Dead in the Water (49 page)

They staggered together, bumping into piles of cracked dishes, an overturned bathtub. A mash of tables had gathered to their right, skittered in a jumble toward the doorway.

The floor was dry, but parts of it were missing, and it was the same crazy quilt as the walls—wood here, something like cork farther on, linoleum, metal.

“Daddy,” Matt croaked. “I—”

And then it was the kitchen again.

And half of it was underwater.

On the other side, Donna and a man who looked like he had been horribly burned waved at them. John’s panicked mind registered a flash of shame: in his terror for Matt, he’d completely forgotten about her.

“Here!” Donna shouted, at the same time the man kept shrieking, “It flickered! It flickered! They’re gone!”

Then Donna jumped into the water and started swimming
toward them. He roused himself and gathered Matt in his arms.

The captain froze at the top of the ladderway that led to the hold where … where … she …

 … where he had found Cha-cha before, crooning to …

 … to
nothing
.

Then everything flashed into blackness. Around him, the night whipped and slashed. Rain thundered down on him with sharp needle mouths. The
Pandora
! Where was she?

He pounded his fists together. “I am. I am the I am that I am. The sea is my mistress. The sea, mine.”

COME

And he heard it. He
heard
it. The call, the cry, the promise.

The threat.

And he remembered the forgotten stanza of the siren song:

The yacht swam away from the
Royal Grace,
and the man inside the canvas raved. Thomas Reade called on Satan, his Dark Master, and he begged Diana, goddess of the moon, and every other deity of his infernal studies, to save him
.

The storm abated, but he was sick inside the bag, fevered and bilious and mad with thirst; and it took hours to work his way out of it. The bird, yes, the bird came
.

Nathaniel’s head was there, yes
.

He found the bottle in the boat and blest the ocean and swallowed the contents; and thought that if he ever met the generous seaman who slipped it aboard, he would deal with him kindly. Yes! That was what he had thought
.

And the head of his darling, yes. They were so afrighted, they threw the head in. And though it was old by then, and stinking, he ate of his beloved; he ate everything; coconut crack! the brains, still moist
.

But the night descended on him, and with the blackness came new thirst. And he prayed again, and again, and gnawed the skull, picked clean now, and dry
.

The day came, and with the light, the thirst
.

And he lay in the yacht and cursed all men and all gods
.

And the evening and the morning were the second day
.

On the sixth day, he tore a piece of the canvas, bit by bit, all day; his fingers bleeding, his teeth ripped out, and he wrote in his own blood for help. He threw the bottle over the side and fell back, marveling that he wasn’t yet dead
.

And on the seventh day, the reply, the answer, in the green glass; it rose, it rose, it came to him, singing, with fish, and it spewed water into him, and it promised, it promised—

And he promised
.

They became One
.

“No,” he whimpered now. No, as everything flooded back in a deluge of terror, because he had betrayed her. He had promised.

And he had lied.

And
she
was looking for someone else to keep his pact.

Fog, slick and slithery; in it, a hand that snaked through the hold, the door and the nails were a glittery green, kinda cool. And it fanned its fingers to touch him again; and it said

HUNGRY, but what Cha-cha heard was:

The steady sway of the hammock, and the scent of summer; and his mother calling, “Charlie? Would you like some lemonade?”

Or maybe he heard that pretty little gal back in Nam, who called herself Betty, and she had those crazy kung-fu fightin’ nails and she loved him. Maybe they’d get married, yeah, and take all her little cousins and brothers and her teeny-weeny mom and dad to the States, yeah.

And then the napalm …

He leaned against the door with his eyes closed. Something made scratching noises near his feet, which were numb; why were they numb? And he was so cold, even though it was summer—

No, it wasn’t! He was on the
Pandora
, with his goodbuddies. He looked down. Oh, hey, that wasn’t a hand at all, it was a shimmering thing, no, a beak, no, a tentacle, no, it was a hand, a lady’s hand, and it was supercalifragilistically beautiful.

And whoops! the nails sliced him as they caressed his foot.
Bad bummer, man, ’cuz it
hurt
! And the blood froze as it seeped through his sneaker; pop! like snot on a subzero continent, yeah; but it
hurt
.

Okay, though, ’cuz it was so good. Hey, howdy, somethin’ behind Door Number One, just for him

COMECOME

HUNGRY

And whatever that groove-thang was, it started pushing on the other side of the cold, cold door.

“Dang,” he breathed. “You see that, goodbuddies?”

No one answered.

Cha-cha was alone.

The hand poked from under the door.

And someone started singing:

Cha-cha’s eyes filled with tears. “Mom,” he murmured, kissing the door. His lips stuck to the frozen metal.

But he sang along anyway.

Matt’s head thumped against his father’s shoulder as his dad, Donna, and Curry, the monster-man, ran down a corridor that was not a corridor on the
Pandora
, but on some other ship, one that had posters on the walls with army guys in helmets and life jackets, and guys saluting a flag; and one of a ship slipping under the waves and underneath, the words “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS.”

Fog rolled in, dry-ice tons of it, a heavy, sodden net unfurling as his dad raced into it. Matt cried out and threw his arms around his father’s neck, and when he looked back, he saw the gray raging water of the ocean rushing toward them at a thunderous pace. Within seconds, it washed around his dad’s thighs, splashing Whitewater into the foggy air. A piece of seaweed whipped around his leg—no, it was an eel!—and
shapes spun and danced beneath the surface of the rising waters.

Matt raised his hand and pounded on his father’s shoulders, crying “Daddy!” but his father didn’t answer him, just kept running and praying and running on. Donna was saying something to him and he was nodding, and the other guy made a funny noise in his throat and Donna smacked him one but good.

The water grew choppy as it built and roared and churned shapes to the surface: the bisque head of a doll, china plates, a piece of net, a bathing cap, a chair leg.

A figurehead, hands clasped over her naked tee-tee’s, with brown eyes and flowing dark hair; and in her hands she held one of Dane’s mittens. She bobbed past, late, late for an important date; it was the lady he’d seen, the statue lady!

Matt screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but his father plunged on, not hearing him.

Farther on, another set of posters was plastered on the walls, with funny stick writing all over them, and all the men had cat-shaped eyes. They were faded and old, half rotted away; there was a hole in the wall and Matt saw not another part of the ship, but the sky, and it was pitch-dark out, and things were exploding in the air, bombs or something, and airplanes droned and whirred—

—and something shot downward, and the hallways shook. Chunks of the ceiling rained down on them. Matt covered his head and something struck his fingers, cutting into them. He cried out and jerked up.

But the adults kept going, a powdery coating like snow covering their heads and shoulders. The water rushed around their thighs; it lapped up and drenched Matt’s bottom.

“Daddy!”

Farther on, wooden signs hung on the walls: “All Steerage Passengers Must Report to Assistant Purser,” and Matty’s mind reeled, because the ocean was swallowing up the ship, and airplanes were bombing it, and the wall was a patchwork of green paint and gray metal and dark wood, and some of it was streaked with slimy stuff, and some of it was streaked with brown splotches. He didn’t know what the hell was going
on but steerage had to do with cows and he thought of the freezers and moaned.

They reached the deck of an old sailing ship. It was the playroom Matt had seen on the way to dinner.

But no, it was a ship, a real ship, or part of one. It jutted topsy-turvy, all smashed up, and a mast to Matt’s right had cracked in half, and the other end had crashed through the floor, leaving a huge hole less than an inch from Matt’s dad’s right foot.

And beside the other foot, there was a pile of bloated, purple bodies that stretched to the other side of the deck, maybe ten feet away, and one of them was—

—Matt’s mouth dropped open and he threw up.

One of them was a boy with no face. Two eyes peered from an oval that pulsed red gore, but when he smiled, his teeth sparkled and glittered, clean and pearly; and then a crab crawled out of his mouth and dropped into the goo, and flailed in it, its claws and body sinking, sinking into gut quicksand.

The boy sat up and reached a hand toward Matt. He wore old-timey clothes, all rotten and torn: a striped shirt and a pair of black pants that stopped just below his knees.

“Climb, baby. Climb up the mast,” his father said. Matt stared at him, at the boy. His father didn’t see the boy!

“Daddy …”

“The water’s coming. We’ve got to go up.”

“But the boy! The boy!” he shrieked.

“C’mon, Matty,” Donna said, pulling him out of his father’s arms. Matt screamed and clung to his father. Donna pried him off, one piece of him at a time, and the monster-man helped.

Matt reared away from them as the boy stood up.

“Climb, Matt!” his dad pleaded as Donna pushed him against the mast. “The boat is sinking!”

“Daddy, he’s coming!” He jabbed wildly at the air. They all looked, but Matt could tell they didn’t see him standing there, blood running down his face.

“No! No!”

“Get up there, goddamn you!” Donna slapped Matt’s face and pushed on his butt. “Please, baby. Please.”

Grinning, the boy slogged toward them, right through the gooey bodies, guts squishing under his bare feet. He was maybe six feet away. Sobbing, Matt shinnied up the mast. It was old and splintery. The wood tore at his hands and pants knees.

“Go up, Donna,” his dad said, but she shook her head and moved away.

“I’m going to find the captain. Curry, come with me.”

They argued while Matt watched the boy come closer, closer. Matt gave a shout and began to climb. His dad came after him, boosting him with his hand as Matt scrabbled up the mast for all he was worth.

They went high, very high. Ignoring Donna and Curry, who still must not have seen him, the faceless boy put his hands on the mast.

“Oh, no!” Matt shouted. He stopped, frozen.

“Please, sweetheart, please, Mattman.” Distantly, his father’s voice, from another world. Matt’s heart was the loudest thing he had ever heard. “You can do it. Think about James Bond.”

The monster-boy started to climb. Matt’s heart roared in his ears. If he didn’t move, the boy would get his father! Even now, he could see his fingers, just bone, with pointy ends and blood—

Matt scrabbled upward.

“Good boy. That’s my Mattman.”

Matt tried to go faster. The boy’s hands were grabbing for his dad’s feet. Faster, and faster, and—

With a cry, he lost his grip and fell

down

down

down, into the rushing water. He heard his father’s wail as his head went under.

There was a second splash, and the boy’s worm-eaten face cannonballed down on him, and his hands came around his throat. Matt tried to push him away, but he kept coming, kept pushing Matt

down, and Matty thought he heard him say,
This is how it feels to drown, Matt. It’s not so bad, is it? Just let it happen. Let it go. It’s better than dying of cancer. Believe me. Far better. We’re doing you a favor
.

This couldn’t be happening, Donna thought distractedly as they pulled Matt from the water and raced to higher ground: the top of a stack of crates marked “SPECIMENS.”

“I dreamed this,” John husked as they tried to force the water out of Matt’s body.

And lived it? Donna tingled with a horrid déjà vu. Not Matt, too. Not another little drowned kid. Not here.

She fell to her knees beside John. His face was white. “There’s no pulse.”

As they looked at each other, she began to shake. She clenched her muscles tight to make herself stop. It didn’t work. Not Matt. Please, God, not again, and not Matt.

“You compress,” she said steadily. “I’ll breathe.”

“No, he has cancer …” John blurted.