Everyone froze
Everyone just stood there.
Cook went for his gun, thinking that this had to be the very worst thing you could possibly hear on an old derelict: the sound of footsteps coming in your direction. He thanked God then and there than he was not alone. He wasn’t sure he could have handled this alone.
The footsteps stopped outside the hatch. They could hear someone out there, someone breathing hard as if they’d run a long way. Of course, in everyone’s mind, it was not that at all, it was something far worse. Some dead and dripping thing sheathed with fungus coming to pay them a call.
There was the sound of scraping as the latch was worked from the other side. That harsh breathing. The door opened a few inches and Saks, good old hardass Saks, pulled it open all the way and took hold of whoever-or whatever-was on the other side and pitched them or it to the floor with a quick, violent jerk of his hand.
It wasn’t an it.
It was a he.
And whoever he was, the moment Saks pitched him to the deck, he let out a wild surprised cry and tried to find his feet. At which point, Saks kicked him in the side with enough force to knock the wind out of him.
“That’s enough,” Cook told him.
The face looking up at them in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp was round and streaked with dirt. Great, sunken half-moons were dredged beneath staring eyes. The lips were trembling. The face belonged to a chubby little man wearing jeans and a denim shirt so greasy and filthy, it looked like they’d been used to clean out a chimney.
“You… you’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Not supposed to be on this ship… this is my ship… I’m supposed to be here, but not you…”
He was breathing hard with a rattling sound as if his lungs were clogged with phlegm.
“What’s your name?” Cook asked him.
“I… my name,” he said, examining his left hand like maybe it was written there. “I don’t know…”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Fabrini said. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“He’s crazier than a grub in shit,” Saks said with his usual sensitivity.
The man kept babbling, not making a squirt of sense. Something about how they were not supposed to be there, that them being there was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Maybe he has amnesia like in one of them movies,” Menhaus speculated.
But Cook found it hard to believe it was something so simple. Not here, not in this place. Whatever the reason was, he knew, it would be overblown and fantastic like everything else. What Cook was really wondering was: How long had this guy been aboard? Had he been here all the time, hiding from them or had he just arrived?
“Just tell us your name,” Fabrini said. “How you got here.”
But the guy just shook his head.
And Crycek, who’d been silent so far over the whole matter, said, “His name is Makowski, Bob Makowski. He was an oiler on the Mara, our ship. Guys called him ‘Slim’’’
Now all eyes were on Crycek.
“So why didn’t you say so?” Saks said.
“I wasn’t sure at first,” Crycek explained. “It looked like him. .. but that don’t mean nothing. Not here.”
They ignored that.
“Help him up,” Cook said.
Everyone stood there. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of touching him, as if maybe he was a ghost that would go to mist in their fingers or whatever had driven him crazy might be catchy.
“Give him a hand, shit-fer-brains,” Saks told Menhaus. “C’mon, Fabrini, get your hand out of your shorts. You heard the man.”
Grudgingly, they helped Makowski to his feet. He couldn’t stop staring at them as if he wasn’t convinced of their reality anymore than they were convinced of his.
“It’ll be okay, Slim,” Menhaus told him. “We’re all friends here.”
Which got a laugh out of Saks.
They brought him up to the main deck and then down to their cabins. They sat him on Menhaus’ bunk and tried to get something out of him. Which was about as easy as squeezing grape juice from a brick.
He just kept shaking his head as all those faces put questions to him.
He clutched his head in his hands, said, “I don’t remember how I got aboard… I remember drifting… I must have drifted here. Do you think that’s how it happened?”
Saks just shook his head. “Now he’s asking us. What a fucking piece of work this one is. Crycek? You sure he ain’t related to you?”
“You must remember something,” Cook said to him. “Just relax and try to remember. The ship went down in the fog… do you remember that?”
Makowski’s face twisted up like he’d bitten into a lemon. “The fog
… oh the fog… there’s voices in the fog… the voices.. . they told me things…”
Crycek had stepped back now, like maybe he’d smelled something on the guy he didn’t like. Or maybe he thought Makowski’s head was going to split open and a monster was going to jump out.
“He was probably hallucinating,” Menhaus said.
But Makowski shook his head. “No, no, no… I heard them, they told me things, they said-” he sketched his index finger in the air like he was writing words “-they told me to come here… they showed me how to get here.”
Saks shook his head. “This guy’s a real fucking treasure.”
“All right,” Fabrini said. “Can you at least tell us how long you’ve been here?”
Makowski just looked at him dumbly like the question had been spoken in Aramaic or low Latin.
“Don’t waste your time, Fabrini,” Saks said. “This guy don’t have no bristles on his broom.”
“You know, you’re not helping a thing here, Saks,” Cook told him. “Let’s just go easy.”
Saks laughed at the idea. Like maybe if he had his way, they’d throw Makowski’s useless ass over the side.
They kept at it another twenty or thirty minutes until it became pointless… if it hadn’t been before. Then they packed it in and decided to get some sleep. Saks’s watch, a digital, was still working and he told them it was getting on around eleven p.m. back in the real world.
“I suppose this crazy squirt of shit gets to bunk with us, eh?” Saks said. “Why not? Me and Menhaus, we already have Crycek. Might as well make it a full set.”
Cook sighed. “Well, I thought-”
“He ain’t sleeping with us,” Crycek said and you could see he meant it. “I’m not having this… guy sleeping with us. No damn way.”
“Now what’s your problem?” Fabrini said.
“My problem? Jesus Christ, are you all blind? Can’t you see it on him? Can’t you feel it? He isn’t right. Something got to him and there’s no way in hell I’d close my eyes with him nearby.”
“Oh, for chrissake,” Saks said.
But Crycek looked stern… and crazy, ready to do just about anything. “I mean it. He’s not sleeping with us.”
“Why, Crycek? Is he a fucking ghost?” Saks said.
“Maybe he is.”
Saks burst out laughing. “Oh, c’mon. Ghost, my white ass. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that Richard Simmons has a dick.”
Menhaus looked unhappy. “You know what? I’m pretty tired here. I’m goddamn hungry, worn out, and I’m not in the mood for this nonsense.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Crycek said. “I won’t sleep with him in our cabin.”
Makowski just looked around, confused.
“Good going,” Saks said. “Now you got Crycek all worked up again. C’mere, Crycek, let daddy hold you against his tit.”
“Shut up,” Fabrini said.
“All of you shut up.” Cook rubbed his temples, massaging away the headache they all gave him. “Crycek? You bunk with us. Menhaus? You take Makowski in with you.”
Saks seemed to approve. “Sounds good. We’ll take Mr. Slim Loony and you get Crycek. Give the three of you time to be alone. You can get a nice circle jerk going in there. Fabrini can do a striptease and show you his pussy.”
And that’s all it took.
Fabrini almost knocked Cook to the deck getting at Saks. He’d had his fill and now Saks was going to get his. He made it right over to him, Saks grinning the whole time. Fabrini reached out for him… and stopped.
Saks had his knife out and the blade was pressed to Fabrini’s belly.
“Go ahead, you fucking wop,” Saks told him. “If you got the stomach for it.”
Fabrini backed off, thinking about his own knife, but never pulling it because Cook and Menhaus got between them. Were both sick to death of this shit. Even jolly old Menhaus had had enough.
“Put it away, Saks,” Cook said. “You know, we’re all getting shit-tired of you and your mouth. And we’re getting really, really tired of your high school locker room wit. We’ve had enough. If you don’t have anything good to say, then kindly shut the fuck up.”
Saks laughed, put his knife away. “Take it easy, big chief. Don’t go getting pissed-off at me if Fabrini can’t take a joke. Shit, we all know that wop is an ass-pirate, don’t jump me over his lifestyle choices.”
“Just shut up, Saks,” Menhaus said. “For once in your life, just shut up.”
Saks started laughing. Menhaus getting a backbone to him was like Mister Rogers telling you to go fuck yourself.
Fabrini, calmer now, said, “You think we should post a watch?”
“Against what?” Menhaus asked.
“Nothing to watch against… unless you believe in ghosts, that is.” Saks thought the whole idea was pretty funny. “Besides, I’m not standing out in that goddamn corridor all night listening to Fabrini moan while Crycek puts the meat to him.”
“You mother… fucker,” Fabrini said low in his throat like the growl of a dog and launched himself at Saks again.
Menhaus and Cook stopped him, holding him back.
Crycek just stood there, managing to look amused and disturbed at the same time.
And Saks? He just smiled, loving it how he could push Fabrini’s buttons so easily. Loved the power he had over the man. And the thing was, he honestly wanted Fabrini to come at him, to get in real close. Maybe Cook had been partially right when he said that Saks had a deep-set fear of being alone and that he wouldn’t kill the others for that reason… but that fear didn’t extend to Fabrini. He would’ve killed Fabrini. Happily so. You could see it in his eyes.
And what broke off all the fun and games was Makowski getting up and walking over to the porthole and saying, “None of you belong here. None of you. Tonight… tonight she’ll come… and you can’t be here.”
“Who?” Cook said, chilled now.
Makowski turned and looked at them, a sick yellow smile on his face. His eyes were dark and empty like drained ponds. “You know who. .. and she won’t want you here…” Saks wasn’t smiling now.
If it was possible for him to be scared, he was now.