Author: Cyrus Borzak
“Hey! Hey! Parker! Are you okay?”
He heard Hudson’s yell and understood the question, but Parker had still not caught his breath. The pain coursing through his chest nearly made him crumble to the floor. Seeing the distress, Hudson ran over to him and helped him sit. Parker grimaced the entire way down.
“I think you just had the wind knocked out of you. Give it a second.”
Parker wanted to yell at Hudson that maybe he would like to change spots, but there were no words coming out at the moment. Instead, he gesticulated at his chest, using his index finger to trace the radiating pain from his sternum back. Hudson caught on quickly and pressed just below Parker’s right nipple. The spiking peal of agony intensified so much that his surprised silent scream shocked his diaphragm back into its rhythm. As air flooded back into his lungs, Parker could only whimper in pain, afraid to waste the precious air on any cursing.
Hudson nodded knowingly, “Yep, your ribs are busted pretty good. Just lie still til I can get something to wrap you up.”
Parker shook his head and wheezed out his concern, “The storm. Steer.”
Hudson took his turn shaking his head as he looked out the wheelhouse windows, “No, she’ll be fine. Storm looks like it’s letting up. Besides, I don’t want you screaming or passing out with every bump.”
Despite every breath and movement sending stars across his vision, Parker looked out at the sky and saw the canopy of dark clouds thinning enough to allow bold rays of sunlight passage to the world below. He then scanned the wheelhouse to see the extent of the damage. Something felt off to him, and that is when he noticed the open door.
“Where’s Stone?”
Hudson immediately stopped digging around in the first aid case and whipped around to scan the wheelhouse. His eyes finished at the open door and he went pale.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
He leapt over Parker and ran through the open door. Still lying on the floor, Parker could hear Hudson’s frantic movements from stern to bow and back again on the other side. He burst back into the wheelhouse, hurdled Parker again, and bounded below deck. More hurried movement accompanied by, “shit, shit, shit, shit,” that carried up the stairs. Finally, Hudson climbed back into the wheelhouse wearing a sheen of resigned exhaustion.
He tried speaking but his voice caught in his throat. After an especially big swallow, he choked out, “I, I think he went overboard.”
He was scared. Parker could not recall ever seeing Hudson show any fear. There was a churn in Parker’s stomach that intensified upon seeing his brother’s despair. It accompanied the draining of energy Parker felt when he thought about his nephew potentially meeting the same end as his father. As he fought to gather his wits and figure out what to do next, he noticed Hudson’s eyes roll back into his head as his brother crumpled to the floor.
The next moments felt for Parker as if he were on autopilot. He silently diagnosed Hudson with a concussion. In a true mind over body moment, Parker overcame the pain of his broken ribs to get to his feet, step over Hudson, and get to the first-aid case. Pulling out the smelling salts, he cracked one open and knelt next to his brother. His body screamed in protest, the pain crescendoing to the point Parker yearned to trade places with his brother, but he got the packet up to Hudson’s nose. He only had to wait a brief moment before Hudson’s eyes shot open and he let out a slurred, “Whoooooo.”
Parker prevented Hudson from jumping up and risking passing right back out. He directed him to sit up and lean against the back of the wheelhouse. Handing the smelling salts to Hudson, he said, “If you start feeling like you’re falling sleep, take another whiff. I’m pretty sure you’re concussed.”
Hudson did not put up a fight, but it was apparent he felt his brain was swimming. He strained to focus on Parker, who was struggling to return to the wheel.
“Wha, wha you doing?”
Although the storm had mostly subsided, the ocean lagged behind, and another sharp wave kicked Parker back into the wheel. The shockwave of pain blanked his vision and emptied his mind. He had never felt such misery, but the jolt expedited his return to the Nightingale’s controls. He took several deep breaths before answering Hudson’s confused babble in chopped, short sentences.
“We need to turn around. Stone. There somewhere.”
The Orange Nightingale responded quickly to Parker’s input and turned to reverse its course. The vessel moved easier than its captain, who leaned into every movement to try minimize his torso’s strain. Thankfully, the ocean no longer put up much fight and allowed the Nightingale to charge ahead along against its previous course.
Confident he countered their original heading, Parker made sure every light the Nightingale had was illuminated. He continued fighting the pain strangling his midsection as he scanned port to starboard for any sign of his nephew. With only himself capable of searching, and barely capable at that, Parker began accepting the likely outcome. He started thinking about how he would break the news to his sister.
While Parker got lost in dark thoughts, he failed to notice the weather turning ominous once again. Along with a darkening sky, the waves began rising and falling more aggressively. The Orange Nightingale’s momentum ceased as the boat dug in to climb a rising wave. The violent change again slammed Parker, who had not been paying attention, against the wheel without any bracing for the impact.
This time, the pain was more than Parker could withstand. He lost his grip on the wheel and staggered back. The world around him grew fuzzy and Parker felt his legs giving way as his every heartbeat sent the most intense pain of his life coursing from chest to limb. He collapsed and crashed to the wheelhouse floor as the world outside howled.
Parker could no longer fight the pull of unconsciousness. He accepted the Nightingale’s fate was now up to the forces of nature. His eyelids slowly dipped closed while the Nightingale rocked against the ocean’s intensity. Parker’s fleeting vision wandered to the open wheelhouse door, and just as his world went dark, his brain registered feet stepping through the open doorway.
He was on a raft made of lashed together wood planks that sat atop three runners. A hand-made sail sat taught from a mast that zigzagged left and right like a branch. On what was assumed to be the raft’s stern sat the only protection from the elements, tightly woven branches and leaves that formed a lean-to. It would not keep out the ocean, but it would intercept the sun’s full fury.
As Parker’s brain awakened and his eyes adjusted to the luminous assault of the surroundings, he clocked the vastness of blue all around the raft that stretched to the horizon. It took another moment, but Parker realized there was no bob to the raft; the water was still and as smooth as glass. He had never seen anything like it. Despite that strangeness, something else felt incongruous to what Parker felt he should be experiencing in that scenario.
He looked around, trying to find what was amiss, and aside from being on a raft he had no recollection of building or boarding, everything appeared as he would expect. Nothing was out of sorts until his eyes settled on the sail. Its patchwork surface bulged, pregnant with a full wind. Parker’s eyes shifted from the sail to just off the raft’s stern, where he expected to see a wake. Instead, the stern appeared to be cutting through the water, albeit slowly. He swung his attention to the bow and saw a wake. It was slight, but it was a wake nonetheless. The raft was “under power”, but it still inexplicably drifted.
This defiance of physics made Parker’s head hurt. His thoughts and grip on reality started to swirl in the fog that beset his mind. He fell to his knees as the world spun. The sudden jolt of landing hard on the raft’s deck sent a jolt of pain coursing through him. Despite the urge to scream, the extreme discomfort pierced through his mental haze and gave him a moment of lucidity where Parker could question his reality. The pain felt familiar and real; it was grounded in the memory of an experience, unlike anything else around him. This ignited a thought in his mind, a clear order to help himself.
“Open your eyes! OPEN YOUR EYES!”
Parker’s eyes shot open, and the confusion, still ocean, and raft were gone. He immediately recognized the wood paneling above his berth on the The Orange Nightingale and felt the subtle rolling of the vessel as it moved across active waters.
“Uncle Parker, you’re awake! Thank, God!”
The fuzz of a heavy slumber began disappearing from Parker’s vision as he looked for the source of the familiar voice. When he found it, Parker worried he was not back in reality after all. There was Stone standing in the doorway to Parker’s cabin, looking as alive and healthy, actually better than, when Parker last saw him.
“Stone?”
The kid’s smile shifted to one corner of his mouth while his eyes sparkled. There was more life in him than Parker thought possible.
“Yeah, it’s me. Boy, am I glad you’re awake. Huds been annoying the crap out me, worrying about this and that.”
Parker remembered his brother’s collapse and the likely concussion. He was actually relieved to hear Hudson was being annoying, but he girded himself against the possibility this was fiction as well.
“He’s okay?”
“Okay from the sense that he bumped his head and doesn’t seem to have any lasting effects. I can’t speak to the rest of him.”
Parker stared at Stone while he tried discerning if he was flesh and bone or a fever dream hallucination.
“I can’t believe you’re here. How?”
Stone’s smile disappeared but the sparkle in his eye remained even though he averted his gaze to the floor.
“Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t be. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t know what happened?”
Stone shook his head, “No, I know what happened. I can’t explain it. But if you’re feeling up to it, I can show you.”
Parker slid out of his berth and followed Stone up into the wheelhouse. He immediately noticed the serene ocean and blue sky. Hudson manned the wheel and looked back at the sound of their entrance, “There he is! How’re we feeling?”
Parker was about to say, “Like I went twelve rounds,” but as he moved and expected shooting pain to rack his torso, there was nothing. He twisted from left to right like he was stretching or trying to crack his back, and nothing pulled or twinged.
“I…I guess I’m fine. How long was I out?”
Hudson and Stone exchanged a look before Hudson answered, “Day or so. Glad to hear you’re ship-shape. Didn’t want to hear you whimpering every time the wind blew.”
Parker struggled to reconcile his seemingly miraculous recovery and the timeline. Coupled with Stone’s appearance and then Hudson’s normalcy so far, Parker’s mind filled with questions, “Huh. How are you?”
Hudson shrugged and resumed looking out the wheelhouse, “I’ve never been better. I should get knocked in the noggin more often.”
The answer and Hudson’s nonchalant demeanor surprised Parker. He gave a questioning look to Stone who again quickly averted his eyes. The same feeling of an incongruous reality from his dream returned to flicker at the edge of his thoughts. He looked from Stone to Hudson, but neither said more. Despite the silence, they looked like they were hiding something.
“Okay you two, what’s going on? Stone, how are you here? I’m relieved and thankful you are, but how? Hudson, I can’t tell if you’re still messed in the head, but if you are, it doesn’t look like the concussion anymore.”
Hudson’s shoulders rose and sank with a deep sigh. He stepped away from the wheel and turned to look at Parker. His eyes held Parker’s for a moment before he looked and nodded to the door. Parker watched as Stone stepped aside to let Parker pass. Before exiting, however, Parker caught sight of the wheel and registered its stillness as the rudder apparently encountered no conflicting forces. The water was never that compliant.
Parker stepped onto the deck and welcomed the warming embrace of a temperate sun. He felt transported back to the raft. The calmness of the world and stillness of the water was straight from his dream. Parker walked to the bow to scan the boat and horizon. His eyes drifted to the water, and he felt a shiver course down his spine. There was a wake. Breaking from the surprise, he turned and ran to the stern, feeling Hudson and Stone’s eyes on him as he passed.
The Orange Nightingale hummed from its cunning engine. Parker felt the vibrations in each footfall. She was under power. The stern was only a few strides away, but he already knew what he would see. It was something he had seen before. Parker stopped his momentum with a firm grip on the deck’s railing before stretching to see over the side. The water parted around the vessel’s square backside as it moved in reverse.
Parker ran back to the wheelhouse and pushed past Stone and then Hudson, checking to make sure the Nightingale’s props were supposed to be pushing her forward. Hudson apparently followed Parker’s thinking and interrupted, “Yep, we’re under power and going nowhere.”
“We’re drifting.”
“Yep.”
“Any idea how or why?”
Hudson and Stone exchanged another look before Hudson responded, “Need to work on your skills of observation.”
He pointed forward out the wheelhouse across the bow. Parker followed the gesture out the window, across the bow, and onto the water. His eyes stretched over the water toward the horizon, and he froze. Parker felt his mouth drop open and a breathy, “Whaaaaat,” pass over his lips.
Hudson nodded, “Yeah, that’s what I said too.”
A dark cloud hung several klicks from the vessel. Under the cloud and moving toward The Orange Nightingale was a visibly violent ocean. Within that tumult was a creature, at least that is what first popped into Parker’s mind. The creature crested with each wave as it moved toward the Nightingale, bringing the dark cloud and stormy waters with it.
Fear gripped Parker. He managed to rip his attention from the approaching monstrosity to check Hudson and Stone. They appeared utterly unfazed. They mixed glances at Parker with watching the creature.
“It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” Hudson said with a calm demeanor.
Parker found it impossible to believe those words and boggled at how steady they remained. He looked back at the approaching creature and stumbled back upon seeing it a stone’s throw from the vessel. In a blink, the Nightingale lurched with the wave signaling the creature’s arrival. The beast stopped directly off the bow and began rising from the water. Parker closed his eyes and prayed his final moment was not here, not now. Eyes closed, he heard Hudson yell, “Get ready!”
Featured Image: Shutterstock 2307655165 (Alexey Seafarer)
HobbyScope 