Hell Rig (8 page)

A woman’s laughter, soft and distant, came to him from the shadows, seeming to drift around him. He played his flashlight about seeing nothing but shadows retreating from the light, like a dark mist before a breeze.

Alert now, he became cautious. “Who’s there?”

His flashlight flickered once or twice before dimming to a pale glow and then fading out completely. “Damn batteries,” he cursed, hitting the flashlight hard against his leg in a futile attempt to make it work.

The distant sound of laughter grew louder, closer. The shadows seemed to swell around him, cutting him off from the rest of the rig. The string of lights along the main deck faded one by one. He reached out and felt the cloying stickiness around him like a black, wet fog.

“I’ve come for you, priest,” the voice said, echoing in the mist.

“How…how do you know me?” he asked, startled, slowly backing away from the voice. He felt the railing behind him, cold against his back.
Nowhere else to run
. Bitter cold, almost burning in its intensity, swept over him: A
kabala
wind from hell. He shivered in its frigid embrace, his strength failing him. “Wha…what do you want?” he muttered through chattering teeth.

“Your soul.”

Shivering badly, he fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette lighter. His hands trembled from cold and fear. On the third attempt, he managed to light it. He held it out to view his foe.

“You,” he sighed as the shadows pounced on him, smothering him. The face was familiar, that of Jo Beth Slocum, but not the beautiful Cajun girl he had madly loved and who had forsaken him. It was a Jo Beth Slocum ravaged by time and possessed of evil, a demon stripped of its disguise. He felt strong arms carrying him like a child. Moments later, pain, hot and brutal, erupted in his mind and coursed through his body like fire. Then he passed out.

He awoke in agony. He opened his eyes. An indeterminate amount of time had passed but it was still dark. He looked down on the deck, swinging like a pendulum below him, illuminated by his flashlight. No, he realized in horror, he was the one swinging. His arms stretched out from his sides, almost pulling his ribs from his ribcage. Sixteen-penny nails secured his hands to a wooden two-by-four crossbeam. Luckily, they were numb from lack of circulation. The rough board pressed tightly against his naked back and drove long splinters of wood into his flesh. Heavy wire bound his feet, cutting deeply into his skin. They dangled loose below him, blood dripping from his toes.

He was naked. His crucifix was gone. In its place was a vivid welt, burning like fire. A movement in the shadows caught his attention. Suddenly, a long sharp metal rod lanced into his side. It burned like a branding iron. Warm blood ran down his side.

“Oh, my God!” he cried out in realization. “You’ve crucified me.”

“You’ve crucified yourself in your mind, priest,” a voice taunted from the shadows. “Every day for ten years.”

“Go to hell!” he snapped.

Laughter, dark and sinister assaulted him from the shadows, a deeper, masculine voice this time. As Bale watched, a man emerged from the shadows, tall and muscular with red hair. He smiled as he looked up at Bale with empty sockets. As he spoke, flames flickered deep inside the holes where eyes once peered out.

“I’ve been there, priest. No holy resting place for me, eh Father? I’ve come back for you, all of you.”

“Digger Man,” Bale gasped, recognizing his antagonist. “Waters said you were dead.”

Digger Man stopped smiling and opened his mouth. A piercing wail erupted from his mouth, continuing to open, unhinging like a serpent’s jaw until Bale could see deep into a black void where Digger Man’s head had been, a swirling ebony cloud that drew Bale’s gaze hypnotically downward and into the dizzying maelstrom.

Bale’s life drained from him one drop at a time, his soul slipping away, drawn into the void like falling down a well he suspected led straight to hell. He fought the pull, closed his eyes and prayed aloud, asking God for forgiveness. Demonic laughter echoed in his ears. He hoped it was not too late.

“If you’ve abandoned me, God, I’ll abhor you for all eternity!”

Greg recognized the voice and the words as his own, spoken in a moment of drunken anger after his suspension by the Bishop. He hung his head, knowing his own words had returned to condemn him. As his life’s blood dripped onto the deck and his breathing became more labored, he looked down. Digger Man was gone.

“I forgive you, Jo!” he screamed into the shadows. The effort tore into his chest, ripping sinew and muscle.

“God does not forgive you, Father,” Digger Man’s voice shouted from the shadows. “Nor do I.”

The Digger Man’s laughter followed Bale into oblivion.

Chapter Seven

Sid Easton shook Ed to rouse him, gently at first, then with more vigor when Ed did not respond.

“What?” Ed moaned, irritated at being disturbed. He looked up and saw Easton leaning over him, then looked at his wristwatch. He had been asleep less than three hours. At his age, he needed his sleep. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t find Greg.”

“He’s probably down on the lower dock taking a piss or smoking a butt,” Ed suggested, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“Nah. I looked. I found this, though.” He held out Greg’s flashlight.

Ed examined it closely. “Is that blood?” he asked of a dark smear on the lens.

Sid shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. You want me to look for him, or what?”

Ed sighed. He knew he was going to have trouble with this contract. When Global came to him, offering almost twice the usual rate for a simple clean up, he had been skeptical. Asking around, he had learned that most of the big companies had turned it down. It seemed Global Thirteen had a bad reputation.

Rig workers can be a superstitious lot. When word spread that of the six men first sent out to number Thirteen after Katrina, one had committed suicide a week later and two had dropped out of sight, men refused to go near it. Even supply ship captains were reluctant to go there.

It was a bad luck rig.

Ed thought of the others, still sleeping soundly. “You and I will look around. Let the others get some sack time.”

The string of lights outside on the platform was out, leaving the platform in darkness.

“What happened to the lights?” Ed asked.

“They were out when I came out,” Easton answered, playing his flashlight around the platform.

“Let’s check the generator room.”

As they turned the corner, they could hear the generator humming away. Checking the electrical panel, Ed found the switch for the lights they had rigged was off.

“Why would Greg do that?” he asked Easton, not really expecting the kid to know. He flipped the switch and the lights flickered back on. “That’s better.”

They made a circuit of the main deck and found nothing. They next checked the cellar deck with its maze of pipes and equipment. The chemical room and mudroom were empty but they did not enter the waterlogged workshops. A dozen men could have hidden in there and Ed did not wish to wade through ice cold water. Finally, they descended to the bottom deck and found nothing. Ed played the flashlight along the pipes running underneath the platform. Satisfied Bale had not come down to the landing dock, they went back to the main deck, going building-to-building but still finding no sign of the missing Bale. They even checked the helideck.

One area of the main deck near the crane remained dark. As they walked toward the far side of the platform, Ed slid on a puddle, catching himself on a rack of pipes.

“What the hell…?” he asked. Shining the light, he saw a dark puddle on the concrete. He dipped his finger in it. “It’s not oil,” he said, checking the viscosity between two fingers. “It’s sticky, more like…” He paused and sniffed the liquid. A drop of the dark substance fell on his hand. Slowly, he shined his flashlight upwards. “Holy Mother…” In its beam he saw Bale, naked, swinging like meat on a hook, his arms stretched out beside him and nailed to a wooden two by four.

Easton followed Ed’s beam with his own, both beams converging on Bale hanging there. Easton fell to the deck and began backpedaling across the platform on his ass, whimpering like a frightened child.

“Jesus Christ!” Ed swore. He looked at Easton sitting with his back to a rack of pipes, biting his hand. “We’ve got to get him down.”

Easton frantically flashed his beam around the platform. “Are you kidding? What about whoever put him up there?”

Ed realized Easton was right. Bale hadn’t crucified himself. The only people out here were his crew, unless someone had come aboard later.

“Okay. Let’s wake up the others.”

They left Bale dangling from the crane and returned to the main building. The others were irritated as Ed and Easton turned on the lights and shook them awake, expressing their feelings vocally.

“I was having a wet dream,” Tolson complained, smiling at Lisa.

“I hope I wasn’t in it,” she retorted.

“Shut up!” Ed shouted. Everyone looked at him in surprise. He looked at Jeff. “Bale’s dead,” he said.

“Greg’s dead? How?” Jeff asked, incredulous but with a sinking feeling growing in his stomach.

“Somebody crucified the bastard,” Easton said, adding his two-cent’s worth to the conversation.

Ed slapped Easton on the shoulder to silence him.

“Crucified? You mean like hanging from a cross?” Lisa asked, turning pale at the thought.

Tolson shook his head and put on his Saints cap. “I knew there was something about this place I didn’t like.”

The others remained silent, stunned at the news of their co-worker’s death, all except Waters. He began to laugh, quietly at first, but slowly it grew louder until it held a hysterical edge.

“Shut up, you bastard!” Gleason yelled at him from across the room.

“What are you laughing at?” Tolson asked, sneering at Waters.

Waters stopped laughing and looked at each of them, smiling. “I told you this place was haunted. Digger Man never left. He’s here, waiting.”

Gleason lunged toward Waters, knocking over a couple of chairs on his way across the room. Tolson held him back.

“Don’t bother, Big Clyde. The dude’s fried,” he said. He looked at Waters, then at Ed. “Maybe Waters did it. He’s the one who believes in ghosts. Maybe he wants to make us believers.”

Ed shook his head. “Look. There’s no blood on him and he was asleep when Sid came to get me. Besides, do you think he could overpower Bale? Bale outweighed him by thirty or forty pounds and was as tough as nails.”

Tolson shook his head. “He could’ve snuck up on him or something. I still don’t trust him.”

Waters snickered. “We’re all going to die. I came back to die. I couldn’t live with the voices any more. The rest of you,” he paused and looked around, “have your reasons for being here. He needs you. He needs us all.”

Gleason growled. “Let me bitch slap the bastard a few times.”

Ed shook his head. “No, let him go. He went through a lot out here. He can’t help it.”

Jeff pulled on his pants. “If you don’t think Waters did it, who did? One of us? Me?” He looked at Lisa and smiled. “Her?”

Lisa smiled back.

Ed held out his hands plaintively. “Look, maybe a boat came alongside. Oh, hell, I don’t know! Let’s get him down. Then we search this platform top to bottom.”

He turned and left. One by one, the others followed.

* * * *

Lowering Bale to the deck proved more difficult than anticipated.

“The controls are frozen,” Jeff called out from the crane’s cabin as soon as he crawled inside. He pulled open the control panel, glanced quickly at the tangle of hoses and saw a hydraulic line ripped from its connector. Fluid dripped down the side of the cab and pooled on the floor. Jeff whistled, thinking it would have required enormous strength to do that. It would also take a while to repair it. He didn’t want to leave Bale’s body dangling in the air for that long. It didn’t seem right. Instead, he crawled out onto the lattice boom, dropped a rope over the upper sheave, slid down the cables and attached it to Bale’s cross. Together, they pulled Bale up while Jeff took in the slack on the chain, unhooking and then lowering him to the deck.

“He’s as pale as a ghost,” Easton observed dryly.

“Have some respect!” Tolson snapped.

Lisa examined the body closely. “Look,” she said. “He wasn’t dead when they did this.”

Jeff looked at Bale but could see nothing, other than the fact someone had crucified him. “How do you know?”

“All the cuts and punctures bled out. He was alive the entire time. He bled to death.”

“Good God. How long would that take?” Ed asked.

“Not long—fifteen, twenty minutes considering the size of the wound to his side.”

“Just like Christ,” Easton whispered, crossing himself.

“Shut the hell up, Easton!” Tolson snapped.

Easton dropped his hand and backed up.

“Look at this,” Lisa said. She pointed to a burn on Bale’s chest. It was in the shape of a cross. “It was a crucifix. You can even see part of the chain.”