Night Terrors Vol. 2: Short Horror Stories Anthology

Live Bait

By Jude Reid

We were all dead from the moment the torpedo hit the Grangemouth. It just took some of us longer to realize than others.

There were five of us in the lifeboat: my brother Iain and I, a Lieutenant of Marines named Horton, the ship’s telegrapher Charlie Sengupta—listed at fourteen years of age, but who looked closer to twelve—and a big Maltese stoker who spoke no English but whose name, Charlie told us, was Joe Abela. We had the luxury of a week’s water supply meant for ten, but at Horton's insistence, we kept the ration short. Abela was suffering more than the rest of us, an eight-inch gouge torn out of his thigh by a piece of shrapnel.

The wound opened every time he moved and gave off a sickly, pungent smell of decay.

There must have been other survivors. We’d seen the other lifeboats cast off during those last, desperate moments on board, and surely not all of them had been pulled down with the ship as she broke deep and took on water—but once we were out in the open sea, we might have been the only men alive in the world. Half our crew had been killed outright as the U-boat’s torpedo ripped a twenty-foot hole through the stern, most of the rest drowning below decks as she sank. I thought we were lucky, those of us who found a space on the life-rafts and made it far enough away that the ship couldn’t drag us under in her wake. If I’d known what was to come, I’d have gone down with the Grangemouth and thanked God for my good fortune.

On the first day, we put our backs to the oars and headed on an eastward bearing, thinking we might retrace our ship’s route across the Aegean, but we soon gave up any hope of that. We had tarps to shield us during the blistering heat of noon and the freezing nighttime air, a case of flares, and a portable wireless transmitter-receiver that would have been a lifesaver, if only it had been working.

Close to dawn on the third day, Charlie woke us with a yell, the boat rolling wildly under us.

“Sit down before you have us over,” Iain said, eyes still closed.

“It’s land,” Charlie said. “Lieutenant, wake up. There’s land ahead.”

The boat pitched as Horton got to his feet, leaning across the side as if getting three feet closer would make a difference to the quality of his view. “The boy’s right, by God,” Horton said. “Could it be Malta, do you suppose? Ask Abela, Charlie.”

The lascar knew a few words of Maltese and seemed to have a natural flair for languages. Abela’s eyes remained unfocused, but he answered the boy’s halting question with a few words of his own.

“He says there’s lots of islands out here. Too far south for Malta, he thinks.” “I’ll take a desert island over another day of this,” Iain said, getting up from the bottom of the boat. “Up you get, Gus, give me a hand.”

Horton nodded with approval. “Take the oars, men. Give way together.”

Iain rolled his eyes at me. Horton seemed to have appointed himself cox of our crew, maintaining rigorous attention to discipline that the rest of us had more or less lost in our new role as castaways. My brother had never shown much reverence to the officer class, and he reserved special contempt for the Grangemouth’s Marines, who were, in his opinion, an inferior sort of seamen compared to the rest of us. I was sure that when the water ran short, Horton would be first over the side.

I took the other oar, and between us, we navigated toward the rocks. The worst heat of the day was yet to come, but my mouth was already dry and my skin chafed with salt. Charlie was leaning over the bow like an eager dog, the waters below us turning from midnight to a clear pale turquoise.

"Doesn’t look like much,” Iain muttered, as we got our first sight of the island—little more than a bare rocky spur sticking up from the ocean.

“It’s land,” I reminded him. “Count your blessings.”

Iain and I dragged the boat up the beach, while Charlie helped Abela limp his way through the shallows and settled him with his back to a rock. Even that small exertion had turned him grey with exhaustion, and thick greenish pus was leaking through the bandage around his thigh. Horton was already striding away from us. “Hello?” he shouted. “Anyone home?”