They Cling to the Hull (Horror Lurks Beneath Book 2) Read online

  They Cling to the Hull

  Horror Lurks Beneath, Book 2

  Ben Farthing

  Copyright © 2021 by Ben Farthing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art and design by Pierluigi Abbondanza.

  BOOKS BY BEN FARTHING

  BOOM

  THE PIPER’S GRAVEYARD

  CROWDED CHASMS

  IT WAITS ON THE TOP FLOOR

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  A SPECIAL THANKS

  WANT YOUR NEXT STRANGE HORROR READ?

  1

  Chris presented his ticket for the cruise ship he intended to sink.

  The chipper young woman behind the counter scanned the ticket’s barcode. She inspected his ID and passport. “Mr. Haberman, so happy to have you.”

  He wished he had fake documents, but he’d never even had a fake ID as a teenager. He wouldn’t know the first thing about forging a passport.

  “Before you drop your bags off, strap these tags on. They’ve got your cabin number so the porters know where to bring them. Then you’re welcome to explore the ship until dinner at 7:30.” The attendant’s gummy smile looked genuine.

  Chris didn’t blame her. Only about a hundred cruise-goers lined up this morning, and they were mostly relaxed-looking retirees. The Aria of the Seas was on a transpacific season relocation, sailing six weeks from Long Beach across the Pacific to Hong Kong.

  The public story was that the ship was transferring from its West Coast Mexico route to an Indonesian route. Chris doubted that story.

  But that meant it was a different type of cruise from the common, drink-all-night, party-all-day trips. The entertainment staff would be bare bones, and only the primary restaurant would be open. No port-of-calls to disembark and tour foreign cities and pay for supposedly locally-made trinkets that had “Made-in-China” stickers on the bottom.

  And for the crew and staff, that meant no dealing with demanding vacationers who only had two weeks off from their soul-sucking jobs, so they demanded perfection.

  No, Chris thought as he surveyed the crowd, these were leisure class. You didn’t buy a ticket to a transpacific, ship-transfer cruise expecting perfect service. You intended to sit on a lounge chair, drink tequila, and be entertained by the three acts who were on board.

  According to the website, this voyage featured: a lounge singer who could sound like anyone from Elvis Pressly to Michael Buble to ABBA, a stand-up comedian who did acts both with and without props, and a French couple who performed ballroom dance routines, and who doubled as dance instructors.

  Chris carried his two suitcases to the drop-off point outside. He squinted at the blinding sunlight. Salt flavored the air. A team of porters were lugging suitcases onto carts. Chris said a silent prayer that he’d hid the suitcase’s hidden pockets well enough. If not, this whole endeavor would be over before it started.

  The lead porter took his suitcase. “Enjoy your cruise, sir.” He looked like a gym-addicted meathead. He had gelled hair, muscles bulging out of his shirt sleeves, and a chip on his shoulder. He eyed Chris suspiciously. “Everything okay?”

  Chris flashed a smile. Don’t look too closely in the bag, he thought. He said, “Just excited, I guess.”

  The porter’s name tag read, “Bobby.”

  “It should be a relaxing cruise, don’t you think?” Bobby peered into Chris’s eyes, obviously trying to read his expression. “I hope you brought a few paperbacks.”

  “I sure did.” Chris tried to hide his nervousness. He gave an awkward wave and headed up the gangway.

  It was out of his hands now. Nothing to do but wait to see if they caught him.

  He got stuck on the gangway behind a white-haired couple, the husband using a walker.

  Heavy guilt settled in Chris’s gut.

  He didn’t want to drown a hundred retirees and three times as many crew and staff.

  But if the Aria of the Seas stayed afloat, everyone on board would suffer a fate worse than death.

  He hoped the evacuation procedures were as seamless as the check-in. These old folks would need it.

  2

  “We’re finally on vacation!” Krystal squealed.

  Everyone on the concourse stared.

  Riley hid her face, pretending to search through her purse. The last thing she needed was the wrong person to spot her.

  A lady in a Hawaiian shirt shot Krystal a glare and whispered to her husband, “This is supposed to be a relaxing voyage.”

  Another old lady—this one with hair dyed bright pink, and leaning on a cane painted like a candy cane—shushed the grump. “That’s the spirit. Tequila!”

  “Yes!” Krystal pointed at the candy cane lady and shimmied her hips.

  “Can you turn it down a notch?” Riley kept her face low. She tried to do that and look around the concourse at the same time.

  Krystal was bringing attention to them, and if the wrong person saw Riley, it would make life a lot more difficult.

  Krystal finished her dance. She noticed Riley hiding her face in her hand and gasped. “I’m so sorry. I got excited about our six-week vacay and forgot about your uncle.”

  “Keep it down,” Riley hissed.

  “Is he here?” Krystal whispered too loudly. Her head popped up like a prairie dog’s to peer at everyone in line.

  Riley looked around again to be sure. “No. He’s probably in whatever VIP timeslot they have.”

  “Rich bastard,” Krystal said. “So, what’s the plan to steal it back?”

  “Be quiet,” Riley insisted.

  Her uncle Nathaniel had stolen Riley’s inheritance. The only thing her dad had left her after his quick battle with prostate cancer was a gold pocket watch.

  The estate lawyer had read her the will. His remaining cash went to a charity she hadn’t heard of. It was only $75.

  Riley had been most surprised to hear that multiple banks would be fighting over the house. Dad had been tight-fisted and careful to avoid debt—even credit cards. But in the years while his prostate was
secretly growing a tumor, he’d taken out two mortgages.

  The probate lawyer didn’t know where the money went, but he gave Riley a stern warning about not accidentally taking the debt on herself.

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Her two jobs—one at the coffee shop, one driving for UberEats—only left a little spending money each month.

  So when the probate lawyer said she was to receive her father’s pocket watch, Riley immediately felt guilty. Dad loved it, it was a family heirloom, and Riley would have to sell it. Dad used to say it was worth $50,000. She hoped he was right. That was enough to quit one of her jobs so she could go to nursing school.

  That pocket watch was her passport to finally having a purpose in life. She was nearly twenty-five and had spent the last seven years feeling entirely useless. The minimum-wage trap kept her too busy for school, too busy to do something valuable in the world. She was even too busy to help her neighbors. She was afraid she would die in sixty years, having never made a difference in anyone’s life. Just serving coffee and delivering food thirteen hours a day until her body wasted away.

  But Dad’s pocket watch would give her the freedom to go to nursing school. She didn’t feel especially called to wearing scrubs and dealing with bodily fluids, but at least she would be helping people. And it would pay a lot more than serving coffee. She might even get free of splitting rent with roommates. Not that she didn’t love Krystal, who was now singing a Madonna classic as they waited in line.

  The watch never made it to Riley.

  As the probate lawyer pawed through the boxes in Dad’s living room, his expression grew more and more frazzled. “It was just here. I can’t imagine.”

  Finally, he admitted it. “Your uncle Nathaniel and his wife were here earlier. I’ll need to call them and ask if the watch could have slipped into the box your father left them.”

  Over the next few weeks, the probate lawyer called Riley to update her. He’d filed the police report for the missing watch, and if she wanted to sue her uncle for the watch or its value, he’d be happy to testify that Nathaniel was the only one who could have stolen it. He even recommended a lawyer who hadn’t lost a civil case in years.

  No way Riley could afford to sue Nathaniel. The man owned a mining operation that hacked apart mountains. He could afford an army of lawyers.

  The watch was gone—unless she could get it back herself.

  She’d tried twice already.

  The first time, she marched up to his front door to demand it back. A maid opened the door, and dear Uncle Nathaniel didn’t bother showing his face.

  The second time, she broke in during the day. Aunt Wendy caught her, and in an embarrassing show of pity, shooed Riley out of the house before Nathaniel could notice she was there.

  Two weeks ago, Riley received a postcard that said, “He’s taking the watch on the Aria of the Seas on Sept 8th.”

  She didn’t know who it was from. Maybe Aunt Wendy felt guilty about stealing $50,000 from her niece when they owned cars worth twice that much. Maybe the maid was sick of Nathaniel, and this was a quick opportunity for revenge.

  Neither of those explanations quite made sense because the final note on the postcard said, “Your father would want you to see.”

  “See what?” Krystal had asked between mouthfuls of popcorn while they watched Jane Austen movies on a Tuesday morning.

  “Beats me. My watch, I guess.”

  Krystal shrugged. “If you say so. So are we going?”

  “On the cruise?” Riley had realized that yes, she was absolutely going. She’d open a credit card if she had to. She’d quit her coffee shop job and forgo six weeks of UberEats pay. Uncle Nathaniel didn’t need the watch. He’d stolen it just to be an ass. Probably wanted to display it in his ten million dollar mansion.

  But if Riley could get it and sell it—even for half of what Dad said it was worth—everything would change. No more nights and weekends swallowed up by part-time jobs, leaving her scrounging for me-time on a Tuesday morning. No more crappy apartments. If she could just get qualified for a decent job—and nursing felt right—life could finally start moving. Riley could finally search for a reason for living.

  “Yeah, we’re going.”

  Now, two weeks later, the attendant was scanning their tickets and reviewing their passports.

  Riley had studied the Aria of the Seas, learning its layout from blueprints, watching every YouTube video she could find. She stalked public Instagram pages of people who’d taken videos on the ship. She knew where the biggest cabins were—that’s where Nathaniel and Wendy would be. She knew where the safes were, but Riley doubted Nathaniel would trust someone else with the security.

  Two weeks isn’t much time to learn to pickpocket, but she practiced with Krystal anyways. They had a dozen half-baked plans on how to snatch the watch out of Nathaniel’s pocket or how to sneak into his cabin. She knew it was a long shot, but she had to take the chance.

  She’d kinda learned to steal, and she’d definitely learned everything she could about the ship. She was ready.

  But when they walked out of the concourse, dropped their bags with the porters—where Krystal flirted with a muscly guy named Bobby—and then started up the gangway, Riley froze.

  “What is it?” Krystal asked.

  Riley inspected the windows on the bottom deck of the ship. A dinner-plate size porthole every ten feet.

  “This isn’t the Aria.”

  Krystal checked her ticket. “Of course it is.”

  “That’s what our tickets say. That’s what the signs say.” She craned her neck to look up at the side of the ship. “That’s even the name painted on there. But I’ve spent two weeks learning every inch of the Aria, and it doesn’t have that many windows on the bottom decks.”

  “You must be remembering wrong.” Krystal shrugged. “I see windows. You see windows. Those guys inside see windows.”

  “Who?” Riley scanned dark glass circles the reflected glaring sunlight.

  Krystal pointed three portholes down.

  A blurry face was pressed against the glass. The thick window distorted the image, but Riley could see two small blobs for eyes and a large blob for a mouth. It looked like animal fat mixed with Play-Doh. She couldn’t make out the rest of the head—the mass continued in all directions to the edge of the window.

  But it was all so blurry she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Maybe a walk-in freezer? “Are you sure that’s a person?”

  The face rotated, so the two eyes focused on Riley. A chill ran up her spine.

  “It’s somebody,” Krystal said. “Quit staring. Let’s go.”

  Riley followed Krystal onto the ship that was definitely not the Aria.

  3

  The gangway led them to the concourse, what was essentially a floating shopping mall. It even had the mixed smells of greasy food and sweet ice cream.

  It should be deck seven, but instead, they were on deck six.

  “I’m telling you,” Riley insisted, “this isn’t the Aria of the Seas.” She wanted to explore the ship top-to-bottom, to verify that she wasn’t crazy.

  Krystal had other ideas. “Forget that. Let’s find the buffet. Wait, I need a margarita!”

  The voyage had a barebones staff and few travelers, but everyone was on the deck six concourse.

  The restaurants and shops were all bustling, despite the website’s warning that they would be closed most of the voyage. The three-story interior space was decorated like a rainforest. Leafy vines hung from the ceiling. Lights on the ceiling projected green silhouettes of monkeys and jaguars onto the floor.

  Riley and Krystal were the youngest guests there by far. A crowd of senior citizens gawked at the scenery or browsed through the jewelers and fine art galleries.

  The lady from the concourse with the pink hair and peppermint-striped walking cane saw them. “There’s my party girls! I’m here with my sisters, and they’re a couple of wet blankets. Can I get drunk with you?”
r />   “Yes, girl!” Krystal grabbed the lady’s hand. “We’re looking for margaritas right now.”

  Riley swallowed her irritation. She tried telling herself they had six weeks to explore the ship.

  But if it wasn’t the Aria, then that threw off her footing. Right now, she felt like she was flailing. Her whole plan to steal back Dad’s pocket watch had lost its launchpad.

  Riley desperately wanted to explore the ship and start working on a new mental map.

  “I’m Marjorie,” said the old lady. “And don’t tell anybody, but I already swiped a wine cooler from the shops.”

  She tucked a glass bottle into Riley’s purse.

  That was the last thing she needed. Riley tried to hand the wine cooler back to Marjorie.

  “No!” Marjorie waved a wrinkled hand. “I think the cashier saw me take it.”

  “I don’t want it.” Riley looked over into the shop, where a skinny dark-haired woman craned her neck to see them from behind her cash register.

  Krystal shoved the bottle into her own purse. “Let’s go spend enough on margaritas to make up for it.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Marjorie’s eyes shined like a schoolgirl’s.