Michael Drake tossed on his bunk as if on a frying pan. He couldn't fall asleep. He kept imagining that behind the thin bulkhead, Ethan Carter was creeping—silent as a cat, coming to slit his throat and stay alone with Laura on the ship. And perhaps, after enjoying her helplessness and doing his dark deed, he'd throw her overboard too, and when the ship was finally found, he'd lie that he was the sole survivor.
Drake sat up in bed, listening to the night sounds. Somewhere, a door creaked. Someone walked down the corridor. The footsteps faded, but in the silence they echoed long after in his alcohol-addled mind.
"No, quiet... Imagined it." He wiped sweat from his forehead. "Damn, it's stuffy! And these cursed mosquitoes! Where did they even come from in the middle of the ocean? Mosquitoes, gnats—like over a swamp. Or are we near land? I'll go get some fresh air..."
For several nights now, Drake had been "getting fresh air" in the ship's bar. The storerooms held crates of alcohol from around the world, gathered for the most refined clientele, but he invariably chose whiskey or rum from the old stocks. Drake stubbornly convinced himself he only drank "for preventive purposes," but with each day, his trips to the bar grew more frequent, and his justifications grew shorter.
Making his way through the dark along familiar passages, Drake finally reached his cherished corner in the bar, where, uncorking a bottle, he took a good swig right away. The warm liquid burned his throat, spreading pleasant warmth. He closed his eyes, listening to himself.
And suddenly, just as he had finally relaxed, planning to sit in his cozy corner until dawn as usual, a rustling came from beyond the bulkhead. Quiet, but frighteningly distinct.
This sound, seeping through the layer of steel, made Drake freeze with the glass halfway to his lips. In the empty belly of the huge liner, where every rustle should have drowned in the ocean's hum, this sound seemed deafening. Drake froze with the bottle at his mouth. His heart skipped a beat, then started pounding somewhere in his throat.
"Ethan's looking for me... decided to get rid of me after all," he whispered, barely aware of his own words. "Well, hide and seek it is. Just don't let him find me till morning..."
Drake began backing into the farthest corner of the bar, pressing against the wall, until he tripped over a chair and crashed to the floor. Lying there, he pressed himself against the cold metal of the deck, feverishly whispering either prayers or curses aimed at Ethan.
At that moment, a new sound came. As if something enormous, slippery, and rough was scraping against the hull with a disgusting screech. And then came a soft but terrifyingly powerful thud. The liner swayed—but it wasn't an ocean wave. It felt as if some colossal being had pushed the multi-ton mass from below with its palm. With a deep, low thrumming, the bulkheads vibrated.
Drake's hair stood on end. Ancient, animal terror gripped his throat with an icy hand.
He screamed—not in his own voice, wildly, piercingly—and, stumbling, falling, breaking tables in his path and knocking over chairs, he raced upward. Bursting out onto the deck, he came face to face with Ethan Carter.
"What was that?!" Drake rasped, clutching Ethan's sleeve in a death grip, completely forgetting that moments ago he had feared him above all else.
"Haven't the slightest idea," Ethan replied calmly, not even trying to free himself. His voice was so steady, as if he encountered unknown creatures on deck every night. "I felt the impacts, got dressed, and came out to look."
The moon bathed the deck in cold, ghostly light. The Orion's bow was nearly level with the water, and the stern was raised toward the sky, and in that lunar glow, the ship seemed a phantom sailing between worlds.
"Come down here, Drake, don't be a child," Ethan called, already standing on the deck by the water's edge, examining something below.
"Thank you kindly, but I can see fine from here!" Drake gripped the railing so hard his knuckles went white.
At that moment, Laura emerged onto the deck, wrapped in a blanket, barefoot, with disheveled hair. She squinted sleepily, trying to understand what was happening.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"Miss Evans, please come here," Ethan said.
Without hesitation, Laura descended to him, stepping over debris. Emboldened by her presence, Drake shuffled after her, constantly glancing back at the dark water.
The moon illuminated the deck brighter than any spotlight. On the white boards—where they were still clean—a wide, wet trail was visible, as if something heavy had crawled across the deck, made a semicircle, and tumbled overboard, crushing the iron railings like paper.
"See?" Ethan said quietly. "That's a belly trail. As if something enormous crawled through here. At least fifteen feet, no less."
They climbed higher along the deck, examining the damage. The railings were crushed and twisted, as if squeezed by a giant hand. Deep scratches remained on the deck, the kind no known sea creature could have made.
Even Drake forgot all about his "detective rights"—right now, he needed Ethan, with his calmness and confidence.
"What kind of monster was that?" Drake asked in a trembling voice, unable to tear his eyes from the dark water.
"I don't know." Ethan bent down, examining the tracks. "It's not an octopus or a whale. They don't have limbs like that. Maybe something no one's ever seen. A relic from the time when dinosaurs walked the earth. The deep ocean holds many secrets."
"What if it comes back?!"
"Then we'll shoot." Ethan patted the revolver protruding from the terrified Drake's holster. "But I don't think it'll come back here. It already got what it wanted."
"What did it want?" Laura asked, wrapping herself tighter in the blanket.
"I don't know. Maybe just curiosity. Or maybe..." Ethan looked at the compass in his hand and frowned. "But it's not that thing that worries me." He showed the compass to Drake. "It's this."
The compass needle spun wildly, not stopping for a second, as if gone mad.
"The compass needle? What's so scary about that?"
"It means our instruments are starting to lie, Drake. And that's a bad sign. We're most likely in the Bermuda Triangle region. I've read about it." Ethan swept his hand across the horizon. "The danger here is invisible. Many talk about magnetic anomalies in this area. They throw you off course, destroy electronics. A ship that loses navigation in these waters can sail in circles until food and fuel run out. And what happens next, I won't describe."
They all looked overboard. The ocean under the moonlight seemed unnaturally calm and black as pitch. Even the familiar sound of waves against the hull had quieted, as if the sea were holding its breath.
"It's a navigation trap," Ethan continued, watching the frantically spinning gyrocompass needle. "You stop trusting your instruments, then your eyes, then your common sense. In panic, you can make a fatal decision. Most disasters here are the result of human error multiplied by distorted reality."
"A trap?!" Drake slammed his fist against the railing. "Are you saying we could be lost here forever?"
"Yes, my dear Drake. Perhaps your ten thousand dollars will become paper we use to light the stove if we're stuck here long." Ethan smirked. "Courage."
"To hell with the money!" Drake exclaimed, and for the first time, his voice lacked its usual greed. "If only we could regain control of this iron box and get out of here! Preferably alive!"
Laura watched them both—this strange criminal and this absurd detective—and thought about how the ocean wasn't just testing them; it was probing who they really were.
The following days dragged on—oppressive, sweltering, windless. The ocean lay flat as a mirror, and in that silence, there was something unnatural, terrifying. And at night, fog sometimes rolled in—thick as milk, and then it seemed the ship hung in a void, cut off from the entire world.
Laura read a great deal—the ship had an excellent library, assembled for first-class passengers. Novels, poetry, travelers' memoirs—all helped pass the long hours and avoid thinking about what lay ahead.
Some evenings, they escaped the cramped officers' mess for the grand main salon. Ethan had run a temporary line from the generator, bringing a few lamps to life, their dim pools of light only emphasizing the vast emptiness of the space. Laura would sit at the piano—the instrument was slightly out of tune from the sea air, but still responded with a deep, pure sound. And she would sing. Her voice, clear and strong, carried through the empty halls of the Orion, and for a moment, one could forget they were stranded in the middle of the ocean, in the very heart of the accursed Bermuda Triangle.
Ethan listened, leaning back in a chair, and in his usually cold eyes, something warm appeared. And Drake... Drake increasingly carried bottles of alcohol with him—he'd taken to drinking out of despair.
At first, it was just "a couple of swallows for courage," then "to help sleep," and then with no explanation at all. Ethan saw it but said nothing—for now.
One night, spotting the detective creeping toward the bar again, Ethan followed him. The next morning, Drake found the wine storeroom doors locked with a heavy padlock, the key nowhere to be found.
"The last thing we need is delirium tremens," Ethan cut him off when Drake started protesting, waving his arms and demanding the return of "his rightful property." "If you want to die, do it sober. Or jump overboard and swim to that thing that crawled across the deck. Maybe it'll keep you company."
Drake wanted to protest, wanted to remind him who represented the law here and who was the criminal, but meeting Ethan's cold gaze, he understood—arguing was useless. He had to submit.
That evening, Laura played the "Moonlight Sonata" on the piano. Ethan stood by the porthole, gazing at the endless water. And Drake sat in his corner, gloomy and sober, and for the first time in a long while, looked at his companions without his usual suspicion.
"Do you think we'll make it out?" he asked quietly.
Ethan turned. "I don't know, Drake. But if we don't—I'm glad I met you both here."
Laura smiled, not stopping her playing. Drake grunted and turned away, hiding his embarrassment.
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