Dead in the Water (36 page)

As John gaped, the captain turned on his heel and headed for the elevator.

Through the looking glass, through the magic periscope that Reade had somehow fashioned, Ramón watched as the crumpled form of a man sagged at the feet of Captain Reade. The man wept and mumbled. Reade laughed.

“Curry, I must thank you for your latest service to me. You have been a worthy acolyte.” He looked straight at Ramón. “And now I must ask you, do you truly wish to die?”

Sobbing, the man named Curry picked up the sword Ramon had so recently dropped. “Goddamn you,” he whispered, and lunged toward the captain. But he was weak; the momentum threw him face forward onto the deck with a sharp crack. A cloud of blood bloomed around him and the sword clattered from his grasp.

“Try again,” the captain taunted as he picked up the sword and held it out to him.

“Just kill me,” the man begged.

“No. You must do it.”

Bastard, Ramón thought. Fucking
chingadera
asshole. He was going to kill that man; why not just do it? Reade was a fucking sadist, tricking the
señora
into killing herself with a bottle. And her husband, making him jump into a pot of boiling water. Why did he have to fool with them? Why not just fucking do it?

“
Ay, Dios.
” His mind numbed: what had Reade said? Only the living could kill the living.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” he said in English, over and over. He shook, hard.

Maybe Reade couldn’t kill them because he was not alive.

And if he couldn’t kill them. If he wasn’t alive …

He had to get free. He had to tell the others. He had to save them, save himself.
Jesús Cristo
, maybe Reade could do nothing to them. Nothing, unless they let him. If they didn’t
believe what they say … if they understood it was all fake …

“
Ayúdame, ayúdame.
” Help me. Help me, God.

But God was not listening.

Perhaps He was dead, too.

Or a fake.

Ruth cried out. In the tub, why was she in the tub in her stateroom? Why was her face under the water?

Why did it seem that something was pressing against the back of her neck? And what was she seeing? Beauty, beauty, fading—

The image of the captain’s face, when he had come to visit her, loomed large, burst like a bubble.

What was she doing?

Beauty, beauty; ah, no wait …

A knock on the door.

Ruth sat up. The water streamed off her face into the tub. But she couldn’t have bent low enough to put her head under the waterline. She was too old, too stiff, too …

The knock came again. “Yes?” she asked timorously. “Yes, who is it?”

A shape on the other side of the plastic curtain. A shadow,
moving among the red and blue fish, the printed forest of seaweed.

A voice that she couldn’t hear, but suddenly she knew whose voice it was:

“Don’t go,” she pleaded, lurching forward. “Stephen!”

The doorbell.

The shadow faded.

Ruth put her hands to her head. Dreaming? Or awake? Why could she no longer tell?

“Ruth? Ruth!”

It was Donna. Ruth flattened her hand against the shower curtain. “Come back, come back,” she said.

“Ruth!”

She was alone now. She felt it, knew it. Carefully, she hung on to the railing above the soap dish and hauled herself to a standing position.

“Coming!” Her voice screeched, an old lady’s voice.

She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. Stepped cautiously out and reached for her bathrobe.

The doorknob rattled. “Ruth? Ruth!”

She faced the tub. Was there anything in the room that could have cast a shadow against the shower curtain? A chair in the next room, perhaps, or the way the light fixture was adjusted?

For now, hearing Donna’s voice, she understood how … jumbled … she had been. Imagining all kinds of things. A gullible old woman’s hopes, amplified by the excitement of being lost at sea. Foolish hopes. No one had been hovering behind the shower curtain, least of all her missing husband. There was no supernatural force at work; there were no messages coming to her from beyond.

But what about what had happened on the
Morris
?

And why had she been sitting in the tub? She’d taken a shower not an hour before, in preparation for lunch.

And there
had
been a shadow on her curtain. A moving shadow.

“Ruth!”

Stirring herself, she walked out of the bathroom and
crossed her stateroom. Glanced at the clock as she passed the dresser, and caught her breath.

Either the clock was wrong, or she’d sat in the water for three hours.

She opened the door.

“Hi,” Donna said. “I was getting worried about you. You all right?”

I don’t know, I don’t know, she wanted to cry. She nodded and said, “I am a little hungry, though. I … I missed breakfast.”

“Lunch, too, I’m afraid. It’s almost dinnertime.” She peered around the door. “Has John been by to see you?”

“No, dear. Ah, can you give me a few moments to dress?”

Before Donna could answer, she slammed the door shut and fell against it. Her heart spasmed; she was covered with goose bumps.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, and turned her head toward the bathroom.

A shadow on the curtain, moving slowly, slowly.

Waiting.

The icy water chilled his knees into two brittle disks of throbbing pulses as Ramón stared into the magic periscope and saw:

The captain and Dr. Fielder, walking, talking. Fielder looked guarded, yet he was clearly interested in whatever the captain was telling him.

Lies,
señor
. Lies. Take your boy and leave the ship. Leave, leave, as soon as you can.

Saw:

The museum, and a skeleton stretched within a cage of glass; she a creature of exquisite beauty, who raised her arms toward Ramón and sang. And Cha-cha with his old metal bowl, and spoon, and he was stirring a mixture of fingers and eyes; God, he was stirring.

Saw:

A woman with Matty. They were walking across a fogladen
deck of some kind of barge, some Egyptian-looking thing, with velvet hangings and tassels and torches. The torches, something about them. Ramón flexed his knees, relaxed them. The torches. Fire. Heat.

With her arm around Matt’s shoulders, she raised her other hand and pointed to a cloaked figure who glided through the black torch smoke. He rode in a boat, and he guided it with a long pole. Ramón heard the woman murmur, “Charon.” Only that.

The figure raised its head. And Ramón felt a flash of shock that there was anything left that could terrify him.

But death terrifies everyone, even the dead. And the captains of the dead.

And the Desire of Death moved upon the waters, something bigger than they knew about; something beyond the captain …

Wanting.

The captain stood on the bridge. The sea opened her arms to him. He grit his teeth and thought about diving into her, and sinking deeply.

Do you hear me, Donna
? he called, though the bitch wouldn’t listen.
Do you hear me? I am gathering them, all your friends. I am putting them under

(
way under; way, way under)

my spell, which is the ocean’s spell: a dream, a hope, the ebb and flow of their lives, which is the tide of their mortality
.

And you can do nothing about it, you with your near-perfect imperviousness. You have a hard shell, but I shall penetrate you. I shall have you, and I shall take you, and I shall keep you. You will be Life-in-Death to my Ancient Mariner, the beautiful woman who never dies, but brings death. The captain’s woman
.

You are the one. Do you not remember me, my darling? Whose hand pulled you to the slumber-deaths, with the boy I loved, the little boy in the cold, bottomless lake
?

My lady of the lake, do you not know me? The companion in your watery grave, who calls to you with the song of a tempter? How you fought, my lovely, as I sought to keep you. How you hated me for taking the child
.

And was it only fate that when she called me, the old widow called with her Desire, and gave form to
Pandora,
that you came back to me? Fate, or destiny
?

They’re taking longer than I expected, your death throes. Much longer. How tired you must be. And how you fight me still! How you deny me
!

But you shall tire. Everyone eventually does. And you shall accept my invitation. You shall come aboard. And after you’ve done with kicking and screaming and fighting to keep your head above water, we shall come together and I shall fulfill my Desire
.

Do you know this poem
?

Melville. It’s in that book, which of course I let you have. And of course, you’ve been too thick—thus far, at least—to make any connections: Bruce Smith was the master of the
Titanic.
Creutz commanded the
Kronen,
which sank in 1767. Such an odd name, yet you passed it off as nothing. The two times I used Marcus Hare, who went down with his ship
Eurydice—
a double clue, nay, a triple, as Eurydice herself went down to the Underworld—no matter. It was elegant, but lost on you. No matter. I am amused. That is why I bring them back, again and again. For my amusement. I would grow lonely without them, and I am fated—for I have sworn—to sail with a dead crew
.

And after you cease to amuse me, the deluge
.

So learn the poem, me beauty. Learn it word for word, because I shall make you say it, Donna me lass, Donna you bitch, you cunt you filthy whore I shall wound you I shall cut you I shall torture you and I shall make you sorry I shall drag you down a thousand times I shall I shall

Implacable

It was five-thirty in the afternoon of the fifth day aboard
Pandora
. Donna sat cross-legged on her bed with a glass of Scotch in one hand and the other on the phone. She was becoming seriously concerned.