Again, a suggestion of movement out there.
He looked over at Soltz and Cushing. They were sleeping. Gosling was, too. It was George’s watch. And what had Gosling said to him?
Just sweep your eyes back and forth, George, never stare at anything too long or you’ll start seeing things that ain’t there.
Gosling had been dead serious when he said that. There was not so much as a glimmer of humor in his eyes. Gosling had spent a lot of his life on watches and he knew the funny things you might see out there.
George saw that flutter of motion again and shook his head. Jesus, but a cigarette would have been good. A cigarette and a cup of hot coffee. They would have straightened his head right out.
He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around in the raft. Just those three men dozing in the roomy interior beneath the canopy and George himself at the door, the fog moving out there, drawing him in.
You need me,
Gosling had said,
you wake me, hear?
Gosling. Jesus. Mother Hen.
George looked away from the fog, had to force himself to, and studied the water instead. It was steaming and rank, filmed with a rotting membrane that seemed to be equal parts sediment, slime, and decaying organic matter. From time to time it quivered like jelly, as if some underwater current was stirring it. Little islands of weed and knotted creepers floated on it, a scum of pink algae.
The mist itself seemed chilly and damp, but the sea was warm. Like a mud bath, it was warm and oddly inviting.
Something moved out in the fog again.
When George looked up, it was gone.
Every time he averted his eyes, it moved. Like maybe it did not want to be seen, not yet. Which got George to think something was playing with him. Something was playing headgames with him, maybe wanting to scare him or disturb him or just make him goddamn uneasy. If that was the case, then they or
it
were doing a fine job for George
was
all those things. Gooseflesh had spread out on his lower belly and his balls had sucked up now, like they were afraid of being exposed.
Motion again.
Then it was gone.
Like some child, it occurred to George, some kid out there flitting about in the fog, playing hide-and-seek and catch-me-if-you-can. Wanting George to get a peek, but no more. Not yet. Not until he or she was ready, because then it was going to be real funny-
But it wasn’t funny.
George badly wanted to pop a flare out there and see what was lurking beyond the fog, sliding in and out of it like a naughty little boy hiding in the curtains.
George kept swallowing, but he couldn’t seem to moisturize his throat. It felt like old machine parts, rusty and seized-up, choked with dust and mouse droppings.
The sea was quivering a bit, those clots of fetid weeds sluicing about as if something was pushing them from below. A great dark mass of them swept against the side of the raft with a weird, whispering motion like somebody breathing.
George caught the movement this time.
And this time, it did not try to hide.
What he was seeing was a figure standing just at the periphery of the fog bank, enshrouded in wisps of fog, yet very visible. So visible that he could see that the figure was small and that it was a little girl of all things. She stood stock still like a mannequin or a puppet waiting for fingers to work her.
George blinked and rubbed his eyes.
When he looked back, she was still there.
There was a chill moving up his spine now, spreading out over his shoulders and forearms. He was telling himself that he could not be seeing a little girl standing out there. She would have sank like a rock and what would a little girl be doing out in the mist in the first place?
George looked back toward Gosling, wanted to say something, wanted to rouse him, but his throat was simply too dry. It had constricted down to a pinhole now and he could barely draw a breath.
You need me, you wake me, hear?
But George could not. He was barely breathing. Locked tight, motionless, his heart just a shallow pattering in his chest.
The girl was waving to him now.
And George could do nothing, not a goddamn thing. He didn’t have the strength to wave back. And the idea of waving, of drawing attention to himself … it was unthinkable. For in that little girl was the embodiment of every fear he’d ever known, every adult anxiety and childhood terror alive and breathing and rustling.
The girl was moving now.
George could see it happening and was telling himself madly that he had to push these awful images from his mind, because it was all hallucination, just some dark fiction vomited up from the depths and if he let it root in his mind, if it got too strong of a hold there …
But he didn’t think he was hallucinating.
He was seeing some little girl in what appeared to be 19
th
century period dress moving in his direction, getting closer and closer and he was absolutely helpless to do anything but watch it happen.
He told himself:
You are not seeing a little girl out there. I don’t know what in Christ that is, but it cannot be a little girl. It’s something else. Either a fiction your mind created and fleshed out … or something worse. Something that wants you to think it’s a little girl.
And that made perfect sense to him.
Yes, something vile and degenerate, the sort of thing that haunts black submarine valleys and lives in the rotting hollows of sunken ships. Something that picks through the bones of drowned men and howls through high masts and calls ships down into abyssal plains. Yes, that’s what it was. The living, phobic personification of all the men, women, and children lost at sea and drawn into murky graveyards of swaying kelp and gutted coffin-ship and barnacle-encrusted bone that no light would ever touch.
George thought maybe she was standing on an island of weed, but that wasn’t so. She was moving, yes, but standing perfectly still, drifting in his direction very slowly, just above the water. She was wrapped in tendrils of fog, but he could see that she wore a royal blue silk taffeta dress trimmed in white ribbon and braid. A party dress. There was a gold Celtic cross around her neck.
A ghost,
his mind told him,
a ghost of some little girl sucked down into the dead sea, a shade that haunts the mist …
As she got closer, he saw her hair was done in golden ringlets and her face was smooth and white like porcelain. A Victorian doll. She looked exactly like a Victorian doll.
No, not at all.
That face was corpse-white, bleached by seawater, the eyes just huge black pits punched into it and filled with a misty yellow glow like full moons sinking into a cloudbank. Hazy and misty and ghastly. She was only ten or fifteen feet away now and he could see that she was fouled with strands of weed that draped over her shoulders and were tangled in her hair. Her dress was a dingy rag spotted with mildew. Fog was steaming from her, boiling inside her and blowing out through innumerable holes torn through her like she was burning up inside. She came on with a wake of churning, smoky mist, tendrils of fog seeping from her outstretched fingertips.
George felt something shatter inside his head like glass in a faraway room.
Closer and closer yet. He could see the fog bank through the fissures eaten through her, could see the green marine worms burrowing at her throat. Her eyes were wide and glistening and yellow, a rope of drool hanging from her lips.
There was something building in George, something raging and sharp and violent: a scream scraping up the back of his throat.
Your soul … she’s come to suck away your soul.
Those puckered white fingers reached for him and her mouth opened like a black, seething blowhole.
And George screamed.
Screamed until she was gone, dissipated like vapor, and he could hear his voice echoing through the fog, becoming something else and coming back at him like a dozen taunting voices. None of which sounded like his own.
Then there was a hand on his shoulder shaking him and Gosling was yelling something.
“What?” George said.
“What?”
“Was is it?” Gosling demanded, his hands on George strong and sure. “What in the fuck is it?”
Both Cushing and Soltz were staring at him with barely-concealed horror.
But George couldn’t tell what he saw, because he just wasn’t sure. So, instead, he let go with the first lie his mind produced: “I … I must have fallen asleep, had a nightmare …”
But they didn’t look like they believed him anymore than he believed himself.
He only hoped they couldn’t hear what he was hearing. A high, mocking childish giggling from somewhere deep in the fog.
“Either you’re with me or against me,” Saks said, aiming the Browning in the general direction of Fabrini and Cook and Crycek. “You’re either with me, Menhaus, or you’re with them. What’s it going to be?”
“Saks,” Menhaus said breathlessly, “come on now.”
He was directly in-between the opposing sides now. Saks was in the stern and the others were up near the bow and he himself was seated roughly amidships. This is where things got complicated and dangerous. If he went to Saks, the others would never trust him again. And if he stayed with them, Saks would think everything he’d said was bullshit.
“What I would like, everyone, what I would really like is for all this to stop,” Menhaus told them, trying desperately to sound calm and reasonable, but probably only succeeding in sounding like a scared little boy. Which was pretty much how he felt. “This can’t go on. It just can’t.”
Saks’s reply to this was to aim the gun directly at Menhaus. There was a deadly gleam in his eye. He looked very much like a man who wanted very badly to hurt someone.
He’s going to kill me,
Menhaus thought.
“Get your ass over here now,” Saks said, “or get over there with
them.
If you’re with me, you’ll live to tell the tale. With them … you get the picture, don’t you?”
Menhaus looked around uncertainly. He was almost wishing those horrible fish would come back, even the big one. Or maybe that something even worse would come sliding out of the mist. At least then, they’d have a common enemy.
But he supposed they already did: each other.
“Don’t do it,” Fabrini said. “Don’t go over there. You get involved with that gutless shit, you’re going to be an accomplice to murder. Mine or one of the others. And you don’t want that, do you?”
No, Menhaus certainly did not want that.
“Don’t listen to that goatfuck,” Saks said. “He don’t know shit, Menhaus. Besides … look around you. All of you, look right fucking around you. You think we’re adrift in the Gulf of goddamn Mexico here? Well, we ain’t. Where we are there are no laws. It’s survival of the fittest. You come with me, Menhaus, I’ll keep you alive and I just might get your ass out of here. But you stick with them …”
“He’s talking nonsense,” Cook said. “We can only survive together.”
But he didn’t understand. Neither did Fabrini. It was the only way. The only possible way to pacify Saks.
Swallowing, Menhaus went and sat in the seat directly in front of Saks.
“You cheap fuck,” Fabrini spat.
Cook said nothing.
Crycek smiled, then pointed upward … as if that made a lick of sense. Then he nodded, thinking he’d made his point. But like most things with him, it was just too damn abstract.
They think I’m a traitor, Menhaus thought, but they just don’t get it.
“That’s the way,” Saks said happily. “Now we can both watch ‘em.”
Saks and Fabrini engaged in a staring contest. It lasted only a few minutes. The hatred between them was like a pall hanging in the air and it smelled of raw meat and gunpowder.
Saks smiled. “Well, I guess you boys are fucked,” he said.
Cook and Fabrini just stared, waiting for the bullets.
But as usual, Crycek looked like he was waiting for something else entirely.
“Which one of you should I kill first?” Saks said. “Which one?”
“Kill me,” Fabrini rasped, “you fucking pussy.”
“It’s not that simple, Fagbrini. Not that simple at all.” He patted Menhaus on the shoulder. “In fact, I’m going to let my pal here decide.”
“No,” Menhaus said flatly. “I won’t.”
“Yes, you will. If you don’t, I’ll kill
you.”
The barrel of the gun was shoved into Menhaus’ spine. It was death and he knew it was death. He’d thought he could join Saks and pacify him. Keep him from killing the others, but it wasn’t that simple. He’d simply underestimated the twisted, sadistic turn of Saks’s madness. The man was so far gone now he just didn’t realize how crazy he was. Right and wrong had become vague concepts. And maybe, just maybe Saks wasn’t so crazy as Menhaus might have thought. Maybe he’d planned it this way all along. He only wanted Menhaus on his side because it fit into his plans. He had an unwilling participant now in murder.
“Well, old buddy, which one?” Saks asked, almost lighthearted.
Menhaus had no saliva left. Yet, he attempted to lick his lips. “This is insane, Saks. We’ll go to prison for this.”
Saks started laughing. “Christ, Menhaus! Look around! You see any fucking cops or jails or judges? No, we do what we want here. Frontier justice, eh?” The gun was pressed deeper into his back. “Now decide.”
Fabrini and Cook maintained their cold, hateful stares. Menhaus admired the both of them like he’d never admired anyone ever in his life. They were men. Real men. Real human beings. Scared shitless inside, but facing death bravely. Neither of them would ever stoop to doing what he did. They’d die first.
But they don’t understand, they just don’t understand. I did this to save them, I really did …
And he was right: they
didn’t
understand. They thought he was weak and selfish and empty inside. That’s what they thought and Menhaus knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could say to change their minds.
“Well?” Saks said.
“I guess Cook is the one,” Menhaus said in airless voice.
Cook just stared, unblinking.