by Joshua Grant
Or so he thought.
He wasn’t aware he was being watched from the shadowy alcove beneath the stairway to the right. He was even less cognizant of the carefully laid trap he had so innocently strolled into.
Other than fancy beach chairs, the wide open deck was only interrupted by a twenty foot pool-hot tub combo. This was Gabe’s objective. He removed his shirt and discarded it on one of the many vacant chairs. The warm evening breeze tickled his exposed skin as he dipped a toe in the crystal clear water. Cold.
Gabe sighed. Someday I’ll invent the perfect temperature pool and make my millions, he mused. Here goes nothing.
He plugged his nose and dove straight in. Yikes! The cold water slid over his skin, electrifying his senses. He was instantly awakened as he breached the surface and took a much needed gulp of warm air, his panting breaths echoing back to him—
But something wasn’t right.
Gabe blinked, his vision blurred. Motion to the right. Something out amongst the chairs was moving, a low crawl. Nothing overt. In fact, he was pretty sure whatever it was out in the shadow-splashed deck was attempting to do so slowly, stealthily, like it knew that he was watching. Quickly, he batted the water away from his eyelashes, willing his eyes to see more in the dim light…
…more deck chairs illuminated by the dancing green flicker of the pool. Just deck chairs.
Okay Gabe, you’re going nuts, or cashews. And everyone hates those.
Slowly he exhaled. Once more, his imagination had gotten the best of him. Stupid imagination, he noted. Had to be a bird or something. The seagulls are coming to eat you Gabe, you big cashew. He smirked. Ninja cannibal seagulls. Could make a good show.
But the humor did little to calm the swell of cold he felt, the slithering unease building in his stomach. All remained still beyond the brightly lit pool. Too still. Unnaturally so. Like a show really was happening here, a private one whose single audience member didn’t want to be seen as he watched Gabe with cold eyes. And as if that wasn’t creepy enough, Gabe became too overly aware of the sound of his own breathing, of the fact that nothing moved in the surreal stillness but him, and for once he found the solitude disquieting. Because he was alone, and he wasn’t.
“Hello,” he managed. His voice sounded odd as it breached the oppressive silence. Small and shrill. His heart thudded as he waited. The only answer came from the output of the turning propellers a dozen decks below.
Congratulations Gabe, you’ve definitely gone cashews. You get a cookie, he thought. Speaking of…
One of the ship’s numerous twenty-four hour buffets was nearby, a tray full of neatly stacked cookies calling his name. His stomach was rumbling, calling back. When was the last time he ate? He started moving for one of the side ladders—
CRASH!
Sound and movement somewhere close! Something appeared, just beyond the pool, its fleshy limbs yanking one of the deck chairs to the side as it hastily, hungrily, inserted itself into the water just feet behind him!
Oh my God! Panic shot into his panting chest as he whipped around, trying to get a view of whatever had just joined him, whatever was in the pool! The thing thrashed about, the chaotic movements sending up hordes of tiny bubbles as it twisted its dark flexible body in an effort to propel itself forward!
What is it!?
Gabe didn’t want to find out the hard way. It was sure as hell no seagull! The pool lights began to flicker, strobing the creature’s thrashing, the ghoulish stop-motion gaining ground, coming within feet!
Gabe became motion itself, turning, his heart pulsing in his ears over the creature’s splashing, and swam for the far side of the pool, his arms and legs pulling and kicking with all their might. But he wasn’t alone. The creature was somehow aware its prey was slipping away, its limbs flailing more desperately too, reaching, the displaced water tickling his feet now. It wanted him, needed to get him, the terrible thought making Gabe will every ounce of strength into his crawl stroke.
He was just a few feet from the pool’s edge. For all its thrashing earlier, the mysterious swimmer was adapting quickly to the pool. It was gaining on him. Something touched his calf—
Not gonna make it! I’m not gonna—
Gabe’s hand hit the solid edge of the pool. He grabbed it like the precious beacon of safety it was and lifted his body out of the water with inhuman strength—
--but he didn’t hit the deck, not fully. His fall was abruptly halted. What—
Gabe’s very thoughts shut down. Something warm and oily had attached itself to his ankle! The gnarled hand, if that’s what it was, tightened painfully. Gabe cried out, a strangled yelp of revulsion, glass sliding up and down the nerves of his leg as the creature began to pull him back into the pool.
Help! Somebody please! he thought but couldn’t manage to get the words through his tightly clamped jaw.
He felt the sinuous muscles of the creature’s arm working against his foot, dragging at it, winning their terrible match of tug-o-war. He kicked against that arm with his free limb and was rewarded with a guttural screech from the creature, but it didn’t let up. In fact, it pulled harder. Gabe slid back an inch, two. His knee scraped mercilessly on the edge of the pool. He flailed his arms desperately against the deck, digging his fingernails into the fake wood slats.
It yanked again and Gabe’s wrist slammed painfully into the metal leg of a nearby chair. Help! Please! He gripped the piece of deck furniture and threw it blindly over his shoulder. There was a loud crunch behind him as the creature took the unexpected barrage to whatever its equivalent of a face was. Thankfully, impossibly, its nasty hand slipped from his bruised ankle this time.
Gabe practically shot onto the deck. He didn’t let the pain swelling in his ankle and knee keep him from launching to his feet. He half limped, half ran around the corner of the Lido deck as the thing splashed noisily in the pool behind him. He’d sprint down the outside walkway that traversed the entire length of the ship and keep on sprinting until he was in the comforting warm arms of his mother.
He rounded the corner and smashed into a man carrying two drinks, one of which splashed all over him. Gabe didn’t think to warn him about the danger of the pool. Who would believe him anyway? He just kept running, vaguely aware of the man’s muttered curse behind him.
Please be safe Mom, please!
Watcher wailed as the boy, 10, forty-two organs disappeared around the corner. It had been so long since it felt the immeasurable pleasure of the hunt and the boy’s perspiration, his screams of primal fear and agony, electrified it. They massaged its inner core with a force more fearsome than sex.
And now he was gone.
The despair built in its misshapen chest, the pressure becoming too great, the bundle of nails ripping its way outward in the form of another wail, a distant, unnatural sound as Watcher lacked the traditional concept of vocal chords. It cursed its inability to transition smoothly from terrestrial to aquatic environments. It was out of practice and that had cost it dearly. Sure, it would catch up with the boy eventually. He was a prisoner within this ocean just as surely as Watcher had recently been. But Watcher needed to kill immediately. The brief hunt had enlivened its senses, feelings coming alive that it hadn’t experienced in so so long. Feelings that were shutting down now, being ripped away like the infected scabs they had become. It needed to kill, to bathe in flesh, and it needed it now.
“Damn kids.”
The muttered curse came as a blessing to the mucus-lined holes Watcher currently utilized as ears. Tingles ran up and down its spines, quickening the three blood pumping organs throughout its current body.
Yes! it thought with a greater yearning than any human could grasp.
Yes, yes!
A single flash of thought and Watcher’s muscles eased it out of the pool with deadly silence. The chair that had impeded its progress earlier fluttered lightly to the bottom of the pool behind it, a distant reminder of the boy that had escaped.
Not this one.
Not him!
The man stumbled around the corner and Watcher grew still. Ichorous blood thundered in its mucus filled ears, a war drum taunting it into battle, but Watcher knew when to exercise patience. Here, behind a deck chair and an outcropping of the hot tub, the man would not be able to see it.
Male, 38, forty two organs--shut up!
Watcher clamped down its racing thoughts. It smelled the ethanol-sweat mixture leaking from the man with something that wasn’t quite an olfactory gland; saw the clearly inebriated man stumble to the ship’s edge with not quite eyes; and slowly crept forward with limbs that weren’t quite arms or legs.
The man’s back was to Watcher, completely unaware of the cold death that stalked him. It realized with some glee that a man of this size could not be acceptably dismembered in its current form.
Change.
Watcher heard the sound of its own flesh ripping, as did the man. He turned around to find the source that his addled brain could not fully comprehend, but it was already too late. Watcher descended on him, and into him. Its squirming bodies wriggled through his skin. Apparently it had gotten the knack for swimming after all. The man seemed to agree. His failing scream-turned-gurgle washed over Watcher with all its orgasmic beauty.
This was turning out to be a fun night.
Chapter 1
In Transit
Rain trickled down the limousine’s window in tiny rivulets, the clear tentacles intertwining with the whirring city lights beyond to create a dazzling display of liquid lightning. Dr. Aubrey Pittinger watched the fiery snakes, not completely immune to the beauty of their dance. It only added to the surreal sense that this night, this very strange night, had taken on.
What are you doing Aubrey? she asked herself, and not for the first time tonight. When men come to your door in the middle of the night offering you a lot of cash to meet with someone, you say no. And you certainly don’t get in their car. And who the hell still uses limos anyway?
Obviously, her mysterious gentleman caller was pretty well off. The stretch limo was fully stocked and wasn’t shabby or dingy like some of them tended to be. Her two couriers, sealed away in the front compartment, wore fully tailored suits.
“Our employer would like the honor of meeting you,” they had said just before offering her two thousand dollars if she accepted the invitation. She’d call it kidnapping if she didn’t need the money.
Aubrey just hoped she didn’t just agree to become some drug lord’s new concubine. She should have called the cops, especially when they wouldn’t reveal who “their employer” was.
And yet here she was, riding in the back of a relic of a more gaudy time, going God knew where.
Aubrey was always a sucker for adventure. It’s why she never married. She had a few flings over the years, the last one pretty serious, but she never found it in herself to tie the knot. She wasn’t the “settle down and start a family” type. At least that’s what she used to tell herself. And then Jennifer came along and changed all that.
Oh Jenny. The pain in Aubrey’s gut was almost physical. She clamped down on that memory violently. She couldn’t allow her thoughts to get sidetracked at a time when she needed her head to be clear. She had put herself in a strange situation, and possibly a dangerous one.
“We’re here ma’am.”
Her escort’s smooth voice interrupted her reverie. The limo came to a stop and an umbrella-toting attendant, another expensive suit, opened the door for her. The smell and sound of the heavy but pleasant rain rushed over her. She was still expecting to wake up at any moment, to find herself snuggled up with her cat Buster in her cozy apartment, but reality continued to prove itself stranger than fiction.
At least “here” wasn’t some slummy hotel on the outskirts of town surrounded by gang bangers and prostitutes. “Here” was instead some big corporate office building downtown. Not expected, but not a bad development either.
You might just survive the night after all…unless they’re with the mafia.
Aubrey tucked that pleasant little thought away and followed the suited men in through the building’s glass doors. The marble lobby was elegant to say the least, its vast space dominated by a large glass sculpture of an eagle. Water pumped from unseen openings in the chiseled feather tips and poured down its spread crystal wings giving the impression the statue was soaring gallantly through a storm like the one tonight.
Holy crap. And I thought a table plant was a little too much.
A night security officer nodded to the suits from behind his desk. They made their way around the eagle to the four elevators at the rear of the imposing room. One stood open and they shuffled in. Suit Number One clicked sixty, the top floor, and swiped his security card.
Aubrey wasn’t about to wade through sixty floors of silence. “So what’s this about?”
Suit One looked at Suit Two and back to her. “Perhaps that would be better explained by Mr. Carver himself.”
Carver. Aubrey had heard the name before. Truly anyone who hadn’t was living under a rock somewhere. Carver was the Bill Gates of the ocean world. He owned a number of cruise liners, oil rigs, and was just breaking into the exploration industry, both sea and space.
The name only added more questions to Aubrey’s mind than answers. She decided she wasn’t going to get them here and turned her attention forward. Carver. Aubrey, what the hell did you get yourself into this time?
The lift whirred to a stop and dinged pleasantly as the metal doors peeled away. Beyond lay a large penthouse office and the city’s best watery panoramic view of the streets and lights below. Glass cases lined the walls displaying artifacts and model ships from various eras, each illuminated softly by an array of lights like you’d find in a museum. And beyond at the far side of the room sat a man behind an oversized mahogany desk silhouetted by the city and the storm. He watched her expectantly.
Aubrey shifted her stance ever so slightly. How very James Bond.
“Ma’am.” Suit One gestured to the open door.
Aubrey somewhat reluctantly stepped onto the office’s soft carpet and the elevator’s doors slid shut behind her, taking the suits with it. Right. Bridges burnt. Guess we move forward.
The man stood as she approached and greeted her with a gracious smile. “Ah, Doctor Pittinger. It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said warmly through a slight English accent. The Bond villain ambience was blaring. He was older, somewhere in his sixties, but between his smile and the accent he had a certain disarming charm about him, like that actor that played Gandalf in the movies. “My name, as I’m sure you probably know, is Patrick Carver.”
“Carver,” Aubrey returned the smile with one of her own, “I certainly hope that’s not some kind of promise.”
Carver laughed, his perfect smile broadening. “A man who reaches my heights has a few skeletons in his closet but I assure you, you won’t be one of them.”
“Well I’m not going to sleep with you Mr. Carver,” Aubrey pressed, trying to keep her tone light so as not to piss off the ‘Emperor of the Ocean.’
The business tycoon held up his left hand and waggled his fingers, emphasizing the silver ring on it. “Happily married for forty years,” he said in the same charming tone as before, unhurt by her accusation.
Aubrey regarded him for a moment. Her speculation had come up completely dry by this point. She rolled the question she really wanted to ask around her tongue, slowly building up the courage to spit it out. In her life, she learned that people shouldn’t ask questions they didn’t really want to know the answers to. Knowledge was sometimes painful, even damning. But Carver’s expectant and annoyingly unwavering gaze finally got the better of her.
“So why am I here?”
Carver nodded his head and put up a finger. “That, Dr. Pittinger, is the million dollar question.” He turned and faced out the drenched window, searching the soggy skyline for the best way to say something. “Have you ever heard of the Emerald Rose?”
Aubrey knitted h
er brows. What did that have to do with anything? Still, her curious scientist side urged her to play along. “Of course, who hasn’t? It’s been all over the news. A cruise ship containing five thousand people disappeared a week ago without a trace. It was one of yours.”
“True, but it didn’t go without a trace.” He turned, facing her, his expression knifingly serious. “The Emerald Rose reappeared early this morning.”
Carver’s candid revelation truly stunned Aubrey. The complete disappearance of the Emerald Rose had been the story of the year. As far as she knew, the Coast Guard still had planes and ships out looking for her, meaning they weren’t privy to the information Carver just piled on her. Which begged the question…
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Well you just asked me to—“
“No, me, Carver. Why are you telling me this? I’m not search and rescue.”
Carver’s eyes twinkled thoughtfully. “Maybe not. But you are on a search for truth, as am I. On top of that, you’re an intelligent girl with a degree in archeology, biology, and you’re a capable doctor to boot.”
“Next time I pick through a cell culture in the lab, I’ll sympathize,” Aubrey quipped, subconsciously brushing her hair back over her ear. Everything about this was wrong. Carver’s knowing stare and overbearing charm only made her that much more uneasy.
He snorted. “That’s what I like about you Dr. Pittinger. You’re never afraid to charge right in. You are willing to say yes to the adventure. And you’ve certainly seen plenty of that. The dig you were on in the Middle East was attacked, was it not?”
Aubrey tried not to remember that particular trek. She didn’t even know how Carver learned of it. It wasn’t exactly something she ever talked about to anyone or made a scrapbook of. But Carver had money, and people with enough money could get the dirt on anyone. The question was why did he go through all the trouble? Aubrey was afraid she’d figure out soon enough. “It was a tight situation. People got killed.”
