by Emby Press
“What is it? What do you see?” she asked him. Despite supporting herself by pressing a hand against the wall, she still lurched each time the cottage shook.
The spindly chair that had been Mr. Silva’s suddenly tipped over. After stepping toward it, presumably to set it upright, he waved it off and moved behind Vera. My eye caught the magazine illustration tacked to the wall, the incongruous medieval scene. Something had swiped it into the air, leaving the tack behind. Not even a mighty castle could withstand the convulsions assailing this frail cottage.
Our host continued to growl in the grip of his nightmare.
“Tell us, you old sinner!” Vera demanded. “What stalks you in your dreams?”
The captain barked a string of words that were only slightly coherent.
Vera twisted to Mr. Silva, saying, “Was that ‘I’ll not have another Junior on my hands’?” She spun back to the captain. “Did you have a son? Are you ashamed of having another son?”
The tremors were growing in power now. Clumps of dust and dirt fell from the pine beams overhead. I spotted what appeared to be a bend in one of those supports. Stepping closer, I raised the lantern to it. Through the falling debris, I glimpsed a crack in the timber. It split apart for a mere instant as the quaking became stronger.
“Vera?” I coughed more than articulated. “Vera? We’d better go now. This beam doesn’t look right.”
Without turning to me, she shouted, “It’s vital that we discover the source of guilt before we can attend to the manifestation!”
But the volume of her voice was just enough to rouse the captain. He blinked hard while his eyes darted amid the rocking furniture. “Not again!” he moaned. “Are they back again?”
Something invisible slammed against one of the legs of the table, forcing that leg inward. The flowerpot upon it slid off, smashing on the floor. Another fierce blow collapsed the table altogether!
I squinted to see that the gap in the ceiling beam was now split further. It gaped like the cruel grin of a toothless devil. “I insist that we leave now!” I shrieked. “We might be crushed!”
Vera and Mr. Silva turned from me to look at one another. Without a word, they both grabbed Captain Lord by his arms and dragged him toward the door. I felt an impulse to shove my way before them, but somehow, feeling the lantern in my hand reminded me to do the nobler thing. I ushered them through the door first.
And I was barely outside when I heard Vera calling.
“Lucille, quickly! The lantern!” She was running to the spot where Mr. Silva had found the curious prints in the sand.
I left Mr. Silva supporting the recovering captain and rushed to Vera’s side. There, we saw what I can only describe as flashes of wide, wet canvas being slapped fiercely against the ground. The images remained visible only for the duration of each strike, and they were occurring at unpredictable points. Vera pulled me backward. One of the heavy slaps could easily have come down upon our legs.
At a safe distance, we were able to observe that each slap left the imprint of a blackfish’s fluke.
Vera wrapped her arm around mine and said close to my ear, “Thar be whales here!” “Beached whales,” I said. “The ghosts of beached whales—struggling to swim forward! But they’re held in place. Why? Why would they be held in place? They’re spirits!”
“Guilt, I fear. The intense guilt hovering around this place has pierced holes between their realm and our physical one. It’s acting like a net. Come, dear, we must discover what haunts this man!”
Vera had to pull me away from the vision of the flukes, away from the revelation that whales survive death! She dragged me back to where the two men had taken refuge from the haunted cottage. The phantoms struggling to swim beyond this structure continued their clamoring. A loud crash of glass caught our attention, and the moonlight revealed that a side window had shattered outward.
“There’s no time to waste—you must tell us what wrongs you’ve committed in the past, Mr. Lord!” Vera entreated the captain. “In your nightmare, you spoke of not having another Junior. Did you disavow a son or do something worse to him?”
The lopsided captain teetered and almost lost his balance, but Mr. Silva caught him. The old man swatted at the air, silently demanding to be allowed to stand on his own. Mr. Silva took a step back. The captain then steadied himself and turned toward Vera. It appeared to take him a moment to focus on her face.
“What do ya accuse me of, fool woman? I’ve had no children! The Junior is a ship! A ship long gone. I served as second mate on her back in ’57.”
“Did you commit some crime onboard that ship? You must confess it, or the ghosts will continue their attack on your cottage!”
“The crime was committed against me! Mutiny, it was! Murdered Captain Mellon—and tried as much with the first officer and myself! But the fiends reckoned they needed us to navigate ’em to Cape Howe. Kept me in irons with my wounds festering! There’s your crime, woman!”
Mr. Silva stepped forward. “These mutineers—do you think they might be the ones ransacking the cottage?” He was asking anyone able to answer.
Vera began to pace. “No. No, the ghosts aren’t human. You were right, Scully, about the prints over there. They were made by beached whales. We just observed a manifestation of them. The cottage happens to be in their way. They’re struggling to get through it.”
Mr. Silva slowly faced the spot where he had discovered the prints. His jaw hung open a moment. He then dashed to that place where we had witnessed the blurs of flukes.
Meanwhile, Captain Lord sidled toward Vera and glared closely into her eyes. “Lunacy, woman!” he spit at her. “Ghosts of whales? A whale is a soulless beast! These ghosts are the conniving crewmembers I made examples of! No, madam, I made certain there’d be no mutiny aboard any ship I captained! At the earliest signs, I let the men know how I dealt with disobedience!”
A piercing, agonized squeal sounded from within the cottage. I remembered the ceiling beam that was giving way to the poundings, and I pictured it twisting in two. The walls were now beginning to rock erratically.
“Tell me how you made examples of these crew members!” Vera demanded. “You say those men are the ghosts—the ghosts you wanted driven back into the sea? What did—what did you—” She was unable to utter the words.
I stepped forward. “Captain Lord, did you throw those men overboard? Men who showed any sign of disobedience? Was that your way to prevent mutiny?”
“I’ll not be accused by women!” the captain shrieked. “It’s those men who’ve come back! It’s them, I tell ya! I had doubts if I’d done right by ’em—but this proves they were wicked! Wicked and now cursed to roam the earth! And now they’ve found me to destroy what little I have! I’ll not abide such insolence! Not from them, and certainly not from the likes of women!”
At this, the captain shoved Vera out of his way. As if frozen in my own nightmare, I watched my dear friend hit the ground. Not until I saw her begin to roll and push herself upright did I regain the cognizance to assist her.
“Scully, stop him!” Vera shouted. She pointed toward the cottage door, struggling to keep her arm poised. “We must bring him to justice!”
Captain Lord had managed to stagger back inside the cottage. Mr. Silva, clearly overwhelmed by all he was seeing, came running to us. He knelt down beside Vera, putting his arm around her waist to lift her.
“Don’t bother with me,” she moaned. “That wretched sea captain confessed to tossing men overboard to prevent mutiny. There needs to an inquest! A trial to see if his actions are defensible!”
“There might not be time,” I said, staring at the cottage.
My meaning became clear when another shrill squeal pierced the air, a portent of what was about to happen. A major section of the roof collapsed with a thunderous crash and a whirlwind of debris.
Shielding his eyes, Mr. Silva charged into what remained of the cottage, despite protests from Vera and myself. I stooped down beside V
era, hiding my face against her neck. I could hear that the quakes and strikes continued—but gradually the clamor diminished. The ghosts of the whales, it seemed, were freeing themselves of the dimensional net and swimming forward.
I pulled my head back. “Does this mean he’s—is Captain Lord—dead?”
Vera put her hand gently to my cheek.
Mr. Silva emerged from the wreckage with the captain limp in his arms. Vera and I helped each other up and rushed over to examine the old man’s condition. There were no signs of life. The captain had not been crushed, though, despite some streaks of blood on his face. Subsequent medical reports confirmed what we had suspected.
Captain Henry Thorn Lord had expired from an overstrained heart.
“I submit that it was the long, dark shadow of what he had done to those sailors that had taken a toll on his heart,” Vera said. “His past finally caught up with him, so to speak.”
Mr. Silva set a beer before her. After a wearisome day of official interrogation and, ultimately, official exoneration, we were hoping to regain our composure at Scully’s bar before the regulars arrived.
“That is sensible, Vera” I said. “However, I see the captain as a man driven to monstrous acts. A man ensuring he’d never again suffer as he had on the Junior. His attempts to beautify his cottage, meager as they were, suggest a deeply buried decency. Why else would there have been any guilt? And what do you think, Scully?”
He stroked his dark beard. “I think what stopped the old skipper’s heart was your idea that his ghosts were whales.” He paused and then added, “If whales they were.”
Vera’s eyebrows shot upward. “Did you not see the flukes striking the ground? I know they lasted only an instant, but Lucille and I both saw them!”
“I didn’t have the lantern, remember. I don’t know what I saw. Something, I guess. I certainly can’t explain the invisible assault on the cottage.” A smirk peeked through that beard. “Ghostly whales caught between dimensions—now, that’s a remarkable notion.”
Mr. Silva moved to the far end of the bar, where he picked up a towel and began to wipe the insides of a line of beer glasses. The fact that these glasses were not wet implied he needed a moment alone.
I leaned toward Vera. “He’s grappling with an afterlife that’s large enough to include angels—and ghosts—and whales. It takes a while to accustom oneself to such expansion. But what I still grapple with is why Captain Lord stirred such disdain in you. Yes, he reminded you of your grandfather, so let me rephrase the question. Why does your grandfather stir such disdain in you?”
Vera ran a finger around the rim of her beer glass. “His transporting slaves—especially transporting them to the deep South—isn’t enough?” she asked. “I realize my grandfather was simply following one school of thought during the era in which he lived. But would you have me ignore the tenement owner who preys on struggling immigrants because others our own era do the same?”
Journalists, I reminded myself, prefer to ask the questions. Nonetheless, I persevered. “When Captain Lord spoke of not having another Junior, you assumed he meant a son. There is certainly logic in that. Yet you also asked if he disavowed his son or did something worse. Why might that have come to your mind?”
Vera slid her beer forward a bit and gazed in its direction.
I continued, “I ask because, if the captain reminded you of your grandfather—I mean to say—and I sincerely hope I’m not being too bold. But—well, just as our understanding of the afterlife has been expanded on this trip, I wonder if we might expand our friendship, too. If only a bit.”
Without turning to me, Vera stated, “My grandfather never acknowledged his son. He acted as if my father had never been born.” She reached for her glass but then withdrew her hands and folded them on her lap.
I took her nearest hand and held it a moment. “Vera,” I said gently, “such neglect is atrocious. Perhaps beyond forgiveness even! Why would a father—how could any parent ignore a child that way? Were you ever told a reason?”
Vera glanced at me. She pulled her hand back, but it was so that she could caress my cheek. She replied, “Be it one’s understanding of the afterlife—or of friendship—it takes a while to accustom oneself to such expansion.”
Vera and I sat at the bar patiently. We waited until the musicians arrived. Once they were prepared to play, we asked to hear some melancholy airs but suggested that any rousing sea shanties be postponed for another evening.
To honor the passing of the captain, so we said.
THAT THE WICKED SHALL BE WELCOME
Lee Clark Zumpe
Half a dozen squad cars gathered in the parking lot at Cappy’s Pump and Pay on Highway 274 east of town. One sat idling, window-wipers beating out a rhythm beneath the light rain. Its headlights shined over the metal swing doors of the ice chest outside the front door.
A disconcerted, somewhat emaciated man perched on the rim of a stool behind the cash register, rocking back and forth biting his nails. He pointed to the back where voices echoed down a long, poorly lit corridor.
Baxter Davenport followed his directions, unknowingly descending into hell.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Davenport stuttered as he pushed his way into the crowded restroom. The putrid stench hinted at the horrors within, but nothing could prepare him for the grisly spectacle he found in the second stall. “What kind of monster…”
“The human kind, unfortunately,” said Sheriff Laird Choate as he gripped Davenport’s shoulder. “So far as we know, anyway. We’ll need a series of shots of the crime scene.” He looked around at his team, half of them rookies; most of them off-duty. They had learned of the incident over the scanner, through the grapevine. In a small, secluded community, news travels at breakneck speed – faster even than bootleggers used to race along Flaming Azalea Road with a trunk-load of moonshine. “Everyone else clear out, now.”
A line of local law enforcement agents filed out of the room, some choking back vomit. One wept.
Blood coated the walls, pooled around a drain in the floor. Mounds of flesh and shattered bone lay scattered about across the tile. The only identifiable portion of the body – the victim’s severed head – glared out from the bottom of the toilet bowl. Murky waste covered everything below the nose.
“Who is it?” Davenport knew just about everyone in the small town of Daquwa, North Carolina. The only decent photographer in the area with a stomach for this type of work, he had assisted the police and the forest service on several occasions. He had seen hikers mauled by bears, pedestrians splattered over asphalt and more than a few disfigured delinquents mutilated in barroom brawls. “Is this someone I should know?”
“Still a John Doe at this point,” said Choate. “The gas station attendant found him a few hours ago. This time of year this stretch of highway doesn’t get much traffic – he said no one’s stopped since early this morning.”
Davenport circled the room, hiking boots slipping in slick blood. He began snapping pictures.
“What’s that on the wall above the toilet?”
“Some kind of writing, I suppose.” Choate held the door to the stall open, his latex gloves already soiled with blood and filth. “It’s not in any language I recognize, anyway; just a bunch of nonsense as far as I can tell.”
“Laird,” Davenport said, his gaze still channeled through the camera’s eye, “Laird, no offense, but I don’t know if you guys are equipped to handle something like this.”
“I’m with you, Baxter. I’ve already called for some backup. The FBI is sending in two specialists, and they’re picking up a crime scene investigator in Asheville.” Choate did not like outsiders poking into local affairs, but he knew that a crime this gruesome could not be kept concealed for long. Ravenous reporters would swoop down on the town when word broke, digging for dirt and jumping to conclusions, crucifying anyone they deemed guilty or even remotely suspicious. Tabloids would publish illegitimate confessions, invent motives and create conspiracies
. By calling in federal agents, the sheriff hoped to secure swift and fair justice, and to keep his town out of the spotlight as much as possible. “I’m willing to do what it takes to find whoever is responsible for this. Right now, though, my job is to keep everyone else in Daquwa safe.”
“None of us are safe, Laird,” Davenport looked away from the camera. He studied the symbols scrawled on the wall reflected in the dingy mirror above the sink. “We haven’t been safe for a long time.”
*
“How many people have been in here since the victim was discovered?” Officer David Weeks, a crime scene investigator from Asheville, collected fiber samples using tweezers. Each strand he dropped into a separate plastic bag, carefully sealing it and labeling it for future evaluation.
“Eight, including Baxter, the photographer.” Choate and Davenport had been banished. They stood outside the restroom in the hallway. “We’ve obviously never had to deal with anything quite like this,”
“Well, even so, common sense should have prevailed,” Weeks said. “Contaminating a crime scene can set an investigation back months. Every extraneous sample makes finding the clues that will lead to the real killer more difficult,”
“We understand that, Mr. Weeks,”
“Not very well, apparently. But that’s alright. As long as you can provide the names of everyone who marched through here disturbing my evidence, I’ll sift through everything and find something that can connect us with a suspect.” Satisfied that he had collected adequate material from every square foot of the restroom, Weeks meticulously packed away gear in one suitcase before opening another. He pulled on latex gloves that stretched up his arms beyond his elbows, popped his neck and swung the door to the stall wide open. The victim glared up at him. “Like they say, the proof is in the pudding.”
“Right,” Choate said, aggravated by Weeks’ arrogance. “Only one thing, Weeks,”
