The Ocean Dark

41

Dwyer hated going down into the bowels of a ship, with the engines and boilers, the sweat and the heat close around him. He never visited Angie when she was on duty belowdecks, and was glad that she had never asked him why. How could he admit to her that it frightened him? More than frightened him, really. With the metal closing around him and the water beyond that, he felt as though he would be crushed. Once, while visiting New York, he’d been trapped for over an hour on a broken elevator. Panic had closed off his throat and amped up his adrenaline so that he thought he was suffocating and having a heart attack, all at the same time. But he’d been claustrophobic long before that elevator ride.

He followed Tupper down the metal steps into the engine room. His eardrums were unused to the noise level and he winced as it pressed around him. The heat embraced him, but Dwyer clenched his jaw and kept moving, down through the engine room, out into another corridor, and then into the boiler room, where humidity blanketed him in an instant.

“Tupper!” he barked.

The engineer had gotten ten feet ahead of him, but turned now, wide-eyed and anxious. “Come on, man.”

Dwyer wiped sweat from his forehead, then ran both hands through his red hair, spiking it, wishing for a shower. “Tell me again what we’re doing down here? ’Cause I’ll tell you, boyo, you seem like you’ve gone off your rocker.”

Off your rocker. One of his Gram’s favorite sayings, from back when he was a boy. Stress had a way of making him regress, and always had, as though subconsciously he wished he could go back to a simpler time. Dwyer figured everybody felt that way sometimes.

The suggestion pissed Tupper off. The engineer narrowed his eyes, nostrils flaring. If they were in a bar, Dwyer would have thought he was squaring off for a fight.

“Haven’t you been listening to a word I said?” Tupper demanded.

“A bit difficult when you’re muttering half of it.”

Tupper squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he spoke with barely controlled anger. Yet Dwyer thought the anger itself was a kind of control, and what it held the reins on was fear.

“Look, the whole ship’s on edge,” Tupper said. “I get that. But you’ve gotta listen to me, man. Better yet, don’t listen to me. Listen to the ship.”

Dwyer hesitated. Even the arch of an eyebrow right now might be enough to set Tupper off, and he really didn’t relish the idea of a fistfight down here. As it was he had to force himself to keep his breathing steady, keep his heart from racing, and he wasn’t succeeding completely. But Tupper was really losing it.

“Listen to the ship?” Dwyer said, carefully.

Tupper rolled his eyes. “Fuck! I’m not crazy, Dwyer. Come over here.”

He stepped into a narrow space between two large boiler tanks. Dwyer started to follow, then froze. The gap held only shadows, not even wide enough for light to pass through. The boilers hummed. His hands clenched into fists and his throat felt tight. He managed to swallow, then took a long, labored breath.

“Dwyer!” Tupper called from the darkness.

Dwyer took a step back instead of forward. Yet in the space of long seconds, he heard a loud thump. He frowned, distracted by the sound. It came again and he stepped forward.

“Tupper?”

The engineer popped out of the narrow space, and Dwyer jerked backward, startled. The thump came a third and fourth time, in rapid succession, muffled but still echoing low and deep in the boiler room.

“There. Did you hear it?”

Dwyer nodded. “What the hell is that? Is something wrong with the boilers?”

“No, man. It’s not the boilers. That’s what I’m telling you.”

Then the engineer’s rant came back to him, his mutterings about something in the water, banging on the hull.

“That’s coming from outside?” Dwyer asked, incredulous, as he pushed past Tupper and slid between the boilers. His skin crawled and panic threatened, but he kept on.

“Damn right it is,” Tupper said, right behind him. “Something’s knocking. And it wants to come in.”

Past the boilers, Dwyer stopped, waiting, thinking for a second that the sound wouldn’t come again, that Tupper had been wrong and it really was something to do with the engines and the boilers. And how the hell would they get out of there if the boilers exploded?

He laid his hands on the inner surface of the hull.

The knock came again, louder than ever, and he jumped back. “Jesus!”

“What do you think it is?” Tupper asked.

Dwyer stared at his palms, which still tingled from contact with the metal. He backed away farther, pushed past Tupper, slid quickly between the boilers, and quickened his pace as he threaded back through the Antoinette’s heart.

“Dude!” Tupper called, rushing to catch up with him, keeping pace just behind him. “What do you think that is?”

Dwyer still didn’t answer. He hadn’t a clue what could be banging on the Antoinette’s hull, but he had the terrible feeling Tupper was right; it wanted in. And no way did he want to be trapped in the narrow labyrinth belowdecks if it got its wish.