George Martin - Fevre Dream

“I told you,” said Joshua York.

“I wanted to see her.” They walked back out into the sunlight of the forecastle. Marsh glanced back over his shoulder at the shadows, the rotten rusted shadows of all that she had been and all that he had dreamed. “Eighteen big boilers,” he said hoarsely. “Whitey loved them engines.”

“Abner, come. We must do what we came to do.”

They ascended the grand staircase, climbing with care. The slime on the steps was foul-smelling and slippery. Marsh leaned too hard on a carved wooden acorn and it came off in his hand. The promenade was gray and deserted and looked unsafe. They entered the main cabin, and Marsh frowned at three hundred feet of decay and despair and beauty gone to rot. The carpet was stained and torn and eaten away by fungus and mold. Green splotches spread across it like cancer eating away at the soul of the steamer. Someone had painted over the skylight, had covered all that fine stained glass with black paint. It was dark. The long marble bar was covered with dust. Stateroom doors hung broken and shattered. One chandelier had fallen. They walked around the pile of broken glass. A third of the mirrors were cracked or missing. The rest had gone blind, their silver flaking away or turning black.

When they walked up to the hurricane deck, Marsh was glad to see the sun. He checked the gun again. The texas loomed above them, its cabin doors closed and waiting. “He still in the captain’s cabin?” Marsh asked. Joshua nodded. They climbed the short flight of steps to the texas deck, and moved toward it.

In the shadows of the texas porch, Sour Billy Tipton was waiting.

But for the eyes, Abner Marsh might never have recognized him. Sour Billy was as ruined as the boat. He had always been skinny. Now he was an animated skeleton, sharp bones thrusting against sickly yellow flesh. His skin had the look of a man’s who has been bedridden for years. His face was a damned skull, a yellowish pockmarked skull. Nearly all his hair had fallen out, and the top of his head was covered with scabs and raw red blotches. He was dressed in black rags, and his fingernails had grown four inches long. Only his eyes were the same: ice-colored and somehow feverish eyes, staring, trying to scare, trying to be little vampire eyes, just like Julian’s. Sour Billy had known they were coming. He must have heard them. When they turned the corner he was there, his knife in his hand, his deadly practiced hand. He said, “Well-”

Abner Marsh snapped up the shotgun and fired both barrels, point-blank, at his chest. Marsh didn’t much care to hear that second, “Well.” Not this time.

The gun roared and kicked back hard, slamming into Marsh and bruising his arm. Sour Billy’s chest turned red in a hundred places, and the blast threw him backward. The rotten railing of the texas porch gave way behind him, and he went crashing down to the hurricane deck. Still holding his knife, he tried to get to his feet. He reeled and staggered forward dizzily, like a drunk. Marsh jumped down to the hurricane deck after him, and reloaded the gun. Sour Billy grabbed for a pistol stuck through his belt. Marsh gave him two more barrels, and blew him clear off the hurricane deck. The pistol spun from his grip, and Abner Marsh heard Billy scream and smash into something on the way down. He peered down at the forecastle. Billy was lying face-down, twisted at an unnatural angle, a smear of red beneath him. He still had a hold of his goddamned knife, but it didn’t look like he’d be doing any damage with it. Abner Marsh grunted, pulled a couple of fresh shells from his pocket, and turned back toward the texas.

The door to the captain’s cabin stood wide open, and Damon Julian was out on the texas porch facing Joshua, a pale malevolence with black and beckoning eyes. Joshua York stood immobile, like a man entranced.

Marsh wrenched his eyes down to his shotgun and the shells he held in his hand. Pretend he ain’t there, he told himself. You’re in the sun, he can’t come for you, don’t look at him, just load, just load the gun and give him both goddamned barrels right in the face while Joshua holds him still. His hand shook. He steadied it and slid in one shell.

And Damon Julian laughed. At the sound of that laughter Marsh looked up in spite of himself, the second shell still between his fingers. Julian had such music in his laugh, such warmth and good humor, that it was hard to be afraid, hard to remember what he was and the things he could do.

Joshua had fallen to his knees.

Marsh cussed and took three impetuous strides forward, and Julian whirled, still smiling, and came at him. Or tried to. Julian vaulted down to the hurricane deck over the ruined porch, but Joshua saw him, rose, and came leaping after, catching Julian from behind. For a moment they grappled on the deck. Then Marsh heard Joshua cry out in pain, and he looked away and slid the second shell home and closed the gun and looked up again and saw Julian coming, that white face looming up before him and the teeth gleaming, the terrible teeth. His finger tightened convulsively on the trigger before he had the damned gun aimed, and the shot went wild. The recoil sent Marsh sprawling, and that was what probably saved his life. Julian missed him, spun… and hesitated when he saw Joshua rising, four long bleeding tracks down his right cheek. “Look at me, Julian,” Joshua called softly. “Look at me.”

Marsh had one shot left. Sprawled on the deck, he raised the shotgun, but he was too slow. Damon Julian tore his eyes away from Joshua and saw the barrel swinging toward him. He whirled, and the shot boomed through empty air. By the time Joshua York had helped Abner Marsh to his feet, Julian had vanished down the stairs. “Go after him!” Joshua said urgently. “And stay alert! He might be waiting for you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll see he doesn’t leave the boat,” Joshua said. Then he spun and leaped from the edge of the hurricane deck, out over the forecastle, quick and nimble as a cat. He landed a yard from where Sour Billy lay, landed hard and rolled. An instant later he was back up, and darting up the grand staircase.

Marsh took out two more shells and reloaded. Then he went to the stair, peered down it warily, and began to descend step by careful step, the shotgun held at the ready. The wood creaked beneath his tread, but there was no other sound. Marsh knew that meant nothing. They moved so silently, all of them.

He had a hunch he knew where Julian would hide. In the grand saloon, or one of the staterooms off it. Marsh kept his trigger finger tensed, and went on in, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Way at the far end of the cabin, something moved. Marsh aimed and froze, then eased off. It was Joshua.

“He hasn’t come out,” Joshua called, his head moving as his eyes-so much better than Marsh’s-raked the cabin.

“I figured he hadn’t,” Marsh said. All of a sudden it felt cold in the cabin. Cold and still, like the breath from a long-closed tomb. It was too dark. Marsh couldn’t see anything but vaguely menacing shadows. “I need some goddamned light,” he said. He jerked the shotgun upward and fired one barrel up at the skylight. The report echoed deafeningly in the enclosed cabin, and the glass disintegrated. Shards and sunlight came raining down. Marsh took out a shell to reload. “I don’t see nothing,” he said, stepping forward with the gun under his arm. The long cabin was utterly still and empty as far as he could see. Maybe Julian was crouched behind the bar, Marsh thought. Cautiously he moved toward it.

A vague tinkling sound touched his ears, the clatter of crystals clinking together in the wind. Abner Marsh frowned.

And Joshua cried, “Abner! Above you!”

Marsh looked up just as Damon Julian released his hold on the great swaying chandelier and came plunging down at him.