The Night Boat

by Robert R. McCammon

  “What is it?” Kip asked.

  Maxwell snapped off the light, returned it to his pocket; he placed the sheet back down. “This man is missing a great quantity of blood,” he said, turning toward the constable. “But I believe he was dead before he received that throat wound.”

  “Then one of the blows to the head killed him?”

  “I’m not sure. I want to go into the chest cavity and look at the heart. The frozen facial muscles, the coloration, the teeth locked through the tongue—all those may indicate instantaneous heart arrest. Perhaps brought on by a sudden and severe shock.”

  Kip blinked, letting the words sink in. “A shock? Fright, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That I don’t know. I’ve heard of it happening before, but I’ve never seen it.”

  Kip shook his head in disbelief. “Christ Almighty!” he said softly. “What could scare a man enough to kill him?” He looked into the doctor’s eyes for an answer, but the other man had turned away. Kip crossed the room to a desk with a metal tray which contained items the young man had had in his pockets. A few coins, a small penknife, a rusted key, cigarette papers, and a bit of ganja. And also something the doctor had pried from the corpse’s rigid fingers. It was a few inches of filthy cloth, matted with yellow streaks of fungus. Kip picked it up and held it under the desk lamp to examine it for the third time. At one time the cloth had either been brown or green, but now it was a sickly, faded color somewhere in between. What was it? he wondered. Something Turk had grabbed at during his horrifying ordeal?

  The constable gathered up the items and buttoned them in the back pocket of his trousers. Coins, a key, enough ganja for a few wild highs; it was one hell of a legacy to leave behind. What a terrible way for any man to die.

  “Kip,” the doctor said quietly, looking from the covered corpse back to the other man. “What types of wild animals would you say were out in the jungle?”

  At first he thought he’d misunderstood Maxwell. Then Kip answered. “Not many. Maybe a few small boar, and if you’re not counting snakes, that’s it.” He narrowed his eyes, seeing the puzzled expression on the doctor’s face. “Why?”

  Maxwell folded his arms before him and leaned back against the examination table, keeping his gaze steady. “There are teeth marks on this man’s throat and on the right cheekbone. Some of them have broken bone, as if…something was trying to get at the bone marrow. All I can think of at this point is some kind of animal.”

  What kind of animal would do that? Kip shook his head, ran the back of his hand across his face. No, he knew of no vicious animals in that jungle, though there were probably several places so choked with growth that anything might be hiding in there. He had seen a couple of the boar on occasion, but they were too small to be of any consequence.

  “An animal big enough to take on a man?” Kip asked. “Impossible, not on Coquina. But…teeth marks? You’re sure it’s not the mark of some kind of tool or something?”

  “Yes.”

  Kip took a step toward the corpse and then checked himself, realizing he couldn’t bring himself to look at it again. Teeth marks? No, it didn’t make sense! “Do this for me, please,” he said. “I want you to keep that opinion to yourself. Do whatever you have to, an autopsy or whatever, but I don’t want anyone to know about the marks. At least not until I can figure out what the hell’s going on.”

  “All right,” Maxwell said, “I understand.” He made a move to wheel the table out of the examination room, and as the doctor turned the table around, Kip felt that scrape of nails inside again, and this time a chunk of mortar fell away. He watched the doctor push the table through a pair of doors into a hallway and then into another room. Kip had to get out; his mind was numbed and his senses on edge.

  Leaving the clinic, he walked in the hot sunlight toward the Square, his brain filled with questions he couldn’t begin to answer. What if there were something out in the jungle that could attack and kill a man by ripping his throat into bloody rags and gnawing on the bone? But then why hadn’t some of the inland farmers seen it? They’d been out there for years, and if an animal like that prowled the jungle at least one person should have seen it. But no, no; Turk had been struck by blunt instruments as well as fists; Maxwell had said so himself. What had probably happened was that someone…or more than one?…had killed the man, leaving the body for the big wharf rats that had eaten through the dead flesh. That made sense, but then how did Turk’s body wind up in the water?

  Kip was stunned by the brutality of the crime. A murder on Coquina was practically unthinkable. There were always barroom fights, of course, and often those got pretty damned ugly, but murder? Who among the islanders would be capable of such a thing? At once he thought of the Carib Indian men. They were a rough, fierce breed, and whenever they came down to the village, which was fortunately rare, Kip had to wield a billyclub to break up the trouble. The Caribs were hot-blooded people who—island rumor said—had practiced cannibalism on their enemies less than a hundred years before. Was it possible Turk had run into one, or a group of them, who had come down from their settlement to see the submarine? It was all speculation, of course, but maybe worth a drive over to Caribville to ask some questions.

  No, he decided. It was rats. The rats had crept out and torn into the corpse’s flesh, and that accounted for the teeth marks.

  Kip saw David Moore’s truck parked over by the hardware supply in the Square. There was a stack of timber in the truck bed, and as Kip approached, Moore came out through the doorway, carrying another load of wood in his arms. He laid the timber down, wiped sweat off his face, and started to go back inside when he saw the constable and raised a hand in greeting.

  “Business so good you’re building an addition?” Kip asked him.

  “Not hardly. I’m setting this aside in case we have another blow during the season. The old roof might not take much more this year.”

  Kip nodded. There were three elderly men on a porch in front of the hardware store, two smoking pipes and the third just sitting with a straw hat pulled low over his face. They had been talking quietly until the constable had walked over; now they listened, eyes moving from Kip to Moore. Kip greeted them politely and then said to Moore, “Anything I can help you with?”

  “That should do it, except for paying my bill. If you really want to help you can talk Yarling into extending my credit.”

  Kip tried to smile but found it difficult because he couldn’t shake the image of Turk’s dead face; the eyes of the old men were on him and he felt uneasy. “Sorry. No favoritism.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” Moore dug for his wallet and then turned to go back into the hardware supply.

  “Constable,” said one of the three on the porch, a lanky man with snowy hair and teeth clamped around the bit of a pipe. “What happen’ to that boy las’ night?” He leaned forward in his chair, and Moore stopped where he was.

  “Never you mind about that,” Kip told him.

  “Is it true what they say?” one of the others asked. “About his neck bein’ broke and all the blood gone out his veins?”

  “Whoever told you that has got one hell of an imagination. I’d have to go far to think up a better one.” Kip kept his voice light and easy, but he was fooling no one; the old men’s eyes were sharp and direct. Moore was watching him, his mouth half-open in astonishment.

  “Dan Miles saw the body,” the man in the straw hat said. “He say somethin’ got hold o’ that throat an’…”

  “Dan Miles drinks too much, too,” Kip said, more sharply than he’d intended. “If listening to lies was a crime I’d throw all of you in jail.”

  “They say somethin’ come out the jungle,” the man continued. “Mebbe be somethin’ nobody got the right to see. I seen a jumbie back in there when I was a boy. Him a mean thin’, a tall white thin’ moved so fast you could hardly see. Moved with the wind, and the wind around him go wheeooooo…wheeooooo, like that. I’d seen that face and I ain’t ne
ver forgot. Ugly thin’, with bright red eyes and teeth hangin’ out the mouth. I run and I run and I run ’cause I wasn’t s’posed to be out there at night, you know? But I seen that face and I ain’t never forgot.”

  Kip leaned a hand against a porch slat, keeping his movements casual. “No such things as jumbies.”

  “I seen the ghost of the Ritter woman long time back,” the first man who’d spoken added, his eyes wider and brighter. “Damn me if I didn’t see her over on the fishin’ wharf where her man’s boat used to lie. She wave her arms at me, and I seen the stars shinin’ through her, and she say ‘Follow me. Follow me.’ And then when I step back, she walk right on off the wharf into the sea and she gone.” He looked at the other two men, and they nodded appreciatively.

  “Kip,” Moore said, “what happened last night?”

  “You’d best go pay your bill,” the constable told him. “Yarling’s been known to get mean.”

  “Young buck name o’ Turk got hisself killed,” the one in the straw hat told Moore, sharing the secret. “It happen’ over in the yard where that dam’ boat be. Thass a bad thin’, constable. Unlucky as all hell. That dead boat draw the jumbies out from the jungle, and they all flock around in there when everybody sleepin’ and they have a hell of a party, all them dead thin’s together. And they laugh and scream and roll them eyes up and they look for the livin’ man ’cause they jealous, and they hate the livin’ man and want his soul. And thass what happen’ to that young Turk.”

  The other old men had settled back in their chairs, saying nothing, pipe smoke swirling about their heads.

  “What happened last night?” Moore asked again.

  Kip said, “Come over to my office when you’re finished here. We’ve got things to talk about.” He glanced again at the men on the porch and then turned away, crossing the Square toward his office. Kip went inside, drew the blinds, and brought the dead man’s belongings out of his back pocket, laying them together on the blotter on his desk. He sat down, rolling himself a cigarette, and then snapped on his desk lamp. Picking up each item in turn, he examined them under the light; when he came to the rotten cloth he felt a dull throbbing start somewhere inside him, at the pit of his stomach. He traced a finger along the ridges of yellow fungus. This is important, he told himself, but I don’t know why. This is important and I can’t yet understand it. And deep within him, in the hidden recesses, he felt the brick wall tremble, as if something were pushing against it from the dark side.

  There was a knock on the door. “It’s open, David,” Kip said.

  Moore came in looking puzzled by the secrecy and intrigued by what the old men had been saying. He stepped toward Kip’s desk, seeing the items there on the blotter. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, noting the strained, tired look in his friend’s eyes.

  “The submarine was torched open early this morning,” Kip said. “A welder for Langstree did it, a crazy fool by the name of Turk.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Kip gazed at Moore through a blue haze of cigarette smoke and shook his head. “No. Someone beat him to death over at the boatyard. I know what he was looking for, though, because just yesterday afternoon he was rambling on about gold bars and a wrecked German ship. I tell you, David, someone did a hell of a job on him, and when they were finished the rats took the rest. It’s possible he got into the hulk, found something, and whoever killed him took it away from him.” He waved at the items on the blotter. “This was all we found in his pockets, and this scrap of filthy cloth was gripped in his hand. Could be he ripped at something before he went down.”

  Moore was speechless. A murder on Coquina was unbelievable; there had never been a murder while he’d been operating the Indigo Inn. Hell, he’d come to this island because he’d believed it was set apart from all the bitter cruelties of men. Now he realized his fantasy was just that—a ridiculous dream. “How’d he get into the boat?” he asked after another moment.

  “Torched through a hatch on the forward deck, just in front of the main gun.” Kip put the items into a plastic bag; he sealed it and put the bag away in a lower drawer. “He was a drifter; maybe he had enemies, and one of them caught up with him. I don’t know.” He pulled on the cigarette, then crushed it out in his ashtray. “Anyway, dead men tell no tales, as they say.” He pushed his chair back and went over to the storage cabinet, unlocking and opening it. From its recesses Kip withdrew a flashlight and a bull’s-eye lantern; he tossed the flashlight to Moore. “I’m going to have a look inside the U-boat. Want to come along?”

  “Yes,” Moore said, taking a deep breath. “I’d like to see what’s in there.”

  “All right, then. We’ll be taking a chance if there’re live explosives in it, but if a cutting torch didn’t blow anything to hell I figure it’s pretty safe.” He glanced over toward the gun cabinet, but he quickly dismissed the idea. What was there to arm himself against? The rats? He was certain the shelter was filled with them, but they certainly weren’t man-killers. For God’s sake, he told himself, settle down. He clicked the lantern on and off a couple of times to check the battery and then motioned toward Moore. “Let’s see what the old relic’s carrying,” he said, and stepped toward the doorway.

  “God only knows,” Moore said.

  Yes, Kip told himself, as they stepped out into the harsh white glare of the sun’s eye and Kip climbed into the driver’s seat of the jeep.

  God and perhaps one other.

  Nine

  MOORE COULD FEEL the tension radiating from Kip as they passed through the boatyard gates’ broken slats and drove across the yard. Kip was chewing nervously on a match he’d taken from his breast pocket. When they came around a lumber pile Moore saw the other man’s eyes narrow a fraction. There was the shelter and the dilapidated wharfs just ahead. As Kip pulled the jeep to a halt alongside the shelter Moore himself began to feel uneasy; he stared at the weathered wall, knowing that behind it was the thing that had lured him down to the depths. It had broken free by his hand. Violence had followed it, marring forever the naive, pure pattern of life on Coquina. Moore thought that the thing’s purpose—giving death—had somehow, horribly, been revitalized. And he had brought it here.

  Kip climbed out, waving a hand to a few of the men working some distance away on a storm-beaten trawler at the wharf’s end.

  Turk’s frozen, horrified face burned at the back of his brain. He could see every detail, and for the first time in a very long while he realized that a strange and vague fear crawled inside him. What was it? he asked himself. There’s nothing to fear. It’s irrational, stupid, childish. But something bothered him, something terrible, something he did not want to think about. When he realized Moore was standing beside him, he clicked on his lantern and pushed against the door.

  It swung open hesitantly, on rusted, whining hinges. A foul darkness lay beyond the doorway, as if they stood on the rim of day and were about to cast themselves on the mercy of the night beyond. The Night Boat, Boniface had called it, Kip thought suddenly. A creature of the night, a thing that used the darkness as a defense. They stepped through into the shelter, Moore following the constable, their lights leading the way. A wall of overpowering stench hit them.

  “Jesus,” Kip said. “This bastard’s rotting from the inside out.” He motioned with the light into the sheen of water beneath the gangplank. “That’s where I found the man. You’ll see the dried blood up around the hatch opening.”

  Moore scanned the length of the U-boat. It lay entirely in the darkness except for the stream of murky light that flowed down from the roof holes. The water around the hull was oily and thick, a deep emerald green in which a few bloated fish had met their death. Their carcasses, white bellies up, bumped against the iron, and each slow movement scattered flies that were exploring the decaying flesh. A chill ran up Moore’s back; he could imagine the terrible rumble of the boat’s diesels. God, he thought, what a machine that must have been, gliding through the deep canyons like some kind of
sea predator.

  “Just a minute,” Kip said quietly, moving his light past Moore. He focused the beam on a pile of timbers that lay on the forward deck near the hatch. A coil of cable sat against the conning tower, on the port-side deck. He didn’t recall seeing either the cable or the timbers earlier that morning, but then, he couldn’t remember anything very clearly except the dead man’s face breaking water. He moved his light over the cable, then back to the wood. The timbers looked as though they’d been stacked there, haphazardly. Kip probed with the light back in the far shadows, where the carpentry section had been. The timber had been over there the last time he’d seen it. Or had it been? He couldn’t remember. As his light brushed the mound of crates and rags red eyes glittered and they heard the sound of high, panicked squealing.

  “What’s wrong?” Moore asked him.

  Kip shook his head. “Nothing.” He stepped into the darkness, away from the warm sunlight, and Moore followed him across the gangplank onto the U-boat’s deck. Moore stepped into something, and drawing back with his flashlight he saw a little heap under the looming bulk of the tower. There were small shattered bones, grisly whiskered heads, curled black tails. A mound of offal, of mangled things that had been fat wharf rats. Glassy gelatinous eyes caught the light and Moore quickly looked away, stepping over them. A cat must somehow have gotten in and out of the shelter.

  Clots of blood marked the area where the young man had been killed at the yawning circular hole. Kip played his light across them; the splatters looked like brown paint flung wildly from a brush. Beneath them the plankings creaked softly, and the rustling of the rats filled the shelter with echoes.

  And then the two men aimed their lights down into the hole.

  A ladder descended into the boat, but there seemed no room to move around in there. Moore bent lower and shined his light in at varying angles. Pipes, bare bulkheads, thick bundles of cables, all illuminated briefly and then reclaimed by the dark. Beneath the opening he could see rusted floor platings and a sheen of water perhaps three inches deep. He saw his reflection there, a shadow without form or face.