Dead Sea

Sighing, deciding he was probably losing his mind an inch at a time, he looked out over that stagnant sea, wondering, thinking. Now and then he caught sight of wreckage-charred bits of wood, splintered beams, a crate or two, but never anything more than that. Unless you wanted to count clumps of floating weeds, spreading near-submerged things that steamed as if they’d just been pulled out of a boiling pot.

“I guess we just drift,” Crycek said, the words coming out of him like air from a leaking tire. “We just drift and we wait.”

None of that gave Cook any real hope. He was not an optimist by nature, but neither was he a pessimist. He was balanced on the borderline in-between, what his mother had once called a realist. Both he and Crycek could live for weeks with what was in the boat, but Hupp was doomed if help didn’t come soon. And maybe it was already too late.

Already too late for everyone concerned.

Cook had never felt quite so alone in his life.

He had always been something of a loner. It was the way he was, had always been. He didn’t trust people. He decided early on that they were basically evil creatures hiding beneath a veneer of civilization

… that is, when they bothered to hide at all. Many didn’t. And he wasn’t sure whether he liked these better than the others or not.

Crazy as it sounded at this stage of the game, he still entertained fantasies of washing up on some deserted tropical isle. All by himself. No one to bother him, give him trouble or pain. Just nature and he. He could catch his meals from the sea, scavenge for edible plants and berries. It would be a simple life. One that he was psychologically suited for.

Hupp began to moan and thrash around noisily.

“Here, here,” Crycek said. “I’ve got you now. You’re okay.”

At the sound of his voice, Hupp quieted down. Crycek was very good with him, Cook thought. A born nursemaid. It took the right kind of person to care for others like that. And it was exactly what Crycek needed. There was something brewing in him, something hot and sharp that was cutting him open from the inside. Caring for his shipmate gave him an anchor, it cemented him to the here and now.

And without it? Cook didn’t want to think about that.

“You better try that radio again, don’t you think?” Crycek said and Cook was pretty certain there was something behind his words, something like sarcasm.

“I suppose.”

But he didn’t want to do that. It was about the last thing in the world he really wanted. And that’s when he decided it was all a sick fucking game between the two them. They both knew that it was hopeless, that the Coast Guard couldn’t send out a rescue mission even if they wanted to. But they weren’t going to admit that out loud. Something in them just refused to. For maybe once such things were voiced there was no going back. Like calling up some demon from the formless ebon pits of the universe, once you said its name aloud, you admitted its reality.

So Cook went through the bit of transmitting a distress call and it was funny how his voice got on that radio now. Where before it was loud and clear and insistent, now he practically mumbled the words into the mic like he didn’t want anybody hearing him.

“You hearing… anything out there?” Crycek was asking him.

But Cook just shook his head. Just dead air and white noise. A raging storm of static that his mind pictured to be white and blowing like some electrical blizzard, a vast and tangled sound full of fuzz and friction and emptiness. It was a sound the human mind had trouble with. It grasped and fought to separate something, anything it could identify. And after a time, if it couldn’t get a hold of anything, it would create something before it went mad.

Cook kept listening, knowing he had to.

He began to hear odd patterns in it, the static rising and falling in gentle oscillations that sounded very much like breathing, respiration, something pulling air into its lungs and exhaling. But not air… static, in and out, in and out. He was hearing it and knowing it was his imagination, but unable to stop listening. There was something morphic, hypnotizing about it and you couldn’t pull your mind away. You could only listen to the static breathing, filling its lungs with that droning white noise and feel yourself being pulled away, floating.

And about that time, Cook heard something come up out of that static, a voice that was clear and crisp and evil. A woman’s voice: “That’s right, Cook… you just keep dreaming and drifting… I’m out here in the fog, I’m waiting for you out here, waiting to touch you-”

And maybe the voice itself wasn’t so evil, but its intent was unmistakable. Cook dropped the radio and fell backward onto the deck. Crycek was saying something, but he could not hear him. Could not hear anything but the static now and maybe the fog whispering and that clotted sea sluicing and that voice echoing in his head.

“Christ, Cook… what’s wrong?” Crycek was saying, sounding desperate now.