“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that sort of thing comes out of habit. You know, it’s the kind of thing someone does without thinking if they’ve spent their life working in a hospital… or living on a military base.”
“So our monster once lived on a military base?”
“It would seem so. The question is whose?”
They continued all the way through to the bow of the ship. Everything was dry and clean, with barely any brown watermarks. If he hadn’t known better, Sam would have almost guessed that this part of the ship had never been submerged.
But he did know better.
Which meant that someone or something had gone to the effort of obsessively drying the entire compartment, and then cleaning it afterward. Again, that might be common enough for a person trapped on a giant raft for seven years — or someone who liked the comfort of a clean, almost sterile environment.
Sam turned around. “Come on, let’s go check out the starboard passageway.
They moved quickly through the dark passageway, flicking the beam of the flashlight in a giant arc around the hull, trying to search for any clue as to the location of the original crew.
Sam stopped at the opening to the starboard passageway. There was no doubt in his mind what they would find in there. Scott Meyers, the Fish and Wildlife Officer had all but confirmed it to him earlier, when he asked about the strange set up of mutilated skeletal bodies.
He glanced at Guinevere, who took a deep breath and nodded reassuringly.
They walked inside.
It was the combined galley and mess area.
Four skeletal remains were set up at the table. Someone had used nylon fishing wire to tie the bones in various positions. Like the rest of the ship, even the bones had been well cleaned, making the sight less ghoulish and more like a morbid attraction at a museum. The bones might have been plastic toys the way they were set up.
One was reading a book. It’s bony fingers still gripped the pages in an open position. Two were playing chess. It looked like the player with the black pieces was about to checkmate white and the other player was throwing his hands in the air as though he was angry about losing. The fourth one looked somber and almost pensive. Although how someone can make a skeleton look that way, Sam had no idea. The skeleton wore dog tags and in his hand was a single note.
Sam withdrew the note.
It was made from multiple cuttings of a book written in English glued individually onto a random piece of paper, the same way old ransom notes were written using newspaper cutouts.
Sam ran his eyes across the paper.
DR. JIM PATTERSON’S NEXT…
Guinevere glanced at the name on the dog tags and then removed the dog tag over the skull. She squeezed the tags close to her chest. “This was my brother.”
Sam lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I never expected to find him alive. At least I now know what happened to him. Even if I don’t know why.”
“You might have gained more questions than answers.”
“Why?”
Sam handed her the note. “Any idea who Dr. Jim Patterson is?”
“No. Why?”
“I don’t know. But apparently, he’s next.”
Guinevere glanced at the note and shook her head. “No. I’ve never heard that name mentioned before. Not that that means much. The fact is, my brother worked with the Secret Intelligence Service, so most of what he did and who he did it with were closely guarded secrets.”
“I understand.”
Guinevere looked at the four skeletons. They were set up with the same sort of imaginative demonstration as that of a child playing with dolls.
She met Sam’s eye and asked, “How did you know?”
“About what?”
“The bodies. You practically told the Fish and Wildlife Officer what we’d find in here. So how did you know?”
“I didn’t,” Sam confided. “I just guessed. I figured Scott Meyers would have told me the truth with his eyes either way. Besides, I wasn’t lying when I said the body that I found at Tillamook was set up like a child had been playing with its toys.”
“You know what I don’t understand?” she asked.
“What?”
“If someone’s been living here all this time, where did they live?”
“What do you mean? Wouldn’t they have lived all throughout the ship?”
She frowned. “No. I mean, where’s the evidence of food, of fresh water, of living… I mean, this place looks like a museum. The entire thing appears artificial. Like the set ups of an historical diorama. There’s no smell of recent human habitation. Those beds clearly haven’t been slept in for years. The entire place looks… like something’s missing…”
Sam nodded. “I get it. The place is like a vacuum. A shallow cardboard cutout of one’s existence.”
“That’s right. So where’s the doll maker?”
Sam flicked the beam of his flashlight around the room, and wondered who or what had been living there for the past seven years. What sort of creature would make up such games to pass the time while drifting aimlessly on a raft across the Pacific? What sort of creature could be capable of such ruthless killings, yet positively neurotic when it came to cleanliness and tidiness?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Caliburn barking ferociously on the top deck.
Sam turned to Guinevere, and he shouted, “Quick!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sam ran up the flight of steel stairs into the pilot house and out onto the deck. There, along the heavily encrusted section of the aft deck, was a raised platform about twelve feet high. It might have once served as an aft living quarters, or storage section to house various fishing equipment, but years of the bottom half being predominantly underwater had left the lower section of the doors permanently rusted shut and fused with barnacle encrustations.
The fur on Caliburn’s back spiked. He continued to bark nonstop at the structure.
Sam patted him on his back. “It’s all right, Caliburn. What do you see?”
Caliburn stopped barking, his eyes fixed against what was once the opening to the structure. The muscles of his lips pulled taut, as the dog bared its teeth.
Sam squinted trying to imagine the internal make-up of the Hoshi Maru. If the internal structure had a large hatchway to the back, was it possible that there might be an internal stairwell that reached it, also? And if so, how could it be reached?
He patted Caliburn until he settled. Speaking in a soothing tone, he said, “It’s all right Caliburn. Whatever it was, it’s no longer here now.”
Guinevere’s eyes traced the outline of the raised structure, stopping at a hatchway two thirds of the way along the deck that appeared to open to the lower decks. “It looks like there might be a connecting passageway. What do you think, Sam?”
Sam nodded. “I had the same thought.”
He leaned over the non-existent railing and shouted, “Hey Scott, you there?”
Scott stepped up to the third rung of the boarding ladder. “I’m here.”
Sam pointed to the raised structure that had Caliburn in a frenzy. “Has anyone checked inside there yet?”
Scott shook his head. “No. We had a look at prying that hatchway open. But it won’t be an easy job. Probably simpler to cut a hole in the wall with an angle grinder.”
“Or reach it internally,” Sam suggested.
“You can try, but the whole thing’s been flooded.”