She felt the boat rock again and held the paper-stuffed folder to her chest. With a tapping on the door, Freddy stepped inside. Behind him a woman carrying a huge, longhaired black cat stood, waiting to enter. With the marina lights behind her the woman’s hair was a halo of blond with white-streaked tresses flying out as if she were in a windstorm.


“You mind if Belle comes in?” Freddy smiled, polite and quiet. “And this is my friend, Cappy.”


The woman cut her eyes sidewise at Anna and then bent and let the cat down. She handed Anna a bottle of wine.


“The cat’s Belle. I’m Cappy. I’ve got the pink sloop down the dock—that is, the boat with the wide pink stripe,” she said. “You can’t miss her. She’s the prettiest boat here, with white sails and flags. Lots of doodads hanging about.”


The cat crouched as if stalking something, then darted forward, disappearing down steps to the rear of the boat.


“Belle will clean the place up for ya quick as lightning.” Cappy leaned toward Anna to shake her hand. “Welcome.”


Anna noticed her skin was dry and rough.


“Is this boat supposed to be tipping like this?” Anna asked her.


Cappy looked at Freddy, but did not smile though he was grinning ear to ear. Looking back at Anna she said, “You don’t know boats, I take it?”


“No. I’ve never been on a boat other than a canoe and that was on the Au Sable River in Michigan.”


“We’ll take care of that in time,” Cappy said. “First thing you ought to know is that yes, the boat is rocking as she pleases. She—the boat. Boats are feminine, like hurricanes used to be. When you face the bow—the front of the boat, the side to your left, is the port side and to the right is the starboard.”


Freddy began to chuckle.


“Fred, you get the hell out of here, will ya?” With an audacious air of authority she pointed to the doorway.


Freddy left obediently.


“Now I’ll help you learn a lot more, but you first might want to find a bunk and go to sleep. We’ll put order to all this chaos in the morning.” She stepped out the door saying, “I’m stepping onto the gunnels and walking up to the foredeck. If you need me for anything, remember the boat with the pink stripe. You can’t miss it.”


Anna was alone again except for the cat. She couldn’t see Belle but guessed that the feline was crawling around somewhere below, in the bowels of the boat, doing unspeakable things to the mice. Anna was irritated with the woman’s instructions in boat terminology. She didn’t want to have anything to do with these people who looked more like ragtags of society than rich boat owners.


She never would have thought a marina or the people on the boats in that marina would look like this. She had thought boat people were all rich and spoiled. She had seen a marina near the bridge that looked like what she assumed a marina should look like, with huge, triple-deck yachts.


The boat rocked again to the left—port, as the woman had instructed. Anna got up, thinking Freddy might have returned but no one was on the boat or the dock. She held the flashlight in her left hand but did not turn it on. Everything was quiet. Looking down the row of boats she could see that several were occupied, with glowing lights behind their curtains, and on one, the flicker of a television set blinked behind its windows though she could not hear it.


The silence gave her an eerie and lonely feeling. Oddly, she could barely see a small red flag with a white stripe floating and bobbing out on the river, illuminated by the sliver of the small moon. She stood on not much more than twelve inches of walk space outside the door. There was a dim slant of orange halogen glow from a nearby light post up next to the dock master’s building. The sulfur smell from the water was strong, but a small breeze came up, causing many of the riggings on the boat masts to clang and clatter in their music.


She looked down along the side of the boat. A noise, sort of a bumping on the bottom of the boat, not loud but definite, caught her attention. She looked down at the black, murky water and thought she could see something. She clicked the flashlight on and, holding the stainless steel bar railing, she leaned over as far as she dared, to see better.


The object was floating close to the surface, with bubbles rising. She bent to see—a turtle, maybe? She squatted to get closer to the water, pointing the light at the object.


Anna tipped her head, trying to get a focus on what it was. And then, within inches of her face and as if loosened and exploding from a deep underwater grave, up shot a deadly white-gray, puffy, watery face surrounded completely by a black hood that tightly encircled the entire ghostly head. The eyes popped open, glassy and blank, unfocused.


Anna felt that her heart stopped. She choked back a scream, terrified by the unexpected emergence of a body. She ran forward, toward the bow of the boat, tripping as she clumsily climbed onto the dock. She got up and ran down dockside looking for the pink stripe on the boat with the white flags.