The Dead Men Stood Together

by Chris Priestley

  But he made no move to take it off. He stood there for a long time, staring at the sea below, his right arm wrapped around one of the thick hemp ropes. I saw his eyes glisten as tears welled there and overflowed the lids, trickling down his bearded face.

  I cursed him all over again at the thought of this last selfish act. How dare he think that he should have an end to this misery whilst I had to endure it for who knew how long?

  Why should he have control over his fate when I was held in the grip of a madness he had spawned? Was I to lie here for all time, staring out across these bodies at the passing days?

  The red light from the setting sun mixed eerily with the green glow flickering below and I imagined the creatures moving around the ship and cursed them too for living on when so many men had died.

  How could it be that our lives had been so easily forfeited on the roll of a dice and these slimy, squirming things were allowed to live on? These men had mothers, brothers, sons, wives. Their lives couldn’t be compared to these sea slugs – or to the albatross for that matter.

  My uncle’s lips moved, but at first I could not make out the words. But then his voice grew louder – or my hearing sharper. To my amazement, he was praying. Praying to the very force who had let us all die at the throw of the dice.

  He sobbed to himself and asked for forgiveness and suddenly the rope that held the albatross around his neck gave way and snapped, and I heard the splash as it dropped into the water below.

  There was a dazzle of green and golden light from the unseen creatures gathered around the ship. The dancing light played across my uncle’s tormented face and then there was a change.

  Even though I was some way off, my mind seemed to concentrate my vision, as though I looked through an eyeglass, and I could see my uncle’s face enlarged and in sharp detail.

  The haunted expression he had worn for so long fell away and in its place was a look I would never have expected to see. It was the saintly expression of the most devout and God-fearing monk. It was a look of love.

  Yes – love! He could not have looked more fondly at those repulsive creatures had he been looking at his own children. Why did I have to witness this latest bout of madness? I swear that had I been able to move I would have beaten him over the head and thrown him headlong into the sea to join his beloved slime-monsters.

  PART THE FIFTH

  XXVI

  My uncle turned from the sea and slumped to the deck. At first I thought he had finally joined the rest of the crew in death, but, no, he was sleeping.

  I thought I could not contain my anger, that it was so strong no spell could hold it. Yet I remained locked in stillness, silently hurling abuse at his sleeping face.

  What right had he got to sleep? What right had he got to wear that peaceful look on his face when we lay all about him, dead before our time? And all because of his spite and that accursed crossbow!

  I hated him then. I burned with the hating of him. He slept on and I was forced to watch him, my eyes wide open, always, always open. The night seemed to darken by degrees and I felt so alone, so bitterly alone. I cursed him over and over again.

  I begged my arms to move, my legs to shift, so that I could at least crawl across the deck and cause him some kind of pain. He could still feel pain, I knew that. Let me hurt him.

  But none of my prayers were listened to. None of my begging caused a single change in the fabric of that nightmare. My uncle slept on and I could do nothing.

  The first drop of rain hit the deck like a cannonball, it was so unexpected. Then another fell, and another. One struck me on the face, though I didn’t feel it. One hit my open eye and I suffered no pain. I didn’t even blink.

  Soon the sound of the rain was deafening as it raked across the deck and the dead, drumming the faces of the crew and my sleeping uncle alike. I heard it passing through the air like arrows. I heard each drop as it splashed against canvas, wood, rope and flesh.

  The night was filled to bursting with the sound of it. Water flowed over the dry decks and dribbled into the hold. It dripped from sodden sails and into empty barrels and buckets, the metallic notes sounding as loud as a peal of cathedral bells.

  It flowed over the faces of my dead comrades – it hammered against their open eyes and trickled into their mouths and over their lolling jaws. It soaked their hair. It drenched their clothes until they clung to the unmoving muscles beneath.

  I thought my ears would explode with the sound of it and wondered if my eyes could stand the constant onslaught as I stared out, my vision blurred by the pounding rain.

  My uncle finally awoke. How he had slept so long was a wonder in itself. He looked about him in amazement, licking the rainwater from his moustache and beard. He picked up a nearby bowl and poured the contents into his mouth, savouring each drop as though it was the finest wine in all the world.

  I saw the suspicion on his face at first. Was he dreaming? Was he dead? And then there was a great roaring in the distance. Lightning flashed far off and thunder rolled like drums. A storm was coming and the sails began to shift.

  The sailcloth bulged and billowed like the clouds beyond them. The rigging creaked as the ropes took the strain and the deck boards flexed as the ship began to move off.

  The strange thing was that the wind from the storm never touched us. Not one single strand of my uncle’s hair was moved. What filled those sails I couldn’t say, any more than I could tell you what strange spirits now flew through the rigging.

  They were like some flying cousins of the luminous things that had surrounded us in the sea. They too glowed, but with a white or golden light, and they flitted here and there among the sails. It was like the stars had dropped and were dancing around the mast tops.

  Meanwhile, the storm roared angrily in the distance but still not a breath of breeze moved over us. The rain still fell straight down, soaking everything below.

  The black cloud that was above – the source of this deluge – moved to starboard a little and out came the moon again. And then CRACK – down came a bolt of lightning, without a flicker or a fork, straight into the ocean ahead of us.

  Again, the lightning came. It lit the scene with a harsh and sudden light, a scene that had looked vile enough in daylight, but which gained a new level of shock when blasted with this merciless light. Again. And again, imprinting itself upon my mind. Each flash worse than the one before, but I could not close my eyes!

  Each shock of light was seared into my eyes and flashed into my mind to live on as a ghostly afterglow when darkness flooded back.

  Then there was a groan. And what a groan it was! It came from every body that lay around and all at once, as though there was only one set of lungs and only one throat, and it came from me too.

  It came from me too!

  It sounded like it rumbled up from the bowels of the earth and the depths of the ocean. Each one of us who had fallen now stirred – as though the power of the lightning had worked some kind of magic on us and urged our dead muscles back to some kind of life.

  After all this time, I could move again! Our dull movements were animated in bursts of light that sped them up and made it seem as though the whole ship had come to life to a crazed beat. Each flash showed the scene in flickering motion like the figures in a magic lantern show.

  But it was not life. It was a cruel mockery of life. We moved but that was all. The horrible faces of the dead shone out at each new lightning burst and I suffered the pain of knowing that I looked like them. I was their kin. I was undead.

  We groaned, we stirred. I had no more will in this than I had before in lying still. The air moved through my lungs and spilled out in sound but it was nothing to do with me. I was just a puppet now – the gruesome plaything of some hidden force. I supposed we all were.

  Was this the grim victory of that female Life-in-Death? Is this what had pleased her so? Was it her pale hands that controlled us? Or had she simply left us as bodies without souls, dead but not dead?

&n
bsp; And again I knew somehow that even as my comrades moved, they did so unaware entirely. Only me and my uncle had been allowed to think. As the lightning flashed across the faces of the crew, I found myself jealous of them: jealous of their empty heads.

  I sensed something had changed in this strange world. Everything my uncle did seemed to have some effect and this new attitude in him – this repentance of his – had also wrought a change.

  He was free of the albatross at last. Were we now free of the curse that fell on us when he killed it? Or was this just another act in the same mystery play?

  The ship sailed on and, as it moved, we all took up the places we had occupied in life, whilst my uncle shrank back in terror. And who could blame him?

  The sight of my old comrades lying dead on the deck was tragic and hard to bear, but this sight was worse – worse by far. This was a scene from a nightmare – a scene from the Last Days when hell bursts like a boil and madness spills out across the world.

  The dead moved about the ship like sleepwalkers and me along with them. Their eyes like mine were open wide and stared without a blink or twitch. Each face was lit by the fireflies above and the glow-worms below and at each flash of lightning they burst into blinding clarity. Each staring face was a nightmare from some doom painting. No church wall had such hideous warnings of the rewards of an ill-spent life. No hell could hold more fearful victims.

  We each took up our posts. The captain made no sound yet stood as though commanding us and we obeyed his unspoken orders. From a distance, we would have looked a normal, if very efficient, crew. From a distance!

  The helmsman strode to the wheel and, lifting both his hands at once, grabbed hold and began to steer the ship. Or at least he gave the appearance of steering, for I was sure he was no more in control of his movements than I was of mine.

  Perhaps even more strangely, my uncle – who did have a free will – chose to join us. It was as if he was trying to make the scene less horrible by pretending to be a part of it.

  He took his position next to me, not looking at me once, and pulled on the rope as I did. The muscles on his arms stood out as did the sinews on his neck, where our – the dead crew’s – movements seemed effortless.

  The grim crew scaled the rigging, climbing in silence. Their movements were, if anything, quicker and more agile than they’d been in life. They moved like lizards or spiders. They swarmed over the ship and my uncle clenched his jaw and went about his task, trying hard to blot us out.

  Only once did he look at me. He turned his head and stared straight into my eyes, searching them for some sign of recognition. A sign I did not give him. A sign I could not give him. And so he turned away again and never looked back.

  We worked as we would have done. We worked hard and the ship sailed on. I did not tire. I felt nothing. One time the hemp rope slipped in my grip and rasped its way across my palm for a minute before I took hold again. I felt no pain. No pain that is except the pain I bore from knowing I was for ever lost.

  XXVII

  The ship sailed on. The storm still stalked us, growling every now and then, and though we were in the windless eye of it, still the ship sailed on. The sails we worked were full, but full of what? What force filled that canvas and drove the ship? I didn’t know then and I still don’t.

  We worked through that night, sailing on blindly into the darkness. Our limbs didn’t tire; our bellies did not growl for feeding. Never could a crew have worked as hard. We’d left the mass of glowing sea monsters far behind and were in open ocean. Then, whatever force compelled the crew to work, now made them stop and gather slowly round the mainmast.

  All of us – all of us apart from my uncle, who stood at the stern, watching us in awestruck wonder, trying to decide what new strangeness was about to unfold – clustered together in silence.

  Then the crew as one tilted back their heads and opened up their mouths and sang. The sound was like no human being could ever make: more beautiful than the greatest earthly choir. It was the singing voice of angels.

  And beautiful though it was, it was yet another torment, because the sound didn’t come from me. Of all the undead crew, I was the only one who did not join this heavenly choir, and I knew then that their souls had not returned when they raised themselves up. The emptied shells that were the crew were host to heavenly spirits.

  My soul had never left: my soul, with all its flaws, remained inside the husk of body, chained like a prisoner in a cell.

  My fate was different to the rest of the crew. Their souls were somewhere else. Who knew where? It wasn’t as though they were all good men. Was it heaven that awaited them? I’d have gladly taken my chances wherever it was.

  The singing shook the air. The sound of it was like a physical thing. As it left their mouths it seemed to me to take the form of shining angels, and they took flight like a flock of white doves, bright and pure against the sky. They were so beautiful.

  The sound-angels flew off towards the rising sun and back again, flitting round our heads, their music echoing round and round, like birdsong and babbling brooks and the sound that ripe barley heads make as they brush against each other in a summer breeze. It was like the music of Nature – of everything that was good in the world.

  Just as suddenly, all the crew closed up their mouths and the music stopped. The singing ceased but there was not the same silence as before. The sails breathed and sighed as the ship moved and the water lapped at our hull and again I was taken back to fields of corn and fields of barley and the chatter of water flowing over pebbles.

  These noises I must have heard a million times and never thought anything of them, yet I flew back in my mind to my childish self, standing chuckling with delight and clapping my hands excitedly over nothing more than these sounds as I stood on the field’s edge with my mother. Oh, to be back there.

  The ship sailed on – still without a breath of wind. It needed no further assistance from the crew. We simply stood at our place by the mast and my uncle stood at his place and on we went until the sun was directly overhead.

  My uncle sought shade, but the sun beat down relentlessly on me and the other crew, making our damp clothes steam. We should have burned like martyrs on a gridiron, yet still I felt nothing. Nothing. I didn’t blink or move a muscle. I was as unfeeling as the nails that fixed the deck on which I stood.

  The ship came to a sudden halt as though an anchor had been dropped. It lurched back and then forward again. My uncle was thrown to the deck and we, the undead, managed to shift our stance and stay on our feet somehow. My uncle lay unconscious as the ship stood still on a windless ocean.

  I – we – stared down at him from our post. My uncle furrowed his brow but did not open his eyes. We stood over his fallen body in a strange reversal of our previous positions. We stood like a group of murderers over the body of our victim.

  PART THE SIXTH

  XXVIII

  The silence came down again. The only movement was the rise and fall of my uncle’s chest as he lay in his faint, and the hairs of his beard trembling as his breath left his lips.

  The whole world seemed concentrated on those small movements. Without them, the scene could have been a painting or a sculpture, though one that only a madman would have created.

  My uncle lay insensible all that long night, but as dawn’s light began to grow and soak the whole place in yellow then it was that I heard voices. Voices. Not sounds of weird music, but actual voices.

  Two people were talking. Because I could not move my head I couldn’t see where the voices were coming from. Could it be that not all of my shipmates were dead? Maybe they had been hidden away in the hold and escaped whatever foul magic had captured the rest of us?

  The voices drew nearer and I realised now that they were dropping down from above. There were no living crew up in the topsails, I knew that: I had seen my undead crewmates swarm all over those masts. Nor did these voices give any sign of movement, as men’s voices will when they are climbin
g whilst talking. Instead they seemed to float down.

  And in any case, now they were clear, I knew these voices were not those of any one of us. These were not the harsh notes of fishermen and mariners. These voices had the light sing-song tones of a parson.

  ‘Is this he?’ said one of the voices. ‘Is this the man?’

  I still could not see who – or what – spoke, but I could see very clearly that a light was now hovering over where my uncle was lying asleep on the deck. My uncle stirred and half opened his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice continued. ‘It was him. With his cruel bow. It was he who slew the albatross. And the spirit who lives in the land of mist and snow, he loved that bird. And even though the bird did nothing but love these men, still that wretch killed it.’

  The other voice was softer and sweeter-toned.

  ‘And he has done penance – and he will do more.’

  ‘How is the ship moving without wind to fill the sails?’ asked the first voice.

  ‘The air is cut away in front,’ said the other. ‘And closes in behind!’

  The speed of the ship picked up. I could feel the air rushing past me as we went, faster and faster until the stars above were mere blurs in the heavens. Every timber rattled and quaked as it hurtled through the air, skimming across the wavetops like a swallow across a millpond.

  ‘Fly, brother, fly,’ said one of the voices, getting fainter. ‘Higher! Higher! The ship will slow and the mariner will wake. We must away.’

  The ship did slow and the stars began to settle in the sky once more. The night was still and calm, the moon high and still no breeze moved our craft, yet on it went. My uncle woke and stared around in confusion, wondering what he had seen or heard or dreamt.

  His eyes naturally came to rest on us, the undead crew who still stood, lit now by the moon high overhead, and he recoiled with a shudder. We must have been a gruesome sight, gathered there together silently in the moonshadows.