Hell Rig (4 page)

Fifteen minutes later, they were ready to crank it up. Tolson turned the switch and pressed the starter button. After a few heart-stopping seconds, it caught. The lights flickered at first before coming on more steadily. Tolson revved up the engine a few rpms and checked the electrical panel.

“It’s drawing pretty heavily. We’ll have to cut out a few circuits with just the one generator operating.” He turned to her and smiled. “Not afraid of the dark, are you?”

She smiled back. “Not as long as I can see where your hands are.”

“Fun-ny. I guess we can head back.”

She hesitated. “I want to check out the radio shack first. We might want to hurry up that supply ship.”

Tolson held open the door. “After you, love,” he said, grinning at his play on words.

* * * *

Ed was speaking with Lisa and Tolson as Jeff, Easton and Gleason entered their new office. Waters, McAndrews and Sims were not there.

“What’s up?” Jeff asked after noticing Lisa’s puzzled expression.

“As I was just telling Ed, we got one generator running. The other one is trashed. No chance of repairing it. There’s only enough fuel for two or three days,” Tolson said. “We need to prioritize our power consumption needs.”

Ed nodded and turned to Jeff and Gleason. “Shut down the power to any areas that aren’t critical and turn off any equipment you find left on. We have a supply ship coming in a couple of days but let’s not take any chances.”

“Lisa,” Jeff prompted, not certain he wanted to hear her news.

She nodded and swallowed before speaking. “More bad news, I’m afraid. I checked the radio before we came over. It was badly smashed either by the storm or… something.” She did not mention the Digger Man’s name but it was obvious to everyone whom she meant. “I think I can piece together something using the portable unit we brought with us, but the antenna is down. We need to set it back up. We’ll need the crane for that.”

Ed turned to Jeff, “You go with them to operate the crane after shutting down the unnecessary lines.”

Jeff nodded. Operating the crane was his main thing, the thing that set him apart from the others. With his hands on the controls, he could make a crane pick a dime out of someone’s pocket, or so he liked to brag. “The top deck crane looks good,” he replied. “The cellar deck crane’s gone, though. Most of it is lying on the bottom of the Gulf.”

Flying in, he had noticed the tangle of lines and twisted metal where the cellar deck crane had once jutted out from the platform, convenient for loading supplies into the mudroom and lower level. Only a stub of the derrick and part of a smashed control cabin remained.

Lisa sighed. Exhaustion showed on her face. “Where do I sleep?” she asked.

“We can double up, if you’d like,” Tolson offered.

“No thanks, I sleep nude. You couldn’t stand it,” she quickly shot back.

Tolson grabbed his chest and pretended to be wounded. Jeff thought the newbie might just fit in.

“Come on. I’ll show you,” he offered. He rolled his eyes at Tolson, who gave him a wink and a thumbs up.

“Looks like my old college dorm room,” Lisa commented to him as she surveyed her new temporary home. She sniffed the air. “A few fresh flowers, a shot of room deodorizer, curtains and I’ll be in business.”

“Good luck on the flowers. I haven’t even seen any weeds growing out here, but there is some room deodorizer with the cleaning supplies. There’s also a small private bathroom next door, once we get the water running. When the supply ship gets here, we’ll have fresh water for showers down the hall. For now, we’ll have to use sea water to wash up,” Jeff explained. Remembering the bloody stains, he added. “The showers might need a bit of cleaning.”

“Better than taking a dump over the side,” Gleason repeated, laughing uproariously as he walked by, peeking into the room.

Jeff ignored him.

She smiled at Jeff. “Oh well. I guess we’ll all smell like death warmed over in a few days.” Her face suddenly paled and her brow wrinkled as she realized what she had said. “God, I don’t know why I said that.”

“There’s an outdoor safety shower just around the corner,” Jeff said, trying to get her mind off the rig’s dark history. “It might have a separate fresh water tank. We can rig up some kind of privacy curtain and use it, maybe.”

She smiled at him again. “Yeah, sure.” She looked thankful for his redirecting the conversation. “How long have you worked for Ed?”

“About eight years, ever since I graduated high school. My grades were too bad for college,” he added defensively. “It was either this or the Navy.”

Her light laughter disarmed him. “I pulled a few C’s myself freshman year until I buckled down and got serious about it. I had to cut out the late night sorority parties and weekend binges down in New Orleans.”

The way she pronounced New Orleans—
Narlins
—reminded him of his dad.

“I spent a few weekends in New Orleans myself, especially during
Mardi Gras
. I lost my car once. It took me two days to find it right where I had left it in a pay lot. Cost me thirty bucks. Even reported it as stolen. Boy was I embarrassed to admit what had happened.”

She smiled. “I bet it happens all the time.”

He shook his head. “Not to me. I slowed down my partying after that. Ed asked me to work for him. Best decision I ever made.”

“You like Ed.” It was a statement, not a question.

Jeff looked around to make sure no one could overhear. “He’s like my second dad,” he admitted.

“That’s good. Ed knew my father. He asked me to join Re-Berth right after I graduated. This is my first real job. I have to make a good impression.”

“You will. Welcome to the company,” Jeff said with a big grin and holding out his hand. Her hand felt warm and soft in his, but her handshake was firm. He caught a whiff of her perfume, a delicate floral blend. It suited her well.

“You two want a room?” Gleason asked loudly from the doorway. He had been quietly listening to the entire conversation out of sight around the corner.

Jeff’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment as he quickly dropped Lisa’s hand.

“Yeah, find us a nice cozy suite with a bath if you don’t mind,” Lisa snapped. She smiled at Jeff. “Don’t let him bother you.”

“Thanks,” he said, ducking his head and turning to leave.

“Strange,” Lisa said.

Jeff turned back to her. She held her cell phone in her hand with a quizzical expression.

“What is it?”

“I’ve got plenty of bars but I can’t dial out.”

Jeff pulled out his cell phone. “Use mine.” He wasn’t sure why he even bothered to bring it. He had no one on shore to call. He looked at the screen. “Same here. Plenty of bars but no dial tone.”

Lisa smiled. “Oh, well, I guess my sister can wait.”

Jeff wandered out of the building as Lisa began to unpack. He saw Ric Waters leaning over the railing, staring into the water.

“What are you lookin’ at?” Jeff asked as he approached Waters.

Waters said nothing at first. Then, as if suddenly noticing Jeff’s presence, he looked up. His eyes bore that same haunted expression as earlier but there was a thin-lipped smile on his face.

“You guys think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

Jeff was surprised by Waters’ question and didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to antagonize Waters, yet felt Waters would know somehow if he lied.

“Some of the guys do,” he answered truthfully. “Me, I don’t judge too quickly.”

Waters nodded. “That’s good. I didn’t believe in ghosts until I came back here after...after the fires. When Trey called me on the field radio and told me what was happening, I didn’t believe him at first. It just didn’t make any sense. I knew Digger Man. When I saw it, all the death and destruction, I thought Digger Man had gone postal or something. He had been out for over three months except for a couple of days back in New Orleans. It’s been known to happen,” he said, looking at Jeff defensively.

“When I got here and saw what Digger Man had done…” He shook his head and closed his eyes as if the memories hurt too badly. “I…couldn’t believe it. Bodies were everywhere. Some I couldn’t recognize, men I’d worked with for months. The crew shack…” He glanced to the blackened scar where the module that had served as crew’s quarters had sat. The outline of the portable building still remained etched into the concrete deck but the module itself had washed overboard during the hurricane. Only a few of the charred bodies had been picked up later, floating in the Gulf.

“What happened?” Jeff asked. “I heard the rig caught fire.”

Waters swayed and moaned. He shook his head so violently that Jeff thought he might hurt himself. “Digger Man connected the automatic sprinkler system lines into the natural gas distillate lines, before triggering the fire alarm. Eight guys, the entire night tour, were burned alive in their bunks.”

Jeff swallowed hard, looking at the blackened foundations where the crew quarters had stood trying to imagine their inconceivable horror as Waters continued.

“There were bodies scattered about, hacked open and dismembered, parts of bodies and bloody trails of guts everywhere.” Waters put his hands over his eyes and sobbed. “I found Digger Man hanging from the crane. He had run steel rods through his chest and hands and attached them with cables to the hook, and then disemboweled himself and used the remote to lift himself twenty feet into the air. His eyes were missing but he stared down at me like he could see deep into my soul.

I didn’t find everyone’s bodies and hoped some of them got away in the escape craft, but I found it later still in the rack. I guess he tossed their bodies overboard, or maybe they just got scared and jumped, taking their chances with the hurricane.”

Waters looked up at Jeff, as if judging whether to continue.

“They were all dead, but there was something here, something invisible lurking in the shadows, following my every move. I could feel it watching me as I stumbled around in shock. I could feel it in the rain, hear it in the thunder. I could smell it even over the horrible stench of death. It smelled of old graves and ancient tombs, of musty rooms and locked basements. It smelled like you imagine hell would smell, sulfurous and stupefying.”

“There’s lots of sulfur in these old wells,” Jeff reminded him.

Waters shook his head negatively. “I know. I’ve seen the piles of sulfur at Port Sulfur over in Plaquemine Parish before, but this was different. It was sulfur after it had been burned for a long time, since the beginning of time maybe, or brimstone.”

Waters’ eyes glazed over for a moment and Jeff thought he had slipped over the edge into insanity, if he was not already there.

As if reading his mind, Waters glanced up and said quietly, “They put me under psychological observation in the hospital after they picked me up drifting in my boat three days after the hurricane. I told them what I had found and they thought I was crazy, delusional from the shock, like combat fatigue. When they got back to the rig and found Digger Man and the others, I think at first they suspected me. Finally, they concluded that Digger Man had gone mad and had somehow killed a few of the crew and the rest had died during the storm. Global invented the rig fire story in order to cover up the insurance company’s investigation. It wouldn’t look too good in their quarterly report to have twenty-one murders.”

Jeff could understand Waters’ unbalanced emotional state, even commiserate with him, but one question bothered him. “Why did you come back here?”

“Because he’s not finished yet.”

“Digger Man?”

Waters shook his head. “No, not the Digger Man. They buried his body with the others. He was the twenty-second victim. No, I mean whoever or whatever took over his body that day. He comes to me in my dreams sometimes, trying to make me do things, horrible things. I can’t see him but I know he’s here, inside.” Waters touched his chest, gently as first, but quickly clawed at it as if an attempt to dig out his misery. “I told the docs once and they said it was survivor’s guilt, like I didn’t think I was worthy of surviving and needed to die with my buddies.” A shudder ran down Waters, body. “I held out as long as I could, but I know now it’s no good. He wants me here as a witness.”

“Witness for what?” Jeff asked.

Waters stared at him before replying. “Your deaths. All of you. He wants me too, but last so I can witness his resurrection.” He laughed. “Lucky Thirteen. That’s what we called this damn rig. Hell Rig is what we should call it now. Look at it! It looks like a black skeleton of the Grim Reaper striding the depths, seeking lost souls to drag down into the briny deep. Save yourself, boy. Take the girl and leave this place. Your souls are unblemished, protected. I can see that. The others…” He shook his head.

“Have you ever thought about shadows and light? I have a lot since that day. I think maybe we have it all wrong with our science and technology. Shadows aren’t places where the light doesn’t penetrate, a by-product of the interplay of light on an object. That’s too passive, too mundane. I believe it’s the other way round. Light is just the absence of shadows. There was darkness before there was light wasn’t there, in the Bible, I mean? Have you ever wondered what lived in those shadows? There are shadows in the universe as large as galaxies. Half the universe is dark matter. What do you think it is?” he looked at Jeff expectantly.