“I deserve to go thirsty. And that’s not the reason you’re aboard this ship.”
“You’re going to keep me captive down here?”
“Everyone I get close to, I end up hurting. Even poor Grace. I hurt her because I couldn’t take back the pain you’d caused. I couldn’t tell her everything would be alright.”
Absinth trembled, seeing for the first time how horribly he’d hurt the man by killing his pet. “Listen, I’m sorry I killed your rat. Okay? I’m sorry!”
But the Mariner didn’t hear. “I used to think I was being punished, put on this ship as some sort of penance for past sins. I no longer think that’s true. The Neptune is being punished, just as I. We’re stuck together, two monsters in the same cell. The punishment’s the world, not the boat. I can’t remember the horrors I committed. Does the Neptune, I wonder?” He looked around the room with haunted eyes and now Absinth was sure the Mariner could see ghosts, even if just in the confines of his own demented skull. He focused back on Absinth and gave a weary smile, in a strange way intending comfort. “I’ll take the blame Absinth. Let the fault lie with me.”
The Mariner opened the door and half stepped through.
“Then let me go! Take me back to my ship, I’ll be gone, you’ll never see me again. Listen, you crazy fucker, don’t leave me alone down here!” Absinth looked about nervously, terrified at the notion he could be left down in the belly of the Neptune, alone but for the ghosts of murdered convicts. “Let me out!”
The Mariner paused. “I’m sorry Absinth, but no. This ship is like me. I have demons within. The eels made that perfectly clear. I don’t know where those demons came from, but they’re there. This ship has some too. We’ve a lot in common, her and I. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us, and her devils need to eat.”
“Devils? What devils?” But the Mariner was already gone.
And in the darkness, it were not ghosts, but a dozen furry bodies that began to emerge, hunger overriding their cautiousness.
Absinth screamed and kicked as best he could, but he’d been secured tight. The Neptune was, after all, a prison ship. In her time she had ferried convicts and slaves, monsters and madmen. Those who sailed within her soon learned that their journey was not one of geography, but misery.
And Absinth Alcott embarked upon his own voyage as Grace’s brood began to feed.
PART II
DOCTOR TETRAZZINI & HIS LIFE-AFFIRMING THEORY
10. EVERY STORY HAS A BEGINNING
LIKE RAINWATER CASCADING THROUGH A filthy gutter, shame flushed out all other feelings from the boy’s system as he lay prone across the bed. As usual that night he’d snuck into his parents’ bedroom, aware they wanted him to sleep in his own, yet determined to feel that closeness supplied only by theirs. Being a toddler, he had little understanding of an adult’s needs for privacy, nor did he have any concept of right and wrong, other than a rudimentary instinct instilled during the few years he’d been alive.
After complaining and whining he’d eventually won his way into their nest. His father was away, out of town for work, an absence that had weakened his mother’s resolve to keep him out. With a warm feeling of safety he’d climbed into the bed, pulling the thick duvet up over his shoulders.
The boy thought it must have been his breathing that had caused the problem, as no other reason could be deduced in his infant mind. Sometimes his asthma made the air struggle as it escaped his lungs, causing a whistle out and a hiss in. This must have kept his mother awake longer than she could bear, and for that the boy was sorry. His mother meant the world to him. Sometimes he would imagine what he’d do if he saw her fall from a cliff; at the thought tears would come to his eyes (even though it were all a fiction) and he promised himself he would hurl his body after her. Better to be dead than to lose his mother.
And thus, the suggestion that he would deliberately keep her up at night was preposterous, and yet he must have, because clearly she’d become frustrated with his wheezing; a pillow was held tightly over his face, hard enough to block out any possible breath.
He wanted to struggle free. His mind and body were already revolting against the suffocation, auto-survival instincts telling him to thrash about, anything to reunite him with life-giving air. He didn’t though, for beyond the sound of his pounding heart he could hear his mother crying. Perhaps if he stayed completely still it would show that he was sorry? Perhaps she would forgive him and remove the pillow, then they could go back to sleep?
And then it seemed his wish came true. The pillow was removed and his mother rolled back into the darkness, her sobs concealed by a black void. The Boy couldn’t bring himself to move. He hated himself for making her upset. His chest felt hollow and twisted; his heart beat wildly within the vacuum. It was no wonder his mother was disappointed with him.
He would always be a failure.
But suddenly he was dragged away, lifted from the bed by the soaring freedom that only comes from a dream’s release. The Mariner awoke, crying and scratching at his face, thin rolls of torn skin beneath his nails and red lines down each cheek. He lay in his bunk as the ship around him groaned, and after what seemed like an age, he slept once more.
And as it so often did, the dream returned.
11. SIGHISOARA
(Zig-ish-wa-rah)
SIGHISOARA LOOMED OUT THE OCEAN like a turd on a mat. A single dock jutted out of a land bristling with buildings, hundreds of ancient homes huddled together for mutual safety. Some on the outer circumference were dilapidated, ocean facing walls having fallen into the sea, the ground beneath eaten by erosion. Their insides now lay open for all to see. Weather-beaten kitchens and bedrooms homes to seagulls and rats, their human occupants long gone.
In the centre of the town rose a mighty hill that wore a great stone wall like a crown. Behind the wall were further buildings, even older in style and organised around a central courtyard. Within this enclosure the hill continued, and upon its lofty summit dwelt the only piece of ground supporting wild trees, the copse looking like a collection of besieged soldiers, forced back into the final ramparts. And finally, amongst the trees shone a bright light; a beam from a lighthouse, placed there to warn ships in the dead of night.
The Mariner eyed the settlement, jubilant at the potential. He hadn’t come across land in an age and all food had run out. More and more often he was forced into the bowels of the ship, into passageways he hadn’t previously dared to tread, in search of basic sustenance. Occasionally he’d find rats. Sometimes strange mushrooms that made his head ache. Always just enough to survive, but not enough to keep the hunger-madness at bay. It gnawed at him, erasing thought of all else, even alcohol, which usually was his one true love.
A rumbling stomach made him look down. It wasn’t his own; a Tasmanian devil stood nearby, its nose stretched out, sniffing the air, getting a better picture of the land ahead than the Mariner’s tired eyes could ever ascertain.