But Gosling just shook his head.
He took his lightstick and went over to the doorway of the canopy, adjusting the drag of the sea anchor. He explained that while there was no wind, they were still moving, being pulled gradually by what he surmised were subsurface currents.
“The anchor will keep us moving in pretty much a straight line,” he said. “Because… yeah, we’re moving, all right… there’s tension on the line. We’re being dragged somewhere.”
George was at the doorway with him, watching the mist out there, moving around them. Patches of red were reflected against it from the flashing beacon atop the raft. Other than that, sometimes the mist was dim and other times brighter. The illumination it threw was about what you got at twilight… things were visible, just not terribly distinct.
Gosling took up a handful of water, examined it by the light of the stick. It was not water as such, but a slime of liquid jelly and sediment in an aqueous suspension. And it was pink in color, almost red it seemed. It smelled like rotten eggs up close.
“That’s not right,” George said. “I’ve never seen water like that.”
Gosling admitted he hadn’t either, but said it reminded him of “red tide”, when patches of ocean went crimson from dense concentrations of microscopic algae. “I don’t recommend drinking it.”
It was the first time George had seen the stuff by true light. And it made him remember that when they’d righted the raft, he’d gotten a mouthful. But he hadn’t swallowed any… he didn’t think so, anyway.
“Fucking place,” he said.
Gosling laughed. “You got that right.”
George cleared his throat, remembering the taste of that slop in his mouth. “I wonder if the others-”
He never finished that, for out of the fog there came a high, keening wail that was strident and ear-piercing. It rose up sharp and whining like a cicada in a summer field, then faded away just as quickly.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, digging at his left ear with a finger. “What the fuck was that?”
Gosling just shook his head.
They sat there in silence, waiting for it to come again, but it never did. There was something about the quality of that wail that was alarming, that got right inside of them and made them want to hold on tight. It reminded George of some high-pitched version of an air raid siren… except he didn’t think it was a mechanical device. He had the crazy, frightening idea that something living had made it. But what that could be, he did not know. Regardless, it left him feeling numb, helpless, wanting to cry out, but not daring to.
“Well,” Gosling said. “Well.”
That pretty much summed it up, for what else was there really to say?
And maybe, given time and peace, they would have tried to figure it out, tried to come up with something rational that would have wrapped it up nicely, but there was no time. For something thudded into the bottom of the raft. Something big, for it lifted the raft up five or six inches and dropped it back down again. George cried out in surprise, maybe it was more of a scream than a cry for Gosling grabbed him by the arm and his grip was like a clamp.
Again, they were waiting.
Whatever it was, it did not strike the raft again. But it passed beneath several times and its wake made the raft bob and sway, sent that jellied sea to rolling in slow, slushy undulations like ripples in a mud hole. George could barely breathe, could barely pull a breath past his lips they were pressed so tight. Gosling’s hand was still on his arm, tight and crushing.
Five minutes later, it had not returned.
“Must have been big,” Gosling finally said, releasing George’s arm. “Must have been goddamn real big.”
Which was exactly what George was thinking. Except the word bouncing through his head was colossal. It was the only one that satisfied his runaway imagination. He was thinking something like a whale or the mother of all sharks. Jesus.
“It’s gone,” Gosling said, his voice a little forced. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”
“But-”
“But nothing. It didn’t attack us, so the hell with it. Just because something’s big, don’t mean it’s nasty.”
George supposed there was logic to that.
He stayed by the doorway, watching, guarding against he did not know what. Gosling went back to his radio and George was glad of it. For what was there to say? What could they possibly manufacture to explain that one?
But he got to thinking: Still don’t mean shit and you know it. Still don’t mean you’re lost in the Bermuda fucking Triangle or something like that. It could have been a whale for chrissake. Quit panicking already.
George started going through every whale he’d ever seen on every nature documentary on the Discovery Channel. He tried to remember their names and what they looked with. For reasons he wasn’t even sure of, this calmed him. This put something to bed in his imagination and locked the beasts of childhood terror in their respective cages.
He looked at the sea anchor line. It was clotted with weeds and green nets of something like an aquatic moss.
“Scrape it off,” Gosling told him, handing him one of the little rubberized oars.
George took it, leaned over, started peeling the stuff away, a big and heavy clump of it was tangled on the oar. It smelled rank. He tossed it aside, heard it splash, and then saw that there was something still stuck on the blade of the oar. It was about the size of a shoe. In the dim light he could see it was a clot of something. .. something odd. He pulled the oar in, made to brush the mass aside with his fingers.
The mass moved.
George cried out in shock, dropped the oar. It floated just behind the raft, the mass still intact. Gosling was there by then, he cursed George for dropping the oar and brought the lightstick out so he could grab it.
But he didn’t grab it.
He didn’t dare.
George saw it and just stared. Sitting on the end of the oar was something like a round, thick spiderish body, ringed by dozens and dozens of legs. They were segmented and dirty-brown in color. Two of them were up in the air, shuddering. From the top of its body there was a cluster of things like yellow grapes that he realized must have been eyes. As Gosling brought the light closer, a pink membrane slid over them.
George wasn’t sure if it was an insect or a crustacean or a mollusk for that matter. Only that it was disgusting and he had a mad desire to smash it.
“What in the Christ?” Gosling said.
It just sat there, looking oddly grotesque and comical at the same time with all those eyes. George could see that they were set on stalks and jerked slightly as it looked about.
Carefully, Gosling grabbed the end of the oar, tried to shake that beastie off, but it held on tenaciously. Taking up another of the oars, he swatted at it and it moved. George had a nightmarish image in his mind of the thing running up the oar and wrapping itself around Gosling’s arm, but it didn’t happen.
Gosling swatted it again, this time making contact.
It made a weird, almost birdlike peeping sound and ran off. Actually ran over the surface of the water, skimming along easily like a water strider. Then it vanished in the fog.
“What do you suppose that was?” George asked, more amused than anything. The idea of it being on you was offensive, but he didn’t really think it was dangerous. “What sort of critter is that? And please tell me you’ve seen one before, Paul, or I’m going to start thinking hard on that Sargasso-shit you told me”
“No, never seen a critter like that before. Like a sea spider gone all crazy,” was all he would say.
He went back to his radio and George sat there, wishing he had a cigarette or a drink, just about anything to pass the time with. Because with that ever-present fog, time was distorted and he just couldn’t seem to get his internal clock moving.
Again he waited, wondering what the next thing would be and whether it would amuse him or scare the shit out of him. Gosling was suddenly very talkative, going on and on about an old Chevy Bel-Air he was fixing up.
But George wasn’t paying attention.
He was seeing something out in the fog… or thought he was. He kept watching it, his skin feeling so tight it
