by Tim Curran
He pulled out another cigarette and lit it with shaking hands. He could barely hang onto the Zippo. It felt like its brass casing had been oiled. As he smoked, he studied a door directly across from him. It was no different than any other cabin door, yet he could not stop staring at it.
And he knew why: the thing that haunted this fucking ship was behind it.
It was waiting there, grinning with a crooked smile of long yellow teeth, looking right through the door at him. In his mind, he could see its single blood-rimmed serous eyeball watching him. It was daring him to open the door. It was taunting his weakness and lack of real guts.
He pulled off his cigarette, goosebumps rising on his forearms and the nape of his neck. He had the flashlight trained on the door. He licked his lips. He tensed his muscles. He tried to fill that gaping hollow inside him with steel because he was Charlie Petty and he wasn’t afraid of anything.
But that’s a lie and you know it, he heard his own voice saying in his head. Inside here, in the darkness at the top of the stairs which is your mind, the empty attic of the beast itself, you know it isn’t true. This is like nothing you’ve ever faced before. It doesn’t matter how fast you are, how strong, how smart, or how cunning or lethal you are. Whatever walks alone on this ship doesn’t play by those rules. It knows you are physically dangerous and perhaps its equal, but it doesn’t want to fight. It wants something else.
Yes, that was true.
He knew it was true. It didn’t want to fight. It had other motivations, only it was keeping them secret. He would not learn what they were until it had weakened him with his own fear and then and only then, when he was curled up and sobbing with terror, would it show itself. Until then, it would play mind games. It would crawl inside his head and make him doubt the reality of everything.
Yes, he knew it.
Just as he’d known it was there the moment he stepped on the ship and knew that puddle of urine he found was not accidental or harmless. The thing had pissed itself out of excitement because he was exactly what it had been waiting for.
He exhaled a cloud of smoke that filled the flashlight beam. “I know you’re in there,” he said. “And if I want to, I’ll come after you.”
He was certain he heard it tittering.
It was still staring at him and its grin was wider than ever, all those long, interlocked teeth shining with malice, daring him to come after it because that was part of the game. And if he didn’t play the game, it would be angry and it would no longer smile.
Charlie waltzed over there, steeling himself as he had once upon a time when he’d stuck a shank in a guy in the prison yard. He grabbed the door and threw it open. The flashlight beam found only darkness within. Nothing more. But the smell…it was horrible. Stagnant and fusty like standing water. Then worse: a sour stink like the glandular secretions of a mink.
“Nothing,” he said under his breath. “Not a goddamn thing but your imagination.”
Then the door slammed shut, cracking him in the forehead and sending him reeling out into the passage where he banged into the bulkhead and slid down to the floor, knocked cold.
He came to gasping for breath, his hands flailing in the darkness for something to strike, but there was nothing. He only calmed down when he found the flashlight and shined it around, making sure he was alone. It was hard to say how long he had been out, but judging from his cigarette that had burned down to a long gray ash, it must have been at least fifteen minutes or so.
He put the light on the door again.
It was askew.
“Motherfucker,” he said under his breath, still wanting to believe that it had been one of Arturo’s tricks.
He jumped to his feet and kicked the door wide, leaping in there, ready to fight. It was empty. Even the smell was gone. Just another cabin that was identical to all the others. If it wasn’t Arturo’s boys, then it had to have been a strong gust of wind. But there was no porthole for a wind to come from.
He stepped back out into the corridor.
You’re never going to figure this one out.
It was true and he knew it. He stood there a moment longer, just thinking. There was a throbbing pain at his left index finger. He studied it in the light. It was cut. Blood had run over the back of his hand. Much of it had dried. He wiped it away on his shirt. The wound was like a couple of tiny puncture marks. Not a cut, more like a bite.
A rat?
It was possible. Having grown up in a shitty neighborhood and having been bitten by rats more than once, he did not panic. He knew for a fact that rats were very rarely rabid. The germ killed them almost instantly. He would find the head, the bathroom, and clean it up. It was nothing.
He grabbed his duffel and went on his way.
Goddamn ship would not break him. He would not allow it.
His finger started to itch.
8
Charlie’s little tour took approximately ninety minutes according to his watch. No more, no less. Had he not been thinking funny and acting funny, daydreaming and imagining, not to mention knocking himself cold with doors, it would have taken a hell of a lot less. He did not know what had gotten into him, but he’d had a few bad turns out there. Most guys would have went running, he figured.
Then, again, he wasn’t most guys.
And that’s what was really starting to worry him. He’d always taken it as it came and now he was starting to think about it, starting to contemplate the idea that he was not only living a dangerous lifestyle, but that he was making bad decisions on a daily basis. And this little party was maybe one of them. What scared him wasn’t that the ghosts of suicides—because there had been suicides on the Addams—were going to come knocking at his door at midnight and demand that he join them like in some cheesy horror flick, but that he was losing his nerve.
Because when you made your living playing cards as he did, your nerve was everything. And when you lost it, you lost the lifestyle and everything that went with it. No more high-dollar hookers and good booze, no more four-star restaurants and clubbing with guys like Arturo. No, when that happened, you were just another shmuck and it was only a matter of time before you were working in a factory or flipping burgers.
And this, more than the $50,000 even, was what made Charlie decide that he had to spend the night on the Addams. He knew instinctively in his guts that there was something bad about her, something rotten right down to her keel, but he could not leave. Because if he left, he not only left his balls behind but his life.
And he couldn’t let that happen.
After his little tour, he took the companionway that led from the pilothouse down to the captain’s office and stateroom beyond. Like the rest of the Addams, it was pitch-black down there. Charlie was suspicious of that, too. If the ship was ready to sail as Arturo had said…then why not crank up some juice, get the lights going? Or at least give him some battery power or something. He didn’t know much about freighters, but he was pretty sure they had some sort of back-up battery.
But that would ruin all the fun, he told himself. Arturo’s playing you, just like you thought. It’s all part of his plan, you moron. He wants you to freak out tonight. He wants to shake you up but good. Don’t be surprised if a couple of his goons show around three in the morning and start moaning and rattling fucking chains.
No, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
That’s why he had brought the .45.
In the stateroom, he stood there, looking around. He took in all the fine cherry and black walnut woodwork, the desk and bookshelves and sofa. There was a rocking chair in the corner and he wondered if it had belonged to the captain’s wife. The bed was big and they’d put on new sheets and blankets. It looked nice. It looked clean and comfortable. It looked very much like it wanted him to sleep in it.
“Then maybe I should,” he said under his breath.
But his nerves were still jangled…partly because of where he was and what he was sensing and partly because he’d put down about tw
o pots of black coffee that day.
He went into the head, but the pump was down and only a trickle came from the taps. No matter. There were a couple of quart bottles of water in there. Arturo thought of everything. He cleaned his finger and bandaged it. It was itching so badly by then he wanted to take a knife and scrape his skin off. But it would pass. It was the healing. That’s all it was.
There were a couple of battery lanterns, a cooler of beer and cold cuts set out at the captain’s table. He lit one of the lanterns and the gloom of the cabin was immediately dispelled…or most of it. He shut the flashlight off to conserve on batteries.
“I ain’t budging from here. I’m going to stay right here for the rest of the night,” he said out loud, instantly wishing he hadn’t. The sound of his voice echoing through the empty cabin was almost too much. It sounded like someone else mocking him.
If there were such things as ghosts, bad ghosts, evil ghosts, hungry ghosts—why had he thought that?—then he decided that they needed your cooperation. They needed your fear. If you wouldn’t give it to them, they were powerless. It made sense in his thinking. Good sense. Their game was fear and if you wouldn’t play with them, then they’d go sulking away like bratty kids who couldn’t get their way.
But, no, he was not about to start thinking that way. Ghosts. Of all things. There were no goddamn ghosts on the ship, there were only a couple of Arturo’s goons playing trick-or-treat. One of which had kicked the door and cold-cocked him. He’d sort that sonofabitch out later.
Yes.
He felt much better now.
His head was clear and his balls were well in place. He was thinking like a man again, not a scared little kid. He should have come down here in the first place. A guy could feel human here. Not like out there…out in the darkness where things existed that no man should look upon.
Fuck are you talking about?
He giggled in his throat because he simply did not know and why was his finger so unbearably itchy?
Finally, tired of pacing around, he sat at the captain’s table and had a cigarette. He sipped a beer from the cooler, figuring a little alcohol might calm his nerves a bit. He had too much on his mind. How the hell could he possibly relax, even for a few moments in a place like this? But that was why he knew that he had to; no sense playing into Arturo’s hands. He’d had some funny feelings since he’d boarded, but that was just nerves. Couldn’t be anything else. He had to get a grip. By lantern light, he spread out a game of solitaire and smiled at the thought of seeing Arturo in the morning. That goddamn meathead. He’d show him what balls were all about.
He kept trying to involve himself in the cards, but it just wouldn’t happen. He was too on edge, too something. His skin was crawling, his belly full of needles. He’d never felt like this in his whole life, not even when he was sitting in court all those times waiting to be sentenced. And it felt kind of like that, now didn’t it? Like he was waiting for judgment to be passed on him, for something to happen. Expectant. Filled with anxiety as if he knew the worst was yet to come.
Funny how your imagination could screw with your head, he thought. Real funny.
He sat back and pulled off his cigarette, listening to the sound of the ship which was an absence of sound, really. Just that pervasive great humming emptiness that was its own sort of noise after awhile. It was there all the time, just behind his thoughts, invasive and crowding and consistent. Like the sound you could hear in your head at night when all was quiet…the gentle, distant rush of blood; the thrum of idling neurons; the pulse of arteries. It was like that. A living sound of machinery waiting to cycle up, waiting to be put to use…
He blinked his eyes.
Blinked them again.
What the hell is this?
That was the question that defied an answer; it was a gossamer-winged fairy that danced in his head, its grin not harmless and sweet like Tinkerbelle, but malevolent and toothy like some South Seas cannibal that had filed his teeth to sharp points.
I’m seeing it but I’m not seeing it.
It was not there, it had no more substance than smoke but yet he did not doubt its physical reality. He saw ghosts. At least, he guessed they were ghosts. He saw three men standing around in a cabin, a smaller cabin of the sort he had visited down in dunnage. They were gathered around a bunk and Charlie knew very well that there was a body on that bunk. He did not believe for a moment it was a living person.
The men were talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was garbled. Behind the men, the cabin door was partially open. Charlie caught sight of something, some hunched-over black shape pass before it.
In his brain, a voice said, See? It does not walk. It scuttles, it creeps, but it does not walk.
The men stepped away from the bed, three very ordinary-looking swabbies, and Charlie caught a glimpse of the body that was partially obscured by a sheet. A bearded man whose hands were locked into claws, his back arched, his lips wide open in a scream. There was something white all over his mouth as if he had gagged out a prodigious amount of foamy saliva before dying. Overall, it appeared as if he had died in the midst of the most awful convulsions. His flesh was purple-black and swollen as if he had been bitten by a dozen bushmasters or night-sleek mambas. The men just kept staring down at him and Charlie knew it wasn’t because they liked looking on the horror their friend had become, but because they wanted to lock that image in their mind. They wanted to suckle the milk of hate. It would nourish them and keep them bitter, allowing them to do things that had been unthinkable and inhuman, perhaps, just scant days earlier.
But what killed the sailor? a voice in Charlie’s head asked again and again like a riddle. And what else had happened that turned those boys hard and mean?
Though no one told him, he knew a few things in his weird, tripping, dreamy psychic connectivity. Captain Maxton was dead for one thing. He had taken a pistol and blown out his brains and he did so after something that was not his wife crawled into bed with him one night. He was the fourth captain of the Yvonne Addams to kill himself. His suicide set off a chain reaction of violence—beatings, stabbings, and murders, as well as more than a few disappearances. No one seemed to be in their right mind and they all blamed it on the ship itself and the images it opened in their minds. Afterwards, most of the crew lowered the lifeboats and set out into the open sea, not knowing they would never see land again. But five swabbies led by the 2nd Mate—his name was…was…Heslip, yes, that was it—stayed behind. Charlie was not sure why…vengeance? Were they going to deliver the ship to pirates or try to sell her and the ore she carried? That was unclear.
But what wasn’t unclear was Heslip.
Willard Heslip. 2nd Mate. Ex-con. He was a violent, cunning, and dangerous man. Even the 1st Mate, who’d fled in one of the lifeboats with the others, was intimidated by him. And on most ships the 1st was lord and master. Maybe the captain was the skipper, but ask any sailor who was really in charge and they’d tell you. Only Maxton himself was unafraid of the 2nd. Although Charlie had never met Heslip, he knew all about him. He’d done time with guys like him, yes, but his knowledge was more detailed, more personal. He knew that Heslip was essentially uneducated and quick with his fists. He was suspicious of anyone with an education. His father had abused him daily, using him as a punching bag, and his mother had been too drunk to care. In high school, he took mostly machine shop classes and auto mechanics. In every other class, he sat at the back of the room giving any kid that dared look at him a death stare that was legendary. He did his best work out in the parking lot where he had a free hand beating other kids. He had once pulled a knife on his sophomore math teacher who had dared laugh at him and that ended his high school career.
That’s what Charlie knew about him.
The rest, he saw.
Other than Heslip and his crew of tough guys, there was no one left on the ship but Virginia, Maxton’s wife. She had locked herself in the captain’s cabin, but they got in. Guys like them
always got in. He thought they were going to rape her, but that’s not what happened at all. By that point, they were motivated by fear and when men like them were afraid, there was only one thing that made them feel better.
Charlie heard Virginia say, “Please.”
And he heard Heslip’s reply: the sound of a meaty fist striking her.
“You brought it onto us,” Heslip said. “You brought it aboard.”
“No! It was already here! Can’t you see that? It was already here as it’s always been here! It has nothing to do with me!”
Heslip said, “It killed Jim. It fucking killed him.”
“And Pete and China, too,” another sailor said. “It tormented them. It crawled inside them until they couldn’t take it anymore.”
Virginia tried to talk sense to them, but you could not talk sense to animals. Yet, she tried. Charlie had no idea what she was going on about. She was practically hysterical and she was pleading her case about sensing something on the ship, something that was dangerous but could be appeased because it was really just lonely. She said she left out food for it, but the others became hostile and it grew angry.
“Shut up! Shut up, you whore!” Heslip said and slapped her across the face.
“Please,” Virginia sobbed. “Oh, dear God, please don’t hurt me.”
Charlie could see him and the others gathered around her like a jury and that was pretty close to the truth because he knew they had already found her guilty of…something. Jury? No, judge and executioner was more like it.
She was crying and pleading, but Charlie could have told her that things like that never work with guys like Heslip. Begging is weakness and men like Heslip do not respect weakness. It makes them angry, it twists up something in them already twisted beyond repair. They see you as a victim then. Worse, they see themselves and their own unhappy, abusive childhoods.
The very act of pleading for mercy made Heslip hit her again and again until she was no longer begging like a human being but yelping like a whipped dog.