From below, p.32
From Below, page 32
Aidan clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. He waited for her light. She’d have to turn it on again soon to correct their course. Soon…soon…
Something soft and malleable ran along Aidan’s thigh. He pictured one of the dead bodies raking its limp hands across his side, or perhaps one of the swaddled, shrouded figures struggling toward him.
Aidan took a deep breath. It was a long time since he’d checked his dive computer for his oxygen level. He was frightened to look at it. A small part of him registered that, even at that moment, it might be too late to escape. Even if they got past the grasping hands and out of the cursed ship, they might not have enough air to reach the surface.
And then, ahead, Vanna’s light flicked on.
Rows of glinting eyes filled their path. The light turned off immediately. The cord, which had been tugging him, became slack.
Turn back and risk being cornered? Or push forward and risk being caught?
Two short, sharp tugs on the cord answered Aidan’s question. They were going forward. And they were going to do it fast.
Vanna lunged forward. Aidan moved with her, kicking his feet furiously, no longer cautious about the silt or creating currents.
Hands raked across his chest. Something hit his mask, shifting it a fraction of an inch, and Aidan grappled with it to push it back into place.
Light flashed again as Vanna turned her flashlight on. It glared across the closest faces, and the gaping jaws stretched wider as the figures coiled back.
Aidan grappled for his own spare flashlight. His left hand was still tied to Vanna’s right, but he held his light in his spare and directed it toward anything that came close to them.
It helped. A bit. The bodies didn’t fully retreat, but the grasping, clawlike hands rose to block their eyes. It struck Aidan that, after living in the dark and the cold for more than ninety years, the sudden illumination must hurt their eyes.
His flashlight was weakening rapidly though. The bulb grew dim, as though each grimacing face it pointed toward was stealing some of its power. Vanna’s was fading just as fast.
But he could see the door ahead. No more than fifteen paces away, it still had the white dive line floating through the opening like a marker.
His light blinked, then stuttered as it fought for life. Aidan kicked forward again, the edges of his fins scraping over reaching, shriveled arms. Vanna moved at his side, both of them propelled by pure adrenaline. Her flashlight failed first. Aidan pointed his ahead, no longer bothering to shine it on the shrouded figures clustering toward them but using it to guide their path.
A broad, dim silhouette moved in front of the doorway. Aidan’s flashlight flickered across the sagging stomach and the faded dinner jacket, then up, toward the slack jaw and the blunt end of its head where the bridge of its nose began.
And then his flashlight died.
Aidan dropped it and instead reached his hands forward to claw through the water. They were moving too fast to stop…not that stopping was an option either way. Movement swelled behind them, eddies dragging on their fins as the figures tried to claw them back.
Aidan’s outstretched hand dug into something bony. He didn’t think but simply pulled on it, using it to aid his speed as he clambered toward freedom. It was only when bony plates shifted and his fingertips sank into something soft that he realized what he was touching: the insides of the half-headed man’s skull.
A scream boiled in his chest but choked on the lump in his throat. He couldn’t breathe as he snatched his hand free. The doorframe scraped his shoulder, and fingertips ran down his calf, searching for purchase, but were shaken free when he kicked his feet.
They were through the hold’s door and out into the hallway.
50
19 April 1928
The day before the sinking of the Arcadia
The captain called a meeting just before midnight. One of the officers, Pulley, had sent word that they were to be summoned to the bridge. That came as a surprise to many: the bridge had been off-limits to all—even the officers—for days.
Harland felt numb as he traced the passageways. He could no longer feel his feet or his hands through the cold. It was almost possible to imagine that he had slipped over the veil between life and death without even noticing it, except that he still tasted it. The rotting, sticking fog, drenching his clothes, filling his lungs, like glue on the inside of his nostrils. If he were dead, he should have at least been set free from that.
Though he could be mistaken, he reasoned. Perhaps this was hell.
The ship certainly felt like it. Voices mumbled from the hospital on the floor below. No one had visited them since the hallways were barricaded, but their raving and shrieking ensured they were not forgotten.
As Harland trailed after his companions on the route to the captain’s bridge, arms reached from holes in the walls, languidly plucking at his pant legs as though trying to draw him into their hiding places. They were all familiar faces, some of them even friends. Now, he barely spared them a glance.
The bridge door was open. The captain occupied his chair, facing away from them. He stared toward the controls and the broad windows overlooking a wall of white.
The fog was thicker on the bridge, and Harland raised his sleeve over his mouth in a vain effort to block it out.
There was no rhyme or reason to the people who had been summoned. Harland half believed that Officer Pulley had simply grabbed the sleeves of whoever he passed in the halls. For all he knew, that could be the truth. They had stopped keeping records of which staff were still alive and still willing to work. Indeed, work had almost entirely ground to a halt. The engines were rapidly growing cold as the surviving stokers congregated in one of the staff mess halls, staring into empty mugs with empty eyes and never seeming to leave their seats.
Nearly thirty individuals lined up inside the bridge. That was about as many as the space could take, but although it was cramped, they all avoided moving too close to the captain’s chair. Only Pulley, his favored officer, stood at his side, one hand on the chair’s leather back.
Still, the captain remained facing away from them. The top of his cap was visible above the seat. His elbows lay on the armrests, unnervingly still. The dim light of burning fat in a jar did a pitiful job of lighting the space, and Harland squinted. Were those flecks of dried blood on the captain’s sleeves?
He, along with several colleagues, shuffled backward, trying to pull deeper into the crowd that was already packed shoulder to shoulder.
“The captain thanks you for joining him this evening,” Pulley said. He was a small man with sloped shoulders but a few years older than Harland. He’d had keen eyes before the journey set out, and they seemed to have only sharpened since then. Harland had a flash of memory: Pulley’s lips pulled tight with a harsh kind of glee as he and his fellow officers rushed Fitz in the hold. He turned aside so he wouldn’t have to see that same maniacal glint again.
“The captain has special instructions for you tonight,” Pulley continued. “I suggest you listen closely.”
He pushed on the edge of the captain’s chair. Slowly, creaking, it rotated to face them. Harland squinted as the dull light burned his eyes. It was impossible to read any detail clearly. He had the strange impression of a crooked smile on the captain’s lips as the chair came to a halt, then abruptly took another step back.
Quiet murmurs rose from those around him. The captain faced him, a jar of burning fat held between his hands. He’d been tied to the chair with coarse rope. Even his hands had been lashed together, to prevent the jar from falling and spilling. If not for the ropes, Harland was certain Captain Virgil would have been entirely limp.
There was no crooked smile on his lips. His cheeks and jaw were slack. His eyes were cast downward and fogged. His head rocked with every small movement, giving him the illusion of motion. A harsh, jagged line cut across his throat. Blood ran down from it like a cravat, to paint his shirt in dark crimson.
The whispers were growing into a crescendo. Pulley’s eyes drew tight. “Silence,” he barked, and the crew fell quiet.
The captain is dead, Harland thought, and although he knew he should feel some kind of emotion at that revelation, all he experienced was a dull sort of surprise.
It was because it had been inevitable, he realized. He’d been too slow to read the signs, but they were all there: painted across the walls as messages, carved into the plaster and metal, present in the inhuman creatures that stalked through their secret passages. This was as inevitable as winter following autumn, as inevitable as the passing of an elderly relative. It was always going to happen…and he was the fool who hadn’t felt the need to prepare.
“The captain has orders,” Pulley said, still standing uncomfortably close to the captain’s chair, still resting his pale fingers on its back. “Listen.”
Against his better judgment, Harland edged closer. The captain was dead. And yet…was he really? The harder Harland listened, the more he became convinced that he could hear whispers. Not from his fellow crew; they, along with him, were holding their breath. But as he leaned in, he swore he saw the captain’s lips twitching. Secret, rasping phrases dropped from between bloodied teeth and bruised lips.
The captain was dead. And yet…he was not.
“You hear that?” The sharp glint in Pulley’s eyes had grown dangerous. “You understand it, don’t you? The captain wants the holes widened. We must root out these intruders. Go to work; begin digging. Peel away the layers. Don’t stop until you find them.”
Yes, Harland thought. That’s what the whispers say. We’re supposed to dig.
The captain’s bloodshot, faded eyes fixed on nothing, but the lips continued to twitch, those dark phrases he couldn’t fully understand falling from them as smoothly as snakes.
Yes, they were supposed to dig, and dig deeper and not stop until the others were uncovered—and maybe not even then.
51
The third dive
Just get to the stairs. That’s all that matters. Get to the stairs.
Cove had their path mapped out in her mind. Ahead, the hall turned to the right. There would be the stairwell, one-half leading down, but the other half taking them up, back into the writing room, and then out into the ocean.
And the misshapen, once-human figures creeping in their wake wouldn’t follow them into the ocean, Cove was certain. Somehow, they felt as much a part of the ship as the plate metal walls and wood panels: fixtures that could not be removed without carving something vital out of the ship.
Loose wallpaper coiled over her face mask as her too-rapid pace sent eddies rolling through the hall. Roy was close behind her, his dark form visible in brief flashes at her side. She hadn’t heard from Vanna or Aidan. She only hoped they’d already found their own way out. They couldn’t have been far from the smoking room when Vanna’s first warning came through.
She didn’t know what she’d do if she and Roy arrived outside the Arcadia and found they were alone. The thought tied her stomach into knots. With her lights threatening to fail and the audio so broken it was close to useless, she had no plan for how she would even go about locating her missing crew…let alone retrieve them.
Don’t think about it. They’ll be there. You just need to focus on getting yourself out; that’s all you can afford right now.
Quiet clicking sounds echoed from around Cove. She could no longer identify them as coming from behind her. They seemed to surround her—inside the rooms they passed, from the floor above, from the floor below. She refused to twist her head in search of the sounds but instead fixated ahead, eyes glued on the hall’s end. Every fiber of her body was wound tight at the idea of something shifting in to block her path. She thanked whatever luck they held on to for each passing moment that the hall remained clear.
Up the stairs. Through the writing room and into the lounge. Out through the hole. Then you’ll be safe.
A heavy, sonorous noise rose from the ship. Beginning at the stern and rushing along the ocean liner like shivers along a spine, the reverberations vibrated the water around Cove and shook sparkling lines of sediment loose from the ceiling. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and coaxed herself to breathe. There was no luxury to stop and wait the noise out; they simply had to keep moving as the shudders passed around them and faded at the stern.
The ship’s waking up. She’d had that thought once before, but it seemed so much more possible at that moment. They’d brought the oxygen back into the Arcadia. They’d fed the bodies that had been dormant for so many decades. They hadn’t risen from their resting places at once; the first dive, they’d been in hibernation, still and silent and reluctant to be roused.
But Cove and her team had been given warnings during the second dive. The safety line being severed. Doors closing. Signs that something did not want them to leave. And Hestie—reliable, logical Hestie—collapsing in the hospital.
It had taken those first two dives to fully rouse the sleeping dead. But now they were awake, and Cove didn’t like to think how little time they had to escape the Arcadia’s jaws before they were closed forever.
They were at the hall’s end. Cove knew they couldn’t afford to stop, but she still slowed her pace to lean around the corner, sending her fading headlight cutting into the gloom beyond.
The stairs were to her left. The sharp edges of the railing caught the light, casting hard shadows on the opposite walls. Specks of waterborne sediment floated across the stairs, marking the path Cove and Roy—and presumably, the stiffly suspended figures—had followed.
Cove beckoned to her companion as she leaned forward. The clicking noises had grown louder and more consuming and bled into the static in a way that put Cove’s teeth on edge.
Roy pushed forward to come up beside her, just as eager to leave the vessel. Cove pointed herself at the stairs leading up and began to rise.
Almost…
A gray figure turned toward her. Cove pulled up, her hands cutting through the water as she tried to halt her momentum.
One of the unnaturally stiff creatures blocked the stairs. Its shoes were missing, and its toes curled under themselves, grazing the steps as it moved toward them. Its back was bowed and its hands wrapped around its torso, but as it moved nearer, they uncoiled, slowly spreading out from its body.
Cove froze as she stared up at it. She couldn’t afford to turn away from the stairs, but the figure blocked the path, and it was growing nearer.
The lights worked before—
Just as that thought registered, the bulb on her head flickered, its strength fading dangerously. Cove clenched her teeth, willing it to hold.
The figure’s arms spread, reaching out toward them. Two more shapes filled the shadowed recesses behind it, and Cove’s heart missed a beat.
Roy backed away from the stairwell, his motions sharp. He was moving toward the other passageway, the path they’d originally taken when entering that level.
Cove felt ice flood her veins. The creature from the wardrobe twisted through the water at his back. Cove reached toward him, desperate, and managed to snag his gloved hand. She pulled on him. The wardrobe-creature’s too-long fingers reached forward, snagging Roy’s canister. Cove heard him yell, not through the static-flooded communications units, but through the water. He writhed, frantic. The creature’s grip slipped, and Cove pulled her friend to her.
The figure on the stairs was nearly at the landing, its bony, wax-crusted arms twitching through the water as it reached for her. Cove backed away from it, moving toward the passageway they had just come from. Slick fear flowed across her tongue. The four figures, the ones that had followed them around the loop, were nearly on top of them.
Can’t go up. Can’t go forward. Can’t go backward.
Cove turned, her hands sweeping the water to back her away from the threats drawing closer on all three sides.
There was one path that still remained empty, but terror gripped Cove at the thought of it. The stairwell down was an ink-black tunnel of shadows under her failing light, but nothing blocked the stairs. Yet.
Roy grasped her shoulder and hauled her toward it. They were out of choices. Reluctantly, she let herself tip into the hole leading to the lower level, knowing it likely wasn’t a coincidence that the only path left open to them was the one that carried them deeper into the ship.
The hallway between the holds was so perfectly silent that Aidan could hear his heart beating. He tried to drift forward, toward where the doors to the upper levels could be found, but the cord still tied to his wrist pulled taut.
Vanna. Is she stuck? Is she okay?
He felt for the controls next to his headlight, desperately hoping it had survived the struggle through the hold. The sound of metal shrieking put his teeth on edge. He found a switch and pressed it, and sharp white light flickered across the scene.
Vanna was at the hold door, forcing it closed. Scabbed, cracked hands reached past the door’s edge, trying to curl around far enough to snag her. Aidan pressed his lips together, hoping it might somehow be enough to keep him from being sick, and raised himself in the water. He kicked at the hands in quick, sharp jabs, never leaving his foot there long enough to be snagged in return. The door shuddered as it ground home, and Vanna leaned her shoulder against it, her chest heaving from the exertion.
The dark mask covering her face tilted toward him, and Aidan tentatively raised an okay sign. The head dipped, then Vanna gave him an okay in return.
Aidan reached for the knot holding the cord around his wrist, but Vanna placed her hand over it, refusing to let him untie it. They were going to stay tethered until they left the ship. That made sense, Aidan realized; they only had one light left—his—and no radios. If the headlight went out unexpectedly, they might never find each other again.
