“But if someone was able to drain the water, why not do so completely?” She raised her palms upward. “You know, so that they had the most amount of room available?”
“No. Whatever did this, made the conscious decision to keep the boat low in the water.”
“Why?” she asked. “To help with stability?”
“Possibly, but I don’t think so. A ship like this would have inbuilt ballast, meaning that it was sound floating in any position in the sea. She was never going to the bottom. She would simply float adrift until she eventually washed up on some beach somewhere.”
“So why did it keep most of the deck submerged?”
“My guess…” Sam said, his deep blue eyes severe as they raked across the vessel. “I think it was trying to keep the profile of the Hoshi Maru low in the water, to prevent anyone spotting her and attempting to make a rescue.”
“Why?”
“Beats me. My only guess is someone willing to risk their own life to prevent being spotted adrift at sea must know a lot of people are out to hunt them, and if that’s the case, whatever the hell it is we’re searching for, it’s smart.”
Up ahead, toward the pilot house, Caliburn gave a sharp bark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sam followed the dog to the entrance hatch.
“What is it boy?” he asked.
Caliburn lowered his nose to the deck and started sniffing. He reminded Sam of the old Looney Tunes cartoons of Porky Pig and Charlie Dog. In the cartoon, the dog would sniff out Daffy Duck, which Porky Pig would inevitably attempt, and fail, to shoot.
Caliburn followed the scent inside.
Sam and Guinevere followed close behind.
Sam glanced at Guinevere. “Are you sure you don’t want to just wait out here?”
“No way,” she replied. “After seven years of wondering, I want to know the truth.”
“All right,” Sam said.
He stepped inside the pilothouse.
The place looked surprisingly clean, given that it had been drifting on the Pacific Ocean for more than seven years. The wheel was still intact. The instruments and gauges were all there. Despite the outward appearance of the barnacle encrusted shipwreck, the pilothouse may as well have been that of a fully functioning, seagoing vessel.
Caliburn sniffed again and barked toward the internal stairwell, leading into the main compartments of the forward hull.
Sam said, “You want to lead the way?”
The dog backed away from the stairwell, leaving his tail tucked between his legs. He made a sort of mewling sound, and then turned to face the outer hatch to the pilothouse.
Sam nodded. “You don’t want to go down there?”
Caliburn gave a short bark in acknowledgement.
“Is it because you don’t like what we’re going to find inside?”
Caliburn met his eye, holding it for a fraction longer than Sam had ever known a dog to do, before turning away.
Sam said, “Or is it because you don’t like what used to live down there?”
Caliburn barked loudly.
“It was evil, wasn’t it?”
Caliburn dipped his head.
Sam said, “All right. Go wait outside for us. We have to go see for ourselves.”
The dog didn’t need to be told twice. He immediately turned and walked outside.
Guinevere gave Caliburn a reassuring pat as he stepped outside.
Sam pointed the flashlight down into the main forward compartment. With barnacles thoroughly encrusted throughout the hull, blocking the portholes, it was completely dark inside. He carefully climbed down the iron steps. Each one made a resonant clang as he transferred his weight to the next one.
Inside, he found a recreational room. A cracked flat screen TV was mounted onto a wall. A bookshelf was stocked with various books. Their pages were dry but showed the brown discoloration of watermarks. The entire place had obviously been below the waterline at one stage, but someone, or something, had gone to the trouble to return it to its original state. The place was tidy, if not clean. Like someone had spent the effort required to keep it spotless. Two books were left open on the table. One was a Japanese book, its name Sam was unable to decipher, and the second one was a Japanese-English dictionary.
Sam turned to the remaining books fixed to the bookshelf. He assumed they had merely remained there after the ship had rolled over in the water because of the way the book shelves had been designed to keep the books trapped in their place. But now that he examined them closer, he realized the bookshelf had probably once been much fuller, and now, someone had specifically chosen which books to keep, and re-stacked them on the shelf.
He withdrew one at random.
It was in Japanese, but the pages had been well fingered with a series of dog-ears folded into the pages. They were all in Japanese. Hundreds of words had been underlined with a pencil.
Guinevere picked up the two books left on the table. Her face crunched up in a perplexed daze as she studied the Japanese book and the Japanese-English dictionary. Her red lips pursed as she tried to make sense of any of it.
Sam asked, “What’s your first impression when you look around?”
“I don’t know. It seems, tidy…”
“Maybe the monster or the person, or whatever the hell we’re dealing with here, got bored and tried to keep himself occupied by tidying up and…”
“What?” She laughed. “Teaching itself to read in Japanese?”
“Hey, why not?” Sam asked. “It’s no crazier than assuming a monster could already read in English.”
That brought her out of whatever daze she might have wandered into. “What the hell are we dealing with here, Sam? I mean, whatever this is, it’s not human. You’ve seen the footage of the 2011 tsunami. Those waves were thirty feet high, and carrying enough energy to devour five story buildings.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if this wasn’t human, what the hell are we dealing with?”
Sam shrugged. “I have no idea.”
A large, watertight door prevented passage to the aft section of the ship. Sam tracked the beam of his flashlight along the port side of the hull. The recreational room had two forward passageways open. Sam took the portside.
He glanced at Guinevere. “You want to take the starboard side?”
“Without you?” She grinned. “Hell no! I think I’ll keep you company.”
“That’s fair enough.”
Sam continued forward. He spotted a series of small sleeping quarters. One of the perks of a large fishing trawler was the increase in space over smaller vessels. This one was large enough to offer multiple sleeping quarters for its crew.
He shined the flashlight inside the first one.
It was clean, the bed was made, but looked like it hadn’t been slept in for years. Sam stared at the bed a moment longer and stopped. He reached down and pulled on the sheets.
Guinevere’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “What? You’re checking on the quality of their bed making skills now?”
“No.” Sam sighed and shook his head. “Look at this. Someone made this bed. But I bet you a hundred dollars whoever that person was, it sure as heck wasn’t some fisherman living out at sea.”
“Why not?”
“The people working on this ship were all fishermen. Judging by the size of the ship, they would have gone out to sea for a number of weeks, filled up their live fish holds to meet their quota, and then returned to their families. Those sorts of people are unlikely to want to have their beds perfect.”
Guinevere shrugged. “So what? Who’s to say there weren’t any women on board? Besides, even if there were, who’s to say that the men didn’t just like to have clean sheets and a well-made bed?”
“First of all, you told me that your brother mentioned he felt like he was a bachelor again, living on a fishing trawler with a bunch of Japanese men away from their families.” Sam pulled at the edge of the bed. “And secondly, those are hospital corners. They use them in the military and in hospitals all around the world. There’s no way anyone casually did that.”