by Cat Knight
While the waves weren’t large, were they enough to shake loose wires to create shorts and flakes of crap to foul up the fuel lines? It appeared so because these problems hadn’t cropped up while in port. The boat shuddered and the engine coughed and died.
Grinding her teeth, Darcy started them up and spun the wheel. She was pretty sure she could reach port, and she was absolutely certain she couldn’t start her business until the boat proved seaworthy. Suddenly, her timeline had gone to hell in a handbasket. Time was money. Wasn’t that the old adage? When she lost time, she lost money.
“You’ll be sorry.”
The woman’s voice was more than annoying, it was a thorn in Darcy’s side. In a way, Darcy was already sorry. Why had she thought she could turn this boat into a money-generating asset? It was crazy.
The breath blew across her neck, and Darcy shivered. She slapped her neck, but she didn’t turn around. She knew she would find nothing, just her imagination. Bloody hell, she thought. She needed a crew.
She needed someone who could chase down the voice generating device and help with the other issues, for Darcy was certain she would find other niggling problems.
And she was pretty sure, Mandy was going to be the crew, and she bloody well better pretend to find the voice generator. As long as Mandy threw the device overboard, Darcy would pretend Mandy hadn’t installed it.
Darcy limped into port, the engines dying on a regular basis, the compass spinning around whenever she turned her back, and that nagging voice calling her “matey” and warning that she was going to be “sorry”. The GPS remained stable. Well, it went black only one more time which made it positively perfect compared to the compass. She had never entered a slip as slowly as she did this day. Unable to rely on reversing the engine, she crept along. In fact, she was so slow, she managed to grab a rope and jump to the pier, wrapping the rope around a stanchion and using her own strength to stop the boat.
“Bloody hell” Darcy groaned.
She tied up the boat and locked down all that could be locked down. Then, she started her search for the voice generator. She knew that as soon as she heard the voice, she would find what she searched for. As soon as she heard the voice.
She searched for an hour. Under every seat, every ledge, every cupboard. Darcy covered every surface possible.
She never heard the voice. She never felt the breeze on her neck. Yet, she had a feeling she was being watched. Darcy told herself that her imagination was working overtime.
The power of suggestion, nothing more. Yet… As she left the boat, she was trying to plan her next steps.
“Sorry yet?”
Darcy spun and stared at the boat. She took one step forward and then stopped still, her mouth gaping. She closed her mouth and sucked her teeth, fear building in her belly. No, she wasn’t going to repeat the hour she had just lost but she did need help. Someone who would assure her that she wasn’t hearing voices inside her head. Someone else that would hear the woman. Someone else needed to confirm Darcy’s senses. Wasn’t insanity a strictly personal disease? It couldn’t be passed along, so if Mandy didn’t hear the voice…
Well, Darcy would face that issue if and when it arose. For now, she needed a pint and a shoulder to lean on and someone to convince her that she had not made the worst deal within human memory. She hurried away from the dock, from the boat. She was pretty sure Champagne Taste would be waiting for her when she returned. Once Mandy heard the voice too, or confessed to what she had done, Darcy would feel much, much better.
Chapter Six
“What are you talking about?” Mandy asked as she bit into a chip.
“I’m talking about a boat that is out of control. And I think you know what I mean.”
“I do?”
“Ahoy, matey? That insane laugh?”
“And that means what?”
“Oh, come on.” Darcy sipped her ale. “It had to be you.”
“What had to be me?”
“The voice generator. You programmed it, didn’t you?”
Mandy sipped. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Darcy stared at her friend, butterflies turning swoops inside of her stomach. She was either lying, which infuriated Darcy, or, perhaps Mandy wasn’t responsible for the voice at all.
“All right,” Darcy said, her tone clipped and her voice higher than usual. “It goes like this.”
Mandy watched intently as Darcy mimicked the voice. Her eyes widened as Darcy continued explaining what had happened on the boat.
Darcy started with the compass, added the engines, and ended with the GPS screen, interspersing the voice as she recounted her afternoon.
“That sounds scary.”
“Which bit - the voice?”
“Yes, weren’t you frightened?”
“I was at first. But then, I thought you had played one of your jokes, so I disregarded the voice. The breeze, well, when that thing happened — that was scary.”
“Everyone is scared on a boat.” Mandy’s voice was imbued with more confidence than Darcy thought Mandy really felt.
“Well not everyone Mandy, and not usually me, but this was different. You weren’t there, but had you been, you would have felt the difference.”
“You were all alone. Odd occurrences are double odd when you’re alone.”
“OK, but it wasn’t like that, it just felt awfully— strange. Something’s off. It’s eerie. Like walking into your flat and feeling someone is watching. It just kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies. I mean, if I were the superstitious kind, I’d be thinking… oh… I don’t know…”
Mandy nodded slightly, a fixed smile appearing on her lips.
“I tell you what. If it makes you feel better, I’ll come with you when you take it out next. You won’t feel so alone, and maybe we can find that voice. I promise you, it wasn’t me, and I feel bad that you think it was. I bet the previous owner had some novelty jokey thing installed. So, you’ll take me along next time you go out. Agreed?”
Darcy should have felt reluctant, since Mandy’s enthusiasm was underwhelming, but the truth was she felt much better.
“Agreed.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
At home in her flat, Darcy thanked the two pints she had imbibed for her mellow mood. Despite her failed maiden voyage, and thanks to talking things out with Mandy, she didn’t feel so bad. In fact, she began congratulating herself. She had examined what she knew, and she had built a list of things to check before she next left port. To her logical mind, discovering the causes for the problems was merely doing enough digging. The laws of physics overcame the laws of ghosts, didn’t they?
The thought hit her mind. It had come unbidden. She let out a whistling sigh from her lips. The truth was, she had just admitted to what had been nagging at her mind all day and night. Darcy was wondering if it were possible… could she have a ghost on board. She was becoming scared of the things she had always laughed at. The things that went ‘bump’ in the night.
Climbing into bed, sleep closed her eyes yet they fluttered open now again as haphazard dreams flitted through her REM state.
“Ahoy, matey.”
Her eyes popped open, wide awake now. Had she heard a voice, or was it just the echo from her dream? She tried to push the voice out of her mind. Tomorrow would be soon enough to rid herself of the plague for good. Tomorrow.
Chapter Seven
Mandy slipped over the side and untied the ropes that moored the boat to the dock. Darcy’s morning had been devoted to solving the issues from the day before. She hadn’t found any obvious shorts in the wiring. She hadn’t discovered dirt in the fuel lines. The compass worked exactly as it was designed. The GPS booted up without a glitch, and she restarted it several times, just to check. During those hours, she had not heard “ahoy, matey” a single time.
As the hours passed, she wondered if she was of sound mind. Did her brain make up the voice? Did some part of her psyche want problems? Was she her own worst enem
y? Was she sabotaging herself? As she finished the list, she started the engines. They fired up without a hitch.
She leaned out and told Mandy to jump on board. Slowly, she maneuvered the boat away from the dock.
They moved toward the open sea as Mandy climbed the ladder to the bridge.
“How we doing, skipper?”
“Captain, if you please, and we’re doing fine. How about you? Find a ghost yet?” Darcy laughed, covering her own nervousness.
“Not even a black cat.”
“No cats on my boat. You don’t get seasick, do you?”
“Haven’t yet.”
“And when was the last time you were on a boat?”
“There was that cruise I took around the Mediterranean just last year.”
“On a gigantic ship that never rocked for a moment, correct?”
“I hardly noticed. I was having a good time.”
“Ahoy, matey!”
Darcy and Mandy stopped talking.
“You heard that?” Darcy asked.
Mandy’s face paled, and she nodded weakly.
“We’re alone, correct?”
Her voice was barely a whisper
“As alone as alone can be… I think.”
Darcy didn’t bother to lower her voice.
“Then, then, who just spoke?”
“It was a woman’s voice, right?”
“Sounded like one.”
“Then it’s that novelty box voice. It’s acting up again.”
At that moment, the compass flipped. Darcy stared at it a moment and sucked in her bottom lip before she tapped it, making it flip to the proper reading.
“Did I just see you do that?” Mandy asked.
“Seems a tap works when it acts up.”
“You’re scaring me. Instruments aren’t supposed to act like old TV sets. You can’t just hammer them and have them work right.”
Darcy shrugged and looked around trying not to let the worry show.
“Go down to the deck and listen. When the voice comes again, pinpoint where it came from. Can you do that?”
“I can try. Do I have to?”
“Well unless you want to stay up here in case the boat decides to have a mind of its own… and you said yourself it was a novelty voice.”
Mandy hesitated and looked at her feet.
“All you have to do is listen.”
“To a ghost.”
“There are no ghosts.”
“Well that’s not what you were implying the other day.”
“I just said it gave me the heebie-jeebies, and you said it was because I was out here on my own. Now you’re acting worse than me.”
Darcy watched Mandy climb down to the deck, pushing her guilt away. But honestly, it really was just some weird occurrence – there would be a logical explanation. Darcy was just glad that someone else had heard it now. She stood in the middle of the bridge, not going near the sides as the boat began to rock.
“There’s a life jacket in the cabinet to your right,” Darcy called down.
Mandy retrieved an orange life jacket from the cabinet and quickly put it on. Darcy didn’t have the heart to tell Mandy that the life jacket looked a bit like overkill, until the boat began lurching.
“What the bloody hell!” Darcy steered in the sudden swell, and then the port engine sputtered and died.
“Oh, I don’t believe it!”
“What was that?” Mandy called.
“The port engine cut out,” Darcy replied and immediately went through the steps needed to restart the engine.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Mandy asked.
“Not really.”
Darcy restarted the engine and looked carefully at the instruments. As far as she could tell, everything was working perfectly. Why didn’t the readouts make her feel better?
“Are you scaring me on purpose?” Mandy asked.
“Not a chance.” The compass flipped, and Darcy tapped it. The boat was scaring both of them, but she wasn’t about to admit that to Mandy.
“Mayday! Mayday!”
A wind came from nowhere, the wheel spun furiously and Darcy grabbed it ignoring the burn in her hands.
“Did you hear it?” Darcy shouted
“Of course, I heard it. Be quiet, I’m listening.”
As Darcy watched, the wind roared and Mandy leaned over the side, head down.
Slowly she turned her ears side to side. For the first time, Darcy thought they might be pinpointing the source of the messages. That would be a welcome event, no matter what the outcome.
The starboard engine surged, and the wheel jumped from Darcy’s injured hands.
The boat lurched and Darcy fell, cracking her knees hard in the process. Forcing herself upright, she immediately grabbed the wheel again and throttled back the engine. How the bloody hell had that happened? Straightening out the boat, she turned her head and looked down.
The deck was empty.
“Man overboard, Man overboard.”
A delighted, satisfied, chortle followed.
Chapter Eight
Darcy was stunned, her whole body refused to move. Where was Mandy? The unbelievable, yet un-refutable knowledge hit her as she looked around, refusing to believe what she knew. But Mandy was nowhere. Darcy let out a frightened yelp. Her thoughts still came slowly, but she reined in control of them and forced her body to work. Killing both engines, she lashed the wheel. Then, she hustled down the ladder to the deck.
She limped to the side and looked out, careful not to lean out too far just in case the stupid boat decided to lurch again. Her hurt finger throbbed, and she vaguely wondered if losing the wheel had damaged it anew. Panic was starting to surface as the reality set in. Mandy was gone, she was not on the boat. Darcy must find her.
Bobbing in the water, thirty metres away, the bright orange life jacket marked the spot.
“HOLD ON!” Darcy yelled. “I’M COMING.”
Darcy scampered up the ladder as fast as she could and started one engine. She wasn’t going to take chances with a second engine she couldn’t control.
She unlashed the wheel and spun it as she throttled up. It would take only a minute or two to reach Mandy, and Darcy kept an eye on her friend as she headed back. A cold breeze wrapped itself around Darcy and she shivered.
She wanted to turn around, but she couldn’t afford the time. She had to rescue Mandy.
When Darcy was close, she stopped the engines, lashed the wheel tight, and practically jumped to the deck, moaning as pain shot through her knee. Mandy lifted her arm. Thank God Thank God. Darcy grabbed a coiled line and tied one end to a cleat.
“Catch this and don’t let go,” Darcy called. “No matter what!”
Darcy threw the line to Mandy who managed to stroke a few times and grab the line. Darcy was encouraged. Mandy could follow instructions.
“Got it,” Mandy called.
“Murder! Murder!”
Darcy ignored the voice and hauled in the line hand over hand. Then, icy fingers grabbed her arm. Darcy screamed and immediately released the rope. She couldn’t help herself. The fingers were so real!
Mandy drifted out again.
“What are you doing?” Mandy’s voice sounded dim as she bobbed in the waves. Darcy grappled for the rope
“Don’t. Let. Go. No matter WHAT. JUST GRAB AND HANG ON.”
Darcy pulled and felt Mandy’s weight on the end, and it was a good feeling. No cold fingers grabbed at her. Darcy’s insides seemed to quiver. She hauled in the line as fast as she could. Something told her to not waste time. She couldn’t afford any more mistakes.
Then, the engines came alive. What the bloody hell was happening?
“NO!” Darcy yelled. And dropped the line.
Even as she ran for the ladder, the boat lurched forward. She fell and slid backwards, slamming into the stern. Something in her shoulder popped, and she heard her own agonised scream.
She grabbed at the pain, trying to stop it, and watc
hed the line play out as the boat ran ahead. Darcy knew that Mandy couldn’t hold on for long. The speed would rip the line from her hands. The boat charged ahead.
Despite the pain, Darcy scudded across the deck. With one arm hanging limp, she struggled up the ladder. While the wheel was still lashed, the throttles were full open. Darcy hit the kill switch for both engines, and they died. The boat immediately slowed.
She stared at the controls. The compass was flipped, and the GPS screen was blank. Nothing seemed to be working, and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
Hanging on for dear sanity, Darcy tried to convince her self that maybe it was all just some untimely malfunction, even though she knew it wasn’t.
I’ll worry about it later, just get a grip.
She looked for another second, daring the boat to act up again. When nothing happened, she slipped down the ladder and limped to the line, suddenly aware of a pain in her hip. S
She grabbed the line. It was slack.
Mandy wasn’t at the other end. That was a very bad thing. Darcy moved to the side and looked behind. She saw nothing, and panic flooded her.
“Mandy, Mandy” Darcy screamed out, scanning the waves. If anything happened to Mandy…
The orange life jacket bobbed up.
Mandy was still inside.
“I’M COMING!” Darcy yelled. “HANG ON!”
She limped to the ladder and took the rungs one at a time. At the top, she started one engine and unlashed the wheel. She turned the boat and throttled the engine with her almost worthless arm. The pain was crazy, but she didn’t have a choice. She had to reach Mandy. While the channel wasn’t the coldest water in the world, it was more than cold enough to give Mandy hypothermia. Panting, fighting pain in shoulder and hip, Darcy steered back to where Mandy floated. Darcy saw no movement in Mandy, and that was a very bad thing.
Once again, Darcy managed to get the boat close. This time, Darcy cut all electricity. She was pretty sure the engines wouldn’t start without the electrical connection—at least, fairly sure. She lashed the wheel and slid down the ladder, collapsing with a small cry when her bad leg hit the deck. She pushed herself erect and limped to the line. She pulled it in before she tossed it to Mandy.
