Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  “This ferry went down,” Hare said. “Do you remember the big disaster in ’67? It was the Sausalito itself. You remember it?”

  John covered his face. “We’ve been hallucinating. All of us. We’ve …”

  “No, John. It was your happiest time. Your Summer of Love. You can live there. You can live there with Matt. It was your happiest time.”

  John shook his head.

  “Come aboard, John. Of your own free will.” The doctor’s voice was soft, hypnotic. “Come aboard for Matty’s sake. Now. While he’s still well.”

  Shook his head, shook it, hiding his face.

  “Because we freeze here, John. However we were when we came aboard is how we remain. And Matty is getting sick, John. Matty’s getting deathly ill. We won’t be able to help him much longer, John. Dr. Fielder, can you hear me?”

  Shook his head, shook, shook, shook.

  Screaming.

  Curry minced out of the kitchen and stood behind a palm. No one seemed to notice him. He had never been able to tell how far the captain’s control extended; how many of the actions of the—what? ghosts? phantoms? zombies?—were independent. Free will, in dead things? In memories and fantasies?

  Free will. Could he have done other than he had? If he had refused to obey, if he had let him … let the captain kill him …

  He pushed his hand over his face to keep himself from weeping. He was distraught, barely able to cope. He wanted to puke out his fear, beg someone to help him. The woman had to. She had to believe him, and do something.

  Matt had calmed down, and when Ruth told him that his father had sent her to fetch him, he agreed at once to go with her. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the mittens and stuffed them in his pockets.

  “What are those?” she asked pleasantly as they went out into the companionway.

  “For Donna,” he said.

  “Oh.” She held out her hand, and he took it.

  “Dr. Hare has some medicine for you to take,” she said as they strolled along. “Something that will make you feel better.”

  An alarm sounded in Matt’s head. “But I feel okay,” he said tentatively. His dad had gone off with the other doctor to talk about him. Because he wasn’t okay. Because he was dying.

  That couldn’t be. That just couldn’t be. He didn’t feel bad at all.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t leave Nemo alone,” he ventured, turning back. Because suddenly he didn’t want to go with her, but he couldn’t tell her that because she was a grown-up. Besides, she was nice, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  Ruth’s hand squeezed around his like his dad’s when he forgot how skinny Matty was. It hurt, and he flinched. She smiled quickly.

  “Nemo will be fine. She needs to be alone with her kittens right now.”

  “But …”

  “Matt, come on.” She practically dragged him down the hall.

  For an old lady, she was really strong.

  Donna awoke on the floor. There was a terrible cramp in her neck and she swore under her breath as she rolled over.

  All the nerve endings in her body shot up. Without moving, she raised her arm and fumbled for the phone. Got the receiver in her hand and yanked it to her ear, pulling the entire phone set onto the floor. The bell jangled once and for a second she was back in Ruth’s cabin on the Morris—

  brrrnnnng

  knocking over her alarm clock in the fog.

  “He-ehllo,” she managed.

  Finally realized the phone was still dead.

  And that when she’d gone down, she’d been by the door. Now she lay next to the bed; her arm was stretched under it, hidden by the dust ruffle, and her foot, as if something were pulling at her, pulling her under—

  God! She dropped the receiver and half jumped, half rolled away from the bed. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees and staggered to a standing position. Ran like hell out of there, stumbling, yanking open the door, and flying into the corridor.

  Where, just outside her door, a pair of red snow mittens embroidered with yellow reindeer lay on the carpet.

  Cha-cha walked to the doorway of the museum, ringing his hands. The king was waiting for him. He would be angry, so pissed, p.o.’d, for sure.

  “Cha-cha!” Neptune cried. “Come! Dance, Cha-cha! Dance the hornpipe!”

  “Um, Your Maj,” Cha-cha murmured, confused. His master capered at the far end of the room, scraping and bowing to the rows of figureheads. The king straightened and ran up the stairs. Clasping the nearest, a statue of a dark-eyed woman in his arms, he thrust his pelvis forward and ground it against the wooden lady.

  “Fuck, Cha-cha! Fuck all my ghosts!” He flung himself away from the figurehead and hung over the railing, waving Cha-cha to draw near.

  “Ah, um …” Cha-cha scratched his head. “The dude is, like, uh …”

  Flustered, he trailed off. Oh, no. Those couldn’t be figureheads, if the king was talking about ghosts. Cripey, he’d gotten so crazy he thought everybody was a statue! Time to go back to the hospital, Cha-cha, whether the Nammie-ghosts get to come aboard or—

  “I couldn’t find him,” he said. “Sir, Your Majesticness, the man …” Had not been in the room His Oceanic Majesty had sent him to. Curry. The man Cha-cha was supposed to kill.

  Neptune reached a hand behind him and fondled the breast of the figurehead. “Come, my vassal, don’t you fancy any of these ladies?”

  Cha-cha sighed low in his throat. He was so confused.

  “Any of these fair sirens?” the king said in a funny, high voice.

  And then His Supreme Oceanic Majesty was surrounded by beautiful, busty mamas with long, flowing hair and—

  Cha-cha blinked—

  and tails, man. They were mermaids! Mermaids!

  And they were singing to him, man. With the sweetest voices he’d ever heard. Reaching out their arms, nipples like the big pink gumdrops in the white dish in Dr. Brown’s office back at the hospital; shimmering gumdrops and his stomach growled because he was

  HUNGRY.

  He jerked his head around just as the king shouted, “Don’t listen!”

  Then Neptune began to dance again. He hoisted himself up on the railing and jigged along it, shouting and laughing; and Cha-cha had an awful moment where it occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, His Majesty needed a little vacation. He was kind of acting … scattered.

  “Hi, Cha-cha, hi!” said a voice, and suddenly a head poked up from behind the mermaids. It was Captain Esposito’s boy, the one Neptune had taken so long ago.

  “Hiya, Roberto,” Cha-cha said brightly. He waved. “How ya been, lovechild?”

  “Groovy, Cha-cha. You should come aboard soon.”

  “Right on, baby.” Cha-cha felt confused again. He thought he was on board already.

  “Dance!” Neptune commanded. Cha-cha glanced down at his sneaker-clad feet.

  “Oh, oh, hey!” Cha-cha bellowed. They were wet. Water was seeping from beneath the floor, and that meant, that meant—

  “The Pandora’s filling up with water!”

  Neptune laughed and danced. “And when it goes down, it won’t be airtight!”

  COME!

  Neptune danced. Laughed. Launched himself into the line of beautiful mermaids, who caught him, laughing.

  The water soaked Cha-cha’s shoes. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Gotta get help, sir. Gotta—”

  “They should have killed me. They were so afraid. I had my occult books. I had my magic wand; I had my chants. Superstitious fools, and now I use them. She was my first victim, the Royal Grace! I made her see rocks! I made her heel over and go down! I made her see—” He pointed at Cha-cha. “I make you all see, but you don’t see!”

  COME

  Neptune didn’t hear the other. Or was shining it on, man. And maybe he could, but the pull was major strong on Cha-cha. It was hard to stand there, and not go. He thought of the hatch, the psychedelically bitchenitis door to something supergroovy, and his heart danced a ji
g along the railing of his arteries.

  Then the room shimmered, hard, once. They weren’t in a museum at all! They were in some horrible, dark place, and it stank like death. Something grabbed him. He screamed, jumped away, landed on the face of a black dude lying on the floor. No, not lying there, chained there.

  “Hey,” Cha-cha said.

  Black dudes chained to the floor everywhere, a mine field of Afro-American brothers, moaning and writhing.

  “Oh, brothers,” he said, staggering. The water was rising up to his insteps—

  —their ears—

  —his ankles—

  —their cheeks.

  They struggled, bellowed, and screamed. Naked, scrawny, sores glistening on them. Rats, cheeping and shrieking, climbing on top of them ’cuz of the water, man, the water that was coming fast—

  And Neptune shined it all on. He didn’t see it, Cha-cha realized. He didn’t see what was happening. There were two other boys with him, one bundled up, one missing … missing everything—

  COME

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod,” Cha-cha said in one breath.

  King Neptune turned his head, with its rays of light like Jesus, his golden karma aura. “What are you going on about?”

  “Gotta go,” Cha-cha pleaded. Go to the voice, the other. Maybe the voice could help. Make it stop. Make everything groovy. Fix the boy with no face.

  “Go? Where can you go?” Neptune asked testily.

  “Oh, man, gotta go.” Cha-cha jabbed his fingers downward at the black men and the water, the boys. “Please, you see? You see?”

  “No, Cha-cha. No. You’ve got to dance first.” King Neptune raised both hands over his head. “I am the captain I am I am I am.” He interrupted himself with laughter. “I am I am the I am that I am.”

  Oh, bummer, major bummer, bad trip, the king was wigging out. Bad acid, bad synapses. Oh, no.

  COMECOMECOMECOME

  “Oh, man, oh, man,” Cha-cha groaned.

  And then he was back in the museum, and the king had his fishy cock out, and he was feeding it to the nearest of the beautiful brown-eyed—

  —women? Cha-cha blinked. No mermaids. No figureheads. Just the three boys, and lots of people, and some of them were moving and some of them were talking, and some of them were crying.

  And one of the boys—couldn’t tell which—was giving head to King Neptune.

  The king smiled at him. “Been a long time since someone gnawed your bone, eh, Cha-cha? Don’t worry. Very soon now, someone will. Oh, yes, someone will gnaw all of them.”

  “Oh, oh,” Cha-cha fretted.

  COMECOMECOMECOME

  Fearfully he glanced in the direction of the museum door. Hadda go. Hadda go. Hadda go.

  COMECOMECOMECOME

  COME

  COME

  The king threw back his mane of golden seaweed hair and groaned with ecstasy. He pushed the child away and stuck his cock back in his pants. The faceless boy. There was blood all over the king’s cock, his pants. Blood and … clumps.

  “Time for the real fun to begin, Cha-cha. Let’s go.”

  “Wh-where?” Cha-cha quailed as the king stepped down the stairs, one at a time, slow and regal.

  COME

  “The shipwreck party, of course. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

  Wide-eyed, Cha-cha shuffled his feet. “Oh, no. Of course not.”

  “And you have been a good acolyte, and deserve holiness.”

  Cha-cha cleared his throat. Better confess now. Better tell him. Je-hesus H. Christ, his king. His king was freaking out.

  Better confess. If he found out and Cha-cha hadn’t told him …

  He licked his lips, over and over, cotton-mouthed. “Um, Your Highness? I couldn’t find the guy.”

  The king stopped, stared at him. Cha-cha said helpfully, “The one you wanted me to kill? C-Curry?”

  For a moment His Majesty turned white. His single eye spun. Then he laughed and said, “It doesn’t matter, Cha-cha. He’s done for, no matter what. He can’t do anything.”

  COME

  COME

  COMECOMECOMECOMECOME

  “Come, Doctor, it’s time to make your decision,” Hare said to John as he dragged him down another corridor. John was no longer moving under his own steam. Most of his energy was consumed in the battle to hold his mind together.

  Gone was the Sausalito. They were back on the Pandora—at least, he thought they were—but things were happening to it. The walls flickered and disappeared, reappeared. The carpet grew moldy, became tile, metal, reasserted itself. John saw all this, but by then he was so out of it the shock was minor compared to the explosion caused by the first … hallucination, that of the ferry. The stars had sparkled, the wind had blown. He had been there.

  He had been there.

  “Where …?”

  “The grand ballroom of the Titanic,” the doctor said. “It’s the most beautiful room on the Pandora.”

  “Oh,” John replied dully. Inside, his mind was going: notcrazyMattynotcrazyMattynotcrazyMattynotcrazydon’tdiedon’tdie

  “You lied, you know,” the doctor said. “You said you’d do anything.”

  Matty Matty Matty Matty Matty Matty Matty crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy Matty

  “I guess I’ll have to tell the captain you’re in no shape to act. I hate him, you know,” Hare said easily. “But there’s no alternative. I hate him. That’s the only part that’s left of me, and so I cling to it. And I’m grateful that he loves my hatred so well. Because if he didn’t I would be …” He trailed off.

  “Not even belly timber,” he said after a time.

  “Come on, dear,” Ruth said, jerking on Matt’s wrist. “Let’s get this done and go to the party.”

  They were in the freezer room. The large, white oblong freezers stood in rows like hospital beds. Overhead, a few light fixtures hummed dully and cast a sheen of blue-gray light on the old lady’s face. She looked terrible, all sunken in and … dead.

  He wasn’t prepared when she bent down, gathered him around the waist, and sat him like a toy on top of one of the freezers. It was on; the vibrations needled his butt. He folded his arms across his chest.

  “I want my father. Now.”

  “Drink this first. This is the medicine Dr. Hare prepared for you.”

  She held out a brown bottle with a prescription label on the front. Matt had swallowed many things from many such bottles, wondering what they were, knowing only that his dad and the other doctors had their fingers crossed that one of their potions would save his life.

  “Drink it, sweetheart,” she said gently.

  “I ought to check with my dad first.”

  “Dr. Hare thought that might be what you’d say. In fact, he was hoping your father would administer it himself. But …” She scrunched her face in a silly smile and jutted her head forward like a snake. “We have to hurry, Matt. They’ll be waiting for us.”

  Matt eyed the bottle. Why was he arguing? After all, she was his friend. She’d comforted him in the lifeboat, and played with him on the Morris. He had no reason to doubt her.

  “Don’t you want to go to the shipwreck party, dear?”

  Maybe he had no reason to doubt her, but he should still check with his father.

  “I—” he said, and then the room wobbled. It went blurry, and—

  —the bottle was green; it was the captain’s special bottle, and the room wobbled again, and—

  —he was sitting alone in some kind of shed, and there was a ship’s wheel in front of him. Wind and rain whipped his face. He shielded his eyes and focused in on the bow of an immense ship, heading right for him.

  “Help!” He grabbed the wheel and turned it left, right, left, remembered his lesson on the bridge with the captain, remembered she responded slowly, and pushed it all the way to the right and held it there.

  A klaxon blew, long-long, short-short-short. Fog rolled in, obscuring his vision, but the water in front of him chopped and slosh
ed and rolled. It was coming closer. It was almost on him—

  “Jump!” someone called. Matt looked to his right and saw a hooded figure on a small, curved boat. He’d seen that person before, hadn’t he? He’d—

  He cried out as something smacked the front of his boat. A face! A woman’s face, the statue lady—

  “Ruth!” he screamed. “Mrs. Hamilton, where are you?”

  Jump overboard.

  Jump, jump

  for my love.

  There was no other choice. Matt let go of the wheel and ran to the side of the boat. It was a tugboat, he realized distractedly as he balanced in the doorway. The hooded figure gestured for him to hurry, hurry, and Matt jumped

  into the freezer.

  And the heavy lid fell shut from the force of his momentum.

  “Ah. Excellent.” Dr. Hare smiled. “The choice has been taken from you, Dr. Fielder.”

  “Wh-what?” John stammered. “Where’s Matty?”

  “I believe we’ll meet your son at the party. Come this way.” He dragged John after him.

  Donna knocked on John’s door, heard a plaintive mewing on the other side. The cat. Maybe she was having her babies.

  “John! Open up!” She slammed both fists on the door. Again. Pushed with her shoulder. Too thick. She was very aware of the mittens in the small pockets of her dress, bulging like hand grenades. Where had they come from? And who had left them before her door? The shithead who stole her gun?

  But who cared about that, Donna? Who cared about one swiped firearm when you heard something in the hatch—yes, yes you did! You heard something and you felt something that gave you the screaming meemies, and someone had brought her yellow reindeer mittens, just like the floater’s, the little Tahoe boy’s. Name, name had been Dwayne or something.

  The mom had knitted them herself, that’s what one of the paramedics said. So fucking tragic, all that love, those little red mittens …

  … in Donna’s pocket.

  And someone had moved her across the floor. Ice water, something being pulled out of her mind, out of her …

  “John, goddamn it!”

  She didn’t get this, not any of this. Her mind raced through horrible pictures of what lay beyond the door. Boy and man, shot through the head with her gun. Boy and man, bludgeoned.