A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [26]
Kelly laughed. “Please. Let’s just meet up here when we finish our searches. If there’s no way to keep track of time, just make a lot of noise or something.”
Flanagan nodded, smiled at her. “Sounds like a good idea. Make sure you stay with your team. Don’t separate. In the dark it’d be easy to run into something down there, get hurt. Awright? Let’s go.”
They parted then, and Kelly gave a last look over her shoulder as the two men vanished into the swirling wisps of fog.
Chapter 4
“Captain Flanagan,” Kelly said as they approached a cocoa-brown teak wood door, glistening with moisture which collected and ran in fat droplets down the oily surface. A brass knob tarnished in the center.
“Yeah?” Flanagan focused on the fo’c’sle door and didn’t look up.
“Why is this vessel moving when yours wasn’t? Were we anchored?”
“No, we weren’t anchored,” he said. “I dunno why. This one might have a sail down, but we were in a dead calm far as I could tell. Storm came through and didn’t budge us. No current to speak of, and even the bump by this big tub didn’t knock us adrift. I been scratching my head over it since we set off. Can’t figure why this one’s moving and we were dead.”
Kelly bit her lip. “You know what else? Before the ship hit us, I checked my watch … you know, while you and Willy were working on the engine? And it worked. I noted in my journal that a couple of hours passed.”
“Damn, Kelly,” Sam said, “you’re freaking me out. The watches stopped working too?”
“Yeah,” Flanagan said, “and now that I think about it, it musta happened after this boat rammed us.” He opened the door and a dark, musty staircase opened in front of them. “Matter of fact, I think Kelly’s right. I think I used my watch before we got clipped and it worked.”
“So this ship showed up and nothing works anymore?”
“No,” Kelly stared into the middle distance, “not exactly. Things didn’t work after the storm blew by. Engine, radio, GPS, stuff like that. But our watches stopped when the ship appeared.”
“Know what else?” Flanagan cast a bleary eye to the fog. “I ain’t noticed it getting darker, neither. Like … like the sun’s not setting.”
“That’s … well that’s just nuts. Isn’t it?” Sam hugged herself and looked at Kelly with a mix of fear and hope. “Isn’t it, Kelly?”
Kelly sighed. “I’d … I’d’ve thought so before … before today, yeah. But … I wonder …”
Flanagan held onto the door jamb and leaned as far as possible into the depths of the shadows in it, then popped back to look at her. “Wonder what?”
Sam tensed.
Kelly’s eyes went from one of them to the other. “What if … what if time’s not working right? I mean, this vessel came out of nowhere. It’s … it’s old, right? I mean, it’s not a new ship, is it? Built to look old?”
Flanagan shrugged. “Can’t tell yet.”
“What if that storm was some sort of … some sort of temporal anomaly?” Kelly felt silly once the words slipped past her lips, and blushed.
“That’s … that’s like something out of Star Trek, isn’t it?” Sam perked a brow at Kelly, but no smile mocked her. “I mean, that’s Sci-Fi, isn’t it?”
Flanagan nodded. “Yeah, it is. I’ve been on the water a long time, and I’ve never seen any sorta temp’ral anemone.”
“Anomaly,” Kelly corrected. “Maybe it’s something like what goes on in the Bermuda Triangle.”
Sam shuddered. “Kelly, you’re scaring me.”
“And it’s a load of crap anyway. Triangle’s a myth, nothing more, and we’re a long way from it.”
“I know … I mean, I’m just throwing out possibilities, you know? What else could this be?”
“This might be a schooner set sail from some port and the crew had to abandon ship, same as we did. Maybe the same storm got ‘em. Maybe it broke loose of its mooring somewhere. I don’t know for sure, but I know it ain’t a temp’ral … whatever.”
“Anomaly,” Kelly said, her voice soft with embarrassment. “I was only thinking … never mind.”
“Right now we need to find Charles, so let’s focus on that, awright?”
“She’s just trying to understand the weird-ass shit going on, Flanagan, you don’t have