Dead Sea

Styles threw himself through the door, slammed it shut and bolted it, waiting, waiting, feeling it coming now with a heat and a cold electricity that was hot and acrid and stinking. Outside the door and boarded windows, Styles could see that the decks had gone phosphorescent, that some blinding and burning illumination had consumed the ship now. He heard a high, shrill whining sound and whatever was out there was crawling through him with fire and ice and acid, coming under the door and straight through the walls in a mist of flesh and intent and malevolence.

He screamed once.

Once as it fell over him, moved through him, sorting through his brain with hot needles and knives and gnawing at his thoughts with diamond teeth. He felt his mind boil and loosen, run out his eyes and ears in a cold, smoking sap as the flesh that housed it fell to ash and his bones rattled dryly in a smoking heap on the deck.

Then there was only silence.

Maybe Styles could not remember the name of the ship, but history would. For she would drift back out of the fog and men would remember her name.

The Mary Celeste.

PART ONE INTO THE MIST 1

Although George Ryan had never been aboard ship before, never anything more radical than a rowboat in an inland lake, he knew there was something he didn’t like about the Mara Corday. Had he been a sailor, maybe he would’ve said she didn’t feel right. But he wasn’t a sailor. He’d never even been in the Navy or the Merchant Service. He’d spent three years in the Army, very landlocked, as an enlisted man in an engineer battalion. The closest he’d ever gotten to the ocean was a six-week stint at Edwards in California when they’d repaved runways. On the weekends, he and a few of the others would drive out to Ventura for a few days of sun, surf, and women. But that was it.

So this was his first time at sea.

And money or no goddamn money, he’d decided it would be his last.

They’d sailed at six in the morning, some twelve hours before, and at first, George had strutted about the decks like an experienced salt. It was nothing, he kept telling the green faces of his co-workers, all of whom had succumbed to seasickness almost immediately. None of them, save for Saks, had ever been out in deep water before. The rolling seas and the violent pitch of the ship hadn’t really affected George at that point. Sure, he had trouble walking the spar deck without pitching every which way (much to the amusement of the ship’s crew who all seemed to be studies in balance and control), but beyond that, everything was okay. All the worrying and fretting he’d done was for nothing.

He wasn’t going to get sick like the others. He was going to take it like Saks. He was a tough guy, too, he’d show ‘em all right.

Saks had told them all in Norfolk the night before they’d sailed that they were going to be miserable the first day out. “Well, you listen to me, girlies. The sea’ll turn you into babies. You pussies’ll be crying for your mommies when we lose land and you start puking your guts out.”

George had decided that, as afraid as he was of going out to sea, he wasn’t going to get sick. He wasn’t going to give Saks the satisfaction. He was going to show that loudmouth macho asshole how wrong he was.

And he had. Oh, yes.

That was… until they’d hit the so-called “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” off Hatteras, that place of evil seas and wild weather patterns. The very convergence of the warm Gulf Stream current pushing north and the cold currents sweeping down from Arctic waters. Oil and water, they just did not mix very well. Right away, the sea began to turn choppy and angry, the Mara Corday responding with what a sailor might have deemed a gentle roll, but to George was an all-out assault on his stomach. So, without further ado, he very promptly hurled his lunch into the head.

After that, of course, he really got sick.

The others were starting to get a little better by then. But George was lying in his bunk feeling like he’d swallowed a bucket of butterflies. He was nauseous, sweating, shivering… so dizzy he couldn’t even stand up to take a piss. Saks had looked in on him. He couldn’t refuse the opportunity, had a big, shiteating grin on his sunburned, leathery face.

“Not so tough after all, eh, George?”

“Fuck… you,” George managed and then got the dry heaves again.

Saks was his boss – technically, the foreman of the crew – but he seemed to enjoy it when you mouthed off to him. It made him laugh. Made him feel good, George supposed, knowing which buttons to push to totally piss you off. That’s the kind of guy Saks was.

The porter gave George Dramamine and Hyoscine for what ailed him. After a few hours, the worst seemed to be over.

He was able to sit up anyway.

A little while later, gripping the bulkhead of his cabin like a blind man full of whiskey, George actually made it to the porthole and looked out at the sea. It was fairly calm. Yet the ship pitched and yawned like a carnival ride. Maybe it was just him, though.