A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [34]
Her heart shattered in her chest, and her blood ran cold. She listened.
The murmur changed. It became laughter. Thick, wet chuckles and chortles.
Kelly stared wide-eyed.
Along the pier, and the base of those welcoming, shanty-like port buildings, something glimmered through the fog.
Eyes. Baleful eyes glowed with their own amber, red and orange luminescence. They winked on, shining stars in the gloom, first six … then ten … two dozen … more.
The laughter drifted faint and deep under the piggish sounds and wet breath. Kelly saw those shifting, glowing eyes as they moved, shuffling on the dock, along the waterfront. Waiting. Waiting for the ship.
She backed up, shook her head in disbelief. What place is this? Where had she come?
She backed away, faster, eyes locked on the glowing ones along the shore, dotting the shadows of the port.
She yelped when she backed into something, and turned, afraid of what it might be, but it was the ship’s forward mast. Her eyes ran an involuntary trace of its length up, and she noted she could see its top for the first time, and the boom crossing high above. No sail flew from it, but … she saw something. She peered up, into the fog, and it thinned for her, and rolled back, and she saw them.
Bodies. Bodies dangled from the rigging high above deck, strung upside down from their feet. They swung with the gentle rolling and rocking of the sea beneath the ship, the limbs swayed in a macabre dance, tattered clothing hung and flapped. She couldn’t see their faces, only the shapes, their clear forms … more than twenty carcasses strung from the ship’s elaborate rigging, jouncing and swaying and bumping with a horrible thump, thump, thump against the boom, the mast, the lines.
She screamed again, because she couldn’t do anything else.
And the ship creaked, moaned, groaned, tick-tick-ticked in reply.
Chapter 6
Tim Keegan watched the horizon through the powerful binoculars, staring into the clear sky. The thrumming thump of a beating helicopter rotor roared, fanning the water into a white-skinned mist skittering off the mellow waves on the aqua sea.
He pulled them down as his executive officer, Jake Harmon, bounded up to the cutter’s bridge and through the door. He had something in his hands, Keegan noted. A book.
“What’s the story, Jake?”
Harmon shook his head. “Wish I had something to give you, Cap’n, but … nothing. I mean, the boat’s intact. The motor’s working fine. The GPS, the radio, and of course the emergency beacon are all functioning perfectly. I don’t get it.”
“No sign of the crew?”
Harmon shook his head. “Not one. No flotsam and jetsam, either. No debris of any kind. Divers say the hull doesn’t have a scratch on it. There’s a little nick above the water at the bow, on the port side, like maybe they bumped a dock pulling in, but other than that, she’s ship-shape and sea-worthy. No water on her anywhere.”
Keegan shook his head. “This is damn peculiar. How far offshore was she when we picked up the signal?”
“Twenty miles, maybe a hair more.”
“Pirates? Terrorists? Kidnapped maybe?”
“Six people on a day charter? What would anyone get from them? Few hundred bucks? Why hit a small boat like this? She’s 42 feet. Why not a cruise ship, with butt-loads of money and valuables and rich people? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Besides, we don’t have any reports of pirate or terrorist activity around here. None. Drug runners maybe?”
Keegan scratched his chin, and shifted the cap on his head. “Could be, but that’d be new for them. This is damn weird. What would cause a skipper to pull his emergency beacon and then abandon ship?”
“Didn’t abandon ship in his dinghy, whatever the cause. They went swimming.”
“You got the dinghy?”
Harmon nodded. “It was tied alongside her, just off the aft port. Inflated and ready, both oars on it. A cooler of water and food stowed. Life vests. Nothing else. No sign they ever left the boat.”
Keegan sighed, and stuck his chin at Harmon’s hand. “What’s that?”
“A journal.