The Night Storm

He checked the clock on the wall again, ‘2:15’ displayed in dispassionate red numbers, blurred from its own faint glow. Turning back around, Derek rolled his shoulders and looked at the screens, each showing a different angle of the ship. Big heavy clumps flashing by the cameras, the snow falling in droves. The pale light of the monitors flickered with the activity.  

The camera flashed again, a big line of white appearing and then disappearing. Must have been a big flake, he thought to himself. His eyes went down to the table. The sensation that his eyelids were heavy consumed anything he tried to turn his mind too. Three night shifts in one week were working a number on him.  

The ship rocked gently; it was protected from the heavier waves of the inlet by the seawall. The crash and bang of those swells hurling themselves against the rock wall were muffled but constant, almost a lullaby. 

Derek leaned back against the semi-cushioned bench and looked overhead at the chaotically organized cluster of pipes, that held his attention for longer than usual. All he wanted to do was sleep, but knew, from experience, that only trouble came from falling asleep on the watch. He was pushing the line even now, wearing only his uniform pants. He had traded his boots for some fur-lined moccasins, flexing his toes against the soft fur even then.  

Instead of his blouse, he wore a blanket hoodie, something that people had laughed at but were secretly jealous of. It was hard to see how it mattered, they were at the end of a half-mile pier in the middle of nowhere. Even with this secret defiance, he kept a uniform in his locker for the morning shift.  

He looked back at the screens, noting the amount of snow build up. Soon, he thought, he would have to go shovel. Pierce would be pissed if he let the snow build up until seven again. Annoyance flashed through him, he was an engineer, why would he shovel? That was for the deck hands. Derek closed his eyes, tired of staring at pipes and the snow. 

It took effort to open them, a heaviness in his eyelids that he had to wrestle against. He knew what happened, only looking over to the clock to confirm his suspicion. The numbers were too blurry for him to read. He squinted and ‘4:25’ came into sharp focus.   

“Shit!” he shot up, quickly grabbing the clipboard from the table in front of him. He missed a round again. Some part of him knew that no one checked, no one would know, but another part remembered the confidence in which he was told that they checked for gun decking above all else on the night shift. He rushed up the steep stairs. 

The ship was cramped, as if the designers mimicked stuffing a house into a storage unit. By now, Derek could navigate the ship in the dark but something about being alone late at night made him take corners more carefully. He guarded his eyesight, afraid of seeing something that he knew wasn't there. He didn’t want to take chances. Shadows maliciously lingered longer late at night. 

He found himself on the bridge. The feeling of being a creature caught in headlights washed over him as he looked around at the minutiae of the bridge, illuminated by the dark red glow of the night lights overhead. Everything seemed sharp, caught in the moment before action, predators ready to pounce. He turned and moved to the control panel, looking out through the large bay of windows towards the front of the ship and the waters beyond. He felt transfixed on the dark line of the seawall, when something flashed in his peripheral.  

The bow of the ship was covered in a thick film of snow, the actual vessel hardly visible under the layer. Large and wet snowflakes were coming down without grace, hitting the ground with an audible wet thump. It must have been a large snowflake, he once again thought to himself, comfortable with that excuse to explain away anything that made him uncomfortable. A set of oval shaped indentions led to the forward hatch from the bridge. Footprints? 

   He shrugged uneasily, they must be his, though his last round was four hours prior, an eternity for the snow to cover them. Turning away, he took up the pen and clipboard again. The barometer reading were solid and no alarms had been tripped, so he headed for the back hatch, stopping to grab his beanie.  

Pulling it over his ears, Derek headed out into the snow. He quickly realized it wasn’t just snow, but rain as well, coming down wet between the flurries. The town’s roads will be hell in the morning after the freeze.  

Derek made his way down to the steering compartment. The snow had completely covered the hatch, so he spent the next few minutes digging it out, feeling the cold snow against his bare hands. By the end, he had to breathe on them and stuff them in his pockets before bending to open the hatch. As he grasped the frozen handle, a shadow swung at him from behind. His scream was shrill and clipped as he ducked his head. A few seconds passed. 

Nothing happened, so he opened his eyes and looked back. Only the snow fell, his steps from the bridge hatch, and his misted breath hanging in the air. Everything else was static. A sickened feeling gnawed its way into Derek’s stomach.   

The adrenaline coursed through his veins; his heart felt heavy with its action. Even as his brain raced on the course, he knew he couldn’t explain that away with a large snowflake. It was a shadow, vaguely humanoid, swinging something at the back of his head moving towards the front of the ship. Suddenly, the thought of going back down to the mess deck pressed into his mind, the promise of where it was light and safe. He could hole up there until morning came.  

His eyes darted around. The feeling he was being watched intensified with the snow. He tried to breathe. Technically, he was in charge of the security of the ship, the authority to challenge anything that went against that. Morals and fear were at war within him. Morality, and a healthy fear of being accused of lying on a round sheet, won over. 

He had to go forward to check to line storage. The thought flooded his body with a heavy dread, he tasted bile in the back of his throat as fear clawed at him. His beanie pushed itself down his forehead, wet and heavy with the downpour. He didn’t bother to push it back up.  

A memory hit him, something that had set his nerves alight from the onset of the shift. Pierce had stayed with him on the mess deck for an hour or so after the shift change. The usually calm man was jittery and near frantic, saying he had seen something on the cameras. Derek never asked what Pierce saw, assuming it was another joke to scare him before the shift. He wished he would have now.  

Then he changed his mind, no, he was glad he didn’t know. That would’ve freaked him out even more. He just needed to complete this round and he could go make a green tea and have some of the candy the cook tried to hide in the pantry. Yes, that was a good plan. 

Derek focused on this plan as he trudged through the shin high snow to the forward hold. His moccasins were drenched, his feet cold; he regretted not wearing his insulated boots. The price one pays to be comfortable, he thought, trying to laugh at the stupidity of the situation but coming up short. He walked around the corner, in sight of the large windows on the bridge and the eerie exposed distance between the safety of the superstructure and the forward hold.  

The red-lit windows bore down on him from the corner of his vision, but he didn’t look. He never did. The possibility that one day he’d look and see red shadows staring back at him ate in his mind every time he came out for a round at night. The feeling was especially strong tonight.  

His footsteps did not match the tracks leading to the hatch, no matter how hard he tried to explain them away in the back of his mind. His feet were too small and fit easily in the semi-covered tracks. The strides were staggered, as if whoever had made them had been drunk or drugged. Derek felt his breath growing ragged and hard, he felt as if he couldn’t gulp enough air into his lungs to stave off the drowning feeling of anxiety.  

Derek bent down and started to shovel the snow from the hatch with his hands. The snow melted as soon as it touched his skin, though his fingers had long since grown numb. His pants were soaked through, and the blanket hung heavy on his shoulders. Derek was cold, but felt himself sweating, the claustrophobic feeling causing a warmth that was uncomfortable.  

When the hatch was uncovered, he stared at it for a few moments. His breathing had started to spiral, and he was trying to reign it in. Get it over with, he thought, once again thinking of the warmth of the mess deck down below, the perceived safety of that space. It would be warm, but not in the pressing, anxiety-induced way. Shivers coursed through his body. He reached out and grabbed the handle. 

Hoping to install some sense of false courage into himself, he wrenched the hatch open forcefully and quickly, peeking down through half-closed eye. Something stared back at him. That’s all he knew; all he could see. He opened both of his eyes. Two glinting eyes looking back at him, cold as the snow. Derek flung the hatch down and fell backwards, another scream high in his throat. He hit the floor with a dull wet thump. 

Dazed with fear, Derek lolled his head towards movement on the shadowy periphery of his vision. In the windows, looking down at him, stark against the red light, were three dark figures. Wrong was all he could think as he stared back. He wanted to look away, terrified, a deluge of tears threatening to spill out. The heads were too large, the torsos too short. He could see the sea wall just below the windows, realizing.  

He wasn’t looking at the bridge.  

Quickly, he looked the other way and saw the red emptiness of his own bridge through the haze of snow. Not wanting to, but losing to some sickening sense of curiosity, he looked back towards the figures. They were within some craft, large, circular, and with navigation lights shining in many places. The figures stared at him, unmoving within the confines of their ship.  

The hatch to the forward hold opened slowly and something crawled out, all limbs with a big head and two glinting black eyes. Derek passed out as it crawled his way.