by Ben Farthing
“Lead the way!” Krystal said.
The Cloud Club was on the same top deck as the swimming pools. Riley had come in from the elevator, which let her stay inside. She hadn’t been outside since what she’d seen on Deck Eight.
Marjorie pulled Krystal by the hand, and Krystal pulled Riley.
“Hold on, guys,” Riley said as they dragged her to the outer doors.
Flashlights turned on, and glow sticks cracked among the guests waiting for their staff escort.
The automatic sliding doors hissed open. Salty, humid night air collided with the air conditioning. A knot turned in Riley’s gut. The outer deck wasn’t safe. “Guys, what if we stayed inside?”
But Marjorie didn’t hear. She led them onto the outer deck.
Krystal leaned back to say, “It’ll be fine.”
The night was empty.
Clouds hid the stars and moon. They were the only ones taking this route, so they were the only movement. Their flashlights revealed the path between the swimming pool and rows of lounge chairs. There were more lounge chairs on this ship than people.
Their footsteps were staccato slaps over the soft rushing of water and wind.
Riley avoided looking at the edge of the deck. The railings were high here since usually there’d be so many people enjoying themselves. But the thing she’d seen clinging to the hull had looked perfectly capable of climbing a few extra feet.
Marjorie stopped suddenly. Krystal bumped into her, and Riley had to rush to grab the old lady by the shoulders, so she didn’t fall. Riley shouldn’t have been laughing about broken hips earlier.
“What is it?” Krystal asked. “Why’d you stop?”
“Y’all didn’t hear that?” Marjorie pointed her flashlight at the side railing. “Something splashed in the swimming pool.”
Riley closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see. “Let’s keep moving.”
“No, I see it too,” Krystal said.
Riley forced her eyes open. Krystal and Marjorie’s flashlights revealed a dark, bulky mass at the bottom of the pool.
16
Riley brought her own flashlight beam up to the dark shape in the water.
The wind picked up, bringing with it a scent of rot and salt.
The shape in the middle of the pool was bulges upon bulges. Or maybe that was just in Riley’s head. She was still freaked out from earlier, and now the tequila was muddling her thoughts. The rippling pool water distorted their limited view, which was already difficult with the pitch darkness.
Krystal walked to the pool’s edge. The flashlight’s beam lit up a surface patch of blue chlorinated water and a wavering section of the pool.
Riley just wanted to go back inside.
“What do you see, honey?” Marjorie asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s something.”
Riley had a sudden vision of the thing from the hull bursting out of the pool to grab Krystal. She rushed to Krystal’s side to pull her away.
But the water closest to the edge was empty. Just a blue and green mosaic pattern on the bottom. This was the deep end, five feet down to the decorated cement bottom. “It’s too far away,” Riley said. “Let’s just go.”
Marjorie came up beside Riley, her light still trained on the shape in the water. “It’s not an issue of how far. It’s an issue of what it is.”
Riley tried to pull both her friends away from the water. They resisted.
“Is that a person?” Krystal squatted, got up, and walked a few feet to the side. “It’s not a person, is it?”
“Ah fuck, I think it is.” Marjorie was already taking off her clothes.
Marjorie’s vulgarity surprised Riley, but she was more focused on the thing in the pool. “It’s bigger than a person, isn’t it?” But was it the size of the thing on the hull? Is this where it had ended up after Riley fled? Or was the thing in the pool too small?
Marjorie stripped down to her underwear, which had a lot more lace and was a lot skimpier than Riley expected for a woman Marjorie’s age. “We gotta pull them out.”
Riley pointed her light at the mass. The water distorted the light too much for her to be sure of its shape.
Marjorie lowered herself into the pool. The splash was drowned out by the wind. The pool nearly swallowed her small frame. She craned her neck to keep her chin dry.
“Please don’t,” Riley said. “Let’s go find somebody.”
“That’s a good point,” Krystal said. “If it’s a person, I don’t know CPR, do either of you? I’ll go find a crew member. Riley, you keep an eye on Marjorie.”
Krystal ran off before Riley could protest. Her flashlight and glow stick bounced as she ran back toward the Cloud Club.
“Shine your light on them for me,” said Marjorie.
Riley turned back to the pool.
The mass had moved closer.
“It moved,” Riley tugged at her hair. “Did you see it? It’s not a person. Get out of the pool. Please.”
“Calm down.” Marjorie hopped in slow motion through the water. “What are you scared it might be? You didn’t tell me you get paranoid when you drink.”
Riley clung to that idea. She was paranoid because she’d drank too many margaritas. She held her light steady on the mass. The ship’s movement shifted the water, fracturing the light.
Riley tried to see what she’d seen on the hull: bulging, rough surfaces clung together, at least one oblong limb. But it was no use. It could be anything.
Marjorie drew close.
The mass expanded, doubling like a cell dividing.
“Oh lordy, is it moving?” Marjorie froze.
“I told you. Get out. It’s not a person.” Riley knelt down, ready to help Marjorie out of the pool.
But Marjorie took another step closer. She looked nearly straight down into the water, which covered her mouth and nose as she tilted her neck forward. She pulled her mouth back up. “Well, now I want to see what it is.”
The ship dipped, sending a splash of water over the pool’s edge.
Marjorie’s dyed pink hair floated up behind in the deep water. She stretched a leg out, distorted in Riley’s view, toward the mass.
Riley considered jumping in and forcing Marjorie out. But no way was she getting in the water with that thing. If that made her a coward, oh well.
“Please get out, and let’s wait for the crew. Krystal should be back any second.”
“I raised my kids to help when there’s help needed.” The wavering form of Marjorie’s leg stretched out and made contact with the mass. The woman yelped. She jerked her leg back.
Riley was in the water before she realized it, her instinct to help overpowering her fear. It was warm compared to the night air. Her clothes instantly became heavy. She held her flashlight above her head.
“What was that?” Marjorie stumbled backwards, paddling with her hands.
Half the mass dashed away along the bottom of the pool, far along the ship, out of reach of Riley’s flashlight.
“Where’d it go?” Marjorie whipped her head around.
Riley ignored the part of the mass that had fled. “It’s still at your feet.” She pointed her light. Cool air chilled her wet skin. The thing still at Marjorie’s feet took a clearer form.
“It’s a little boy!” Marjorie cried, her voice cracked with a mother’s anguish. She dropped below the water, then surfaced with a body in her arms.
Riley helped her to the edge of the pool. She climbed out, her weight clothes weighing her down. She dragged while Marjorie lifted, and a body flopped onto the deck.
Riley held up her flashlight. It wasn’t a boy, but he was young. A bit younger than Riley, probably. Brown hair hung over pale gray eyes that stared lifelessly at the sky. He wore a tweed blazer and blue jeans.
“This wasn’t a swimming accident,” Marjorie said. “Oh, the poor thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s five feet of water. He could have just stood up. And he’s in h
is dinner clothes.”
Riley sat back on the deck. She’d seen those dinner clothes. She recognized the corpse. Three hours ago, he’d been sitting at the table with Nathaniel and Wendy. The only guy his age at the table.
Someone in Nathaniel’s group had either suffered a terribly unlikely accident or been held under the water to drown.
Riley imagined the young man strolling out on the upper deck, enjoying the night air, happy to be on vacation. And then the thing from the hull dragging him into the pool.
A sickening thought occurred to Riley. She unbuttoned his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Marjorie asked. “Do you know CPR? I think it’s too late.”
Riley inspected the body for any kind of wounds. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Bite marks, scratches. Anything that would suggest the thing from the hull had attacked him.
Nothing. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her when she’d seen half the mass dart away. They absolutely weren’t, but maybe she could convince herself of it.
Her light glinted off of something near the corpse’s waistband. Something silver dripped out of his pocket. Riley scooped it up with her finger.
A drop of liquid mirror.
The same stuff she’d seen stretched between the ceiling and floor down on Deck One. It was hot enough to burn if she left it against her skin, so she wiped it on his clothes. It was gritty and scratched her finger as if it were minuscule flecks of broken glass.
She got up and started walking.
“Where are you going?” Marjorie asked.
Riley didn’t know. Away.
Riley walked the entire perimeter of the pool. The mass that had fled was gone.
She hugged her arms across her chest. The temperature was probably low eighties, but her drenched clothes were cold. Across the pool, Marjorie’s glow stick lit her and the corpse in a sickly green.
The thing clinging to the hull was connected to Nathaniel’s drowned friend, who was connected to the insane stuff on Deck One, which was coming down from the locked Deck Two.
She’d come to steal a watch. What was she getting involved in by going after Nathaniel? Was it still safe to break into his cabin tomorrow during dinner? Someone had died. She might be risking her life if she continued on with her planned heist. But if she went home without the watch, she’d be condemning herself to a lifetime of retail overload, always too busy to escape her minimum wage prisons.
An electric lantern’s glow appeared down the deck. Krystal was bringing the crew.
Riley couldn’t do anything to help. She switched off her flashlight, hid her glow stick in her wet pocket, and went to her cabin to dry off and clear her head.
17
A sharp knock on Riley’s door woke her from a restless sleep.
She sat up fast, prepared to claw out the eyes of her attacker.
The room was empty. Nobody was attacking her. Krystal wasn’t even back yet.
Krystal blinked in the green-tinted furniture and walls. The tight space was lit only by her glow stick. She’d left the light switch on before turning in, so that meant the power was still out.
The knock came again, louder this time.
Riley heard Krystal complaining but couldn’t make out the words.
Riley stumbled out of bed. Krystal must have lost her key card.
Riley’s body ached. Judging by how exhausted she was, she couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour. But the windowless cabin made that hard to judge.
A third knock, practically pounding.
“I’m coming!” Riley unlocked and swung open the door.
A small man waited in the doorway. He wore a blue blazer with gold stripes on the shoulders and cuffs. He held a hat under one arm and a lantern in his other hand.
Krystal stood behind him, one hand scratching her elbow. Her cocktail dress had become wrinkled. Her eyeshadow was smeared, and her eyes were red. She grimaced. “I would have texted, but we’re in the middle of the ocean.”
The uniformed man held out his hand. Riley shook it. It was smaller than hers.
“My name is Captain Silva,” he said with a European accent. Maybe Portuguese? “Forgive me for the intrusion.”
His curt tone said that he was not especially sorry.
“That’s okay,” she said anyways.
“I’m here because of what you and your friends found.”
Krystal said, “Don’t worry, they don’t think we had anything to do with it.”
“Where’s Marjorie?” Riley asked as if that were the most important thing right now.
“We’ve already escorted her back to her cabin.”
“You know her sisters she keeps mentioning?” Krystal said. “They’re triplets. Two other ladies that look exactly like her. Except their dye jobs are boring.”
Captain Silva blinked slowly. His silence swelled loud enough for even Krystal to notice.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just gonna wash my face, and then I’ll come with you.”
“I’d prefer to talk to your friend alone,” Captain Silva said. “Just like we spoke to you and your elderly friend individually.”
Krystal walked into the cabin, lighting her way with her cheap plastic flashlight. “She’s gotta change back out of her pajamas. Give us one sec.” She shut the door behind her.
Captain Silva immediately knocked again.
“Better go with him.” Krystal shimmied out of her dress and kicked off her heels. “God, that feels good.”
“What did he ask you?” Riley wanted to go back to bed. She wanted to be invisible, not grab the attention of the Captain.
“Just to tell them what happened. They recorded me with a camera in a creepy room. The Captain and some weirdo security guy.”
Krystal was in bed and asleep in the two minutes it took Riley to get sweatpants and a t-shirt on.
Riley went back into the hallway armed with her glow stick and flashlight.
The anger on Captain Silva’s face made her want to shrivel up into a little ball. It made sense, though. Such a physically unimposing man running such a big crew, he’d have to be able to intimidate despite his size.
“I walked your friend here as a courtesy. I could have gone back to bed and had security do it. You should not have had time alone to straighten out any stories.”
Riley hesitated. “We only found the body. Are you accusing us of something? I might need to wait to talk to a lawyer before I talk to you.”
A quick calculation behind his eyes, then he relaxed. “No, no. We have security cameras around the pool. It seems likely the body was there before the power outage. I expect the investigation will reveal a high blood alcohol level. Come.” He walked back toward the elevator.
Riley didn’t feel like she had any choice but to follow.
“When’s the power coming back on?” she asked.
“It’s being worked on. Don’t worry. We have a slim staff because of the unusual nature of our journey. But our crew is full.”
Riley realized she had a chance to ask the biggest question on her mind to the man most likely to know the answer. “Why doesn’t this ship match the pictures of the Aria online?”
Captain Silva missed a step. It was almost imperceptible, but her question had definitely jolted him. “What do you mean?”
“Windows on the bottom decks for starters. And the Promenade is a deck higher than I saw online.”
“The cruise line doesn’t make public such detailed schematics.”
“People post photos on review sites.”
“And you study them in great detail?”
“You’re dodging the question.”
They reached the elevator. Captain Silva pushed the down button.
Riley’s heart flipped. “Where are we going?”
“To the security offices for you to give your statement.”
“They’re down?”
“On Deck Three.”
Riley placed herself in her mental map of the A
ria. When she’d gone down and seen the dripping mirrors and heard the strange yelling behind the locked door, all that had been towards the ship’s stern. Now they were at midship.
Too close to the strange things she’d seen. Thoughts of interrogating Captain Silva about the replacement Aria slipped away, crowded out by fear of descending back into the warped belly of the ship.
The elevator pulled them down.
18
Captain Silva led Riley into a plain, white-walled room.
Fluorescent lights buzzed. It was smaller than her bedroom in her and Krystal’s tiny apartment.
Riley expected an interrogation room with a metal table in the middle, maybe a one-way mirror on the wall.
Instead, despite the simpleness of the room and the eerie effect of the flickering light, the room had four armchairs with floral patterns set in a circle. She could imagine a knitting circle gossiping away in this room.
Captain Silva invited Riley to sit. A pale man as wide as he was tall walked in behind them.
Next to the short, slender Captain Silva, this newcomer made Riley think of a square plastic CD case on steroids.
Captain Silva introduced him. “This is First Officer Bengtsson. He’ll take your statement.” Captain Silva nodded to Riley. “Regrettably, I must retire. I relieve my second mate in four hours. If I don’t get at least three hours of sleep, I won’t leave any coffee for the guests.” He smiled, revealing bright white teeth.
Riley gave a polite laugh, trying to hide her nervousness at the interview and her fear of being this low on the ship again. The dead kid had been on Deck One. The thing clinging to the hull might be down here.
First Officer Bengtsson stoically watched Riley. He saluted Captain Silva, who left and shut the door behind him.
Riley was left alone with the blocky troll of a man.
He sat down across from her. The chair creaked under his weight. “I would also prefer to be sleeping. Let’s make this quick.” His accent was some type of Scandinavian.
“I’m sure Marjorie told you everything, but—”