Duma Key(156)

There, riding at anchor no more than a hundred yards from the beach, clear and unmistakable in the light of a quarter-moon and a million stars, was the Perse. Her sails had been furled, but nets of rope sagged from her ancient masts like spiderwebs. The shrouds, I thought. Those are its shrouds. She bobbed up and down like a long dead child's rotten toy. The decks were empty, so far as I could see of both life and souvenirs but who knew what might be belowdecks?

I was going to faint. At the same instant I realized this, I realized why: I had stopped breathing. I told myself to inhale, but for one terrible second, nothing happened. My chest remained as flat as a page in a closed book. When it rose at last, I heard a whooping sound. That was me, struggling to go on with life in a conscious state. I blew out the air I had just taken in and inhaled more, a little less noisily. Black specks flocked in front of my eyes in the dimness, then faded. I expected the ship out there to do the same surely it had to be a hallucination but it remained, perhaps a hundred and twenty feet long and a little less than half that in the beam. Bobbing on the waves. Rocking from side to side just a little, too. Bowsprit wagging like a finger, seeming to say Ouuu, you nasty man, you're in for it n -

I slapped myself across the face hard enough to bring water to my left eye and the ship was still right there. I realized that if it was there truly there then Jack would be able to see it from the boardwalk at El Palacio. There was a phone on the far side of the living room, but from where I was standing, the one on the kitchen counter was closer. And it had the advantage of being right under the light switches. I wanted lights, especially the ones in the kitchen, those good hard fluorescents. I backed out of the living room, not taking my eyes off the ship, and hit all three switches with the back of my hand. The lights came on, and I lost sight of the Perse of everything beyond the Florida room in their bright, no-nonsense glare. I reached for the phone, then stopped.

There was a man in my kitchen. He was standing by my refrigerator. He was wearing soaked rags that might once have been blue jeans and the kind of shirt that's called a boat-neck. What appeared to be moss was growing on his throat, cheeks, forehead, and forearms. The right side of his skull was crushed in. Petals of bone protruded through the lank foliage of his dark hair. One of his eyes the right was gone. What remained was a spongy socket. The other was an alien, disheartening silver that had nothing to do with humanity. His feet were bare, swollen, purple, and burst through to the bone at the ankles.

It grinned at me, lips splitting as they drew back, revealing two lines of yellow teeth set into old black gums. It raised its right arm, and here I saw what must have been another relic of the Perse. It was a manacle. One old and rusty circlet was clamped around the thing's wrist. The other one hung open like a loose jaw.

The other one was for me.

It emitted a loose hissing sound, perhaps all its decayed vocal cords could produce, and began to walk toward me under the bright no-nonsense fluorescents. It left footprints on the hardwood floor. It cast a shadow. I could hear a faint creaking and saw it was wearing a soaked leather belt rotten, but for the time being, still holding.

A queer soft paralysis had come over me. I was conscious, but I couldn't run even though I understood what that open manacle meant, and what this thing was: a one-man press gang. He would clamp me and take me aboard yonder frigate, or schooner, or barquentine, or whatever-the-hell-it-was. I would become part of the crew. And while there might not be cabin boys on the Perse, I thought there were at least two cabin girls, one named Tessie and one named Lo-Lo.

You have to run. At least clock it one with the phone, for Christ's sake!

But I couldn't. I was like a bird hypnotized by a snake. The best I could do was to take one numb step backward into the living room... then another... then a third. Now I was in the shadows again. It stood in the kitchen doorway with the white light of the fluorescents striking across its damp and rotted face and throwing its shadow across the living room carpet. Still grinning. I considered closing my eyes and trying to wish it away, but that wasn't going to work; I could smell it, like a Dumpster behind a restaurant that specializes in fish dinners. And -

"Time to go, Edgar."

- it could talk, after all. The words were slushy but understandable.

It took a step into the living room. I took another of my numb steps backward, knowing in my heart it would do no good, that compensation wasn't enough, that when it got tired of playing it would simply dart forward and clamp that iron manacle on my wrist and drag me, screaming, down to the water, down to the caldo largo, and the last sound I'd hear on the living side would be the grating conversation of the shells under the house. Then the water would fill my ears.

I took another step back just the same, not sure I was even moving toward the door, only hoping, then another... and a hand fell on my shoulder.

I shrieked.

vii

"What the f**k is that thing?" Wireman whispered in my ear.

"I don't know," I said, and I was sobbing. Sobbing with fear. "Yes I do. I do know. Look out at the Gulf, Wireman."

"I can't. I don't dare take my eyes off it."

But the thing in the doorway had seen Wireman now Wireman who'd come in through the open door just as it had itself, Wireman who had arrived like the cavalry in a John Wayne Western and had stopped three steps inside the living room, its head slightly lowered, the manacle swinging back and forth from its outstretched arm.