Cook sighed. “Why am I reading this?”
But the look Saks gave him told him it was important, so he read on:
January 26? 1955
I have not written for several days. I do not wish to write now. I am so alone in this place and I think I have lost my mind. I do not know where I am now. This ship is the Cyclops, I know that much. It disappeared during the First World War and I remember hearing something about it. But I can’t seem to remember exactly what.
This place is purgatory or limbo, some borderland on the outskirts of Hell. Perhaps God is punishing us. I do not know why he would punish us. Robert and I have been good people. We have done nothing wrong. We do not deserve to be marooned in this awful place.
Oh dear God, why? Why?
What have we done?
Robert is very sick now. I think he may be dying. He is feverish and disoriented. He thinks I am his mother and I do not know who I am. My mind seems to wander and I’m not sure what is dream and what is reality.
Last night or maybe a few days ago… I can’t be certain… I walked on deck and I saw something like a huge and glistening snake laying over the decks. When I approached it, it moved, slid away back over the side. It must have been the tentacle of some sea monster. There are horrors in the fog. Strange beasts and worse things, things that try to get inside my head. But I will not let them inside my head.
Oh, God, I hear things. Things on the ship. But I must not be hearing them. It must be in my head.
I am so scared now.
So scared.
If Robert dies, I will be alone.
Oh, God, give me the strength to take my own life. Please.
January 27? 1955
I am not alone here.
There is another.
A woman.
I hear her at night.
She hums to herself out in the corridor.
Humming, humming, humming.
January? 29
Robert is dead. He must be dead. He does not move and he is so very cold. There is no pattern now. Life is a maze, an arabesque, and I can find no way out.
I cannot sleep.
When I close my eyes, I hear Robert calling out to me. Why does he call out to me when he is dead? Sometimes I think he moves, but the dead do not move and I wonder if maybe I am dead, too. Can I be dead? For surely I am not alive in this place.
No, I cannot sleep.
Last night or tonight, I can’t be sure, I awoke feeling hot breath in my ear, smelling something decayed leaning over me. I could not see it, but it was there. It was telling me awful things. It wants me to commit suicide. I hear it at night, I hear it whispering to me out in the corridor. I lock the door tight and huddle with Robert. But it can see me through the door and I can feel it smiling at me.
I think it is a woman.
Yes, just like I thought.
I think the other is a woman.
Perhaps she is mad and perhaps she is trapped here, too. But she is dangerous. She is a lunatic. She has been hiding down in the black, stinking confines of the ship. I think she eats rats. She must live on rats. Oh dear God what must she look like after all these years eating rats and living like a mushroom in wet darkness?
She cannot be human. Not like me.
Oh, the voices? How long must I hear those voices?
February 5?
I am afraid all the time.
The woman will not leave me alone. Even during the day… what I think is day here… she haunts me. She chases me through the ship. I barely made it back today. And then she was out there, scratching at the door. She knows my name. Somehow she knows my name.
Food is running short. What will I eat next? I will not eat what she says I must eat.
Robert opened his eyes and spoke to me. He said: “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything, my pretty little darling.”
No, no, no, I wasn’t going to write that down. None of it.
Robert is dead, dead, dead. I must remember that he is dead and the dead do not speak.
Not like me.
Not like me.
Not like me.
February 10?
Yes, I am scared all the time.
How long can you be scared before you stop being scared?
Only a little bread left that is moldy. I will eat the mold, too. Yes, I will. Watch me eat the mold. It is green and yeasty-tasting. It turns my stomach.
I killed a rat.
It was delicious.
February 11?
I am not afraid of the woman.
She wants to be my friend and tells me so.
Last night or today or maybe last week I heard her humming down the corridor. That incessant, lunatic humming. I took my knife with me. My knife and a candle. I will stop that humming or it will stop me.
I saw her.
A misshapen, dwarfish creature in rags. Her face is white as a corpse. Her eyes are yellow. She was waiting in a darkened cabin for me. I wanted to kill her. She would not speak to me. She would only hum. She has a puppet. I saw it. A little puppet on wires that she makes dance. Oh dear God, it is not a puppet… it is a mummified infant. It has yellow eyes, too. It smiled at me and began to drool. It was wrapped in a dirty blanket and I could see things moving beneath that blanket. The puppet infant has too many legs.
I locked myself in my cabin.
Something has been eating Robert’s corpse. Rats. They must come in when I am out. Come in and chew on him.
Terrible.
February 15?
The woman is not my friend. She is horrible.
She does not hum now. She sits outside the cabin door and whistles. The whistling is melodious, yet eerie. She likes to whistle as I eat my dinner. That whistling makes me think things and do things I cannot remember later.
Why does she torment me? What does she want?
Why does she keep scratching at the door? Fumbling with the latch.
I will not let her in.
She wants my food and I will not share it.
She and that puppet-baby are hungry. Let them eat rats.
Robert says our food is not to be shared.
It is secret our food. Our secret food.
Let them be hungry.
Hungry.
Hungry.
Hungry.
Cook stopped reading there.
It was terrible, like a dirty window looking into a madhouse, a guided tour of a woman’s mind going to rot. It was very unnerving. There were things she was not writing about. Awful things. Like what she was eating and Cook had a pretty good idea what that might be.
“Why do I need to read this?” he asked Saks.
“You’ll see. Just keep going.”
“This is pointless.”
“No, it’s not. It’ll make sense to you when you’re done.” His eyes were bulging, his face twisted into a grimace. “You don’t like it, do you? Well, I didn’t like it either. You know what it was like for me? Down here… alone… reading that warped shit, sure I was hearing things out there. Funny things. At least you got me with you…”
Cook sighed, picked up the book again.
February 21?
I hear things at night or maybe in my head.
Different things now. Like snakes crawling against the door. How can there be so many snakes? And why do they whistle? But maybe it is that insane woman and maybe it is me.