Dead Sea (32 page)

In the wheelhouse, there were more cadavers. But these were not burnt or in any other way molested, save for numerous contusions. Dr. Asper examined them, telling me that they looked to have died of some horrendous seizures, that their bones were broken, limbs dislocated, abdominal muscles strained and ruptured. Most had bitten through their own tongues. They all bore the same looks of contorted horror as the captain — lips shriveled back from teeth, mouths locked in screams, faces pulled into psychotic masks, eyes bulging. And their eyes, dear Christ, I have never seen such a thing. They were completely white, though not glazed as from putrefaction, but as if the color had been leeched from them or what they had looked upon had been so harrowing and frightful that it had bleached the pigment free.

Later, Dr. Asper attempted a crude autopsy on one of these cadavers in the Korsund’s meager surgery. He told me that its nervous tissue in general was actually reduced to a sort of pulp. That its brain was nothing more than a sort of runny slime as if said brain was boiled to a soup in its own skull. And what, we wondered, could cause such awful seizures and violent contractions? Could literally melt a man’s brain in his own skull and bleach his eyeballs white?

Examination of several others showed the same degree of damage. Also, Dr. Asper discovered that their internal organs had been dissolved down to a sort of white jelly that burned his hands when he touched it. We found similar globs of this burning jelly in various parts of the ship. It has an unusual sort of shine to it. Even Dr. Asper, with his scientific leanings, cannot explain this jelly.

After some three hours aboard the Korsund, that malign and shadowy death ship, we departed. Some of the men were nearly hysterical with the horrors they saw and those they sensed, but could not see. What appalling tragedy has befallen her? And when, I wonder, will it come for the Cyclops?

24 March 1918

Several days now since last entry. I have no good news, nothing which will save those that look to me for answers which are far beyond my grasp. Dr. Asper fears that the crew I put aboard the Danish ship has been contaminated with some nameless pestilence. They bear terrible burns on the exposed flesh of their hands and arms as if they came into contact with some intense heat. Dr. Asper says the burns are quite similar to radium burns. The men are plagued by fatigue and melancholy, terrible weakness and severe vomiting. Asper is doing his best, but the men grow steadily worse. Dr. Asper, too, I fear is contaminated, but will not admit as such.

Though I exhibit no outward signs of the unknown malady, I find myself increasingly nauseous and listless, unable to eat. My mind is given to dream and I do not trust my own judgement.

Whatever terrifying specter circles us out in the fog, it grows nearer by the day and several times now I have been certain I saw something huge and unspeakable slipping through the mists. Perhaps it is only my fevered imagination, but I do not think so. It has placed a curse over this undead sea and the Cyclops in particular. I cannot say what this haunter is or even guess at its nature, but that it is an evil, hungering taint I have no doubt. It has cocooned the ship up now with invisible threads and slowly, patiently, it is sucking our blood dry drop by terrible drop.

I pray for death.

29? March 1918

There is death now, a grim and covetous death that haunts the ship. Day by day by night more men disappear. Some have escaped into the mist by taking lifeboats. I wish them godspeed. Others have been liberated as well, but not of their own free will. This morning, I believe it was this morning, we discovered the cadavers of three men who vanished several days ago. How can I describe their remains to you? They were leathery, empty husks, their faces like crumbling Autumn leaves, webbed up in some wiry silk that is so sharp it slips through fingers if you merely brush or touch it. The cadavers were wound in this like flies in a spider’s web and hung from the aft coaling booms. We found them dangling there like corpses from a gallows. With some ingenuity, Holmes, the boatswain, managed to cut them down by climbing up there and sawing through the wire filaments that held them with a hacksaw. Dr. Asper is too sick now to examine the bodies. I tried, but even prodding one of them with a knife caused it to shatter as if it were made out of some fragile glass. The bodies have been drained dry of liquid and crystallized. Frozen? I do not know and cannot guess.

I am in poor shape. I move now and exist through sheer force of will. I have not eaten in days and my flesh is sore to the touch as if rubbed raw with rocksalt. I vomit blood regularly. There are less than two dozen of us now.

April 1918?

Very weak now. See omens and portents everywhere. Have seen no one in days now or is it weeks? Sounds coming from the mist as of a million shrieking birds or a buzzing as of bees or wasps. I do not listen to that which scratches at the door, those terrible puckered white faces which peer through the portholes. A huge, globular moon has risen above the mist now and it is the color of fresh blood that paints the decks and superstructure with a red fire. Feel a kinship with the beasts of the haunted sea and fog. For though alien, they are living, are flesh and blood. That which buzzes and shrieks above and below is not corporeal in my understanding of the word. It is a disembodied appetite, a malignant sentience that hungers and hungers stuffs itself with the bones and souls of men grows fat like a spider on human suffering and horror. I must finish this entry must before I hide myself away

Not sure now but I must be alone alone I shut my ears tight against that which haunts the ship that which screams and laughs and calls to me that ravening faceless nightmare

cursed iam cursed imust be cursed it comes now and i feel its heat and cold that which slithers and hisses and fills my brain with fever oh the cold burning light frozen crystalline eyes of cosmic fire

the buzzing buzzing

The log of the
Cyclops
ended here and for Fabrini and Cook, by God, it was enough. It was more than enough. For the things they had guessed, had sensed, had been alluded to by Crycek’s lunacy, were sketched out in frenzied, baleful detail by Lieutenant Forbes, the executive officer of the
Cyclops,
a man who had been dead ninety years. What they were reading was a dire history, the thoughts of a man reaching out to them from the grave.

Fabrini slammed the book shut so forcefully it made Cook jump. “I don’t need this shit, okay?” he said, his face pallid and his voice rusty and scraping. “I can’t take this shit, Cook. And don’t fucking tell me that sailor was just crazy, because I know better. You do, too. Oh Jesus Christ, Cook, I’m coming apart here, okay? Something’s breaking up inside me and I don’t know what to do …”

He was practically sobbing now.

Cook put an arm around him and the physical contact of another living, breathing human being seemed to steady him a bit.

Cook said, “Just take it easy. That shit happened in 1918.”

Fabrini was breathing hard. “And it’s going to happen again.”

“Fabrini, listen to me-”

But Fabrini did not want to listen. “It’s out there now, Cook, whatever got them. You’ve felt it and so have I.” Fabrini’s face looked almost ghoulish in the flickering lantern light. “And we’re going to feel it again real soon. And you know what?”

Cook just shook his head.

Fabrini licked his lips, tried to swallow. “I’m scared shitless and so are you.”

During the hour or so while Fabrini and Cook were gone, Saks tried every argument he could think of to get Crycek to turn him loose. But it was no good. Menhaus had fallen asleep in the bow, which left him alone with Crycek. And Crycek just stared at him, listening, but never speaking, seeming to find Saks’s plight amusing.

Thirty minutes into it Saks began to threaten them, telling them how he was going to kill them when he finally got his hands free. Forty-five minutes into it he had lapsed into a glum, stony silence. Crycek kept watching him, burning holes through him with those crazy eyes of his. Menhaus ignored him. The graveyard stillness was what was eating away at Saks. Now and then there would be a slopping, sliding sound from off in the weed or a muted splash from out in the mist, but that was about it. Other than a mysterious droning sound that seemed to come from far off now and again, there was nothing.

Silence. Brooding and secret and infinite.

That and the sound of Menhaus snoring.

Finally, Crycek said, “Do you feel it, Saks? Do you feel it out there waiting for us?”

“Quit with the mind games, Crycek, it’s getting boring,” Saks told him.

But Crycek just smiled. “It’s getting stronger. I can feel it and so can you … closer all the time. We’re drifting closer to its black heart all the time.”

“We’re stuck in the weeds, you silly fuck, we ain’t drifting anywhere.”

“Still, we’re drawn closer. Closer to those teeth and eyes and that cold, ravenous mind. Can you feel its mind, Saks? Feel it trying to find a way in? Because it is, you know, all the time.” He looked out into the fog, then back at Saks. “Sometimes … sometimes it’s so close I can almost touch it. But it’s always scratching at the back of my mind, trying to find a way in”

Menhaus blissfully slept through the exchange.

Saks laughed without mirth. “It gets in your mind, it’s gonna find one big vacancy.”

“Is it already inside you, Saks? The thing? Is it inside you even now?”

“Shut the hell up,” Saks told him.

What he wanted badly right now was to get his hands free, because when that happened, Crycek was gonna be in a world of hurt. Saks hadn’t decided yet whether he was going to wrap those hands around his throat or just thumb the bastard’s eyes right out of their sockets. But something was going to happen. And Crycek wasn’t going to like it much.

Crycek suddenly gripped his head in his hands and out in that cloying mist, that weird droning rose up, faded away just as quick. “Jesus … it’s
thinking
about us, Saks. I can feel it … feel it in my head. It knows what we’re feeling and seeing … it can read our minds …”

Saks felt something cold under his skin now like a killing frost. “Read my mind?” he said. “Let it read my fucking mind. Hey! You out there! Read my mind right now! Go ahead … you ain’t gonna like what I’m thinking!”

But it was sheer bravado, a thin veneer and nothing more. For inside, Saks was cold and squirming and he badly wanted to scream. He had decided that Crycek was full of bullshit with this
devil
of his … yet, yet, he could almost feel something in his mind, a whisper of motion like the fluttering wings of a moth.

Two minutes later, he was certain he had imagined it all.

“Gone … it’s gone now, Saks,” Crycek said, chewing on the knuckles of his right hand. “But it’ll be back … maybe … maybe it already got Fabrini and Cook. Maybe that’s what happened.”

“They’ll be back,” Saks said, without much conviction. “Sure they will. When … when Cook gets tired of bouncing his balls off Fabrini’s chin, they’ll be back.”

But Crycek shook his head. “Maybe not. Maybe we’re already alone … just you and me, Saks. And Menhaus.”

“Be my fucking luck.”

Crycek laughed now, but it was a demented sort of laugh like a knife scraped over glass. “If they don’t come back … I wonder, I just wonder which of us that thing will take. Me or you? Maybe it’ll just want
one
of us.” Crycek’s eyes were blazing now. “Yeah … maybe it just wants a sacrifice, Saks, a
human sacrifice.
If that’s what it wants, maybe I’ll just have to give it one. I just happen to know a guy who’s already tied up …”

When Gosling relieved Soltz on watch, Soltz was looking funny … dreamy. There was an odd haze in his eyes, a faraway look like maybe he was not there at all, just lost in distant places and unseen horizons that Gosling himself could never reach.

“You okay, Soltz?”

Soltz seemed to realize for the first time that he was not alone. He looked at Gosling, blinked, and focused his eyes behind those heavy glasses. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Just fine.”

“What were you looking at out there?”

But he just shook his head. “You see funny things in the fog, don’t you?”

“What sort of funny things?”

Soltz thought it over. Something pulsed at his throat and his eyes went shiny and distant again. “Things that aren’t there. Those things I saw … they couldn’t really be there, could they?”

“What did you see?”

Soltz shook his head again. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked off into the fog and Gosling did, too. It did not look any different. Swirling and thick, sparkling and yellow-white like a drive-in movie screen.

“I saw a ship out there,” Soltz said. “I know I didn’t really see it, maybe just with my mind … but it was so real.”

“Tell me about it.”

Soltz narrowed his eyes, seeing it again now. “Well … it was an odd ship, a big ship. But not a modern ship at all. One of those old ones like maybe a barque, a pirate ship … yes, that’s what it was, a
pirate ship.
It had high masts … except they were ragged and full of holes, gray and sagging. I heard it out in the fog, creaking and groaning, wind whistling through the torn canvas … then it came out and I saw it. It had a funny glow to it, you know? There were men along the railing and they were ragged, too. Dead men … ghosts … skeletons. They looked like skeletons … isn’t that odd? Like skeletons.”

Gosling sighed, did not like it. “A ghost ship? Is that what you saw?”

“Yes … I think so. It just went past us and faded into the mist.” He squinted his eyes and cocked his head. “It went past us and there was a woman aboard … a woman. She waved to me. And you know what, Gosling?”

“What?”

“She didn’t have any eyes.”

Gosling felt a chill lay over his skin now. The idea of what Soltz had seen was scaring him, yet Soltz seemed fine with the idea. And that was probably the worst part. Like maybe his mind was going now, was coming apart to the point that he did not recognize fear and danger.