of space opened between the two boats. The metal hook on the end of the gaff caught hold of something and was ripped from Lester’s grip. Two feet. Norma grabbed Otis’s arm. With a glance he could see that she was watching the action unfold with pure carnal delight; her eyes glittered even more brightly than when she had spoken of treasure. Three feet. As the gaff slid past him, dangling in the air, he could see that the hook had snagged the latch on the watertight hull door. Dent had speared his Leviathan.
They cleared the stern and skittered across the last of the foam and turmoil churned up by the ship’s big prop. To Driftwood, the impact of the final heavy bounce seemed right beneath his feet; at the same instant he felt the throttle go lifeless in his hand, the steady vibration suddenly ceasing. He looked behind him, to starboard; almost as quickly as the ship of mystery had appeared out of the elemental darkness, she had allowed herself to be swallowed back up into it. Almost simultaneously with its disappearance, he felt the currents settle as they made the transition from the murky, icebound waters of the East River to the calm waters of Long Island Sound.
He felt warm, soft lips against his cheek. The flush was gone from Norma’s face; she was ashen, but the intensity of her eyes was still stirring.
“Good job,” she said.
He nodded. She took one of his cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit it, and handed it to him. He shook his head. His hands were stuck to the wheel. She stuck the cigarette between his lips and he inhaled deeply.
“Damn Sunday drivers,” he muttered grimly. She smiled, just as grim. “I think I killed the engine.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do we go back?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Hubbard sat heavily on the cabin roof. “It was the ghost of the General Slocum, right?”
Dent stood above him, leaning against the mainmast for support, and staring at the wide, long wake of the vanished vessel. “That reminds me. The most important writing tip of all?” He turned his eyes toward the east, the sound. He lit up his pipe and grinned. “Avoid monotony.”
Episode Thirty-Five
LIFE ON the water had its own rhythm, which they became a pa
rt of easily.
Lester and Hubbard spent time below with the engine, but while it was not leaking fuel, and the bilge pump was functioning properly, its silence remained beyond their ability to divine without dry-docking the vessel and giving it careful attention. They both suspected the jamming of a piston; perhaps one of the rods had snapped as the boat had been tossed about. Nevertheless, the wind was strong and steady and they forged ahead through a day that was bright and clear. Dead reckoning and the sighting of landmarks along the Connecticut coast to confirm their location on the chart came easily to all of them, confirming their steady progress throughout the day.
In a bleary fog at the end of her noon shift, when she should have curled up in the warm spot Lester had recently vacated, Norma laid out roast beef, a beefsteak tomato, lettuce, mustard, mayonnaise, and home-baked bread which she had brought from the apartment. One thing marriage had taught her was that there were few things a man better liked to be in control of, and few things that gave him a greater sense of control, than the creation of his own sandwich. She set the platter aside on the galley table and set about refreshing the coffee. Then, feeling a little more in control herself, she climbed into their bunk.
As she lay between consciousness and sleep she could hear the men above discussing airplanes; Lester loved to fly and Hubbard was claming to be an accomplished pilot who had flown on expeditions over China, India, and Tibet.
“You look really good for your age,” she heard Otis crack wise. “It’d take most men forty or fifty years to do all the things you say you’ve done.”
Dent roared with laughter while Ron protested the veracity of his claims. As the young man, who did seem prone to exaggerating, launched into a detailed biography of his life, she heard someone come down the ladder. Moments later, Lester crept quietly into the cabin and slipped under the sheets to lie next to her. She could feel the cold air flowing off his body and she pressed against him to give him warmth.
“Getting any sleep?” he whispered.
“Sure,” she said. “Sounds like the boys are getting a little testy. They may not get their milk and cookies later.”
“What about me?” he asked, snuggling closer.
“No,” she said, slapping his thigh lightly. “Because then you’ll just want to sleep through your watch.”
When she went on deck later for her shift, Ron was sulking. She began talking to him about his children and soon his dark clouds began to dissipate. His mood became downright giddy when, several watches later, he was the first to lay eyes on their destination.
The small island rose out of the fog to meet them in the gathering gloom of nightfall. Its shores were high and rocky. Here and there they could see trees clinging to the top of the sea cliffs.
“It looks as if there’s a deepwater mooring on the windward side.” Lester said, looking up from the charts. Otis turned the wheel appropriately while Ron let out the sails.
Norma kept her eyes on the water looking for rocks. The water was black, with a prismatic oily sheen glistening on top. “There’s a dock,” she shouted. The wood was old and untended, and there were planks missing, but it was obvious from the length and width of the dock that it had been built to support large, oceangoing vessels. Without an engine to help they had to retry their approach under sail several times before Hubbard was finally able to leap to the dock and make the spring lines fast. Night had fallen heavily across the sound by the time Norma finally set foot upon the creaking wood of the dock. She could see the lights from distant dwellings twinkling far across the water, beckoning her to come out of the lonely cold and back to the warmth of home.
The rocky shore blocked the wind and all became silent and motionless. A dank stink of decay rose from the ground, as if seaweed and more had been washing into the isle’s rocky crevices for hundreds of years and rotting. Upon everything was a haze of oppression, a miasma of the unreal and the grotesque. The large, bare rocks which formed the isle swept up in odd angles away from the waterline, until some fifty yards above and ahead of them the party could see the twisted shapes of small, ugly, leafless trees which struggled to survive here.
“Stygian,” said Ron.
“Cimmerian,” Otis agreed.
“Like Skull Island in miniature.”
Norma saw Lester tuck his pistol into his coat pocket and realized that this was what he had been rummaging for earlier.
“Got one of those for me?” Otis asked.
Lester shook his head. “Sorry. Let’s go.” He led them down the short way to the end of the dock, where the wood met the outcropping. “Look at all these fresh scrapes,” he said. “Someone’s been here recently.”
“A lot of fellas by the look of it,” Ron added.
Carved into the rocks was a smooth, narrow path which ran quickly uphill and disappeared in a small grove of those gnarled trees. They set off up the steep, moss-lined trail, their flashlight beams looking nearly solid in the dank mist. The trees in the grove were low and withered, their branches spread out just above the explorers’ heads and occasionally snagging the taller men, Lester and Otis. At one point, Lester held them up and urged silence. They each strained to hear what he had heard, but if there had been a sound, it was not repeated. They clambered on.
“Hey, Otis,” Norma heard Ron whisper nervously, “who’s your favorite writer?”
She could hear the tension in Otis’s voice as well. “Can we close the writing salon for the time being?” he snapped. “This place is giving me the willies.”
“Sure,” said Ron. “Not a problem. You can all keep playing the heroes. I’m still just a pulp writer.” She could hear him muttering a list of writers to himself, as if summoning them and the spirit of their tales to ward off the dangers of this night. “Of course, Jack London sets the standard for all of us. Hemingway? Honestly, I don’t get the big deal. He couldn’t handle real pulp. The Brits? Kipling, Doyle, and Conrad. Stevenson and Wells. Are the Brits better at pulp than we are? Maugham. Did I say that right? How do you say Maugham, really? Is it with an f sound or an h or is the gh completely silent?”
He grew silent as they crested the top of the hill and the path leveled out. The trees were sparse up here and craggy boulders jutted up from the gray ashy dirt. They could see the ocean on all sides from this vantage point.
“I can see the Empire State Building.” She pointed out the distant light to Lester. “It looks like a star on the horizon.”
“I wonder what’s worse when it comes down to it?” Hubbard’s nervous monologue began again. “Is a bandit worse than a brigand? Is a crook more dangerous than a thief? Why do we have more words for villain than hero?”
At the entrance to the clearing was a rusted chain-link fence clinging vaguely to leaning ground posts. The remains of an old gate hung desperately to a pole. Otis swung his flashlight around the clearing. The fence had once encircled its perimeter.
Lester lifted a rectangular piece of metal which lay to the side of the path and flipped it over: PROPERTY U.S. DEPT. OF THE ARMY. NO TRESPASSING. The small date stenciled at the bottom of the sign read August 1918.
“I’d hate to be the private that got assigned this sentry post,” Otis said.
“I think they forgot about this place,” Lester replied, tossing the sign back to where he had picked it up.
“There’s something up ahead.” Norma pointed her flashlight.
They walked past the gate toward the low structure. Concrete walls on three sides rose only as high as their waists. There was a wide cement staircase beginning at the top of the open fourth side and descending a short way into the earth, where it was stopped by a metal door. The door hung ajar several inches, exposing only darkness.
“An underground depot,” Otis explained. “Looks like Uncle Sam wanted this sealed up but good.”
Lester pulled the gun from his coat pocket. When the others gave him raised eyebrows, he shrugged back. “Better safe than sorry,” he said. He took Norma’s flashlight in his other hand
and descended the steps. He reached the floor and nudged the door open with his forearm. Then he shone the flashlight inside.
“It’s a room,” he told them. “A big storeroom. A big empty storeroom. Wait a sec. There’s something in the corner.”
“Lester?” Norma called, but he had already entered the bunker. There was a long moment of silence and then she heard him swear, something he never did. He came out a moment later and leaned heavily against the doorjamb. She started to slip past him to see for herself but he grabbed her roughly and held her.
“Bodies,” he said, shaking his head. “About a dozen dead men. Sailors by the looks of ’em.” He looked up at the other men. She felt him suddenly stiffen and stare at a point behind her. She spun around and couldn’t contain the horrified gasp which leapt from her throat.
There were two of them, appearing from behind the scrub trees which lined the path. Their eyes had a cunning, merciless, brutish glint but without a glimmer of human intelligence. Each of them had sallow skin glistening with oily liquid oozing from the broken pustules covering their face and hands. Clinging to each of them were the scraps and remnants of peacoats, wool sweaters, dungarees; one of them still had a knit cap clapped loosely to his head.
“The sailors from the Zephyr!” Driftwood whispered through his gritted teeth. “That’s why Towers marooned them. They’re contaminated exactly like the night watchman.”
“So now you believe him?” Hubbard whispered.
“Hell, yeah.”
Lester has the gun, Norma thought. We’ll be all right. She saw him start to leap up the stairs while at the same time another creature materialized from the rocks overhanging the door to the bunker, arms outstretched. In an instant the contaminated sailor had its arms around Dent and they tumbled against the steps, the pistol flung forcefully from Dent’s hand. Ron and Otis had intercepted their attackers and each now grappled furiously with an opponent.
A fourth slavering monster appeared from behind a rock pile and flung itself at Norma. Its moist hands closed around her throat. She grabbed its wrists and her fingers sank into the soft flesh without effect. All the man’s teeth were gone and she could see the bloody gums in its gaping mouth centered in its horrible black beard. Its breath smelled of rancid fish.