The Fathom Flies Again

by James Walley

  “Over there. Stairs.” She motioned, training the light on the far corner of the room, where a small flight of steps disappeared up towards Sporting Goods. They darted, and in some cases scampered, over to the stairwell, trying not to make a sound as they ran. As far as midnight pirate incursions into deserted department stores went, this was a particularly stealthy one, Marty thought, and once again allowed hope to wave a little flag inside of him. Nothing lay in wait for them on the stairs, and in moments they were making swift progress across the vacant Sporting Goods floor. Marty had memories of camping equipment, fishing supplies, and hunting paraphernalia that he had not been allowed to touch when he’d been here as a child. None of that remained, and only a few racks stood now, holding nothing but dust, and the ghosts of long extinguished camping stoves.

  With the torch light dancing in front of them, the second stairwell sprang into dim view, the upward pointing sign above it declaring ‘Second Floor: Bedroom Furniture.’

  “Brilliant,” Timbers chirped quietly. “Fancy a nap, Marty? Get us all back home?”

  Marty turned to his pint sized compadre, a half-smile on his face. “What, click my heels? There’s no place like Lucidity Junction?”

  Timbers beamed back at him, scuttling towards the stairwell. “Just a thought. Come on, we’ve got clowns to find.”

  The little captain was already on the second floor when Marty and the rest of the crew arrived at his side. Whoever had cleared this place out when Acey’s had gone under had apparently not been able to count to two, as cabinets, wardrobes, and beds stretched out and away into the dark corners of the store. Worryingly, those dark corners seemed to spread throughout most of the floor, so much so that even the beam of the torch seemed unable to throw its light more than a few feet. The thin celestial rays that threatened to pry through the grime smeared windows seemed to be choked by the all-consuming gloom that rolled in to spoil the party.

  “Whoa!” Timbers rasped, squinting out into the blackness. “It’s like the inside of my eyepatch in there. Good job, we’ve got the torch. Hey, wouldn’t it be awful if the batteries died, y’know…?”

  Marty sighed. Whatever stay of execution fate may have given them was surely about to imminently run its course. “Like you see in movies?” he ventured, wearily.

  “Yeah, like you see in…”

  Timbers’ reply was cut short as Kate’s torch flickered, and blinked ominously out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The thing about total darkness, is that it is usually followed by complete silence. Nobody wants to wake the sleeping monster, or advertise their whereabouts. It was something of a mystery therefore, that Timbers, Whipstaff, and Oaf had taken this opportunity to embark upon an impromptu game of hide and seek.

  Marty stood frozen to the spot the moment the torch light had gone out. It was an involuntary instinct, borne solely and unashamedly from nights of thunderstorms and x-rated movies he had been too young to see, and more recently, from a brush with the monster under the bed. Standing as they were in the bedroom furniture section of Acey’s department store, Marty had made a judgement call to stand as quietly and motionlessly as possible, for the foreseeable future. It seemed that Kate had decided upon a similar course of action, and Marty flinched as a hand grasped his in the pitch blackness. Beside him, the faint yellow glow of a petrified Benji did nothing to allay the void, and the little koala’s repeated mantra of, “Oh no. No, no, no,” only served to fan the flames of panic inside him.

  Somewhere out in the smothering nothing of the store, voices cropped up here and there, as the pirates taunted each other from their respective hiding places.

  “You’ll never find me,” sang a voice that sounded liked Timbers.

  “Oaf, where are you?” Whipstaff called from somewhere off to the right.

  “I’m in the wardrobe,” Oaf replied, provoking uproarious laughter. “No. I’m not. I’m definitely not in the wardrobe.” He clearly had about as much grasp of the rules of hide and seek as he did on the rest of life.

  Marty edged forward, feeling Kate moving just as tentatively alongside him, and hearing her muffled curses as she attempted to slap the torch back into life. His leg brushed against something wooden, and he staggered, flopping down onto what might once have been a finely sprung mattress, but was now little more than finely sprung garbage. Something below him gurgled expectantly, and bright plumes of bristling panic shot up Marty’s spine. He managed a rasping SHH! which seemed to draw more movement from beneath the bed, before silence once again fell upon the department store.

  “Who’s shushing? That’s not in the rules.” The voice was off to Marty’s left, and could have been Timbers. The thing under the bed seemed to like it, and a flurry of movement and shadow slid fluidly out into the store. Marty squinted, trying to see what had spilled forth from beneath him, but it was just shadow. Shadow that moved, significantly more than shadows had any right to move.

  Marty’s mind wrenched him back to the incident earlier that night, and how it had been so similar to the nights spent huddled under the covers as a child. You never saw the monster, but you knew it was there, his mind chided, and he fought against the ‘keep quiet, keep still’ reflex which was now putting his friends in danger. “Timbers, stay where you are and be quiet. Something’s coming,” he managed, as the dark shape he watched stopped and floated back towards him.

  I hear youuuuu, the shadows chattered out of the darkness. Marty tightened his grip on Kate’s hand. Mercifully, she had taken his advice, and aside from a trembling koala in her arms, stood statuesque beside the bed.

  “I’m not going anywhere Marty. This is the daddy of all hiding places, there should be an ‘X’ over me, it’s so good,” Timbers crowed, somewhere amongst the rows of bedtime regalia.

  Again, the shadow shifted, back towards Timbers’ voice. I like it when they hide, something cooed malevolently.

  A faint stirring jerked a nearby chest of drawers from its inanimate state, and the hidden thing paused, drifting over to the cabinet and reaching out with hazy, intangible limbs. It caressed each drawer, hissing malevolently as it probed for evidence of concealed prey. The top draw rattled and shifted again, and the hissing became more urgent, rising almost into terrible melody. If you move, you’re mine. Those are the rules, seemed to be the crux of the dreadful chant, and Marty’s eyes widened as the top drawer slid jerkily open, borne by some force that he could not make out.

  “Oy! You’re not a registered hide and seeker,” A voice from within the cabinet growled. The barrel of Whipstaff’s blunderbuss poked out of the open drawer, plunging into the ragged mist of the encroaching shadow. “Bugger off!” The roar of the shot sent the cabinet rocking backwards, and wrought the mystery shadow thing into a million fluttering scraps of swirling void. The noise shattered deafeningly through the department, sending instinctive fingers that were mercifully his own into Marty’s ears. He removed them, scanning the floor for signs of their ethereal assailant, but only the sound of scuttling feet remained, as Whipstaff relocated to a better hiding place.

  The swirling, shattered creature hung in the air momentarily, mingling with the dust and gunpowder, before closing in on itself, and settling in a rapidly expanding pool of unpleasant darkness on the floor beside the now vacated chest of drawers. I bet I’ve got more lives than you’ve got bullets, it cooed, laughing emptily, before oozing a path to where Timbers had last spoken.

  Beside Marty, Kate had ceased her torch cajoling, and waited, quite literally it seemed, with baited breath. Evidently she too knew about the monster under the bed, and was reluctant to draw the gaze of the mysterious phantom. It headed back towards Timbers, though, and Marty summoned up what words he could to halt its pursuit. “Find a light. Get into the light.” Again, the shadow changed course, moving back towards the wide-eyed Marty, whose hand now clasped firmly across his mouth in a feat of bodily self-preservation.

  There you are, the shadow gurgled, fronds of darkness wrapping aro
und the foot of the bed and inching towards Marty’s feet. If he moved, that would be all she wrote, and yet tendrils of black nothingness inched closer to him along the mattress. Something snagged Marty’s boot as the unseen terror probed ever closer, and he finally gave in to the scream pestering to be let out of his chest. “Light. Light. LIGHT!” he ranted, much to the apparent glee of his stealthy stalker.

  “Oaf!” Timbers shouted up from somewhere beyond Marty’s sight. “Light your lantern up, big lad. Marty’s got a case of the heebies.”

  As the command cracked through the stagnant air, the shadow creature veered away, searching for the new voice, and a door swung open beside Marty’s head. Oaf stepped out from the wardrobe, his trusty lantern held out in front of him, casting a brilliant glow, and sending the shadows sneaking back whence they came. Marty sprang up from the bed, distancing himself from the hiding place of the darkness dwelling nightmare, and wrenching Kate and Benji along with him. He stood, gasping for the breath that he had been holding, next to his light wielding savior.

  “What the hell was that?” Marty managed, breathlessly surveying for any sign of returning nastiness.

  “Looked like the thing we barged in on you scuffling with earlier,” Timbers replied from his apparently unfindable hiding place. “Well, I say looked like, it didn’t really look like anything, except maybe angry smoke.”

  “It lives under the bed.” The voice was quivery, cautious and Australian. “It lives under all the beds. It comes out when you make a sound, make a move. It eats kids.” Benji quaked in Kate’s arms. “Now it’s here, looks like its menu has expanded.” The little koala shuddered, and Kate squeezed him tighter, perhaps to fend off the notion that he had just given voice to.

  Not wishing to fan this new fear any further, Marty turned to Oaf, who still held his lantern aloft as though it were some kind of holy talisman against evil. Right now, that was probably exactly what it was. “Oaf, why didn’t you light that thing earlier,” Marty panted, resisting the urge to hug the tiny giant.

  Oaf shrugged, hoisting his lantern and peering out into the blackness. “Miss Kate lady ma’am. She had the big light, and that glowing penguin. Didn’t think we’d need it.”

  Kate knelt and squeezed Oaf warmly, whilst Benji tutted at yet another anthropological affront to his lineage.

  Marty aimed a thankful nod at the blushing Oaf, before casting his gaze across the gloomy shop floor once again. “We should get out of here before that thing comes back.”

  “But you haven’t found us yet,” a pleading duet yelped from somewhere in the bedding section of the second floor.

  “We’re out of here Timbers, you win, ok?” Marty called back, much to the dismay of Oaf, who hadn’t even begun to look for his crew yet.

  “Boom! I never lose at hide and seek.” The voice was jarringly close, and Marty wheeled around to see Timbers at his side. “What? How the hell? Where were you?”

  Timbers patted his nose smugly. “A pirate never reveals his hiding places.” He winked cheekily, and made for the stairwell. “Plan B then, is it?” he called over his shoulder.

  Kate glanced at Marty. “What’s Plan B?”

  Marty had no idea, having only half-concocted Plan A, but followed the little captain to the stairs. Coming up here to scope for clowns had been a great idea, but he wasn’t about to wait around for whatever came out when the lights went off to make another appearance.

  Several leaping steps later, they were back on the veritably well-lit first floor, with nothing but darkness and silence behind them.

  Marty sighed. It had been Kate’s idea to come up here to cast an eye over the town for clownish behavior, but he had really hoped that it would work. Now they would have to go street to street, and that was far more of an unpredictable course of action. Not that this had ever been any sort of deal breaker in the past.

  Behind them on the stairs, something stirred. A rustling, scampering, galloping sound of something hastily following them. As one, the group adopted defensive positions, except Benji, who adopted a familiar cowering, trembly stance. The footfalls grew closer, and a shape clattered into the stairwell behind them, barreling into Oaf, who was still trying to figure out what floor he was on.

  “You bilge rats never came to look for me,” Whipstaff gasped, getting back to his feet amongst the pile of Oaf. “And you scarpered without telling me. I’m invoking Section Five, Subsection B of the Hide and Seek code, therefore I win.”

  Timbers grimaced, plodding back towards the ground floor stairwell. “Damn. He always wins on the technicalities.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The crew were part way through the tricky and wholly graceless maneuver of returning to the alleyway through the broken loading bay window when Marty spotted something.

  Across the square, past the tranquilly bobbing Fathom, a blinking blue light flitted through the sparse trees flanking the town hall. As he watched, it was joined by another, and another, until a cluster of the strange beacons were faintly visible in the darkness, like regimented fireflies. Marty wasn’t aware of such behavior in clowns, but then, up until tonight, he’d had no clue that they were also walking confetti bombs either, and this was certainly an odd enough site to warrant investigation.

  Timbers appeared at Marty’s side, peering first at his transfixed companion, and then off into the distance at whatever had caught his attention. “What is it, Marty?”

  Marty shrugged. “No idea, but it’s weird and shiny, so that ticks at least two of the boxes that normally has you guys chasing after stuff.”

  “I want to chase after it,” Timbers confirmed, his one good eye as wide as a dinner plate. He snapped out of it long enough to shoot an approving grin up at Marty. “You’re learning, lad. We’ll make a pirate out of you yet.” With that, the little captain set out across the still deserted street towards the mysterious lights.

  “Hang on, Timbers. We can’t just go galloping into something we know nothing about,” Marty hissed, calling a halt to Timbers’ charge. The pint-sized plunderer tutted loudly. “But that’s my favorite part. I’m a pirate, not a Sunday school teacher. Caution is for people who don’t want to get shot at, chased, and return home with scars and awesome stories.” It was hard to argue with that.

  “Well you’re going to have to wait.” Kate arrived beside Marty, a look of concern on her face, and a rapidly strobing koala in her arms. “We’ve got to do something about Benji, he’s freaking out.”

  “I don’t want to get shot at, or chased,” the meek marsupial stammered, flashing brilliant yellow, before imparting another seizure inducing technicolor volley. “I want to go home. I don’t like clowns, I don’t like shadow monsters, and I don’t like adventure. Small furry animals are not cut out for such things.” Marty raised a hand to comfort the trembling, fluffy disco ball, causing Benji to flinch and recoil, hiding his face against Kate’s shoulder.

  “We’re going to have to make a stop at the Fathom, guys.” Marty sighed. “We can’t take this little fella off into the dark again, look at him.” He turned his attention back to Benji, taking care not to make any sudden movements. “Would you prefer that, Benji? If we drop you off at the ship? You can stay with the Bobs, they’ll look after you, and you won’t have to sneak around in the dark, how’s that?”

  Benji’s frantic flashing slowed, then drifted into a steady pink haze, and he withdrew his face from its hiding spot. “Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry, I’m just no good in these situations.” The tiny ball of fur looked past Marty, a look of faraway melancholy etched on his face. “I normally just meet up with my dream person, and we run in the grass, gaze up at clouds, munch on eucalyptus. Well, that’s just me usually, but there’s certainly no shooting or chasing or mortal peril of any description.” Benji lowered his head sorrowfully. “I’m not really of any help here. I’m sorry.”

  “He got that bit right,” Whipstaff muttered. “Not unless Oaf runs out of lantern oil.” He chuckled, stopping short as Oaf shook hi
s head disapprovingly. Kate, too was not amused. “It’s not his fault, leave the little guy alone,” she chastised. Whipstaff hunched his shoulders and kicked at the pavement grumpily.

  Timbers clapped his hands together, attempting to bring the focus back to the matter in hand. “Come on then. We’ll swing by the Fathom, drop Kate’s gerbil off with the Bobs, and get after those fantastically shiny things.” He made a trotting start towards the ship, turning mid-canter. “Come on!”

  A brief sneak across the deserted road brought them back to the Fathom, where the Bobs were busily involved in some sort of stock take. Bob scampered across the broad planks which made up the deck, numbering each one with a stick of chalk. As he did so, Also Bob scribbled in a tatty note book. Marty wondered just how important it was to ensure all the planks of the deck were still there, and filing them all in number order, but decided not to make the enquiry. Clearly, it was a pirate thing.

  “Do they ever leave the ship?” he whispered to Timbers, who was ushering Benji up the gang plank.

  Timbers turned, glancing up at the plank labelers as he did. “The Bobs? No, not really. They’re as much a part of this ship as old Zephyr. They’re happiest here, making sure everything works, and is where it should be.” He lowered his voice further, ushering Marty down to his level. “Probably for the best to be honest. Bob’s stitching is coming undone, and Also Bob has asthma. Still, I recruited them on a twofor-one deal, and they keep the place tidy, so I can’t really complain.”

  Marty found himself struggling for a reply, as if one was needed. Why wouldn’t this make perfect sense tonight of all nights? And anyway, Benji was now emitting a contented white glow on the deck of the Fathom, and off in the night behind them, something else, probably less fluffy, and certainly more bizarre was waiting for them.