by Ben Farthing
Chris wondered at that. He invented scenarios where Nathaniel purposely brought Riley onboard. But he had way too little evidence to make a real guess.
She didn’t know about Micah’s cult. So she couldn’t help him figure out Nathaniel’s plans. “What happened downstairs? Why were you scared to go down there?” Suddenly, her face became familiar. “Wait, you’re the girl who ran past me. You saw that thing on the hull.”
Her eyes went wide. “That was you. Did you see it?”
“Only for a second. Then it was gone.”
“That’s what attacked me on Deck Three.” Riley’s breathing grew heavy. The memory was stressing her out. “It was like a starfish, except the size of a horse and covered in tumors. It came up out of the floor in an oily patch of mini tentacles that matched what it has for feet.”
Chris had seen similar monstrosities in the overnight skyscraper. Not starfish monsters, but other impossible creatures that had breached the barrier between dimensions. “This was last night?”
She nodded.
“I’m guessing you ran to the casino, and someone shot at it?”
“How’d you know?”
“I hear things.” Okay, so Riley knew way more about the Deviser than she realized. But she could still walk away ignorant and happy if Chris could convince her to go back to her cabin and lie low.
On the other hand, he could use her help. An extra pair of eyes. And if he had to keep his head down because of the cult, maybe someone on his side would be useful. “That thing you saw, that’s why I’m here.”
“You said you’re not with the government.”
Chris chewed his tongue, deciding how much he could say. “I’ve dealt with a similar… anomaly before. I got tipped off that it would happen again on the Aria, so I came to stop it.”
“Who tipped you off?”
“One of Nathaniel’s cult. The dead kid.”
“You already know about that? You hear things quick.”
Chris nodded, mind racing. “Will you help me stop them?”
“Stop Nathaniel, you mean?”
“That, too. I don’t think he’s causing anything. I think he’s here to take advantage of the anomaly. That’s what I want to stop.”
“You’re calling this starfish monster the anomaly? You’re like a monster hunter?”
He hadn’t been clear. But he couldn’t be clear without sounding crazy. “I think it came from somewhere. I want to stop anything else from coming from there.” He sounded like an idiot.
“Deck Two,” Riley said with certainty.
“What’s on Deck Two?”
“That’s where the starfish monster came from. It crawled up through the floor. There’s some kind of machinery I heard in there. And if you go down to Deck One, there’s some silvery stuff dripping from the ceiling.”
Chris was surprised. She’d ran into more weird shit than he had.
“I think my uncle’s involved,” Riley continued. “He makes hundreds of millions of dollars by destroying mountains for their coal or natural gas or whatever. I’m sure he’s got some new method to destroy the ocean and make even more money. Maybe a side effect is mutated starfish. It’s like Godzilla.”
Chris chewed his lip. Pete had said that Nathaniel had found the new Aria. So Riley’s theory couldn’t be true: Nathaniel didn’t create whatever was on Deck Two.
But if Riley was right, the Deviser’s dimension was bleeding over down there. Whatever the purpose of Aria was, it was centered in Deck Two.
It sounded like a great place to plant his bombs. He could even skip over his half-baked plan to clog the sewage system. Plant enough explosive to damage whatever was in Deck Two, then when the cruise line sent other ships to evacuate the Aria, blow out the hull and let it sink to the bottom of the Pacific.
“What?” Riley was watching him think. “You went quiet.”
“I’d like to destroy whatever’s on Deck Two.”
“If it hurts my uncle, I’m game. I want photos first, though. To send to the EPA and get him arrested.”
“Fine with me. Just keep my face out of them.” Chris felt a hesitant confidence. This could work. He could stop the Deviser and still make it home to Eddie.
Smooth sailing, almost. The cruise line had no idea about his plans. They couldn’t stop him. The only potential kink was Nathaniel’s cult. He opened up the leather folder. “Let’s see what your uncle knows.”
An intercom speaker chimed from around the corner. Chris looked up, finally pulled from his narrow focus on Riley and their developing scheme. The storm clouds had drawn closer in just the time they’d been sitting here. And he was pretty sure the ship was slowing down and turning.
The captain’s voice came over the speaker. “As discussed, all guests must return to their cabins. We will be back to port in twelve hours. Meals will be served in your cabins. Again, a thousand apologies, and rest assured you will be fully refunded.”
“Wow,” said Riley. “They’re taking the deaths seriously. Or Captain Silva is worried about Deck Two.”
A wave of anxiety washed over Chris. He couldn’t let the Aria get back to port. In the overnight skyscraper, the anomalies had been contained inside the building. But he’d seen the monster starfish clinging to the outside of the hull. Sinking the ship in a shallow port could put everyone nearby in danger.
Chris felt himself grinding his molars. He now had a twelve-hour deadline to sink this ship.
26
Riley couldn’t believe her luck.
Right as she found Dad’s watch, not only was the Aria turning around to head straight back to California, but she was also getting her money back. Instead of a credit card bill that would take six years to pay off, she could sell the watch and start nursing school with a clean slate.
Nursing school still felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole, but it was better than nothing.
What did feel like a reason for living—at least for today—was screwing over Nathaniel.
Whatever earth-destroying machine he had down on Deck Two, she’d get evidence and send it to the EPA, FBI, ATF, and whoever else she could think of.
Today was shaping up to be the most satisfying day of her life.
As long as she could keep the image of the monstrous starfish out of her head. And the screams of that old man and woman in the casino.
She found herself staring at the storm clouds. Cool wind crossed over the stern of the Aria as the ship turned towards the dark horizon. They’d be passing right back under those clouds.
“We probably have a solid hour or two before anyone notices we’re not in our cabins.” Chris opened the leather folio on his lap.
Riley adjusted her position on the plastic lounge chair. “I’m rooming with my friend. She’ll notice.”
Chris looked up at her. “Will she call security right away?”
Krystal would assume that Riley was going after the pocket watch. “No.”
“Right. Then we’ve got an hour or two.” He thumbed through a short stack of paper. He gave half to her. “See if there’s anything about what’s on Deck Two. We have to move quickly on that, and I want at least a hint of what we’re up against.”
She took her share of the papers. She didn’t like how he made it sound like they were assaulting a defended military installment. “It’s just some mining machinery or something, don’t you think? Probably toxic or radioactive, but I assume that’s all contained.” Riley thought she sounded stupid. Of course it wasn’t contained. Something mutated that starfish. Now that sounded stupid. Radiation didn’t magically transform animals like in Roger Corman movies.
“Who knows what we’ll find.” Chris was already lost in his stack of paper.
The intercom chimed, and Captain Silva’s message played again. Riley’s nervousness at helping a stranger destroy Nathaniel’s plans once again was quelled by her excitement at claiming the prize she’d came for. “Can I see the watch?”
Chris handed it to her
without looking up. “Don’t run off with it. We might need it downstairs.”
“Why?”
“If you’d look through those papers, maybe you’ll find an answer.”
Riley looked over the top sheet. “No, I mean, that’s a weird thing to say. Why would we need a pocket watch?”
That got Chris’s attention. His green eyes fluttered off to the right, the same way they had been when she’d asked him questions before, and he’d obviously invented answers. “Pete said it had something to do with your uncle’s machinery.”
Riley wasn’t letting him get away with such an obvious lie. “You didn’t know about Deck Two until three minutes ago.”
“I knew Nathaniel had something to do with the weirdness going on here. I just didn’t have an exact location.”
Riley held eye contact with him. He was still lying, but she couldn’t prove it yet. He had some other purpose up his sleeve. But if he wanted to mess up Nathaniel’s plans, he could say whatever he wanted. Riley was still on board.
Chris went back to his papers, and Riley inspected Dad’s watch for the first time.
It’d always been locked in a glass doored hutch. She’d never cared enough about it to ask to see it up close. Now that she held it, she could tell it wasn’t a typical pocket watch.
Chris spoke as he shuffled through the pages. “They think the building is nearing completion. Can’t be Richmond, that’s gone. Unless they mean…” he droned off as he read.
Riley kept her attention on the strange watch. There were the obvious design features that she already knew about: the round body with a diamond-shaped flip cover that kept visible the numbers two, four, eight, and ten. And the one diamond-shaped link in a chain of normal, oval links.
But the weirdness went beyond that. For starters, the metal felt even softer than gold. She was pretty sure she could squeeze a dent into it without trying very hard. What was softer than gold? Tin? Lead?
Chris flipped rapidly through the pages. “Here it says the creation is complete, but over here, it’s still being built. Both places suggest the cult thinks it’s getting bigger. Or maybe approaching. It’s like they think they’re writing scripture, so they’re writing in obtuse, fake Old English.”
Riley looked up to see if he wanted her to respond. He wasn’t concerned about her uncle's weird beliefs. She was holding what she’d come for. And the more she inspected it, the weirder it got.
Instead of a little knob to press to release the latch that opened the flip cover, there was a tiny gold switch in the bottom right. It was awkward to use—the release should be up top, so you could hold the watch in your palm and open it with your fingers. Instead, it didn’t seem designed for human hands.
It got even stranger when she did open the watch: no hour hand, no minute hand, no second hand ticking in staccato circles. The stupid thing didn’t even tell time! In the center of the face was a black stone. No, not black. It had swirls of color. It reminded Riley of a mood ring. She pressed her thumb against it to see if it changed color. It didn’t.
She held the watch up to her ear. It ticked. Nathaniel must have wound it recently. Except there wasn’t a winding key. Her stomach fluttered. What if there was a special winding key, and Nathaniel still had it, and not having it dropped the value of the watch?
But there wasn’t even a hole to insert a key. A bit of fiddling revealed that the front glass face and gold backplate rotated independently of each other. That’s how you wound it.
Riley gave it a few twists.
Chris grumbled, eyes glued to the papers. “If it’s a building, how is it approaching?” He tapped his fingers on the deck chair. “It never says it’s a building. ‘Building’ is a verb. It is building. What the hell is this about?”
The ticking grew louder and faster. Dark blue gears appeared from behind the mood stone, popping out into view with gyroscopic movement.
Chris looked up. “What’s it doing?” He reached for the watch.
Riley held it away. It thrummed in her fingers as the mechanisms spun faster. “I must have wound it too tight.”
The wind grew stronger with the Aria’s turn. The dark clouds were nearly out of sight, which meant that they were headed straight for them.
“Let’s not mess with the watch when we don’t know what it is,” Chris said.
Riley looked closer at the mood stone. Gears whirred in and out of view. The stone lightened in color from black to violet to red to orange. She thought she could feel the thrumming of the small watch all the way through her body down to her feet.
“Turn it off,” Chris said.
“How do you turn off a watch?”
The floor buzzed. The wall behind them joined it, and then the ceiling above. The silver railings rattled, silhouetted against the blue sky that the Aria was leaving behind.
Chris leaped up and grabbed at the watch. Riley tried to jerk away, but he grabbed her wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. He pried the watch from her fingers.
“Get off me!” Riley yelled. She punched his chest, but he came away with the watch. “That belongs to me.”
Chris held it away from him like it stunk.“It’s dangerous. It’s obviously the trinket Pete told me about. Forget using it. I’m tossing it.”
“Not unless you’ve got fifty-thousand dollars.”
But Chris was already walking to the railing.
Riley saw her chance at a future slipping away. She jumped at Chris, grabbed his arm with two hands, and yanked him backward.
“Let me get rid of it,” he grunted. “Can’t you feel it getting stronger?”
He was right. The watch itself thrummed at the same frequency, but the floor underneath them was vibrating in a rapid, irregular rhythm.
Her fear at losing her inheritance had distracted her from the bizarreness of what was happening. She wanted to be back in port and forget this entire trip. But she squashed that fearful desire because she wasn’t getting off this ship without her fifty-thousand dollar pocket watch.
Chris relaxed. He thought she’d been convinced.
Riley snatched the watch away.
“You don’t know what could happen!” Chris lunged for it.
Riley jumped back.
Then the ocean and the horizon did something Riley didn’t understand.
27
The blues of the water and sky, and the whites of the wispy clouds and wave crests, folded in on themselves and then unfolded back out. An opaque vista became translucent. An empty scene of ocean and sky became crowded.
Chris let out a high-pitched groan of terror. A wheezing death rattle of acceptance.
Riley could still see the calm ocean and sky. But in the same space, she also saw roiling orange shoals. Sharp, mountainous waves crashed and tore at bulbous rocky growths that protruded from the water. Even if the water were calm, there wasn’t space for the ship to have navigated the rocks. If they even were rocks. Pieces fell off in great chunks and then were replaced as organic movement squeezed new pieces out from the inside.
A swell taller than the Aria crashed into a rock and splashed upwards into the sky.
It didn’t fall back down.
Riley backed away from the railing. This couldn’t be real. Her legs felt weak. She tried to think of an explanation—Chris had slipped her LSD, or she was looking at a giant TV screen she hadn’t noticed before—but the impossible oceanscape behind the Aria brought with it a smell of cinnamon and rotten grass clippings. Seawater splashed onto the deck. It was orange and thick. Riley thought of sweet-and-sour sauce.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
She wasn’t willing to deny the reality in front of her, but if she could just reset her eyes, she knew she could get back to the regular Pacific ocean. She looked again.
No luck.
The organic rock outcroppings and orange, mountainous waves still created an impossible scene of chaos. Thick fog hid the sky.
But she could also see the calm, blue Pacific. Somehow, two
oceans overlapped.
The pocket watch still buzzed in Riley’s hand.
“What is this?” she whispered to herself, forgetting Chris was with her.
When he spoke, she jumped like she’d touched a live wire.
“The place where that monstrous starfish came from.” Chris held Riley’s hand to pull her farther from the edge. “At least, I think.”
His hand was soft and warm. It felt safe in this chaos.
But what he said made no more sense than the orange ocean. The starfish couldn’t come from this place she was seeing, because it couldn’t exist.
One of the bulbous rock formations rose higher out of the ocean. Water poured off of it. Bits of itself fell into the sea, to be replaced by matter that emerged from fleshy sphincters.
Another rock formation rose at the same rate, and then another. Soon, dozens of the organic rocks rose out of sight. It formed a perverted city skyline.
The sound of an enormous splash came from somewhere behind the skyscraper rocks, like a meteor had hit the ocean. Riley caught glimpses of water shooting upwards into the fog, out of sight.
“Something’s coming,” Chris said. “We should get inside.”
Riley sensed it, too. The empty feeling of the ocean had been replaced by an animalistic need to hide.
But turning away would be like turning her back on a starved tiger. She was prey, but she’d already been spotted—no time to hide.
The skyscraper rocks shuddered. Pieces fell. Replacements emerged. The towers wriggled and tapped against each other.
Riley thought of the tiny black tentacles that had lined the walls of Deck Three and the thumb-shaped feet underneath the monstrous starfish.
The Aria passed another organic rock tower.
Riley thought of a toy boat navigating a thick forest of starfish feet.
“What’s below us?” Riley asked. Nothing was down there. Nothing could be that big.
“Let’s get inside,” Chris repeated.
Riley finally looked away from the ocean.