by Jacob Hammes
“Already done, Germaine.” Frank sounded angry. “Thanks for the help, buddy, but why don’t you just stick to your job and I’ll stick to mine?”
Germaine didn’t feel the need to respond. He had pulled up to the end of the dock anyhow and was collecting the air horn and the high-powered flashlight off the seat next to him. The asshole on the other end of the radio could sit there and wonder how the next few minutes would go as punishment for being rude. As far as Germaine was concerned, the guy was off his rocker anyway. Regardless, he had a job to do that didn’t require him thinking about what type of drug Frank was on that made him so moody.
The cold air whipped past Germaine as he got as close to the end of the tire-lined dock as he could. The concrete piers dropped ten feet into the churning soup and each small wave caused a spray of water that chilled him to the bone. It was nearly impossible to see anything with the dense fog and utter darkness, but Germaine had to try and avert the impending disaster. He stopped just a foot from the end of the dock, plugged his ears as best he could, and laid on the air horn in loud resounding bursts.
It was out of air after three such bursts, but Germaine could hear the horn echoing through the dark fog for many seconds. He discarded the used air horn and pulled the spotlight from beneath his arm. The thing was blindingly bright but he doubted it made it ten feet into this god-forsaken fog. Regardless, Germaine did the only thing he could and shined the flashlight out into the darkness toward the oncoming ship.
Suddenly, Germaine realized something. Though he could hear the distant hum of machinery and the whipping of the wind over the water, the dock was strangely quiet. If some ship was motoring madly into port, regardless of its size, he should have been able to hear it. Either this thing was stealthy quiet, or, and this was much more likely, Frank had been messing with him.
Germaine waited patiently for another ten seconds before flicking the flashlight off and turning around. He had already been freezing to death in this abominable weather and now he was suffering even more from standing on the end of a dock. If Frank had been messing with him, Germaine swore he would march up there and rip him out of that surveillance shack before beating him half to death.
He gritted his teeth as he walked back to his transport. With shaky hands, he reached across the seat of the golf cart and snatched the two-way radio. Even the radio had a thin layer of moisture over it because of the misty fog, rain, and splashing ocean. Germaine cursed Frank as he wiped water from the durable electronic device.
Trying and failing to keep his temper in check, he made ready to call his counterpart. It would be the tongue lashing of the century if this guy was messing around. Germaine hated being the brunt of anyone’s joke.
The familiar sound of water slapping against fiberglass caught his ear. There had been a ship coming in after all, yet he still couldn’t hear the engines. What he could hear made his blood freeze. The sound of some haunting melody, and the frightening scream of what sounded like someone being tortured floated in along the whipping wind. The high-voice of an old-time artist sounded scary as hell in the dark of the night. Germaine felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end at the complete absence of any engine noise that accompanied both the boat and that frightening melody.
Unconscious of the fact he was moving at all, he grabbed the handle of his pistol.
Marcus panted from beneath the sheets. It was nearly three in the morning now and still he had this strange feeling. It wasn’t getting any stronger, at least. Marcus knew something was going down somewhere and soon he would be back on the road. He wondered for a brief second how Julie would take it if he were right. It would mean cancelling plans for their weekend getaway.
Her soft touch brought him back to reality. He was here, in his room, with his giant television and paper thin tablet, his automated security system and lights, and a woman in his bed. Sometimes he took for granted all the things he actually had in hopes of gaining a little more adventure.
“I wanted to add to the list,” Julie said breathlessly beside him. Her hair was in tangles now and her face was red from exertion. She kissed him softly on his chest.
“I have been thinking about it for a few days now.”
“Go on and do it then,” Marcus teased. “You want to add another few hours of abuse? I’m ready for whatever you’ve got.”
She patted him playfully. They had been dating for nearly a year now and Marcus still couldn’t anticipate everything the woman would say. He assured himself that someday he would be able to read her as well as he hoped. Today, however, she was being difficult.
“No more sex,” she answered. “I’ve been thinking about something a little more serious than that.”
“Oh,” Marcus answered inquisitively. “Do tell.”
“Well, we’re supposed to take this vacation soon and even though it’s just a weekend away I was hoping we could do something crazy.”
“You want to get a tattoo?” Marcus guessed. She had been thinking about getting one for weeks now but she was still too afraid that eventually she wouldn’t like it anymore. Marcus had nearly pleaded with her to keep her body clean; it looked amazing like it was and he didn’t want to chance ruining it.
“No,” Julie responded. “More serious than that, Marcus.”
“More serious than something that marks your body for the rest of your life?” he goaded. “I wonder what you could possibly be talking about.”
“I was thinking while we are there, you could buy me something special.”
“You’re the one with all the money,” Marcus joked. It was true, after all. She ran her own private law practice in D.C. No one out there could compete with her either. She had all the money she could ever want, but she wanted something special. Marcus couldn’t imagine what it was.
“Well, I can’t buy my own engagement ring.” With those eight words, Julie nearly shattered Marcus’s world.
Chapter 2
Germaine made his way as close as he could back to the end of the dock. He could hear the rowdy sea slapping up against the cement below him and feel the cold water brushing past as he stared out into the darkness. Unfortunately the fog was thick enough to obstruct anything that was more than five feet away, so even using the flashlight turned out to be futile. Regardless, he could hear the strange music and the slapping of water on fiberglass approaching. He knew he would see what was coming at him at any second.
The ship appeared like a specter through the ultra-bright beam of light and illuminated fog before him. The polished white bow was just a foot or so lower than the pier itself meaning it stood out of the water a good eight to ten feet. It glided in without the slightest sound of propulsion, giving it the illusion of a ghost ship. From stern to bow the Crown Prize was sixty-two feet long, though no one was ever an accurate judge of her length. The height at which she sat made her look much shorter.
It was immediately obvious that no one was steering the ship. The way it plummeted through the water toward the end of the dock told Germaine that it had only seconds before driving itself headlong into the cement moorings. He had to act quickly or risk losing a perfect safety record. The thought that people might be aboard didn’t even cross his mind.
In an instant he made the jump from the end of the dock onto the ship’s main level. He took off as quickly as he could down the length of the bow toward where the controls of the ship were sure to be. If this thing was going to slow down enough to stop itself from gashing a hole in the bow large enough to sink her, he would have to cut propulsion immediately.
He rounded the corner onto the ship’s main level deck and bolted up a ladder that Germaine knew would take him to the control room. It was a large compartment through which he could see the fog sliding past huge glass windows. As he had expected, it was completely abandoned.
Though Germaine didn’t have much experience with ships, he had been aboard a yacht or two and knew what to look for. The control levers for the forward thrust were just where h
e had expected them to be, right near a huge wheel that controlled the rudder. Without a second thought, he yanked the controls into full reverse.
With a sudden shudder, the ship immediately started slowing its approach. He hoped and prayed that it would be enough, but knew it that it wouldn’t stop the ship from at least contacting the pier. A sudden jolt and enough forward momentum to throw everything that wasn’t tied down forward told him that he was right. The ship had slammed into the end of the pier, though with considerably less momentum than it otherwise would have.
Cursing to himself, he pushed the throttle back into neutral and smashed his fist against the mahogany desk near the controls. It cracked a little beneath his powerful blow, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He was going to have to write a mountain’s worth of paperwork on this incident. In the worst case scenario, he might lose his job. Though there was nothing Germaine could do to stop the incident from happening, it still went on his record.
All around him, instruments glowed softly. Though the ship had been the quietest he had ever heard, it was obvious there was some power being applied. He took a moment to look around. The cockpit was lit with the dullest of glows from lights near the floor, colorful paintings hung on the walls, and everything seemed extravagant. It had everything a man could ask for.
“Stupid assholes,” he muttered as he turned around to leave. Someone had to be down in the decks below him. There had to have been someone who steered the yacht this far. When he found them, he was going to wring their neck. A faint tune was audible now that he was on board. It must mean someone was down there—hopefully they had come to their senses by now.
“Is anyone on board this ship?” he roared as he made his way down the rungs to the main level. Someone was bound to hear him yelling and whatever drunkard might have been piloting the yacht was about to experience more than he could have bargained for.
As he stepped off the ladder, lights started appearing within the interior of the ship. They were dim, but he figured it was from the tint on the windows. It was only when he approached the sliding glass doors that he noticed there was no tint. The lighting system had either been damaged or the obviously wealthy owners had invested in mood lighting. He threw the door open and started to scream, but something else came out of him instead. It was the sound of horror meeting confusion.
“Ungh,” he groaned.
Before him lie the most gruesome thing he had ever seen. Over an unnecessarily loud music system, effectively muted by the thick glass, was a sea of blood. Large globules moved this way and that with the boat as they trailed away from five or more seriously disfigured corpses. Faces that might have once been normal had been ripped to shreds, along with necks and backs and appendages.
No wonder the captain hadn’t stopped the ship.
Germaine drew his weapon. Something sinister had happened aboard and it was very possible that a perpetrator was still wandering about. He tried his hardest not to look at the bodies as he moved into the interior of the ship. It was extremely luxurious. The white couches lining each wall had been splattered with too-red blood. The elegant floors and carpets were also stained crimson. All the mirrors and glass and what looked to be a hundred wine glasses were smashed and littered across the floor. Along the walls were painted symbols and pleas for mercy.
All had been written in blood or something that looked like feces.
Near the rear of the main floor lounge was the most gruesome of all spectacles. A man had been stuck to the wall. His arms and legs were pulled tightly away from his body, pinioned in place with knives and nails. On the floor beneath him lie his guts.
He tried his hardest to hold down the dinner he had eaten not long ago. Germaine had heard stories of modern day pirates raiding ships and killing all the witnesses, but he never thought that he would see such a thing. His hands started shaking and sweat burst from nearly every pore. In an instant, he was covered in a slick sheen.
As he turned to leave, to get the hell out of that massacre, he heard something unusual. Above the noise of the awful music, he could have sworn that someone had screamed for help. Knowing someone had to have been piloting the ship in order for it to get so far inland, he decided to investigate. With pistol pointed straight ahead, he started creeping as carefully as he could through the bloody mess on the ground.
The door next to the strung-up man opened to an even more frightening hell than he had just walked through. It was nothing but a long corridor, but four or five doors stood half-opened into dark rooms before the hallway disappeared down a black staircase. Their silhouettes were hardly visible against the flashing overhead lights, but he could still make them out. Beside them were more streaks of blood. He could only imagine that whoever had done this might be lurking inside one of those darkened rooms.
He kept as close to the left wall as he could, hoping it would afford him some sort of cover in the closed corridor.
“Is this shit really worth it, Germaine,” he asked himself as he crept silently down the hall. The first door he came to was on his left. Despite his eyes becoming accustomed to the light, he could hardly see a thing within the room. It wasn’t until he had stepped inside that the lights decided to start working again.
Like a vision from one of the more horrible horror movies he had seen, he could only describe what lay before him as shocking. A thin young woman stood, staring at the ceiling as if something interesting was going on up there. She was short, skinny, nearly naked—and bloody from head to foot. If her moving lips were saying anything, Germaine couldn’t hear the words. They moved as if she were praying, but when she noticed someone was watching her, she gave a short scream and bolted for a corner.
Germaine was more than startled. He nearly shot the woman in the face. Her ripped bloody clothes told the security guard that she had something to do with the massacre. The flashing lights and the overpoweringly loud music made him even more jumpy than he would have been creeping into a ghost ship full of dead bodies. He was actually quite amazed at himself that he had made it this far without being overcome by paralyzing fear, let alone shooting the bloody mess of a woman curled up in the corner.
The woman inside the boat did not belong. She was tiny, with such petite features. Though he thought she may have been cute, she was way too young for him. Germaine placed her at or around eighteen years old, but no older than twenty. Her skinny legs and arms shook like a leaf beneath the grime and gore that covered her. He could tell she was frightened, and she had every right to be. After what she had obviously witnessed, he was amazed she hadn’t plunged off the yacht and into oblivion.
“Miss.” His voice broke and came out much too quietly against the overpowering music. “Miss, are you hurt?”
She jumped noticeably. Her unfocused, black eyes came to lock on his. Her emotionless face obviously belonged to a woman who had seen something she would never recover from. The only way he could describe what he saw was that the girl was not whole; something about her was amiss.
“You need to come with me, miss,” Germaine said over the noise. “We need to get you to a doctor. We need to get off this ship.”
Though the lights made it hard to see, Germaine was sure the woman was speaking. Her lips moved ever so slightly beneath blood and grime. As to what she was saying, he could not be sure. It came out as a whisper and he could hardly read her dirty lips. He didn’t know if it was even possible for her to speak louder, let alone speak English.
Germaine stepped further into the room and cocked an ear in her direction. It seemed like a room converted into a large storage closet. Wide as it was long, each wall was lined with shelves holding everything from extra clothing to canned goods. With just a cursory glance he could tell that nothing inside was immediately dangerous.
With pistol drawn and sweeping the room, he took another step toward the woman.
“Get away from me,” she screamed suddenly. Germaine nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the shrill cry. He took two s
teps back and leveled his flashy silver pistol on her head.
“Please get away from me,” she repeated in a much more controlled manner. “You don’t know what’s going on here.”
The linebacker-sized guard hardly realized that he had backed into the claustrophobic hallway. Apparently being startled had made him retreat farther than he had initially intended. He hardly paid the woman any mind as she scooted away from him behind a nondescript plastic box. He was more concerned with making it out of the haunted ship alive. If she couldn’t fix herself quickly, he would be picking her up like a football and heading for the door.
The woman was obviously distraught. She had experienced something unimaginable from the looks of it. Maybe all of these people were her family members or good friends. He had no way of knowing if either was true. All he knew was that he really wanted to get off of the damned ship and away from the creepy interior of the blinking lights and pounding music. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the ship would open some hidden maw and eat him whole any second.
“Ma’am,” Germaine tried as gently as he could over the music, feeling a bit of his courage come back. “I’m going to come in there and get you. We are going to walk out of here together. Is that okay?”
Her face was hidden behind the plastic box. She had curled her tiny frame into an even tighter ball so that the only thing visible was a small portion of her foot. Had Germaine not been lucky enough to catch her standing up as she had been, he would have simply passed the room and regarded it as empty.
The music stopped, leaving Germaine’s ear ringing in the sudden absence of sound. The silence was like a breath of fresh air in the horrifying environment. Though the lights still blinked away, it was far easier to cope with flashing lights than it was to worry about having to listen for some killer sneaking up on the two of them. Germaine took the opportunity to step deeper into the room and snag the woman while he could.