Sargasso

by Russell C. Connor

  “What happened to it? Do you think it was still on the yacht when it went down?”

  “No, he put it in his pocket just before that big guy got on board.”

  Amber pointed across at their attackers’ ship, where four men were climbing over the side and dropping into the metal bottom of the rowboat. “Stay here and yell when they get close. I’ve gotta see what he’s doing.” She started to get up, then turned back to the Cherrywine. “And stay away from the water. Just in case.”

  She went into the cabin and stood just inside the door for a few seconds, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the moonlight filtering through the streaked, filth-encrusted windows on either side.

  The room in front of her was long and rectangular, and looked like a rather snug living room, circa 1980. The walls were paneled with fake wood grain, the floor tiled in a faded lime green. She could make out the shapes of plastic coated furniture, a couch and divan with gaudy, vintage upholstery, a recliner, and a small teak coffee table. A mini-kitchen stood to the left, with a refrigerator and short, wraparound bar.

  Every horizontal surface held the thickest layer of gray dust she’d ever seen. Eric’s barefoot tracks were visible in the grit on the floor, leading toward the far side of the room.

  “Hello?” she asked, coughing a little at the staleness of the air. It smelled like the earthen basement beneath her grandmother’s house in here. “Is anybody, uh, home?”

  There were shelves along the front wall of the room, lined with seashells, kid’s toys, and other knick-knacks. The top row was all framed pictures, most of them knocked over on their fronts or backs. Only one still remained upright on its prop, and she wiped away the dust to reveal a family photo of a smiling, olive-skinned man and woman in their 40’s, maybe Middle Eastern or Indian, with a boy around ten and a girl maybe half that age crammed between them, all wearing the absolute chicest fashions the Reagan administration had to offer. The photo had been taken in this very room, while they sat on the couch only a few feet behind her.

  So what had happened to this grinning quartet?

  Maybe they went for a little swim, and ended up just like your friend the pirate back there.

  She turned to go after Eric, but something on the coffee table caught her eye this time. A collection of magazines was spread across the surface beneath the sprawl of dust. Amber picked one up and blew sediment from the cover. It was an issue of People Magazine with Prince on the cover, wearing his signature purple jacket and frilly cuff ruffles.

  The issue date was November 19, 1984.

  If this was right, if these people weren’t old periodical hoarders and it wasn’t all some incredible hoax (and god, she really wanted to believe that it was, especially the men with guns, something cooked up by Eric to fuck with them), then close to thirty years had passed since the family in the photograph had sat in this room.

  All of Eric’s stupid Bermuda Triangle stories tried to run through her head at once.

  She dropped the magazine and hurried out of the room, following Eric’s footprints. Past the living area was a short hallway lined with closet space, clothes still on the hangars, and the top of a staircase that led below deck into pitch black, where she figured the bedrooms must be. Beyond that was the door to the houseboat’s control room, with a curtain across it. She peered through the inch wide gap where the curtain met the wall.

  On the other side was a space that looked like the driver’s compartment of an RV, with two deep captain’s chairs and a slanted windshield overlooking the water. In the near distance, the hulking outlines of other dark ships were visible, but she didn’t take time to study them. Eric sat in the chair on the left with his head under the long console, working frantically. After a few seconds, he reached into his pocket, pulled out some long, thin object that she couldn’t quite see in the dim light, and jammed it up into the space beneath the steering wheel.

  She slid aside the curtain. Eric came up so fast, he banged the back of his head against the edge of the console. “OW! Christ, don’t do that!”

  “Can you get this thing going?” she asked.

  “Not a chance.”

  “What about calling for help?”

  “Both the radio and the engines run off the main power, but the entire electrical system’s rotted out. Everything in here is dead.” His choice of words seemed to make him falter. He swallowed thickly as he looked around the room, his face ghostly pale in the moonlight coming through the windshield. All except his nose, which was so red and swollen it could’ve guided Santa’s sleigh. “I think this boat’s been here a really long time.”

  “I know. So what’s it doing here?” She pointed through the window, at the outlines of the other ships floating in front of them. “What are they all doing here?”

  “Oh my god.” He jumped up from the chair and moved to lean over the console so he could peer through the glass. “I didn’t even see them…”

  While he was distracted, she eased into the seat he’d vacated and felt around under the dash. Her hand encountered a cool, smooth cylinder tangled in the ancient wires beneath. The size and shape was actually pretty close to that of her vibrator back home. She freed it and shoved the object in the cargo pocket of her own shorts just as he turned around.

  “They’re derelicts. Just like the stories. We just stumbled upon the biggest motherfucking find in history!” He sounded ecstatic at the idea; the Bermuda Triangle skeptic who wanted to be proven wrong. “Do you remember the name on the side of this tin can?”

  “I think it said ‘Holy Mackerel’.”

  “Holy Mackerel, Holy Mackerel…” His fingers drummed the houseboat’s wide steering wheel. “I don’t remember that name from any of the books.”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter if Jimmy Hoffa and the Lindbergh baby are on board this thing, it isn’t going to help us! Those pirates will be here any second! We have to figure out what to—”

  From the far end of the deserted, time-ravaged houseboat, Cherrywine screamed.

  9

  As the rowboat glided through the water toward the moonlit sunporch where Cherrywine huddled, she wished with all her might that she was back at the hotel in Nassau, or in her shitty apartment back home, or even at the strip club, shoving her tits into a grabby, elderly gentleman’s face for a few bucks. Anything but this royally fucked-up situation her Prince Charming had led her in to.

  She could almost see the eyes of the men in the oncoming boat, the rest of their faces hidden under their masks. The craft had stopped about halfway across, and was turning in a lazy circle while they appeared to have an argument. As angry as she was at Eric for what he did (and scared too; that blankness that had stolen over his face and infected his eyes haunted her even now), Cherrywine had no problem believing these people would do far worse. She was just getting ready to yell for Amber when a scrabbling noise above drew her attention.

  Perched on the edge of the houseboat’s roof across from her was a large bird. She couldn’t see any real details, but she thought it was the kind that had the big pouch under its bill for scooping up fish, like the bird in one of her all-time favorite movies, Finding Nemo. A stork? No…a pelican.

  Something about it wasn’t quite right. As it sat on the roof, turning its head back and forth on its long neck to watch her from one eye and then the other, she tried to figure out what it was.

  The bird opened its slender bill and gave a half-squawk, half-shriek so horrible it struck her as almost obscene. She caught a whiff of something acrid, a stench both rotten and burnt. It opened its wings and flapped at the air awkwardly, as though trying to remember how to fly, then lurched forward and fell straight off the roof, faceplanting on the deck in front of her. The bird lay in a crumpled pile of stinky feathers.

  “Oh, you poor thing!” Cherrywine cried. She couldn’t stand to see animals in pain, and the thought of comforting another creature instantly took her limited attention span off the task at hand. She scooted forward, intending to gather it up
in her arms, smell or no smell. Before she could, its head lifted to look at her.

  Cherrywine screamed.

  The thing was an absolute nightmare. Its feathers—the few remaining patches of them—were mangy and covered in a dark blue slime. Even worse, the flesh revealed by the bald spots was discolored and almost…runny, like melting candle wax. It fixed her with rheumy, bloodshot eyes and gave another of those awful caws through a beak that, she now saw, was cracked and covered with blackened holes.

  The freakish pelican rose jerkily to its feet—reminding her of a malfunctioning robot in its stiff, shuddering movements—and launched at her.

  Cherrywine flung an arm over her face out of instinct. Her forearm connected with greasy, hardened flesh. Its bill clacked shut beside her ear. She shoved it away and scooted back toward the end of the sunporch, sobbing.

  The thing scrabbled at the deck on its gnarled, webbed feet, regained its balance, and came in for another attack. She flung her bare legs up, managing to brace her feet against the tattered remains of its flapping wings. It stretched its long neck between her legs in a grotesque parody of every orally-inept boyfriend she’d ever had and snapped at her face over and over again, missing by mere inches. Over its thrusting head, she saw Eric run out of the cabin.

  “What the fuck is that?” Eric backpedaled, throwing himself flat against the wall.

  Amber came out behind him, but wasted no time with words. She leaned through the cabin door and reemerged with an armload of framed pictures. She chucked them like Frisbees, the first one smashing off the deck to Cherrywine’s right, but the next hitting the pelican right in its bald rump. It left off the attack and wheeled around, then gave a lopsided bounce into the air, open maw aimed at Amber’s throat.

  A booming gunshot rang out.

  The bird exploded in a spray of blue feathers.

  10

  Lito and Ray sat on the front bench of the rowboat while Jorge and Carlos rowed behind them, the latter grumbling about forced labor. As their destination drew closer, Lito used binoculars to scan the water to the west and then passed them to Ray.

  “I count at least five others, besides the pontoon and the houseboat. Looks like a few more little fishing boats, a couple of sailboats, and another yacht. Too dark to see if there are any more past that.” Something about the silent shapes drifting out there reminded him of ancient burials at sea, the deceased placed aboard miniature crafts and left to drift on the open ocean for all eternity.

  Or maybe he just had Vikings on the brain.

  Ray said, “Nope, there’s something big farther out.” Lito peered through the binocs again, with Ray directing where to point them. “You can’t get any sense of it, you can just see where the horizon-line is broken.”

  Lito strained his eyes and finally spotted it, the barely perceptible juncture of dark sky against darker sea broken by something enormous riding the water. Judging by the length and distance, whatever it was had to be close to a thousand feet long. “I see it. What do you think they’re all doin here?”

  The other man shrugged sheepishly. “I didn’t wanna be the one to say it, but…this is the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Jesus H. Christo,” Lito groaned. “Don’t feed me that, Ray. We been sailin the Sargasso our whole lives and never seen shit out here. Bermuda Triangle. That’s for tourists.”

  “Hey, you want explanations, that’s the only one I got.”

  They were all silent as this information digested.

  “So what we gonna do, Cap’n? After we get Rabid back, I mean,” Jorge inquired between pants. He worked his stick arms twice as hard on the oars to keep up with Carlos. Every time the paddles rose, they were covered in a mucky film of seaweed.

  Lito sensed Ray watching him from beneath his mask, waiting for the answer that had been rolling around in his head all along. “If all these ships are derelict…that means they’re up for grabs. We lost the yacht, but maybe there’s somethin even better. I say we get these kids taken care of and have a look around.”

  Ray held up his wristwatch and tapped the face. “That bein the case, it’s close to eleven now. Which means we got seven or eight hours to work until we’re out here in broad daylight.”

  “Who cares?” Carlos said. “If they’re derelict, it’s all legit. We ain’t gotta hide nuttin.”

  “Except the American citizen we got tied up on our boat. Oh, and the three more about to join him.”

  “So fuckin kill ‘em.”

  Lito looked over his shoulder. Only the kid’s eyes and mouth were left uncovered by the holes in the ski mask, not enough for him to gauge how serious he was. “We’re not doin that.”

  Carlos let go of his oar. Jorge pumped for another few strokes before realizing he was alone, spinning them in a half circle. “Why the fuck not?” Carlos demanded. “We wanted their yacht, but that ain’t gonna happen now. ‘Less you plannin on sellin them or some shit, these muhfuckahs ain’t worth nuttin ta us. So just get rid of ‘em.”

  Lito raised a hand, wanting to wring his neck, but calmed himself enough to grab the boy’s shoulder. “Nothin’s changed. We’re not killin ‘em if we don’t have to.”

  Carlos shoved his arm away. “Damn Lito, I thought we was pirates. You know, as in criminals? Those stupid-ass chink books made you into a chump.”

  Lito felt his cheek muscle twitch beneath the knit material. “Row the goddamn boat, Carlos.”

  “Make me. Better yet…get back here and do it yo’self.”

  This time it was Ray that reached back, gathering of a handful of the boy’s jersey in one fist. “What’d you say? You forget who you’re talkin to, you puto mongrel?”

  “Get yo’ hand off me, homey!”

  Both of them reared back, ready to go at it, but a scream from the houseboat stopped them before the first punch could be thrown.

  Lito pried his second-in-command away from the boy. “Get us over there. Now.”

  By the time they docked against the other vessel, Lito could see the pelican on the porch as it attacked the blonde. He snatched up his shotgun and waited for the water to calm so he could take a shot, then blew the thing out of the air when it went for the other girl.

  The three white kids all stood frozen, mouths hanging open as they watched Lito and the others climb on board.

  11

  “Okay, you three. Let’s have a chat.”

  Amber, Eric and Cherrywine sat side-by-side on the houseboat’s dusty couch, where they’d been for the last five minutes. One of the hijackers (presumably the leader, a guy who looked dressed for a luau aside from the ski mask over his head) instructed them to stay here and not move while he talked to someone on a crackling walkie-talkie. Amber caught only part of the conversation; the person on the other end wanted to know what the gunfire had been about. Now he turned to them while two of the others waited by the door to the sunporch and the fourth—a little pipsqueak—stood over them from behind the couch with a huge rifle.

  “Are…are you gonna kill us?” Cherrywine bawled, with tears streaming down her face. Amber put an arm around her. It was the question on all of their minds, but still, she wished it hadn’t been voiced.

  “Maybe.” Hawaiian Shirt grabbed the leather recliner and dragged it around to the opposite side of the coffee table to face them, ignoring Cherrywine’s renewed sobs. He put a flashlight down in the center of the table with its beam facing the ceiling so it cast the entire room in a weak glow, then plopped down in the chair so hard a cloud of dust poofed up around him. He laid a revolver casually across his lap. “Depends on the answers to my questions. And how fast I get ‘em.” Amber detected traces of a Spanish accent, an airy, almost regal dialect that made her think of swashbucklers and nobility.

  “What do you wanna know?” she asked cautiously. She seemed to be the only one willing to speak. Cherrywine continued to cry into her hands while, to Amber’s right, Eric sat with his arms crossed on the other end of the sofa, glaring at their captors. He was obviously
still convinced these guys were here for him, but they didn’t seem to treat him any differently.

  “First of all…you know somethin about these derelicts?”

  Amber squinted. “Huh?”

  “This boat and all the others abandoned out here.”

  “Yeah, I understand what you meant. Why would we know anything about them?”

  “When you ran, you led us here. Was that on purpose?”

  “We were just trying to get away from you. If we knew they were here, why were we the ones that crashed into them?”

  His fingers steepled and flexed. “A good point, I admit, but I prefer to leave no stone unturned. Just to make sure we understand one another…you’re not here for the Dominican? You got nothin to do with him?”

  “Honestly…I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  He nodded slowly. She knew she should still be terrified of these people, just as she had been back on the MishMasher, when her imagination was conjuring bloodthirsty psychotics, but now that she was actually in the same room with them, something about this one’s demeanor—not to mention his wardrobe—just didn’t instill the emotion. He was too calm, his voice too rational, and his eyes were clear and intelligent inside his mask. Even his death threats sounded forced. Either that, or Stockholm Syndrome was setting in already. “Okay then. Tell me what happened to our man. And don’t feed me any bullshit about him not bein here, because I saw four people head to this boat with my own eyes. What did you do, drown him?”

  “No, I saved him!” Amber said indignantly. “I dragged him all the way over here. We tried to help him on board and this…this thing!...came up out of the water and pulled him under.”

  “You lyin cunt!” the skinny man behind them spat. Unlike their host, the accent attached to his squeaky voice was so syrupy that the last word came out a long-Oed ‘coe-nt.’ Cherrywine jumped.