The Mariner

by Ade Grant

  The pyromaniac pushed closer to him. At first he thought she sought comfort and gladly welcomed the touch, but as she threw her lamp onto the pile of papers he realised too late that she was distancing herself from the bonfire she’d prepared.

  The inferno erupted as the glass case shattered, fire meeting fuel.

  “You stupid fucking bitch!” he screamed, scrabbling away, eyes flicking between the demons and the flames. As yet, the dogs were enthralled by their recent kills; that could theoretically last, but to escape the fire he would have to dash past them, risking their hungry consideration.

  “Ohfuckohfuckohfuck!” he repeated under his breath. Already his eyes were beginning to sting. One of the devils looked up at him, its own beady black pearls seeming to glow in the firelight. It held him in its gaze whilst chewing on a stringy clump of Jeb’s muscle.

  You’re not one of the good guys now, the eyes seemed to say. Far from it my old friend. Far from it.

  Meeting the monster’s gaze weakened Schiff further and he closed his lids to blot out the horror. “I’m sorrysorrysorrySORRY!”

  This was it: Hell. When the world had fallen apart and he’d found himself shipwrecked on this god-awful settlement he’d thought he’d found it. But McConnell was right: Sighisoara was not Hell. Hell was hot.

  With the thought of being either burnt or eaten alive ripe in his mind, Schiff rose to his shaky feet. He had to run for it, past the bodies of his friends, past those demon dogs and then up the stairs. From there he’d throw himself overboard into the safety of the open ocean. Cool water. Salty safety. Fuck revenge against this ‘Mariner’ fellow, death wasn’t worth it. Revenge? Pah! He hadn’t even liked the men the stranger had killed. Fuck ‘em all! He wanted to live!

  Schiff staggered forward like an animated scarecrow, limbs stiff and uncertain, heat at his back galvanising him into motion. Just a quick dash and jump would do it, the dogs were small, no more than misshapen terriers really. He could do it.

  He could.

  Schiff ran the short distance and jumped through the doorway. Too high. He smacked his head on the ceiling sending his vision into sparkling darkness. Something wet and slippery met his foot as he landed sending him skidding forward, collapsing into a heap upon the stairs.

  Weeping in both pain and fear, Schiff crawled the ascent, sure any moment he’d feel tiny teeth upon the nape of his neck. The rising heat seemed to lift his body like the smouldering remains of kindling. Fresh air awaited, a heavenly promise that propelled him onwards and upwards, towards the open door and then the Neptune’s top deck.

  Coughing and wailing, Schiff tumbled through the doorway, once again under the sky, a presence he’d never fully appreciated before. Well he’d never make that mistake again. He’d prize it, he’d worship it: cool, clean air. It filled his lungs, soothing the scorched sensation within, and as he lay prone across the deck he sucked in huge healing gasps.

  Schiff began to laugh. He’d seen Hell and escaped! A second chance had been given. From now on, everything would change. No more theft. No more fights. No more rapes. He was a changed man, a police-man, and he would strive to be a Good Guy once more. Those dogs would be proud.

  The sound of a whip cracking against flesh stopped his laugh as it began, his throat clamping shut like a startled sphincter. A horrible moan of pain followed, though it was cut short by a second terrible thwack.

  Schiff slowly raised his shaky head and looked at the scene about him.

  If he’d witnessed the gates of Hell within the Neptune’s belly, then rather than flee from it as he’d hoped, he’d tumbled through. All about him people were tortured. Some were flogged, the skin on their backs sliding off like film upon hot milk, clumps clinging to the leather chord as it rose for another pass. Others were having ropes put around their necks, eyes bulging as the nooses tightened. One man’s face was repeatedly beaten with a thick wooden stick. Two pained eyes roved wildly above the mush that once was his nose, mouth and chin.

  The violence wasn’t just intended to inflict pain upon the victims, acts of humiliation and degradation were indulged with similar vigour. One man was urinated upon by three laughing tormentors, whilst behind a woman was raped by an equally distraught victim, forced into the act by spectators who lashed at him when they thought his thrusts lacked the cruelty they intended. They laughed and jeered, dark smiles beneath soulless eyes.

  Where had they come from? Was he dead? Was that it?

  Schiff tried to stand amongst the carnage, but found he could not. It was too horrible, too nauseating. Everywhere he looked something terrible was taking place, some act designed to reduce man to vermin. None returned his horrified stare, so consumed in their own activities the sight of one terrified man must have been inconsequential.

  And then he saw him. The Mariner. The man he’d come to kill. He was on the floor, naked with a redhead, rutting as if their life depended upon it. However, all Schiff’s previous intentions were gone. He had no desire to kill the stranger, just to escape, just to feel that cool water he’d promised himself moments before.

  Schiff looked up from the naked couple, one scene amongst many, and into the eyes of the Mariner once more. He blinked and looked again. There were two of them, one on the floor fornicating, the other standing in the centre of the carnage, watching, eyes wide and filled with just as much horror as Schiff’s.

  “What have you done? What is this?” Schiff asked, but the Mariner didn’t seem to notice. He was looking down at himself, face drained of colour.

  The rutting Mariner was becoming more and more vigorous, approaching orgasm. The redhead was too, her hips rising to meet him with every thrust. He hoisted himself up upon his elbows, running his hands about her face. She closed her eyes and welcomed his caresses, gasping as he placed one about her neck and raised the other, curling his hand into a fist.

  “No!” the voyeur Mariner wailed, but his words were impotent. The couple couldn’t hear him just as the torturers and victims couldn’t see Schiff.

  The rutting Mariner began to strike. One. Twice. Each time flecks of blood would hit his cheek, a snarl of orgasmic joy peppered with red.

  Schiff looked at the voyeur Mariner, the real Mariner, whose face was a picture of misery and something else. Something beyond the scream. Was it... was it lust?

  A growling behind him made Schiff stop studying the man’s expression and look back into the darkness. Beneath the billowing smoke he saw several of the demon dogs crawling up to meet him, their muzzles caked in blood, but their bellies far from empty.

  Unable to make himself move he turned once more to the Mariner.

  “My past has conjured monsters to punish me.”

  The Mariner nodded. “Mine too.”

  Schiff closed his eyes and prayed the visions, the fire and the dogs would go away.

  Not a single one did.

  18

  CONFESSION

  MCCONNELL SMELT THE MARINER LONG before he saw him. The reverend was working alone in his spacious church, a large structure clinging to the scent of freshly cut wood, despite its construction fading to memory and the ever present cloying odour of incense. The pews stretched back generously into the shadows, optimistic considering the small population, and it was from these shadows that the smell of smoke and singed clothing announced the Mariner’s arrival. McConnell looked up from his book, a tome he’d busied himself writing during all his time in Sighisoara, and wrinkled his nose.

  “Can I help you?” he called into the dark entrance of the church as he rose from his chair, voice echoing back from the rafters.

  “There was a sign outside,” came the hesitant reply.

  “Ah yes, ‘futures given, demons driven, all your sins forgiven’,” he quoted the charming advert, though his voice faltered in the empty chamber. “You were right to enter when you read it.”

  The Mariner stepped out of the dark and into the light cast by McConnell’s candles, exhausted and dazed. Smoke still rose from his c
lothes, despite them being quite cool.

  “Is this a holy place?”

  “Yes, yes it is. Do you like it? I built the structure myself. When I arrived in Sighisoara I found all the old churches destroyed and I said to myself, this must change. A place needs a mouthpiece through which to hear God’s word. Build a Church and write the book. So I did and so I am.”

  “You are?”

  “Writing a book.” McConnell indicated a large transcript laid out on a well-lit table. “It’s called the Shattered Testament.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Everything,” McConnell smiled, the earnestness in his face betraying his youth, a vigour well hidden behind clipped beard, glasses and worry lines. Altogether his face seemed far too crowded for the slender skull on which it sat. “God, Jesus, good and evil. Have you heard of Jesus Haych Christ?”

  Before an answer could be given, the Mariner swayed on his feet like a nudged bowling pin and crashed to the floor. McConnell ran over to him and after placing a hand under each arm, managed to hoist the larger man onto one of the pews. McConnell collapsed next to him, breathing deeply from the exertion. His visitor was a wreck, clothes stained and singed, dark red stains that could only be blood spread liberally about his body.

  “You look like a cooked rat,” said McConnell. “I’ll get some food. Do me a favour and don’t steal anything.”

  The Mariner opened a wry slit of an eye. “You think I’m a thief?”

  “Bluntly? Yes. I think you’ve been a thief and many worse things. But that’s fine, we’ll get into that. First, do you understand that I can offer you something far more valuable than any object you can lay a finger upon within this church?”

  The Mariner nodded.

  “Good, I shall be back shortly.”

  McConnell left the Mariner sitting alone in the large hall and dashed into his private kitchen. He gathered bread, cheese and a glass of wine. When he returned, the Mariner ate and drank greedily.

  “Who are you?” he asked once the Mariner had finished the meagre meal.

  “I don’t know. The doctor says I’ve forgotten because of problems in my past.”

  “The doctor? You must mean Tetrazzini. You’re a patient of his?”

  The Mariner confirmed whilst scooping up crumbs with his fingers and pouring them into his mouth.

  “How, may I ask, is your treatment going?”

  He thought for a moment, unsure. “I think it’s going well. He’s got some strange ideas.”

  “That he has,” McConnell agreed. “I remember talking to him when he and his daughter first arrived. He specialises in addiction doesn’t he? Well I know a few things about addiction myself.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ginger biscuits,” he confessed, the mirth a tad too defensive. “They’re my sin and I indulge myself whenever I can. Sadly there isn’t much ginger spice left in Sighisoara so I’m having to wean myself off.”

  The Mariner looked at the reverend blankly.

  “I suppose that’s not funny to a recovering... drug addict?”

  “Alcoholic.”

  “Ah, of course. I see a lot of people come and go from Tetrazzini’s rehab centre. Do you want to know what they all have in common when they leave?”

  “Sure.”

  “They all have their symptoms cured, but not their illness. They are still desperately unhappy people.”

  “Then I suppose you’re about to tell me that you can fight the illness?”

  McConnell smiled at the cynical challenge. “No, but Jesus can.”

  “I’ve already found one cure, I don’t need another.”

  “Nonsense!” snapped McConnell. “You saw the sign and you entered. You could have easily gone to Tetrazzini, you can’t miss his place, just keep climbing up! No, instead you came here, because you know you need something else!”

  The Mariner didn’t answer, but instead rose and walked to a small box jutting from the wall. It had a small slit with an arrow pointing inside. Next to it was a drawing of a pair of eyes. He had to stoop to look, but not by much.

  Inside was an amateurish tableau of a man and a woman walking across a beach so wide that the sand stretched into the distant horizon. The wife was heavily pregnant and riding a donkey with her bearded husband leading the wretched beast by the nose. A placard beneath explained, ‘Joseph and Mary make their way to Bethlehem’.

  “The birth of Jesus,” said McConnell. “I built the miniature theatre to tell the story. The box you’re looking through slides to the right.”

  Still keeping his eyes level with the box, the Mariner slid it as instructed and the small wooden frame juddered along a fixed track. One tableau was replaced with another, this time the pair sitting in a wooden barn lined with straw whilst their loyal donkey watched on.

  “It changed!”

  “It’s a series of compartments arranged in order. Nothing has changed, you’re just moving the viewing piece along to see the next set-piece. I use it to tell the story of Jesus’ birth to children. I remembered how effective films were and wanted to recreate the effect.”

  “Films?”

  “Moving pictures.”

  “Moving pictures?”

  “Never-mind.”

  The Mariner moved the box further, sliding it four foot across the wall, every six inches or so revealing a different scene from their hidden stage.

  “Very clever,” he said, finished.

  “You like that, huh?”

  “I do. It was lucky that Father Christmas guy turned up and saved them from King Heron.”

  McConnell nodded gravely. “Yes it was.”

  The Mariner walked back to the pews and sat on the one in front of McConnell, staring at the focal point: an alter built from odd bits of wood and crafted about a central spherical stone. “I don’t know where to begin,” he whispered.

  “Start with tonight. How did you arrive at my door?”

  “I was warned my ship was the target of an arsonist; one of the patients at the rehab centre likes to burn things. I guess the Neptune was too big a temptation.”

  “The Neptune? The ancient ship?”

  “Yes, she’s mine.”

  “You’re a lucky man, she’s a fine vessel. The largest I’ve seen since the Shattering.”

  “The Shattering?”

  “We’ll get to that. You say this woman was tempted by the Neptune. Surely if she was being treated for a compulsion to commit arson, she should be prevented from doing so? Watched at all times if necessary.”

  “That’s not how Tetrazzini’s theory works. He encourages-” A puzzle-piece fell into place as he suddenly remembered the fire that introduced the doctor. “He believes in curing through medication rather than behaviour.”

  “I see.” McConnell said, although it sounded as if he had severe reservations.

  “I went to stop her, but when I arrived others were already there. Thieves or vandals, it doesn’t matter; they were dead.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “Tasmanian devils guard the Neptune for me. Actually it’s not for me at all, they consider it their home and I’m just a tolerated guest.”

  “The devils killed-?”

  “The intruders, yes.”

  “You didn’t instruct them, or train them to do so?”

  “No.”

  “Then there is no sin. These men were trespassers and thieves. Get rid of these dangerous beasts and put it behind you.”

  “The fire-addict was also there, she’d indulged herself before I’d had a chance to intervene.”

  “I haven’t heard the fire bell. Were you able to put it out?”

  “Yes.” The Mariner chose not to share how he’d quelled the flames, slitting open the men’s bellies and emptying their fluids onto the fire.

  “Excellent. I can understand your exhaustion, but you should be pleased. Crisis avoided!”

  In the dark gloom of the church, the haunted expression had returned to the Mariner’s battered feat
ures. “I saw things. Things that weren’t there.”

  “Visions?”

  “Yes. Visions. Ghosts. I think they were things that happened on the ship before it was mine.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m not, it’s just a feeling. A feeling that that the Neptune was sharing moments of her past with me.”

  “What were these visions?”

  “Terrible things. Torture. Rape. Murder. Why would I be shown these sights?”

  McConnell, sitting behind the Mariner, both surrounded by darkness, felt uneasy. Had this man really seen these things? Or had years at sea hammered a madness into his skull? “Perhaps God showed you to warn you from straying too far down damnation’s road?”

  “If he did, then his message failed.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I enjoyed it.”

  McConnell’s heart froze in his chest. This man was mad. Surely only the insane would admit to something like that?

  “And I saw something else too.”

  “What?” whispered McConnell, not wanted to hear at all.

  “I saw myself taking part. Something I did, something terrible.”

  I don’t want to know, thought McConnell. Just leave. Get out, get out now! Sweet Jesus save me from this nutter!

  “I saw myself kill a woman. I punched her to death as we fucked.” The Mariner turned in his seat to look at the reverend. As his face came into view, McConnell was sure the confessor would be grinning a psychotic bloody smile, but instead his visage bore a simple picture of misery. Sadness and guilt, nothing more. “I enjoyed it. Why would I enjoy a thing like that?”

  “Are you sorry?” McConnell asked, feeling a sudden pity for the man despite his confession. “Do you repent?”

  “Yes. But I want to know why I am this way.”

  “Some whys cannot be answered. Not until Jesus returns and sews the world back together. But if you ask for forgiveness, God will give it. This vision you had: that’s your guilt. Ask Jesus for forgiveness, and then forgive yourself. Only through forgiveness can we be cured our ills, not through pills or time on a therapist’s couch.”