Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(48)

“What happened to your hand, Joma?”

Joma looked down at the wound on his hand and tried to dismiss it as nothing. “I burn myself in the kitchen.”

Jack looked closer. “Looks bad. Is that…is that wax?”

The wound on Joma’s hand was red-raw flesh mixed with a spotty patch of gleaming white substance. It looked exactly like a burn caused by molten wax.

Tally mentioned something about a candle. She said that all time spells require one.

Jack stared at Joma and noticed something else. The man had aged at least ten years since the day they’d first met. Joma was not as ordinary as he had first seemed.

Jack’s eyes went wide. “You’re the pathwalker!”

Joma seemed struck by an invisible blow. It seemed like the relevant action for someone who had just had their cover blown. He nodded at Jack and seemed defeated. “I think we should go somewhere and talk.”

***

In a back room, behind the Voyager Lounge’s bar, Jack took a seat in stunned silence on a small leather sofa-cube. Joma tipped away the pint he’d poured Jack and went and got him something stronger.

He handed over a new, smaller glass and then took a seat on the couch beside Jack. “You’re a whisky man, right?”

“You should know by now. You’ve served me enough times.”

Joma shrugged. “I guess, but you haven’t been by for a while.”

“What’s going on?” Jack asked, cutting straight to the point.

“I think you know,” was Joma’s reply.

“No,” said Jack. “I haven’t got a clue about anything. All I know is that some kind of zombie-flu gets loose onboard and kills everyone, every single night, over and over. Plus there’s a small arsenal of weapons in the hold of the ship along with a dead body. Oh yeah, and someone onboard keeps accusing me of attempted rape – most likely someone who I thought was my friend.”

Joma smiled and actually seemed to find Jack’s frustrations amusing. He raised one palm as if wanting to summon calm upon them both. “I apologise Jack for the turmoil I have brought down on you, but I assure you that it was necessary. It was only meant to be you that was conscious of the true reality, but alas there is a gypsy onboard that I did not know of.”

“You mean Tally?” Jack asked.

Joma nodded. “Usually I would be able to sense her kind, but she is not an avid follower of her own ancestry – it made her spiritual aura…diluted. If she was a regular practitioner of the magiks then I would have sensed her immediately.”

“So…what? Is Tally some sort of witch?”

Joma shook his head and laughed. “No, no. She is just from a people blessed with a natural resistance to magic. Her ancestors were probably close to what you call witches, but their methods are all but lost now. I have come across very few Romany that truly remember their old ways.”

Jack rubbed at his forehead and sighed. Things were getting into mumbo jumbo territory again and he didn’t want his natural cynicism to kick in and cloud his ability to listen respectfully. “What about Donovan?”

“You mean the American man running around the ship like a drunken cowboy?”

Jack laughed. “Yeah, until somebody murdered him.”

Joma’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows lowered.

“You didn’t know?” asked Jack. “I found him dead yesterday in the cargo hold.”

Joma nodded as if something had clicked into place. “The lower deck of the ship was outside the range of my spell. The hull of the ship is stuck in time, but the cargo area within is a vacuum where time exists as normal. There was not supposed to be anyone down there, but it would appear this…Donovan…was an unfortunate stowaway.”


“He was transporting weapons and cash to Tunisia to bribe the Government on behalf of Black Remedy.”

Joma shrugged. “Such things do not surprise me. But they are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. What is more concerning now is that somebody killed this man in the hold. The only possible suspect is-”

“Tally. I’ve already started to come to terms with that.”

“It could be no one else. If there were another onboard outside of the spell then I would know of it. Other than you, she is the only one.”

Jack drank his whisky and looked down at the floor. He still could not fathom why Tally would murder Donovan. He couldn’t imagine the petite, beautiful girl committing such a brutal crime.

That’s probably how she got the jump on Donovan. He never saw it coming.

“Why is she doing this? Killing Donovan and trying to set me up so I have to go into hiding? I don’t see what she has to gain.”

“I see many things, Jack, but unfortunately I cannot see a person’s motivations for doing something. Perhaps she seeks to stop you from succeeding in your task.”

“Task? What task? If I am here for a reason I would really like to know why you didn’t just come find me on day one and tell me.”

“That would have been against the rules. A person cursed with the ability to see across the pathways is forbidden from taking direct action to change future events. I must let them play out, but you are not bound by those same rules. You can change things, Jack.”

“You’re saying you can’t get involved, but you can stop time?”