soon after he was laid to rest. “Or is there another reason why you came?”
Winston knelt down to the grave. “I don’t know.” He reached his hand down to touch the earth, and for an instant the dream flashed though his mind again like a static shock.
A lavender lounge chair.
A ledge.
Three figures.
By the time they left a few minutes later, Michael’s Ivy was green and lush, and Winston’s mind was still a dry heave, willing him to action against a painful absence of purpose.
4. Lost Horizon
Transcription excerpt, day 202, 13:51 hours
The cruise ship was never actually reported missing.
Monarch cruise line simply listed the
Winston Pell had kept his ear to the ground for many months in search of such anomalous events, which was no easy task, because over the past year, daily life had evolved into one anomalous event after another. Riots springing up unprovoked, stocks fluctuating so violently analysts were jumping out of windows. There was a surge in the number of militant religious zealots, as well as rampant hedonism popping up in the most straight-laced of bible-thumping towns.
And all because everyone could sense that the world had suddenly become a sinking ship. What began with the Backwash had taken on a momentum all its own, metastasizing to the far reaches of the globe. There was a prevailing, unnameable sense that something immense and terrible was about to occur. Winston suspected people had a kind of species instinct about it, the way dogs could sense a coming earthquake.
And so on the police bands, and in the media, and in the chat rooms, Winston searched for any anomalous event that was simply too anomalous to be anything but Dillon, or Lourdes.
Finally he narrowed his sights down to the
As Lourdes had a very special knack for rendering whole groups of people unconscious, news of this particular ghost ship was of special interest to Winston.
It was on a Saturday in October that Winston drove a rented car across the Mexican border to Ensenada. The word was that the Blue Horizon had anchored offshore, staying put for the first time in many months.
As he drove along the coast, past a smattering of Ensenada resorts, he could see the great ship, half a mile off shore. He parked by the docks amidst a bazaar of trinkets and curios, where tourists from the two other ships in port bargained for deals. Most locals and tourists, fairly oblivious to the
“No, my friend,” the boatman said. “I don’t go out there. She is
“What makes you say that?”
“I know all the ships that come in: Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity. But this one. She not supposed to be here.”
Winston pulled out his wallet and fanned out the corners of several bills.
The boatman then gazed forlornly at his glass-bottom boat. Business had obviously been slow. The man stared at the money in Winston’s hand, then sighed. He shoved the bills in his pocket. “Yesterday, four men from the cruise line come in by helicopter,” he explained. “Fancy suits, very important-looking. A friend of mine, he takes them out there, and as soon as they get near the ship, three of them pass out cold, like someone poisoned them or something. The one man left—he is the one they let on the ship. My friend waits and waits in his boat, but the man doesn’t come back, and the other three, they don’t wake up. Then he hears the man screaming on the ship, he doesn’t wait anymore. He comes back, goes home.”
“And the other three men?”
The old man shook his head. “The hospital. Still they don’t wake up.”
Winston pulled out a roll of bills, and handed the boatman a twenty, but kept his billfold out. “How much for you to take me out there?”
The boatman shook his head. “I told you—I don’t go out there.”
Winston slowly began flipping twenties. “You’re telling me you’re afraid?”
The boatman began to scratch his beard stubble, thoughtfully at first, and then nervously, as the number of bills increased. “It’s drugs. Some drug lord took over that boat. You go out there, he cuts your throat—maybe mine, too.”
“I thought you said it was haunted.”
“That, too.”
Winston had flipped four bills, he flipped a fifth to make it an even hundred. The boatman began to sweat.
Winston flipped another bill. The boatman took one more glance at his passengerless boat, and sighed.
They pulled away from port, leaving behind the commotion of tourists. The sea was calm, and although the glass-bottom boat wasn’t the fastest vessel, Winston was grateful for the time it gave him to prepare for what he might find. As they got closer and closer to the white behemoth, Winston could hear music growing louder as they drew nearer. Upbeat salsa. Cruise music. The kind of music that summoned images of streamers and balloons, and