World's End Read Free Page B

“Huh?” he said.
    What she wanted, bobbing there like a naiad in the turbid ancient Hudson in the late hours of the night and with the great high monumental V-shaped prow of the ship hanging over her, was derring-do. Heroics. Feats of strength and agility. What she wanted was to see Walter hoist himself up the anchor chain like a naked buccaneer and vanish into the fastness of the mystery ship, there to unravel the skein of its secrets, absorb the feel of its artifacts and memorize the lay of its decks. Or something like that. “My arms are too weak,” she said. “I can’t do it myself.”
    A tug moved by in the distance, towing a barge. Beyond it, Walter could make out the dim lights of Peterskill, hazy with distance and the pall of mist that hung over the river’s middle reaches.
    â€œCome on,” she prodded. “Just take a peek.”
    Walter thought about the presumptive watchman, the penalties for trespassing on federal property, his fear of heights, the crapulous, narcotized, soporific state of his mind and body that made every movement a risk, and said, “Why not?”
    Hand over hand, foot over foot, he ascended the chain like a true nihilist and existential hero. What did danger matter? Life had neither meaning nor value, one lived only for personal extinction, for the void, for nothingness. It was dangerous to sit on a sofa, lift a fork to your mouth, brush your teeth. Danger. Walter laughed in the face of it. Of course, for all that, he was terrified.
    Two-thirds of the way up he lost his grip and snatched at the chain like a madman, twelve pints of blood suddenly pounding in his ears. Below, blackness; above, the shadowy outline of the ship’s rail. Walter caught his breath, and then continued upward, dangling high above the water like a big pale spider. When finally he reached the top, when finally he could snake out a tentative hand and touch skin to the great cold fastness of the ship’s hull, he found that the anchor chain plunged into an evil-looking porthole sort of thing that might have been the monstrous, staved-in, piratical eye of the entire ghostlyfleet. He leaned back to take in the huge block letters that identified the old hulk—U.S.S.
Anima
—hesitated a moment, then twisted his way through the porthole.
    He was inside now, in an undefined space of utter, impossible, unalloyed darkness. Bare feet gripped bare steel, his fingers played along the walls. There was a smell of metal in decay, of oil sludge and dead paint. He worked his way forward, inch by inch, until shadows began to emerge from the obscurity and he found himself on the main deck. A covered hatch stood before him; above rose the mainmast and cargo booms. The rest of the ship—cabins, boats, masts and cranes—fell off into darkness. He had the feeling of perching on a great height, of flying, as if he were strolling the aisles of a jetliner high above the clouds. There was nothing here but shadows. And the thousand creaks and groans of the inanimate in faint, rhythmic motion.
    But something was wrong. Something about the place seemed to rekindle the flames of nostalgia that had licked at him throughout the day. He stood stock-still. He drew in his breath. When he turned around he was only mildly surprised to see his grandmother perched on the rail behind him. “Walter,” she said, and her voice crackled with static as if she were talking on a bad long-distance connection. “Walter, you’ve got no clothes on.”
    â€œBut Gram,” he said, “I’ve been swimming.”
    She was wearing a big sack dress and she was as fat as she’d been in life. “No matter,” she said, waving a dimpled wrist in dismissal, “I wanted to tell you about your father, I wanted to explain. … I—”
    â€œI don’t need any explanation,” a voice growled behind him.
    Walter whirled around. It had been going on all day—yes,