Dead Sea

All the arguments and grumbling skidded to an echoing halt. The screaming was coming from aft, on the deck. Somewhere out in that maze of equipment and containers lashed to the spar deck. But in the fog. .. it was really hard to say exactly where. Everyone turned and made ready to go, to investigate… made ready and that was about it. Because everyone just stood there, faces pale, lips locked tight. No one moved. They all wanted to know what the hell was going on, but nobody wanted to be the first to charge through that fog and see. Maybe it was the sheer quality of that scream which was more than just a scream but the shriek of somebody being slowly roasted over a hot bed of coals. It was loud and shrill like nothing they’d ever heard before.

It was the sound of someone who’d just lost their mind.

“Jesus,” Saks said. “We better-”

The screaming broke down into painful, sharp squeals and the guy who was doing it appeared suddenly out of the murk. One of the deckhands. He was soaking wet, wearing rubber chest waders which had fallen down to his hips now. The front of his denim apron was red and glistening and he clawed frantically at it. His face was hooked into an awful, gray, twisted mask and everyone got out of his way.

“Get it offa me get it offa me get it offa me!” he howled, thrashing away across the decks, leaving a trail of blood. “OH JESUS JESUS JESUUUUS IT’S IN ME IT’S YAAAHHHHH…”

Before anyone could move, he ran to the railing. They saw him as a dim form convulsing in the fog. And then he threw himself over into the sea.

“Sonofabitch!” Saks said, breaking the spell. “Man overboard! Man fucking overboard!”

But no one came.

And everybody just stood there, not knowing what in the hell to do. To a man, nobody even moved an inch toward that spot where he’d gone over. Yes, they’d all been watching him, wanting to help him, but the screams, the blood, the very nightmarish absurdity of the whole situation had kept them from doing anything. They just watched. For it almost appeared as if he’d been pulled over the railing, rather than jumped of his own accord. And the splashing they heard… huge, echoing splashes… it didn’t seem like a man could make that kind of noise. It sounded more like somebody had dropped a car into the drink.

There was complete silence for a moment or two.

It was like everything was suspended, locked down tight and motionless. You could hear the water, something that might have been a distant drone of wind, the faint thrum of the engines, but nothing more.

“Man overboard,” one of the sailors said very quietly. “Man overboard. There’s a man overboard.”

But no one seemed concerned.

Reality had taken a beating in the last few minutes and it was still reeling, still trying to find its proper footing and the men with it.

“He’s gone,” Saks said. “Even if we turned this crate around, we’d never find him. Not in this.”

“Oh dear God,” Menhaus said. “That man.”

One of the sailors ran off and a few seconds later an alarm began to sound. It was high and whining like an air raid siren. The sort of thing that went right up your spine, filled your head, made you want to grind your teeth and squint your eyes.

Despite the racket, everyone started talking at once. Talking almost in low tones like they didn’t want the others to hear what they were saying.

Fabrini had his own way of dealing with the unreal, the frightening. He got angry. “This is bullshit,” he said, walking around in a loose circle. “This is fucking bullshit. We’ve gotta turn back. You hear me? We gotta turn back. I ain’t gonna die like that.”

“Like what?” Saks said.

“Yeah,” Menhaus said. “We don’t even know what happened.”

Fabrini realized they were all staring at him. His swarthy skin had an almost moonish pallor to it now. “You heard that guy for chrissake! All of you heard him! You heard what the fuck he was saying! Get it off me, get it off me! He was bleeding like somebody stuck a knife in him! Something got him, right? Something must’ve bit him!”

Saks rolled his eyes. “For the love of Christ, Fabrini, the guy was nuts. He probably slit his own fucking wrists or something.”

No one argued with that hypothesis. It was neat and tight and safe. It made sense. You could fit it into a box, close the lid, and be sure it wouldn’t get back out again. And it was much better than the alternative and nobody even wanted to consider that. At least not openly. Not yet.