Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  There was something in the room with them.

  “Wha—wha—” she whispered. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak. Her hands gripped the revolver until her knuckles turned white.

  “Now you see, don’t you?” the man demanded, advancing into the room. “You see the ghosts and the pieces he collected! He made them! He caused them!”

  “I don’t see a fucking thing!” she shouted, looking left, right. Her arms shook as if she were being electrocuted.

  “The one he almost couldn’t penetrate,” the phantom voice said again; and a cold, thick fog—

  —the sick fog of the Morris, of the sea, the heavy blankets, formed about half a foot in front of her, and unfurled toward her, the mist falling in upon itself, heavy, sodden, thicker, thicker still, taking form; walking vapors, walking

  men, and women. With dead faces and shiny, dead eyes, in costumes: Victorian sailors, Japanese World War II soldiers, women in satin art deco evening gowns and men in tuxedos. A walking hologram of sodden zombies; and at their head, Lorentz Creutz.

  “Late of the Kronen, which sank in 1676,” he said to her.

  “Yeah, right.” She leveled the gun at him, at the mob. Not what it looked like, no way, Jose. Okay, José. It’s okay, José. Jumpin’ Jesus, José. “And you sound real Swedish, pal.”

  “No, I don’t,” Creutz said, almost in a whisper. “I should, and I don’t. I don’t even think in Swedish.” He took a breath. “If I really think at all.”

  His face was tinged with gray and for a moment, just a moment he was—

  —no he wasn’t, bullshit, he wasn’t—

  “I cannot endure this any longer. If oblivion is the consequence, I …” He gestured to the people behind him. “If there is something more. If perhaps, a god …” He lifted his chin. “I must ask you to believe that the captain has somehow enslaved our souls. He sank our ships through trickery, and captured us.”

  “He mutilated our souls,” said a tall black man. “He made us eat, drink …” The man turned away. He looked hard at Curry. “We ate. We were starving. But dead men don’t starve!”

  She swallowed. Didn’t understand any of it, and believed less.

  Creutz held out his hand. If he touched her, she’d shit. “We need your help. Reade must be stopped.”

  Donna’s other reeking buddy stepped forward. “Reade’s not alive! She shot him! Over and over! He’s one of you!”

  “What?” The crowd drew back as one, looked at each other, began to roar.

  “Quiet!” Creutz commanded, facing them. “We must hurry! We must plan!” He turned to Donna. “Is that true? That you shot him and he didn’t die?”

  Maybe I’ll pass out now, Donna thought. Or maybe just go stark raving mad.

  “All you assholes stop talking and start explaining,” she said, crossing her arms. “Nobody’s going anywhere until I get some answers.”

  Creutz opened his mouth, closed it. Looked at Curry. “We must try to make sense of this.”

  Curry nodded.

  Donna said, “Good luck.”

  The chandeliers.

  John looked up with glazed eyes. The same as in the foyer. The ones the captain picked out personally. They were the same. The room was familiar; he had seen pictures of the vast spaces, the chairs and tables …

  But he couldn’t be on the Titanic.

  “But you are,” Dr. Hare assured him. “See their clothes? See the name above the door?”

  John blinked. He could, and couldn’t see, the immense gilded room, the jewels, the mirrors. The grand carved stairway he’d seen on TV when that man, Ballard, found the Titanic. The photographs they’d shown. Yes.

  No.

  He could, and couldn’t hear, a band playing

  Nearer, my God, to Thee.

  “It’s Miss Almond’s favorite,” the doctor said.

  “Donna?” She seemed a distant dream. Everything but this room existed in another time, another space, when he had had the energy to affect it. Now he was along for the ride. An onlooker, a passenger. A voyeur, a voyager.

  The doctor folded his arms over his chest. “She’ll be along.”

  John saw, and didn’t see, Phil and Elise dancing. Phil wore a tuxedo, and Elise a cream satin gown and a net over her hair. Elise outshone the candles and the swaying chandeliers with her radiant happiness. They turned and waved, beckoned.

  Come aboard, John. It’s all right. It’s wonderful. Come and join the party.

  And he saw, and didn’t see, Ruth Hamilton in the arms of a silver-haired man. Her husband. John knew it without being told. At last, at last; he felt her joy in waves as her husband leaned her back in a dip. She lifted her hands over her head, let them fall back, as her husband held her. Arched her neck, and he kissed it. She wore large white flowers in her hair, and she was dressed in a soft blue evening gown. Her husband wore a tux, like Phil. The glamorous years, and they were all together, forever.

  Come aboard. They, too, waved. Dazed, John waved back.

  “You see? Everyone is happy.” Hare made an expansive gesture. “All these people. They’re all aboard. Come, John, come aboard.”

  “I …” He looked around. Everywhere his gaze fell, the people, chairs, and chandeliers blurred and smeared, then snapped into focus. He had to sit down. He was so confused. So very confused.

  So tired.

  “My son. My baby,” he managed as he staggered.

  “Don’t have the stabilizers yet,” Hare said, chuckling. “Invented later.”

  “Matt.”

  “On his way.”

  Donna stared slackjawed. Creutz had been trying to explain it to her so reasonably, as if of course it all made sense. As if you came across the Flying Dutchman every day.

  “He came from the 1790s, or so he says.”

  “Aye,” said a man dressed in rags, with a long full beard of gray. “1797. I were on his ship, the Royal Grace. We set him adrift. He were a murderous, evil man. He killed the cabin boy, Nathaniel, to do his witchery! So we cast him off, with no food nor drink; and we thought the sea would take ’im …” He drifted off, looked at his feet. “The sin be on our heads, that he lived.”

  “But Curry claims he didn’t live,” Creutz said. “And I can’t account for my presence aboard this damnable ship, for I went down in 1676. Either he’s lying, or …” Creutz glowered. “He isn’t bound by time.”

  “Listen,” Donna cut in. “If he was alive in 1797, he couldn’t possibly be alive now.” She thought about what she was saying—what they’d been saying—Curry some kind of cannibalism pimp, these guys some kind of combination of hallucinations and memories?—and shook her head violently. “Fuck it. You’re here and I need help.” She thought about that, too. “I’ll say,” she muttered. “Like, a thousand sessions with the force shrink.”

  She ran her hand through her hair. “Okay. There’s this old guy, Cha-cha? I think he’s been murdering the passengers. I—”

  “Damn, woman! Don’t you understand what we’re telling you?” Creutz thundered, then exhaled. He scratched his temple, let his arm drop. “Ah, what does it matter? However we help one another, perhaps we can do something, eh?”

  “C’mon, then,” Donna said. “We’ll straighten this out later. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Creutz held a hand toward her. “We may not make it,” he said.

  “Yeah, well.” She snapped her head at Curry. “Can you walk?”

  “I’ll look for a means of escape,” he ventured.

  “You’ll come with us,” she retorted, and led the way.

  The hatch dangled by some threads, man. You could practically blow on it and it would come off.

  COMECOMECOMECOMECOMECOME

  Cha-cha’s buddies were laughing and dancing. Yeah, okay, and saying he was the captain! Saying he should lead them and they would go do stuff and—

  sink?

  Suddenly the drum rocked forward and rolled sideways.

  Chatter-scrabble.
/>   A quick stab sliced Cha-cha’s ankle. “Ow!” he cried.

  YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES

  “Where’s Matt?” John repeated, slumped in a chair in the strange ballroom. So tired.

  “I told you. He’s on his way,” Hare replied.

  But …” John cupped his forehead. He was going to fall forward,

  down

  down

  down,

  and land deep, beneath the surface. He was going to jump, just like—

  —Ruth

  Elise

  Phil

  but not like

  Kevin or

  Ramón.

  Then the doctor shouted once, very loud. Everyone in the room froze, echoed his shout.

  With a crack, the room blackened, brightened, flashed in a strobe chop-chop-chop-chu-chu-chu. A wind rose up, and the rumbling of great machines, and the shrieking of people as if from far away.

  “Man the lifeboats!” someone shouted.

  The room popped like a burning photograph, chop-chop-chop. Around John, the passengers jerked, smeared, ran, floated.

  “Captain Reade!” Hare screamed. His face slid off his skull like a piece of rotten fruit thrown against a window. John backed away in horror. Hare’s eyes popped, and the vitreous liquid ran down his cheekbones. As he raised his hands, the meat rotted, slid off. The bones cracked apart and thudded on top of the pulp.

  John stumbled backward, hitting a chair. It crumbled like a fungus.

  A chandelier blew apart, hung at odd angles, became coated with cobwebs, no, with seaweed. The mirrors cracked, tarnished.

  Chop-chop-chop-chu-chu-chu

  “Reade!” someone shrieked. “Reade!”

  The people ran; most fell to nothing, their silks and satins and small, lacy shoes disintegrating.

  “Mutiny! Mutiny!” came a cry from the entrance to the room. John turned.

  Donna dashed in with a throng of men behind her. They shouted, raising cutlasses and rifles and harpoons and hooked hands. Donna’s gun looked like a toy.

  “Mutiny! At last, shipmates!” someone called.

  “Yes!” The remaining passengers swarmed toward a man beside Donna—Jesus, one of the ship’s officers, young, with a handlebar mustache, pushing John roughly out of the way.

  “I’m taking over the ship!”

  “Mutiny!” a woman cried, standing on a chair. “Mutiny!” Then, slowly, she turned in a circle and began to melt like a candle.

  John called, “God!” and held out his hands. “God!”

  His ulcer tore at him and he doubled over as the passengers dashed around him. The room shook once, and then it reared up at a forty-five-degree angle, and there was nothing to do with a ballroom or chandeliers or passengers. John was in the deep-freeze room and freezers rushed at him as he slid along the floor with them. Electric cords popped and slithered like snakes in the avalanche of metal and freon. Wind whipped around them, sharp and chill and—

  a flood of water poured over them, crashing against the freezers like breakers and pummeling John. It picked him up and carried him away. A freezer slammed past him, hit the wall, and burst open. His son fell out.

  John blinked as he shouted, “Matt, Matt!” and the freezers became

  icebergs,

  became freezers,

  became chair legs, tabletops, orange crates, barrels labeled “DANGER. CORROSIVE.”

  As he darted toward his unconscious son he was surrounded by flotsam and jetsam: headboards, shackles, a net, a jar. A bottle. A light, that moved and beamed.

  Matt’s fist, clenched as it sank—

  His dream. John took a breath and dove into the water. He dodged shoes, gray shapes, black kelp, rotted lace. A flashlight, on, casting through the water. A gray fish swam over the light; and something that slithered away.

  And Matt!

  He grabbed his sinking boy around the waist and yanked him to the surface. Matt sputtered and choked, cried, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “Baby.” His kissed Matt’s face, every inch of it, and held him. His child, his child, thank the dear Lord.

  “Daddy, the boat’s sinking!”

  Yes. Yes. John’s mind raced. What to do? Find a boat. Something that would stay afloat. Paddles. Food and water and—

  No, no. The boat first.

  “Grab hold of my neck, baby,” he told Matt, sliding him around onto his back. “Can you do that for me? Not too tight,” he cautioned as Matt nearly cut off his air.

  He started swimming toward the up end of the room, reached it, and used a locker wedged against an underwater object to drag them out of the water. Used the mirror that had slid against the locker to give them a way to climb up the slope. A barrel rolled onto the mirror, and he used that to take another step. As more things piled against the locker, he was able to walk through them and reach the edge of the room.

  He snaked his hand around the open door.

  “Put both your hands around my wrist,” he said to Matt.

  After the boy had done so, he pulled him along and both of them made it out of the refrigerator room and into the kitchen.

  Only it wasn’t the kitchen anymore.

  The walls were a patchwork: one was a towering slab of corroded metal, another, of rotted wood, jutted into it at an angle; another was round and curved and covered with shreds of red-flocked wallpaper.

  “It’s like a fun house,” Matt said in a strong voice, and John filled with pride at his son’s courage.

  “Yes,” he said. “Like a fun house.”

  They staggered together, bumping into piles of cracked dishes, an overturned bathtub. A mash of tables had gathered to their right, skittered in a jumble toward the doorway.

  The floor was dry, but parts of it were missing, and it was the same crazy quilt as the walls—wood here, something like cork farther on, linoleum, metal.

  “Daddy,” Matt croaked. “I—”

  And then it was the kitchen again.

  And half of it was underwater.

  On the other side, Donna and a man who looked like he had been horribly burned waved at them. John’s panicked mind registered a flash of shame: in his terror for Matt, he’d completely forgotten about her.

  “Here!” Donna shouted, at the same time the man kept shrieking, “It flickered! It flickered! They’re gone!”

  Then Donna jumped into the water and started swimming toward them. He roused himself and gathered Matt in his arms.

  The captain froze at the top of the ladderway that led to the hold where … where … she …

  … where he had found Cha-cha before, crooning to …

  … to nothing.

  Then everything flashed into blackness. Around him, the night whipped and slashed. Rain thundered down on him with sharp needle mouths. The Pandora! Where was she?

  He pounded his fists together. “I am. I am the I am that I am. The sea is my mistress. The sea, mine.”

  COME

  And he heard it. He heard it. The call, the cry, the promise.

  The threat.

  And he remembered the forgotten stanza of the siren song:

  The yacht swam away from the Royal Grace, and the man inside the canvas raved. Thomas Reade called on Satan, his Dark Master, and he begged Diana, goddess of the moon, and every other deity of his infernal studies, to save him.

  The storm abated, but he was sick inside the bag, fevered and bilious and mad with thirst; and it took hours to work his way out of it. The bird, yes, the bird came.

  Nathaniel’s head was there, yes.

  He found the bottle in the boat and blest the ocean and swallowed the contents; and thought that if he ever met the generous seaman who slipped it aboard, he would deal with him kindly. Yes! That was what he had thought.

  And the head of his darling, yes. They were so afrighted, they threw the head in. And though it was old by then, and stinking, he ate of his beloved; he ate everything; coconut crack! the brains, still moist.

  But the night descended on him, and
with the blackness came new thirst. And he prayed again, and again, and gnawed the skull, picked clean now, and dry.

  The day came, and with the light, the thirst.

  And he lay in the yacht and cursed all men and all gods.

  And the evening and the morning were the second day.

  On the sixth day, he tore a piece of the canvas, bit by bit, all day; his fingers bleeding, his teeth ripped out, and he wrote in his own blood for help. He threw the bottle over the side and fell back, marveling that he wasn’t yet dead.

  And on the seventh day, the reply, the answer, in the green glass; it rose, it rose, it came to him, singing, with fish, and it spewed water into him, and it promised, it promised—

  And he promised.

  They became One.

  “No,” he whimpered now. No, as everything flooded back in a deluge of terror, because he had betrayed her. He had promised.

  And he had lied.

  And she was looking for someone else to keep his pact.

  Fog, slick and slithery; in it, a hand that snaked through the hold, the door and the nails were a glittery green, kinda cool. And it fanned its fingers to touch him again; and it said

  HUNGRY, but what Cha-cha heard was:

  The steady sway of the hammock, and the scent of summer; and his mother calling, “Charlie? Would you like some lemonade?”

  Or maybe he heard that pretty little gal back in Nam, who called herself Betty, and she had those crazy kung-fu fightin’ nails and she loved him. Maybe they’d get married, yeah, and take all her little cousins and brothers and her teeny-weeny mom and dad to the States, yeah.

  And then the napalm …

  He leaned against the door with his eyes closed. Something made scratching noises near his feet, which were numb; why were they numb? And he was so cold, even though it was summer—

  No, it wasn’t! He was on the Pandora, with his goodbuddies. He looked down. Oh, hey, that wasn’t a hand at all, it was a shimmering thing, no, a beak, no, a tentacle, no, it was a hand, a lady’s hand, and it was supercalifragilistically beautiful.

  And whoops! the nails sliced him as they caressed his foot. Bad bummer, man, ’cuz it hurt! And the blood froze as it seeped through his sneaker; pop! like snot on a subzero continent, yeah; but it hurt.