by RA Williams
‘Here,’ he said, handing her a glass. ‘Take a belt.’
‘Thanks.’ She took the glass tumbler in her shaking hands and knocked the liquid back, the rye’s burn warming her.
Putting back his own drink, her father choked.
‘Where did you get this coffin varnish from?’
‘Where do we get any of our booze? Canada, of course.’
‘It’s not bad.’ He put his glass down and went to the telephone on her desk. Lifting the receiver, he tapped the cradle several times. ‘Lines are down. Was anything taken?’
‘I don’t know.’
Shining his torch around the room, the beam settled on the open safe.
‘Anything valuable in there?’ he asked.
She nodded, looking inside. The escudos remained.
‘Where have all those gold coins come from?’
‘Services rendered. I assisted in the recovery of quite a treasure trove.’
‘Looks like it. I had no idea St Dunstan’s was participating in any expeditions just now. How much…’
‘Gratis. In fact, St Dunstan’s made a profit.’ Before he could question her as to how, she said, ‘I made a deal.’
‘What kind of deal?’
‘You know… a deal, deal. The science institute will be the first museum to display nine Mayan stelae recovered from the ocean floor.’ Rubbing her hair over with the towel, she wrapped it around her shoulders.
‘Those coins you’re looking at are worth a half-million bucks.’
He turned back to the safe, whistling.
‘Hang on. Someone goes to the trouble of prying off the door to your safe then doesn’t make off with gold coins worth a half-million dollars?’
Contemplating this, she leaned over, lifted her bag from the floor and looked inside again.
‘Unless they were looking for something more valuable to them.’ Checking the interior pocket where she had put Balthasar’s talisman she’d kept since Titanic, she realised immediately. ‘Shit. It’s gone.’
‘What is?’
‘The talisman I’ve worn about my neck the past seventeen years.’
‘It wasn’t around your neck?’
Instinctively, she raised a hand to her chest, feeling the amulet replacing it on the gold chain. ‘I haven’t worn it since Honduras.’
‘You were in Honduras?’
‘Long story, Father.’
She nearly leaped for the chair as the power kicked back on and the lamp suddenly flooded her office in soft light.
Opening her soaked shirt collar, she tugged on the chain around her neck, retrieving the small oyster-cased amulet she had taken from the cannon. Had they been watching her all along?
On his way to try the telephone again, her father picked something up and put it on her desk. Her tennis ball. It rolled, and he caught it just as it fell off the end, offering it to her.
‘Where did you find that?’ she asked.
‘It was right there, on the floor. It’s yours.’
She rolled it around with her fingers. R.F. Downey & Co. It was hers.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the one she’d caught bouncing down the stairs. ‘So is this.’
They were identical. But she had saved only the one from Titanic.
Arms akimbo, her father asked, ‘Eleanor, are you in some sort of trouble?’
Gripping the tennis balls from Titanic’s hold, she looked out of the window, the lightning strikes distant now, the storm moving off. Through the parting clouds, she saw the whole of the moon.
‘I think I am,’ she replied, remembering what the phantom had proclaimed before vanishing into the forest behind Lake Jonah. ‘Seems the dead have been resurrected.’
❖❖❖
14 APRIL 1912
RMS TITANIC,
THE NORTH ATLANTIC
Mahmoud Hajian heard rivets popping an instant before a churning wall of water slammed him against the bulkhead separating No. 1 Hold from No. 2 Hold. Although he had managed the odd graceless crawl when splashing about off Folkestone’s shingle beach, he’d never quite learned to swim. There hadn’t been much need for it in Persia.
His shotgun had been trained on the Sentinel while Balthasar impaled it with a spike when the foolish girl interrupted them. He hardly had a moment to wonder how she had got there before the hold’s hull plates fractured, his double-barrelled Winchester taken by the icy cauldron. More bothersome, though, was the loss of his bowler. It had taken months to fit it properly to his head, and there was no telling when he’d return to Bates for another. Pulled under by his heavy greatcoat, Mahmoud’s lungs filled with seawater as he inhaled, the heaviness in his chest causing him momentary panic. Expelling the water, he inhaled again, lungs refilling. As odd a feeling as it was, he calmed himself. He had never drowned before – nor was he about to start now.
Striking a solid object, his eyes flashed open. Lights encased under glass still burned along a catwalk. Grabbing its rail, his body twirled in the maelstrom as mutilated corpses bumped him and were sucked away, their intestines trailing behind like a Portuguese man-o’-war’s tentacles. The Crimen had turned Titanic’s forward hold into their abattoir.
None of them had expected an iceberg.
Through stinging salt water, Mahmoud glimpsed movement ahead. Abloom in the flooding, a faded pink gown offered a glimpse of perfection underneath.
The banshee Siobhan.
Flawless pale skin and long, lean, muscled legs he could just imagine wrapped around Balthasar as he penetrated her. If the Persian were so inclined, he could fancy her carnal embrace. But he had no taste for what she had on offer.
She snarled, a submerged, primal howl muffled by the flooding and buckling bulkheads. She had consumed and was now whole. Given a chance, the banshee would rip him to pieces, but in the cold chaos she was as helpless as he, and in the next instant was sucked through the hatch to No. 2 Hold and the rest of the ship.
The lights winked before Mahmoud was left in darkness. Holding tightly to the handrail, the flooding unexpectedly changed direction, ensnaring him in some sort of netting. He knew how to reach deck via a Third Class entrance, twists and turns through escape ladders, companionways and accommodation staircases under the forecastle head. But flooded and in total darkness, it would be impossible to muddle his way out. Before he could consider his next action, he found himself beginning to float.
The netting. A cargo net used for lowering stores from Titanic’s deck to the hold; it was fringed with cork. Snared as he now was by the netting, he relaxed his grip on the rail, permitting the churning seawater to take him. He swirled and bumped against objects in the darkness, some solid, others malleable – the latter, surely corpses.
His ears popped. He was ascending rapidly and must have been forced into the cargo access shaft leading to the well deck. Far above, he picked out hints of light amid churning water. No. 1 hatch had gone, probably blown off by back pressure as the flooding forced the air from the hold. In another moment, he was purged from the ship’s innards.
Bursting through the surface, expelling seawater from his lungs, he gasped for air at last. All around, the sea regurgitated crates and wardrobe trunks from the hold. He decided to remain attached to the net, as the cork balls were keeping him afloat. Trunks, airtight and buoyant, became entangled in it as the escaping water from the cargo hatch thrust him against the ship’s forward mast.
Shouts for mercy were drowned out by the deafening shriek of steam shooting from the foremost funnel as boilers blew off.
Although there were hundreds of passengers on deck, all the lifeboat ropes and blocks hung empty. Desperate passengers leaped from deck, reaching out to take hold of the ropes, like proverbial rats abandoning the doomed ship. Some slid down the ropes to the sea; others lost their grip, spinning helplessly into the water. Hopeless as it might be, abandoning Titanic was a wiser choice than hanging about waiting to be sucked down with the ship when she made her death plunge.
&n
bsp; Silhouetted by one of the ship’s enormous buff funnels, a man leaped confidently into a fall, slid down the rope and dropped elegantly into the sea, before swimming away from the ship. Mahmoud kicked his legs, disentangling his netting from the mast, already feeling the ship beginning to pull him down with it.
There were others alive in the water, kept afloat by their lifebelts.
‘Spare me,’ a small voice called to him in anguish. He turned. A woman, tangled wet hair over her face, flailed in the bitterly cold sea.
He grasped her lifebelt. ‘I have you.’
Lifting her trembling arms one at a time, he rested them on his flotsam raft.
‘Cold… taken the life… outta me,’ she managed through chattering teeth.
‘I know, darling,’ he said with pity. ‘Can you climb up onto the wardrobes? You’ll be out of the water.’
‘I can get air in ma lungs… just.’
She was Scottish. Not working-class, nor a lady of high breeding, and she was neither young nor a grandmother. Already the cold had rendered her helpless and, like Titanic, she was doomed. Lowering his own stiffening arm underwater, he lifted her like a bear hauling salmon from a rushing river. Dropping her atop the crates caused them to sink momentarily before they bobbed to the surface again. As the raft stabilised, she was just able to take hold of the rope netting.
‘Bless you, sir. Bless you,’ she whispered, face inches from his, her frosted breath clouding his spectacles.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said reassuringly, but as he took hold of her hand, he felt her life ebb away.
Brushing her hair away from her face, he watched her grasp for the little bit of life she had left. But she could not hold on.
‘Bless,’ she repeated, voice a gentle rattle, before she went still.
‘Death strikes when fate ordains,’ he said, watching her eyes empty.
Already, she saw beyond the edge of mortal vision.
‘I envy you. For you have arrived to a Paradise I shan’t ever see.’
‘Oi.’
Neck stiff, Mahmoud slowly turned to see Balthasar stroking towards him.
‘All right, me old china?’ he asked, oblivious to the misery all around him.
Swimming to the Persian’s jumble of floating debris, Balthasar took hold of the netting, nose and ears bright red from the bitter cold. After a glance at the woman lying atop the crates, he gave her a poke.
‘Don’t do that,’ snapped Mahmoud.
‘She’s on her way out,’ Balthasar said, face wooden, voice devoid of anything at all.
‘Let her be a little while.’
Balthasar looked back at him without response. Manoeuvring around the corpse until he was beside Mahmoud, he asked, ‘However did you escape the hold?’
‘Got belched out No. 1 hatch,’ he replied, still tightly holding the dead woman’s hand. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘I bumped into our uninvited guest.’
‘What, that silly girl?’
Balthasar nodded. ‘Carried her up to Scotland Road. Strange as it might sound, I couldn’t leave her to drown.’
Titanic groaned. Turning their gaze to the ship, they watched her stern rise entirely out of the sea.
‘As opposed to her drowning when the ship sinks?’
Balthasar looked towards the now distant lifeboats.
‘There’s hope she’s on one of them. Strange, though.’
‘What?’
‘I half expected to find terror in her eyes,’ Balthasar replied, almost talking to himself. ‘But she was having none of it.’
‘I saw her,’ Mahmoud said.
‘Suppose she was just being a dopey girl.’
‘No.’ Clearly, Balthasar hadn’t twigged on to what he meant. ‘The banshee.’
‘Siobhan?’
The Persian nodded.
‘Where?’
‘When we were swept up in the flooding. She must have been in the hold all along, Buster.’
‘Bugger.’
‘She’s trapped below decks,’ Mahmoud said, watching the wounded ship loll lazily from port to starboard.
‘Titanic’s lost her stability. Won’t be long before she plunges.’
‘Then the banshee is not going anywhere.’
‘You managed, though,’ Balthasar countered.
‘Just dumb luck,’ he replied, raising a hand swollen like a boxing glove. ‘My extremities have frozen. Surely it’s the same for her?’
‘We ought not depend on dumb luck.’
Producing a nip flask from his pocket, Balthasar struggled to open the top, his own hands beginning to freeze. Taking a sip, he passed it across the netting to Mahmoud.
‘It can’t hurt.’
Mahmoud took a mouthful, his throat warming as brandy went down. A second gulp and he returned it. ‘Sentinel?’
‘He’s done.’ Balthasar took another swig. ‘I spiked him right good. He’ll go to the bottom with the ship.’
Terrific splashes abruptly drew their attention. Those left behind were leaping from the ship. They fell like bombs, six decks to the sea. Mahmoud looked to the distant lifeboats.
‘For God’s sake, why don’t they come back?’
‘They don’t want to be pulled down by the ship’s suction when she goes.’
He watched two men – two of perhaps a thousand left behind – light cigars.
‘There ought to have been far more lifeboats.’
‘There’s one,’ said Balthasar, pointing out a collapsible canvas boat being lowered just aft of the bridge.
‘That flimsy thing?’
‘Better than being in the water. But I don’t expect it’ll last long on the open sea.’
‘Will we?’ Mahmoud asked.
Prising a frozen hand from the netting, Balthasar’s fingers cracked as he slowly unclenched them.
‘We might freeze. But not to death.’
They watched as the two men smoking cigars tossed them aside and leaped into the descending collapsible.
‘They’re the lucky ones,’ Balthasar added.
Turning the raft, he began to kick his feet, moving them away from the doomed ship. Nudging the dead woman’s frost-covered body, he told Mahmoud she needed to be put off.
Mahmoud intensely disliked Balthasar’s ruthlessness. ‘Won’t you let her be?’
‘She’s frozen stiff. We’ll be better able to manoeuvre with her off.’ Pitiless as the comment might be, it was a hard truth. The poor woman was dead weight, and only served to slow them down. Ashamed of himself for being unable to save her, Mahmoud begrudgingly helped shift the frozen body to the edge of the crates. Balthasar slid her into the water with as much interest as launching a toy boat.
‘What a sad bloody waste,’ Mahmoud muttered.
A peculiar whipping sound drew his attention swiftly away. Steel lines securing the forward funnel under tension began snapping one by one, the freed ends cut across the deck.
One of them whipped through the arm of a nearby cabin steward, slicing it off with a surgeon’s precision. Knees buckling, the steward collapsed, the encroaching sea swallowing him up.
‘Kick!’ Balthasar shouted, as the funnel leaned lazily towards them.
With all his might, Mahmoud forced his frozen legs into action, propelling the raft away as the funnel now bore down upon them. As it struck the sea mere feet away, the resulting wave pushed them further from the ship. The next moment an unearthly groan filled the night air as Titanic’s back snapped.
‘Jesus wept,’ Mahmoud cursed, watching unfortunates sucked into the flooding cabins and public rooms. An explosion deep beneath Mahmoud reverberated through him, the bubbling sea growing strangely warm.
‘Boilers brewing up,’ Balthasar noted, without the slightest alarm. Titanic’s stern rose high out of the water, its lights winking once, before plunging the ship into darkness.
‘She’s had it.’
An enormous air bubble belched from the bow as it disappeared beneath the
waves. Small white balls surfaced all around the raft. Scores of them. Reaching out, the Persian took hold of one.
‘Tennis balls.’
‘A crate of ’em must have broken up.’
It was the stern’s turn to plunge now. The shrieks of those remaining until the end filled the night, becoming a single hysterical wail. Abruptly they ceased as the fantail slipped beneath the sea.
Titanic was gone.
Silence.
Then screams from within the haze of coal smoke as hundreds of survivors bobbed to the surface, their cries for mercy dreadful.
Instinctively, Mahmoud kicked towards them – whether to save or watch them perish, he hadn’t yet decided.
Balthasar reined him back, towing the raft away from the survivors. Mahmoud knew there was naught to be done. Amid the cries, he picked something out. A faint singular cry. Straining his waterlogged ears, he heard nothing more of it.
He dearly hoped he had imagined the banshee howl amid the screams of the dying.
A man burst through the surface, vomiting up a lungful of seawater. Even in the darkness, Mahmoud could see he was a gentleman in white tie and a fur-collared greatcoat. Despite Balthasar’s frown, Mahmoud took hold of the man’s lifebelt.
‘All right then.’
‘Mein Gott,’ the man gasped. ‘Mein Gott.’
‘Alles in Ordnung.’ The Persian told the German he would be all right now that he had hold of him. ‘Ich habe dich.’
The man pulled his face against the netting like a child to its mother’s bosom.
‘Is she gone?’ he asked.
Mahmoud nodded grimly.
‘I was at the stern,’ said the German. ‘I stayed until the end. The ship took me down with her when she went under.’
‘Your lifebelt saved you.’
The German attempted to pull himself onto the flotsam, but he had not the strength. ‘We must get out of the water.’
‘There’s nowhere to go,’ Balthasar pointed out.
