Dead in the Water (30 page)

His mouth turned up on one side. Very charming, very gallant. He took her wrist and steadied her glass as he poured her one more glass of champagne.

“For the road,” he said. Then: “I hope you’re feeling better tomorrow.”

“I feel … thank you,” she amended. If that was the game—that she wasn’t up to it—that was fine.

“Good night. Sweet dreams.”

“Thanks.” She fished in her purse and found her key, unlocked the door. Hesitated.

Once again, she didn’t want to go in. The hairs on her forearms stood on end and a stripe of ice coated each cheek, her scalp, the small of her back. She didn’t want to go in, not at all. Haunted …

“Officer Almond?” he said.

She shook hands and held up her glass. “Good night.”

Pushed the door open to a dark room. Stood on the threshold. Swallowed.

Looked back toward Captain Reade. He was already walking away.

She took a step inside the door. In the light from the companionway, she saw something moving around her feet.
Wispy, and smoky and insubstantial, something that curled around her ankles on

little

cat

feet,

pussy willow-gray.

“Jesus!” She jumped back into the hall. Her heart jackhammered her rib cage as she peered into the blackness. She glanced left and right. Now what?

“Shit,” she muttered, darted forward, and felt along the left side of the wall for a light switch. Her forefinger nudged the edge of a switch plate and she hurried to find the switch itself, suddenly sure that if she didn’t move fast, someone—or something—was going to grab her hand—

—or chew it off her wrist—

Damn it! Somehow she missed the switch. Huffing, she tapped the wall with her palm.

Heavy breathing. And a waft of heat against the back of her hand, oh, fuck—

She pulled back her hand; and as she did so, the lights magically snapped on. She cried out, heard herself, and made a tight, angry face.

Because there was nothing in the goddamned room, no dry ice on the floor, no monster salivating over her wrist. Christ on a crutch, what was the matter with her, and did it have anything to do with her blackouts?

And then goose bumps flooded over her like an ice-water waterfall as she walked into the room and slammed the door shut. She trembled violently, from head to toe, as she stomped across the room,

and she swore to God something moved as she passed by the foot of the bed to the closet; she could almost see the covers ripple.

But when she yanked them back, there was nothing there. Because there
was
nothing there.

Of course.

Chatter-scrabble
.

The captain froze. Listened. What
was
that bloody noise?
On occasion, he heard it; on occasion, his heart raced at that sound. Its familiarity, its … treachery.

No. An engine. Nothing more. It was nothing.

Chatter-scrabble
.

No, he was

and between him and the gull he had summoned with his magical incantations, yes, together they had ripped open the shroud, and uncorked the bottle he had caused to appear.

He touched his chin. Singing. Had someone called to him, sung a lovely song—

No. That was Donna Almond, on the other side of the door, practicing her music because she wanted to be a chanteuse. It had always been Donna.

And so
strong
. He sighed, smiled. How she fought against the lines he drew around her. He would keep her a long time; as long as forever proved to be. But tonight he had other fish to fry, as they said nowadays.

As
they
said.

Chatter-scrabble
.

“Nothing there,” he said in a booming voice.

Nothing there at all.

Ruth had been correct, back on the
Morris
: something had lurked in the companionway outside her cabin door.

And now, in the chimera-black mirage of night, it lurked outside Elise and Phil’s suite on the
Pandora
. It slithered within the fog that blanketed the companionways and forecastles and stacks and cabins, in the gray mass of dream-cloud wherein it had its being; as it moved,
chatter-scrabble
, as it curled and crawled with its bird-beak pincers; as it sought out the flesh and the blood; and the dreams, and the traitor,

chatter-scrabble, chatter-scrabble
,

its hunger fierce, its yearning terrible, its agony unbearable.

Its anger, a crucible.

*  *  *

Elise sat in bed, surreptitiously fondling the invitation a steward had delivered to her while Phil fussed in the bathroom:

The paper was thick linen, luxurious to the touch, romantic. She smiled to herself. Of course she had no intention of going, but it was nice to be asked, all the same.

If Thomas Reade wanted to ignore her publicly in favor of that meter maid, let him suffer the consequences. All day, she had made herself available, sunning by the pool in the most outrageous bikini, and he had never come by, not once.

Phil’s electric razor buzzed and hummed, and her smile slipped. Her husband was hoping for sex. He went through the same precise rituals whenever he wanted her, and in the same order: combed his hair, washed his face (the only man she knew who did so), shaved, brushed his teeth. God, God! Maybe if he’d do something different—comb his hair last, or not comb it all; Jesus, if he’d just stop being so predictable, and so goddamn spineless—he never came and asked her, or told her, that he wanted to make love. He just combed his hair and primped like a woman, hoping, she assumed, that it would arouse her.

With the anger came the guilt. She was horrible to him. Last night she’d practically grabbed the captain’s crotch right in front of him. Why did he put up with it? Any man would—

Any man would do what her father used to do. Reflexively, she touched her jaw. It had hurt worse when the doctor pushed it back into the socket than when her father dislocated it.

Oh, was she screwed up. To equate such sadism with manliness …

The razor went off. Now he was gargling. New fury seethed through her, though she didn’t understand it. On their honeymoon, he had folded his clothes as he had removed them, garment by garment, aligning the creases in his trousers, rolling
his tie. Would’ve folded hers, too, if she hadn’t ordered him to leave them on the floor, for God’s sake.

The cap of the deodorant bottle.

The
fist
of his breath spray.

By the time he came to bed, she was so angry she wanted to slap him. And when he shyly tried to mount her, she gritted her teeth and said, “I’m not feeling too well.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, darlin’,” he said, climbing off without a protest, though his erection was jabbing her in the thigh and surely he must be ready to explode. “Can I get you anything?”

Meet me
.

Raging, she shook her head.

Within an hour, he was fast asleep. He was making her do this, she told herself. You didn’t go looking for it if you got it at home, and it was a male conceit that women were more likely than men to remain faithful though unsatisfied. Lots of her friends back home had something going on the side, with the pool man or the gardener or their kids’ soccer coach. It was part of being married to worker bees: even if their husbands owned the hive, they were drones, and a queen bee needed a special kind of jelly to keep her royal.

No, she didn’t believe that. She knew she was a tramp, treated him abominably. But why the hell didn’t he kick up a fuss?

Yet even her shame could be exciting. Dressed in white slacks and a cashmere sweater, and nothing underneath either, she pulled open the door and darted into the hall, shielding the light with her body. She stood for a moment, assuming he would come to her. Surely he didn’t expect her to know
where
to meet him.

Only what to do when she found him.

She took a few steps to the left and looked down the hall. The passageways were so long they dipped, which gave the
Pandora
a less-than-solid air she found unnerving after her ordeal at sea. Once they landed in Australia, she would never set foot on any kind of vessel again.

“Captain?” she whispered; and, more softly, “Thomas?”

She heard a creak behind her. Thought he could sneak up on her, eh? She stayed as she was, allowing him to enjoy the element of surprise.
Creak, creak
, and the tread of shoes on the carpet.

The lights lowered, throwing her into sudden shadows. A thrill of anticipation made her shiver once—goose walking over her grave—and she took a couple casual steps forward, to make the game more interesting.

The soft, sure tread of footsteps in the gloom advanced. She lowered her head and tried to peer out of the corner of her eye without giving away that she knew he was there—

—and the carpet moved.

She blinked. It
moved
. The vinelike traces eddied and whirled, and whirled, and the red shapes floated among them, and a

face

She cried out just as a hand cupped her mouth. Then she whirled around and the captain stood before her, laughing silently.

“Got you,” he chortled quietly.

“God!” She took two steps backward. “I—I saw—” She jabbed her finger downward. “I saw—”

“What?” He followed the direction of her hand. “A spot?”

She thought for a moment. What had she seen? She could no longer remember. What had frightened her?

“I creep in on little cat feet,” he whispered, nuzzling her under the chin. His hands stole around her waist. Rolling, liquid warmth circled her thighs and her sex. Her nipples hardened, and she gasped when he pulled her against his body.

He kissed the nape of her neck, pulled her around to face him, and opened his mouth.

Something moved behind him, at the end of the corridor. A tall shadow? Her gaze flickered past his ear—

—and then there was nothing, and he was kissing her. His breath was hot and his tongue probing and thick; his erection pushed into her belly and she became very, very wet.

“Come on,” he whispered, grabbing her hand. He hurried her down the corridor.

“Where are we going?”

He smiled though he looked straight ahead. “To play spin the bottle.”

Together they hurried down the passage. He had a death grip on her hand that was painful, but they moved at such a breathless pace she couldn’t manage to tell him. He was strong—she could tell he didn’t mince around, but took what he wanted—and all her icy shame melted away. She was built for more than Phil could give. Love was giving you what you wanted. Fulfilling your needs. Ergo, Phil did not love her.

So there was no need to be faithful to him.

The captain’s grip was an iron band over the back of her hand, and it clamped down hard, making her cry out. They were practically running. She put her other hand on his wrist, started to ask him to slow down, ease up, when he whipped her around the corner and the—

—the
difference—

—struck her mute.

It was the same ship, wasn’t it? She had walked down this same section of hallway a dozen times. But she had never noticed—never
seen
—the royal red carpet, the flocked walls, the elaborate crystal lamps hanging from the ceiling. She had never seen how dirty it was, with cobwebs dripping like diamonds from the teardrop coronas of the fixtures; the green mold on the thick oak baseboards.

A mirror, splattered with raised, round bumps—

—barnacles?

“Captain,” she said, “what …?”

Around another corner. Now she halted, throwing him off balance, and turned violently left, right.

The walls, the ceiling, the floor, were made of dull gray metal, low and slick with moisture. Papers were strewn on the floor, and they were wet; and everything smelled rotten and dead; and something gritted beneath her shoes: sand, and shells, and the skeleton of a large fish. The spine curved around her left foot and the skull crunched beneath her heel as she jumped back.

“What?” she cried.

He frowned at her. “What’s wrong?”

And the room—the metal, the papers, the fish skull. Her knees turned to jelly and she grabbed hold of his shoulder to keep herself from falling to the filthy deck.

“Don’t you see it?” she asked, raising a trembling hand to take it all in. But it wouldn’t go in; her brain refused to process the images she knew she was seeing. She looked, looked hard; and then—

—the white walls, the ugly carpet, the hurricane lamps.

“But,” she said stupidly. She covered her mouth. “But I saw—”

He stared at her. Stepped backward. “What?” he asked, and his voice was low, dangerous. “What did you see?”

She pointed. “The room. The whole place! It was … it’s …”

He looked at her with a wild grimace, showing all his teeth, like a fish she’d seen in the museum, something long and dark and wicked—a viper fish, all head and tail, and sharp, sharp fangs.

“Thomas!” she cried.