“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I believe, sometimes not. I guess that’s like most people.”
“I’m a good Catholic, suh,” Oran said. “I love the Holy Mother and the baby Jesus, and I pray to them. I wish … I wish I’d gone to church more often, suh. Gone to confession.”
“Murder is a lot to confess,” Gordon said.
“Do you know who Saint Bruno is, suh?”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Gordon said.
“He’s the patron saint of exorcism, suh, of ridding the world of evil spirits. I think he’s the one I should pray to now.”
Gordon raised his eyebrows. “Exorcism?”
“My family, suh, we go way back in the bayou. We come from Acadian stock, suh—Frenchmen who migrated all the way from Quebec down to Louisiana. My family were trappers, and over time they mixed with locals—Spanish colonists, escaped slaves, Tunica Indians from the surrounding territories. We’re bayou through and through, suh; it’s in our blood now. And in the bayou, Catholics don’t just believe in what comes out of the Vatican. It’s combined with stories people been tellin’ in the bayou for centuries. We believe Jesus rose from the dead to forgive our sins, but we also believe there are things out in the swamps. Ghost lights, spirits, creatures, the vengeful dead. The rougarou.”
Gordon straightened. “You used that word before, in the galley. What is it?”
“The rougarou is a creature from the swamp that sucks the life out of people while they sleep,” Oran said.
The most astonishing part was that he said it absolutely straight-faced, just as he might say that a cat was an animal that chased mice. But on some level, Gordon knew he shouldn’t be surprised. He had seen Oran stab his brother with a chef’s knife. The man had obviously lost his mind. Was rambling about swamp monsters much of a stretch after that?
“I heard lots of stories about the rougarou growin’ up,” Oran continued. “They look like old hags. They tear off their skin and leave it in a stone bowl, then go out prowling the bayou as spirits. Some say it tears off its victim’s skin too, wears it as its own so no one can tell the difference. Ain’t no way to kill it except by finding its bowl and sprinkling salt on the skin it left behind.”
Gordon shook his head. Clearly, Oran was too far gone for him to reach. This story that his brother had been replaced by the roving spirit of a swamp hag was stark-raving lunacy.
“I know how this must sound, suh,” Oran said. “But they’re here, suh, on this submarine. That thing I stabbed, it ain’t LeMon. It’s not my brother. It’s a rougarou. And I’m tellin’ you, it’s still alive.”
Gordon walked back toward the stateroom door.
“Where you going, Lieutenant?” Oran asked.
“We’re done here, Guidry.”
Oran hung his head. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
Gordon didn’t answer. His silence was answer enough.
“Just be careful out there, suh,” Oran said. “Promise me. There never is just one rougarou.”
“That was your brother you stabbed,” Gordon snapped. “Not some creature from your bayou folktales. Don’t you understand that? Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Monje was already dead,” Oran said.
Gordon gave up. There was no reasoning with the man. He just wished he had spotted the warning signs sooner. If he had, maybe he could have saved LeMon’s life. He went to the door, ready to leave this madhouse. More than ready.
A loud crash came from outside. Gordon stiffened. Oran stood up quickly from the bed.
“Ensign Van Lente, is everything all right out there?” he called through the door.
He heard Van Lente cry out, then a gunshot. Gordon grabbed the doorknob.
“Don’t!” Oran warned.
Gordon ignored him. He opened the door slowly, just a crack. The corridor outside was pitch black.
“Ensign Van Lente?” he said. There was only silence.
He opened the door farther, and the lantern light from the stateroom spilled out into the dark corridor. It fell across the lantern mounted on the bulkhead outside, and Gordon saw that it had been smashed. He pushed the door open farther, and the light fell on Ensign Van Lente. He was lying on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling. His pistol was on the floor beside him. Something was straddling him—a dark shape in the shadows. Gordon pushed the door open farther, until the light hit the shape. Its head was bowed, its face buried in Van Lente’s neck. The shape looked up at him, leaving behind a bloody wound in Van Lente’s throat. Gordon nearly screamed.
It was Ensign Penwarden. His mouth and chin were red with Van Lente’s blood. Penwarden threw one arm across his eyes, shielding them from the light, and hissed angrily. Gordon had only a moment to notice the elongated teeth in the grimacing mouth. Then Penwarden sprang at him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tim Spicer awoke to a loud pounding. He opened his eyes in the darkness of his rack. Confused and groggy, it took him a moment to realize that someone was pounding on the side of his bunk.
“Tim!” a voice hissed. “Tim, wake up!”
It was Jerry White’s voice. Tim leaned up on one elbow and slid the heavy curtain aside. In the dim red light of the berthing area, he saw Jerry standing in front of his bunk, quickly buttoning his poopie suit. Tim rubbed his eyes.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked, his voice low and raspy with sleep.
“You’ve got to come with me,” Jerry said breathlessly. “Right now. You have to see this!”
“Jerry, it’s my rack time,” he said. “Can’t this wait? Shouldn’t you be sleeping too?”
“Now!” Jerry hissed, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t wake everyone else.
Tim sighed. He swung his legs out of the rack and dropped to the floor. He had fallen asleep in his coveralls after an exhausting day, and suddenly he was glad for it. He quickly pulled on his shoes and followed Jerry to the curtained doorway.
“What’s this about?” Tim whispered.
But Jerry just motioned for him to stay quiet.
They left the berthing area, but as soon as they were in the middle-level corridor, Jerry pushed Tim back against the bulkhead. Then he pointed silently down the corridor, past the mess. Another overhead light was out, and the deck beneath it was littered with broken glass. Then he saw what Jerry was pointing at. Someone stood with his back to them in the shadows beneath the broken light. He wasn’t moving. He just stood there, staring at the bulkhead that separated the forward compartment from the nuclear reactor. Tim couldn’t get a good look at him in the shadows, but he was pretty sure he saw white-blond hair.
“Who is that?” Tim whispered.
Jerry grabbed him and dragged him into the head. The auxiliary techs had mounted battle lanterns on the bulkheads and taped plastic garbage bags over the broken mirrors.
“Jerry, what’s going on?” Tim demanded.
“That was LeMon Guidry.”
Tim stared at him. “What!”
“I think he broke that light in the corridor, and now he’s just standing there.”
“That’s impossible,” Tim said. “LeMon’s dead. Oran killed him in the galley. He stabbed him.”
“I know,” Jerry said. “But remember when I thought I saw Steve Bodine after he died? Oran said Ensign Penwarden saw him too.”
“But you said Bodine was in a body bag in the torpedo room,” Tim said.
“That’s where LeMon should be too,” Jerry said. “But he’s not.”
Tim blinked and rubbed his face. “Hold on. How can you be sure it’s him?”
“Come on, you saw his hair. Who else has hair that white?”
“His brother, Oran,” Tim said.
“Who is currently under armed guard in the XO’s stateroom,” Jerry pointed out. “That’s not Oran out there.”
Tim shook his head. It wasn’t possible. He turned away from Jerry and went to the hatch.
“What are you doing?” Jerry said.
<
br /> “I need another look,” Tim said.
“Be careful,” Jerry said. “Don’t let him see you.”
He opened the hatch a crack and peered out. He couldn’t see the far end of the corridor from this angle, so he risked poking his head farther out of the doorway. He felt exposed leaning that far out, and spooked by what Jerry had said, but the corridor was empty.
“He’s gone,” Tim said, stepping out of the head.
Jerry followed him. “We need to find him.”
“It can’t be LeMon,” Tim insisted.
“I’m telling you, it is.”
“Maybe we should talk to Senior Chief Farrington,” Tim said. “He’ll know what’s going on.”
“There’s no time. We have to find LeMon.”
“If that even was LeMon.”
“It was him,” Jerry said, and he started down the corridor.
Tim sighed and followed him. He was awake now, anyway. He may as well see this through. As they passed the mess, he stole a glance inside. The room was empty. It was well past midrats and still hours from first meal, but it was unusual to see the mess completely deserted. Even when the galley wasn’t serving, crewmen usually gathered there to talk or play cards. But there was no one. Was everyone still searching for the three missing officers?
They stopped at the main ladder. Tim looked up through the hole to the top level and saw lights, heard voices. Then he looked down through the hole to the bottom level and saw only darkness, heard only the hum of the air vents. He had a bad feeling about what Jerry was about to say.
“I think he went down.”
Tim sighed. “Yeah.”
Jerry went down the ladder first. Tim followed, thinking about the white-haired figure he had seen in the shadows. Even if it wasn’t LeMon, something had been off about him. The way he stood so still under the freshly broken light, just staring at the bulkhead as if he could see through to the other side …
Descending to the bottom level, he felt very exposed again. He had never realized just how vulnerable he was on a ladder. His back was fully exposed, and his arms and legs were too busy with the rungs to fight anyone off. If someone came up behind him, he wouldn’t even know until it was too late.
He chided himself. There was no sense spooking himself further, so he tried to put the thought out of his mind, but it clung tight. Some instinctive part of him was raising an alarm, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, telling him to watch his back.
When he reached the bottom level, he saw that all the ceiling lights had been broken. The whole level would have been black as India ink if battle lanterns hadn’t been mounted to the bulkhead at ten-foot intervals. He scanned the ceiling, following the conduit pipes from broken light to broken light.
“What happened down here?” he asked.
“The mess, the head, Officer Country, and now the whole goddamn bottom level,” Jerry said. “This isn’t the work of one man. It can’t be.”
“Warren Stubic, Steve Bodine, and LeMon Guidry all got sick,” Tim said. “We know that Stubic and Bodine became sensitive to the light. LeMon probably did too.”
“Then there are more sick sailors than we thought, because LeMon didn’t break all these lights himself.”
“Matson got sick too,” Tim said. “Maybe he helped before he got better.”
“Did he get better?”
“That’s what I heard. Matson came to retrieve LeMon’s body himself and brought it back down here with a couple of POs from the mess. But everyone who saw him said he looked like he’d made a full recovery.”
Jerry took a lantern off the bulkhead. It made a soft click as he pulled it free. Not a loud noise, but in the silence of the corridor it may as well have been the bang of a snare drum. He shined the light up and down the corridor. There was no sign of LeMon—or anyone else, for that matter. It was completely deserted, just like the mess deck. Where was everybody?
“So, what do we do now?” Tim asked.
Jerry trained the light on the torpedo-room hatch. “We see if LeMon Guidry is where he’s supposed to be.”
He walked up and banged on the hatch with his fist.
“What are you doing?” Tim demanded, coming up behind him. “It’s still quarantined. No one’s allowed in there.”
Jerry ignored him. He pounded again and shouted, “Senior Chief Matson! We need to talk to you!”
When there was no answer, he tugged on the hatch. It unlatched and swung outward a couple of inches.
“Matson?” Jerry called again.
He pulled the hatch open. It was dark inside the torpedo room. Except for the LEDs on the equipment, the lights had been broken in there as well. Tim pulled a battle lantern off the bulkhead and nodded at Jerry. The two of them moved slowly into the shadows of the torpedo room. Tim closed the hatch behind them, sealing them in.
He had to remind himself to breathe. The darkness was suffocating, filling his lungs like water. He felt like that little kid on Presque Isle again, praying all winter long for the sun to come back and drive away the endless darkness. Their two lanterns helped illuminate the dark space, but not nearly enough. He shined his lantern all over the torpedo room, checking every corner, every patch of darkness, but there was no sign of Matson. Strange. As far as Tim knew, the corpsman was still supposed to be stationed in the quarantine.
Jerry approached the closest body bag lying on the deck. Its flat black finish seemed to eat the light from his lantern. Tim went over to it and read the name on the tag: guidry, lemon.
“It’s him.”
Every instinct told him to leave it alone and just get the hell out of here, but he had to see this through. Too many strange things had happened on Roanoke already. If LeMon Guidry was in his body bag, that was one thing, at least, he could take off the list.
And if LeMon wasn’t in the bag? Tim didn’t want to think about that.
But Jerry didn’t appear to have any reservations. He crouched over the bag and unzipped it quickly, head to foot. Tim shined his lantern into the bag as Jerry spread it open.
“Oh, God,” Jerry breathed.
There was a body in the bag, but it wasn’t LeMon Guidry. It was Lieutenant Carl French, Roanoke’s weapons officer.
“Fuck two ducks!” Tim exclaimed. “We’ve got to tell the captain!”
Jerry looked up at him sharply. “Bring that light over here.”
Reluctantly, Tim came closer with the lantern. As he shined the light down on French’s waxy face, Jerry turned the corpse’s head to one side. There on the neck were two red welts.
“What are they?” Tim asked.
“LeMon had them too. So did Bodine.”
“Stubic?” Tim asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t look,” Jerry said. “But the last time I saw Matson he was rubbing his neck a lot. What if he has them too?”
“They look like … like bite marks,” Tim said. A chill washed over him. “Jerry, if Lieutenant French is here, where’s LeMon?”
“It was him we saw,” Jerry said. “I knew it.”
“But he’s dead,” Tim insisted. “That’s his name on the tag.”
Jerry stood up. He picked up his lantern and pointed it across the floor, until the beam found another body bag. This one was unzipped, spread open, and empty. He walked over to it and checked the tag.
“Steve Bodine,” Jerry read.
“Where’s the body?” Tim asked.
Jerry just looked at him.
“What the fuck?” Tim said. “Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away!”
Jerry returned to the body bag at Tim’s feet and shined his light down into it. “Let’s close this up again. Matson could come back any second.”
They zipped up the body bag and jumped at the sound of the torpedo-room hatch being opened from outside. Matson was already back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“The lights!” Jerry whispered.
They switched their lanterns off. Jerry turned toward th
e hatch. It wasn’t fully open yet. He heard a muffled voice outside and glimpsed the beam of another lantern through the crack. Someone had stopped Matson to talk.
Jerry turned back to Tim. “We have to hide.”
“But what if Matson can help?” Tim objected. “We should tell him what’s going on.”
“Tim, who do you think put Lieutenant French’s body in LeMon’s bag?”
In the dark, he heard Tim’s breath hitch. “Shit.”
“Find a place to hide, and stay quiet,” Jerry told him.
The torpedo room was long, narrow, and crowded. There was only one place to hide: in the gap between the bulkheads and the torpedo tubes at the far end of the space. Jerry hurried over, listening for Tim’s footsteps behind him. He heard the rustle of fabric against metal as Tim squeezed into a hiding spot. Jerry went to the opposite bulkhead and shimmied into the tight space. He could wedge himself into the gap if he exhaled first and didn’t take a deep breath. Not the most comfortable place to hide, but his options were few. Until he knew otherwise, he had to assume that Matson was in on it.
But in on what, exactly? He still didn’t understand what was going on. Corpses disappearing from their body bags and being replaced with others? Had Bodine and LeMon ever truly been dead, or was it all a colossal lie? Was there even really a fever, or was it a conspiracy with Matson at the head?
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