Tim Curran - Dead Sea

Particularly when you started wondering if there had been a crew aboard.

“I’m not buying that flying saucer shit,” Menhaus said, about as stubborn as they’d ever seen him. “I don’t believe in any of that shit. We only saw it for a few seconds. Could have been anything.”

“Like what?” Fabrini wanted to know.

“Like… like maybe a hovercraft. They’re round, right? Could have been one of those.”

“A hovercraft?” Saks said, laughing now. “A fucking hovercraft? Didn’t look much like a hovercraft to me.”

“You know damned well what it was,” Fabrini said. “We all do. I knew the minute I’d saw it and I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. And you know why?”

Menhaus looked at him. “You tell me.”

“Because it scared me, same as it scared all of you. And don’t you goddamn try and deny it, any of you. It scared the shit out of all of us. Those dead ships are one thing, but-”

“That’s enough,” Menhaus said. “That enough already.”

So that was it. They all knew something was eating him and here it was. He knew what it was they had seen, he just wouldn’t admit to it and the reason for that was it had him scared silly.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Saks said. “Menhaus isn’t buying it, are you Menhaus?”

“I certainly am not.”

“See, Fabrini? Menhaus don’t believe in little green men from Mars. He’s too damn sensible for that.”

“Damn right I am,” Menhaus said.

“It’s all a big stupid joke and Menhaus isn’t buying it.”

Menhaus swallowed. “Well…”

“Sure, it’s just a joke.” Saks looked amused. “A big, stupid, silly-assed joke. All right, Fabrini, let’s come clean already. This has all been a joke. The fog, the sea, all those big ghost ships out there. We set the whole thing up just to fuck with you, Menhaus. Candid Camera, right? Fabrini? Tell Alan Fundt to turn off that pissing fog machine and bring the lights up. We’re not fooling Menhaus with this shit, he saw right through it. I told you that flying saucer would tip him off. Menhaus, he’s just too smart for shit like this. Isn’t that what I said? Isn’t that what I told-”

“Fuck you,” Menhaus said.

“Yeah, fuck me is right.” He turned and looked at Fabrini. “Break them oars out, we’ll row back there. I wanna show Menhaus how I made that prick out of coat hangers and old garbage bags. He’s going to love this. Hey! Somebody turn the lights on already, enough is enough. Menhaus has had his fill.”

Menhaus looked like maybe he wanted to cry.

“Take it easy,” Fabrini told him. “So it’s a fucking dead flying saucer and there’s a couple little green men floating in the weeds. So what?”

“So what?” Menhaus shook his head. “What if they’re not dead? What if they’re alive right now and watching us? What then?”

Saks laughed. “Then you’ll get that anal probing you’ve always been wanting.”

“Fuck you, Saks. Just fuck you-”

“I think I saw it.”

They were all looking at Crycek now who had kept out of the entire discussion thus far. He was still gazing out into the fog, but apparently he had been listening. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that thing come down.” He turned and looked at them. “Before we picked you guys up… when it was just me and Cook and Hupp… I saw this sort of glowing blue light pass over us. It was up high, kind of hazy in the fog. I could only see that blue glow, nothing else. I been thinking… I been thinking that maybe it was that flying saucer coming down. Why the hell not? This goddamn place might have a hundred doors to it. Maybe that ship got sucked through one of ‘em, same way we did.”

“But if they can build a ship like that, something that jumps around from star to star like in those shows,” Fabrini began, “then they’d have to be real smart. That kind of technology is about a thousand years or a hundred thousand from where we are. You wouldn’t think a race like that could get sucked in here and even if they did, you’d think they’d know how to fly back out.”

Saks said, “Maybe the thing was damaged. It looked kind of burnt or something. Crusty.”

Menhaus was just sitting there with his arms folded.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Menhaus,” Saks said. “We’re leaving you out of the loop again. See, we’re talking about this movie we saw once about these queers lost in the Bermuda Triangle. This big, dumb fat lick of dogshit named Menhaus don’t believe that these ass-raping little green fuckers from the Andromeda galaxy have come to sodomize him. Movie was called Invasion of the Butt-Guppies or I Married a Leather-Boy from Outer Space. Something like that. It was one hell of a flick, I tell you.”

Fabrini joined in, laughing now with an almost hysterical sound. “Sure, I remember it. But I think it was called It Came in My Inner Space or The Man from Planet XXX.” He couldn’t stop laughing. “Remember that movie poster, Saks? It said: In space, no one can hear you squeal. Oh, oh, oh, that was a good one. What a movie!”

Menhaus was just staring off blankly now. There were tears coming down his cheeks. He just looked… broken. Used-up and violated like something important in him had been handled, dirtied-up and then stuffed back inside of him. That’s how he looked.

Crycek finally said, “None of this gets us anywhere.”

He was right, of course.

Saks said, “Let’s find us a ship somewhere so Menhaus can cry in private. Jesus H. Christ.”

Fabrini got out the oars and Crycek and he started working them. It was hard pulling through that weed. Anything with a keel on it was going to have trouble cutting through that growth. But they kept pulling and pulling until they sighted a fishing boat.

“She ain’t much,” Saks said. “But she’ll do for now.”

About then, a sound rose up out in the fog. Something like a high, insane chittering. The sound of a beetle just completely out of its mind. When it sounded again it was closer. And they were all starting to imagine the mother of all crickets coming out of the mist.

“Let’s make that boat,” Saks said. “I think our number is about up.”

It was the sort of wild, implausible rescue that, looking back on it later, George could scarcely believe had happened in the first place. There they were, about to be eaten by that monster-squid and then flames began to spread over the weeds… and out pops a woman, tossing fuel oil at the beast and driving it off. She said her name was Elizabeth Castle. That they had about two minutes to get out of there before Mr. Squid came back, probably not in the best of moods.

After that, to George’s thinking, things were a little fuzzy.

Everything happened very fast. They threw what gear they could into her boat… one of those flat-bottomed things that looked like a big box, you saw them on TV, people poling around the bayou in them

… and carefully brought Gosling aboard, still not knowing what any of it was about and just goddamn happy they were being rescued.

Of course, Chesbro had to get some preaching in, saying, “You were sent by God, Miss, you surely were.”

To which she politely replied, “If you say.”

George and Pollard grabbed poles and joined the lady in directing them wherever it was they were going. That flat-bottomed little scow was really something in the weed. It glided right over the most tangled and knotted patches. Elizabeth Castle was apparently an old vet, because she steered them through the congested weed, darkness, and mushrooming fog where you couldn’t see ten feet in any direction. She brought them back to a big sailing yacht that said Mystic on her bow and couldn’t have been in the weed for too long.