I put a hand on the door to the deck and at the last second remembered the hook, still swinging out on deck, so I ducked low as I pushed it open.
That saved my life.
The knife slashed a half inch over my head and came for me again on the back stroke. I twisted back and it missed me by a quarter inch this time, and almost as close I heard a hiss that was half animal and half something from a bad movie.
Bernadette stood there in the doorway in a blinding spray of rain and wind, and she looked twice as wild as the storm. Her hair was plastered to her head, and one eye was swollen shut from the thump she’d taken from the cargo hook. But the other eye, the one in the melted part of her face, was wide open, bloodshot, and filled with hate. As I stared and wondered what the hell it took to kill her, or if it was even possible, she stepped at me with her knife up for another try.
Before she could gut me I pulled the door toward me as hard as I could. It caught her on the wrist and I heard something crack—I couldn’t tell if it was the door or her wrist, but all that mattered was that the knife clattered to the floor. I heard her grunt, and I pushed on the door as hard as I’d pulled. It caught her in the chest and pushed her back out onto the deck, and I stumbled out after her.
I had no idea what I was going to try to do, but I knew if I didn’t stay on her and do something, she would have me, even without her knife. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I don’t mean because I was so beat-up I could hardly stand. It was her. In my mind, Bernadette had turned into some kind of undead monster, an immortal thing that would just keep coming at me until it got me and shredded me into a heap of red ribbons.
But I had to try, even though I was half sure she couldn’t be killed. I went at her as fast as I could, and she was faster. She swung a kick at my head, and I blocked it—but my arm went numb. I took a feeble step forward to get inside the arc of her kick and threw a punch. It hit her as she sidestepped, so the impact was much less, and as the punch pulled me past her she swung an elbow that caught me on the jaw and knocked me off my feet.
I scrabbled away across the rain-slick deck toward the stern of the boat, and she came right after, stomping on my bad leg. I wanted to scream with the pain, but before I could she landed a kick on my good knee tha
t took the breath out of me. I was pretty sure that if she got me with another one like that I’d break into small pieces, but I was halfway to shattered already, and on a slippery deck already, so what could I do?
Really stupid, I know, but one more time I heard Mom: Turn your stumbling blocks into stepping-stones! And this time I knew right away what that meant.
As Bernadette was raising her foot to crash it down and finish me, I whipped around on the slippery deck, like a fidget spinner. Her foot was already up, and with my bad leg I crashed into her plant foot, the one still on the deck. It probably hurt me more than it did her. The shock of it went through me and took the pain of my leg into another dimension—but Bernadette went down and I hauled myself to the gunwale and onto my feet.
I got up just in time to see her scramble to her feet, too. She stood there panting a little, staring at me with that one red eye in the monster face, and then she smiled, because she knew, just as sure as I did, that I was out of moves and backed against the gunwale with no room to do anything but let her come and kill me.
So she stood there for a second enjoying it, and all I could do was watch her. And then I caught sight of the hook, still swinging in its crazy arc behind her. My eyes flicked to it, hoping for a repeat miracle—and she saw me look. She turned and dodged, and the hook sailed harmlessly past her. It came straight at me, and now it was my turn to dodge and I couldn’t.
So I caught the hook, grabbing the steel cable with one hand and the hook with the other. It stung but I got it, and I wasted a second staring at it, dangling from my hands by the steel cable. I looked up at Bernadette, sure she was slithering at me, coming for the kill.
She wasn’t. She was staring at the hook hanging from my hands and she wasn’t smirking anymore, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I’d like to say it was just all the beating up I’d taken, the blows on the head, the swollen and damaged leg, all the extra pain that seemed to fill every nook and cranny of my body, but let’s face it. It was just plain good old-fashioned stupid. I was so completely convinced I had to run from her I just couldn’t think about attacking Bernadette. I was so used to her having all the weapons and the supernatural mojo, and me just trying to get away from her, that it took me a couple of seconds before I remembered what I had in my hands.
A weapon. The cargo hook was a weapon.
And just as I realized that, Bernadette figured out that I was slow to catch on and she came at me. I had just enough time to swing the hook and let it fly sidearm.
And it missed her.
Because I threw sidearm, though, the hook curled as it went past her, and just as it began to swing back I got both hands on the cable and yanked. Hard. As hard as I have ever yanked on anything. To be honest, I just wanted to hit her with the hook, slam her to her knees, hurt her since she couldn’t be killed, at least slow her, and I screwed that up, too.
But.
I said I yanked hard. Looking back, maybe too hard. What can I say? I definitely had a lot of adrenaline happening. And I admit I didn’t like her, and she scared me, and I half believed she couldn’t be killed. So I put everything I had into that yank—but I swear I never thought it would happen like this.
When I pulled the cable, the hook bit into Bernadette’s back, just below the ribs. It went into her. And it stuck. When I yanked it was like setting the hook in a really big bass. That hook went deep into her side and stuck there. Bernadette said, “Aaaaaggghuh,” or words to that effect, and for a moment the two of us froze like that. I mean, she had that hook in her, and I was in a kind of a freaked-out funk, and I’m not sure which of us was more shocked.
Well, okay, to be fair, I’m pretty sure Bernadette was more shocked. She put a hand down to the hook, not like pulling it out, just sort of caressing it, which looked so damn wrong it kept me staring, unable to move. And then she looked at me and this expression came onto her face that made it seem like all that melted scar tissue on one side had taken over her whole face and she was bringing it all to me—
She took a step forward. At me. With a steel hook stabbed into her.
I was right. She couldn’t be killed. I know that sounds stupid when you are far away and it’s happening to somebody else—but it was happening to me. I was on a boat getting hammered by a storm, and something that looked like a movie monster was coming at me, and I had seen the creature hit with enough to kill four or five superheroes, and it was still coming at me. None of us are really very far away from being half-monkey savages hiding from the dark in a cave. At a certain point, that monkey-man takes over, and ghosts are real, and the darkness is filled with things that cannot die—and I was there now, with one of the things from the darkness coming at me.
She took another step forward.
I couldn’t move. I could just watch her, feeling the hair stand up all over my body. Another step—and I was filled with a blind, unthinking terror—but suddenly I had to move. I was jammed against the gunwale and couldn’t retreat any farther—I needed to find a weapon. Without taking my eyes off Bernadette, I scrabbled blindly behind me for something, anything—a rock, a big stick, anything at all to hit her with. All I found was some kind of metal lever sticking up from the gunwale. It felt like it was only a few inches long, but it was metal and it was all there was. I pulled at it. It stuck. I pulled harder, pulled in another direction—
And Bernadette jerked to a stop.
I was so sure she couldn’t be stopped that it took me a moment to see it. But the cable attached to the hook had gone tight—so tight she could no longer move forward. And as I blinked at this miracle, and she tried to take another step forward, she went backward.