Cook put an arm around him and the physical contact of another living, breathing human being seemed to steady him a bit.
Cook said, “Just take it easy. That shit happened in 1918.”
Fabrini was breathing hard. “And it’s going to happen again.”
“Fabrini, listen to me-”
But Fabrini did not want to listen. “It’s out there now, Cook, whatever got them. You’ve felt it and so have I.” Fabrini’s face looked almost ghoulish in the flickering lantern light. “And we’re going to feel it again real soon. And you know what?”
Cook just shook his head.
Fabrini licked his lips, tried to swallow. “I’m scared shitless and so are you.”
4
During the hour or so while Fabrini and Cook were gone, Saks tried every argument he could think of to get Crycek to turn him loose. But it was no good. Menhaus had fallen asleep in the bow, which left him alone with Crycek. And Crycek just stared at him, listening, but never speaking, seeming to find Saks’s plight amusing.
Thirty minutes into it Saks began to threaten them, telling them how he was going to kill them when he finally got his hands free. Forty-five minutes into it he had lapsed into a glum, stony silence. Crycek kept watching him, burning holes through him with those crazy eyes of his. Menhaus ignored him. The graveyard stillness was what was eating away at Saks. Now and then there would be a slopping, sliding sound from off in the weed or a muted splash from out in the mist, but that was about it. Other than a mysterious droning sound that seemed to come from far off now and again, there was nothing.
Silence. Brooding and secret and infinite.
That and the sound of Menhaus snoring.
Finally, Crycek said, “Do you feel it, Saks? Do you feel it out there waiting for us?”
“Quit with the mind games, Crycek, it’s getting boring,” Saks told him.
But Crycek just smiled. “It’s getting stronger. I can feel it and so can you… closer all the time. We’re drifting closer to its black heart all the time.”
“We’re stuck in the weeds, you silly fuck, we ain’t drifting anywhere.”
“Still, we’re drawn closer. Closer to those teeth and eyes and that cold, ravenous mind. Can you feel its mind, Saks? Feel it trying to find a way in? Because it is, you know, all the time.” He looked out into the fog, then back at Saks. “Sometimes… sometimes it’s so close I can almost touch it. But it’s always scratching at the back of my mind, trying to find a way in”
Menhaus blissfully slept through the exchange.
Saks laughed without mirth. “It gets in your mind, it’s gonna find one big vacancy.”
“Is it already inside you, Saks? The thing? Is it inside you even now?”
“Shut the hell up,” Saks told him.
What he wanted badly right now was to get his hands free, because when that happened, Crycek was gonna be in a world of hurt. Saks hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to wrap those hands around his throat or just thumb the bastard’s eyes right out of their sockets. But something was going to happen. And Crycek wasn’t going to like it much.
Crycek suddenly gripped his head in his hands and out in that cloying mist, that weird droning rose up, faded away just as quick. “Jesus… it’s thinking about us, Saks. I can feel it… feel it in my head. It knows what we’re feeling and seeing… it can read our minds…”
Saks felt something cold under his skin now like a killing frost. “Read my mind?” he said. “Let it read my fucking mind. Hey! You out there! Read my mind right now! Go ahead… you ain’t gonna like what I’m thinking!”
But it was sheer bravado, a thin veneer and nothing more. For inside, Saks was cold and squirming and he badly wanted to scream. He had decided that Crycek was full of bullshit with this devil of his… yet, yet, he could almost feel something in his mind, a whisper of motion like the fluttering wings of a moth.
Two minutes later, he was certain he had imagined it all.
“Gone… it’s gone now, Saks,” Crycek said, chewing on the knuckles of his right hand. “But it’ll be back… maybe… maybe it already got Fabrini and Cook. Maybe that’s what happened.”
“They’ll be back,” Saks said, without much conviction. “Sure they will. When… when Cook gets tired of bouncing his balls off Fabrini’s chin, they’ll be back.”
But Crycek shook his head. “Maybe not. Maybe we’re already alone… just you and me, Saks. And Menhaus.”
“Be my fucking luck.”
Crycek laughed now, but it was a demented sort of laugh like a knife scraped over glass. “If they don’t come back… I wonder, I just wonder which of us that thing will take. Me or you? Maybe it’ll just want one of us.” Crycek’s eyes were blazing now. “Yeah… maybe it just wants a sacrifice, Saks, a human sacrifice. If that’s what it wants, maybe I’ll just have to give it one. I just happen to know a guy who’s already tied up…”
5
When Gosling relieved Soltz on watch, Soltz was looking funny.. . dreamy. There was an odd haze in his eyes, a faraway look like maybe he was not there at all, just lost in distant places and unseen horizons that Gosling himself could never reach.
“You okay, Soltz?”
Soltz seemed to realize for the first time that he was not alone. He looked at Gosling, blinked, and focused his eyes behind those heavy glasses. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Just fine.”
“What were you looking at out there?”
But he just shook his head. “You see funny things in the fog, don’t you?”
“What sort of funny things?”
Soltz thought it over. Something pulsed at his throat and his eyes went shiny and distant again. “Things that aren’t there. Those things I saw… they couldn’t really be there, could they?”
“What did you see?”
Soltz shook his head again. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked off into the fog and Gosling did, too. It did not look any different. Swirling and thick, sparkling and yellow-white like a drive-in movie screen.
“I saw a ship out there,” Soltz said. “I know I didn’t really see it, maybe just with my mind… but it was so real.”
“Tell me about it.”
Soltz narrowed his eyes, seeing it again now. “Well… it was an odd ship, a big ship. But not a modern ship at all. One of those old ones like maybe a barque, a pirate ship… yes, that’s what it was, a pirate ship. It had high masts… except they were ragged and full of holes, gray and sagging. I heard it out in the fog, creaking and groaning, wind whistling through the torn canvas… then it came out and I saw it. It had a funny glow to it, you know? There were men along the railing and they were ragged, too. Dead men… ghosts… skeletons. They looked like skeletons… isn’t that odd? Like skeletons.”
Gosling sighed, did not like it. “A ghost ship? Is that what you saw?”
“Yes… I think so. It just went past us and faded into the mist.” He squinted his eyes and cocked his head. “It went past us and there was a woman aboard… a woman. She waved to me. And you know what, Gosling?”
“What?”
“She didn’t have any eyes.”
Gosling felt a chill lay over his skin now. The idea of what Soltz had seen was scaring him, yet Soltz seemed fine with the idea. And that was probably the worst part. Like maybe his mind was going now, was coming apart to the point that he did not recognize fear and danger.
“Go lay down, Soltz, you need a rest.”
Soltz nodded. “What… no, it’s my imagination again. I thought I heard it out there, creaking and groaning, the sound of feet on its decks, pacing and pacing.”
“Go lay down,” Gosling told him.
“I didn’t really see it, did I?”
Gosling told him that he hadn’t, but deep down he honestly had to wonder. Wonder what might next come drifting out of the mist and if it was a ghost ship, would it keep ghosting by… or would it decide to stop?
6
Fabrini seemed better after he admitted his fears openly.