Haunted Legends (31 page)

“Andy?” Langley repeated, turning his attention back to the sea. He was vaguely aware that Dugan was now behind him, but felt that he had to take the risk. “Can you hear me?”

There came a frantic metallic banging, and Langley swung the flashlight beam around until he saw a hand protruding from behind a sheet of metal. “Are you okay?”

The response was too muffled to make out. “That had better be him, and not the ghost,” said Moss.

“I’ll risk it,” said Langley. “Dugan, go and get the radio. Call for help.”

The biker didn’t move. “Why don’t you go? Didn’t they say that whoever used that to call for help was out of the game?”

“You asshole,
this isn’t a game anymore
!”

“I’ll go,” said Moss. “You fuckers can argue later. Do we still have the climbing gear?”

“Yes. And get my bag, too. There’s a signal flare in there, just in case the radio doesn’t work.”

Dugan scrambled to his feet and let her pass. “I’ll go get the ropes,” he said, sullenly. “But I’m not going to quit.”

•  •  •

“This is Moss to
Worst Nightmare
. Can you read me? Over.”

Silence from the walkie-talkie. Langley held his breath, vaguely aware that he was sick with fear and in danger of vomiting. It occurred to him that if the radio didn’t work, he’d have to use the flare, and if no one saw that . . . “This is the
Alkimos.
Can you—”

A crackle of static, barely audible over the wind, then, “. . . hardly hear . . .”

“Mayday! SOS! Help! Can you hear that? WE NEED HELP!”

“. . . what . . .”

Langley grabbed the radio. “THIS IS
ALKIMOS.
PART OF THE SHIP HAS COLLAPSED AND SYVERSON IS TRAPPED UNDER THE WRECKAGE. HE’S STILL ALIVE, BUT NEEDS EVAC. DO YOU READ? OVER?”

“. . . call Beck . . .”

“WE’LL NEED A WINCH AND A MEDIC. DO YOU COPY?”

“Medic. Copy,” came the reply. “Did you say witch?”

“WINCH! WHISKEY INDIA NOVEMBER CHARLIE—”

“Winch,” said Kelly. “Copy that. Over and out.”

Langley sighed with relief, and handed the walkie-talkie back to Moss.

“What do we do now?” asked Dugan. “Wait?”

“How much first aid do you know?”

“Basic,” said Langley. “And that was a couple of years back.”

“The same, but a
lot
of years back,” said Dugan.

“I have a Level Three Certificate, and I used to be an enrolled nurse,” said Moss, picking up the first-aid kit, then the ascender and rope. “How do I use this thing to get down there safely?”

“I’m not sure you
can
get down safely.”

“I won’t if I don’t try.”

Langley nodded. “Okay. You’ll need a headlamp—I have one if you don’t. Let’s do it.”

•  •  •

Langley hauled her back up onto the deck nearly half an hour later. “There’s a boat and a chopper on its way,” he said. “Divers on the launch as well as medics. Is he going to make it?”

“Well, he won’t bleed to death or drown,” she said. “And his head’s above water—just. He can move his fingers, but can’t feel his legs . . . at least one of which is broken.”

“Spinal injuries?”

“It looks that way. I don’t know whether he can be fixed.”

Langley shook his head. “Fuck. I’m not sure he wouldn’t rather be dead. I think I would be.”

“At least this way he has a choice,” said Moss, sharply. “Look, I’m going to go back to my room and get out of these wet clothes. Then I’m going to get a cabin near the other end of the ship. I suggest you do the same.” She pointed at the microphone still slung around Langley’s neck, then ran a finger across her own throat. He blinked, then nodded. He returned to his cabin, removed the microphone, then met the others in the corridor between the boiler casing and the galley.

“Okay,” said Moss, without preamble. “I don’t know whether the producers are going to drop me from the show because I used the radio, or because I left the ship to help Andy; if they do, I’ll go straight to one of the other networks and try to sell them my story. It won’t be worth a million, but it’s got to be worth something. If they
don’t
try to kick me off . . .” She drew a deep breath. “I say we split the money. A quarter million’s enough for me.”

“Four ways?” said Dugan.

“I think Andy’s going to need it more than we do.”

“You don’t know what I need it for,” replied the biker, heavily. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll settle for half. The rest of you can sort the other half a mill out between yourselves.”

“What makes you think—”

“Because I’m prepared to go the distance with this thing,” snarled Dugan. “Are the two of you? I’m doing you a favour here.”

“Pig’s arse you are!” Moss snapped. “Sure, I want off this wreck, but I’m not—”

“Hold on a second,” Langley interrupted. “Dugan, if you’re so fucking confident, how about the three of us each take . . .” He calculated quickly. “Two hundred thousand. I have a deck of cards in my room. High card keeps the rest. You get it, you get your half mill and an extra fifty thou. We get it, we give half of it to Andy. Or to his wife, if he dies.”

Dugan lit up a cigarette to give himself time to think, then he shook his head. “Nah. Life’s mostly dealt me a shitty hand: I don’t trust to luck anymore.”

“Jesus,” said Moss. “You think you’ve had—” She froze, and the other two looked around. There was a man standing at the T-junction, his face illuminated by the beam from Moss’s headlamp. He wore a tight checked swimsuit and had a sheath knife strapped to his right shin, and he seemed to be laughing. Dugan took a step toward him, and he backed away through the wall and out of sight.

The three of them stood there for a moment, then Dugan laughed. “Ooh, I’m so fucking scared!” he said sarcastically. “Fuck it. I get half a mill, and the general can split the rest any way he likes, but that’s my final offer.” He took a drag on his cigarette, then added, “And I stay until the end.”

“That’s corporal,” said Langley. “You’re saying you want me to quit.”

“I’m doing you a favour.”

“I did a tour in Afghanistan, and you expect me to say I’m scared of a fucking
ghost
? Besides, do you really expect us to trust you to hand that money over after you get it?”

“Why should I trust
you
?”

“
I’m
not the one who’s done time.”

“That was for assault. And drugs.” He took a long draw on his cigarette. “But I’m not a thief.”

Moss looked from one to the other, and realized that neither of them was going to back down. She shook her head in disgust and walked back to the stern, waiting for the helicopter.

She was safely back at home, and Syverson was in hospital and in stable condition, when another storm hit the
Alkimos
three days later and the last rusted remains of the hull and deck collapsed into the sea.

•  •  •

Beck walked out of the inquest with his back straight and his head held high. The network had fired him because
Worst Nightmare
had ended its run early, but they’d decided not to sue him, and after the coroner had delivered his verdict on Langley’s and Dugan’s deaths, the crown prosecutor had announced that he had no intention of having anyone charged with negligent homicide. The production crew had confirmed that neither Langley nor Dugan had made any attempt to contact them to ask to be taken off the ship, either before or during the storm.

As far as the coroner could tell, the two men had been sitting in the galley, drinking coffee and playing cards, from the time Moss had left the ship until the ceiling collapsed on them with no apparent warning. Two large knives had also been discovered among the wreckage, but the pathologist who’d performed the autopsy had made it clear that neither body showed any signs of knife wounds.

As far as he could determine, he told the court, while both men might have survived and possibly even remained conscious for as long as an hour after the wreck had come crashing down on them, they seemed to have died within minutes of each other—quite possibly, at exactly the same time.

Afterword

The wreck of the
Alkimos
was a few hours’ walk from my parents’ home; it could easily be seen from the beach near the house, and on a few occasions I trudged along the beach to take a closer look at it, though I never swam out to the wreck, nor ever saw the ghost.

Most of the history of the ship given in this story is true—though on a few occasions, when the legend has contradicted the facts, I’ve printed the legend. Accounts vary as to exactly where Voight’s skull was found, in or near the ship. The story Langley tells of his friends is based on those of visitors to the wreck who were later struck by similar misfortunes. And in 2007, the wreck did indeed collapse, leaving nothing remaining above water except the engine block.

The transcript of the séance, however, is fictitious—as are all of the characters, and (fortunately)
Worst Nightmare
. There was an attempt to produce
Fear Factor
in Australia, but it was canceled after only two episodes, and I will not pretend to mourn it. Some things should remain dead.

Lily Hoang is the author of the novels
The Evolutionary Revolution, Invisible Women, Changing,
and
Parabola,
winner of the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest.
Changing
received a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. She is associate editor of Starcherone Books and coeditor of the anthology
30 Under 30.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Foxes aren’t indigenous to Vietnam, but that’s part of it. That’s what makes this whole story memorable. And I want you to understand it wasn’t just one or two foxes that appeared in that little village that day. No, hundreds of foxes circled the place, and they didn’t leave until there was nothing left but flattened soil.

•  •  •

This story starts like most stories do, as a memory. There was a time when Vietnam was a peaceful place. This was a very long time before today, long before Communism, long before my parents lived there. In this Vietnam, the people lived cooperatively. They worked in their fields during the mornings when it was cool and by midafternoon everyone retired to their homes for rest and study, but studying was nothing like it is today. Instead, people wandered from house to house, seeing what each person had to offer. If you felt like learning weaving, you would go to Co Thu’s house. If you wanted to learn about the stars, you would visit Chu Sang’s observatory. If you wanted to study the human body, you could go to the doctor’s—Tiem Phuong—office. Of course, if you didn’t feel like attending a lesson, you weren’t forced to. You could simply rest, but most people enjoyed these lessons. It gave the citizens of this small village an opportunity to learn and build a level of appreciation for all forms of work.

Then, as most stories like this go, something happened. In this case, it was disease. Disease came into this village and killed almost everyone. It
was a horrible sickness, one so grotesque that the villagers prayed for death. It wasn’t the fear of a slow death that made the people wish for a quick one either. No, the people who had the disease felt such pain and looked so repulsive that those who were not sick prayed for murder. They prayed for quick deaths. They prayed to a God they had not yet met to take them.

Then, with the same ease with which it came, the disease left the small village. It left the village with exactly seven people, most of them malnourished and so crazy they had forgotten language and could think only of death. It was their method of survival. And so these seven survivors, unable to acknowledge that the disease had indeed left them, planned and plotted ways to kill. Luckily for them, the colonizers arrived at their village just in time to save them.

These colonizers were much like all other colonizers. They had hair that blew yellow in the breeze and gold crosses around their necks and wrists that blinded our savage survivors. They spoke a language close to the one the village linguist, Chu Hien, had taught them so long ago. They remembered. Even after the disease had eaten most of their memories and ability to feel compassion, they remembered, and so these survivors allowed the colonizers into their homes. They explained as best they could with the patchwork of language they had left, that a plague had come and ransacked their entire village. They told the colonizers about the lives they’d led before the disease came, but the colonizers only heard Hail Mary’s and prayers. It was not long before these seven survivors of the most deadly disease to have ever surfaced on this earth were hanged.