If there’s anybody out there, why, we’ve just invited them in, haven’t we?
No, Cook didn’t like it much. Didn’t like the idea of them being listened to, monitored, that somebody out there could find them just by homing in on the signals. The idea of it filled his mind with a shapeless, blowing blackness that made him afraid right to the core of his being.
He thought: But isn’t that what you wanted? Somebody to hear you? To find you?
Only he wasn’t so sure anymore. Wasn’t sure of a lot of things. All he was going on here was instinct maybe colored by imagination, but it was telling him that the thing to do in this place was to keep a low profile. He didn’t know what he was expecting really, but he was getting some bad vibes about it. And hour by hour, they were getting worse. Like some latent sixth sense in him was trying to warn him of impending danger.
And what it really came down to, the very thing Cook couldn’t even bring himself to admit to, was that he didn’t know where they were, but he had a nasty feeling you wouldn’t find it on any map… at least, not one drawn by anyone sane. Nothing about this place was right. According to his internal clock the sun should have been up (he was guessing) an hour or more by now… but there was no sign of it. Not so much as a smudge of brightness up there. And while it wasn’t dark exactly, it was not actually light either. Things seemed to be caught somewhere in- between like a drawn-out midsummer twilight. That wasn’t right. That brooding, suffocating fog wasn’t right. The slopping, jellied sea was not right. And that pervasive gassy stench. .. no, that was certainly not right either. So, with that in mind, Cook was pretty much figuring that if there was an intelligence here that could monitor radio signals, then it wouldn’t be of the human variety.
And that, most assuredly, scared the hell out of him.
Sighing, deciding he was probably losing his mind an inch at a time, he looked out over that stagnant sea, wondering, thinking. Now and then he caught sight of wreckage-charred bits of wood, splintered beams, a crate or two, but never anything more than that. Unless you wanted to count clumps of floating weeds, spreading near- submerged things that steamed as if they’d just been pulled out of a boiling pot.
“I guess we just drift,” Crycek said, the words coming out of him like air from a leaking tire. “We just drift and we wait.”
None of that gave Cook any real hope. He was not an optimist by nature, but neither was he a pessimist. He was balanced on the borderline in-between, what his mother had once called a realist. Both he and Crycek could live for weeks with what was in the boat, but Hupp was doomed if help didn’t come soon. And maybe it was already too late.
Already too late for everyone concerned.
Cook had never felt quite so alone in his life.
He had always been something of a loner. It was the way he was, had always been. He didn’t trust people. He decided early on that they were basically evil creatures hiding beneath a veneer of civilization
… that is, when they bothered to hide at all. Many didn’t. And he wasn’t sure whether he liked these better than the others or not.
Crazy as it sounded at this stage of the game, he still entertained fantasies of washing up on some deserted tropical isle. All by himself. No one to bother him, give him trouble or pain. Just nature and he. He could catch his meals from the sea, scavenge for edible plants and berries. It would be a simple life. One that he was psychologically suited for.
Hupp began to moan and thrash around noisily.
“Here, here,” Crycek said. “I’ve got you now. You’re okay.”
At the sound of his voice, Hupp quieted down. Crycek was very good with him, Cook thought. A born nursemaid. It took the right kind of person to care for others like that. And it was exactly what Crycek needed. There was something brewing in him, something hot and sharp that was cutting him open from the inside. Caring for his shipmate gave him an anchor, it cemented him to the here and now.
And without it? Cook didn’t want to think about that.
“You better try that radio again, don’t you think?” Crycek said and Cook was pretty certain there was something behind his words, something like sarcasm.
“I suppose.”
But he didn’t want to do that. It was about the last thing in the world he really wanted. And that’s when he decided it was all a sick fucking game between the two them. They both knew that it was hopeless, that the Coast Guard couldn’t send out a rescue mission even if they wanted to. But they weren’t going to admit that out loud. Something in them just refused to. For maybe once such things were voiced there was no going back. Like calling up some demon from the formless ebon pits of the universe, once you said its name aloud, you admitted its reality.
So Cook went through the bit of transmitting a distress call and it was funny how his voice got on that radio now. Where before it was loud and clear and insistent, now he practically mumbled the words into the mic like he didn’t want anybody hearing him.
“You hearing… anything out there?” Crycek was asking him.
But Cook just shook his head. Just dead air and white noise. A raging storm of static that his mind pictured to be white and blowing like some electrical blizzard, a vast and tangled sound full of fuzz and friction and emptiness. It was a sound the human mind had trouble with. It grasped and fought to separate something, anything it could identify. And after a time, if it couldn’t get a hold of anything, it would create something before it went mad.
Cook kept listening, knowing he had to.
He began to hear odd patterns in it, the static rising and falling in gentle oscillations that sounded very much like breathing, respiration, something pulling air into its lungs and exhaling. But not air… static, in and out, in and out. He was hearing it and knowing it was his imagination, but unable to stop listening. There was something morphic, hypnotizing about it and you couldn’t pull your mind away. You could only listen to the static breathing, filling its lungs with that droning white noise and feel yourself being pulled away, floating.
And about that time, Cook heard something come up out of that static, a voice that was clear and crisp and evil. A woman’s voice: “That’s right, Cook… you just keep dreaming and drifting… I’m out here in the fog, I’m waiting for you out here, waiting to touch you-”
And maybe the voice itself wasn’t so evil, but its intent was unmistakable. Cook dropped the radio and fell backward onto the deck. Crycek was saying something, but he could not hear him. Could not hear anything but the static now and maybe the fog whispering and that clotted sea sluicing and that voice echoing in his head.
“Christ, Cook… what’s wrong?” Crycek was saying, sounding desperate now.
Cook poured some steel into his rubbery limbs, pulled himself up, just shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing.” And he knew that sounded foolish, ridiculous, but it was the truth. Because he hadn’t really heard a woman’s voice out there, some malefic female ghost inviting him to doom and madness. Just imagination. He was tired and scared and confused and his imagination had spun all that into the worst thing it could imagine.
His breathing slowed now and he felt foolish. Utterly foolish. He reached over to turn the radio off and, yes, it was still blaring static, but mixed in with it were those buzzing pulses he’d heard earlier. Something his mind had tagged as Morse Code for wasps.
He shut the radio off.
“Better conserve batteries,” he said, feeling, really feeling that fog out there now. Certain it was reaching out for him, wanting to drag him into a murky, enclosing shroud of itself.
“What did you hear?” Crycek wanted to know.
“Thought… well, I thought I heard a voice. Just my mind playing tricks on me. I need some sleep.”
Crycek nodded. “There’s funny things in the fog. Funny, weird things. I know all about that. Maybe some of it’s imagination, but not all of it… no sir.”
Cook just sat there, not saying a thing. Crycek was ready to talk now. He wanted to say things and none of it was going to be good.
“I was out there, Cook. I was one of the ones that went to look for Stokes, the guy who jumped overboard. Gosling, the First, he picked me. Picked me because he must have known I was scared of the fog,” Crycek said, his voice low and even and somehow unpleasant. “We went out in the boats to look. Out into that goddamn fog. And I’m not too proud to admit I was afraid. I was afraid from the moment that boat touched water. Terrified. Because that fog wasn’t right then and it’s not right now. Yeah, I knew there were things out in that fog.. . crawling, pallid things… abominations… things that would drive you mad just to look upon them. Yes, I knew that.”
Cook swallowed. “C’mon, Crycek. Just take it easy.”
