monologue three
[1]
A loud voice rang out. “If you’re looking for weapons, here they are!”
The children stood very still under the blazing lamplight of the hallway. I stood there in their midst, clutching the body of the Hungarian girl, her throat pierced with the combat knife. For several seconds, no one moved a muscle, nor did anyone say a word.
There were nine boys and girls left. Huey and the Hungarian girl were no longer with us.
The shout had come from the German boy. His heavy-set frame, nearly large enough to be an adult, although he was only fourteen years old, quivered with anger. He grabbed Ree, who had been the last one to arrive, and yanked forward the hand she was hiding behind her back.
I immediately yelled, “Stop it!”
His deep and commanding German-accented voice thundered through the hallway. “Look at her. Here’s your murder weapon! She was carrying it with her!”
When we all saw what he was pointing at, we gasped.
For some reason, Ree was gripping a small knife in her hand. It was long and smooth like an elephant’s tusk, and it gleamed coldly under the lamplight.
“It’s her. She’s the killer!” the boy spat out venomously.
Ree struggled to free herself, which shook loose the knife from her small hand. The German boy bent down and retrieved it, while keeping a tight grip on her.
Ree shook her head, trying to tell us that she didn’t do it. Tears filled her eyes.
Yang stepped forward. “Stop it!” he shouted.
“I don’t take orders from yellow bastards like you!”
“What!?” Yang sputtered in anger.
Another boy quickly stepped in between them. This boy, a tall and muscular Austrian, had been together with the German boy since the beginning, and looked and acted similar to him. He joined the German boy and grabbed Ree’s other wrist. “If we get rid of her, we won’t be in danger anymore. Look at her; she’s the only one hiding a weapon. Damn it, I’ll bet she’s just pretending not to understand what we’re saying!”
“You’re wrong. She really doesn’t understand!” I yelled.
But they didn’t even bother to look in my direction. Now that they had Ree pinned between them, unable to move, the German boy punched her in the head as hard as he could. Ree’s small head bobbed, her long black hair fluttering into the air.
Yang frantically tried to pull him away from her. The other kids just stood there petrified, watching what was unfolding.
“Yeah! And she was the only one with Huey when he died. This bitch locked us up in here, and she’s killing us one by one!”
“Your little game is finished! Now we’re going to kill you!”
The two tall boys nodded at each other, and started to beat Ree. They had lost all self-control. Being locked up in this place and seeing people die right in front of them must have terrified them out of their wits.
Yang yelled, “Stop it!” and tried to intervene, but their difference in body size was too great, and they simply kicked him aside.
Then the German boy shouted, raising the knife.
The children screamed.
He swung the knife down with all his strength. Yang saw that he was aiming directly at Ree’s heart, and slammed into him with his own body. Several other kids surrounding us yelled at the German boy to stop.
The impact of Yang barreling into the German boy deflected the knife from Ree’s heart, causing it to slide lightly along her side instead. The boy had swung down the knife with such force that it made a loud thud against the floorboard as it fell on the red carpet, missing Ree.
The knife must have been very sharp. Bright red blood streamed from the shallow cut on her side, the open wound staining her skin red like a blooming flower.
Everyone held their breath.
Then Ree let out a thin scream, and fainted dead away.
Once the Austrian boy caught sight of her blood, that seemed to pull him back to awareness, and he quickly pulled his hands away from Ree. But the German boy, with bloodshot eyes, picked up the knife again and raised it into the air.
I flung away the corpse that I was holding in my arms, opened the drawer, and took out the small pistol. I lifted it with both hands, and yelled out, “Get away from Ree, or I’ll shoot!”
The German boy froze, and turned around, a look of disbelief in his eyes. He quietly raised his hands up above his head.
The other children stared at me with shocked faces.
Silence engulfed the hallway.
As I held the gun, I could feel my arms shaking. I didn’t know if what I was doing was right or wrong. The only thought that filled my mind was the desire to save Ree. She was a good and kind girl; that much I knew, even if we couldn’t communicate with words.
Yang opened his mouth, and said in a quiet voice, “Alex. Calm down.”
“Okay…”
“Where did you find that gun?”
“It was in here,” I said, motioning to the chest of drawers. Everyone’s gazes immediately converged on that spot. “I found it a little while ago. I don’t know why, but there are weapons on board this ship. Ree must have found that knife the same way. Maybe it was for self-defense, or maybe she wanted to tell everybody about it, but either way, I think she was just holding a knife that she found and nothing more than that.”
“What?!” hissed the German boy.
“Get away from Ree. Yang, take care of her wound.”
Yang nodded, and crouched down next to her. He tore off his own shirt and pressed it to her side.
I turned my attention back to the two boys, who were still holding their hands in the air. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’d never do something like that. But … I just want us to stop suspecting each other. We’re all in this together, so let’s just hurry up and get to the radio room—”
“I, I don’t think so!” the German boy shouted, his voice trembling. He was starting to look obstinate again. He grabbed the hesitating Austrian boy and walked away with him.
“Hey!” I called after them.
“So there’s weapons around? Then we’ll arm ourselves, too. You expect us to trust each other? When there’s a girl here hiding a knife?” They shot one last hateful glance at Ree on the floor, then started pulling out drawers one by one from the chests lined up along the walls, searching for weapons.
After they had traveled a ways down the hallway, I heard one of them yell from afar, “I found one!” But they had gone around the corner and I couldn’t see what was happening.
Suddenly, the Turkish boy stood up. He had dark skin and long, graceful limbs. The boy started yelling something in his deep voice, sounding indignant. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I could guess that he was telling them that it was dangerous, and was calling them to come back. He pointed down the hallway, then pointed at himself, and with a nod, took off running.
The Turkish boy’s slim body rounded the corner and disappeared.
The very next moment…
I heard a gunshot. It was so loud that felt like the floor, walls, and even the air vibrated. Then, in the corner of my eye, I saw the boy’s body reappear from around the corner. He flew backwards and landed on the floor face up.
All was silent.
…A few seconds later, somebody screamed.
I ran up to the Turkish boy, my gun in hand. I was reaching out to rouse him when I saw the gaping hole in his chest. For a instant, I thought I could see the pattern of the carpet through that hole. And then all I saw was blood, oozing out and staining the floor.
I immediately knew that he had been shot by a very high-powered gun. The Turkish boy’s face was frozen in a slight grimace. He had died instantly, without even enough time to realize what had happened to himself.
I looked up and saw the German and Austrian boys running away. The German boy was holding what looked like a machine gun.
[2]
Three people were dead: Huey, the Hungarian girl, and the Turkish boy. Ree had fainted from pain and blood loss, and I carried her on my back down the hallway, toward the radio room at the bow of the ship. Now there were six of us left: Yang, the Chinese boy; the black-haired Ree; me, plus a strapping Italian boy with strong features. In contrast to him was a tall, thin American boy, his hair loosely curled like a cherub’s. There was also a petite French girl with long, braided brunette hair.
We said nothing as we walked along, our faces tense with fear.
Unlike the luxurious upper floors, the lower levels were dark and dreary, giving me a unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. The lamps and doorknobs that dotted the hallways seemed to be shifting into slightly plainer and more utilitarian designs.
The French girl walking in front suddenly let out a forlorn cry. She looked over her shoulder at us and shook her head helplessly.
Once again, we had found a wall blocking the middle of the hallway, and we couldn’t pass. We turned around back to the stairwell to go down yet another floor.
Yang called out to me. “Alex. That was brave of you back there.”
“Nah, that was nothing compared to what you did….”
“Do you still have that gun?”
I nodded, and Yang asked if he could see it. I handed it over to him.
“This is the safety,” he said. “You need to release it before you can shoot.”
“Oh.” I nodded, then I thought for a moment. “…So if I had pulled the trigger before, nothing would’ve happened?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t think you would do that anyway.”
Our eyes met. Yang smiled at me, his eyes narrowing into thread-like slits.
*****
We took the stairs, descending one more floor. The five of us walked down a hallway that seemed even gloomier than the last one. Ree was still unconscious on my back. I worried that her bleeding hadn’t stopped yet, but for now there was nothing I could do except keep on walking. I concentrated on just getting through this hallway, praying all the while that it wouldn’t be blocked off by another wall.
This floor had many old and austere-looking cabins and dining rooms for the second-class passengers and the engineers. The lighting was shadowy, and the carpet, which must have originally been crimson-colored, was darkened and threadbare.
Suddenly, the French girl started to talk softly about something completely unrelated, about the countryside where she grew up. I scratched my head at the unexpected topic.
“We used to raise sheep. But we were poor, so we didn’t own that many. My family ate cheese that we made from their milk. We were all in good health back then. I had a friend from a rich family, and I used to go play with her in her family’s wine cellar. I miss those days…”
If I looked closely at the girl with the braided hair, wearing ragged boys’ clothing, she was actually pretty cute. But now her face was ashen with fear.
After listening to her for a while, the American boy decided to join in, speaking loudly in a forced tone of cheerfulness, “Eww, sheep cheese! Who’d want to eat something stinky like that?” His voice hadn’t changed yet, and he sounded girlish and sweet.
The French girl pouted, and tried to argue with him, “Oh, but it’s so tasty.”
“Hmm… I used to live next to a cornfield. Do you like corn? Back then, we made corn soup nearly every day. Sometimes we put it in a meat stew. …I could sure use some right about now.”
In his calm and gentle voice, Yang began to tell his own story. When his father was still alive, they used to go traveling together. After Yang was orphaned, he was able to eke out a living unloading cargo at the port. The traveling lifestyle was lots of fun….
Now the Italian boy let out a bored snort. “Should we really be talking about this right now? I don’t want to hear it.”
With the wind taken out of our sails, we shut our mouths. For the next few minutes, we walked in silence.
Then the American boy suddenly spoke. “None of us is the killer. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Everyone stared at him, startled.
The American boy continued eagerly in his girlish voice. “I’ve been thinking. It’s true that we might be the only ones on board this ship, and that there’s weapons hidden all over. But it doesn’t mean any one of us is a murderer. That’s what I think.”
“Yeah!” enthusiastically shouted the French girl, nodding. “I think so, too. There must be some other bad people who locked us up in here. I don’t know why they would do that, but there’s someone who brought us all the way to this ship, and were even mean enough to break the rudder, just so they could have fun watching us suffer. That’s why they built these walls in the hallways. It’s not something any of us could have done.”
The two of them nodded at each other. But the Italian boy with the sharp features snapped at them, “Don’t be ridiculous! Then how did Huey die? There wasn’t anyone there except us. When Yang turned on the flashlight, Ree was the only one around. And there was that knife in that girl’s throat….”
As he spoke, he seemed to think back to that scene, and his voice trembled. “If that Hungarian girl had met some stranger who wasn’t in our group, wouldn’t she have at least screamed? But when she got stabbed, she didn’t make a sound. That means the person who killed her was one of us.”
“Well… you have a point…” The American boy groped for a response, but in the end he could only hang his head.
Silence descended upon the group.
Then Yang looked up at me. “Alex… Do you remember when we went to the deck?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“When that Hungarian girl hurt her cheek, there was something she said….”
I thought back to that time. After we came out to the deck, the Hungarian girl walked to the railing, and then cried out for help.
Something just grazed my cheek….
I remembered that. She said…
Right after I walked over here, something flew at me and fell into the water….
Yang nodded. “That girl must have stepped on something. Once she did, an arrow or something shot out and grazed her cheek. Because there wasn’t anyone standing in the direction that she was pointing in.”
The Italian boy leaned toward him. “So, what you’re saying is…?”
A cautious look passed over Yang’s face. “What if the person behind all this laid out traps for us to trigger automatically? Maybe no one stabbed her with the knife; it was just set up to jump out when someone passed through that area.”
“You’re kidding me….”
We started trying to open doors and move around furniture, while crouching low to the ground for safety’s sake. In one particular room, an arrow shot through the air the moment we opened the door. The Italian boy went inside, and carefully searched every nook and cranny. But there was no one there.
In another area, a hammer fell from the wall, narrowly missing the French girl’s head. Yang pushed the girl away in time for a large chunk of metal to pass directly in front of her nose. The hammer was rigged to fall when someone stepped on a certain part of the floor.
These traps weren’t in every room or hallway. But we could sense how ruthless and irrational they were. We were terrified. Everyone pulled closer together as we walked, trying both to warm our bodies and shield each other from harm.
After a while, the French girl suddenly shuddered.
“What’s wrong?”
“…I hear water.”
We strained to listen, but didn’t hear anything. I began to ask the French girl again what she had heard, but Yang shushed me, and I swallowed my words.
Finally…
I started to hear a faint dripping sound.
What could be causing it? I stood there for a moment, uncertain.
Then Yang yelled out, “We’re sinking!”
“What?!”
“It’s happening slowly, but water is entering the hull. My guess is … we’ll sink by tomorrow morning. Let’s hurry! We need to get to the ship’s bow!”
The moment that we all nodded at each other, I heard some children scream somewhere in the distance.
******
I ran to the source of the scream as fast as I could. I turned the corner and arrived at the elevator, which was glaringly illuminated by lamps. Since we had descended to the lower levels of the ship, the hallways and rooms were gloomy and bleak, but this corner happened to be oddly bright, almost blindingly so.
The scream had to have come from around here. But I didn’t see anyone….
I was looking around in confusion when suddenly a thick arm appeared out of nowhere. That arm grabbed my hair roughly, and yanked me to the side. I let out a scream.
Then the owner of that arm spoke in my ear. “Help me!”
…It was a familiar voice, speaking in a German accent.
I turned around and saw that the arm came from inside the elevator. The two German and Austrian boys were standing inside the iron cage. Their large, grownup-looking bodies shook spasmodically as they reached out to me.
“Wh-what happened?!”
“Help us! Unlock it, unlock it!”
I went to lower Ree down from my shoulders to the floor, and ran back to the elevator. I banged loudly on the iron lattice doors, but they were locked from the outside and wouldn’t open. The rest of the children rushed over and asked what had happened, but the two boys inside were frightened out of their wits and couldn’t give us a straight answer.
“I saw a ghost!”
“It took our gun, and threw us in here!”
Yang turned to us and yelled, “That reminds me. Alex, the gun!”
I took out the gun, but when the two boys saw it, they screamed, overcome by fear.
“Stand back!” I yelled. I aimed at the lock, and pulled the trigger. A powerful shock wave ran up my arms to my shoulders. The sound was so loud that my ears rang. My first shot missed, so I shot again right afterwards. The lock shattered and fell from the iron lattice with a muffled clank.
“Thank God!” I breathed, relieved from the bottom of my heart. I saw the tension drain out of the boys’ expressions.
Yang quickly reached out to open the latticed doors.
But that very moment…
The elevator suddenly began to drop.
The boy’s faces stiffened in terror. They opened their eyes so wide that it seemed like their eyeballs would pop out, and they grabbed my hair again with their sturdy arms. I screamed, and they shrieked back. I heard the sound of my hair getting torn out by the roots. A dull pain ran through my scalp, prickling the inside of my eyes.
Through the metal lattice, I caught a glimpse of their faces, stricken with horror and rage. The iron cage jerked from one side to the other, and then suddenly fell, disappearing into the abyss.
Their screams ripped through my eardrums, but after no more than an instant, those too faded away.
And then…
Far below, I heard something splash.
*****
The elevator was broken. Yang and I tried desperately to bring it back up, but it wouldn’t move. In the end I was reduced to crying and banging my hands against it.
The American boy gently placed a hand on my shoulder. I turned to him with tears in my eyes, and silently shook my head.
The French girl was standing behind him, crying soundlessly.
“Those two … are already dead,” said the American boy.
“No!”
“It’s already been ten minutes. The elevator would have flooded by now … and they would have drowned.”
The Italian boy pounded the wall, howling like an animal.
[3]
If the ship was slowly sinking, we couldn’t stay there for long. I hefted a still unconscious Ree onto my back and started walking again with the remaining children. We walked carefully, looking out for traps. When we ran into another wall, we returned to the stairwell. As we descended deeper into the ship, the lighting got dimmer, and the hallways looked more rundown. The sound of water was getting louder and louder.
“He said it was locked from the outside,” murmured Yang, as if talking to himself.
Walking beside him, I nodded. “Yeah. And that a ghost did it.”
“What could he have meant by that?”
“Who knows?”
Yang continued, “All of the traps we’ve found were triggered automatically. But this time was different. There’s someone else here besides us, hiding on board this ship so he can hunt us down. That’s the only possibility I can think of.”
We kept on walking through the hallway, but it was so dark that we could barely see what was in front of us. No one said a word. The only sound we heard was our own footsteps.
Then I heard Ree moan behind me.
“Ree? Are you awake?”
Grimacing in pain, she opened her eyes. Then she looked at me and smiled weakly in thanks.
For the next few minutes, Ree lay silently against my back. But suddenly, she yelped, and started to struggle.
I quickly lowered her to the floor. “What’s wrong?”
With a frenzied look in her eyes, she pointed at her throat.
“Oh!”
Her pendant was gone.
Her pink, heart-shaped enamel pendant—Ree’s beloved amulet.
Yang was watching us, and he said dismissively, “This isn’t the time for that. You can just buy another one later. If we can survive this, then you can do whatever you want after you go back home. Try to be strong.”
Ree shook her head over and over again, her jet-black eyes filling with tears.
Yang looked away from her face, and instead took off his own shirt to staunch the bleeding from her wound on her side, which had opened up again slightly.
It looked like we would have to wait there for a few minutes. As I waited, I suddenly remembered how Ree fussed over me and smiled at me so gently when I first woke up on the ship. When I thought of how I had awakened to find this girl at my side, worried for my sake, trying to encourage me with her precious heart-shaped pendant, my heart ached.
And now here she was, deathly pale, enduring her pain in silence.
I jumped up. Yang looked up at me curiously. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“I’m, uh, going to go … get something.”
“Huh?”
“Her pendant. She probably dropped it where Huey collapsed. After they started fighting over the knife, I think I remember that she wasn’t wearing it anymore.”
“Alex!” Yang hissed warningly. “It’s dangerous. Stay here. Don’t separate from the group.”
The other children also tried to stop me.
“He’s right. She can just buy another pendant!” said the American boy.
The French girl added, “It’s dangerous. We should stay together.”
“Don’t waste time on a little thing like that!”
I looked down at Ree’s wan face. I couldn’t be sure whether she had enough strength to last until this was all over. All I wanted was to find her pendant and give it to her. There was no other way for me to communicate with her. My gratitude wasn’t something I could convey with words.
“I just have to go back to the landing, so it shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back soon,” I declared forcefully, then took off running.
The voices of Yang and the other children echoed after me.
*****
I climbed the dark staircase. Lighting up the area at my feet with the flashlight that Yang had taken from the elevator, I carefully climbed step by step, trying not to stumble into any traps.
The white-tiled floor gleamed coldly, illuminated by the circle of light from the flashlight. Uneasiness surged through me. Now that we were separated, would I ever be able to see the others again? Would I end up being left to wander this ship all by myself? Assailed by second thoughts, I felt tears rise unbidden in the corners of my eyes. I kept on climbing, one step at a time, trying to chase away these dark mental images.
Right when I thought I had reached the spot where Huey had collapsed, I nearly tripped over something round and rubbery. Fearing I had stepped into a trap, chills ran through my body. I quickly pointed the flashlight at my feet, and saw that it was no trap, but a small ball—a tennis ball.
I picked it up, mystified. Why would it be on the floor in a place like this? I wondered to myself.
I returned to climbing the stairs.
And then I gasped.
*****
The body was gone.
The spot where Huey’s body should have been was now empty. There was nothing left to indicate that that a corpse had been there. It had vanished without a trace.
I sank down to the floor, dumbfounded.
With the movement of my body, the flashlight’s aim turned to shine on a different spot by my feet. There on the floor I spotted a shiny pink heart-shaped enamel pendant—Ree’s precious pendant that she had been looking for. Once I sighted it, for a moment it felt like my heart was connected with hers. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I picked it up and squeezed it in my hand. Tears overflowed from my eyes. I didn’t even know why.
*****
Where was the body?
Why had someone hidden it?
Who else was on the ship?
monologue three
[1]
A loud voice rang out. “If you’re looking for weapons, here they are!”
The children stood very still under the blazing lamplight of the hallway. I stood there in their midst, clutching the body of the Hungarian girl, her throat pierced with the combat knife. For several seconds, no one moved a muscle, nor did anyone say a word.
There were nine boys and girls left. Huey and the Hungarian girl were no longer with us.
The shout had come from the German boy. His heavy-set frame, nearly large enough to be an adult, although he was only fourteen years old, quivered with anger. He grabbed Ree, who had been the last one to arrive, and yanked forward the hand she was hiding behind her back.
I immediately yelled, “Stop it!”
His deep and commanding German-accented voice thundered through the hallway. “Look at her. Here’s your murder weapon! She was carrying it with her!”
When we all saw what he was pointing at, we gasped.
For some reason, Ree was gripping a small knife in her hand. It was long and smooth like an elephant’s tusk, and it gleamed coldly under the lamplight.
“It’s her. She’s the killer!” the boy spat out venomously.
Ree struggled to free herself, which shook loose the knife from her small hand. The German boy bent down and retrieved it, while keeping a tight grip on her.
Ree shook her head, trying to tell us that she didn’t do it. Tears filled her eyes.
Yang stepped forward. “Stop it!” he shouted.
“I don’t take orders from yellow bastards like you!”
“What!?” Yang sputtered in anger.
Another boy quickly stepped in between them. This boy, a tall and muscular Austrian, had been together with the German boy since the beginning, and looked and acted similar to him. He joined the German boy and grabbed Ree’s other wrist. “If we get rid of her, we won’t be in danger anymore. Look at her; she’s the only one hiding a weapon. Damn it, I’ll bet she’s just pretending not to understand what we’re saying!”
“You’re wrong. She really doesn’t understand!” I yelled.
But they didn’t even bother to look in my direction. Now that they had Ree pinned between them, unable to move, the German boy punched her in the head as hard as he could. Ree’s small head bobbed, her long black hair fluttering into the air.
Yang frantically tried to pull him away from her. The other kids just stood there petrified, watching what was unfolding.
“Yeah! And she was the only one with Huey when he died. This bitch locked us up in here, and she’s killing us one by one!”
“Your little game is finished! Now we’re going to kill you!”
The two tall boys nodded at each other, and started to beat Ree. They had lost all self-control. Being locked up in this place and seeing people die right in front of them must have terrified them out of their wits.
Yang yelled, “Stop it!” and tried to intervene, but their difference in body size was too great, and they simply kicked him aside.
Then the German boy shouted, raising the knife.
The children screamed.
He swung the knife down with all his strength. Yang saw that he was aiming directly at Ree’s heart, and slammed into him with his own body. Several other kids surrounding us yelled at the German boy to stop.
The impact of Yang barreling into the German boy deflected the knife from Ree’s heart, causing it to slide lightly along her side instead. The boy had swung down the knife with such force that it made a loud thud against the floorboard as it fell on the red carpet, missing Ree.
The knife must have been very sharp. Bright red blood streamed from the shallow cut on her side, the open wound staining her skin red like a blooming flower.
Everyone held their breath.
Then Ree let out a thin scream, and fainted dead away.
Once the Austrian boy caught sight of her blood, that seemed to pull him back to awareness, and he quickly pulled his hands away from Ree. But the German boy, with bloodshot eyes, picked up the knife again and raised it into the air.
I flung away the corpse that I was holding in my arms, opened the drawer, and took out the small pistol. I lifted it with both hands, and yelled out, “Get away from Ree, or I’ll shoot!”
The German boy froze, and turned around, a look of disbelief in his eyes. He quietly raised his hands up above his head.
The other children stared at me with shocked faces.
Silence engulfed the hallway.
As I held the gun, I could feel my arms shaking. I didn’t know if what I was doing was right or wrong. The only thought that filled my mind was the desire to save Ree. She was a good and kind girl; that much I knew, even if we couldn’t communicate with words.
Yang opened his mouth, and said in a quiet voice, “Alex. Calm down.”
“Okay…”
“Where did you find that gun?”
“It was in here,” I said, motioning to the chest of drawers. Everyone’s gazes immediately converged on that spot. “I found it a little while ago. I don’t know why, but there are weapons on board this ship. Ree must have found that knife the same way. Maybe it was for self-defense, or maybe she wanted to tell everybody about it, but either way, I think she was just holding a knife that she found and nothing more than that.”
“What?!” hissed the German boy.
“Get away from Ree. Yang, take care of her wound.”
Yang nodded, and crouched down next to her. He tore off his own shirt and pressed it to her side.
I turned my attention back to the two boys, who were still holding their hands in the air. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’d never do something like that. But … I just want us to stop suspecting each other. We’re all in this together, so let’s just hurry up and get to the radio room—”
“I, I don’t think so!” the German boy shouted, his voice trembling. He was starting to look obstinate again. He grabbed the hesitating Austrian boy and walked away with him.
“Hey!” I called after them.
“So there’s weapons around? Then we’ll arm ourselves, too. You expect us to trust each other? When there’s a girl here hiding a knife?” They shot one last hateful glance at Ree on the floor, then started pulling out drawers one by one from the chests lined up along the walls, searching for weapons.
After they had traveled a ways down the hallway, I heard one of them yell from afar, “I found one!” But they had gone around the corner and I couldn’t see what was happening.
Suddenly, the Turkish boy stood up. He had dark skin and long, graceful limbs. The boy started yelling something in his deep voice, sounding indignant. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I could guess that he was telling them that it was dangerous, and was calling them to come back. He pointed down the hallway, then pointed at himself, and with a nod, took off running.
The Turkish boy’s slim body rounded the corner and disappeared.
The very next moment…
I heard a gunshot. It was so loud that felt like the floor, walls, and even the air vibrated. Then, in the corner of my eye, I saw the boy’s body reappear from around the corner. He flew backwards and landed on the floor face up.
All was silent.
…A few seconds later, somebody screamed.
I ran up to the Turkish boy, my gun in hand. I was reaching out to rouse him when I saw the gaping hole in his chest. For a instant, I thought I could see the pattern of the carpet through that hole. And then all I saw was blood, oozing out and staining the floor.
I immediately knew that he had been shot by a very high-powered gun. The Turkish boy’s face was frozen in a slight grimace. He had died instantly, without even enough time to realize what had happened to himself.
I looked up and saw the German and Austrian boys running away. The German boy was holding what looked like a machine gun.
[2]
Three people were dead: Huey, the Hungarian girl, and the Turkish boy. Ree had fainted from pain and blood loss, and I carried her on my back down the hallway, toward the radio room at the bow of the ship. Now there were six of us left: Yang, the Chinese boy; the black-haired Ree; me, plus a strapping Italian boy with strong features. In contrast to him was a tall, thin American boy, his hair loosely curled like a cherub’s. There was also a petite French girl with long, braided brunette hair.
We said nothing as we walked along, our faces tense with fear.
Unlike the luxurious upper floors, the lower levels were dark and dreary, giving me a unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. The lamps and doorknobs that dotted the hallways seemed to be shifting into slightly plainer and more utilitarian designs.
The French girl walking in front suddenly let out a forlorn cry. She looked over her shoulder at us and shook her head helplessly.
Once again, we had found a wall blocking the middle of the hallway, and we couldn’t pass. We turned around back to the stairwell to go down yet another floor.
Yang called out to me. “Alex. That was brave of you back there.”
“Nah, that was nothing compared to what you did….”
“Do you still have that gun?”
I nodded, and Yang asked if he could see it. I handed it over to him.
“This is the safety,” he said. “You need to release it before you can shoot.”
“Oh.” I nodded, then I thought for a moment. “…So if I had pulled the trigger before, nothing would’ve happened?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t think you would do that anyway.”
Our eyes met. Yang smiled at me, his eyes narrowing into thread-like slits.
*****
We took the stairs, descending one more floor. The five of us walked down a hallway that seemed even gloomier than the last one. Ree was still unconscious on my back. I worried that her bleeding hadn’t stopped yet, but for now there was nothing I could do except keep on walking. I concentrated on just getting through this hallway, praying all the while that it wouldn’t be blocked off by another wall.
This floor had many old and austere-looking cabins and dining rooms for the second-class passengers and the engineers. The lighting was shadowy, and the carpet, which must have originally been crimson-colored, was darkened and threadbare.
Suddenly, the French girl started to talk softly about something completely unrelated, about the countryside where she grew up. I scratched my head at the unexpected topic.
“We used to raise sheep. But we were poor, so we didn’t own that many. My family ate cheese that we made from their milk. We were all in good health back then. I had a friend from a rich family, and I used to go play with her in her family’s wine cellar. I miss those days…”
If I looked closely at the girl with the braided hair, wearing ragged boys’ clothing, she was actually pretty cute. But now her face was ashen with fear.
After listening to her for a while, the American boy decided to join in, speaking loudly in a forced tone of cheerfulness, “Eww, sheep cheese! Who’d want to eat something stinky like that?” His voice hadn’t changed yet, and he sounded girlish and sweet.
The French girl pouted, and tried to argue with him, “Oh, but it’s so tasty.”
“Hmm… I used to live next to a cornfield. Do you like corn? Back then, we made corn soup nearly every day. Sometimes we put it in a meat stew. …I could sure use some right about now.”
In his calm and gentle voice, Yang began to tell his own story. When his father was still alive, they used to go traveling together. After Yang was orphaned, he was able to eke out a living unloading cargo at the port. The traveling lifestyle was lots of fun….
Now the Italian boy let out a bored snort. “Should we really be talking about this right now? I don’t want to hear it.”
With the wind taken out of our sails, we shut our mouths. For the next few minutes, we walked in silence.
Then the American boy suddenly spoke. “None of us is the killer. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Everyone stared at him, startled.
The American boy continued eagerly in his girlish voice. “I’ve been thinking. It’s true that we might be the only ones on board this ship, and that there’s weapons hidden all over. But it doesn’t mean any one of us is a murderer. That’s what I think.”
“Yeah!” enthusiastically shouted the French girl, nodding. “I think so, too. There must be some other bad people who locked us up in here. I don’t know why they would do that, but there’s someone who brought us all the way to this ship, and were even mean enough to break the rudder, just so they could have fun watching us suffer. That’s why they built these walls in the hallways. It’s not something any of us could have done.”
The two of them nodded at each other. But the Italian boy with the sharp features snapped at them, “Don’t be ridiculous! Then how did Huey die? There wasn’t anyone there except us. When Yang turned on the flashlight, Ree was the only one around. And there was that knife in that girl’s throat….”
As he spoke, he seemed to think back to that scene, and his voice trembled. “If that Hungarian girl had met some stranger who wasn’t in our group, wouldn’t she have at least screamed? But when she got stabbed, she didn’t make a sound. That means the person who killed her was one of us.”
“Well… you have a point…” The American boy groped for a response, but in the end he could only hang his head.
Silence descended upon the group.
Then Yang looked up at me. “Alex… Do you remember when we went to the deck?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“When that Hungarian girl hurt her cheek, there was something she said….”
I thought back to that time. After we came out to the deck, the Hungarian girl walked to the railing, and then cried out for help.
Something just grazed my cheek….
I remembered that. She said…
Right after I walked over here, something flew at me and fell into the water….
Yang nodded. “That girl must have stepped on something. Once she did, an arrow or something shot out and grazed her cheek. Because there wasn’t anyone standing in the direction that she was pointing in.”
The Italian boy leaned toward him. “So, what you’re saying is…?”
A cautious look passed over Yang’s face. “What if the person behind all this laid out traps for us to trigger automatically? Maybe no one stabbed her with the knife; it was just set up to jump out when someone passed through that area.”
“You’re kidding me….”
We started trying to open doors and move around furniture, while crouching low to the ground for safety’s sake. In one particular room, an arrow shot through the air the moment we opened the door. The Italian boy went inside, and carefully searched every nook and cranny. But there was no one there.
In another area, a hammer fell from the wall, narrowly missing the French girl’s head. Yang pushed the girl away in time for a large chunk of metal to pass directly in front of her nose. The hammer was rigged to fall when someone stepped on a certain part of the floor.
These traps weren’t in every room or hallway. But we could sense how ruthless and irrational they were. We were terrified. Everyone pulled closer together as we walked, trying both to warm our bodies and shield each other from harm.
After a while, the French girl suddenly shuddered.
“What’s wrong?”
“…I hear water.”
We strained to listen, but didn’t hear anything. I began to ask the French girl again what she had heard, but Yang shushed me, and I swallowed my words.
Finally…
I started to hear a faint dripping sound.
What could be causing it? I stood there for a moment, uncertain.
Then Yang yelled out, “We’re sinking!”
“What?!”
“It’s happening slowly, but water is entering the hull. My guess is … we’ll sink by tomorrow morning. Let’s hurry! We need to get to the ship’s bow!”
The moment that we all nodded at each other, I heard some children scream somewhere in the distance.
******
I ran to the source of the scream as fast as I could. I turned the corner and arrived at the elevator, which was glaringly illuminated by lamps. Since we had descended to the lower levels of the ship, the hallways and rooms were gloomy and bleak, but this corner happened to be oddly bright, almost blindingly so.
The scream had to have come from around here. But I didn’t see anyone….
I was looking around in confusion when suddenly a thick arm appeared out of nowhere. That arm grabbed my hair roughly, and yanked me to the side. I let out a scream.
Then the owner of that arm spoke in my ear. “Help me!”
…It was a familiar voice, speaking in a German accent.
I turned around and saw that the arm came from inside the elevator. The two German and Austrian boys were standing inside the iron cage. Their large, grownup-looking bodies shook spasmodically as they reached out to me.
“Wh-what happened?!”
“Help us! Unlock it, unlock it!”
I went to lower Ree down from my shoulders to the floor, and ran back to the elevator. I banged loudly on the iron lattice doors, but they were locked from the outside and wouldn’t open. The rest of the children rushed over and asked what had happened, but the two boys inside were frightened out of their wits and couldn’t give us a straight answer.
“I saw a ghost!”
“It took our gun, and threw us in here!”
Yang turned to us and yelled, “That reminds me. Alex, the gun!”
I took out the gun, but when the two boys saw it, they screamed, overcome by fear.
“Stand back!” I yelled. I aimed at the lock, and pulled the trigger. A powerful shock wave ran up my arms to my shoulders. The sound was so loud that my ears rang. My first shot missed, so I shot again right afterwards. The lock shattered and fell from the iron lattice with a muffled clank.
“Thank God!” I breathed, relieved from the bottom of my heart. I saw the tension drain out of the boys’ expressions.
Yang quickly reached out to open the latticed doors.
But that very moment…
The elevator suddenly began to drop.
The boy’s faces stiffened in terror. They opened their eyes so wide that it seemed like their eyeballs would pop out, and they grabbed my hair again with their sturdy arms. I screamed, and they shrieked back. I heard the sound of my hair getting torn out by the roots. A dull pain ran through my scalp, prickling the inside of my eyes.
Through the metal lattice, I caught a glimpse of their faces, stricken with horror and rage. The iron cage jerked from one side to the other, and then suddenly fell, disappearing into the abyss.
Their screams ripped through my eardrums, but after no more than an instant, those too faded away.
And then…
Far below, I heard something splash.
*****
The elevator was broken. Yang and I tried desperately to bring it back up, but it wouldn’t move. In the end I was reduced to crying and banging my hands against it.
The American boy gently placed a hand on my shoulder. I turned to him with tears in my eyes, and silently shook my head.
The French girl was standing behind him, crying soundlessly.
“Those two … are already dead,” said the American boy.
“No!”
“It’s already been ten minutes. The elevator would have flooded by now … and they would have drowned.”
The Italian boy pounded the wall, howling like an animal.
[3]
If the ship was slowly sinking, we couldn’t stay there for long. I hefted a still unconscious Ree onto my back and started walking again with the remaining children. We walked carefully, looking out for traps. When we ran into another wall, we returned to the stairwell. As we descended deeper into the ship, the lighting got dimmer, and the hallways looked more rundown. The sound of water was getting louder and louder.
“He said it was locked from the outside,” murmured Yang, as if talking to himself.
Walking beside him, I nodded. “Yeah. And that a ghost did it.”
“What could he have meant by that?”
“Who knows?”
Yang continued, “All of the traps we’ve found were triggered automatically. But this time was different. There’s someone else here besides us, hiding on board this ship so he can hunt us down. That’s the only possibility I can think of.”
We kept on walking through the hallway, but it was so dark that we could barely see what was in front of us. No one said a word. The only sound we heard was our own footsteps.
Then I heard Ree moan behind me.
“Ree? Are you awake?”
Grimacing in pain, she opened her eyes. Then she looked at me and smiled weakly in thanks.
For the next few minutes, Ree lay silently against my back. But suddenly, she yelped, and started to struggle.
I quickly lowered her to the floor. “What’s wrong?”
With a frenzied look in her eyes, she pointed at her throat.
“Oh!”
Her pendant was gone.
Her pink, heart-shaped enamel pendant—Ree’s beloved amulet.
Yang was watching us, and he said dismissively, “This isn’t the time for that. You can just buy another one later. If we can survive this, then you can do whatever you want after you go back home. Try to be strong.”
Ree shook her head over and over again, her jet-black eyes filling with tears.
Yang looked away from her face, and instead took off his own shirt to staunch the bleeding from her wound on her side, which had opened up again slightly.
It looked like we would have to wait there for a few minutes. As I waited, I suddenly remembered how Ree fussed over me and smiled at me so gently when I first woke up on the ship. When I thought of how I had awakened to find this girl at my side, worried for my sake, trying to encourage me with her precious heart-shaped pendant, my heart ached.
And now here she was, deathly pale, enduring her pain in silence.
I jumped up. Yang looked up at me curiously. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“I’m, uh, going to go … get something.”
“Huh?”
“Her pendant. She probably dropped it where Huey collapsed. After they started fighting over the knife, I think I remember that she wasn’t wearing it anymore.”
“Alex!” Yang hissed warningly. “It’s dangerous. Stay here. Don’t separate from the group.”
The other children also tried to stop me.
“He’s right. She can just buy another pendant!” said the American boy.
The French girl added, “It’s dangerous. We should stay together.”
“Don’t waste time on a little thing like that!”
I looked down at Ree’s wan face. I couldn’t be sure whether she had enough strength to last until this was all over. All I wanted was to find her pendant and give it to her. There was no other way for me to communicate with her. My gratitude wasn’t something I could convey with words.
“I just have to go back to the landing, so it shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back soon,” I declared forcefully, then took off running.
The voices of Yang and the other children echoed after me.
*****
I climbed the dark staircase. Lighting up the area at my feet with the flashlight that Yang had taken from the elevator, I carefully climbed step by step, trying not to stumble into any traps.
The white-tiled floor gleamed coldly, illuminated by the circle of light from the flashlight. Uneasiness surged through me. Now that we were separated, would I ever be able to see the others again? Would I end up being left to wander this ship all by myself? Assailed by second thoughts, I felt tears rise unbidden in the corners of my eyes. I kept on climbing, one step at a time, trying to chase away these dark mental images.
Right when I thought I had reached the spot where Huey had collapsed, I nearly tripped over something round and rubbery. Fearing I had stepped into a trap, chills ran through my body. I quickly pointed the flashlight at my feet, and saw that it was no trap, but a small ball—a tennis ball.
I picked it up, mystified. Why would it be on the floor in a place like this? I wondered to myself.
I returned to climbing the stairs.
And then I gasped.
*****
The body was gone.
The spot where Huey’s body should have been was now empty. There was nothing left to indicate that that a corpse had been there. It had vanished without a trace.
I sank down to the floor, dumbfounded.
With the movement of my body, the flashlight’s aim turned to shine on a different spot by my feet. There on the floor I spotted a shiny pink heart-shaped enamel pendant—Ree’s precious pendant that she had been looking for. Once I sighted it, for a moment it felt like my heart was connected with hers. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I picked it up and squeezed it in my hand. Tears overflowed from my eyes. I didn’t even know why.
*****
Where was the body?
Why had someone hidden it?
Who else was on the ship?
