Cook said, “I think Fabrini and I checked this door, it was locked tight. Rusted shut.”
“Well, it wasn’t rusted shut when I came down here,” Saks said. “It was open.”
Those words hung heavy in the air, full of dark implications Saks wasn’t about to put into words.
Cook said, “Maybe… maybe it was just locked from the inside. Maybe Makowski was hiding in there.”
Saks smiled. “You think so?”
Cook took hold of the latch, the door groaning as he pushed it inward. The sound was sharp and creaking like nails pulled from a coffin lid. It went right up his spine, sounding to him as if the door was screaming. In the light of the lantern, dust motes and flakes of filth swam like sediment disturbed in the bowels of a sunken ship. Everything in there was dirty and crumbling, like what you expected in an Egyptian tomb. The porthole was so thick with grime it looked practically furry.
But what paused Cook at the doorway was the smell in there. He could not immediately associate it with anything else. Certainly, there was a dry tang of age and nitrous decay and rust, but there was more, too. An inexplicable odor that reminded him of ozone, a sharp and heady almost chemical odor mixed with older corruption.
Right away, Cook figured that was trouble.
“You don’t want to go in there, it’s okay with me,” Saks said, maybe smelling it, too, or feeling it down deep as Cook had.
But Cook shook his head. He was expecting some smartassed comment from Saks, something about him being afraid of the dark and pissing himself… but it did not come. Saks’s eyes were wide and bright, almost fearful. There was a tic in the corner of his mouth. As they entered the room, Saks started to say something half a dozen times, but promptly shut his mouth. There was an almost infantile sense of confusion about him in this place. He would start in one direction, stop, reverse himself, then start again only to take a faltering step back. That’s how Cook knew that it was inside Saks, too. That like himself, he could not find his center here, could not get his bearings. This place had a strong, withering negative psychic charge that filled your mind with whispers and reaching shadows. Psychologically, it felt like the end of the world… beyond even, shivering blackness trying to suck you down into nothingness.
“Jesus, but I don’t like this fucking place,” Saks said.
Cook did not either. A terror, vague and half-formed, was prickling the back of his neck. This place was sucking him dry. He felt something like a wild, hysterical scream building inside him.
“Show me,” was all he would say.
Saks led him over to a writing desk pushed in the corner. The dust on its top was disturbed, maybe from Saks’s earlier visit. The metal of the bulkheads was riddled with holes like great ulcers. You could see into the cabin next door through them. In the far corner, amongst the debris and settled dust, there was something like soap flakes strewn about. Looked like somebody had scaled a fish in there, a big fish… but many years back, for the flakes were curled and brown like autumn leaves.
Cook did not want to think about what that might have meant.
Saks pulled open a drawer on the desk and took out an old leather-bound book with a clasp on it like a journal or a diary.
“You better read what’s in here,” he said.
So this was it. Another goddamn book, another confession of nightmares. Cook, his hands trembling now, began to page through it. The first ten pages were blank. Then they began to be filled with stunted paragraphs, quickly scribbled odds and ends written in a woman’s flowing hand. She claimed that her name was Lydia Stoddard. That she had been aboard a sixty-five foot two-masted schooner called Home Sweet Home with her husband, Robert, and five others. They were apparently en route from Bermuda to Antigua in January of 1955 when they found the fog or it found them. Entry after entry told of the Home Sweet Home floundering in the becalmed, fog- enshrouded sea. Of people disappearing until it was just her and her husband. The entries began to get very jumbled and incomprehensible, the handwriting was practically illegible. About all Cook could figure was that the Home Sweet Home had to be abandoned for some reason. That Lydia and Robert packed up a dinghy and floated for days until they found the hulk of the Cyclops.
Cook sighed. “Why am I reading this?”
But the look Saks gave him told him it was important, so he read on:
January 26? 1955
I have not written for several days. I do not wish to write now. I am so alone in this place and I think I have lost my mind. I do not know where I am now. This ship is the Cyclops, I know that much. It disappeared during the First World War and I remember hearing something about it. But I can’t seem to remember exactly what.
This place is purgatory or limbo, some borderland on the outskirts of Hell. Perhaps God is punishing us. I do not know why he would punish us. Robert and I have been good people. We have done nothing wrong. We do not deserve to be marooned in this awful place.
Oh dear God, why? Why?
What have we done?
Robert is very sick now. I think he may be dying. He is feverish and disoriented. He thinks I am his mother and I do not know who I am. My mind seems to wander and I’m not sure what is dream and what is reality.
Last night or maybe a few days ago… I can’t be certain… I walked on deck and I saw something like a huge and glistening snake laying over the decks. When I approached it, it moved, slid away back over the side. It must have been the tentacle of some sea monster. There are horrors in the fog. Strange beasts and worse things, things that try to get inside my head. But I will not let them inside my head.
Oh, God, I hear things. Things on the ship. But I must not be hearing them. It must be in my head.
I am so scared now.
So scared.
If Robert dies, I will be alone.
Oh, God, give me the strength to take my own life. Please.
January 27? 1955
I am not alone here.
There is another.
A woman.
I hear her at night.
She hums to herself out in the corridor.
Humming, humming, humming.
January? 29
Robert is dead. He must be dead. He does not move and he is so very cold. There is no pattern now. Life is a maze, an arabesque, and I can find no way out.
I cannot sleep.
When I close my eyes, I hear Robert calling out to me. Why does he call out to me when he is dead? Sometimes I think he moves, but the dead do not move and I wonder if maybe I am dead, too. Can I be dead? For surely I am not alive in this place.
No, I cannot sleep.
Last night or tonight, I can’t be sure, I awoke feeling hot breath in my ear, smelling something decayed leaning over me. I could not see it, but it was there. It was telling me awful things. It wants me to commit suicide. I hear it at night, I hear it whispering to me out in the corridor. I lock the door tight and huddle with Robert. But it can see me through the door and I can feel it smiling at me.
I think it is a woman.
Yes, just like I thought.
I think the other is a woman.
Perhaps she is mad and perhaps she is trapped here, too. But she is dangerous. She is a lunatic. She has been hiding down in the black, stinking confines of the ship. I think she eats rats. She must live on rats. Oh dear God what must she look like after all these years eating rats and living like a mushroom in wet darkness?
She cannot be human. Not like me.
Oh, the voices? How long must I hear those voices?
February 5?
