Ahab's Return: or, The Last Voyage

by Jeffrey Ford

  After ten minutes or so of spilling and sparking, I paused to survey our handiwork. We were deep into the towering conglomeration of chests, which were blazing all around us. We had been so intent on our task that we now ran the risk of going up in flames ourselves. I turned around to look for Arabella, who should have been right behind me.

  The air was thick with smoke and a cloying, sweet aroma; my eyelids felt heavy and my mouth was as dry as cotton. I saw her through the flickering firelight, standing stock-still and breathing deeply. Half of me was inclined to join her, and the other half knew I was in trouble. I ran back to her. “Arabella, we’ll be burned alive,” I said. She dropped to her knees and reached into a large inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a notebook. A pencil appeared as if from nowhere. The next thing I knew, she was writing.

  Our plan, our mixture, our fire was going too well. The heat was intensifying, flames creeping into the alleyways at the base of the wooden mountain. We didn’t have long before it would be too late and we’d not escape. “Arabella,” I said, “we’ve got to keep moving. The fire.”

  Her voice, as if in a dream, said, “This is important, Harrow. I’m nearly there.” Her hand flew over the pages of the notebook, birthing scribble. I wondered if what I was looking at was really language. I tried to control my fear as the fire crackled around us. From within the rush of flame, I thought I heard a strange and sonorous voice, reciting poetry.

  I spun around in confusion; the movement left me dizzy. Not too far off, the flames looked like petals of bright lilies undulating in a breeze. The smoke was yellow and thick like tea-stained cotton, enveloping the flowers. In the next instant, the blossoms exploded and it was all fire, and panic set in. I heard Mavis’s voice echoing through the warehouse, calling for us. Yet Arabella scribbled on. To my left, suddenly, a fierce snarl and a line of iambic pentameter. I turned and there was the manticore, its scorpion tail hovering in the air above its head.

  If I’d not been intoxicated by the smoke, I could have made a run for it. But my legs had turned to sand. She came toward me, her blond ringlets bobbing above her sleek shoulders. Her eyes were an unforgettable blue—the deepest, clearest, Caribbean water lit by a star from below. All that was left to me was to shiver.

  She didn’t stop to grind my head into a pencil point with her three rotating rows of teeth. Instead she passed me by and went directly to Arabella, who seemed not to notice that a monster leaned over her, drooling. I tried to scream, but my mouth was too dry. I watched in horror as the creature went to work on Arabella’s lovely face. But, as in my dream, there was no blood. It was as if every bite was a pass of the eraser.

  Bit by bit, Arabella disappeared. The thick yellow smoke swelled around them like an ocean wave and they vanished into it. At that moment, Mavis grabbed my arm and pulled me away. As we fled, I had a hallucination that we were running through a city on fire—I saw flames leaping from the windows, heard people screaming. When we emerged from the warehouse and into the cold night air, Mavis backhanded me across the face to wake me up. We made our way to the barge’s stern where she had stowed three of the opium chests.

  I don’t mind telling you, the chests were heavy as hell as we carried them, slung across one shoulder down the ladder. Mavis made two trips to my one. I sat in the front of the boat and tried to reconcile my feelings for Arabella Dromen and the fact that I had witnessed her disappear one bite at a time. An unkind thought occurred to me: after all her opium-induced scribbling, she is erased. There was something classically ironic to that, but I cared for her too much.

  This time, Mavis rowed, a roll-up stuck in the corner of her lips. Her charcoal beard had faded. I told her what had happened to Arabella. “Bloodless,” I said, “like eating the wind.” Mavis stopped rowing and pulled up the oars. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and blew smoke at me. The water lapped at the sides of the boat as we drifted in the current. “Harrow, you have to wake up. Too bad for Miss Dromen, but we have to deal with Malbaster when we get to shore.”

  She took up the oars again and started rowing. I huddled in the bow, still unable to get the picture of Arabella slowly disappearing out of my mind.

  “Listen,” Mavis said, softly. “It’s not like I don’t feel awful about what happened. But right now we don’t have the luxury to dwell on it. Once we’re safe ashore—once we sell these blasted chests of opium and split the money with whoever else of our party survives—that’s when I’ll think about it. Arabella is dead. I want to live.”

  My mind was still racing, but I knew she was right and kept my peace. She brought the boat in beneath the dock, and we quickly tied it up and removed the cargo. Once the wooden chests were stacked away in the bushes out of reach of the tide, we proceeded up the shallow incline to the road. We both turned at the same time and looked back at the oyster barge that was ablaze, the wild light reaching into the heavens.

  We met the others on the corner across from the Fulton Street dock. Arabella’s coach-and-four was there, positioned at the side of the road, with Madi holding the reins in the driver’s seat, ready to block traffic on West Street. Standing on the sidewalk were Ahab and Gabriel. The captain had somewhere acquired a new top hat and peacoat—no doubt from the funds Garrick had donated to the end of this business. I couldn’t begrudge it. Ahab looked revived, sharp, and proud to have his son standing next to him. He swung the boarding ax slowly, practicing, what I surmised, was his killing blow.

  Gabriel, on the other hand, looked somewhat peaked. He stood near the horses, shivering, one hand shoved in the pocket of the filthy thug’s coat, his other holding the pistol in a wobbling grip. It was Ahab who inquired about Arabella. I shook my head and waved away his question. Mavis interceded. “Gone,” she said. “Harrow says she was eaten by the manticore.”

  All of them, including Mavis, wore a forlorn expression, and soon enough they looked away and shook their heads in silence. It wasn’t long, though, before Madi interrupted the reverie, pointing out into the sky beyond the dock, where we saw clouds of opium smoke rushing at us from the burning oyster barge. The storm moved faster than a running dog and swamped us before we could react.

  Within the realm of the smoke, the streetlamp was a godsend. Its glow, though dimmed by the clouds, was still strong enough to allow us to see one another. Together, we waited in the pale-yellow night, our gazes glazed. Reality, such as it was, was slightly frayed at the edges. Madi, sitting atop the coach, drank from a canteen and kept his head cocked as he listened for movement up the street. Gabriel leaned against the lamppost, yawned, and smiled. “That’s the ticket,” he said, between deep breaths. Mavis sat on the sidewalk with her back against the wall of the closest building, smoking a roll-up and staring out at the flames. Ahab stood ramrod straight, as if at attention, awaiting the order to attack.

  God knows what each of them saw before his eyes. As for me, it was the bird of the unseen color from Ahab’s tale. It flew in and out of the fog at the end of Fulton Street, a swooping shadow. How I knew it was the bird of the unseen color, I’m not sure, for I never really got a good look at it. I was trying to remind myself to wake up, when from somewhere beyond the clouds, there came the sound of hoofbeats on cobblestone.

  “Here we go,” said Madi and grabbed up the reins. Before the coach pulled away from the sidewalk, Ahab opened the cab door, reached in, and drew out his harpoon. “From hell’s heart, I stab at thee,” he said.

  31

  When the coach appeared out of the smog and encountered Madi and his team blocking their way, the driver pulled hard on the reins and the lead pair of black horses reared to a stop only inches away. It was clearly the same coach that had been used in Malbaster’s getaway from the Crystal Palace and to kidnap Madi and Ahab.

  “Move it along,” said the driver.

  Madi pulled out the new pistol and shot the man twice in the chest. The body tumbled out of the driver’s seat and into the road. The coach’s cab door opened and a trousered leg appeared. Befor
e the fellow could get out, Ahab was upon him. He grabbed a shock of the man’s dark hair, whipped his thin form around and buried the boarding ax blade dead center into what turned out to be Ishmael’s forehead. Blood splattered and the author’s distant voice uttered the phrase, “Good Lord.” My old copy editor, obviously under the influence of the opium, didn’t die at once, but staggered to and fro with a look of astonishment in his eyes, the surprise that comes with being slain by your own creation. When he did finally succumb to the wound and fell onto the street, dead, Ahab spat upon him and said, “Who’s the author now? Make a ghost of me, will ya?”

  The cab door swung shut and as a curtain was drawn over the window we couldn’t see in. Blood pooled in the street and had sprayed across the side of the coach. The captain was breathing heavily. I could tell by his expression that he just wanted to get the job done and be finished with it, kill whoever else was in the coach. As he moved for the door, Mavis stepped in his path and told him to wait. “Stick your head in there and you’re asking to be shot,” she whispered to him.

  Ahab relented and backed up a step. As he did, Gabriel came forward to join Mavis and his father. She and the lad pointed their guns at the door of the coach, and the captain lifted his harpoon prepared to strike. And from his seat on Arabella’s rig, Madi aimed at the same target. I stood there with my fid in my hand, nervous, scared, and hallucinating a drizzle of small white flowers drifting down through the smoke.

  Time passed and not the slightest noise or movement came from the cab. Mavis called up to Madi to make sure no one had gotten out the other side. “I’d have shot them already,” was his answer.

  “What about those blue moths coming out of the coach?” said Ahab.

  “Moths?” I asked.

  “A torrent of them. Does no one else see them?”

  “I see the smoke keep changing into people, like a phantom Jolly Host,” said Mavis.

  “You’re beautiful,” Gabriel said to her.

  Without turning she lackadaisically reached back and smacked him in the face. “Look alive,” she said and he smiled.

  At any second, I expected to see the coach turn into a pumpkin and the horses into mice. With that thought, the cab door opened, and a bright beacon of light streamed out into the night, reflecting off the swirling fog. The beam was brighter than any lantern could produce, and it stunned us. No one spoke. Even Ahab was subdued by it.

  Then the springs on the coach squeaked and bounced a bit as a figure exited through the door. The instant I saw the giant pale head contrasted with the black suit, I knew we had Malbaster in our trap. What were the odds? He moved toward our group with an otherworldly smile on his face. The balloon head bobbed up and down as he halted and took a position ten yards away.

  “Gentlemen,” came the strange voice. Mavis stepped forward with the pistol pointed directly between his eyes. The Pale King Toad snapped his fingers twice and her gun became a bird, squawked, and flew out of her hand. Madi’s pistol followed suit. “You all know my friend,” said Malbaster and made a half turn toward the coach. From out of the bright beacon light emerged the manticore. She leaped to the ground, moving with a slow dreamlike grace, and took up a position next to her master. The blue eyes scanned over each of us.

  “This mere girl took a shot at me once in the cotton warehouse,” she said, nodding to Mavis. “I don’t forget such treachery.”

  Mavis’s ruined charcoal beard must have fooled Malbaster for a moment. “Ahhh,” he said. “I smell it now, an Irish slut. In that case we’ll kill her last.”

  Mavis drew the thin blade from the waist of her trousers, but before she could think to throw it, Malbaster had nodded at her, and instead, she plunged the blade into her own thigh and cried out.

  “Shhh, dear,” said Malbaster, “you’ll summon the police.”

  I stumbled to her and helped her to the ground, pulled out the blade, which hadn’t sunk that deep into the muscle, and stanched the bleeding with my handkerchief. As all this transpired, Gabriel had stepped forward with his gun, the only one remaining, and aimed it at the marshmallow globe.

  “Gabriel, my boy, you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd. A Negro hardly worth a bullet, a slatternly Irish whore, a lunatic seafarer who claims to be your father, a pathetic scribbler of poorly written tripe, and where is the other crazy bitch?”

  The manticore laughed aloud at his question. Understanding shone in Malbaster’s expression. “A shame,” he said. “I hope her mental confusion didn’t give you too much indigestion.”

  Although his aim was wavering, Gabriel kept the gun trained on Malbaster.

  “Now, my boy, seriously, don’t you miss the life of the streets? I was about to make you prince of the Jolly Host, ruler of your own throng of ne’er-do-wells to command as you see fit. What in God’s name do you want with this powerless scrum of lackeys? Come back to me. This opium that burns is only a quarter of all the stores I have secreted throughout the city. Your days and nights will never be without it.”

  I wanted to move. My anger at Malbaster had reached foolish proportions, and I was all set to take him on, but his magic had me trapped as if my feet were buried in the ground. It must have been the same for the others. I saw Ahab flailing his arms wildly trying to be rid of the spell and Madi, long knife in hand, attempting, with no luck, to pull himself to the edge of the driver’s seat of the coach.

  “What do you say, Gabriel?” asked Malbaster.

  “I’m through with you,” said the boy.

  “Well, in that case, I’ll just have to kill the girl right now, for I sense that it’s she who draws you away from me.”

  “It’s all of them. My family.”

  “We’re your family. I’m your old dad, and the Host are your brothers. Who took you in?”

  “And made me sick. Made me do sick things.”

  “Okay,” said Malbaster. “I don’t want to kill you and I’ll even spare the bearded girl. But I’m afraid that the others must die. All you need do is shoot that jackass who claims to be your father.”

  It was easy to see that Gabriel was trying to resist his old master’s commands. His body trembled and his arm shook wildly. Slowly, the lad turned around and aimed the gun at Ahab’s head.

  The captain watched, as did the rest of us. He said, “Don’t worry, boy. Save yourself and Mavis. You must go on to live your life. I’ve done what I can. Forgive me my sins.”

  It was obvious from the expression of anguish on Gabriel’s face and how he shook that great pressure was being put on him. I noticed that the manticore now rose from her haunches and stood ready to pounce. I feared I’d be the first to go. For all my own scribbling, Lord knows I deserved to be erased. Still Gabriel held out, although it was clear his finger was tightening on the trigger.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a strange movement from the manticore, as if a sudden wave had flooded through her body from head to tail. I shifted my gaze to her, and to my awe, noticed her blond ringlets straighten and darken. Her cheeks, which accommodated those extra sets of teeth, smoothed and flattened, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her paws were becoming hands before my eyes. I shook my head at the hallucination. Or was it? The scorpion stinger that had bobbed at the end of her tail in the air above her head was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

  I grunted involuntarily when I realized what was happening. It was too amazing. Too much for even George Harrow to take in. Malbaster hadn’t noticed, concentrating, as he was, on willing Gabriel to shoot his father. But I watched the entire transition as Arabella Dromen stepped out of the melting form of the manticore. The creature’s sleek cat body transformed into the powerful physique of the friend I believed to have been erased. Mavis must have been watching too, because she grabbed my ankle and whispered up to me, “Throw her the fid.”

  I threw it in an arc as Arabella moved toward Malbaster. She caught it in one hand, and as his concentration was broken by her movement beside him, Arabella rammed its spiked end with all her strength
into his stomach. She leaped away once the weapon was planted. The Pale King Toad made a prolonged toad noise, a deep croak like a machine running down, as yellow smoke poured out of the wound.

  Gabriel, suddenly free of Malbaster’s control, turned and fired a shot at him. The bullet went wide. It didn’t matter, though, because Madi launched himself off the driver’s seat of Arabella’s coach and landed on the pale villain’s back. He still had the long knife in his hand and, in one quick, savage motion, he dragged it across Malbaster’s throat, leaving a gaping, smoking wound.

  We all drew closer to the corpse of the Pale King Toad, who lay lifeless, like a heap of laundry in the middle of West Street.

  “That’s it?” said Mavis.

  “Where’s the blood?” asked Gabriel.

  “Aye,” said the captain.

  Arabella pointed and said, “What’s that?”

  The smoke had stopped pouring from the gash in his throat, but now there was something pushing its way out from inside Malbaster, a puddle of white goo come to life. It wriggled and undulated its way out of him, and it was huge. At its tallest point the blob that slowly crawled forth from within him was twelve feet. We watched it being born. Once it was free, it headed for the river like a snail without a shell.

  Ahab took off after the blob with a vengeance. I don’t know how he moved so fast on that whalebone leg. By the time we crossed the street and climbed down the rise on the other side to the bank of the Hudson, the captain already had the dinghy untied and was twenty yards out into the water. He wore his top hat as he rowed methodically, following the white, half-submerged hump of the blob. The head of Ahab’s harpoon could be seen jutting out over the prow.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled to him.

  “Finishing the job, Harrow,” he called back. “Making the world safe for my son.” I saw his silhouette wave before he disappeared into the smoke-filled night. And then, I could have sworn I heard laughter off in the darkness. That’s how Ahab left my life, as suddenly as he’d entered it. I would never see him again.