Cast in Dark Waters

by Ed Gorman

  Welsh spat out into the soil and said, "If I didn't know better myself, I'd swear the bastards were carved from the same rock as those steps. They haven't twitched so much as an eyelid."

  "The sick men spoke of stealing the sloops," Daphna said. "Of raiding other islands."

  A frigid thread of fear wove through Crimson, imagining the contamination spreading up through the Bahamas and into the Americas. "Did any leave? Is that why there are no ships here?"

  "I don't know. I'm not certain how many of the men were sick at the end, or how many of the healthy freebooters ran out before then. There were terrible struggles, friends pitted against one another. God forgive us for ever setting foot here."

  "It's not your fault for falling in love. Even with a pirate."

  "Villaine knew of the superstitions and sought them out. He hunted his own men after they began to change. We thought Benbow was almost rid of all the creatures when more appeared, from out of the water. We've been fighting for days. Villaine was...taken captive. He soon showed signs of becoming ill." Daphna began to shake free from shock and the flintlock finally dropped from her hand. "This evening, when the moon rose, he could battle his infection no longer and begged me to kill him. I did so, and was about to fire a shot into my own heart when you arrived."

  "We'll get you off this damned piece of rock.”

  “I can't leave," she said, "you see, I've fallen ill myself."

  Crimson saw no marks on the girl's throat other than bruises and drew back, wondering how easy the sickness was to pass on. Daphna guessed her thoughts and drew down the collar of her dress, showing scabbed marks on her breast. Villaine had infected his own love.

  "These creatures from the depths...did you see any of them? Were they men?"

  "They're calling to me."

  Welsh perked up. "Who? Them's outside?”

  “Those outside, yes. They want me."

  "Your parents want you more, I'll wager,"

  Crimson told her.

  "I'm unclean."

  Those four, like standing pieces of the temple itself, awash in the gloating moonlight, drying in the wind. This dealing in blood hadn't put any fat on them, for sure. Bodies were so skinny that their ribs stuck out sharp as knives. Their eyes sparked with loss and something like a sad lust. Crimson had to hold down a peculiar excitement within her, guessing at who else might be out there in the dark or floating in the dark waters between here and the San Muy Malo. Was the vessel under attack? Daphna made as if to rise but did little more than shift the corpse across her legs.

  "Can you blokes talk?" Welsh called out. "Have you come about hopin' to share me final pint of whiskey?"

  "We're leaving this island," Crimson said to them, hoping they could still understand something of the human world. "Any of you fool enough to try to stop us will be sent straight to hell."

  The four appeared to move a bit, as if drawn back to earth from whatever walking perdition they suffered. "Give us..."

  "You'll be getting nothing from us, now move on!"

  "...the woman."

  "They're not such bad fellows," Welsh said. "I've a feelin' I've tipped a few tankards with them before."

  Crimson tried to calm herself but the frothing agitation kept right on bubbling up in her. Tyree visited her every night, and she felt he had to be out there now. Her hands quivered badly unless she tightened her grip on the ash wood until her knuckles cracked.

  "Why do they want you?" she asked Daphna.

  "Need you ask? For companionship.”

  “But—"

  "Even the dead... especially the dead...can be beset by loneliness."

  She let that pass for the time being. "When did they last feast?"

  "What?"

  "When did they last kill? Are they hungry?”

  “We're always hungry."

  Stepping forward, the four Daemonia Wampyros, these Blutsaugers, made their way across the community meeting area towards the hut.

  "We're in it now."

  "They don't seem to be much interested in us now, Cassie," Welsh said, and she heard the implication. He was offering a way out. They could leave Daphna behind and make a run for it.

  "I've never left a job only halfway through. And this has more to do with love than diamonds."

  "I know," he said, "just thinkin' aloud I was."

  "Remember," Crimson said. "According to the tales, you need to plunge it into the heart, with one blow."

  "Ye've said it before. Don't you be worryin' about me none, you jest watch yerself." He stuffed the stakes into his belt and held his dagger out. "Let's see if steel matters any to 'em."

  With perfect aim he cast the blade fifty feet, to where it struck one of the beasts in the throat. The blood drinker let out a startled cough and nothing more. He didn't even bleed as he continued trudging along with his mates, all of them so caught up in their own profane doom that she had a fleeting sense of sympathy. Casually, without interest at all, the creature drew the dagger from its neck and tossed the weapon into the dank undergrowth.

  And then the four dead men silently launched themselves.

  Crimson leaped past Welsh and brought her cutlass clean across the first Blutsauger's shoulders, taking his head off with such speed that she surprised herself. There was no living muscle or tendon to slow her blade and the force of her own swing threw her off balance.

  Behind her, Daphna Maycomb said, "Let me go to them."

  Using the pike, Welsh cleared a path outside the hut, pressing back two more of the Loogaroo without actually being able to touch them. The beasts were fast, when they wanted to be, but were so far removed from their former lives that they could not recall why they should defend themselves. He wheeled aside into the brush and stepped on the pommel of his own dagger. It tripped him up enough to stumble over snaking roots, and as he swung the pike around to batter at one of the creatures, another moved in from his left, his blind side.

  Crimson fought the third Blutsauger, keeping it at bay with the edge of her sword and weaving a stake before its heart. She saw Welsh floundering and shouted, "Goat, left side!"

  "I can smell 'em."

  "Do more than that."

  The headless dead man limped in circles, arms waving and searching. Crimson watched for an instant, entranced, wondering what it must be like to take the form of a human and have so little to do with who you might once have been. A spasm of fear worked up her back imagining Tyree down below the ocean waves, buried up to his neck in silt. Alone and as different from the man she loved as this bloodless thing groping with endless need. But it still wanted a woman.

  And, as she watched, one of the beasts bit down on Welsh's fist.

  "Welsh!"

  "I'm fine, he snagged his teeth on my wristlet."

  He'd backed up to the dying torch and readied himself as the two creatures dove towards him. He waited until they were so close that their fingernails brushed his belt, sensing the activity on his left side without seeing any of it. He swung around and brought the pike down into the heart of the first beast, using his momentum to carry him into the clutches of the second. Its flopping tongue slid against his eye patch as he thrust upwards with the stake, shattering ribs and piercing its heart. He fell on top of both corpses waiting for them to rise again, but neither did.

  "And that's what a near-blind old man can do in these parts! You tell 'em all your tale in Hell!"

  Whirling, Crimson slashed the fourth Loogaroo across its naked chest with her cutlass. No blood welled, only a foam not unlike whitecaps in the crashing tide. She swung wide again, aiming for the critter's heel. She hooked it and yanked, cleaving through bone and dropping the beast. With a snarl she threw herself atop it and staked the damned thing through the belly.

  Welsh stepped over to finish the job, hauling' back his arm to deliver the final stake in the heart. Crimson said, "No, wait!"

  "What's that?"

  "I'll have some answers first."

  "And what questions will ye as
k?"

  She kneeled over the beast that had once been a raiding pirate and draped two rings around its neck. With its lips drawn apart in anguish, she saw all those spirals of teeth leading all around its mouth. It reacted violently, choking and bringing up gobs of black fluid and hunks of bone.

  "Tyree," she said. "Does that name mean anything to you?"

  The Blutsauger's mouth worked meaninglessly, chewing at the air as its fangs gnashed together and it slowly strangled on the properties of the iron. It gagged and moaned in agony. Its teeth were broken deep in the back of its throat. She needed to know what it knew about the other ghosts.

  "Talk, you rotted beast, is my Tyree out there? Is he on the island elsewhere? Answer!"

  It spoke only one word, pleading. "...forgive..."

  "Lass," Welsh said, "put the damnable critter out of its torment."

  "Not until I get what I'm after. You hear! I want to know about my husband and his haunting ways. Tell me, you moldy corpse or I'll leave you here like this for all the ages.”

  “... mercy..."

  "None, you bugger!"

  Welsh drew his arm back and slapped Crimson hard across the face. Grunting, she toppled over into the dirt and watched as Welsh used the rings to choke the beast into its final rest.

  He glared at her without a word and she could do little more than force back the sobs of frustration before they escaped. Her lip was split and she sucked at it, tasting the blood as it filled her mouth.

  She spat it out, knowing that some day this would be her fate.

  Rising, she strode to the headless body still weaving about, fumbling at the edge of the jungle as if searching a way to escape. She staked it through the back and Welsh buried the still blinking head face down in the sand.

  When they returned to the hut they found Daphna slumped forward across Villaine's corpse. She'd taken one of the sharpened pieces of bamboo and propped it in Villaine's cold fist, then driven herself upon it.

  7

  Onboard the San Muy Malo, Crimson told her story to the Maycombs. About how she'd found the village completely empty and discovered two gravestones next to each other, one for Daphna, the other for Villaine. FEVER had been scratched on both. And below that, GOD GRANT YE REST.

  Beneath his sorrow, Maycomb's rage boiled until he was almost hissing. "And the other privateers?"

  "All dead or shipped off to escape the disease, I'd imagine."

  "So there was no Loogaroo? Is this what you say? You didn't find the Boabhan Sith, the Dearg-Due?"

  "No," she said.

  Instead of relief he grew only more frustrated. She understood why. It takes a great leap of faith for a man who prides himself on reason and common sense to believe in such spirits, and once the leap is made, there's no turning back. Then he must have his proof.

  Crimson considered telling him the truth, but she knew that eventually this reality would eat away at him as much as his doubts. Better he went to his grave believing his daughter to be the same pure girl he'd last seen. It served her memory that much the better.

  She retrieved the pouch of diamonds and returned more than half its contents to him. "This will pay my wages."

  Elaine Maycomb did not cry. She had finished with that and now had to take her grief and make it into something else. Perhaps she would heal there on the coast of Virginia, perhaps not. "Thank you, Lady," she said.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," Crimson told her.

  She left the couple then and went to hold watch in the bow with Welsh, listening to Hedrick and his men carousing a bit below decks. She couldn't help scanning the waves to see what might be lurking within.

  It was true that both Villaine and Daphna rested in the earth. Welsh himself had cut the words on the gravestones with his dagger, after hacking off all their heads and burying them face down. Then he and Crimson had built a bonfire and burned the bodies as best as they could. Let the animals of the jungle scatter those cursed bones and embers.

  "We've a good wind pluming the sails," he told her.

  "Yes, we'll make Port of St. Christopher's in three days at this rate." She caught him looking over the side. "Any mermaids?"

  "They say Blackbeard himself died after twenty-five stab wounds and five bullets. His head was taken and hung on the bowsprit and his body tossed overboard. It swam around the ship thrice before finally sinking out of sight."

  "You think Blackbeard might've been one of those beasts?"

  "Nah, he was just a pirate," Welsh said, grinning. "Nothing special 'bout him."

  There was a great deal inside her that needed to be said but she could find no way to frame her thoughts. They had come close tonight, she and the old man. Close to death and whatever might lay beyond it. I love you, father. "Welsh—listen to me, I—"

  "In the morning, lass," he told her. "Now, get yerself some sleep, and blessed be that ye don't dream tonight."

  But she does. She dreams of a snow-covered tower built by a father who adores her, and the love of a husband who was once sunburned a golden copper and now flits about the room as white as the wings of a moth. Perhaps there are mermaids down in the ocean, or maybe those swimming there are only more murdered sailors kicked about in Neptune's surf.

  Mama calls from the tide, where she reaches up with her broken fingers.

  This, however, isn't real, she knows. This is only dream. He can kill her a thousand times in this place and it won't matter at all, really. He's done it dozens of times already, and still she awakens and does her duty. He is down below at ten or twenty fathoms, buried in the silt and seaweed, awaiting her arrival for when she'll finally set him free.

  The shipwrecks creak and crumble on the reefs, rotting timbers tumbling aside. Dead men lay strewn across the rocks, eyes still open and mouths working. Snow begins to fall as he presses his icy body against hers.

  He hungers, but she does as well. This, perhaps, is how it's always been meant to be, with one desire played against the other. She tries to hold on but as he moves to her throat, she knows he only wants blood and companionship. Even the dead...especially the dead...can be beset by loneliness.

  "Soon, Tyree. Be on the lookout for me. We'll have an end to it, one way or another."

  She is a pirate, and she's not afraid of blood.

  Reaching, as his lips skim the veins of her throat, she pulls open the shutters and looks down below at all the writhing shadows and souls cast in these dark waters.