“Well, we can sure use your head,” Marx said. “When we find that way out, we’ll let you pick door number one or two or three.”
George thought that you just had to admire Marx’s energy level. He was always up, always ready to tango. To a guy like him, pessimism was unthinkable. Not among his natural rhythms. If you were to ask him, George figured, Marx would have said that pessimists weren’t nothing but sissies with philosophy and good diction.
Gosling said, “Let’s rope the raft to your lifeboat and do some rowing. I have a feeling these channels through the weed here, by accident or purpose, lead somewhere. And I want to know where that is.”
“And there’s a drift here,” Marx said. “And it’s pulling us in that general direction. Sooner or later we’re going there, might as well row our nuts off and get a look at it before it gets a look at us.”
Chesbro looked like he was going to say something, but shut his mouth.
Which George figured was probably a good thing.
Marx explained to them that anyone else that got spit into this place would drift in the same direction, chances were. So that if there were other survivors they would be up ahead. “And who knows? If this is the same place that’s been sucking ships and planes out of the Triangle and the Sargasso since god-knows-when, they’re probably up there, too. Jesus, we could find a good boat… I could get my hands on some engines and fuel… shit, I’d either push us back home or make one hell of a stab at it.”
And that, George realized, was about as close as you were going to come to a reason to live in this place.
It was too much to hope for… but it was better than drifting and brooding. He had a funny feeling they were poised at the edge of revelation. He just hoped it didn’t have big teeth and an empty belly.
18
When Menhaus came awake, he knew instinctively something was wrong.
His eyelids fluttering open, he could not put a name to it. But he could feel it, same way you can feel someone in the darkness with you. You do not need to see them or be told that they are there, you can feel it. An invasive sense of presence… no less palpable than fingernails drawn up your spine.
Saks was snoring lightly.
Menhaus could not see Makowski. It was too dim in the cabin. Shadows nested like snakes, finding each other, combining, mating, breeding a slithering brood of shifting darkness.
Menhaus tried to blink it away, for there was something positively unnatural about that darkness.
He listened. Yes, he could hear it. He could hear the darkness.
Just a subtle whisper of motion, but he’d sensed it, felt it somehow. And now he heard it: a wet, dragging sound. Like a soaked, moth-eaten blanket dragged over the floor. Swallowing, he pulled himself up on his elbows, craning his neck, listening. There. He heard it again. A secretive, moving noise. Menhaus imagined that’s how snakes would sound in the dark… but it wasn’t snakes; he knew that much. Not here. Not in this dead ship in the boundless graveyard sea. No, this was a stealthy, intelligent locomotion. The sound of something trying to be quiet. Something that knew it was being listened to and was trying not to be heard.
He wanted to write it off to imagination, to nerves, but he was beyond all that now.
For not only could he hear it, he could smell it now.
A rank, wet smell. The stink of something from the bottom of a pond.
Carefully, Menhaus found his lighter and flicked it into life.
“Saks?” he whispered softly. “Saks?”
Nothing. Saks was out cold.
Only that rustling, breathing motion.
Menhaus swung his legs over the bunk and hopped off. But quietly, a cat dropping soundlessly to the floor. He snatched one of the candles they’d purloined from the lounge and lit it.
Makowski’s berth was empty.
No, not empty. Not exactly. There was a form there, a shape, a sense of solidity. Makowski was there, all right, but wrapped in a net of shadow.
Except that the shadow wasn’t moving… it was not evaporating as the light hit it.
Yes, as he approached Makowski with the candle the darkness did not retreat. It hung over him like a shroud. Blacker than black, glistening and wet, an oil slick of shadow. It seemed to almost shudder at the intrusion of light like it was not shadow at all, but something pretending to be shadow.
Menhaus felt his heart seize momentarily in his chest.
Makowski was enveloped in the stuff.
He looked like he’d been dipped in tar.
As Menhaus brought the candle closer, closer, the mass began to slide off of Makowski, running like hot wax from his staring face. A thick, serpentine clot of it deserted his open mouth with the sound of viscera yanked from the belly of a fish. He began to convulse, to gag and sob and tremble. The black stuff was like tissue, fleshy and convoluting. You could see the flex of alien musculature beneath that neoprene skin.
Jesus, it was alive… living blackness.
Menhaus saw, for just one brief insane moment, a face in that blackness. The smooth, shining mockery of a woman’s face grinning at him… then it melted away and maybe it had not been in the first place.
He wanted to scream.
Wanted to, but his throat was constricted down to a pinhole. Shaking now, he held the candle out towards the retreating black mass. It moved quickly now, seeking darkness in which to hide in. One crazy, insane moment he could see it fluttering and shifting, the next it had vanished into the shadows or become the shadows.
Menhaus stood there helplessly, the candle flickering wildly in his trembling fist, throwing nightmare shadows over the bulkheads. He wanted to collapse, to cry, to yell, but his lips were glued tight.
Makowski, however, found his voice.
It was a high, mad wailing that filled the cabin, reverberated and pounded through the still air. He fell to the deck and screamed and howled and sucked in great, wheezing lungfuls of air in-between. He fell against Menhaus who nearly dropped the candle, knowing damn well he could not drop it. For if it went out, if it went out…
Makowski was clutching his legs like a terrified toddler, his mouth frozen open, spraying spittle and horror: “IT’S ALL OVER ME CAN’T BREATHE CAN’T-”
Menhaus first tried to kick him away, then went down on his knees, setting the candle on the floor, letting its radiance keep the darkness at bay. He took hold of Makowski and shook him, tried to shake the madness out of him. Makowski fought in his arms like a freshly landed salmon, twisting and turning and clawing at him, out of his mind with panic.
“STOP IT!” Menhaus cried. “STOP IT! MAKOWSKI! STOP IT! IT’S GONE DAMMIT! IT’S GONE AWAY, DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Finally, he slumped into Menhaus’ arms, weightless, powerless, curled up on his lap like a sick child, just shaking, damp with sweat. His hands furled and unfurled.
Saks was out of his bunk by then. “What?” he demanded. “What the fuck is it?”
And what was Menhaus to say? The shadows, he was attacked by the shadows? But saying something like that sounded even crazier that seeing something like that. So he said nothing, feeling his heart racing and his breath coming hard.
Saks was staring at him. “Well? What in the fuck are you two pussies screaming about?”
Menhaus had a sudden, irrational need to laugh. But he didn’t. Instead, he found his voice and told Saks what he’d seen. “I saw it. By Christ, Saks, I mean I really saw it.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Saks said bluntly.
“Fuck you, Saks. What the hell do you think happened?” Menhaus said fiercely, his eyes glaring with rage. “You think we both goddamn well dreamed it?”
Makowski was not saying a thing. His eyes were wide and glassy. Wherever he was, it was a lonely place and certainly not a very good place.