Free Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest Page A

something. Maybe he got up, out from between the sheets, and maybe he opened that door.
    Whatever happened after, he hadn’t closed it and he was gone.
    I opened the door again and went back into the wet. It didn’t matter. I was soaked all the way down to my skin everywhere anyway. And if finding the captain had taught me anything, it was that hiding in a cabin wouldn’t do me no good, and probably my knife wouldn’t either.
    Out on the deck I stepped on something that crunched and slipped. It was a lantern, or what was left of one—the glass kind filled with oil. The cook probably took it with him when he left the room to see what the noise was. And he’d dropped it, but he’d been lucky—or we’d been lucky. Either the rain or chance had kept it from bursting into flames along the deck and setting us all ablaze.
    But there were my hints—an open cabin door, a broken lantern, and an unmade bed. No cook. And out in the cabin decks someone was surely going to find the captain soon.
    And someone was shooting—once, twice, maybe a third time—the thunder got in the way of what I heard, but I heard the first two clearly enough. Someone was shooting, and that couldn’t mean anything good.
    I thought of the pilot’s house, up on top of the boat, and I thought of the big whistle there. It was a whistle you could hear for miles, if you kicked the treadle wheel with all you were worth. You could sure hear it farther off than a gunshot, I’d bet.
    Somewhere back towards the captain’s cabin I heard a big commotion, but it sounded too close to have come from there.
    I thought it was up by the stern, by the big paddlewheel or thereabouts; so if there was trouble roaming the boat, it was coming my way. I wasn’t running far enough or fast enough, but Jesus Lord have mercy—the captain was dead and we were anchored down to the river bottom. Where could we have gone? What could we have done?
    I thought about the whistle again, and I thought maybe it was a bad idea to sound it. Even as I braced myself against the thunderstorm and started to run to the stairs, I thought I might be making things worse for myself. I might lock myself in the pilot’s house and sound the whistle a thousand times—and someone might hear, and someone might come.
    But the odds were better than fair that whatever came would kill me as soon as rescue me. The killer was closer than any help, that was sure.
    But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t think of anything else and I couldn’t just stand there and wait for it to come and get me. So I ran to the stairs, and I charged up them—stepping on my skirts and falling on my face before making it to the top.
    Up there it was cold and windier than downstairs; I was closer to the sky and closer to the storm, but it felt all right. It felt like being surrounded by God, and I felt alive.
    And then I heard the growl. I didn’t mistake it for any thunder. This was something other than the sky, making a noise that said it hated me. Well it could hate me all it wanted. I still had my knife.
    From the corner of my eye—off to the left, coming around a bench bolted down to the top deck, it crept forward.
    Lightning showed me its eyes, and they were the color of new pennies. It was walking hunched over. Its feet made clicking noises on the deck, not like it was wearing shoes but like it was walking on claws. It definitely had teeth; I saw those teeth shining sharp as it breathed and chewed at the wet air.
    “Jesus Lord have mercy,” I said, to myself and not to it—whatever it was.
    I began to back sideways and away, towards the pilot’s house. It might be locked but I’d break anything I had to, in order to get inside. But I backed off slow, and it came at me slow. Like a game. Like a step from me, and a step from it.
    If I ran, it’d chase me.
    I tried to angle myself to put obstacles between us—deck chairs, bundled crates, anything.
    It was herding me. It took me a few yards of retreat to