Chapter Seventeen
Reckoning
Iwoke in the morning to a peacefulness that soothed me until I remembered the trials of the previous day. I shifted my feet under the blankets, feeling the reassuring weight of Pearl and the sound of her sleepy sigh. Thank God. She was here, safe in our bed.
Her tail gave a few lazy taps, she stretched, and then must have drifted off to sleep again.
I lay there listening to Dinesh’s breathing and enjoying the warmth of his body. My left hand, the one that was tied to his, rested on my hip in a way that was uncomfortable. The flaccid length of the captain’s substantial cock lay against my buttock.
I reached back for the thing with my lashed hand, dragging Dinesh’s carefully along so he wouldn’t wake.
Whilst he snored and grunted, I circled my fingers around the familiar appendage, expecting the organ to grow hard in my hand.
But his prick didn’t feel right, and I hesitated.
I moved my hand to give the length a stroke, and Dinesh’s cock came away in my grip.
My eyes widened in horror as I turned to look, only to see that the object in my hand wasn’t his penis at all, but a fat, grey worm.
I screamed and threw the fucking thing at the wall, which of course caused the captain’s arm to swing with mine, waking him from a sound sleep. Pearl scrambled from the bed, barking her displeasure at being awakened so abruptly.
I cursed and wiped my hand on the sheets, trying not to panic, although the experience had been quite a fright and so revolting to think that a wet worm was my captain’s beloved cock touching me.
“What the fuck is wrong? What’s happened?” Dinesh cried out, grabbing me and shaking me. “Are you possessed again? Rooster! Talk to me!”
The door pushed open and Squid charged inside.
“Oh my God! What’s going on? Has someone been killed?” Squid asked, white as a sheet beneath all his tattoos.
“A disgusting, revolting worm!” I pointed at the wall. “I threw the horrid creature over there. Dear God, I need a drink.”
“A worm? What do you mean, a worm?” Dinesh asked. “Shush, Pearl. Quiet!”
“I thought the worm was your prick! It was thick and squishy—no offense—then I thought I’d pulled your cock off! It was a fucking disgusting worm! Laying against my arse! What the ever-loving fuck is happening?”
Pearl continued to bark. She stared at the wall, and I noticed movement there.
I could have sworn something had fallen onto the floor. Before I could get up to look, I saw several of the grey worms emerging from burrows in the wood and then dropping.
“Oh my fucking God,” I cried, standing on the mattress and wrapping my arms around myself, pulling the captain’s arm with me as if he were a large doll. He resisted, however, and tugged the limb down.
“You’re about to pull my arm off. For fuck’s sake, stay still.”
“Look at the fucking wall! Look!” I said, pointing with my free hand.
Right as Captain Martin and Squid noticed the worms, Hillier charged in.
“Captain, we’ve been infested!” he informed us. “Why is White standing on the bed?”
“Because of the worms!” I yelled, pointing at the wall. “Pearl, come here. Here, girl. Get away from the vile things!”
She jumped up on the bed but continued to bark.
“Jesus, shut up, you bloody dog!” Dinesh yelled.
Pearl quieted. Dinesh threw me an apologetic look.
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s all right.” I bent to soothe her, taking comfort in her familiar closeness.
“Good God, what are they?” Dinesh asked, working to untie the rope around our wrists.
“Shipworms, I’m afraid,” Hillier stated. “But we inspect her hull every week, Captain. There were only a few signs of such activity two days ago, I swear. And now they are everywhere.”
“I know,” Dinesh said, pointing at the wall.
“Holy fucking hell,” Hillier said, gazing at the worms falling out of holes in the wood of the captain’s cabin.
“Are we taking on water? Are things as bad as this below deck?”
Hillier didn’t answer, but turned and ran out of the room. We heard him tearing down the stairs, men yelling, footsteps.
Squid took off out the door.
“Get dressed,” Dinesh ordered. “Here.”
He tossed my clothes onto the bed.
I let go of Pearl, who jumped down from the bed, still barking.
I took my shirt up and shook the cloth, half expecting a few worms to fall out. I dressed as quickly as I could and followed the captain.
Puzzled crewmen rushed about and slimy worms squished under my shoes as we went up to the deck. Worms slithered out of holes in the wood of the deck and gunwale.
“What the fuck is happening?” the captain bellowed. “Lahiri! What’s the situation below decks?”
“I don’t know, Captain.”
“Well, neither do I,” Dinesh admitted. “But if there are this many in the hull we’re going down, and fast!”
Hillier came up the steps from below deck.
“There’s water coming in now, Captain. The men are pumping the bilge and repairing the holes as fast as they can. They’re small but there are too many of them.”
“Bloody hell, I’ve never heard of this before. Should take a month or more for shipworms to get this bad.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Fear sliced through me.
“There are holes in the ship? We’re going down?” I yelped.
We were in the middle of the ocean, approaching Jamaica but not there yet. If the Arrow went down, we were all dead.
“Rooster, can you do something? Anything!” Dinesh pleaded.
Men yelled orders and boots stomped on the deck and beneath, as the crew killed as many worms as they could find.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Won’t a storm make us go down faster, whether the gale’s mine or not?”
The captain shrugged and lifted his hands in a helpless gesture.
“To be frank, I don’t know what else we can do.”
I frowned, seeing a worm inching toward my foot.
“God fucking dammit, you stupid shite!” I muttered, lifting my foot to stomp the slimy creature into the deck.
My shoe came down on solid wood. The worm had vanished.
“Where the fuck did it go?”
I met the captain’s confused gaze. We looked about us. Where a moment before there had been an infestation, now the wood was solid and the worms had gone.
Puzzled shouts came from all around us.
“What the fuck? Where did they go?”
“The holes are filled. What the hell is going on?”
This was yet another hallucination, like the attacking ship.
The captain recovered his wits more quickly than I.
“Hillier, check below decks. Hopefully, the same has happened there.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Men wandered the deck, muttering in confusion. I was relieved, of course, but also unnerved. If we couldn’t distinguish the truth from illusion, how were we supposed to fight what assailed us? How could we defeat a foe who didn’t play fair?
I looked about me at the men of the crew, this community that had become dear to me. They looked as frightened as I felt. Captain Martin, who loved the Arrow and her men, now faced perhaps his greatest adversary, and all because of me. In a moment, my fear turned to blazing anger.
How dare this mysterious force disrupt our lives and cause such chaos? Well, this ends now.
I reached down, grabbed Pearl to my chest with two hands, strode past the captain, and climbed the steps to the quarterdeck.
“Hear me, and hear me now!” I yelled into the bright morning sunshine, gazing about me at the Arrow and the ocean surrounding her. “Enough! I’ve had enough of your bloody games and your fucking foolishness!”
I waited to see if there would be any response. The captain and the crew gazed at me with astonishment. Pearl licked my chin and wagged her tail against my leg.
Seabirds cawed and the Arrow’s hull slapped against the waves. In the far distance, I could make out what might be the hazy shape of land. Thank Christ.
“Leave us be, or I shall smite you into oblivion, you fucking menace!” I yelled as loudly as I could.
I waited a few more moments, and when nothing happened except for Hillier coming up on deck and declaring that all was good in the hold—the worms, holes, and water gone—I stomped down the steps with my dog and made my way to our quarters, fury and conviction coursing through me.
I stalked into our room and slammed the door shut with my shoulder, checking the walls and the floor to make sure the worms were gone.
I bloody hoped they wouldn’t make a reappearance because the entire debacle had been unsettling in the extreme.
I looked out the windows at the expanse of sea, wondering what lurked under her depths.
What ancient and evil phenomenon had felt so threatened by me and my magic that the monster was trying to drive me mad and disable the ship?
If I wasn’t able to put a halt to these torments, we would all lose our hold on reality.
Dinesh came into the room quietly and shut the door, as I lowered Pearl to the floor.
“That was inspiring.”
“I’m sick of the bloody games.”
“So am I.”
“The monster has gone from toying with my imagination, to affecting things in the real world.”
“Yes. That’s worrying,” he said. “I’m trying to decide if we should lay anchor and spend some time in Port Royal. Perhaps getting off the ship would help.”
“Yes, I thought of that too. But would that change anything? The creature would only be waiting for us when we returned.”
Dinesh nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“I sense…the battle is close. I can feel the…creature, or whatever the beast is, becoming more desperate. The mass hallucinations. The sleepwalking. My possession the other night.”
“It worries me how hard this has been on you.”
“Perhaps that’s because I’ve been cowering in fear and simply waiting for the monster to do what it will.”
Dinesh cocked his head. “I’m listening.”
I shrugged. “That’s the thing though. I don’t know what I’m fighting and I don’t know how to fight. I want to fight. Shouting at the monster made me feel so much better. Did Hillier say if the water had gone? Or only the worms and holes.”
“Everything. As if nothing had happened at all.”
“That’s good. Although I could have done without the fright. Nasty trick.”
“Yes.”