Chapter 106: Cruise Ship: An Anomaly Witnessed at Night

Chapter 106 Cruise Ship: The Anomaly Witnessed at Night

Even with limited intel, what Misha had managed to dig up was already plenty alarming:

There was something in the sea—and it was likely humanoid. They attacked people and fed on their flesh.

This was just about the worst news she could have gotten. Everly had figured that when the ghost ship crisis blew up, she could snag a lifeboat and bail. If she couldn't get a lifeboat, she could throw on a life vest, grab her stuff, and float in the water—with any luck, she'd get rescued.

But the monsters hiding in the water crushed that hope in a heartbeat.

If there was really something like that in the water, there was no way there was just one—there had to be a whole pack. With that many flesh-eating monsters in the water, even a small lifeboat could get flipped over easy. The only reason they hadn't done it yet was that the movie had just started, and it wasn't time for them to show themselves.

So to survive, she still had to convince the Captain to get moving ASAP and steer the Mary Jane away from the Golden Anchor.

But was it really gonna be that easy...

Everly walked to the window and peered through the darkening sky at the outer edge of the two cruise ships.

It was still pouring out there, and the weather had gotten even worse than that morning. The sky looked like it had sprung a leak, with raindrops the size of beans hammering down, howling winds ripping dark gashes across the sea, and the occasional gold lightning bolt slamming down, lighting up the churning waves.

But even at the storm's worst, the water around the Golden Anchor stayed calm and clear.

It was like a giant glass dome surrounded the ghost ship, keeping out all the nasty weather while trapping the tiny Mary Jane—nothing more than a speck of duckweed—inside.

Unless someone had the guts to take on nature itself, there was no way the Captain would agree to leave this safe zone and plow into the storm.

Everly ate dinner in a restless, anxious state.

After eating, she sat in her room, frowning and trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. Suddenly, Misha, who was by the window, pointed at the Golden Anchor and gasped, "Everly, it's changing!"

"What?"

Everly rushed to the window and saw the pitch-black Golden Anchor suddenly light up bright.

"What's going on? What the hell is happening?"

"What is that out there? Why did the Golden Anchor just light up?"

The cruise ship's soundproofing was crap—through the thin walls, startled shouts came from rooms all around.

Everly craned her neck, frowning as she watched.

The ship was way too tall. Her and Misha's room was on the third deck of the Mary Jane, and even from the window, Everly still had to tilt her head way back to see the lights glowing from the giant ship's decks and portholes.

Brightly lit, colorful, absolutely gorgeous.

That was Everly's first thought when she saw the giant ship light up.

Even though it had been drifting at sea for thirteen years, the Golden Anchor in front of them looked brand new. Its hull was coated in pristine white anti-rust paint, the metal gleaming with a cold shine. The windows along its sides were clean and whole, and a huge anchor chain hung from the stern, dangling in the air, swaying now and then with a nice metallic clink.

Those thirteen years didn't seem to have left a single mark on the giant ship.

As night fell, golden light strips lit up the ship's edges, the warm yellow glow tracing the cruise ship's gorgeous outline like an elegant brush. Inside that outline were flowing lights, dazzling colors, and a stunning, dreamlike forest of light.

At some point, sweet singing and music started drifting over from the Golden Anchor. Even from a distance, Everly could picture just how spectacular the lights and how classy the party must be on that giant ship right now. If it weren't for the situation, she might've thought it was just a normal luxury cruise.

But Misha suddenly spoke up: "No, that's not it... What I wanted to show you wasn't the lights—it was the ship suddenly getting old."

"Getting old?"

"Yeah, just now, the whole Golden Anchor suddenly got all old and beat-up. Trust me, it really did!" Misha gestured excitedly, like she was afraid Everly would think she'd made it up.

First rule of surviving a horror movie: pay attention to the warning signs.

Everly didn't think Misha—a young woman with a sound mind and great eyesight—would just hallucinate. She calmed her friend down and let Misha explain at her own pace.

The "ship getting old" thing Misha described had happened half a minute earlier, around 7:59:50 PM. She'd been staring at the giant ship, spacing out.

As she watched, Misha suddenly saw the ship's snow-white hull, like someone had hit it with an aging filter, instantly break out in big patches of rust and corrosion. Railings bent, windows shattered. Rain poured down in sheets, and battered by wind and water, the whole ship looked wrecked and creepy—like a giant ghost ship.

"At first I thought I was seeing things, so I stared at it for a few seconds to make sure it wasn't a hallucination before calling you. But the second you got to the window, the wind and rain just stopped, and the ship suddenly went back to looking brand new and lit up. It's seriously weird..."

"We're dealing with a cruise ship that's been missing for thirteen years—isn't it normal for weird stuff to happen?"

Everly patted Misha's shoulder, opened the window, and wiped her hand across the glass.

It was cold and wet. When she opened her palm, there were clear water stains.

Since noon, when the Mary Jane had entered the "safe harbor" zone around the Golden Anchor, it hadn't been hit by the storm outside. Any rain on the hull had dried up hours ago. By all logic, the outside of the ship should've been dry—but Everly had just touched rainwater.

So that was it. It was all about time...

Everly had thought it was weird earlier. Why was it that even though the Golden Anchor had been gone for thirteen years, when it showed up again, the giant ship looked like it had only vanished yesterday—no signs of wear and tear at all, impossibly new?

The ring of calm, windless water around the giant ship was also bizarre. The storm outside hadn't let up, yet not a single gust of wind or drop of rain could get through the "invisible wall" to touch the massive cruise ship.

Everly had originally figured the supernatural beings on the giant ship had some special power to control the weather. But now it seemed like what was affected wasn't the weather—it was "time."

Time on the Golden Anchor was frozen.

The whole giant ship, along with the spherical area of weather and sea around it, had its time locked to thirteen years ago. Like a bug trapped in amber, or a plastic figurine sealed in a snow globe, it drifted endlessly across the sea. No matter how long it floated, the inside of the amber, the inside of the globe, stayed exactly the same—never changing.

But this "time-freeze" was probably unstable, which was why Misha had seen the ship "fade" and the storm break through.

As for why the time-frozen Golden Anchor had suddenly lit up with colorful lights and music—that was way beyond Everly's understanding.

She had way too little info right now. To get to the bottom of it, she first needed to figure out what those eight people had seen on the ship during the day.

Everly planned to send Misha, her little intel expert, out tomorrow to sniff around and see if she could get anything out of George and his two buddies.

But that was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight's main job was watching the cruise ship.

Everly was dying to know what was happening on the giant ship right now. Like some of the other bored, sleepless passengers, she dragged a sofa over and took turns with Misha sitting by the window, eyes glued to the giant ship's deck up above, trying to spot any clues.

It looked like there was a party going on aboard the Golden Anchor. From not too far away, under the cover of the singing and music, you could hear excited cheers from men and women popping up every now and then. Even without seeing it, just from the sounds, you could imagine how happy and thrilled the people on board were.

And that was exactly what sent chills down your spine. Because all day long, not a single person had shown up on the Golden Anchor. The passengers on the Mary Jane had already decided the Golden Anchor was completely empty.

—So then, where the hell had all these people who lit the lights, played the music, sang the songs, and cheered on the ship suddenly come from? If there were people on board the whole time, why hadn't anyone tried to contact land in thirteen years? And if there were no people, why was all that noise coming from the ship?

None of these questions held up under scrutiny—the more you thought about them, the more they freaked you out.

In the rooms around her, people were already getting creeped out, muttering to themselves and pulling their curtains shut to go to sleep.

But Everly stayed at the window, watching the brilliant lights on the giant ship, listening to the lively racket drifting over.

She stayed by the window all night, and at one point, when she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore, she switched shifts with Misha. As dawn approached, while she sat slumped on the sofa, staring blankly at the still-lit deck of the giant ship up above, the noise on board suddenly stopped.

Sensing something was off, Everly immediately sat up straight, opened her phone's camera, and hit record.

On the Golden Anchor, like a cassette tape that had just been paused mid-play, the songs, the music, and the voices of people talking, chatting, and laughing all stopped abruptly in an instant.

At the same time, the ship's lights went out rapidly, section by section, flickering off into darkness. In their place, Everly spotted flickering flames scattered across the giant vessel's deck.

The fire was not large, always contained within a certain range, so it probably wasn't a fire, but someone lighting torches or something similar. One after another, the torch lights linked into a long line, moving toward the interior of the ship. The deck quickly went dark as the light sources moved away.

Everly raised her phone, hesitating over whether to keep recording.

Just then, she heard a faint song rising from within the massive cruise ship.

The singing was muffled, like many voices joining together in a chorus. The melody was extremely strange, sounding anything but pleasant—more like nails scraping a chalkboard, making the listener feel deeply uncomfortable and repulsed. Mixed in were chants that sounded like a blend of incantations and murmurs, making Everly wonder if someone was holding some kind of group recitation.

As the song went on, Everly gradually caught another sound—piercing, agonized screams.

The screams were brief and faint, easily drowned out by the singing. If her hearing hadn't been sharpened by banshee milk, making it keener than most people's, she might not have caught them at all.

Everly held her breath, listening intently, not wanting to miss any subtle clue in the sound.

The screams lasted only a minute or two before fading away, but the singing and chanting continued.

After some time, the singing and chanting also ceased. In the silence, Everly's sharp eyes caught sight of one figure after another appearing at the edge of the giant cruise ship's deck.

Because the surroundings were too dark and the distance too great, those figures looked like matchsticks placed side by side—thin and elongated, their features indistinguishable.

Just as she wondered why they were gathering at the deck's edge, Everly saw these silhouettes begin to move.

One by one, they climbed over the railing, then let go with both hands, leaning forward, and without hesitation leaped from the deck, seven or eight stories high, dropping like dumplings into the dark, murky sea below.

...