Day Four (28 page)

At 9ish or so, Dane and Carl from ‘my’ group (BTW, they look exactly like their names suggest) came back from fetching their dope supply out of their cabin (Deck 5) looking spooked. Said they saw a woman and a kid staring at them and then the lights went out.

They looked genuinely rattled, convinced they’d seen ghosts.

Said I’d go check it out.

It wasn’t pitch dark like they said – the emergency lights were on when I got there. Stank like death. All the doors were open on the deck, which I guess was supposed to look creepy. Had to hand it to Dane and Carl. Don’t know how they pulled it off. They denied it of course.

No ghosts, but ran into a security guard dude as I was leaving. He asked me if I’d seen anyone else down there. Said no. He was intense.

Nose is killing me so going to turn in.

Night.

DAY 7

The Witch’s Assistant

Last night, alone in Celine’s suite, Maddie had managed to convince herself she’d caught the virus. Her body broke out into a cold sweat, her guts churned and she couldn’t stop herself from swallowing convulsively. Little by little she got herself under control. It was only the thought of having to use the red bag that snapped her out of it.

Celine still hadn’t returned to the suite. Should she take her a change of clothes? No. Celine wasn’t her bloody boss anymore. She had to stop thinking like that. It still burned that Celine was shutting her out. They’d been through so much together; they had a history. The fallout from the Kavanaugh show, made worse by the fact that Celine continued to insist to whoever would listen that Bobby and Lori Small had survived one of the four Black Thursday crashes. The stalker who’d showed up outside Celine’s house every night for a week, begging her to put him in touch with the spirit of Johnny Carson. The journalist who’d taped one of Celine’s readings and then debunked it, line by line, on YouTube. Those bloody awful romcoms. The endless, endless messages she’d answered from the Friends and the desperate on Facebook.

Three years she’d been loyal to her, and for what? No, that wasn’t fair, Celine had offered her a way out of a bad situation. A way out of that shitty cocktail bar in Long Island, the only place that would hire her after Neil destroyed her life. Celine and her then PA, a pinched-faced girl who rarely spoke, came into the bar once a week or so, and Maddie had heard from the other staff that Celine was some sort of psychic, a Sylvia Brown type. She’d found Celine amusing, with her bouffant hair, long red nails and false eyelashes. Thought of her as the weird woman in a wheelchair. All sorts frequented the bar – corporate types looking for a fling; blue-collar workers; out-of-work musicians. But Celine stood out.

One night, while Maddie was wiping down the tables, Celine had grabbed Maddie’s wrist, and said: ‘Know this, it will get easier for you, my darling.’

Taken aback, Maddie snatched her hand away, but then, with no warning, and before she could stop them, the tears came. She’d sobbed, right there in the bar, while the punters ate chicken wings and downed tequila slammers. Celine instructed the PA to fetch Maddie some tissues from the bathroom, and then said: ‘The girl’s an idiot. No conversation. No charm. I need someone who can talk. Has some chutzpah about them. Someone I can trust.’ Celine had pressed a card into her hand. ‘Call me tomorrow.’

She’d googled Celine that evening. The books, the interviews. An old TV show,
Celine del Ray, Mindhunter
, which hadn’t lasted more than one season. And Maddie had called her. Of course she had. Celine invited her to her house. Expecting either a shaggy colonial or a gleaming mansion, Maddie had been surprised to find herself parking next to an unremarkable suburban villa in East Meadow. Sitting at the counter in Celine’s bland kitchen, Maddie had come clean. She told her all about her past; about Neil. About meeting him in a pub in Hackney (she’d thought it was love at first sight, and continued to cling to the idealised memory of the moment she’d first seen him even when it all turned to shit). About throwing in her job, moving to the States, the lavish wedding that was never paid off. About his endless money-making schemes that never went anywhere. About his investment firm, that wasn’t a firm at all. About the day when she finally woke up and saw him for what he was. About her decision not to leave. About extracting the last of her sister’s savings, mining her friends for cash, all with the promise of a payday that would never come. She told Celine about Neil skipping out just before the axe fell. The two years of probation she’d received for being an accessory.

Celine had listened, and then she’d offered Maddie the job, on condition that she sign a non-disclosure agreement. Celine had seen something in her. A lack of morality, perhaps. A desperation that she knew she could exploit. Maddie had almost quit several times in the first month. The sympathetic woman who’d listened to her that day in the kitchen had quickly morphed into a demanding autocrat. But she’d stuck it out.

More fool her.

She stood up and stretched. Xavier was fast asleep on the couch, his mouth open, his laptop on the floor next to him. The bruise above his nose was turning yellow. She almost hadn’t let him in last night, but she hadn’t wanted to be alone. And it felt good – reassuring – to have someone with her, even someone she hardly knew, and certainly didn’t trust. She’d rummaged through his things earlier, unearthing nothing more incriminating than a driver’s licence showing a photo of him with blond hair and an address in South Beach, Miami.

A beep, and then another bullshit message from Damien: ‘G’day, ladies and gentlemen. It seems that bad weather at home port is delaying any rescue operation at this time . . .’ She tuned him out. She could detect the insincerity in his voice. Celine had taught her that skill.

She needed to shower. Her skin was clammy after last night’s panic attack, and she’d kill for some fresh gear. She could always ask Xavier to bring her suitcase up from the lower levels, although maybe that wasn’t a great idea. The smell might have infested her clothes. He’d been down there last night, and when he returned to the suite, his shoes reeked of sewage. She’d made him put them out on the balcony.

She padded into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

She couldn’t get her brain to accept it at first.

There was a woman in the bath.

There was a woman lying in the bath wearing a shift dress – a Gatsby-style dress – beaded with tiny white pearls. Her skin was as white as the dress, the pores clogged with dark matter, like black pinpricks.

‘How did you get in here?’ Had Celine given someone her key-card, perhaps? But no . . . After she’d let Xavier in, she’d drawn the security bolt across the door.

The woman opened her eyes wide – and God, oh God they were white as well – and bared her teeth. They were tiny, pointed and quite dark. She snapped them together with a clearly audible ‘click’ and then started humming, softly at first, then louder and louder until it was all that Maddie could hear.

A woman in 1920s garb, like Lizzie Bean, Celine’s Lizzie Bean, Celine’s roaring twenties cliché, was lying in her bath.

Maddie understood that she was having a nervous breakdown. She’d always wondered what one felt like, and now she knew. She reached for the door behind her, fumbled for the handle, and backed out. The humming stopped abruptly. Her whole body was shaking. A distant part of her mind noted that pure terror really was icy.

She ran over to the couch and shook Xavier’s shoulder. He woke with a start, his mouth snapping shut.

‘Xavier. There’s someone in the bathroom.’

He sat up, took one look at her face and jumped to his feet. ‘Huh? Someone’s in here?’

‘In the bathroom.’

‘Who?’

She pushed him roughly towards it. Xavier gave her a look, walked over and flung open the door.

‘It’s empty.’

‘What?’

‘There’s no one here, Maddie. C’mon. Take a look.’

Digging her nails into her palms, she peered past him. The bath really was empty. ‘Look behind the shower curtain.’

He ripped it back. Nothing.

‘She was there. Lying in the bathtub. A woman. A . . . a dead woman.’ No one alive had skin that colour.

Xavier snorted. ‘Are you fucking with me?’

‘Do I look like I’m fucking with you? I know what I saw.’

‘A dead woman in the tub? Like in
The Shining
?’

‘It was . . . I think it was Lizzie Bean.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know, one of Celine’s spirit guides.’

‘Maddie . . . seriously. You hit your head or something?’

Hysteria surged, but she forced it down. ‘Maybe Archie and Papa Noakes will show up too.’

‘Who the fuck is Papa Noakes?’

Maddie hesitated, the old loyalty kicking in. But sod Celine. ‘Spirit guide number three. He was around in the seventies and eighties.’

‘So tell me about this . . . what’s his name again?’

‘Papa Noakes.’

‘He’s an ex-slave.’

He laughed. ‘Oh Jesus. Really?’

‘Listen . . . I know how it sounds, but I saw her, Xavier. I know what I saw. And you said people were seeing things on the lower decks.’

‘I went down there, Maddie. It’s just a bunch of guys fucking with everyone. All that was down there was a really, really bad smell.’

‘But—’

‘Listen, Maddie. You haven’t been sleeping well. None of us have. You ever heard of lucid dreaming?’

‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘I’m not. But what you’re saying . . . what’s the most logical explanation? That Celine’s spirit guide was hanging out in the tub, or you had a nightmare that felt so real you were convinced you actually saw a ghost?’

‘It was so
real
.’

‘Maddie. Listen to me. It was only your imagination. You of all people should know this.’

‘Maybe I should go and talk to Celine. Maybe . . . maybe she was sending me a message.’

‘Hello? Earth to Maddie. You know she’s a fraud. How can you even be saying this?’

Maddie paced, avoiding looking at the bathroom door. And hadn’t Helen and Elise said they heard humming as well? Yeah. She was losing it. ‘I just want to see her.’

‘After what her henchman guy did to me?’ Xavier looked almost childishly aggrieved.

‘I just . . . I think I should talk to her. I’m not the only one who’s—’

‘Bad idea. Listen, I know what’s going on here. You’ve been affected by the stress of what’s going down and Celine’s taking advantage of it. I’m talking about mass hysteria. Mass psychogenic illness. The only explanation for why people are seeing things is that Celine is feeding some kind of shared delusion.’

Maddie paced again. ‘I know Celine. I know how she does what she does. It’s all bullshit. But some of the things she was saying on the day after the ship stopped . . . she couldn’t have known them.’

‘And that other dude, Ray? He couldn’t have told her? It’s all cold reading, Maddie. People believe what they want to believe. People are scared. This whole situation is weird. They’re flocking to someone who seems to know what they’re doing.’ He drew breath. ‘She’s taking advantage of the situation, Maddie. After all this is over, she wants to be seen as the big hero.’

‘I want to talk to her.’

‘Seriously, Maddie . . . You think her goon Ray will let you in to see her?’

‘I can talk him round.’

‘And then what?’

Yeah, then what?
‘I don’t know, Xavier, okay?’ She risked a glance at the bathroom door. ‘But whatever happens I’ve got to get out of this cabin.’

‘Maddie, there’s nowhere else to go. It’s fucking awful out there.’

‘There must be someone we could go. The gym, maybe. The spa.’

‘Nope. Been there. It’s a mess.’

‘I don’t care! I have to get out of here.’

Xavier assessed her for a couple of seconds. ‘Okay, okay. If you want to see Celine, we have to play this carefully.’

‘We?’

‘Yeah. We.’

A wash of relief. She didn’t trust him, but at least she wasn’t alone. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘We can’t just go in there all guns blazing.’ He gingerly touched the top of his nose. ‘I could do without getting whacked in the face again, it’s not a good look for me. I’m thinking, how about we try and get to the crew area through one of the service doors?’

‘You think we can?’

‘We can try.’

While Xavier collected his shoes, she wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled on her gloves. Xavier was probably right about her mind playing tricks on her. He had to be right. Fear did strange things to the brain.

But it had seemed so
real.

They stepped into the corridor. She hadn’t been out of the suite for hours; the least she could have done was check up on Helen and Elise again. She promised herself she’d do that later. Maybe. Xavier attempted to open Althea’s service door, but it was tightly sealed. ‘No go. Hey . . . maybe we can try down on my deck.’