Nightmare Ship: Space Exploration Thriller

by Scholes, James

  He reached the next blast-door. He held his hand to the metal and relaxed at its coldness. If anything, it was even colder in the next section than in the section he was standing in. A quick check of the read-outs next to the door showed that everything was fine: pressure, oxygen levels, temperature. It was cold, but not freezing.

  Nolan opened the door. Darkness beckoned.

  With a click, the flashlight cast its beam deep down the corridor. Everything looked in order, but the corridor curved with the lines of the ship, and he couldn't see very far beyond. Nolan checked the map by the blast-door, confirmed that the airlock was in this section. He stepped inside, rested his hand on the door's lock control.

  He hesitated. There was something about the dark that made him want to keep the door open. He looked behind him to the relative brightness of the previous section of the ship. Yes, leave the door open, he told himself. It would be okay.

  Nolan withdrew his hand, started walking. His footsteps were unnaturally loud on the metal floor, and he wished he was wearing his slippers because they didn't make a sound at all.

  Up ahead, he could hear his footsteps come back to him in an echo: click... click-click... click... click-click. Nolan played his light against the walls. There were signs of dust and a build-up of grime. The metal struts and arches glistened with some form of grease. Something was leaking up above; Nolan would have to query the ship to see if it was important, or if it could wait until he arrived in port. He hoped it could wait, but he knew that was wishful thinking: this was a spaceship, everything was important.

  But first, the airlock.

  He rounded the slight curve; the airlock should be just up ahead. Nolan frowned. His light didn't penetrate very far into the dark. His pace slowed. He couldn't see the airlock, and he couldn't see anything else. There was a black hole of nothing in front of him that swallowed the light. He took another step closer, and it was only then that he saw that the nothing wasn't nothing at all, but something that filled the entire corridor.

  The blackness... It wasn't black, either, but shades of brown and grey. Impossible colours and shapes that Nolan couldn't decipher. He stopped walking, remembered that the door behind him was still open. He stared at the obstruction in front of him. Was it a meteor of some kind? Had they been hit by a rock and it was lodged here, right in front of the airlock? The sensors should have woken him up, and the diagnostics should have told him more than just an airlock error. Nolan frowned at the sight.

  Then the shapes began to move. Slowly, jerkily. Nolan's light only added to the shadows as they started to unfold towards him. Nolan cried out, almost fell. He couldn't comprehend what was unfurling in front of him, and he didn't want to.

  He started running. Behind him, he heard the sound of his footsteps once more: click-click, click-click, click-click. They weren't his footsteps at all, but something else. Something living.

  Something aboard his ship.

  5

  Nolan ran. Behind him, he could sense the intruder chasing. The footsteps grew faster: click-click-click-click-click. The sound echoed all around him, came for him with the promise of death.

  In front: the blast-door.

  Nolan lunged for it, slid across the smooth metal floor. He skidded to a stop, grabbed onto one of the metal arches that encircled the corridor and spun around. His flashlight splayed over the corridor in front of him, and he could see shadows chasing towards him. Big shadows; their shape was inhuman and nightmarish—the sense of danger was all-consuming.

  Shut the damn door! Nolan slammed his open fist on the blast-door and the heavy metal came crashing down. Nolan gasped at the door's speed, but he relaxed as soon as the door sealed him off from... Well, from whatever had chased him.

  He waited, but there was nothing. Nothing crashed into the door, nothing cried out in fury. It was just him, and him alone. Nolan let out a deep breath, took in another. He looked up, inspected the blast-door. Nothing. He stared at the door's open button, wished there was a way he could lock it—but there was no lock, and if anything touched the button on the other side, the door would open. Nolan's heart started to race, but the door didn't open, and he knew it wouldn't. Whatever was on the other side was stuck there.

  Whatever it was... A shadow, and that was all. Nolan tried to picture what he had seen, but nothing came to him. His mind couldn't make sense of it at all: legs and hair and eyes, all hidden by the darkness. A massive thing—taller than Nolan, so large that it filled the entire corridor. This wasn't his imagination. It couldn't be. There was something there, he knew it. It was trapped behind the door, and behind that was the airlock.

  And how had it found its way aboard his ship?

  Nolan shuddered at the thought, and he spun around, half expecting to find another shadowy shape lurching towards him. If there was one, there could be more... No, there was nothing except the empty corridor, and his own shadow stretched across the cold, metal floor.

  He took a step away from the blast-door, and then another. A third, a fourth; each step made his heart beat slower. Still, nothing had smashed into the heavy door. Perhaps it really was his imagination. There was no indication that there was any disturbance at all. Just what he had seen, and what had he seen? Meaningless shapes, that was all.

  Was he going mad?

  “No,” Nolan said, and then he took another step away from the door. He looked at it. The blast-door was powerless over him. He should storm back to it and force it open again, confront his fears. Prove that whatever was there was only an illusion.

  “No,” Nolan said again. No, he wasn't ready for that—not yet. Maybe he was going mad, and maybe he wasn't, but the blast-door would remain closed.

  He headed away from the room, back towards the galley. Another coffee would help him think, he knew that. Some food, too. And time—plenty of time.

  The galley was exactly as he had left it, but Nolan couldn't be certain about some of the chairs. He headed to the coffee machine, waited as the hot, black liquid came sloshing into his new cup, and then he grabbed a protein bar and took a seat near the centre of the room.

  All around him, the blackness. Shadows reached out for him, hidden in the dark. Long fingers and sharp teeth and blood-red eyes. Creatures with sunken cheeks and sharp, bony features. They were all there, waiting for the lights to fail.

  Nolan took a bite of his protein bar, tried not to think. The thoughts came unbidden. A singular vision: Nolan, lying in his coffin-like hyper-sleep pod, unmoving and unknowing. Around him, things... Things moving, things watching. Did they know he was there? Was he just another piece of furniture? Nolan couldn't answer that, but he could see the dust swirl around his pod as tentacles and talons caressed the curve of the plexi-glass. There was meat inside that pod, and it wouldn't stir until the final moment.

  But Nolan was awake now, lying in his pod. His coffee was in his hand, and his protein bar was in the other. He was staring out through his bed as a million eyes stared down at him. He could see his reflection shining back at him a million times over. His face, white and pale and fearful. Sleeping, even though he could see. Mouth slightly slack, arms by his side, unable to move. A twitch, a flinch. Nolan's lip curled upwards, his leg jittered. Still, the eyes—staring at him, and then the sound: tap-tap-tap... tap-tap-tap. Pincers tapping the glass. The plexi-glass held, but for how long? And when it broke, what then? He had to get out of here, but he was trapped. There was no way out of the coffin except to open it, and there was something out there. It would grab him, kill him, eat him. But he had to try, had to run. If only his legs would work, but they were resolutely still except for a quick jerk—

  “Ow!” Nolan cursed as hot coffee ran down his leg. He swiped the excess liquid clear of his pants and stood, grabbed the material and fanned it away from his flesh. He looked down at the mess he had made and growled to himself. He had fallen asleep in the galley, and the very thought of being alone in such a large, cavernous room made him shiver involuntarily.

 
He looked down at his stained pants and knew he would need to change. A shower, too—a piping hot shower to wash the cobwebs of sleep from his mind.

  Cobwebs... What had he been dreaming of? A million eyes staring down at him, and pincers tapping the glass.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  Nolan froze at the sound. He hadn't imagined that, his ears had heard it. It was coming from the dark recesses of the galley. For a long time, Nolan just stared. The sound came again, and then it stopped and then it came again. The same hesitant tapping.

  Nolan headed towards the sound. The light of the galley followed him, made him glow like an angel. The far wall lit slowly under the harsh light and in the upper recesses he could see a rectangular air vent.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  Something in the air vent. Nolan grabbed a chair and placed it against the wall, then he climbed onto the chair, looked through the grating. There was nothing there but an impenetrable blackness.

  The tapping stopped.

  Nolan could feel eyes on him, but he couldn't see a damn thing. He waited, but the air vent was too dark and he had left his flashlight with his spilled coffee. He could go and get it, but he knew he would find nothing. Whatever was there—if there was something there—was biding its time. Watching and waiting and wary.

  “Hello?” Nolan called down the vent. There was no response, not even a squeak. He sagged and climbed down from the chair, headed back to his flashlight. The tapping had stopped and it did not start again; Nolan wondered if his imagination was still getting the better of him. It could have just been the metal twisting as it warmed.

  “I need some sleep,” Nolan said, and the exhaustion hit him like a hammer. He was jumping at shadows—quite literally. There was nothing on this ship, and there never had been. He was showing signs of hyper-sleep exposure, nothing more. Too long in the coffin, not enough time in a real bed. That was what he needed: real sleep.

  But first, a shower.

  Nolan headed into the locker room, took his usual shower. The hot water made him feel better, but the bitter loneliness found its way through the steam and into his heart. Nothing could replace the caress of another human, not even boiling hot water.

  He shook his head, as though that would clear it. Nothing would change the fact that he was light years from home, the only occupant of a ship headed for a planet he didn't know, with supplies that weren't his. The thought of his mission made his head spin: the colony had never been heard from, because the distances were too great. Nolan was flying blind. For all he knew, there would be nothing at the other end except the dead. Or there could be a bustling metropolis that had no need for the supplies that Nolan had with him. And then he was supposed to turn around and come straight back, and what would he find then? Would they even know who he was, what he had been sent out to do?

  Would they even pay him?

  “Not today,” he told himself, because it wasn't the time to worry about things like money and civilisation. He climbed out of the shower and dried himself. He cleaned his teeth and brushed the knots from his hair. He trimmed his chin—the hair on his face wasn't quite a beard, but it would be in a few days. Nolan stared at himself in the mirror. The face that stared back wasn't the one he was familiar with. The eyes were too sunken and the cheeks too shallow. The skin was too tight and the colour was off. In the harsh lighting, he had a sickly green pallor to his flesh. He nodded silently to his reflection.

  Yes, he thought. It's time for bed.

  6

  Nolan's quarters were near the top-most portion of the ship. Another corridor: this time, with identical rooms running half the length of the ship on both sides. Nolan's quarters were near the front, near the captain's quarters—not that there was any captain on board. Nolan didn't have access to that suite, but his quarters were big enough for his needs.

  And what were they? A bed, and that was all. The bed was cold and well-made. Nolan couldn't remember ever sleeping in it before. In fact, he hardly used his quarters at all. The ship was his bedroom and the hyper-sleep pod was his bed. This was... Well, it wasn't his, not really. But the bed looked so very inviting...

  Nolan collapsed on top of the covers, still fully-clothed. He stared up at the ceiling light and he knew he should turn it off.

  “In a minute,” he told himself, and even as he spoke the words he knew that was a lie. He would sleep with the light on, or he wouldn't sleep at all. Who knew what terrors he would find in the dark?

  Nolan lay there and tried to close his eyes. They remained open. He blinked, then blinked again—longer, this time, but still a blink. He turned and looked at the wall, but the wall was bland and uninteresting and he returned to staring at the light fixture.

  “I need to sleep,” he said but the words were meaningless. Nothing existed except the light. The light and the sounds of the ship: a faint, electronic hum; a whirring of fans and the whistling of air; the soft footsteps of the crew outside his door; snatches of conversation on the edge of hearing.

  Nolan frowned. There was no crew, only him.

  Slowly, silently, he climbed out of the bed. He stood in the centre of the room and listened. No, there was nothing there—but he was sure he had heard something just before. Footsteps, and conversation. Words that had been muffled but they had been there. A chill ran up Nolan's spine.

  He headed for the door and opened it. Into the corridor: nothing, completely empty. No sign of any life except for him.

  “I'm going mad,” he said to himself, and then he remembered the shadowy thing he had seen in the corridor down below and he wondered if that had really been real, or if it was just in his imagination. The corridor before him stretched long and dark and disappeared into a black pit of shadow; Nolan very much hoped that it had been his imagination.

  There was only one thing that he knew for a fact: he wasn't going to sleep. Slowly, Nolan started to walk down the corridor. He tried every door that he passed. None of them opened, but he had to try them anyway. He even tried the captain's quarters. The only door that opened was his own, and that was as it should be.

  “It must have just been the air ducts,” he said to himself, not quite sure why he was talking, even now. He turned away from the corridor, headed back to his room.

  Once more, he climbed into bed. This time he stripped naked and slid under the cool sheets. It did feel good to have fresh cotton wrapped around his flesh, and the pillow was comfortable, if a little firm. He finally closed his eyes, but he did not turn off the light.

  Still, sleep eluded him. He tossed and turned and tried to lie still, but no matter what he did he found himself more awake than ever. He opened his eyes again, half-expected to find a shadowy mess standing over him. There was nothing except the light—the light and his own imagination.

  Nolan groaned, a pitiful noise. He got up, headed to the shower recess that was set into the side of his quarters. He ran the shower hot—so hot that his skin glowed red and started to itch. He washed his hair, between his toes and everywhere else. When he was done, he stood under the hot drying blast of air even after he was dry.

  Then he went back to bed.

  “This is stupid,” he told himself after a few minutes. He wasn't going to fall asleep, not without drugs. Nolan had never been one for sleeping pills, but if he was going to take pills then he might as well jump into the hyper-sleep pod and be done with it; the effect was the same.

  “Yes, why not,” he said, and he realised that he was talking to himself more and more. At first, he had done it almost as a joke but now that he was jumping at shadows, he would be lying if he didn't admit that the sound of his own voice made him feel better.

  He got dressed and headed back into the corridor. Out of reflex, he checked both ways but there was nothing there. Slowly, he could feel himself relaxing. The sense of being watched was slowly fading. There was nobody here but him, and there never had been. There was a malfunction, that was all. The shadow he had seen hadn't been anything except just that—
a shadow. Perhaps there was a gas leak in the corridor with the airlock: that would explain the malfunction and the shadow rushing towards him—the air pressure had changed when he had opened the blast-doors, and that change in pressure was what he had seen. There wasn't anything on board this ship; he was frightened of the loneliness, that was all.

  Nolan didn't hurry back to the hyper-sleep pod, but he didn't take his time, either. He checked every room and corridor that he passed, just to be certain. He almost laughed at his thoroughness: he was like a child checking for monsters under the bed. It did little to make him feel better, but how could he sleep in the hyper-sleep pod if he didn't check?

  When he reached the cavernous room that housed his lonely pod, he felt his heart start to beat faster. Now that he was here the fear came for him. Every corner of the room was painted in shadow, and the raw nakedness of hyper-sleep made him shiver. If there was anything here, they could watch him sleep. He would be trapped inside his coffin-like cocoon, but he wouldn't be safe. If they broke the plexi-glass, Nolan would never know. He wouldn't even wake up as he was devoured.

  He wouldn't even stir.

  “Just hop in the bed,” he told himself, and there was real venom in his voice. He was tired of being afraid, and he was tired of being tired. The hyper-sleep pod was right there in front of him; there was no reason not to climb into it and sleep. No reason at all.

  Still, he hesitated.

  “Just get in!”

  Nolan stripped naked, against his better judgement. He pulled off his boxer shorts and paused. The coolness of the room tickled at his bare ass, and he slid his under-shorts back around his hips before he climbed into the pod. Let the monsters look at him—he would still keep his privacy. He grinned at the thought, and at his own petty little fears. Such a stupid thing to worry about.

  The pod started to close in around him. Nolan let out a deep breath but it caught in his throat and became sharp and short and panicked. His breathing quickened as the transparent coffin lid closed around him. It sealed with a faint hiss and a click and he was trapped. His heart began to race—this had been a mistake. He didn't want to sleep, and he certainly didn't want this.