I

Somebody asked for the cigars. We had talked long, and the conversation was beginning to languish; the tobacco smoke had got into the heavy curtains, the wine had got into those brains which were liable to become heavy, and it was already perfectly evident that, unless somebody did something to rouse our oppressed spirits, the meeting would soon come to its natural conclusion, and we, the guests, would speedily go home to bed, and most certainly to sleep. No one had said anything very remarkable; it may be that no one had anything very remarkable to say. Jones had given us every particular of his last hunting adventure in Yorkshire. Mr. Tompkins, of Boston, had explained at elaborate length those working principles, by the due and careful maintenance of which the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad not only extended its territory, increased its departmental influence, and transported live stock without starving them to death before the day of actual delivery, but, also, had for years succeeded in deceiving those passengers who bought its tickets into the fallacious belief that the corporation aforesaid was really able to transport human life without destroying it. Signer Tombola had endeavoured to persuade us, by arguments which we took no trouble to oppose, that the unity of his country in no way resembled the average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the illimitable wastes of political chaos.

It is unnecessary to go into further details. The conversation had assumed proportions which would have bored Prometheus on his rock, which would have driven Tantalus to distraction, and which would have impelled Ixion to seek relaxation in the simple but instructive dialogues of Herr Ollendorff, rather than submit to the greater evil of listening to our talk. We had sat at table for hours; we were bored, we were tired, and nobody showed signs of moving.

Somebody called for cigars. We all instinctively looked towards the speaker. Brisbane was a man of five-and-thirty years of age, and remarkable for those gifts which chiefly attract the attention of men. He was a strong man. The external proportions of his figure presented nothing extraordinary to the common eye, though his size was above the average. He was a little over six feet in height, and moderately broad in the shoulder; he did not appear to be stout, but, on the other hand, he was certainly not thin; his small head was supported by a strong and sinewy neck; his broad, muscular hands appeared to possess a peculiar skill in breaking walnuts without the assistance of the ordinary cracker, and, seeing him in profile, one could not help remarking the extraordinary breadth of his sleeves, and the unusual thickness of his chest. He was one of those men who are commonly spoken of among men as deceptive; that is to say, that though he looked exceedingly strong he was in reality very much stronger than he looked. Of his features I need say little. His head is small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his nose is large, he has a small moustache, and a square jaw. Everybody knows Brisbane, and when he asked for a cigar everybody looked at him.

“It is a very singular thing,” said Brisbane.

Everybody stopped talking. Brisbane’s voice was not loud, but possessed a peculiar quality of penetrating general conversation, and cutting it like a knife. Everybody listened. Brisbane, perceiving that he had attracted their general attention, lit his cigar with great equanimity.

“It is very singular,” he continued, “that thing about ghosts. People are always asking whether anybody has seen a ghost. I have.”

“Bosh! What, you? You don’t mean to say so, Brisbane? Well, for a man of his intelligence!”

A chorus of exclamations greeted Brisbane’s remarkable statement. Everybody called for cigars, and Stubbs, the butler, suddenly appeared from the depths of nowhere with a fresh bottle of dry champagne. The situation was saved; Brisbane was going to tell a story.

I am an old sailor, said Brisbane, and as I have to cross the Atlantic pretty often, I have my favourites. Most men have their favourites. I have seen a man wait in a Broadway bar for three-quarters of an hour for a particular car which he liked. I believe the bar-keeper made at least one-third of his living by that man’s preference. I have a habit of waiting for certain ships when I am obliged to cross that duck-pond. It may be a prejudice, but I was never cheated out of a good passage but once in my life. I remember it very well; it was a warm morning in June, and the Custom House officials, who were hanging about waiting for a steamer already on her way up from the Quarantine, presented a peculiarly hazy and thoughtful appearance. I had not much luggage—I never have. I mingled with the crowd of passengers, porters, and officious individuals in blue coats and brass buttons, who seemed to spring up like mushrooms from the deck of a moored steamer to obtrude their unnecessary services upon the independent passenger. I have often noticed with a certain interest the spontaneous evolution of these fellows. They are not there when you arrive; five minutes after the pilot has called “Go ahead!” they, or at least their blue coats and brass buttons, have disappeared from deck and gangway as completely as though they had been consigned to that locker which tradition unanimously ascribes to Davy Jones. But, at the moment of starting, they are there, clean shaved, blue-coated, and ravenous for fees. I hastened on board. The Kamtschatka was one of my favourite ships. I say was, because she emphatically no longer is. I cannot conceive of any inducement which could entice me to make another voyage in her. Yes, I know what you are going to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft, she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower berths are most of them double. She has a lot of advantages, but I won’t cross in her again. Excuse the digression. I got on board. I hailed a steward, whose red nose and redder whiskers were equally familiar to me.

“One hundred and five, lower berth,” said I, in the business-like tone peculiar to men who think no more of crossing the Atlantic than taking a whisky cocktail at downtown Delmonico’s.

The steward took my portmanteau, great-coat, and rug. I shall never forget the expression of his face. Not that he turned pale. It is maintained by the most eminent divines that even miracles cannot change the course of nature. I have no hesitation in saying that he did not turn pale; but, from his expression, I judged that he was either about to shed tears, to sneeze, or to drop my portmanteau. As the latter contained two bottles of particularly fine old sherry presented to me for my voyage by my old friend Snigginson van Pickyns, I I felt extremely nervous. But the steward did none of these things.

“Well, I’m d——d!” said he in a low voice, and led the way.

I supposed my Hermes, as he led me to the lower regions, had had a little grog, but I said nothing, and followed him. One hundred and five was on the port side, well aft. There was nothing remarkable about the state-room. The lower berth, like most of those upon the Kamtschatka, was double. There was plenty of room; there was the usual washing apparatus, calculated to convey an idea of luxury to the mind of a North American Indian; there were the usual inefficient racks of brown wood, in which it is more easy to hang a large-sized umbrella than the common tooth-brush of commerce. Upon the uninviting mattresses were carefully folded together those blankets which a great modern humorist has aptly compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odour less faint, but not more pleasing, ascended to the nostrils, like a far-off sea-sick reminiscence of oily machinery. Sad-coloured curtains half closed the upper berth. The hazy June daylight shed a faint illumination upon the desolate little scene. Ugh! how I hate that state-room!

The steward deposited my traps and looked at me, as though he wanted to get away—probably in search of more passengers and more fees. It is always a good plan to start in favour with those functionaries, and I accordingly gave him certain coins there and then.

“I’ll try and make yer comfortable all I can,” he remarked, as he put the coins in his pocket. Nevertheless, there was a doubtful intonation in his voice which surprised me. Possibly his scale of fees had gone up, and he was not satisfied; but on the whole I was inclined to think that, as he himself would have expressed it, he was “the better for a glass.” I was wrong, however, and did the man injustice.

II

Nothing especially worthy of mention occurred during that day. We left the pier punctually, and it was very pleasant to be fairly under way, for the weather was warm and sultry, and the motion of the steamer produced a refreshing breeze. Everybody knows what the first day at sea is like. People pace the decks and stare at each other, and occasionally meet acquaintances whom they did not know to be on board. There is the usual uncertainty as to whether the food will be good, bad, or indifferent, until the first two meals have put the matter beyond a doubt; there is the usual uncertainty about the weather, until the ship is fairly off Fire Island. The tables are crowded at first, and then suddenly thinned. Pale-faced people spring from their seats and precipitate themselves towards the door, and each old sailor breathes more freely as his seasick neighbour rushes from his side, leaving him plenty of elbow-room and an unlimited command over the mustard. One passage across the Atlantic is very much like another, and we who cross very often do not make the voyage for the sake of novelty. Whales and icebergs are indeed always objects of interest, but, after all, one whale is very much like another whale, and one rarely sees an iceberg at close quarters. To the majority of us the most delightful moment of the day on board an ocean steamer is when we have taken our last turn on deck, have smoked our last cigar, and having succeeded in tiring ourselves, feel at liberty to turn in with a clear conscience. On that first night of the voyage I felt particularly lazy, and went to bed in 105 rather earlier than I usually do. As I turned in, I was amazed to see that I was to have a companion. A portmanteau, very like my own, lay in the opposite corner, and in the upper berth had been deposited a neatly folded rug, with a stick and umbrella. I had hoped to be alone, and I was disappointed; but I wondered who my room-mate was to be, and I determined to have a look at him.

Before I had been long in bed he entered. He was, as far as I could see, a very tall man, very thin, very pale, with sandy hair and whiskers and colourless grey eyes. He had about him, I thought, an air of rather dubious fashion; the sort of man you might see in Wall Street, without being able precisely to say what he was doing there—the sort of man who frequents the Café Anglais, who always seems to be alone and who drinks champagne; you might meet him on a racecourse, but he would never appear to be doing anything there either. A little overdressed—a little odd. There are three or four of his kind on every ocean steamer. I made up my mind that I did not care to make his acquaintance, and I went to sleep saying to myself that I would study his habits in order to avoid him. If he rose early, I would rise late; if he went to bed late, I would go to bed early. I did not care to know him. If you once know people of that kind they are always turning up. Poor fellow! I need not have taken the trouble to come to so many decisions about him, for I never saw him again after that first night in 105.

I was sleeping soundly when I was suddenly waked by a loud noise. To judge from the sound, my room-mate must have sprung with a single leap from the upper berth to the floor. I heard him fumbling with the latch and bolt of the door, which opened almost immediately, and then I heard his footsteps as he ran at full speed down the passage, leaving the door open behind him. The ship was rolling a little, and I expected to hear him stumble or fall, but he ran as though he were running for his life. The door swung on its hinges with the motion of the vessel, and the sound annoyed me. I got up and shut it, and groped my way back to my berth in the darkness. I went to sleep again; but I have no idea how long I slept.

When I awoke it was still quite dark, but I felt a disagreeable sensation of cold, and it seemed to me that the air was damp. You know the peculiar smell of a cabin which has been wet with sea-water. I covered myself up as well as I could and dozed off again, framing complaints to be made the next day, and selecting the most powerful epithets in the language. I could hear my room-mate turn over in the upper berth. He had probably returned while I was asleep. Once I thought I heard him groan, and I argued that he was sea-sick. That is particularly unpleasant when one is below. Nevertheless I dozed off and slept till early daylight.

The ship was rolling heavily, much more than on the previous evening, and the grey light which came in through the porthole changed in tint with every movement according as the angle of the vessel’s side turned the glass seawards or skywards. It was very cold—unaccountably so for the month of June. I turned my head and looked at the porthole, and saw to my surprise that it was wide open and hooked back. I believe I swore audibly. Then I got up and shut it. As I turned back I glanced at the upper berth. The curtains were drawn close together; my companion had probably felt cold as well as I. It struck me that I had slept enough. The state-room was uncomfortable, though, strange to say, I could not smell the dampness which had annoyed me in the night. My room-mate was still asleep—excellent opportunity for avoiding him, so I dressed at once and went on deck. The day was warm and cloudy, with an oily smell on the water. It was seven o’clock as I came out—much later than I had imagined. I came across the doctor, who was taking his first sniff of the morning air. He was a young man from the West of Ireland—a tremendous fellow, with black hair and blue eyes, already inclined to be stout; he had a happy-go-lucky, healthy look about him which was rather attractive.

“Fine morning,” I remarked, by way of introduction.

“Well,” said he, eyeing me with an air of ready interest, “it’s a fine morning and it’s not a fine morning. I don’t think it’s much of a morning.”

“Well, no—it is not so very fine,” said I.

“It’s just what I call fuggly weather,” replied the doctor.

“It was very cold last night, I thought,” I remarked, “However, when I looked about, I found that the porthole was wide open. I had not noticed it when I went to bed. And the state-room was damp, too.”

“Damp!” said he. “Whereabouts are you?”

“One hundred and five——”

To my surprise the doctor started visibly, and stared at me.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“Oh—nothing,” he answered; “Only everybody has complained of that state-room for the last three trips.”

“I shall complain, too,” I said. “It has certainly not been properly aired. It is a shame!”

“I don’t believe it can be helped,” answered the doctor. “I believe there is something—well, it is not my business to frighten passengers.”

“You need not be afraid of frightening me,” I replied. “I can stand any amount of damp.’ If I should get a bad cold I will come to you.”

I offered the doctor a cigar, which he took and examined very critically.

“It is not so much the damp,” he remarked. “However, I dare say you will get on very well. Have you a room-mate?”

“Yes; a deuce of a fellow, who bolts out in the middle of the night, and leaves the door open.”

Again the doctor glanced curiously at me. Then he lit the cigar and looked grave.

“Did he come back?” he asked presently.

“Yes. I was asleep, but I waked up, and heard him moving. Then I felt cold and went to sleep again. This morning I found the porthole open.”

“Look here,” said the doctor quietly, “I don’t care much for this ship. I don’t care a rap for her reputation. I tell you what I will do. I have a good-sized place up here. I will share it with you, though I don’t know you from Adam.”

I was very much surprised at the proposition. I could not imagine why he should take such a sudden interest in my welfare. However, his manner as he spoke of the ship was peculiar.

“You are very good, doctor,” I said. “But, really, I believe even now the cabin could be aired, or cleaned out, or something. Why do you not care for the ship?”

“We are not superstitious in our profession, sir,” replied the doctor, “but the sea makes people so. I don’t want to prejudice you, and I don’t want to frighten you, but if you will take my advice you will move in here. I would as soon see you overboard,” he added earnestly, “as know that you or any other man was to sleep in 105.”

“Good gracious! Why?” I asked.

“Just because on the last three trips the people who have slept there actually have gone overboard,” he answered gravely.

The intelligence was startling and exceedingly unpleasant, I confess. I looked hard at the doctor to see whether he was making game of me, but he looked perfectly serious. I thanked him warmly for his offer, but told him I intended to be the exception to the rule by which everyone who slept in that particular state-room went overboard. He did not say much, but looked as grave as ever, and hinted that, before we got across, I should probably reconsider his proposal. In the course of time we went to breakfast, at which only an inconsiderable number of passengers assembled. I noticed that one or two of the officers who breakfasted with us looked grave. After breakfast I went into my state-room in order to get a book. The curtains of the upper berth were still closely drawn. Not a word was to be heard. My room-mate was probably still asleep.

As I came out I met the steward whose business it was to look after me. He whispered that the captain wanted to see me, and then scuttled away down the passage as if very anxious to avoid any questions. I went toward the captain’s cabin, and found him waiting for me.

“Sir,” said he, “I want to ask a favour of you.”

I answered that I would do anything to oblige him.

“Your room-mate has disappeared,” he said. “He is known to have turned in early last night. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his manner?”

The question coming, as it did, in exact confirmation of the fears the doctor had expressed half an hour earlier, staggered me.

“You don’t mean to say he has gone overboard?” I asked.

“I fear he has,” answered the captain.

“This is the most extraordinary thing——” I began.

“Why?” he asked.

“He is the fourth, then?” I explained. In answer to another question from the captain, I explained, without mentioning the doctor, that I had heard the story concerning 105. He seemed very much annoyed at hearing that I knew of it. I told him what had occurred in the night.

“What you say,” he replied, “coincides almost exactly with what was told me by the room-mates of two of the other three. They bolt out of bed and run down the passage. Two of them were seen to go overboard by the watch; we stopped and lowered boats, but they were not found. Nobody, however, saw or heard the man who was lost last night—if he is really lost. The steward, who is a superstitious fellow, perhaps, and expected something to go wrong, went to look for him this morning, and found his berth empty, but his clothes lying about, just as he had left them. The steward was the only man on board who knew him by sight, and he has been searching everywhere for him. He has disappeared! Now, sir, I want to beg you not to mention the circumstance to any of the passengers; I don’t want the ship to get a bad name, and nothing hangs about an ocean-goer like stories of suicides. You shall have your choice of any one of the officers’ cabins you like, including my own, for the rest of the passage. Is that a fair bargain?”

“Very,” said I; “and I am much obliged to you. But since I am alone, and have the state-room to myself, I would rather not move. If the steward will take out that unfortunate man’s things, I would as lief stay where I am. I will not say anything about the matter, and I think I can promise you that I will not follow my room-mate.”

The captain tried to dissuade me from my intention, but I preferred having a state-room alone to being the chum of any officer on board. I do not know whether I acted foolishly, but if I had taken his advice I should have had nothing more to tell; There would have remained the disagreeable coincidence of several suicides occurring among men who had slept in the same cabin, but that would have been all.

That was not the end of the matter, however, by any means. I obstinately made up my mind that I would not be disturbed by such tales, and I even went so far as to argue the question with the captain. There was something wrong about the state-room, I said. It was rather damp. The porthole had been left open last night. My room-mate might have been ill when he came on board, and he might have become delirious after he went to bed. He might even now be hiding somewhere on board, and might be found later. The place ought to be aired and the fastening of the port looked to. If the captain would give me leave, I would see that what I thought necessary was done immediately.

“Of course you have a right to stay where you are if you please,” he replied, rather petulantly; “but I wish you would turn out and let me lock the place up, and be done with it.”

I did not see it in the same light, and left the captain, after promising to be silent concerning the disappearance of my companion. The latter had had no acquaintances on board, and was not missed in the course of the day. Towards evening I met the doctor again, and he asked me whether I had changed my mind. I told him I had not.

“Then you will before long,” he said, very gravely.

III

We played whist in the evening, and I went to bed late. I will confess now that I felt a disagreeable sensation when I entered my state-room. I could not help thinking of the tall man I had seen on the previous night, who was now dead, drowned, tossing about in the long swell, two or three hundred miles astern. His face rose very distinctly before me as I undressed, and I even went so far as to draw back the curtains of the upper berth, as though to persuade myself that he was actually gone. I also bolted the door of the state-room. Suddenly I became aware that the porthole was open, and fastened back. This was more than I could stand. I hastily threw on my dressing-gown and went in search of Robert, the steward of my passage. I was very angry, I remember, and when I found him I dragged him roughly to the door of 105, and pushed him towards the open porthole.

“What the deuce do you mean, you scoundrel, by leaving that port open every night? Don’t you know it is against the regulations? Don’t you know that if the ship heeled and the water began to come in, ten men could not shut it? I will report you to the captain, you blackguard, for endangering the ship!”

I was exceedingly wroth. The man trembled and turned pale, and then began to shut the round glass plate with the heavy brass fittings.

“Why don’t you answer me?” I said roughly.

“If you please, sir,” faltered Robert, “there’s nobody on board as can keep this ‘ere port shut at night. You can try it yourself, sir. I ain’t a‑going to stop hany longer on board o’ this vessel, sir; I ain’t, indeed. But if I was you, sir, I’d just clear out and go and sleep with the surgeon, or something, I would. Look ‘ere, sir, is that fastened what you may call securely, or not, sir? Try it, sir, see if it will move a hinch.”

I tried the port, and found it perfectly tight.

“Well, sir,” continued Robert triumphantly, “I wager my reputation as a A1 steward that in ‘arf an hour it will be open again; fastened back, too, sir, that’s the horful thing—fastened back!”

I examined the great screw and the looped nut that ran on it.

“If I find it open in the night, Robert, I will give you a sovereign. It is not possible. You may go.”

“Soverin’ did you say, sir? Very good, sir. Thank ye, sir. Good night, sir. Pleasant reepose, sir, and all manner of hinchantin’ dreams, sir.”

Robert scuttled away, delighted at being released. Of course, I thought he was trying to account for his negligence by a silly story, intended to frighten me, and I disbelieved him. The consequence was that he got his sovereign, and I spent a very peculiarly unpleasant night.

I went to bed, and five minutes after I had rolled myself up in my blankets the inexorable Robert extinguished the light that burned steadily behind the ground-glass pane near the door. I lay quite still in the dark trying to go to sleep, but I soon found that impossible. It had been some satisfaction to be angry with the steward, and the diversion had banished that unpleasant sensation I had at first experienced when I thought of the drowned man who had been my chum; but I was no longer sleepy, and I lay awake for some time, occasionally glancing at the porthole, which I could just see from where I lay, and which, in the darkness, looked like a faintly luminous soup-plate suspended in blackness. I believe I must have lain there for an hour, and, as I remember, I was just dozing into sleep when I was roused by a draught of cold air, and by distinctly feeling the spray of the sea blown upon my face. I started to my feet, and not having allowed in the dark for the motion of the ship, I was instantly thrown violently across the state-room upon the couch which was placed beneath the porthole. I recovered myself immediately, however, and climbed upon my knees. The porthole was again wide open and fastened back!

Now these things are facts. I was wide awake when I got up, and I should certainly have been waked by the fall had I still been dozing. Moreover, I bruised my elbows and knees badly, and the bruises were there on the following morning to testify to the fact, if I myself had doubted it. The porthole was wide open and fastened back—a thing so unaccountable that I remember very well feeling astonishment rather than fear when I discovered it. I at once closed the plate again, and screwed down the loop nut with all my strength. It was very dark in the state-room. I reflected that the port had certainly been opened within an hour after Robert had at first shut it in my presence, and I determined to watch it, and see whether it would open again. Those brass fittings are very heavy and by no means easy to move; I could not believe that the clump had been turned by the shaking of the screw. I stood peering out through the thick glass at the alternate white and grey streaks of the sea that foamed beneath the ship’s side. I must have remained there a quarter of an hour. Suddenly, as I stood, I distinctly heard something moving behind me in one of the berths, and a moment afterwards, just as I turned instinctively to look—though I could, of course, see nothing in the darkness—I heard a very faint groan. I sprang across the state-room, and tore the curtains of the upper berth aside, thrusting in my hands to discover if there were any one there. There was someone.

I remember that the sensation as I put my hands forward was as though I were plunging them into the air of a damp cellar, and from behind the curtains came a gust of wind that smelled horribly of stagnant sea-water. I laid hold of something that had the shape of a man’s arm, but was smooth, and wet, and icy cold. But suddenly, as I pulled, the creature sprang violently forward against me, a clammy, oozy mass, as it seemed to me, heavy and wet, yet endowed with a sort of supernatural strength. I reeled across the state-room, and in an instant the door opened and the thing rushed out. I had not had time to be frightened, and quickly recovering myself, I sprang through the door and gave chase at the top of my speed, but I was too late. Ten yards before me I could see—I am sure I saw it—a dark shadow moving in the dimly lighted passage, quickly as the shadow of a fast horse thrown before a dog-cart by the lamp on a dark night. But in a moment it had disappeared, and I found myself holding on to the polished rail that ran along the bulkhead where the passage turned towards the companion. My hair stood on end, and the cold perspiration rolled down my face. I am not ashamed of it in the least: I was very badly frightened.

Still I doubted my senses, and pulled myself together. It was absurd, I thought. The Welsh rarebit I had eaten had disagreed with me. I had been in a nightmare. I made my way back to my state-room, and entered it with an effort. The whole place smelled of stagnant sea-water, as it had when I had waked on the previous evening. It required my utmost strength to go in, and grope among my things for a box of wax lights. As I lighted a railway reading lantern which I always carry in case I want to read after the lamps are out, I perceived that the porthole was again open, and a sort of creeping horror began to take possession of me which I never felt before, nor wish to feel again. But I got a light and proceeded to examine the upper berth, expecting to find it drenched with sea-water.

But I was disappointed. The bed had been slept in, and the smell of the sea was strong; but the bedding was as dry as a bone. I fancied that Robert had not had the courage to make the bed after the accident of the previous night—it had all been a hideous dream. I drew the curtains back as far as I could and examined the place very carefully. It was perfectly dry. But the porthole was open again. With a sort of dull bewilderment of horror I closed it and screwed it down, and thrusting my heavy stick through the brass loop, wrenched it with all my might, till the thick metal began to bend under the pressure. Then I hooked my reading lantern into the red velvet at the head of the couch, and sat down to recover my senses if I could. I sat there all night, unable to think of rest—hardly able to think at all. But the porthole remained closed, and I did not believe it would now open again without the application of a considerable force.

The morning dawned at last, and I dressed myself slowly, thinking over all that had happened in the night. It was a beautiful day and I went on deck, glad to get out into the early, pure sunshine, and to smell the breeze from the blue water, so different from the noisome, stagnant odour of my state-room. Instinctively I turned aft, towards the surgeon’s cabin. There he stood, with a pipe in his mouth, taking his morning airing precisely as on the preceding day.

“Good morning,” said he quietly, but looking at me with evident curiosity.

“Doctor, you were quite right,” said I. “There is something wrong about that place.”

“I thought you would change your mind,” he answered, rather triumphantly. “You have had a bad night, eh? Shall I make you a pick-me-up? I have a capital recipe.”

“No, thanks,” I cried. “But I would like to tell you what happened.”

I then tried to explain as clearly as possible precisely what had occurred, not omitting to state that I had been scared as I had never been scared in my whole life before. I dwelt particularly on the phenomenon of the porthole, which was a fact to which I could testify, even if the rest had been an illusion. I had closed it twice in the night, and the second time I had actually bent the brass in wrenching it with my stick. I believe I insisted a good deal on this point.

“You seem to think I am likely to doubt the story,” said the doctor, smiling at the detailed account of the state of the porthole. “I do not doubt it in the least. I renew my invitation to you. Bring your traps here, and take half my cabin.”

“Come and take half of mine for one night,” I said. “Help me to get at the bottom of this thing.”

“You will get to the bottom of something else if you try,” answered the doctor.

“What?” I asked.

“The bottom of the sea. I am going to leave this ship. It is not canny.”

“Then you will not help me to find out——”

“Not I,” said the doctor quickly. “It is my business to keep my wits about me—not to go fiddling about with ghosts and things.”

“Do you really believe it is a ghost?” I enquired, rather contemptuously. But as I spoke I remembered very well the horrible sensation of the supernatural which had got possession of me during the night. The doctor turned sharply on me.

“Have you any reasonable explanation of these things to offer?” he asked. “No; you have not. Well, you say you will find an explanation. I say that you won’t, sir, simply because there is not any.”

“But, my dear sir,” I retorted, “do you, a man of science, mean to tell me that such things cannot be explained?”

“I do,” he answered stoutly. “And, if they could, I would not be concerned in the explanation.”

I did not care to spend another night alone in the state-room, and yet I was obstinately determined to get at the root of the disturbances. I do not believe there are many men who would have slept there alone, after passing two such nights. But I made up my mind to try it, if I could not get any one to share a watch with me. The doctor was evidently not inclined for such an experiment. He said he was a surgeon, and that in case any accident occurred on board he must be always in readiness. He could not afford to have his nerves unsettled. Perhaps he was quite right, but I am inclined to think that his precaution was prompted by his inclination. On enquiry, he informed me that there was no one on board who would be likely to join me in my investigations, and after a little more conversation I left him. A little later I met the captain, and told him my story. I said that, if no one would spend the night with me, I would ask leave to have the light burning all night, and would try it alone.

“Look here,” said he, “I will tell you what I will do. I will share your watch myself, and we will see what happens. It is my belief that we can find out between us. There may be some fellow skulking on board, who steals a passage by frightening the passengers. It is just possible that there may be something queer in the carpentering of that berth.”

I suggested taking the ship’s carpenter below and examining the place; but I was overjoyed at the captain’s offer to spend the night with me. He accordingly sent for the workman and ordered him to do anything I required. We went below at once. I had all the bedding cleared out of the upper berth, and we examined the place thoroughly to see if there was a board loose anywhere, or a panel which could be opened or pushed aside. We tried the planks everywhere, tapped the flooring, unscrewed the fittings of the lower berth and took it to pieces—in short, there was not a square inch of the stateroom which was not searched and tested. Everything was in perfect order, and we put everything back in its place. As we were finishing our work, Robert came to the door and looked in.

“Well, sir—find anything, sir?” he asked, with a ghastly grin.

“You were right about the porthole, Robert,” I said, and I gave him the promised sovereign. The carpenter did his work silently and skilfully, following my directions. When he had done he spoke.

“I’m a plain man, sir,” he said. “But it’s my belief you had better just turn out your things, and let me run half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of this cabin. There’s no good never came o’ this cabin yet, sir, and that’s all about it. There’s been four lives lost out o’ here to my own remembrance, and that in four trips. Better give it up, sir—better give it up!”

“I will try it for one night more,” I said.

“Better give it up, sir—better give it up! It’s a precious bad job,” repeated the workman, putting his tools in his bag and leaving the cabin.

But my spirits had risen considerably at the prospect of having the captain’s company, and I made up my mind not to be prevented from going to the end of the strange business. I abstained from Welsh rarebits and grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist. I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to make a good figure in the captain’s eyes.

IV

The captain was one of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew it.

About ten o’clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came up to me, and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.

“This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane,” he said. “We must make up our minds either way—-to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of it. You see I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens to-night we will try it again to-morrow and next day. Are you ready?” So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage, watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and bolted it.

“Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door,” he suggested. “One of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed down?”

I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the captain’s advice I lighted my reading lantern, and placed it so that it shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had sat before the door.

Then he requested me to search the state-room thoroughly, an operation very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were quite empty.

“It is impossible for any human being to get in,” I said, “or for any human being to open the port.”

“Very good,” said the captain calmly. “If we see anything now, it must be either imagination or something supernatural.”

I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.

“The first time it happened,” said the captain, crossing his legs and leaning back against the door, “was in March. The passenger who slept here, in the upper berth, turned out to have been a lunatic—at all events, he was known to have been a little touched, and he had taken his passage without the knowledge of his friends. He rushed out in the middle of the night and threw himself overboard, before the officer who had the watch could stop him. We stopped and lowered a boat; it was a quiet night, just before that heavy weather came on; but we could not find him. Of course, his suicide was afterwards accounted for on the ground of his insanity.”

“I suppose that often happens?” I remarked, rather absently.

“Not often—no,” said the captain; “never before in my experience, though I have heard of it happening on board of other ships. Well, as I was saying, that occurred in March. On the very next trip——What are you looking at?” he asked, stopping suddenly in his narration.

I believe I gave no answer. My eyes were riveted upon the porthole. It seemed to me that the brass loop-nut was beginning to turn very slowly upon the screw—so slowly, however, that I was not sure it moved at all. I watched it intently, fixing its position in my mind, and trying to ascertain whether it changed. Seeing where I was looking, the captain looked, too.

“It moves!” he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction. “No, it does not,” he added, after a minute.

“If it were the jarring of the screw,” said I, “it would have opened during the day; but I found it this evening jammed tight as I left it this morning.”

I rose and tried the nut. It was certainly loosened, for by an effort I could move it with my hands.

“The queer thing,” said the captain, “is that the second man who was lost is supposed to have got through that very port. We had a terrible time over it. It was in the middle of the night, and the weather was very heavy; there was an alarm that one of the ports was open and the sea running in. I came below and found everything flooded, the water pouring in every time she rolled, and the whole port swinging from the top bolts—not the porthole in the middle. Well, we managed to shut it, but the water did some damage. Ever since that the place smells of sea-water from time to time. We supposed the passenger had thrown himself out, though the Lord only knows how he did it. The steward kept telling me that he cannot keep anything shut here. Upon my word—I can smell it now, cannot you?” he enquired, sniffing the air suspiciously.

“Yes—distinctly,” I said, and I shuddered as that same odour of stagnant sea-water grew stronger in the cabin. “Now, to smell like this, the place must be damp,” I continued, “and yet when I examined it with the carpenter this morning everything was perfectly dry. It is most extraordinary—hallo!”

My reading lantern, which had been placed in the upper berth, was suddenly extinguished. There was still a good deal of light from the pane of ground glass near the door, behind which loomed the regulation lamp. The ship rolled heavily, and the curtain of the upper berth swung far out into the state-room and back again. I rose quickly from my seat on the edge of the bed, and the captain at the same moment started to his feet with a loud cry of surprise. I had turned with the intention of taking down the lantern to examine it, when I heard his exclamation, and immediately afterwards his call for help. I sprang towards him. He was wrestling with all his might with the brass loop of the port. It seemed to turn against his hands in spite of all his efforts. I caught up my cane, a heavy oak stick I always used to carry, and thrust it through the ring and bore on it with all my strength. But the strong wood snapped suddenly and I fell upon the couch. When I rose again the port was wide open, and the captain was standing with his back against the door, pale to the lips.

“There is something in that berth!” he cried, in a strange voice, his eyes almost starting from his head. “Hold the door, while I look—it shall not escape us, whatever it is!”

But instead of taking his place, I sprang upon the lower bed, and seized something which lay in the upper berth.

It was something ghostly, horrible beyond words, and it moved in my grip. It was like the body of a man long drowned, and yet it moved, and had the strength of ten men living; but I gripped it with all my might—the slippery, oozy, horrible thing—the dead white eyes seemed to stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odour of rank sea-water was about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face. I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me back and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse’s arms about my neck, the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud and fell, and left my hold.

As I fell the thing sprang across me, and seemed to throw itself upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an inarticulate cry of horror.

The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body, and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and instantly I knew that my arm was broken—the small bone of the left forearm near the wrist.

I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.

Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of 105; and if ever you take a passage in the Kamtschatka, you may ask for a berth in that state-room. You will be told that it is engaged—yes—it is engaged by that dead thing.

I finished the trip in the surgeon’s cabin. He doctored my broken arm, and advised me not to “fiddle about with ghosts and things” any more. The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost—if it was a ghost. It was dead, anyhow.

The post The Upper Berth appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Mark Feldmeier was too old for family vacations, but no one had invited him anywhere else. Unless he wanted to stay home alone for a week in an empty house in Milwaukee, he had no choice but to accompany his parents and little sister on their kid-friendly Caribbean cruise. Yes, this was a supremely dorky way for a nineteen year old to spend his spring break, but Mark secretly thought he might prefer playing Go Fish with his family to getting wasted in Cancun alongside a horde of other college students. After all, he wasn’t really the partying type.

“Ahoy there, landlubbers,” the speakers sang out as Mark and his family boarded the ship. “Welcome aboard the Fiesta Rainbow, departing from San Juan and making stops in Grenada, Barbados, Dominica, Antigua, and St. Bart’s. We’re proud to tell you that this ship truly lives up to its name: in charge of your experience this week are staff members from over fifty different countries, including Armenia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Canada, Cyprus, Fiji, Singapore, South Africa, Venezuela, and more. We all take great pleasure in ensuring that you have a truly joyful experience aboard the Rainbow, so pleased sit back, relax, and get ready to soak up our special Fiesta brand of love.”

As the three thousand passengers trudged, cattle-like, up the gangway, a wave of enthusiastic applause crashed over them, and Mark cringed. Contrary to his expectations, he was far from the only person his age on the Rainbow. Lining the decks were hundreds of beautiful, well-groomed young people, all smiling identical, dazzling grins.

***

The Fiesta brand of love was the stuff of a shy person’s nightmares. Everywhere Mark turned, he was met by another devastatingly good-looking staff member who was eager to accost him with cheer. There was Marisol, the cruise safety specialist from Argentina, who tightened his life jacket for him, her coral-painted fingernails brushing his chest; Asha, the Indian blackjack dealer, who passed him his chips with a wink, and white-blonde Hilje, from Estonia, who announced gleefully that she would be his family’s server for the whole week.

As Hilje launched into her dinnertime patter, charming his sister, flattering his mother, and flirting with his dad, Mark hunched his shoulders up to his ears and wished he could fling himself into the ocean. He didn’t understand how his family could bask so unselfconsciously in Hilje’s practiced corporate warmth—it was like they didn’t even notice that she used the same canned lines on the table right next to them, and that her beaming smile never quite reached her eyes.

On the second afternoon of the cruise, Mark sat by one of the Rainbow’s seventeen pools, nursing a miserable crush on Hilje and loathing himself. God, how the staff must hate the passengers, all of them: they were greedy, oblivious monsters, adults and children alike. The chaotic buffet line was a riot of snouts shoved into muck; the pools a seething mass of pink and brown flesh. At night, when the kids went to bed, it only got worse: the adults turned into cackling drunkards, leering at each other in front of their spouses and leaving their vomit in the elevators for the staff to clean up.

Overnight, the Rainbow had slid into port, and this morning it had ejected a bolus of passengers onto a rounded green island that looked smaller than the ship itself. Mark had stayed onboard, hoping for a little bit of peace and quiet, but the number of people on the Rainbow appeared to be constant; the discharge of a thousand tourists onto the island had done nothing to ease the mind-numbing thrum of the crowd.

Mark applied another layer of clotted, coconut-scented sunblock and tried to come up with a joke that might earn a genuine smile from Hilje, but failed. Maybe he could ask her a question about Estonia? The problem was that when it came to Estonia, Mark had lots of questions, but they were basic ones like, where is it? and do they speak English there? that seemed profoundly unlikely to charm.

Mark was trying to remember the name of Estonia’s capital (Riga? Tallinn? Minsk?) when a very small, very tanned child climbed out of the pool, dashed past the “No Running” sign, slipped in some water, and cracked its face against the leg of Mark’s chair.

“Shoot,” Mark said. “Are you okay?” The child goggled at Mark, wild-eyed, its mouth a red puddle of blood. Mark looked around for help, but Sven, the Swedish lifeguard, was too busy wrangling a feral pack of unsupervised preteens to be of any help. Mark stood up, searching for worried adult faces that bore some resemblance to the one bleeding in front of him. He didn’t see any, but he did spot a pale, black-haired girl in giant mirrored sunglasses. She was lying amidst a swarm of larval bodies that looked like they might be the co-spawn of his charge.

“Bruno,” the girl said, as Mark deposited the child at her feet. “What happened? Did this bad man do something to you?”

Bruno ran to her side and buried his face in her shoulder, smearing it with gore. She sighed deeply, reached into her straw handbag, dug out a crumpled tissue, and dabbed at her skin before pressing the tissue to his face.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ve got extra teeth.” She extracted another blonde child from the mass. “Petra, take your brother and go get a Popsicle.” The two children dashed off at top speed, once again ignoring the signs.

“Sorry if he got blood on you,” the girl said to Mark. “Trust me, it could have been worse.” A distorted version of Mark’s head loomed at him in her reflective glasses, and he was briefly distracted by the way his huge nostrils gaped.

“Dude,” the girl snapped, misinterpreting his look. “I said thank you already. What do you want, a blow job? Jesus Christ.”

Mark let out a little horrified snort. At least three kids were still piled at her feet, but even apart from the ethics of saying ‘blow job’ in front of small children, he was pretty sure she hadn’t said thanks. She waved her hand at him dismissively. He turned to leave, and as he did, another tanned blonde child ran at them from a different direction, barreled straight into the pool, sank to the bottom, and didn’t come up.

“Is that one of yours?” Mark asked.

“None of these are mine. Do I look like their mother? Come on.”

Mark peered down into the aquamarine water, where the child still sat at the bottom of the pool, a line of glistening bubbles trailing from its mouth. “Do you want me to get him for you?” he offered.

She frowned. “Yeah, do you mind? That’d be great.”

Mark jumped into the pool and dredged up the child, who scampered happily back into the pile. “Now I really fucking owe you,” the girl said, with a hint of despair. She handed Mark a towel that smelled faintly like cat food, and he wiped his dripping face. “I see you skipped the island excursion,” she said as he dried. “I respect that. It’s fun if you enjoy being hated. Otherwise, thanks but no thanks, you know what I mean?”

“No, not really.” Mark said, as the faint clang of reggae music drifted towards them on the breeze.

“Everybody there hates all of us,” the girl said fiercely. “Why wouldn’t they? We pull up and dump all our sewage and garbage and rotting corpses and condoms into their harbor, and in exchange, we, what, buy a couple of elephant carvings, and my God, do you see any elephants here? Of course they fucking hate us. I hate us. I’ve been on this cruise for eleven straight trips and I hate myself a little more every time.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “It’s horrifying. Wait, did you say eleven?”

“I’m a freelance nanny. Cruise ships are my specialty. Especially this one. There’s a whole website for it. German families like to pass me around.” She seemed to interpret his confusion as skepticism, because she added grimly, “I’m really good at my job.”

That brought the conversation to a close. “Well,” he said. “It was nice to meet you all.” He waved goodbye to her, and then, awkwardly, to the jumble of limbs at her feet.

“Stop,” she said in a rush. “I still owe you. How should I pay you back? I know. Let’s meet here after dinner. A lot after dinner. Like, three a.m.”

“Um. I don’t think so?”

“Don’t look so terrified. I’m going to show you something fun. Not cruise ship fun, real fun. I promise.”

“Okay,” he said. She was right—he was terrified—but he was on spring break, and he didn’t have anything better to do.

***

She was already there when he showed up at 2:50, sprawled in the same beach chair he’d seen her in that morning, and still wearing her sunglasses, as though she were tanning by the light of the moon. When she saw him, she jumped out of her chair and came towards him. “You’re late,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”

“What? No. You—”

“Follow me.”

He trailed after her as she descended into the bowels of the ship. They passed by dozens of empty rooms that were usually filled with activities—yoga, Zumba, acrobatics, magic shows, Bingo, shuffleboard, sports trivia, movie trivia, guided meditation, Duck Duck Goose. At this time of night, most of the guests were either asleep or at bars, and none of the usual staff were around. Instead, a second set of workers had emerged, sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing, but they were neither as friendly nor as aggressively good-looking as the daytime staff; they were also, Mark noticed, a slightly darker shade of brown.

The girl led him silently through the ghostly common areas and down through the floors filled with honeycombed passenger suites. The light here was dim and refracted strangely off the hideous magenta carpets. “Wait a second,” he said, stopping. “What’s happening here? Where are we going? What’s your name?”

“We’re having fun, not much farther, and Agnes,” she said. She handed him a water bottle. “Here. Have a drink.”

He did. It was vodka. He almost spat it out, but then he changed his mind and swallowed. What the hell, he reminded himself: spring break.

They kept walking for what felt like hours, taking dozens of unpredictable turns. He’d known the ship was big but he hadn’t understood just how enormous it was; soon, he was sure they must have covered at least a mile. Agnes kept passing him the vodka and he kept drinking it; once, when she passed it back, she also took hold of his hand. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. Her hand, which dwarfed his, was knobby and a little bit clammy, but it also felt good to be led.

***

At last, she stopped in front of a door, identical to the thousand others they’d passed. “Here we are,” she said, and knocked. The door swung open, and on the other side was a curvy, olive-skinned girl with dimples. It was Marisol, the cruise safety specialist.

“Sven invited us,” Agnes said, and barged in.

Mark tried to say hello to Marisol, but she’d already disappeared into the crowd. The room was packed with at least fifty people, and many of them looked vaguely familiar, though it wasn’t easy to tell. The lights were off, the music was pounding so loudly he could feel it as a buzz in his teeth, and the close air stank of cigarettes, spilled liquor, and weed. Underneath it all, though, Mark was pretty sure this was a Premiere Stateroom, a suite identical to the one in which his family was staying. The centerpiece of the main room was a king-sized bed, and as Mark squinted at it through the gloom, he realized that what he’d thought was pile of coats was actually several bodies lying on top of one another. Someone re-opened the door, and in the light that came inside, Mark saw a flash of bare hip, white breast, and blonde hair.

“What can I get you?” Agnes shouted over the music. “A Slippery Nipple? A Fuzzy Navel? A Sex on the Beach?”

“No, thank you,” he said, but Agnes shoved a solo cup into his hands, and he drank its contents to try and calm himself down. This was a staff party, definitely, where the people who worked on the boat went to get away from the people like him. If someone recognized him as a guest instead of a staff member, would they be pissed off? He scanned the room for Hilje, then looked down and saw that he had a condom wrapper stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

Agnes dragged him over to a corner by a closet, then sat on the floor, pulling him down. The carpet was sticky and linty beneath him; he was pretty sure he was sitting in someone’s spilled beer. “Thanks for inviting me?” he said uncertainly.

Agnes took off her sunglasses, climbed on top of him, and stuck her tongue in his mouth. She tasted like shrimp and vodka, and her tongue, like her hands, was disproportionately large. Oddly, though, he didn’t really mind it. After a minute, he opened his eyes to see if anyone was watching them. No one was, so he slid his hands up her shirt and under her bra. He thought about Hilje, and then about Marisol, and then Agnes undid his jeans, tucked her underwear to the side, and slid onto him, and he didn’t think about anyone else. After a while, she made a little whimpering noise, brought his hand to her mouth, and bit down on his knuckle, and that was the end of it for him. He thought he’d lasted long enough, but he couldn’t be sure. It was only his second time.

She rolled off of him and readjusted her clothes, and only when it took him four tries to button his pants did he realize he was drunk. He tried to think of something to say to Agnes, but couldn’t come up with anything, so he kissed her cheek. Her skin felt chilly, and a little waxy, as though bits of it might have flaked off on him. Agnes, he thought, and practiced mouthing the syllables of her name.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” someone said.

There was a rush of confused movement all around them, and then the music shut off abruptly, and the lights came back on. Mark blinked. He’d never seen Agnes in the light before, without her sunglasses, and her face looked rabbity and strange. It took him a second to realize why: she didn’t have any eyelashes. Her eyelids were pink and sore-looking, so she’d probably been plucking them out.

“We should get out of here,” she said, and stood up. “Are you coming?”

“Yes, I’m coming,” he said, but then a crowd of people swirled past her and she was swallowed up in them and disappeared. He tried to follow her, but he tripped on a crumpled beer can and fell over, and when he managed to get up again, the room was empty, except for three men sitting on the bed. “Hey you,” one of them said in a thick European accent. “Help.”

“What? Me, no.” Mark said. The room was rolling even more than it usually did on the cruise ship, and he understood, blurrily, that he was much drunker than he’d originally thought.

“Yes, you, asshole. Unless you want us all to get busted. Come here.”

That seemed compelling. Mark walked over to the bed and he saw that actually only two men were sitting on it. A third man was lying down, but his face was a dark gray, mottled purple at the edges, and there was a ring of dried puke around his mouth. After a moment of thought, it became obvious to Mark that this was no longer a man, but a corpse.

“Get his feet,” one of the living men said.

Mark didn’t move.

The two men stared at him expectantly.

“I don’t want to do that,” Mark said.

The men looked at each other. “Goddamnit, you moron. Karl could be here any minute! Get your ass over here, now.”

Mark thought about running, but then he remembered tripping over the beer can. He was very drunk and scared, and the man yelling at him was very angry.

“I’m not fucking kidding, here!” the man shouted. “This is on all of us. Move!”

Mark walked carefully over to the body lying on the bed. His hands were shaking, but he slid them under the corpse’s sneakers and lifted. He felt dizzy, and as though he might throw up; the sour stench of puke in the room was very strong. They got the body off the bed and clumsily maneuvered it out the door. Mark half-expected to see a policeman outside, and he was ready to drop the body and run away, shouting, they made me do it! but the hallway was silent, empty, and bright.

“Stairs or elevator?” said one of the men behind Mark.

“Elevator,” the other man said.

On the way up, Mark noticed that the corpse’s gray leg was covered in a layer of crisp, black hair. He was also wearing green socks printed with little yellow ducks. I’m probably dreaming, Mark told himself, but he wasn’t even slightly convinced.

When the elevator doors opened, the three of them got out, ran to the railing, and heaved the body over the edge. It tumbled down, down, down, and disappeared in a small frothing burst of white foam. They gazed at the black, featureless ocean in silence, and then the cruise ship’s horn sounded, a nasal, braying honk that landed like the punchline to a joke.

“Thank you,” one of the men said to Mark. Mark expected him to follow this with, and don’t tell anyone about this or we’ll murder you, but instead, the man clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not easy, but our position is tenuous. You know how important this is for all of us, right?”

Mark nodded. “Right. Yes. I do.”

“Good man,” the other one said. “Okay, that’s it, then. I’m sorry this had to happen. Take care of yourself. We’ll see you around.”

They got into the elevator and Mark waited for them to descend several floors before he screamed and ran away as fast as he could.

***

Mark ran past the locked ice cream cart, the closed pool, the stacked deck chairs, the shelves piled high with fluffy towels, the locked ice cream cart, and the closed pool before he slammed into the stack of deck chairs and realized he’d run in a circle. The tower of chairs teetered and fell down with a crash, taking Mark with them. He landed face-first, his palms splayed against the pebbled deck, stinging, and then he rolled over and stared at the white expanse of the ship’s tower, monstrously large against the starlit sky.

What the fuck just happened, he thought. He saw the corpse disappearing into the waves again, and remembered that it had bounced once before it sank, like a poorly tossed skipping stone. He needed to call the authorities, the navy, the international police. No, first he needed to tell the captain of the ship, because they needed to turn the boat around, pull the man out of the water, and make sure he wasn’t still alive. Oh God, what if he’d still been alive? Mark pictured the man’s matte gray face, his glassed-over eyes, the vomit crusted on his lips. No, definitely not alive—but remembering that face made Mark need to throw up too, so he did. He wiped his mouth on the front of his shirt, tentatively stood up, and wobbled down the stairs below decks. He wandered, lost, through a maze of locked doors for what felt like hours. “Hello?” he called. “Is anyone around? I need some assistance, please? Help?” He was about to give up and go find his parents when he turned a corner and bumped into a bald man wearing a spotless uniform lined with epaulets.

“Oh, thank God,” Mark cried.

“What’s wrong, son?” the man said. Mark opened his mouth to speak, and then his vision started foaming, and he collapsed against the man’s starched white chest.

***

Shortly thereafter, Mark lay on a scratchy couch in a cramped office. The walls were papered with photographs of people on cruises, whose teeth all looked bluish under the bright florescent lights. The bald man sat across from Mark in a large, wheeled leather chair. A plaque on his desk read: Karl V. Karpovich, Cruise Director.

“Tell me everything,” Karl said, and Mark did.

When Mark was finished, Karl leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. “That’s quite a story,” he said.

“It’s all true,” Mark insisted. “I’m not making it up.”

“I don’t doubt you. Not for a second.”

“Really?” Mark asked. He was having a hard time believing himself.

“Not at all. You know, this is far more common than you might think. Not this kind of incident, necessarily. But people disappearing off cruise ships? Oh, absolutely. Suicides, accidents, murders, cover-ups of mistakes. People practically pour off of the edge of these boats. Not that this is something we advertise, you understand, but yes, we’re prepared. We’ve got a whole protocol in place. Multiple protocols. Lots.”

“That’s… reassuring. I guess.”

Karl came around the desk, knelt down, and sandwiched Mark’s hands between his. “Son, you are in capable hands. What I want from you—what I beg of you!—is to trust me. Under my supervision, this will all be put right. I have some leeway to remedy this situation; much more than I would if we were stateside, which—fortunately for you and for me—we are not.”

Mark looked down at the cruise director’s capable hands. On the tip of Karl’s middle finger sat a fat pink wart. “So…I’m not in trouble?”

Karl chuckled and smacked Mark between the shoulder blades, inadvertently slapping loose a small burp. “You mean, for the drinking? Son, we’re in international waters. I won’t tell your parents if you won’t. How about that?”

Mark hadn’t meant the drinking at all. He said weakly, “But I’ll need to testify, right?”

Karl pursed his lips, and his small black eyes flickered. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we? I think, for the moment, the most important thing is for you to get some rest. In the meantime, I promise you I will take care of this.”

Mark nodded gratefully and stood up. His drunkenness had mostly subsided, ceding its space in his skull to the most punishing headache of his life. “Thank you,” he said.

Karl nodded. “My pleasure. Oh,” he added off-handedly, glancing up as Mark opened the door. “Just one more question. You mentioned you were at a staff party, where there was drinking and drugs. May I ask you—at that party, did you see anyone you specifically recognized? Anyone you knew by name?”

Mark hesitated, thinking of Marisol. “Everyone kind of blurred together,” he said.

***

Mark slept through breakfast, but he groggily joined his family by the pool and had a corndog and a pineapple slushy for lunch. He let the sun bake the remnants of alcohol poisoning out of him as his brain circled in a wobbly dual orbit around the sex he’d had with Agnes and the dead body bouncing on the waves. At some point, surely, he’d have to tell his parents what had happened at the party—except that he had the distinct impression that somewhere in their conversation, Karl had hinted he would not. Ethically, that made Mark feel a bit queasy, but it wasn’t as though he wanted to confess.

Mark’s little sister, Maddie, returned triumphantly from getting her long red hair braided and strung with dozens of jangling beads. She’d learned a new card game from the other kids on the boat, and he played Spit with her for hours, all the while keeping an eye out for Agnes, who never showed up. Mark realized, unhappily, that Agnes had sixteen other pools to choose from; if she decided to avoid him, he might never see her again.

Throughout the afternoon, even as Mark’s hangover faded, a different, vaguer discomfort began to mount. Something is wrong, he thought, as he bought Maddie a frozen Mars Bar from the ice cream stand. He thought it again as he joined his mother for a session of hatha yoga, and once more as he accompanied his dad for a round of gambling in the afternoon—and it was a wrongness distinct from the awful events of last night. Though he couldn’t quite put his finger on the source, it permeated the ship like a stench; he had the nagging feeling that if he weren’t so tired, he could have figured it out. As it was, he merely spent the day rattled by the certainty that something was off.

At dinner, Maddie was telling him the meaning of each of her thirty-two friendship bracelets when a pretty blonde woman approached. “Hello, Feldmeiers!” she said. “Did you have a fun day today?”

“I beat Mark eight times at Spit,” Maddie announced. “He is very, very bad at that game.”

“Or maybe you are very, very good,” the blonde lady said. “That’s what all the other kids on the boat are saying—that Maddie, she’s a real card shark, watch out.”

Maddie grinned proudly. “So what can I get you to drink?” the woman asked them. She went around the table, listing their usual orders: “Shirley Temple, white zin, Coors Light, a Coke?”

Mark waited until she had left before turning to his family. “Who the heck was that?” he demanded.

Mark’s mother cocked her head. “That was our waitress. Are you feeling all right?”

“That wasn’t our waitress! Our waitress is Hilje from Estonia. That woman’s nametag said Antje from Latvia and I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Mark’s mother frowned. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s always been Antje,” she said, placing her hand on his forehead. “How much time have you spent in the sun?”

***

Mark stalked the ship from top to bottom, accumulating evidence everywhere he went. A sparkling-eyed blackjack dealer named Shala from Bangladesh. A lifeguard named Ulrik from Norway. A freckled Irish girl named Siobhan, who smiled at him from the same ice cream stand where a Welsh girl named Bronwen had smiled the day before. Finally, Mark strode up to a staff member who was polishing the railings near the lifeboats. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have a question about safety.”

“Sure! How can I help?”

“I’d prefer to speak to the cruise safety specialist,” Mark said.

“Of course! Soledad is at dinner right now, but I can have her come find you as soon as she’s free.”

“I don’t want Soledad,” Mark said, his voice cracking. “I want Marisol. Even if she’s off-duty, can you find her for me? Pretty girl; short, curvy, dimples. Marisol.”

“Right. You mean Soledad,” the staff member said.

***

Mark’s family had eaten dinner at 5 pm, on the early bird shift, and he began a panicked hunt for Agnes, praying that she and her charges had decided to stay late at the pool. Against all odds, he found them at pool number seven. “Agnes!” he said. “I need to talk to you. Please.”

Agnes did not appear pleased to see him; behind her sunglasses, he was sure she was rolling her eyelashless eyes. But she finished slathering the child on her lap with sunblock and dropped it onto the ground, then joined him at the railing, where they gazed out at faded blue sky that was just beginning to blush.

When he told her about dumping the corpse, Agnes’s pasty face didn’t flinch—yet when he got to the conversation with Karl, she punched him, hard, in the bicep, her pointy knuckles digging into his flesh. “Are you joking?” she hissed. “You told Karl on everyone? What were you thinking? Jesus Christ!”

This was not the part of his story he’d imagined would upset her. “A guy died. And they threw him overboard. What else was I going to do?”

“Literally anything,” she said flatly. “It was none of your business, you rat.”

“Well,” he said. “Okay. But there’s more.” Knowing how ridiculous he sounded, he told her about how Hilje and Asha and Sven and Siobhan and Marisol had apparently been replaced by Antje and Shala and Ulrik and Bronwen and Soledad overnight. He expected her to tell him he was being an idiot, or at least punch him again, but instead, when he was finished, she responded with a fatalistic shrug.

“Yeah,” she said. “That makes sense. The Rainbow is famous for churning through staff members. I’m not surprised they keep a spare set below decks.”

“I’m sorry, but what did you say?”

“Karl’s a dick,” she said. “You shouldn’t have tattled. Now look what’s happened. You goddamned tool of the system. Fuck you.”

***

Mark was unable to fully comprehend what Agnes had just told him, so as he ran down to Karl’s office, he tried to pummel it into a shape that would fit in his brain. He thought she’d suggested that when Karl had found out what the cruise ship staff had done at the party, he’d gotten rid of them all and replaced them with an entirely new set of employees, sweeping the ship clean and starting again—but that was impossible; so surely, what she’d meant was, that Mark had inadvertently gotten a whole lot of innocent staff members in trouble, and now he was obligated to go make that right.

Karl’s office was, once again, locked, but Mark pummeled on it with his fist and shouted: “Hey, hey Mr. Karpovich! It’s me, Mark, from yesterday!” and Karl opened the door. Mark hadn’t noticed before the way the curve of his skull vanished into his meaty neck, or how one of his bushy, v‑shaped black eyebrows was bisected by a ropy, caterpillar-thick scar.

“How can I help you, young man?” Karl asked.

“I—” even in its pummeled down form, the accusation was too huge to articulate. “Where’s Hilje?” he shouted instead.

“Excuse me?”

“Our waitress! Hilje! Where is she? Is it her day off? What about Marisol? Is it her day off, too? Did they get in trouble because of what I told you? What happened to them?”

Karl smiled politely, revealing too many spit-slicked white teeth. “As you may be aware, there are nearly a thousand staff members aboard the Rainbow, so I can’t tell you where your waitress is right at this precise moment. But if you’re have a complaint about your table service, I suggest you speak to your head waiter; I have no doubt he’ll be able to smooth everything out.”

Karl tried to close the door, but Mark jammed his foot in it. “Why are you pretending you don’t recognize me?”

“I’m pretending nothing of the sort,” Karl said. “You’re the young man who was involved in the unfortunate incident yesterday evening. However, as I promised, I’ve taken care of that situation, so I see no reason to continue this discussion. Good night.”

The door closed and locked, loudly; from the inside, Mark could hear the scrape of an opening drawer. Oh Jesus, he thought. His palms were slick and his head was swimming; he wanted nothing more than to lie down, cover his face with a pillow, and not wake up again until the ship had reached land. People practically pour off the edge of these boats, Karl had said, and though the scale of what Agnes had suggested was impossible, for a brief, terrible second, Mark imagined the Rainbow churning through thousands and thousands of bodies, leaving an oily, stinking stream of chopped flesh in its wake. No. That was nonsense. If nothing else, it was premised on an endless pool of replenishable labor, somehow bubbling up from the bowels of the ship. All those bright-eyed, friendly young staff members—Marisol, Hilje, Asha—they were individual people with names and personalities, not a collection of interchangeable, disposable parts.

Again, he strained to beat his fears into submission: employees were missing and they might be in danger; Karl was a bad man who was abusing his power. Poor Marisol! He needed to help her. Yes, that was a wrong on a scale he could handle; he thought he might even know what to do.

***

“Hi everybody,” Mark said as he entered the cabin. His parents and sister looked up from their endless game of Go Fish. “Maddie, could you go play at the pool for a little while?” Mark said. “I have to say something only grownups should hear.”

Maddie gave him a dirty look but ran off. As the door closed behind her, Mark’s parents sat up straight. “I’m going to confess something,” Mark says. “You’re not going to like it. But I need your help, because I think something terrible is taking place on this boat.”

His parents listened as he spoke, their faces reflecting disappointment, anxiety, fear. He tried to use phrases they’d believe, instead of the nightmarish ones that kept presenting themselves to him as possibilities; he said accident, cover-up, employee mistreatment instead of horror, evil, and death. “A girl I met who’s been on this ship lot of times said that the cruise director has a history of treating the employees really badly,” he said, though this was such a diluted version of what Agnes had told him that he had trouble saying it with a straight face.

But his strategy worked. “We’re proud of you for coming to us with this,” Mark’s dad said when he was done. “What you’ve said is very disturbing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, first, I’m going to call my lawyer. I’m going to have him contact the cruise line and go right over this Karpovich character’s head. Apart from the appalling working conditions you’ve described, he had no right to keep this a secret. We’re your parents, and we paid for your ticket; if you were involved in something like this, he ought to have come to us first.”

Mark didn’t think this was exactly the crux of the problem, but his parents looked so wonderfully solid—his mother, in her pearl earrings and teal sweater set, his father, with his swept-back, distinguished white hair—that he felt reassured all the same. He imagined them cutting through Karl V. Karpovich with the confidence of a reinforced hull carving through ice. Mark’s dad was the vice president of his company; he had the kind of authority that made people listen. His mother, meanwhile, was tireless; whenever someone wronged her, she clung doggedly to the problem and never gave up. One way or another, Mark believed, the two of them would uncover the rottenness at the heart of the Rainbow and drag it into the light.

Mark hugged his parents as they left, and then curled up on the bed. Through the porthole, he could see the sun melting into the ocean. As the sunset spilled over the water, the vast curving arc of the Rainbow’s wake frothed red.

***

When Mark woke up again, it was midnight and the cabin was empty. His parents and sister hadn’t returned. He sat up, terrified, and ran out into the hall.

“Maddie!” he cried. “Mom! Dad! Where are you?”

A pair of drunken revelers in blue sequined dresses parroted him as they tottered by, squawking “Mom! Dad! Where are you?” but Mark pushed past them and into the elevator. He rode to the pool where Maddie liked to go, but it was far too late to swim. The elevator doors opened onto an abandoned deck, but Mark rushed through it nonetheless, crying Maddie’s name. His voice was swallowed up by the implacable roll of the ship’s thunderous engines. “Maddie!” he screamed—but then the engines stopped, and the night was infinitely quiet again.

In the silence, Mark heard a child’s faint, piping voice calling out: duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck…

He trailed the sound to a brightly decorated room, full of yellow light. A group of children were sitting in a circle, supervised by a fresh-faced young woman who waved at him with a smile.

“I’m looking for my—”

“Goose!” the child screamed, and a little girl jumped up from the circle and ran straight into Mark. Her long red hair was threaded with dozens of beads, and her wrists were ringed with friendship bracelets, yet her freckled face was both familiar and strange. He pushed her away, and ran back to his cabin, where he saw his parents sliding their key into the door—only it wasn’t his parents; it was another woman in pearls and a teal sweater seat; another man with swept-back, distinguished white hair.

Mark stumbled away from his room and down a maze of corridors, turning left then right then again, until he’d lost all sense of direction; he wandered for hours, maddened, disoriented, terrified, until at last he opened a door, ran down a flight of stairs, and emerged into a different identical corridor, where a pale, black-haired girl in sunglasses was herding a host of blonde children into a room.

“Oh,” said Agnes. “It’s you.”

He fell on her, babbling and grateful, desperate to explain.

“Dude,” she said. “Breathe.”

He tried—but then, reflected in her giant sunglasses, a familiar face loomed behind his.

“We’ve had reports of a guest causing a disturbance,” Karl V. Karpovich said. “Won’t you come to the infirmary and lie down?”

Karl was flanked on either side by two security guards: Angelo from Italy and Declan from Scotland. They were broad-shouldered and muscular and they towered over Karl, which gave Mark some small sliver of hope.

“You have to tell them!” Mark begged Agnes. “Tell them what’s happening! We have to stop it! Help me, please!”

Karl turned to Agnes. “Do you know this young man?” he asked her.

Agnes peered at him over her sunglasses, and her bald pink eyelids twitched. “I don’t know…” she sighed. “I think his name is Michael, maybe? Or Marty? Or Matthew? I wish I could be more helpful. Marshall? Marcel? Maurice? I’m sorry… I guess he seems sort of familiar —Maxwell? Miles? Malcolm? Mason?—I think I’ve seen him before, but you know, he looks like every other college kid on spring break.”

The post The Rainbow appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea.

With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forrard in their den; while Will — my friend, and the master of our little craft — was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin.

Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise.

It came again — a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

“Hullo!” I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. “What are you? What do you want?”

“You need not be afraid,” answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. “I am only an old man.”

The pause sounded oddly; but it was only afterwards that it came back to me with any significance.

“Why don’t you come alongside, then?” I queried somewhat snappishly; for I liked not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken.

“I— I— can’t. It wouldn’t be safe. I—” The voice broke off, and there was silence.

“What do you mean?” I asked, growing more and more astonished. “Why not safe? Where are you?”

I listened for a moment; but there came no answer. And then, a sudden indefinite suspicion, of I knew not what, coming to me, I stepped swiftly to the binnacle, and took out the lighted lamp. At the same time, I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken Will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight, muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash as though someone had dipped oars abruptly. Yet I cannot say that I saw anything with certainty; save, it seemed to me, that with the first flash of the light, there had been something upon the waters, where now there was nothing.

“Hullo, there!” I called. “What foolery is this!”

But there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night.

Then I heard Will’s voice, from the direction of the after scuttle:

“What’s up, George?”

“Come here, Will!” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, coming across the deck.

I told him the queer thing which had happened. He put several questions; then, after a moment’s silence, he raised his hands to his lips, and hailed:

“Boat, ahoy!”

From a long distance away there came back to us a faint reply, and my companion repeated his call. Presently, after a short period of silence, there grew on our hearing the muffled sound of oars; at which Will hailed again.

This time there was a reply:

“Put away the light.”

“I’m damned if I will,” I muttered; but Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks.

“Come nearer,” he said, and the oar-strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half-dozen fathoms distant, they again ceased.

“Come alongside,” exclaimed Will. “There’s nothing to be frightened of aboard here!”

“Promise that you will not show the light?”

“What’s to do with you,” I burst out, “that you’re so infernally afraid of the light?”

“Because —” began the voice, and stopped short.

“Because what?” I asked quickly.

Will put his hand on my shoulder.

“Shut up a minute, old man,” he said, in a low voice. “Let me tackle him.”

He leant more over the rail.

“See here, Mister,” he said, “this is a pretty queer business, you coming upon us like this, right out in the middle of the blessed Pacific. How are we to know what sort of a hanky-panky trick you’re up to? You say there’s only one of you. How are we to know, unless we get a squint at you — eh? What’s your objection to the light, anyway?”

As he finished, I heard the noise of the oars again, and then the voice came; but now from a greater distance, and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic.

“I am sorry — sorry! I would not have troubled you, only I am hungry, and — so is she.”

The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was borne to us.

“Stop!” sung out Will. “I don’t want to drive you away. Come back! We’ll keep the light hidden, if you don’t like it.”

He turned to me:

“It’s a damned queer rig, this; but I think there’s nothing to be afraid of?”

There was a question in his tone, and I replied.

“No, I think the poor devil’s been wrecked around here, and gone crazy.”

The sound of the oars drew nearer.

“Shove that lamp back in the binnacle,” said Will; then he leaned over the rail and listened. I replaced the lamp, and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant.

“Won’t you come alongside now?” asked Will in an even voice. “I have had the lamp put back in the binnacle.”

“I— I cannot,” replied the voice. “I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you for the — the provisions.”

“That’s all right,” said Will, and hesitated. “You’re welcome to as much grub as you can take —” Again he hesitated.

“You are very good,” exclaimed the voice. “May God, Who understands everything, reward you —” It broke off huskily.

“The — the lady?” said Will abruptly. “Is she —”

“I have left her behind upon the island,” came the voice.

“What island?” I cut in.

“I know not its name,” returned the voice. “I would to God —!” it began, and checked itself as suddenly.

“Could we not send a boat for her?” asked Will at this point.

“No!” said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. “My God! No!” There was a moment’s pause; then it added, in a tone which seemed a merited reproach:

“It was because of our want I ventured — because her agony tortured me.”

“I am a forgetful brute,” exclaimed Will. “Just wait a minute, whoever you are, and I will bring you up something at once.”

In a couple of minutes he was back again, and his arms were full of various edibles. He paused at the rail.

“Can’t you come alongside for them?” he asked.

“No — I DARE NOT,” replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving — as though the owner hushed a mortal desire. It came to me then in a flash, that the poor old creature out there in the darkness, was SUFFERING for actual need of that which Will held in his arms; and yet, because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our little schooner, and receiving it. And with the lightning-like conviction, there came the knowledge that the Invisible was not mad; but sanely facing some intolerable horror.

“Damn it, Will!” I said, full of many feelings, over which predominated a vast sympathy. “Get a box. We must float off the stuff to him in it.”

This we did — propelling it away from the vessel, out into the darkness, by means of a boathook. In a minute, a slight cry from the Invisible came to us, and we knew that he had secured the box.

A little later, he called out a farewell to us, and so heartful a blessing, that I am sure we were the better for it. Then, without more ado, we heard the ply of oars across the darkness.

“Pretty soon off,” remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury.

“Wait,” I replied. “I think somehow he’ll come back. He must have been badly needing that food.”

“And the lady,” said Will. For a moment he was silent; then he continued:

“It’s the queerest thing ever I’ve tumbled across, since I’ve been fishing.”

“Yes,” I said, and fell to pondering.

And so the time slipped away — an hour, another, and still Will stayed with me; for the queer adventure had knocked all desire for sleep out of him.

The third hour was three parts through, when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean.

“Listen!” said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice.

“He’s coming, just as I thought,” I muttered.

The dipping of the oars grew nearer, and I noted that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed.

They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness:

“Schooner, ahoy!”

“That you?” asked Will.

“Yes,” replied the voice. “I left you suddenly; but — but there was great need.”

“The lady?” questioned Will.

“The — lady is grateful now on earth. She will be more grateful soon in — in heaven.”

Will began to make some reply, in a puzzled voice; but became confused, and broke off short. I said nothing. I was wondering at the curious pauses, and, apart from my wonder, I was full of a great sympathy.

The voice continued:

“We — she and I, have talked, as we shared the result of God’s tenderness and yours —”

Will interposed; but without coherence.

“I beg of you not to — to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night,” said the voice. “Be sure that it has not escaped His notice.”

It stopped, and there was a full minute’s silence. Then it came again:

“We have spoken together upon that which — which has befallen us. We had thought to go out, without telling any, of the terror which has come into our — lives. She is with me in believing that to-night’s happenings are under a special ruling, and that it is God’s wish that we should tell to you all that we have suffered since — since —”

“Yes?” said Will softly.

“Since the sinking of the Albatross.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “She left Newcastle for ‘Frisco some six months ago, and hasn’t been heard of since.”

“Yes,” answered the voice. “But some few degrees to the North of the line she was caught in a terrible storm, and dismasted. When the day came, it was found that she was leaking badly, and, presently, it falling to a calm, the sailors took to the boats, leaving — leaving a young lady — my fiancée — and myself upon the wreck.

“We were below, gathering together a few of our belongings, when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came up upon the deck, we saw them only as small shapes afar off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft. Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold including a quantity of water and some ship’s biscuit. Then, the vessel being very deep in the water, we got ourselves on to the raft, and pushed off.

“It was later, when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some tide or current, which bore us from the ship at an angle; so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken masts remaining in view for a somewhat longer period. Then, towards evening, it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist, the weather remaining quiet.

“For four days we drifted through this strange haze, until, on the evening of the fourth day, there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance. Gradually it became plainer, and, somewhat after midnight, it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space. The raft was raised upon a swell several times, and then we were in smooth water, and the noise of the breakers was behind.

“When the morning came, we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon; but of this we noticed little at the time; for close before us, through the enshrouding mist, loomed the hull of a large sailing-vessel. With one accord, we fell upon our knees and thanked God; for we thought that here was an end to our perils. We had much to learn.

“The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard; but none answered. Presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel, and, seeing a rope hanging downwards, I seized it and began to climb. Yet I had much ado to make my way up, because of a kind of grey, lichenous fungus which had seized upon the rope, and which blotched the side of the ship lividly.

“I reached the rail and clambered over it, on to the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered, in great patches, with grey masses, some of them rising into nodules several feet in height; but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship. I shouted; but none answered. Then I went to the door below the poop deck. I opened it, and peered in. There was a great smell of staleness, so that I knew in a moment that nothing living was within, and with the knowledge, I shut the door quickly; for I felt suddenly lonely.

“I went back to the side where I had scrambled up. My — my sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft. Seeing me look down she called up to know whether there were any aboard of the ship. I replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long deserted; but that if she would wait a little I would see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck. Then we would make a search through the vessel together. A little later, on the opposite side of the decks, I found a rope side-ladder. This I carried across, and a minute afterwards she was beside me.

“Together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship; but nowhere was there any sign of life. Here and there within the cabins themselves, we came across odd patches of that queer fungus; but this, as my sweetheart said, could be cleansed away.

“In the end, having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty, we picked our ways to the bows, between the ugly grey nodules of that strange growth; and here we made a further search which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves.

“This being now beyond any doubt, we returned to the stern of the ship and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Together we cleared out and cleaned two of the cabins: and after that I made examination whether there was anything eatable in the ship. This I soon found was so, and thanked God in my heart for His goodness. In addition to this I discovered the whereabouts of the fresh-water pump, and having fixed it I found the water drinkable, though somewhat unpleasant to the taste.

“For several days we stayed aboard the ship, without attempting to get to the shore. We were busily engaged in making the place habitable. Yet even thus early we became aware that our lot was even less to be desired than might have been imagined; for though, as a first step, we scraped away the odd patches of growth that studded the floors and walls of the cabins and saloon, yet they returned almost to their original size within the space of twenty-four hours, which not only discouraged us, but gave us a feeling of vague unease.

“Still we would not admit ourselves beaten, so set to work afresh, and not only scraped away the fungus, but soaked the places where it had been, with carbolic, a can-full of which I had found in the pantry. Yet, by the end of the week the growth had returned in full strength, and, in addition, it had spread to other places, as though our touching it had allowed germs from it to travel elsewhere.

“On the seventh morning, my sweetheart woke to find a small patch of it growing on her pillow, close to her face. At that, she came to me, so soon as she could get her garments upon her. I was in the galley at the time lighting the fire for breakfast.

“Come here, John,” she said, and led me aft. When I saw the thing upon her pillow I shuddered, and then and there we agreed to go right out of the ship and see whether we could not fare to make ourselves more comfortable ashore.

“Hurriedly we gathered together our few belongings, and even among these I found that the fungus had been at work; for one of her shawls had a little lump of it growing near one edge. I threw the whole thing over the side, without saying anything to her.

“The raft was still alongside, but it was too clumsy to guide, and I lowered down a small boat that hung across the stern, and in this we made our way to the shore. Yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus, which had driven us from the ship, was growing riot. In places it rose into horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost to quiver, as with a quiet life, when the wind blew across them. Here and there it took on the forms of vast fingers, and in others it just spread out flat and smooth and treacherous. Odd places, it appeared as grotesque stunted trees, seeming extraordinarily kinked and gnarled — the whole quaking vilely at times.

“At first, it seemed to us that there was no single portion of the surrounding shore which was not hidden beneath the masses of the hideous lichen; yet, in this, I found we were mistaken; for somewhat later, coasting along the shore at a little distance, we descried a smooth white patch of what appeared to be fine sand, and there we landed. It was not sand. What it was I do not know. All that I have observed is that upon it the fungus will not grow; while everywhere else, save where the sand-like earth wanders oddly, path-wise, amid the grey desolation of the lichen, there is nothing but that loathsome greyness.

“It is difficult to make you understand how cheered we were to find one place that was absolutely free from the growth, and here we deposited our belongings. Then we went back to the ship for such things as it seemed to us we should need. Among other matters, I managed to bring ashore with me one of the ship’s sails, with which I constructed two small tents, which, though exceedingly rough-shaped, served the purpose for which they were intended. In these we lived and stored our various necessities, and thus for a matter of some four weeks all went smoothly and without particular unhappiness. Indeed, I may say with much of happiness — for — for we were together.

“It was on the thumb of her right hand that the growth first showed. It was only a small circular spot, much like a little grey mole. My God! how the fear leapt to my heart when she showed me the place. We cleansed it, between us, washing it with carbolic and water. In the morning of the following day she showed her hand to me again. The grey warty thing had returned. For a little while, we looked at one another in silence. Then, still wordless, we started again to remove it. In the midst of the operation she spoke suddenly.

“‘What’s that on the side of your face, dear?’ Her voice was sharp with anxiety. I put my hand up to feel.

“‘There! Under the hair by your ear. A little to the front a bit.’ My finger rested upon the place, and then I knew.

“‘Let us get your thumb done first,’ I said. And she submitted, only because she was afraid to touch me until it was cleansed. I finished washing and disinfecting her thumb, and then she turned to my face. After it was finished we sat together and talked awhile of many things for there had come into our lives sudden, very terrible thoughts. We were, all at once, afraid of something worse than death. We spoke of loading the boat with provisions and water and making our way out on to the sea; yet we were helpless, for many causes, and — and the growth had attacked us already. We decided to stay. God would do with us what was His will. We would wait.

“A month, two months, three months passed and the places grew somewhat, and there had come others. Yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow, comparatively speaking.

“Occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed. There we found that the fungus grew persistently. One of the nodules on the maindeck became soon as high as my head.

“We had now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island. We had realized that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans, with the things from which we were suffering.

“With this determination and knowledge in our minds we knew that we should have to husband our food and water; for we did not know, at that time, but that we should possibly live for many years.

“This reminds me that I have told you that I am an old man. Judged by the years this is not so. But — but —”

He broke off; then continued somewhat abruptly:

“As I was saying, we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food. But we had no idea then how little food there was left of which to take care. It was a week later that I made the discovery that all the other bread tanks — which I had supposed full — were empty, and that (beyond odd tins of vegetables and meat, and some other matters) we had nothing on which to depend, but the bread in the tank which I had already opened.

“After learning this I bestirred myself to do what I could, and set to work at fishing in the lagoon; but with no success. At this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon, in the open sea.

“Here, at times, I caught odd fish; but so infrequently that they proved of but little help in keeping us from the hunger which threatened.

It seemed to me that our deaths were likely to come by hunger, and not by the growth of the thing which had seized upon our bodies.

“We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. When I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday. I came off from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left. In the mouth of her tent I saw my sweetheart sitting, eating something.

“‘What is it, my dear?’ I called out as I leapt ashore. Yet, on hearing my voice, she seemed confused, and, turning, slyly threw something towards the edge of the little clearing. It fell short, and a vague suspicion having arisen within me, I walked across and picked it up. It was a piece of the grey fungus.

“As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale; then rose red.

“I felt strangely dazed and frightened.

“‘My dear! My dear!’ I said, and could say no more. Yet at words she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the news that she had tried it the preceding day, and — and liked it. I got her to promise on her knees not to touch it again, however great our hunger. After she had promised she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly, and that, until the moment of desire, she had experienced nothing towards it but the most extreme repulsion.

“Later in the day, feeling strangely restless, and much shaken with the thing which I had discovered, I made my way along one of the twisted paths — formed by the white, sand-like substance — which led among the fungoid growth. I had, once before, ventured along there; but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought, I went much further than hitherto.

“Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer hoarse sound on my left. Turning quickly I saw that there was movement among an extraordinarily shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily, as though it possessed life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses, and coming towards me. The head of the thing — a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed across my face. I gave out a frightened cry, and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my lips where the thing had touched me. I licked them, and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus. Then more and — more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring, the remembrance of the morning’s discovery swept into my mazed brain. It was sent by God. I dashed the fragment I held to the ground. Then, utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness, I made my way back to the little encampment.

“I think she knew, by some marvelous intuition which love must have given, so soon as she set eyes on me. Her quiet sympathy made it easier for me, and I told her of my sudden weakness; yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before. I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror.

“But, for myself, I had added an intolerable knowledge, to breed an incessant terror in my brain; for I doubted not but that I had seen the end of one of those men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon; and in that monstrous ending I had seen our own.

“Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was upon us; for, day by day, with monstrous rapidity, the fungoid growth took hold of our poor bodies. Nothing we could do would check it materially, and so — and so — we who had been human, became — Well, it matters less each day. Only — only we had been man and maid!

“And day by day the fight is more dreadful, to withstand the hungerlust for the terrible lichen.

“A week ago we ate the last of the biscuit, and since that time I have caught three fish. I was out here fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist. I hailed you. You know the rest, and may God, out of His great heart, bless you for your goodness to a — a couple of poor outcast souls.”

There was the dip of an oar — another. Then the voice came again, and for the last time, sounding through the slight surrounding mist, ghostly and mournful.

“God bless you! Good-bye!”

“Good-bye,” we shouted together, hoarsely, our hearts full of many emotions.

I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was upon us.

The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea; pierced the mist dully, and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire. Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge — a great, grey nodding sponge — The oars continued to ply. They were grey — as was the boat — and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar. My gaze flashed back to the — head. It nodded forward as the oars went backward for the stroke. Then the oars were dipped, the boat shot out of the patch of light, and the — the thing went nodding into the mist.

The post The Voice in the Night appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Lovecraft sent geologist William Dyer on a famous Weird voyage to one of the strangest and most farflung places accessible to mankind, Antarctica, at which he discovered many profoundly unsettling truths in At the Mountains of Madness. Likewise, the sea provides one of the loneliest settings one can find, and it remains perhaps the least robustly understood part of the planet to this day. One might even consider the lack of stability beneath the feet of such voyagers as a figurative way of examining the instability of the world in a Weird tale. Perhaps this is why William Hope Hodgson set so many of his stories there, away from the hope that might be provided by civilization and the stability of known geography and dry land. Numerous tales in The Weird turn on similar premises: Jean Ray’s nautical tale of terror, “The Mainz Psalter,” Leena Krohn’s fantastical travelogue, “Tainaron,” and Michel Bernanos’s “The Other Side of the Mountain,” itself inspired by the author’s trips to Brazil.

The act of waking up under an unrecognizable sky holds the power to instill a sense of wonder in us all, and wonder (whether the disquieting kind or otherwise) is at the heart of Weird fiction. To examine just how rich the tradition of the weird voyage is, throughout the week we’ll be bringing you several of these tales, both classic and new:

• “The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson
• “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford
• “The Rainbow” by Kristen Roupenian

Each of these pieces deftly examines the unfamiliar locales of the world and our place within it in masterful fashion. Next time you travel, travel Weird.

The post Weird Voyages and Strange Seas appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.