Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  And those dreams. God. Had she said something in her sleep? Had he heard her? Maybe he thought she was playing around again. Maybe he got so angry he went off to a bar, as he had done the night before.

  Well, the hell with him; was it so much to demand, what she asked? That he be a man, that he …

  How disappointing their first time together had been. How diffident, how tentative he’d been. And he was tiny. She honestly had trouble knowing when he was inside her. That made her angriest of all, but she didn’t understand why. Except that she felt cheated; that being with him made her less of a woman. That she was being wasted.

  And the captain. The captain had …

  She shivered and shook her head. Dangerous shoals there. Uncharted territory. She’d had a bad dream that seemed very real. But it hadn’t been real, because she was here, and she was fine, and …

  She closed her eyes and put her hands on the thick glass. She wished to God they hadn’t set out on the Morris. She hadn’t wanted to; now she couldn’t figure out how she had acquiesced after they’d seen that damn rust bucket. He had his ways, now and then. Money wasn’t his only charm.

  The boat rocked. Though she felt dizzy, she kept her eyes shut. Beyond the glass, the water rushed like a caress. Footsteps sounded around her. People laughing, talking. Distantly, a piano tinkled something like “Camp Town Races”; or was it a calliope? Very Natchez Belle; oh, God, she hated the South, all that magnolia-sweet-potato-pie crap. Peachtree this and Tara that, and half the people were so ignorant they couldn’t even spell “confederate.” Small-town small minds, called you honey with one side of their mouths and tore you to shreds for being a Yankee with the other. And the men were so wrapped up in themselves, in their glory of being a good ol’ Southern boy. They were terrible lovers …

  The sound of the water caressed her. A coldness swirled around her, and she opened her eyes as something—someone—

  —a man—

  —spread-eagled himself behind her and pushed her against the glass. The hard chest, the hard thighs, the penis—

  “Wh—” she gasped, and the man said gruffly, “Look.” She struggled; he squeezed her against the barrier and clamped one hand around the back of her head, forcing her to face straight ahead. She tried to scream but no sound came out; she blinked rapidly in her panic, trembling violently. The other passengers walked by with apparent disinterest. This couldn’t be happening. This was another dream.

  “Look, damn you.”

  Snails covered the wall now, dozens of them, in a wide circle, sluglike, brown, and oozing; and each time she blinked they got bigger, and bigger, until she could see that they were taking each other from behind, each one, in a long chain of sex.

  “Each one is male and female,” her captor said in a low, languid voice. “Each one fucks the one in front, gets fucked by the one in back. Look.”

  He forced her head to the left. Black mussels clung to the glass. “Hermaphrodites,” he whispered. “They release their jelly into the sea. Queen bees require special jelly, do they not?”

  Elise gasped. Her knees buckled, but he held her hard. His penis pushed against the small of her back and a wild roar of fear thrust through her.

  He turned her head up and to the right. A crab clicked sideways along the top of the glass, carrying another crab in its claws.

  “The ocean seethes with sex,” the voice said. Was it the captain? “It seethes. You will be happy in it. And I’ll wake you and fuck you from time to time, and you’ll live.”

  Bile shot up from her stomach and trickled down her chin.

  “It’s time for you,” he went on, squeezing her. “I’m tired. Perhaps I’m growing old. You saw through the Pandora. You saw my other lives. My ships. I wasn’t prepared for that.”

  “I … I …”

  “If you die aboard, you’re mine,” he whispered in her ear.

  She heard the tinkle of the piano; the man’s hot breath, growing rapid; and then, a single woman’s voice, singing, a clear, sweet soprano. Elise’s eyes rolled back in her head.

  When Elise woke, she lay on the floor of the museum, flat on her back with her legs spread apart. And he was there! On top of her, again, the dream, again; and it hurt.

  But he was so real. Solid, as he leered and laughed at her, as he thrust through the crotch of her jumpsuit.

  “Ss …” She tried to push him away; and he pushed in hard; he rent her. Blood streamed out of her, pooling around and steaming, etching a hole in the floor where she lay. The linoleum warped beneath her like a badly tied hammock.

  With a voiceless gasp, she shrank from him as he thrust again, slid a shaking hand between their bodies to his cock, hard and thick and

  glass.

  She hadn’t known you could hurt like this and live.

  Her hand pushed at him, stop, stop. There was a roaring in her body, a wail like a burning animal; and then she couldn’t tell if she was pushing it in or pulling it out; and behind him, around them …

  the faces. The faces. Then, no faces.

  His laughter. And incredibly: singing. Someone she knew. Donna. Donna, singing!

  “God!” she shouted. “Help!”

  The glass.

  The agony.

  Time, or no time. Space, or no space. Elise was, and wasn’t awake.

  She was, and wasn’t alive. But alone, yes, alone.

  all, all alone.

  “Oh,” she groaned, rolling over on her side. A sound of a bottle, rolling on the floor. Her legs slapped together and hot pain rolled through her sex organs. She moaned. The room tipped and swirled, dissolved, returned—

  —for a moment she was sure, absolutely sure, that she was on some kind of long, flat barge, stretched out next to the wheel of a car, or a pile of dead fish—

  She struggled to awareness. The fogginess receded, and she lay in the museum. She faced the back of the room where the figureheads were kept. Indian chief, bare-breasted Columbianna, ancient Chinese demon—

  She screamed. They were—

  No, no, they couldn’t—

  —in a long chain, up and down the stairs, one in front, one behind, one in front, one behind, one—

  —and then she was surrounded by writhing bodies, black men in chains on the floor, grabbing at her, screaming, clawing.

  “Hell! Help!” she shrieked, and rolled hard to the right.

  The men disappeared. She lay on the deck of a large yacht, the sails full with sweet breezes. A man sat in a chair at the wheel, and he was singing:

  “ ‘Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main …’ ”

  “Wha …” she rasped.

  Then someone clutched her ankle and pulled, hard; she shrieked as she tumbled down into a whirlpool, down,

  down,

  down,

  and around, raging on black panthers’ paws, sucking her below, to the deadly deep, forty, fifty, sixty-nine thousand leagues; and the sharks came for her, the gray shadows half as long as the Pandora, serpent sharks smelling the forbidden fruit of her. They seized her with rows of teeth like broken glass bottles, and dragged her

  “Phil!”

  under, and out

  of everything.

  And also harvesting him; the male and female of the pair, though they are actually so sexless that I shall remember them as figureheads. I will use their faces and their memories, but I shall never give them knowledge of sex again. Adam and Eve before the Fall, poor sad and tasty duet:

  Phil staggered on with the lovely girl on his arm. It didn’t matter to her that he was in his pajamas, nor to anyone else who passed them by. On this sunny spring morning, the other passengers smiled and waved, the bustled ladies twirling their parasols, the men raising their top hats.

  Phil shuffled on the steamboat deck, and he knew this was all wrong. Didn’t he? He knew he was on the Pandora, but this was a paddlewheel, wasn’t it?

  “What …?” he murmured.

  A flash—

  a flash—

 
; —and he was standing on some kind of catwalk, surrounded by blackness, and she was, oh, God, she was—

  —like in the dining room, nothing but rot—

  —beautiful, and smelling of the magnolia behind her ear. Her hair was loose, how daring, and it draped the creamy lace of her dress like a cape of shiny black—

  Water! Black, foul water swirled around his knees! The Pandora was sinking! It was—

  “Come,” she urged, and stepped into a metal cage. No, an elevator. Yes, up to the surface, before the water got them.

  He jumped in. “I’m, I’m all mixed up,” he said, grabbing her shoulders.

  Her shoulders of bone, her spine of bone, her skull. She dangled from the top of the cage like a puppet, a skeleton, whose jaw opened, closed, whose bony arms reached for him.

  Whose tail bones—

  Phil screamed and threw himself against the back of the elevator. She reached for him—

  —it started to go down, down, into the water.

  Jump overboard, Phil. Jump now.

  “Gahh!” he shouted. His jaw locked open as he dug his heels into the floor and hurtled himself against the cage—the glass case—the cage—

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her deep-set brown eyes large with worry. Her hair fell in a curtain as she raised her hand and touched his sweaty cheek.

  His jaw hung open and he made gagging sounds. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t make sense. Where was he? Dream, dream. Pajamas, a dream.

  Whoosh.

  That sound! He swiveled his head.

  Whoosh. Whoosh.

  The tinny plunk-plunk of a piano, a banjo.

  “It’s all right. Just jump,” she said softly.

  Whoosh, whoosh, whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh

  And Phil saw, but didn’t see, a white wood column grow behind her, and he felt, but didn’t feel, the floor bow upward into a curved wooden deck. And heard, but didn’t hear—

  —the whoosh of the paddlewheel—

  —the cry of the steam whistle shrieking, shrieking, too much steam, too much, the engines, racing; and the riverboat swerved to avoid something dead ahead, a black shape in a bank of fog huge as a cathedral.

  Someone bellowed, “Reverse! Reverse engines!” The whistle blew; bells clanged.

  The shudder of gears; squealing like dying pigs. And a crowd of passengers stampeding toward him, pointing and wailing and screaming in fear. And one of them was Mrs. Reinstedt, the fat woman who had come by at dinner, only now she wore strange clothes, old-time clothes, lace and a bustle …

  “Please,” Phil begged. She waddled past him, pointing. She fell to her knees. Phil turned and something hit him in the forehead, something small and hard and green;

  and he screamed as he stood on the edge of the top deck of a steamboat painted fresh and white, and a score of old figureheads posed like religious icons before the columns that held up the roof, and the wheelhouse; he really stood there now, really did—

  —too much steam, the boat was rumbling like a volcano—

  —and he jumped just as it blew, grabbing the girl beside him and throwing them both over the side. The deck blasted into a thousand flaming pieces, up into the air, and he grabbed on to the girl, whose dress burst into flames, and the two plummeted toward the blazing inferno, and the steam.

  And into some kind of huge metal container like a drum or a kettle. And at the last, the very last as the steam boiled him alive, flaying the skin off his beet-red body, he hung in a silent scream in her arms, her charred arms that moved around his back and held him tight. Her skeletal rib cage punctured his chest and boiling blood oscillated out of him.

  At this last, as he held on, held on, unable to believe anything, least of all that a man could live through this, a man could sizzle like a griddle and still draw breath; the skull kissed him on his lipless mouth and whispered, in the captain’s voice, “Fresh, hot belly timber. Ah, yes.”

  20

  Feeding Time

  The captain stood on the bridge, staring out to sea with his hands folded behind his back. He was tired, though he was never tired; his bones ached, though they had never troubled him through all the centuries and shipwrecks and harvests.

  Something was wrong.

  The sea, his sacred lady, stroked the hull of his vessel.

  I was a mariner, he brooded, a captain, and they shoved me in that boat with my treasure about me. My books, my uniform. The hand of glory; no, the head, Nathaniel’s sweet head of glory, so superstitious were they that they wouldn’t allow him to stay aboard the Royal Grace. Nor would they commit him to the sea.

  It were a boon, that his little head was there. I was so hungry.

  I was so thirsty. And that taste, that taste, that was mana from the sea, the beauteous sea, who suckled me with the milk of Nathaniel’s brain. Ah, Stella Maris! Giver of life!

  It was so black, so dark, on the high breasts of my beloved Oceana. And I Wanted,

  I Desired,

  I Dreamed and

  And suddenly, Creutz beside him was no longer Creutz, but a mossy stick figure dressed in wafting tatters of silk and ribbon; a thatch of blond hair wove above his head, floating like a sponge. And from his mouth, a tentacle waved Hello, Goddag, in Swedish; and it begged

  Let me not be,

  let me not be …

  The captain panicked. That couldn’t happen! He whirled around. He stood on the bridge

  alone, alone, all, all

  Everyone was gone! The wheelhouse was a wreck, sand and detritus littering the floor—

  Losing his touch. Losing his strength. His vision.

  “No!” he shouted, and it all came back.

  Creutz, leaning over a chart. Adams, late of the Benicia, at the wheel, the wooden wheel that—

  No!

  at the plastic joystick. And the others, at their stations. Their battle stations.

  It was their fault, he told himself, and thought of the survivors aboard. Her fault, for he still had not learned the nature of the hook that would impale her heart. She was confusing him, dissipating his magical power. He must pull the nets in faster.

  Yes, he must.

  He smiled, and sent out his thoughts to the young Mexican, the one who would be a big man. This one he would do with élan.

  He closed his eyes and dreamed.

  On the water, in the fog, Ramón stood with one leg on the hull of the longboat and faced into the bitter English wind. Yo soy, he thought. I am. Yo soy vikingo. I am a Viking, and I’ll cut these weaklings down! I’ll bash their skulls in and drink my mead from their bones!

  He grabbed his erect cock with both hands and laughed into the gale that rocked the longboat. Thus blazed his kinsmen into battle, loving the fight, thrusting with pride in their prowess and savagery. What did the English plead?

  From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord deliver us.

  Yes, the fury! The fury!

  He stood at the prow, clad for battle in his leather and metal. Kraken, his fabled longsword, was drawn and pointed downward. His crew rowed through the mist, their arms corded with muscle. There would be spoils to take, and dark beauties to rape, and priests to torment and torture.

  What a fine day. What a day to be alive!

  “Captain, strong seas ahead,” his lieutenant warned. Indeed, as the boat slipped between two tall, chalk-white cliffs, the waters swelled beneath the boat and crested.

  “Evade!” Ramón commanded, holding on to the dragon figurehead. The weight of Kraken dragged him forward; as he sought to right himself, two long, white hands shot through the surface of the water and grabbed the tip of his blade.

  “By Odin!” he shouted.

  “ ’Tis one of their water witches!” one of his comrades shouted. “Let go of your sword!”

  The two men closest to him abandoned their oars and grabbed hold of his waist. But the long, white hands wrapped around the blade and yanked. The steel sliced through them but they did not bleed.

  Despite the strength o
f the two men holding him, Ramón plunged into the frothing waves.

  And into the arms of a creature with a stark-white face and hair the color of bleached bone. It was naked and it had the torso of a woman, but beneath, it curled white-rotted tendrils around him, legs, hips, arms. Tighter, tighter, until he was swaddled in its stinking flesh. Beneath his sword arm, something jerked Kraken from his grasp.

  The creature cackled. He heard the sound distinctly through the water; and then it was obscured by a stream of bubbles that Ramón understood was the air in his lungs, which it was squeezing out of him.

  He jerked his body hard. It laughed again. Violently he wriggled back and forth as his brain filled with blinding panic.

  Above, oars stabbed into the water from the hull of his boat. His mates, trying to save him, though none dared dive in after him, although he was their captain and they loved him. His eyes rolled as he saw how close they came, and yet never touched the monster.

  His eyes began to cloud and his lungs ached with emptiness, but he kept his mouth clamped shut. He mustn’t try to breathe; there was nothing to breathe, except death.

  The monster roared with glee and rubbed its breasts against him. Its tendrils curled around and around and around. Shouts filtered from the surface, but they were moving on; the dragon’s head began to move past.

  And then the creature began to sing in a clear, sweet voice. Its rib cage vibrated against Ramón’s as it trilled words he couldn’t understand. Perhaps it wanted to lull him into surrender, or it was a spell of some kind. Odin protect his men, he thought, if the English had command of such a being.

  It sang. Ramón’s lungs shook. Leader of such a fine ship, and the first son of a chieftain, and he was dying an inglorious death. If only he had his sword, or any kind of weapon.

  Then something moved through the murk behind the monster. It was a flask, he thought, yes, a flask, of green, some treasure of the English. He willed it to hit her, knock her unconscious. Willed it, willed it …

  Tantalizingly, it bobbed just behind her, and he lost all hope as it stopped and hovered harmlessly. A vain wish, that such a thing could harm his enemy. A vain hope, that he would survive her evil embrace.