Hell Rig (5 page)

Jeff responded. “I haven’t given it much thought. I guess cold gases, matter left over from the Big Bang.”

Waters looked at Jeff and he could swear he saw shadows dancing in Waters’ eyes. “The Big Murder I think, when some other universe died to create this stinking corpse we live in. Maybe dark matter is real and the rest of the universe, the one we live in, is just a projection, a reverse shadow.” Waters grabbed Jeff’s arm and squeezed hard. Jeff tired to pull away but Waters’ grip was intense, unbreakable. “Stay away from the shadows, Towns. They’re alive and they’re hungry.”

With a solid yank, Jeff pulled free and backed away, staring at Waters. He walked quickly back to the main blockhouse, leaving Waters alone. He considered telling tell Ed about Waters but did not want to get the man in trouble. After all that Waters had suffered, anyone would be a little off his rocker. He felt a little sorry for the man and more than a little frightened by him. He glanced up at the crane, and for a split second, thought he saw a dark shadow dangling from the cable. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

“Trick of the sun,” he said to himself.

Chapter Four

The dying sun danced a macabre jig on the horizon announcing its hasty departure. Night descended like death’s shadow, cold and congealing. Areas of deeper darkness bloomed in the corners of the rig in this garden of night, its ebony fruit oozing along the deck like a black oil slick as a slight breeze stirred the string of deck lights. Naked sixty-watt bulbs strung above the deck on wires brought some relief to the gloom, but the open, empty windows stared at him like the vengeful ghosts of Global Thirteen.

There were no stars, no moon. The sky was as black as the water surrounding him, a dark mirror reflecting dead shadows. Ric Waters felt other shadows dancing inside his head and yelled silently for them to cease their senseless chatter. Ever since he had set foot on the platform for the second time, he could envision a dark presence around him, whispering to him in that subtle alien, yet somehow familiar voice. He tried to ignore it, and in the company of the others managed to do so for a short time, but alone, especially in the dark, it crept over him with a sinister purpose, oozing like a liquid shadow through the pores of his skin or entering his lungs like death blown from the mouth of a corpse.

He toyed with the silver cross he wore around his neck but doubted it would do him any good. He did not know if God still existed, or if the Supreme Being had walked away from his creation in disgust after the whole Garden of Eden fiasco, but he was sure the Dark Presence existed and it was older than anything, maybe older than God. To Waters, it seemed the Dark Presence had always been there, a part of the blackness between the stars and galaxies, living dark matter, absorbing the light, antimatter waiting to annihilate matter and explode into a new universe of darkness.

His fingers lightly caressed the other thing on the chain nestled beside the cross and felt the cloth bag warm to his touch. He smiled.

The company strongly urged him to come back out with the Re-Berth crew, insisted on it really. They thought if he got back on his feet, he would snap out of the morbid funk that had taken him over. He agreed partly to keep his job and partly because he was tired of arguing with the voice in his head hounding him night after night. He was going to die. He knew it. Somehow, death didn’t seem as ominous as it once had. What frightened him most was wondering what lay on the other side of death. Was it streets lined with gold, as his mother had taught him as a child, or was it the deep, dark utter emptiness devoid of all hope that the voice described?

Was he supposed to simply watch while
It
took the others or was he supposed to help in some way? He didn’t think he could actively participate in murder, but if
It
insisted, what choice would he have? He belonged to the Dark Presence, body and soul.

He had tried to warn the others and had tried to warn the Global Corporation before they sent him back out, but no one would listen. They all thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. Minds are curious things, hoarding knowledge secret even from the mind’s owner, a buffer against the horrible unknown, but no mind could absorb the touch of pure evil his had and remain as it was. Sanity and insanity were two sides of a single coin. Tossed into the air, it must invariably land on one side or the other, except on those rare occasions when it landed on edge. If so, his mind was not the only thing the Digger Man had taken from him. His soul was gone, too. With his mind, he could probe the cold empty spot where it had lain. It was funny that he could have something he didn’t believe in all those years, but immediately mourn its absence, like a pulled tooth felt by a probing tongue.

He should have heeded the Digger Man’s warning and not returned to the rig. The shadows were not empty. Things moved in them, things no longer human, no longer alive. They were grotesque memories of his friends trapped by the unholy mass of the rig and the Dark Presence inhabiting it, refusing to release them. Ghosts, some would call them, but these apparitions were no benevolent Caspers, no silent spots of light playing out an endless spectral loop. These ghosts were real, possessing no life and not yet a part of death but hungry for either.

They watched him, calling softly for him to join them.

Soon enough
, he thought.
Thank you for reserving a place for me in your private hell
.

He felt a twinge of guilt for Towns and the girl. They had no real dark blemishes on their souls, just mistakes such as everyone makes. He had warned them but they would not listen, thinking him mad.

Mad. Ancient prophets were surely mad with their wild revelations of the future, yet men listened to them, built religions and civilizations upon their chaotic ramblings and frenetic utterances. Since when have madmen been ostracized and ignored, relegated to the shadows of society? Shadows. He watched the shadows for a moment, trying to pick out friends from the brief glimpses, but in death, all men truly look alike.

He knew who would have to die first. The voice inside his head whispered these things to him, making him an unwilling accomplice. He would warn, but they would not heed. It was a part of the game. Perhaps his warnings were part of the process, the reason he was here, a teaching tool to show him his uselessness, the futility of foreknowledge.

They all held secrets, the others, deep dark secrets that linked them to the greater darkness that lived festering within the dark heart of the rig. Their secrets would doom them. Except for one of them. That one, Waters could not read and the voice said nothing of him, but he would watch him just the same. His eyes were as dark as shadows and Waters trembled when the eyes came to rest on him. The cold of them burned like venom.

Avoiding the deeper shadows, Waters stalked the platform like a shadow himself, reliving that terrible afternoon when his life had become unglued. Soft sobs came from him as he mumbled quietly to himself, remembering.

First, working alone on the saltwater injection manifold, miles from the main rig, windy, cold, rain soaked as Hurricane Katrina bore down. Then, the frantic radio call from rig boss Trey Dixon claiming the Digger Man had gone mad, killing, murdering, burning. He remembered the cold horror as he listened to Digger Man kill Dixon and the sepulcher voice that wasn’t Digger Man’s warning, “You’re safe now, Waters, but don’t come back or you’re mine.”

He knew he had to go back to the rig, if only to act as a witness to their deaths. Smoke, black and gritty, swept low by the gale, wrapped the landing dock, heaving like a wounded beast in its death throes as he tied up his boat. The bodies seemed unreal, Halloween props placed haphazardly about the rig for maximum shock value. The crew shack was a mound of molten steel smoldering on the deck, its grisly contents invisible but present in the stench that hung over the rig in spite of the wind. Invisible hands had drawn him toward the crane, to Digger Man’s crucified, eyeless corpse hanging in Messiah-like penitence.

The voice in his head had not been Digger Man’s, had not been human. It called to him in symbols and visions so horrible he swooned. He felt his mind slipping away and ran blindly for the boat, for escape, remembering nothing more until he awoke strapped to the hospital bed. Now, he was back and the horrors were just beginning again.

Chapter Five

Lisa Love read the faded labels on the tumbled pile of drums in the warehouse by flashlight and checked them off on-by-one on her clipboard. There were oil solvents, lubricants, surfactants, biocides and corrosion inhibitors. Most of the drums were intact. A few, tossed by the wind, had small pinhole leaks. These she temporarily sealed with leaded tape. A few blue plastic drums of acid had leaked and etched their outlines on the concrete. They would have to be loaded into special 55-gallon plastic drums sealed for later removal. She found no extra drums of diesel fuel, which they needed badly.

Three drums were unmarked, their labels washed away by the rain, but by sloshing them around she suspected they were different grades of motor oil or hydraulic fluid. She would have to run down the serial numbers on the inventory sheet to identify them, a long and laborious process, and she was too tired to continue. It had been a long, exhausting day. Her head and back ached and her eyes itched behind her safety glasses. She wanted to rub them, but her heavy rubber gloves prevented that small luxury. The drums were safe for now, providing no one tossed a cigarette butt onto them. Half of them contained flammable materials.

A sound, like the scuffing of heavy boots on concrete startled her. She turned and shined her flashlight around the room, seeking the source of the sound. The shadows moved slowly away from the beam of light, like a viscous liquid, but revealed nothing. As the beam swept by one particular spot, the shadows coalesced into a face with no eyes. Startled, she reversed the light, but when her flashlight returned to that exact spot, the face was gone, reabsorbed into the shadows.

“Who’s there?” she asked in a shaky voice. There was no reply. Behind her, a dark tendril oozed from the shadows, becoming a hand and lightly caressing her hair. She jerked around but saw nothing. She shook her hair to remove an invisible insect before recalling that she had she had not seen a single insect, bird, rat or spider since their arrival on the rig. That in itself was an oddity on an oil rig.

She returned her attention to the drums. Again, a few moments later, she heard the same scuffling sound, this time much closer and followed by deep heavy breathing. She turned in a circle, playing her flashlight about like a searchlight.

“Stop playing games,” she shouted to the empty room, only to be startled even more by the echo of her own voice. “Rats,” she surmised hopefully and shuddered. “I hate rats.”

Seconds later, a deep masculine voice asked, “Did you say something?”

She jumped at McAndrews’ question, shining her light in his eyes. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the metal frame. He swiped his hand across his face. His lean, muscular body made her uneasy. He looked intimidating, though he had barely spoken to her since they had arrived.

“Quit playing games, Mac. You’re spooking me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Making strange noises,” she answered

“I was passing by and heard you call out,” he protested, looking offended at her accusation. “I was curious.”

“You weren’t walking around in here a minute ago?”

He shook his head. “Like I said, I heard your voice as I was walking by. I just peeked in to see who you were talking to.”

Maybe she was just jumpy
. “Sorry. Nerves I guess.”

McAndrews smiled. “Maybe it’s Waters’ ghosts.”

“Ooohh!” Picking up a piece of wood, she threw it at him, deriving some small measure of satisfaction as he ducked back out the doorway. “Men!” she huffed.

Satisfied the drums would not present an immediate threat, she turned her attention to the boxes stacked against the wall. Most were tools or tool parts, waterlogged and rusty. Some were valves and pipe connectors, equally rusty. One small box, pushed to the rear of the stack, was marked radio parts.

“I wonder why they were put here?” she asked the shadows.

She pulled the box down and opened it. To her surprise, it was filled with broken circuit boards, a mass of melted wiring and smashed tubes, all meant for the radio.

“Damn,” she cursed. This was not storm damage. Someone had deliberately damaged the spare parts and had done a thorough job of it. The question was, who and why?

The repairs she made to the radio earlier were, at best, temporary. She had managed to contact the supply depot and verify a fuel shipment for delivery in two days, but had been unable to contact anyone since, just a bunch of static. They were out of touch with the mainland.

What was Mac doing here
anyway
? She thought. He was supposed to be downstairs on the landing dock helping Tolson weld the stanchions so the supply ship could tie up when it arrived. She shook her head, afraid she was leaping to conclusions. The parts could have been damaged before the Re-Berth crew had arrived; maybe even by the Digger Man. Why would anyone on the crew want to disable the radio? Mac was quiet, secretive and much smarter than he let on, but that did not make him dangerous.

The dark and chill of the storage room finally got to her. She decided to complete her survey later. As she secured the metal door behind her, she thought she heard the echo of laughter from inside.