by catt dahman
John Astor clasped her with his arms about her, “I shall.”
They followed the steward and were out of sight within seconds. Benjamin Guggenheim and his group walked up the stairs, followed by Isidor Strauss, the founder of Macy’s, Bruce Ismay, head of the White Start Shipping Line, the Thayers, and Countessa de’Rothes.
On D deck, Daniels grinned, “Even if we take on water, the bulkheads are beneath this deck, and the water can go no farther. We’re all quite safe.”
“Unless the bulkheads have been breached,” John said.
“Oh, Sir, I am sure….” However, he did not finish. It was impossible.
Passengers streamed into the Reception Room, seeking warmth and human contact. Families and couples burrowed beneath blankets before the fireplaces. Some of the stewards made pots of tea and coffee, took out more blankets, and spoke in soft, calm voices. They served wine, fruit, and cheeses.
“Scotland Road, we call the walkway along this deck. It is the nickname for it; it’s the busiest passage in the ship,” Daniels said as they walked lower. “Third class and crew are always about the walkway. “No one was rushing about but standing around on E deck, confused and dazed. “This is where we gather, see, in the salon.”
The crewmembers seemed calm and unconcerned, unsure of what was really happening. The idea of sinking was a vague thought. Passengers, awakened from their bunks, stood about, asking questions in other languages; answers never came.
“Do ye know what’s a’happenin’?” a steward asked Daniels. He looked at everyone watching him and threw his arms up, “What ‘ave ye ‘eard? ‘Tis a foine mess we have got ‘ere.”
“We have no word from above. We are looking to find out.”
“All of ye?”
Daniels nodded, his face flushed, “All of us. We will find out and let you know.” He thought the group with him was a spectacle.
F deck was for third class passengers and featured the beautiful Turkish baths that some had enjoyed. Stewards here calmed passengers and told them that there was nothing wrong at all and there was no need to do anything but gather in the salons with life belts. They assured everyone that this was a minor issue, but protocol demanded the reaction.
Several stewards blocked the stairway so none of the third class passengers could go up the stairs, but they did not bother the large group going down, led by Daniels. Instead they looked at them curiously, wondering what they were about and why.
From that deck, they would use a regular stairway, as the grand stairway did not extend that deeply.
“Ya can’na go down to G. She’s flooded,” said a steward as he passed them.
Daniels grabbed another steward, “We want to know what’s going on. Above, we have no news of what is happening here.”
All around them stood the third class in their dining area. Women wept, and men cursed, demanding to know what was happening. Those who could not understand English were vexed.
The steward sighed, “Some of the firemen have locked themselves away and are pumping out water to keep the lights on so we can send distress signals and see, or we’d be in pitch black.
I fear they will remain there until the ship goes down. The mail workers are trying to save the mail and refuse to leave. G deck is a mad house. The mail cargo room and boilers have flooded fully.”
“Well, we’ll make them get out of there and go to the life boats,” Maggie said. Before anyone could say a word, she walked down the hallway. Everyone followed her. “When will these people be taken up?”
“As soon as first and second class are loaded into lifeboats, Ma’am,” Daniels replied.
“The staff neglected the lifeboat drill,” Maggie said, “and it will be pandemonium. Think of how long it will take to get these people loaded when half don’t speak English.”
John stared ahead, going still. Before him was the beginning of seawater that had flooded into the ship. He stood in an inch of water. He suggested most wait there and keep dry.
The water was twenty-eight degrees and painfully cold, but he walked along until his knees were immersed. “I will go see what is happening.”
In a minute, his toes were numb, and it felt as if knives pierced his shins.
Opening the doorway to the heated pool, he found that instead of water in a pool surrounded by elegant marble tiles and decor that made one think of Roman baths, the entire room was a pool. Movement caught his eye.
Claire Cotton, her brother Sam, Howard, and Karl Behr followed John.
“Be careful. The pool is somewhere. and you would go under. It’s impossible to know where the pool lies,” John said.
“What is that? Oh no, have people fallen in?” Claire asked, wading forward.” No one came to help them?”
“Stay to the walls,” John warned again.
On the surface were floating, flesh-colored bodies moving slightly. At the far side, a figure was sitting with her head down, weeping, her long hair covering her face that was barely above the water. Her body was immersed in the freezing cold water.
The group skirted along the edge next to the wall to get to her.
The lights were dull.
“We are coming. It is all right now. You’re safe,” Claire called. “Just a second, and we shall be right there with you, and we will find something warm for you.” She wondered how the stewards could neglect their passengers in this way, leaving them to drown by the pool and freeze in cold water. The Third Class was treated horribly, she thought.
“We are here,” Daniels called.
“Stay there. Claire, please go back. We can get her out,” John pleaded.
Howard forced himself forward. Below his knees, the icy water felt like painful daggers, stabbing into his flesh repeatedly. It was so cold that it hurt. His bones felt like glass breaking, and his skin was going through terrible pains. The nerves burned and ached and felt torn, crushed and stabbed, all at once. Howard shivered with cold and pain.
How could the woman sit in the water and not scream and still be alive? Why was she naked like the rest of them? How had they lost their clothing? Something was terribly amiss.
Claire and Sam reached the woman first, and Claire knelt, murmuring reassurances. Claire’s skirts were soaked, and her teeth chattered, but she was determined to save the woman. A hot bath or warm blanket was a luxury she thought of continuously, as a person dying of thirst might dream of water.
Pale with the cold, the figure looked bloated and much too soft, Howard thought. Her naked flesh looked like soft, whipped cream. If someone were to touch it, his hand might be engulfed.
Howard called out a warning, but it was too late. The creature, that looked human from a distance and that pretended to be a person, raised its abominable head. It was not hair hanging down her face, but very fine, very dark tentacles. It brushed back the strands absently.
Serpent’s eyes, gold and cruel, looked at them, and the being was not smiling but had a frog-like mouth, lipless, wide, and wet. There was no nose or ears, and its arms were thin appendages with three splayed fingers on each.
“Oh dear, God,” Jack cried, stumbling backwards and almost falling.
Howard stood frozen in place as the frog snapped out its long, black tongue towards Claire. She screamed as the barbs and saliva took the flesh from her cheek in a bloody, raw strip. It sounded like cloth being ripped. In a flash, it swallowed the strip of skin.
Sam pulled at Clair, but she slipped to her hands and knees, clasping at her face and wailing. Before she could get up, the frog-women lashed out twice more, removing Claire’s right eye and other cheek; she shrieked. The eye socket was empty, as if someone had scooped away the organ and left only a bare stripe from the top of her cheekbone, across her eye, and to her hairline. It had taken only a few seconds to remove her face.
Sam grabbed Claire under her arms and pulled her away, but the creature was able to steal flesh from the girl’s ankles and legs, leaving bloodied swatches. It swallowed the tattered bits of her stocki
ngs along with her flesh. Claire threw one arm over her face to protect herself and used the other for balance as she kicked at the frog-people.
John kicked the one attacking Claire in the face, and the creature’s skin was soft. Bones and white flesh caved in, leaving a hole where the face and mouth of the creature had been. John did not know if it were a beast or a girl, but the thing squealed with pain.
“Look out,” Peter Cavendar called. He and the rest were dry but watching fearfully.
Karl helped Sam pull Claire away, but the creatures that were floating complacently upon the pool’s surface suddenly became active, kicking over to the group with frog-like movements of their dark, slimy, back legs. All of them showed wide mouths and yellow eyes as they swam closer, flicking their tongues in the air as if tasting blood.
Sam and Claire tried to avoid them, dodging to the side, but they fell into the pool, vanishing under the surface. Karl stepped back before he fell in.
No one could get to the brother and sister as the monsters dove after them.
When Sam and Claire surfaced, they wailed with pain as the creatures used their tongues to slurp flesh from their bodies, staining the water bright red. The frog-people attacked in a frenzy. Each time they flicked their tongues out at their victims, a section of flesh ripped away from Claire or Sam who could not swim.
With the attention of the creatures diverted, Karl and John sloshed along the wall to get away, hoping that their legs would not, in their numbness, give way and cause them to fall.
“Get out; get out; hurry,” John said, pushing at the rest.
Karl reached for Helen, but she pulled away. She was staring out a porthole that was even with the waterline outside.
“What is it?” he asked, huffing and glancing behind to make sure the creatures were not coming.
“I do not quite know,” she said. In shock, she spoke dully, staring out the porthole. “And look how much lower we are in the water.” Tears ran down her cheeks as she puzzled over what had happened to Claire and Sam Cotton. Had those been frogs of some gigantic type?
Stead looked out the porthole next to Helen and cursed. He did not apologize for his language.
At first, he saw a gigantic fin breaking the surface, swimming back and forth as if it could smell the blood. The fish swerved, swimming away, and Stead was disappointed not to see it.
No, not disappointed, but rather nervous. He felt dread.
Then he screamed.
Everyone pushed backwards out of the room, but before the door was closed, they saw the leviathan swimming at a tremendous speed towards the porthole and then bash it with its nose. The porthole exploded, and the sea rushed in, but the thing was not satisfied and used its great teeth to bite and gnash at the opening as if it could get its enormous bulk inside.
Peter Cavendar slammed the door closed.
“What were those things?” Jenny asked. “What kind of monsters are they and where did they come from? The sea? Were they frogs?”
“Nothing like that lives in the sea,” Stead murmured.
“We’re doomed. We’re in a place of the damned,” Charles Whitmore mumbled.
Jenny ignored him, “They looked like frogs, but frogs do not do that to people. And that fish, he thought to come right inside with us.”
“Out on the deck, I saw far worse,” Howard said, “and you may not believe me, but I’ll tell you quickly.” He related his story fully now.
“I can’t imagine what that was like. I would have fainted,” Jenny said, “and the frogs, why they must be a part of this, in some way. Howard, how could they be here? What is allowing them to come into our world?”
“I can only think the worlds have somehow crossed one another. Perhaps it is this spot on the sea.”
“They killed those poor people,” Maggie Brown wiped her eyes. Everyone wanted to run away and hide, but each tried to stay strong. She wanted to hide under the covers of her bed.
“I can’t say I believe it, but after seeing those horrid things, I can’t disbelieve it either,” Peter Cavendar said, “but if you did indeed see those things, and we know you saw the shark because we saw it; it’s old. It’s older than we can imagine. I think we have somehow crossed another time.”
“Exactly,” Howard agreed.
Maggie asked what Howard and Stead thought it could be that they were seeing.
Stead shrugged, “Sea monsters are the easy answer, but those are vile things, things that are disgusting to the human race. They looked abnormal or unnatural. I admit the shark scared me nearly to fainting.”
“I think the ship somehow entered a rip in worlds. Our worlds have collided, and we can go into theirs, and they can…are coming into ours. And they are hungry,” Howard said.
“Impossible,” John said, “but doesn’t this entire event seem impossible? I have wet trousers and wet, cold feet, and I saw frogs consume two people.” He shook his head, and Jenny took his hand and said, “I believe every word of what Howard told us.”
“Of course, it is the truth,” Jenny said, “As we have seen it ourselves.”
The water grew deeper, and most stayed behind, watching. Those already wet: Peter and Lewis Darby went to check the mailroom. The plan was to look since they were already here, then to hurry up the stairs, and make the Captain listen to them. If he would not, then the officers must.
The squash court was like a swimming pool, and no one wanted to go inside the room for fear more frogs were there.
They were up to their chests when they reached the mailroom, fearful that something was swimming nearby. The others located fire axes and other things to use as weapons. “ ‘ Ello, mailroom. We’ve come to help you.” Lewis Darby hoped those from the mail cargo room already had gone up the stairs.
When they opened the door, they found a lake of soggy letters and mailbags that were lost to the seawater.
Daniels said eight were down there at work usually. There were body parts, pale bits of flesh and yellow fat, and a lot of blood. The surface of the water was very busy. Daniels could not say if the people he knew were there or if other, unfortunate souls were torn apart in this room.
Those who saw inside were horrified and shielded their eyes. Peter closed the door, but one of the creatures slipped through the water with lightning speed.
The fish swam right at Lewis, latched onto his leg, and began biting him. He howled as he slapped at it; his hand slid off the fish with the slime it excreted. John grabbed it, its mouth full of Lewis’ flesh, and slammed it on the ground far away where Stead wacked it with a fire axe.
The women of the group gasped and turned pale.
“Hit it again, Mr. Stead,” Maggie called out.
“It is dead,” he promised her, but he pounded it a few more times.
“Now, it is very dead,” Maggie said.
Stead looked over the dead fish carefully and curiously but refused to touch the monstrosity. “That is a piranha, one of the most deadly fish in South America. See the teeth?”
“South America, where the water is warm? That is mad,” Helen Monypenny said.
“Well, it looks like one and behaves like one. The teeth and the bodystructure…this is a piranha, but piranha are not colored purple, and they do not have lizard tails, see. So it is a piranha but an abomination of one,” Stead explained. He showed them that the fish’s body did not end in a fin but a slender tail.
“It is quite larger than piranha grow,” Howard said.
Maggie tore strips from her chemise, and after she looked at the bites, she felt Lewis would be fine after she bandaged him. She warned him to keep his wounds dry. “I need some whiskey to clean the wound. It always works for me.”
“For to drink or for to burn my wound?” Lewis asked, trying to remain chipper.
“Both,” Maggie Brown said, “I know it hurts, and it is bleeding a lot, but I think the damage is less than you imagine.”
Daniels paced as he thought and told them, “F has to be underwater at the b
ow or close to it. There is nothing else we can do. The firemen have locked themselves away, and we cannot help anyone down here, now.”
Shivering the entire way, Charles Whitmore talked to himself, shrugging off comforting words. “We’re quite doomed.”
“We are not. We are going up now, so try to be calm, Mr. Whitmore, please.”
They trudged back along the walkway until they found the activity of the third class. They heard the screams towards the bow but did not have the fortitude to investigate or to wade through the rising water again.
“There are injured people back there?” a steward asked.
John Morton used his hand to grasp the steward’s elbow, “Go down there, but know, there is ice-cold water, and it is rising quickly. Most are dead. What you are hearing are the screams of the crewmen, left fighting back there. If they win the battle, they will come here, but if they lose, you do not want to be anywhere near.”
“I’m going,” the steward said as he and another ran down the flooding hallway towards the mailroom, pool, and monsters. No one ever saw the men again.
“Foolish,” Stead shook his head sadly.
Several of the stewards locked the doors of the dining salons, and the hammering to be let out was faint and inconsistent.
“Why have they been locked away?” Maggie Brown asked, “What is going on with you? The water is coming.”
“Oh, mum, they’ve tried to rush the stairs several times, and someone will be injured. Some of the more daft ones have tried to run the other way, splashing along; it’s more’n a bit of madness ‘ere,” the stewardess said, shaking her head.
Daniels nodded and patted her arm as he told the others, “We’ve no practice except for life boat drills, and we’ve been told we must follow orders. I mean when we get orders….”
“We have told them to relax and wait,” the stewardess, Alicia said. She saw that some of the people before her were soaking wet. “Is the water rising? It’s still coming up? Is it true?”
“Just back there it begins. In a bit, this will flood, too,” John told her, “and you have to get everyone to the boat decks. It is just as Mrs. Brown said.”