Issue #186 : Near To Shore
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“What the hell is that?” Duncan asked, dropping his pole as he sat up in the boat.
“What?” Rich asked, not bothering to look himself. “Let me guess, you just caught a lobster on your line again? Did it just now fall back in to the water? Did I miss it again?”
“Not much chance of missing that,” Duncan said. He grabbed Rich by the shoulder, causing him to spill the beer down his front in the process.
“Fucking cunt,” Rich muttered as he glanced back to see what Duncan was pointing at.
Across the water, close to shore was the darkened but unmistakable outline of a vessel that looked like it had run aground.
“The hell is that?” Rich asked. “That wasn’t there yesterday, you hear anything on the news?”
Duncan shook his head as he powered up the motor, steering the boat towards the wreck. As they drew closer, he pulled out his portable spotlight and popped it on, running it up and down the side of the boat.
“Ahoy, the ship!” Duncan called out, waiting for someone to pop their head out from the wheelhouse, yelling at them to fuck off or to thank God that someone had found them. Neither one happened and as he continued to run the light along the ship, he realized that it wasn’t likely that they would see anyone. From the wear, rust and decay, the wreak looked like it was fifty years old. It was like something had just tossed it up from the bottom and deposited it in the shallows.
“That thing didn’t just pull up here this morning,” Rich said as he half stood in the boat. “Looks like it’s been there forever.”
Duncan reached out to grab at one of the mooring lines, pulling them in closer.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Taking us in. We got to check it out.”
“What the hell for?”
Duncan twisted around in his seat to stare up at Rich. “Something like this just appears out of nowhere and you aren’t even a little curious?”
“Yeah, I’m curious,” Rich said. “Curious how long it’ll take Coast Guard to get out here and check it out their own damn selves.”
Duncan was already tying their boat off, reaching up for the ladder hanging down the side of the ship. Together, they made their way up to the main deck, easing over the side as they looked around for any sign of life.
“Hello?” Duncan called out. “Anyone here?”
“Right, because if someone is waiting here to fucking kill us, they might be polite enough to answer you.”
Duncan ignored the comment and began walking towards what looked like the wheel house.
“Fucking horror show,” Rich muttered as he followed, looking back over his shoulder at what he thought was the sound of the deck creaking. Duncan pulled open the door to the cabin with no small effort. They were greeted with the awful smell of rot in the air and he leaned back at the sight of a corpse, still gripping the wheel. The decayed skull looked towards the bow with a maniacal grin on it’s face, almost as if it was waving its comrades on to victory.
“Christ,” Rich said as he back-pedaled to the side of the boat, nearly tripping over the side as he did so. Duncan took in a deep breath and strode in. There were some papers on the floor and he stooped down to pick them up. He withdrew quickly as he flipped through them, the aged paper cracking loudly over the evening breeze.
“What is it?” Rich asked. “What do they say?”
Duncan squinted, shaking his head as he tried to decipher it. “Hard to say, it’s so old. It looks like a legal document of some kind. I don’t know what kind of court it was written up in but it looks to me like a pardon. The only thing I can really make out is a name. Thomas Flowers.” He looked up at Rich. “Mean anything to you?”
“Not a fucking clue. Let’s clear out of here. Fucking dead body should be enough, innit?”
“Don’t be such a fucking baby. Let’s check out the decks below, see if there’s anything there.”
Rich shook his head. “Out of your mind. There is no way I’m going down there. You don’t even know if the boat’s taking on water or not.”
Duncan shrugged. “Fine. Stay then. But I’m not sharing any salvage with you if you just stay up here twiddling your thumbs. You coming or not? This is the last chance.”
Rich scowled and shook his head again, muttering just loud enough to be heard. “Right fucking scavengers we are, yeah?” He looked down and made a show of picking up a piece of the siding that had somehow ended up on deck. The name of the vessel was painted neatly across it. SS Feeney. Rich tossed it overboard. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”
The stairs leading below deck creaked from the strain of their weight as they walked down into darkness. Duncan flipped on his light and shone it ahead of them. They listened as the sound of the water sloshing against the hull became louder and more distinct, in time with the crashing of the waves on shore.
“Hello?” Duncan called out suddenly, causing Rich to jump.
“Would you stop that? If there was anyone here, they probably would have answered you before now, yeah?”
“Shut up. There’ s no harm in trying.”
“No, but there might be harm in—”
Rich was cut off as the boat suddenly shifted and toppled to the side. They yelled out as the floor under them suddenly became the wall and they fell to the right. Duncan landed roughly and Rich hit one of the doors, causing it to open inward. He tumbled into the room, crashing into the far wall which now served as the bottom of the boat. From where he lay, he looked up at Duncan who lay limply above him, one arm dangling down into the air. He was groggy but seemed to be coming around.
“What the hell?” Duncan started to say as he shifted around.
“Don’t move!” Rich yelled out. Somehow, through the fog of disorientation, Duncan managed to understand and ceased his movement, only barely avoiding falling through the doorway. “I’m coming up to you!” Rich called out.
Reaching for a cord that dangled across the room, he pulled himself up and swung his feet up, just barely hooking one of them on the doorway. He bucked his hips, trying to pull himself up, missing several times and feeling like a vein was about to burst in his forehead. “Too much fucking cheese,” he sputtered, trying to get a foothold, when he heard a rumbling within the ship, a sensation of movement within the structure itself. He saw something from the corner of his eye and looked to see lengths of wood, several feet long and as thick as cricket bats pulling free from the wall, hovering lazily in a semi-circle around him. He let his feet drop back down, swinging back and forth as the fragments shifted down until they all pointed at him like spears, trembling in what looked like anticipation.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered.
From above, Duncan looked in time to see the wood explode out from the wall. The first fragment cleaved the top of Rich’s head off, knocking one hand loose and causing him to spin, still hanging from the rope. Two more implanted roughly into his back, taking him from the rope and pinning him to the far wall. From deep below, he heard the rumbling sound again, as if the engines were powering up.
He had to get off this ship.
Just as he was starting to re-acclimate to the new orientation of the corridor, it shifted again, rocking him to the side until the boat was upright again. Picking himself up off the floor, Duncan pulled himself up the stairs and out onto the main deck. The sky was already starting to show the colors of pre-dawn as he sprinted to the side and paused, leaning against the rail in order to get his breath.
The spray of blood before him happened so quickly, he didn’t even register it at first as being his own. Then he looked down at the shaft of exposed bone that was now emerging from his stomach, run through from behind. In a dull haze, he turned to face his attacker and as his vision began to fade, he was ushered on by the grinning visage of the former Thomas Flowers.
Morning came slowly that day and the low light of dawn was interrupted by the lights from the squad cars pulled out onto the beach. Some of the locals gathered in a small crowd to watch from afar as the police looked over the remains that had been found.
“Christ,” Jack said as he crouched down over what was left of the two bodies. “Got a dirty one here, friend-o.”
The uniform on the scene nodded as he crouched down next to Jack. “Where the hell do you think they were moved from?”
Jack shrugged, looking up suddenly as for the briefest moment he thought he had seen the outline of a ship out in the water. Of course there was nothing. “Could have been from anywhere. Who knows?”
“Who would do something like this?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, kid. You know what the world is like anymore. Just drugs and apathy anymore out there. Probably some punk-ass punk, someone that…” Again, he caught a shimmer off something on the water, a reflection of light sent back at him from open air. He frowned, wondering how much he needed to cut back on the caffeine and the powder.
“Detective? You just kind of trailed off there.”
Jack shook his head to clear the fog and stuck his fingers into his mouth to whistle at the crime scene unit. “You all can go ahead and wrap these guys up for carry-out. Nothing much to see here.”
There would be an autopsy, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that it would yield any more than they knew already. Another incident to stuff into the “unsolved” file. Another brutal murder on this beach, with no connection or reason to any of it. A cool wind blew in off the water and as it flowed over them he shivered, wondering if somehow they were waging a war that they would never truly or completely understand.
.
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