He waited out her brief marriage, even smiled and drank the champagne toast at the reception, but the glow in his eyes never dulled. He was always there for her rebounds, an ever-hopeful smile on his face that said he believed she’d stay this time, and the hurt on his face each time she ended their affairs never really left, either. She could see more of herself in his face at a glance than she would ever see in a mirror.
She frowned. What if he was right? What if she pushed him away precisely because misery was easier for her to embrace than happiness? Had her father really tore out enough of her heart to turn her into her own worst enemy? She wished it was as easy as simply dropping into Buddy’s arms, sliding on a ring, and buying a hardbound cookbook. Sometimes the idea even appealed to her. But a stronger gravity pulled her away and insisted she keep him at arm’s length, even in those overheated moments when nothing— not even clothes—separated them.
Priscilla froze at the hold’s double doors. Although she was sure she had closed the doors earlier, they were again teetering open. It was possible, of course, someone else had come through, or even that the cat had managed to nudge them open, but her instincts told her otherwise. Something else had opened doors.
Taking a deep breath, she swung the doors open and stepped inside. In the dark, the hold was a dense forest of deep black shadows and darker recesses, as close to an abyss as she could imagine. Reaching up, she found the pull line and tugged. One by one the overhead lights flickered on, some hesitating before committing, others blazing away too quickly, too brightly. Most of the shadows disappeared. Most.
Resting parallel under a blazing bulb, wooden surfaces bright in the harsh white light, the three long crates drew her attention. The bloodstain on the center of the middle crate had divided and dried into a series of rust-hued blotches. From her distant view, they resembled a series of sloppy hieroglyphs—a caricature of a bird, a triangle, the jaws of a crocodile.
The vibration grew stronger as she stepped up to the crate, a shiver that felt like electricity tearing through the outer flesh of her heels and toes. She wrapped her arms around herself and forced herself forward, even as the sensation crept deeper inside, rattling her bones, sending pangs of arthritic pain out from her quivering arches and talus. Her stomach protested, growling and wheezing, as her midsection cramped, the pain rushing through her, her lungs emptying. The need to curl in half and drop the floor overwhelmed her, but, grinding her teeth, she stayed upright and stepped up to the bloodstain crate.
She dropped a hand across two planks on its face.
The vibration—and her pain—stopped.
The deck below her feet went ghostly still. Without the constant vibrations, the Limpkin felt as if the ship was not at sea at all, or even in motion, but rather floating in a rippleless void. As unnerving as the vibrations had been, this was worse. Even the creaking, mewing sounds of the ship’s hull had ceased, leaving behind only droning silence, the echo of nothingness.
A tickle fingered its way up Priscilla’s spine. Suddenly feeling very alone, as if she had slipped out of time, she turned back toward the doorway and called, “Buddy?”
There was no reply from the under-lit hallway.
“Bud—”
A crowbar hit the floor, rattling, the sound of the collision as loud as an explosion. Spinning in the sound’s direction, she watched as a half dozen more prybars fell from hooks on a plywood toolbar. Covering her ears to dampen the deafening crescendo, she stepped back until her heel struck the bloodied crate. Off balance, she twisted sideways, waving her arms, until she fell, toppling onto the crate. Ear against the wood, she felt a puff of air and dust rise from between the planks, and an odor like dried garlic.
A voice from within whispered, “Free me.”
Leaping off the crate, she scrambled on her hands and knees across the hold to the pile of crowbars. Seizing one, she swung it toward the crate, as if fencing off an invisible attack.
The voice hadn’t been the monstrous growl of the thing she’d heard in the truck’s bed, or her father, or Tamir. It was her mother’s voice.
The hallway double doors slammed shut.
“Prissy,” her mother called from inside the crate, her voice taking strange aural twists, like a weak radio broadcast drawing out some syllables and rushing through others. “Honey, get me out of here. It’s so very dark.”
Rising to her feet, Priscilla kept the crowbar outstretched. The voice had spoken with her mother’s tongue, but with a disdainful tone, the way a master chastised a disobedient pet. Her mother had never sounded anything like that. A dark, rollicking laughter filled the hold. “It’s so dark,” it cackled, “and you’re still mine.”
Treading carefully, she started to sidestep toward the doors, not taking her eyes off the crates, but a faded sign against the port wall caught her attention. Squinting past the words keep side loading bay locked at all times, she could just make out the outline of a metal door cut into the side of the ship. She rushed over to the wall and latched her hands around a large metal lever just below the sign. Pushing with all her strength—and some borrowed by the grace of panic—she worked the mechanism. With a loud crack, the seal broke. Rolling it along a ceiling runner, she threw open the heavy sliding door.
She stood only a few feet above the lapping waves of the black Atlantic. The stench of sea salt, dead fish, and driftwood wafted up to her nose. As far as she could see there was only dark sky above the black ocean.
Biting her lip, Priscilla tightened her grip on the crowbar and turned back toward the crates. In that moment her mind was made up: she would drag each of them to the edge of the ship and jettison them into the sea. No matter how valuable the relics inside might be or how severe the workplace consequences she might face, it had to be done. The things inside the crates had to be destroyed. If her muscles could match her resolve, she would watch with pleasure as they sank to the ocean’s bottom.
A wave of cold wind tunneled through the open door behind her and buffeted her hair free of her hairpin and sent red curls wrapping around her face, their sharp tips stinging the corners of her eyes. Pushing the tangling locks aside with her free hand, she walked to the crates.
I won’t touch it again, she thought, I’ll die before I do.
Instead, she heaved the crowbar down, short blade facing the floor, like a claw. It dug into the gap between the planks. She ratcheted it back and twisted, locking the blade under the lid, and pulled. The crate didn’t budge from its seat on the deck floor. Adjusting her footing, she leaned back, and, straining, tugged. Still, no motion. Grunting, she slid further down the crowbar, drawing her hands closer to the bloodstained crate. With a growl, she dug in with her heels and thrust her body weight into the effort. Her muscles tightened and heat flushed through her body, radiating out from her taut calves, diaphragm, and shoulders. She let out a short chirp of pain.
The box slid an inch.
The laughter returned, louder now, and full of mocking condescension. She heard the beast’s alien tongue as well as her father’s choking laughter, voices mixed like a radio receiving two overlapping broadcasts. The sound cut out, replaced by her mother’s voice: “You still have so far to go.”
They were the last words her mother ever spoke to her, whispered in gasps, the day the men from the hospital took her away.
You’ll be okay, Mom, I know you will—no, honey, I don’t have much time left—I need you, Mom, what would I do without you?—You’ll be fine, Prissy, you still have so far to go—
Priscilla lunged, screaming, and the crate slid. Pain flooded her as her muscles begged her for mercy, but she dropped her hands lower on the crowbar, knuckles almost touching the wooden planks, and pushed again. The crate approached the loading door. Another burst of wind tunneled in, now blowing her hair out of her face, the cold feeling good against her burning skin. Another push, feet skidding, and the corner tip of the crate slid off the edge of the deck. Just another few feet …
The vibrations returne
d, rumbling under her feet and growing stronger, shaking so violently fierce spikes of pain ran up her legs.
It’s fighting back, she thought, and that brought a wicked little smile to her face. “You go ahead and fight, you hear me? ’Cause I’m gonna win.”
Barreling forward, her hands slipped as the crate’s lid cracked and the crowbar dislodged, skittering out of her hands and cascading across the floor. Bouncing, it dropped out the doorway and fell into the darkness.
Dropping onto her knees, she coughed, breathing heavily, and swore. The vibrations, now entering her at the knees, punched upward, jangling her hips. Her eyes shot across the room to the other crowbars. She pushed off the floor and strode toward them, but skid to a stop after only one step. As if commanded by an unseen magnet, the eight crowbars floated up from the floor, wobbling in the air.
Impossible, she thought, before her instincts took control and she ducked, hitting the floor a scant second before the first crowbar soared overhead. The others followed, some flying higher, some lower, one close enough to tease her hair with its wake. Stabbing into the far wall, they hung like a volley of arrows in a target.
Priscilla crawled back toward the crate, no longer driven to force it overboard out of fear but now compelled by pure survival instinct. Had she dropped to the floor even a second later, she would already be dead, bludgeoned and impaled by the crowbars. Abandoning her vow not to touch the crate again, she thrust her shoulder against it, dug her fingers into the floorboards, and shoved.
The crate slid farther over the edge. It would only take another push, two at most, before it toppled over and plummeted into the ocean. Steeling herself, she leaned in, bit her bottom lip, and pushed.
The loading bay door trembled on its runner, drawing her attention in the middle of her effort, before driving down its track and colliding with the crate. The box spun in a half circle and knocked Priscilla away from its end. She rolled, gliding over the floor, compelled by the blow toward the open doorway. She reached out, desperate to find purchase and stop her freefall, already aware her legs had left the side of the boat. The pull of gravity tugged on her feet and calves; the cold air of the open sea sent a shiver down her back.
Her hands latched onto the rim of the crate, her body slid over the edge and dangled there, holding on by white fingertips.
The laughter returned; a torrent of buzzsaw cackling.
The sharp snap of her fingernails breaking sent pain down her fingers as she clawed her way onto the crate. Pulling herself up, arm muscles quivering, she felt a line of blood run down from her mouth. She’d bitten down hard enough to split her lip in two. She pulled herself onto the crate, reaching farther down the wooden planks, elbows against wood, until her hips were inside and she could swing her legs aboard. Gulping rather than breathing, she dropped her gaze down, straight into the gaping hole her crowbar had pierced in the crate. A quilted shipping blanket inside had been pulled to the side.
She stared down into a sunken, mummified face. Time had eaten the nose away, leaving only a dark ridge outline and black crater. The eyes were shrunken slits, pinched closed by a mass of wrinkled skin. The ancient papyrus wrappings, gray and brown, like clay, had peeled away from the salted skin of the mummy’s face, similar in color but smoother in texture. A circular wound bore through the shriveled skin and blackened skull above the left eye socket. Priscilla had seen dozens of mummies but never one with an expression like this. Full of rage and defiance, it sneered with an awful intensity that even centuries of decay could not soften.
Rushing off the crate, she propped herself against the sliding door, now closed up to where the crate blocked its path, closed her eyes, and tried to catch her breath.
The laughter dissipated.
When her eyes opened, she stared out at the dark water and realized the monster inside the box would never allow her to force it into the ocean. It would fight her—and it would win. If it needed, it would kill her. She had no idea why it hadn’t already.
Helplessness cascaded through her, taking her heart and mind hostage. She slid down the door, eager to relieve her legs before they gave out under her.
Out on the black waves of the Atlantic, she saw motion, and then light, and finally a shape: there was a small boat riding on the waves, not much larger than a raft, really. A flashlight beam cut through the night, aimed up toward the Limpkin.
It blinked three times.
Chapter 13
Sprinting through halls and bounding up stairs, Priscilla felt stronger with each stride she took away from the hold. The vibrations under her feet trickled away and had become almost unnoticeable when she burst through the dining hall door.
She’d raced here for several reasons, the best to let the others know about the tiny boat she’d seen drifting on the ocean, but the most pressing was she needed people around her. The two she most hoped to find, Buddy and Mason, were absent.
She saw Felix hadn’t returned, but Bennie and Eli were still there, joined by the men who had assaulted her in the hallway. Sullen and bruised, they were nursing their wounds with cloth napkins and sipping from soup bowls. Eli glanced up from out of his small kitchen, his hands submerged in sink dishwater, and made hard eye contact with her. From his expression she knew he could see the terror still swimming in her eyes. In that moment she wished they were alone. Maybe then she could tell him what had happened in the hold, maybe one-on-one he’d believe her, but he wasn’t alone so she’d say nothing.
“Mason told us what happened,” Bennie said. “First I didn’t want to believe it. These men, they might be dumber than a pack of matches” —he waited for a response from the engine room workers, but absent one, continued— “but I’ve never known them to—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, impatience brimming in her voice. The attack in the hallways already seemed so long ago, a memory like an old painting already bleached of its color by too many years under harsh lights. These were only men. The thing downstairs in the hold was infinitely more dangerous.
“Oh, yes,” Bennie stated firmly, “it matters.”
The tall white man lifted his head. His bulging, discolored nose was clearly broken. Both cheekbones looked to be in about the same shape. His voice came out soft and full of bewilderment and shame. “Ma’am, I might not have made all the best choices in m’life—and I’ve paid for all that—and I know you don’ have no reason to believe me, but I swear on my mamma’s soul that I don’ know what happened back there.”
“Was like …” the black ship hand said, “… we wasn’t us. Like I was watching from inside, but I couldn’t control my body.”
The third man said nothing, couldn’t through his wet, blubbery tears.
“It felt horrible. Like being dead, I guess, all hollow and cold.” The white man rolled up one sleeve. A deep scar ran across his wrist. “I know what that feels like.”
Ignoring them, she turned fully toward Bennie and said, “There’s a boat out there.”
“What kind of boat?” he asked.
“Something like a raft.”
“Ain’t been no reports of the Kraut U-boats sinking any ships this week, not out this way, anyhow. That don’t mean nothing, ‘course, but could be a fresh kill. You see any people on the boat?” Bennie asked. His voice caught her off guard. Earlier, she hadn’t noticed how his accent drew words together into a quick rhythm pattern of syllables and pauses— “Brooklyn poetry,” she’d heard it called. Fear brought it out, she realized, and then a second later realized why: if there were survivors on a raft, that meant there might still be a German submarine out there, too, maybe circling underneath their ship at that very moment.
Bennie jumped up from his chair. “I’ve got to alert Captain Hilliard.” Gesturing toward the three engine room workers, he added, “I know you boys probably don’t feel much like workin’ through your off-shift, especially in the shape yer in, but I’m gonna need you topside to help skim the refugees off the water. You, too, Eli.”
&n
bsp; Crossing her arms, Priscilla asked, “What can I do?”
“Find your boys, Buddy and Mason. We’ll need their help on deck, too.” Bennie swept his threadbare tweed trilby hat off the table, pulled it snuggly down onto his head, and headed into the hallway. Stepping aside as he passed by, she thought it might take a brick wall to stop him. Although not an athletic man, Bennie’s body took on the demeanor of a cannonball as he rushed away, head bowed, shoulders jutting forward, an unstoppable force.
Not bothering to wipe his hands dry, Eli hurried out of his small kitchen, waving for the other men to follow him, and nodded as he passed. For a moment she was alone, listening to soup bowls spiral to a rest on the table, before she too turned and fled down the hallway, calling, “Mason. Buddy. Mason.”
Bennie’s quick tour hadn’t revealed much more of the ship than the routes to the cabins, cargo hold, bath, and dining hall. Quickly making her rounds—her feet moving even faster in the hallway outside the hold—she found neither Buddy nor Mason in any hallway she knew. Exasperated, she headed down unexplored corridors and cracked open doors, stealing glances at rooms full of supplies, food stores, and machinery. Still, she found no one.
Halfway down a hall lined by metal lockers, she heard voices whispering, the words too washed out by distance to discern. She called out, waited for an answer, then followed the sound down a short flight of service stairs. At the landing, she angled her head toward the voices. It was Brigham and Dara.
Eternal Unrest: A Novel of Mummy Terror Page 11
