My heart ran wild. My entire body trembled as I made a quick sweep of the wheelhouse. It’s common for a captain to keep a weapon of some sort near him. I had hoped for this to be the case and was thrilled when I found the revolver clamped underneath his chair.
I grabbed the gun, pausing only briefly to give Captain Bailey’s fallen body a moment’s notice before I made my way back down the stairs. I had others to kill.
* * * *
“Hey, Benny?” I shouted through the opened door of the readyroom. I had seen this guy go up to the wheelhouse on more than one occasion, so I hoped he would fall for my ploy. “Captain wants to see you.” Then I shut the door and ran down the hall. I stepped into the shadows of an adjacent stateroom and waited anxiously. What if Benny went up to the wheelhouse via the side railing? It was unlikely, but possible all the same. Matters would turn profusely complicated if he did. I would be forced to use the gun sooner than expected.
But then I heard the creak of the door as it opened, and adrenaline shot down my spine like liquid fire. I heard the door shut. I heard Benny curse. I heard the movement of his body as he ambled down the hall toward the wheelhouse. Intuitively, I pulled myself further into the darkness, then I heard my own breathing, which seemed so loud. My awful breathing, I thought, just before I spotted Benny arrive at the steps.
It had to be swift and silent. It had to be—NOW!
In a blur, I moved out of the shadows and behind Benny. I raised my killing hand, ice pick dripping with blood. And with my other hand, I grabbed Benny’s hood, twisted, pulled, and yanked back with tremendous violence.
He didn’t even have a chance to gasp. I brought the pick into his head and chest a hundred times—or so it seemed. More than enough to kill the man, with all the blood pooling out of him, and the disfigurement of his face.
Left with a sudden urge to be sick, I ducked back into the stateroom and began to dry heave. My job was nowhere near finished. I needed desperately to compose myself, so I took a few minutes in the darkness, breathing deeply. Then I went to the sink in the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, thinking about my next victim.
It was Stovich. The small guy, not too strong as I’d observed. I knew I could overwhelm him with my strength. And so I did, when he came down to the freezers to help me bring up more bait jars. With a three-foot length of rope, I wrung the last breath out of the man. I was amazed at how simple it was—like lifting a heavy box onto a shelf or climbing a short flight of stairs.
Finally, I was ready to use the gun and end my torment. I had seen the next step of my plan a hundred times, in the movies. It would begin with a casual stroll toward their proximity—the two men left on deck. I would make myself busy, perhaps find some rope to coil. And then, as smooth and swift as the hydraulic block used to pull crab pots up from the ocean, I would simply walk up to the first man and put a bullet in the back of his head. Then I’d unload the remaining cartridges into the last man before he realized what had just happened. I’d kill the last man—Taylor—before his stupid face would turn into the scowl I’d seen back in the storage room when he offered me moldy cheese.
* * * *
Seconds after the first man’s brain blew out of his left eye, I stood on the deck and stared in dumb horror.
Click, click, click…!
Taylor’s face twisted into more than a scowl, as there was something much heavier than anger in his eyes, his bent brows, his quivering lips.
Click, click, click…!
He came at me, a cannonball of fury. I fell with a thump, landing on the slick deck. My hand that held the revolver smacked into the base of a crab pot, and the gun slid down a scupper and into the sea.
Taylor cursed as he laid one fist after another into my gut. I gripped his hair and tried desperately to push him away.
“Think you’re a killer, eh?” he shouted. “I’ll show you how to kill!” He reached up and scratched at my eyes. I screamed, and then one of his fingers fell into my mouth. Clamping down, I bit, chewed and ripped away at it. I heard an awful snap, followed by a howl of pain.
“Son of a…!” Taylor cried, pulling away from me.
I got to my feet and searched the deck for a weapon, or place to run. But I was too late. Again, he was on me like a charging bull. He smashed me into a crab pot, against its ribbed siding. Then he reached for my throat. Terrified, I realized he meant to strangle me—and I knew from experience just how easy that would’ve been. I knew he’d kill me in seconds if he got his hands around my neck.
I made a quick shift of my hips and used the slick deck to my advantage, sliding between his legs. The void left behind caused Taylor to fall forward and smash his head into the steel girder of the crab pot.
When I stood, he was blinking and rolling his eyes, and there was a naked gash on his forehead, leaking blood. “I’ll…kill…you.” Those were his last words before I sent him unconscious to the deck with a smashing fist.
* * * *
The time it took to kill four men…
The time had transpired with some effort, but before I knew it, I was struggling with my greatest challenge yet: getting the dead into the crab pot before they woke again.
Taylor, now bound with rope, moaned as I shoved him in with the rest of the crew. Far to the horizon, the sun was a sliver of orange fire, sinking deep into the frozen sea.
“Why are you doing this?” he mumbled.
Running controls on the hydraulic crane, I spotted the shadows of night rising from the northeastern corner of the world.
“Let us out!”
A gull passed through the ship’s rigging before circling back to perch high on the mast.
“We saved you, dammit! We pulled you from the ocean! You’d be dead if it weren’t for us!”
I brought the pot onto the launch table then stepped away from the controls. For a long minute, I stared at Taylor’s twisted body as it lay on top of the others. His back was to the ship, and he thrashed about in vain to turn around so that he could see me. He cursed, spat, and begged, but when I finally threw the control switch, he was the first one to go in.
And just when the pot crashed into the ocean, not surprisingly, I saw hands move. I saw fingers grab at the cage, and bodies wriggle against one another. I saw Captain Bailey look up from the mouth of his cold grave. I saw his eyes: beads of fire burning a hateful path straight to mine. And those dead eyes of his burned for a full fathom, before disappearing into the blackness of the Bering Sea.
My subsequent conflicts were long and arduous. Close to land, I hurried to gather gear, water, and food, then stowed everything into a motorized dingy. Once ready, I set the Aleutian Whisper on a westerly course then struck for land in my little boat. And as I drifted away, from the wheelhouse came the sounds of Elvis Presley’s, Don’t Be Cruel. At last, I was liberated from the ghostly terrors of that abominable ship and her abominable crew.
But was I, really?
* * * *
Thirty years later and I now live in the basement of a colonial-style
