Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

“Sure. Whatever.”

“Just try to…”

“Try to what?”

“I dunno. The smell, dude.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I get that. But if you can hold it back for a couple minutes that’d be super-cool.”

“I’ll try.” The last word was strangulated, and ended in a gasp.

I hit ANSWER. “Rick?” Shannon said immediately.

“Well, yeah, Shann, of course it is. This is my phone. Kind of caught up in something right now, though.”

“Are you drunk?”

I’d hoped I’d hidden it better. “Shannon, Christ’s sake, of course not. Well, a little, yes, obviously. Okay, I’m drunk. What’s your point? And why are you calling me?”

“You need to leave.”

“I need to what?”

“Didn’t you see my email ?”

“Email? No—when?”

“ Over an hour ago .”

“Shannon, I’m at the conference . I’m talking to people. From all over the place. London, Helsinki, uh, Wisconsin. I can’t be checking my phone every ten minutes.”

“Haven’t you seen the TV?”

“The bar doesn’t have a TV.”

“ There’s no TV? ”

“It’s not that kind of bar.”

“Rick—you need to get on land.”

“I’m on land, Shannon—seriously, what the heck?”

“No, you’re on a boat.”

“But it’s attached to the land. By… walkway things.”

“It’s in the actual ocean, still, though, right?”

“I guess, technically , but…”

“On TV they said to stay away from the ocean. Any part of it. That everybody should stay away from the ocean .”

“What are you talking about ?”

Carl grunted again suddenly, far louder than before. This time the growling was coming up out of his mouth, like a long, rasping belch.

“Oh shit,” he groaned when it abated. “Oh Jesus fuck.” He sounded confused and desperate.

“Shannon,” I said, “can you give me a simple, declarative sentence to respond to? Imagine you’re texting me. Try that.”

She said something but I couldn’t hear it because of another sudden barrage of blows on the outer door. It wasn’t the kind of sound you get from a person requesting entry. It sounded more like someone trying to break in.

“Busy in here,” I shouted. There was a momentary pause, and then the banging sounds started up again, even harder.

“Tell them there’s another restroom down the boat,” Carl said. He sounded very tired. “My head really hurts. I can’t take the banging noise.”

I opened my mouth to do that but the banging suddenly stopped. There was silence.

Then what sounded like a scream.

I stared at the door.

“What… was that?” I’d forgotten I still had the phone pressed to my ear, and Shannon’s voice startled me. It sounded as though she was right there, as if our heads were on pillows alongside each other. Which they never have been, though since my divorce she’s the one woman who’s seemed to give a damn, my mother being down in Florida and also the most foul-tempered and least maternal person I’ve ever met.

“I don’t… know,” I said.

“Was it a scream ?”

“Kind of, yeah.” She sounded panicky and I spoke as calmly as I could. ‘Look. Who is saying what on TV?’

“It’s on all the stations,” she said. “And the Internet. Twitter’s gone insane with it. A few hours ago people posting about odd things happening. Kind of, well, nobody really seems to know. Things going weird, near the coast. And not just in one place—everywhere. Not the lakes. Just the ocean. Something’s wrong with the ocean.”

“But what ?”

“I don’t know ,” she said. “A fog coming in.”

“A fog,” I said, remembering how it had been on the smokers’ deck when I left it… What? Ten minutes ago? A dense sea fog. Getting thicker and thicker.

“Right. But then it started to snowball and now they’re saying it’s not the fog after all, or maybe that’s part of it but not the main thing. But nobody knows .”

“Stay on the line,” I told her.

“Hell’s going on?” Carl said. His voice sounded weak and strained.

“I have no idea,” I said, flipping over to Twitter on my phone. All my follows and followers are business related—tech rivals and bloggers and a bunch of “influencers” and “growth hackers” who are super-annoying but I nonetheless track in case they start trash-talking the company and in particular the fucking RX350i and why it’s still not on the market. As a result my feed is usually crushingly dull.

One flick with my thumb showed this wasn’t the case now. Nothing tech at all. A mass of retweets from news organizations and randomers, blurry footage of people running, others asking if the country was under terrorist attack—and yes, a consistent message urging people to get away from the coast.

“What are you doing ?” Shannon asked.

“Looking at Twitter. It’s a dumpster fire. What the fuck?”

I heard another scream from out in the corridor. This one approached like a siren and went past like one too, as though someone was sprinting down the corridor outside.

The sound suddenly cut off.

The silence afterward seemed so loud that I barely noticed the growling noise from the stall, followed by another explosive release of air and something splashing into the toilet bowl.

“Oh no,” Carl said, very quietly. “That’s… oh no.”

“Who’s that?” Shannon asked, sounding freaked. “I heard a voice your end.”

“I’m… in the restroom. It’s a guy from the Boston office.”

“Carl Hammick?”

“You know him?”

“Not in person. But it’s my job to know who—”

“Whatever. Shann, what I need to know is…”

I tailed off. I didn’t know what I needed to know. My Twitter feed was still spooling down the screen, absurdly fast, showing more of the same. I flicked sideways to trending stories and saw identical retweets, the same information—or lack of it—being rotated very quickly.

Then one popped up that said: Santa Monica to be evacuated?

My heart was thumping in my chest now. It was impossible to believe this was real. But then there was a retweet of something that looked like a genuine news source. The problem with social media is it’ll recycle bullshit without anybody stopping to check it has any basis in reality, but then—there it was: a different source saying the same thing.

This source was CNN.

And regardless of the forty-fifth president’s views on the matter, I consider CNN to be real fucking news.

There was a thudding sound above me, then a heavy crash. I didn’t know the boat well enough to know what would be on the next floor, but it sounded like some large piece of furniture had been overturned. I hoped it was that, anyway—because if the noise had been caused by the collision of a body with something, the person could not have survived.

“Shannon,” I said, “where are you right now?”

“In the car,” she said. “You’re on speaker.”

“Going where?”

“Wait…” She stopped talking, and I caught the faint sound of other voices in the background.

“Are you with someone?”

“No—it’s the radio. There’s some guy from the army saying they think definitely it’s the water now.”

“Not a terrorist thing? I saw—”

“No. They bailed on that idea half an hour ago. This isn’t terrorists. It’s something in the water .”

“But what kind of thing?”

“They don’t know . Just get onto land , Rick.”