Dead in the Water (50 page)

“Compress,” she said evenly, waiting.

Drown, how could he drown? John pushed his bony chest five times, nodded to Donna. She listened for his breath,
breathed into him. His lips were cold and soft. She thought of other small lips. The mittens. The failure.

The death.

“Compress,” she said. John began to pump.

Oh, God, oh, God, the water was sloshing over the tops of the crates as the level rose. Curry, useless Curry, screamed and moved toward the center. Wouldn’t do any good, Donna thought. Reade wanted them, he had them … unless they could get him first. Son of a bitch. What the hell was he? Son of a bitch, she shot him and he didn’t die. Her cop brain raced ahead to possible scenarios, showdowns, outcomes. Curry was hopping on one foot, the other, screaming how they mustn’t drown on board, any of them, or
he
would have them.

Mutilate their souls. Jesus, what a load of crap.

But the bullets. The bottles. The floor.

The air changed, violently. A swirl of fog, the poof! of magic smoke from a lamp … and then her world cracked open.

Her little floater crouched at Matt’s feet. Same Windbreaker, same soft brown hair. Those jug ears. Those eyes. She hadn’t seen his eyes until she’d checked his pupils.

She froze and stared at the ghost. John’s glance ticked at her. I’
m so sorry, ma’am
, she’d said to his mother. I’
m …
and the lady had fainted, dead away, without a word.

You okay, Osmond? Listen to this, what do you call a dead floater? Bob
.

What kinda wood floats
?

Natalie Wood
.

You lose some, Officer. Now and then, you lose some
.

“Breathe,” John ordered her sharply. Automatically she complied.

Gonna lose him
, the floater said, and didn’t say.
Lost him already
.

“John,” she whispered.

“Breathe!”

She obeyed. The floater watched with a smile on his face. He held up his hands to show her his reindeer mittens.

You lost me. You could’ve had me if you hadn’t let your boy-friend
hurt me. You were too wimpy to stop him in time. If you weren’t such a whore, I’d be alive today
.

“No.” She breathed for Matt without John’s prompting. He couldn’t be gone, could he? Not little Matty. Not this one, too.

You’re a whore. You know you are. Going after another woman’s husband. You know your Desire. You want to be a slut
.

She breathed for Matt.

“We’re doing good,” John said, panting. “We’re fine here.”

It’s your fault
, the boy said.
You killed me, and you don’t even remember my name
.

“Dane,” she murmured. And she’d tried, goddamn it, she’d tried; and she knew that. She knew she did her best. She’d forgiven herself. She had.

She breathed into Matt.

No. It was your remorse pulled you to us, to him. A Desire for relief. You want to pay for losing me
.

Wrong. She had wanted to save the boy; and she wanted to save these guys, too. And that was her strongest desire: to protect and to serve. To save. Social worker with a gun.

Breathe, baby. Breathe, sweet baby.

“A pulse!” John cried.

Water spewed out of Matt’s throat. John flipped him on his side again and patted his back. The boy vomited, coughed, choked. John held him and rocked him.

Dane faded away without another word, another gesture.

Shaking, Donna got to her feet.

“Now we’ve got to get a boat,” Curry said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

Donna licked her lips. “You three go ahead.” With an unsteady hand she tousled Matt’s wet hair. “Can you help your daddy, hon? Can you move okay?”

The water sloshed over the crates, and then everything heeled backward, slamming them against the wall. Matt screamed and fell hard on Donna. His father followed after, and all the breath was knocked out of her.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Curry cried.

“It’s going down.” Donna pointed to a metal ladder that led up to the next deck. It rose from the waterline at a thirty-degree
angle. “Get a boat, get off the ship, wait a while for me and the others. If we don’t come, get away. The suction …” Her heart skipped a beat. Christ, ghosts or no ghosts, she didn’t want to die on the
Pandora
.

“Come with us,” John urged. He took her hand.

She shook her head. “I’ve got to find the others. And stop him. If any of it’s true …” She laughed bitterly. “Christ, just go. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. But the damn boat is really sinking, and I’ve got to get the others.”

A low, slow moan shuddered through the room, metal against metal. Matt’s eyes widened. “Get him out of here,” Donna said fiercely.

John gazed at her as Matt climbed around his waist. Kissing the top of his son’s head, he murmured, “You won’t be able to do anything.”

“Yes, I will. I will.” To Curry, she said, “You help them. You know where things are. You know what’s … real. Get them off here.”

Curry nodded. He dropped his gaze. “I’m so ashamed. I—”

“Save it,” she said, took a breath, and jumped—

—don’t let her hit anything big and heavy!

—off the crates.

Keening, the captain started down the ladderway.
He must stop, because I am come to do my penance! I am hurrying to your side, oh, Stella Maris! Forgive me, forgive, and await your slave!

Cha-cha stood in the doorway, totally overwhelmed as the water rushed back out of the room and flooded around his waist. It sluiced around him like a buffalo stampede and ran off.

COMECOMECOMECOME

He took a step closer. The room was frigid and filled with cold mist. When he breathed, he sent out a stream of breath-smoke that curled into the air. Water ran from the top of the doorway, melting ice, and blankets of fog unrolled as he stepped closer.

COMECOMECOMECOMECOME

He recoiled as the fog billowed left, right, making a path for him.

COMECOMECOMECOME

The king! No, something glistening. His mom! No, something sharp and shiny, like a kaleidoscope. Something with tentacles! An octopus! No, something with a little Nessie head, sea serpent! A mask, all white. A spider face. A skull.

No.

No.

Things that were, and weren’t. In the center of the changes and the movin’ and groovin’, like in a lap, an old, wooden boat teetered as the things—the colors! the mists—drooped over it and seeped along the boat’s gunwales. A boat encased in ice, and a guy sitting upright inside it?

Cha-cha cocked his head. That couldn’t be—

A scream of terror behind him. Cha-cha jumped in the air and turned, ax at the ready.

That couldn’t be the King Neptune in the boat, man, because here was His Majesty, standing right in front of him.

But the Big Guy was
freaked
. Cha-cha doubted he had ever seen a look like that anywhere but on the faces of the sailors on the old
Morris
, when she was the
Abernathy
, and all her ammo did its thing to all the Vietnamese who crackled and grizzled on the delta shore.

His Oceanic Majesty staggered left, right, fell to his knees, screaming all the time. Over and over.

Cha-cha looked back at the boat. The block of ice obscured his vision, but that thing in the boat was a body, mostly bone but with some meat still clinging to the ivory; and lots of a face, and that face was King Neptune’s.

Except for where
his
king wore an eye patch, the boat king had a green bottle stuck in the eye socket, and a—a what?

A pincer,

a ripple of shadow,

a pretty hand with green nails

was, like, pushed through it, or had grown through it, or he didn’t know what. And it wiggled at Cha-cha from a thatch of dried, bleached hair that sat on top of king’s—of this dude’s
—head, like the stuffed mom in
Psycho
. He blinked, wondering how anything could move in there. Must not be frozen all the way, he thought; and realized—even he!—that that was the least of the things he was looking at that should totally wig him out.

Then the ice made a wrenching sound—
Titanic
hits the iceberg, they blow up half of Nam!—and slid in big, honkin’ chunks to the floor.

“Shee-it,” Cha-cha whispered. Then the head made a popping sound—a single gunshot—and it cracked open like a coconut husk. And the thinking stuff was in there, man, fresh and clean and knobby, slick and set and thumpin’. Pieces of the wiggly pincer-shadow-green-nailed-hand were buried down deep in it, like fingers smushed into a piece of watermelon; and everything was … pumping, living,

doing.

And King Neptune grabbed his own head and threw it around and around in a circle, Jane Fonda Workout on speed, like he was trying to whip it off his neck and slam-dunk it—

—and Cha-cha stood there, completely befuddled, more than a little amazed; and all of a sudden,
clang-clang-thump, thump!
somebody else joined the party.

Officer D. raced down the stairs.

“Freeze!” she shouted.

He raised his hands, even though hers were empty.

Donna clambered over the railing of the catwalk, ran through the droppings and litter on the deck beside it. She saw the captain, and Cha-cha, and—

My dream of life, all over

Billie Holiday’s voice; Donna saw the singing; and feelings, saw them: a black column of pain and tears; something that reached for her, stretched with such pleading. So blue, so lonely; ice-blue, so lonely. A purple-black stream of unbelievable desolation: Oh, baby, baby, I am hurtin’, I am friendless, no one to call my own. I am so

down

down

down,

I’m as low as you can go. I hurt so bad I cannot breathe.

Singing, drawing her in; Donna’s cheeks were wet with tears and she sang back; yeah, she sang it, she knew it:

Alone, in the ocean depths.

Alone, a hundred thousand fathoms beneath the sea.

Alone, in the cold and the dark, the last, the very last of the race, no hope, no future.

And a man, and a promise. And the risk, and the betrayal.

Alone, alone, all, all alone
,

no one to call my mate, my own
.

And I am callin’ you, oh, please, I’m so awful lonely;

I am so blue,

I am so empty.

I am so hungry,

so hungry,

so HUNGRY

The bruises and colors and the hurt and the endless pain reefed over her; and Donna raised her hand, yes; she understood; yes …

Without warning, Reade sprang at her and pushed her over.

“Don’t you touch her!” he shrieked. “Don’t you dare!” He hit Donna in the face, fire and breakbone, God; he pummeled her, slamming his fists into her. He screamed and shrieked and hit her, over and over; she was all bruises and loose teeth; she was losing consciousness, going black.

Something coming, slithering along the deck like eels, like Medusa serpents—

in the garden—

the snake is a friend—

Donna’s head snapped sideways. And she saw Cha-cha waving an ax, and beyond that, she saw fog and mist, and saw that she’d almost walked right into it; she’d fallen beside the hatch. She focused hard—

In the room, chunks of ice, and a boat stuck in them, and inside the boat was, was, a body, and it was, it—

Connections went off, lightning fast, because necessity is the mother of understanding.
That
was Captain Reade, the
castaway he’d told about in the museum; yes,
that
was him. That bottle in his eye, that was the bottle he loved so much. The ghosts were right; he made it all up, and somehow this
 … thing
 … made it all happen. You make me think I’m still alive, I’ll give you something, too.

I’ll be your mate. I’ll be your friend. I’ll make you not lonely.

And she, Donna, had driven him berserk because she never saw—never saw and never heard—The dreams of the Lorelei.

“Not real.” She gaped at the shape that was hitting her. “Cap’n, you’re not real either, asshole.” One of her teeth spit out with her words.

He raised his hands above his head. “I am! I survived! I was in the lifeboat and they set me adrift! But I opened my bottle, and I prayed to the sea, and she made me the Master of a thousand ships! And I have sailed through time and space, and like a siren, I’ve made their drowned souls serve me.”

A prism of glass sparkled toward her; and then it was, and wasn’t, a tentacle. She saw, and didn’t see, the end of it, a round mouth filled with teeth, hundreds of them like spines, drooling red that spilled onto the metal deck with a
hisssssss
and ate holes in the thick plate. And then it was a lily-white hand, and then a black one. They called Billie Holiday the Black Lorelei, didn’t they? And then it was prisms and sparkling crystals that blinked and wobbled, danced closer, closer. Shadows, rippling. Depths.

“You’re nothing,” she said to Reade. “That’s you, and that thing is using what’s left. You’re a dead man’s dream. That’s all you ever were.”

The captain’s fists arced down. “No! I am hurting you! Ghosts cannot hurt the living!”

“So say you,” Donna rasped. “But looks like you were wrong about that, baby. Or did you just invent it, and believe it?”

“No!” And he came down on her with everything he had, centuries of rage and fury.

Cha-cha shouted, “Okay! Okay! I’m doing it!” as if he
were talking to someone. He darted into her range and brought up the ax.

“Stop messing with her!” he shouted, and swung it across the head of the corpse in the boat.

It exploded like a melon; the bottle shattered, and ice flew into the sky and rained down, bone soup and shards of grass; pricking, cutting.

Straddling her, Reade screamed once—

—and then he was gone.

Donna’s eyes rolled up in her head

and then
she
was gone.