Stefán Máni - The Ship

‘Yep,’ says Sæli as the being becomes more clearly defined. ‘That’s Satan.’

18:31

‘Where have you been?’ asks Guðmundur when Satan steps off the gangplank onto the stern of the ship.

‘I made it to land,’ says Satan, scratching his beard, which is covered in ice up to his nose and out to his ears. ‘You can walk over the icefloes. When the fog lifts, we set off.’

‘Off to where?’ asks the captain.

‘I’ll show you after. There’s a map up in the bridge,’ says Satan, unwinding a white cloth from his neck; it’s a sheet he cut a strip off to use as a scarf. ‘What are you girls doing outside, anyway?’

Silence.

‘There’s crying,’ says Sæli, sniffing. ‘A baby crying.’

‘A baby crying?’ repeats Satan, brushing snow and ice off his parka.

‘It’s the Christ child,’ says the captain, smiling the smile of one who has blind faith in one thing while refusing to face everything else.

‘Or some devil,’ says Jónas with a shudder. ‘Let’s not forget that there are two powers competing for the souls of men!’

‘Anyway. It seems to come from below, this crying,’ says Sæli. ‘From the engine room.’

‘There’s nothing down in the engine room,’ says Guðmundur, still smiling, though his smile is now a bit tired. ‘I’ve looked high and low and found nothing. The only place we still haven’t looked is in the hearts of us men!’

‘But before we start digging in them, I’ll just have a look down there,’ says Satan with a grin.

‘Very well,’ says the captain, rising onto his toes. ‘But remember that what the heart can hear isn’t always understood by the mind!’

‘You’ve lost it, man,’ says Satan, shaking his head as he disappears into the wheelhouse.

18:59

It’s cold in the engine room, colder even than out on the ice, and the silence that fills the dark and surrounds the engines is more troubling than the sound that disturbs it off and on.

Waaahaaa…

It can’t be a baby crying because there’s no baby on board the ship. Like everything else, this crying will have its natural explanation. Satan believes in neither ghosts nor any other supernatural beings. At any rate, he fears nothing that isn’t flesh and blood. Only flesh and blood can conquer flesh and blood. Guys who lose their cool just because of mental pain or imagination aren’t sane – that’s all there is to it.

Satan walks slowly across the metal floor, hands outstretched, until he finds the railing above and behind the main engine.

Waaahaaa…

He ignites his gas lighter, which weakly illuminates the floor and down into the bottom of the ship, where the main engine is standing, cold and silent. The moment he lit the flame the crying stopped, which means its source is in the vocal cords of some form of life that is aware of his presence.

‘Where are you, you crybaby?’ says Satan, leaning over the railing and looking searchingly into the darkness. When nothing happens he takes to jumping up and down on the metal floor so that it shudders from end to end and produces a fearful rumbling.

And then the creature leaves its hiding place and rushes noisily across the floor behind the main engine. What Satan sees in the weak light of the flame is something white that scoots across like…

‘What the fuck was that?’ mutters Satan, staring into the dark, but when the flame burns his fingers he lets go of the lighter, closing off the gas so the flame dies.

Waaahaaa…

Satan creeps down the stairs to the main engine, waiting to ignite the lighter again until he’s near the place where he thinks he last saw the creature. The ship must leak somewhere, because there’s a couple of centimetres of ice on the floor of the engine room. Satan squats by the portside hull and reaches out his right hand with the lighter in it.

‘Right. One, two and…’ he whispers and takes a deep breath before thumbing the wheel on the lighter.

As the spark from the flint lights the gas, the creature shoots out of its new hiding place.

Satan sees something white that spreads itself out right in front of him. Its eyes are tiny and coal black, its yellow mouth opens wide and its red tongue sticks out like a poison dart.

19:07

‘Here’s your Jesus,’ says Satan as he walks out the door to the back of the wheelhouse and returns to the stern of the ship.

Guðmundur, Sæli and Jónas stare at the creature he’s holding out to them by its neck. It’s a large bird, ruffled and covered in oil.

‘It’s a seagull,’ says Sæli and he looks at Jónas, who lights a cigarette with trembling fingers.

‘Are you sure that’s…’ says Guðmundur, but stops talking in mid sentence when the exhausted seagull gives a cry.

Waaahaaa…

‘Any more questions?’ says Satan, looking at the three men in turn like a parent who has just proven that there’s no monster in the closet.

Silence.

‘Then we’ll just put this foolishness behind us,’ says Satan coldly and smashes the head of the seagull hard against the iron wall of the stern.

The other three jump as if at a gunshot and watch, horrified, as the seagull’s eyes turn red and the blood flows out of its open beak.

‘Anybody want to eat it? asks Satan, holding the bird out to the three men, who retreat a couple of steps and stare at the bloody carcass, which is jerking and beating its filthy wings.

Silence.

‘Just asking,’ says Satan and he tosses the bird overboard.

‘How did it get in the engine room, anyway?’ asks Sæli as he looks over the railing to the ice, where the seagull lies on its back, head to one side and wings spread.

‘What does it matter?’ says Satan, looking at Sæli as if he were an idiot. ‘Come with me up to the bridge. I want to show you the map I found.’

19:43

‘This X here shows the position of the ship, according to the captain’s calculations,’ says Satan, who’s standing by the table in the map room in the bridge pointing at an X on a small map of Antarctica, dated 1979.

‘You know my calculations aren’t exact,’ says Guðmundur, looking at the map, which is in the scale 1:40 000 000.

‘They’re all we have to go on,’ says Satan, tapping his pen on the map. ‘May I continue?’

‘Go ahead,’ mutters the captain.

‘Look at this, and this,’ says Satan, pointing with the pen at two black triangles on the map. ‘Those are research stations, as far as I understand it. The one that’s west or south of us is British, called Halley Bay, and the one more to the east is South African, called Sanae. If I’ve measured it right we’re 600 kilometres from the British one and 400 from the African one.’

‘Four hundred kilometres,’ says Sæli, looking at the captain. ‘That’s not so terribly far.’

‘Yes and no,’ says the captain with a sigh. ‘But that map is both old and tiny. Those stations aren’t necessarily still there, besides which it’s hard to measure distances on such a small map.’

‘It’s the only map we’ve got,’ says Jónas with a shrug. ‘Don’t we just have to make do with it?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with this map!’ says Satan, banging his pen against the table. ‘One centimetre on the map is 400 kilometres on the surface of the earth. It’s one centimetre to Sanae and one and a half to Halley Bay. Is that complicated?’