by Sarah Lotz
‘I am sorry, Devi,’ someone said – he could no longer tell if it was Ram or Madan.
Devi tried to move; desperately, he fought to speak. Don’t do this, I have something I need to do. And then—
The Wildcard Blog
Fearlessly fighting the fraudulent so that you don’t have to
Jan 03
Predator’s group is growing. So far only met 2 or 3 people who have been to one of her shows and haven’t been taken in by her bullshit. Even Emma and Donna from the singles group are convinced their dead friend Kelly spoke to them ‘through Celine’. They said the usual, that Celine knew stuff she couldn’t have known. Got them to break it down fact by fact, none of which were that specific, or anything Celine couldn’t have picked up from ship gossip.
People are flocking to the theatre because it’s clean and they’re being fed and no one is freaking the fuck out. Pure cultish behaviour: make new arrivals feel special.
Unsure how Celine is influencing the rest of the ship. Auto suggestion? Must be. It’s that or a hysterical reaction to a stressful situation, hallucinations caused by electrical impulses, low frequency sound or suggestibility. Even Maddie, who knows for a fact that Celine is a fake, has been seeing things. (NOTE TO SELF: If we ever get out of here, must check up on Celine’s magical negro spirit guide. Figures she’d have one. Forgot his name – Papa Norris??) Maddie says she heard a humming sound before she hallucinated. Manifestation of The Hum on the ship?
4 p.m. People are really freaking out now. Quality of food dropping fast. Nothing at the Lido but bananas and tomatoes in hotdog rolls. Just heard the bars will be opened. BAD IDEA.
Captain has really fucked us. Reckon he went way off course. Most popular theory is that there’s major bad weather on land preventing anyone from coming for us. Only other explanation is that something cataclysmic has happened. Like 9/11 or Black Thursday. Or worse. Nuclear War. The Rise of the Machines, an alien attack. Zombies. Ha fucking ha.
5 pm. Feeling a bit gross as the ocean is getting choppier. Maybe the ship will go down, put us all out of our misery.
Need to lie down. Will finish this later.
The Witch’s Assistant
The lights had died ten minutes ago, and Maddie was still hoping that they’d miraculously come on again. Beneath her, the ship writhed and creaked. Even with the balcony door shut, the shouts from the deck above her filtered down.
Xavier groaned, and then she heard the liquid cough of him throwing up again. She’d given him some of her Dramamine, but it hadn’t helped. And it seemed that The Beautiful Dreamer had cured her of her squeamishness. Now, in the dark, where anything could be lurking (like Lizzie Bean, perhaps?) she had other things to fear than someone getting ill.
The ship dropped, leaving a hollow feeling in her gut. Air, fresh air, that would help. She crab-walked over to the window and stepped out onto the balcony, lunging for the railing to steady herself. Rain swirled in her face; the ocean heaved below her. And something else – lights. There were lights in the water. She squinted, wiping moisture out of her eyes. Boats, there were boats out there.
She lunged for the door. ‘Xavier! There are ships in the water. They’re here!’
‘Huh?’
‘There are boats in the water! Someone’s coming to rescue us.’
She heard him groan and stagger over to the window. Gingerly, he dragged himself out to join her. The ocean surged, and now she could make out a triangular-shaped silhouette – some kind of inflatable boat? – before it became subsumed in the swell.
Xavier grabbed her shoulder. ‘Maddie. Those aren’t rescue boats. They’re lifeboats.’
A cold wash of panic. ‘But . . . but I didn’t hear the signal for an evacuation!’
He grasped her wrist. ‘Come on.’
Together they reeled to the door, crossed the suite and stumbled out into the corridor. The only light came from the emergency strips on the floor and ceiling. She clung to the wall as the ship dropped again. Shapes loomed towards them from the far end of the corridor. The brother-and-sister couple lumped past them, clutching at each other. ‘You got to get outta here,’ the woman shrieked at them. ‘Oh sweet Jesus. Abandon ship!’
Maddie hammered on Helen and Elise’s door. ‘Helen! Helen!’ No answer.
‘Come on,’ Xavier yelled.
She turned to him. ‘Where’s your muster station?’
‘Fuck that. We’re going to the main deck where the fucking lifeboats are.’
Using the wall for support, they staggered past the elevator bay and across to the atrium. The door to the main deck didn’t want to open at first, the wind was pushing against it, but then the pressure eased and she fell through it, almost going down as her feet slipped on the deck.
Chaos. Pure chaos greeted her. Mattresses had slid into the pool, the water around them sloshing violently. A sun-lounger was wrapped in a strange embrace with the railings, and the deck glittered with broken glass. To her left, passengers were rooting through the life-jacket boxes, pushing and shoving at each other. She spotted the brother-and-sister couple over by the bar. He appeared to have slipped and fallen, and his wife crouched over him, cradling his head to her chest. Should she help them? Shit – she didn’t know what the fuck to do. She looked around for Xavier, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Water stung her eyes.
A piercing whistle sounded, and then the sky exploded with red light (flares, they must have set off flares) and for several seconds the deck was lit up clear as day. People were fighting to get up to the side decks, where the lifeboats were housed, their faces distorted masks of panic and pain. The ship rolled again, and several lost their grip, falling back into each other.
Someone thumped into her, and she turned to see Ray, holding the hand of a petite woman. ‘Maddie! Come on! Gotta get . . . lifeboats.’
A security guard slammed past them, yelling: ‘Wait! You cannot operate the davits from—’, his voice was snatched away by the wind.
Again she searched for Xavier. The knot of panicked passengers clogging the area around the life-jacket boxes cleared, and she spotted him. He was on his knees, scrambling to keep his grip on a couple of life vests.
‘Maddie!’ Ray roared again.
‘Does Celine know?’ she shouted back.
‘Maddie. You gotta . . . crew . . . the ship.’
‘What about Celine?’
‘Fuck her, Maddie.’
‘But what about the Friends?’ Jacob and Eleanor and Leila and Jimmy and Annabeth and . . .
The girl with him was tugging at his hand. ‘Come with us,’ she shouted at Maddie.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t just leave the Friends. Maddie just couldn’t do it. At the very least she needed to make sure they knew to head for the lifeboats. She turned and slid back to the glass doors, fighting against the tide of people trying to get out of the ship.
She’d reached the main staircase when the ship dipped into another steep pitch, so severe that her feet felt like they wanted to push up into her knees. A whooshing in her ears. A grinding, and then a metallic scream. Using the handrail for support, she half ran, half tumbled down the stairs to the Promenade Dreamz deck, grateful for the green glow of the emergency exit signs. The doors to the theatre were slamming open and closed, open and closed, but the stairs in front of it were deserted. She dragged her way up to the entrance, kicked the door open and crawled inside. There was a lull in the roaring in her ears and she heard Celine shouting: ‘If you leave, you will die. It’s your choice!’
‘There is no death,’ Maddie thought – or maybe she said it aloud, she wasn’t certain, because then the floor disappeared beneath her.
The Condemned Man
He liked his hiding place. Snug as a bug in a rug. A boat within a boat! And he liked the movement of the ship, he always liked it when he could feel the sway of the sea. The wind was picking up, which he also liked, and it was raining. The tap-tap-tap on the tarpaulin roof was soothing. It swallowed t
he sound of the shouting.
He was safe in here. They’d never find him. Those security men would never find him. It was inspired. He was aware that he still wasn’t quite himself. Everything was still a little bit out of focus, distanced really. He liked that, too. The bench he was lying on wasn’t comfortable, but that was a small price to pay, wasn’t it?
The old cautious Gary – the one who didn’t have friends to help him – would have been paranoid about being caught in here. He knew that the lifeboats were all monitored to stop passengers fooling around in them, but this didn’t deter him now. He trusted his friend. He’d tried to talk to him about the girl, but he’d come and gone, and sometimes Gary found he was talking to himself. The big man was mostly silent, but Gary didn’t think he was judging him. Gary had explained that he wasn’t sick. He wasn’t really hurting anybody. It was just something he did. They didn’t remember anything, and everyone knew that secretly, they wanted it. It was a biological imperative. People were hard-wired like that. Men were the hunters and women were the hunted. It was pointless trying to dress it up in any other way.
He didn’t hate women. He didn’t have ‘unresolved anger issues’. He did it because it was in his nature.
And no. He didn’t want to think about the other things. The dark things, although his mind did try and root around in his memory like a tongue straying to a tooth cavity. He was getting good at blocking it. It was a skill. You could build a wall and slot things behind it. It was something he’d done for years without thinking about it.
She’s got a message for you . . .
Nuh-uh. Not listening.
She says she’s going to make you suffer. She says she’s going to make you suffer over and over and over and over again and it will never end.
She didn’t say that. There was no message.
Shhhhhhh.
The boat rocked violently; a thump. The tarpaulin around him rippled, hands and arms stretched towards him, and he heard himself scream. People – there were people climbing into his hiding place. They were scrambling over each other and he felt himself being squashed against the side – he couldn’t breathe.
He had to get out. Get away. He pushed against them, shut his eyes and fought. Someone pulled his hair, his cheekbone exploded, but he kept going, ignoring their yells of protest. Something slammed into the side of his head, and he saw stars, burped out bile, and then, like a cork fired from a bottle, he landed on his hands and knees on the deck, wind and rain lashing at his face. Someone stood on his hand, and he curled himself into a ball and rolled until he reached the railings on the other side.
He looked up, thought he could see Marilyn in the crowd, but then she was gone. Using the railing for support, he pulled himself to his feet and looked down at the pool deck below. A man had fallen into the pool. He flailed his arms, then disappeared under one of the mattresses in the water. Then, whoosh, the sky exploded with red light and he saw him. His friend. Waiting for him next to the glass doors that led into the ship. The floor rocked and bucked under his feet, but Gary kept his eyes glued to his friend as he shrugged past the people pouring up the stairs.
Someone smashed into him as he reached the main deck and screamed in his ear, but Gary brushed him off and kept going to the door. He shoved through it, pushing a woman who was attempting to exit out of his way. He couldn’t lose sight of his friend. But it was dark inside the ship, and he was struggling to see. Then, a hand slipped into his left palm, and a smaller one slid into his right. He felt a moment of pure, primeval revulsion – this was familiar he remembered this was familiar – and then the hands tugged him forward.
The Devil’s Handmaiden
Mrs del Ray had stopped calling out to people. Now she just sat there on the stage, lurking in her wheelchair. It would tip over soon. Althea had no doubt of that. Althea couldn’t see her face. It was too dark to make it out, but she had the feeling the woman was watching her.
The only light came from the few people who still had battery life on their phones and the weak sickly glow of the exit signs. She had been helping Pepe hand out the water when she’d heard a man thumping down the aisle shouting that the crew were abandoning the ship and everyone ‘must please go calmly to their muster stations’. She’d caught sight of him as he ran past her. One of the security guards – not the inscrutable one she’d encountered in the dead girl’s cabin, but a young one with a weedy moustache. The panic hadn’t lasted long. Those who were going to leave had already left. Those who remained were sitting quietly, huddled in groups. Most were getting sick.
The ship rolled beneath her, and she clutched at the back of a seat until it passed. She shouldn’t be here, but she had no one but herself to blame. Maria had warned her yesterday that something like this was on the horizon. She should have figured out what she meant: that the crew was planning to evacuate the ship.
She would find the boy, and then she would leave. She made her way up to the stage, almost falling as she climbed up the side stairs. Avoiding looking at the woman in the wheelchair, she pushed through the curtain. She navigated by memory, gingerly picking her way around the obstacles at the back of the stage until she found the door that led out into the passageway. The boy had been with her a few hours ago in her cabin when she’d slipped away for a nap. Being with him was . . . it gave her energy. She was sick of everyone wanting something from her. Joshua wanted to suck the marrow from her bones and steal her money; the housekeeping managers and that puta Maria wanted her to be grateful for her job and put up with the poor working conditions and pay; Mirasol wanted her to tell her what to do; Mrs del Ray wanted her to bring others to the theatre. Her guests wanted her to smile and make them fuck-darned towel animals and not make them feel guilty about their shit-stained toilets and bad tips. The boy didn’t want anything from her except just to be in her presence.
Keeping her eyes glued to the emergency strips on the floor – in places they were scuffed away – and using a hand on the wall to steady herself, slowly, carefully, and without allowing herself to panic, Althea made it to the I-95.
The beam of a flashlight came wobbling towards her. She squinted, then made out Rogelio, bulked out in a life jacket, face made ugly with terror. ‘Have you seen Devi?’
‘Who?’
‘Devi. He’s one of the security men.’
She clung to him for a second while the ship pitched. ‘No.’
He shoved her away and moved on. A spectacular heave pushed her over to the other side of the corridor, but she found her balance and carried on. She wouldn’t get sick. She couldn’t afford to get sick. Now using both hands to steady herself, she inched down the stairwell to her crew deck. There were no strips down here. Nothing to guide her way. She was disorientated, and it took all of her self-control not to panic. This time, she navigated by feel, and when she turned the corner, she saw a faint light radiating out of one of the cabins.
A dark shape threw itself into her arms knocking her off balance. A surge of hope that it was the boy, but then she heard Trining sobbing: ‘Althea! What’s happening, Althea?’
‘Everyone is evacuating the ship.’
‘There was no signal. Why haven’t they come to get me?’
Because they do not care. No one cares anymore.
‘Please give me your flashlight.’
‘No! Why? Don’t leave me, Althea.’
‘Give me your flashlight and then I will take you to your muster station. I have to get something from my cabin.’
Trining handed it over, and Althea raced into her cabin and shone it over the bunks, underneath them and into the tiny bathroom. Nothing. He wasn’t here. Could he be on Five where she’d first seen him?
‘Althea!’
‘Go, Trining. Go to the muster stations.’
‘You are not coming with me? Please, Althea. I still feel weak. And I’m scared.’
Fuck-darned Trining. ‘Come on.’
She took Trining’s hand and pulled her along the staff corridor,
using her for balance now that she could no longer use the wall. The ship yawed, and she slammed into Trining’s shoulder.
‘It is going to sink!’ Trining screamed.
‘It is not going to sink.’
They made it past the bar and out onto the muster deck, where a cluster of crew members were waiting to climb into the chute that fed into the inflatable lifeboats. Althea had only ever seen this done in calm weather; she didn’t dare look down over the railing. Someone shoved a life jacket over her head, the wind blew salty spray into her face. The ship groaned and the ocean raged and roared.
A hand pushed her forward.
‘Althea!’ A waving hand. Maria. Maria was near the front of the group, helping people clamber into the chute’s mouth.
‘I have to get the boy,’ she said to Trining.
‘What? I cannot hear you.’
The boy isn’t real.
He was real.
‘Don’t be afraid!’ Maria was shouting. ‘Althea, come! It’s your only choice.’
The Suicide Sisters
Screaming. She could hear screaming.
The ship’s movement was far more pronounced – up, down, side to side – rolling and pitching, rolling and pitching.
Helen had closed the curtains and locked the balcony doors after their uninvited visitors had left. Once or twice she thought she’d heard sounds from the corridor outside. The sleeping pills had held her under. She’d only taken two (for now), but they’d done their job and blocked almost everything out. She sat up, unable to bear looking over at Elise in case she’d slipped away to join Peter. For God’s sake! Died. Not ‘slipped away’. Died. The room was dark, but she didn’t remember turning off the lights.
