“I don’t give a shit,” Crycek said. “I won’t sleep with him in our cabin.”
Makowski just looked around, confused.
“Good going,” Saks said. “Now you got Crycek all worked up again. C’mere, Crycek, let daddy hold you against his tit.”
“Shut up,” Fabrini said.
“All of you shut up.” Cook rubbed his temples, massaging away the headache they all gave him. “Crycek? You bunk with us. Menhaus? You take Makowski in with you.”
Saks seemed to approve. “Sounds good. We’ll take Mr. Slim Loony and you get Crycek. Give the three of you time to be alone. You can get a nice circle jerk going in there. Fabrini can do a striptease and show you his pussy.”
And that’s all it took.
Fabrini almost knocked Cook to the deck getting at Saks. He’d had his fill and now Saks was going to get his. He made it right over to him, Saks grinning the whole time. Fabrini reached out for him … and stopped.
Saks had his knife out and the blade was pressed to Fabrini’s belly.
“Go ahead, you fucking wop,” Saks told him. “If you got the stomach for it.”
Fabrini backed off, thinking about his own knife, but never pulling it because Cook and Menhaus got between them. Were both sick to death of this shit. Even jolly old Menhaus had had enough.
“Put it away, Saks,” Cook said. “You know, we’re all getting shit-tired of you and your mouth. And we’re getting really, really tired of your high school locker room wit. We’ve had enough. If you don’t have anything good to say, then kindly shut the fuck up.”
Saks laughed, put his knife away. “Take it easy, big chief. Don’t go getting pissed-off at me if Fabrini can’t take a joke. Shit, we all know that wop is an ass-pirate, don’t jump me over his lifestyle choices.”
“Just shut up, Saks,” Menhaus said. “For once in your life, just shut up.”
Saks started laughing. Menhaus getting a backbone to him was like Mister Rogers telling you to go fuck yourself.
Fabrini, calmer now, said, “You think we should post a watch?”
“Against what?” Menhaus asked.
“Nothing to watch against … unless you believe in ghosts, that is.” Saks thought the whole idea was pretty funny. “Besides, I’m not standing out in that goddamn corridor all night listening to Fabrini moan while Crycek puts the meat to him.”
“You mother …
fucker,”
Fabrini said low in his throat like the growl of a dog and launched himself at Saks again.
Menhaus and Cook stopped him, holding him back.
Crycek just stood there, managing to look amused and disturbed at the same time.
And Saks? He just smiled, loving it how he could push Fabrini’s buttons so easily. Loved the power he had over the man. And the thing was, he honestly
wanted
Fabrini to come at him, to get in real close. Maybe Cook had been partially right when he said that Saks had a deep-set fear of being alone and that he wouldn’t kill the others for that reason … but that fear didn’t extend to Fabrini. He would’ve killed Fabrini. Happily so. You could see it in his eyes.
And what broke off all the fun and games was Makowski getting up and walking over to the porthole and saying, “None of you belong here. None of you. Tonight … tonight
she’ll
come … and you can’t be here.”
“Who?” Cook said, chilled now.
Makowski turned and looked at them, a sick yellow smile on his face. His eyes were dark and empty like drained ponds. “You know who … and
she
won’t want you here …” Saks wasn’t smiling now.
If it was possible for him to be scared, he was now.
So, in the raft, they waited.
They waited for small terrors and big ones, they waited for madness in every color of the rainbow … and some out of it. For although the talk was light as they rowed deeper into the weed, they fully expected death in their hearts. They expected it from the sea or the mist and possibly both. They did not know what form it might take, only that it would be terrible and immense when it showed itself.
Gosling and George were rowing while Cushing kept watch for trouble.
Gosling was worried about them, even though he would never have said this aloud. He worried about their flesh and blood, certainly, but more so, he worried about their minds. Because there was only so much the human mind could be expected to take. Only so much a man could drink down and hold in his belly before it all came back up. The camel’s back could only hold so many straws. And right then, he was thinking that those straws they were carrying were getting real damn heavy.
Cushing seemed to be taking it pretty well.
He had a well-disciplined scientific sort of mind. Regardless of how horrible the things in the mist were, he seemed to be able to rationalize their existence with a counterpart back home. For after all, he argued, even that big ugly jellyfish was really just a jellyfish. It was not some monster from hell.
Then there was George.
George was tough in Gosling’s book, he was sensible. He was the sort of guy who could take a lot because he pretty much had an optimistic turn of mind to him. But that was wearing. A little at a time it was wearing, just as it was wearing on Gosling himself.
And maybe George wouldn’t admit it, but he was beginning to fray around the edges.
Gosling didn’t blame him, for he felt the same.
The mist, the sea, those goddamn weeds … they seemed to go on forever. It was all bad enough, of course, but the ever-present billowing fog definitely was not helping matters. How long could you be trapped in a raft in that thick, pissing fog before you lost it? There was something about fog that played havoc with men’s minds. Gosling had seen it countless times at sea. The thicker the fog got, the thicker men’s fears got. They became silent and morose and brooding. It was eerie and oppressive, claustrophobic and suffocating. It squeezed the soul out of a man a drop at a time. And when the fog cleared — as it always did at sea, sooner or later — men’s minds cleared with it. They began to talk and laugh, clap each other on the backs, maybe feeling foolish for how the fog had gripped them, locked them down in a black, sightless box.
But what about in this godawful place?
What about here where the fog did not lift? Where it was always steaming and misting and haunted? How long could the human mind hold itself intact in that maze of bleeding mist?
There were times in these past few days … and even Gosling was no longer sure how long it had been now … when he had wanted to scream at that goddamn fog. Would have sold his soul just to part it like the Red Sea even for a few moments of clarity. It was just … everywhere. And it got so you could not only see it pressing in like a shroud, but feel it and smell it and taste it. And there were times when Gosling was almost certain it was inside of him, coiling in his belly or filling his skull with gray, nebulous ropes.
These were things you could not think on.
But these were the things Gosling worried about.
And that was one reason he had them rowing. The physical exertion would be good for them. It would give them a sense of purpose, the feeling that they were not just drifting aimlessly, but in charge of their fates. And something like that was very necessary to the human spirit.
It needed something to cling to.
Something to struggle against.
But there was more to it than that. The weed was very thick now, impenetrable in spots. But there were channels cut through it and Gosling was just enough of an optimist to believe that those channels were taking them somewhere. Maybe it would be somewhere they’d wish to God they’d never seen when they got there and maybe there would be deliverance.
So they kept rowing, spelling each other.
Looking and watching and waiting.
And it was while they were doing this that Cushing suddenly said, “Something … there’s something coming out of the mist.”
Saks waited, too.
He waited for the ultimate breakdown of Cook’s little command here. Because like death, taxes, and Fabrini’s ass getting wet, it was only a matter of time. Some things were inevitable. You could hide your head in the sand or stick it up your own ass, but the bottom line was, they were going to happen. And the real question was: were you going to be ready to face them like a man … or were you going to be like Cook’s little crew of ass cowboys and shit monkeys and have yourself a group hug and a good fucking cry?
He’d never in his life seen a more incompetent bunch than the four stooges here — Fab-rini, Cook, Menhaus, and Crycek. And don’t forget their new sidekick, Makowski, a.k.a. Slim Loony.
What a crew.
Outside of the Keystone Cops, you weren’t going to find a bigger bunch of morons. It was pathetic. Sickening, even. There was no doubt in Saks’s mind that they’d all spawned in the shallow end of the gene pool … and in Fabrini’s case, the side with the frilly curtains and oiled-up cabana boys giving back-rubs and sucking sugar plums out of each other’s mouths.
Jesus, it was like some kind of fucked-up reality show.
Cook, of course, claimed to be in charge. But, Saks figured, Elton John also claimed to be a man.
And if he was in charge, what exactly was he in charge
of?
That was the real question. Because his crew wouldn’t make anybody’s top ten list. Crycek was crazy. Menhaus was a goddamn mama’s boy. And Fabrini? Shit, Saks had heard of guys coming out of the closet, but Fabrini was the only one he’d ever heard of going back
in.
And then there was the new guy, Slim Loony, who had more kinks in his rope than a squareknot.
And then, of course, there was also Cook, like the poster boy for inbreeding, sitting atop this heap like a circus ape hoarding turds.
What it all came down to was that it was every man for himself and that spelled death on a spit in a survival situation like this. When Saks picked these numbnuts for the job back in Norfolk, he’d never imagined what sort of goddamn useless, sewer-sucking shitrats they would turn out to be. The biggest collection of limp-wrists he’d seen since the Village People reunion.
He found himself laughing at them.
At everything.
And
he
was the crazy one, they said.
They thought
he
was the real danger. Of all things. Saks figured he was their only true salvation. The only hope they had of surviving in this goddamn place. Because, the way things were going, they were all dead men in search of a grave. Cook had no leadership ability. Neither did any of the others. Given time — and they had plenty of that, now didn’t they? — it was all going to come apart around them with Cook at the helm. He was the sort of guy that was all right for shining shoes and cleaning toilets, but you didn’t want him at the wheel. No sir.
If Cook was smart, if he had the rudimentary smarts that God gave a dog’s dick, he would have organized and did some planning. Every man should have been armed. Watches should have been set up. And that was just for starters. Because Saks might have been hard-nosed and practical, but he knew one thing for sure: they were not alone on the ship.
Something
was there with them. And that something was not just another nutjob like Slim Loony, but something else, something dangerous.
Something …
evil.
Yeah, the way Saks was looking at things, it was only a matter of time before they wanted him to take charge again. He just wondered how many were going to be left by then.
Crycek woke to the sound of scratching.
Right away he started thinking rats. Started thinking
big
rats. Because the sound he was hearing at the door was not a little sound, but a big sound, the sort of scratching noise that goes up your spine and scrapes around in your skull. The cabin was dim, though not exactly dark. Cook and Fabrini were sleeping. Everyone was sleeping. Except for Crycek and what was outside the door.
Saks had said there were rats on the ship and he also said that was a good thing, because when the food ran out … and it was going to, yes sir … then rats could keep a man alive. Some parts of the world, he said, rats are considered a delicacy. But listening to that metallic scratching out there, like tenpenny nails drawn over rusty iron, Crycek wasn’t so sure about rats.
You know better than anyone else that this ship is not empty,
a chill voice said in his head.
There’s something here listening and watching and waiting. Not the Other from the fog, the devil-thing … no, not that. That was big, gigantic, cosmic … this was localized. What waited here was … was … more of an echo, a sentient lunatic echo … something starving for company …
It was not a scratching at the door now.
It was a tapping. A gentle rapping, tapping like in that poem by Poe Crycek had to memorize in tenth grade.
Tap, tap, tap.
Yes. And who exactly was that tapping at the chamber door? Crycek did not want to know, not really, yet he swung his legs off his bunk and sat there, wondering and willing whoever or whatever it was to just go away. Go scratch at Saks’s door. Go anywhere but here.
Tap, tap, tap.
See, now it wasn’t sounding so much like a harmless tapping, now it was sounding like fingers drumming impatiently. And if it was fingers, then it had to be a person … didn’t it? But who would be out there now? And if they wanted to come in, why didn’t they just use their voice?
Yes, fingers drumming now. Whoever owned them was not going away because they knew Crycek was in there and they knew Crycek was awake. That he could hear what it was they were doing. Come out and play.
Come out, come out, wherever you are …
Crycek licked his lips and his tongue felt thick, ungainly. “Cook,” he said in a whisper. “Cook …”
But Cook was sleeping and that’s the way it had to be, Crycek knew. For whatever was out there wanted it that way. It would have it no other way. What waited beyond that door was for him and him alone. And the very idea of that filled him with a numb, white silence. The terror on him and in him was so extreme, so marrow-deep, that he thought he would have slit his wrists if a razor had been handy.