The Monster Man of Horror House (12 page)

“We
can’t leave this ship like this for others to find,” he said, dropping a coil
of rope into the Boatswain’s lap before climbing down after it. He took the line
from the Boatswain once he was in the launch and started unfurling it as H took
us away. After a hundred yards, Singh came to the end of his line and tied the
loose end to the aft cleat.

“Now
go, full power,” he told H, bracing himself against the hull.

H
duly obliged, squeezing the accelerator and taking us away from the
Wind
until the line whipped taut. For
one moment we crunched against the weight of that abominable ship, but the
launch was just as keen to get back to the
Folly
as the rest of us, and quickly we broke free again, yanking several pins from
their oak moorings a hundred yards away.

A
thud struck deep within the waves and we looked back to see the first of four quick
flashes rip open the side of the
Wind
,
exposing her decks to the cold grey seas before the fires had a chance to warm
her soul one last time.

“There
she goes, boys,” the Boatswain said, doffing his cap to show his respects.

The
Wind
lurched onto her side and lay
floundering in the waters until she could support herself no longer. Several
air pockets blew out her port side windows and at last her bow slipped beneath
the waves, up-ending her stern to reveal her static screw. She called to us one
last time when the salt waters hit her battery cells, imploring us to remember
her name, before sliding beneath the waves to her final resting place three
quarters of a mile below.

“Look
after her well,” the Boatswain commended, replacing his cap and cutting loose
the line we were trailing to sever us from our night’s work. “Now let none of
us speak of this thing again.”

That
should’ve been that as far as the
Sumatran
Wind
was concerned. We shouldn’t have seen nor heard from her again, except
in our nightmares. But the sea will always give up her dead.

Just
as she’ll always find a way to reach those who escaped her cold embrace the
first time around.

ii

The weather had blown itself out by the next morning and the sun blazed down to
turn the rippling sea into a collage of shadows. I never got over the colours
the seas became in weather like this, and imagined monsters lurking beneath the
waves whenever a dark square sailed by. I expect I wasn’t the first sailor to
think these thoughts. But the squares never reared up to flick a fin nor take a
bite out of our ship because they were only squares; shoals of fish or banks of
seaweed. Or oil. Or simply shadows.

Our
previous night’s encounter must’ve played on our Captain’s mind because my
first task of the day was the check the
Folly
’s
six life rafts. This was a relatively simple job; all I had to do was fill each
raft with water and plug any leaks that sprang. Any idiot could do it,, which
was why the Captain asked me. The skilled part of the job came with knowing not
to fill all six rafts at the same time, but to check them individually, so that
at no time would we be sailing around the South China Sea with all our life
rafts full of water.

And
so it was close to midday and I was just getting started on the fourth life
raft when I glimpsed another of those shapes out to sea. I didn’t look up at
first, because the work was gruelling, particularly under the heat of the
midday sun, but the shape registered with me all the same and lingered in my
mind’s eye just long enough to make me look out for it next time I swung the
bucket.

It
was still there, just short of the horizon and tickling along with the tidal
currents, but this shape looked different to the shapes that had passed by so
far this morning. This one looked tangible.

I
shielded my brow against the blazing sun and strained my eyes, but the shape
was too far away to tell what it was. Probably some flotsam or jetsam that had
found the water in the previous night’s squall but without a set of glasses I
couldn’t tell for sure.

I
called up to the First Mate who had the bridge and he trained his glasses on
the distance, scouring the cobalt swells until he found what I’d spotted.

“Life
raft!”

This
was our second encounter with another craft in a little under twelve hours, so
you didn’t need to be an ancient mariner to guess where this particular raft
had come from. Sure enough, when we were within a few hundred yards the First
Mate lowered his glasses and spoke the words we all feared to hear.

“It’s
from the
Sumatran Wind
.”

It
was inscribed on the bow of the little raft, and I cursed my tongue for drawing
us to it once again. But it was too late now. One or two of us could’ve looked the
other way and left the raft to her fate, but not a crew of eighteen. We had to
bring her in.

On
first inspection it didn’t look like anyone was on board, but as we neared her,
we saw a tiny shape curled up against the bow.

“Steady
as she goes,” the Captain called, slowing us to a stingray’s pace until we were
almost on top of her. Najib and Singh climbed down the portside ladder and
snared the raft with hooks, while Sushanta, 50ft above, struck the winch and pulled
her from the water – lone survivor and all.

“Does
anyone else think we should get the rifles before we do this?” I was asking,
but Singh just grinned with amusement so I peered in to see what we’d landed.

He
couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but curled up as he was, he looked
barely half that. The face was oriental, but not Chinese or Japanese, sharper
looking. Possible Thai. I wasn’t an expert, though from the wasted state of
him, I think even his own mother wouldn’t have recognised him. His clothes were
tattered and his body racked with scars. I wondered how long he’d been at sea.
And what precisely had chased him into the raft in the first place.

“He’s
alive,” the First Mate declared, feeling his pulse and looking around for
cheers of joy. The silence was unanimous.

The
Captain looked as crestfallen as the rest of us, but there was no tossing him
back over board now, so he ordered Lumpati and Ahmed to take our newest crewmate
below and have the ship’s doctor look at him.

The
ship’s doctor was a Bengali called Upendra, who rumour had it, had learnt his
trade gutting
hilsa
in the Gariahat
fish market. An appointment with him wasn’t necessarily a green light to keep
buying shoes in pairs, so our newest passenger might’ve been better off taking
to the seas again, but he was out for the count and blissfully oblivious to the
dangers.

Just
as the rest of us were.

iii

I was finished my life raft duties after two more hours and thanked my stars I
wasn’t working a bigger ship, otherwise I’d be able to tie my laces without
bending over come the end of the afternoon.

I
stowed my rope and bucket, fired a couple of fags off the back of the
Folly
and timed my endeavours to
dovetail neatly into dinnertime.

Freddy
was down in the Mess already, as were Sushanta and Najib, so the four of us
broke bread together, Sushanta and Najib standing on one end, me and Freddy
jumping up and down on the other – an old joke, but quite apt. The Mess
boys claimed they could only make the best with what they’d been given, and
while this was true, what they’d been given two years earlier was seven and a
half tons of tinned sweet corn; a versatile vegetable as the crew were to
discover and one I’m still passing to this day.

Naturally,
it didn’t take long before the conversation turned to our newest arrival.

“The
sooner he wakes up and we find out what happened to the rest of the
Wind
, the happier I’ll be,” Freddy said.

“You
sure that knowledge will make you happy?” Sushanta asked.

“You
know what I mean?”

“Whatever
did that to her crew is surely at the bottom of sea by now alongside their
bones,” Najib ventured.

This
time Sushanta stayed quiet.

“What
did
do that to her crew?” I decided
to ask, seeing as no one else had even come close to speculating yet.

Three
sets of eyes turned to me and stared.

“I
don’t know, and it does us no good to guess, lest we get so distracted looking
for one cause that we miss the other – until it’s right behind us.”

Najib
agreed, though Freddy bet five shillings it was some kind of sea monster.
“Bound to be,” he reckoned.

The
rest of the Watch started to filter in for tonight’s fish surprise (and you can
guess what the surprise was) before ‘Doctor’ Upendra finally entered to be
confronted by a hailstorm of questions.

“Is
he awake yet?”

“Who
is he?”

“Where’s
he from?”

“What
happened to the others?”

“What
raked his body like that?”

“Can
he cook?”

“Oi
fuck you!”

Upendra
stroked his chin and suggested we retook our seats before beckoning in the
person waiting just behind him. As you can imagine, the Mess fell into
ear-splitting silence as a now familiar scrawny little wretch stepped through the
doorway and regarded us with apprehension.

“It’s
okay, they’re okay,” Upendra reassured him, motioning him to take a seat.

The
worst of the filth had been scraped off his body and he’d been bandaged with
enthusiasm until he resembled a barber’s shop pole. A clean set of clothes and
an old set of sandals topped off his ensemble and finally he was ready to be
reintroduced to the human race.

This
was our second mistake.

“Everybody,”
announced Upendra, “this is Tran Van Khan. He’ll be with us until Hong Kong.”

*

Khan was Thai, or at least this is what he claimed to be. But without papers or
documentation it was difficult to tell. At least it was for a European, but the
Boatswain sat him down with H for five minutes, who spoke both Thai and French,
and that’s all it took to dismiss Khan’s claims in favour of somewhere rather more
combustible.

“He
Vietnam,” H told us. “He not want to go home.”

Still
who could blame him for that? Men and machines were pouring in to South Vietnam
from both sides of the ideological divide and it wasn’t going to be long before
the whole region went up like a Chinese chip pan. If I’d been Khan I wouldn’t
have wanted to go home either.

But
this still didn’t explain what had happened back on the
Wind
. H pushed the point.

“He
say pirates boarded him them at night and killed everybody on board. Savages,
he say. Very bad killings.”

“Very
bad killings, huh!” the Boatswain repeated back, chewing those words over a few
times before spitting them out along with a glob of chaw. “Must’ve lost
something in translation,” he concluded.

“They
skinned them? They ate them?” Sushanta put to Khan through H.

“They
cannibals,” H confirmed, though Sushanta was a hard sell.

“Cannibals
this far north? Cannibals who eat raw meat?”

At
this response, Khan began to wail, burying his face into his hands and curling
up into a ball against the table to make us all feel like heels. At least,
almost all of us; Freddy was still urging H to ask him about sea monsters when
the Captain entered the Mess and went ballistic at what he found.

“What
the hell is going on here? Why is that man out of the infirmary? And why are
you all speaking with him? He is under house arrest until we dock at Victoria
and not to be spoken to by any person aboard this ship. Do you understand?”

I
personally didn’t, but then again this didn’t prove a stumbling block for the
Captain who ordered Upendra, the Boatswain and Najib to take Khan back to the
infirmary.

“If
it’s food he wants, I’ll have it brought to you,” the Captain told the Upendra.
“But no one knows what happened on his ship, least of all me. And until I do,
he is to be kept under lock and key.”

The
Captain looked at Ahmed and Freddy and finally posted off a late entry for
sensible decision of the week.
 

“You
two; go to the Radio Room and draw side-arms. Then stand watch outside the
Infirmary until relieved. No one gets in there, you here? Or out.”

iv

Well, that fairly put the cat amongst the pigeons. Although Sushanta was still
concerned about who was the cat? And who were the pigeons?

After
dinner, I turned in for the evening, tired and grubby, yet excited to have the
cabin to myself for once. As weary as I was, I couldn’t let the opportunity slide,
so I borrowed one of the Boatswain’s dirty books and drifted off to sleep to
the sound of baby Jesus weeping for my soul.

I
rarely remember my dreams. Some people can recall them in detail, but this
hardly ever happens to me. If anything, all I ever experience is a brief nudge
from my subconscious at the end of my sleep, which always causes me to wake up
confused and slightly frightened. And this particular night was no different.
After just a couple of hours a voice in the middle distance asked me if I’d spoken
to my father yet and I awoke to hear myself replying that I hadn’t seen him in years.