Fevre Dream Page 0,157

the bayou, but quite thoroughly concealed."

Marsh said, "How the hell..."

"It was my doing. Let me start from the beginning, and tell you all of it." He sighed. "I must go back thirteen years, to the night I took my leave from you."

"I remember."

"I went upriver as quickly as I could," Joshua began, "anxious to get back, worried that the thirst would come upon me. Travel was difficult, but I reached the Fevre Dream on the second night after my departure. She had moved only slightly. She now stood well away from the shore, the dark water rushing around her on both sides. It was a cold, foggy night when I approached her, and she was absolutely dead and dark. No smoke, no steam, not a flame showing anywhere, so silent that I almost missed her for the fog. I did not want to return, but I knew I must. I swam out to her." He hesitated briefly. "Abner, you know the sort of life I have led. I have seen and done many terrible things. But nothing prepared me for that steamer the way I found her, nothing."

Marsh's face grew hard. "Go on."

"I told you once that I thought Damon Julian was mad."

"I recollect it."

"Mad and heedless and dreaming of death," Joshua said. "And he had proven it. Oh, yes. He had proven it. When I pulled myself up onto deck, the steamer was deathly quiet. No sound, no movement, just the river rushing past. I wandered through the boat unmolested." His eyes were fixed on Abner Marsh, but they had a far-off glazed look, as if they were seeing something else, something they would always see. York stopped.

"Tell me, Joshua," Marsh said.

York's mouth grew tight. "It was a slaughterhouse, Abner." He let that simple statement hang in the air for a moment, before he went on. "Bodies were everywhere. Everywhere. And not intact, either. I walked through the main deck, and found corpses... among the freight and back with the engines. There were... arms, legs, other body parts. Ripped loose. Torn off. The slaves, the stokers Billy had bought, most of them were still in the manacles, dead, their throats torn out. The engineer had been hung upside down above the cylinder, and cut so... he must have bled down onto... as if blood could take the place of oil." Joshua gave a small grim shake of his head. "The number of dead, Abner. You can't imagine. And the way they were torn, the grotesque mutilations. The fog had seeped onto the boat, so I could not see the whole at once. I walked, I wandered, and these things would suddenly appear before me where, an instant before, there had been nothing but vague shadows and a drifting veil of fog. And I would look at whatever new terror the mist had yielded up to me, and move away, and take only two or three steps before the vapors dissolved yet again to reveal something even more vile.

"Finally, sick at heart and filled with a wrath that burned in me like a fever, I went up the grand staircase to the boiler deck. The saloon... it was more of the same. Bodies and pieces of bodies. So much blood had been spilled that the carpet was still wet with it, even then. Everywhere I found signs of struggle. Dozens of mirrors were shattered, three or four stateroom doors had been smashed in, tables were overturned. On one table that still stood there was a human head upon a silver platter. I have never known more horror than I did as I walked the length of that saloon, those terrible three hundred feet. Nothing moved in the darkness, in the fog. Nothing living. I moved back and forth listlessly, not knowing what to do. I stopped before the water cooler, that great silver ornamental water cooler you had placed at the forward end of the cabin. My throat was very dry. I picked up one of the silver cups and turned the handle. The water... the water came slowly, Abner. Very slowly. Even in the darkness of that saloon, I could see that it was black and viscous. Half... clotted.

"I stood with the cup in hand, looking about blindly, my nose filled with the smell... the smell, I have hardly mentioned that, the smell was terrible, it... you can imagine, I'm sure. I stood in the midst of it all watching that agonizing slow trickle from the water cooler. I