The Last Passenger

by Manel Loureiro

  Kate shook her head as if she were on board a train that had been derailed. Everything was spiraling out of control.

  “You need to get off this ship, all of you.” Kate grabbed the man’s jacket and spoke carefully. “There’s something on board this ship that is far worse than a German bomb. Get out of here, or it will finish you off.”

  “Ralph! Bring that goddamn ammunition right now.” A voice, tinged with terror, came down through the hatch opening. The soldier who responded to the name Ralph looked up and then at Kate. His face was full of doubt and panic.

  “Get out of here,” he finally sputtered, pushing Kate out of the way politely but firmly. “Right now. If you don’t, I’ll have you arrested. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ammunition for our guns.”

  The man walked straight toward the shadows. He removed a flashlight from his pocket, awkwardly fumbling to turn it on, as he entered into the tatters of darkness swirling at the end of the hallway. Far too busy with his flashlight, Ralph did not notice how the impenetrable darkness closed in all around him. The explosions from outside drowned out the impatient sounds the shadow was making.

  After a few steps Ralph disappeared entirely. That watery vacuum noise was followed by a gurgle and the sound of something falling to the floor. The ship rocked again, and out of the shadows rolled Ralph’s burnt-out flashlight.

  The growing shadows advanced toward Kate. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and pursed her lips before turning around and running away from the evil presence. The shadows had already climbed up the ladder and visited those on the outside, entangling themselves around the unsuspecting men on the deck.

  As Kate ran she could hear screaming and the hiss of the darkness as it grew louder and moved closer.

  L

  Moore was furious. The Jewish whore had barely escaped. There was no way of opening that door. He howled with rage and pounded on the door with his bare fists. Waves of unnatural anger washed over him, and all he was capable of doing was making unintelligible noises as he banged against the steel. The door became splattered with his blood as his knuckles split open, but he continued to punch.

  Otto.

  The voice. Her voice—a soothing balm to calm his feverish state. With her everything made sense. Moore stopped hitting the door and let his hands fall to his sides. Blood dripped from his knuckles as he tilted his head and listened. He drank in each and every word.

  The other bitch is history, Otto, but this one’s different. She’s dangerous. You’ll have to work for it.

  Moore frowned. He sensed blame in her voice, but there was something else. Urgency, maybe? He was reminded of his mother’s tone when she would head off to work at the factories, yelling out her good-byes as she checked her watch.

  She has something, Otto. Something that makes her special and dangerous. You have to find him and get rid of him.

  Moore shook his head, confused. He had begun to bleed from one ear, but he paid no mind. He felt a light push within his mind, and he was suddenly able to picture Kate’s cabin door shining like a neon sign right in front of his eyes.

  “No,” Moore yelled, hitting the door once more. “I want to find her now. Open the door. I know you can do it.”

  The pressure within his head became more intense, and Moore let out a howl of pain. A portion of his brain died instantly, and Moore lost all feeling in his face and right arm. But he didn’t care. A wave of orgasmic feelings ran up and down his body like a series of electric shocks. It was the most wonderful feeling he’d ever experienced in his life.

  You’ll have that, Otto. You’ll have it whenever you want it. All you’ll have to do is wish for it. But right now you have to obey me.

  “Yes.” A bit of spit dribbled out of Moore’s mouth. “Yes, I will.”

  Inspect the cabin up and down, Otto. That’s where you can find what’s protecting her. If you get rid of it, she will be defenseless.

  With the determination of a shark tracking the scent of blood, Moore headed for the elevator. He noticed that the shadows surrounding him lost some of their intensity. He sniffed at the air like a restless hound and tried to determine what had happened. It was her. Moving. Receding. Moore could feel her doubts and concerns. The connection between his mind and the shadow was so powerful that he was able to perceive the thoughts and feelings of his new mistress with total clarity. They were not thoughts in the literal sense, or at least, Moore wasn’t able to perceive them as such. Still, they were clear, complex impulses that flowed through his mind and viciously laid siege to his rationality.

  She’s worried about something, Moore thought and shivered. Something’s happening to the ship that isn’t in her plans.

  He had no time to contemplate his discernment of her master plan because an impulse forced him to walk toward the elevator. As his boots kicked through the scattered remains of the explosion and as the sounds of sirens and bells echoed throughout the ship, the voice in his head continued to provoke him.

  In her cabin. You have to go there. Search him out. End him.

  Moore entered the damaged elevator, and as it rattled up, Moore wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. A mixture of grease and blood covered his skin like a macabre disguise. His shirt was completely ruined. By reflex he threw it to the ground. He was naked from the waist up. He checked the magazine in his gun and waited patiently for the elevator to come to a stop.

  The doors opened up on the Valkyrie’s main deck. The pits of darkness had multiplied all around the ship. It was as if some fungus had attacked the ship and was meticulously colonizing every last corner of it. Some areas were darker than oil, while others were still full of light and life. The shadows spread without any intelligent design. Rather, the darkness was something organic, growing around what it encountered.

  The only thing certain was that when the shadows reached somewhere, they took root and stayed there.

  They prowled and waited for something to happen. Lurking.

  Moore stumbled through the halls. The waves outside were getting stronger, and the hallway bucked like a wild stallion. From time to time he heard something crashing in the distance. Not even the slightest noise, however, could be heard coming from the areas that had been touched by the shadows, which were like black holes that consumed sound along with light. Somehow, Moore knew that absolute stillness reigned in those bleak patches.

  Nothing moved in the shadows. Ever.

  His ears picked up the muffled sounds of the cooks struggling with the stovetops when he passed by the kitchens. In one corner he watched as several tendrils of darkness seeped into the room like thick smoke, slipping through the vents. The lights grew dimmer until they vanished altogether. The last thing Moore heard as he rounded the corner were screams of surprise and agony coming from the kitchen staff as the shadows established their empire.

  After five interminable minutes he arrived at the hallway that contained Kate’s cabin. Moore didn’t even bother to grab his set of master keys jingling from his belt. He simply placed his hand on the doorknob and turned. He knew it would be open for him.

  He walked inside the cabin, while the shadows huddled in the hall behind him. They were anxious but dared not pass through this particular doorway. Moore looked around before he opened the closet and emptied it systematically. He tossed Kate’s clothes over his shoulders after thoroughly inspecting each garment. When he finished with the clothes, he started in on the suitcases, and once he was through with those, he tore down the framed pictures off the wall.

  Next, he turned to the bed and tore off all the sheets. He sank his knife into the mattress, cut a huge hole, and proceeded to rip out all of the stuffing. He did the same with the couch and Kate’s suitcase, completely destroying it. Once finished, he stood straight up in the middle of the room and heaved for breath. He felt dizzy. His eyes hurt, and shapes were shifting all around him. He had the feeling that something was moving on the other side of the bathroom door, but when he opened it no
one was there.

  Feeling defeated, he dropped down onto what remained of the mattress. His eyes fell on a black ceramic urn that he hadn’t seen before. The waves must have caused it to roll into a corner and be hidden by a curtain.

  Moore’s heart began to race as he walked across the cabin and crouched down to pick up the urn.

  He shook it next to his ear. Something was inside. With great trepidation he uncorked the container and looked down inside. It was sand. He sank his fingers into the contents and then removed them. No, it was ash.

  That’s it. You’ve found it.

  Her voice sounded triumphant, jubilant, and relieved. Another pang of trepidation shook him briefly, but he had no time to react. The voice, eager and breathy, glided into his head once more.

  You have to get rid of those ashes, Otto. That’s his only physical connection. Without them he has no way of holding on to this side. It’s his bridge. You have to get them off the ship right away.

  LI

  Kate went to the outdoor walkway and immediately lost all hope. The sea was churning with an unknown and vengeful fury. The waves, as tall as a four-story building, were lashing the sides of the Valkyrie with the strength of a freight train. Each time one of those frothy behemoths slammed against the hull, the entire ship quivered as if a boiler had exploded inside. The teakwood floor was buzzing and cracking with every wave. In some places the wood had splintered or burst, and half a dozen of the portside lifeboats had already been swept away.

  Kate heard something that sounded like several bottles of champagne being uncorked at the same time. She carefully poked her head over the railing, clutching the baby against her chest as she looked down. Approximately thirty feet below, screws about six inches in length were shooting out like rockets. Despite all of the renovations, the seventy-year-old rivets had begun to burst as each surge of the ocean weakened the entire ship’s structure. Kate watched as an entire steel plate the size of an enormous window was ripped off and dragged into the sea. Petrified, Kate realized the storm was going to destroy the Valkyrie, this time for good.

  Above her, the last of the lifeboats hung from the side of the ship. Kate glanced out to the sea and vacillated. Staying on board the Valkyrie would be an almost certain death. On the other hand, going out on a tiny boat in these conditions was something akin to suicide.

  But she had no other choice.

  She walked toward the lifeboat and started devising a way to unfasten the boat from the side. As she did so, the side door closest to her suddenly burst open, and there was Moore, holding something against his chest in one hand and his Walther PPK in the other hand. Blood gushed from his ears, mouth, and nose. The right half of his body was paralyzed as if he’d suffered a stroke. But his look was one of fierce determination. Kate saw a glimpse of the demons that were feeding on the enormous man’s last reserves of energy.

  “You,” Moore yelled. “You’re mine now.”

  Kate stepped back and felt the railing against her back. The rain and waves were soaking her, but it no longer mattered. She was trapped.

  “You know something?” Moore stared at her with something like respect. “I never would have thought a dirty Jew like you would give me so much trouble. You’ve got nerve, and you’re smart. But I also have those qualities. And I’ve also got this.” Moore smiled and pointed his gun, so Kate could see the barrel’s opaque glint.

  “I don’t like weapons,” Kate retorted and cradled the baby closer. “Or those who use them to kill innocent people.”

  “Don’t you?” Moore moved two steps closer without lowering his pistol. “Guns have two sides, one good and one bad. I’m standing on the good end. You’re on the other end, the bad one. The rest is just extra.”

  Kate realized that he was slurring his words as he spoke, as if the lights had been turned out in a section of his brain. Only then did Kate notice that Moore was holding the urn that held Robert’s ashes. Her heart began beating wildly.

  “Well, well,” Moore said, seeing what Kate was looking at. He raised the urn above his head and gave a low chuckle. “You know each other. Well, say good-bye to this charred fucker because he gets off here.”

  He extended his arm to hurl the urn overboard. Kate gulped, frozen in place like a statue. Everything was moving in slow motion in an uncontrollable sequence of events that would ultimately end with Robert’s ashes in the sea.

  From the swirling shadows behind Moore emerged a figure brandishing a wooden chair, which he smashed across Moore’s back. The chair broke apart, and Moore crashed to the deck. Isaac Feldman was heaving like a train. He dropped the piece of the chair he was still holding and spat on Moore’s body. He put his hands to his knees and tried to catch his breath, visibly shaken. Lifting the chair had taken a superhuman effort.

  “You’re . . . fired . . . bastard,” Feldman panted. When he finally caught his breath, he walked toward Kate with a bright smile on his face.

  She couldn’t believe her eyes. Feldman no longer seemed to have one foot in the grave. He’d made a remarkable recovery. He was no longer the healthy, formidable old man who had left Hamburg, but he also was no longer the senile and drooling shell of a man she’d encountered a few hours earlier, wrapped in blankets. No. The Feldman that stood in front of her brimmed with life, radiating a brilliance of his own as if he’d been refitted with new batteries.

  “Isaac,” she whispered and felt a wave of relief flood through her. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a familiar face.”

  “Listen, Kate.” Feldman stepped toward her and picked up the urn from the deck. “We don’t have much time. Robert sent me. You have to get out of here. The cycle is about to finish.”

  “Cycle? What cycle?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” Feldman’s voice was imbued with sorrow. “But you’ve got to believe me. If Moore had managed to toss those ashes overboard, we would have been defenseless against her. She’s angry but scared. For the first time everything’s different.”

  “Who is she? What’s changed?” Kate fired off. “Why is the urn so important? I don’t understand, Isaac.”

  “It’s got something to do with Pulsa Dinura and the ashes of a dead man, but I’m not sure. It’s all so complicated. Robert’s presence has changed the cycle of events that’s been repeating itself on board this ship since 1939. Now we can stop it. But you’ve got to—”

  A bullet pierced the small of Isaac Feldman’s back. He looked down at the red stain that was spreading across his abdomen. He then fell to his knees, drowning in his own fluids, before collapsing to the deck and shaking like a fish out of water.

  Moore got up from the deck, his hair soaked in the blood that continued pouring out of the wound on the back of his head. He looked dizzy, but he groped along the floor for the urn. He kept his eyes and his gun trained on Kate, who was too scared to move. His aim had been incredibly accurate the first time.

  “It’s over,” he said with a gritty voice. He sounded like an old jukebox that was slowly losing power. “To hell with these ashes and to hell with you, fucking Jew.”

  He struggled to open the top of the urn. In order to do it, he had to put down his gun. Kate took advantage of the brief moment in which Moore took his eyes off her and got up on the railing near one of the lifeboat clamps.

  Moore looked up, having twisted off the urn’s lid. He picked up his gun again and glowed with a savage triumph. The lid to the urn rolled on the deck and plunged down into the sea. Kate followed it with her eyes as it disappeared into the waves. Then, Moore raised the urn over his head and slowly tipped it overboard without taking his gun off Kate.

  The ashes whipped out like a curtain of dust, fluttering in the rushing wind and vanishing into the sea. Moore looked away from Kate for half a second as he finished emptying the urn, and Kate knew that was her only chance.

  The clamps holding up the lifeboat were one of the few modern concessions on board the Valkyrie, due to safety regulations. The lifeboats wer
e lowered via electric pulleys. Once on the sea, there were switches that would release the cables tying the lifeboat to the ship. The switches were located inside small Plexiglas boxes that were to be broken only in case of emergency. Kate hit one with her elbow and prayed she would be strong enough to break it in one try.

  Her elbow broke through the thin layer of glass and cut her skin. But her elbow also hit the switch inside. Moore looked up at her upon hearing the crack. That was enough of a distraction for him not to see as the end of the lifeboat swung down and fell on his head.

  The impact was so violent that all of the ribs on his right side were pulverized and his arm shattered before he even knew what was happening. The blow sent him flying over the railing, and he had no time to use his good arm to grab hold.

  With one final scream of rage, Moore wildly flailed his good arm to grab hold of something, but the damage had already been done. He only had time to give Kate one last look of wrath before plunging headfirst into the cold black waves of the Atlantic. After a moment he disappeared completely, as if he’d never existed.

  Kate jumped back to the deck and fell to her knees, the baby still in her grasp. He had woken up and was fussing tirelessly from the biting cold. The rain hadn’t let up, soaking both of them, and now Kate’s elbow would not stop bleeding. She took a look at the wound and turned pale. The cut was much deeper than she had suspected. She would need to make a tourniquet or she would lose too much blood.

  She walked closer to Feldman’s body and began undoing his crocodile-skin belt. She looked over his body with infinite appreciation and sorrow. If it hadn’t been for him, she would be dead. She reached out to close his eyes.

  And then, Isaac Feldman blinked.

  Kate thought she had imagined it, but the first blink was followed by a second and then a spasm of bloody coughs. The old man was alive, hanging on by a thread, but alive.

  “Isaac,” she yelled and loosened his shirt. “Isaac, look at me. It’s me, Kate.”