The Monster Man of Horror House (14 page)

BOOK: The Monster Man of Horror House
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“Schnell!”

The
Wheel House was elevated above the main decks and could be accessed by two
flights of steel steps on the port and starboard sides. Me, Freddy, Lumpati and
H spilled out against the starboard rail, while Sushanta, Najib and the Captain
did likewise on the port side.

Beneath
us, I felt the boat lurch eastwards and pick up speed. The First Mate had been
ordered to make for help and to hell with the consequences. A hundred and sixty
nautical miles away bobbed enough men and machines of the US Navy start a small
war – which I think was the general idea – so the First Mate
pointed us in their direction and set about turning the
Folly
’s read-outs red.
 

“Don’t
panic fire,” Lumpati whispered when he saw me shaking. “One careful shot will
serve you better than three frightened bangs.”

I
took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves but all I really wanted to do
was curl into a ball and cry myself to sleep.

That
was when it started.

Gunfire
crackled from the port side bow and I heard Najib and the Captain shouting at
someone or something to come towards it. I don’t know if it sensed a trap and
fled in the other direction as a consequence but a moment later a shape darted
between several container stacks about fifty yards in front of my field of fire.

I
disregarded Lumpati’s advice entirely and shot off two quick rounds with
absolutely no idea where they went, but I felt better for doing it all the same
and quickly chambered another. H told me to hold my fire and directed the
starboard lamp towards the container stacks, sweeping the beam from shadow to
shadow until we saw something make a break for it again. I let off another bang
but H knocked the barrel of my rifle away to kill a passing wave.

“Don’t
shoot,” H scowled, before shouting to whoever was out there, “Up here! Up
here!”

The
beam once more fell upon the movement, but it wasn’t the monstrous apparition of
Khan we saw darting between the container stacks but that of Rupak Singh.

He
ran from stack to stack, wide-eyed with madness and caked in all that was left
of our shipmates. He’d seen first-hand what we’d only tuned into on the
intercom and now he could hardly draw a breath for the terror that bore down upon
him. Lumpati joined H and called to Singh, but I was too dry to pitch in. Not
that it would’ve done much good anyway; Singh wasn’t listening. Something else
had his focus and it was tracking him amongst the stacks.

“This
way Singh, this way! We’ll cover you!”

Out
of the corner of my eye, ten yards from Singh, I saw something else moving. I
couldn’t make it out at first, because it was as black as the very night
itself, but something was down there creeping amongst the rocking shadows and
circling our startled shipmate. I squeezed my eyes as tight as I dared in an effort
to penetrate the gloom but the silhouette was always somewhere else other than
where I was looking.

“It’s
behind you, Singh! It’s behind you!” I finally concluded, sending Singh
spinning this way and that, desperate to move, but paralyzed with a fear of making
the wrong decision.

Again
I shot into the darkness, this time sending a
.303
slug into a bulging black shadow just beyond Singh’s left ear.
Once again I hit only decking, prompting yet another rebuke from H, but this
time I knew I was right shoot.

“It’s
there, it’s in the shadows. It’s behind him!” I insisted.

Freddy
took me at my word and opened up with his rifle, plugging each shadow with a
shot to the heart, and Lumpati pitched in too. H let go of my barrel and
blasted a couple of silhouettes of his own and before long all four of us were
scouring the deck around Singh, searching for flesh and blood amongst the steel
and tin.

Singh
finally realised where his best hope lay and made a break towards us –
only to have his path blocked by a huge savage shape that reared up out of nowhere
before him.

Khan’s
appearance took my breath away; he seemed to have grown even larger than our
first terrible encounter, standing a clear nine feet tall and as broad as a barrel
of rum. His thick black coat sucked in what little light surrounded him so that
he appeared to have no form at all, just mass – mass and two great arms
that stretched out like the skeletal branches of long dead trees.

H
and Lumpati were emptying their mags into Khan, but Khan barely batted an
eyelid, he simply flicked his head and roared with indignation, baring a row of
blood-flecked fangs to snort his contempt.

Singh
screamed one final farewell and lunged the only way left open to him, straight
over the starboard bow and into the forbidding waters.

“Nooo!”
Lumpati screamed, dropping his rifle and grabbing a life jacket to hurl to his
compatriot, but Singh was gone, swallowed up by the swells and in no mind to
fight them.

Khan
now turned on us, furious to be denied his sport and intent on satisfaction.
His snout wrinkled up to bare those terrible yellow incisors and then he
dropped onto all fours –


and charged straight for us.

We
responded with a volley of shots but this didn’t deter Khan a jot, and he was
upon us in the blink of an eye, snapping and slashing at our ranks as we fell
back in a panic. Lumpati’s head spun clean away from his shoulders and almost
kissed me as it sailed past, while H was dumped into a pile of his own
intestines as he fought to find the beast’s bulls-eye with his final shot.

I’d
been nearest the Wheel House door so I’d had the space to tumble back into, but
this would've normally have counted for nothing – Khan was that fast. But
I’ve always been lucky with my friends and I had the remarkable good fortune to
be with the one man on earth who Khan most wanted to reacquaint himself.

Freddy
Bolton.

Khan
leapt on Freddy’s back as he tried flinging himself over the side, pinning him
to the steel decking with his five-inch talons and screaming into his face with
a ferocity that made his previous furies seem like petulant sulks.

“Help
me! God help me Coal!”

Khan
shot me a glare as if to say, “don’t even think about it”, so in the interests
of fairness I afforded Freddy the same level of help I’d given his bedfellow
earlier that evening and scuttled for the sanctuary of the Wheel House.

The
First Mate and Erik dragged me inside and spun the lock to seal the hatch while
Sushanta and Najib did likewise to the portside access. Captain Schmitt had
decided to get stupid with himself and try sneaking up on Khan from the other
side of the Flying Bridge, so I chalked him off without even waiting to hear
his screams. But they’d come. Of that I had no doubt – just as soon as Khan
was done with Freddy.

My
randy ex-bunkmate had not stopped howling from the moment Khan had pinned him
to the deck, but they were still screams of terror, not pain, telling me Khan
was intent on enjoying this kill.

“For
the love of God, help me! Help meeee!!!” he implored, but what could we do?

“Put
your fingers in your ears,” Sushanta suggested, which was as good a plan as any
so I jammed my fingers into the side of my head until all I could hear were the
sounds of my own exhaustion and the crashing of my heart. Sushanta elected to hear
things through, and I was able to monitor my ex-bunkmate’s progress from the expressions
Sushanta pulled. I don’t know what Khan did to the
Folly
’s resident romantic – and frankly I don’t want to know
– but from the looks on Sushanta’s face, I’d say he gave every bit as
good as he got.

A
sudden, almighty crunch against the steel door sent me sprawling across the
deck. The six-inch glass porthole shattered under the next blow and Khan stuck
his snout through the hole to howl a storm into our souls. The First Mate blasted
away with his sidearm, hitting Khan in the face, before sending the next two
slugs rattling around the Wheel House to chase up from pillar to post. Khan
seemed unfazed and continued pounding the hatch with all of his might, while
both the First Mate and Sushanta peppered his snout with lead.

Eventually
Khan moved away, though it was a purposeful lumber of a creature changing
tactics rather than that of a beast beating a retreat.

“What
the hell is that thing?” Erik asked. Again nobody answered. And not just
because nobody could – but because Khan never gave us a chance.

The
steel door may have withstood all that Khan could throw at it but he soon saw
he’d have more luck with the glass windowpanes that fronted the length of the Wheel
House. A narrow walkway ran just beneath it and Khan now stepped into view
looking larger and hairier than a Highland beauty queen.

The
five of us backed against the far wall and for one terrible moment, Khan simply
stood studying us through the glass as if we were prime cuts in a butcher’s
window. He wrinkled his snout into a perverse smile and snapped his jaws a
couple of times, as if to bite the very air between us, then he swung one of his
great claws and shattered the glass into a thousand silver shards. Khan bound
straight in, hitting the deck along with the glass and he went for the First
Mate.

The
rest of us rushed to escape, tumbling out of the portside hatch as a foursome,
but only three of us hit the bottom step, Najib having been snatched back into
the Wheel House by one of Khan’s loose claws. I barely heard the screams before
the hatch splashed with blood and the carcass of Najib was hurled into our path,
almost as if Khan was expressing pique at our impertinence. Still you know what
they say; when the devil’s got you by the tail, never offer him your hand too,
so we ploughed on into the night, stumbling across the rolling deck as the
Folly
now crashed through the waves in a
blind arc.

I
looked over my shoulder to see the enormous shape of Khan leaping from the
Wheel House to land at a canter just ten yards behind us. He was utterly
unstoppable and I knew at that moment, just as surely as a condemned man knows
when he sees the rope, that I was going to die. I tried to find the courage to
die well, urging myself to about turn and go down fighting, but my strength had
deserted me; all I could do was brace myself for that dreaded killer blow.

Erik
was the first to fall, gobbled up in an instant without Khan even having to
break his stride. He shrieked just as all the others had shrieked and was
snuffed out in a heartbeat. It sounded quick. I hoped it was quick. I hoped
mine would be quicker.

I
hoped Khan hadn’t seen me at the Infirmary.

I
hoped I’d be spared what Freddy had endured.

I
hoped…

Sushanta
had no intention of going out with such ease and darted between the stacks,
weaving this way and that, through a maze of narrow runs to put some distance
between himself and the beast. I simply followed, unable to think of my own
plan and determined to fuck Sushanta up in the event he looked like getting
away without me.

As
it happened, Khan was less manoeuvrable in these cramped confines and so by
some miracle we were able to put the merest of hair’s breadths between ourselves
and our snarling foe so that by the time we emerged from the stacks we had the
luxury of almost a full four seconds to consider our next move.

Naturally
Sushanta led the way, sprinting to and then scurrying up the aft mast like a
squirrel running up an Oak. I tried to follow but this time I couldn’t. Try as
I might, I simply couldn’t pull myself up the smooth white pole. I guess
Sushanta had spent his childhood shinning up coconut trees for his supper while
I’d spent mine lying next to an electric fire reading
The Adventures of Tintin
while I'd waited for the old man to get
back from the chippy.

Khan
burst out of the stacks and stumbled against thin air for a few seconds before finding
his balance. He roared at me once more with a
ferocity
that stripped the skin from my face, before charging for
the kill.

I
was about to flee – where? I had no idea – when I suddenly saw
Sushanta’s shoes at the bottom of the mast. Given the situation it was an odd
thing to notice, but then it occurred to me that they were down here while the
man himself was up there – which of course was how he’d climbed the pole.
It was suddenly so simple.

Unfortunately
I barely had the time to straighten my hat, let alone kick off my shoes, so I did
the only thing left open to me and fled aft, hoping salvation would offer
itself once more, only this time a bit more glaringly.

No
such luck. I reached the back of the boat with desolation to spare and found
myself cornered alongside a tattered Ceylonese flag. Khan slowed when he saw I had
no place left to go and he stretched out his arms to prevent me from making a
break for it. Once he was sure I was hemmed in he began closing in on me,
slowly and carefully, determined to enjoy my anguish to the full. It was a
deliberate act of a beast conscious of his actions.

“Wait,”
I decided to try, wondering just how much this fiend could understand. “Wait,
I’m on your side.”

Khan
snorted derisively, smacking his lips as if he was savouring the fear in my
voice.

BOOK: The Monster Man of Horror House
3.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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