Dead in the Water (34 page)

Someone bellowed, “Reverse! Reverse engines!” The whistle blew; bells clanged.

The shudder of gears; squealing like dying pigs. And a crowd of passengers stampeding toward him, pointing and wailing and screaming in fear. And one of them was Mrs. Reinstedt, the fat woman who had come by at dinner, only now she wore strange clothes, old-time clothes, lace and a bustle …

“Please,” Phil begged. She waddled past him, pointing. She fell to her knees. Phil turned and something hit him in the forehead, something small and hard and green;

and he screamed as he stood on the edge of the top deck of a steamboat painted fresh and white, and a score of old figureheads posed like religious icons before the columns that held up the roof, and the wheelhouse; he really stood there now, really did—

—too much steam, the boat was rumbling like a volcano—

—and he jumped just as it blew, grabbing the girl beside him and throwing them both over the side. The deck blasted into a thousand flaming pieces, up into the air, and he grabbed on to the girl, whose dress burst into flames, and the two plummeted toward the blazing inferno, and the steam.

And into some kind of huge metal container like a drum or a kettle. And at the last, the very last as the steam boiled him alive, flaying the skin off his beet-red body, he hung in a silent scream in her arms, her charred arms that moved around his back and held him tight. Her skeletal rib cage punctured his chest and boiling blood oscillated out of him.

At this last, as he held on, held on, unable to believe anything, least of all that a man could live through this, a man could sizzle like a griddle and still draw breath; the skull kissed him on his lipless mouth and whispered, in the captain’s voice, “Fresh, hot belly timber. Ah, yes.”

The captain stood on the bridge, staring out to sea with his hands folded behind his back. He was tired, though he was never tired; his bones ached, though they had never troubled him through all the centuries and shipwrecks and harvests.

Something was wrong.

The sea, his sacred lady, stroked the hull of his vessel.

I was a mariner
, he brooded,
a captain, and they shoved me in that boat with my treasure about me. My books, my uniform. The hand of glory; no, the head, Nathaniel’s sweet head of glory, so superstitious were they that they wouldn’t allow him to stay aboard the
Royal Grace.
Nor would they commit him to the sea
.

It were a boon, that his little head was there. I was so hungry
.

I was so thirsty. And that taste, that taste, that was mana from the sea, the beauteous sea, who suckled me with the milk of Nathaniel’s brain. Ah, Stella Maris! Giver of life!

It was so black, so dark, on the high breasts of my beloved Oceana. And I Wanted
,

I Desired
,

I Dreamed and

And suddenly, Creutz beside him was no longer Creutz, but a mossy stick figure dressed in wafting tatters of silk and ribbon; a thatch of blond hair wove above his head, floating like a sponge. And from his mouth, a tentacle waved Hello,
Goddag
, in Swedish; and it begged

Let me not be
,

let me not be …

The captain panicked. That couldn’t happen! He whirled around. He stood on the bridge

alone, alone, all, all

Everyone was gone! The wheelhouse was a wreck, sand and detritus littering the floor—

Losing his touch. Losing his strength. His vision.

“No!” he shouted, and it all came back.

Creutz, leaning over a chart. Adams, late of the
Benicia
, at the wheel, the wooden wheel that—

No!

at the plastic joystick. And the others, at their stations. Their battle stations.

It was
their
fault, he told himself, and thought of the survivors aboard.
Her
fault, for he still had not learned the nature of the hook that would impale her heart. She was confusing him, dissipating his magical power. He must pull the nets in faster.

Yes, he must.

He smiled, and sent out his thoughts to the young Mexican, the one who would be a big man. This one he would do with élan.

He closed his eyes and dreamed.

On the water, in the fog, Ramón stood with one leg on the hull of the longboat and faced into the bitter English wind.
Yo soy
, he thought. I am.
Yo soy vikingo
. I am a Viking, and I’ll cut these weaklings down! I’ll bash their skulls in and drink my mead from their bones!

He grabbed his erect cock with both hands and laughed into the gale that rocked the longboat. Thus blazed his kinsmen into battle, loving the fight, thrusting with pride in their prowess and savagery. What did the English plead?

From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord deliver us
.

Yes, the fury! The fury!

He stood at the prow, clad for battle in his leather and metal. Kraken, his fabled longsword, was drawn and pointed downward. His crew rowed through the mist, their arms corded with muscle. There would be spoils to take, and dark beauties to rape, and priests to torment and torture.

What a fine day. What a day to be alive!

“Captain, strong seas ahead,” his lieutenant warned. Indeed, as the boat slipped between two tall, chalk-white cliffs, the waters swelled beneath the boat and crested.

“Evade!” Ramón commanded, holding on to the dragon figurehead. The weight of Kraken dragged him forward; as he sought to right himself, two long, white hands shot through the surface of the water and grabbed the tip of his blade.

“By Odin!” he shouted.

“ ’Tis one of their water witches!” one of his comrades shouted. “Let go of your sword!”

The two men closest to him abandoned their oars and grabbed hold of his waist. But the long, white hands wrapped around the blade and yanked. The steel sliced through them but they did not bleed.

Despite the strength of the two men holding him, Ramón plunged into the frothing waves.

And into the arms of a creature with a stark-white face and hair the color of bleached bone. It was naked and it had the torso of a woman, but beneath, it curled white-rotted tendrils around him, legs, hips, arms. Tighter, tighter, until he was swaddled in its stinking flesh. Beneath his sword arm, something jerked Kraken from his grasp.

The creature cackled. He heard the sound distinctly through the water; and then it was obscured by a stream of bubbles that Ramón understood was the air in his lungs, which it was squeezing out of him.

He jerked his body hard. It laughed again. Violently he wriggled back and forth as his brain filled with blinding panic.

Above, oars stabbed into the water from the hull of his boat. His mates, trying to save him, though none dared dive in after him, although he was their captain and they loved him. His eyes rolled as he saw how close they came, and yet never touched the monster.

His eyes began to cloud and his lungs ached with emptiness, but he kept his mouth clamped shut. He mustn’t try to breathe; there was nothing to breathe, except death.

The monster roared with glee and rubbed its breasts against him. Its tendrils curled around and around and around. Shouts filtered from the surface, but they were moving on; the dragon’s head began to move past.

And then the creature began to sing in a clear, sweet voice. Its rib cage vibrated against Ramón’s as it trilled words he couldn’t understand. Perhaps it wanted to lull him into surrender, or it was a spell of some kind. Odin protect his men, he thought, if the English had command of such a being.

It sang. Ramón’s lungs shook. Leader of such a fine ship, and the first son of a chieftain, and he was dying an inglorious death. If only he had his sword, or any kind of weapon.

Then something moved through the murk behind the monster. It was a flask, he thought, yes, a flask, of green, some treasure of the English. He willed it to hit her, knock her unconscious. Willed it, willed it …

Tantalizingly, it bobbed just behind her, and he lost all hope as it stopped and hovered harmlessly. A vain wish, that such a thing could harm his enemy. A vain hope, that he would survive her evil embrace.

He could contain himself no longer. Better to die in a manner of his own choosing than in whatever way the monster intended.

He opened his mouth to take a breath that he knew was not there—

—and the creature crushed her mouth over his and spewed something into him, something horrible and cold and clotted. He knew that taste. It was blood; she was drowning his lungs in the blood of her body.

Nei
, he roared in his mind. He struggled in the cocoon of her body, whipping his head back and forth, demanding of the gods a chance to fight. A chance for Valhalla.

The bottle flew at her, crashing across the back of her head. Her skull cracked and blood gushed up from the fragments, toward the surface. Going limp, her arms fell from around him. As soon as the tendrils loosened, he ripped them off himself. Grabbed his sword from her fingers, raised it back in the water, and cut off her head.

Down, it tumbled in the water,

down,

down,

down,

At his feet, the head of Elise van Buren.

Ramón screamed and leapt away from it. No, he had not—

No
.

Fog rushed around him, gray, dirty, cold. It billowed toward him, an onrushing tide of wind and stink.

He spun left, right. Dropped the sword. Ran through the cloud. About ten feet from him what looked like an old wooden mast pierced the sweaty clouds, and from it jittered a tattered Union Jack. The fog grappled with the top right corner like an animal worrying a bone.

“Nahhh …”

The fog swirled downward and scraped itself away, revealing the hulking wreck of an ancient sailing vessel. Pirate ship, Ramón thought, trying for an answer where there could be none. Schooner, clipper, part of a movie, part of a dream. An intricate sign above the companionway that led below decks read “
Royal Grace.
”

Ramón staggered backward, directly into Elise’s head, and with a shout he fell, sprawling over a rotted deck.

A stench rose from beneath his elbow. He crabbed on his backside and palms, put his hand into the warm guts of a rat whose head had been crushed and smeared against the splintered, pitted deck.

The fog careened toward him. A face poked out from it, smirking, laughing, a sharp, cruel face with an eye patch, and
the mouth opened and it was full of blood and meat, and it chewed so that he could see that it was—

—it was—

Ramón rolled over on his stomach and vomited.

Someone stood in the distance, at a ship’s wheel. A tall, wiry figure with long, flowing blond hair.

Kevin! Ramón crawled toward him, trying to call, unable to speak. He crabbed on his hands and knees, straining to outrun the fog and Captain Reade. Nails and splinters pierced his kneecaps and tore the skin in long, tortuous lines; he grunted, felt nothing, hurried toward Kevin.

The fog slipped around him.

“Kkkkk—”

Reached him. Ramón reached him. He put out a hand—

—and Kevin’s ruined body slumped over the wooden spokes, fell to one side, and splattered onto its back. His face was a motley of gray and purple. Large, crusted wounds covered each side of his face. Like a large, withered flower, his nose was crushed against his cheek, white shards like stamens stuck in the gore.

As Ramón screamed and jumped away, he caught that something was wrong with Kevin’s eyes, something horribly wrong: they looked like cartoon eyes; they were nothing but outlines of navy-blue—

—they were drawn on his lids. His eyes were closed and someone had drawn eyes on his eyelids.

“Jesus!” Ramón shouted; somehow this was more horrible than—

No. No, it wasn’t.

Reade’s boots stood beside him. The man bent down and offered Ramón a hand. In his other hand he carried Elise’s head by the hair, like a handbag.

“See how easy it is?”

Ramón whimpered, shuffled away, and flung himself against the base of a wooden mast.

The captain had a handkerchief over his mouth; he wiped daintily and drew it away. His lips were covered with blood.

“Fresh, not rotted,” he said. The head dangled in his grasp.
Her right cheek was missing; Ramón could see her teeth through the hole.

The captain smacked his lips. Ramón looked from the head to him and back again. No. No.

“Now we’ll render her.” He pointed above Ramón’s head.

Elise’s corpse was strung upside down from a hook that dangled from the crow’s nest. The body was sopping with blood, which no longer ran, no longer dripped. The flesh from between her legs to her throat had been sliced open, and entrails hung like sausages.

Ramón sobbed.

The fog billowed down, broiling, roiling, wringing itself around him like wet sheets. Ramón sank to his knees and punched at it like an angry child, tears splashing over his cheeks and scattering like spittle with each futile jab.

“And you wanted to be a big man,” Reade scoffed, stepping through the fog to stand before Ramón. “You thought to presume.”