Cook poured some steel into his rubbery limbs, pulled himself up, just shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing.” And he knew that sounded foolish, ridiculous, but it was the truth. Because he hadn’t really heard a woman’s voice out there, some malefic female ghost inviting him to doom and madness. Just imagination. He was tired and scared and confused and his imagination had spun all that into the worst thing it could imagine.
His breathing slowed now and he felt foolish. Utterly foolish. He reached over to turn the radio off and, yes, it was still blaring static, but mixed in with it were those buzzing pulses he’d heard earlier. Something his mind had tagged as Morse Code for wasps.
He shut the radio off.
“Better conserve batteries,” he said, feeling, really feeling that fog out there now. Certain it was reaching out for him, wanting to drag him into a murky, enclosing shroud of itself.
“What did you hear?” Crycek wanted to know.
“Thought… well, I thought I heard a voice. Just my mind playing tricks on me. I need some sleep.”
Crycek nodded. “There’s funny things in the fog. Funny, weird things. I know all about that. Maybe some of it’s imagination, but not all of it… no sir.”
Cook just sat there, not saying a thing. Crycek was ready to talk now. He wanted to say things and none of it was going to be good.
“I was out there, Cook. I was one of the ones that went to look for Stokes, the guy who jumped overboard. Gosling, the First, he picked me. Picked me because he must have known I was scared of the fog,” Crycek said, his voice low and even and somehow unpleasant. “We went out in the boats to look. Out into that goddamn fog. And I’m not too proud to admit I was afraid. I was afraid from the moment that boat touched water. Terrified. Because that fog wasn’t right then and it’s not right now. Yeah, I knew there were things out in that fog.. . crawling, pallid things… abominations… things that would drive you mad just to look upon them. Yes, I knew that.”
Cook swallowed. “C’mon, Crycek. Just take it easy.”
“Take it easy?” He uttered a short, sharp laugh that was more like the bark of a dog. It was flat and empty-sounding. Cook was glad, really glad he could not see Crycek’s face then, because he knew it would have been bad, a shroud chewed by lunacy. “Sure, I’ll take it easy. Out in that fog… we were hearing things. Things like voices calling us… awful, clotted voices spoken through mouths full of seaweed… and once, just the once, I heard laughter. A cackling laughter that almost finished me. And then, oh yes, then I saw something. I saw it and it saw me.”
Cook’s arms were full of gooseflesh. He could barely find his voice. “What? What did you see?”
But Crycek could only shake his head back and forth, make a weird whimpering sound low in his throat. “It… it was staring at me out of the fog. Something slimy and stinking with a long neck like a light post. It had a head, something like a head, but all curled-up like a snail shell. Jelly was dripping from it and there was some kind of growth hanging from it, like weeds or dangling roots, only they were crawling and twisting. And its eyes… oh dear God, those eyes, huge and yellow and wicked, staring at me, staring right into me like they meant to eat my soul raw…”
Crycek’s voice faded out and maybe he with it. He was shaking and making sobbing sounds, his fist shoved up against his mouth so maybe he wouldn’t scream his mind away.
Hupp began to moan and thrash.
“Easy,” Crycek said. “Easy… I won’t let it get you, I swear to God I won’t… when it comes for us, I’ll cheat it. Yes, I’ll cheat it.”
He started giggling then.
Cook had all he could do not to join him.
And then there was a sound.
Something was coming out of the fog.
It was Fabrini who saw the flare.
The flare Crycek fired off. And that’s how they found the lifeboat in the fog.
“Paddle, you goat fuck,” Saks snapped at Menhaus. “It’s a goddamn boat!”
“I’m doing my best,” Menhaus said under his breath.
“So do better.”
But it wasn’t easy. Not for any of them. Fabrini had sighted the boat just as Saks was asking him if his parents had any children that lived. They’d swung right into action, but it was tough going. It wasn’t easy to hang onto the wet, slimy crate and paddle your feet at the same time. And the crate wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to navigate or steer.
“Let’s just abandon it,” Menhaus panted, “and swim for it,”
“No way,” Fabrini said.
“He’s right, Menhaus. If we don’t make the boat and we ditch the crate, we won’t have anything. Keep going.”
