by Ben Farthing
She could see the ship’s off-white, textured deck, and the silver railings, and the shiplap ceiling above. But like the dual realities of the ocean, here she also saw something else.
The overlapping deck was made of some cross between stone and wood. The ceiling above was sagging beams, revealing the bottom of the walkway the next deck up. Instead of a railing at the edge of the ship, the gap between floor and ceiling was vacant, an open space inviting Riley to fling herself off the overlapped Aria and firmly into the alternate ocean to await the approaching threat.
The invitation was clear in Riley’s mind, but it was not hypnotic by any means. She imagined falling towards the orange water, a wave reaching up to meet her, and undertow dragging her down to whatever fleshy giant these organic rock towers protruded from, where she’d be held until the arrival of the thing behind the rock towers.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
She feared what she would find. Was this phenomenon infecting the entire ship? Riley forced herself to believe that inside would be a sanctuary. Otherwise, panic threatened to consume her.
Chris’s hand in hers now felt more like a rubber duck instead of a lifeboat, but it was all she had. They ran around the stern, up the starboard side of the Aria. Riley kept her eyes and her feet far away from the open edge.
Animalistic grumbling thundered through the air. Riley’s ears hurt at the deafening sound.
The ship lurched under their feet, upwards, sending them to their hands and knees. The deck tilted with the stern raising behind them. The whole ship jolted twenty yards forward.
Riley heard herself scream. The off-kilter lilt of the ship started her sliding to the edge.
She covered her head, positive that the approaching threat had arrived, and the leviathan beneath them had lifted the ship as an offering.
A strange sensation in her hand.
She still held the pocket watch, but now it had stopped vibrating.
The ship was still at an angle. Riley slid towards the edge of the deck. She saw both the bronze railing with the blue ocean beyond and the empty gap above the orange maelstrom.
Chris scrambled after her, fighting for purchase.
She dug her fingernails into the deck. Rough splinters entered her fingertips.
The bronze railing grew stronger than the empty gap. The blue sky and white clouds became more solid than the low fog. The blue ocean with white wave caps drowned the mountainous waves.
The imitation skyline of organic rocky towers faded.
The leviathan beneath—and the sense of a more dangerous approaching threat—disappeared.
Riley crashed into the railing.
Chris slammed into her.
Before either could catch their breath, the Aria’s stern crashed back down onto the ocean.
Riley and Chris were lifted off the deck and then smashed back down onto it.
Riley gasped for air, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She stared at the blue sky like it was a glass of ice water and she’d just escaped Death Valley.
Alarms went off throughout the ship.
Chris sat up, chest heaving. “Don’t wind that watch again.”
28
Riley kept her eyes on her feet as she hurried to her cabin.
The alarms had gone quiet, and Captain Silva had come over the intercom to announce that a mechanical problem had been fixed. No mention of how he thought the whole ship had been lifted and dropped.
Chris followed her. “If you don’t want to help anymore, I understand. But I really need that watch.”
Riley left the stairwell and entered the hallway. She hoped Krystal was in their cabin. She wanted to be near a familiar face after what had just happened.
It broke every rule of reality, and Riley wanted to get back to port, drive home, and forget about it.
That it had happened at all was traumatic enough. But Riley had felt something massive lift the ship. No animal was that big. No animal was a tenth that size.
And even that leviathan wasn’t what had really shaken her. As she’d seen the other world, she’d known without a doubt that something worse was approaching. Something evil or chaotic or just beyond anything she could understand.
“The watch, Riley,” Chris said.
Riley walked faster as if that would leave behind her memory of what she’d felt. “Stop following me.”
A trio of old women shuffled down the hall, complaining about being banished to their cabins. Riley squeezed past them.
Chris followed, earning a protest from the women.
“What if the watch does that again?”
The watch was in Riley’s pants pocket. She almost patted it to make sure it was still there, but she didn’t want to risk setting it off. “I won’t wind it.”
“But you’re going to sell it. Someone else will wind it.”
Riley scoffed. Selling the watch was the last thing on her mind right now. They reached her cabin door. “Forget the watch! Didn’t you feel that out there? Something coming for us? I swear it was as wide as the horizon.”
Chris nodded. “Let’s discuss it in private.”
“No,” Riley said. “I’m done with all this.” She unlocked her cabin and went inside.
The claustrophobic setup of two beds, a tiny loveseat, and a narrow dresser now felt cozy. There was plenty of ship between her and the outside ocean.
Krystal sat on the loveseat watching the same episode of Frasier that had been on last night. She looked up, excited to see Riley, and then her eyes widened as she looked behind her. “Hey! You can’t come in here! Get out.”
Riley turned around to see Chris shutting the door behind him. His unimposing demeanor had been replaced by a shaky determination. “I can’t let you leave with that watch. Not after what we just saw.”
Krystal launched herself up from the couch. She shouldered Riley out of the way to get in Chris’s face. “This is a private cabin. Get the hell out.”
Her physical response surprised Riley. She’d seen Krystal mad plenty of times, but trying to physically intimidate someone was new.
Chris rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. He easily had seventy pounds on Krystal. But Riley doubted he would actually fight her.
“Krystal,” said Riley, “let’s just call security and let them deal with him.”
“You call.” Krystal tied her hair back, not breaking eye contact with Chris. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t move.”
“We want him to move.” Riley picked up the phone. “He should leave.”
“Not without that watch,"
“You work for her uncle?” Krystal asked.
“No,” Chris said. “I’m here to stop what just happened from happening again.”
“You mean the ship shaking around?” Krystal asked.
Riley stopped in the middle of dialing for the operator. “Is that all you felt?”
“What do you mean?” Krystal asked over her shoulder.
“You didn’t see anything weird on the ship?” Riley had seen a different ship overlaid atop the Aria. Weird floors, open ceilings, no railings. She’d felt the whole ship lift and then drop. Alarms had sounded, so she’d assumed the whole ship felt the same thing.
“I’d just made it back here after the captain’s announcement in the theater. Everything shook like a stuttering earthquake, and then alarms started screeching.”
Chris looked as confused as Riley felt. “It felt like the ship hit one giant speed bump. Up and then down. You didn’t feel that?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t see anything different about your cabin?”
“No.”
Chris exhaled long and slow. “Maybe the watch isn’t as bad as I thought.”
Riley held her finger over the phone’s buttons. “Keep talking.”
“I thought it was merging realities. But if we’re the only ones who experienced all that, then maybe it was shifting our perception to both planes.”
Krystal kept herself as a barrier betwe
en Chris and the rest of the cabin. “Did any of that make sense to you?” she asked Riley.
“Kind of. I don’t know. Let him in.” She pointed at Chris. “You sit down. You’re wrong about it just being perception. We didn’t just see that other ocean—my clothes are still wet from those waves. And I’ve got bruises from getting knocked around.”
“Then it’s limited in its reach. The rest of the ship only felt a little shudder.”
Krystal backed up just enough to let Chris reach the loveseat.
Riley was torn between wanting to know more and wanting to know nothing. She wanted to go home, sell the watch, and figure out a new life. Find a path to something more than eating, working, and sleeping.
But if the watch was dangerous, she couldn’t sell it. “Tell me everything you know about what just happened.”
Riley sat on Krystal’s bed because sitting on her own bed would have her bumping knees with Chris. “What do you think my watch is?”
“Based on what just happened, I think when you wind it, you cross over with a different dimension. The dimension where your monster starfish crawled out of.”
“It crawled up from Deck Two. It’s a mutation from my uncle’s mining equipment.” Riley knew that wasn’t true, but it would be so much nicer if it were.
“What in the world are you guys talking about?” Krystal leaned on the dresser.
Chris rubbed his eyes. “Do you want her here for this?” he asked Riley.
“We’re supposed to stay in our cabins,” Krystal said.
“I want you to leave me alone. But I need to sell my watch. If I can do that without risking…” Riley gestured above them, “…all that, then I want to know. So start talking. Tell me everything you know.”
“I want to know who he is,” Krystal said.
“That’s a good idea,” Riley said. “Start with who you are and how you’re involved in all this. It’s obviously more complicated than what you told me earlier.”
Chris cleared his throat. “Okay. But if I tell you, you have to let me use the watch until we reach the port.”
“No,” Riley said.
“Alright. Then you get to wonder if you’re holding a time bomb in your pocket.”
Riley dug her fingernails into her palm. She was selling this watch. If she could do it without feeling guilty, then that’s what she wanted.
Also, she wanted to know what had just happened. She and Chris had shared a wild vision that left her bruised and had a real impact on the ship. Chris seemed convinced it was entirely real, and Riley couldn’t convince herself otherwise. She wanted to know everything she could.
“I’ll come with you,” Riley said. “Whatever you’re doing, you can use the watch, but I’m not letting it out of my sight.”
“That works,” Chris said cautiously.
“He still hasn’t said who he is,” Krystal pointed out.
Chris cleared his throat. “Remember on the news last year when that building in Richmond popped up overnight, and then a couple weeks later it disappeared?”
Riley nodded. The story had been all over social media. Most talking heads wrote it off as a prank. It still came up on the news once in a while when some scientist made another comment. So the actual experts weren’t taking it as a prank.
“I remember that. It was super weird,” Krystal said. “That billionaire lady disappeared.”
“Micah Rayner,” Chris said. “She was friends with your uncle.”
“You were involved?” Riley asked.
“I went inside,” Chris said. “I was lucky to survive.”
“What was it?”
“An overlapping of dimensions. There’s an entity over there—your uncle’s cult calls it the Deviser. It created the skyscraper to harvest us. Mankind, I mean. It meant for Micah to build replicas of the skyscraper and start harvesting, but Micah didn’t make it out.”
Krystal laughed. “Is he serious?”
Riley swallowed. “I think so. You didn’t see what I just saw outside. It was like some other world laid overtop ours.”
Riley watched her friend study her face.
“You’re serious? You’re drunk.”
“Not since last night.” Riley turned back to Chris. “So you know what the Aria is, then?”
He shook his head. “I expected another skyscraper. The Deviser wanted to start harvesting people. It lost its tool to do so. I figured it’d just try again. But then Pete—the dead kid from your uncle’s cult—tipped me off to the Aria. That it had appeared overnight. Sure, it could snatch away the several thousand people on board, but the Deviser isn’t after one-off smash-and-grabs. I don’t think it thinks much about us at all. In Richmond, it was setting up long-term harvesting. And the Aria doesn’t fit into that.”
Even with what she’d seen so far, Riley had to willingly suspend disbelief. Glimpses of a foreign ocean and an attack by a giant starfish didn’t mean there was an evil demon that wanted to eat her. But she had no other explanation. And Chris didn’t seem insane. He seemed scared.
“What do you think the Aria is, then? Why’d this Deviser send it over, if not to pick up where the building left off?”
“I don’t know. It’s some kind of Plan B. Or I wildly misunderstood the purpose of the Richmond building. But I expect we can find out for sure down on Deck Two.”
“And then what?” Riley asked.
“Destroy what we find. Sink the ship.”
“Hold up,” Krystal said. “Are you some kind of terrorist?”
“I’ll wait to sink it until everyone’s evacuated,” Chris said.
Riley felt out a hole in Chris’s plan. “You don’t know what the Aria’s doing. How do you know that sinking it will stop it?”
“I don’t,” Chris admitted. “But if it’s trying to suck people over to its dimension, it won’t find a lot of people on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.”
“That’s fair.”
“You can’t sink the ship,” Krystal said. “Riley, we’re turning him in, right?”
“Not yet,” Riley tugged at her hair. She shouldn’t have had this conversation in front of Krystal. It was too much to believe if she hadn’t seen anything. She didn’t want Krystal to turn Chris in and then for her pocket watch to disappear into an evidence locker. She shifted the conversation to something Krystal did know about. “What do you know about my uncle?”
“I know he took over Micah Rayner’s cult after she died. They think the Deviser is a happy, generous god. Nathaniel’s not here to destroy the ocean and get richer, as you suggested. He thinks he’s gonna help the Deviser’s plans for the Aria. I don’t know how much detail he actually knows.”
“You’re trying to blow up a ship,” Krystal said, “and you can’t even say why it needs to be blown up.”
“If the overnight skyscraper had fulfilled its purpose, there’d be thousands of people harvested every day. I assume the Aria is key to something just as devastating.”
“What’s ‘harvested’ mean?” Riley asked. “Eaten?”
“No. Taken. Tortured or forced into slave labor. I’m not sure. I saw glimpses of a few people after they were taken. I still have nightmares about them begging for help.” Chris raised the folder they’d stolen from Nathaniel’s safe. “Based on these writings, your uncle thinks these slaves were building something. Nathaniel came to the Aria because that project is complete. Still building, but complete, whatever that means.”
“If this were really true,” Krystal said, “then we should jump in a lifeboat and get away from this ship.”
“You should, yes,” Chris agreed. “And I’ll do the same thing once I stop the Aria from doing whatever the Deviser has planned for it.”
Riley found that Chris reminded her of Dad. His earnestness and worry. Dad always had a strange mix of joy at the simplicity of life and worry that any little accident could turn into a disaster. He’d invite Riley over for a walk around his block because the neighbor’s flowers were blooming, then change t
heir route when he heard a police siren.
Chris felt as genuine as Dad.
He believed what he said.
But that didn’t mean it was true. He could be crazy. Or even if the horrors she’d just scene were real, Chris could be misinterpreting everything he’d seen.
Even accepting that what she’d seen upstairs was real, that didn’t prove all of Chris’s claims. The only facts she knew for sure were that she’d been attacked by a monster, she’d seen an overlapping world, and she’d felt a primal terror that something gargantuan from that world was coming for her.
Those facts didn’t prove Chris’s claims about this demon or about the Aria. An explanation that answered all the questions could still be incorrect.
But, if Chris was right, then she should help him. The building in Richmond was real. That couldn’t be explained. The starfish monster was real. The orange, violent ocean was real.
If Chris was right, and she helped him, then she’d stop the horrors she’d seen today from spreading.
If he was wrong and she helped, then law enforcement wasn’t going to care about her stories of monster starfish when they arrested her for helping sink a cruise ship.
On the other hand, if Chris was right and she didn’t help, then her watch was a ticking time bomb. She couldn’t sell it with a clean conscience. By himself, Chris might fail. Riley wasn’t any sort of secret agent, but an extra pair of hands and eyes might make the difference. If she didn’t help and the mystery of the Richmond skyscraper repeated itself in a California harbor, she’d blame herself for the deaths.
So it came down to whether or not Chris was right. Whether there really was some demon thing in another dimension trying to harvest people.
“Here’s what I’ll do,” Riley said.
“Oh, come on,” Krystal interrupted. “You’re not seriously thinking of helping this psycho?”
“Everything he said about Nathaniel lines up with what I know,” Riley said. “And it fits the crazy things I’ve seen since last night.”
Chris waited patiently with his hands on his lap.
“Here’s what I’ll do,” Riley repeated. “I don’t know if what you say is true. My uncle’s obviously involved in what’s going on down on Deck Two. And that’s where the starfish monster came from. And I think your friend—Pete, you said his name was—was down there before he died. I’ll go down there with you. Let’s see what’s on Deck Two. If it matches what you’re saying, then I’ll help you. If it’s just an engine room or something, then I’m keeping my watch and turning you in.”