Laying the Music to Rest by Smith Dean Wesley

Author:Smith, Dean Wesley [Smith, Dean Wesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: WMG Publishing
Published: 2016-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Boat Deck

First Cycle

April 15, 1912

THE TITANIC’S BAN, tucked back in an alcove beside the first-class entrance to the boat deck, played ragtime as the ship sank. Upbeat, happy music to cheer the passengers as they prepared to die.

It wasn’t cheering me at all.

I didn’t plan on dying just yet. I threaded a rope through the wooden slats of a chair, wrapped it around the legs of the other four chairs in the bundle, then yanked on it hard to pull all the chairs tightly together. Hard to believe I had been dumb enough to get into this. Going through the mirror had been a risk. I had known that. But I never expected anything like this. In all my forty years, I had never been this confused.

Or this scared.

Or this damn cold. The hair in my nose had frozen into needles the minute I stepped back out on the wood-covered boat deck. My ears ached, my knees were numb from kneeling, and I had lost track of any feeling in my fingers two minutes after starting this stupid raft.

I blew hard on my hands, then stuck them under my jacket to see if I could regain enough touch to tie the next knot. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if the raft I was building didn’t hold together. Or if Susan didn’t come galloping to my rescue. I glanced around. Same thing as the last six hours. No sign of Susan and not a soul paying me the slightest bit of attention.

After getting jolted that first time by putting my hand through the maitre d’, I had sat against the wall with my pack until I had calmed down enough to stand up without fear of a heart attack. Then I had gone looking for Susan, being real careful to not touch anyone. I did get one other jolt when a woman in a fur coat turned suddenly and would have bumped my arm, but for the fact that my arm went right through her. Again it felt as if I had brushed up against an electric fence. I couldn’t imagine what running into someone head-on would do. Probably be fatal.

I had spent the next few hours going through the halls, dining rooms, libraries, and card rooms, yelling for Susan. I had no idea how big the Titanic was until those hours. I wasn’t able to cover even a quarter of the decks before there was an ugly rumbling noise deep in the ship and the engines stopped.

The Titanic had struck the iceberg.

That was the exact moment, as I felt the engines stop, and then listened to the huge stacks as they started blowing off the steam from the engines, that I decided I wasn’t going down with the ship. I had the advantage of knowing what was going to happen and I could figure out a way to stay alive.

I had dragged my pack back up the stairs to the boat deck, only this time

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