HIPPOCAMPUS

ADAM NEVILL

Walls of water as slow as lava, black as coal, push the freighter up mountainsides, over frothing peaks, and into plunging descents. Across the rolling backs of vast waves the vessel ploughs ungainly, conjuring galaxies of bubbles around its passage and in its wake; vast cosmos appear for moments in the immensity of onyx water, forged and then sucked beneath the hull, or are sacrificed fizzing to the freezing night air.

On and on the great steel vessel wallops, staggering as if up from soiled knees before another nauseating drop into a trough. There is no rest and there is no choice but to rear, dizzy, near breathless, over and over again to brace the next great wave.

On board, lighted portholes and square windows offer tiny, yellow squares of reassurance amidst the lightless, roaring ocean that stretches all around and so far below. Reminiscent of a warm home offering a welcome on a winter night, the cabin lights are complemented by the two metal doorways that gape in the rear house. Their spilled light glosses portions of the slick deck.

All of the surfaces on board are steel, painted white. Riveted and welded tight to the deck and each other, these metal cubes of the superstructure are necklaced by yellow rails intended for those who must slip and reel about the flooded decks. Here and there, white ladders rise, and seem by their very presence to evoke a kang kang kang sound of feet going up and down quickly. Small lifeboat cases resembling plastic barrels are fixed at the sides of the upper deck, all of them intact and locked shut. The occasional crane peers out to sea with inappropriate nonchalance, or at the expectation of a purpose that has not come. Up above the distant bridge, from which no faces peer out, the aerials, satellite dishes and navigation masts appear to totter in panic, or to whip their poles, wires, and struts from side to side as if engaged in a frantic search of the ever-changing landscape of water below.

The vast steel door of the hold’s first hatch is raised and still attached to the crane by chains. This large square section of the hull is filled with white sacks, stacked upon each other in tight columns that fill the entire space. Those at the top of the pile are now dark and sopping with rain and sea water. In the centre, scores of the heavy bags have been removed from around a scuffed and dented metal container, painted black. Until its recent discovery, the container appears to have been deliberately hidden among the tiers of fibre sacks. One side of the double doors at the front of the old container has been jammed open.

Somewhere on deck, a small brass bell clangs its lonesome, undirected cry; a traditional affectation as there are speakers thrusting their silent horns out from the metallic walls and masts. But though the tiny, urgent sound of the bell is occasionally answered by a gull in better weather, out here tonight the bell is answered by nothing save the black, shrieking chaos of the wind and the water it ploughs.

There is a lane between the freighter’s rear house and the crane above the open hatch. The lane is unpeopled, wet, and lit by six lights in metal cages. MUSTER STATION: LIFEBOAT 2 is stencilled on the white wall in red lettering. Passing through the lane, the noise of the engine intake fans fills the space hotly and the diesel heat creates the apprehension of being close to moving machine parts. As if functioning as evidence of the ship’s purpose and life, and rumbling across every surface like electric current in each part of the vessel, the continuous vibration of the engine’s exhaust thrums.

Above the open hatch, and beside the lifeboat assembly point, from out of one of the doors that has been left gaping in the rear house, drifts a thick warmth, as if to engulf wind-seared faces in the way the summer sun cups cheeks.

Once across the metal threshold the engine fibrillations deepen as if muted underground. The bronchial roar of the intake fans dull. Inside, the salty-spittle scour of the night air, and the noxious mechanical odours, are replaced by the scent of old emulsion and the stale chemicals of exhausted air fresheners. A staircase leads down.

But so above so below. As on deck, no one walks here. All is still, lit bright and faintly rumbled by the bass strumming of the exhaust. The communal area appears calm and indifferent to the intense, black energies of the hurricane outside.

A long, narrow corridor runs through the rear house. Square lenses in the steel ceiling illuminate the plain passageway. The floor is covered in linoleum, the walls are matte yellow, the doors to the cabins trimmed with wood laminate. Half way down, two opposing doors hang open before lit rooms.

The first room was intended for recreation to ease a crew’s passage on a long voyage, but no one seeks leisure now. Coloured balls roll across the pool table with the swell that shimmies the ship. Two cues lie amongst the balls and move back and forth like flotsam on the tide. At rest upon the table tennis table are two worn paddles. The television screen remains as empty and black as the rain-thrashed canopy of sky above the freighter. One of the brown leatherette sofas is split in two places and masking tape suppresses the spongy eruptions of cushion entrails.

Across the corridor, a long bank of washing machines and dryers stand idle in the crew’s laundry room. Strung across the ceiling are washing line cords that loop like skipping ropes from the weight of the clothing that is pegged in rows: jeans, socks, shirts, towels. One basket has been dropped upon the floor and has spilled its contents towards the door.

Up one flight of stairs, the bridge is empty too; monitor screens glow green, consoles flash and flicker. One stool lies on its side and the cushioned seat rolls back and forth. A solitary black handgun skitters this way and that too, across the floor. The weapon adds a touch of tension to the otherwise tranquil area of operations, as if a drama has recently passed, been interrupted, or even abandoned.

Back down and deeper inside the ship, and further along the crew’s communal corridor, the stainless steel galley glimmers dully in white light. A thin skein of steam drifts over the work surfaces and clouds against the ceiling above the oven. Two large and unwashed pots have boiled dry upon bright red cooker rings. From around the oven door, wisps of black smoke puff. Inside the oven, a tray of potatoes has baked to carbon and now resembles the fossils of ancient reptile guano.

Across the great chopping board on the central table lies a scattering of chopped vegetables, cast wide by the freighter’s lurching and twisting. The ceiling above the work station is railed with steel and festooned with swaying kitchen wear. Six large steaks, encrusted with crushed salt, await the abandoned spatula and the griddle that is now hissing black and dry. A large refrigerator door, resembling the gate of a bank vault, hangs open to reveal crowded shelves that gleam in a vanilla light.

Inside a metal sink the size of a bathtub lies a human scalp.

Lopped roughly from the top of a head and left to drain beside the plughole, the gingery mess looks absurdly artificial. But the clod of hair was once plumbed into a circulatory system because the hair is matted dark and wet at the fringes and surrounded by flecks of ochre. The implement that removed the scalp lies upon the draining board: a long knife, the edge serrated for sawing. Above the adjacent work station, at the end of the rack that holds the cook’s knives, several items are missing.

Some dripping thing was taken from the sink area and out of the galley and along the corridor, and down one flight of stairs to the crew’s quarters. Red droplets that have splashed as round as rose petals lead a trail into the first cabin that is situated in an identical corridor to the communal passage on the deck above. The door to this cabin is open. Inside, the trail of scarlet is immediately lost within the engulfing borders of a far bigger stain.

A fluorescent jacket and cap hang upon a peg just inside the door of the cabin. All is neat and orderly upon the bookshelf holding volumes that brush the low white ceiling. A chest of drawers doubles as a desk. The articles on the desk top are weighed down by a glass paperweight and are overlooked by silver-framed photographs of wives and children at the rear of the desk. Upon the top of the wardrobe, life jackets and hardhats are stowed. Two twin beds, arranged close together, are unoccupied. Beneath the bed frames, orange survival suits remain neatly folded and tightly packed.

The bedclothes of the berth on the right-hand side are tidy and undisturbed. But the white top sheet and the yellow blanket of the adjacent berth droop to the linoleum floor like idle sails. There is a suggestion that an occupant departed this bed hurriedly, or was removed swiftly. The bed linen has been yanked from the bed and only remains tucked under the mattress in one corner. A body was also ruined in that bed: the middle of the mattress is blood-sodden and the cabin now reeks of salt and rust. Crimson gouts from a bedside frenzy have flecked and speckled the wall beside the bed, and part of the ceiling.

Attached to the room is a small en suite bathroom that just manages to hold a shower cubicle and small steel sink. The bathroom is pristine, the taps, shower head, and towel rail sparkle. All that is amiss is a single slip-on shoe, dropped to the floor just in front of the sink. A foot remains inside the shoe with part of a hairy ankle extending from the uppers.

From the cabin more than just a trail of droplets can be followed down the passage and to the neighbouring berths. A long intermittent streak of red has been smeared along the length of the corridor and past the four doors that all hang open and drift back and forth as the ship lists. From each of these cabins, other collections have been made.

What occupants there once were in the crew’s quarters all appear to have arisen from their beds before stumbling towards the doors as if cause for alarm had been announced nearby. Just before the doorways of their berths, they seem to have met their ends quickly. Wide, lumpy puddles, like spilled stew made with red wine, are splashed across the floors. One crew member sought refuge inside the shower cubicle of the last cabin because the bathroom door is broken open, and the basin of the shower is drenched near black from a sudden and conclusive emptying. Livestock hung above the cement of a slaughterhouse and emptied from the throat, leave similar stains.

Turning left at the end of the passage, the open door of the captain’s cabin is visible. Inside, the sofa beside the coffee table and the two easy chairs sit expectant but empty. The office furniture and shelves reveal no disarray. But set upon the broad desk are three long wooden crates. The tops have been levered off, and the packing straw that was once inside is now littered about the table’s surface and the carpeted floor below. Intermingled with the straw is a plethora of dried flower petals.

Upon a tablecloth spread on the floor before the captain’s desk, two small forms have been laid out, side by side, in profile. They are the size of five year old children and black in colour. Not dissimilar to the preserved forms of ancient peoples, protected behind glass in museums for antiquities, they appear to be shrivelled and contorted with age. Vestiges of a fibrous binding have fused with their petrified flesh and obscured their arms, if they are in possession of such limbs. The two small figures are primarily distinguished by the irregular shape and silhouettes of their skulls. Their heads appear oversized, and the swollen dimension of the crania contributes to the leathery ghastliness of the grimacing faces. The rear of each head is fanned by an incomplete mane of spikes, while the front of each head elongates and protrudes into a snout. The desiccated figures have also had their lower limbs bound tightly together to suggest long and curling tails.

Inside the second crate is a large black stone, crudely hollowed out in the middle. The dull and chipped character of the block also suggests a great age. A modern addition has been made, or offered, to the hollow within the stone. A single human foot. The shoe around the disarticulated foot matches the footwear inside the shower cubicle of the crew member’s cabin.

The contents of the third crate have barely been disturbed. In there lie several artefacts that resemble jagged flints, or the surviving blades of old weapons or knives to which the handles are missing. The implements are hand-forged from a stone as black as that of the basin that has become a receptacle for a human foot.

Pictures of a ship and framed maps have been removed from the widest wall, and upon this wall a marker pen has been used to depict the outlines of two snouted or trumpeting figures that are attached by what appears to be long and entwined tails. The imagery is crude and childlike, but the silhouettes are not dissimilar to the embalmed remains laid out upon the tablecloth.

Below the two figures are imprecise sticklike forms that appear to cavort in emulation of the much larger and snouted characters. Set atop some kind of uneven pyramid shape, another group of human shapes have been excitedly and messily drawn with spikes protruding from their heads or headdresses, and between these groups another plainer individual has been held aloft and bleeds from the torso into a waiting receptacle. Detail has been included to indicate that the sacrificed victim’s feet have been removed and its legs bound.

The mess of human leavings that led here departs the captain’s cabin and rises up a staircase to the deck above and into an unlit canteen. Light falls into this room from the corridor, and in the half-light two long tables, and one smaller table for the officers, is revealed. Upon the two larger crew tables long reddish shapes are stretched out and glisten: some twelve bodies dwindling into darkness as they stretch away from the door. As if unzipped across the front, what was once inside each of the men has now been gathered and piled upon chairs where the same men once sat and ate. Their feet, some bare, some still inside shoes, have been amputated and are set in a messy pile at the head of the two tables.

At the far end of the cafeteria that is barely touched by the residual light, and to no living audience, perversely, inappropriately and yet grimly touching, two misshapen shadows flicker and leap upon the dim wall as if in a joyous reunion, and then wheel and wheel about each other, ferociously, but not without grace, while attached, it seems, by two long and spiny tails.

Back outside and on deck, it can be seen that the ship continues to meander, inebriated with desolation and weariness, or perhaps it has even been punched drunk from the shock of what has occurred below deck.

The bow momentarily rises up the small hillside of a wave and, just once, near expectantly, looks toward the distant harbour the vessel has slowly drifted toward overnight since changing its course. On shore and across the surrounding basin of treeless land, the lights of a small harbour town glow in white pinpricks as if desperate to be counted in this black storm. Here and there, the harbour lights define the uneven silhouettes of small buildings, suggesting stone facades in which glass shimmers to form an unwitting beacon for what exists out here upon these waves.

Oblivious to anything but its own lurching and clanking, the ship rolls on the swell, inexorably drifting on the current that picked up its great steel bulk the day before and now slowly propels the hull, fizzing and crashing, but perhaps not so purposelessly as was first assumed, towards the shore.

At the prow, having first bound himself tight to the railing with rope, a solitary and unclothed figure nods a bowed head towards the land. The pale flesh of the rotund torso is whipped and occasionally drenched by sea spray, but still bears the ruddy impressions of bestial deeds that were both boisterous and thorough. From navel to sternum the curious, temporary figurehead is open, or has been opened blackly to the elements, and the implement used to carve such crude entrances to the heart is now long gone, perhaps dropped from stained and curling fingers into that far-below obsidian whirling and clashing of a monumental ocean.

As if to emulate the status of a king, where the scalp has been carved away, a crude series of spikes, fashioned from nails, have been hammered into a pattern resembling a spine or fin across the top of the dead man’s skull. Both of his feet are missing and his legs have been bound with twine into one, single, gruesome tail.