“Well, the fibula is certainly broken, but you were able to stand on it, so I think the tibia is intact.”
“What?” Silas took a pull from the bottle of spiritus frumenti and grimaced as she pulled off his boot.
“Basic anatomy.” She smiled thinly. “I read a lot. Part of being a librarian, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve two bones in your leg here, and the smaller one’s broken. Fortunately, the larger is the one that supports most of the weight. If we splint it so it doesn’t twist, you should be able to walk.” She looked around. “I need some slats of wood and cloth to bind it up.”
“The locker there’s got a couple of swabs…er…mops. You can use the handles. And there’s bed sheets in the fo’c’sle.” He took another pull from the bottle.
“Okay, but not too much more of that.” Abigail pointed at the bottle of whiskey. “You need your wits about you.”
“Wits…” He shook his head. “I’ve already lost my wits just considering this madness.”
Abigail ignored him and bustled about, tearing a sheet into strips and breaking two swab handles into shorter lengths for splints. As she wrapped his leg tight, Silas bit back all the curses he’d learned in two decades at sea and marveled at her.
“How do you know how to split a leg?”
“I read a lot, remember?” She cinched a knot and started wrapping another strip.
“Good. Maybe you can figure out a way to set that mine off, then.” He pointed the neck of the whiskey bottle to the massive sphere of iron on the deck.
“What do you mean?” Abigail continued to work but looked at him worriedly. “I thought we just dropped it over the side and…boom.”
So, librarians don’t know everything after all. “No. Mines have fuses.” He winced as she drew the wrappings tight. “Prongs that stick out so when a ship hits them, it sets off the mine.”
“How do they work, these fuses?”
“No idea, but they’re soft, made of lead. I worked on a cargo steamer during the war that transported hundreds of mines to England. They showed us they were safe as long as they didn’t have fuses. The inside of the hole they screw into looks like the inside of a flashlight, two metal terminals, so I think when the fuse is bent it makes an electrical connection that sets off a charge inside.”
“That can’t be.” She pointed out to the rain-soaked deck. “Water conducts electricity. If that’s all it took, the mine would have already exploded.”
“Huh…that’s right.”
“So maybe it needs a current to set it off, like a demolitionist’s blasting cap.”
Maybe…” Silas considered. “Maybe once the mine’s placed I could use my lantern battery and some wire to set it off.” Of course, he’d have to be right next to the mine when he did that. Death by explosion, Armageddon, or answer the siren call of those things…not much of a choice, Silas.
“Placed? What do you mean?”
“The mine needs to be placed inside the wreck.”
“Why?”
“A blast outside might not do the job. The ship’s hull is thick iron. Also, unlike the wreck, Sea Change is wood. If that mine blows up under her, it’ll rupture the hull.”
“Oh.” Abigail bit her lip and cinched the final knot. “Well, then we’ll just have to figure out a way to set it off from up here after you come back up, won’t we?”
“That won’t work. Even if we had enough wire to reach the boat, there’s not enough current in that light to overcome that much resistance. I’ll have to trigger it from down there.”
“And blow yourself up?” She grimaced and reached for his boot. “There’s got to be a better way, Silas.”
“What else will work?” He was sick of arguing with her.
His boot wouldn’t fit over his swollen foot, but when he stood and put careful pressure on his leg, it held his weight, although it hurt like blazes.
“Wait…” Abigail looked around. “How does the telephone work when you’re down that far, then?”
“The phone box has magnetos that generate alternating current.”
She looked at him blankly.
“You read a lot and you don’t know about electricity?”
Her face reddened. “I read about ancient history, natural history, and advances in medicine, Silas. Nobody can read everything!”
“Sorry. The batteries in my light provide direct current, which weakens over a long wire run. Alternating current, like the lights in your house, overcomes resistance better—” He stopped cold and stared at Abigail wide-eyed. “That’s it! The telephone! We can rig wire from the telephone box! Abigail, you’re a genius!”
“I thought you said we didn’t have enough wire to reach.”
“We don’t, and we’ll need the telephone. Damn!”
“Why do we need the telephone?”
“So I can tell you how to maneuver the boat. There’s no way we can anchor in exactly the right spot, so you’ll have to steer Sea Change at anchor when I’m down there. But maybe…” Silas looked around the cabin. He had some spare wire—not enough—but there was more wire aboard. “We can scavenge it! If we rip out the running lights and cabin lights, we should have enough!”
“But we have no way to make sure it’ll work.” Abigail looked at the black iron sphere resting against the splintered rail. “Do we?”
“Not short of blowing ourselves up, no.” He shrugged helplessly. “But at least we’ve got a chance now.” A chance to survive, and maybe to be free of this damn thing in my head… For even now the siren call of Devil Reef cried out to him.
But would he be able to resist that call when he descended into the wreck? If I can’t, Abigail will detonate the mine, and that’ll be the end of it.
“Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I can’t crawl around in the bilges scavenging wire.”
Recovering enough wire took hours. They ate the last of a stale loaf of bread slathered with salted butter and pots of double-strength coffee to keep going. Neither had slept in more than a day, and fatigue dragged at them. Abigail was covered in filth and dead on her feet when they finally had enough wire, but the work still wasn’t done. They spliced the ends of the short lengths together, dipping the splices in hot decking tar and wrapping them with tape. Silas checked the connections by hooking the wire to the telephone and touching the wires together while Abigail cranked the box. A bright blue spark arced between the wires. Connecting the wires to the mine and filling the fuse orifice with tar swallowed more precious time. Silas worked with his injured leg up as much as possible, but the pain wore on him like a beast gnawing at his gut.
All the while, they both cast glances at the rain-shrouded tower of Innsmouth lighthouse. The Marshes either thought they’d fled or had some other reason not to come after them. What that reason might be, he didn’t care to speculate, but he kept the Remington handy. By the time they had all the wiring rigged, the rain had eased off and the clouds had thinned. The gray light of day was fading to evening, their remaining time dwindling fast, when another problem rose up like one of the fish-faced monsters from the depths.
“The lift!” Silas sat down hard and lifted his leg onto the table. “Damn!”
“What about it?” Abigail tried to wipe a gob of tar from her cheek and left a black smear.
“We’ve got one lift, and two things to lift. Me and the mine.”
“Um…” She squinted up at the winch. “Can’t it lift both simultaneously?”
“I don’t know. The dive suit’s about two hundred pounds, I’m another two hundred, and the mine’s probably four hundred. Sea Change wasn’t designed to haul anything so heavy. Eight hundred pounds is almost double what that winch is supposed to lift. Once I’m in the water, it’ll be fine, but lifting both off the deck…”
“All we can do is try.”
Silas squinted at the sky. “We better move Sea Change before it gets dark. We’ll try it once we get anchored.”
“We an
chored in the dark before.” She argued.
“I know, Abigail, but this time we need to be as close to the wreck as we can manage without dropping our anchor right on it.” Silas tried to bite back his temper, but fear, pain, and fatigue swirled in his skull like a hurricane. “Once I’m down there with the mine, I don’t want to have to walk too far with my leg.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “I just…imagine those things coming up while we’re getting ready.”
“So do I.” He imagined a lot worse, tentacled horrors big enough to drag Sea Change down to whatever hell lurked within that maelstrom of darkness inside the wreck.
Silas started the engine and laboriously hauled anchor, working the windlass crank with his injured leg propped up on the bow gunnel while Abigail kept them on station. When the anchor cleared the surface, Silas maneuvered close to Devil Reef, using the siren call hammering in his head as much as dead reckoning to gauge their position.
“This is as good as I can guess,” he said, handing over the controls to Abigail. “Keep her idling into the wind. When I signal you, shift into neutral.”
“Right.” Abigail glanced over her shoulder through the cabin to the deck as if suspecting swarms of fish-faced monsters any moment.
Silas lowered the anchor slowly, trying to minimize the noise. The roar of surf on the reef would probably douse the thrum of the engine, but metallic clanks and clatters traveled far underwater. When he felt the tension on the anchor ease, he signaled Abigail and she shifted the boat into neutral. They drifted downwind, and Silas paid out rode. When the yearning call in his head rose to a crescendo, he tied it off. Sea Change jerked as the anchor set and their bow came into the wind.
“The sky’s starting to clear.” Abigail pointed west as he hobbled back into the pilothouse.
“Good. It’ll give you some light. The moon should be up soon.” He limped aft. “Now, help me with the dive gear.”
With his injury, struggling into the dive suit was challenging, slow, painful, and nerve-racking. When they came to the last piece, Silas ran one of his heaviest dock lines through the helmet’s lift ring, and then the lift eye on the mine.
“I can cut it free when it’s in position and clip the lift line to my helmet.”
“And then I winch you up, right?”
“Right.” Once inside the wreck, however, Silas doubted he would ever come out again. Abigail will do the right thing… “I’ll tell you to stop lowering when the mine’s just above the seabed. Then you’ll have to shift the power transfer lever, and idle Sea Change to the left until I’m inside. Then you can just slip the clutch on the lift to drop the mine. You’ll have to disconnect the telephone wires and hook up the mine wires to detonate the mine. Just turn the crank hard, like you’re making a call, and it should do the job.”
“Okay, but…” Abigail glanced between the winch, the pilothouse, and the open engine room hatch. “Too bad we don’t have help.”
“Well, we can’t ask anyone now. You can do it, just one thing at a time.”
“Yes, but… I’ll have to flip the power transfer lever again to pull you up, and the boat will drift back on the anchor. Won’t it pull the wires out or break one of our connections?”
“Damn, you’re right.” Fatigue, pain, and alcohol were wreaking havoc on his concentration. The answer came easily: idle Sea Change into position, lower him and the mine into the wreck, and detonate the mine, but Abigail would never agree to that. When it came to his life or Armageddon, he knew she’d choose the lesser of two evils, but she wouldn’t accept a plan to kill him. He thought furiously for some answer she would agree with. Make something up! “When the mine’s placed, I can drop my weight belt. That’ll let me climb the lift line up.”
“But without the lift, I won’t be able to get you aboard.”
Damn it, quit making perfectly sensible arguments! “No, but I can hang onto the air hose while you set off the mine. That’ll free the lift line, then I’ll tie it around my chest and you lift me up.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
He barked a laugh. It sounded impossible. “This whole thing’s dangerous, but—”
Abigail’s eyes focused beyond his shoulder and she stabbed a finger to the east. “Silas! Look!”
For a moment Silas feared some monster had risen from Devil Reef, but when he turned, it was only the moon shining from between scudding clouds. But something wasn’t right about it. As a sailor, he knew the phases of the moon innately, for the moon governed the tides. It should have been waxing gibbous, but it shone full. The tides in the canal…they were wrong, too! What the hell? Then something else caught his eye: the full moon.
“Something’s eating the moon!”
Chapter Nine
The Deep Gate
It’s an eclipse! It’s a lunar eclipse, Silas!”
“Impossible! It’s not supposed to happen for another week!”
“Another week…” Abigail dashed into the cabin. At the table, she rifled through the tome. “Here! ‘When Father Sun and Mother Moon join with the Earth in blood, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra will join in the deep to usher the third of their triune into the world of man.’ The moon turns red in the shadow of the Earth!”
“Joined in blood…” Silas swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“It matters! The Marshes of Innsmouth formed a…society a long time ago. The Esoteric Order of Dagon!”
“I’m sorry, I…just thought it was nonsense.”
“But the moon’s not supposed to be full at all!” Silas hobbled to the table and snatched up his nautical almanac. He flipped to the date and pointed to the entry. “Full in one week.”
“Which was the original date of the event in the tome, Silas. They changed the moon to change the date of the event!”
“Changed the moon?” He blinked at her. “That’s insane!”
She pointed to the moon. “Then explain that!”
Silas cursed and shook his head. “We’re out of time Abigail! Help me with the helmet!”
They muscled the helmet on and dogged down the seals, then Silas hobbled over to sit on the gunnel next to the mine. “Get the hook!” Abigail retrieved the lift hook and he clipped it to the center of the line connecting his helmet to the mine. “Good, now rev up the engine a bit and engage the lift. I’ll close the face plate when I’m up.”
“Right!” Abigail complied, but when she engaged the lift, the engine lugged dangerously with the weight before his feet left the deck.
“Stop!” Silas gritted his teeth. “Rev it up some more and put some slack in the line before you try again.
“Okay.” She revved up the engine just short of full throttle, ran out some line, and threw the lever again.
The engine screamed, then lugged and died.
“Damn it!” Silas untied the line from the helmet to the mine.
“What do we do?” Desperation edged Abigail’s voice like a razor.
“You’ll have to lower me first, then the mine. I’ll push it into the wreck, then drop my belt and climb the rope. It’ll just take longer.” He unclipped the line. “Can you get the engine started?”
“I think so.” Abigail hurried forward, climbed down into the engine room, and grunted with the effort of hauling the crank.
To Silas’s relief, the engine coughed to life. “Now, if we haven’t burned out the clutch…” He checked his light and the big knife at his belt and nodded to Abigail. “Do it. I’ll tell you when I’m on the bottom.” He closed the face plate.
The lift labored, but he rose into the air. Abigail cranked the boom over the sea and lowered him. The ink black water enveloped him in a chill embrace, feet, legs, hips, chest, and finally his head. One last glimpse of the half-eaten moon, and he was under.
“Can you hear me?” Abigail’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Yes.” Silas flipped on the dive light and shone it aroun
d. Nothing but blackness surrounded him. The descent seemed to be taking much longer than the first time, until a sudden jolt of pain up his leg as he hit the bottom wrenched a yelp from his throat. “I’m down!” He teetered there for a moment, fighting for balance, then unclipped the line from his helmet. “The line’s free. Take it up and attach it to the mine. Be careful not to tangle the wires!”
“I’ve got it!”
Silas waited. Two eternities passed while he imagined the moon slowly being devoured in shadow. He pointed the light straight up, daring not pan it around for fear of arousing the nest of monsters in the wreck. The yearning hammered at his mind like an echo inside his dive helmet, pulling him, pleading with him to join them. Come to us! Come home! Join us… Pain lanced up his leg, snapping his hypnosis, and he realized he’d taken a step toward the wreck, toward oblivion.
“Thank God,” he muttered. “Never thought breaking my leg would save my life.”
“What’s that?” Abigail asked over the phone.
“Nothing. Just talking to myself. How’s it going?”
“It’s on the way down!”
Silas arched his back to look up. The mine descended out of the murk. When it neared the height of his head, he yelled, “Stop!” into the phone.
The mine stopped at the height of his chest, bobbing up and down with the waves jostling Sea Change above. He pushed against it, but it barely moved, and his leg stabbed him with the effort.
“Okay, Abigail, the depth is perfect. Now disengage the power transfer lever, and idle the boat hard over to port, that’s left. In this wind, she’ll swing on the anchor without making any forward headway.” Silas didn’t even have to look to know what direction the wreck lay in. The call pulled him, pleading with him to join them. He gritted his teeth against the urge. Oh, I’ll join you… I’ll send you all straight to hell!
“Okay. Yell when you’re in position. I can barely hear you from forward.”
“Okay.” Silas waited, and the mine started to drift away. He limped after it, a slow shuffling gait that minimized the strain on his leg. The pain jolted him back toward sanity with every step.
Arkham Horror- The Deep Gate Page 9
