Dead in the Water (41 page)

Hacking hard, she rested her cheek on the sink. Sweet Jesus. Dear, sweet Jesus, what had she been doing?

My love
.

“Oh,” she gasped. “S-Stephen?”

Unsteadily she rose, not daring to let go of the sink to wipe her mouth. Fresh blood plopped into the sink. Her wet hair streamed into her shoulders; she knew when she looked into the mirror she would see an aged crone, a bloodied skull-thing that would terrify Matty if he saw it.

She closed her eyes as she lifted her head, because it would terrify her as well.

And then she opened her mouth to scream, though no scream came out.

Because she was no longer holding on to the sink. Her hands rested in someone else’s.

Stephen Hamilton, lost at sea these eleven months, stood before her.

“Ruth,” he said, pulling her to him. “Ruth, my darling.”

She put her arms around his neck and began to cry. Her blood smeared across his white Windbreaker; he held her head and rocked her. His heart beat in her ear; his sun-leathered hand cupped her under the chin.

“Ruth.”

She couldn’t speak. She only nodded. He was here. He was here and he had been here all along. She knew it now. She knew. She knew.

They stood for a long, long time, in a fuzzy darkness that was somehow soothing. She didn’t know where they were now; she didn’t understand how; she didn’t care. There are more things on heaven and earth. There are more things.

There is Stephen.

He stroked her hair, her cheeks. Daubed her face with the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. After a time, she
seemed to awaken as if from a doze; she started and he said, “Shh, shh, it’s all right now, dear.”

He took her hand and led her—

startled, she looked around—

—led her through a maze of tables in an immense and beautiful ballroom. The walls were paneled and lacquered with art deco figures of the sea gods and goddesses; and above the dais where band instruments were arranged, a golden statue at least twenty feet tall watched over them. Robes flowed around the figure in streamlined grace, and his hair coursed down his shoulders. In his left hand he held a trident; Neptune, Ruth supposed, though he reminded her more of God. The features of his face were pleasant, though modeled with a heavy hand, imbuing them with an underlying sense of power.

No, not Neptune, for he was missing an eye. And his features were those of another man.

“Captain Reade,” she breathed. The unmoving form gazed down on her like a guardian.

“He brought me to you, Ruth,” Stephen said.

Past tables draped with jade and salmon, glittering with silver, he escorted her, easing her along on her sore legs. Her knees were bruising; her stomach was upset and her nose had begun to bleed again. With her free hand she wiped fiercely at it, rubbed her fingers on her nightgown. It was covered with blood and vomit; he didn’t seem to notice.

“Sit, darling.” He eased her onto a padded chair at a table for two. “Sit, and I’ll order drinks.”

He raised his hand. A steward appeared at the far end of the room, on the other side of the dance floor, and floated toward them. Floated, his feet inches above the ground.

Ice poured through Ruth’s head and she doubled forward and grabbed it. Questions, terror flooded in—what was happening? Dear God, how was he here? And how—

“Champagne for my love.” The steward nodded, floated away. She knew that man. She knew him. He was … She blinked hard. Her head ached with the cold. He was Kevin! The surfer boy on the
Morris
!

The room spun around and around. A strange rattling
sound orbited her,
chatter, chatter, chatter-scrabble
. Her closet door, on the
Morris
. She was kneeling by her porthole and dreaming all this; and someone had whispered in her ear:

Jump overboard, Ruth
.

Jump now
.

Before it’s too late
.

Her heart stalled. Then Stephen slid his hand over hers and squeezed between her fingers, the way they used to do when they first got married. He liked to see their wedding rings side by side. His gleamed on his hand—

his hand of black pulp—

No, on his wonderful, tanned hand; his strong, brilliant hand.

The steward reappeared with a tray. On it sat a bottle in a silver bucket and two champagne flutes.

“Kevin?” she ventured.

He winked at her. “Hi, Mrs. Hamilton. Surf’s up.” With a flourish, he presented the bottle. “Retrieved from the
Titanic
. Never opened.”

It didn’t look like a champagne bottle. It was green, with gold stripes running through it, and there were jewels around the neck.

Kevin wrapped a towel around the top and pushed at the cork with his thumbs. Stop, she wanted to say. Stop; this is a dead man’s bottle and it holds a dead man’s potion; it will kill me if I drink it. It’s a libation; they used to pour blood on the deck to ensure a good voyage; and that was a symbol of the earlier days, when they would kill someone, actually kill a living person. A slave—

How did she know that?

What was he doing here? What was she doing here
?

“Oh, Stephen,” she blurted in a flash of panic. “Stephen, Stephen, I don’t understand!”

He faced her and wiped her wet hair away from her face, caressing her cheeks.

On the dais, a dance band began to play “Always.” Lush strings, a clarinet, the flash of brass as the trombones droned.

The cork strained against the top of the bottle. Kevin smiled and pushed, smiled and pushed—

—and she remembered her dream of the
Morris
inside the bottle, and the laughing face. Captain Reade’s face.

“No, no, my darling.” Stephen took her hands in his and kissed the knuckles. “It’s a garden here. It’s paradise. We can be here forever.”

The room filled with people, women in slinky satin and furs, men in tuxedos. Beautiful, and handsome, candlelight gleaming on their faces and necks. The tinkle of ice, low, husky laughter; a swish of silk as the woman at the next table rose with her escort and they headed toward the crowded dance floor. A sultry brunette, with dark, deep-set eyes, who put her hand into her companion’s and her arm on his shoulder, and swiveled her head toward Ruth and smiled.

The couple began to fox-trot. Above them, light bounced off the golden statue and cast diamonds on the lacquered walls; the diamonds blurred and rippled and the entire room shimmered, as if it were underwater.

The cork popped. Ruth jumped. Stephen held her hands tightly, tightly, leaning over a glass candleholder and a bouquet of exquisite fish—

—no, not of fish, but the bright colors of kelp forests, and seaweed prairies, and the ice-blue sweetness of the underside of icebergs; oh, the beauty, the beauty, the riot of sponges, the jewels of anemones, the wonder of eternal life beneath the sea.

and Kevin poured champagne, not—

—not anything else—

into their glasses.

Ruth stared into the eyes of her husband. She had missed him so much. She loved him so much. Young people couldn’t feel love like this. It was only after years, decades, half a century—

“To you, my beloved,” Stephen said, raising his glass. Letters were engraved around the base, but she couldn’t read them. “To us, together forever.”

He waited for her to touch her glass to his. Without moving, she lowered her gaze to the glass Kevin had set by her hand. “
Normandie
,” the engraving read. Another museum relic; the
Normandie
had burned in New York harbor when
she was sixteen. She remembered her mother’s distress; she’d always wanted to travel on it.

Tulip glasses from the
Normandie
. Champagne from the
Titanic
.

She brushed the glass with her fingers. Anticipation rose throughout the room. The couples around her stopped chatting and watched. The dancing couples slowed, focused on her.

The reflections of the mirror ball rippled and danced, rippled and danced, as if everything were—

—underwater—

“Oh!” Ruth cried. She leapt out of her chair, breaking contact with Stephen. He cried out in despair—

—and her head flew up and out of the sink.

And the shadow in the mirror that was, and wasn’t, there—

The shadow misted into steam and rolled away on a night-time sea.

“Stephen!” she cried, slamming her hands against the mirror. “Stephen, come back!”

Just one moment of courage, my darling. A minute, and then it will be over
.

And then it will begin
.

The water in the sink swirled with the blood from her nose. Tentatively she dipped her shaking fingers into it. It had seemed so real. So very real.

She looked into the mirror.

“Will we really be together?” she asked aloud.

“Of course, darling. I said we would, didn’t I?” Stephen replied beside her, his warm, gentle hand resting upon her shoulder.

“I’m just so afraid.”

“There’s no need. You wanted to come to me, Ruth. Didn’t you hear me? Back on that other ship, I called to you.”

“I thought you did!” Her eyes misted. “I was too afraid. I thought you were warning me against something. I heard you tell me to … to …” She frowned. What had he told her? To jump—

“Ruth. My darling Ruth. I knew nothing could separate us. I tried so hard to contact you, so many times. And now …”
He ran his fingertips along the surface of the water. “You’ve seen how beautiful it will be. Look again.”

And she saw the garden of her dreams; swimming through the undersea beauty with her love at her side, she was young again, and Stephen was a handsome boy-man. All this could be done. All this would continue.

What was there for her, back on the surface? Age, and mourning, and wishing, and regrets. And here, an enchanted existence.

And if she was imagining it all?

Well, if she was?

But it was too real. And she was too much in love.

There was the glass snake, coiled on its pillow. It saw them, and straightened itself. Why, it wasn’t a snake at all! It was the champagne bottle from the
Titanic
.

Deftly he uncorked it; the stopper was a precious little sea creature, a crab or a shrimp of some kind, that skittered off to join his fellows among the heavenly cloud of bright orange and yellow sponges. A large bubble the color of the sun at day’s end undulated above their heads and she thought of her favorite hymn: “Now the Day Is Over.”

Yes. The days were over. Time was over. She would drink the shimmering, silver potion that poured from the bottle. She would drink, and in the twinkling of an eye—

—nearer, my God—

Ruth’s hand gripped the sink edge, spasmed, dropped to her side. The last oxygen bubbles of her life flooded out of her mouth.

It did not hurt.

Thank God for that.

King Neptune said, “Very good, Cha-cha. Let her go.”

Cha-cha stepped back. The lady’s head bobbed in the sink. Her hair was a floating mass of jellyfish tentacles. Her hands slipped down to her sides, she collapsed to her knees, and then she flopped over onto her back, smacking the floor hard. Her eyes were open, staring at him sightlessly.

“She’s at peace now.” The king clapped Cha-cha on the arm. “You did a good thing. Now, for your reward.”

Cha-cha stared down at the dead woman. A good thing? Why was it a good thing?

“Come, Cha-cha.”

COME

Cha-cha started at the sound of the
other
. Saw that King Neptune hadn’t heard it. Puzzled, he followed his master.

Shut the door after him.

“I can make them jump,” the king said offhandedly. “I whisper to them, over and over, and they hear me. They do it. Because I am the power.” He shrugged. “Others are not so … receptive. They don’t hear me.” His face hardened, and Cha-cha thought the king was mad at him.

He looked up at the king and said, “Officer Donna? She heard … she was down where you found me. She was there, freakin’, before you came.”

There was a change in the king’s face that knocked Cha-cha for a loop. For one sec, he was just nothing, just a heap of puss—

No! Flashback, that was all!

“Cha-cha, come,” the king said impatiently.

COME.

“Yessir,” Cha-cha said, and for another sec, he wasn’t sure which of the two voices he heard was the one he was answering.

Make that three or four secs.

But just two voices, baby.

Just two.

Donna ran—was chased, no of course not—into her stateroom. With a gasp she slammed the door shut and stumbled into the center of the room. God, why come back here, to the place that frightened her the worst? Why come back here, indeed, when she needed to find the others, needed to figure out what the hell had happened. Toxic reaction. Something organic. Like the blindness, something … reasonable

’Cuz there had been something down there, don’t deny it; some kind of spook-show vision. She had seen something, felt something. Now it was cloudy, but the terror remained. She was heaving with exertion and fear; tears of shock ran down
her cheeks. Hyperventilating, and trying to stop as she reeled with dizziness.

Something was very wrong on the
Pandora
.

And someone had her gun.

She turned to go back out.

Something was in the room. A stinging cold hopped onto her back, spread like syrup down her chest. Something was right behind her.

“All right,” she said. “All right, freeze.”

But it was she who was freezing. She shivered, tried to move her head. And slowly, as if someone were projecting a movie of her into the room, she collapsed forward, slow, slow, chin tilting upward an inch, two, three; her lips parted, slow, slow, slow; her wrist lifted toward the ceiling, fingertips arching—so very slowly; and it all floated

down

down

down, her face against the back of the door, smacking it a cell at a time, a tissue at a time, and her head rocked backward; and her neck slid down the slick latex paint like a cat’s languid tongue, and she caved in at the threshold, crumpled in a heap; and her mind said

Heeeellllpppppppppppppp