Down With His Ship

 Down With His Ship

Kaosu Narvna 2020

The windshield kept fogging up. Too stubborn to the dash's many buttons and controls to defog the glass, Mortimer would crack the backseat windows when the visibility came close to nil. It let the rain in, little droplets on the seats. At least it didn't waste any energy.

"Keepin a family in th’tiny house…" he grumbled to himself, checking for the information signs posted on the side of the road. "Can’ see why they aven't paid up rent."

He took an exit off onto a dirt road, uneven and slim. The edges sloped down sharply, eroded around rocks embedded in the earth. Neopiscus Campground was engraved in a rustic stone sign. Not far beyond were little blue road signs, square, the standard tent and camper images portrayed upon them. In this weather, any man without a lay of the land wouldn't make heads or tails of the paths branching off every which way into the woods—but he'd driven up here enough times to know his way. The weather wasn't ideal for neither camping nor travel, but it was about time he stopped putting it off and made the trip.

Mortimer was good friends with the family who ran the grounds, he was good pals with George, the owner, the owner back in college. Without that, he might not have been able to secure the kind of deal he had. Some years back, he’d got his hands on an old tug. Remodelling it for full-time living was a great project, working on the boat every weekend. A slip and fall turned that short-term goal into a retirement hobby, only if he's lucky. George was kind enough to let him park and maintain it on quiet little Lake Neopiscus.

It didn't run well anymore, the old tug. It became weak with age, rendering itself unworkable—perfect to be remodelled into a houseboat. Now, unable to retire as comfortably as he'd once desired, he rented out the boat to whoever would be willing to cover the costs of its port space. If a family looking to switch themselves over to a sustainable, tiny-boathouse lifestyle would take care of the old girl? Mortimer allowed it, until the cash-flow stopped. This change was concerning more than anything. They'd been good tenants—better than most looking for stationary houseboats. Never a late payment, nor fuss, nor unreasonable damage reported. And yet, over a week had passed the first of the month without word, contact, nor transaction. He'd like to have thought that he was a saint, as far as most landlords could be judged, thus Mort decided to check in before making assumptions.

 

He parked in the wee lot riddled with weeds, headlights illuminating his tenants' own vehicle, a beat-up old minivan with rust developing at the edges of its frame. One of those "stick families" was plastered on the rear glass: mum, dad, two boys, a dog. "Least they're in," Mortimer said, parking his car beside theirs. He left the headlights on, he wouldn't be around long, he figured. Anything to help with the fog.

He trudged over to the rickety old pier, with its wobbly segments and missing boards. The tug was the only thing it got used for these days—he's been meaning to do some work on it for a few years now, never managed to find the time. That bottom rail needed fixing, where the deck nearly touched down to open water.

She was still beautiful, even in all this fog. His perfect idea of sea life sat before him, the old tyres wrapping around the bow, two stories above the deck—she looked like something out of a cartoon, perfectly vintage. Her more recent paint jobs kept her in good condition, even if they detracted from her authenticity. Carefully stepping onto the main deck, feeling her bob ever so slightly, Mortimer cautiously stepped his way to the cabin door. Much to his chagrin, the deck was smeared with putrid brown sludge, from pier to the bow's tip. The trail went past the door, streaky and fluid at points, semi-solid at others. Bits of kelp and colour peppered the smears. He did his best not to step in it. The windows were shuttered, and the bridge's screens were much the same. A weak light filtered through them, but he couldn't see inside.

 

Nothing. He knocked again, louder this time.

 

He could hear the muffled barks of a small dog.

 

No one came to the door—and given the size of the place, it's not as though they wouldn't have heard him, "Better still be’ere…gone all quiet."

As Mortimer stepped away from the door, the boat rocked. It lurched from side to side, throwing him off balance for a moment—fortunately he still has his wits, steadying himself on outer walls. He'd never felt her make such a rolling motion, as she kept to the shallows. Sure-footed, he slowly walked up towards the front of the bow. The rain collected in little pools on the deck, meandering in whichever way her body tilted.

Leaning over the bow, he felt around for the tyre fender, trying to get his hand under the lip of the front-most one. “Gave ‘em my notice, jus need my spares.” He stared down into the muddy shallows, steadying himself with another firmly planted hand. Two, no, three pairs of lights reflected back at him from just below the water, as something dark broke the surface. It wasn't unusual for little fish to gather in the shallows, with the weeds and eggs—he thought, the rain must have drawn out quite a few of them. The water bore a dark, fluid shadow, even through the fog. The lake's sandy shore wasn't visible below them, only a hint of movement, shrouded in disturbed mud.

Mortimer felt it out, with some difficulty. The spare set of keys rested in the top of that old tyre. He had super glued a little case for it there, where no one else might find it.

She lurched again, dipping him towards the lake. The fish must have fled, as the reflection returned to the peaks of disrupted water. The sand and dwarf stones were faintly visible on the floor just moments after.

As he turned back to look towards the door, Mortimer realized the extent of the awful deck stain. Across this side lay a nearly irreparable disaster—the deck needed to be repainted for certain. What was a trail along the other side became a moistened pool of dark, rusty muck here. The rain revived the goopy mess, lifting a copper taste up and into the wind. It spread across the entirety of the deck, in its body pieces of cloth well saturated with the ooze, even gluing a child's drawing to the floor. The boy must have liked shark movies.

It seemed nothing was spared, even the bridge ladder held rungs victim to the chaos, both on the first few steps, and at shoulder height. A drippy handprint decorated the side of the cabin.

"No wonder they didn' wan me t’see -" Mortimer grumbled like an old ratting terrier, only to hear something collide with the bow, followed by an immense splash and a struggle. The dog barked louder then, snoot pushed up against one of the windows, below the blinds. That thread of light broke through the fog just enough to see the once- white deck had been well stained a reddish-brown, radiating out from the path of destruction. Clumps of kelp cluttered the surface, algae and mud stringing them together to make slimy, rusty cobwebs. “...Kid must’ve draggd a couple’a buckets of muck up’ere or summat.” There were no stones, nor limpets, nor buckets.

He knocked on the little side window, quickly that moist little nose pushed straight against the glass, fogging at the spot. “Hey bud, where’s your mam?” Mort watched as wide eyes peeped through, scrunching up the shades. For a moment he’d stop yapping, just breathing, looking. “Why y’in there?” The dog returned to clicking its nails against the ground, scampering from window to door with unusual zest.

 

Once he lost the dog’s attention, Mortimer took great care in returning to the lower-down part of the deck, where the water lapped up onto the floor. The rails guided him back, trying to step in the sludge as little as he could manage—he didn’t want to risk another fall in his old age, that half-coagulated mucous would be perfect for it. He thought, this rain might wash some of it down, at least.

The old tug rocked as he struggled for the bottom door’s lock, with little light to guide his shaky hands. Muscle memory could only help him so much. Mortimer could hear the dog bumping up against the door, running back to the window, and again—barking up a storm as hearty as the one raging outside as it went.

A splash, a wet thud. The boat tipped back towards the land, and Mort’s back foot went back with it—he looked back and down to try and catch himself as he fell, and saw it there, after it jumped the shallow rail. Black as ink, it slithered up the deck towards him. Headlight beams scattered off its oily back, many-toothed maw and distanced, milky eyes of spider’s quantity. What light entered its world was lost upon the depths of its throat, the highlights of reflective teeth going back into its esophageal void. Lost between centipede and eel it half-slithered half-skittered its way up towards Mortimer, one foot in his grave, then he was two.

He hardly had the time to call out from his old throat, as he was pulled swiftly down into the shadowy shallows and thrashed against the hull’s underside, dragged through the mud. His keys floated up to the surface, hugging the side of the tug until the water calmed—they bobbed on the disturbed tide, depositing among the weeds and frog clutches. The dog kept barking for a time, before it had no choice but to be silent.

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