broom handles.
Without further ado, Morse clicked on his light and slid through the manway, his rubber boots finding an uneasy purchase on the slimy iron rungs leading down. One step at a time he descended into the murk and Gosling was right behind him. The ballast tank was huge, about the size of a basketball court. At the bottom of the service ladder, Morse’s boots slipped into the brown, stinking water. It came up past his hips.
Gosling eased into it, feeling the dank chill of it wafting around him.
“How’s the water down there?” Marx called from above.
“Nice,” Morse called up to him. “Strip down to your skivvies and take a dip with us.” Marx chuckled from the hatch above, his voice echoing around with an eerie resonance.
No, there was nothing funny about the sound of that laughter and standing in the sluicing brown water, it was even worse. Gosling hadn’t been down in a ballast tank in years. Not since he was a deckhand and had to clean them out. Even when they were drained, there was still a foot of oozing sediment that had to be hosed out. And right then, Gosling could feel the muck with each step he took. Every movement made was amplified by the cavernous tank, coming back at them with volume. The darkness was thick down there, a mist wafting off that filthy water. A few dead fish and bits of weed floated on the oily surface.
They played their helmet lights around and there was nothing to see but water and silt built up on the walls.
The stench was stronger now, almost overpowering. Like decay and brackish swamps, putrescent mud. Water was dripping. The air close and clammy.
They started off and Gosling could feel the breath in his lungs, the papery rustle of his heart. He’d never been prone to claustrophobia… but he was feeling it today. The tank was like some immense, submerged casket, the air thin and moist, all that brown, smelling water like some heady organic soup drained from a primordial, subterranean sea.
Morse led them forward, the beams of their headlamps bobbing and jumping, creating vast shadows and murky forms that rose from the mildewed water.
“See anything?” Morse asked and his voice sounded dry, airless.
“Not a damn thing,” Gosling said, panning his light looking for. .. he did not know what he was looking for. But maybe something that could smell blood in the water, something with teeth.
Morse stopped. “You hear something?” he said.
Gosling just shook his head, sucking that charnel mist into his lungs. He listened and heard only the drip of water from some intake pipe. He scanned his light back and forth. Grotesque, huge shadows crawled around them. Clots of weeds drifted past, a stray cigarette butt.
“What did you hear?”
Morse just shrugged, looked like he wasn’t going to say anything at all and then, almost in a whisper, he said, “Funny… sound. A sliding, swishing sound… but just for a second there. Behind us maybe.”
They put their lights back there and there was nothing but a few stray fish floating belly up. Morse motioned with his gaff and they moved forward, stepping carefully now. The water had been calm before, but now there were ripples and secret currents. Gosling was wound-up tight and he figured Morse was about the same.
“There,” Gosling said. “What the hell is that?”
It was something floating in the water, just beneath the surface. It could have been a large patch of weeds or maybe a scum of filth, but neither man thought so. They stood there looking at it, then at each other, then slowly – very slowly – they moved toward it. Whatever it was, it began to move and bob in the wake they created. Morse reached out with his gaff, his hands so tight on the handle that Gosling could hear his knuckles popping. In the splash of light from the first mate’s helmet, Morse’s face was sallow and lined with shadow. He looked confused, frightened maybe. There was no reason for it, not yet, but it was in both of them, chewing away at something vital and important within them.
“Let’s see,” Morse said, wielding his hook with a fixed, deadly intensity. “Let’s see what… this… is…”
He caught it with the gaff and Gosling tensed, made ready to swing his hook… was certain that it would begin flapping and writhing, but it did neither. It was nothing alive. As Morse brought it up from the water, they both saw it was only a denim work jacket.
“Stokes’?” Morse wondered aloud.
He told Gosling to get rid of it, knowing something like that could easily plug one of the lines. Gosling took hold of it and brought it back to the ladder. He went up half way and Marx caught the jacket with his own gaff and hauled it up.
Gosling went back down.
He was beginning to feel very ridiculous. Ridiculous because he wasn’t the high-strung sort. Fear, real fear, wasn’t something he had much truck with or use for. The ballast tank was just a ballast tank, not the home of some flesh-eating monster. It was time to start acting like a man here. There was a job to be done.
His chest inflated, heat burning where there’d only been a cold trembling before, he started back to Morse. Made it most of the way and then stopped. Stopped cold as if someone had taken hold of him.
Stopped there, he breathed slowly, waiting.
The sound.
It came again. A sort of muffled splashing noise, like something large had just dipped beneath the surface. Gosling panned his light over near the far side and, yes, there were ripples moving gently in his direction. They were too far away to have been caused by either himself or Morse. Then, he heard it again… this time from over near the captain. That same, almost hissing splash of something submerging.
More ripples, this time from behind him.
He felt something in his chest unwind, open like a flower. Yes, there was something in the tank with them. Something moving through that dirty water and moving with great stealth, playing a demented game of hide and seek. And all Gosling could think was that it sounded large and as he thought this, his flesh went tight and rigid as if his skin was preparing to be attacked. He stood there, waiting for whatever it was, waiting for something to take hold of his ankle or loop around his throat.
Another splash, then another. Finally, the worst sound of all.. . a snaking, sliding sound like something thick and wet brushing against the steel bulkhead.
And Gosling thought: It doesn’t know exactly where we are… it’s casting for us like a hound for a scent…
Morse started back. Coming fast. He held his gaff tightly in his hands, was ready to use it as the sounds came from just behind him. There was a look of abject terror on his face and if he had something to say, his lips were pressed so tightly even a breath couldn’t get out. Gosling turned and made for the ladder, splashing wildly forward, afraid he would go on his ass. But he made that ladder and started going up it.
There were more sounds in the water now.
Morse just said, “Climb! For the love of Christ, climb!”
It seemed to take a long time to fight his way up the ladder. The waders he wore were wet and heavy, the boots slipping on the ladder rungs, his hands gripping tightly. He had dropped his gaff and did not remember doing so. All he could remember as he reached up for the light, for Marx’s outstretched hands, was catching a quick glimpse of something as Morse started splashing toward him. A strange, convoluting form moving just behind the captain. Whatever it was, it was big. Very big.
When he was up, both he and Marx yanked Morse up through the manway and the three of them sat on the deck, not saying a word. Morse and Gosling were panting and thinking things and not honestly knowing if they’d overreacted or not. But were pretty sure they hadn’t.
Morse wiped water from his face. “Put that fucking hatch back on,” he said and it was not a suggestion.
Gosling helped the engineer put it in place.
Marx grabbed a bolt and was about to screw it in, but then he stopped. “What… what in the hell?” he said.
By then they were all looking.
Looking at what they assumed – and correctly – to be Stokes’ work jacket. It was laying on the steel deck not four feet away, rank-smelling water draining from it in little streams. What caught their eye was that the jacket was moving.
Or something in it was.
