Hell Rig (11 page)

She smiled. “Sounds yummy. Let’s go.”

They met Tolson in the hallway.

“We tied up Waters’ wrists and dumped him in the supply room.” He held out the key. “I’ve got the only key. The bastard can’t get out of there.”

“Is he all right?” Lisa asked. “Clyde hit him pretty hard.”

Tolson snorted. “He’s breathing, but he’ll have one helluva headache tomorrow. Better than he deserves.” He looked at Jeff and Lisa. “What are you two up to?”

“I can’t sleep,” Lisa said. “We’re going to work.”

Tolson smiled. “Hell, I’ll come with you, unless, that is, you two want to be left alone.”

Lisa smiled at him. “No, I love threesomes, Eric.”

Eric hooted and Jeff laughed, but somehow, his laughter rang hollow. Bale’s death was in the back of his mind. Something just wasn’t right and he couldn’t quite place his finger on it.

Chapter Nine

With Waters safely secured in a supply closet, Lisa felt a little safer. Bale’s gruesome death had shaken her confidence in her decision to take Ed’s offer. Seeing Bale hanging there suspended like a slab of meat reminded her of Water’s description of the Digger Man, eviscerated, his intestines piled below him like some macabre monument to horror. It recalled to her some of her grandmother’s boogeyman stories, designed to frighten little boys and girls. Well, she was certainly frightened.

Waters was an enigma. He acted crazy and said crazy things, but he didn’t act like a murderer. He had shown almost no emotion when he saw Bale’s body. She would have expected him to gloat over the act if he was responsible or deny it vehemently if not. Maybe she was just expecting an insane man to act sanely. She had not helped carry the body to the cooler. The dead gave her the creeps, always has. As a child, she had been repelled by the ancient picturesque cemeteries of New Orleans. The grave mists that had seemed half alive, dancing as if taunting her, inviting her; the wind whispering to her in a somehow familiar voice as it blew through the monuments; the heavy quietness that crushed her chest like a deep sea diver beyond his limits – death was real, death was ever-present and she wanted no part of it.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up at Jeff and forced a smile through her respirator mask to reassure him she was fine. He could not see the gesture and continued to stare at her. “Nothing. I’m just creeped out about this whole thing.” Her voice sounded oddly distorted through the mask. They were knocking down ceiling tiles and the air reeked of dust and moldy fibers.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, Waters is crazy, but to do what he did…” Jeff shook his head. “I can’t see it.”

“Do you think…?” She was afraid to finish her thought.

Jeff looked at her. She saw his eyes go wide as he caught her meaning. “No. It has to be him. None of us…a sane person couldn’t do that and there’s no one else here. We’ve searched the platform twice.”

“What if it’s something we can’t see?”

Tolson’s ready laughter embarrassed her. She looked up at him on the stepladder. His head was invisible, jutting through an opening in the ceiling and his voice was as muffled as hers. Seeing him that way, headless, made her shiver. “You don’t mean Waters’ ghosts, do you?”

“Not ghosts,” she said. “Loa. Spirits.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in this voodoo stuff,” Jeff said.

She turned to him. “My grandmother always said there were no accidents; that there is a reason for everything. The world was in balance and what we did to others came back around to us.”

“So,” he pushed.

She paused a second to gather her thoughts, piecing them together like a puzzle, turning her ideas around until the odd shapes melded and fit.

“So, Greg Bale was a defrocked priest running from his past, seeking redemption. Waters knew this and called Sid a liar. How did he know? You remember he said he was brought here to bear witness, each of us being blemished in some way.”

“I’ll show you my blemish if you’ll show me yours.” Tolson leaned down and winked at her through his goggles.

“Oh, shut up Tolson,” she snapped at him. “I’m being serious here.”

“Maybe Waters made everything up,” Jeff suggested. “It all just fits in with what little we know or believe about things. Maybe he’s playing us all for fools.”

She stumbled on half-afraid she would make a fool of herself. “What if we are all here for a reason, like he said? What if in some way we’re all tied in with what happened here?”

“He said you and I weren’t blemished,” Jeff interrupted her. “He warned me to get you away from here.”

Lisa felt a moment of warmth for Jeff. He sounded so defensive about her. “I’m not perfect,” she said.

He grinned. “Me either, but I guess we aren’t bound for hell.”

“Like me?” Tolson asked with a scowl on his face.

Jeff’s grinned faded. “Hey, I didn’t mean—Bale was my friend, and I didn’t mean that you and the others were damned.”

Tolson grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “I may be. I’ve always played the devil hell.”

“I think Waters meant it,” Lisa piped up.

“Waters’ mind is a bowl of Jell-O,” Tolson responded with a soft chuckle.

Jeff nodded. “Tolson’s right. He’s safely out of the way. Are you saying you’re still frightened?”

Lisa shivered. “Yes, I’m still frightened.”

Jeff reached out and touched her. Even through his gloved hand, his warmth lent her courage. “There’s nothing here. We’ll get the job done, get our bonuses and hit the town, you and I. What do you say to a big dinner at Antoine’s, followed by a night in the French Quarter?”

“Are you asking me out?” she asked.

His eyes lit up. “Sure, why not? I won’t hold your intelligence against you.”

“That’s awfully noble of you.”

Jeff bowed.

“Okay, it’s a date.” As she said it, a sudden chill crept over her. She hoped it was a date she could keep.

“Oh, brother,” Tolson moaned, taking off his mask and descending the ladder. “I’ve heard enough. Beat out by Towns. I’ll never live down the humiliation. I’m going to bed.”

After he left, Lisa looked at Jeff. He was staring at her, smiling.

“What?” she asked. She liked the way he looked at her, not lustily, like Tolson, but still wanting.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

As she watched him work, she wished they could be alone for a while. Maybe he could take her mind off this horrible place.

“What horrible secrets are you hiding?” Jeff asked, catching her off guard.

“What…oh, the usual, I guess—self-doubt, insecurity, a mania for chocolate. And you?”

“No secrets. My life’s an open book.”

“I see,” she said, “The perfect man.”

His cheeks reddened beneath his mask. “No, not perfect,” he said and walked across the room to work.

She watched him for a minute, wondering what she had said to anger him.

* * * *

“Ric.”

The voice whispered in Waters’ mind, a hauntingly familiar voice. He regained consciousness slowly, reluctantly. His head ached and his hands were numb. He wriggled them around until he was certain they were securely tied behind his back. His feet were free but he recognized the room he was in, the main deck utility locker. There was nothing in it but office and cleaning supplies. There was no window but he knew it was dark outside. Darkness was the home of the Presence. He moved around to face the door and his head began to swim. That bastard Gleason had hit him with a pipe and dragged him in here. He was alone.

Except for the voice.

“Ric,” it whispered again.

“What?” he asked.

“We’re not finished,” the voice said. “Seven remain.”

“Seven?” Waters asked, trying to mentally count. The concentration made his head throb. “There are eight left.”

“Seven,” the voice repeated.

“I can’t do anything,” Waters smirked. “I’m locked up. They think I did it.” He was glad they had tied him up. It relieved him of any further responsibility for the deaths he knew were coming.

“They will soon learn different.”

A vision flashed through Water’s mind. He watched through Digger Man’s eyes as Sid Easton stood in the shadows of the landing deck, his face pale with fright. A serpentine shadow detached from the blackness, screamed in unholy agony and enveloped him, squeezing. His protests cut off quickly, turning into muffled whimpers.

“You’re full of secrets, aren’t you Sid?” the voice whispered as the shadow held him tight. Each ‘S’ sounded like escaping steam. “Dirty little secrets you keep bottled up inside.”

Easton struggled but could not move or speak.

“What did your mother say when she discovered she had raised a sick pervert? Looking at dirty little girl pictures on the Internet—what’s the matter, Sidney, can’t get a real man’s hard on?” The voice became that of Lisa Love. “Don’t you even find me attractive, little Sidney? So many dirty little secrets. Are they choking your throat?”

Easton struggled but the shadows held him outstretched, his feet dangling a few inches above the deck. Pathetic moans erupted from his throat. Finally, one word escaped.

“Please.”

“Please? Yes, I’ll help you release them,” the voice, still Love’s, said. “Later.”

“Why?”

“I still need you,” the voice answered. It changed to that of Bale and added, “You’re next.”

The shadows released him and Easton raced up the stairs seeking escape. Waters shook his head, trying to shut out the images. The room grew cold. He could see his breath in the air. A dirty gray fog began to seep under the locked door, pulsing sickly with a corrupt light. Gray snake-like protuberances slithered across the floor and found his feet, tiny tongues quivering hungrily. He jerked his feet away in horror.

“Meanwhile…” the voice in his head added.

The snakes crawled behind him. Waters felt his bonds slacken as the fog snakes enveloped his wrists, writhing over his hands, leaving them drenched in icy seawater. He moved his arms, wincing as the circulation returned. He reached up and touched the cloth bag around his neck, Digger Man’s
gris-gris
, Digger Man’s voodoo medicine bag. Waters had picked it up from beneath the Digger Man’s body. It felt warm to the touch. Waters clutched it tightly, drawing strength from it.

“Remove it,” the voice commanded.

“Why?” Waters asked defiantly. The amulet gave him strength. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

He felt a searing pain in his head as the snakes coiled and bit him. Images of rotting corpses and decapitated children flashed through his mind with their foul venom. The sun was blood red and the sky black as cities burned. He saw his own body stripped of flesh, blackened bones held together by strips of dried skin. He grabbed his head with both hands and rocked back and forth on his buttocks. When the vision faded, he saw the
gris-gris
lying on the floor of the stock room. He didn’t remember jerking it from around his neck.

“That’s much better,” the voice said, soothing.

Waters jerked backward as powerful spasms racked his body. The Dark Presence was a hot poker slicing through the different layers of his mind. The pain was so intense that he left his body. He looked down and saw his body, emaciated to the point of anorexia, lying on the floor twitching. His eyes were open, fixed and dilated. In fact, his entire eye was a black void, a vortex. He fell into its depths, swirling faster and faster until his stomach heaved.

“Join with me,” the Dark Presence said.

“No,” he cried, fighting to resist its advances. Finally, with a searing thrust, the Dark Presence sliced to the core of his mind and poured its black vitriol into the empty space he just vacated. He watched from afar as his body slowly began to respond to the Dark Presence’s manipulations, ignoring his feeble attempts to regain control. He was a meat puppet, a plaything of the Dark Presence. He knew now how Digger Man felt, no longer in control. The fog serpents retreated to the door. The lock snapped open. The snakes waited expectantly, and followed as Ric Waters escaped.

Chapter Ten

Jeff let his mind wander aimlessly as he moved the nozzle of the sand blaster back and forth along the steel walkway gratings, stripping off layer upon layer of rust. He wore a lightweight plastic hooded coverall over his jeans and shirt cooled by an independent air supply from a nearby steadily thumping pump. Strains of B.B. King played over his mini CD player, barely audible over the snake-like hiss of the air hose, ‘
Paying the Cost to be the Boss
’. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Big Clyde Gleason methodically dumping fifty-pound bags of sand into the hopper that fed the sand blaster. He handled the bulky loads like they were sacrificial animals destined for some pagan altar, propping a bag on the lip of the hopper, slicing it open with a quick practiced movement of his knife and letting the sand pour in like blood for a god.

Jeff had been blasting for several hours and a large section of the railings, deck grating and upper stairway were clean. Mac was sweeping the sand into piles and shoveling it into barrels for later disposal onshore. Dumping the contaminated sand into the Gulf was illegal and punishable by high fines and jail time, neither of which Ed Sander’s little company could afford.