The Derelict

“Right,” I said, raising my voice on deck to make sure I could be heard. There were four of us, me up front and three others lounging around on deck chairs. “What have we got so far?”

“The anchor’s bad,” Cole answered, sitting upright to rub a hand over his shaved head. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it up. It’s held out for thirty years and isn’t coming easy.”

“Well we kinda need to get it up,” I replied. “Especially if we’re going to get this baby to a dock.”

“If we need to,” he said, “we can cut it but I’m not sure we’ve got anything that can do the job.”

“I’ll speak to Khasim’s men,” I replied. “How’s the rudder?”

“Looking good,” Gareth answered. “The rudder is good.”

“Anything else?”

“We found a leak,” Charlie said, crossing her boots with a sigh. “Bottom deck is flooded but we can’t be sure why the water level is still.”

“A leak’s bad news,” Gareth groaned.

“It is,” I said, “let’s get down there. Charlie, Cole, you ready for a dive?”

“Aye aye,” they cried. “Already brought the suits up,” Charlie added.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

With that Charlie and Cole left. Out of all of us they had the hardest job and from the keen looks in their eye as they made their way below deck, they took it seriously. I nodded approvingly at Gareth as he walked over. He handed me a coffee and we began to carefully pick our way across the open deck where we stood. It looked like it had been a sunbathing area with a nearby bar. Now all that furniture was just broken wreckage left strewn across the floor.

“They’re good guys,” I said. “They’re taking all of this well.”

“It does seem pretty good on paper, doesn’t it?” Gareth said.

We had been hired ahead of any other crew and sent to board the ship on our own. Our job was to have some kind of inventory ready to go the second the buyer’s crew arrived. After that we would organise and manage the repair effort based on our initial reports.

“It does,” I said. “I would say that, except…”

“Nothing about this place feels good?” Gareth asked.

“You have to wonder, don’t you? Looking at all this shit.” I picked up an old handbag that had been lying on the floor. “I know it was a sudden evacuation but I’m not sure the captain went crazy like they say.”

“You think it was something else?” Gareth asked, arching one eyebrow towards me. “This place is creepy but I’ve just been putting it down to nerves.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and tossed the handbag to the floor. “It’d help if it was a big story, y’know? If there were articles and interviews with pissed off passengers, standing on some dock with dripping wet hair, moaning about how the captain had abandoned ship for no damn reason.” I showed him the purse I’d taken from the handbag, opening it up to reveal a faded driver’s license. “I just get a funny feeling when I look at stuff like this. I know it was thirty years ago but you’d think there’d be something online, wouldn’t you? The rescue effort must have been huge.”

“You think conspiracy?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This place just feels weird.”

“It’s just the heeby jeebies,” he replied, doing his best to make us both feel a little better. “Besides… I mean, well we’re here now.”

“True.” I nodded. “You’re probably right. Just the heeby jeebies.”

Gareth chuckled at my use of probably.

“I gotta go,” he said. “This conversation isn’t doing me any favours.”

I waited for him to leave, shouting a final thanks for the coffee. He waved goodbye and I watched him turn a corner. Once he was gone I opened the purse again and ruffled through the papers. Most of them were old receipts but something caught my eyes. A folded square of old paper towel, something taken from a dinner table perhaps. It was wrapped around an old dinner knife, the tip snapped off and nowhere to be seen. I unrolled it and found a message written in old lipstick. The writing was desperate, the letters jagged and harsh.

“They hurt me,” it read.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I whispered.

-

“Get up here!”

Gareth’s voice sounded tinny and distant. I was alone, hearing it filtered through the radio at my waist.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’ve… to come… fucking nuts… you won’t…”

“Fuck’s sake,” I grumbled. “Alright, where are you?”

“Top deck… it’s… zing!”

“Gareth? You still there?” I cried before resigning myself to a short walk. “This better be fucking good.”

Only when I climbed all the way to the top deck I found it empty. Deck chairs were stacked toward the aft, and parasols, bleached white in the sun, lay torn and lifeless along the floor. Occasionally a gust of wind would catch one of the shredded flaps and it would struggle like a bird with a broken wing, the sudden sound touching a nerve deep inside me. Most of this deck was taken up by a large swimming pool, the scum-covered surface disturbed only by old foam toys and deflated beach balls that floated eerily in the wind. Each one was a furry shape engulfed in algae, pacing those choked waters like patient predators.

Directly ahead was a water slide. A twisting multicoloured tunnel of plastic that rose upwards for thirty feet. It looked faded and pale and was grown over with speckles of green algae. Half-way up one of the sections turned transparent, offering a once-tantalising view of the sea. Something caught my eye up there and to get a better view I walked around the edge of the pool until the acrylic caught the sun and I could see right through it. There was a fuzzy dark shape, something that if I squinted just right looked like it could be big enough for a person. Suddenly my radio flared up and I caught the tail-end of Gareth’s voice.

“…gotta help… stuck… fuck!”

The shape moved silently against the hard plastic. It looked like there could be someone stuck up there. Is that him? I wondered.

“Gareth where are you?”

“… up… just… up here!”

It must be him, I decided, and I couldn’t quite work out what to feel about that. I sure as hell wanted to be angry. I had to assume it was him, didn’t I? There was no one else so it had to be! And that meant I’d have to crawl up there and help him out.

And that… I guess that was where my thoughts started to dribble away like candle wax. Because going up there was just about the scariest fucking thing I could imagine doing. It wasn’t just the thought of the danger. It was that place. Even just walking around the pool, stepping quietly over old swimsuits and dropped champagne flutes, I felt as if any second something was going to lunge out and pull me down and I would disappear into that opaque slimy water. The pool would be deathly still within seconds and if anyone came looking, they’d never know I’d even been up there. They’d never even know what happened.

“Gareth!” I cried as I reached the foot of the ladder. “This is… this is a seriously fucking stupid thing you’ve done.”

I must be alone up here, I told myself, barring Gareth. I know I am because nothing else makes sense. No one’s aboard this thing except us. And if I am alone then I have to help. There are no two ways about it. He could get seriously hurt in the time it takes me to find the others. Any feelings I have about those murky waters are irrational. Just like that old church I had to walk past as a kid. It looked scary that was all. This place looks scary but it’s dead. Lifeless.

Nothing to be afraid of.

So I took my first step and immediately noticed the awful noise that rickety frame made. Every footfall on the ladder rattled all that metal and the plastic slides like an earthquake, and it took every ounce of courage to get up there. I’m not often afraid of heights, but up there you felt like you were stood on a collapsing tower. Every gentle turn of the ship was magnified a thousand-fold so that even I started to feel a pang of seasickness.

Not thinking, I crawled towards the tunnel entrance and went in headfirst hoping to get this all over and done with. The plastic was dry as a bone and my hands gripped it easily, so that was something. I pulled myself along at a good pace, uncomfortably aware of how the claustrophobic tube was made for bodies much smaller than mine. How Gareth had thought it was a good idea to go down was beyond me, and I spent most of the way swearing quietly under my breath. The furious muttering as a nice release, enough to keep me going until I reached the acrylic see-through tube.

Somehow, the space before me was empty. I’d arrived at the mid-section only to find a scratched view of the cloudy sky. For a moment I replayed events in my head. Had I seen what I thought I had? Or had he somehow gotten free? But there was no way he could have gone down. With the way the slide was rocking, I would have noticed. And he definitely didn’t come my way!

But the proof was before my eyes. He wasn’t there. I was alone.

Or so I hoped.

“Gareth!” I cried. “What the fuck are you playing at!?”

I don’t know why I shouted anything. I hadn’t wanted to hear a reply, not even from Gareth. What I wanted, what was slowly expanding in my mind like a blooming star eclipsing every other thought, was to get the hell out. But something did reply. A thud. A loud and angry sound coming from the very bottom of the tunnel, out of sight. And I didn’t just hear it. I felt it. The tunnel shook. The vibrations passed up my hands.

Another thud, and my whole body locked down with terror. Something is coming, I thought. My skin grew cold, my scalp tightened, and my heart started skipping every other beat. There were a few explorative thumps before they exploded into a galloping spring, the owner barrelling up that slide with unseen fury. Something inside me finally broke. I began to backpedal in a crab walk, not even bothering to turn. Only now my hands gripped nothing! The once firm plastic was smooth and slick, and I couldn’t get enough traction to pull myself upwards. I lost all coordination and had to fight with everything I had just to keep myself in one place, my feet kicking black marks into the vinyl and my hands squeaking against the plastic.

I wanted to turn but I couldn’t take my eyes of that bend in the tunnel. What will come around there? I thought. What stinking wet thing is speeding towards me?

I don’t know if it was sweat or just clumsiness, but eventually what little grip I had gave way. The tunnel seemed steeper than it ever had before and gravity finally started to bear my weight downwards. For long agonising seconds the plastic was as slippery as ice and I was helpless to stop myself moving. My mind turned white hot with terror and all my thoughts were burned away and replaced with a near-hallucinatory state of despair. I screamed the whole way down only to land in that retched green water with a bassy plunk, the soup-like water too thick to give off any splash.

I broke the water in a state of total hysteria, gagging as I sucked in lungfuls of rotten miasma. That organic soup had been stewing for three decades and if I had to guess, I was the first thing to break the surface for a long, long time. The result was near-intoxicating, enough to leave me on the cusp of unconsciousness. But I fought to stay lucid and pushed through that stringy muck—its hairy tendrils clinging to my wrists and ankles with an almost-lifelike animation--and heaved myself over the pool’s edge to collapse on the floor. There I lay panting, confused and desperate, only to hear something else come from the pool beside me.

Kaplunk.

The water looked undisturbed, but then again it would, wouldn’t it? It was hardly even water, more like a tangle of weeds and slimy algae suspended in ooze. Something was in there, I knew it. It was an irrational thought, one of many I’d had in the last few minutes, but God I was certain that there was something in that damned water!

Another sound.

A loud screech.

The sound of a child riding a slide.

I looked up and saw the waterslide’s mouth rimmed by a dozen pale hands… children’s hands. Their owners crouched out of sight in darkness.

I ran screaming from that deck, unable to wait any longer, unwilling to take the risk of seeing who, or what, would emerge from that water.

-

Gareth found me lowering bags onto the deck of our yacht below, my clothes rancid and dripping wet. I jumped when he called my name, and he jogged over with concern on his face.

“We’re leaving,” I said as soon as he was in hearing range. “We’re getting the fuck outta dodge. Get Cole. Get Charlie. Let’s go.” I could see that Gareth was about to tell me something urgent, but then the state of my clothes caught his eye and he stopped himself.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I… fuck I don’t know,” I said. “Did you radio me to get up on top deck?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Have you spoken to me at all this morning? After our meeting?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t stay in contact with—”

“What are you on about? I haven’t radioed you once. What the hell happened to you? Did… did you go for a swim!?” he asked incredulously.

“Not voluntarily,” I answered. “And I didn’t go alone.”

“What is that supposed to mea—”

“This place is fucked,” I said. “Something is aboard this ship and it took a shot at me and I’m not about to give it a second chance. Get Charlie and Cole before they dive. Tell them we’re leaving in the next twenty minutes.”

Gareth’s face darkened.

“Cole hasn’t surfaced,” he said. “They went down but he never came back up and Charlie’s down there, passed out. I didn’t want to move her, but I don’t know what’s wrong. Did someone attack you up there? Do you think they hurt Cole?”

I didn’t have time to explain everything to Gareth, so I grabbed him and tried to give him the cliff notes as we hurried to where he’d left Charlie down below. He kept poking holes in my story along the way and oh boy did that piss me off. I had to guess he was just trying to rationalise it, but I felt like he was maybe missing the point. We weren’t alone, and that was all I needed to set my ass sailing towards the horizon. By the time we reached Charlie I think I’d certainly spooked the guy a little bit. He looked shaken up. But I’m not sure he believed my story word for word, like he thought I’d maybe taken a tumble and knocked my head on the way down that slide.

Not that it mattered, something I was reminded of when we found Charlie changing out of her suit. She was in a mad rush.

“We need to fucking go,” she cried, scrambling towards us with her things in hand.

“We can’t leave!” Gareth said. “We have to get Cole.”

“Nu uh,” Charlie shook her head. “He’s gone. Whatever the fuck was down there, it got him. We gotta go.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I tried. Believe me I tried but… but he’s gone.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “For the love of God let’s just fuckin’ go!”

To our soul-crushing horror, when we reached the railing we found nothing but grey water staring up at us. Perplexed, I reached out and gave the rope a tug, almost as if to check the very truth of my senses. Just a shortwhile ago I’d been climbing that rope and loading the yacht below. By definition, the yacht had to be wherever the rope was. They simply had to be together. So how could there be one without the other?

We stood there in a traumatised silence until at last Gareth spoke up.

“What happened down there Charlie?” he asked. “What the fuck is going on?”

-

“Give it up,” I said as Gareth tried the back up radio for what must have been the hundredth time that hour. “We know Khasim’s men will be here sooner or later.”

“It’s just fucking stupid!” He cried. “It was working this morning, all of them were. How the hell can it be down now? We have a radio. A back up. A back up for the back up. Four different satellite--”

“It’s this place,” Charlie said, her legs pulled up to her chest as she took a long drag from a cigarette. “It’s got us where it wants us.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Gareth cried.

“You know exactly what I mean,” she said. “I told you plain as day, something took Cole. One second he was there, the next he was not.”

“You can’t even say what it is,” he replied. “For all you know he got stuck on something and we could—”

“He was fuckin’ dead Gareth I found his damn mask!”

“There could be an air pock—”

“He’s dead,” Charlie said, slowly withdrawing back into herself, her eyes glazing over. “That leak we found was repaired. We weren’t the first to come here and try patching her up and whatever got the last fuckers before they could pump the water is going to get us next.”

“Charlie,” I said, sitting beside her with deep concern. “It would help me a lot if we knew what we were dealing with? What else did you see?”

She shuddered and took a long slow breath.

“People,” she said. “Or bodies. Lots and lots and lots of ‘em. I’d say two, maybe three dozen. All of them were crew, those white little uniforms gone grey and rotten in the water. I saw a few officers down there I think. They were just bones so it looked almost like coral at first, until I got closer. That was where I found Cole’s mask, sticking out from old ribs and femurs like it’d always been there. But it was his alright.

“All those bones were piled up against one wall like those people had been crawling towards it. Something had been drawn on it, maybe, I don’t know… It looked charred like fire had been taken to it. I couldn’t look at it long though. Seeing that mask, those bones, it just… we’re not alone. I know you don’t believe me but I’m telling you we’re not alone! I wasn’t in that water alone! Things moved. The currents, you could feel them crawling across your skin and the shadows never stayed still. There was something down there just out of sight, always just out of my fucking sight. It had me going in circles until my air damn nearly run out. If I’d kept going, kept trying to find it and really lay my hands on it, I would have drowned down there too. You know the last thing Cole said before he went missing? Before something snatched him right out from under my nose? He said, ‘Who’s that?’”

Something about Charlie’s story wormed its way right into my head. I could practically see that place with all those dead skeletons trying to claw their way towards God-knows-what, could sense and feel the deathly silence hanging in the water.

“Fuck,” was just about all I could manage to say, muttering it under my breath.

“Well what do we do now?” Gareth asked.

And that was when someone knocked the door.

“Room service.”

The voice was Cole’s.

-

“Sir? I’ve been asked to bring you some room service, on the house.”

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. Cole was standing just outside the door, back straight and arms to his side. A trolley, full of hidden silver dishes, was beside him. He looked paler than he ever had in life, like a powdered corpse. He was shaking and a thin trickle of sweat rolled across his brow, his eyes fixated on some distant spot behind me.

“Cole?”

Charlie heard me say his name and she immediately rushed over and pushed me aside. She saw it was him, really truly him, but before she could get close something stopped her. It was the same thing that had kept me frozen at the doorway. Cole didn’t really look like Cole. It was him, sure. But he looked like he’d gone through the ringer, like he was watching his child’s coffin get lowered into the ground. He kept licking his lips like he was going to say something only he didn’t quite seem sure what.

“Cole what happened to you?”

“Quite the spread, sir,” he said, putting his hand on the trolley’s handle. “It’s… it’s on the house!”

His words were wooden, like a recited script. For some reason I imagined a hostage speaking into a phone with a gun against their head. That was exactly what he looked like. He was expecting something of us, I’m sure but I couldn’t say what. By now Gareth was behind me, every bit as confused as the rest of us.

Cole smiled like he was about to burst into tears, and then he turned stiffly and walked away.

We exchanged brief looks of confusion and immediately followed, calling and shouting for him to stop but he only sped up. He moved quickly as well. Whenever we got close he’d turn a corner and by the time we made it around he’d be way down the corridor, only he never ran. He was always impossibly far ahead after every twist and turn. It was as if he was sprinting when out of sight and slowing to a leisurely walk whenever we got close. But why? I thought. What the hell is he playing at?

The chase didn’t last long. He soon disappeared from sight and we were left alone in just another one of those endless velvet corridors. I tried to see where he might have gone, but it was useless to look for him. He could have been anywhere. In despondent silence we returned to our room only to suddenly remember the trolley he’d left behind. We lifted each lid and found plates covered in rancid mulch, the food so rotten you couldn’t even tell what it had once been.

“Why would he want us to eat this?” Gareth asked. “Was that even him?”

“I’d like to take a look at the kitchen,” I said. “I’d like to know where this came from.”

-

The food had been scooped out of some rotten sacks around the back. Ancient vacuum-sealed packs of beef torn open and plopped onto cracked ceramic in a hysterical rush. You could see where he’d dropped plates and old meat and had to start again. You could also see half-a-dozen hypodermic needles littering the ground, and on one countertop was a plain old toolbox filled with every type of sedative you could imagine. It was an old thing, the hinges rusted. But a grimy outline in one of the cupboards, close to the back, let me know it had always been a fixture of that kitchen. I couldn’t help but think of that note I’d found in the old handbag.

They hurt us.

“The fucker tried to drug us. Do you think he’s gone nuts?” Gareth asked.

“I think we have a job ahead of us,” I answered. “I think we need to go back to our rooms and figure out our supply situation. I also think we need to work out shifts for keeping a watch during the night.”

“So you think he wants to hurt us?” Gareth nodded towards the toolbox. “I don’t understand what happened to him… We’ve known him for years.”

“I don’t think it’s him we need to worry about,” Charlie answered. “It’s whatever got to him.”

-

Something was hissing. I was sure of it. I was up late watching over the others and something in the room was letting out a quiet whisper of white static. Gareth and Charlie were both asleep and I was half-way through the midnight watch. At 4am Gareth would wake up and take over and I’d finally get some rest. But until then it was just me and my thoughts, and the deeply worrying sound of Cole occasionally shuffling around somewhere in the distance.

And that hiss.

If only I could figure out where it was coming from, but I was reticent to start walking around in case I woke the others. God, we were tense enough as it was without me worrying over some little thing. I tried to focus on the front door, hoping that whoever else was on this ship would leave us alone.

At least we had a fair amount of supplies. We’d brought enough to last the whole stay, something we owed to Gareth’s peculiarly anxious mind. He was always doing things like that. Stashing away enough food for twice the journey and always bringing back ups for back ups. I quietly thanked him while I drank from a bottle of coke.

I paused with the bottle to my lips, hearing the carbonated bubbles hiss against my lips. I brought the bottle back down and screwed the cap on. The hiss diminished but it didn’t disappear, and when I shook the bottle it rose to a shrill whistle. Carefully examining the lid, I noticed a tiny hole in the plastic. It was so small that when I tipped the bottle nothing flowed out, but once upright the pressure was high enough to force a tiny trickle of air back out.

“What the fuck?” I muttered, speaking aloud for the first time in a few hours.

Only my words had sounded a little slurred.

And my lips had felt a little weak.

I thought of the needles in that kitchen, of the sheer quantity of sedatives tucked away. I rushed over to the stack of bottles we had and began to pull them out, cursing as my arms and legs grew weak and sluggish.

Every bottle had a tiny pin prick in the top.

“Guysh,” I whispered, my limbs so numb I had to crawl my way over to the two sleeping forms. “Sharlie!?”

I reached out and shook her but she did not wake. She was sleeping so heavy she barely looked alive. We’d all been eating and drinking from that stock. It was our own so we’d assumed we were safe, but of course, Cole would have known about it.

“Shit!” I cried, falling backwards and feeling the world start to swim around me. The last thing I heard was the sound of our door opening and Cole muttering quietly under his breath.

“He’s hungry.”

-

“Dave wake up!”

I had to fight to pull myself up. I’d been left on the floor where I’d fallen, my neck and shoulders badly hurt. Slowly I realised I hadn’t left the room, and I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing. Then Charlie spoke again and the nightmare was renewed.

“He’s gone Dave!” Charlie cried. “He’s fucking gone! Gareth is gone!”

I looked around and saw that his sleeping bag was empty.

“He drugged us,” I grunted, grabbing the nearby bottle and handing it to Charlie. “Injected something in the lid. Look.”

“Fuck!” she screamed, hurling the bottle against the wall where it bounced harmlessly onto the floor. “He must have come here when we went looking in the kitchen.”

“ “We need to search for him.” I said.

-

The medical facility aboard the ship was small, but densely packed with chairs, tables, and dozens of old cabinets. When the ship once sailed there would have maybe been a few medics or a single doctor aboard to treat mild injuries or illnesses, but should anything severe happen, most cruise ships simply turned around and dumped the injured passenger at port to seek medical help on land.

So why did this one have an operating theatre? I wondered. When I first saw that gurney with leather straps and an overhead light I thought I simply had to be mistaken. But there was no denying it… the tanks full of nitrous and other gases, the trolley full of rusted scalpels, Jesus… the drain in the floor to collect any blood.

This wasn’t your average professional operating theatre. The straps to restrain the table’s occupant made that pretty clear. It was a small DIY space with no real room to move or do anything except get someone horizontal and begin cutting away with no thought to what came after. The doorway had been hidden behind old filing cabinets that had since toppled over, and you got a powerful sense you were standing in a place that was meant to be a secret.

It had been Gareth’s screams that led us to that place. We never did find him, at least not there and then. But we’d chased those shrill cries for help from one end of the ship to the other until, at last, we’d tracked it to this tiny little space. Charlie said we must’ve been late and I didn’t quite have the guts to say anything else afterwards. That overhead light had been on when we first entered. The padlock to the door opened and lying on the floor. And all along that table were little channels filled with blood that dripped slowly onto the floor ready to circle the drain.

Yes, I thought. We were too late.

We didn’t find much else to clue us in as to what happened to Gareth, but we did find an old doctor’s bag with paperwork stuffed inside. It didn’t make much sense but reading it… God, you got a horrible feeling you were reading the product of a twisted or broken mind.

Passenger Soltz will be ready for collection between 0000 and 0200 hours. Do not return later than 0400 hours. Passenger sleeps with company. Observations show they are both early-risers.

Passenger Lorin will be ready for collection between 0000 and 0200 hours. Passenger Lorin is in a single occupancy cabin. Observations show she sleeps late due to nightly alcohol consumption. Effects of alcohol withdrawal may be used to mask effect of sedatives. Prepare her cabin appropriately upon her return.

Passenger Jacobson will be ready for collection between 1200 and 1400 hours. Passenger Jacobson will be staying with the childcare facility on deck three. Crewmember Fillan will prepare passenger Jacobson for collection. Use of sedatives unnecessary given passenger’s age. Reports of behavioural problems to be prepared for parents’ return at 1800 hours. If parents seek to escalate, the matter may be brought to the medical department where appropriate documents and diagnoses will be devised to diminish the impact of Passenger Jacobson’s narrative.

Passengers Morris, Athley, and Supton have been selected for further observation. In the event they are inappropriate for collection, passengers Whettle, Dibson, and Gillet remain potential alternatives.

Further notes - Crewmember Aileen Tuson has filed a report with the Captain. She has expressed concern regarding safety of children aboard the ship, citing several mentions of The Hungry Man. This is the third report since she joined the crew four months ago, following complaints regarding kitchen and medical staff. Report was intercepted. Crewmember Tuson was reprimanded for inappropriate conduct with passengers.

This was only one of dozens and dozens, and if I had to guess there was probably a place somewhere on this ship where we’d find hundreds more. They were not dated but you got a twisted sense of chronology anyway.

Passenger Donaghy will be ready for collection between 0000 and 0200 hours. Passenger Donaghy will be undergoing his third collection since starting his journey and has consequently stopped eating meals prepared by crew. Sedation is impossible. Prepare appropriately for resistance.

Passenger Nguyen will be ready for collection between 1430 and 1500 hours. Observations show that Passenger Nguyen is rarely separated from their spouse. Complaints or official inquiries regarding Passenger Nguyen’s location are to be directed towards complicit members of the medical and officer staff only.

Room service personnel are on hand to provide a third, as-yet-unidentified, candidate for collection between the hours of 0000 and 0600.

Further notes – the Captain has escalated the situation. His capacity for disruption is significant. We are unable to direct the ship to return to port and collect new passengers. He has reported damage to the hull that is not present and drawn significant attention from the coastguard. Corporate are working towards correcting the situation. Passenger population will return to normal in the coming weeks.

I handed the last one to Charlie and waited for her to read it.

“I don’t like that corporate reference,” I said.

“I don’t like that Hungry Man thing,” she replied. “What was this place?”

I shook my head in confusion and picked up another. This one was considerably shorter.

Crewmember Fillan will be ready for collection at 0600 hours.

Crew should remain vigilant for collection opportunities among remaining passengers. Some activity has been reported in the nursery on deck 3. Surviving passengers have proven difficult to collect, children included. He gives as well as takes. They are changed.

Further notes – Given the meagre offerings, decks 1, 2, and 3 are off-limits. It is unlikely He will be satisfied with current supplies. All remaining crew should be prepared for spontaneous collection. Do not resist Him. Corporate report that efforts to return the ship to full functioning are underway, but significant resources are being directed towards containing any information leaks after the recent evacuation. We must bear this period of scarcity with stoicism.

“Looks like not everyone got off,” I said, handing it to Charlie without looking. “Some of the crew stayed behind. Some of the passengers too. I think this place had something of a cult going on.”

Only Charlie wasn’t listening. She had wandered over to a nearby counter and, opening drawers at random, had found another sheet of paper. It was shaking so badly in her hand I had to reach out and take it just to read the words. She didn’t even resist. She just kept looking at her empty hand, her eyes wide and glistening.

Passenger Gareth Jones will be ready for collection between 0200 and 0400 hours. Observations show passengers will not sleep alone. Sedatives have been prepared for entire group. Crewmember Cole must wait for sedatives to take effect.

Further notes - Passenger Cole Webb has joined the crew. This represents a significant increase to current staff levels. Expect Passengers Jones, Wallis, and Mitchell, to join the crew within the week.

It has been lonely.

We have given so much.

And so has He.

His gifts hurt.

-

We had barricaded our room as best as we could. Only it didn’t amount for much. This time it was not Cole, or even Gareth as I’d suspected he might, that came for us. It was something else that did not pretend to be anything except a monster. A clicking drooling shuffling thing with broken bones and sagging skin that glistened in the moonlight like rancid meat. It silently pulled our door apart with heavy breaths that gurgled wetly in the dark. You could smell its hunger, its desperation. It did not groan or cry or roar. It only worked towards its prey like a determined predator driven by nothing but a mindless, animal instinct.

It was in the room within minutes.

We could hear it tearing the supplies we’d brought apart. Suitcases were hurled against the wall and toolbags tipped upside down. Its breathing grew rapid and more strained as the thing continued to search for us. Meanwhile we hid in the room two doors down, clutching ourselves in the pitch-black bathroom with our breaths held tight. Only once had I ventured out to the door to look at what was tearing our room apart and the single glimpse had been enough to nearly turn my mind to jelly. Whatever was out there looked human in its general outline but that where the resemblance ended. I couldn’t help but think of what we’d read. Is this what happens after so many collections? I wondered. Is this what will happen to Cole and Gareth if we leave them? Is this what will happen to me?

I didn’t want those kinds of gifts.

Charlie eventually fell asleep but I never could. I’d heard the thing wander off into the darkness crying in rage and terror. It had wanted so badly to find us and I knew on some level, it would never stop.

-

“Do you think it’ll float?” she asked.

“I’ll fucking swim the rest of the way if I have to,” I said, giving the tiny lifeboat a kick. We’d thrown it together out of some old double doors and a few empty drums. It was desperate, but so were we. “Besides, we’re betting on the radios and EPIRBs suddenly working out in water which I’m pretty sure they will.”

“You think they can do that?” she asked. “Block our calls for help?”

I thought of what I’d seen in the slide, of those little hands and the quiet plunk of something falling into the water.

“Yes.”

We hauled the raft overboard and waited for it to settle. Charlie was clutching the orange dufflebag full of provisions as if it was a child, and I couldn’t blame her. Things had taken a desperate turn and all our hopes were pinned on it. We were getting ready to climb down to it when a loud echoing bang shattered the silence. It sounded like a circuit breaker, like some great machine coming to life. Before we’d even turned we found ourselves bathed in an amber light, and the whole ship was lit up in a mockery of life.

“Go!” Charlie cried and we hurried to the rope ladder. She threw me the bag and I climbed over first and for a brief moment Charlie and I were face to face. We’d spent the whole night couped up in that little room, unable to sleep or relax. And we’d spent all day working on this last-ditch effort at escape. You could see the stress and horror written across her face. She looked like a terrified child, lost and alone in the dark.

And she couldn’t even see what was behind her.

I tried calling out. Tried to warn her. But before I could get a word out she was snatched from before me. Whatever it was it had come out of the nearby window, shattering glass and steel like it was clay. It moved so quickly I barely registered its existence on my retina, but the slightest smear was still enough to leave me paralysed on the ladder, my muscles seized with unspeakable terror.

The Hungry Man.

She was gone in an instant, and I was left with a choice. I looked down at the raft. It was still there, bobbing away. It promised a chance to leave, a chance to get off that damned ship like I’d wanted to that very first day. Meanwhile the ship continued to whir into monstrous life, and looking up towards its moonlit silhouette I glimpsed an ancient creaking body crouched on the nearest roof, its spider-like limbs contracted and ready to spring, waiting for me to return. It was like some shadow come to life.

I took a deep breath and climbed down.

-

They went back. The coastguard went back and looked for them. I told them not to bother only they did anyway, unwilling or unable to believe my story. I hoped that over a dozen crawling from room-to-room had a chance of being safe, although I suspected the ship would not easily let go of fresh meat. Hearing myself say this to them, it was like hearing someone else talk. I spoke of curses and hauntings like a stark-raving lunatic driven mad by exposure. I was surprised they even listened to me and tried to look for the others.

But not as surprised as when they found Gareth.

They took me a little more seriously after that. He’d been found in a random passenger cabin sleeping under the covers. I dread the poor soul who’d first pulled back the duvet only to find themselves face-to-face with the much-changed Gareth. In another time the ship would have taken its pound of meat slowly, and carefully, distributing the load across several passengers each day, with a constant rotation of new ones getting on at each port. If I had to guess, what happened to Gareth was a pride of hungry lions tearing apart a zebra. Something violent and insane…

He died before they got a hundred metres from the ship. I’m thankful for that little mercy, although it breaks my heart to know that Cole and Charlie will never know that peace. I’ve thought about going back, about burning it to the ground or blowing a hole below the water line and letting it sink. Only I can’t go near the water, not anymore. And the thought of seeing that ship rising on the horizon… I could no more return than I could fly to the moon. I simply cannot go back.

Khasim acted like I’d done him a favour. He firmly believed me when I told him it was haunted and he offloaded it as quick as he could to some poor dupe from Bangladesh. Only a little digging showed me it was just another shell corporation for a company he owned. I’m not sure he was as ignorant as he claimed. But then again I’m not sure it even matters.

In the end I found an old passenger. A middle-aged woman who’d been there as a child. She’d seemed normal. Or at least… pretty normal. But when I made mention of The Hungry Man she lost all semblance of calm and fell into a total state of hysteria. Her husband threatened me and forced me out. But I guess it wasn’t that that bothered me too much. It was the fact her kids had started crying as well. And for the briefest of moments I’d felt a shadow pass over me and the room had grown a little darker.

And I saw something. Something in the corner of my eye. The kind of thing a mad person might even want to worship as a god.

His gifts hurt.

I remembered those words clearly. Whatever had happened to those passengers, I think they took a little piece of it back with them, carrying it inside like a smuggled package back out into the world.