Dark Water

by Kōji Suzuki

  As he lounged at perfect ease in these relaxing surroundings, he began thinking about sex for the first time in quite a while. Yet the welling urge was short-lived. Before he knew it, he was sitting up straining his ears. He was sure that he had heard a noise, something that sounded like a human voice. It seemed to have come from the main cabin. Yet there was no one on this boat except him.

  Kazuo went back to the main cabin and looked around suspiciously. Under the galley was a refrigerator, and from behind it came an electric hum. Kazuo felt a surge of relief; the strange sound had been nothing more than this. Opening the refrigerator door, Kazuo found several bottles of white wine left there to cool. One bottle was open and its content partly consumed. He decided to take a new bottle, uncorked it, and drank the wine straight from the bottle. He couldn’t be bothered to use a glass.

  It had been many years since he had tasted chilled white wine. Aboard the fishing vessel, there had been nothing as sophisticated as white wine in the way of liquor. The men almost always drank a strong brand of shochu gin. This was no doubt why the wine had for him a special savour.

  He drank half the bottle, accompanied by a pleasant sensation of tipsiness radiating from his stomach throughout his body. Kazuo felt relaxed, very relaxed.

  … What on earth had happened on this boat?

  It was a question that surfaced time and time again in his mind. Until now, Kazuo had never in his life been aboard such a fine cruiser. Thus, it was difficult for him to imagine what kind of accident could have beset such a craft. He was not even in a position to judge whether it was realistic to conceive that the entire crew had been swept overboard simultaneously. Would that be in fact just too much of a coincidence?

  …Phantom ship

  The words came to mind every time he tried to think.

  Kazuo recalled a phantom ship he’d read about as a boy. There are few people who have never heard of the Marie Celeste, a phantom ship case that occurred well over a century ago. An English sailing ship discovered her floating adrift in the Atlantic. The ship’s movements appeared odd, so the crew of the English ship boarded her to investigate. They could find no trace of the captain, his family, or the seven crewmembers who should have been aboard. It appeared that they had been about to enjoy a meal: coffee cups, bread, eggs, and utensils had been set out on the table. Moreover, the ship still had ample stocks of food and water. Apart from a torn sail, the ship was perfectly seaworthy. People had evidently been in the cabins shortly before the English boarded. There was also ample evidence that the passengers had been enjoying their journey. Nonetheless, the humans aboard the ship, and only they, had disappeared from the ship like smoke. Although the Marie Celeste was discovered back in 1872, a credible explanation hasn’t been provided to this day.

  As a child, Kazuo had tried to solve the mystery. There could have been, he imagined back then, a quarrel. During the course of the fighting, they’d all been thrown overboard somehow, leaving the ship deserted. Or there could have been an outbreak of the plague, with some of the crew making a desperate escape by lifeboat with all but the barest of provisions. But, tragically, the lifeboat had capsized. It was all too easy for a child to come up with such theories, but they did not explain the very real aura of daily routines that had remained so strongly in the air. There had been no sign of any disturbance or trauma to support the theory of a quarrel or plague. The orderly way the table had been set for a meal ruled out such scenarios. Always raising more questions than he could answer, Kazuo had given up the chase in frustration.

  Just as on the Marie Celeste, this cruiser’s cabins were in perfect order. Although no meal was out on the table, the boat had an ample supply of drinking water and fuel. It was also in perfect condition. The interior of the cabins had been kept meticulously tidy, suggesting a penchant for cleanliness on the owner’s part.

  There had been no lack of space on the boat. It had been occupied by a family of four, whose belongings were packed neatly in the lockers.

  According to the boat’s log, the cruiser’s home port was the Bayside Marina, which it had left six days earlier. The log bore a detailed account of each stage of the voyage, coming to an abrupt end on the fourth day. In other words, just two days earlier, some serious incident had occurred on the boat. As far as Kazuo was concerned, all the relevant information regarding the circumstances of the yacht had been uncovered during their initial investigation and relayed to the Maritime Safety Agency. But he hadn’t read the log yet.

  Taking the logbook from the chart table, Kazuo moved to the sofa, where he sat down and drained the wine remaining in the bottle.

  The leather cover of the logbook bore the name of the boat’s owner: Takayuki Yoshikuni, Captain. Kazuo started to read it from the beginning; the log began on the day of the boat’s departure.

  July 21, Friday. Fine weather.

  Dead calm in Tokyo Bay, but backwash from maritime traffic sometimes causes us to roll unexpectedly. Son and daughter have just started summer vacation, our traditional summer cruise gets under way. Children over the moon, but my wife refuses to get into the spirit of things. Accustomed to more genteel surroundings, she prefers to be waited on hand and foot. She finds life on an oceangoing cruiser rather difficult. After all, the obligatory midnight watch will not be to everyone’s liking. Being averse to sunburn, she insists on wearing an enormous straw hat whenever on deck. Not quite what one expects on a yacht.

  Conversely, both my kids are turning into first-class yachtsmen. Takahisa did good by me, winning in the Snipe class of the All-Japan High School Yachting Championships. Yoko may still be in elementary school, but she did very well, too, placing third overall in the Open Regatta, Hobby class. Even if only four yachts participated!

  Both kids couldn’t be better crewmembers. I really don’t know what I would do without them. My wife will not pull her own weight, but if the kids manage to cover for her, I believe we will enjoy a fair open-sea cruise.

  We will therefore sail longer than we first intended. This will now be a ten-day cruise, around the island of Torishima and back. Perhaps we can get as far south as the Ogasawara Islands? No. That will be next year’s treat…

  Reading the log up to this point, Kazuo already had a clear picture of the owner and his family. With a son in high school and a daughter in elementary, the owner and his wife had to be in their forties. The son belonged to a high school yachting club. The daughter, probably a fifth-or sixth-grader, was also crazy about sailing. Then there was the wife, who, being of genteel upbringing, did not enjoy life at sea. From what the log suggested, they were not only well-off but the very image of a happy family. Kazuo couldn’t tell what the father did for a living, but he certainly didn’t seem like a regular salaried employee if he could get ten consecutive days off work at this time of year and, of course, afford the upkeep of a luxury yacht. He had to be either the owner of his company or a successfully self-employed man.

  As Kazuo read on, his envy subsided. The owner’s unabashed love for his wife and children made it difficult for him to feel resentful toward the family and its privileged circumstances. The log, in fact, was invigorating to read and put Kazuo in a sunny mood. Here was the kind of family you never saw in the seaside fishing community where he’d grown up. His parents had fought constantly like alley cats, and they’d been too poor to afford a car, let alone a luxury yacht. As the second of four children, Kazuo had never been pushed by his parents to excel in either sports or studies; nor could he recall being praised by them, ever. His family had never spent so much as a single night away together on vacation. The life portrayed in the log reflected so many ideal family virtues, not one of which his own family had evidenced. Perhaps, it was just that this family was too perfect.

  But by the third day out of port, the idyllic voyage was seeing signs of trouble, if that wasn’t an overdramatic way of putting it. The father was beginning to get bad vibes about something and it was communicated in the pages of his log.

  July 2
3, Sunday. Cloudy, occasional rain…

  It may have been a coincidence, but I’m not sure. I do feel uneasy about this sort of thing when we’re out at sea. I wish she hadn ‘t mentioned the dream at all.

  When Yoko described the dream she’d had last night, my wife gasped and fell silent. She reacts badly to things of this nature. She must have had the same dream.

  Although I can’t be sure, I think I had the same dream too. I can’t be more precise because I simply have no clear recollection of it. Perhaps, as Yoko recounted her dream, I came to feel that I’d also had the dream. I simply can’t say.

  Nothing could be as appalling as seeing your family, your dearest loved ones, drown in the sea before your very eyes and finding yourself unable to lift a single finger to save them. If that weren’t ‘t bad enough, the sensation of having pushed them over yourself lingers in yours hands. Why, why? I cannot understand. It’s the last dream anyone would want to have! Maybe the dream was born of fear. The terror of losing loved ones becomes so obsessive that you come to glimpse the worst possible scenario. Let that stand as the interpretation. Enough! I’d rather not think about it again…

  It was clear to Kazuo what the writer was saying. A discussion of the previous night’s dreams revealed that every member of the family had had the exact same dream the night before. Each had pushed the others into the sea with their own hands.

  The log then went on at length to describe how smoothly the voyage was going. The writer was attempting to dispel the uncanny dream with a forced tone of cheerfulness, and Kazuo just skimmed these pages.

  July 24, Monday. Fair, N wind 3-4 m, Temp. 30°C

  Yoko made another strange remark today. She has a habit of doing this and it’s beginning to annoy me. She seems convinced that she has some strange powers. Such nonsense must be the fad at school. She was probably scaring her classmates with that kind of talk at the school outing before summer vacation. The scene isn ‘t all that difficult to imagine. I know Yoko shared a room with three others. When it got dark, the silly girl must have told them, ‘There’s someone else in this room.’ Hinting that there was a fifth ‘presence’ managed to scare the others. And so now she’s trying the same trick on us. It’s the kind of thing she would do.

  Listen, Yoko. There are only the jour of us on this boat. There is no fifth presence here or anything of the kind. Last year, when I brought one of my friends along, you didn’t like it, did you? You said you had nothing against him but that it tired you having to be on your best behaviour all the time. So I planned this cruise for us to be all by ourselves, just the four of us. Have you got that? The only ones here on this boat are the four of us, the family. Just as you wanted…

  Although there was no exact indication of when this entry was made, it was probably at night. After all, the log came to an abrupt end with the following few sentences.

  …Tomorrow morning we’ll enter the waters south of Torishima and begin our cruise around the island. We must thank God for this excellent weather and calm voyage? I just heard someone scream. Takahisa is now on watch. He probably saw a shark’s fin cutting through the water. Such a sight is certainly not comforting, especially in the moonlight. Now that I think about it, today at dusk…

  At this point, something no doubt caught the writer’s attention, for the sentence wasn’t finished. He must have abandoned the log to go investigate.

  As the captain was making this entry, his son stood on watch, while his wife and daughter were probably asleep.

  The log recorded what the daughter had said earlier that day. Yoko had apparently tried to persuade her father that there was some other ‘presence’ aboard the cruiser. Her father had dismissed her concerns as childish nonsense and later chided her in the log. The daughter seemed to be fond of making remarks that hinted of the occult.

  Closing the leather covers of the log, Kazuo threw it onto the table. According to the entries, something had happened on July 24th – two nights ago. The four of them had either vanished that night or been swept overboard the next morning, though the details of this weren’t clear. Two things bothered Kazuo now that he’d read the log. The first was that the entire family of four had apparently had the same dream at the same time. The second was that the presence of someone other than the family members had been sensed by at least one passenger. Otherwise, the log spoke of nothing unusual. It seemed a faithful description of a smooth voyage.

  Kazuo took a second bottle of wine from the refrigerator. He needed to get a little more drunk if he wanted to sleep that night.

  3

  Kazuo was aware that he was dreaming. But not waking up, he remained crouched atop a large rock surrounded by the sea, crushing the crabs at his feet with a fist-sized stone. The more crabs he crushed, the more came clambering out of the water to try to crawl up Kazuo’s feet. As he brought down the stone, he felt, first, the hard shell resist before it cracked and splintered, and next a mushy sensation. The top of the large rock was so littered with smushed crabs that hardly an inch of the surface was visible. Like an obsessed man, Kazuo continued to exterminate the crabs. He sensed a gaze burning into his back and wondered whether it was his conscious self staring at his dreaming self. But no, the gaze embodied a powerful will intent on senseless slaughter, and it gave Kazuo no choice but to wield the stone.

  Soon there were no more crabs left alive on the rock, but the urge to continue killing did not abate. Where could Kazuo find the life on which to vent his murderous rage? The feeling of being watched grew stronger, and the gaze was urging him on. Obligingly, Kazuo raised the stone high over his head and smashed it down on his feet. The dull thud of tearing flesh and splintering bone reverberated upwards through him. Although he felt no pain, he suffered the horrible anguish of knowing that he was rending his own flesh. He kept smashing at his feet with the stone until the bones were pulverized, and the torment finally shook him awake.

  His eyes now opened and fixed on the ceiling, Kazuo gasped and held his breath. The scene of the dream receded into thin air together with the putrid smell of dead crabs, and the features of the real world, the rocking of the boat and the lapping of the waves, came into focus. Kazuo sensed that something was different. He hadn’t been roused from his sleep just by the terror of a nightmare; his seaman’s instinct that something was amiss had also stirred him. Instantly forgetting the dream, he concentrated every nerve in his body on the motion of the boat. It seemed subtly different from when he’d fallen asleep.

  Getting up, he went to the cabin and tried to calm his breathing. Telling himself to relax, he glanced at his watch, which read 12:30 a.m. He’d only been asleep three hours. His heart was pounding violently. He was getting the feeling that the boat wasn’t plying water.

  It was but five steps up from the cabin to the cockpit. A tall man, Kazuo dashed up stooping, opened the hatch, and made his way out.

  Although he was quite sure that he’d turned on the navigating lights before retiring, he found out differently. The expansive teak deck was illuminated only by the moon and stars above. The stern of the Wakashio VII, which should have been visible straight ahead, wasn’t there.

  ‘Of all the…’

  Unable to believe his eyes, he vainly scanned in every direction. There was no sign of any boat. The line that separated the sky and the sea was now a deep dark thing that also engulfed the cruiser. Kazuo stood all alone in the midnight ocean. An acidic taste came surging into his mouth.

  Kazuo crawled towards the bow to check the bow cleat that secured the rope from the Wakashio VII. The rope was gone. It had apparently come undone from the bow cleat. Kazuo swallowed in alarm. This was absolutely impossible; no amateur had tied the knot; veteran seamen were all masters of rope-work. The rope had been bound to the cleat with a cleat knot and wound around twice for good measure. It simply couldn’t have come undone on its own. He’d checked several times after the yacht had gone into tow. Could someone with a grudge against Kazuo have contrived a slipping knot? That seemed unli
kely, but then, who on earth could have untied it when there was no one else on the boat but himself? Could he have done it himself? It was a hazy idea. Kazuo held out his palms and stared at them. He vaguely remembered seeing himself from afar untying the knot under some sort of compulsion. Another scene from the dream?

  What he’d read in the log flashed into his mind.

  …There’s someone else on this boat.

  It was something more concrete than a hunch. He was being watched. Something was skulking somewhere on the boat and following his every movement closely. Jumping back, he glanced around in all directions and screamed. He could shout as loud as he wanted, but there was no boat in sight and it was useless. He had no time to waste. He had to make contact with the Wakashio VII immediately. Returning to the cabin, he grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed the SPEAK button.

  ‘Come in, please come in.’

  There was no response. If the rope had come loose as far back as a few hours ago, then the Wakashio was out of transmission range. He tried to get through repeatedly, but the handset remained silent. The walkie-talkie was useless. Undaunted, he kept shouting into the thing until his voice was hoarse. ‘Come in, please come in!’

  Kazuo strained his ears. He thought he’d heard something, some faint noise coming from the remote depths of the walkie-talkie. An instant before the buzzing could form into words, Kazuo had instinctively thrown the walkie-talkie at the floor to smash it. It was too late, the buzzing had conveyed the words to his brain.

  ‘Crush the life out of them.’

  That was what it sounded like. It was a dark, damp voice, like some message from the seabed deep below. Kazuo was now in a state of near-panic, on the verge of a fit of hysteria.

  He responded with a shower of abuse, and, rallying himself by making as much noise as possible, he managed to make his way to the radio set.