The Cold Beneath (12 page)

“Then it is settled,” Lightbridge said after the vote was tallied. “We will continue our journey, but when we arrive at True North I shall shorten our stay. We shall remain just long enough to plant our flag. After which we will get back into the air and return home with our goal accomplished. Agreed?”

Everyone, save for me, did.

Lightbridge instructed Geraldine to store the body of Morrow in the larder, in the mechanical icebox. The kitchen staff agreed it was for the best, and the ghouls seemed all too glad to have their old friend resting in the chiller. I was disgusted by the whole affair, and retired to my room without another word.

Two nights later, I awoke to a soul-rending scream. At first I thought an animal of some sort was trapped aboard, screeching and caterwauling in an effort to free itself. I leapt from the bed, throwing on my dressing gown before I stumbled into the darkened hallway—we kept the metal shutters of all the windows closed during the ‘night’ hours to help our nocturnal senses stay sane—where the few night crew members had gathered at the door to the kitchen. Bands of soft light streaked the hallway as others peered from half-open berth doors.
 

“What is that terrible noise?” I asked.

One of the men turned to me, saying, “It’s coming from the kitchen, sir.”

“I can hear that!” I shouted back at him.

The men lingered at the doorway as if made afraid by the terrible sounds pouring from the room beyond. I must admit I was frightened out of my wits, but I was neither a roughneck nor a rowdy laborer as these men were purported to be. But I would learn soon enough that cowardice lies in the hearts of all men, no matter their station in life.

“What do you suppose is the cause?” I asked.

“Something must be trapped,” Albert said as he pushed his way to the front of the group. The man was dressed in nothing but his long underwear, heedless of decorum or modesty. He stomped past me and straight into the den of darkness that made up the kitchen. With the flip of a switch, he ignited the electrical lights, and a golden glow consumed the darkness, eliciting a wince from all present. After the moment of sudden brightness passed, a strange truth became apparent.

The kitchen was empty, but the din continued.

“Where is it coming from?” I asked loudly as I stepped into the kitchen.

The howling and screeching were amplified by the echo of the large room, leaving the source of the sound uncertain. It seemed as though it came from all around us, swirling in an eddy of shrieks and shouts. As we listened, trying to pinpoint the origin, I fancied that perhaps I heard something else alongside of those screams. I thought, and I wish to the heavens above that I were making this up, I thought I heard words. The longer I stood there listening, the more snatches of phrases came through the din of shrieks.

I heard, “Pain!”

I heard, “Help!”

But above all else I heard, “Cold! So cold!”

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

Before Albert could answer my inquiry, a series of loud bangs started, punctuating the shouts. I snapped my attention to the source of the thumps, and watched in horror as the door to the cooling unit shook in its frame. The phrases, the shrieks, the thumping all clicked into a perfect picture in my mind.

“There!” I shouted as I pointed to the larder. “Dear God! Someone is trapped inside.”

The larder door was a weighty affair that bore a dual-handled system, both inside and out. It was a safety measure designed to keep the very thing happening from happening. During normal operational hours, the cooler was accessible from both sides; if it swung shut while someone was inside, he could escape with ease. But at this time of night, the thing was kept locked to discourage anyone sneaking the much-needed food for personal consumption. Yet there was someone inside, behind the lock, jostling the handle, beating on the door, screaming for his life.

Albert was much further ahead of the situation, racing across the room and unlocking the door with his master key before I even had time to react. He then pulled the door open, for it swung outward rather than in, and the screams increased tenfold as their owner burst forth into the kitchen. The man, for I was correct in my assumption, fell to his knees before me, just outside the larder door, as if exhausted from his efforts to escape. I could scarcely believe my own eyes as he lifted his face to meet mine.

Kneeling on his naked knees was the very same man whose passing we had mourned just that morning. It was Morrow who lifted his pale face to me. Morrow who parted his blue lips. Morrow who began to shriek again as if he were still locked inside the cooler. In the direct presence of his shouting, I found the sound most unbearable. I cowered, backing away as I placed my hands over my ears in a weak attempt to block the sound surging from the once-dead man’s lips.

“Benjamin!” Albert demanded over the yelling.

At the name, or perhaps just the sound of Albert’s voice, the cook fell quiet and turned his attention to the first mate.

What happened next I shall do my best to relate, though I am still unsure how much of it I remember and what parts I imagined. Since this first encounter, I have been careful to catalogue, in my mind’s eye, the truth of things, so I could relate them to someone, anyone, at a later date. But there will be no later date for me. Just this record and my fondest wish that it is never discovered.

Morrow leapt from his position of supplication, springing across the room with blinding speed and landing square on Albert. The pair toppled to the floor, with Morrow straddling his prey, scrambling and clawing at the bald first mate, meaning him harm. A deep snarling rose from the pair, as did the distinct and chilling sound of snapping teeth.

By all that is holy, the nearly naked man was trying his best to land a bite on Albert’s tender flesh!

Albert struggled to dodge his attacker’s onslaught. He wrestled with the blue-tinged body, rolling around, fighting the skinny man for purchase, and if it had been under any other circumstances, the whole affair would have seemed amusing. It became apparent that Albert was being gentle with the old man, trying to fight him with soft blows, open-handed nudges instead of striking with balled fists. Morrow, however, wasn’t toying around and cared little for Albert’s health. The old man snarled as he finally met his mark, sinking his teeth deep into Albert’s shoulder.

At this act, Albert found his voice and began shouting at once for help. It was almost a full ten seconds before anyone moved to lend him a hand; we were just that shocked at what we witnessed. One of the younger men watching from the hall, again I am ashamed to say I do not know who, snapped out of the mutual trance and ran to assist Albert. He threw himself into the scrimmage, snatching Morrow by his thinning hair and pulling him away from his prey. The first mate scrambled across the kitchen floor until he met the wall, at which he backed himself right up the siding. His eyes stood wide in terror, his body shook with fear, his feet continued to work the floor as if he could back himself right through to the other side of the wall. A crimson blossom flowered at the wound, spreading from the torn fabric of his long underwear in a wide circle.

Morrow recovered his loss quickly, managing to turn full circle on his keeper, despite the grip the young man had on Morrow’s hair. He then proceeded to pull the man to him and dig his teeth into the young man’s arm. The fellow’s shrieks filled the air alongside the cook’s snarling, wet grunts. This broke several of the others from their daze and a full-scale attack commenced.

Events grow sketchy here, for I admit I was on the far side of the kitchen, too much of a coward to help where I was needed, and thus I missed the bulk of the fight. All I remember was much screaming, a great deal of shrieking, and the lightning-quick Morrow leaping from man to man as the crowd struggled to subdue him. In the end, either subduing wasn’t enough, or perhaps someone became overzealous in the brawl. Over the sounds of conflict there rang out a sickening crunch, and with it the fight was over.

The crowd parted like an ebbing tide to reveal the now-still form of Morrow on his back. From the center of his face protruded a large butcher knife, piercing him through his left eye and deep into his brain. A small trickle of blood oozed from the wound, rolling down the side of the dead man’s face to pool upon the floor beneath him. Everyone stared at him as if expecting him to get up again. Yet he didn’t. He was certainly dead now, no doubt about it. Who planted the final blow? No one would admit to the deed, and at the time no one was concerned. Other facts overshadowed the killing stroke, such as the fact that the man who was already declared as dead somehow managed to get up and give chase to a half dozen full-grown men.

There seemed only one solution, and it wasn’t one I took pleasure in declaring.

“Geraldine must have made a mistake,” I said.

Lightbridge nodded as he eyed us over his desk. We had relayed the story ten or more times to him, for with his room being so far from the epicenter of the disaster, he had missed the bulk of the affair. By the time he got his dressing gown on and ran the length of the ship, the worst had passed, and all that was left was a twice-cold corpse.

“I swear he was dead,” she insisted. Her eyes were red with well-spent tears. Whether she was crying for the cook or herself, I didn’t know.

“That man was not a dead man,” Albert said. He winced as Geraldine tended to his many wounds. “He was anything but dead.”

“He is dead now,” Lightbridge said. “No one can survive such a wound.”

A brief moment of silence followed his proclamation. I shifted in my seat, made uncomfortable by the notion of Morrow’s gruesome death. A heart attack was one thing, but this was something altogether different.

“I promise,” Geraldine started, “that man had no vital signs, no breathing, no heartbeat. He was stone cold dead.” She then fell into another bout of weeping, leaving Albert to tend to the bite wound. Even I was moved by her tears. It must have been so embarrassing to make such a grievous error in judgment.

“Dr. Goode,” Lightbridge said in a soft voice. “No one doubts your professionalism. No one is making claims or accusations. But the fact of the matter remains that you declared him deceased when he clearly was not.”

She wept louder.

“He might not have been dead,” Albert offered. “But he wasn’t right either. He acted like a madman. An animal. All snarls and snaps and tooth and claw. I’ve never seen the likes of it in my whole life. He might have been alive, but he was right out of his mind.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not true. I heard him speaking. Under his cries, I heard his voice. He spoke words.”

“Words?” Lightbridge asked.

“Yes.”

Geraldine whimpered at my insistence. It must have been hard for her to deal with the knowledge that the man wasn’t quite the maniac the story made him out to be. Lightbridge took pity on her delicate constitution.

“Madam,” he said. “Perhaps you should return to bed. What’s done is done. We can discuss the rest in the morning.”

She nodded and left without argument. It was the first time I had ever seen her reduced to silence. What a terrible price to pay for the opportunity.

No sooner had she slipped from the room than Lightbridge turned to me and demanded, “Tell me more about what you heard.”

“The cook was speaking,” I said again. “Under his growls, he spoke.”

“Nonsense,” Albert countered. “All I heard was screams and growls.”

 
“I heard him say short phrases,” I insisted. I repeated the things I heard the cook say. Pain. Help. Cold, so cold.

“Cold,” Lightbridge echoed. “I can’t imagine the horror of waking up locked in the dark of the cooler. There is no telling what he thought had happened to him. He must have gone mad from the sheer terror of it.”

“Then we are all accomplices to his death.”

“Now, there is no need to go that far. He attacked my men. They were only defending themselves. It’s a simple explanation.”

“There is no simple explanation.” I was appalled at his flippant attitude. “We killed him, every one of us. When we left him for dead in that cooler, we drove him to his breaking point. Then we fought him like some wild beast and killed him for lashing out at us in what was surely confusion.”

Lightbridge was not impressed by my outburst. “Mr. Syntax, that is quite enough.”

“No,” I said as I got to my unsteady feet. “Your insistence to go forward after the man’s original death was madness, but I will not allow you to sweep this incident under the rug. We should return to civilization and deal with this. True North be damned!”

“Mr. Syntax!” Lightbridge shouted as he stood to tower over me. “You will find that one of the fundamental conventions of being aboard a ship is that the captain has the final authority. I am the authority. What I say goes. Do you understand?”

I fell silent, fearing that my tongue would betray me if I allowed it.

“Then what do you say?” Albert asked. “Sir?”

Lightbridge’s anger seemed to cool a bit at the question. He sat again, patting his round belly in thought for a moment before he spoke again. “I say we keep going. We are but two days from True North. I won’t turn back now. I won’t let that man die for nothing.”

“Aye, Captain,” Albert said.