Do Not Enter. Do Not Answer. Do Not Stay. (Three Novelettes of Horror)

Do Not Answer

Lena heard the knocking just after her father told her to quit kicking the seat.

She looked down at her legs. Both feet were tucked beneath Danny’s sweatshirt, which she had rolled into a pillow and wedged between her knees and the wall.

“I’m not.”

Her father kept looking at his phone.

“You’re shaking the bench.”

“The whole boat is shaking.”

That was true enough that he should have left it there.

Cups rattled in their holders. A red tackle box had been creeping across the floor for the past ten minutes, moving an inch whenever the boat leaned hard to port and staying put when it leaned the other way.

The man in the green raincoat finally trapped it beneath his boot.

Three dull knocks came through the floor.

Lena felt the last one in the side of her foot.

Her father looked up.

“There.”

“I didn’t do that.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You were about to.”

He put his phone facedown on his thigh.

“I was about to ask if you heard it.”

Lena looked at him. He had been trying harder lately. Sometimes that made things worse because she could always tell.

The boat climbed the side of another wave. Rain pressed against the windows until the sea disappeared. For a second they might have been moving through gray paint.

Across the aisle, the man in the green coat leaned forward.

“Loose fuel can.”

Nobody had asked him, but he had spent most of the trip answering questions nobody asked. He had explained why the gulls stayed near the harbor, why the clouds looked worse than they were, and why the woman sitting near the bathroom had made a mistake by wearing canvas shoes.

His own name was Mercer. Lena knew because he had introduced himself to everyone while they waited at the dock.

The woman in the canvas shoes glanced at the floor.

“Is that dangerous?”

“No.”

Mercer adjusted his foot on the tackle box.

“Everything sounds worse through a hull.”

Her father nodded as though this settled it.

Lena didn’t.

The knocking had not sounded loose. Loose things moved with the boat. These had been slow and evenly spaced.

She pressed her heel against the floor.

Nothing.

Her father picked up his phone again.

There was no service. He knew there was no service because he had announced it twice, but he kept checking anyway.

Lena turned toward the window. Her reflection hovered over the rain-streaked glass: dark hair pulled back badly, one cheek marked from where she had slept against Danny’s sweatshirt in the car.

She had meant to leave it there. At the dock she had gone back for it while her father was arguing with the parking machine.

It had been in the back seat since October.

Her mother had asked her three times to bring it inside.

The first time Lena said she forgot. The second time she said it was Dad’s car and therefore his problem.

The third time her mother stood beside the open rear door holding the sweatshirt between two fingers and asked whether Lena wanted it washed.

Lena had taken it from her and put it back on the seat.

It no longer smelled like Danny. It smelled like the car, old french fries, and the cedar chips her father had scattered beneath the seats after spilling a milkshake. She still thought of it as smelling like him when she picked it up too quickly.

The boat rose again.

A second sound came from below, more of a scrape this time.

Mercer looked toward the stern.

“That’s the prop catching air.”

The unshaven man across from him said, “Prop’s behind us.”

Mercer turned.

“I know where the prop is.”

“Then you know that wasn’t it.”

The unshaven man had boarded last and taken the only seat nobody else wanted, beside a cloudy window that leaked at the corners. He wore jeans, work boots, and a black jacket that had probably been waterproof before the shoulders started peeling. There was grease along the side of one thumb.

Mercer looked at the man’s boots.

“You work on boats?”

“Sometimes.”

“What kind?”

“Ones that break.”

The woman near the bathroom laughed. Mercer did not.

Lena’s father almost smiled. It went away quickly, as though he had remembered he was supposed to be annoyed.

The door at the front opened, and Keller ducked out of the wheelhouse. He owned the boat and had spoken to them at the dock with the distracted politeness of somebody already behind schedule. His gray beard was wet at the ends.

“We’re changing course a little,” he said.

Mercer immediately asked, “Why?”

“Wind shifted.”

“How far?”

“Not far.”

“Are we still going to see whales?”

Keller looked toward the windows.

“If the whales cooperate.”

The woman laughed again. Her name was Ruth. Lena remembered because Ruth had offered her a ginger sweet before they left the harbor and told her not to be embarrassed if she got sick. Lena had said she didn’t get seasick. Ruth had said everybody did eventually.

Keller held the doorframe while the boat rolled.

“Anybody need anything?”

“A better forecast,” Mercer said.

Keller gave him a tired smile.

“I’ll order one.”

He started back toward the wheelhouse.

Lena said, “Something knocked under the floor.”

Her father looked at her, then at Keller.

Keller stopped.

“When?”

“Twice. Three knocks the first time.”

Mercer sighed softly enough that he probably thought only Ruth could hear.

Keller looked down the aisle.

“Probably gear shifting in the aft locker.”

“That’s what I said,” Mercer told no one in particular.

The unshaven man glanced at Lena.

“Did it move with the boat?”

She shook her head.

Her father said, “Mason, right?”

The man nodded.

“We met at the dock.”

Lena had no memory of that, although her father had spent fifteen minutes talking to strangers while she sat on the seawall.

Mason leaned forward and put his palm against the floor.

They all waited.

The boat groaned. Rain tapped the windows. Somewhere behind the wall, the engine kept up its rough, uneven drone.

Nothing knocked.

Mercer lifted his eyebrows.

Mason sat back.

“Could be the locker.”

Mercer smiled without looking at Lena.

Her father touched Danny’s sweatshirt with two fingers.

“You cold?”

“No.”

“You can put it on.”

“I’m fine.”

He withdrew his hand.

Lena knew he had not meant anything by it. That did not stop the irritation from arriving.

He had started doing that after Danny died—touching Danny’s things as though each one belonged to both of them now, or neither. He had taken the blue sweatshirt from Danny’s room the morning of the funeral and carried it downstairs before her mother made him put it back.

A month later, it appeared in the car.

Lena had never asked which of them put it there.

The boat dropped hard.

The tackle box jumped beneath Mercer’s boot. Ruth caught the edge of the sink beside her. A cup fell from its holder and rolled toward the back.

The engine coughed.

Keller turned before anyone spoke and went through the wheelhouse door.

Mason stood.

Her father looked at him.

“What?”

“That sounded expensive.”

He moved into the aisle and caught the overhead rail. Mercer got up too, though he had no reason to.

The engine steadied.

Keller called from the front, “Sit down.”

Mason sat.

Mercer remained standing until the boat leaned again and made the decision for him.

Lena’s father checked his phone.

She said, “It still won’t have service.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you keep checking?”

He looked at the screen a moment longer before locking it.

“Habit.”

“You didn’t used to.”

“I used to have service.”

That was almost a joke. Lena knew because he glanced at her afterward.

She looked back at the window.

Three knocks came through the floor.

This time everyone heard them.

Ruth lowered her ginger sweet.

Mercer lifted his boot from the tackle box.

The knocks came again.

Not from beneath him. Farther back, under the narrow bench where the emergency jackets were stored.

Mason stood without saying anything.

Keller opened the wheelhouse door at the same time.

“What did you move?” he asked.

Mercer pointed toward the bench.

“Nothing.”

Mason crossed the aisle and crouched beside it. The seat was held down by two metal clips. He opened the first.

Keller came out of the wheelhouse.

“Leave that.”

Mason looked over his shoulder.

“You said it was gear.”

“It is.”

“Then we’ll keep it from shifting.”

“I need everybody seated.”

Mason stood.

Keller checked the clips himself. The second had already come loose. He pressed it down until it caught.

The boat rolled.

Something struck the underside of the bench.

Once.

Ruth moved her feet away.

Mercer said, “That’s your gear?”

Keller kept one hand on the bench.

“Life jackets. Anchor line. Tool bag.”

“Something alive in there?” Ruth asked.

She sounded embarrassed as soon as she said it.

Mercer laughed.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Rat.”

“On a boat?”

“Rats famously hate boats.”

Mason looked at Keller.

“Open it.”

Keller shook his head.

“Not while we’re moving like this.”

Lena expected Mason to argue. Instead he sat down.

Keller went back to the wheelhouse.

The bench did not move again.

For several minutes, the only conversation was Mercer explaining that rats did, in fact, get onto boats but would not remain inside a sealed equipment locker. Ruth ate another sweet. Mason wiped water from the corner of his window with his sleeve, watched it return, and stopped trying.

Lena’s father leaned closer to her.

“Do you want headphones?”

“No.”

“You brought them.”

“I know.”

“You could listen to something.”

“I don’t want to.”

He nodded.

A minute later he said, “Your mother texted before we left.”

Lena looked at him.

“What did she say?”

“Just wanted to know we got here.”

“She could’ve texted me.”

“She probably did.”

Lena checked her own phone.

There was a message from her mother sent forty minutes earlier.

Let me know when you’re off the boat. Love you.

Nothing about Dad.

Lena put the phone away.

Her father watched her do it.

“She okay?”

“You can ask her.”

“I do.”

Lena pulled the sweatshirt higher over her knees.