Hell Rig (20 page)

“Fat feet, fat head!” Parnell sang; a song Clyde had come to loathe.

Clyde tried to ignore the taunts but found himself lifting bales in rhythm to the banal tune.

“Idiot boy from an idiot mama!” Parnell yelled.

That was the last straw. He turned to Parnell.

“Take that back,” he said.

“Make me, Clumsy Clyde,” Parnell replied. His speed had protected him from Gleason’s reprisals before. He had no doubt they would again. As Clyde reached for him, Parnell slipped on an untied shoelace. Clyde’s meaty hands encircled his neck.

“Take it back,” Clyde shouted. “Take it back.”

Parnell would gladly have done so if he could have spoken, but Clyde’s hands clamped like a steel vise too tightly around his throat. Clyde continued to repeat, “Take it back,” until he felt Parnell’s body go limp. Seeing what he had done, Clyde carried Parnell’s body to the East branch of the Pearl River and tossed it into the muddy waters just north of the Interstate 59 Bridge. The Pearl emptied into the Gulf. As he watched the body slide beneath the surface, he knew the Gulf would take Parnell’s body away.

Just as the cold dark waters lapped at Parnell’s head, his lifeless eyes stared at Gleason, holding him in their gaze. Gleason ran back home. When young Parnell’s parents noticed his absence, they assumed he had run away to New Orleans as he had so often threatened.

Clyde reached up and gingerly touched the wound on his forehead, remembering his injury, but not how had he wound up in the radio shack. He looked at the damage. Had he done this? His head ached and he did not want to be alone. Ric Waters was out there somewhere and Waters had killed Bale.

“Fat head!” A voice, slightly familiar called to him from outside.

“It can’t be,” he said. He opened the door and saw no one, only a strange fog draped over everything, softening shapes and warping sounds.

He walked toward the main deck house hoping to find the others. Things moved in the fog out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked directly at them, they disappeared. He picked up a steel pipe and held it reassuringly in his hands.

The fog swirled, opening a corridor in front of him. Someone lurched from the opening. He held up his pipe.

“Parnell,” he said as he recognized the tall figure. “You’re dead.” He raised his pipe, intent on killing Parnell’s ghost. The river had taken Parnell’s body away but he had come to the Gulf and Parnell’s ghost had found him here. As Clyde watched, Parnell’s face erupted in oozing sores. Corrupted flesh peeled from bone revealing a different face beneath it—Tolson’s.

“Murderer!” Tolson yelled and swung a knife with his left hand. Tolson’s eyes were blazing with fury. Gleason raised his arm to ward off the blow and felt sudden burning pain as the blade bit deeply into his forearm, slicing it to the bone. Blood sprayed over Tolson’s face, mutating it into a bloody death mask.

“Tolson, no!” Gleason yelled as he stumbled backwards. He tired to grasp his pipe clumsily with his other hand but it was slick with blood and he dropped it. Tolson swept the knife sideways across Gleason’s stomach. Gleason felt it slice flesh and muscle and sever sinew. Pain erupted like fire, burning deep. He reached out and shoved Tolson backwards with his good hand, sending him sprawling to the deck. Tolson scrambled to his feet and ran away, howling like a mad animal. The fog closed in behind him.

Gleason looked at the ruin of his stomach and cried out, “Lordy, he’s done killed me!” He held his stomach with his good hand while fire burned in him, like something he ate, pain shooting throughout his body. He sat down on a pallet of water stained boxes filled with papers they had removed from the offices and tried in vain to hold in his intestines as the slippery coils escaped between his fingers.

Voices taunted him from the fog. “Idiot boy!” “Fat head!”

“You take that back!” he cried. “You take that back!”

Slowly, as the pool of blood grew larger around his feet, Clyde Gleason closed his eyes to rest. A single tear ran down his blood-smeared cheek.

Chapter Eighteen

“I killed him! I killed him!”

Eric Tolson pressed his face against the glass of the door to the front office, leaving a bloody imprint. Blood smeared his face and head and his right arm drooped uselessly by his side. Jeff stared at Tolson in horror. The fog reared like a gray beast behind Tolson, yet not touching him.

“Let me in! I killed him, I tell you. He came at me and I killed him.”

Jeff opened the door, pulled Tolson inside and quickly slammed it shut. The fog billowed against the door in front of him. Tolson collapsed on the floor, his back against the wall.

“I killed him,” Tolson repeated and laughed hysterically.

Ed, Lisa and McAndrews rushed into the room. Lisa threw her hand over her mouth when she saw the blood-spattered Tolson. McAndrews checked Tolson’s wound.

“Some of this blood is his,” he said. “He’s bleeding pretty badly.”

Jeff stared at Tolson in disbelief. “He said he killed someone.”

“Who? Clyde or Waters?” McAndrews asked as he removed Tolson’s bloody bandage. “He’s delirious with fever.” He looked up at the others. “I think maybe he was allergic to the codeine I gave him.”

“You had no way of knowing,” Lisa offered.

“Help me get him to a bunk.”

Jeff took Tolson’s good arm while McAndrews gently wrapped an arm around Tolson’s waist. They walked Tolson to his bunk and laid him down.

“I killed the bastard,” Tolson said, giggling. “He tried to hide in Clyde’s body but I could see it was him behind those cold dark eyes.”

McAndrews and Jeff looked at each other in shock.

“You killed Clyde?” Jeff asked.

Tolson looked up at Jeff and frowned. “No, Waters. He was just wearing Clyde’s body.”

Lisa placed one hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “We have to look for him. He might not be dead.”

“You’re forgetting about the fog,” Jeff reminded her.

“Tie him to his bunk,” Ed told them. “For his safety and ours.”

“It would be safer to leave him outside with the others,” Sims said. Jeff looked up to see him leaning casually against the doorframe eating an apple.

“He’s crazy with fever,” Jeff snapped. “He’s not responsible.”

“Are you giving Waters that much sympathy?”

“Here, rip this,” Lisa said as she handed Jeff a sheet.

Jeff nodded, ignored Sims’ presence and began ripping a sheet into strips while McAndrews dressed Tolson’s wounded shoulder. He glanced at Sims as he worked, silently damning the man. When McAndrews’ finished, he pulled the others aside out of Tolson’s earshot.

“The wound is badly infected,” he informed them. “The antibiotics aren’t working and he’s lost a lot of blood that I have no way to replace.”

Ed shook his head. “We can’t do anything until the supply ship gets here.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s well overdue now.”

“What if it doesn’t get here in this fog?” Lisa asked. “What if it turns back?”

Ed’s forehead furrowed deeply. “It will come.” He made a fist of one hand and shook it in the air. “God, I wish I had turned this damn job down.”

“It’s not your fault, Ed,” Jeff said.

“Isn’t it?” Ed asked before he turned and stalked off.

Jeff took the strips of sheet and bound Tolson’s legs, chest and arms to his bunk.

Tolson watched as Jeff secured him to the bed, his eyes following every move. “What are you doing, Towns? I saved us. I killed that bastard Waters. Now, we can go home.”

Jeff forced a smile to his face. “We don’t want you falling out of bed, now, do we? It might hurt your shoulder.”

Tolson smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.” He lay back and closed his eyes.

“Get some sleep.”

“I am tired, so very tired,” Tolson said. “I think I will.”

Jeff finally realized what had been bothering him about Tolson’s story. “How did you kill Waters?”

Tolson opened his eyes and cocked his head to one side as if trying to remember. After a moment, he answered. “With my knife.”

Jeff looked at Tolson’s knife, a fold-up pocketknife like his still in Tolson’s belt scabbard. He took it out.

“This one?”

“Sure. That’s my knife.” Tolson closed his eyes.

“Okay. Get some sleep, Tolson.”

“Sure thing.”

Within minutes, he was snoring softly. Jeff sat down on a chair and hung his head. The past few days had sapped his strength and tested his mental stability and he was afraid things were just going to get worse. Some force was holding them captive on the platform, killing them one by one, and he no longer thought it was Waters. There was something else, a dark, evil presence hovering over the rig like a black cloud. It lingered in the strange fog and in the shadows. Its hunger radiated like heat from a flame, but this appetite was cold and sapping their will power.

“He’ll be okay,” Lisa said, placing her arm around Jeff’s neck. He leaned into her for support.

“I’m so tired,” he said. “I can’t think straight.” He looked up at Lisa. “I looked at Tolson’s knife.”

“So?”

“It’s clean. There’s no blood on it or in his scabbard yet he said that’s what he used to kill Clyde.”

“You should sleep,” she suggested.

He drew back and looked at her in surprise. “Sleep? I’m afraid to close my eyes.” He knew it was not sleep that he feared; it was the fear that the presence would reach into his mind as it had Easton, Tolson and probably Gleason and he would be unable to prevent it. The fact that Tolson’s knife was clean meant something. He just didn’t know what.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lisa said.

Jeff drove away the shadows threatening to overwhelm him and looked back up at her. The love he saw in her eyes anchored him.

“Whatever is happening here isn’t natural is it? I mean, it’s not just some nut job knocking off people in some ritual way. That wouldn’t explain the fog and you can’t tell me that’s natural.” She shuddered. “Maybe Waters is helping in some way but there’s something or someone else here on this platform.”

“We’ve searched it top to bottom.”

“Yeah, and we couldn’t even find people we knew were on the platform. Did any of us think to look for someone else? I didn’t.”

Jeff considered her idea. “Someone hiding?”

“Or some
thing
.”

Sims laughed. “Ghosts?” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Jeff shot a hard look at Sims to shut him up, then looked back at Lisa. She had her hand wrapped around her medallion, clasping it tightly for reassurance.

“What are you suggesting?” he asked.

Lisa sobbed. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just…it’s just that I feel something here; some evil presence and I don’t mean Waters. He’s sick and scared. What I feel…it frightens me.”

Jeff did not tell her he felt the same thing. He did not want to upset her even more. “What would your grandmother say?” he chided gently.

“She would say there’s a doorway here, a gateway to the spirit world. I don’t know what opened it or why, but it’s still open and if we don’t find a way to close it, we’re all going to die,” she blurted.

Jeff just stared at her, dumbstruck.

She ignored his expression. “It started with Hurricane Katrina. Can a physical force, like a hurricane, open a spiritual doorway? I don’t think so, but spirits exist in storms—Agau, Sogba and Bado are storm spirits. Maybe some spirit, some Loa, found another source of power and a way to channel this power to open a doorway to hell.”

“This is insane,” Sims scoffed. “I’m going to smoke a cigarette.”

“You do that. Don’t go outside,” Jeff warned but he really didn’t care what Sims did. “You mean Waters?” he asked Lisa.

She shook her head. “No, he’s part of it but I’m thinking of Digger Man.”

“He’s dead.”

“The dead don’t just disappear, Jeff. The human soul has two parts, the
ti-bon-ange
, or little good angel, and the
gros-bon-ange
, or great good angel. When we die, the
gros-bon-ange
goes back to the cosmos. That life force, that energy, is powerful. The Egyptians called it the
Ka
and built pyramids in order to preserve it. Their entire civilization was devoted to nurturing the
Ka
. Other cultures, even Christianity, believe in the soul or divine spirit.”

“The Digger Man wasn’t a voodoo priest or anything. He was just a mechanic.”

Lisa threw up her arms in defeat and sighed. “I know. I know. It’s just conjecture. Without Waters, we’ll never know what went on that day.”

An idea was beginning to form in Jeff’s mind. It was insane but he was getting desperate. He got up from his seat. “I think I know a way to find him.”

“How?”

“My medallion. The fog seems afraid of it. It let me follow Easton without attacking me. I’ll wear it and look for Waters.”

Lisa held out her medallion and smiled. “I’ll help.”

Jeff’s stomach grew cold at the thought of Lisa in danger. “No, you need to keep the others safe with yours.”