Ghost Writer(20)

“The guardian spirit was able to speak through me, and I spoke in what I imagined was an ethereal tone: ‘Fear not, dear girls. The Black Chicken, Harbinger of Death, only foretells the death of chickens. She has shown herself to remind you to be thankful for the chicken fingers you ate for dinner.’”

There was a deep chuckle that faded into a dead silence.

“Sorry,” he said, returning, “the com officer was wondering why I was laughing.”

So, I wasn't on a speaker. Interesting.

“I have to leave you for a bit. Your intrepid Mr. Neville has come over from the émil Gagnan. I believe he wants to interview you for the documentary. Since we want to keep this line open and you awake, I'm allowing him to talk to you. Stand by.”

While I waited for Tim, I decided to risk moving. All the time I was talking to Captain Campbell, I had stayed beside Parker, irrationally afraid that I might lose the signal if I moved. Now I sought out the high ground of the dining table.

Water had seeped in at my collar and cuffs when I was stuffing bags into the hole and crawling about the deck. It wicked the cold past the thermal protection of my orange costume. My hands, feet, and face were frigid. To fight the chill, I stomped and swung my arms until a distorted voice called my name.

“Hey, Jen!”

“Hey, Tim. How is everyone?”

“Everyone is good. Bad luck you got caught in the explosion.”

That struck me as a singularly stupid remark. “Yeah, bad luck. Parker had worse. He's dead.”

“I'm so sorry.”

There was an awkward silence.

“I'm sorry, Tim. None of this is your fault.”

“It's okay.”

Judging by his tone, he quickly recovered his spirits. “Have you heard? You practically caused an international incident. Rumour has it a couple of Marines are facing a Captain's Mast. That would be something for the documentary, wouldn't it? Not that Tinsdale is going to let us on his boat. Maybe I could get a transcript and we could do a re-enactment. We could do that for the explosion too. Details! I need you to give me details.”

I did my best to oblige. He asked me about Parker's death. Where had he been standing? What hit him in the neck? Had he been thrown forward in the explosion? How far away was he from the damaged bulkhead?

I sort of knew where he had been when the lights went out. What happened between then and when I could see him on his knees, I couldn't say. On the other hand, by examining the body, I could tell him that a shard of metal had imbedded itself in his neck.

“What was it like?”

I hesitated, sincerely hoping that he wasn't asking how it felt to have Parker die in my arms.

“The explosion?” I asked.

“That too, but I meant the place. It doesn't look like I'll get a chance to go and look for myself.”

“Guess not.”

“Was it spooky?”

“Actually, it was eerie how normal it looked. There was no sign of violence or emergency. It looked like everyone just tidied up, went to work and never came back except…”

I stopped.

“What?”

“You'll think I'm nuts.”

“Who, me?”

Yes, you, I thought, and whoever else is listening to this conversation. If they're recording communications, which was practically given, they would have evidence that I'm looney-toons.

“It felt it feels like not everyone left. It's too tidy. It's as if someone stayed behind to tidy up.

There was a long silence.

I tried to break it, asking, “Did I freak you out?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

I looked at the phone which was obviously not your average consumer device and wondered if I hit the disconnect button by accident. If I understood the icons correctly, it was still on and almost fully charged. So, why the hell wasn't it working?

“Hello. Is anybody there?” Should I hang up and let them call again? “Hello!”

Reluctantly, I disconnected. When the phone didn't immediately ring, I had to fight down a moment of panic. I looked for a call-back button or something that would give me a menu, afraid to experiment in case I messed something up.

Without the steady flow of conversation, I noticed how cold it was and heard faint, ominous creaking and metallic moans. Nothing wrong with my hearing now. My eyesight was another matter. With the weird shadows created by the emergency lighting, it would be easy to convince myself that I was surrounded by the ghosts of the missing crew.

I used to look for ghosts when I was younger. To this day, I don't know how many were real and how many were the product of my overactive imagination.

Now, not only did I know they were hovering at the edge of my consciousness, I knew I might be joining them soon. I tried to push that possibility aside because that meant leaving my son, and I couldn't bear that thought.

To distract myself, I did a little work.

The deck listed away from the leak, making the damaged bulkhead the driest area in the room. I dragged Parker's body to the higher ground. First, I used the hand-held camera to record his position and took a close up of his wound. Once I had him out of the water, I retrieved his gear, including an almost full water bottle. That lifted my spirits a bit. My bottle was almost empty. I only wish one of us had packed food. I also found a spare headset, which I put on. I was picking his pockets for items to return to his family when the phone rang.