Getting Away from it All, Pt. 5

Here’s the whole thing.

Kira screamed into the deadening wood and carpet of the corridor.

It struck her after the fact. She didn’t know the sound escaped her. Her vision narrowed into a tunnel and her knees quivered, threatening to collapse. Her vision blurred, and she blinked with frantic aggravation, the tears rolling down her cheeks her only clue that she cried.

She heard a raking, whimpering sound, and it startled her to realize it came from her. Her breathing, in strained little sobs and fearful blubbering, was soft and to her ears seemed distant. When she realized she made the noises, she snuffled hard. Something pressed against her sternum and got her attention. Her hands, knotted together and writhing with terror against her chest, moved independent of her remaining thought processes. With her last scrap of rationality she stilled herself, and with deliberate paces, unhurried and quiet, she moved back up the hall toward the juncture of the corridors.

The lights running along the walls to the aft and fore were all dark, extinguished. In front of her, the lights beyond the juncture – where Flanagan went before he disappeared – were also dark. Kira drew a deep breath and listened into the dark.

The timbers of the vessel groaned, creaked, ticked. The waves against the hull slapped, lapping and splashing as the ship moved of its own volition through black waters toward some unknown destination. The humming melody of the music still played as background noise, faint, indistinct. She couldn’t identify the song anymore.

She held her breath, staring at the maroon carpet.

Moaning boat beams. Straining timbers as the sea twisted and squeezed the ship. And something else, deeper, softer, subtle and subversive, under the rest of the sounds.

Breathing.

A raspy, wet sound, like a great barrel chest filled with air and blew fetid exhaust through moist lips and nostrils. She felt herself spinning, head light and heart thudding relentless and hard. She focused, and could just pin-point it, under the watery rhythm and fading music.

A grinding, grating sound, like something pushed down the hall against the dark wood walls, scratching on them. The thrum of impact on the floor boards with … what? Heavy footfalls? She couldn’t be sure.

She turned and looked down the hall. She tried to hear, to isolate sounds … was someone stumbling out of the dark toward her?

“Hello?” Her voice carried weak, but the narrow corridor channeled it like a megaphone and it came out louder in the coffin-like area than she wanted.

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked at her.

“Hello?” she called again, her hope fading. She could still feel the thump of the floorboards, but now couldn’t tell if they approached or receded, or were just rhythms of the ocean on the ship.

Another deep, wet, hollow breath drifted to her from everywhere, and nowhere. A chill ran from the base of her skull to her tailbone. She shuddered hard, and fought back panic, trying to decide what to do.

The stairwell to the deck lay in front of her somewhere, aft of the junction of the corridors. She stared in that direction, trying to will her eyes to focus and see if a looming, shambling shape ambled and stomped toward her, to dispel the terror tickling icy and wet at her innards.

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked in response.

Her heart fluttered, racing like a hummingbird’s, and her eyes darted around in all directions. Sounds … guttural, mucus-filled, animalistic … she couldn’t tell if she heard them or if her imagination held her ransom. Another shudder ripped through her and tore a tiny whimper from her.

She stepped toward the stern.

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked.

She took another step, then another, listened.

A rushing, wind-in-the-willows breath again, from somewhere, from everywhere, from nowhere, surrounded her, gave visions of dripping, rotting maws or dank cave openings teeming with crawling, slimy creatures. Kira’s head spun, the adrenaline nauseated her, made her dizzy.

Another step, then another, then another. She turned.

All the lights behind her still burned. She turned around, and in the gloom of the hall in front of her she saw the pale patch of gray, the telltale spot of light falling down the stairs from the open door to the deck above.

Still daylight. Still hope to see, to at least be out of the tomblike catacombs of the ship.

She drew in a sharp breath, held it, and ran.

The sudden darkening of the hall as the lights behind her went out drew a startled yelp, but she kept her eyes locked on that patch of light, and pounded her feet. She felt cries and sobs escaping her as the hall seemed to grow in front of her, getting longer with every step, just as it would in a nightmare, stretching away from her faster than she could force her feet to move. The maddening sensation, the sanity-breaking sounds, the breathing, the gooey, sopping breathing …

The light – she made it to the patch of light, and she turned, banging against the corner where the access emptied into the hall, and bright, hot pain slammed through her shoulder as her flight ended in her collision with the wall. She panted, clawing at the handrail to heave herself up the stairs, with the sensation tingling at the back of her neck, the sensation of cold, wet something grabbing at her, clutching at her, reaching for her, and she screamed again, felt it erupt from her diaphragm, her feet moving too slow, too sluggish to escape, up the stairs, up toward the sliver of light spilling through the open door, and screamed again because it narrowed, the door above her slipped and started to close, and her only hope, her only escape would be lost if something waited on deck and locked her below with the breathing, the grunting, phlegmy, stomping thing she wasn’t sure was there, and another shriek tore from her, and vibrated and rattled the beams of the tight staircase.

Kira exploded through the door into the gray, flat-toned mist, toppled onto the wet wooden planks and slid, her throat closing for a brief second, her legs kicking, pedaling wild and furious, knocking the door shut, slamming it with a heavy smash and a click of the brass works. She scrambled back on her hands and crawled away from the door, from what she was sure would push through, splinter the door into shards and charge out onto the deck to eviscerate, disembowel, devour …

But the door stayed shut. She wanted to hear, to listen for the sound of the door mechanism working, something stealthy turning the handle to spring open the door and crash through the portal, but couldn’t, something made too much noise and she couldn’t hear – then she realized it was her. She sobbed, raked gasping breaths, gulped in salty mist air, she panted and her heart pounded, she muttered prayers and pleas.

It took a moment for her to catch her breath, to calm herself.

She listened.

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked.

She stood up. The waves lapped against the hull, the boat sliced through the water, churned a low, spreading wake behind it, the wash of the water as it pushed aside, and the smell of the ocean around her came through the dense fog. Nothing else.

Then she noticed it.

Ding-ding … ding … ding … ding … dingding … ding …

Irregular, no set timing to the ring. A bell.

A buoy. A bell buoy.

Her heart leaped. She laughed, relief forced tears from her, and she wiped at them, annoyed and grateful and still afraid all at once, overwhelmed with emotion.

She was near land. A port, perhaps.

She looked around, and only the fog stared back. She couldn’t make out the edges of the ship in the thick, soupy gloom. She wondered for a moment about Jurgen, and Edward, but only a moment. Flanagan, Sam and the others all met the same fate, whatever it was.

But a buoy sounded.

She stepped around the structure housing the door to the abyss of the ship’s belly, one eye on it as she moved. She went slow, watched for the gunwale to materialize out of the fog. As much as she wanted to run, she dared not for fear of going overboard. She paced, hands wringing in front of her, breath shallow, thin, reedy. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking. She saw it then, the edge of the boat, rising and sloping in a graceful curve toward the narrow bow, the bowsprit lancing into the fog away from it like a sword held aloft.

Wafts and tendrils of fog swirled and parted as the ship knifed ahead through the water, and the sound kept her hope afloat.

Ding … ding … ding-ding … ding …

The fog thinned. Kira saw a gap open and could see the water ahead of the ship. And just beyond, a silhouette, a phantom floating ahead of her, was the buoy, rocking on the gentle waves, tipping in a lazy dance over the water’s surface.

Ding-ding … ding-ding … ding … ding …

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked beneath her.

The bow rose and fell in slow swelling surges, and she breathed deep.

She covered her mouth to keep from screaming in joy when the buoy slipped past on the starboard and she saw gables, sharp and steep, cupolas, and the dark masses of buildings, some structures, began to form, the lower portions obscured yet in the haze, the tops of them black and shadowy outlines against the grayness. From the foreground ahead of those buildings, clustered like a master’s painting of an old New England or European fishing shanty town port, the pilasters of a pier and the heavy planking of the boardwalk grew out of the inky thick fog, thinning as the ship drew closer to land, to the port.

Tears raced down Kira’s face, her hands over her mouth, and she wept with relief, with joy.

The ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked under her.

Ding … ding-ding … ding … ding … ding-ding … The bell’s tolling faded behind her as the ship slid on, gentle and calm, in no hurry. The dark shapes of the buildings sharpened, and Kira took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Then she heard it.

A murmur. Voices.

She opened her eyes, her mouth opening to call out, to hail whoever was the first person she saw.

And something silenced her.

She listened.

The murmur was indistinct, many voices. Deep. Baritone and bass. Guttural. Grunts, growls, like wild boars, tigers and lions … and yet not like them. Not like anything.

She froze, her heart slammed to a stop in her chest, and her blood ran cold. She listened.

The murmur changed. It became laughter. Thick, wet chuckles and chortles.

Kira stared wide-eyed.

Along the pier, and the base of those welcoming, shanty-like port buildings, something glimmered through the fog.

Eyes. Baleful eyes, glowing with their own amber, red and orange luminescence. They winked on like pairs of stars, first six … then ten … two dozen … more.

The laughter drifted faint and deep under it. She heard the piggish sounds, and the wet breath, and the laughter. And saw those shifting, glowing eyes as they moved, shuffling on the dock, along the waterfront. Waiting. Waiting for the ship.

She backed up, backed up, and shook her head in disbelief. What place is this? Where had she come?

She backed away, faster, eyes locked on the glowing ones along the shore, dotting the shadows of the port.

She yelped when she slammed into something, and turned, afraid of what it might be, but it was the ship’s forward mast, the heavy beam stretching up. Her eyes followed, an involuntary trace of its length, and she noted she could see its top for the first time, and the boom crossing high above. No sail flew from it, but … she saw something. She peered up, into the fog, and it thinned for her, and rolled back, and she saw them.

Bodies. Bodies dangled from the rigging high above deck, strung upside down from their feet. They swung with the gentle rolling and rocking of the sea beneath the ship, the limbs swayed in a macabre dance, tattered clothing hung and flapped. She couldn’t see their faces, only the shapes, their clear forms … more than twenty carcasses strung from the ship’s elaborate rigging, jouncing and swaying and bumping with a horrible thump, thump, thump against the boom, the mast, the lines.

She screamed again, because she couldn’t do anything else.

And the ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked in reply.