The Last Passenger

by Manel Loureiro

  The Valkyrie was adrift in the middle of an intense, strengthening storm.

  The explosion spread and hit the weakened walls that separated the engine room from the coal hold. Hallucinating, Kate was seeing double as images from two different times superimposed themselves on her vision. Behind Moore, almost like a magic trick, she saw the stabilizing engines that had been destroyed by Paxton overlaid with the image of the dead Jewish family.

  The force of the blast also caught Moore by surprise and sent him flying through the air. Three or four alarms began going off simultaneously, and the sprinklers began raining down on the fire that spread through the engine room. The shower of chemicals was so strong that Kate could hardly see a few feet in front of her own face.

  It was the moment she’d been waiting for. Limping, she slunk along one of the walls, trying to put distance between herself and Moore. She headed toward the other end of the space, where there was a closed hatch. Kate didn’t know where it led—perhaps it was some rat’s nest or another room like the one she was in, but she had to try. With the baby pressed to her breast, she lurched forward faster until she arrived at the entryway. With her free hand she tried to turn the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

  She could hear Moore huffing behind her as he charged about like a bull in search of Kate. He was getting closer.

  Robert, move your ass and help me out of here. Now!

  Kate closed her eyes and used all her strength to turn the knob. Just then, it released and began turning as if someone, or something, had helped it along from the other side. The door creaked open to reveal a long corridor lined with pipes along the walls and ceiling.

  Thanks, baby, thought Kate in relief as she entered without looking back.

  As soon as she passed through the doorway, the door closed quickly behind her with a thunderous boom. The doorknob turned in the opposite direction as before, and the bolts clicked into place. Through the window Kate saw that Moore had arrived at the door and was trying to open it. The English head of security turned red, and his muscles clenched hard. A thick vein the size of a finger swelled up in his neck, but the knob refused to budge.

  Furiously, Moore punched the window. He stared hatefully at Kate, who was watching him from the other side of the door with a mocking smirk. Slowly, Kate stretched her arm toward the door. Moore watched her with disbelief and fascination. Kate lifted her hand and closed her fist gradually. Then, her middle finger went up right in the face of the stunned former soldier.

  In careful German, overenunciating her words so that Moore could read her lips, Kate shouted, “Rot in hell, you crazy bastard,” as she raised her fist again and gave him the finger.

  Moore’s face turned several different colors, going from white to red to purple. He began shouting as he kicked and punched the door. But all he managed to do was make Kate smile. Moore stopped and pointed his gun at the glass and shot three times. Fine cracks like cobwebs appeared, but the glass didn’t break. It was a security hatch that had been designed to isolate an entire section of the ship in case of a leak and, therefore, was also designed to withstand a vicious amount of force. Kate made one last mocking gesture before running down the hall toward a ladder. She needed to find a way out of this claustrophobic hell.

  She needed to get off the Valkyrie by any means necessary.

  Seven decks above, in a hall that was enveloped by shadows, the potted plants shook as the Valkyrie bobbed in the rough sea. The lack of balance from the stabilizing engines was much more noticeable on the upper decks of the cruise ship. The only light in the hall came from the ghostly illumination of the occasional lightning bolt. A large bronze jar rolled around on the floor, clanging against the baseboards each time the sea slammed into the ship.

  It was the only noise that could be heard in this phantasmagoric space.

  Then, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed throughout the deck. Someone was walking with calm determination. Despite the fact that the entire floor was completely dark, the person was moving easily through the shadows without any need of a flashlight, walking freely, as if he knew every twist and turn on board and whistling a jingle.

  A bolt of lightning flashed outside. Everything briefly lit up, revealing a young man, perhaps thirty, with tousled black hair. He was dressed in a fancy, cream-colored Italian suit. As he walked, the shadows scurried out of his way as if he were surrounded by some special aura.

  The man approached a corner of the hall where there was a low table surrounded by several couches. On one of them sat a bundle of blankets that were piled up haphazardly. The man watched the bundle closely and then took a seat in a free chair, taking care not to wrinkle his jacket. Then, he turned to the pile and spoke.

  “Hello, Isaac,” he said.

  The bundle stirred, and an aged hand covered in liver spots emerged from beneath a woolen blanket. Behind the hand peeked the lost face of an old man whose eyes were watery with cataracts. He was completely bald except for a few hairs on the back of his head that were about to fall out. He was covered in sores, and a string of drool dripped down his chin. Upon hearing the voice, he blindly directed his head toward the man.

  “Isaac, my name is Robert Kilroy. I’m Kate’s husband. Or, rather, I was. All I know is I shouldn’t be here, and you have something to do. The woman I love is in danger, and so is your soul.”

  Feldman drifted in his own galaxy, trapped in a dark castle with no windows or doors.

  “It’s far too late for the other crew members, but not for you two.” Murmuring unintelligibly, Robert was talking more for his own sake until he leaned toward Feldman. “I need you to come back from the darkness, and I need you to do that now.”

  Feldman’s only response was a weak yelp while he put his hand up to his face, as if the faint light Robert emitted was a nuisance.

  Patiently, Robert grabbed Feldman’s shirt collar and pulled him up in his seat. He smelled like urine, but Robert was undeterred. With one hand he began undoing Feldman’s collar and tie. Then, he stood up and gave the old man a light slap on the cheeks.

  “Isaac, look at me. Look at me.” He slapped him again lightly and slid his hands under his armpits to make him stand up. Feldman huffed in anger. “We don’t have time,” Robert said. “So I’ll have to do it this way.”

  Robert brought his lips closer to Feldman’s gaunt and sickly face. Relaxing, Robert closed his eyes and pressed his lips against the old man’s forehead and held him in a tight embrace. They were like two dancers who hadn’t heard the music stop.

  Someone encountering this scene would have been extremely surprised. A tenuous glow was becoming brighter and brighter with each passing second in the room. The source of the brilliance was Feldman’s shriveled body, which levitated a few inches off the ground, held up by some invisible force. His arms were stuck to his sides, and his head was tilted back. Light shone from every pore of his body, beaming through his clothes and radiating from his extremities. On the floor below him was a blanket, embroidered with “KDF,” that had slid off his shoulders.

  The light continued to glow brightly. The shadows whirled about in fear and cried out in pain. The glow emanating from the elderly man melted the shadows as if it were acid. Any shadow in the path of that light was shredded and fell to the floor. The lights in the hallway trembled weakly, and the filaments in the lightbulbs began glowing faintly, like smoldering embers. Vanquished by the powerful glow, the shadows fell back down the hall.

  And then, Isaac Feldman opened his eyes.

  At the same time, seven decks below, a dark and ancient presence lifted its head and took notice of the unexpected glow. The entity deliberated over its toy, a muscular man in uniform who was pounding furiously on a door as his target made disrespectful gestures on the other side of the glass. The timeless creature hesitated. For the first time in an endless cycle, something had changed. The creature felt disconcerted, and it did not like the feeling.

  It took one last look at its prey and roared angril
y as it flew off toward the upper deck. Toward the defiant light.

  Isaac Feldman blinked several times, perplexed. His cataracts were disappearing, something that would have made any ophthalmologist faint in disbelief. It took only a minute for them to vanish completely.

  “What . . . who . . . what’s going on here? Who are you?” Feldman’s voice still sounded weak. But the relentless businessman was gaining his fire back from beneath the shattered ruins.

  Robert responded by looking Isaac Feldman in the eyes. Without a single word uttered between the two of them, Feldman understood everything. Every last bit of the truth became clear.

  There was no doubt. Feldman was going to die within the hour.

  XLIX

  Kate found that climbing up a ladder while holding a bawling baby was much more difficult than she’d expected. She needed to use one of her hands to hold the little boy, leaving only one hand free to hold on to the bars as she climbed up. Her head still hurt, and she suspected her swollen ankle might be broken. Every time she put weight on it, a flash of pain crept up her leg.

  The ladder was part of a service duct that seemed endless. It was illuminated every few feet by a flickering light that trembled like drunken fireflies. The heat was absolutely stifling. Kate was unable to do anything about the sweat running down her face except close her eyes, which only made it worse.

  Each time she shut her eyes, a new image greeted her upon opening them again. It felt like someone with a remote control was wildly changing the channel in her head. In one moment Kate was able to see a well-lit tunnel with pipes that were painted bright colors and the glinting metal of the ladder’s rungs. But in the next, the lights were covered in layers of cobwebs, and the pipes were broken and riddled with rust. Every time that happened, the steel ladder was substituted for a rotting, swollen wooden one that was on the verge of crumbling like sand.

  All of it should have disturbed Kate, but she found herself calmer than ever. Her fright had faded and was hidden in some remote corner of her mind, far too weak to come out. She was in a state of tranquility that she hadn’t felt since before she’d been handed Robert’s remains in an urn.

  Confident, she saw everything clearly, and she knew she wasn’t on the Valkyrie by coincidence. She had a specific role to play. Kate no longer felt like the events controlled her. The story had already been written, but she knew that, thanks to Robert’s help, she could change the ending.

  She’d taken the initiative and confused the shadow.

  The movement of the baby against her chest broke her thoughts. He was still wrapped in a blue-and-white tallit, and a gold chain hung from his neck, lost in the rolls of his baby fat. Kate didn’t need to look to know that the end of the chain had a small Star of David—the same one Feldman had shown her a few days before.

  She paused a moment to catch her breath and looked at the baby’s scrunched-up face. She stroked the top of his head down to his chin.

  “One day you’re going to be a very important man, Isaac,” she whispered to him sweetly. The boy began hungrily moving his mouth toward her finger in search of nourishment. “That is, if this shadow doesn’t get us. I think your grandpa set free something quite dangerous.”

  His last words continued ringing in her ears: Pulsa Dinura.

  Kate knew exactly what it meant.

  A few years ago she’d worked with Robert on a story about ultraorthodox settlements in Israel. In the course of their investigation, they came across the fact that in certain parts of Jerusalem a few very unusual groups had retained the values and customs that reigned in central Europe in the nineteenth century. The groups were quite hermetic and turned their backs on the state of Israel. In order to maintain their rich cultural identity, they harbored Kabbalists who practiced the Jewish equivalent of black magic. For those practitioners their most powerful weapon was the Pulsa Dinura.

  Invocation of the Shadows.

  The only problem was that such power required a spell caster of equal magnitude to control it. Someone who was able to see the future and prevent letting the shadows take over. Very few people in the world had the knowledge, which took decades of study, to do it, and even fewer ever called on the dark power. These ancient and prudent individuals knew better than to wake such a monster if it were not absolutely necessary.

  The man who had invoked Pulsa Dinura now lay dead on the boiler room floor, several floors below, having been killed by his own handiwork. The monster he’d summoned, free for the first time in eons, no longer had a master. It found itself ravenous and full of hate and pain.

  Kate had never believed in such mysticism. As far as she was concerned, it was no more than folktales and legends for those who lived in a fantasy world of superstition. Tales that were quaint but imaginary. But now she believed.

  A thunderous boom sounded from one side of the Valkyrie. The ship tilted sharply about ten degrees, and the lights flickered out for a moment, leaving Kate in total darkness. Amid a chorus of metal scraping, the Valkyrie slowly righted itself as Kate clung to the ladder to avoid falling. The ship was pitching and heaving. Without the propulsion of the engines, the Valkyrie was no more than a hunk of metal and wood floating on the vastness of the ocean, mercilessly rocked by the waves.

  Kate looked down and immediately regretted doing so. Below her was a drop of nearly one hundred feet with boiling hot pipelines all around. One wrong step and she would end up being no more than a pile of broken bones at the bottom of a pit. She clutched the child closer and began climbing up the ladder again until she was forced to stop once more to catch her breath.

  She looked up to see a hatch door no more than six feet above her head. She blinked several times before sighing hopefully. That had to be the exit. But Kate could only see the door when she was in 1939, so she was forced to wait for the rocking motion of the ship to sync up with the correct moment in time.

  The next time the door entered her vision, she jumped for it. Her ribs smacked hard against the door, knocking the wind out of her, but it opened. She balled herself up to protect the child and found herself rolling on a carpeted floor before hitting a wall.

  Kate was dazed, and it took awhile for her to stand. When she did, she recognized the passage as belonging to first class. She walked down the hall with the baby held tight and looked around. Most of the hall lights were still working, but some hallways were no more than pits of darkness. Kate avoided them, making a wide circle in order to get to the outside deck of the Valkyrie.

  Her goal was to get to the walkway that surrounded first class, find one of the lifeboats, and hide inside. It was better to risk her life in the middle of the ocean on one of those boats than to spend one more second aboard this cursed ship. On the other hand, the Valkyrie was not going anywhere. The storm had become a beast. Bolts of lightning flashed all around. The thunder was loud enough to shake everything. There were no windows where she was, and Kate was unable to see the sea, but she figured the waves had to be monumental, judging from the way the ship was swaying.

  Everything appeared deserted. The floor was covered with confetti and empty bottles rolling from side to side. It looked like the celebration there had ended just minutes ago. Rows of KDF paper flags along with swastikas lined the ceiling. But nobody was in sight.

  Several claps of thunder rumbled outside. The ceiling above her head shook, and the chandeliers jingled. Kate looked up in confusion. It was not thunder she heard. It sounded more like a continuous series of staccato explosions. It stopped. Those had been gunshots.

  Her resolve began slipping away. What was going on up there? Who was shooting? Who were they shooting at?

  Something moved behind her. She spun around and felt a chill down her back. Shreds of shadows were whirling in the corners, each fragment stretching out to link with another and form ever-larger blocks of darkness. A nervous whispering could be heard, getting louder by the second. It was already taking up the entire end of the hallway and was slowly growing as it advanced. The shad
ow seemed to be waiting for something.

  Kate heard footsteps approaching. She looked around but saw nothing that could be used as a weapon, and she could not recede into the shadows. Suddenly, a trapdoor above her head opened, and a drop ladder crashed down in the middle of the hall. Through the opening, gusts of frigid wind brought in sheets of rain that soaked the carpet below. A man came down the ladder, taking care not to slip. He was wearing military boots, a wide-brimmed helmet, and a uniform with the insignia of the British Home Guard.

  The weathered-looking, thickset man of about forty jumped to the floor and turned to look at Kate. His face twisted into a look of surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing here, ma’am?” he shouted. “The Germans are up there. The entire southern section of the port has been razed, and more airstrikes are coming. This is a combat zone.”

  Kate looked up through the trapdoor opening. Through the rain and lightning, she could make out about half a dozen men huddled around an antiaircraft gun that was launching heavy artillery into the sky. Above the howling wind Kate could hear the distant drone of aircraft. When far-off explosions echoed over the ship, the sailors crouched behind their weapons, hands on helmets, in search of a nonexistent safety.

  “It’s seriously not safe here.” The man’s tone was paternal and conciliatory. “Go back on land and search for shelter. If the Germans bomb the ship, we’ll all be dead. You and your baby.”