The Night Boat Page 11

  Kip, his teeth clenched around the match, his breath coming in short gasps, lowered himself carefully through the opening, his feet groping below for the rungs. He stepped onto the floor plates, splashing water, and waited for Moore to join him.

  They stood in a narrow, cramped chamber filled with pipes, flywheels, and complex machinery. Kip swung his light around and motioned. There were four sealed torpedo tubes at the bow, with hatches the size of upended kettle drums. Two torpedoes seemed to rise up from the floor plates on iron tracks; thick clumps of dried black grease, veined with a greenish fungus, clotted the tracks, but the torpedoes themselves seemed almost clean. Moore ran a hand along one of them.

  “Careful,” Kip cautioned, the sound of his voice an eerie noise that rang from one bulkhead to the next. He moved his light again, illuminating the thin, fungus-coated mattresses which had been hung on chains so they could be folded back when not in use. A narrow path led between the bunks into the black guts of the U-boat. Beneath the bottom bunks were more torpedoes, secured in place with metal clamps. Kip shined his light on the bulkheads; there were photographs, badly faded and hardly recognizable, still in place among the mattresses. A young dark-haired woman stood in the midst of an amusement park, smiling; a middle-aged man and woman embraced on a bench with a fountain in the background; there was a postcardlike photo of a huge house surrounded by woods; a pretty blond woman stood on skis, against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains, and waved to a lost love.

  The lights revealed crates stowed in every possible nook and cranny. A bucket had overturned, spilling out something that resembled thick, whitish globs. Everything was covered with the sickly hues of decay; a shoe, caught in the miniature swells made by the men’s movements, bumped against one of the stored torpedoes. Moore lowered his flashlight and saw what was left of a shirt, coiled like an octopus in a shadowy corner. Moore thought: And what happened to whoever wore that?

  Kip sloshed through the water, bent down and picked at the shirt. It fell into pieces in his hand, covering his fingers with a yellowish residue. He held a scrap of it before the light as if mesmerized by it, and then abruptly let it drop back into the water. The shirt fragments floated out of sight beneath a bunk. Kip wiped his hand on a trouser leg.

  A passageway stretched ahead of them. The air seemed putrid and thick here; Kip found it difficult to draw a full breath. There had probably been no air at all in here until that hatch was torched through, and not enough had circulated yet. Over the graveyard stench there was another odor: cloying, sickly sweet, harsh on the lungs. Some kind of noxious gas? Something that had been collecting inside here for forty-odd years? Kip waited until Moore’s light caught up with his and then he crouched forward, ducking under pipes, and started into the corridor. The darkness seemed to gnaw away at the lights, and up ahead small shadows scurried for safety. The men couldn’t walk side-by-side because the corridor wasn’t wide enough. It was like crawling down the throat of a huge beast into the sodden entanglement of tissues and organs and bone. “Jesus,” Moore said softly, hearing his voice jump back at him, “it’s hard to breathe in here. It’s a claustrophobic’s nightmare.”

  There was a large central pipe above them that wound its way through the boat like a rusted spine. Kip shined his light through one of the openings off to the side, toward a cramped storage space filled with crates, two more bare mattresses, and a table bolted to the floor plates. A row of white shirts hung from the ceiling, and more lay in water. He moved on, his shoes stirring swirls of rust and filth from the plates.

  The crewmen had gone about their duties here, all part of the efficient mechanism, like cogs in a terrible weapon. But how they managed to keep their sanity in this place day after day, week after week was beyond comprehension. The smell of humanity, of sweat, of cigarette smoke and urine mingled with the stenches of diesel oil and fuel must have been all but overpowering. Even now Moore felt trapped, as if the bulkheads and ceiling were gradually closing in on him, and he was walking downhill instead of straight ahead. What had started as an irritation had become a raw burning at the back of his throat, and when he drew in a guarded half-breath his lungs were seared. He heard Kip cough violently once, then again.

  Moore leaned inside the next opening, probing with the flashlight as Kip moved on ahead. On a metal table there was a radio console; a set of headphones dangled from wires, and a chair had been overturned. The shadows were deep and thick, clinging to the corners like solid cobwebs; they resisted the thin spear of light. Rising off the rotted debris in the water was that terrible crypt smell, dry and sweet. Moore drew back, inhaling sharply. He was about to rejoin Kip when he thought he heard something move.

  He froze, listening.

  There was only the sound of Kip moving ahead, sloshing water. The echoes were merging, doubling and tripling, vibrating full force off the bulkheads. Moore flashed his light into that radio room again. A pulpy mass bumped against the back of the chair, and it took him another moment to realize it was more torn rat carcasses, entrails floating behind. Rats down here? What had they done, gotten down into the boat after the hatch had been opened, lured by the smells of fetid food? But they were all mangled, ripped to pieces like the ones piled on the deck. He shuddered. How had that occurred? What in God’s name had done that?

  Moore backed away from the cabin, feeling the ooze of the water at his feet; he shined the light back in the direction they’d come. The sound he’d heard had been the noise of something moving back down the passageway; he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He kept his light steady for a few more seconds, and then he began to move toward his friend.

  Kip was examining the filth that floated around him: articles of tattered clothing—shirts, underwear, shoes—empty crates. There was part of a magazine, showing a picture of a girl coyly hiking a skirt up over a thigh. There was a date on it: November 1941. Racy stuff for that time, Kip thought. He was about to move on when a feeling of dizziness swept over him; he thrust a hand out against iron to keep himself from failing face-forward. Black spots swirled before his eyes and his lungs seemed filled with fire.

  Moore caught his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Just a minute,” Kip said thickly, trying to catch his breath. “There’s bad air in here, David.” He shook his head, waiting for the spots to clear. “Okay. I’m better now.”

  “Can you go on?”

  Kip nodded, looking ahead. Beyond the narrow beams of light the darkness was clinging and ominous, like something hideous and alive. On either side, fungus and rust had scrawled strange multicolored patterns. The boat was a fester of decay. Moore felt filthy and contaminated; his throat was burning but he made an effort to suppress the urge to cough. Oddly, he feared making more noise than was necessary. The lack of oxygen and the fumes were beginning to take their toll.

  Kip was sweating profusely, the droplets running down his arms and beading up on his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, wondering what it was that frightened him so much about being inside here. It was only a machine…a machine of war, yes…but now only a dilapidated relic of days past. It was not the closeness of the place, or the darkness, or the sense of being buried alive. No. It was something else, a sixth sense he had and had possessed all his life, that was now trying to whisper to him, to reach into his soul and shake it.

  Kip’s light moved past more openings on each side and came to rest on the outline of a sealed iron hatch farther down the passage.

  His legs began moving, sluggishly, and carried him to that hatch as if he were drawn to it. It was not closed after all, but cracked open an inch or so. An empty crate lay in his path and he pushed it aside. Before him was the grisly, crushed body of a large rat. Flesh still clung to the head and front half of the thing, but its hind quarters and stomach had been ripped away, leaving bare bone, as if something had been gnawing greedily at the carcass.

  Get out, he heard a whispering voice say; his skin crawled, writhing on his spine and arms. Ge
t out while you can.

  Moore stepped to one side of the passage and drew back the remnants of a green curtain; it fell away, across his arm. There was a bunk, a small writing table with a mold-smeared blotter, a few metal lockers. There was a paperweight, amid a clutter of old books and papers on the table, and Moore held it up to the light.

  It was a heavy glass cube, and a scorpion was frozen at its center. The gold letters etched across it, some of them chipped away by time, spelled out: WIL E M KO RIN, SEPTEMB R 1941. And directly beneath, a portion of a swastika. “Kip,” he said quietly. “Look at this.”

  Kip turned from the hatch and came over, shining the light around the small cubicle. He examined the paperweight for a moment and then handed it back to the other man. “I’d say this must have been the commander’s quarters,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “You’d best keep that. It’s probably all you’ll get to salvage off this goddamned crate.” Moore slid it beneath his shirt. It was like the touch of ice against his flesh.

  Kip focused his attention on the hatch again. He slid his fingers into the crack and pulled at it; steel grated across steel, but the hatch came open more easily than he expected. Wiping the sweat from his eyebrows, he aimed the light inside.

  “David…” Kip said, hoarsely, not moving from where he was. He didn’t think Moore had heard, so he called again, more loudly this time.

  “What is it?” Moore stood next to him and peered through, following his beam as it crept across the flooring.

  They were staring into the control room, the U-boat’s heart. At the ceiling hung a mass of pipes, flywheels, and tubing. There were banks of controls, rows of gauges and dials. The glass caught Kip’s light and glinted back. In the center of the room stood a chart table, surrounded by machinery and more gauges, their needles frozen in place. Equipment took up almost every inch. It was suspended from the ceiling in clusters, jammed into the corners: multiple rows of toggle switches, levers, flywheels, blank-faced dials.

  And something else.

  The corpses.

  Some of them were still at their stations, obedient to a long-dead commander, but now they wore the rags of uniforms; they were the ghost crew of a dead boat.

  And they had been mummified.

  One whose face was half-covered by a white veil of fungus had crossed his brown, shriveled arms on a table before him; a grinning, eyeless mask stared into their lights from the aft shadows; bone showed in a misshapen skull. Here were empty brown eye sockets, here one with the nose rotted away and the facial features collapsed around a cavernous hole. On the flooring, washed by less than an inch of water, a corpse stared directly at them, its mouth a straining O, broken teeth showing. More littered the rear of the control room, lying singly or in groups, some with facial features still distinct, others coated with yellow and gray fungus, which had covered them like a thick and creeping leprosy. The lack of oxygen had helped to preserve the bodies, had mummified them and left their flesh brown and crusty-looking. Skin was stretched tight over bones and tendons, and the dark eye sockets were deep, fathomless pits in front of solidified brain matter. In one corner a corpse held up both stiffened arms before its face, as if trying to hide from the lights.

  Kip released his breath from between clenched teeth. Moore could feel the tension holding his own body upright. Kip’s stomach was churning from the reek of decay. He coughed, the pain throbbing in his tissues. What was it? Gas, vapors oozing from the guts of the U-boat, from the aft section where the diesel engines lay? It was an airless crypt, an iron coffin that had taken these men to their deaths. There was an opening at the far end of the death-chamber; the men aimed their lights into it but they could see nothing except a murky curtain of black.

  “Must be other bodies back through here,” Kip heard himself say, realizing they were the first words to be spoken in this terrible place for nearly half a century. “Could be they were trapped in the aft section when this bastard headed down, and none of them could get out.”

  Moore shivered involuntarily, moving his light from corner to corner. The drawn, hideous faces stared back, as if watching them. The darkness seemed to be closing around him. The cone of light was a weapon of protection he held before him. The beam glinted across a bronze plaque mounted on a bulkhead: KIEL—1941. As he stared at it the lettering faded out of focus, and every breath he took seemed to draw the stench of decay deeper within him. He wiped his face, his skin cold and clammy. He could barely move his hand from his face, as if suddenly paralyzed.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Kip said, but the words were distant, muffled sounds. Kip coughed violently into his hand, and had to support himself again in the frame of the hatch.

  And then something in the aft section, beyond the range of their lights, clattered. The sharp sound of iron against iron riveted the men, raising the hair on their necks, causing their hearts to pound with the fear of the unknown.

  “Jesus,” Moore whispered. “Jesus, what was…”

  “Back away,” Kip said, slurring his words. “Back away from…”

  And then the hammering, the frenzied clattering of hellish noise, exploded through the aft opening and pounded at the two men before they could get away, the echoes building, sweeping wildly past them, filling the boat with more echoes, and more, a thousand others a hundred thousand others and no escape from it no way to get out get out get out get out…

  “GET OUT!” Kip shouted, his voice lost. He couldn’t see; the black motes had obscured his vision, and he could no longer make out his light. Moore reached for him, slowly, too slowly, grasping the man’s elbow and trying to pull him away from the hatch opening. The entire boat seemed to vibrate, and Moore heard something like the shrieks of the damned roaring in the passageway just above his head. He twisted around, staring into the control room, gritting his teeth in terror.

  Things stirred within, uncoiling themselves like reptiles rising from the water. A wave of cold, pure hatred hit the men like an icy blast. Moore could see the inhuman forms reaching out with black-taloned fingers, ruined faces gaping, black eyeholes now red and hungry. Moore pulled Kip back, shouting out but not knowing if he actually had because he couldn’t hear himself. He threw his full weight against the hatch, forcing it closed, and as he did he saw the greedy mouths open and the teeth glitter. Kip had turned and was staggering back down the passage, flailing at the unseen with his light. Moore started after him, tripping over a crate and falling to his knees in the water, losing his flashlight. He struggled up, dripping, trying to hold back the panic about to burst out of him. He fought on, locked in the nightmare, his feet thickened in the cement hold of the water. God what was it God what was it MY GOD WHAT WAS IT! He opened his mouth to cry out but all that emerged was a dry, dusty rattle, like the voice of something long buried. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT…

  Kip, almost blind with terror, tripped, slamming his head against a pipe. He struck out with his arm, cracking the bull’s-eye lantern against metal. It flickered to a dim yellow.

  And in the shadows that lay beyond him, between the two men and the way out, something was rising up, a skeletal thing with a half-consumed rat clutched in one clawlike hand. Kip tried to warn Moore, but he was struck dumb and frozen with fear. The thing’s other hand came up quickly, and an object flew at Kip’s face from the blackness, turning end over end, whistling as it passed his head. The hammer slammed into a bulkhead and bounced off even as Kip steeled himself and threw his lantern at the walking corpse. There was a sharp crash of shattering glass and then the darkness claimed all.

  Moore reached Kip and they stayed together, moving as rapidly as they could toward the bow section, still dazed and staggering. The light was growing stronger, the noises of hatred and madness falling behind. The open deck hatch was ahead, and the ladder. Moore grasped it and hurtled up into the rush of clean, pure air. He fell across the deck, the strength drained from him, and crawled toward the railing like a madman. Behind him Kip, his face a tight,
drawn mask, rocketed up and slid the heavy hatch lid back over the hole to seal it. He threw himself across it, breathing raggedly, shivering and unable to stop. He thought he must be losing his mind. “No,” he protested in a raw, pained voice. “NO!”

  Moore reached the port railing and leaned over, vomiting into the water. “What was that?” he said, wiping his face. Then he demanded in a choked whisper, “WHAT WAS THAT?”

  Kip listened. No sounds, no movement. He couldn’t stop shaking; his body was out of control. “They’re dead…” he spat out finally. “They’re DEAD!”

  And then the echo, coming up around them, engulfing them with a word that seemed strange and terrible.

  And untrue.

  Ten

  THE SQUARE-SHOULDERED black fisherman dealt cards to the four other poker players arranged around a central table in the Landfall Tavern. Evening was rapidly falling and the trawler crews had long since finished their labors. The place was now a maelstrom of noise and movement; on the other side of the plank-floored room a jukebox blared a raw, insistent reggae, and several of the men were trying unsuccessfully to get the bar girls to dance with them. It was Friday night, a time for drinking and wildness, tall tales, and an occasional fight to blow off steam, and with Saturday a market day the crews wouldn’t be working until Monday. Cigarette smoke swirled above the men’s heads, drawn by the lazily turning ceiling fans; glasses clinked against bottles, and there was a din of loud laughter and talking. On the rough plank walls tin signs advertising Red Stripe and Jaguar beers and Bacardi rums almost vibrated from the noise level.

  The card dealer settled back in his chair and calmly surveyed his hand. Then he looked from face to face, trying to read the other men’s hands from their expressions. They had been playing for over an hour and he had won most of their money; he was feeling loose now, all good and warm inside. He had been drinking hard on purpose, hitting the rum bottle time after time, because he wanted to forget the stories he’d heard about that young buck Turk. He had played cards with the man here in this bar, on another Friday night, and thinking about the way Turk had died unsettled him. There was no sense to it, no reason for it at all. Now Turk was cold and dead, lying on a slab over at the clinic. The dealer reached over for his bottle and swigged again. Damn. Could have been anybody lyin’ over there, he thought. Damn, it was a bad thing! He raised the rum bottle and took another slug; suddenly he didn’t feel quite so warm after all.