Day 103
Jack woke up screaming. He leapt out of bed and immediately started trashing the room. He rammed his fists into the television, making them bloody with glass splinters. Then he ripped the bedside cabinets away from the wall and hurled them across the room. He kicked holes in the wall. He pulled doors off their hinges. None of it made him feel any better.
When security finally came to apprehend him, they locked him inside the ship’s brig and left him there. The tiny, square room kept Jack safe from the infection that night and he sat there in silence until he fell asleep at midnight.
Day 104
Jack woke up and smashed the room up again. He spent another night in the brig. It was safe there.
Day 198
Jack had given up hope. The last of it had disappeared the night Ivor and his family had died in the medical centre. It had made Jack realise that, no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop the infection. He couldn’t prevent the passengers from turning into monsters. Nor could he find out what was the cause of it all. Even if he did know where the infection had started, it wouldn’t do any good. It would still kill everybody just the same.
Jack had stopped trying to find answers, had stopped wondering why this was happening, or whether or not he was in hell. He just dragged himself out of bed at 1400hrs each day and went outside, performing the same rituals over and over. They had even started to become comfort him in some strange way. Jack looked forward to the seagull at his window, prepared himself for the boys racing down the Promenade Deck, and was beginning to feel ownership of the green towel on the lounger. The recurring elements of his day made him feel in control, made him feel that he was the master of his own existence. It was all he had.
The sun was out on the pool deck, as it always was. One of Jack’s few blessings was the warmth of its rays. It was the only thing that still connected him to the world. He was stuck on a cursed ship in the middle of a featureless sea, but he still shared the same sun as people in Mexico and Japan and England. He was still connected to them in some small way.
For a change, today, Jack decided to take a dip in the water. He took off his t-shirt and dropped it onto the floor. Then he stepped in front of a small boy running around the edge of the pool and caught him as he was about fall. The boy wouldn’t know it, but Jack had just saved him from a nasty knee-scrape. Jack received no thanks however; he never did whenever he saved the boy.
Jack sat on the side of the pool and dangled his legs in the crystalline water. Once he was ready to engulf himself in the cold kiss of the pool, he slid down beneath its surface. The water was cold enough to make him shudder at first, but after a few quick breast strokes, Jack’s body adjusted. The sun beat across his shoulder blades and the soothing sensation flowed down all the way to his toes. Kids swam and played all around him, splashing the water and throwing inflatable balls to one another. In spite of Jack’s usual depression, he actually found a moment of brief respite. The pool was relaxing and Jack started to feel happy. But he knew it was only temporary. The pool would soon lose its charm if he were to spend more than a day or two coming there.
Jack waded over to the edge of the water and placed his forearms against the cool cement of the pool’s coped edge. He let his legs float away behind him and closed his eyes, trying to blank his mind, to forget that he was trapped in a bottomless limbo. Stuck on a floating hell in the middle of the sea, removed from reality and forced to endure a never ending day of misery and despair. Jack wondered if it was his punishment. Was this what he deserved for what he had done? The murders he’d once committed?
Have my actions damned me to hell? Am I evil?
Jack had never thought of his actions that night as murder – more as justice that would not be rendered in any other way – but perhaps some celestial judge saw it differently. If there was a God, maybe He saw murder as a sin regardless of its motives. Jack could admit that he was a killer, but there was no way he would ever admit to being an evil man. In the grand scheme of things he was firmly planted on the side of good. Especially when compared to the countless wicked souls he had spent his entire life apprehending. He’d spent a majority of his existence trying to help others, trying to make the world a safer place. If this was his reward – damnation – then God could go straight to Hell.
If He thinks I could have done any better, I suggest He tries living on this rotten earth for a while. Then perhaps He’d understand what the few decent souls left in the world are up against.
Jack had never been one for contemplation or philosophical thinking, but he had found himself turning to it more and more lately, if only as a way of keeping sane. He would ask himself questions to try and occupy his mind and then obsess desperately over the answers. It was one of the few good ways to pass time. Jack knew, though, it would only be a matter of days now before his mind started to unravel from the strain of it all. The loneliness and isolation of his resetting world would eventually drive him mad. Eventually he would run out of questions to ask himself.
“Jack?”
The sound of his name shocked him. He glanced up to find someone standing at the edge of the pool looking down at him. The sun, shining behind, presented the figure as a silhouette, but Jack could still tell who it was. It was the brunette waitress.
Jack’s mouth dropped and he tried to swallow. Then he tried to speak, but failed.
The waitress smiled at him but she seemed weak and weary. She was not wearing the uniform she’d had on when Jack had originally met her. “I think you’ve been looking for me,” she said to him. “Come with me, Jack. I think I know what’s happening.”
***
Tally’s cabin was at the aft of A Deck, which she told him meant at the back. When Jack had previously searched for her, he’d knocked on just about every cabin door on the ship. Most did not open and there was no way to tell if anyone was inside simply ignoring him or if the rooms were empty. He’d eventually given up on finding Tally, and it seemed that as soon as he did, she found him.
Her room was nice, personal, with a wide assortment of chintzy knickknacks adding to its charm. Jack took a seat on the foot of the neatly-made bed and Tally sat down on a chair beside the room’s cluttered dressing table.
“So, what do you know?”Jack asked before she even had time to settle in her seat.
“The day is resetting.”
Jack sighed. “I know that! The day keeps repeating over and over.”
Tally shook her head. “No, you do not understand. It is not repeating. It is resetting.”
“What’s the difference?”
“For the day to be repeating it must first exist, an unchangeable part of our timeline. That is not what is happening. For whatever reason, this day is being wiped clean at midnight and reset to start over.”
“But the same things happen every day. Repeating.”
Tally looked at Jack as though he was a child. “No. The things that happen on this day are fated to occur. They happen because they are a culmination of the almost infinite events from the days preceding them. What people do tomorrow is a product of what they do today. The world ripples and those ripples do not change.”
Jack tried to understand. He sort of did. People kept acting the same way because they were acting however they would have if the day had just gone by once. There were no factors to make them behave any differently so they didn’t. Things only changed if Jack did something to directly influence events.
As if reading his mind, Tally said, “This is why you can change things, Jack. If the day was repeating, so too would you repeat. Your free will exhibits that the day is being reset, and that you are the only passenger of this ship that can still remember the previous version of events that have been erased. Whoever did this chose you for something.”
“And you,” Jack quickly added.
Tally shook her head. “No. At first I was like everybody else. I didn’t realise what was happening.”
“So what changed? How come you know n
ow?”
“I am Romany. My people have dealt with magic for centuries. We have built up certain…resistances. At first I was oblivious, the same as everybody else, but the longer the spell was in effect the more it failed to get through my natural defences. At first I just felt a little odd, daydreaming about things that hadn’t happened – or at least I believed so at the time – but then, gradually, I became aware of what was happening. I stayed in my room for many days, trying to make sense of things. On one of those days I saw you knocking on doors and asking about me. I was frightened, of course, and I hid from you, but I also realised that whatever is going on wasn’t just happening to me.”
“What is happening?” Jack urged her to tell him because the anticipation was killing him. This woman sitting in front of him perhaps held the knowledge to end his suffering.
Tally sighed. “I do not know for sure, Jack, but I believe there is a pathwalker aboard this ship.”
Jack swallowed a mouth full of saliva and stretched his eyes wide to clear them of their fuzziness. He wanted to make sure he had heard her properly. “A pathwalker? What the hell is a pathwalker?”
“A pathwalker is a very powerful being. Human, yet…changed. They undergo a ritual at a young age which allows them to see across the many threads of time. They are the true seers of the future and the past. They can even see sideways.”
“Sideways?”
“Yes, sideways. Every time you make a decision, Jack, there are a thousand possibilities that you did not follow. Each of those possibilities plays out in an alternative version of events, with alternative versions of you.”
“That’s sounds a bit Movie of the Week to me.”
Tally did not seem to understand his incredulity. She carried on her explanation as if she were reading it from a textbook. “Think of time as a piece of string made of many, many tiny threads. Each time you choose left, another version of you chooses right, and the string is pulled apart into two separate threads. This happens millions of times every second and the strings eventually become a tangled weave, a tapestry of existence. We call this tapestry the celestial pathways. And a pathwalker can grab a hold of every one of these tiny threads and see the events that transpired there. They can even, sometimes, affect things – I think we are seeing an example of that now – although there are consequences.”
Jack leant back on his palms and let out a long, laboured breath while he tried to absorb everything. It sounded like a bunch of hocus-pocus and new-world superstition but, with what he had been through for the last six months, he really had no option but to believe what Tally was telling him. Jack had to believe in something or he would go insane.
“So, this pathwalker?” he said.“He’s evil, right? Like some kind of witch?”
Tally shook her head. “No, Jack. Not at all. Pathwalkers are good. They are protectors of the world. I do not know why they are doing this, but it will be for a reason.”
Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t agree that anyone responsible for the hell he was in was good. There was just no way. Jack had to find out who this pathwalker was, and force him to stop doing whatever it was he was doing. The madness had to stop.
Even if it means I have to kill the son of a bitch!
Day 199
Jack had gone back to his room after talking to Tally. He needed to think things through. What Tally had told him, about pathwalkers and time-threads, was a lot to take in for a sane person. Jack’s already-crazy world had suddenly grown to include time-controlling wizards and magic-resistant Romany gypsies – and, for some reason, he’d been selected to play some part of a plan he knew nothing about. Tally hadn’t even gotten around to discussing the virus onboard; it had almost seemed like a background event to her.
Jack had previously thought he was in Hell for the sins he had committed, and it was a theory he could get to grips with. He found himself struggling to believe in Tally’s version of events. Why had this pathwalker (he felt stupid even saying the word) picked him over a thousand other passengers? What was so special about Jack?
He’d woken that day at 1400hrs as always. In some way he had hoped that the new knowledge of the situation would have been enough by itself to break the spell. No such luck.
He’d agreed with Tally to meet her again today at around four. It was now a quarter-to and Jack was still lying on the bed in his cabin, fully clothed and ready to leave. His depression had lifted at the realisation he now had a companion onboard – someone with whom he could share his fate. Not being alone made all the difference; one of his basic human needs had been restored.
Jack got up from the bed and went into the bathroom. He glanced in the mirror. Although it had been the best part of a year since he’d boarded the Spirit of Kirkpatrick, it looked like he’d aged a whole decade. Jack knew it was the stress and misery he’d been subjected to, but he was also concerned that it was because he was actually aging. The day was being reset at midnight each night, but he was not. Jack was living every day. His life was ticking away.
Jack left his room and took the elevator up to the Broadway Deck. He was going to meet Tally by the pool and together they were going to search the ship for the pathwalker. Hopefully whoever it was would be shrouded by a sphere of glowing light and wearing a mage’s robe.
I should be so lucky.
Tally was already waiting for Jack when he reached the pool. She was again dressed in casual clothing and seemed to be hiding out from the other members of staff. If they saw her she would probably have to explain why she wasn’t at work like she was supposed to be.
“Hey,” he said, walking up to her. “How are you?”
“I am fine, thank you. Are you ready?”
“I guess so. Do you have any ideas where to start?”
“No. It could be anyone. Pathwalkers have belonged to every race since the dawn of time. They could be as normal as you and I.”
“Great,” said Jack. “Just a thousand or so passengers to check on then.”
“Plus three-hundred staff.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you know if it was a member of staff?”
Tally shrugged. “I’ve not spoken to most of them. It’s a big ship and we all have our own areas.”
“So where should we start?”
“I don’t know. I guess we should try to make a plan.”
“Okay, is there anything to look for specifically, to find a pathwalker I mean?”
“They will be outside of the spell, like us. Have you noticed anybody else not following a pattern?”
Jack stared at his shoes and thought about it, before looking back at Tally. “I honestly haven’t. You were the first person I realised was like me.”
“Okay then, so we have nothing. We should just start at the bottom and work our way up.”
“You mean at the bottom of the ship?”
“Yes. Let’s go down to the Orlop Deck – that is the lowest part of the ship. There is a small amount of cargo onboard. Maybe that will give us some clues.”
“Cargo? But this is a cruise liner.”
Tally sighed impatiently. “The ship is owned by BR shipping. They take advantage of their cruise itineraries by offering free freight service to their subsidiary companies.”
Jack scratched his chin. “BR? BR? Where do I know that name from?”
“Black Remedy. They are the largest commercial entity in the world. I would think they are familiar to everybody.”
Jack clicked his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it, Black Remedy. Jesus, they even have their hands in the holiday business now?”
Tally shrugged. “Looks like it. Now come on. We may feel like we have eternity to find the pathwalker, but we do not.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“Enough!” Tally took Jack by the arm and begun dragging him away from the pool. “No more questions. We have to get started.”
***
Tally took them down to the bowels of the ship via the el
evator. She first had to key in a code on the console which allowed her access to the none-passenger parts of the ship.
The Orlop Deck was stifling, lit only by fluorescent strip lighting. There were no windows or soft furnishings of any kind. The floor was uncarpeted, leaving the metal walkways exposed. There was the sound of machinery nearby and the ship seemed to move with every wave.
“The cargo hold is aft,” said Tally. “This way.”
They headed down a corridor towards the back of the ship. There were no doorways on this level and everything was wide open. Up ahead there were several cargo pallets, wrapped tightly in saran wrap and secured to the floor by ropes and buckles. Some of the pallets were stacked ten feet high.
“What is all this stuff?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know. BR usually transports medicines from their plant in Portugal to other countries in Europe.”
“How do you know so much about Black Remedy?”
“Because I like to know who I work for. Plus, all the staff know that the lower hold is used for shipping. It is no secret.”
“Then what do you expect to find down here?”
“Evidence of a spell.”
Jack frowned. “Huh?”
“You cannot just reset time without having certain things prepared. Somewhere on this ship there is a candle burning. If we find it, we find the person who cast the spell.”
Jack looked about the cargo hold at the various boxes and crates. He raised an eyebrow. “We’re looking for a candle? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“Because if you saw the candle in question you would have mentioned it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because all time-magic requires a candle. That candle will burn with a bright blue flame. It’s probably being kept somewhere private, undisturbed – like the cargo hold.”
Jack moved between the pallets, prodding at various boxes and crates. Sure enough they all had printed labels reading BR PHARMACEUTICALS. “You think this stuff has anything to do with the virus onboard? What do you make of what has been happening to people every night? There’s something pretty damned nasty onboard.”
Sea Sick: A Horror Novel Page 8
