He wondered if he could face life without her.
They emerged into the darkened room to find disagreement, cursing, suggestions, and counter-suggestions being thrown around. Nielsen demanded to know what was happening. One of the angry young men, who was wearing a t-shirt that bore the words FACTS DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS, told him.
“Something’s moving down there,” he said. “Sonar picked it up. It’s probably a submersible from a rival outfit.”
“Shoal of fish, that’s all,” said a second man.
“Bullshit, it’s too solid!” the first man insisted.
There was more confused, ill-tempered debate while the non-experts stood by, Nielsen for the first time looking uncertain. The thing below them was a shoal of fish, a submarine, a sonar ‘ghost’. The last word made Joe uneasy, and he asked Nielsen what it meant.
“A false reading, something that’s not actually there,” Nielsen said. “Like a layer of unusually cold water might bounce the sonar beam back.”
“No, it’s not a thermocline effect!” shouted the first man. “Not in these waters, not at this depth. It’s moving like another vessel—one as big as us.”
Joe went to the window and stared out over the sea. The moon, a scarred reddish orb, had risen high into the night sky. He could just make out a small, dark shape moving over the water, then grasped that it was their little dive boat. He felt his heart starting to race, willing it to turn back.
“Jesus Christ, it’s right below us!”
After the exclamation, there was silence. Joe looked over the shoulder of the t-shirt guy, who was hunched over what seemed to be a blank screen. Then Joe realized that there were a few flecks of light as floating organic debris was caught in the ROV’s lights. But the camera had been blocked by something dark. Then the screen died. As did all of the other screens, as well as the indirect lighting in the room.
Nielsen demanded to know what was going on. Somebody stammered that the emergency generator should have kicked in. Joe went back to the window, stared at the small boat that was now bigger, its white wake just visible. It felt very cold despite the room being thronged with confused, frightened men.
“Turn back, Sara,” he said under his breath, and for the first time in weeks, he reached up and clasped the half-heart that hung around his neck. Half a heart of gold. Joe had never been one for symbolism, but it struck him now.
“What the hell is that?”
He looked seaward and saw the water roiling with turbulence in the moonlight. Nielsen was trying to shout down his team, giving orders, demanding they immediately provide light, power, and ‘break out the small arms’. Nobody seemed to be listening.
***
Sara almost lost control of the boat when she passed out of the sheltered cove and into the Caribbean proper, hitting bigger waves head-on. She corrected her course, checked that she was well clear of the reef, then looked back at the Deep Star just in time to see its lights go out. Her eyes, adapting to a darkness suddenly grown more profound, made out a patch of sea beyond the white ship. The water seemed to be boiling.
The side of the Deep Star was like a vast, steel wall, unclimbable—an obvious obstacle she had not even considered in her headlong race out there. But then she saw the launch and the ladder. She pulled alongside, tied her boat to the launch, then leaped onto the bigger boat, and grasped the lower rungs. She was soon breathing hard with fear and exertion. She took the ladder too fast and had to stop halfway, cursing her weakness, whimpering at the time she was losing.
Above her, there was shouting. She listened for Joe’s voice but could only hear the sound of unknown men in fear and panic. She resumed her climb, reached a kind of gate in the ship’s rail, climbed on board, and fell clumsily to the deck. A running figure tripped over her and went flying, landed with a loud ‘Oof’, then got up and ran on. Sara struggled to her feet and then froze at the sharp crack of a gunshot.
Another man dashed around a corner, collided with her, and sent her careering against a stanchion. She got her breath back and went in the opposite direction to the running men. Then she saw the ship.
The Vengeur lay alongside the Deep Star, motionless, a black flag hanging limply atop its mainmast. She was outlined in a strange glow, like Sara imagined St. Elmo’s fire might look. Flickering bluish light ran over mast and spars, across ragged sails. It danced across the muzzles of a row of bronze guns. It was beautiful in its way, the ship of the unquiet dead.
But the ship was nothing compared to its crew, who were swarming aboard the salvage vessel. For the first time in centuries, they were boarding an enemy vessel, one that had sought to take treasure from Lemaitre’s domain. Dark figures were leaping from the rigging of the Vengeur onto the decks of the Deep Star. She saw a glint of bone, a flash of moonlight on metal. There was another gunshot and one of the attackers reeled but did not stop advancing.
Is he free to take as many as he likes now?
The thought had preyed on her mind all the way out. Even if it were not true, even if Lemaitre was still bound to take just one sinner, might Joe be the worst of the men on board this ship? She had to find him, shield him if she could.
“Joe!” she shouted. “Joe, where are you?”
She forced herself to think. If Joe was talking to a businessman, he’d be inside. A conference room or something similar. She looked for a door, wrenched it open, peered into utter blackness. There was no way she could find her way around an unknown ship’s interior. She ran toward the bow of the Deep Star and peered up at the bridge. A loping figure that squelched as it moved rose from a hatchway, and she screamed.
“Catherine.”
A hand on her shoulder made her freeze, then she turned her head slowly. She couldn’t make out the face clearly, for which she was grateful. But she knew who it was. A bony hand moved down her arm, clutched at her wrist. More fingers clawed at her waist, turned her around, pulled her close to brine-sodden clothing that covered a ribcage and little else. The face came closer, and tiny blue lights flickered where eyes would have once gazed at her.
“Nielsen, you bastard!”
It was Joe’s voice. She pushed Lemaitre away, feeling her fingers sink into what she hoped was just wet cloth. For a moment, Lemaitre seemed to hesitate. Then, with frightening elegance, it drew its sword and turned to face two men swarming down a stairway from the control room.
“It’s every man for himself, Joe!”
The leading man’s voice was unfamiliar, and the words he spoke were all Sara would ever hear from him. Too late, the stranger saw Lemaitre raising his blade, and emitted a strangled cry. It was cut off by the sound of meat being hacked apart. The half-seen figure of Nielsen dropped to its knees, then fell flat on its chest.
“Sara?”
In the strange blend of moonglow and ghost light, she saw Joe hesitate at the base of the stairway. Lemaitre, too, paused for a moment, before striding toward the living man. A small figure leaped onto the pirate’s shoulder, chittered at Sara as she ran forward, arms outstretched.
“Leave him alone!”
The specter raised its sword as Joe tried to back up the stairway, hands raised in a futile attempt to ward off the inevitable blow. The curved blade gleamed in the unnatural radiance.
“Victor!”
Sara spoke urgently, not shouting this time, and forced herself to put a hand on the nightmare’s free arm. She struggled to recall her high school French, but could not remember anything useful. Then she found a simple command.
“Arretez vous!”
The word was too formal, she suddenly realized, a command rather than a request one might make of a friend or a lover. She should have said arrete toi. Lemaitre’s blow did not land. Joe remained frozen in terror, sprawled on the stairway. Sara could not think of how to say, ‘spare him’, or ‘have mercy’, and what effect would such pleas have anyway?
“Catherine?”
Lemaitre turned to face her again, the monkey screeching wildly now, h
ead bobbing on its crooked neck. This time, the bony claw caressed her cheek. And at that moment, she saw her future, or at least the future imagined by the being that loomed over her, hands moving over her skin, clutching at her body, eager to unite itself with her flesh. She gasped, reeled away.
“No! I won’t go with you!”
The familiar emitted one final, piercing screech and leaped at her face. Flailing wildly at it, she tripped over a coil of rope and fell. With a metallic clang, her head struck something hard. And then she was in a greater blackness than that of any tropical night.
Epilogue: Six Months Later
Hyacinth was explaining to Sara that one of the new cleaners might be a thief when Keri arrived with some news. They were grabbing lunch in the resort’s new office, previously a cold and sterile place before they had livened it up with posters, ornaments, and a jokey calendar featuring cute animals in amusing predicaments. Some of it was too kitschy for Sara, but she didn’t mind compromise with the girls.
Without the support of her friends, she would not have made it.
“It’s on CNN and the BBC,” Keri said, without any preamble as she burst in.
Sara didn’t need to ask what ‘it’ was.
“They decided the gold can be raised but not until the bones are recovered and taken back to England,” Keri went on. “All that fuss to do the bleedin’ obvious!”
The others laughed at Keri’s attempt at a Cockney accent. The mirth was short-lived, though, as Sara relived the mental turmoil she had suffered. The crew of the Deep Star had found her lying unconscious on the deck. Nielsen had vanished, and her claim that he had been killed had been treated as the ramblings of a mad person.
And Joe? The consortium’s men had insisted that Joe had never been on board at all. Officially, Nielsen had either fallen overboard or been abducted by drug gangs known to operate in that part of the Caribbean. Once its court of inquiry had returned that verdict, the British government had decided to focus on getting its bullion back and in taking credit for bringing ‘our boys’ home, albeit somewhat belatedly.
“So that’s it?” Sara said, surprised at how emotionless she felt. “They’ve tied it all up into a neat little package of rational explanations and procedures. Good for them. I guess.”
After an awkward silence, Hyacinth said she had to be getting back to work.
When they were alone, Keri asked, as she did most days, how Sara was coping. After that, they talked about Ryan, and how he was progressing, and whether he would make a good dive instructor. They went over the costs for a new dive boat and resolved to cast their net further afield than Port Louis to avoid price gouging.
They did not talk about the full moon until Sara decided to mention it.
“Nobody has been taken since that night,” she said. “Maybe Lemaitre was satisfied. Maybe he was free to go to Hell or limbo or whatever.”
Keri looked skeptical.
“Ryan would like to think that, too,” she admitted. “Me, not so much.”
They sat in silence for a while. Sara finished her wrap, wiping her fingers.
“If I’d gone with him, Joe would still be here,” she said finally. “That was the deal. That was what he showed me. Him and his—his Catherine, together forever.”
Keri, open-mouthed, watched as Sara got up and stood at the window, looking out over the reef. The resort was busy enough, all of its bungalows occupied, the online reviews generally good. Joe would have been pleased, she knew, but he’d also have been sure they could do better. Because they could be richer. Because they could always win more.
“I still love him,” she said. “In a way. Maybe it’s the memory of love, of all those years. And maybe, if I hadn’t found out, I might have sacrificed myself for that—for what we had, or for what I imagined we had. But instead, he was taken.”
Keri stood up and stood behind her.
“Lots of kinds of love,” she murmured. “You turned down the worst kind, I guess. Maybe you hurt Lemaitre’s feelings so bad he won’t come back? Maybe he’ll just spend the rest of time ranting about you on his blog in the afterlife?”
Sara laughed at that.
“The reincarnated bitch who broke my heart,” she giggled. “Oh God, let’s get back out there and do stuff. One day at a time.”
***
In the sea of the dead, on the deck of the sunken ship, they danced. It was an elaborate measure, no mere waltz—a craze of the distant future, to Lemaitre. No, this was a stately pavane, masked ladies and gentlemen moving as gracefully as they could, considering the state of the planking, not to mention their limbs.
The sea was alive with ghosts. Not merely those of Lemaitre’s crew, the few dozen who had signed up with him and the many he had taken. No, the green waters thronged with the restless dead, long-drowned faces gawping down at the dancers as they moved around the deck of the Vengeur.
Sara tried to focus on the right moves, the elaborate turns and curtsies. She tried to ignore that hirsute demon that chittered angrily from its perch on a capstan. She had learned so many nautical terms in her dreams, the nightly reverie that took her to the suitor she had rejected. Once more, Lemaitre trod his measure, bowed his bow, and took off his mask. He kissed her passionately, his hands straying, insistent, intimate.
Again, she woke and stifled a scream. A sheen of sweat drove her into the shower, and she luxuriated under the warm torrent for far too long. When she got back to bed, she paused to check the time on her phone. The blue light splashed over the small table by her bedside, and something gleamed. Her pendant, the half-heart. She did not remember taking it off. It was an odd thing to do after so many years, another sign of a mind disturbed.
“But…”
She reached up and found the love-token hanging from her throat. She picked up the other half of one heart, placed the two parts together. She sat holding them as the phone went dark, and she watched the moonlight steal away the luster of the gold.
* * *
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