Despite the blood, he looked as healthy as ever. And he was visible. “Why can I see you?” I asked. “I can’t even see myself.”
He pushed himself up and walked through a handful of sailors to get to me. “I can see you. You see what you expect to see. Our perceptions create reality here. At least, I think that’s how it works. You’re a ghost, so you expect to be invisible, right? I didn’t realize I was dead for a while, so I was just walking around and trying to get people’s attention. Here, give me your hand.”
I stuck out my hand, and he grasped it. The firm pressure of a human hand jump-started my appearance. Color flooded through my hand, coursing up my arm and swirling into my torso like paint in clear water.
Something flickered in the corner of my vision, in the doorway. I looked over, but saw nothing. The same trickle of cold from before raced down my spine. We were not alone.
I pointed to the doorway. “Did you see—?” But it was already gone.
He brushed off my shoulder. “Looking good. Sorry about the accident.” His face softened. “I was just putting two and two together when the plane hit. I was there when… well, I was there. It was actually me who got you all onto the Saint Catherine.”
I was getting a headache from all of this. “What do you mean, it was you?”
He pointed all around. “According to Dot and Peggy, when you have one psychic on a living ship and one on the Saint Catherine, you can hook them up like a plug into a socket. Torres was the living one, and some guy named Wayne is the Saint Catherine’s. So when you all died and Dot and Peggy popped through one of the openings with their stretchers, I told them to save their energy, and I carried all five of you through the openings myself. You guys were in some kind of stasis, probably from how fast the deaths happened.”
This all begged one question. “So why are you still on the Taft?”
His expression darkened. “Gorman gave me the whole speech. I’m not getting involved with any of that. I pledged my life to the Navy, not my afterlife. I’ll stay right here and watch over this ship.”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Um, pretend I attacked Gorman and Muree during the welcoming speech, and therefore didn’t get to the shocking information you’re insinuating.”
He paused, then laughed. “Was it just you, or was it all of you?”
Two invisible awarenesses joined us, their identities automatically obvious to me. Instead of greeting them, I reached out and touched where I knew their hands to be. Color raced up their arms like it had mine, and my confused, ghostly teammates stared at their hands like people seeing the sunrise for the first time.
“Yeah, we’re definitely dead,” I said quickly. I turned back to Rollins. “You were saying?”
Rollins arranged his legs Indian-style, making him appear to be sitting on an invisible chair. “There’s a war on,” he said, his tone dark. “And the Saint Catherine is a warship. Gorman was going on about some magic crap, and how the ship needs sailors to do its part in the conflict. That was the weirdest part—he kept referring to the ship as a person.”
“It is a being,” Torres said, pulling her legs into the same floating style. “It’s spoken to us.”
Rollins didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t care. I’m not getting involved in some magical war of the ancients. I have that choice. If any of you want to stay behind with me, I don’t mind. I’ll haunt the Taft forever if that’s what it takes to not get embroiled in someone else’s fight.”
We all looked at each other. Torres pursed her lips. “I think I’d rather explore the other world than haunt the Taft forever.”
“I want to go home to my parents,” I said. “They’re—”
“No, you don’t.” Bickley shook his head. “Guys, I know every single one of us has someone to go back to, but we can’t. For the sake of our sanity, we can’t haunt the living and watch them grow old without us. I’m not going to watch Tanya marry some other guy. I’m not going to watch my boys call him ‘Daddy.’ It’s the natural order of things, but I’m not sticking around to see it. I’m going back to the Saint Catherine and figuring things out from there.” He floated backward and drifted out of the room.
Torres gave me a sad look. “I guess we really are dead, huh?”
“You think?” I grumbled. I still wanted to go see my parents, but I had no idea how to get off the Taft, or if I even could.
Torres moved her head side to side, her body trailing along each way as she did so. “I’m going to go pray at the crash site, okay? Take your time. I won’t take anyone back until you’re ready to go. Call me when you need me.”
She floated away through the bulkhead.
I turned to Rollins, but he was already disappearing through another bulkhead, leaving me alone with the living. Their voices came in and out; I could most clearly hear words said about me.
Pouting, I slouched in an empty chair. One of the sailors squinted and blinked in my direction, then gave her head a little shake.
“Boo,” I mumbled. “Something, something, dead man’s chest.”
She tapped her ears until the person sitting next to her elbowed her in the ribs and pointed toward the podium.
Ugh, I couldn’t even haunt someone at my own memorial service. This sucked.
Fatigue settled on my shoulders, making me slouch even more as necessary questions presented themselves. What was I supposed to do now? I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do by getting off the Saint Catherine, but what was next? What was going to motivate me to get out of this chair when my memorial service was done?
I closed my eyes, forcing back tears. My story was done. The Book of Rachel was closed, and the world had moved on. I was just a remnant of whom I’d been in life.
Oh, stop wallowing.
The memory of my mother’s exasperated chide, said whenever my lacrosse team had lost, cut through my pity party.
“Yeah, but, I’m dead, Mom,” I muttered. “I’m allowed to wallow just this once.”
You wanted adventure, right? Go back to the Saint Catherine and find out more about the war. It sounds like the ship needs you.
“I’ll stay right here, thanks. It’s safer.”
My daughter isn’t a coward. My father spoke this time.
“No, your daughter is a selfish ingrate, remember?” I sat up, squeezing my eyes shut as hard as I could. “Well, watch me. I’m not moving. I’ll… just… haunt this seat for eternity.”
The soft glow of the electric candelabra blurred from tears, and I crossed my arms across my chest. I was definitely allowed to wallow. I was dead. I’d died when I was twenty-one. I had nothing to look forward to, nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
Another low growl made me whip around and stare at the passageway. “Who’s there? Rollins, is that…”
My words crumbled into nothing when I focused on what I was seeing in the passageway. It was darker than usual, and rippling, as though heat waves were rising from the deck. A low rustle emanated from the depths of the tunnel—“passageway” didn’t cut it anymore—warning me of danger.
My feet touched the deck, providing a blessed feeling of grounding. I didn’t take my eyes off the tunnel as I backed through the crowd, passing through them and causing one or two of them to shiver violently.
A figure took form in the darkness, blurry yet distinctly masculine. He rippled along with the waves of dark energy, then stepped onto the deck, holding up his hands in that same confused way my friends had. His features sharpened, melting from an all-over, shadowy charcoal gray to bone white.
His eyes were equally white, with only a tiny black pinprick for pupils. Shaggy blue-green hair, knotted and snarled, hung down to his ears. His clothes, brown rags tied together with leather straps, were bloodstained and torn in many places. The knife on his thigh glinted in the weak sunlight of the chapel.
I backed away even more. “What the hell are you?”
He bared his long, pointed teeth and said something in a foreign language. His voice was
not human—the vowels and consonants clashed together sharply, forming phenoms that I’d never heard from a human larynx.
“Okay, uh, bye now,” I said, my eyes darting around the room. “Bickley! Rollins! Anyone! Help!”
He unsheathed his knife.
Bickley and the others descended through the ceiling at the same time the man hurled his knife at me. I ducked at the last moment, and the knife sailed straight through the bulkhead.
Bickley and Rollins tackled him. The man crumpled under their combined weights, wailing in his strange, inhuman voice.
Torres hurried over to me. “Who is that?” she whispered. “He has that same kind of energy I felt before.”
“I don’t know,” I said, gasping for breath. “He—”
The man grabbed Bickley’s face. Bickley shouted into his palm, first in pain, then in terror. Visible little beads of light crawled out of his body, up through his face, and into the palm of the man.
Torres and I jumped into the fray, kicking and stomping the man with as much fury as we could muster. He let go of Bickley, who crumpled. Torres immediately grabbed Bickley’s collar and pulled him away, then did the same with Rollins.
She held her arms wide, shielding us, then jabbed her finger toward the tunnel. “Go back where you came from! I know you can understand me!”
The man picked himself up, trembling—but whether from fear or anger, it was not clear. He gave his head a shake. “G…ghosts,” he spat, the word accented but clear. “You are… human… waste.”
Bickley sputtered, but Torres took my hand in her left one, and Bickley’s in her right. “I’m a psychic,” she said, a warning in her tone. “And if you don’t leave, we’ll make you.”
The man growled, a low beast-like rumble that vibrated in my chest. He’d been the sound I’d heard before.
“Last chance,” Torres said. “Everyone, remember what we did to Gorman and Muree? Let’s do that again.”
An electric candelabra by the podium fell over, causing several living sailors to gasp. I stepped up, raising my hand, and focusing on the thread of anger that tugged at my consciousness. I seamlessly joined Torres’ mind, and this time there was no hurricane—just power. Bickley jumped in, strengthening the force even more.
Torres lowered her head and narrowed her eyes—and the porthole to our left exploded. “Good job, everyone. Focus it on this piece of crap. One… two…”
He turned and ran into the tunnel, the darkness receding with him. In less than three seconds, he and the mysterious tunnel had vanished.
I let out a gasped breath. “I think I speak for everyone when I say, what—”
“He was taking energy from me,” Bickley said, his chest heaving. “I could feel him draining something from my body.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” I was still staring at the place where the tunnel had been. “Torres, now, if you please.”
Forget the Taft. The situation was simple: I’d never seen anything like that on the Saint Catherine, so back to the ghost ship I was going.
Torres pulled us into a huddle, and within the blink of an eye, we were back at the scene of the tragedy, where the wind still blew silently and salt spray blew everywhere but didn’t touch me.
Rollins broke out of the huddle and flew upward. “This is where I leave you,” he said sadly. “I’ll be here.” He gave me a thin smile. “I really am grateful for you trying to save me, Rach. I’m sorry that we weren’t able to be friends.” He saluted us, then floated up and away through the ceiling.
Torres gulped. “It’s his choice. Let’s go back now.”
There was another sensation of falling, falling, falling as the world turned back, and this time I was cognizant of pressure on me—like I was traveling through something. The well-like opening of the Saint Catherine’s world neared, and then we were there.
A bomb exploded.
5
The world was ending.
I pushed myself up from the deck, my vision spinning. What the…? I gasped and shrank back into the corner of the hanger bay with my friends.
The sky was alight with sparks and embers, and so many planes. Some of them flew far overhead, shooting at something unseen to me on the other side of the Saint Catherine, their fronts lighting up with tiny orange-and-yellow bursts of light that contrasted sharply with the choking smoke.
Men sprinted back and forth across the deck, shouting to each other and hauling buckets of water, hoses, and flight gear.
“Move, move, move!”
“Stanholtzer, go!”
“Get more ordnance!”
A high whistle from above ended—and then the ship shuddered under the force of an explosion. I landed roughly on my knees next to my friends. Shards of white-hot metal and glass cut my hands and face, but I mentally shook them off. We were already dead, and no matter how scary...
I paused mid-thought and stared at my hands.
The cuts weren’t healing themselves.
I struggled to control my breathing as I shook my hands, the blood flowing freely from several serious lacerations. The others did the same, smearing their blood all over their skin as they tapped and rubbed their wounds.
Bickley pulled Torres and me into a protective hug and shuffled us along toward the door that led into the bowels of the ship. “Let’s go,” he said, panting and casting a fearful look toward the skyward battle. “We need to get away. This is different.”
My teeth began to chatter as I realized the truth: yet again, everything I thought I knew about this godforsaken water world had been thrown for a loop. The bullet hadn’t hurt Commander Hollander, but the shrapnel was dangerous. Okay. What was the logic to this place? Why did a ballistic bullet not hurt a ghost, but jagged metal from a bomb did?
Someone slammed into us, shoving us into an unused flight deck control room. It was Commander Hollander. He opened up a closet, and we all crammed inside.
“Don’t speak,” Commander Hollander said, putting his hands over Bickley’s and my mouth. “Just listen. I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys. There’s a flotilla of… of strange beings on the starboard side. We can use the battle as a diversion to escape.”
A flotilla? “How?” I asked into his hand.
He slowly uncovered our mouths and pulled a cord, turning on a lone ceiling bulb. “There’s a small cargo plane out there that’s not being used. On my order, get in the plane. I’ll fly us out. I got one of the sailors to tell me where the nearest port is. It’s not far. We can fly there.”
Discomfort shivered to life. This was not a smart plan. “No,” I said. “We have no idea where we are, nor do you know for sure if you can fly the plane. We could easily crash into the sea.” I shivered at the memory of recent events. “And if those strange creatures are what I think they are, then I’d rather stay on a warship than risk getting captured.”
And if I were being really honest, I didn’t want to go anywhere with Commander Hollander.
Another bomb exploded, rocking us and knocking dust off shelves. Men shouted even more, calling for aid and ordnance. In the midst of the voices, Dot and Peggy shouted for someone to bring them more bandages.
“I don’t think this warship is going to be sailing much longer,” Commander Hollander said. “And I don’t think we’re going to get another chance.”
As much as I wanted to stay on the ship, I didn’t want to stay on the ship alone if the others were leaving. The light went out, causing all of us to huddle together. After a second, I opened the door, allowing in a narrow shaft of light. “Fine.”
Commander Hollander peeked out, then beckoned for us to follow. “Everyone, hurry. Don’t look around, just get onto that plane there.” He pointed to a smallish cargo plane, the one I’d seen people unloading ordnance from earlier. “Three, two, one… go.”
We all sprinted to the olive drab plane, which had seemingly been forgotten in the chaos of the attack. As predicted, the sailors rushed around us, never stopping as we wrenc
hed open the side door and hopped into the cramped, musty cargo compartment. For once, being a nuke, and therefore virtually forgotten by everyone, was working in our favor.
When we were in, Commander Hollander slammed the door shut and all but jumped into the pilot’s seat, his hands flying over the controls. The engine roared to life. “Everyone, sit down and hold onto something,” he said loudly, barely audible over the din. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Goldstein, what’s in those crates?” We began to taxi toward the runway.
I was sitting on unmarked wooden crates, and I hastily got off and opened one. “Ordnance, I think.”
“The hell is that stuff?” Torres said, kneeling next to me, the urgency of the moment forgotten. “Those aren’t bombs.”
The crate was filled with beautiful crystal spheres, about four inches in diameter. Each sphere contained a viscous, silvery liquid that shimmered as it moved, showing shades of blue, green, and yellow in the low light. Sparkles floated in the liquid, glittering like tiny bits of treasure adrift in a silver sea.
And the sphere was humming. Though the sounds of battle and the plane engine were all around us, the sphere was emitting a soft, almost musical hum. Multiple tones were perfectly audible, creating a chorus of gentle sounds in my head. Almost like… like voices.
“Can you hear that?” I asked Torres, carefully passing her the sphere. “It sounds like music.”
Torres held up the sphere to her ear. “Yeah, I can. Bick, are you hearing this?”
Bickley was staring at the crate, the glow from the spheres lighting up his face. He nodded slowly, then took the sphere from me and placed it back in the sawdust-lined crate. “Yes, I can hear it. Let’s leave this stuff alone. I don’t trust inanimate objects that have a voice.”
Commander Hollander looked over his shoulder again. “I can’t hear anything. Hold on to something, because we’re about to get airborne.”
I shut the crate, then grabbed hold of an anchored shelf that held more crates.
Commander Hollander accelerated. The end of the runway neared, then disappeared—and then we were facing the smokey sky. The crates all moved back an inch as we ascended. Planes whizzed past us, the drone of their propellers coming in and out as we flew by them.
Sea of Lost Souls Page 5
