“Captain?” Mr. Moke asked, and Wil met the man’s old eyes in their permanent squint with his own very wide. He gave his second-in-command a lopsided grin.
“I have a son,” Wil said, sounding amazed.
Moke blinked. “A son?”
“A fine, healthy son.”
The crewmen stared, then exploded with happy calls, several men forgetting their place to hammer Wil familiarly about the shoulders. Their captain did not mind in the least at the moment. Wil called for a double ration of rum to be distributed immediately to all hands, and the cheering redoubled. That evening more of the rum was disposed of by Wil and his officers, along with Nui and Laban who all stayed up late after sundown in the mess. When Wil lurched back to his own cabin, he grinned sloppily at the porcelain figure on his desk, raised it to his lips and planted a kiss on its cool surface before setting it down and flopping into his bunk, still clothed in the green captain’s coat.
He awoke next morning with a headache that was nowhere near bad enough to make him feel anything but joyful. His mood changed when he sat up in his bunk with a groan, and cast a look at the figure on his desk.
The statue was on its knees, more colorful now as its braided hair was a dark black much like Wil’s, and its hands were the dusky shade typical of a Miilarkian Islander. Wil particularly noticed the hands, as they were raised to cover the figure’s bent face, as though the porcelain man were weeping.
* * *
Wil resolved to speak to Nui, though he did not do so immediately. He meant to, but as he hurriedly washed and changed his clothes he began to worry about the hold, and the grain. The dust of the chaff, and the chance of explosion. When he emerged from his cabin in the forecastle he directed the sail master on duty to drop the mains to slow the Kaipo, while ordering the helmsman to hold to course. Not many deckhands were on duty at the early hour, but Wil ordered a pair of them to accompany him to the hold.
“Captain?” Mr. Moke called, approaching across the deck. Moke had stood the nightwatch and looked tired.
“We will slow to reduce the chop below the line of the hatches, fore and aft. I mean to air out the hold.”
Moke frowned. “We have done so every forty hours, sirrah. That is plenty long enough to keep down the dust so it won’t burn. Three days is safe for a ship our size.”
Wil snapped his eyes to his second, temples throbbing.
“Do you not know the sound of an order, Mr. Moke?” he demanded.
Moke frowned. “Aye, Captain. Dropping sails.”
The sail master scurried off to shout men up the masts, while Moke followed Wil and the two hands over to the open hatch down to the hold.
“I can direct the men, sirrah, I still have the deck.”
“I will see to it myself,” Wil snapped, giving his second another glare even as he started down the ladder. He placed one foot on the loose top rung and it rolled. Wil’s eyes widened as he started to fall, surely far enough to break a leg, but Mr. Moke had the reflexes of a darting minnow. He reached out both hands and grabbed the front of Wil’s coat, catching him. Wil desperately grabbed the man’s strong wrists, which felt like iron.
“Captain?” Moke asked.
“I am fine!” Wil snapped. “And fix this gods-damned rung, today! Drive a damned nail through it.”
“Aye, sirrah.”
Wil stepped down to the next rung and descended into the darkness of the chalky air in the hold. Before the next assigned hand was halfway down behind him, the Kaipo yawed and heeled heavily to starboard.
The crewman behind Wil on the ladder nearly dropped off on top of him, but the captain braced his fall. There was a squealing noise from above, rope winding too fast through a tackle, and a vast swoosh as of a collapsing sail, then shouting voices. The Kaipo rocked back to upright and Wil scurried immediately up the ladder, climbing back into the daylight before his eyes had even adjusted to the dark.
What had happened was plain. A gust from landward had caught the main mizzen sail just as the sleepy sailors of the nightwatch had been dropping it, yanking lines from hands which such suddenness that the boom had spun from right to left, sweeping above the deck at the height of a tall man’s head. That last judgment was easy to make, for Mr. Moke was sprawled across the deck, braid lying askew and the back of his skull staved in like a melon struck with a heavy, heavy club.
* * *
The crew was in shock, and the rest of the day was a blur for Wil. Nui saw to Moke’s body in his role as ship’s chaplain, but he could not get a direct answer from the captain as to whether or not to immediately conduct funerary rites and inter the ship’s second in what would be his final rest at sea. At nightfall, Moke’s body still remained in the mess, which made serving the evening meal to the crew problematic. Ultimately the men ate while sitting or standing around on the deck, with few words passing among them. The crew had been virtually silent all day, as had their captain who remained sequestered in his own quarters.
Hours after nightfall the captain appeared, but he spoke to no man of the nightwatch as he approached the port-side gunwales and threw some small object from the ship, pitching it as hard as he could to fly out into the darkness without a sound. No splash could be heard of course, but Wil remained standing at the rails for long minutes before disappearing back to his cabin.
In the morning, Wil woke slowly and sat on the edge of his bunk, staring at the deck between his feet and taking a deep breath before glancing up at his desk.
The figure was there, on a spot damp with seawater. The porcelain man was lying face down, and the statue was painted in full color from the olive green coat to the black hair and brown boots, to the welter of red blood shining on a wide wound on its back.
* * *
Wil did not sleep for the next three days, for whenever he started to doze he thought about the statue moving while his eyes were closed. He carried the object with him, sliding it secretively from his pocket to stare at the prone, bloody shape, to insure that it had not changed by as much as an iota. Not that it could have become much worse.
He did not speak to his own men, nor to the priest Nui, nor to the merchant Laban. Wil expected they were all talking about him plenty, and when after two days Mr. Moke was finally laid to rest over the side with a cannonball chained to his dead legs, Cap’n Wil was the only man not standing on deck to give the second a final salute. Wil watched the ceremony from the porthole in the forecastle, and watched the men cluster together afterwards and speak at great length. The priest and the merchant spoke specifically to Laban’s two Guilder guards, and Wil thought they all glanced toward him repeatedly as he stood back in the shadows, hand wrapped around the cold porcelain in his pocket.
The third night, Wil roused all hands in the depths of the nightwatch by clanging the claxon bell. He ordered all sails dropped, and when the Kaipo slowed to a drift on the current alone, the captain shouted for assembly by ranks on the mizzen desk. It was still hot in these latitudes even at night, but Wil wore a vast greatcoat over his full uniform as he stood atop the aftcastle and watched the men assemble before him. Wil tied off the wheel so the helmsman could join his fellows, leaving no one behind him or unaccounted for. When all thirty men were assembled below, illuminated by bright moon and starlight, Wil withdrew a stout boarding blunderbuss from beneath his coat, where four more pistols still hung from straps. He lit the fuse of the matchlock from a taper, and trained the double-barreled weapon on his men.
“All of you, into the boats!” Wil barked, voice rough from lack of use and face slack from lack of sleep. His eyes were red; some of the men thought they glowed in the silvery moonlight.
The crew exchanged confused looks, and the captain barked that he had given an order. The priest Nui stepped slowly out in front of the men with his arms at his sides, showing his empty hands. He looked up at Wil with an expression of concern, though a quiet calmness.
“Captain,” the ship’s chaplain began, but Wil leveled both barrels at the man’s c
hest.
“Not another word, godling,” Wil said firmly. “I find…I find that I am accursed, Chaplain, and I mean to break it. I mean to live to see my wife and my son. I must sleep, and I may not do so with any of you here on board. I cannot close my eyes with you all around me, unseen.”
Nui kept his mouth firmly shut, staring up into the two dark tunnels of the blunderbuss. Wil looked at the upturned faces of his men, looking back at him with a mixture of confusion and fright. He had known most of them for a very long time, and served beside them before he was promoted. They had never heard him speak as he did now, for he never had done so before.
“When you are all off the ship, I will raise the jibs myself and steer in closer to shore, to a depth to anchor. Rowing the launches, you may overtake me tomorrow. By morning, in one way or another, this will be ended.”
Some men exchanged glances, and Wil felt a flush in his face. He knew his words sounded like madness, and he knew that whatever happened, surely no man here would ever be willing to crew under him again. But none of that mattered now. All that mattered was that Wil lived to go home, to meet his son.
The technical third-in-command of the Kaipo was the navigator, but the fellow was a pleasant and unassuming man to whom the crew did not look for leadership. Instead, after looking at the still-silent priest, the men turned toward the merchant Laban, who had authority to speak on behalf of the House in some matters. No one was quite sure if the captain losing his mind was one of those matters, but they turned to Laban as an authority figure. After a long look up at Wil, the merchant took responsibility, and uttered his first and only order ever given.
“Abandon ship.”
* * *
After the launch and both lifeboats were in the water and the Kaipo had drifted safely a few hundred yards away from them, Wil secured the wheel on a course due south and moved to the foremast. He hand-winched the first jib up into place, and a gentle breeze puffed the white sail enough to move the great ship in toward shore. Wil returned to the stern to look back at the small, dark shapes in the water falling further and further behind, and he felt a sense of relief as deep as his tired bones. The porcelain figure remained in his pocket, but Wil neither reached in to touch it, nor brought it out into the moonlight. He did not intend to examine it again until he looked upon it by daylight after a solid, profound sleep. With no one about to inflict a wound on his back, he felt like he would be able to do so.
He thought of the cargo again before the ship had gone very far. Wil knew the men had aired out the hold again only yesterday, but as he intended to anchor in the shallows, he thought it best to open all the lower hatches lest the flammable air gather while the ship was at rest. He moved to do so now, leaving the blunderbuss with its extinguished taper behind at the helm, and actually checking the four pistols to make sure none of their matchlock fuses were lit, either.
Wil started down the ladder, and almost smirked to himself as he remembered the loose rung. He stretched a foot past it for the next rung down, wanting to risk nothing now that he was safe.
Only the toe of his boot caught the rung, and when Wil put his weight on it the flat sole slid off the wood. He still had his hands on the edge of the hatch and would not have fallen, but when his chest banged the ladder a brass button of his ornate captain’s coat struck against the iron lock of a pistol, and a spark flashed in the pan.
There was not enough of the deadly, dusty air gathered in the hold to ignite. The spark fired no conflagration, but it did fire the pistol. The iron ball pierced Wil’s chest, cracked off two ribs and tore through the captain’s entrails and bowels before blasting a red wound out the back of his olive-green coat.
Wil’s numb hands lost their grip and he plummeted into the darkness of the hold, breaking both legs with cracks almost as loud as the sound of the gun. There at the base of the ladder, Captain Wil bled to death over the course of several hours, while the empty Kaipo glided before the wind. For much of that time, the captain’s wild eyes were focused on the porcelain figure that had popped out of his pocket to lie in a square of moonlight from the hatch. Its posture was calm, with straight legs and arms at its sides. The figure was a colorless white in the gloom, its face again a blank slate. An empty vessel, awaiting whatever would fill it next.
#
While it occurs near a different continent and at an earlier time period, the preceding story is set within the world of The Norothian Cycle - a Musket & Magic Fantasy series by M. Edward McNally. Presently at four volumes - The Sable City, Death of a Kingdom, The Wind from Miilark, and Devil Town.
#
M. Edward McNally writes an awful lot of stories set on boats for a guy who lives in a desert.
Find him at his blog sablecity.wordpress.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter
The Smell of Death
Tara West
Maggie sat on the edge of the sofa while trying not to take deep breaths. She clutched her doll in her lap as her gaze darted to the others around the room.
“This house is dirty,” she mumbled.
She turned toward the kitchen. Her mom and Mrs. Churchill were talking and sipping coffee like old friends. Maggie worried that Mrs. Churchill would give her mom a job and then they’d have to live in a dirty house.
Her gaze wandered back to the others in the room. Mrs. Churchill’s elderly mother’s vacant eyes were focused somewhere on the large bay window. Maggie doubted the old lady was actually paying attention to the red birds building their nests in the heavy oak branches that shaded the large house from most of the sun’s rays.
An orange-hued cat sat in the old lady’s lap, his intent feline gaze boring into Maggie. But his cold stare wasn’t like the others. Maggie sensed the cat was more curious than anything.
She leaned toward the kitty and whispered. “You’re not as dirty as the rest. I might actually learn to like you.”
His ears twitched but he made no other movement.
Maggie took it as a good sign that the cat responded at all. She tentatively scooted closer to him. Interesting, she thought, as his aura seemed to be brighter than the old lady’s. Although it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the old lady’s light was fading. The sweet, pungent odor of death clung to the woman. The scent permeated the room and made breathing difficult for Maggie.
Maggie secretly hoped the woman would pass soon. She didn’t know how long she could stand living in a dirty house that smelled like death, too.
But if the old lady died, Maggie’s mom would again be out of a job. Her mom had been stressed trying to find work and a place for them to live.
The cat’s ears twitched again and Maggie thought she heard a soft purring sound. Despite the overwhelming stench of the old lady and the cold, unwelcoming stares from the others, Maggie scooted even closer to the cat.
“How did you die?” she asked.
The cat responded by lifting his front leg and licking what appeared to be icicles off the pads of his paw.
Maggie’s breath hitched and the gooseflesh on her arms tingled. “You froze to death?”
The cat lowered his paw and twitched his ears again.
“How terrible. I’m so sorry.” And truly she was. Though they’d never stayed long enough in one home for Maggie to own a pet of her own, she’d always liked animals.
She briefly wondered if he’d been Mrs. Churchill’s cat and if Mrs. Churchill had killed her own pet.
The cat twitched his ears again and Maggie felt the tingling sink beneath her gooseflesh and into her bones. Her eyes fluttered shut and she was struck by several images. Mrs. Churchill sick in bed. An angry white-haired man throwing the cat outside during a winter storm. Mrs. Churchill waking up and finding her cat’s lifeless body on the porch.
“Thomas!” the woman sobbed as she fell to her knees.
The strange sensation crawled back out of Maggie’s bones and her eyes shot open. “Thomas, “ she said to the cat, “who was that white-haired man?”
Thomas turned his head and his tabby ears pointed in the direction of the mantle, toward the portrait of Mrs. Churchill and the same man from Thomas’s vision.
“Mr. Churchill?” Maggie breathed.
Thomas answered with a hiss.
The others said nothing as they faded behind a large tapestry on the wall.
A fear like she’d never known suddenly took root in Maggie’s gut. She wondered what other dark secrets were hidden inside this house.
“Oh, this house is very dirty,” she cried as she clutched her doll to her chest.
Just then, Maggie spotted a large black car pulling into the circular drive. Maggie could see that the person who stepped from the car was the same white-haired man from Thomas’s vision, despite the dark aura that shrouded the man like a heavy coat.
Maggie gasped as the others appeared from behind the tapestry again. Their spirits were defined enough that Maggie could make out the whites of their wide eyes. One of them appeared to be a young girl, probably around seven-years-old, just like Maggie.
For a long moment, Maggie and the girl locked gazes. Though the fading spirit didn’t share a vision, Maggie knew well enough by the fear reflecting in the spirit’s eyes, that Mr. Churchill was a dangerous man.
Panic seized her chest. Rising on wobbly legs, she dropped her doll to the floor, not even bothering to pick it up as she hurried toward her mother in the kitchen. “Mother, we have to go,” she whispered into her mother’s ear. “This house is dirty!” She’d accidentally blurted the last part.
When Maggie heard Mrs. Churchill gasp, she knew the woman had heard. But Maggie was too frightened to care. She only wanted to get far away from this place.
“Maggie!” her mother scolded.
“I beg your pardon, little girl.” Mrs. Churchill’s eyebrows dipped beneath the perfectly even bangs of her blonde coiffure as she leveled Maggie with a glare. “I’ll have you know my housekeepers work around the clock to ensure this house is spotless.”
The Eclective: The Haunted Collection Page 2
