by Brian Lumley
“ ‘Look on high, quick!’ Will shouts back. ‘Why, you can see the trail it left!’
“Cranin’ our necks, we all of us looked and saw this spiral of yellow smoke gradually meltin’ away. And nothin’ else but an odd smell like burnin’ tar, and a sky full of blindin’ blue all the way to the horizon.
“Then Zhadia, havin’ climbed up to the quarterdeck, callin’ down to the Cap’n, ‘Jake, I see it! It’s in the water, driftin’ there but fallin’ behind. Gold in the sea, Jake, and a glory to behold!’
“ ‘What’s that?’ he calls out to her. ‘Gold, did ye say? Are ye daft, woman? Gold don’t float!’
“But without lookin’ back at him, her voice barely audible, and with her huge eyes fixed on the water astern, she sighs and answers, ‘Gold in its colour, Jake! In its lovely colour. And I wants it, oh, how I wants it—this cloth of gold, or cloak of gold, whatever it be may be—a-floatin’ there on the sea! Will you not catch it up out of the water for me, Jake?’
“By which time he’d joined her on the quarterdeck and could see what she was on about. And: ‘By God!’ he swore—but so low it went almost unheard, under his breath, as it were: a singular circumstance where Black Jake was concerned—‘But that’s a fine bit of . . . well, whatever it is!’
“Also at which time, the gentlin’ sea breeze had fallen completely away, so that the sails hung slack from the yards. Jake saw that we were becalmed, and there was Zhadia clingin’ to his arm and pointin’ at the thing in the sea where it lolled on the last few ripples of its arrival. But still—bein’ an obstinate man and not wantin’ to appear at Zhadia’s beck and call—Jake stroked his beard and spoke up loud, givin’ himself a reason to retrieve the thing in the water:
“ ‘Cloth of gold? P’raps and p’raps not. But haven’t I heard it said that when lightnin’ strikes a sperm whale it causes the beast to throw up this rare, valuable spume from its gut? Ambergris, it’s called; sometimes it’s grey as ashes and other times yellow as gold. Well, whatever, I’d be a fool to pass it up. So lower the boat, damn ye, and snap to it!’
“And so the thing was brought aboard. . . .
“Now note if you will, Harry: I say ‘thing,’ the reason for which will become clear as I proceed. For now, however, if only for a moment, let me pause to collect my thoughts. A story like this, it needs to be told with special care. The end must astonish; it should come suddenly—as a revelation!—sufficient to startle and even shock the unsuspectin’ mind . . . !
“Er—but not the Necroscope’s mind, eh? Not the mind of a man who has seen things sufficient to shock other men rigid and frighten them into early graves—and then talk to them there! A man with such powers that . . . that . . .
“But there, we understand each other and you know my meanin’. And so I’ll need but a moment to arrange the way my tale’s to be told.
“Will you grant me that much, Harry? Good!”
While the dead pirate composed himself, or more properly, while he composed his story, the Necroscope was given to ask himself: “Just what am I doing here?” But then again, what else would he be doing if not this? Because the fact was that recently, if he wasn’t searching for his wife and child, or answering the calls of the dead, consoling them wherever possible, then he was just as likely to be answering someone else’s call—indeed, rushing to answer it and helpless to stop himself!—B. J. Mirlu’s call, that is, from her wine-bar seat in Edinburgh. Bonnie Jean, yes, Harry’s new love; but a strange love that as yet he wasn’t sure of. The circumstances of their affair were peculiar and confusing to say the very least, and the Necroscope’s thought processes were even more confused whenever B. J. featured in them. She was an extremely fascinating woman.
Fascinating but strange, yes . . .
Well, and what else was new? It seemed as much Harry’s lot to stumble across weird situations and strange characters as it was for someone who was accident prone to trip over cracked paving slabs or hammer his thumb while nailing down a loose floorboard—and hit a water pipe! And what was Billy Browen if not another of that curious ilk: a somewhat odd and, on this occasion as on so many others, a very long-dead person?
But likeable? Plausible? Harmless? Well, so far so good. . . .
Frowning—but keeping both the frown and his thoughts to himself—the Necroscope found himself considering the quality of Billy’s deadspeak; not his vocabulary or way with words, but more properly the “sound” of the pirate’s incorporeal thoughts. Also, along with this unusual resonance (previously noted, when the dead man’s words had rung with such clarity in Harry’s mind it was as if they’d actually been spoken in his ear) certain of Billy’s deadspeak’s concepts had registered as incongruous with the Necroscope. For instance those names which he had so easily—and mistakenly, or possibly even falsely?—dropped. Such as when he’d placed Sir Henry Morgan alongside the infamous Blackbeard . . . strange bedfellows indeed, those two! And in addition he’d then boasted of how he’d sailed under both of them! Or was that all it had been? A typical, piratical flourish of no great consequence: quite simply a boast.
For over and above the silver screen idols Harry had joked about, he did in fact know one or two more things about pirates than he’d so far admitted; as a pre-teenager he had been fascinated by their storybook adventures. If memory served, Sir Henry Morgan had been—initially at least—some sort of gentleman privateer rather than a pirate proper, and for a time he’d even been Governor of Jamaica! Whereas Edward Teach, or “Blackbeard” as he’d been known . . . well he had been something else! Nothing less than a monster!
And again the Necroscope was given to wonder about Billy’s boast. Was it really possible that he’d sailed under both captains? Had they been contemporaries then? If so, that wasn’t the way Harry remembered it from his pre-teen reading. Henry Morgan had died of his excesses—“dropsy” or oedema brought on by his gorging and the massive drinking bouts that had got him suspended as a drunk from his duties as, of all things, a judge!—at Port Royal, Jamaica, sometime in the 1680s. While, on the other hand, Edward Teach had only commenced his pirating in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Thus there could easily be a difference of forty or more years between Morgan’s and Blackbeard’s buccaneering. Or, if Harry based his calculations on the opposite extremes of those dates as he seemed to remember them—dates which might well be inaccurate—then the variance could be as little as twenty or twenty-five years; but even so Billy’s claim would only just fall within the realms of possibility.
As for the variance in the natures of this pair of legendary figures—so pronounced that they had been literally poles apart—the Necroscope couldn’t help but wonder at the changes Billy Browen must have experienced serving first under “officer and gentleman” privateer Sir Henry Morgan, then under the blood-lusting pirate Edward Teach. Teach had been known to prostitute his own wives—at least twelve or thirteen of them, in almost as many ports of call—to members of his crew, and to torture in various “games of endurance” those selfsame crewmen!
So then, in the main they’d been as different as chalk and cheese, this pair of freebooters. But there again, hadn’t Billy made mention of going to sea with “some of the worst captains a man ever served under—and now and then with a handful of the very finest . . .”? Indeed he had, and so for the time being Harry put his doubts and suspicions aside.
All of which had passed through Harry’s unique mind in far less time than it takes to tell, and all of it shielded so that no other person—alive or dead—could have acquired or in any way intuited his thoughts.
And yet . . . there was this low, almost “inaudible” buzzing in his mind; inaudible because of course it wouldn’t be audible to anyone but Harry. It was similar to the interference between active, disparate electrical gadgets when they are brought into close proximity: a kind of static. Or maybe the hum of a record-player’s speakers when there’s no disc on the turntable and the volume is turned up way too high.
Ye
s, that could well be it: as if during this conversation between Harry and the pirate, the psychic aether’s “volume” had suddenly been turned all the way up. But if so, by whom and for what reason?
Or perhaps it was just another manifestation of the Necroscope’s burgeoning parapsychological powers, of which as yet he had grasped only the most basic ground rules. For example—and despite certain baffling and enigmatic statements by no less an authority than Albert Einstein—Harry still believed that the past, the present, and the future were three entirely different concepts. For there were things about the Möbius Continuum that he hadn’t as yet discovered . . .
It was now well into the afternoon towards evening, and drifting in from the east the clouds had cloaked the ancient cemetery in gloom. It was beginning to look like rain again, and the Necroscope had had quite enough of that for one day. Also, his backside was feeling the cold even through the material of his coattails, and his knees were gradually stiffening up. Harry wasn’t used to it; for all his powers he was only human, and following a recent metamorphosis—more properly a metempsychosis—his physical body, while in good shape, was nevertheless many years older than his metaphysical mind.
And so: “Better get on with the story, Billy,” he prompted the pirate, who had been silent for some time now. “It’ll start to get dark in the next hour or so, and if it rains I’ll look a complete fool sitting here in the downpour!” Not that that last was ever going to happen; it was just a figure of speech. If he so desired, Harry could take the Möbius route out of the cemetery before the fall of the second raindrop!
Ah, the darkness, of course! said Billy. You wouldn’t care to be sittin’ there on my cold, cold marker in the dark of night. Absolutely not! But you see, Harry, where I am, I’ve long since stopped considerin’ such concepts as daylight, moonlight, starlight and such. For down here in the ground there’s no light at all! None whatsoever! And there’s no warmth, either—or there wasn’t, until you came along. . . .
And along with that last, once again the pirate’s throaty, deadspeak chuckle. Which had the Necroscope wondering (but only to himself): Is there perhaps something a little too eager, too cunning and lustful, about that chuckle of his? Or is it simply the low, guttural laughter of a villainous old seafarer? And if the latter, just how villainous was he . . . and is he still?
But then, as if in denial of Harry’s inward-directed suspicions: So there you go, said Billy Browen. It wasn’t ignorance or lack of respect on my part, that would have seen you sittin’ up there in the dark and the damp, but simply my forgetfulness. After all these many decades of earth and worms—and of bein’ bodiless, of course—it had slipped my mind how the livin’ are accustomed to the natural comforts of a fully fleshed existence. And with the sort of mobility that you command, Harry, why, it’s hardly surprisin’ that you won’t allow the mere elements to inconvenience you. . . . and following a moment’s pause, but far more quietly now: So, how long do we have then?
Glancing at the eastern sky—framing a darkly oppressive seething of clouds within a stormy, angry tossing of the higher branches of nearby trees—Harry passed that image down to the pirate in his grave. And: “Not very long,” he said. “Perhaps an hour? And then I think the darkness and the damp will arrive at about the same time. Which is when I’ll be leaving.”
But now that we’ve met, as it were, we can still talk even at a distance . . . is it not so? It felt like Billy was grasping at straws.
“We could,” Harry replied, “but I prefer not to. You won’t find me shouting across the room at my friends. When I speak to someone like this I want it to be up close and personal; I like to think they’re not just bones or dust, but that they’re there in body as well as mind—even though I know they can’t be and aren’t.”
He sensed the other’s incorporeal nod, his disappointment. So then, said Billy, it appears I’m not goin’ to get it told in one visit. Not all of it, anyway. And while I know your time is precious, still that’s a shame.
“But you can at least get something more of it told,” said the Necroscope. “And after all, it’s not as if you’ll never get finished with it, now is it? For like you’ve said: this is just one visit, right?”
What? The pirate’s astonishment was almost tangible. Likewise his relief, the deadspeak sigh which he made no attempt to suppress as he gasped: Are you sayin’ you’ll return? Well then, now I know for sure why the dead are so taken with you. For you really are their champion—yes, even a dead pirate’s champion—aren’t you, Harry Keogh?
Trying to hide his embarrassment behind a second glance at the darkening sky, and failing, Harry answered, “I can feel the wind coming up, Billy. And by now the waves in Old Hartlepool’s harbour will be moving Scarhelm Haroldson’s bones around a bit. It looks like it may rain a lot sooner than I thought. So then, will you continue your story, or shall we call it a day—or a night, whichever?”
I’ll continue, of course! said Billy Browen at once. And I thank you once again, Necroscope, for affordin’ me the opportunity to relieve myself of somethin’ of the weight of this thing. For who else but you among the livin’ could ever hear the story out and perhaps even appreciate its horror, eh?
And as Harry eased his joints a little, again shifting his backside’s position on the other’s unmarked marker, he couldn’t help but notice how the volume on the deadspeak aether had been turned up one notch higher still. . . .
“The thing from the sea, but more properly from the sky,” Billy recommenced the telling of his story, “that cloth-of-gold stuff that was no more lightnin’-struck sperm whale puke than I’m the Lord Mayor of London—that shimmerin’ shawl or dress spun from the cold glow in the heart of some weird, unearthly treasure—had been plucked from the sea and brought aboard the Sea Witch; ‘which’ was when our troubles began.
“Zhadia wanted possession of it immediately. She was hypnotised by its glitter, how dazzlin’ly it reflected the sunlight; and the fantasy of its featherweight fragility: the way it wove and wafted in the slightest puff of air where the crewmen who’d lifted it from the water hung it from the riggin’ to dry. Amazin’ly, it seemed already dry, and no more than five minutes out of the sea; with salty white crystals driftin’ down off it onto the deck as soon as they formed, because they couldn’t cling to the sheerness of its weave! By ‘sheerness’ I mean its incorruptible oneness, its purity—or maybe its utterly corrupt impurity?—which wouldn’t permit of any familiarity or mixin’ with lesser ‘elements’; by which I mean inanimate elements. . . .
“Well, leavin’ off from what they ought to have been doin’, one by one the crewmen sidled up scratchin’ their chins to look at this . . . but this what? This raiment? This lump of sky-stuff that seemed made out of sunlight? This gold-shimmerin’ wisp, as light as a fairy’s fart? A nigh weightless thing, aye, that yet had enough of weight to cause it to plummet into the ocean like it was shot from some heavenly cannon!
“And for a while Black Jake Johnson, who was as much taken with this wonder as anyone else, simply stood there and allowed these casual inspections. Until, snappin’ out of it, he yelled, ‘Ho, there, Missus!’ (his ‘pet’ name for Zhadia). ‘What’s this, then? Will ye stand there gawpin’ the live-long day, like these monkey-boys who seem to believe they’re crewmen—in which case they should be about their duties earnin’ a dishonest doubloon, instead of standin’ here scratchin’ their hairy backsides!
“Which was more than enough to send them off about their work, though not without many an oddly wistful backward glance, as Jake took Zhadia’s arm and gentled her belowdecks away from that thing hangin’ so limp in the riggin’. Limp now, aye, as if it had quit attemptin’ to float free of the ship on the slightest waft; which could be because there wasn’t any longer even a stir of air, we were that becalmed.
“As for the thing’s rich glitter: it seemed to have burned itself out now, so that dull patches were showin’ through, like the sides of a fish where his scales have gone missin
’. Or maybe it was just the evenin’ light, fallin’ on the sky-cloth from a different angle as the sun dipped down towards the horizon.
“Sky-cloth, aye, that’s how I first thought of it: as somethin’ woven in the full of the moon, whose golden light had got caught up in it. Hah! First impressions and all. Which as often as not will lead a man astray. By which I mean that the thing’s burnin’ yellow aspect might as easily have been a reflection of hell’s molten sulphur as the light of moon-or sun-beams!
“And so the night came on, and the stars so bright and the sea so still. . . .”
_____
“It was a peg-leg called Pete—(no, I’m not kiddin’!)—who was standin’ watch that night. Stumpy Pete Parsons, aye, whose left leg from the knee down had been eaten by a hungry shark when he fell in the sea while hangin’ his arse overboard to do his business. Pete’s footfalls betrayed his identity each time he went on patrol; or rather one footfall, followed by the thump of his mahogany fittin’! In the heat of many a tropical night, sweatin’ blood in a hammock belowdecks—or up in the cool of the still night air, on those rare occasions when Black Jake would permit it, when it was too hot even for him, the hell-spawned devil—I’d hear Stumpy Pete Parsons comin’, hummin’ some sea shanty or other while keepin’ time with the slap-thump! slap-thump! slap-thump! of his approach.
“This wasn’t one of those rare, up-top nights such as I’ve mentioned, however; in fact it was singularly cool belowdecks, where the gentle lappin’ of the sea and the occasional creakin’ of the ship’s oaken ribs—and Pete’s monotonous, echoin’, slap thump! overhead patrollin’, of course—all combined, were like some lovin’ mother’s lullaby, puttin’ me and doubtless the rest of that weary crew to sleep.
“Only once in the dead of night did I come awake, thinkin’ to hear a thin, quaverin’ cry . . . most likely that of some seabird, grateful for a yard-arm to light upon. So I thought while slippin’ back into sleep: the cry of a seabird, aye—
