Dan Simmons - The Terror

“Bring your knife,” said Fitzjames. “I have this.” He held up the single-shot pistol. “Stay behind me. Lieutenant Le Vesconte will follow us with an armed party and bring extra weapons. Surgeon, you stay by me as well.”

Goodsir nodded numbly. He’d been pulling on his slops – or someone’s – and seemed to be having a child’s difficulty in getting his left arm through the sleeve.

Fitzjames, his hands bare and wearing only a tattered jacket over his shirt, took a lantern from Des Voeux and plunged down the ladder. From somewhere below rose a series of terrible crashes, as if something was breaking timbers or bulkheads. There were no more screams.

Goodsir remembered the captain’s command to “stay by me” and fumbled his way down the dark ladder after the two men, forgetting to take a lantern. He did not have his bag of medical instruments and bandages with him. Brown and Dunn clattered after him, with a cursing Collins bringing up the rear.

The orlop deck was only seven feet below the lower deck but it seemed like another world. Goodsir almost never came down here. Fitzjames and the first mate were standing away from the ladder, swinging their lanterns. The surgeon realized that the temperature down here must be forty degrees below that of the lower deck where they ate and slept – and the lower deck’s average temperature these days was below freezing.

The crashing had stopped. Fitzjames ordered Collins to stop his cursing and the six men stood in a silent circle around the hatch opening to the hold deck below them. Everyone except Goodsir had a lantern and now extended it, although the small spheres of light seemed to penetrate only a few feet of the misted, freezing air. The men’s breath glowed in front of them like golden ornaments. The hurried footsteps banging on the lower deck above them seemed to Goodsir to be coming from miles away.

“Who was on duty down here tonight?” whispered Fitzjames.

“Mr. Gregory and one stoker,” replied Des Voeux. “Cowie, I think. Or maybe it was Plater.”

“And Carpenter Weekes and his mate Watson,” hissed Collins in an urgent whisper. “They were working through the night to shore up that stove-in part of the hull in the starboard for’ard coal-storage bin.”

Something roared beneath them. The sound was a hundred times louder and more bestial than any animal sound Goodsir had ever heard – worse even than the roar from the ebony room at midnight during Carnivale. The force of it echoed off every timber, iron brace, and bulkhead on the orlop deck. Goodsir was sure that the men on watch two decks above in the howling night could hear it as if the thing were on deck with them. His testicles tried to crawl back up into his body.

The roar had come from down in the hold deck.

“Brown, Dunn, Collins,” snapped Fitzjames. “Go forward past the Bread Room and secure the forward hatch. Des Voeux, Goodsir, come with me.”

Fitzjames stuck his pistol in his belt, held the lantern in his right hand, and clambered down the ladder into the blackness.

Goodsir had to use all his will just to avoid pissing himself. Des Voeux hurried down the ladder next and only an overwhelming sense of shame at the thought of not following the other men combined with a fear of being left alone in the dark set the trembling surgeon into motion after the first mate. His arms, hands, and legs felt as insensate as if they were made of wood, but he knew it was fear, not the cold, that caused this.

At the bottom of the ladder – in a black cold somehow more thick and terrible than the hostile outside arctic had ever felt to Harry Goodsir – the captain and first mate were holding their lanterns out as far as they could reach. Fitzjames had his pistol extended and fully cocked. Des Voeux was holding a standard boat knife. The mate’s hand was shaking. No one moved or breathed.

Silence. The crashing, thudding, and screams had all stopped.

Goodsir wanted to scream. He could feel the presence of something down on this dark hold deck with them. Something huge and not human. It could be twelve feet away, just beyond the puny circles of the lantern glow.

Along with the press of certainty that they were not alone came a strong copperish smell. Goodsir had smelled that many times before. Fresh blood.

“This way,” whispered the captain and led the way aft down the narrow starboard companionway.

Toward the boiler room.

The oil lamp that always burned in there had been extinguished. The only glow that came through the open door was a dim red-and-orange flickering from the few bits of coal burning in the boiler hearth.

“Mr. Gregory?” called the captain. Fitzjames’s shout was loud enough and sudden enough that Goodsir again came close to wetting himself. “Mr. Gregory?” the captain called a second time.

There was no answer. From their position in the corridor, the surgeon could see only a few square feet of the floor of the boiler room and some spilled coal. There was a smell in the air as if someone was grilling beef. Goodsir found himself salivating despite the sense of horror rising in him.

“Stay here,” Fitzjames said to Des Voeux and Goodsir. The first mate was looking first forward and then astern, swinging his lantern in a circle, keeping his knife high, obviously straining to see down the dark corridor past the narrow circle of light. Goodsir could do nothing but stand there and bunch his freezing hands into fists. His mouth filled with saliva at the almost forgotten smell of grilling meat and his belly rumbled in spite of his fear.

Fitzjames stepped around the door frame and into the boiler room, out of sight.

For an eternity of five to ten seconds there was no sound. Then the captain’s soft voice literally echoed from the metal-walled room. “Mr. Goodsir. Come in here, please.”

There were two human bodies in the room. One was recognizable as the engineer, John Gregory. He had been disemboweled. His body lay in the corner against the aft bulkhead, but grey strings and strands of his intestines had been thrown around the boiler room like party streamers. Goodsir had to watch carefully where he stepped. The other body, a thickset man in a dark blue sweater, lay on his stomach with his arms by his sides, palms upward, his head and shoulders in the boiler’s furnace.

“Help me pull him out,” said Fitzjames.

The surgeon grabbed the man’s left leg and his smoldering sweater, the captain took the other leg and right arm, and together they pulled the man back out of the flames. The man’s open mouth stuck against the lower flange of the furnace hearth’s metal grate for a second but then came free with a brittle snapping of teeth.

Goodsir rolled the corpse over while Fitzjames removed his jacket and beat out the flames rising from the dead man’s face and hair.

Harry Goodsir felt as if he were watching all this from a great distance. The professional part of his mind noticed with cool detachment that the furnace, as poorly banked as the low coal flames had been, had melted the man’s eyes, burned away his nose and ears, and turned his face into the texture of an overbaked, bubbling raspberry flan.

“Do you recognize him, Mr. Goodsir?” asked Fitzjames.

“No.”

“It’s Tommy Plater,” gasped Des Voeux from where he stood just within the doorway. “I recognize him by the sweater and by the earring melted into his jaw where his ear used to be.”

“God-damn it, Mate,” snapped Fitzjames. “Stand guard out in the corridor.”

“Aye, sir,” said Des Voeux and stepped out. Goodsir heard the sound of retching from the companionway.

“I will need you to note…,” began the captain, speaking to Goodsir.

There came a crashing, a tearing, and then a resounding thud from the direction of the bow so loud that Goodsir was sure that the ship had broken in half.