“If you don’t do what?”
But Addison didn’t answer. Instead, he looked over at the hatchway, where Burton and Farrow were maneuvering themselves back onto the deck, holding Eleanor in a blanket like a sling. Her eyes were open, and one arm was held out toward Sinclair; her makeshift bonnet had fallen off, and her brown hair, once so thick and glossy, blew in loose tendrils about her head.
Farrow brandished a rusted chain in the air and Captain Addison, neither nodding assent nor demanding a halt, turned away. As he went back to the wheel, he hurled the black bottle, without so much as following its course, over the side.
“Sinclair!” Eleanor cried out, her terrified voice nearly lost in the tumult. “What’s going on?”
But it was all too clear to Sinclair; he struggled at the rope and tried to kick his way free of the mast, but his riding boots scrabbled on the icy deck, and Jeffries suddenly landed a roundhouse punch to his gut. Sinclair doubled over, trying to catch his breath again, and saw only boots and ropes and chains as he was dragged toward her. She was standing now, though barely, held up by Burton, as Sinclair was forcibly pressed against her, back to back. How he wished he could embrace her, one more time. But all he could do was whisper, “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be together.”
“Where? What are you saying?”
She was not only frightened beyond words but delirious, too.
Farrow, cackling like a hen, kept circling them, using his gloved hands to wrap the chain around their knees, their waists, their shoulders. Their necks. Wherever the freezing metal touched their bare skin, it seared, like a plaster. Though he was facing in the other direction, Sinclair could hear her ragged breath and feel her mounting panic.
“Sinclair,” she gasped. “Why?”
Jones and Jeffries, having abandoned their watch, hauled them, bound together like two fireplace logs, over to the gunwale. Sinclair instinctively dug his boots into the wood, but someone kicked them loose, he lost his footing altogether, and in a matter of seconds, he found himself staring down into the churning water below. Oddly, he was glad that Eleanor’s gaze would be fixed on the sky, on the white albatross he hoped still clung to the yardarm.
“Shouldn’t we say some words?” Dr. Ludlow said, a tremor in his voice. “It all seems so…barbaric.”
“I’ll say the words,” Burton shouted, leaning low to glare into Sinclair’s face. “May God have mercy on your souls!”
Sinclair felt many hands lifting the two of them off the deck.
“And the Devil take the hindmost!”
Someone laughed, and then he was plunging, headfirst, with Eleanor screaming in terror, down, down, down, toward the water. It seemed to take longer than he expected before they crashed through a thin scrim of ice. Her scream stopped dead, everything went silent, and with the chain weighting them down, they sank swiftly, spinning in circles, into the frigid, black water. He held his breath for many seconds, but then, even though he might have sustained it for several more, let it out in one great rush…embracing Death, and whatever else might await them both, at the bottom of the sea.
PART I
THE VOYAGE OUT
“And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings, And chased us south along.
With sloping mast and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled.”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
CHAPTER ONE
PRESENT DAY
November 19, noon
THE DOORBELL WAS RINGING, and even though Michael heard it, he did not want to wake up; the dream he was in was too comforting. Kristin was with him, and they were driving in his Jeep on a mountain road. She had her bare feet up on the dashboard, the radio was blasting, and she was laughing, her head held back, her blond hair blowing in the wind from the open window.
The doorbell rang again, a series of short bursts. Whoever it was wasn’t going away.
Michael lifted his head from the pillow—why was there an empty bag of Doritos next to his face?—and glanced at the lighted numerals on the clock—11:59. And then, even as he rubbed his eyes, it flicked over to noon.
The doorbell, again.
Michael threw the blanket back, dropped his feet onto the floor. “Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” he mumbled. He grabbed a bathrobe off the back of the door and shuffled out of the bedroom. Through the opaque glass in the front door, he could see a shape—somebody in a hooded parka—standing on the stoop. Michael moved closer.
“I can see you, too, Michael. Now open the door—it’s freezing out here.”