Polaris Page 9

  He now understood the complex calculus of their decision: Untended and without its carpenter, the ship was falling apart a little bit each day. It came down to how many days that would take, and whether they could reach port before then.

  As they stood motionless just a few paces into their journey, he felt the captainless ship jostling along over the waves now, sending little shocks up through the soles of his cold, wet feet. He knew—not out of any knowledge of boats but just based on pure physics—that every jolt would make those little leaks a bit bigger.

  Shhhuck shhhhuck. Owen peeled his feet from the wet wood and began walking again. Splap splap.

  The huddled group reached the edge of the crew’s quarters. Henry heard a few gasps and squinted into the gloom, struggling to see what the others saw. There was a grating directly overhead, but it revealed nothing but little squares of the purple sky above. Thacher leaned closer, shouldering past Henry. “What the devil?” he said.

  Owen nudged Maria a bit farther out into the space, and the group took a few hesitant steps. The lamplight revealed the extent of the wreckage. Sea trunks had been torn open, their lids hanging loosely or ripped off completely on the floor nearby. A pillow had been shredded, leaving wet feathers plastered to the floor and even the hull alongside. A cloth hammock lay in tatters.

  “What could have …” began Emma before pausing and changing her question mid-sentence. “What is that smell?”

  Henry closed his mouth and took a deep whiff through his nose. The wet funk of the crew’s quarters was immediately overpowered by an air of sweet decay.

  “It’s him!” said Thacher, raising the borrowed cross up and holding it out in front of him.

  “Hold your ground,” growled Owen. His voice sounded impressively brave to Henry, until he noticed the barrel of the pistol flopping around like a fish on a dock. “We still need those supplies.”

  But the others were already starting to step back, leaving Owen alone and exposed in the ravaged quarters. Even the light was slowly retreating from him, illuminating only his back now. “We can get them tomorrow,” said Aaron, his voice breaking into a high squeak halfway through the last word.

  “Do you suppose it will be any better then?” said Owen, his head still forward, as if talking to the darkness.

  Henry filled his nostrils again, only halfway this time, trying to pull the odor apart slowly. Trying to match it with the scientific specimens he’d encountered back in Boston and on his travels with the doctor: oddly colored mushrooms, little sprays of fuzz …

  “Perhaps not,” said Thacher, “but it will be brighter.”

  Owen suddenly seemed to recognize that all the voices were coming from behind him and that he was standing at the very edge of the light. He swung around, his eyes wide, and his gun suddenly pointed at the rest of the group.

  For a moment, Henry honestly thought he might shoot one of them for having abandoned him. Instead, he cocked his head slightly, in that doglike way of his, and said, “True …”

  As he did, Henry saw something shift in the darkness behind him. What it was he could not say: just a pale circle flashing across the murk and a quick glitter of something catching the light. Something dark but shiny—or perhaps dark but wet. As it flashed across his vision, strange sounds rose to accompany it.

  Henry heard a quick series of wet scratches, as if a dull blade was being dragged through wet wood, and then breahhkrehka brehkah …

  It was a breathy rasp unlike anything he had heard before. It was utterly alien but also, somehow, vaguely human.

  “RUN!” called Emma. “Do not turn around, cabin boy. Just run!”

  Owen’s eyes, which had grown wider still at the sound, narrowed now. He bolted forward. He quickly caught up with the rest of the group, and they all stampeded down the passage together.

  “AAH!” screamed Maria as they neared the ladder.

  “What is it?” gulped Owen. “Are you struck?”

  “No,” she said, stopping short at the base of the ladder. “I stepped on one of the broken lanterns. Cut my foot.”

  She held the lamp steady as the others climbed toward the square of purple sky above.

  Henry looked down from his spot in the chain of climbers. He saw Owen wave her up. “Go!” he said, pointing his wobbling pistol straight down the passage.

  Maria nodded and began to climb, holding the lantern above her and leaving the terrified cabin boy and a trail of bloody footprints behind her.

  Henry climbed fast, making way for those behind him. When he reached the top, he tumbled onto the deck. Breathing hard, he stared back at the hatch. Emma emerged, and then her sister.

  “Owen …” Henry breathed.

  But no sooner had he said his name than the boy emerged, popping like a jack-in-the-box from the open hatch. “What?” he said.

  Henry shook his head. Nothing, he thought. Just glad to see you.

  They battened down the hatches and then dropped heavy coils of rope on top. For an hour or so, they busied themselves with breathless recountings of their trip below and wild speculation as to what it was they hadn’t quite seen.

  “Not a ghost, I think,” said Owen.

  “Not a normal one, anyway,” admitted Thacher.

  Henry looked at him in the moonlight. What exactly was a normal ghost?

  But soon their excitement drained and they grew tired. Watches were set. It was Owen’s crew’s turn to sleep first. He handed the pistol to Emma—a single shot still primed within its barrel—as he slunk wearily toward the cabin.

  Each in their turn, the crew members slept fitfully, on empty stomachs and with minds full of nightmares. Henry hadn’t eaten since breakfast—and that had only been a spoonful of molasses and some last crumbs of sea bread. The hunger gnawed at him—Who would have thought one could miss old salt pork so much?—but the thirst was worse. The day had been hot and bright.

  He smacked his dry mouth and it made a thick, gluey sound. He knew that they would have to go below again in the morning. They would have to confront some still faceless horror. They would have to risk the possibility of death below deck or endure the certainty of starvation above.

  But maybe they could hold off until it rained again?

  Maybe they could catch some food from the sea?

  They were nice thoughts, if impractical, and the moment’s respite allowed him to drift off to sleep.

  He woke to sore muscles and rosy red light filtering in through the windows of the cabin. The dawn had arrived in purples and blues for the last few days, and he much preferred this new color. Sensing motion in the hammock beside him, he whispered, “It is quite pretty.”

  “It is not,” said Maria sleepily. “It means there’s foul weather on the way.”

  “Oh,” said Henry, ignoring the danger as best he could and thinking only of the rainwater.

  The door to the cabin swung open, and Owen stuck his head in. “Everyone up!” he called.

  The night watch was over, and once again, all hands were needed on deck.

  The Spanish sisters yawned in near perfect unison and tumbled out of their hammocks onto the floor. Reluctantly, Henry climbed out of his hammock to join them.

  A new day had begun, with a fresh storm looming above and a mysterious danger lurking below. As Henry stepped out onto the quarterdeck and squinted up into the crimson dawn, he wondered quite seriously if this day might, in fact, be their last.

  Emma had gladly handed the gun back to Owen at the end of her watch, but now she eyed it jealously as the group made its way back toward the hatch once again. She watched the pistol bobbing loosely in Owen’s right hand. She remembered that weight: cold and reassuring. She looked down at the large carving knife in her hand. It was neither quite as heavy as the pistol nor nearly as comforting. What do I think we’re fighting here? she thought. A cooked turkey?

  Owen stuck the pistol in his belt and knelt down to clear off the hatch cover.

  “Anyone else get the sinking feeling
we’ve been here before?” said Thacher.

  When no one answered, he went on: “What makes us think this time will be any different?”

  “It’s light now,” said Owen. “Remember?”

  He grunted as he shoved the heavy coil of rope aside and then added, “We will be able to see more clearly.”

  Emma looked at him: So literal.

  Thacher looked at him too. “Do you imagine that an improvement?”

  “I would rather go to my grave never getting a closer look at that thing,” said Aaron.

  Owen, already removing the wooden battens, looked up. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said.

  Emma smiled. Not so literal after all. She knelt down to help him remove the hatch cover.

  A few moments later, they stood peering into the opening. Emma looked down at the square of morning sunlight at the bottom. Her sister’s bloody footprints were still visible on the rungs of the ladder. She glanced back at Maria, who was standing at the helm. The seas were too high to tie the wheel today, and Maria’s injured foot made her the obvious choice to take it. Emma looked at the scrap of cloth wrapped around her sister’s foot: dark red, edging toward brown. At least the bleeding had stopped.

  Emma felt a sudden tenderness for her sister, who had come so far with her and been through so much. Maria had been right about their “Spanish style.” The others didn’t seem to care much that they were girls. There’d been some slights, certainly, and it was awkward when Emma looked up and caught Owen looking back. But overall, it was clear: They all had bigger things to think about these days.

  Maria took a hand from the wheel and gave her sister a small wave. “Ten cuidado,” she mouthed. Be careful. Emma nodded and turned back to the hatch. She was glad at least one of them was safe.

  “Who goes first?” said Thacher. He turned to Henry. “You have the lantern.”

  “Plenty of sunlight at the bottom,” Henry protested.

  “I’ll go,” said Owen. “I have the gun.”

  No one argued. Owen took a deep breath, swung around, and headed straight down the ladder. Emma had expected a little more time. “Wait,” she mumbled, but he would not.

  “If I wait, I won’t do it,” he said, disappearing below deck.

  The others fell in line behind him. First Henry with the lantern, then Thacher with a wicked-looking gaff hook, then Emma with her knife, and Aaron directly after her with a blade of his own. There was no Bible among them this time. Whatever they’d seen and heard the last time, it was a living thing.

  “Perhaps a bear?” Aaron had said the night before.

  “A bear? Between decks?” Owen had scoffed.

  “Actually, bears are good swimmers,” Henry had added.

  Not helpful, thought Emma, but she didn’t believe for a second that it was a bear. She could still hear its horrible breathy rasp. There was something obscene about it, unholy. Bears at least have the decency to roar, she thought. She gripped her knife tight and felt the glaze of sweat between her palm and its wooden handle.

  She reached the bottom and joined the others, huddled together in the patch of sunlight, standing in perhaps a quarter inch of seawater. She stepped aside to make room for Aaron. They all stood close together, their various weapons and trembling hands posing almost as much danger to each other as anything awaiting them.

  “Maybe, we should make noise,” said Emma. “It is what you do if you think there are bears in the woods. You make noise to scare them off.”

  The looks she got from the others told her that none of them truly believed it was a bear. “I know it’s not a bear,” she clarified. “But maybe we should treat it like one. Monsters might get scared too.”

  Owen looked down the hallway. Emma followed his eyes. The light from the gratings filed down in hazy beams. The gaps in between were dim but not dark. “We are not going to sneak up on it now anyhow,” he said.

  “All animals can be startled,” said Henry. “Even the lions of Africa.”

  Aaron looked at him. “What’s a lion?”

  “It is like a bear and a cat in one.”

  “I hope it ain’t one of those,” said Aaron very seriously.

  “Lord,” said Thacher, “is there nothing you aren’t afraid of?”

  Owen ignored the chatter. Emma could see that he was thinking. His pistol was pointed down the passageway but his eyes were far off. Suddenly, he blinked and looked up. “Yes,” he said loudly. “We will move fast. Grab food and water. We will raise the dickens the whole way, shouting and stomping. We will scare off this thing, be it bear or man or …” He turned to Henry.

  “Lion?” said Henry.

  “Aye,” said Owen. “Be it that either.”

  “And what if it we don’t scare it off?” said Aaron.

  “Then we shall shoot it and stab it until it wishes we had!”

  “The devil doesn’t scare so easily,” muttered Thacher, and Emma could see that he was still wearing Owen’s silver cross. “Nor does he bleed.”

  She would not let this gloomy boy darken their intrepid mood. “Hurrah!” she said, a rousing vote for her own plan.

  “Hurrah for food and water!” said Aaron.

  “I’ll cheer to that,” said Henry.

  They looked to Thacher, who raised his gaff hook in weak solidarity.

  “Let’s go!” boomed Owen, leading the charge.

  And with that, they stormed the between deck. Weapons up and voices raised, they bashed and stomped their way down the passage and to the galley. Emma’s heart pounded with heavy, fast thumps that she could feel in her head. But nothing rose to stop them.

  Emma smiled as they reached the galley, and Owen swung open the door with the barrel of his pistol. But a new problem arose immediately. They couldn’t haul the food and hold their weapons at the same time.

  “Grab what you can,” said Owen, pulling back the hammer of the pistol. “I will cover you.”

  Emma and Thacher squatted down to lift a heavy barrel of water, their weapons piled on top. Emma was sure the gaff hook would cost her an eye before she saw the sun again. Aaron and Henry wrestled with a barrel of salted meat.

  “Not more pork,” said Thacher. “I am sick of pork. Get that one there, the beef.”

  Aaron and Henry pivoted to the next barrel. “I can balance either the lantern upon it or some of these biscuits,” said Henry.

  “Give me the lamp,” said Owen, reaching over with his free hand, his gun still trained on the open door. “Take the sea bread.”

  “Come on, come on,” said Emma as Henry stacked two large tins of biscuits on the top of the barrel, then knelt down to lift it all.

  “Heave, you dogs!” said Owen, and they did.

  Owen went out the door first, his pistol held at arm’s length. Henry and Aaron followed, squatting on either side of the barrel and taking small sideways steps. They turned to fit out the door and then disappeared. Emma and Thacher were last.

  They squeezed through the galley door and immediately ran into Henry’s back. As Emma filled her lungs to shout at him, she caught the scent that had stopped him. It was a smell of sweet rot. Oh no.

  “Go! Go!” said Owen, swinging around to cover their backs.

  The other four shuffled down the passageway as fast as their heavy loads and straining limbs would allow. Emma’s eyes burned but she refused to blink. She swung her head all around as the light from above faded in and out. But it was her ears that warned her first.

  It made her think of an anchor dragging across a rocky sea bottom: a wet, raking sound. The little supply line stopped cold.

  “OWEN!” she called. “Up here!”

  She heard his quick footsteps slapping past her across the wet floorboards. And then she heard something else.

  Shyehck sheck shhhyehhk …

  That horrible breathy rasp again. She glanced down at her carving knife, its handle pinned under her chin, its sharp metal blade just beyond. Should she drop the barrel to wield the knife?


  She looked up again, and there, illuminated by the checkerboard light from the grating, was the very face of horror. She dropped the barrel a split second before Thacher did, causing it to tip her way. Thacher’s gaff hook skittered across the lid, nicked her cheek, and fell to the wet floor. The sound of its metal clatter was entirely drowned out, however, by that of her scream.

  The face of horror, it turned out, was a familiar one. It stared down at her now, glazed with clear slime, its bloodshot eyes unblinking.

  Emma straightened up and took a step back. She stared at this thing, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Obed Macy’s face stared back at her. It looked glazed and slick, and she could see a heavy glob of some clear, thick substance drooping from his chin, stretching thinner, preparing to fall.

  But it wasn’t Obed Macy. The face of the missing hold rat stared out at them from what looked like a living helmet. It was dark red, almost black, larger than his head had been and entirely hairless. Instead of the greasy brown hair she remembered, two thin black stalks sprouted from the line of raw skin where the strange red sheathing met what had once been his forehead. The stalks waved like tall grass in a light breeze. Alive, Emma realized, feeling a sudden urge to vomit.

  She swallowed down the bile and looked at the creature in its entirety. If the face had been at least somewhat familiar, the body below it was like nothing she’d ever seen. It was covered with the same thick red sheathing, but now she could see that it came in sections, large plates that met and sometimes overlapped. Like a bug, she thought. Like an enormous bug. And every one of those plated sections was glazed and wet.

  The creature stood on two legs. They were about the length Obed’s had been, but they were now covered in their living armor. She saw large, hooked barbs sprouting from the feet, as if this creature was standing on giant thorns. It had two more limbs where Obed’s arms had been; they were thinner than the legs, but otherwise identical. Emma took in the barbs there with a gasp and saw them for what they were: weapons.