He heard a noise from inside. The kind of noise that made a man feel...like a man. It was high-pitched, and rhythmic. And it absolutely was not the moan of their gravel-voiced captain. Reg pressed his ear to the door, and a slow smile drew across his face as he eavesdropped on the unmistakable sounds of a woman quickly approaching o.r.g.a.s.m not far from the other side of the door. Mixed in with her cries were the heavier, deeper but equally satisfied groans of a male.
Reg felt his manhood shift at the sounds, and pulled back from the door. So. The mystery deepened. The captain had brought a woman on this trip. How he had kept her secret from them these past couple weeks he had no idea. Though as he thought back, he realized that Buckley had been absent from the deck more than usual these past few days. The wheels in his head clicked over, and his grin widened. No wonder the ol" man had been so hard on Rogers about snooping and thieving around belowdecks. He didn"t care about the liquor, he was protecting another kind of vice. He stepped back and leaned against the wall until the faint noises coming from inside the captain"s quarters diminished. The ship dove in a sudden roll again, and Reg took that as his cue.
"Captain," he called out, at the same time issuing a quick rap on the cabin door. "We got a storm on us. All hands on deck."
Reg didn"t wait for Buckley"s reply, but turned and walked down the hallway. But instead of heading toward the galley, he quickly stepped in the opposite direction. Reg slipped behind a stack of wooden moonshine crates in the hold, and turned to keep an eye on the path he"d just made. It didn"t take long for the captain"s door to open. Buckley hurried out, straightening his shirtsleeves, and went up top.
Still smiling, Reg waited a beat, and then came out of hiding. The next time he talked to the captain, he was going to have something to talk about. Something the captain couldn"t brush off.
He tried the k.n.o.b of the captain"s door, and found it, not surprisingly, locked. Reg wasn"t perturbed. He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a fishhook. He pressed it against the door frame and pressed until the curve of the hook was nearly straight and then pressed it into the slit of the lock. It didn"t take much jimmying to trip the tumbler.
Reg cracked a grin and turned the k.n.o.b, quiet as could be. Then he pushed it open and slipped inside, pressing the door instantly shut behind him.
The first thing that hit Reg was the smell. The captain"s quarters were rank, that was for sure. At first he thought that it was simply the odor of raw fish, but then another stink revealed itself, and he squinted his eyes and shook his head in disgust.
"My G.o.d," Reg whispered. "Is he raising maggots in here?" The putrid scent hung thick enough in the air to make him gag.
As if in answer, he heard a whining squeal from the dark just ahead. Holding his nose with two fingers, he stepped carefully through the dark toward where he knew the captain"s bunk was. The room was nearly pitch-black; but Reg saw in the dark like a cat. And in a moment, he"d forgotten the stench, as he dropped to his knees to look at the shadowy form on the captain"s cot.
"Sooo," he said, staring down at the woman. She was naked and tied to the walls. Apparently the captain was worried about his little morsel swimming away. Reg ran his fingers across her cheek, and found a strip of leather running from the back of her head, down her jaw, to her mouth.
"He"s really making sure you don"t announce yer presence here, eh?"
Reg leaned forward until he was sure the woman could see his eyes. He could certainly see hers; they glittered almost catlike in the dark. "Just you stay quiet and I"ll let you out of this," he promised. "But one loud word from you and it"s back on, you hear?"
She didn"t move, and he took that as his cue. Reg pulled the gag from her mouth and smiled as she took a couple of heaving breaths. "Thank you," she whispered.
"So the captain"s keeping you here, eh?" Reg said.
"Do you suppose I enjoy being tied up and left in the dark?" she challenged.
"What would ya give me if I set ya free?"
"Your heart"s desire," she laughed, softly. "What is it you want?"
"Right now? I want you."
"Then you can have me," she said. "But release my hands at least, first. I like to feel the man that I"m with."
Reg followed her arms with his fingers to the knot of the rope and undid the bindings by feel. After fumbling a bit, at last he freed her wrists, and she drew her hands down to her waist. As she kneaded her skin, the woman began to sing softly, and Reg found himself lost in the whisper of her voice. She sang sweetly, light as air. He couldn"t make out the words, yet they made his heart bleed with desire. He wanted to protect this beautiful creature. To hold her and save her and nurture her. He leaned in to kiss her, and she flicked a tongue across his mouth, and continued to sing.
Reg leaned back and smiled, indulging her. But then the ship shivered, and he remembered what was going on outside.
"We don"t have much time now," he said.
"No," she said. "I know." She drew him close, and breathed upon his eyes and nose before slipping her mouth over his. She started to kiss him softly, lips warm and full, barely touching, but then grew more urgent, sucking him inside her with an urgency that Reg had never before experienced. She left him breathless, and when she broke away from his mouth and ran her hands down his chest, Reg gasped with an abandon he had only imagined.
"What is your name?" he whispered, as fingers slipped below his belly b.u.t.ton to trace the workings of a man with the sensuality that only a woman could provide.
"Ligeia," she said. "I am and always have been, Ligeia."
Reg positioned himself back over her and found his entry without help. "I"ll do whatever I can for you, Ligeia," he promised, pressing himself within her. She gasped at his entry, and then ran sharp fingernails down his back until her hands cupped his a.s.s in a stranglehold, nails pinching so hard that they could draw blood.
"I know...you...will," she moaned beneath him, and then her mouth was on his, and then she was kissing his neck, and shoulder, and...neck.
And then Reg screamed. Because her kiss was not a kiss, but a bite, hard and mean. He pulled back and slapped at her, but in a heartbeat the sensual creature beneath him was no longer a girl, but a monster, all teeth and claws.
"Stop!" he screamed, but her fingernails ripped his face and bit into his chest like daggers. He punched at her, repeatedly, but he never seemed to hit her in a way that counted; he caught her in the chest and the shoulder, and even once in the jaw, but Ligeia only smiled each time, showing long teeth that opened in a shark"s smile and dove for his flesh.
She did not miss her mark. Reg pulled away in stinging pain, slapping a hand against the warm stream at his neck with complete shock.
"Why?" he gasped, blood already streaming into and out of his mouth.
"Why did you come in here?" Ligeia said, grinning a crimson smile at him while holding his head in a vise between her hands. "Because I can." With that she dove back to his neck and sucked at his life like a leech. Reg would have protested, but already the feeling had left his hands, and as he feebly tried to push her away, the pain only exacerbated in his head. And so he leaned back and let her have her way. Just as he would have had her do, for him.
In seconds he was dead.
Ligeia undid the ropes that held her feet for the second time in a week. But this time, she vowed that she would not be a man"s prisoner again.
Never.
She rolled herself over Reg"s body and stepped past the half-rotted corpses of Rogers and Nelson on the floor, free for the first time in more than twenty-four hours. She stretched, and then retrieved a robe that Buckley had given her when they"d first boarded the Lady Luck. She strapped it around her waist and decided to go see what men were left.
She would never leave the ship, not while there were men to be played. To be hunted.
She could make things mighty difficult for her previous captor if he had no crew left to run the boat.
Ligeia smiled at that thought, and let herself out of the captain"s chambers. She had spilled first blood, and now she was primed for a chase. As she stepped into the pa.s.sageway, she saw her next victim, but as it turned out, he didn"t give her much of a run for her money. He looked puzzled at her sudden appearance, though unafraid. He should have been.
Ligeia grinned, teeth still warm with the iron of Reg. She began to trill a quiet song as she advanced on the man.
"Who are you?" First Mate Travers said to the b.l.o.o.d.y half-nude woman exiting the captain"s quarters.
He never did find out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
The waves crashed and broke in the restless sea; an abyss of frighteningly empty proportion. A mile or a thousand away, the horizon slipped down to close the gray of the day in a perfect kiss. In between-in between-was the horror. Two pale young hands reached out from churning turmoil, two hands without a face grasping at the gray sky for air. Evan stood rooted to the beach, desperate to run into the angry waves to grab those hands, to pull them out of the maelstrom, but somehow, his feet wouldn"t listen. They remained rooted to the sand, trembling like jelly. With every attempt he made to dash into the water, his legs locked and shivered and threatened to spill him to the beach. But they would not move forward. From the turquoise blue of the waves a dark head suddenly shot up and a thin, frightened voice yelled in pure terror, just once, "Dad, please!" And then the head was gone.
Evan surfaced from the dream with tears on his face. He wondered if he would ever stop reliving the nightmare in his sleep. It came almost every other night, and had since the night after Josh"s death. For a while, he"d worried it would drive him mad, and he"d started seeing Dr. Blanchard. In the distance, he heard someone call his name. He wiped his cheeks dry, and then heard his name again.
"Evan!"
It was Sarah. And she sounded upset.
G.o.d, from one nightmare to the next.
He rolled out of bed and staggered to the bedroom door, wearing only his boxers. He pa.s.sed Josh"s room, dark and quiet as always, and reached the family room. Sarah was there, wearing her heavy pink robe and holding a cup of coffee. He could see the steam in the shadows of the dawn light.
"Evan, what the h.e.l.l?" Sarah asked. With her free hand, she pointed out the front door. He stepped past her and looked. His heart leaped as he registered the sight.
The white cement of their porch was marred with an offering. Or a warning. Evan wasn"t sure which.
The cement was covered by a pile of hand-size silver fish. They were fresh; a couple still twitched and spasmed, sending dead ones to slide across the concrete. Dead fish eyes stared at Evan like an accusation. He grimaced and looked away.
"What the h.e.l.l?" he echoed.
"That"s what I said," Sarah answered. "Why the heck would someone pile fish onto our stoop?"
Evan shrugged. "High school prank? I dunno."
"Well, that"s just creepy," she said, wrinkling her face in disgust. "Could you get rid of them before the flies come? I don"t want to smell these things come dinnertime."
"Could I get dressed first?" he asked, and she shrugged, before walking back to the kitchen.
Evan stood at the door a minute longer, staring at the dull, vacant eyes of the fish. The eyes looked angry, accusatory. In their reflection he could see the events of last night, on the beach, as he turned his back on Ligeia and left her to the water. Abandoned her.
In his heart, he had no question about where the fish had come from. They were here for him. A gift from Ligeia. But...what did they mean? Was it a spiteful good-bye? Or simply a way for her to let him know that she knew where he lived? What was she trying to tell him?
He closed the door and went to pull on a pair of sweatpants, so that he could scoop up the dead fish with a shovel and bury them in the compost at the back of the yard, though the neighborhood cats would likely tear them to shreds before they decomposed. Still, no point in wasting a chance at good fertilizer. But he had to wonder if this particular fertilizer were tainted in a way that would poison the soil instead of enrich it.
Evan shook away the thought and pulled on his clothes. Sarah remained in the kitchen, nursing her coffee like an addict. She was not a morning girl, and it took her a shower and a solid pot of the black stuff before she was ready to talk about anything. As he pa.s.sed her on his way outside, he looked at her profile in the gray morning light and a chill cascaded down his spine. She looked so fragile and soft as she sat there at the kitchen table, just staring out the sliding door to their backyard. She looked so alone, and Evan longed suddenly to hold her, to crush her to him in an embrace to prove to her that he was hers and hers alone.
Sarah had no idea what he had done to her. No clue why anybody would send them fish. The thought drove a sick pit in the center of his stomach. Again, his fault. His weakness that threatened the equilibrium of their life. He didn"t want to hurt Sarah any more than he already had. He wanted to move beyond these last few weeks of his strange, but undeniable betrayal and bury it with the fish-bury it with the past, really, all of it. Once and for all. They could never erase the memory of Josh, nor would they want to. And he would never outlive his guilt at his son"s death. But they had to somehow get past the daily anchor of the pain; they had lived in a purgatory for too long. Evan figured he and Sarah had thirty or forty good years left to muddle about on this earth, and he didn"t want to spend them anch.o.r.ed in this horrible, recriminating cycle they"d slipped into since Josh"s funeral.
Evan dug a hole in the musty compost pile mix of coffee grounds, old gra.s.s clippings and rotting bits of food that somehow had escaped the scavengers. After he"d cleared a hole two or three feet down, he dumped in the pile of fish from the plastic bag he"d carried them in and covered the hole back up. The gray of the morning fog was just starting to lift, and he felt better as he tamped down the last bit of earth.
After he put the shovel away, he stepped back into the house. He walked into the kitchen behind Sarah and put his hands on her shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
"It"s time," he announced. She looked up at him with a crinkle of confusion.
"Tomorrow morning, we are going to start converting Josh"s old room."
Sarah only nodded and took another sip of coffee.
"I know I"ve said it before, but we need to do this, for both of us."
"I don"t know if I can help," she answered. "I"m not sure I can put his things in a box."
This time it was Evan"s turn to nod. "Go shopping in the morning," he suggested. "Let me take care of the worst of it. Then you can work with me to redecorate it, to make it new again."
He brushed a tear from her cheek, and she leaned into his hand. Wordless, he held her, and caressed her shoulder with his free hand. "I love you," he said.
The day pa.s.sed slowly. Evan was on a paper-trail mission and that meant lots of time at the desk, sorting through forms. Plenty of time to think. And his mind always seemed to come back to the ocean. And a woman.
"How"s it going?" Bill asked him in the afternoon. "You"ve been pretty quiet today."
Evan shrugged. "Woke up with a pile of fish on the stoop this morning."
"Hmmm," his friend said. He leaned in to talk softer. "Well, that seems normal. Especially when you"re dating a sea creature. Maybe it"s the Siren equivalent of roses."
"I don"t think so," Evan said. "I broke up with her last night."
"Uh oh. In that case, I suppose you could consider it the marine equivalent of dog s.h.i.t on your stoop. Be glad she didn"t set the fish on fire. That woulda stunk. "Course in your neighborhood, n.o.body woulda known the difference."
"Very funny," Evan said. "Do you think I should try to go talk to her tonight?"
"Do you want to make up with her?"
Evan shook his head. "I"ve gotta end this. I told Sarah that tomorrow we"re cleaning out Josh"s room. It"s really time to move on. You know? On every level."
"Then let it be," Bill said. "You"re not going to make her any happier by going out there, raising her hopes when she sees you, and then telling her a second time that no, you"re breaking up. Trust me, dragging it out never makes it easier. You"ve told her once, so now move on. You dropped your bomb, she gave you her little love token, and hopefully that"s the end of it."
Evan nodded. "I hope so."
Bill went back to his desk, but in his heart, Evan knew that a pile of fish wasn"t going to be the end of it. Ligeia was more tenacious than that. But what she would do next...he had no idea. A shiver raised the hair on the back of his neck. He had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
"I brought home some boxes from work," Sarah said, as Evan stood in the center of Josh"s old room, coffee cup in hand. "I stacked them up in the garage."
Evan nodded absently at his wife as he looked around the room, eyes roaming from posters to light fixtures to the jumbled desktop. He wasn"t sure where to begin.
"That"s fine," he said. "Thanks."
Sarah rested a hand on his shoulder, and planted a peck on his cheek. "You"re not mad at me for leaving you here to do this for a while, are you?"
"No, I understand," Evan insisted, though in his heart, he was a little miffed that Sarah was bailing on this part of the journey. They both needed to put away the pieces of their son"s life-him doing it for her wasn"t really going to help her with that. And he could have used her hands in putting it all away. Symbolically if not in practice. He wasn"t looking forward to this. h.e.l.l, he"d spent a year avoiding it.
"I"ll be back by lunch," Sarah promised. "By then I probably can be more help to you."
"Okay," he agreed, as she gave him a quick kiss and disappeared out the doorway. He didn"t miss how her eyes lingered on the walls of the room that one last time, or how she blinked quicker as she did so.
Once he heard the garage door close, Evan took his own deep breath and circled the room a last time. And then he began.
First step was simply to start removing things from the walls and piling it on the bed. And so the Snow Patrol poster turned into the first victim, as Evan slipped his hand beneath the paper and forced the tape away from the wall. He didn"t know why, but he carefully removed the tape from the poster and rolled it up to set on the bed, as if he were going to rehang it at some point. But Evan had no intention of doing that. Still...he handled Josh"s things as if they were his own. Carefully. With love.