Deadlock

10

When he came out of it, he was sitting there before the wall, touching it very lightly with his fingertips. What he had just seen, whatever sort of psychic trip it was, was lost on him. There was only the wall.

The paper felt moist, lumpy.

It was as if there was something beneath it, something wet and plump and wormy. Something that moved under his fingers. He half-expected to see the wallpaper split open and dozens of glistening pale larvae coming squeezing out, wriggling and looping.

“All right,” he said. “Knock this shit off.”

He squinted his eyes shut to make it stop.

He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating… but the wallpaper was bulging now, swelling, forming into a rising bubble that expanded into a great central pouch like it was filled with water. As he watched, the bubble expanded and deflated like it was breathing.

You’re not seeing any of this.

To prove it to himself, he reached out and touched it. He flinched. The bubble was real. It was soft and… warm. He ran a hand over it. It felt like the belly of a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy. He pressed on it and it seemed like something moved in there, not kicking like a fetus might but moving with a slow, undulant roll. He was giving into his delusions now, he was feeding his hallucinations and becoming one with the madness that filled his mind like gray fuzz. He pressed a finger to the bubble until it sheared open and a warm, gushing juice spilled to his feet. Placental fluid, is what he thought. There was an acrid sweet odor to it that was slightly saline and darkly secret, though by no means unpleasant.

He set the lantern down. Breathing hard, icy fingers unwinding his vitals in shivering loops, he tore the wallpaper free. It was slimy and nearly hot under his fingertips. He tore it away and there was a hole on the other side. He knew there couldn’t be a hole. There was only wallpaper, plasterboard, and the steel bulkhead beneath… yet there was a hole, a dark chasm on the other side.

He put his face up to it because he felt that he had to. It was not necessarily a conscious decision anymore than getting an erection is. This was darker, deeper, almost instinctual and subconscious.

He could feel the heat coming out of the chasm and it gave him a momentary erotic thrill. The scent he breathed in was like that of warm, juicy, well-marbled meat, the way he had always thought the privates of women smelled when they were moist and engorged.

Moving on auto by that point, he reached down for the lantern.

He had to see. The feel, the smell… it had excited him in ways he had not been excited since he was thirteen. He could hear movement in the chasm. It was soft and slick like oiled flesh sliding against oiled flesh. He brought the lantern up and saw what was in there. His impression was subjective and damaging. The hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end. Gooseflesh spread up from his lower back, bristling up his spine in a cold wave until it covered the nape of his neck. His eyes widened, seeming to expand in their sockets as if they might blow open the orbits that held them. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. It ran down his face in droplets.

In the chasm he saw… he saw a face emerging from the hot womblike darkness, a wriggling, soft machinery straining to break free. It was membranous and pulsating, coiling with fat purple-blue arteries and grinning with a puckering and suckering mouth like that of a pond leech.

No! It’s not there! You’re not fucking seeing it! YOU ARE NOT SEEING IT!

He blinked his eyes and it was gone, but there was another rising bubble on the wall. And another and another. Dozens of them were pushing out now like sores filled with pus, like water blisters. With a cry, he scratched at them, popping them even as more rose up. Hot fluid like infected blood ran over his knuckles. He tore the bubbles open and from each one, black, wiry hairs sprouted, thickening and tangling until the entire wall was furry and crawling. He tore the hair out in clumps like weeds from garden soil, filling his hands with it and tossing knotted tufts of it in every which direction, clawing and clawing. His fingers scraped against the bulkhead beneath, but it was not steel… it was soft, pliant flesh, leprous flesh that came apart under his nails like spongy tissue.

The walls were bleeding.

With a scream, he fell back, hitting the floor on his ass. He saw the forest of creeping hairs suck back into the holes that had birthed them. They made a strawlike, rustling noise. He brushed sweat from his eyes. When he looked again, he saw only dusty wallpaper and nothing more. An unbroken expanse.

“Enough!” he said, climbing to his feet. “I’ve had enough of this shit!”

And there went his voice again, echoing shrilly like his words were being mocked by a locust or a cricket. Strident, piping. He studied the wallpaper even though he knew it was the last thing he should be doing. It bled and wavered, vines and stems knotting together. He looked away and the room tilted this way then that as if he’d just gotten a whiff of poison gas. He sat down on the bed again, trying to screw his head on straight.

There’s nothing holding you here, you know.

Oh, but there was. Fifty grand in gambling debts. And Arturo, of course. If he left now, Arturo would know he didn’t have any guts. He would know what Charlie was beginning to suspect about himself: that he’d spent his entire life puffing out his chest and inflating his balls, talking the talk and walking the walk because… because inside he was scared to death and always had been. And even if he suspected this, he couldn’t let Arturo know it, couldn’t let him see the raw and unreasoning fear that dogged him. Because if he left now, Arturo would see it on him or smell it on him the way they said dogs sometimes could.

But to stay… the idea seemed worse all the time.

Worse? No, it was getting to the point where it was fucking dangerous.

He’d already experienced too many weird things, enough so that he was now doubting the nature of reality. He had a mad, almost feverish feeling that if he walked out that door right now there would be nothing on the other side but some immense and bottomless black gulf or maybe a brick wall like there was in old haunted house movies when people opened doors.

Things were happening, they were building up to something and he knew it. He was no longer believing that some of Arturo’s goons were running around causing mischief. This was far beyond simple parlor tricks like that because the real enemy, he was starting to think, was his own mind… that and the thing which manipulated it, plucking his nerves like the strings of a lute.

Bang, bang, bang.

Charlie jumped, a bolt of white fear piercing his chest. Gooseflesh covered his entire body. His mouth went dry as dirt. Somebody was pounding at the door. He told himself he did not hear it, but then it came again and he seized up inside. From head to toe, he shook. His teeth were even chattering.

Bang, bang, bang.

He had to be imagining it. There was nothing out there. Arturo wouldn’t come until morning. There was no way he’d board the Addams at night. Hadn’t he said that? I been on her dozens of times. But not after dark. No, sir. Even if it was him, he would call out. He wouldn’t just beat on the door and stand out there silently.

Charlie waited.

He tried to call out, but it felt like his throat was constricted. He couldn’t find his voice. He could barely get a breath in his lungs. He tried to calm himself which was nearly impossible under the circumstances. Finally, in a weak and threadbare voice, he said, “Who’s… who’s out there?”

Bang, bang, bang.

It came with more force and urgency now. He could hear flakes of rust dropping from the walls. He stood up and stepped over there. He was wringing wet with perspiration. It ran down his face in rivers. He faced the door, knowing there was only about an inch of iron between him and what waited out there, what had come calling in the dead of night. It was out there and he could feel it, whatever it was. He imagined what it would be like to reach out and unlock the door, grasp the knob and throw it open. Whatever was out there would leap on him and he knew it, but at least he’d know what it was.

No.

He went back over to the desk. He picked up the .45 and the flashlight. He wasn’t going to back down. He could not let himself back down because the thing out there would feed on his terror if he did that. It would get fat like a leech at an artery and he would get weaker and weaker. And when it sensed his weakness…

He cleared his throat. It felt like it was filled with dust balls. “I know you’re out there and I’m coming for you. I have a gun and I’m going to kill you,” he said, his voice strong and sure.

But if his voice was strong and sure, he was trembling inside. He could barely hold onto the gun because he could feel that eye looking at him again as he’d felt it outside the cabin earlier… only now he knew what it looked like—green and glistening, the socket it sat in juicy and red like raw meat. The very idea of it made him want to run, to burst out the door and not stop running until he was off the ship and down the dock itself. Let them call him a pussy. There were worse things.

He stared blankly at the door as the banging came again. It seemed that shadows were crawling over its surface, shadows that worked their way beneath, born in the hollow, wasting depths of the thing out there. He could not let them touch him because they were alive.

He shook that from his head. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

He undid the lock and threw the door open, the gun coming up and the flashlight beam showing him what it was he needed to kill. There was no hideous, skulking goblin shape out there ready to sink its teeth into his throat. There was only a wooden box, the box from the cabin, the packing crate. Its surface was filthy. There were old bloodstains on it and scratches like it had been worked with an awl.

As he stood there, white with fear, the box slid down the corridor as if it was being towed. He had a mad urge to break out in a wild, gasping paroxysm of hysterical laughter. But he knew if he started, he’d never stop.

Willing himself to move, he followed the path the box had taken. It moved down the corridor and around the bend. He could still hear it sliding away. He would have to be fast to catch it. It wanted to be caught, but the question remained: did he really want to catch it?

Yes, he had to.

He’d rather face it than spend the night shivering in his bunk. He ran after it, his flashlight beam bobbing and casting immense, leaping shadows around him. He got to the bend of the corridor just in time to see the hatch at the end slam shut. Boom, boom, boom-boom-boom. The box was sliding down the companionway stairs to the lower level, making for dunnage where the ordinary swabbies laid their heads.

He raced after it, a voice in his head asking him exactly what it was he thought he was doing. But he did not know. He was being lured by the thing, but that was part of the game and he needed to play along.

He found it where he knew he would: outside the cabin that had been locked in his vision. The cabin where Heslip had died and where he had been cold-cocked earlier. This was the focal point and he knew it. The box was vibrating on the floor like something was building up inside it, approaching critical mass. He dove on it, putting his weight on the lid so it wouldn’t come loose because he did not want that. No sir, he did not want that.

He pressed his face to it. “I got you now,” he whispered. “What’re you going to do about it?”

The box and its occupant did nothing. They both waited as Charlie himself waited. The box was warm to the touch. There was something very comforting and soothing about that. He cuddled up against it, letting the warmth enter him until he could feel it deep inside his very bones. For one moment, he thought he heard a slight childish giggling from inside.

And that more than anything made the worried voice in his head say, Just what in the hell do you think you are doing?

Charlie shook his head. Well, he was… that is, he was… it would take too long to explain. He didn’t have the time. It required too much thinking and right now he did not want to think or reason. He was an emotional being sucking warmth from the box and dreaming of what was inside and how… yes, how he wanted to touch it. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything so badly in his life. His finger was itching like crazy. He had a knife in his pocket and the idea of scraping the blade against it and peeling back the skin in a bloody flap filled him with a carnal thrill. He studied the sore and was amazed to find that a single black and luxurious hair had grown from it.

In the box, something was breathing.

It had an almost musical sound and he knew that made no sense, yet he was certain of it. Breathing hard himself, impassioned, he ran his hands over the lid of the box and he could hear what was in there doing the same from the other side. This was not threatening… it was playful.

Romantic, he thought.

And as he thought this, his hand felt a knot in the wood of the lid, only he knew it wasn’t a knot at all. He put the light on it. No, his name was carved into the lid right in the center of a large, crude heart.

It’s a girl and she’s lonely. Don’t you see that? She’s in love with you.

That was madness, yet it excited him. She had killed many others, drove them off the ship or to suicide… but, somehow, he was different. She coveted him. He had the craziest feeling that if Arturo and a couple of his heavies showed right now that she would kill them. She had marked her territory and she was jealous, very jealous.

And beautiful… God, beautiful enough to take your breath away.

Immediately, as if what was in the box found his thoughts pleasing, that sweet perfumed smell came from beneath the lid… lilacs, roses, orchids, rising up until it was nearly sickening. It made him feel giddy.

She’s enticing you with her secret feminine scent.

Charlie knew he had to touch what was in there. His breath was barely coming now, his heart pounding in his chest. Every inch of his skin was tingling with heat. Licking his lips, his eyes wide and glassy, his face beaded with sweat, he tried to pull up the lid. It would only move three or four inches. A hot, cloying odor wafted out. It smelled like an open wound, like warm healing flesh.

He pressed his hand into the gap and touched soft, lustrous hair that made the air catch in his throat. He had never felt anything so pleasing. The tactile sensation made him grow hard.

He reveled in it and when the teeth sank into his palm, he barely even cried out.