It was not until after noon when I noticed that the mutilated whale had attracted marauding sharks, as usual, but for some very strange reason they were hesitant to approach the carcass too closely—as if they were instinctively frightened of something. It was most puzzling. Yet this was not nearly so mysterious as what occurred late that night, when three of our men were killed in a singularly horrible manner.
The work progressed throughout the night, and by sunup dense clouds of smoke still veiled the rigging, the decks gleaming darkly with blood and grease, enormous masses of blubber scattered here and there. Oil hissed and sizzled in the try-pots, and the entire ship was enveloped in a cloying stench. During the night the listless breeze had virtually died away altogether, the sails scarcely off the masts, and left us stranded in a dead calm.
Sometime before noonday I was belowdecks assisting two other men in placing casks of cooled oil into stowage. We were working toward the bow, wrestling them to fill every nook and cranny. The hold was a confining, gloomy place, imprisoning odd odors and shadows. Suddenly one of the mates accidently happened upon something behind several displaced barrels in an obscure corner, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Stretched out in grotesque fashion were the corpses of three of our erstwhile shipmates, unmissed from an earlier shift. They had been ravaged beyond belief—barely recognizable for the men they once were. One of my comrades tore his eyes from the sickening sight and peered intently into the deeper darkness. “Listen,” he muttered, “—you hear somethin’?” I hearkened closely and probed the shadows for some sound or movement, but there was nothing stirring.
Anxious to get shy of these shuddersome surroundings, we forthwith notified the old man, who summoned everyone out except for the second mate. After much serious discussion and conjecture he had the sailmaker sew up the bodies—or what was left of them—in some spare canvas, and with quick, quiet ceremony conferred them to the everpresent sharks.
When evening came the Reaper drowsed sluggishly in the water, her mast tops towering toward the stars, the sea as black as basalt and smooth as glass. Only an occasional flying fish broke the surface, swiftly gliding off into the night as if in fear.
Perhaps they sensed our own.
About an hour before sunrise, myself and a number of others were awakened by a fearful howl from the second mate’s cabin. He came lurching out, barefoot and clad only in trousers, holding one hand away from him with his other. And then we discerned that there was something round attached to the whole back part of his hand. Blood dribbled freely betwixt his fingers and slowly ran down his arm.
“I—I was in my bunk,” he stammered, his throat tight with fear, “an’ I ’spect my arm was hanging out, touching the floor. I woke up feeling an awful pricklin’, and found this—this thing on me.”
We examined the object carefully. Every now and again it quivered slightly, as if securing itself more firmly in the mate’s hand. After several moments it struck us as to why the thing seemed somewhat familiar ... it was one of the barnacles that thronged our dead whale. But barnacles these obviously were not; just what they truly were, we had yet to learn.
The organism had plainly imbedded itself in the second mate’s flesh. We endeavored to pull or pry it off, but the man winced and cried out in pain, unable to endure it. Various other opinions and suggestions were bandied about and tried in due course, such as applying heat to its shell (which prompted it only to dig deeper), yet none of these methods proved the least bit effective. Finally the old man took aside the chippy and spoke for his ears only. Momentarily he returned and gravely informed our second mate that it appeared the only solution to be quit of the creature and to keep him from slowly bleeding to death was to amputate his hand. This may have seemed a rather drastic measure, but as a result of our vain attempts to remove the thing, and the victim’s increasing torment and revulsion, the mate reluctantly agreed.
We plied him with the old man’s stoutest rum and ere long he lapsed into a deep, drunken stupor. Forasmuch as we boasted no surgeon or formal doctor on board, the task was left to the butchery of the ship’s cooper, or carpenter. When the deed was done the laceration was cauterized with a red-hot iron till the bleeding stopped, so it could be cleaned and dressed. He was carried back to his quarters to sleep it off.
The hand, still with its parasite, was then dropped into a burlap bag and placed in one of the pots of bubbling oil for a long while. When the creature was dead, the sack was discarded and the hand carved away until only the creature remained. We huddled round and studied it in detail.
It was comparatively small—that is, in relation to the others we had noticed on the whale, ranging in size from a man’s fist to a large dinner plate, and semi-spherical in shape. It reminded me of a horseshoe crab without its tail. The shell was rough and incredibly resilient, thicker and tougher than a tortoise shell. Someone tried to cut it with a short mincing knife and could not. This chitinous mantle was strengthened by a lower one-half inch band of movable, shelly plates, probably its means of locomotion—a ring of rubbery cartilage from which sprouted sparse, stubby growths of bristle or hair, mayhap some sort of sensory apparatus. Despite the dense and rigid carapace of the creature it was remarkably light in weight.
The underside mouth parts of the animal functioned as a piercing organ, and our scrutiny disclosed a narrow but deep slit running lengthwise which housed several rows of sharp, serrated teeth. Surrounding it was moist, leathery tissue with what looked to be cement glands, and dozens of tiny needlelike claws, each tipped with barbs. On this particular specimen these could be extended as much as five centimeters and were unquestionably the source of its tenacious clinging and boring abilities.
With a skitter of gooseflesh we surmised that this surely explained the presumed rubbing motions of the whale against our hull, having been driven mad with pain. I dare say the longer we pondered the dark possibilities of this the more it seemed plausible. The sperm is primarily a deepwater dweller; its predilection for giant squid, some four hundred pounds and measuring five and fifty feet in length, lured them down more than one-half mile to feed, their awesome under-teeth enabling them to dislodge the squid from their rocky lairs at the bottom of the sea.
Even other whales, such as the slender gary, were known to have surfaced after foraging with their heads and lips besmeared with a murky ooze from the inky depths below. The faint sunlight would give way to utter blackness, and in the unfathomed realm of an eternal night who could guess what alien creatures lurked therein? There were all manner of sea-floor scavengers, parasites, and suchlike; weird carnivores, primitive snails and other curiosities. The intestines of any whale might be teeming with as many as twenty different kinds of pelagic worms. So it was not improbable at all, then, that our stricken whale had perchance been made host by these odious denizens of the deep, conceivable like wandering through a nest of ticks or fleas.
In light of this revelation, and having stripped the whale of all we could in spite of its myriad “barnacles,” we unchained the remains of our hard-earned prize and cast the carcass adrift. But with a trickle of terror we realized the tardiness of this action; for by this time the majority of the creatures had left the dead animal and were now firmly fastened to the bare wood of the vessel’s starboard hull, a large portion of the protective copper sheathing having been torn off by the whale.
When another nightfall approached, an atmosphere of dread descended over the sullen ship like a funeral shroud.
The somber gray of dawn brought with it the discovery of two more of our men, both half-eaten. It was appalling. One of the crew members found them together on deck, under the midship shelter. It occurred to us that it was strange that five of our companions had met this gruesome end and yet no one heard an outcry or sounds of struggle. This happenstance led us to suspect that the unfortunate wretches were suddenly swarmed and helplessly covered with the creatures, or else perhaps some of the things possessed the capability to poison or stun
their victims (possibly depending on their size or the area of the body whereto they affixed themselves). Or, as in the case of the second mate, they were clearly advantaged by his heavy slumber. Similarly, scuttling armies of cockroaches—some as much as an inch and a half long—frequently nibbled around the lips and beards of exhausted, sleeping sailors in quest of food residues. It was an exceedingly unpleasant speculation.
We again disposed of the corpses, then the old man had us swab down the decks with vinegar and salt water, and fumigate below with pans of burning pitch. However, this was obviously a fruitless gesture, of which we were all well aware, even the captain himself. A prodigious number of the creatures had already infested the ship itself, and during the warm daylight hours they apparently retreated to the dank shadows and more remote parts of the ship, being basically nocturnal in nature and hitherto accustomed to their twilight world beneath the sea.
In several such places we uncovered to our growing horror sticky clusters of what could only be egg deposits, somewhat comparable to a frog’s eggsacks. We destroyed those we were actually able to ferret out, or dared to try. Moreover, a quick, tentative inspection of the hold revealed a new crisis at hand: the things’ rapacious appetites had compelled those which remained attached to the hull to burrow themselves deeply into the scantling, weakening the structure in spots and causing the ship to slowly take on water.
The crew grew increasingly morose and fretful, and after midday about half the men began milling together with renewed protests and murmuring. The crew of the Reaper was a diverse and rather motley collection: most were in their late teens, some, as I, were in their twenties, and a few, such as the old man, in their thirties; we represented numerous nationalities, including Spaniards, Swedes, Germans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, and a smattering of Pacific Islanders. And from every walk of life we were—adventurous gentlemen, reckless soldiers, discontented tradesmen; among us a failed Shakespearean actor, a homesick farmboy, a bankrupt Philadelphia hardware clerk, and even myself, a well-educated Kentuckian having given up my profession as a newspaper reporter in order to “see the world.”
Presently the gathering ambled to the afterhouse, something most assuredly weighing on their minds, and converged toward the old man. The ship’s helmsman, whom it was rumored was a British jailbird having escaped from a penal colony in Australia, stepped forward to address the captain. He was a brawny, bullying, “cock-o-the-walk,” but seemed to hold strong influence over some of the others.
“We chaps wish to ’ave a word wi’ you, Cap’n,” he announced stonily.
The old man folded his arms and said nothing, waiting.
The other continued. “We been studyin’ this—predicament, and seein’ as ’ow we got no wind to make for land, think it would be best if we all evacuate the ship—leave ’er to these mis’rable buggers.”
The old man paled at this, being more a challenge than appeal, and swallowed hard. “I forbid it! This ship is under my command, as well as her crew—and I say no.”
“She won’t be yours much longer,” the surly helmsman sneered, “ ’tween the sea and those critters.”
“We can overcome them, somehow—we must. We cannot carry these things with us to an inhabited port ... you saw their eggs. They would multiply tenfold, continue to adapt, spawn and spread to other vessels, become a plague. Nor can we surrender the ship to them, leaving both to an uncertain fate. No, we must keep our wits about us, exterminate them, and bide for a favorable wind. She will not founder if we can make good her course and set-to somewhere safe for repairs. Besides, consider your mates who have given their lives for the wealth in our hold. ’Twould be a crime—nay, a sin—to forsake it.”
“And pray tell what bloody use is any lay to those poor blighters dead since—eaten alive? or to us, about to join them?”
Several others piped in with raucous voices. The captain spotted his second mate amongst them. “You too, man? You side with these mischief makers?”
The second mate raised his already festering, bandaged stump. “Aye, Capt’n. I would gladly give meself over to the mercy of the drink afore I’d let those horrid devils touch me again.”
“But we would be weeks at sea. The nearest coast is bounded by treacherous reefs and strong currents. ’Tis a hostile and uncivilized region—a rugged mountain wilderness. No ship anchors there if they can prevent it. There would be uncounted privations. ’Twould be lunacy, plain and simple, and I shan’t allow it.”
The old man managed to retain his outward composure and a frail facade of authority, but beneath his somewhat faltering speech I detected that he could not avoid being swept up in the same undercurrent of dismay washing over most of the crew. Our good captain, once God Almighty of the quarter-deck, was quickly losing control of his men.
The group’s leader gave him one last, long, ugly, look—and absently fondling his sheath-knife, I noticed—then turned and stormed off. Hereupon the others likewise dispersed, still grumbling.
This aura of tense unrest lingered through the rest of the afternoon, escalating fatefully just before sunset when the brooding silence was shattered by a bloodcurdling scream from the galley. With a prick of panic we rushed to its source and found the cookie shrieking in agony, his eyes wide circles of fear. He was flailing his arms and clawing mindlessly at one of the creatures—a very big one—which was feasting on the side of his face. For a second we were all agog, smitten by the horror of the spectacle, until the helmsman, whose chum he was, lept forward to seize the fiendish creature with both hands, and with all his might wrenched it off of its victim. Tragically, in so doing the thing took with it a third of the cook’s face, exposing raw white bone. His eyes rolled up in the back of his head, his face dripping gore and his mouth gaping open in shock. He fell to his knees, tottered a moment, then collapsed to hit the floor with a ghastly sound. He twitched once or twice and lay still.
The monster had landed on its back a few feet away, and the enraged helmsman grabbed a meat cleaver and viciously hacked at the underside of the creature till it was quite dead. Just then we glimpsed another of the things darting off into the scraps of the shadows, suggesting a surprising mobility more akin to a crab or spider than a snail. Conversely, they also moved slowly and silently, almost as if stealthily stalking their prey, and could climb upon people or objects without at first being perceived, especially at night.
During the whole of this disaster the old man stood frozen in the background, drugged with the terror of it, saying and doing nothing. The contemptuous helmsman shot him another withering glare, and coldly brushed past him.
That evening the captain doubled the watch, delegating two of his more faithful, older hands, and gave them specific instructions to alert him straightaway if there were any signs of trouble from the disgruntled crew members. The situation was deteriorating rapidly, and things began to look bleak indeed.
Of late we had come to expect the worst, and the following morning brought with it still more reason for our mounting consternation. We found that the two guards were assaulted sometime during the wee hours before light, and the half-dozen men who constituted the preceding day’s assemblage had furtively jumped ship. Apparently the two on duty tried to enforce the old man’s order, for one of them had been dealt a cruel blow from behind with a belaying pin, killing him instantly, intentional or no. The other was pretty bad off due to a dagger wound to the chest. The fellow nearly bled to death and we had difficulty in keeping the bleeding at check. He was more unconscious than not, and his recovery seemed doubtful.
The conspirators left further evidence of their departure, inasmuch as the two remaining whaleboats—in addition to the spare—had been quietly but thoroughly sabotaged. Whether this malicious act was perpetrated to spite the old man or to thwart later probable charges of mutiny and the gallows dance, I could not say for certain. Someone also discovered our stores of victuals and fresh water had been ransacked, as well as assorted and sundry articles pilfered from the supp
ly lockers.
I felt the captain had painted an accurate picture of the ultimate futility of abandoning ship in these waters, and had no doubt but that the scoundrels would all perish long before ever they could gain safety; notwithstanding, such was of little consolation in view of our own plight. There was no practical means of combating these loathsome creatures and they grew bolder day by day. Neither can we hope to mend one of the boats and ourselves escape if needs be, for the carpenter was among the recent victims, and obviously would have been unable to salvage the boat anyway.
As if in further mockery, about three o’clock in the afternoon a light but freshening westerly found us, after almost four days’ flat calm. But of course now we were even more seriously undermanned, being just six of us left, and hardly enough to operate the ship efficiently for any prolonged period of time. I took it upon myself to hoist aloft the appropriate distress flags.
We ate a meager meal at sunset, and by and by headed each to our quarters—three of the hands to the forecastle, the old man to his cabin, and I to the former first mate’s cabin which I had recently occupied at the captain’s permission. I was about to retire for the evening when I heard a muffled, broken moaning from the lazaret, where we had situated the injured man. Procuring a taper, I proceeded to investigate.
When I peered inside, my stomach turned to ice, for the poor fellow was on the floor verily covered with the creatures—all sizes—as they fell to devouring him alive, moving hungrily about like so many maggots. Inevitably they were lured by the scent of his blood, and now it was too late. Powerless to avail him, I spun and fled, shamefully relieved we had isolated him from the rest of us and shut off that particular section of the vessel. Then I related my grisly discovery to the captain. He made no reply, only sat staring at me blankly, eyes like drab marbles, his face drawn, haggard, and very ashen. He looked as if he had aged fifty years. I left him to his dark imaginings and hurried to my own room, where I eventually managed to obtain a few hours of fitful, troubled sleep.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 14 Page 5