Bang, bang, bang.
He had to be imagining it. There was nothing out there. Arturo wouldn’t come until morning. There was no way he’d board the Addams at night. Hadn’t he said that? I been on her dozens of times. But not after dark. No, sir. Even if it was him, he would call out. He wouldn’t just beat on the door and stand out there silently.
Charlie waited.
He tried to call out, but it felt like his throat was constricted. He couldn’t find his voice. He could barely get a breath in his lungs. He tried to calm himself which was nearly impossible under the circumstances. Finally, in a weak and threadbare voice, he said, “Who’s… who’s out there?”
Bang, bang, bang.
It came with more force and urgency now. He could hear flakes of rust dropping from the walls. He stood up and stepped over there. He was wringing wet with perspiration. It ran down his face in rivers. He faced the door, knowing there was only about an inch of iron between him and what waited out there, what had come calling in the dead of night. It was out there and he could feel it, whatever it was. He imagined what it would be like to reach out and unlock the door, grasp the knob and throw it open. Whatever was out there would leap on him and he knew it, but at least he’d know what it was.
No.
He went back over to the desk. He picked up the .45 and the flashlight. He wasn’t going to back down. He could not let himself back down because the thing out there would feed on his terror if he did that. It would get fat like a leech at an artery and he would get weaker and weaker. And when it sensed his weakness…
He cleared his throat. It felt like it was filled with dust balls. “I know you’re out there and I’m coming for you. I have a gun and I’m going to kill you,” he said, his voice strong and sure.
But if his voice was strong and sure, he was trembling inside. He could barely hold onto the gun because he could feel that eye looking at him again as he’d felt it outside the cabin earlier… only now he knew what it looked like—green and glistening, the socket it sat in juicy and red like raw meat. The very idea of it made him want to run, to burst out the door and not stop running until he was off the ship and down the dock itself. Let them call him a pussy. There were worse things.
He stared blankly at the door as the banging came again. It seemed that shadows were crawling over its surface, shadows that worked their way beneath, born in the hollow, wasting depths of the thing out there. He could not let them touch him because they were alive.
He shook that from his head. “All right,” he said. “All right.”
He undid the lock and threw the door open, the gun coming up and the flashlight beam showing him what it was he needed to kill. There was no hideous, skulking goblin shape out there ready to sink its teeth into his throat. There was only a wooden box, the box from the cabin, the packing crate. Its surface was filthy. There were old bloodstains on it and scratches like it had been worked with an awl.
As he stood there, white with fear, the box slid down the corridor as if it was being towed. He had a mad urge to break out in a wild, gasping paroxysm of hysterical laughter. But he knew if he started, he’d never stop.
Willing himself to move, he followed the path the box had taken. It moved down the corridor and around the bend. He could still hear it sliding away. He would have to be fast to catch it. It wanted to be caught, but the question remained: did he really want to catch it?
Yes, he had to.
He’d rather face it than spend the night shivering in his bunk. He ran after it, his flashlight beam bobbing and casting immense, leaping shadows around him. He got to the bend of the corridor just in time to see the hatch at the end slam shut. Boom, boom, boom-boom-boom. The box was sliding down the companionway stairs to the lower level, making for dunnage where the ordinary swabbies laid their heads.
He raced after it, a voice in his head asking him exactly what it was he thought he was doing. But he did not know. He was being lured by the thing, but that was part of the game and he needed to play along.
He found it where he knew he would: outside the cabin that had been locked in his vision. The cabin where Heslip had died and where he had been cold-cocked earlier. This was the focal point and he knew it. The box was vibrating on the floor like something was building up inside it, approaching critical mass. He dove on it, putting his weight on the lid so it wouldn’t come loose because he did not want that. No sir, he did not want that.
He pressed his face to it. “I got you now,” he whispered. “What’re you going to do about it?”
The box and its occupant did nothing. They both waited as Charlie himself waited. The box was warm to the touch. There was something very comforting and soothing about that. He cuddled up against it, letting the warmth enter him until he could feel it deep inside his very bones. For one moment, he thought he heard a slight childish giggling from inside.
And that more than anything made the worried voice in his head say, Just what in the hell do you think you are doing?
Charlie shook his head. Well, he was… that is, he was… it would take too long to explain. He didn’t have the time. It required too much thinking and right now he did not want to think or reason. He was an emotional being sucking warmth from the box and dreaming of what was inside and how… yes, how he wanted to touch it. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything so badly in his life. His finger was itching like crazy. He had a knife in his pocket and the idea of scraping the blade against it and peeling back the skin in a bloody flap filled him with a carnal thrill. He studied the sore and was amazed to find that a single black and luxurious hair had grown from it.
In the box, something was breathing.
It had an almost musical sound and he knew that made no sense, yet he was certain of it. Breathing hard himself, impassioned, he ran his hands over the lid of the box and he could hear what was in there doing the same from the other side. This was not threatening… it was playful.
Romantic, he thought.
And as he thought this, his hand felt a knot in the wood of the lid, only he knew it wasn’t a knot at all. He put the light on it. No, his name was carved into the lid right in the center of a large, crude heart.
It’s a girl and she’s lonely. Don’t you see that? She’s in love with you.
That was madness, yet it excited him. She had killed many others, drove them off the ship or to suicide… but, somehow, he was different. She coveted him. He had the craziest feeling that if Arturo and a couple of his heavies showed right now that she would kill them. She had marked her territory and she was jealous, very jealous.
And beautiful… God, beautiful enough to take your breath away.
Immediately, as if what was in the box found his thoughts pleasing, that sweet perfumed smell came from beneath the lid… lilacs, roses, orchids, rising up until it was nearly sickening. It made him feel giddy.
She’s enticing you with her secret feminine scent.
Charlie knew he had to touch what was in there. His breath was barely coming now, his heart pounding in his chest. Every inch of his skin was tingling with heat. Licking his lips, his eyes wide and glassy, his face beaded with sweat, he tried to pull up the lid. It would only move three or four inches. A hot, cloying odor wafted out. It smelled like an open wound, like warm healing flesh.