In the Mad Mountains Joe R. Lansdale
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life. —Franz Kafka
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. —Philip K. Dick
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. —H.P. Lovecraft
The moon was bright. The sea was black. The waves rolled and the bodies rolled with it. The dead ones and the live ones, screaming and dying, begging and pleading, praying and crying to the unconcerned sea.
Behind them the great ship tipped up as if to give a final display of its former magnificence, its bow parting the night-waters like a knife through chocolate, pointing its stern to the sky, slipping slowly beneath the cold waves, breaking in half as it rode down into the bottomless sea. Boilers hissed, and the steam coughed up a great white cloud. The cloud pinned itself against the moon-bright sky, then faded like a fleeting dream.
The lifeboats bobbed and the survivors in the water swam for them, called to them. One of the boats, Number Three, stuffed full of human misery and taking on water, tried to rescue more survivors, and when it did it tipped, ejected two of its riders, then righted itself again. A man in nightclothes, and a woman wearing a fur coat, fell out. The coat took on water, grew heavy, and dragged her down. A shark rose up close to the boat with its mouth wide open, its teeth gleaming as if polished by rags. Its eyes rolled back in ecstasy, and then the man was in its jaws. The shark’s teeth snapped together and blood blew wide and into the boat, along with a soft bed slipper. The shark took half of the man down under, the other half of him bobbed, and then another shark drove up from below and bit the other half, carried it down and away into Davy Jones’ Locker.
. . .
