Throwing caution to the wind, Pelvin threw open the doors. Thick clouds of smoke came pouring out, making everyone back away and cough. It smelled dry and dusty, making Pelvin think of his grandfather’s home not long before the old man had finally kicked the bucket.
The thick smoke made the already dim lighting even worse but Pelvin thought he saw some sort of figure within the box. A statue of some kind, he reasoned, which lessened his excitement. He couldn’t fit a statue into his back pocket, after all.
“What is that bloody thing?”
Pelvin realized that the Negro with the British accent was standing at his side. Most of the other guys had moved back against the walls, unnerved by the smoke and odor. “How the hell would I know?” Pelvin snapped.
“I didn’t think you’d have sold yourself down the river without a bit of information, mate.”
Pelvin turned towards the other man, planning to put the uppity fool in his proper place but he was greeted by a powerful punch to the nose. He hit the deck, blood flowing freely from his nostrils. Before he could even ask what had happened, a second punch put him out cold.
Mitchell Williams heard a commotion from behind him but he didn’t bother turning to see what was happening. He had a pretty good idea already — and from the startled grunts of the other men, followed quickly by the sounds of their bodies hitting the floor, he knew that Gravedigger had decided now was the time to emerge from the shadows.
Charity Grace was the second Gravedigger that Mitchell had served. During his youth, he’d fallen in with a rough crowd — but his life had changed for the better when he’d been caught committing a crime by Josef Goldstein, the man who had preceded Charity in this costumed role. Goldstein had spared his life and taught him to be something better. For that, he would always be grateful.
Mitchell waved away the smoke, peering into the box’s stygian interior. There was definitely a figure in there, standing with hands straight down at its sides. He took a quick step back when one of the hands began to twitch, followed quickly by a spasm that rocked the figure from head to toe.
“He’s waking up,” he warned, reaching for the automatic that was stuck in the waistband of his pants.
“Get back.” Gravedigger moved quickly past him, brandishing a curved Arabian-style blade in her left hand. Mounted on her right forearm was a small spring-loaded crossbow. With a certain flick of her wrist, she could fire a bolt at her target. In addition to those, she had various other weapons strapped about her red and black bodysuit. The hood and mask she wore hid her face and disguised her voice, giving it an otherworldly quality. Added to the fact that she was a walking arsenal was the strange trace memory she seemed to possess, as if the skills of previous Gravediggers were hers to call upon as needed.
What really made her dangerous, of course, was the steely determination that she possessed. Charity had been born into poverty and had fallen prey to misfortune again and again — but it had never broken her. Mitchell doubted that anything ever would.
“Find the others,” she hissed, obviously wondering why he was still there. “There’s going to be trouble and they need to be ready to help the passengers in case you need to evacuate.”
Mitchell gave a curt nod and ran towards the entryway. He felt only a brief second of regret about leaving her to face the thing in the box. She was a Gravedigger and better suited for such things than he’d ever be.
Unlike Li and Cedric, Mitchell knew that the thing in the hold had never come from the Sovereign Museum nor was it meant to be taken off the vessel at all. It had been sent here for one reason only: to sow chaos and fear. Pelvin was no more than a patsy, a tool to open the box at the proper time, so that its contents could be unleashed. It was never planned for Pelvin to receive his promised reward.
GRAVEDIGGER WONDERED EXACTLY when her life had become so surreal.
Was it when she’d learned that the famous Samantha Grace, the pert blonde beauty from Assistance Unlimited, was her half-sister?
Or was it when she woke up in her own grave, a mysterious entity known as The Voice offering her a chance of redemption?
All she knew was that from day to day, things were so bizarre that the extraordinary almost became commonplace.
For instance, the creature she was now facing was something straight out of an old Gothic horror story or, perhaps, one of those sleazy pulp magazines that she sometimes saw at the newsstand.
The figure slowly emerged from the confines of the box, his skin looking sallow. It lay tight against the bones of his body, spidery veins visible. His eyes lay deep in their sockets, staring out with bloodshot malevolence. His dark hair hung in dirty clumps along his shoulders. The clothes he wore were of a different age — a dusty black suit with tails, a stiff white shirt, a dark cummerbund and a bow tie. He looked like some sort of hellish Victorian butler.
“I am on the open seas,” he said, his voice grating like sandpaper. It was dry and obviously painful. His eyes bored into hers before taking in her outlandish attire. “Are you one of my servants?” he asked, his hands clenching into fists even as he made the inquiry.
Brandishing her weapons, Gravedigger asked, “Do I look like I’m here to welcome you back to the world of the living?”
“No. You do not.” Slowly, the man adjusted the fit of his jacket. If he felt any fear about Gravedigger’s implied threat, he gave no sign of it. “You know who I am?”
“Your name is Ira Shelley, born in 1677. You died in 1722 at the age of 45. Resurrected that same year, thanks to the dark magic cast by your followers. You continued your fiendish existence until 1893, when you were badly injured and your body shut down to repair itself.”
Shelley raised one eyebrow. “You honor me with your careful appraisal of my life.”
“Honor you? I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I can sense your disapproval. May I ask what I have done to offend you?”
Gravedigger continued to hold off on her instinctual desire to attack him. She wanted to give Mitchell plenty of time to reach the others and get them ready to handle a possible evacuation. “You practiced black magic during your lifetime and your resurrection was the result of human sacrifice — three virgins were killed to bring you back. Since then, you’ve killed how many people to satisfy your dark lusts…?”
“Over sixty. I can remember each and every one.” Shelley looked down at her, a sly smile forming on his lips. “You seem troubled by the fact that I am kept alive by the sacrifices of others. But it is no different from you — you subsist off the life energies of animals. And what are humans but highly intelligent animals?”
A feeling of disgust washed over Gravedigger and she knew that this… thing… before her was exactly the sort of beast that The Voice had wanted her to eradicate.
“Now, if you don’t mind, could you tell me how I ended up in the bowels of this vessel?” Shelley moved past her, taking tentative steps at first but quickly gaining confidence.
“For the past couple of decades, you’ve been stored in the basement of the old Elks Lodge building. You still have a half dozen followers who get together to drink and have sex in front of your corpse.”
“How charming,” Shelley murmured and he sounded as if he genuinely meant it.
“Last week, one of them got the bright idea to sacrifice a virgin in your presence. You started to wake up and so they did another… by this time, they were getting a little frightened since they knew you’d be famished when you awoke. So they booked you passage on this ship and fabricated a cover story, saying you were being transported from one museum to another.”
“They intended for me to awaken and feed to my heart’s content on this ship’s unfortunate passengers and crew?”