Deeper (27 page)

The water was
calm.
 
I was not.
 
What I wanted to do was speed like a madman
and find Belle.
 
No one else mattered as
much to me, not even poor Davey.
 
Belle
wouldn't have agreed, and I made myself think like she would.

We may as well
have been combing a beach for one particular grain of sand.
 
The waters were still, and anything that had
been floating would have been spotted with ease, but that changed quickly when
fog started up.
 
Have you ever really
looked at fog?
 
Not the low-lying stuff
you see on the road now and then, but the pea soup stuff that comes from the
ocean.
 
It's almost alive with the way it
moves.
 
This was like a serious pea
soup.
 
It didn't drift down from the
skies and it didn't blow in from anywhere.
 
It just erupted from the waters around us.

Fog does not,
for the record, erupt.
 
But this one
did.
 
It came on heavy and grew until the
spotlights were useless.
 
All they could
illuminate was the swirling cloud of vapor that danced around us.

Charlie walked
past me with a grim expression on his face and muttered something under his
breath.

"What was
that, Charlie?"

"I said,
"The Parsonses are getting excited and I'm going to my cabin."

I must have
had a stupid look on my face, one that showed I had no idea what he was talking
about.
 
I was worried about Belle and
Davey.
 
The Parsonses getting excited
meant nothing to me.

"Joe, pay
attention to me here,
okay
?
 
There's a fucking ship out there.
 
Maybe more than one."
 
He talked to me like I was a feeble-minded
toddler.

"Well,
then maybe they can help with the search.
 
What's gotten into you?"

Charlie's face
was pale and he was shaking.
 
It took me
a second to notice that, but eventually I caught on.

"It's a
goddamn ghost ship, Joe!
 
There are dead
people out there looking us over!"
 
He was a wreck.

"Well,
that's fucking perfect, Charlie!
 
That's
just exactly what I need from you right now!"
 
I knew there'd be no help from him.
 
That didn't stop me from taking out a little
of the pressure I was feeling.
 
I saw the
look of hurt on his face and I new I was countering it with an expression of
pure disgust.

"Go on,
Charlie," I finally relented.
 
I
watched him head to his cabin.
 
The man
had wrestled a monster out of the water and grinned all the way through
it.
 
He'd taken the same monster on with
his fists alone when it was ready to tear me in half.
 
Yet the thought of a dead person looking at
him from the side of a ghost ship freaked him out completely.
 
I didn't try to understand it; I just
accepted it.
 
We all have things that
scare us, right?

I left the
yacht to steer for
itself
for a few minutes and headed
out to see what was happening in the fog.
 
The ship was the same one we'd seen before, or at least it looked the
same to me.
 
I couldn't make out all that
many details.

But I could
see the shadows on board.
 
I could feel
them looking at the
Isabella
.
 
And damned if I didn't look
back, trying to see if there were any new crew members on board that shadowy
galleon.

The college
kids and everyone else forgot the search for Davey.
 
All around me the people were looking at the
spectral vessel that waited only a few hundred feet away.
 
I looked as closely as I could, hating that
the faces of the people on that ship were shadows.
 
There was a part of me, damn it all, that
wanted to see their faces, that wanted to know that neither Belle, nor Tommy
nor Davey was on that boat full of dead people.
 
I was just reaching for the spotlight when I saw a form dive from the
clipper and drop into the water.

Whoever it was
that dropped down hit the calm seas with a tiny splash, and then started
swimming toward the
Isabella
.
 
I watched the shape heading for the yacht,
wondering if this was a real person coming to visit or if this was, like the
girl we'd pulled from the water on the first night, an apparition.

It only took a
second to get to the spotlight and aim it at the figure.
 
Whoever it was had dark hair and was dressed
in some form of jacket.
 
Beyond that I
had no idea who I was looking at.

Finally, after
several moments of watching the stranger swimming over, he made it to the edge
of the yacht.
 
I looked down at him and
he looked back up.
 
I'd never seen the
man before.
 
My heart sank a bit when I
realized that.
 
It shouldn’t have; it was
a good sign maybe.
 
But he was just a
man, dead or alive, and he couldn’t answer my questions.
 
Without asking, he climbed the ladder on the
side and made his way to the deck of the
Isabella
.
 
I don't know all the fancy terms that go
along with older fashions.
 
I just know
the clothes he was wearing were a few hundred years out of date.

The man stared
around with a quizzical look on his face and his gaze cut right through
me.
 
As he looked, his face grew angrier.
 
He was shorter than me and I don't think he
was being rude.
 
I don't think he saw me
for whatever reason.

"Can I
help you?"
 
I honestly couldn’t
think of another thing to say.

He walked past
me as if I weren't there, and I watched the water falling from his body drip
across the deck.

I reached out
to touch the water trail he'd left behind and was puzzled when my fingers came
away covered with a substance that was as cold as water but thicker.

"What is
the meaning of this insanity?"
 
The
man spoke clearly to the wall of the cabin, his face outraged.
 
"I'll not have you attacking my vessels,
or threatening to sink my ship from below me."

I have no idea
what was said in response, but his look of outrage grew much, much
stronger.
 
I watched him as he was suddenly
grabbed by forces unseen and spun back to face his ship where it floated.
 
As I looked away from him, for just an
instant I could almost make out the shapes of other men holding him, but when I
looked back, they were gone.

"You're a
madman, Marsh!
 
What have you done to
these people, to this place?"

He froze for a
moment, looking out at the galleon in the distance.
 
Then he struggled harder, screaming in
protest even as his head was wrenched back and he was forced to watch what
happened.

From out of the
waters they came, a swarm of the fish men, flowing up the side of the ghost
ship in a fury of motion, claws catching the timbers and ripping them away from
the ship even as the Deep Ones rose higher.
 
Like the ship and its passengers, the shapes were vague and shadowed,
more a hint of form than an actual image, but there was enough to see, enough
to let me know that what attacked was not human.

I stood and
watched.
 
I couldn’t look away from the
sight as the things attacked, but I have to be honest and say the fates of the
people on the other ship meant nothing to me.
 
Maybe it was because I knew in my heart that they were already dead and
all I was seeing was a memory.
 
I think
it was more that I kept thinking of Belle in the hands of those vile things and
it crushed a part of me.

Even as vague
lumps, they were distinguishable enough to horrify me, not only because of
their shapes, but also because of the sheer number of them.
 
There weren't dozens or hundreds, but what
seemed like thousands of the things coming from the water and peeling away
parts of the ship that they hurled into the water behind them.
 
I saw a documentary on piranha that showed
them tearing a cow into confetti inside of a minute.
 
The same thing happened to the nameless ship
out there.
 
The people were grabbed and
pulled into the water by the creatures surrounding them and the boat was
disassembled in a frenzy of activity.

All the while
the ghost man on my yacht screamed and struggled against the figures that had
done him in sometime in the distant past, and the students on board watched the
events as they were revealed to us.
 
They
screamed as they were taken down.
 
The
people all screamed and struggled and died.
 
I felt my skin goose pimple up as I listened to them and to the croaking
calls of their destroyers.

And all I
could think about was Belle, lost somewhere out in the water, taken by the very
same creatures.

I headed for
the controls, ready to get back to the cove and make sure that she was returned
to me alive.

For the first
time, the ghost being held captive on my yacht by other ghosts who could not be
seen, turned and looked me directly in the eyes.
 
"They'll never give her back to
you.
 
She's as good as dead, or possibly
worse.
 
You will not win this."

"Fuck
you!"
 
The words were out before I
could even think of stopping them.
 
I
didn't want to hear what he said.
 
I
never wanted to hear it, because there was a part of me that thought he was
right.
 
I would never see Belle
again.
 
Not alive, anyway.

I started the
yacht forward and heard Jacob protesting.
 
This was what he was out here for, to witness the ghosts of Golden
Cove.
 
I didn't care.
 
My wife was missing and I'd waited too long
already to do something about it.
 
If
Davey was dead and gone, then I would mourn him later, but whatever slim chance
I had of getting Belle back alive was waiting somewhere on the shore and needed
to be set free.

The ghost
escaped his captors, or maybe they were never there.
 
Maybe they were just memories in
a
 
dead
man's head and
he used them to show me what happened to his ship and crew.
 
Whatever the case, he was in the cabin as I
sped us toward the distant cove.

"Do not
do this thing, Captain.
 
Do not let one
of them free.
 
No good can come from
bartering with the demons of the deep."

"She's my
wife."

"She's
theirs now, and whatever you do to help her will only bring you
damnation."
 
His face, faintly
transparent now, clear enough that I could see the window behind him, showed
nothing but misery.
 
"We stay here
to warn others, sir.
 
We stay here to
keep others safe."

"She's my
wife."

"She's
not yours anymore.
 
She's either dead or
she belongs to them."

"You go
to hell!
 
She's my wife and I'll have her
back!"
 
I was screaming at a
ghost.
 
I think if I could have I'd have
hit him then, just to make him stop telling me my worst fears had already come
true.

"I am in
hell already, sir."
 
He lowered his
head and faded away like a bad dream.
 
I
ignored him as best I could and gunned the engine of the
Isabella
, cutting across the water like a maniac until I came close
to the docks.
 
Once there, I behaved
myself because I had to, and I docked as carefully as ever.

When we were
stopped, I called for Ward, telling him it was time to get his fish man.

He nodded and
said nothing.
 
I let him lead the
way.
 
Golden Cove was dark and wet and
colder than I'd expected.
 
The fog that
had rolled over the sea had taken home on the streets, turning everything into
shadows as vague as the ones on the ghost ship.
 
I tried not to look too closely into the darkness.
 
Every time I did, I saw Belle's face.
 
Not alive and warm and loving, but cold and
dead with unseeing eyes staring at me accusingly.

Ward was
panting and staggered a bit as he hurried up the steep hillside and headed for
the building where the Deep One was being kept.
 
"Not much farther, Captain.
 
We're almost there."

I nodded in
response, carrying the tracking device and looking at the wicked barb that had
to be put into the monster's hide before he could be let free.
 
I told myself I was doing it for Ward, but in
truth I wanted to know where they really lived.
 
I wanted to know where they might have taken Belle.