A rat?
It was possible. Having grown up in a shitty neighborhood and having been bitten by rats more than once, he did not panic. He knew for a fact that rats were very rarely rabid. The germ killed them almost instantly. He would find the head, the bathroom, and clean it up. It was nothing.
He grabbed his duffel and went on his way.
Goddamn ship would not break him. He would not allow it.
His finger started to itch.
8
Charlie’s little tour took approximately ninety minutes according to his watch. No more, no less. Had he not been thinking funny and acting funny, daydreaming and imagining, not to mention knocking himself cold with doors, it would have taken a hell of a lot less. He did not know what had gotten into him, but he’d had a few bad turns out there. Most guys would have went running, he figured.
Then, again, he wasn’t most guys.
And that’s what was really starting to worry him. He’d always taken it as it came and now he was starting to think about it, starting to contemplate the idea that he was not only living a dangerous lifestyle, but that he was making bad decisions on a daily basis. And this little party was maybe one of them. What scared him wasn’t that the ghosts of suicides—because there had been suicides on the Addams—were going to come knocking at his door at midnight and demand that he join them like in some cheesy horror flick, but that he was losing his nerve.
Because when you made your living playing cards as he did, your nerve was everything. And when you lost it, you lost the lifestyle and everything that went with it. No more high-dollar hookers and good booze, no more four-star restaurants and clubbing with guys like Arturo. No, when that happened, you were just another shmuck and it was only a matter of time before you were working in a factory or flipping burgers.
And this, more than the $50,000 even, was what made Charlie decide that he had to spend the night on the Addams. He knew instinctively in his guts that there was something bad about her, something rotten right down to her keel, but he could not leave. Because if he left, he not only left his balls behind but his life.
And he couldn’t let that happen.
After his little tour, he took the companionway that led from the pilothouse down to the captain’s office and stateroom beyond. Like the rest of the Addams, it was pitch-black down there. Charlie was suspicious of that, too. If the ship was ready to sail as Arturo had said… then why not crank up some juice, get the lights going? Or at least give him some battery power or something. He didn’t know much about freighters, but he was pretty sure they had some sort of back-up battery.
But that would ruin all the fun, he told himself. Arturo’s playing you, just like you thought. It’s all part of his plan, you moron. He wants you to freak out tonight. He wants to shake you up but good. Don’t be surprised if a couple of his goons show around three in the morning and start moaning and rattling fucking chains.
No, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
That’s why he had brought the .45.
In the stateroom, he stood there, looking around. He took in all the fine cherry and black walnut woodwork, the desk and bookshelves and sofa. There was a rocking chair in the corner and he wondered if it had belonged to the captain’s wife. The bed was big and they’d put on new sheets and blankets. It looked nice. It looked clean and comfortable. It looked very much like it wanted him to sleep in it.
“Then maybe I should,” he said under his breath.
But his nerves were still jangled… partly because of where he was and what he was sensing and partly because he’d put down about two pots of black coffee that day.
He went into the head, but the pump was down and only a trickle came from the taps. No matter. There were a couple of quart bottles of water in there. Arturo thought of everything. He cleaned his finger and bandaged it. It was itching so badly by then he wanted to take a knife and scrape his skin off. But it would pass. It was the healing. That’s all it was.
There were a couple of battery lanterns, a cooler of beer and cold cuts set out at the captain’s table. He lit one of the lanterns and the gloom of the cabin was immediately dispelled… or most of it. He shut the flashlight off to conserve on batteries.
“I ain’t budging from here. I’m going to stay right here for the rest of the night,” he said out loud, instantly wishing he hadn’t. The sound of his voice echoing through the empty cabin was almost too much. It sounded like someone else mocking him.
If there were such things as ghosts, bad ghosts, evil ghosts, hungry ghosts—why had he thought that?—then he decided that they needed your cooperation. They needed your fear. If you wouldn’t give it to them, they were powerless. It made sense in his thinking. Good sense. Their game was fear and if you wouldn’t play with them, then they’d go sulking away like bratty kids who couldn’t get their way.
But, no, he was not about to start thinking that way. Ghosts. Of all things. There were no goddamn ghosts on the ship, there were only a couple of Arturo’s goons playing trick-or-treat. One of which had kicked the door and cold-cocked him. He’d sort that sonofabitch out later.
Yes.
He felt much better now.
His head was clear and his balls were well in place. He was thinking like a man again, not a scared little kid. He should have come down here in the first place. A guy could feel human here. Not like out there… out in the darkness where things existed that no man should look upon.
Fuck are you talking about?
He giggled in his throat because he simply did not know and why was his finger so unbearably itchy?
Finally, tired of pacing around, he sat at the captain’s table and had a cigarette. He sipped a beer from the cooler, figuring a little alcohol might calm his nerves a bit. He had too much on his mind. How the hell could he possibly relax, even for a few moments in a place like this? But that was why he knew that he had to; no sense playing into Arturo’s hands. He’d had some funny feelings since he’d boarded, but that was just nerves. Couldn’t be anything else. He had to get a grip. By lantern light, he spread out a game of solitaire and smiled at the thought of seeing Arturo in the morning. That goddamn meathead. He’d show him what balls were all about.
He kept trying to involve himself in the cards, but it just wouldn’t happen. He was too on edge, too something. His skin was crawling, his belly full of needles. He’d never felt like this in his whole life, not even when he was sitting in court all those times waiting to be sentenced. And it felt kind of like that, now didn’t it? Like he was waiting for judgment to be passed on him, for something to happen. Expectant. Filled with anxiety as if he knew the worst was yet to come.
Funny how your imagination could screw with your head, he thought. Real funny.
He sat back and pulled off his cigarette, listening to the sound of the ship which was an absence of sound, really. Just that pervasive great humming emptiness that was its own sort of noise after awhile. It was there all the time, just behind his thoughts, invasive and crowding and consistent. Like the sound you could hear in your head at night when all was quiet… the gentle, distant rush of blood; the thrum of idling neurons; the pulse of arteries. It was like that. A living sound of machinery waiting to cycle up, waiting to be put to use…
He blinked his eyes.
Blinked them again.
What the hell is this?
That was the question that defied an answer; it was a gossamer-winged fairy that danced in his head, its grin not harmless and sweet like Tinkerbelle, but malevolent and toothy like some South Seas cannibal that had filed his teeth to sharp points.