Sacculina Page 4

  “I’m okay,” he said quietly. Now that the fear had passed he felt silly for being such a baby, felt guilt at having broken the controller.

  His mother nodded, stood back up, faced Jack, who hadn’t moved. She gripped his chin in her hands, tilted it down to face Jim, still sitting on the floor.

  “You see that?” she said, her voice sharp and irreproachable. “You see him?” Jack eyes flickered over Jim, then off again.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, a hoarse whisper.

  She pointed at Jim, who stood up slowly, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach. “That’s all you got,” she said, her voice cracking, her lip trembling. “He’s all you got.”

  Jack’s eyes widened, and he looked at her. There was fear in them. Jim looked, too, the sour lump in his stomach spreading. There were tears coming down his mother’s face, and Jim couldn’t understand. Not then.

  “And you better protect him, Jack,” she said, “because that’s it. You understand? He’s it.”

  Jack looked at his brother, questioning, fearful, his eyes wet, his hair matted with sweat.

  Jim turned around and walked away slowly, wanting no more of this. He heard something and turned back, only for a moment, and saw Jack embracing his mother tightly, more tightly than he’d ever seen. He was crying into her shoulder, saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” and she cried too, and stroked his head.

  Jim disappeared up the stairs, but the unshakable dread went with him.

  * * *

  When Henry screamed Jim sprang across the boat to his father, who he saw, for a split second, was bent over the side, khaki ass in the air, only the toes of his white sneakers sticking to the grimy wet floor. As he continued screaming he flung himself backward, crashing onto his ass, his head bouncing off the edge of the red cooler.

  Jim landed on his knees next to him. “Dad!”

  One of Henry’s hands was clutched into the opposing elbow of his windbreaker, hidden from sight. His eyes were squeezed shut, his glasses askew, his face bone pale.

  “Ah... Jesus...” he stammered, eyes remaining shut tight, his mouth contorted into a grimace.

  “Dad, what is it?” Jim said, gripping his father’s shoulders, feeling their frailty beneath the blue jacket, almost wanting to pull them away, forget how much the old man had lost over the years.

  Jack and Chris stood over Jim. The captain yelled from the wheelhouse. “What the hell happened!”

  “Dad...” Jim said, and finally Henry opened his eyes. He looked up, his light blue eyes feverish, tearing with pain. He looked down at his folded arm, slowly pulled out his hand.

  Stuck to the side of it, as if they’d been growing there for months, were two jet-black, acorn-sized barnacles.

  “Jesus, Dad...”

  Jack bent down, grabbed Henry’s forearm, studied the crustaceans. “What are these things?”

  Henry shook his head, then whined and shut his eyes once more. “I was reaching down, trying to grab one of them... off the boat... thought... water splashed up, a wave hit me, and there were... uh... something was in the water, like little jellyfish...” He screwed his eyes open, looked down at the crustaceans on his hand. “They’re pulling my skin, Jack, they’re eating my hand, I think.”

  “Fuck that,” Jack said, looking around the boat for something, anything. A knife, a weapon.

  Chris put his fingers on one of the crustaceans, tried to squeeze it. Henry screamed in pain.

  “Stop!”

  “Gotta pull it off, Mr. Lowell,” he said, squeezing harder. “Fucking thing’s like a rock.”

  “We need fire,” Jim said. “Like a tick. We’ll burn it.”

  “I don’t think so.” It was the captain, standing behind Jim now. “I have no idea how those things got on him. It’s not possible, takes months for the things to secrete the shell like that. Weeks at the least...” He paused, his face a blank. He pushed the rim of his trucker cap up, scratched his forehead. “Ain’t right.” He looked hard at Henry, almost with suspicion, as if he were to blame for the oddity. “Ain’t natural.”

  “How do we get them off?” Jim asked, ignoring the captain’s cryptic tone.

  “Well,” he said, thinking, “I usually have to scrape ‘em off the boat, or the pier, with a shovel. If they’re on the engine, we, well, we use a jigsaw, yeah?” He positioned his hands as if he were holding a jigsaw, a similar position one might use to hold a machine gun. “But uh, here, well, that won’t do.”

  “No,” Jack said, his voice contemptuous.

  “See, like I was saying earlier, they use cement, on their heads, like,” the captain patted the top of his hat. “Then they secrete that shit that becomes a shell. But they don’t just stick like that... takes months,” he said, sounding more baffled than concerned. “If they stick to a whale, like I said, they pull the skin up, you know, like into themselves. That way,” he paused, tugged at an ear, “that way they’re harder to get off.”

  Henry nodded. “I can feel it—oh god it hurts—I can feel them pulling my skin, they’re tearing my hand up, boys! Get them off, please... Jack, get them off me.”

  Jack nodded, turned to Chris. “Pull it.”

  Jim felt the pinging bells of alarm in his head, but he said nothing. He watched his father’s eyes go wide with terror.

  Chris pinched two strong fingers onto one of the barnacles. Henry’s face flushed. “Wait...” he said.

  Chris pulled. Like one might pull a Band-Aid that had been superglued to your skin.

  The thing came off with a puckering squelch, and Henry threw his head back and screamed.

  Chris held the thing up, showing them. There were thin strips of flesh hanging from the base of it. From the crown, where it opened slightly, fiber-thin tentacles were wriggling, reaching. Just like the sea bass, Jim thought.

  “Get rid of it,” Jack said, his voice steady.

  Chris tossed the thing over the side into the water.

  Henry, still screaming, kicking his feet, his body lying in a half-inch of dirty sea water, held his hand high into the air. They could all see the blood trickling down his arm, the quarter-sized hole left by the thing’s removal—a wet, bright red fleshy wound that emptied blood down his arm and to the deck of the boat in trickling spurts.

  “Jesus...” the captain said, a hand over his mouth. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

  Jim sat down, put his arm around his father. Henry collapsed into him, rested his head on Jim’s thighs, all but weeping openly, his hand a bloody mess.

  Jack looked fixedly at his father, his face emotionless, his eyes cold. Jim tried to meet his eye, to beg him to hold off, to give it a second, but Jack’s eyes were hard and clear as they studied Henry’s wounded hand, his thin, crying frame.

  Jim didn’t feel like he knew this man. This version of Jack. This was a brother he’d never met, the one who’d done all that time in Lancaster, the one who made it through, who survived whatever heartbreaking atrocities he’d been subjected to over the six years in state prison. Jim was afraid, but also comforted. This version of Jack could make decisions Jim had no interest in making.

  Jim rested his palms on his father’s head, felt a swelling bump on the back where he must have cracked it into the metal cooler. What a mess, he thought.

  Jack looked at Henry’s face another moment, then his eyes dropped to the other barnacle stuck to the bleeding hand, an inch away from the last, harbored like a black lump on the webbing between the thumb and forefinger. He looked at Chris, who was already reaching.

  “Now the other one.”

  * * *

  Henry groaned as the captain slathered his hand in ointment, then wrapped it tightly in gauze. The cuff of his windbreaker was stiff with dried blood, his face deathly white, the sagging mouth twitching and grimacing with the pain.

  The three younger men stood by stupidly, watching. Jim finally sat down, looked out at the water. The sun hovered past its zenith, hea
ding away from them now, toward the edge of the horizon, the crest of the waves streaked with shimmering gold.

  As his father moaned and the captain talked about getting the boat in as quickly as possible, Jim thought to look over the side once more, curious as to how the passive crustaceans could have so quickly mounted themselves to his father’s hand. A freak thing, he thought.

  He was careful to keep his hands up on the side rail, his fingers resting on the all but worn-through strips of coarse adhesive made to give one tread while walking along the outside of the boat. He leaned over... then jerked away, almost stumbling backward. He spun around, looked at the men, his eyes darting between them.

  “Jack,” he said, his voice high-pitched and panicked.

  Jack studied Jim’s gawping face, then walked over, stood close. “What is it Jimmy?”

  Jim nodded toward the side of the boat. “Take a look, man. I think something’s wrong.”

  Jack’s brows arched in on each other, and he stepped past Jim and looked. After a moment, having overheard them, Chris joined Jack at the side of the boat. Jim waited, hoping against hope they would not see what he’d seen, that he’d somehow got it wrong, misread things.

  “What the hell?” Chris said, and Jim knew he wasn’t wrong. That they were in trouble. He joined them, looked again, and swallowed a scream.

  The boat was alive.

  Blue, black and white hard-shelled barnacles now covered the boat right up to the bulwark, mere inches from where their hands rested. The sides and front were heavy with dense layers of the crustaceans. The black acorn-shaped ones, but more than that. There were wriggling, pulsing starfish-shaped, semi-translucent creatures settled among them, as if fighting for space. Jim noticed, in some spots, there were slick-brown tubes probing, seeking someplace to settle themselves into the thickening carpet of organisms.

  Jim bent over further, could see that the spread of sea creatures continued to mass even more so below sea level. He imagined that from below the boat must look like a heavy black beard, growing longer by the second, a living coral-rock floating along the surface of the vast ocean, getting heavier by the minute.

  But it’s been barely an hour, he thought, thinking of when he last looked over the boat. Hasn’t it? It’s not possible. It’s just not... His mind raced, desperate for answers that made sense, that would bring logic back to the equation, that would help him find some small piece of sanity to build upon, to steady his mind and allow for rational thought.

  None of them spoke for a moment, all of them seeking that equilibrium, that rationale. As if struck with a new fear, Jack groaned and moved quickly to the back of the boat, toward the engine. Chris, having the same thought, joined him.

  Jim could only stand and stare at the wet boards of the deck, wondering how all of this had gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

  “Oh no,” Chris said under his breath.

  Jim, needing to know the worst now, went over, looked down at the giant rudder resting just below the surface.

  The rudder was gone, covered in a white organic mass of barnacles and rope-thick tentacles, a balled-up writhing sphere of featureless crustaceans.

  Stepping back, Jim saw, with a sharp pang of terror, that a few of the creatures had settled among the metal pole rods and were now staggered along the handrail.

  My God, Jim thought, they’re on the boat.

  “What’s wrong with you boys?” the captain said, stomping past Jim and shouldering Chris aside. Jack and Chris stepped back, not wanting to see anymore. They watched the captain as he looked over the edge, saying nothing.

  Abruptly, he cursed and turned, his face crimson, his mouth fixed in a hard line. He pushed past them, stomping back toward the wheelhouse.

  “Damn damn DAMN!” he yelled, then, with more dexterity than Jim would have thought him able, he hoisted himself up onto the coaming of the boat’s side, grabbed the rail that ran the top-length of the wheelhouse, and skirted the outside of the boat toward the bow, where Jim had seen a small seating deck for two or three that none of them had bothered to yet occupy.

  A few moments later he came sliding back toward them, along the other side, casting glances downward as he smothered his belly against the standing shelter of the wheelhouse, shuffling along and huffing with exertion. He stepped down and bent over, panting. When he looked up at them, Jim thought he saw tears in his eyes.

  “They’ve covered my whole boat,” he said, shaken. “Past the spray rail, right up to the goddamn sheerline. I don’t know…”

  He removed his hat, his matted hair stringy and dirty beneath like white seaweed, spotted patches of his broad pate shining through the tangles. “I just don’t fucking know...” he said miserably.

  Jim wondered if the old salty captain was gonna have himself a little breakdown right there and then. Have a good long cry and hug himself, think about all the whores he’d never lay, all the tobacco he’d never smoke, all the whiskey he’d never drink, while his mind snapped like dry kindling in a fire and he rocked and drooled while the rest of them were left to deal with the boat, his injured father and the sea monstrosities that were surrounding them in greater and greater numbers by the second.

  “Captain Ron,” Jim started. “We need to do some...”

  The captain snapped his head up, his magnified eyes blazing and sharp. His hands were clenched into fists. “Shut up, boy! Just shut the fuck up!” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. “You want to know what’s going on, well guess what, school-boy? I have no fucking clue what’s going on!” He smashed one giant paw into the side of the boat.

  They all stood, silent, waiting. Wondering if this is where someone else would have to take control. Mutiny, Jim thought wildly, and had to suppress the image of pulling a sword from a rusted scabbard and holding it to the captain’s throat.

  The captain turned back on them before he could continue the fantasy. His face calm once more, his voice now suddenly steady, suddenly firm. “Look boys, your daddy, well, yeah, he’s injured, and my boat, as you can see, is taking on a lot of organic weight.”

  He looked to the sky, the sun halfway home, the day still hot, the brightness more honey than sunflower now, aging toward death as they rocked on the waves.

  “It’s time to get you boys home,” he said, and no one argued.

  Committed now, he moved quickly, quietly. Went from rod to rod, pulling them down, stowing them sloppily along the deck. He secured them with two bungee cords, then went back to the controls, started the engine. His head cocked up to the Doppler screen. He shook his head, flipped a switch and turned the key.

  The engine roared. The underwater rumbling of the propeller starting up vibrated the deck beneath their feet. Jim sat down, palms flat on the worn canvas of the bench, careful to keep his back from touching the rail. Jack put his t-shirt back on, and Chris—quite gently, Jim thought—helped Henry off the floor and onto the padded bench lining the opposite side of the deck.

  Jim could hear Henry’s moans as the boat’s engine screamed like an animal, the exhaust washing over them like a cancerous dragon’s dying breath. Jim was able to make out the captain saying, “Come on, come on...”

  There was a choking eruption from beneath the boat. Jim was sure the hull was being torn to pieces. The propeller cracked so loudly Henry covered his ears, wincing at the pain in his bandaged hand. It sounded caught, and as the rotor tried desperately to muscle the propeller to action there was a whining so shrill it filled the air like locust wings, so loud now that they were all covering their ears.

  “Come ON!” the captain roared.

  There came a sharp pop, a loud belching sound from beneath the deck, and the boat shook as if slapped by the tail of a great whale. The sounds of the engine hummed more quietly, then sputtered, then died.

  With an almost eerie calm, Jim watched smoke pour up from all sides of the boat. A wet smoke, thick and black and carrying upwards, past them, toward the clouds. For a mom
ent—a brief moment—he couldn’t see the ocean, and was almost grateful. His eyes stung with the sooty dying breath of the vessel and he looked upward. He saw that the sun, lightly-veiled by the cloudy gray wall, was turning a deep shade of crimson, growing darker with every passing second.

  The captain slammed a hand against the controls, tried vainly to start the engine once more.

  There was only silence. The captain spun, his calm eyes gone now, his hard-set mouth open and wet, his cheeks bright red. He pointed a finger at the Doppler screen.

  “The water’s filled with ‘em!” he yelled, decorum gone, leadership driven out by a fear approaching madness. “They’re everywhere!”

  Jack stood up and eyeballed the monitor. Jim could see from where he sat that the little screen was filled with a massive white blob, extending from one edge to the other.

  “What does this mean?” Jack said, running his fingertip from one end of the digitized white mass to the other. “I... how much does this cover? Can we row out of it? Get to better water?”

  The captain looked at Jack like he was the Mad Hatter himself, sprung from the storybook to chase the captain’s sanity far away.

  “Captain Ron!” Jack snapped, his voice a whip. “Can we row out of this?”

  The captain seemed to steady, to calm himself. He put his hat back on, took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes roughly. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Okay,” he said, and stepped onto the deck. The black smoke of the blown engine wispy now, the ocean visible once more, waiting patiently from all around them for their next ridiculous maneuver. “Okay,” he repeated, more loudly this time. He addressed Jack, but spoke loudly enough for them all to hear.

  “Imagine a dining room table, right? A nice white tablecloth on it, it’s Thanksgiving, whatever...”

  Jim and Jack shared a quick what the hell? glance as only two brothers can do, but didn’t interrupt.

  “Okay, so there’s a bunch of you eating, yeah? Nice big table. Now, imagine you put an almond in the middle of that table. Nothin’ else, it’s all white and clean. But there’s that almond, and you’re all sitting around looking at the stupid little brown nut. You got me?”