The Ocean Dark

51

The day had metamorphosed into a nightmare. The dead crew of the Mariposa and the missing guns were no more than a nuisance now, after the horrors of that ancient, crumbling grotto, and the things Gabe believed had come from deep within the glassy, black volcanic rock that lined the cavern within. He imagined a hellish tunnel, straight down through the water, and things still swimming in unknown depths. But even those images were not the worst part of his nightmare. The worst came when he heard Hank Boggs begin to scream.

It wasn’t the screams that got him — they weren’t the day’s first — nor the death of Chief Boggs. The most heinous moment for Gabe came when he recognized the feeling rising up inside him as relief. With Boggs dead, things were simpler. They didn’t have to worry about retrieving him, didn’t have to risk any foolish heroics beyond saving their own skins.

The realization staggered him and he faltered, standing on the precipitous edge of the trawler’s nose. Tori grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Hey,” she said. “Watch it. You okay?”

He peered at her. She was frightened, but rock steady and determined. Gabe wondered where this woman had come from, because the smart, pretty, flirty girl from the offices back in Miami had vanished completely.

“There’s nothing you could have done for him,” Tori said.

She thought he’d been upset, or grieving for Boggs, when in truth he had been glad the man was no longer his problem. Gabe gently tugged his arm free of her touch, unworthy of her concern.

“Go on, Tori. You next,” he said.

Kevonne and Pang already stood on the weathered hull of the schooner’s starboard side, which had spent many years exposed to the elements. The two sailors had considered it a minor miracle to discover that the winch cables at the aft end of the trawler — which had once hauled its nets — were already strung across the gap between the fishing boat and the schooner. Gabe saw it as an ugly omen. Lives had probably been lost just getting from one ship to the next, but someone had succeeded in turning those winch arms toward the schooner and tying the cables off somewhere on its deck. But he couldn’t make himself believe that whoever had done that had managed to make it away from the island alive. The fact that the things were still in the water suggested that no one had come here in force, and that no one had ever gotten away and lived long enough to do anything about the bizarre Venus flytrap this paradise had become.

“Come on!” Kevonne shouted across the gap. “The Antoinette’s coming!”

He sounded so excited, as though he thought Miguel might actually try bringing the Antoinette up close to the rusty freighter. Gabe knew that wasn’t the case. The water just wasn’t deep enough, especially now, with the tide out.

But Miguel said he had a plan.

Gabe looked down into the gap between the trawler and the schooner. At the bottom, only seven or eight feet of water showed. But they needed to cross to a place far enough up the side of the lopsided ship’s hull that they could stand without slipping off. Once Kevonne and Pang had been able to put their feet down, they had used the cables as guide wires to move up farther. Now they were almost at the deck — which would be practically a sheer drop-off into the water on that side.

“What if I fall?” Tori asked.

He looked at her, almost relieved to see that her steely resolve had cracks in it. It shook him from his reverie. Tori needed him to step up, to be the captain.

“You’ll be fine. You saw the guys do it. Just shimmy, and don’t let go.”

Tori arched an eyebrow. “Easy for you to say.”

Gabe glanced at the horizon, feeling the urgency of the dwindling afternoon. Tori caught the look and nodded, as though trying to convince herself. She put her back to the schooner and grabbed hold of the cable, hoisted herself up and wrapped her legs around it. Hanging upside down, she started to haul herself as quickly as she could, hand over hand, across the gap between ships.

“Don’t stop for anything,” Gabe said.

“Thanks,” Tori huffed, the muscles in her arms standing out from the effort. “Now … shut up.”

Gabe watched her, holding his breath. Across from him, on the hull of the sunken schooner, Pang and Kevonne stared in silence, waiting to help. None of them looked down, not even when something splashed below them, between the trawler and the two-masted sailing ship. At the start, Kevonne had wanted to go feetfirst, so he could look ahead and see where he was going. Gabe and Pang had immediately nixed that idea. Headfirst, pulling themselves along, would be much faster, and lugging your own body weight that far, speed was of the essence.

Three-quarters of the way across, Tori paused to rest.

“Don’t stop!” Gabe called.

Kevonne held on to the cable and worked his way toward her. The angle of the hull wasn’t steep, but it did slant, and the wood was smooth, and if he slipped he would end up in the water.

“Tori?” Kevonne called.

“I know!” she snapped. Her arms were wrapped around the cable, giving her hands a rest. She flexed her fingers, took a breath, and then grabbed hold and started moving again, hanging down, muscles straining.

Twenty seconds later, Kevonne was helping her down off the cable. Together they started moving back to the flatter area at the top of the hull, holding on to the cable as an anchor and guide. At the highest vantage point on the schooner, the way it laid in the water, the hull was as flat as the deck would have been had the ship been upright, while the actual deck had become a sheer drop down into the water.

The three of them stood waiting. Gabe felt very old, suddenly, and exhausted. For a few seconds, he almost gave up. Angry with himself, he shook it off. Miguel said he had a plan, and Gabe would have to rely on that. Whatever it took, he would make it back to the Antoinette. No way in hell would he let himself die before he got a chance to look his brother in the eye and ask if the FBI agent had been telling the truth about Miguel and Maya.

Idiot. He’s not lying. What did he have to gain?

Anguish filled him, overpowering his fear. He thought of Maya’s bronze skin, the softness of her hair, and the gentle curve at the small of her back. He thought of the way her eyes sparkled when he made her laugh, and the way they dimmed when he made her cry, and he couldn’t decide in that moment who he hated more, his brother or himself.

Gabe crossed himself, kissed the tips of his fingers, and glanced into the sky. If God took any notice, perhaps he would also take pity.

He hooked his left arm over the cable, then pulled his legs up, troubled at having to support his own weight. It wasn’t something he’d be able to do for very long. Heart fluttering, he began to move across the gap between ships. The cable bit into his hands, but he’d been at sea for years, and the calluses were thick. Working his legs, keeping them hooked over the cable as he made his way, was much more difficult. At twenty it would have been simple enough. Gabe didn’t usually think of himself as very old, but his muscles weren’t as limber as they’d once been.

His arms strained, his shoulders burned, and his hands stung, despite their calluses. A terrible certainty filled him that his strength would give out before he reached the other side, that the extra weight he carried from years of indulgences — not a lot, really, but perhaps enough — would drag him down.

“Captain!” Kevonne yelled. “Put your feet down!”

The words broke through his concentration and he listened carefully, afraid he’d misunderstood. But then Tori spoke, much closer than Kevonne.

“Gabe. You’re here.”

She reached him, touched his arm. Tentatively, blinking with amazement, he let his legs drop down to the schooner’s hull, holding tightly to the cable, and turned to look at Tori. She had walked out to guide him in, just as Kevonne had done for her.

“Thanks,” he said.

Tori squeezed his wrist. “Let’s move.”

The two of them made their way to where Kevonne and Pang waited, and they all rested a few seconds. Gabe had to take a step back from the edge, where the deck dropped straight down to the water. He had never been afraid of heights, but any time he stood on a balcony or even the walkway along the Antoinette’s accommodations block, the physical urge to jump tugged him forward. He’d read about that feeling. Thanatos, they called it. The death urge. Fortunately the instinct to stay alive overrode his body’s strange desire to succumb to gravity.

“The rest should be easy,” Kevonne said.

Pang snorted, glancing at him. “You think?”

Kevonne shrugged, gestured back the way they’d come. “Compared to that, yeah.”

Gabe wasn’t quite so sure. He lay on his stomach on the wooden hull and looked over the edge, getting a better look. Tori lay down beside him, close enough that he could hear her quickened breathing. Adrenaline still drove them all. Without it, Gabe figured they’d be dead already.

The deck angled down into the water, but now that he looked at it, he realized it wasn’t exactly ninety degrees. Perhaps eighty. Close enough. Without something to hold on to, they’d just slide down into the water, and the space that separated the schooner from the sunken freighter had already filled with shadows. The sunlight came skimming across the surface of the water now, and didn’t reach into that gap.

One of the masts had broken off perhaps a third of the way up its length. The other lay on the tilted deck of the rusty sunken freighter, creating a bridge to that ship from the schooner. They would have to slide down the deck to reach the base of the mast. Once again, however, whoever had come before them had paved the way. The cable from the trawler’s winch had been tied off on the mast itself. If they were careful, they ought to be able to guide their descent.

“Who did all of this?” Tori asked, staring down at where the cable had been wound around the mast and hooked back onto itself.

“Dead motherfuckers,” Pang said, voice flat.

Gabe, Tori, and Kevonne all looked at him.

Pang shrugged. “What? We were all thinking it.”

Kevonne stripped off his shirt, wrapped it around his right hand, and sat down on the edge. Traversing the gap had been one thing, and hard on the hands, but the cable wasn’t a fire pole. If they weren’t careful, they’d tear the skin on their fingers and palms.

He didn’t wait for them to wish him luck, just slid over the edge and slowly rappelled down the deck, coming to rest on the thickness of the mast. Kevonne had made it look easy, which prompted Pang to pull his own shirt over his head and follow suit. Halfway down his hands slipped and he nearly fell. Catching himself cost him. He gripped the cable tight enough to stop his descent and cried out as the metal dug into his flesh. His left hand was wrapped with cloth, but the right had been bare. Now it would be slick with blood.

Gabe said nothing to hurry him.

Down in the space between the schooner and the freighter — in the gathering shadows — the water sloshed, slapping the sides of the ships. Tori’s focus was entirely on Pang, and she did not react at all. But Gabe looked down, peering into the dark, and saw the eyes staring back at him. The splash had come from off to the right, and when he looked in that direction it only took him a moment to make out a second set of eyes and the pale, glistening white hump of a head. The creatures watched them like crocodiles, so still, waiting for them to make a mistake.

Pang reached the mast. By then, Kevonne had crept on hands and knees across ten feet of the thick mast. For the last three or four feet, where the mast began to thin, he had to straddle the wood and drag himself forward, keeping balanced, twenty-five feet above the water.

“Shit,” Tori said.

With a look of determination, she started to peel off her tank top. Gabe grabbed her arm to stop her.

“Hold on,” he said. As she watched, he unbuttoned his own, a cotton short-sleeve with a faded scallop pattern. Maya had bought it for him two years before, during better times.

Better times, Gabe thought. Hell, they were all better times. Perspective could be a bitch. Pushing away thoughts of Maya, he held the shirt by its bottom hem and tore it down the middle, then handed half to Tori.

“A weird time to get all chivalrous on me,” she said.

Gabe surprised himself by smiling. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you naked. I just don’t want you distracting the rest of us.”

Tori nodded. “Good. You had me worried.”

She went down much faster than either of the guys, but by the time she landed on the mast, Kevonne and Pang were both safe on the rusty freighter. Tori started making her way across the mast-bridge without hesitation, driven by the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. If she had noticed the things down in the water, watching her, she made no mention of them.

When a third one appeared and reached out of the water to press its hands against the rusted freighter, then began to slither up the metal hull, Gabe wanted to scream. The suckers on its hands somehow allowed it to stick like a salamander to the side of the freighter, and it slithered upward until the top half of its pearlescent body was out of the water. Then it paused, clinging to the hull, as if testing out the shadows.

Dark enough, Gabe thought, glancing quickly at the horizon.

Sunlight still washed the deck of the freighter. Tori, Kevonne, and Pang were safe there, for now. But down there between the ships, the day had already fled. The creature seemed frozen for several seconds, then it slid farther up the hull, its serpentine lower body curled against the metal, suckers holding it in place.

“Gabe!” Tori called. “What are you waiting for? What’s wrong?”

Kevonne joined in. “Captain?”

But it wasn’t their urging that got him moving. Another pair of long-fingered hands rose from the gentle, lapping waves, and a second creature began to climb up the freighter’s hull. How far would they venture from the shadows? How much light was enough to hold them back?

His hands were oddly steady but his throat went dry and he felt twitchy. He dropped down to sit on the edge of the sideways schooner, no longer able to hear the questions and urgent shouts from the others because his heart pounded so loudly in his ears. Twisting around, he gripped the cable with his torn shirt and pressed his feet against the deck. Then he pushed off, just a bit, and let his hands slide on the cable, the shirt tearing further, wearing thin. He tightened his grip and the cloth tugged away, metal scouring his palms and fingers. His jaws clamped shut in pain and his hands became slippery. With two fingers, he pulled the remnant of his shirt down into his hands, wrapped it as best he could, then moved more slowly.

He couldn’t do it. The rag his shirt had become tore away, metal bit into his palms, and after a few more feet he froze. Gritting his teeth he looked down, saw the mast not that far below, and turned around, letting his legs hang down below him. With the wood just five feet away, he let go.

Falling, he felt despair fill him. If not for the square metal fitting around the base of the mast, he would likely have slipped right off and fallen into the water. But his shoes hit that flat surface, jarring his bones, and he let his momentum carry him forward. Steadied by his landing, he went down on his hands and knees on the mast. His hands stung and they were slippery with his blood, but Gabe did not slow. He hustled across the mast, the exhortations of the others finally reaching him.

His skin prickled with fear, but he did not look down, unwilling to learn how close they might be, or how many.

When he reached the place where the mast thinned enough that he should have straddled it, he could not bear to hang his legs over the sides. Instead, he stood. Refusing to look at Tori or his sailors, Gabe ran the last half dozen feet and leaped to the sun-washed deck of the rusting freighter.

He clapped his hands to his forehead and doubled over, heart slamming against his chest, breath too fast. Forcing himself to calm down, building walls around the fear inside of him, he straightened up, first pressing his hands together as if in prayer and then dropping them to his sides. Telling himself he was the captain no longer made any difference. Gabe Rio wanted to live, captain or not. Yes, he and Miguel needed to be eye to eye, and he needed answers, and despite it all he still wanted to see Maya again.

“What the hell, Captain?” Kevonne said.

Pang shook his head, dumbstruck. “One wrong step and you would’ve—”

Tori cut him off. “They’re down there, aren’t they?” Staring at him, studying his eyes.

Gabe nodded. “On the hull.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Pang said with such sadness that the profanity sounded almost like a prayer.

From down in the shadows between ships, a lone voice rose in a slow, ethereal melody, and a second joined it. Revulsion rippled through him.

“Sirens,” Kevonne said. “They’re sirens. Like in the legends.”

“I don’t remember anything about flesh-eating monsters with octopus fingers from my Greek mythology,” Gabe said.

“Maybe not,” Tori said, “but every legend starts somewhere.”

But by then Gabe was barely listening. He stared past Kevonne, out to sea, and now Tori was turning, too. Then Kevonne and Pang both looked to see what had drawn their attention. The Antoinette glided closer — as close as they could take her without running aground.

Not that it would matter. The ship couldn’t come alongside the old freighter, and any gap would be too far. But Miguel had said he had a plan, and as Gabe watched his ship slip through the water, he began to get an inkling just what that plan might entail.

The crane at the Antoinette’s bow was in motion. Already, one of the twenty-foot metal containers had been hooked up, and the crane lifted it slowly into the air.