Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  This time I ran to the deck. I steadied myself against one of the metal struts and stared into the strip of illuminated water. Again I heard the plea but saw nothing. I reached for one of the flare guns strapped to the side of the life rafts. Holding it high I fired it into the night sky.

  It burned brightly, a comet scattering crimson fog. For a split second, I saw the ghostly outline of a life raft, the silhouette of a man standing up in it, arms held to the sky as if he were commanding the heavens. His words were clear above the wind: “I see! I see!”

  Then he vanished, just like that; the man, the boat, his shadow against the horizon. It was then that the story of Jim Tattle, the eyeless madman, came flooding back.

  Needless to say I had trouble sleeping, but after pushing my travel trunk up against the door of my cabin I forced fear out of my head and drifted into oblivion.

  The next morning I woke early. I got up to douse my face with my customary wake-up call of freezing water. One side of my neck felt peculiarly bruised. I pulled my shaving mirror from the wall. A blue-black track of lovebites ran from just under my chin to my collarbone. I gazed at them blankly. It was so bizarre I didn’t realize what they were at first. Confused, I touched them carefully. My neck was definitely bruised as if whoever or whatever had sucked and bitten me deeply. I sat back on the bunk. I couldn’t remember anything about the night except that I had slept far more soundly than usual. I was pretty sure I hadn’t dreamed. I smelled my fingers; they had a curiously sweet fishy scent. And it wasn’t just on my hands. Sniffing the air I followed the scent; it led to my pillow.

  I buried my nose in the rough cotton; the whole bed stank. Suddenly I noticed something glinting and I peered down. Nestled on my pillow was a small pile of translucent fish scales. I scooped them up and carried them to the desk in the corner. Under the lamp I examined them with a magnifying lens I keep for looking at shells and sea specimens.

  The fish scales were pearly and larger than I’d ever seen. There were over ten of them and each was around half a centimeter across. They had a bronze hue and looked a little like crystal snowflakes. I placed them under a stronger lens and was shocked to see that each scale had distinctly individual patterns, very similar to the swirls of fingerprints. I’d never seen that before in any known species.

  I sat back, trying to assimilate the facts. Was it possible that some bizarre fish species had crawled into the cabin and attacked me while I was sleeping? I knew that sometimes the wind will pick up a flying fish and throw the writhing creature onto the deck of a ship or oil rig. But flying fish belong in tropical waters, and besides, what kind of flying fish would crawl across the floor of a cabin and leave lovebites on its human occupant?

  The curious and sometimes obscene relationships fishermen have with sea creatures floated through my mind: tales about dugongs being courted as sea-maidens because of their breast-like teats and near-human proportions; the more graphic stories I’d heard of men fucking skates because their vertical mouths were vagina-like. I cursed my Irish imagination and resolved to ignore the mystery and focus on prosaic matters. I tossed my bed sheets into the laundry. But somehow, later that day, I found myself outside the administration office determined to find out more about Tattle.

  I switched the light on and the fluorescent tubes sputtered into life, creating a bluish underworld. There was a computer on the desk, a shortwave radio, and several metal filing cabinets pushed up against the back wall. Feeling horribly furtive I walked over to them. Harris, the administration officer, a fastidious man in his late sixties, had been working for the oil company for the past thirty years. He was overweight and had trouble squeezing his flesh into the undersized suits he insisted on wearing. I’d often wondered whether his preoccupation with detail and tidiness was a reaction to the war he obviously fought with his body. Whatever the cause, Harris was meticulous and obsessive—if Tattle had actually existed Harris would have filed all the details of his case for sure.

  The first cabinet was marked Personnel Files: 1975–85, the second cabinet contained 1985–95. I knew the rig had been in operation since 1974, although it had gone through several overhauls since then. Mary the prostitute said the Tattle incident happened about twenty years before. I reached for the first drawer.

  The main files were arranged chronologically and then within each year personnel were filed alphabetically. I found a Taylor who had worked the rig from 1978 through to ’82, a Thomas who was the electrician from 1980–81. There were several other Ts but no Tattle.

  I scanned the files again. Time had shaded the tops of the main files with dust and grime. It was then that I noticed the clearly delineated outline of a file that had been removed from between Tass and Topper. Okay, suppose it was Tattle’s file—where would Harris have hidden it? I was sure someone as bloody anal as Harris wouldn’t have thrown it away, especially if there’d been a legal case attached.

  I looked around the room. Harris’s desk was bare except for a curious photo of an albino bat torn out from a magazine and stuck on the wall above the computer screen. The man must be some kind of animal nut, I reasoned. I tried the drawers; one was locked. I knelt on the floor and meticulously began to pick the lock.

  Inside was a Playboy issue July 1982, a framed photograph of a woman I could only assume was Harris’s mother, an electric alarm clock engraved with the immortal words, To E. M. Harris, for twenty years of loyal service. Under all of this lay a large package. I pulled it out and dusted it off; it was sealed with thick sticky tape. I switched on the kettle in the corner, waited for it to boil, and steamed it open carefully. Then I tipped the contents out onto Harris’s desk.

  First item: a newspaper clipping from the Aberdeen Evening Express dated 16 June 1975. It read:

  Last night the body of an oil-rig worker, Jim Tattle, twenty-six, was

  found floating in a life raft fifty miles north of Aberdeen. Tattle, a

  diving engineer, had been suffering from a mental disorder for some

  time. No foul play is suspected.

  Clipped to this was another article, this time from the Edinburgh Echo:

  The horrible sight of an eyeless corpse floating in a life raft shocked

  fishermen working off the east coast of Scotland early this morning.

  The victim, identified as Jim Tattle, an oil-rig diver, was found stark

  naked and sprawled across the inflatable life raft. Mr. Tattle, who

  had just undergone a marital breakup and a nervous breakdown,

  had gouged out his own eyes. The oil company had no comment.

  I leaned back in the chair; I could feel the gorge rising in my throat. So Tattle had been a diving engineer like myself and, also like myself, had suffered a recent separation. Under the clippings was a file: the insurance company’s report, addressed to both the oil company and Tattle’s family. The final verdict was that all evidence pointed to death by self-inflicted wounds, therefore defined as suicide. Poor bastards, I thought, they wouldn’t have got a penny from the company then. We all had to sign a disclaimer regarding mental illness as a condition of employment. I found myself feeling some affinity for the anguished phantom I’d seen the night before.

  Beneath the file, slipped between two blank sheets of aged yellow paper, was a slim notebook covered in a deep-blue satiny fabric. I opened it and was immediately transfixed by the spidery handwriting that slanted upward at the end of each line. A title was scribbled across the first page: Here is the journal of Jim Tattle. I began to read.

  16 May 1975

  Another gray day, sometimes I wonder why I bother to write in this journal at all. I think it’s because the discipline is stopping me from going crazy. It’s been six months now and I’ve started to forget what Vauxhall looks like. Isn’t that pathetic? I checked all the drill’s fuses twice over tonight. Anything to avoid talking with my so-called coworkers. Bunch of total morons. If I hear another knock-knock joke I’ll puke. They don’t seem to care about anything except making
money and the see-through blouse Cilla Black wore on Top of the Pops last night. I could scream. There’s one man I get on with—Harris. He’s older, reminds me of my dad. He’s got the same old-fashioned gruffness. Maybe I’m just more comfortable with rude people.

  He sat next to me at dinner, which was brave considering how the rest of the crew ridicule me. We had a smoke in his office later. He told me he saw an albino bat once on some war ship he served on. That would be fantastic, to see something as weird as that.

  Later I smoked some pot and listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon—again! What a truly amazing album. It felt like the music was playing every secret emotion I had. At about one a.m. I had one of those revelations you get with really good grass. For a moment I thought I was in telepathic communication with Eddy. He was telling me that it was okay I didn’t go to his funeral.

  17 May 1975

  I just woke up and there was that odor again, all over my cabin and bed. A weird musky smell. This is the fifth morning in a row. Maybe I should tell whoever’s on cleaning duty about it. Then as I was dressing I noticed a couple of puncture marks in my arm. Just like someone had bitten me. This is beginning to really spook me.

  I stared out the window at the lightening sky. So Tattle had experienced something similar. I flicked forward through the diary, my hand trembling. His handwriting got wilder and wilder. The last entry was marked 9 June, a week before he was found floating in the raft. It was as if he had scribbled it in a mad hurry—the lines ran diagonally across the page and finished hanging in midair, like a series of mini cliff-edges.

  9 June 1975

  It’s here, screaming, like hooks in my skin, like the rush from a razor-sharp climax. Surrender. Don’t fight it, not anymore. Eddy, I’m going to be with you. Like we were, playing soccer on the field outside the house. Boys, we were boys, possibility screeching in every train whistle, in the London fog, in the dreams of our grandfather. We were going to be millionaires, artists, rock stars, chasing life itself. Taste, taste summer, the chilly smoke, frost on the grass, and hot tarmac. Sirens. The song of the siren. She’s coming for me. Guess this is good-bye. Sucking sleep from the sky and shutting out the moon. Eddy, my brother, my shadow half…

  There was nothing else. I suppose he finally wanted to be with his dead brother. The prostitute was right: the sea can throw up memories like seaweed after a storm. It’s that vast glassy surface—a fucking mirror for the soul. Me, in my darkest moments. I related to poor Tattle—the shadowy outline of that eyeless figure drifted back into my mind.

  I don’t know what made me take the file, but I did. Somehow, its existence made his suicide and burial feel incomplete. Some South American tribes refuse to be photographed because they believe the camera steals the soul; and Australian Aborigines don’t allow their people to be named after their death. Perhaps it was the sense that as long as the file existed Tattle would remain floating out there on that glassy surface screaming, “I see, I see.”

  Out on the lower deck I placed the file in a rubbish bin and torched it. The flames danced up through the wire, vivid against the colorless vista. Gray sea, gray sky. I squatted, warming my hands, staring into the fire, the heat a glorious contrast to my freezing ears. I felt like the last man on earth. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad.

  As the last of the paper crinkled up I made a vow to bury my grief and Tattle’s ghost together. Then I heard the whirring blades of the returning helicopter.

  The next couple of days passed in a blur, just the eternal routine of checking equipment. One of the workers discovered a broken cable and I had to radio the main office to order a replacement. The men were jovial—empty balls will do that. Their conviviality would last a week and then they’d slip back into sullen acceptance of the monotony of the endless little tasks that go into maintaining the rig. Personally I’ve always liked routine, it takes the edge off time, blunts its teeth. Day became night became morning became afternoon…

  Besides, being young, I didn’t yet feel that galloping fear some of the older men experienced who knew the rig was their last chance to make some real money. Yeah, I was naive enough to think I had all the time in the world. And I’d tricked myself into thinking I’d forgotten all about Tattle and his mysterious death.

  Until one of the men pushed an envelope into my hand.

  “A love letter from your Mary. The old cow insisted I give it to you. I would have forgotten but I found it in me back pocket.”

  I stepped into my cabin and reluctantly tore open the cheap pink paper.

  Dear Mr. Seamus, after you left I remembered something about Tattle. Something strange I have not told anyone else. The last time he visited me there were funny marks on his body. I see a lot in my industry but I ain’t seen nothing like this before. Like a sucking or a beating perhaps. I remembered my first thought was whether he had been hurt by the other men. Bored men can get cruel. But to my eyes it looked like animal tracks of some kind. I didn’t ask Tattle because he was quite distressed by this time and not entirely in his right mind.

  Hope this helps. Yours, Mary MacDougal.

  Helps what, I thought. Why should I care about Tattle? A man’s problems can hang around a rig like a ghost for years, even after the man himself is long gone. Every offshore worker knows that. The secret is to walk through that haunting as if you haven’t a care in the world. Otherwise the negative energy will stick to you like metal filings to a magnet.

  The weather was changing; warmth floated in on the breezes that came from the land. It made the men restless and set the cook humming. It usually made me dream, but for the last week I’d found myself plunging into a deep imageless slumber each time I laid down my head. Perhaps it was the switch over to night shift; whatever it was it disturbed me.

  This particular evening I woke up with a pounding at my temples. The air was stuffy with a rich animal smell I couldn’t identify. For a moment I wondered if a mouse had died behind one of the walls. With my head still pulsing I yawned and reached under my pillow. My hand touched something unfamiliar. A blue-black pearl, left there like some sort of message.

  It was large and misshapen, not perfectly spherical like a cultured pearl. There was something alien about the way it shone in the light, as if it had come from an entirely different terrain.

  I ran it across my skin; it was sticky, as if it had only just been removed from the oyster. Then I sniffed it. A familiar salty musk. I’m telling you, as a good Catholic I blushed when I remembered where I had smelled the scent before. I lay there struggling with my erection, before my alarm went off indicating my shift had begun. It had to be a prank the lads were playing on me.

  I waited until the last meal of the shift then confronted the crew.

  “Which one of you jokers thought this would be funny?” I held up the pearl.

  They looked at me blankly. Then Nick the navigator, a bit of a showman, held out his hand. I dropped the gem into the center of his palm. He studied it as if he were a jeweler examining the Queen’s crown; the others watching, fascinated. Finally he looked up with a mock-serious expression plastered across his long face.

  “What the fuck are you on about, Seamus? This is a fucking pearl. A valuable one at that. What’s this got to do with us?”

  “Someone left it under my pillow.”

  There was an awkward silence. Then Nick spoke up again.

  “Okay, fess up, you mob, which of you lads is in love with this here Irishman?” At that they all cracked up.

  “Come on, who left the love note?” Nick yelled over the laughter, which only sent them into louder peals of hysterics. I sat there, face burning, not moving an inch.

  “Mate, you’re losing it. You should get over to the knocking shop before your balls ferment the rest of your brain,” Nick added.

  I spent the rest of the night alone in the library. I couldn’t find a reference to anything as big or the same color as my pearl. It really was exotic. I’d placed it on the flat top of a desk ba
rometer and it stared back at me, almost as if daring me to give it definition.

  By the time dawn started to creep in under my blinds I’d decided it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I settled under the eiderdown and switched off the lamp, hoping that this time I might actually dream. Of what I don’t know—giant oysters?

  I started to doze off but was suddenly flooded with the sensation that I was slipping underwater without my diving mask. I sat up, struggling to draw breath; coughed, almost expecting my lungs to bring up water. But nothing came. “It’s an anxiety attack, that’s all,” I said to myself. “Breathe deeply and it will go away.” I relaxed, then lay down. Again I felt as if I were drowning. Finally, dosed up with sleeping pills, I fell asleep only to wake an hour later. This went on throughout my rest time.

  I moved through my next shift with limbs as heavy as lead, a slow dread growing in my guts—the terror of falling asleep. At dawn I approached my bunk like it was an electric chair. This time I had drunk the best part of a whiskey bottle and taken two Valium on top of that, but the fear was still upon me. I lay there, eyelids wide, my heart rattling like a stone in a tin despite the drink and the drugs. Each time my eyes started to droop and exhaustion eased its way through my muscle tissue it felt as if my lungs were filling with water and I was being pulled down into liquid suffocation.

  The next day I propped myself up with caffeine and some NoDoz pills the cook gave me. I had no choice: I had a job to do. The new cable had arrived that morning and, as chief diver, I knew it was I who had to go down and weld the new section to the old. I was inspecting the cable when one of the crew put his head around the door to tell me there was a phone call for me.

  There was only one phone on the rig and usage was restricted to one call per man per week, incoming or outgoing. I’d never had reason to use it and I couldn’t think who’d be ringing me now. The extraordinary notion that it could be Jim Tattle himself calling from the underworld occurred to me as I walked swiftly to the communications cabin.