3

3

 

Kazuo was aware that he was dreaming. But not waking up, he remained crouched atop a large rock surrounded by the sea, crushing the crabs at his feet with a fist-sized stone. The more crabs he crushed, the more came clambering out of the water to try to crawl up Kazuo's feet. As he brought down the stone, he felt, first, the hard shell resist before it cracked and splintered, and next a mushy sensation. The top of the large rock was so littered with smushed crabs that hardly an inch of the surface was visible. Like an obsessed man, Kazuo continued to exterminate the crabs. He sensed a gaze burning into his back and wondered whether it was his conscious self staring at his dreaming self. But no, the gaze embodied a powerful will intent on senseless slaughter, and it gave Kazuo no choice but to wield the stone.

Soon there were no more crabs left alive on the rock, but the urge to continue killing did not abate. Where could Kazuo find the life on which to vent his murderous rage? The feeling of being watched grew stronger, and the gaze was urging him on. Obligingly, Kazuo raised the stone high over his head and smashed it down on his feet. The dull thud of tearing flesh and splintering bone reverberated upwards through him. Although he felt no pain, he suffered the horrible anguish of knowing that he was rending his own flesh. He kept smashing at his feet with the stone until the bones were pulverized, and the torment finally shook him awake.

His eyes now opened and fixed on the ceiling, Kazuo gasped and held his breath. The scene of the dream receded into thin air together with the putrid smell of dead crabs, and the features of the real world, the rocking of the boat and the lapping of the waves, came into focus. Kazuo sensed that something was different. He hadn't been roused from his sleep just by the terror of a nightmare; his seaman's instinct that something was amiss had also stirred him. Instantly forgetting the dream, he concentrated every nerve in his body on the motion of the boat. It seemed subtly different from when he'd fallen asleep.

Getting up, he went to the cabin and tried to calm his breathing. Telling himself to relax, he glanced at his watch, which read 12:30 a.m. He'd only been asleep three hours. His heart was pounding violently. He was getting the feeling that the boat wasn't plying water.

It was but five steps up from the cabin to the cockpit. A tall man, Kazuo dashed up stooping, opened the hatch, and made his way out.

Although he was quite sure that he'd turned on the navigating lights before retiring, he found out differently. The expansive teak deck was illuminated only by the moon and stars above. The stern of the Wakashio VII, which should have been visible straight ahead, wasn't there.

'Of all the…'

Unable to believe his eyes, he vainly scanned in every direction. There was no sign of any boat. The line that separated the sky and the sea was now a deep dark thing that also engulfed the cruiser. Kazuo stood all alone in the midnight ocean. An acidic taste came surging into his mouth.

Kazuo crawled towards the bow to check the bow cleat that secured the rope from the Wakashio VII. The rope was gone. It had apparently come undone from the bow cleat. Kazuo swallowed in alarm. This was absolutely impossible; no amateur had tied the knot; veteran seamen were all masters of rope-work. The rope had been bound to the cleat with a cleat knot and wound around twice for good measure. It simply couldn't have come undone on its own. He'd checked several times after the yacht had gone into tow. Could someone with a grudge against Kazuo have contrived a slipping knot? That seemed unlikely, but then, who on earth could have untied it when there was no one else on the boat but himself? Could he have done it himself? It was a hazy idea. Kazuo held out his palms and stared at them. He vaguely remembered seeing himself from afar untying the knot under some sort of compulsion. Another scene from the dream?

What he'd read in the log flashed into his mind.

… There's someone else on this boat.

It was something more concrete than a hunch. He was being watched. Something was skulking somewhere on the boat and following his every movement closely. Jumping back, he glanced around in all directions and screamed. He could shout as loud as he wanted, but there was no boat in sight and it was useless. He had no time to waste. He had to make contact with the Wakashio VII immediately. Returning to the cabin, he grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed the SPEAK button.

'Come in, please come in.'

There was no response. If the rope had come loose as far back as a few hours ago, then the Wakashio was out of transmission range. He tried to get through repeatedly, but the handset remained silent. The walkie-talkie was useless. Undaunted, he kept shouting into the thing until his voice was hoarse. 'Come in, please come in!'

Kazuo strained his ears. He thought he'd heard something, some faint noise coming from the remote depths of the walkie-talkie. An instant before the buzzing could form into words, Kazuo had instinctively thrown the walkie-talkie at the floor to smash it. It was too late, the buzzing had conveyed the words to his brain.

'Crush the life out of them.'

That was what it sounded like. It was a dark, damp voice, like some message from the seabed deep below. Kazuo was now in a state of near-panic, on the verge of a fit of hysteria.

He responded with a shower of abuse, and, rallying himself by making as much noise as possible, he managed to make his way to the radio set.

Don't let it get to you, he chastised himself. It's just your nerves. Hurry and contact the Wakashio!

He was unsure about how to operate the set. He felt that by fiddling with it long enough, he'd eventually get through. But when he turned on the switch, the radio refused to come alive. Examining the rear of the set, he realized that the battery connection cord had been severed, probably to prevent anyone from using the set. Incredible. No means of communication. Relax, relax

If he lost his head, he was bound to make mistakes. It was imperative that he think things through calmly. There was no need to rush. Whatever was going on, the seaman on watch aboard the Wakashio VII was bound to notice that the yacht was no longer in tow. They probably knew already. They were sure to retrace their course and could be there on the horizon by now.

Kazuo thrust his head from the cockpit and gazed in a northerly direction. No signs of the ship. He strained his ears in vain for the familiar old blast of her steam whistle.

It then occurred to Kazuo that they hadn't noticed yet. After all, seamen on watch were more often than not preoccupied with the fore view, seldom paying attention to what was behind the ship. They happened to be towing a boat on that particular occasion, but old habits died hard. No one could have possibly imagined that the rope would work itself loose in the first place. To make matters worse, the yacht's navigating lights had been off all the time. They might not notice until morning that the boat in tow was missing.

 

There were still a few hours to sunrise. Yet those few hours seemed like an eternity. Kazuo was not at all sure that he could hold out that long against the indescribable presence that pervaded the boat. Like most seamen, Kazuo tended to be superstitious. Venturing out to sea, nature's untrammelled domain, you often encounter phenomena that are beyond the pale of human understanding. You stand a far greater chance of experiencing the paranormal at sea than on land.

There was no longer any room for doubt. The boat's owner and his family had disappeared through no accident; some mysterious force had worked upon them. What they'd dreamed, they'd gone and done. Goaded by a malevolent force… And it was trying to control Kazuo now.

'Please help me,' prayed Kazuo. Though he worshipped no god, there seemed to be no other way to stave off his fear.

There had to be some explanation. Kazuo tried to think as logically as he could. Thinking, and acting, could distract him if nothing else.

… Was the boat always cursed? No, something happened on this voyage. When?

Kazuo retrieved the boat's log and began turning the pages. During the night of the 23rd, all members of the family had the same dream. On the following day, the daughter, Yoko, sensed the presence of someone else on the boat. This meant that they must have picked up whatever it was on or before the 23rd. 'Picked up'? The words came to him just like that. But indeed, they'd picked up something nefarious. Didn't the log say something of the sort? Kazuo seemed to remember a passage that he'd merely skimmed. The incident had seemed insignificant to the father, who'd barely mentioned it in the log, and so the reader hadn't given it much attention either.

Kazuo hurriedly turned the pages in search of the section. He was sure there'd been something of the sort.

'Here it is!' The entry was dated July 23rd and appeared to have been made at around noon.

 

… Yoko has this annoying habit of picking up any shell she finds. She found something very odd this time. Strange that it should have been drifting in the ocean. It's a bottle containing some kind of shell, resembling a bivalve. The shell is about the size of a human hand and much larger than the neck of the bottle, but there it is inside the corked bottle. I wonder how anyone could have gotten the shell into it without damaging the bottle. Surely the thing can't have grown to that size in the bottle? Perish the thought!

 

I told her to throw the thing away, but she ignored me and hid it somewhere where Daddy can 't find it. She's clearly afraid I'll toss it overboard if ever I find it. But Daddy isn't so cruel as to throw away any of her treasures, even that shell. I wonder why Yoko doesn't find the shell 'creepy'. The shell's pattern looks like an eye. If you hold the bottle up and take a close look, it's really quite frightening, the way it seems to be staring back at you.

 

Those are EYES if ever I saw one. Normally the inside of a half-open shell is a lustrous pearly colour. But this shell has a fleshy mound bulging out on each side. It's altogether different from the thin muscle that pulls the halves together; it looks like flesh, with scarlet capillaries on the surface. The lens and gelatinous cornea are a cloudy brown, with the overall shape of the eye slightly warped. They resemble the eyes of a rotting tuna and seem to exude malevolence. An uncanny gaze I must say. We really should get rid of the thing! Treasure or not, I can't stand it. Where could the silly girl have hidden it?…

 

Sometime around midday on the 23rd, Yoko had found a bottle and picked it out of the sea. The bottle contained a shell resembling a bivalve. What was more, the shell bore a pattern that looked exactly like an eye.

… This is it. The source of the curse.

The problem was where the daughter had concealed the shell. He had to find it and find it fast. And then what? Return it back to the sea, of course.

Since the couple had been sleeping in the aft berth, the children must have been using the fore berth. Ever conscious of what was behind him, Kazuo began to go through the contents of the locker.

His consciousness seemed to skip, and the next thing he knew, he was staring at his hand, which was on the locker door, as though none of this really concerned him. His hand seemed to be an organ separate from his own body. When the hand moved slightly, he felt the urge to crush it. He wanted to destroy every animate object, every living thing. A gaze that bore down on him from God-knew-where told him to.

 

Throwing his head back with a growl of defiance, he fought the murderous urge. If he didn't hurry, it would get the better of him. Losing the battle meant doing to himself what he'd done in his dream.

He didn't stop at the fore berth; in the main cabin, in the aft berth, he searched every nook and cranny that could hide anything. Yet he found nothing like a shell in a bottle.

'Where could the damned kid have hidden it?'

Taking his anger out on the boat's furnishings, Kazuo turned the whole place upside down.

Before he knew it, his elbow was bleeding. He had apparently struck it on the corner of the table during his rampage. Could he have done it on purpose? He simply couldn't say. He couldn't even recall, beyond a haze, what he'd been doing a few seconds ago. Touching the lukewarm, viscous stuff with his left hand, confirming the colour of blood, he panicked and went on another mad rampage. He no longer knew whether he was searching for the bottle or just trying to maim himself. He cut his shin on the shard of a broken wine bottle, and soon slipped in the blood, landing forcefully on his buttocks.

Yet, for all his fervour, his search was in vain.

… I can't stay here.

It occurred to him to escape. It could just make things worse for him, but he hadn't the leisure to think about it. Chanting can't stay here' like some magic charm, he found a flashlight and made his way out on deck. There was nothing but sea on all sides. He had to resist the urge to jump overboard.

 

… Gotta escape!

Shining the flashlight over the deck ahead as he moved, he searched for the lifeboat stowed at the rear of the cockpit. Upon boarding the cruiser, they'd confirmed that the lifeboat was still there.

Praying, he opened the locker, and there to his immense relief he found what he was after. This was the only chance he had left. The Maritime Safety Agency was bound to dispatch another aircraft in the morning. The lifeboat was brightly coloured so as to be clearly visible from the air. They would find him sure enough. It also had a stock of several flares. Placing the container holding the boat at the edge of the deck, Kazuo pulled the tag as directed in the instruction manual. The lifeboat emitted a quiet hiss and began inflating. Securing it with a thin rope, he lowered it into the sea. Before climbing into it, he looked around one last time. He caught sight of three waterproof bags marked SUPPLY SACK in the container. The owner must have specially prepared them to supplement the emergency supplies that came with the lifeboat. Guessing that they contained water and food, Kazuo tossed all three bags into the lifeboat and jumped in after them.

It was probably because there hadn't been much wave action that the whole thing had gone smoothly. Just six feet in diameter, the circular boat was labelled as being good for six people, but it was cramped enough even for one.

Kazuo cast off the mooring rope, and the lifeboat rocked unsteadily away from the yacht. He was surprised to find no relief in watching the yacht steadily recede into the distance. He could only rationalize to himself that it was the anxiety of being in such a frail craft as the rubber float. As he thrust his legs out in front of him, he felt the motion of the sea on his rump through the bottom. Compared to the cruiser, this boat was like a leaf.

More than a hundred feet had opened up between Kazuo and the yacht. The sensation of being watched should have been gone by now. Yet, far from fading, it seemed to have grown in intensity. His adrenaline level was rocketing, but now he had nowhere to escape. Off the lifeboat there was nothing for him but death.

He watched as an irrevocable distance opened up between him and the yacht. Just as she disappeared out of sight into the darkness, his mind seemed to jump the rails. His perceptions became so clouded that he was no longer capable of understanding what exactly was happening. Countless people were conversing in his head at once. The incoherent din sounded like the roar that dominates the floor of the stock exchange. Eventually the voices merged into one and prodded him from behind. Kazuo thrust his hands into the sea and scooped up seawater to bathe his aching temples. Leaning out over the side, he sunk his face into the seawater and peered down below. A dark, fathomless vortex was spiralling at the bottom of the night time sea. Gazing into it, Kazuo was nearly sucked in.

He never did notice. Kazuo never did find out where the daughter had hidden the small glass bottle. She'd tucked it away in a SUPPLY SACK. Tossed onto the lifeboat, it now sat snugly between the rubber bottom and the side tubing. In the silver sack, among packs of water and cans of food, the eyes kept quiet.