Deeper (9 page)

"Does it
bother you?"

"Not much
besides getting wet for nothing."

I looked at
her, trying to read whatever she was thinking from the expression on her face
as the fog thickened even more.
 
Mary
became a silhouette, every detail of her body and face hidden by the heavy
condensation.
 
Even from only a few feet
away the visibility was almost gone.

"You
aren't afraid of ghosts?"
 
She
seemed a little surprised by the notion.

"Well,
I've only seen one, and I'm still not completely sure she was a ghost."

She nodded.

"I think
maybe you're a little worried about it though.
 
Am I right?"

She nodded
again and I could hear her swallowing before she answered.
 
"I've seen a few things."

"Then why
are you still doing this?"

"You mean
the parapsychology thing?"

"Yeah.
 
If you
know that ghosts are real, haven't you already proven everything you need to
prove?"

"We know
there are other planets, but we still keep going out there and looking for more
proof, don't we?"
 
She turned in her
seat and looked at me, her elbows resting on her knees.
 
"We keep looking deeper into the oceans,
too."

"Good
point.
 
But if a deep-sea diver gets
bitten by enough sharks, he stops diving."

"What
makes you think I've been bitten?"

I wasn't sure
I wanted to answer that.
 
It's the sort
of question that can be a double-edged sword:
 
answer it truthfully and you risk pissing off a client.
 
Answer with a lie, or a
half-truth,
and you look insufferably stupid or weak.

"You want
the politically correct answer?
 
Or do
you want it straight up?"

"I prefer
straight up."

"You look
haunted."
 
It wasn't meant as a
joke, but it could have been taken as one.
 
Mary Parsons didn't take it that way.

"Do you
run away from everything that ever bothered you?"

"No.
 
But I don't always invite it to bother me
again, either."
 
And did I sound
defensive myself?
 
Probably.
 
We all have our secrets, and I had more than
my fair share.

"I take
more precautions that I used
to,
Captain Joe, but I
can't turn my back on my life's work because of a few strange
occurrences."
 
She spoke slowly and
carefully, choosing each word as precisely as a surgeon chooses the right
implements of his trade."

"Call me
Joe, okay?"

"I'll
work on it."
 
She smiled an apology
that wasn't necessary.

"I think
I should read a few of your books sometime."

"If I had
my spares with me, I'd give them to you."

"Maybe
I'll check out the bookstore tomorrow."

The lights
from the distant lighthouse were working about as well as a neon sign for
distracting me.
 
Every few seconds the
night turned white and then vanished again.

Mary cleared
her throat.
 
"So, Joe, when was the
last time you was a wooden ship?"

"What?
 
You mean like a full-size ship?
 
Not a yacht?"

"Exactly."

"I saw
Old Ironsides once, when I was a kid."

She pointed
out into the fog, and I followed her index finger.
 
At first I saw nothing but more of the
swirling mists, and then as the beam from the lighthouse came around again, I
saw the shadowy shape of a ship, complete with three masts and furled sails.
 
The angle was wrong to even guess the size,
but she could have eaten the
Isabella
for a light snack.

As soon as I
saw her, she was gone again, lost in the heavy fog and darkness.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
 
How long has that been there?"

"About
three minutes."

"Where
did she come from?"

"She just
showed up.
 
She hasn't moved at
all."

"That's
not possible.
 
A ship
that size doesn't exactly sneak in without someone seeing it."

"Joe,
look at where she is in the water..."
 
Mary's voice was very soft.

I had to think
about it, because the water couldn’t even be seen from where we were.
 
Somehow the ship had gotten past the reef and
never even been seen coming in.
 
Believe
me; I would have known if it had started on the docks.

The light came
around again and once again the galleon cast a long shadow through the
darkness.
 
It hadn't moved at all; she
was right about that.

"Are you
taking any of your scientific readings on this?"
 
I wanted to ask an intelligent question,
maybe mention the Electro Magnetic Frequency readers I'd seen used on a couple
of specials, or ask if they were doing anything with electronic voice
phenomena, like in that movie with Michael Keaton, but the words wouldn't come
out.
 
I was too busy being stunned.

"Oh,
yes.
 
That's what Jacob is
doing."
 
She nodded and stared at
the silhouette out in the distance.

We watched in
silence for several minutes, while the fog grew even thicker.
 
Flash
:
 
and the ship was there, followed immediately
by darkness.
 
Flash
: and it was still there, with no changes.
 
Flash
:
 
and there were figures on the ship that had
not been there before, all of them seeming to face the direction of Golden
Cove.

Flash
:
 
and they were gone.
 
The ship and
all of the people who had suddenly been there looking in our direction.

"What the
hell?"
 
I stood up and walked to the
edge of the deck, staring hard as if I could will it back by looking and
wishing.
 
Nothing happened.

"Ghosts
keep their own schedules, Capt—
"
 
She
caught herself.
 
"Joe."
 
Her voice was soft and almost forlorn behind
me.

"You
think they were ghosts?"

"Do you
think they weren't?"

She had a good
point there.
 
Unless the ship had just
managed the fastest sinking ever, or been rocket-propelled out of the cove,
there weren't many other options.
 
I knew
what I'd seen, and I knew it wasn't a trick of the fog.
 
There was nothing out there to cast the sort
of shadow I had just been looking at, and surely nothing to imitate the shapes
of people on the ship's deck.

"How many
ships did Jacob say they sank here?"

"From what we've been able to gather, at least seven.
 
Probably more."

"I
thought he said more than that."

"Seven that have been fully confirmed.
 
There's a lot of background to go over in
most cases."
 
She walked over to
were
I was leaning out over the railing and joined me.
 
"I think Jacob was right.
 
I think there're a lot of ghosts in this
area."

"It's
never had a very good reputation.
 
My
grandfather used to say it was the one place he knew of that he never wanted to
dock his boat."

"And yet
you're here anyway."

"I made a
deal.
 
I probably would have charged a
little more if I knew where we were going to be, but I made a deal and I like
to stick to those."

"I'm glad
you did.
 
And thanks, again, for letting
us stay on the
Isabella
."

"Not a
problem.
 
Just don't invite any dead
sailors on board for a party."

Mary looked at
me for a long moment and then cracked
up,
laughing as
if that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

Before I could
do more than smile in response, something hit the side of the
Isabella
hard enough to rock her
slightly in the water.
 
Let me make this
clear, there is nothing light about a sixty-foot yacht.
 
Waves don't even move the
Isabella
much unless they're big enough
to break over the sides.
 
The
Isabella
is a damned fine ship and a
heavy one, too.
 
So feeling her move was
enough to make me worry about structural damage.

I calculated
where the sound had come from and moved over there as quickly as I could, half
expecting to see a hole in her side.
 
Instead, I just saw very turbulent waves.
 
The problem with that was that the waves
shouldn't have been there.
 
There was
nothing to make them happen and the rest of the cove was almost placid as far
as my eyes could see.

I leaned over
to look and something came out of the water at high speed, lifting a good ten
feet into the air.
 
Had it been right next
to the
Isabella
, I could have touched
it.

Instead, all I
saw was a dark shape, one that looked almost human, but not quite.
 
The arms were too long, the head was wrong,
and the faint light I saw reflected off the eyes seemed to bounce back at me
from too wide a surface.

The thing
twisted in the air with all the skill of an Olympic diver and dove back into
the waters, barely even making a splash.
 
I saw the body cut through the waves and then the feet and legs kick as
they drove the entire form deeper below the surface.

The feet
looked almost like a diver's oversized floppy fins, but not quite.
 
Most of the diving equipment I've seen
doesn’t fit.
 
"What was it?
 
Did you get a good look?"

I shook my
head, utterly speechless for a moment.

"I have
no idea, and I don't think I want to know."

A few minutes
later the fog started to lift and Mary Parsons went off to see her husband and
find out if he'd gotten anything useful.

I stayed where
I was
instead,
wondering about what I'd seen and
whether or not my mind was going soft in my head.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

How do you
sleep after that?

Not well.

After the
Parsonses had retired, I went to my cabin and got myself undressed and flopped
on the bed, exhausted.
 
My mind decided
to start replaying everything I'd seen again and again.

The damnedest
thing is it's easy to fool yourself if you want to.
 
I caught myself trying to talk my way out of
what I'd seen out there, both the ship and whatever it was that dove down into
the waters.
 
I hadn't really seen a ship,
exactly, just the shadows of one.
 
And the shadows of her crew.
 
Perhaps atmospheric conditions were just right and what I'd actually
seen was some sort of distorted reflection of my own vessel, or even another
yacht somewhere out of normal visual range.
 
The fog could have done it.
 
This
wasn't a light fog, but a heavy blanket over the whole damned area.
 
And if I was having a little more trouble
convincing myself that the thing I saw going underwater was a log, or even a
guy in scuba gear, well, I just tried all that much harder.

It was
midnight before I finally got back out of bed, got dressed, and headed for the
bar in the main cabin.
 
When in doubt,
there's always anesthesia.
 
I poured
myself three fingers of brandy and nursed it down slowly for a couple of
minutes in the nearly complete darkness.
 
The fog was back and thick enough to blind me to the world outside.

I walked out
onto the deck and shivered in the cold.
 
All I could see was the murky darkness followed by the occasional blast
of light from the lighthouse.
 
The night
was so silent I could hear my own breathing and the faint sound of water
lapping at the sides of the dock and the
Isabella
.

And then I
heard a sound that was completely foreign to me, a deep thrumming noise that
came from where I knew the marshes were, just to the north of the cove.
 
It sounded almost like someone had recorded
thunder and then slowed down the noise, stretching it out and distorting it
completely.
 
It wasn't nearly as loud as
it sounds, and I think some of it might actually have been below the human
hearing range.

The sound was
answered several times from different areas.

I felt an
additional chill run through me as I listened.

What I didn't
hear, however, left me nervous.
 
There
were no sounds coming from the shore after that unusual racket.
 
Nothing, when I knew there should have been a
lot of noise.
 
Have you ever been to a
place where the local dogs don't bark when something unusual happens?
 
Except when I was in the Navy and so far
offshore that hearing them was physically impossible, I've never run across
that dilemma.
 
Dogs bark; it's what they
do.
 
It struck me at that moment that I
hadn't heard a dog bark in the last two days.
 
Not even once.
 
Granted, I was on
a boat the entire time, but even so, I should have heard a few barks, or even a
yip, especially when you consider I was docking in the harbor every night.