by Dan Poblocki
“We’re frightened, Gregory!” Margo cried out. “Beatrice and Aimee are gone! And … And we don’t know who any of you are anymore!”
“We’re us!” said Otis, kneeling and holding out his arms toward them.
Again, Josie thought, no comment about his missing daughter? And Charlie’d barely flinched at the mention of his wife’s name.
“Where’s Bruno?” Vivian asked.
“We couldn’t find him back on the island,” Gregory cried. “Come on! We’ve got to get you out of that water!”
“Gregory?” Vivian said. “You’re sure that you’re Gregory Elliott?”
Gregory’s grin widened. “None other,” he said.
To Josie’s left, her mother pulled away, moving around the bow. Once Vivian made this decision, it would be made for all of them. Josie grabbed for her mother’s life vest, but the orange nylon slipped away from her fingers. Vivian stretched her arm up toward Gregory’s open palm.
Lightning. A crack of thunder. And in that second, Josie saw something in Gregory’s face that sent her spiraling into panic. His skin had been sallow, pulled taught over a gaunt skull. His eyes had been empty sockets except for what looked like a crab claw reaching out from the one on the right, clamping down on his lower lid. His nose had been missing, nothing more than two tiny holes in the center of his face. Pieces of flesh had been torn away, revealing bloody bone and teeth. In that flash of lightning, Gregory had looked like a ghoul. And Josie knew: The hungry ghost of Emil Coombs was still wearing Gregory Elliott’s body like a costume.
“MOM! WAIT! STOP!”
To Josie’s relief, Vivian withdrew her hand and glanced over her shoulder. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Josie looked up at Gregory as he snapped his glare toward her. He knew that she knew. And he understood that this part of his game was over. He’d lost.
The others noticed his expression too. Vivian kicked backward from the raft so quickly, she almost lost her grip on the bow, but Josie grabbed her elbow and pulled her close. With one arm, Vivian hugged her daughter, crying out in shock at what had just happened.
“He’s lying,” Josie explained. “They’re all liars!”
Eli leaned toward her. “You saw it too?”
Josie nodded, tears leaking from her eyes.
Instantly, the men changed. Gone were the helpful and worried expressions. They stood in their raft, staring down at the group huddled in the water, each smiling the same satisfied smile. Charlie and Otis raised the long wood oars, reaching out farther, almost over the heads of those bobbing in the surf.
If they brought them down, Josie thought, well … it was over. The only option left was to let go of the dinghy and drift into open water.
“Stop!” said Margo. “Hold your horses! I’m coming around. You can have me.” Otis and Charlie paused, glancing at Gregory as if for orders. “On one condition. You must not touch the others!”
Gregory laughed. “You’ll leave them here?”
“They’ll have a better chance out here than with you, of that I’m quite certain.” She struggled to move back around the stern of the boat, grappling the edges tenderly, avoiding the sharp propellers that were only inches from her face. “Just get this over with.” Josie thought she could hear Margo chuckling to herself, as if something in her head had snapped. As if she had nothing left to lose. At this point, she’d crawled too far away for anyone to stop her. Josie understood that arguing would be pointless. “So, what do you say?” Margo went on. “Do we have a deal?”
“We do,” said Gregory, reaching out again, this time for Margo’s hand.
The sound of a horn blasted somewhere nearby. Momentarily forgetting the melodrama that was playing out before them, everyone turned to see where the noise had come from. To Josie’s surprise, another light was approaching from the opposite direction. It cast a strange, wide beam that seemed to hover and sway across the pulsing waves, back and forth, until it finally settled on them. Then came another blast from the horn.
When the ship was within shouting distance, Josie’s heart switched into high gear. She could just make out the words written on the bow. It was the Sea Witch.
“HOLD IT,” SONNY Thayer said, clutching the ferry’s wheel. “What’s that out there?”
Rick stood beside him, directing the spotlight where his grandfather instructed. When he found the aluminum boat and a large rubber raft floating beside it, he steadied his hands. “Well, I’ll be …” he whispered. “Gramps, you were right.”
“Told you I was better out here than on the road.”
Back at Haggspoint Harbor, when they’d discovered that the current had dragged the ferry upstream, Rick had begged Sonny to leave it alone. But Sonny wouldn’t listen. He’d made his way to the end of the slip and hopped into the dinghy, insisting that they locate the ferry. When Rick realized that his grandfather was not going to take no for an answer, he followed, shouting out that the old man was going to get them killed. But they’d found the ship a half hour later, stuck loosely in a wet marsh a couple of miles inland. Sonny was so relieved, he didn’t bother saying to Rick I told you so. The two of them had simply tied the dinghy to the stern, climbed aboard, and gunned the engine.
Later, in the gulf, Sonny asserted that he’d heard a distress call — a clanging sound that Rick hadn’t noticed over the wind and the waves — and Sonny, being Sonny, had decided to track it down.
“But is that them?” Rick asked, shining the spot on the water. Every one of the group was looking toward the ferry with anticipation. “What on earth are they doing way out here?”
“Let’s go see,” Sonny said, throwing the throttle forward.
“HELP US!” JOSIE cried out. Without thinking, she let go of the dinghy and tried to swim toward the spotlight, but the current snatched her up, carrying her toward the darkness outside the spotlight’s range.
Eli reached out. Catching her life jacket, he managed to drag her back to the capsized boat. “Don’t get too eager,” he said. Josie stared at him in shock, appalled at how easily she might have slipped away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I owed you one anyway.”
They glanced at the men on the raft. The trio stood straight, somehow weathering the rocking of the vessel, staring at the larger boat with empty expressions.
Lights blinked on around the perimeter of the large boat, illuminating a thirty-foot radius of furious water. A figure appeared by the railing at its side.
“Hey!” Rick Thayer waved. “Hold on just a second longer.” He disappeared for a moment, and when he returned, he concentrated on tying something to the railing. Soon, he flipped the object up over the rail. A rope ladder unraveled and dropped down. Then, Rick held up a white foam lifesaver ring. It was attached to a cord that trailed off behind him. “One at a time!” he said. “Catch!”
The first time Rick threw out the loop, Josie snagged it. She called out, “Margo!” Then she passed the flotation device down to the woman who was still clutching the upturned motor. Margo opened her mouth to argue but then seemed to realize that to do so would only waste more time. She hooked her arms through the lifesaver.
“Good,” Rick called out. “Steady now!”
At the ferry, Margo struggled a bit climbing the ladder, but she made it to the top. Gregory and his crew watched silently from the raft.
In this way, the group made their way to the Sea Witch. Cynthia and Vivian insisted Josie and Eli grab on to the lifesaver together. They cried in disbelief as Rick reeled them across the water, away from the danger of the men on the raft.
Once on the deck of the Sea Witch, they gathered with Margo to help Rick pull in their mothers. Rick explained that Sonny was up on the bridge, struggling to keep the wheel steady. When Vivian climbed over the railing and onto the deck, the five survivors watched Rick glance tentatively out at the men, looking ready to toss the foam ring again. They all shouted, “Stop!”
Rick rocked back on his heels,
shocked at their ferocity. Otis, Charlie, and Gregory continued to stand straight, staring up at the group at the railing. “Stop what?” asked Rick.
“Don’t throw them the rope,” said Josie.
“They’re not who you think they are,” said Eli at the same time.
“They’re not?” Rick asked, peering quickly around at the rest of the group. The women shook their heads. Cynthia covered her face, heaving with sobs. “Then who are they?”
“It’s a long story,” said Margo, touching Rick’s shoulder. “But the kids are right. We can’t let them on board.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s up to us anymore,” said Rick, nodding at the raft. “Looks like they have their own plan.”
The group on the Sea Witch’s deck watched as Otis and Charlie used the long oars to push away from the capsized dinghy’s metal hull. The rubber vessel slowly floated in the opposite direction, riding at the crest of another swollen wave.
“Where are they going?” Cynthia asked, leaning forward, as if trying to reach out and stop them, as if she still had hope that things could be turned around.
Vivian sidled up beside her, enveloping her in a tight embrace. “It’s for the best.”
“We need to search for Aimee and Beatrice,” Eli said.
“Search for …” Rick’s eyes went wide. “Oh no, please don’t tell me —”
“Our boat turned over,” said Vivian. “We lost them.”
Rick paused, observing each member of the group, as if in awe. “What were you doing out here?” he asked. When no one answered, he shook his head and turned toward the stairway that led to the bridge. “I’ll go tell Sonny —”
The last piece of his statement was drowned out by a new sound, louder than the wind, the thunder, the ocean. It was a great droning — a humming, grinding sound, like a helicopter descending or a plane on a runway at liftoff. Josie and Eli glanced up and around, looking for some sort of machine coming at them from the sky.
They should have been looking down.
NEARLY FIFTY YARDS off the side of the ship, the ocean began to foam and roil in a massive white oblong patch. Moments later, an enormous black fin burst through the surface. Its tip was sharp like a blade, and it kept rising and rising, dozens of feet into the air. A tumultuous wake rolled away from it on all sides. The humming sound grew to a roar. The ferry’s passengers clutched rungs, poles, and railings to steady themselves from, at first, the surprise of the sight and then, a moment later, from the vicious rocking brought on by the wake.
Eli’s first thought upon seeing the fin was that a massive prehistoric shark had marked them as a meal. It didn’t seem so far off from everything else that had already happened that night. Only when the great fin tilted forward into the water — and a rectangular tower with spires and spikes mounted at the top emerged from behind it — did Eli fathom what he was actually observing: the ascension of a giant submarine.
Sonny appeared at the bottom of the stairwell, having rushed down from the bridge. No one even looked at him; they were mesmerized. “What in the name of all that’s holy is going on out there?” he said.
Lightning jumped through clouds in the distance. For a moment, the sub was backlit, revealing a large group of men standing on the hull and simply staring at the ferry. “Who are they?” Cynthia asked. Another flash and it became clear that a large piece of the vessel was missing. Near the front of the platform where the crew had gathered, a jagged hole exposed the black innards of the ship. The submarine should not have been operational, yet there it was, its engine grinding away angrily somewhere deep inside the dark body.
With a subsequent lightning flash, for a horrific second, the true nature of these men became clear. Even from the distance at which Eli stood, he made out tattered uniforms, missing limbs, pale skin, hollow eyes staring back.
The ghost crew of a ghost ship.
Eli and Josie moved away from the railing and backed toward their mothers, who were leaning against the wall by the stairs. Beatrice’s recollection hovered in Eli’s memories: The navy fleet from Portland sunk the enemy submarine that had been stationed just offshore. This was that submarine. The U-boat. These were the rest of the men who had perished because of Dory’s actions.
“We have to move,” Josie whispered. “Now.”
Sonny was in no state to listen. His jaw had dropped wide-open. From the vacant look in his eyes, his mind was off somewhere trying to make sense of what he was witnessing.
“Mr. Thayer,” Eli tried, “you’ve got to get back up to the wheel. You have to turn this boat around!”
Cynthia broke away from the group at the wall and rushed forward to the railing. “Otis!” she cried. “No! Please!” Everyone turned to catch a glimpse of what she was seeing out on the water.
The rubber raft had come up alongside the U-boat’s hull. The ghostly crew held out their skeletal hands toward the trio of men. Otis. Charlie. Gregory. The three reached up, claiming the help that was being offered to them. Before anyone else on the Sea Witch could shout an objection, the men climbed aboard the sub and stood with their compatriots, reunited in spirit at long last.
ELI RAN TO HIS mother’s side and watched as Gregory, Charlie, and Otis descended into a hatch in the shell of the metal slug. Other members of the crew followed, one by one, until no one was left standing on the platform.
The sound of the ghostly engine rumbled ever louder. A halo of white surrounded the sub, millions of bubbles being released from inside. Cynthia hugged Eli, unable to watch. The platform where the crew had stood now vanished below the waves. A few seconds later, the rectangular tower went with it. Its spires and antennae were the last pieces to go, disappearing like skinny fingers waving a capricious farewell.
The empty rubber raft bobbed in the surf. For several seconds, no one on the Sea Witch said a word.
Vivian followed Sonny and Rick up to the bridge, trying to explain, as best she could, what had just happened. The others wandered the deck, holding on to the railing as the Sea Witch continued to sway under the spell of the immense waves, and peered out at the dark water. “Beatrice?!” they called out to the nothingness that surrounded them. “Aimee?!”
Every whitecap caught Eli’s attention. Clutching the lifesaver, he’d rush forward only to realize he’d been fooled again. Though he’d seen his father go down with the U-boat, he continued to hope that he might spot him too. His stomach churned with dread — a dull pain that worsened with every second that passed.
He did not blame the men for what they did back on Stone’s Throw Island. None of this had been their fault. And yet, he couldn’t help thinking that each of their souls must have been cracked just enough to let in the bad spirits. Or maybe it hadn’t been anything like that. Maybe Eli had merely been lucky that they hadn’t crept inside of his own head too.
“Aimee?!” he called out, standing at the Sea Witch’s stern. “Beatrice?! Dad?!” Margo’s voice echoed out in chorus with his mother’s from the other side of the boat. Josie was ahead of him, leaning over the edge of the railing. Eli was about to turn around and search the waters off the rear of the boat, when he saw her flinch and then jump backward, surprised by something she’d seen. Turning to Eli, she motioned for him to come quickly.
Momentarily forgetting everything else, Eli dashed across the slippery deck. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” By the time he reached her, Josie had backed all the way against the cabin wall. A few feet away, the rope ladder was still tied to the railing, dangling over the edge into the water below. Her jaw was trembling. She raised her hand and pointed.
“Look down there,” she whispered, nodding. “Tell me if you see anything.”
“What are you —”
“Just look! I can’t trust my own eyes anymore.”
Eli edged toward the rope ladder. After everything that had happened, what could Josie possibly have seen to make her behave this way? The sub had sunk, taking the crew — taking his dad — with it. So what co
uld be so scary —
A man was dangling from the bottom of the ladder. When he glanced up, Eli’s throat swelled. He choked and then caught his breath again. Eli had seen this face before — when he’d been in the water beside the overturned dinghy. Here was the sallow skin, the collapsed nose, the empty eye sockets.
The crab that Eli thought he’d noticed earlier had either fallen out or had crawled farther in. “Gregory?” he said quietly, his voice wobbling on the dying wind. “Is that you?”
THE THING CHUCKLED as it took another rung, dragging itself fully out of the water, dangling from the ladder. It was still several feet below the deck, but Eli had a feeling it wouldn’t remain that way for long. “Wrong,” said the specter. The voice was a husk, a wrecked wrinkle of a whisper. “Gregory is down below now. With my crew.” His forehead screwed up in disgust. “How many times must I ask you to call me Coombs?”
Eli felt Josie lean over the railing by his shoulder. “Agent Coombs,” she whispered. “Emil.”
“That’s quite familiar of you, young lady,” said the specter. “Some might even say rude.”
“Rude?” Josie blurted out a guffaw, forgetting her fear. “I’m from Staten Island. I know rude.” She began to tug at one of the rope ladder’s knots that Rick had tied to the railing. She glanced at Eli, and he started to work on the other knot. “You haven’t seen rude yet, buddy.”
The specter reached toward her. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Oh yeah?” said Josie. “Gimme one reason.”
“Because if you send me away, I can’t offer you the prize.”
Josie and Eli let go of the knots, holding their hands over the railing as if they’d just learned they’d been playing with a bomb.