The Devil in Gray (35 page)

Inside the cavity he saw greasy wet planks, blackened with age, which could have been a section of a ship's deck, although most of them had given way, and there was another cavity below them, where the ship's hold must have been.

Queen Aché and Hicks came crouching up to join him. Hicks knocked his head on the ceiling and said, “God
damn
it.”

“You see that?” Decker said. “I'll bet you that was the ship that was carrying Major Shroud's casket—the
Nathan Cooper
, wasn't it? When they started renovating the station last year, all the drilling must have brought the ceiling down, and opened up the old Shockoe dock.”

“You mean to say they built the station right over the ship, without even bothering to move it?”

“Maybe it wasn't practical to move it. Maybe the builders were too
scared
to move it. It looks like they filled in the creek and buried the ship, too.”

Decker tried to penetrate the ship's hold with his flashlight, but the darkness seemed to swallow the beam of light completely, and absolutely nothing was reflected back. His jaw was trembling, not only because of the chilly damp down here in the crawl space, but because he could sense that something deeply malevolent was very close. It was the same feeling that he had experienced in his nightmares—the feeling that somebody was rushing toward him, somebody who wanted to do him terrible harm.

He paused for a moment and took a steadying breath, and then another, even though the air down here was so fetid. He had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but now he was conscious of the tons and tons of brick and masonry that were weighing down on him, and the fact that he would have to crouch like Quasimodo to escape anything that came after him.

“Lieutenant?” Hicks asked. “You okay, Lieutenant?”

“What? Never felt better.”

“You really think there's something down here?”

“I'm sure of it. Let's get down there and check it out.”

“That deck don't look none too safe.”

“Well, we'll just have to tread easy, then, won't we?”

Queen Aché knelt down in the mud. Her candle flame was dancing in the draft, so her expression seemed to change from one second to the next—amused, indifferent, scornful, disturbed. “Changó is here, no question about it. Yemayá can sense his Changó's presence, very strong.”

“In that case, we'd better go get him.”

Queen Aché gripped his sleeve. “Don't forget. You must acknowledge Changó's greatness. You must beg him to forgive you for all of your misdeeds. Whatever Major Shroud looks like, however he talks to you, it is Changó to whom you are paying your respects, not him. When Changó is distracted—then and only then can you deal with Major Shroud.”

“How will I know when that is?”

“Because I will tell you. You cannot see Changó, but Yemayá can.”

“Okay, then. Hicks, you ready?”

“I guess so.”

Decker turned around and cautiously climbed backward down the heaps of rubble. His shoes immediately dislodged broken bricks and crumbling mortar, creating a miniature landslide that rattled onto the planking of the ship below. As he climbed down lower, he saw that a rusted iron girder had fallen across the ship, preventing the rubble from dropping any farther, so that there was a gap of at least three feet between the rubble and the deck. Grunting with effort, he edged himself around so that he could jump down. More bricks suddenly slipped beneath his feet and before he could jump he fell awkwardly sideways and landed on his side, bruising his shoulder and his hip. He said, “Fuck!” His candle rolled away from him, into a pool of stagnant water, where it instantly fizzled out.

“Are you okay, sir?” Hicks called.

“Terrific, damn it.”

“Your candle!” Queen Aché warned him. “You must light your candle!”

Decker climbed to his feet and retrieved his candle. He dried it on his sleeve and then lit it again with his cigarette lighter. “Queen Aché? You coming down next?”

Queen Aché slid down the debris and landed on the deck with a stumble that was almost graceful. Hicks came next, slithering and cursing, although he managed to jump over the gap and land on his feet.

Queen Aché brushed herself down. “Try to show no fear when Major Shroud appears. He is one of the walking dead, but like all
zombis
he doesn't know it. He believes that he is still the same man that he was when he was sealed in his coffin, so you must talk to him as if he is a normal person. While you are doing that, I will present your
plaza
to Changó and see if I can draw his attention away from protecting Major Shroud's head.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

“One thing, though … whatever you do, make no attempt to kill Major Shroud until I tell you that Changó has left him unprotected. Otherwise, you will be directly attacking Changó and Changó's anger will be terrible.”

“You got it.”

They walked along the deck to the fathomless hole where the planks had rotted away. Decker leaned forward and swept his flashlight from side to side. He could make out some of the timbers of the lower decks, and some coils of rope, and a bulging bundle of gray slime that must have been a bale of cotton, but no sign of a casket. “I guess I'll have to go down there and look for it.”

“For Christ's sake, Lieutenant, be careful.”

“Hicks, old man, this is part of the job.”

Although most of the interior of the ship had been gutted by wood rot and boring beetle, there was still the skeleton of a corroded iron companionway clinging to the right-hand side. Decker inched his way toward it and managed to reach out and get a grip on the uppermost railing. The deck planking splintered wetly beneath his weight, but he paused and took a sharp breath, and then he managed to swing himself around and perch both feet on one of the steps.

“You stay there,” he told Queen Aché and Hicks. “I'll shout out if I find anything.”

He descended the companionway a step at a time, testing each step to make sure that it wouldn't give way. It was at least twenty feet down to the remains of the next deck, and it looked so rotten that—if he fell—he would probably fall right through it, and down to the next deck, and the keel, if the
Nathan Cooper
still had a keel.

It took him nearly five minutes to climb down to the bottom of the companionway. He looked around, trying to orient himself, and trying to work out which way the ship had been docked. The likelihood was that it had been sailed into Shockoe Creek prow-first, and since the sides of the ship tapered off to his right, the hold was probably amidships, to his left.

Holding up his candle in his left hand and his flashlight in his right, he crossed the deck toward a darkened, dripping passageway. The floor was heaped with dead crabs in various stages of decay, like the chopped-off hands of hundreds of massacred children, and the stench was so strong that he couldn't stop himself from letting out a loud, cackling retch. He carefully stepped his way aft, his shoes slipping and sliding, and the flickering flame from his candle made it look as if the crabs were still alive, and crawling on top of each other.

As he neared the end of the passageway he heard a loud, flat, clattering sound. He reached a wooden door with broken hinges, and wrenched it open. Beyond the door was more absolute darkness. He stepped out onto a rusted iron platform and found himself in the
Nathan Cooper
's hold. Water was cascading down from the hatches above, and that was what was causing all the clatter. Rainwater probably, thought Decker, from the overflowing storm drains along East Main Street. The hold was hung with dozens of heavy-duty chains, which swung and clinked together as the water poured down them. Decker was uncomfortably reminded of the hold of the spaceship
Nostromo
, in
Alien
. Chains, and water.

He directed his flashlight downward, systematically sweeping the floor of the hold. At first he thought that it contained nothing more than some stoved-in barrels and a stack of packing cases, but then he shone it right over to the far side, deep into the shadows, and he saw a heap of timbers and rubble, and a large grayish green box, a quarter buried in bricks, tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees.

He transferred his candle to his flashlight hand, and hefted out his revolver. Then he carefully swung himself around and climbed down the iron ladder that led to the floor of the hold, testing each rung as he went. He had almost reached the bottom when he stepped right up to the top of his sock in stinking, freezing-cold river water. “Shit,” he muttered. The hold was flooded more than a foot deep. Definitely no chance of salvaging his loafers now.

Holding his candle and his flashlight high, he waded across the hold toward the grayish green box. Ripples spread across the water and splashed against the broken barrels. Beneath the water, the deck was greasy with weed, and he was only a third of the way across when he slipped, and soaked the legs of his pants right up to his knees.

He stopped for a moment, but he didn't say anything. There was nobody to blame but himself. But if Hicks had been here, he would have been shouted at for ten minutes nonstop.

At last he reached the box. Now that he could see it close up, Decker didn't have any doubt that it was Major Shroud's casket. It was huge, more than eight feet long, hand-beaten out of thick lead. A face was embossed on the top of it—a slitty-eyed, almond-shaped face with a mailbox mouth. It looked like the tribal faces that hung on the wall in the Mask Bar.

At first, Decker thought that the casket was still intact, but when he waded his way around it, he saw that one side of it was heavily corroded, pitted and pustular like gangrenous flesh, and split wide open. He bent down and shone his flashlight inside. He could make out bunches of dried herbs and mummified apples and little wooden figures, but no sign of Major Shroud's body.

He looked around, but he couldn't see anything else apart from mounds of black sludge from the river bottom and more shoals of dead crabs. He paddled his way back toward the ladder, not knowing if he was relieved or disappointed. But he couldn't forget what Cathy had warned him about. If he didn't get Major Shroud first, then Major Shroud was going to get
him
.

He started to climb the ladder, but he was only halfway up when he felt a sharp, cold draft and his candle was suddenly snuffed out. Cursing, he holstered his revolver, and searched in his pockets for his cigarette lighter. He flicked it once, but it wouldn't light, so he flicked it again and again. It still refused to light.

He was still flicking it when he became aware that the cold draft was growing even chillier—so chilly that a curtain of icy vapor began to pour down from the edge of the iron platform above him, like dry ice off the edge of a stage in a rock concert. He looked up, but his glasses were fogging up and everything was blurred. He took them off and wiped them on his necktie, and looked up again.

At first he saw nothing but vapor, but when he lifted his flashlight he thought he could see the vapor forming a shadowy outline, as if somebody was standing in it. For an instant, as the vapor curled around, he even thought he could see the impression of a
face
—a face formed of nothing but frozen air. A living death mask.

“Major Shroud, is that you?” His voice sounded small and flat, barely audible over the promiscuous clattering of the water and the
clink-clink-clink
of the swaying chains.

“Major Shroud? I've come down here to help you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what I'm saying?”

He climbed one more step up the ladder, and then another. “Major Shroud? Or is it Changó I'm talking to? The great and all-powerful Changó, king of the city of Oyo? I greet you, Changó. The king hung himself, but the king did not die.”

He climbed farther still, until he reached the edge of the platform. He shone his flashlight from side to side, and he was sure that he could see the transparent outline of a man's shoulders and the side of his head.

“Changó, listen to me. I've come down here to ask you to forgive me for what my great-great-grandfather did to you. He should never have helped to seal you up in that casket, and I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know anything about you before, but now I do and I want to tell you that you're the greatest. Like,
respect
.”

He waited, while the freezing fog continued to pour down all around him. Changó—if it was Changó—didn't reply. Decker thought:
How the hell are you supposed to speak to an orisha? And what do you do if they refuse to answer you? Maybe orishas only understand Yoruba
.

But as he waited, the fog appeared to thicken and knot itself into shadows, like the clots of blood in a fertilized egg. Gradually, right in front of Decker's eyes, a shape began to resolve itself, the shape of a tall, dark, broad-shouldered man. In a little over a minute, he had solidified, although his image still appeared smudgy. He looked down at Decker with black, deep-set eyes. He was heavily bearded, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat with ragged black feathers all around it, and a long black overcoat.

“Major Shroud?” Decker said.

“You're a Martin,” the figure replied. His voice made Decker feel as if his hair were infested with lice. It was hoarse, and thick, and he spoke with a curious saw-blade accent, which Decker supposed was how everybody must have spoken in Virginia in Civil War days. But more than that, it seemed to come from several different directions at once, as if he were standing on the other side of the ship's hold; and close beside him, too, right next to his ear.

“Your forefather was one of those eleven who betrayed me. Your forefather was one of those who condemned me to spend an eternity, imprisoned, unable to move, in absolute darkness, but always awake.”

“Major Shroud, I've come here to settle our differences.”