The Ocean Dark

49

Hank Boggs crouched inside the empty frame of a window in the cabin cruiser’s wheelhouse and watched Captain Rio, Kevonne, Pang, and that bitch, Tori, as they scrambled for better purchase on the tilted deck of the half-sunken fishing trawler. He’d watched as they’d set off from the island, praying that they’d stop and pick him up, or at least get back to the Antoinette and send help.

Then he’d seen the water rippling around them and he’d known his prayers fell on deaf ears. If God existed, up in the heavens, he wasn’t listening. Or perhaps this place — any place where things like this could exist — was in his blind spot.

Bone had died the same way Mitchell had, dragged down into a blossoming pool of his own blood. A goddamned shame. Bone had been a decent guy.

Now all five of them were stranded, but at least the captain and the others were together. Boggs was on his own, separated from them by a gap way too wide to even think about swimming while those things were in the water. And what about them? What are they, anyway? Boggs pushed the questions away, saving them for another time. He didn’t want to think about it, because the few answers that danced at the periphery of his thoughts only frightened him more.

The wreck he’d swum to lay at an angle in the water, maybe forty-five degrees, and he crouched inside, looking down through the open window frame at the water below. He might have been better off on top of the lopsided ship, but from here he had a better view of the island and of the others, stranded across from him.

Little shards of glass still in the window frame crunched under his shoes as Boggs straightened up, careful with his footing. If he fell, he would tumble into the water, and though he could see no disturbance on the water, he thought he could feel them there, waiting down in the dark.

He studied the arrangement of the wrecks near his position, as well as those on the other side of the alley they had sailed through to get to the beach. He needed to get to a higher vantage point to take a look at the sunken ships that were nearest to him. One of these boats must still have a working lifeboat on it, and much as he didn’t want to risk it, that might be his only shot at getting out to the Antoinette. The container ship’s draft was much too deep to get in this close.

Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, he saw something odd out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see that the Antoinette had begun to turn. Though slowly, the ship had begun to move toward shore.

“What the hell?” Boggs muttered to himself.

Then he got it. The Antoinette couldn’t come and get them, but Miguel could sure as hell get her closer, giving them all a better shot at reaching the ship alive.

A terrible thought filled him. Miguel wasn’t coming for Hank Boggs — he was coming for his brother, the goddamned captain. Whatever rescue efforts the crew of the Antoinette would be making, they were going to be focused on the other side of the gulf that separated his position from the others.

Panic flared in his chest. Boggs hadn’t been scared of much in his adult life, but the thought of being out here alone when the sun went down filled him with a terror so profound that for several long seconds he could not move. He had heard people talk about getting a chill, but had never felt anything like the sudden icy cold that enveloped him. For a few moments, he felt as though he’d been locked in a freezer.

When the chill passed, the panic remained.

They might not leave him behind, but Boggs knew he wasn’t their priority. They weren’t hurrying to get to him, and weren’t likely to reach him before nightfall. Keenly aware of the dark water below, he looked over at the fishing trawler and at the double-masted schooner that lay on its side. Gabe and Tori and the others were on the move now, looking for a way to cross to the schooner.

Boggs looked up. Above him and to the left, a thick tangle of netting and rope had been stretched from the bow of the cabin cruiser all the way to the broken mast of the schooner. In places, curtains of net hung down, but the central line was fairly taut. Even where it sagged in the middle, it must still have been at least thirty feet above the water.

He had known it was there, of course. They had all noticed it on the way in, and wondered at its use and origin. Mitchell had said it looked like some kid’s idea of a pirate tree house, the way some of the ships were tethered together. But Boggs wasn’t some circus tightrope walker. He had the strength to shimmy out along the rope and netting and hang on, but ninety feet? Could he make it that far? Once, maybe, when he was younger. But he was older now, and heavier, and as taut as it looked, there was no way of telling how well the rope had been tied off on either side, or how much the sun and salt might have rotted it.

Boggs closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them, he gazed at the western horizon. How many hours before dark? Three? Four? Best not to count on four.

Which meant he had to get started.

The cabin cruiser sat, half-submerged, canted sideways in the water. The angle wasn’t so extreme that he couldn’t manage, but still he was really beneath the wheelhouse. He’d never be able to climb up to the bow from down there. One missed grip or a slip of the foot and he’d fall. It made a hell of a lot more sense to go up through the wheelhouse and get on top of the cruiser. Up there he could scale the port side railing like a jungle gym, all the way to the bow.

Boggs glanced at the Antoinette, sliding nearer to the reef of ruined ships, and then at the horizon one more time. The whole ship creaked and the breeze coming through the broken windows whistled softly. He slid down the inner wall of the wheelhouse to the V where the wall met the floor. On his hands and knees, he began to climb the slanted floor like Spider-Man, the toes of his shoes finding traction, hands giving him balance. Boggs picked his way across the wheelhouse, scaling the tilted floor, headed for the broken windows on the port side — the high side, now.

His left foot slipped and went out from under him. His knee slammed down, and he slid toward the water at the submerged rear of the wheelhouse. His heart raced as his hands scrabbled for purchase. He shoved his right foot out, flat on his belly, slowing down, turning sideways, slipping toward the water.

It’s not deep, he told himself. A couple of feet. If anything was there, I’d see it.

His left hand caught the upright balustrade fixed to the floor around the stairs that led down into the cabin below. Hope filled him, but momentum slid him farther, and first his left foot and then his right plunged into the water. His shoes struck the back wall of the wheelhouse, and he was in water up to his knees. The way the ship sat, tipped over in the water like that, the sun struck the roof, and only ambient daylight made it through the windows. Down there where the water had flooded in, all was in shadow.

“Please, no,” he gasped, tightening his grip on the balustrade and — now that his feet had purchase — pulling himself up to the stairs that led belowdecks. He straddled the top stair, which was a peak, of sorts, like the top of a roof. He thought of sitting on his roof back when he was a boy, up on hot tar shingles, drinking grape soda and waiting for his mother to come home from work.

The thought calmed him. The water that had collected at the rear of the wheelhouse was only that — water. And not very deep. The floor sloped down in front of him; the stairs did the same behind him. But the railings around the stairs would give him a good head start for climbing again, making his way up to the port side where it stuck out of the water. He just had to reach a broken window and get out of the wheelhouse on top, and then it would be easy climbing the outside of the ship.

He caught his breath, taking a moment. The sound of the sea lapping the sides of the ship — so close now that he was near the waterline — made him uneasy. And he could hear, down in the cabin belowdecks, the slosh of the water that had filled the sunken portion of the cruiser.

Bracing himself, he grabbed the railing — more like a ladder at this angle — and stood up on the peak of the top tilted stair. With his right hand he tugged on the balustrade, testing its strength.

Boggs paused, frowning, then cocked his head. He heard singing, like a far-off lullaby. Could that be Tori, all the way over on the trawler or the schooner? The sound comforted him, relaxing his thundering heart.

But then it grew louder, and he realized that it did not come from outside the cruiser, but from within. From below him, down those stairs, inside the flooded cabin.

An awful sorrow filled him — not fear, but profound sadness. As Boggs glanced down into the darkness of the cabin, he began to weep, as he had not done in the better part of thirty years.

Three sets of black eyes gazed up at him from the throat of the stairwell. A single hand slid upward, fingers wrapping around his ankle. He hung his head in surrender.

Only when they began to pull him down the stairs did Boggs begin, at last, to scream.