by Cat Knight
“I’m not taking her out, and I’m not turning on any equipment. I can’t imagine much can happen in port.”
“You couldn’t imagine ghosts a few days ago.”
“I don’t see as I have much choice I can’t throw £79,000 away. And, I’ve quit my job for this.”
“You’re only slightly insane, you know that?”
“I have to be insane to talk to a ghost, right?”
Mandy managed a wry smile.
Chapter Fourteen
Dusk greeted Darcy as she walked onto the dock. The boats, all the boats, were safely moored in their berths. They looked like sentinels, soldiers, silent and forbidding. Some were bigger than others, but they were all pleasure boats. As far as she knew, no one lived aboard a boat. But hers was not just a pleasure boat. It was a working boat, and she needed to get it working. It bobbed peacefully on the water. The decal still partially attached, hanging down, mocking her.
“I’d forgotten about that!” Darcy muttered, the anger in her tone lost on the wind. She wouldn’t fix it, she’d spend no more money there. Not until everything was resolved.
She felt like a person with a snow plow, looking at a June day, not a flake in sight. If she couldn’t put the boat to work, she was going to the poorhouse. Did they still have poorhouses?
Or was that something straight out of Dickens? She supposed she could go on the dole, but that was equally sour tasting. The dole was for those who couldn’t work. No, she wasn’t going on the dole, or to the poor house.
She climbed aboard and stood on the deck.
“Perhaps I should just be done with it and call this boat the Grey Lady” Darcy said out loud. “Would you like that?”
There was no response.
The boat just felt empty. No feeling of being watched, no unexpected rocking. Nothing. She turned a complete circle, as though she might find her hiding somewhere. Was the ghost on deck, in the galley, on the bridge? Did ghosts sleep?
She still felt silly addressing someone or something that she couldn’t see. Weren’t the funny farms filled with people who talked to others who weren’t there? That was a definition of insanity, right? Darcy wondered just how insane she had to be to chat with a ghost about a boat that didn’t work correctly? Had Kipling written something about a crazy boat? Darcy couldn’t remember.
And she was stalling. She knew she was. But how, oh how, did one communicate with a ghost.
“Ahoy matey”
The voice tingled with contempt. Darcy flinched.
“Hello,” Darcy said softly. “Are you Lady Grey?”
She waited for an answer, but nothing arrived. The dusk deepened, and she wondered just how spooky full dark would be.
“I know about the squall,” Darcy said. “I know they never recovered the body. I can understand how angry you might feel.”
“Batten down the hatches.”
Darcy could not pinpoint the voice. It seemed to come from everywhere, all around her. And talking to a disembodied voice was disconcerting. Someone passing by would think Darcy was talking to herself. She hugged herself as if cold.
“I know you’re upset,” Darcy said. “I would be too. I mean, not having a body to bury or anything. But this isn’t your boat.”
The lights on the bridge popped on, and Darcy jumped. She knew she was all alone, and all the power was shut off. The lights COULDN’T come on.
“I bought the boat because I needed it for my business,” Darcy continued. “I will use it to take passengers across the channel.”
The bridge lights blinked out. The running lights fore and aft came on.
“Stop that,” Darcy said. Her voice lacked all conviction. It was more plea than order.
An ice-cold draft blew across her neck, and Darcy shivered. The hair on her arms rose.
“Whose boat?”
“Mm… mine… N… not yours,” Darcy said. “MY boat.”
The bridge lights blinked on and off repeatedly, as did the running lights. It looked as if the boat was in some kind of parade. Her stomach knotted. This was some sort of freak show.
Then the horn sounded. If Darcy thought the boat was drawing attention with the lights, the horn announced their presence like a trumpet jubilee.
“Stop,” Darcy said. “Stop now!”
The lights and horn ceased, and Darcy closed her eyes for a moment. Her heart was beating far too fast. She needed to control it before it popped out of her chest.
“I… I am not without sympathy,” Darcy said. “And I would like to help. So, if you need something in order to leave, now would be a good time to tell me.”
“Get off my boat!”
Darcy froze.
The horn blasted. The lights started blinking. Adding to the circus, a radio on the bridge came on. Darcy heard music, concert music. What the bloody hell?
“Stop!” Darcy said. “STOP!”
But the noise and the lights didn’t stop. Night had arrived, and in the darkness, the boat looked like a party boat, except there were no drunk patrons on board, no teetering, grinning fools.
“STOP!” Darcy yelled.
“OFF MY BOAT, YOU SNIVELING INDIGENT!”
Darcy stood on the deck, and she knew she had lost contact. Whatever controlled the boat was not to be reasoned with. She backed up and stepped off the boat.
Everything stopped.
Darcy stepped back onto the deck.
The lights flashed, and the horn blew, and down below, an engine started.
She stepped off the boat, and the display stopped.
“All right, all right,” Darcy said. “You win tonight. But this isn’t over. I’m coming back, and when I do, you’re leaving. HEAR ME?! YOU’RE LEAVING!”
There was no answer from the boat, and Darcy had the distinct feeling that the ghost had no intention of leaving, none at all. If that were true, it would make things very, very difficult. She backed away from the boat, not brave enough to turn her back.
In a moment of childish retort, she yelled back
“I PAID FOR THIS YOU BITCH YOU… YOU… DEAD BITCH. AND I’M NOT AN INDIGENT.” The voice inside her head told her to “RUN”.
In her flat, Darcy sat on the couch and wondered just what to do. Threatening the ghost was one thing. Getting rid of the ghost was quite another.
The answer wasn’t obvious, and it wasn’t something that was guaranteed to work. After all, if someone had a ghost ridding business, they would be making money, pounds over fists. No, as far as she could see, there was no sure-fire way to dump a ghost. Every case was unique. Every haunting required its own special formula.
She needed a way to rid her boat of a nuisance ghost. And who was going to step up and accomplish that? No one as far as she knew.
She readied herself for bed. She wasn’t sure that sleep would come her way. There were many problems involving the boat, and those problems were like burrs that would irritate her and keep her from sleep.
She knew she would toss and turn, and in the end, she would be no closer to a solution than she was at the moment.
Sleep might provide nothing but eight hours of agony. Still, staying up wasn’t an alternative. She needed sleep, and perhaps, maybe, her brain would manufacture some way out of her current predicament. That was her hope. In the arms of Morpheus, she might just find a solution.
She didn’t really believe that.
But she had to try. In the morning, she would have to do something. There was no place to hide.
Chapter Fifteen
Darcy woke with an idea. It wasn’t a great idea. It wasn’t even a good idea, but it was an idea. As she brewed her first cup of tea, she consulted her phone and its weather app. Forecasters were decidedly wrong most of the time, well, maybe one time out of three. In any case, people always remembered the times the weathermen were wrong, not when they were right. You plan a picnic, and it rains, boo.
She spent the morning poring over all her paperwork for the boat. It had to be in order for her idea
to work. And it was. All the dots and crosses were in place. Now, it was time to execute the plan — if she had the courage.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Darcy stood on the dock and stared at her boat. The Champagne Taste was now devoid of its name completely. Yet it stood calm and ready. It didn’t look anything like a ghost ship. She wondered if this boat, previously known as Grey Lady, would join the names that old sailors whispered over pints when the wind screamed about the pub.
On the scary nights, they would tap the table three times and drain their mugs. But her boat wasn’t going to be a ghost ship if she could help it.
“Ahoy, matey.” The voice greeted her as she stepped onto the boat.
“Ahoy, Lady Grey,” Darcy answered. “Ready to take a ride?”
A blast from the horn was the answer. Darcy decided quickly that she didn’t like the answer. She hated the idea that she was talking to a ghost, a ghost that didn’t particularly like her. As Darcy went through her checklist, she suffered the slings and arrows of Lady Grey. The lights flashed. The icy cold wind ruffled her hair. The horn blew. Once, while going down the ladder, the boat shifted, and she slipped. She thudded on the deck and screamed. The pain was excruciating, and she panted, thinking she had perhaps cracked a rib. Every breath hurt.
“You gotta do better than that,” Darcy muttered. “That might have done for George, but I’m a sight better than that. Come on, Lady Grey, what you got?”
“Get off my boat.”
Darcy pulled herself to her feet and finished her checklist. The boat was ready. Was she? She stepped to the side and looked around.
“All right, Lady Grey, I’m giving you one chance to leave the boat. This isn’t your boat anymore. You leave now, and this stops right here. You can cross over, or what-ever you’re supposed to do.” Nothing happened. Darcy frowned. “Hear me? The ball is in your court.” Still silence. “Done.”
Darcy stepped onto the dock long enough to undo the lines. Then, she hopped on-board before the engines fired up and the boat lurched away. Darcy didn’t put that past the ghost. She climbed to the bridge and started one engine.
She wasn’t sure if the other one would stay quiet, but she hoped the ghost would cooperate — at least for a while.
The compass spun away, and Darcy laughed.
“Glad to have you along, Lady Grey,” Darcy said.
The Lady’s cackle scared Darcy to her toes. What had she started?
Chapter Sixteen
At the harbour exit, Darcy noticed the ‘small craft warning’ flag. She had expected it, and it didn’t frighten her. Let the storms come. She was prepared. At least, she thought she was prepared.
“Rough seas ahead, strumpet, rough seas.”
“Strumpet? You seem rattled. Indeed, rough seas are coming,” Darcy answered. “Rougher than you imagined.”
The CACKLE answered her, and the second engine started without Darcy’s help. She throttled it down, hugely aware that the ghost still exhibited control.
The seas were indeed rough. The boat rocked and tipped and fought through the growing waves. The wind whipped past, harder than Darcy would have liked.
She checked the GPS which was working. The compass was not. It spun from one direction to another at random. She was not going to give it any credence. And she didn’t need it.
In the distance, a black line rose over the horizon. Darcy knew what it was, and she turned the boat into it.
“Living dangerously?”
“Very dangerously,” Darcy said. “Why so chatty? You’ve met your match Lady Grey and you know it.”
The squall line approached, and the engines died. Darcy was more than annoyed, she was angry. She needed power.
“Don’t do that,” Darcy said as she restarted the engines. The response was an ice-cold blast of air. Then the horn sounded.
Darcy gritted her teeth and held onto the wheel. Her courage was waning. The squall line in the distance approached black and angry. The waves rose around the boat, dwarfing it. Darcy had never been out in such seas, and as she looked around, she saw no other boats.
She was alone, churning into a storm. As the temperature dropped, she shivered. The storm rushed toward her, and it seemed to be alive. Maybe it was. Maybe all storms were nothing more than ghosts or demons or things that sought death and destruction. Darcy no longer cared.
Waves washed over the sides and inundated the deck. Rain pelted, sweeping across the boat in a wave. Cold, the storm was cold.
Then the storm was upon her as Darcy killed the engines. She shut off all the power and turned to the ladder. Around her, the wind howled, and the waves hammered against the boat. She started for the ladder.
“Mayday, mayday!”
Darcy stood at the top of the ladder as the boat rocked. She knew the boat was in danger of foundering, and she didn’t care. This wasn’t a hurricane, but it was a storm.
She gripped a handle as the rain raked her. “This is it,” Darcy called. “Hear me? THIS IS IT!”
The ghost didn’t answer.
“Here is what is going to happen,” Darcy said. “I’m going to sink this boat. Got that? SINK! You might think that’s crazy, but it’s not. I’m going to claim that the boat sank in the middle of a storm because the scuppers opened and flooded the hold. In a storm, anything can happen.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“So, you see, when the boat sinks, so do you. You’re gone, dumped to the bottom to join your rotting bones. HEAR ME?!”
Another blast of ice-cold air rushed past Darcy. Clammy fingers grabbed at her cheek and neck. She shivered as she carefully climbed down the ladder, mindful of the tricks the ghost played. Indeed, the boat did lurch, but she was ready for it.
At the bottom, she crawled across the pitching deck to a locker. She opened it and pulled out an orange life vest which she put on. Then, she grabbed a small package, her life raft. She lifted the package.
“See this?” Darcy said. “This is a life raft. It’s my way off this bloody boat. I’ll float my way home while you sink to the bottom. Understand? I won’t join you in the ghost world! You’ll be stuck at the bottom where you belong!”
She opened the package, took out the raft, and pulled the cord. The raft instantly inflated, all yellow and orange. It filled most of the deck as the rain hammered her.
She grabbed a line and tied the raft in place. That last thing she needed was to have the raft blown away. She gripped a railing.
“And if you’re thinking I’m out my money, you’re dead wrong! I have insurance! It will pay me back. SO, YOU CAN’T WIN!”
“IT’S MY BOAT, IGNORANT INDIGENT.”
The wind lashed at Darcy’s face. Ice cold slivers of water burned at her neck. Darcy wasn’t about to give up.
“Feeling upset Lady Grey? Me too! If I lose, you lose”
A piercing scream sounded on the wind.
Darcy yelled. “I don’t care if I sink it! I can start again. But you CAN’T. So, it doesn’t matter, you’re going down, stuck in the bottom of the ocean! Ready Lady Grey? Ready to join your bones?”
Darcy crawled toward the steps that led below, to the seacocks that she needed to open.
“HELM!”
The word stopped Darcy. She wanted to raise her head, but the wind and rain drenched her. It was as the sea and storm conspired to punish her. The question in her mind was whether or not to listen to the voice. Darcy didn’t have a large window. The storm would hide her actions for a while but not forever. She had to decide.
The engines started. The horn blew.
“HELM, HELM!”
Darcy crawled across the deck, fighting to keep from being swept away as waves broke over the side. Sputtering, soaked, she wrapped her numb fingers around the ladder. She didn’t know why she heeded the voice, but she wasn’t ready to send Champagne Taste to the bottom of the channel. The climb up the ladder was a slog as she fought the storm and sea.
For a moment, she thought the boat would capsize
, and if that happened, she would have a devil of time getting to the raft. Her arms weakening, she reached the top of the ladder and crawled again. Her body protested the strain. “Not yet,” Darcy muttered. “I’m at the helm. What now?”
“SECRET”
“WHAT’S A BLOODY SECRET! TELL ME!”
The engines quit. The horn sounded. The lights flashed. The boat was totally out of control as it heaved to and fro. Darcy held on for her life. Waves battered the powerless craft. She looked down. The raft was gone, blown away by the tempest. She had nothing but her orange vest, and that was little comfort in this storm.
“BOTTOM!”
For a moment, Darcy wasn’t sure what was needed. She sank to her knees.
Still clutching the helm, she faced a small door that was still latched. As she watched, the latch turned, and the door opened.
“I’VE LOOKED HERE BEFORE!” Darcy yelled.
A frozen wind slammed Darcy into the door and pinned her.
Out of options, Darcy stuck her hand through the small service door.
Darcy felt someone take hold of her hand!
With a scream, Darcy tried to pull it out, but whoever or whatever was in the helm wouldn’t let go. In fact, even as she struggled, her hand was drawn inexorably into the void.
“DON’T!” Darcy cried. “DON’T!”
As she fought, her hand was drawn through the raft of wires and cables, the roughness scraping her knuckles. The supernatural power was inescapable. While she tugged, her hand was pulled ever deeper. Fear gripped her heart.
The storm crashed over the boat, and if it sunk, she would be held at the helm, sure to drown. With a determination she didn’t realize she had, she jerked as hard as she could.
And accomplished nothing.
Her hand was jammed between two cables, and it wouldn’t move. Then, her fingers felt something.
She had no idea what it was, only that it was small, and hard, like plastic. She struggled to grab the object even as her hand was pinned inside the space. The storm hadn’t abated. It raged, and the boat pitched, and just when she thought she had the bloody thing, it slipped from her fingers.
