From Below

by Darcy Coates

A true ghost ship. A phantom of the deep, manned by the bodies of the dead.

Nor had she ever felt so utterly cut off from the world. If we die down here, our bodies may never be recovered. The thought came out of nowhere, slamming into her and stealing her breath. It was the truth.

You always pay, her father had told her once when she was a teenager. When you go somewhere most people can’t or try something dangerous, there is always a fee. You either pay with caution and a level head, or you pay with your life.

But the sounds in the walls were growing bolder. Louder. Sometimes, if Harland pressed his ear against the cold steel, he could hear it far too clearly: broken fingernails digging at the metal, seeking a way out. He wondered if those clawing hands had left scars just out of sight, on the other side of the metal. The fingers must have been scored and worn, skin cracking, blood seeping—

The wall roused some deep, primal horror that overrode every logical part of his mind and filled his body with sickness.

Fitz had exposed a span of exterior hull four feet by five feet. And, inside, he had revealed a shriveled, twisted corpse.

He’d hung suspended above the tables, in the room’s center. As Hestie’s headlight flashed through the narrow gap, it had illuminated him in awful, grotesque clarity. His skin was marbled with unnatural, off-white lumps. His clothes drifted about him, weightless and dull. She could have sworn she’d seen his eyes beneath the heavy lids and that they’d flashed. Just like the eyes from down the hallway.

Cove’s first instinctual thought was: Damn, we won’t be able to climb them. Followed by the mental slap of: You’re weightless, idiot. Float up.

Isn’t that the truth for all of us though? Isn’t it, in some ways, a blessing that we don’t know when our time will end? Think, Cove—how much attention did you pay to your sunrise this morning? Did you make the most of it, as though it could be your last?

Philosophers have been torn on this subject for almost their entire existence. Are individuals entitled to the truth as a basic human right? Or is it acceptable to disguise facts if they ultimately do more harm than good?