by Ben Farthing
Chris chewed on his cheek. “I don’t know what we’ll see down there. You’re the one who said that’s the source of everything.”
“That’s my offer. Krystal’s right. I don’t know you. You could be some psycho who looked up a few facts about Richmond and about my uncle.”
Chris nodded. “I think you’re right that Deck Two is the source. Let’s go check it out.”
Krystal shook her head. “I feel like I should go with you to make sure he’s not a rapist.”
Riley thought of Krystal’s ear-shattering scream when the lights went out last night. She didn’t want her sneaking around with them. “I’ll be fine. You stay here.”
Krystal looked worried for Riley, but she was obviously anxious about the stories Riley and Chris had told. “Are you sure?”
Chris stood up and handed his wallet to Krystal. “Here. My IDs and everything. If I’m a murderer and Riley doesn’t return, you’ll know exactly who I am.”
Krystal took the wallet.
“Ready?” Chris asked Riley.
“Now?” Riley was surprised.
“We’re headed for harbor,” Chris said. “Clock’s ticking.”
Riley gathered her nerve. “Okay, let’s go.”
29
The hallways were empty.
Riley found that uncomfortable. With all the guests in their cabins, the Aria felt like a ghost ship.
Since it had appeared out of nowhere—from another dimension, according to Chris—she supposed it was a ghost ship.
Riley led the way down the hall to the elevator lobby.
“We need to go to my cabin first.” Chris walked softly behind her.
Riley peeked around the corner. She didn’t know how the crew would be enforcing the order to stay in your cabin, but junctions like lobbies and stairwells seemed a good place to set watchmen.
“We’re going straight to Deck Two,” Riley said.
“I need my supplies. If what we see down there is from the Deviser, then I’m destroying it.”
The lobby looked clear. Two silver elevator doors. A wooden door to the stairwell. Bright kitschy paintings on the wall.
Riley walked toward it. “I’m not getting caught with a man carrying explosives. I want to see what’s down there before I decide to believe you.”
Chris grumbled. “I could just go get my equipment anyways.”
“And I could sit in my cabin with my watch until we reach California. If you want the watch down there, it’s without your bombs. You’ll probably set something off and kill us both anyways.”
“I’ve practiced.”
“Somehow, that’s not reassuring.”
They reached the lobby. Riley leaned around the corner to look down another hallway, across the ship.
Bobby the porter stood fifty feet away, patrolling the opposite elevator lobby.
“Krystal,” Riley whispered to herself, “I’m liking your boyfriend less and less.”
“What is it?” Chris looked around the corner and then ducked back out of sight. “That guy keeps showing up.”
“He part of your conspiracy, too?”
“No. He’s probably just the staffer that the security team thinks is most intimidating.”
Riley laughed at the idea of the spikey-haired 20-year-old being intimidating. Although, he did obviously work out. “He’ll turn around, and then we’ll head for the stairs.”
Chris stayed back while Riley leaned half her face past the corner. She prayed Bobby wouldn’t look directly her way.
Sharp footsteps echoed up the near stairwell. Multiple people, moving quickly.
Chris tugged Riley’s arm. “Get out of sight.”
Riley froze. There wasn’t time to get back to the next bend in the hallway. They were stuck in plain view.
The wooden door muffled barked orders, and then it swung outward. Those orders grew clear. “Check that lobby, then catch up.”
An old man in a blue linen shirt appeared in the doorway. His face was heavily wrinkled, and his hair was in dreads.
Riley had seen him sitting at Nathaniel’s table.
He stepped into the lobby. He held a handful of zip-ties in one hand. His other hand stayed behind his back.
He saw Riley and Chris and froze. “You’re not crew.”
“No,” Riley agreed.
“You should be in your cabin.” His voice was gravely and with a southern hillbilly accent. Riley could believe that Nathaniel really was in a cult that worshipped a weird god, because otherwise, he’d only associate with his fellow New England pretentious pricks.
“You should be in your cabin.” Chris was on the balls of his feet, leaning slightly towards the old man, ready to pounce.
“I’m heading there now.” The old man stuttered through the lie. “I mean it. Stay in your cabin. It’s safer.”
He looked around the lobby once more, and not seeing what he was looking for, went back through the door. His footsteps tapped upwards.
Riley looked towards the opposite lobby. Bobby the porter was out of sight. His patrols must have taken him out of earshot. “That was one of Nathaniel’s friends.”
“I recognized him,” Chris said. “What’s your uncle up to?”
“Not my problem right now. They’re headed upstairs. We’re headed down.”
Riley heard Chris’s teeth grind. “I don’t like it. Pete said Nathaniel’s here to help along the Aria’s purpose. Could be bad. But let’s focus on the task at hand.”
Riley led the way into the stairwell, and they headed down.
30
The last place Riley wanted to be was Deck Two.
But here she was.
The stair landing was the same as any other: art deco light fixtures on the walls, bright patterns on the carpet, stairs up and down, and a wooden door out of the stairwell.
Riley didn’t let herself hesitate. She pushed on the door. It was still locked.
Chris caught up. “Is this the same stairwell you were in before?”
Riley nodded. “Somebody yelled at me from the other side in a garbled language I don’t know.”
“I don’t hear anybody now.” Chris knocked softly. He jerked his knuckles away. “What the hell?”
Wood from the door stuck to his fingers like a paste.
“Oh yeah. The door was a weird texture.” Riley flicked the surface. It rippled like a pond. “Did you see anything like this in Richmond?”
Chris’s face went pale. “Sort of. Once we get through, I’d stay far away from the walls.”
“And how do we get through?”
“Whatever’s in there is messing with structure, so I’m thinking…” Chris grabbed the silver doorhandle with two hands. He yanked with his whole body.
The handle and backing plate ripped out. It took with it the handle on the opposite side, leaving an open rectangle in the door. Chris stumbled but caught himself.
A dull orange glow came through the hole, the same color of the ocean water she’d seen outside.
“No stopping now.” Chris reared back and kicked the door with the bottom of his foot. His leg broke through, and he gasped. His leg sank down through the softening wood.
Riley grabbed him under the shoulders to pull him free. The door let him go easily. A chunk fell to the floor where it shattered and splashed into gravel-sized pieces.
In the bottom right quarter of the door was now an opening big enough to crawl through.
The patterned carpet continued to the other side but lit with an orange hue instead of the fluorescent white light of the stairwell.
“Do you believe me yet?” Chris asked.
Riley ducked down to see inside. “So far, I’ve seen a rotten door.”
“That behaved more like mud than wood.”
As far as Riley could tell, Deck Two was set up like Deck Three. A lobby with seating and art on the walls. Corridors with the doors spaced out enough that they were probably meeting rooms rather than guest cabins.
The
difference being that everything had an orange hue. Ochre seeped over everything like an infection. It pressed in on the light fixtures, smothering their weak white glow.
“I’ll go first,” Chris said.
“No argument here.” Riley watched him crawl through the opening. When he didn’t burst into flames or melt into soggy flesh like the door, she followed.
She stood in a lobby. The floor sagged under her feet. The air smelled of cinnamon and rot.
Potential energy buzzed in the lobby and through Riley. Something was poised to happen, she could feel it.
Chris tested the floor by bouncing. “It’s soft, but there’s a firm layer underneath. It should hold us.”
Riley imagined sinking into the floor to come out the Deck One ceiling, strained into liquid silver threads. “Let’s hope so.”
Two hallways extended out from the lobby. One stretched down the port side of the Aria, and the other led across midship to the starboard side.
“Shouldn’t there be crew patrolling?” Chris asked.
“The cruise line told Captain Silva to leave it alone,” Riley said. “Probably bribed by my uncle.”
“Easier for us, I guess,” Chris said.
“Where should we start?”
“Room by room.”
They walked down the port hallway, checking each door. These weren’t locked, but they were soft and fragile like the stairwell door. Riley had been right in her guess that these were event rooms. Every other space on the cruise ship was packed tight with purpose. Empty and open like the event rooms were, they felt unnatural.
“It’s like it was flooded,” Riley said. “Rotten floors and walls, everything tinted a murky orange.”
“That color isn’t a physical stain,” Chris said. “The light itself is infected.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s how light is on the other side. At least from what I saw in Richmond.”
“You’re saying we’re already crossed over?”
He shook his head. “The space is overlapped. Or actually, that doesn’t feel quite right. The building in Richmond was overlapped. This feels more obviously foreign. I don’t know what it is. We haven’t crossed over, but something’s not right.”
The farther they walked towards the stern, the deeper their feet pressed the carpet into the floor. Orange light grew thick until it blurred the view like fog.
“We’re getting closer,” Chris said. “To something.”
They continued checking rooms, which remained empty. They reached a stretch of the hallway where the wall between them and midship was blank. No doors.
“What’s on the other side here?” Riley asked.
“In a normal ship, crew or staff offices. We’re directly over the engine, so probably engineering equipment.”
“And in this ship?”
Chris tapped on the wall. His knuckles left divots. “Probably what we’re looking for.”
Fog limited their view to twenty feet ahead. They plowed forward, looking for a door inward.
“Stop,” Chris hissed.
Riley froze. The fear in his voice sent goosebumps down her neck.
“Hear that?” he whispered.
Riley squinted into the fog and listened. Soft squelching. Hundreds of tiny footsteps like a stampede of rodents.
Or a giant starfish with hundreds of tiny feet.
Chris looked back and forth down the hallway. “Which way is it coming from?”
The barrage of wet tapping surrounded Riley. She needed to flee, to get off this deck and hide in her cabin until California. She couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from, so it sounded like it was all around her.
“In here.” Chris pulled Riley through a door on the port side of the hallway.
Inside, another empty meeting room. Open dividers split the room into four sections, each with its own door to the hallway. Small circular windows let in dull light from outside. The gray color through the windows said that the Aria was nearing the storm clouds.
Chris held the door cracked wide enough to see through.
“Shut it,” Riley hissed.
Chris shushed her.
The cacophony of wet footsteps drew closer.
Riley didn’t dare move for fear she’d make noise and draw the creature’s attention. She stood ramrod stiff behind Chris, watching over his shoulder through the cracked door.
A dragging sound joined the wet footsteps. Something was swooshing over the carpet.
The monstrous starfish came into view. It was taller than Riley—its top was two-thirds of the way to the ceiling. Its thick appendages made it wider than the hallway, and on either side, it reached up the wall. It glided like a real starfish in a nature documentary, a steady movement from its hundreds of feet, sporadically propelled faster by reaching forward with its longest limb.
Riley tried not to think of the old man and woman in the casino, yanked underneath to be torn into by the thing’s razor-sharp beak.
Chris swallowed a gasp.
Terror made Riley go weak. The creature would hear Chris’s breathing.
Then Riley saw what shocked Chris.
As the starfish passed by their hiding spot, it dragged two bodies. Their legs, still wet with blood, disappeared under the monster’s rear appendage. Their arms and heads hung loosely behind the bloody mess of their torsos.
Riley heard herself let out a little moan of grief.
The first body was a woman in her sixties that Riley didn’t recognize.
The second body was a pink-haired old woman who’d stolen a bottle of tequila for Riley and Krystal. It was Marjorie.
It was too much. Riley shouldn’t have come down here. There was no point. Forget Dad’s watch. Forget selling it. She’d toss it into the ocean. She could make minimum wage for the rest of her life. Lots of people did it. She just wanted off this ship.
The starfish dragged Marjorie and the other body out of sight, in the direction Riley and Chris had been heading.
Chris eased the door open.
Riley kicked the back of his shin, but he ignored her.
He stuck his head into the hallway. The wet footsteps grew quieter.
“Is it gone?” Riley breathed.
Chris shook his head. He motioned for her to look.
Hoping to find a clear path back the way they came, Riley leaned her head into the hallway. The way back was clear, at least as far as she could see through the orange fog.
Chris put his hand on her cheek and made her look in the direction the starfish had gone.
Thirty feet down the hallway, the starfish was raised up onto the tips of its limbs. Its top pressed into the ceiling, making a reversed crater in the softened tile. A wicked-looking beak hung down from its belly, its tip hooked and barbed.
It dropped down onto Marjorie’s corpse, its limb bending like a spider’s. It sprung back up, Marjorie’s corpse pinned to its belly, and then thrust itself at the inner wall.
The corpse pressed into the drywall, but instead of forming a crater, Marjorie disappeared through the wall like flour through a sieve.
Chris winced.
“What the hell?” Riley whispered.
The starfish hooked the other corpse. It pressed the body through the wall, and then its own mutated body pressed through.
That was how it had come up through the floor last night.
“We have to tell Captain Silva,” Riley said. “He doesn’t know what’s down here. If we tell him, he can send security. They have guns locked away, don’t they? This is bigger than us.”
“Take a breath,” Chris said. “It’s bigger than us, and the Captain, and guns.”
“Someone’s gotta kill it.”
“It’s not the starfish I’m worried about. It’s what it’s doing, and why.” Chris walked out into the hallway.
Riley followed but planted her feet once she was out there. “We’re leaving. Or at least I am.”
Chris cautiously walked to
where the starfish went through the wall. “Hiding in your cabin won’t save you. That’s what the old dead ladies were probably doing.”
“Her name was Marjorie.”
Chris looked back at Riley. “You knew her?”
“Just on the cruise.”
“I’m sorry. It’s traumatizing to see that happen to someone, even if you barely know them.”
“So let’s go.”
“Are you listening? There’s nowhere to go. We’ve got to stop whatever’s happening on the other side of this wall.” Chris pointed to the spot where the starfish had disappeared. “Or we’ll be starfish food just like your friend.”
“It wasn’t eating them. It didn’t eat the kid in the pool, either.”
“It’s doing something with them. Not just taking them, like the building did in Richmond, but killing them first. I don’t know what the Deviser wants with dead bodies. But either we find out and stop it, or more people die.”
He was right. It shouldn’t be Riley’s responsibility, but Chris was right. If they ran to Captain Silva, he wouldn’t believe them until he saw it with his own eyes. And how many people would the starfish kill until then?
“Fine.” Riley walked over to Chris. “How do we get through this wall?”
“It’s an overlap in dimensions,” Chris said. “We need to see the other side.”
Fear boiled in Riley’s gut. She’d have to wind the watch again.
31
Riley took a deep breath.
“You ready?” Chris asked. He wrapped his hands around hers.
In her hands was Dad’s pocket watch. Before, she’d felt primal terror that something gargantuan and evil was approaching through the orange ocean. That fear bubbled inside her again. “What if something big notices us again?”
“Only wind it a little,” Chris said. “Half a turn. Enough for us to find a way through the wall.”