Ark Of Hope: Beyond The Dark Horizon

by Roger David Francis

  Cassie shivered and drew her jacket tighter across her chest. “You didn’t really think people would be outside sunbathing, did you?” she asked Brett. She would rather have stayed in the dining room but Brett seemed to have taken the lead.

  “I thought I saw someone,” he told her.

  “Look,” Robbie suddenly yelled pointing his finger upwards, “There’s a big red balloon in the sky!”

  “Very funny, Robbie,” Jade’s lips curled into a weak smile. “Stop messing around. What do we do now?”

  Brett was watching Robbie, at the way he was staring; his eyes swivelling around. He’s not really here with us, Brett thought, he’s lost the plot. He wondered why the strange waiter had mashed drugs into the insect mix. Was it simply mischief or was there a darker reason?

  “Robbie,” he said. “Maybe you should wait inside while the rest of us explore. We’ll come back for you.”

  “I can go and watch the Cockroaches?” Robbie asked, his eyes gleaming. He put his finger in his mouth and began fishing around pulling out a long worm. He threw in on the ground and spat. “Bloody bits get in your teeth,” he grumbled.

  Jade had taken a step backwards her eyes wide with horror.

  “Leave it,” Brett murmured to her quietly. “He’s not himself.”

  Cassie shuddered as Robbie began walking backwards into the dining room, a silly smile on his face. He waved at them and closed the sliding door. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispered.

  “Christ!” Jade turned on Brett. “You can’t just leave him in there alone; can’t you see he’s not well?”

  “Yes, but until we know what’s wrong with him, it’s better this way.”

  “Do you think it’s something to do with the mist?” Cassie asked.

  Brett thought it had more to do with the plate of food Gary Wurner; the strange waiter had served up. “I don’t know,” he said, “but the sooner we get off this ship the better.”

  “Hello there!”

  The three of them turned at the sound of the voice. An elderly man was staggering along the deck towards them waving his arms.

  “My wife’s in a bit of trouble,” he said panting as he reached them. “She was taking a shower and she slipped. I can’t wake her up, you have to come and help.”

  An unpleasant smell was coming off the man and Brett frowned, taking a step backwards.

  Cassie felt frightened. She wanted nothing more than to find other people on the boat but this man scared her. There was something not quite right about him. He was a big man wearing a vest and shorts, his muscles swelling on his arms and calves. Matted thick grey hair poked out in curling bunches from the top of his vest, glistening as if sweat had gathered there. He looked about seventy but it was hard to tell. He seemed to step into their space and fill it up. His face, fat and jowly was set beneath a large domed bald head. She didn’t like the way his small eyes kept darting from one side to the other. She tugged Brett’s arm.

  “Leave it,” she whispered. “Let’s just go back inside.”

  “We can’t, Cas, we have to help.”

  “What are you waiting for?” The big man yelled, “Come on!”

  Brett glanced at Cassie and shrugged his shoulders.“It could be a trick,” he said in a low voice. “But what choice do we have?”

  Jade looked like she was going to cry. “I can’t just leave Robbie,” she said, her voice wobbling. She could see her boyfriend through the glass partition; he was sitting at one of the tables shovelling food into his mouth. He seemed unconcerned about her, not even glancing up.

  “You wait here, Cassie and I will go. Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon.”

  The elderly man was already half running in a lumbering gait back from where he came. He was wearing a pair of red rubber sandals on his feet that looked incongruous against his pale hairy legs. Every now and then he glanced back, a look of panic on his face. Brett and Cassie followed him.

  Jade stood on the deck shivering. She was beginning to wish she’d gone with Brett and Cassie, being here alone was frightening and she didn’t think she could rely on Robbie to help her if something happened. She thought she heard a shuffling sound but all she could see were shadows crawling along the deck, the only problem was there was nothing causing them, no people, no objects swaying in the wind.

  She began to walk backwards, all of a sudden afraid of the shadows that appeared to be merging, taking on the shape of a person. Jade stumbled backwards, her head hitting the glass door and she stood trembling. Rising up from the dark pool of shapes was a man. He was tall and thin, wearing a heavy black overcoat and top hat. He carried a walking stick in his hand which he thumped down on the deck with every step he took as he glided towards her.

  When he reached her he thrust his head forward, his face a few inches from hers. Jade could see his eyeballs were milky white orbs rolling abstractly around his eye sockets but she still had the awful sensation of being stared at. She pressed herself back as far as she could as he raised his face up slightly and sniffed.

  “I thought I could smell a bitch,” he growled.

  His voice was deep and scratchy and his breath stunk as if he’d got rancid meat stuck between his teeth.

  Jade began sidling away, taking quiet small sideway steps. The tall man’s hand shot out and his fingers jabbed her shoulder.

  “Where you going?” he hissed.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Do you know what they say about me?” The man’s lips peeled back in a caricature of a smile, “that I’m smart, a gentleman, what do you think, bitch?”

  “I think you should stop calling me bitch. You don’t know me, what do you want?”

  “You. I haven’t had myself a woman for years.” Shockingly he ran his fingers down the front of Jade’s t-shirt. “Come on, bitch, give an old man a treat, I’ll pay you, I’ve got money.” His voice had grown courser and feeling sick Jade grabbed his hand and wrenched it away from her.

  “Get lost, you dirty creep!” she yelled in his face.

  His white eyes swivelled furiously around. He bought up the walking cane in his other hand and aimed it at her. Jade ducked and scurried across the deck to the rail, panting. She watched him beating the air in front of him, cursing. Suddenly his head twisted all the way around and with his back towards her he continued to strike out with his stick while his milky eyes glared at her.

  Oh dear God, Jade thought, he can see me. However impossible that seemed she knew it was true. Somehow the dirty bastard had found a way to see through the white orbs. He began taking tottering steps towards her, walking backwards. Jade glanced down over the rail at the ocean, the waves scudding against the hull of the ship, there was no escape that way; her only hope was to make a run for it. The man wasn’t moving fast but his awful eyes were still fixed on her.

  And then something unexpected happened.

  The two ginger cats appeared on the deck, their bodies hunched up, ears flattened, screeching. They hurtled themselves at the tall man, spitting and snarling, digging their claws into him as he flailed his arms around crying out in terror. He went down fast, the walking stick skidding across the deck as he curled his long body into a ball. The cats were screaming and yowling as they set about him, ripping and tearing at his exposed skin.

  Jade had seen enough. Her heart hammering with fear and disgust she ran to the sliding door and tried to open it but it wouldn’t budge. She stood panting wondering what to do next. It had grown quiet and she dreaded turning around and seeing what was left of the awful man but when she dared glance round there was no-one there. The man had disappeared and so had the two cats. Even the walking stick had gone and Jade wondered if she’d imaged the whole thing because she was tired and frightened and thought that her mind could be playing tricks on her.

  She tried the door again and this time it opened a few inches.

  She knew she should go inside and sit with Robbie but every time she saw him cram another mouthful of food into his mou
th, her stomach turned over.

  The glass doors were beginning to mist up and she pressed her face to the window. Robbie seemed to have half disappeared; he was like a shadowy figure hunched up in the empty dining room. She was worried about him. She was his partner and it wasn’t right to just leave him to suffer on his own. She needed to stop thinking about herself, it was selfish of her, if there was something wrong then she needed to help him. She cast another last look around the deck but there was nothing to see so taking a deep breath she slid the door across and stepped inside.

  Immediately an ear busting blast of rock and roll music filled her ears. She looked around but Robbie had gone and the dining room was empty. It must be coming from loud speakers, she thought. It stopped abruptly and Jade thought the silence that followed it was almost as deafening.

  “Robbie?” She called out but there was no answer. He had to be here somewhere, she thought, he can’t have just vanished, maybe he’d gone to the loo. Understandable if he wasn’t feeling well. She wished now she hadn’t waited so long to come inside, though to be fair she’d been busy dealing with her own nightmare. But Robbie could be wandering around the ship, lost. If anything happened to him it would be her fault. Brett had hinted that there may have been drugs in the food. She’d eaten some of it but she felt okay, at least for now.

  Her heart thumped uncomfortably as she wove in and out of the tables and chairs towards the toilets. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door of the men’s and stepped inside.

  “Good gracious, young lady, what on earth are you doing in here?”

  The young man standing at the urinals with his zip open was staring at her with a mild expression of amusement on his face. Jade felt her cheeks grow warm.

  “I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “I’m looking for my boyfriend.”

  “Will I do instead?” He asked politely and pulled his penis out waggling it limply in front of her. His mousey brown hair stood up in spikes and he was grinning with delight.

  “Robbie!” she shouted.

  “As you can see, there’s no one here but us two little lovebirds. Never mind your boyfriend, he’s long dead, it’s just the two of us. So what do you say, a quickie over the wash basin?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Get lost, creep,” Jade yelled and ran out of the toilet back towards the dining room, her heart banging in fear and disgust. She stopped abruptly. The dining room had disappeared.

  In its place was a funeral parlour. Row after row of coffins were lined up next to each other and church organ music was playing softly in the background. There must have been three hundred coffins and Jade was finding it difficult to breath. She thought she must have come out from a different door in the toilet, but what was this?

  A little voice in the back of her head supplied the answer. It was all the people who had been on the cruise ship when it sank, who’d lost their lives and were now encased in coffins waiting to be disposed of.

  No! Jade’s mind rebelled. She was tired, that was all, this was just another frightening hallucination. She rubbed her eyes and stared around her.

  She felt herself gasping for breath. She knew this wasn’t possible and it crossed her mind she was having a breakdown. Was that what had happened to Robbie, she wondered, he’d had a breakdown? She wished now she’d been more sympathetic, because this couldn’t be real. Two minutes ago this had been a dining room with food still steaming on plates; it couldn’t possibly have turned into a funeral parlour. She blinked rapidly hoping the macabre vision in front of her would go away.

  The organ music was getting louder and every now and then a discordant note would be played making the scenario even more surreal, it meant it wasn’t a recording, someone was actually playing a church organ. Jade looked wildly around but she couldn’t see any signs of where the music was coming from.

  She had to get back onto the deck, wait for Brett and Cassie to come back; they would know what to do. She should never have ventured inside on her own. They could find Robbie together.

  The ship suddenly rolled and she fell forward clutching the nearest thing to her, a coffin.

  Someone was banging from inside.

  She put her ear to the wooden top and listened, her whole body shaking with fright.

  “Let me out! I’m not dead, please, I’ve been buried alive, someone help me!”

  There was a terrible scrabbling noise as if someone was clawing at the lid. The voice was muffled and Jade’s first thought was that it was Robbie, somehow he’d got trapped inside one of the coffins, and her stomach lurched violently.

  Panicking, her hands sweating, Jade began lifting the lid off the coffin. It was heavy oak and she could feel her heart banging erratically. Whether it was Robbie or someone else, they’d been encased inside the coffin still alive and she felt a desperate sense of urgency to get them out of their wooden prison. She heaved with all her strength and the lid slid partially off.

  Inside was the rotting corpse of a young woman.

  Jade screamed.

  Brett and Cassie hurried to keep up with the elderly man as he led the way down a flight of steps and into a corridor.

  “Nearly there,” he gasped; half running, not looking back, his rubber sandals slapping against the carpeted floor. He turned into a cabin door and pointed to the bathroom. “Through there,” he panted and fell backwards onto the bed flapping his arms at them, his breath whooshing out in loud grunts.

  Brett pushed the small door open and lying on the floor in a pool of blood was an elderly woman. She was half covered in a large blue bath towel that was stained bright red with purple patches. Her eyes were open and she was staring up at them. She drummed the heels of her feet on the floor. “The floor’s slippery,” she wailed, “every time I try to stand up I fall back down. He’s no use, the old bastard. Help me up,” she croaked and flapped an arm out from under the towel. Her face screwed up into an expression of disbelief. “He did this to me;” She cried. “Beat me up because I wouldn’t go for a swim in the sea, the miserable selfish swine. I’m going to report him to the Captain.”

  Horrified, Brett and Cassie began to pull the old woman up off the floor. A large open gash on her forehead was leaking blood, and when the towel dropped from her body Jade could see she was shivering, her thin frame covered in cuts and bruises. Cassie grabbed another towel off the rail and covered her with it. “We need to get you some help,” she told her, leading her out into the cabin.

  The elderly man was still lying on the bed and Brett wondered why he hadn’t just helped his wife up, why he needed their assistance. He was a big man; it shouldn’t have been a problem.

  “Found her, did you?” The man licked his lips. “I told the silly cow no one was coming to rescue her but she got hysterical, wouldn’t believe me. She needs someone to blame, see? Don’t take any notice of the lies she told you. I didn’t hit her, she did it to herself.” He laughed. “Clumsy mare’s always falling over.” His laughter grew louder. “Tripped on a bloody bar of soap, anyone would think she’d been bitten by a shark the way she carried on.”

  “You fat liar,” the elderly woman screeched. “This is all down to you and you’re not even sorry.”

  “You’re the one who drank a bottle of gin, no wonder you couldn’t stand up straight.” The man glared at her and then said to Brett, “Go and drop her over the side of the ship, it’s where she belongs, raddled old cowpat.”

  “She needs attention. You have to take her to the sick bay,” Cassie told him. She eyed him with distaste. He looked smug and a bit too comfortable, all the previous panic he’d shown now gone. The way he spoke to the woman was appalling; he seemed almost dismissive as if he really didn’t care.

  “Not me,” he said, “I’m busy doing my crossword.”

  “Well get unbusy!” Brett barked. “She’s your wife.”

  The elderly man looked surprised, he stood up slowly. “Is that what she told you? No, sorry, I’ve never seen her before. Get rid of her for me, would yo
u? Only she’s littering the place up.” He shot the old woman a dirty look. “Just look at the state of her,” he grumbled, “dripping her diseased blood all over my cabin floor.”

  Shockingly the old woman laughed. Blood was still spurting down her cheeks from the gash on her forehead and every now and then her tongue would whip out and lick it as it settled on her cracked lips. The towel she was wearing had half fallen off and Cassie recoiled in shock. Two massive jagged holes had eaten away half of her left arm and a giant soft yellow membrane was growing over it.

  “He’s such a comedian,” the old woman hissed and before Brett or Cassie could stop her she ran at the man. From nowhere she produced a large pair of open scissors and plunged them up his nose. His mouth fell open and he tottered backwards onto the bed, his body shuddering for a few seconds and then he lay still, a stream of blood running from his nostrils.

  “Don’t talk to me about shark bites, you bastard,” she screeched in his face. “I saw you hiding under that big rock, you cowardly old swine.”

  Shocked, Brett grabbed the woman from behind and pulled her away.

  Cassie stood frozen in disbelief. Brett let go of the woman and took the scissors from her flinging them across the room. She stood swaying and gurgling.

  “Well,” she said, “This is a fine ending for both of us, isn’t it?” and collapsed on the floor.

  “She’s dead,” Cassie mumbled, checking her pulse.

  “This can’t be real,” Brett said.

  “You think? Brett, I can smell the blood.”

  “So can I but I still think we might be imagining it.”

  “Did you see her arm? It looked like bite marks.”

  “Don’t go there, Cas.” Brett looked sick. He said, “We have to leave; we need to get back to Jade. God knows, anything could have happened to her, we should never have left her alone.”