Bloodman

by Robert Pobi

  Behind the burn marks and stitches and antibiotic ointment Jacob Coleridge looked scared.

  Frank shook his head. “He was just a little kid, Jacob. If we would have left him there, he would have died.”

  “Better him than all of us.”

  54

  It was easy to see that the main event was only a few hours off; the world outside looked like it had been scripted for a Hollywood disaster film. By the time Frank pulled into the driveway, Spencer’s cruiser was gone. He ran from the big H1 to the house and the rain clattered against his hood like ball bearings. When he turned the knob the wind ripped the door away from him and slammed it open, sending a pile of mail flapping off into the house like frightened birds.

  Jake was suiting up inside the entryway. Beside him, on the Nakashima console—a broad slab of undressed walnut—the weird spherical sculpture of welded steel shafts hummed with the electricity the storm carried, like a static tuning fork. On the floor a little to the left sat Kay’s airline-tag-covered cello case.

  “Jake, I gotta talk to you.”

  Jake nodded at the door. Or the world beyond. Or maybe at nothing at all—it was hard to tell. “I have to get to Hauser’s. We can talk in the truck.”

  Frank pulled the big brass zipper on the Filson rain slicker up to his chin. “Let’s roll, kiddo.”

  They ducked out into the storm.

  The only sign that life existed anywhere other than the interior of the big metal beast that carried them west was the steady stream of man-made debris that blew over the empty highway and the intermittent flicker of lights in roadside homes. If Jake had been paying attention to these things he would have been surprised that anyone had stayed behind. As things stood, he couldn’t muster up enough interest to notice. The smart ones had left. The rest stayed. That was as far as he got in the equation.

  The wind and rain hammered in on a horizontal trajectory and Frank had to continually fight the massive vehicle to keep it on the road. The interior smelled of diesel fuel, shell casings, blood, and wet pencils. Jake unconsciously gripped the handle by the windshield, his mind turning the events of the past few days slowly over.

  “This is important, Jake.” Frank had to yell to be heard over the combined noise of the storm and the big diesel engine.

  Jake came back to the present, to the world outside the car pulsing with the dark storm, and blinked like a man who was trying out a new pair of eyes for the first time. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know I don’t believe in astrology or God or any of the other stupid shit people lie to themselves about because it makes living in fear a little more bearable. Maybe I’m the wrong guy for this. Maybe you need someone who believes in that stuff.”

  A plastic patio table scrambled across the road like a spider. When it hit the gravel shoulder it upended and spun off into the dark. Frank reached under the instrument cluster and turned on the LED light bar bolted to the roof rack and the road lit up in underwater hues of blue.

  A gust of wind slammed into the side of the Hummer and Frank wrenched the wheel to the left, fighting the vehicle away from the shoulder and the ditch beyond.

  In the blue-green light of the basic instrument cluster, Frank’s face drained of a little more color. “I’m an old man, Jake. I’ve seen the world go from astounding to shitty in the course of my insignificant life. And I’ve been part of some of it.” Frank’s face tightened up a little more and he pulled out his smokes—unfiltered Camels—and tapped one out for his nephew. After giving the cigarette to Jake, he took one himself, returned the pack to his pocket, and fired his up with his faithful Zippo. He pulled the tip of the cigarette through the flame, then passed it across the cabin. The flame left a white trail in Jake’s vision and the heavy taste of lighter fluid made the cigarette taste foul and better at the same time. He took in a deep lungful of the tobacco and held it for a second.

  Jake ignored the screaming rain outside, the squeak of the big wipers across the two flat front panes, the rattle of the big diesel, and the smell of gunpowder and cedar. He simply watched his uncle, hoping that images of Kay and Jeremy would leave him alone for a little while—long enough for him to figure all of this out.

  Frank nodded at the computer sitting in Jake’s lap. “I asked him about the paintings, Jake—about those puzzle pieces.” Jake, the eternal student of behavior, recognized that background static of fear in Frank’s voice. Or was that just the residual taste of the first call he had received from the hospital two nights and a handful of lifetimes ago?

  Jake stopped thrumming the top of the laptop case.

  “He said that you’d figure it out. That you’d know what to do.” Frank sucked on the smoke and the tip went bright orange for a second. “He was letting go of old baggage, Jakey. I think those paintings are some sort of gift to you. Some sort of—” he paused and the click of the wipers filled a few seconds—“apology.”

  “I don’t think Jacob Coleridge knows what an apology is.”

  Frank cleared his throat and two jets of smoke spewed out of his nostrils. It was the action of a man trying to build up his nerve. “Part of this story is true, Jakey—I know because I was there for it.” He stopped again, like his clockworks had jammed. “Jesus, if there’s something in here that will help find your wife and little boy, then I don’t mind breaking a promise.”

  “Drop the melodrama.”

  “I swore I’d never tell you.”

  “Swore to who?” Jake almost yelled to be heard over the jet-engine sounds of the world. “My father’s way past caring, Frank.”

  “I promised your mother, Jakey. I mean, really promised. Swore—on-my-life kind of promised. And I don’t know how well you remember your mom—”

  “Perfectly,” Jake said, cutting him off.

  “Then you’d know that she’d be pretty pissed with me if I told you. She didn’t think you should know about this. No one did.”

  “Frank, this fucker has my wife. My son. If you know something that might help me find him, I better not find out after the fact.” An image of Kay and Jeremy walking on the beach, Jeremy waving to the passers-by, blinded him for a second. “I’m not the forgiving type.”

  “I noticed.” Frank sucked on the cigarette again and nodded, smoke hissing out from between his perfect white teeth. “What the hell, we all die sometime, right?”

  And he began to break forty-two-year-old promises to the dead.

  55

  August, 1969

  121 Nautical Miles Due East of the British

  Virgin Islands

  They were heading north, lazily making their way back to US waters after a summer spent island hopping. The trip had lasted a little over twelve weeks and the sybaritic retreat had done them good. Jacob had immersed himself in his work, trying his hand at watercolors and doing some good studies of lush island vegetation and crystal waters; Mia had learned to scuba and fish and perfected her skills with a barbecue; Frank had nursed yet another broken heart back from the dead. They were all browned by the sun and running on that late-August glow that comes from a summer well spent.

  This was the third vacation they had taken as a threesome but twelve weeks penned up in a boat with his brother and wife was making Jacob squirrely; at least, that’s what he had thought at the time. It wouldn’t be until later, with the clarity of hindsight, that he’d understand that wrong had indeed been waiting for them at the edge of the horizon.

  Mia was on the foredeck, stretched out in the sun, reading a paperback. Jacob was at the wheel wearing nothing but a pair of worn Bermudas, eyeing the compass and working his way through a bottle of Johnnie Walker—his make-do alternative to the Laphroaig he couldn’t find anywhere in the islands except Bermuda. Frank was below deck in one of the staterooms, sleeping off another failed attempt to keep up with his older brother, the resident champion, the night before.

  Jacob watched Mia stretched out, the bikini hiding very little of her body. He loved her skin, its smoothness, an
d he took great pleasure painting her whenever she felt like sitting still long enough for him to commit his impression of her to canvas. He took a swig of the bottle and ran his eyes over her form, taking in her proportions, her musculature. They had been together for a few years now, and he could see small signs of aging starting to creep in. She was younger than him—they had met in a New York tavern when her date had been late and Jacob’s was back at the table. He had barreled up to the bar, demanded a bottle of scotch for his table, and insisted the beautiful woman to his left try a nip of Laphroaig before he carted it away. It had been an instant given that they were meant for one another. Within a week he was painting her. Within two she had moved in.

  The weather was right and they were making good time. They had a southern wind pushing them home like an invisible hand and with the exception of a few small patches of sargasso weed that they had managed to steer around, there was nothing to slow their progress. Mia kept glancing starboard, following a pair of bottlenose dolphins that seemed to be finding pleasure in their company. She was adjusting the strap on her bikini when something to the east caught her eye. It wasn’t much, little more than a glimmer of light, but it was enough to make her reach for the binoculars.

  “Jacob.” In the language of married people that single word was a whole sentence.

  He lifted his eyes and followed her arm to the east. It was a little after one in the afternoon and the sun was at its peak overhead. Jacob squinted in the direction she was pointing, then took off his sunglasses. It was a small triangle of white in the ocean, two miles off, maybe more. He didn’t know how Mia had seen it; it was the kind of thing that if you didn’t know was there, you could easily miss.

  “Give me the binoculars.”

  Mia came down into the cockpit, handed the binoculars to Jake, and climbed back up on the deck and around to the pushpit. She steadied herself on the backstay, raised her hand to her brow. “It’s a boat,’ she said.

  Jacob brought the binoculars up and swept his field of vision across the water to the east. Mia was right, it was a boat—a good-sized monohull—sticking out of the water at a bad angle. Jacob had nothing as a reference point but by looking at the pulpit, then following her line back and seeing the top third of the mainmast sticking out of the water a good distance back, he guessed that the boat was at least a forty-five-footer, maybe more, with three-quarters of her length under water.

  “Get Frank,” he said, loosened the main halyard, and spun the wheel. The boat leaned heavily to port and came around in a tight arc.

  A minute later Frank came topside, bleary-eyed and wet from the cold water he had splashed in his face. “What is it?” he asked.

  Jacob handed the binoculars over. “There’s a boat in trouble out there. Dead ahead. Mile—mile and a half.”

  Frank climbed up on the cabin, put his foot up on the mast step, and peered through the field glasses. The craft was white and blue and had the sleek lines of one of the new Dutch fiberglass yachts. The bow stuck up at an odd angle, like a missile aimed at the horizon. Thirty feet back the mainmast stuck out of the water and from the angle Frank knew that the boat hung in the water at a good forty-five degrees. Debris floated around her but at this distance it was impossible to tell just what it was. The boat wasn’t in trouble—it was sinking.

  “Jesus,” Frank said and lowered the glasses.

  “Get the Thompson,” Jacob said.

  Anyone else would have argued but Frank and Jacob operated on that frequency that many siblings share, twins more than most. Besides, Frank knew that these waters were dangerous, which was why they had brought the machine gun in the first place.

  “And a mask.”

  While Frank was below, Jacob kept his eyes locked on the white triangle of the sinking boat. Mia had moved to the bow and was standing in the pulpit, staring ahead. Jacob couldn’t explain it, and would always wonder about it afterward, but as they approached he consciously wished that Mia had never spotted the faltering craft. Years later, when he had finally wrapped his brain around the incident, he would attach the word Fate to the sighting—sometimes upgrading it to Destiny. But at the time the only feeling he had was that it was a mistake and if they were lucky it would sink before they got there.

  He reached under his seat and pulled out his service revolver, an old blued Colt 1911 wrapped in oilcloth and secured with twine fastened in a tight shoelace knot. He pulled one of the tag ends, dropped the frayed fabric to the deck, and slipped the pistol into his pocket.

  It took them nine minutes to reach the boat. By the time they were one hundred yards out it looked like it had fallen from the sky—clothing, plastic bottles, a single life vest, and a library’s worth of books floated around her in the debris field. A single shark—a twelve-foot tiger—swam through the litter, nosing larger chunks out of curiosity.

  They watched the shark for a few seconds, swimming through the scattered flotsam, her triangular dorsal slicing the blue water. She bumped the life jacket, gave a piece of decking an exploratory bite, then sank out of sight.

  “What happened?” Mia asked. She put Jacob’s shirt on over her bikini and it covered her to mid-thigh.

  “Something bad,” Frank said softly.

  “I’m going aboard,” Jacob said. “You see any other boats on the horizon, fire a round into the air.”

  They pulled their boat—a sixty-two-foot Werf Gusto that Jacob had named The Forger—alongside the sinking monohull. Bubbles rose from below the waterline and there was a soft gurgling that seemed to come from everywhere. They lashed a line to a cleat on the other boat and Jacob went over the side. When he set foot on the sinking vessel, he turned back to Frank. “This thing starts going down, wait until the line is tight to cut it.”

  “What if you’re still aboard?”

  Jacob looked past Frank to Mia and smiled. “If I have to swim free, keep the Thompson ready and shoot that bastard shark if he comes back.”

  “Go through the front hatch,” Mia said.

  Jacob shook his head. “Can’t. That’s where the air is trapped. I open that and the ocean will rush in and this thing will head straight to the bottom. I want to see if there’s anyone on board.”

  Mia gave him a look that said, Be careful.

  Jacob stood on the steep angle of the deck, his foot against the cabin front for balance. He dipped the mask into the water, emptied it, then rubbed some spit around the glass to keep it from fogging up. He still had on the Bermudas and the bulge of the gun in his pocket made him look like his leg was bolted on with massive fasteners. With the trench knife on his belt, the mask on his head, standing on the prow of the derelict sailboat, he looked like a shipwreck survivor. He slid down the deck into the water.

  The deck of the boat slid by as he moved down to the cabin hatch, using whatever was available as a handhold. He focused on where he was going but paid attention to details in his peripheral vision in case the shark came back. The entrance to the cabin was under the water and he’d have to climb at a forty-five-degree upward angle to get inside her. Jacob made a mental note of this so that he wouldn’t get disoriented when he was inside and drown before he could find a pocket of air. He moved down, through a tangle of lines, and dipped under the lip of the cabin doorway.

  The door had been ripped off the frame. More debris floated around the portal. He ducked inside.

  Maps, clothing, and bits of wood floated in the zero gravity of the cabin. Jacob headed up into the prow of the boat, toward the air pocket that was keeping her afloat.

  He clawed his way up the ladder, which felt awkward and wrong. At the top he found a small reserve of air and he took a few shallow breaths, then filled his lungs and moved farther into the belly of the boat.

  From inside, the gurgling sound was louder, more intimate.

  Papers, books, bottles, ropes, and clothing floated by, blocking his vision, disorienting him. He moved up, through the kitchen and past two staterooms—both were empty except for the debris that float
ed everywhere in the flooded craft. He reached the final stateroom and the door was closed. He pulled on it and it was locked.

  Jacob put the blade of his old army knife to the crack and hit the pommel with the heel of his hand, driving the blade in between the jamb and the door. He wrenched the heavy blade to one side and the door opened with a loud crack that seemed to shake the whole boat. He swam through the door, up into the main stateroom, and his head broke through the surface, into the air bubble keeping the boat afloat.

  A body lay in one of the bunks—bloody and dead. It had been a woman. Now, mouth stretched into a last scream, eyes rolled up, fingers clenched into bloody fists, she was a sculpture of horror. Her throat had been opened up in a violent seesaw slash that ran from one clavicle to the other. Jacob had spent twenty-one months in Korea and was no stranger to death but something about this reached inside of him and opened up a little piece of hell. He turned his head away.

  Then saw the second body, this one a man.

  He was up against the wall, hanging like a winter coat, held in place by a stainless-steel speargun bolt that fastened him in place. It was buried in his chest, and if it wasn’t through his heart, it was damn close. Blood leaked out and down and the water swirling around him was black and dense. He hung there, head down, the light crowning his head casting a long shadow that almost covered his body. A bloody knife stuck out of the wall beside him. Probably the same knife that had sawed through the dead woman’s throat.

  “Jesus,” Jacob whispered.

  And that’s when the little piece of hell that was inside him ruptured and a portal to somewhere else—somewhere evil and wrong—opened up and a little noise came scrambling out.

  At first Jacob thought that the sinking boat was creaking, some part of its structure giving way, but he was only able to lie to himself for a second before he admitted that it was a human sound. Or an almost human sound. A moan. Soft and fueled by pain.

  The man nailed to the wall lifted his head and the light filled his features with detail. His tongue came out, licked his lips. He coughed once and blood drooled out of his nose. He tried to speak but all that came was the sound of air escaping his body, as if it had somewhere else it had to be.