WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID
The calm of the sea brought us into a pit of death in and of itself. Silence. Stillness. Like the sky and sea were a mirror of one another, and we floated along in that vacuum of nothingness—spectators to hell and not far from its grips. No wind stirred the sea. No movements were within its depths. The sky was bright and clear like a taunting mirage of hope amidst such unnerving reality. We were stuck until the wind would bring us from that place. And being stuck on a ship stuck in the ocean would make any man lose his wits and succumb to the extremes of human existence.
Galiot, captain of The Albatross, was a hardened sailor, the son of a family of sailors stretching back as far as he could remember. He had seen his fair share of horrors aboard ships in the rough waves of the sea, seen crewmates gone stir crazy aboard the ship as well, but the calm of the sea was always a part of the long journeys on open waters that he dreaded and feared. He never spoke this aloud to any of us, but it was apparent as soon as the winds died down and the waters stilled like death because there was always a shift in his eyes—from the steel grey of sturdy existence to paled, glazed over distress swirling in them. To be fair, none of us enjoyed being in that odd displacement of reality, but for Galiot... it was like he had been told some tale of woe as a child about the calm of the sea and had carried it with him as fact over myth—like he was prepared for hell to open up and take us down below watery depths to eternal flame.
“We're without a windfall, boys,” Galiot murmured with a clearing of his throat to mark the end of his words. And who knew how long it would take before a bit of wind could carry us on. It was just the five of us aboard—Christopher being the newest member—since the ship was little more than a large boat to transport a few personal items across the shore to a wealthy family that employed Galiot and the rest of us every once and a while for menial tasks, however, this was the first time we had been passing through this stretch of sea. Leif, Erasmus, and Christopher were the others on the crew, each a bit trained in every area of working a ship just as I was, and over the years, we had gotten quite attached to one another. It’s hard not to get attached to men you spend every waking moment with for months at a time.
Leif sauntered over from where he had been leaning over the side of the ship and examining the still waters with furrowed brows. “Ay, we got supplies to last us, Captain. We’re fine!” Leif clapped Galiot on the shoulder and gave him a smile, to which Galiot only nodded, more to assure himself than respond to Leif. Out of all of us, Leif had known and been with Galiot the longest. Because of that, it was evident that the burly man could pick up on the captain's tells of distress. "In fact," Leif chuckled a bit as he waved over Christopher. “You’re the young one, Chris, my boy, first time out at sea." He ruffled the young man's hair, who swatted back at him with a look of exasperation. "Go down below and bring us up some of the fine whiskey, will ya? Captain could use some." Christopher grumbled but obeyed and descended down the steps leading to the storage rooms.
“You sure you need whiskey, Leif?” Erasmus chortled, leaning against the mast with sails that were as unmoving as the waters below. “I don’t like the idea of being stuck at sea with a drunken buffoon.”
“Well, it always seems to be that that is the story each time, is it not?” I asked with a smirk.
Leif flipped us both off and said, with a bow, "I keep us all entertained, do I not, Nicholas?" I shrugged my shoulders and laughed.
Galiot kept his distant eyes forward at the sun setting over the ocean, slowly being sunk down into watery depths without the promise of returning. A few clouds rolled in above us, a threat of turmoil in their smoky color.
Erasmus looked up at the exact moment I did. "A storm is brewing. Well, I damn well hate storms. We all do," he said, pointing to us, "But a storm means winds, even as violent as they might become. And winds mean movement."
Galiot seemed to be pulled out of his odd trance then and relaxed a bit beside Leif. “Best prepare ourselves, then.”
A thud came from the other side of the ship, and we all turned in the direction of it but saw nothing.
"Where is that kid?" Leif asked, shooting his eyes to the still-open door leading down below deck. "How long does it take to find some damn bottles of whiskey?"
“Christopher?” I shouted, and we all listened for an answer from him, but there was none. "I'll go get him." I marched over to the door and looked down into the dusty rooms below, the thick aroma of musty, dank wood and something quite unpleasant that was probably some form of food already going bad filling all my senses. “Christopher!” I called down, but again, the boy was silent. I sighed heavily, thoroughly annoyed, as I descended the steps and glanced around the rooms. They were empty save boxes of our supplies and goods being transported. Not even Christopher was to be found.
“He’s–uh, gone?” I shouted up to the men, confused to hell and back with the situation.
Leif and Erasmus peeked inside with raised brows. “Gone?”
“Do you see him?” I asked, spinning around and gesturing to the rooms. The men descended the steps and looked around with me, their faces contorting in bewilderment.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Leif mumbled as he went over to where the whiskey was stored, and he pulled up the lid to the box. Nothing had been touched. “How’s a boy just up and fly away?”
"They don't," Erasmus said, then he looked at us. "Overboard? We did hear a thud earlier.”
“We would have seen him, surely." I shook my head. I eyed our supplies and noticed the boxes were damaged with great openings on the sides as if a sharp knife had slashed them open. "Shit!" I ran over to the boxes and looked in. Gone was our food and water. Gone was everything to live on for the months we'd be gone, let alone the extended time we'd be stuck on the still ocean. Erasmus and Leif tore through other boxes, shaking their heads and yelling.
"Nothing! What? The little prick eat it all like a starved rat and explode into dust down here from gorging?" Leif raked a hand through his unkempt, copper hair.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Erasmus asked, but we had no answer.
“Galiot! Emergency situation.” Leif waited for the captain to appear as we all paced the rooms. “Could the runt be hiding behind a crate?”
“Now, why would he do that?” Erasmus shot his annoyed glare at Leif. “And besides, how would he be hiding all the food?”
“What is going on?” Galiot asked as he came down the steps, gray eyes looking at us and getting more worried the more he regarded us.
“It’s Christopher. He’s gone, disappeared, jumped over...I don’t know!” I offered, and Leif finished with, “And all our supplies have been destroyed!”
Galiot only resumed his previous stone-cold features and ascended the steps, leaving all of us in the dank storage rooms to stare at one another in shocked silence.
Days had passed since then. Days without anything but whiskey, and as much as we reprimanded Leif from drinking it like water, he would listen to no one, and soon he was as mad as the idea that Christopher had disappeared into thin air. But, at that point, we were all going mad even without liquor to twist our senses and our minds. The only one who seemed to be holding up enough to remain somewhat sane was Captain Galiot, but it was hard to decipher if he was genuinely sane since all he did from sunup to sundown was stare out at the endless expanse of a calm ocean. The storm, since that first night, never went away. It did little more than rain and thunder. Winds did not stir, and the sea did not move. It was like God was taunting us with supernatural powers that went well beyond the physics of the universe. He wouldn’t even allow us the hope of catching fish in the sea or birds in the sky. Nothing moved below us, and nothing even flew above us. We were like an oil painting, a ship stuck in time on a canvas—lifeless and motionless. Perhaps we had found our way into Davey Jones’s Locker.
"I'm starving," Leif muttered drunkenly, clutching at the bottle in his hand.
“Are you now, Leif?” Erasmus snapped, a wildness in his eyes.
“I’m thirsty.”
“What news! What bloody news! You’re thirsty!”
“I can’t think about anything else!”
“Then why don’t I just shove you overboard? You’ll stop thinking then!”
“Or,” Leif barked, standing from his spot on the deck and waving his bottle above his head, “I’ll knock your damn head off and eat you!”
“Enough!” I ran over and pulled the two of them apart, but they kept pushing against me to get to one another. “We can’t lose our heads!”
“I already have,” Leif said as he threw me out of the way and jumped on Erasmus. The men scuffled on the deck as I gathered myself to pull them apart again. Galiot was nothing more than a ghost watching the spectacle, eyes still gone from him entirely. Leif broke the bottle on the deck and raised the jagged edge to Erasmus’ neck, who shouted curses at Leif.
"Stop!" I grabbed Leif by the shoulders and forced him from Erasmus, who was sucking in frantic breaths and staring at Leif with wide eyes. “We won’t resort to being animals.” I heaved over with my hands on my knees, thoroughly spent at just the exertion from stopping Leif. The two men were just as haggard over the fight.
Erasmus grabbed a bottle for himself from the stash we had carried up from below deck. I shot him a look of warning at his choice, but he ignored me by knocking almost half of it back in one fell swoop. “If I’m dying soon, I wanna die with whiskey in me.”
“Amen!” Leif seized the bottle from Erasmus and followed him into drunken bliss. My body shook with the need for some sort of sustenance, even if my mind screamed at me to turn from it. I took the bottle from them and finished the rest of it off. Leif and Erasmus cheered as I tossed the empty bottle overboard.
The storm picked up above us, rain now pelting us as we sang and danced along the deck like mad fools, and we were. Drunk and dying.
“The full force of the storm's here," Galiot said to us. We stopped in our revelry to regard him and then the sky above us. The night was quick to steal the day away, and the only thing to allow us the consciousness of our surroundings and each other was a lantern hanging against the mast. The captain turned to look at us, but his pale, glazed eyes shifted quickly to something behind us.
“What is that?” Galiot asked as he took down the lantern. He went over to whatever he saw and poked at something large on the ship deck with his boot. I walked over and stood beside him, cocking my head slightly at the odd thing before us. I stooped and examined it closer with Galiot. Leif and Erasmus finally stumbled over to join in.
“It looks like an animal, but–”
It was merely more than a large slab of meat from some animal and not the animal itself. Half of its body looked to be missing, the head and torso torn off with the ripped off edges of it and all inside nothing but blood and ruby red flesh sloughing off in pieces. Perhaps it was part of a seal, as the skin was soft and silver in color like one. It reeked of rot and decay even though it looked as if it had very recently been cut in half.
“It looks like a dead seal,” Leif finally offered, speaking my thoughts, and the other men grunted their agreement.
“But that’s an odd thing, isn’t it? How’d it get on deck?” Erasmus asked. A question no one had an answer to.
“Well, grab a shovel, Leif and get it off the ship,” Galiot spoke in almost a whisper.
“No!” Erasmus snapped. “We eat the meat.”
Galiot considered Erasmus for a moment, a tick in his jaw, but Leif cut in between us and the dreadful thing and started sawing at it with his knife. The more he cut, the more the sickening smell of it swirled all around us. Even the intense storm that was now kicking up harsh winds and sharp rain couldn't tear it away. Galiot's gaze slid to the sails that were transcendentally unphased by the violent winds, hope in his eyes quickly torn away by muddled dread. We were most surely in hell.
Leif and Erasmus handed me bits of the flesh, and they began chewing on the raw meat like rats with a dead body. The disgust over the vileness of raw, unknown meat stole my breath, but it was quickly pushed out by my starvation that was clawing me to ribbons. I took the clumps of flesh and devoured them. It had no taste aside from overwhelming, thick, coppery blood, but it was nourishment no matter how unnerving and terrible.
A gust of wind took the lantern from the deck and sent it flying over to the side of the cabin, breaking it apart and extinguishing the flame inside, leaving us in a complete void—the formidable darkness of night and storm. We were utterly silent then, listening to the thunder and feeling a skip of relief at the streaks of lightning that allowed us a moment of vision.
Breaking through it all, like a blade slicing through ribs and stealing breath, a woman’s voice, grating and almost child-like in its pitch, echoed all around the ship as if carried in the wind itself, and it began singing.
“What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the morning.”
“A woman,” Leif said, curiosity winning over fear in his voice. Though the storm raged around us, the waters still remained as frozen as Galiot, and now the rest of us, horror piercing our bones. The deck of The Albatross creaked and groaned in protest to sudden movement aboard it, even though all four of us were standing stock still in place. Then the voice continued its haunting singing, closer this time as if on the ship with us.
“Cut off his head with a rusty razor.
Cut off his head with a rusty razor.
Cut off his head with a rusty razor.
Early in the morning.”
We all heard Galiot wail suddenly, lightning illuminating him gripping at his neck, a deep gash on the side of it, blood running through his fingers. Leif ran over to Galiot and helped him press down on the wound. Though it was deep, it hadn’t hit his jugular.
“Oh, I missed a little, didn’t I?” the woman’s voice said from all around us—from the very wind and water.
“Wha–what happened–how?" Leif asked Galiot, who couldn't speak, but we could feel the horror seeping out of Galiot’s spirit. The woman cackled like nails grating on stone, and then she continued singing.
“Eat his eyes from his rotting skull.
Eat his eyes from his rotting skull.
Eat his eyes from his rotting skull.
Early in the morning.”
Another scream in the dark—Erasmus’s, this time. With the flash of lightning, we all turned and watched as he ran in a frenzy on the deck, bumping into things and finally colliding with us as his hands tore feverishly at himself. His eyes were gone from his skull, and he screamed as he looked at us with those two gaping holes in his head. And again, the darkness consumed us all as the wind howled and the rain whipped us.
“Gut him quick and eat his entrails
Gut him quick and eat his entrails
Gut him quick and eat his entrails
Early in the morning.”
Another flash of lightning showed Leif crawling on the deck, his intestines trailing behind him as he gripped at his stomach in an attempt to hold all of his guts inside him. Darkness came again swiftly—as if teasing us past the point of sanity—and the sea became nothing more than violent screams and wails in the black night—screams and wails drowned out by a single, taunting voice.
“Rip out his white teeth one by one.
Rip out his white teeth one by one.
Rip out his white teeth one by one.
Early in the morning.”
Something like a sharp knife cut into the back of my head, but the pain was overtaken with the agony of my teeth being rapidly pulled out of me. I clutched at my face, but whatever had its hold on me only cut into me harder to hold me still. I screamed around its fingers in my mouth as it plucked out each tooth. I was released and thrown to the deck, horror-inducing pain lacing every inch of my being. Something took my hands within its own, slippery skin meeting my skin. It dropped tiny fragments of something into my palms, and then I felt it flee from me just as the lightning came to light up the ship. I held up my shaky hands in front of myself, feeling blood cascading down my lips and neck as I looked at my teeth resting in my palms, roots and all, and I threw them from my grasp, trembling viciously.
“That’s what we do with a drunken sailor.”
Leif finally stopped crawling and fell flat on the deck, blood pooling underneath him.
“That’s what we do with a drunken sailor.”
Erasmus screamed before he was cut off quickly, and I felt a few of his guts fly over and land on me.
“That’s what we do with a drunken sailor–”
In another lightning strike, I saw Galiot running from something, still clutching at his neck. As if the invisible wind itself had done it, his head was severed from his body in an instant, and a thud echoed on the wooden deck as the captain fell forward, dead. Raspy, ragged breathing quickening in its utterance with each breath came from beside me then. I stilled myself as much as my sanity could muster, slowly turning toward the breathing, and looked upon elongated, black claws dangling by my face. A horrifying monster of death and rot towered before me on shaky legs, as if she didn’t know how to use them properly, eyes black and inhuman, blood covering every inch of her grey, desiccated body and her lengthy, black hair sticking to it. She grinned and revealed razor-sharp teeth as long as fingers as she looked at me and finished her song with, “Early in the morning.”
What was left of that horrible slab of seal meat dangled tight in her clutches as she studied me. She dropped the putrefied, ripped flesh at her feet and then stepped inside it, letting the bloody thing slide up her legs like a skirt. Legs still peeked through the disturbing tail where there were missing pieces and holes in it.
“S–selkie,” I breathed.
The selkie laughed as she looked me up and down with those black, empty eyes. “I got fat on pieces of the little one and your food. But I think I’d like to get fat on the lot of you.”
She let out a horrifying screech, and I took off to go below deck in some feeble attempt to save myself. The selkie dropped to the deck and began pulling her upper body along it with intense speed as her shredded tail flapped behind her as nothing more than strips of meat, a bloody trail behind her. My back met the door of the cabin, and I desperately tried to feel my way to the doorknob to push it open. I couldn't see anything again as the lightning, my only saving grace for keeping an eye on where the horror lurked near me, quickly left. I could only hear the wet sliding of her tail against the deck and the scratching of claws digging into the wood in the pitch blackness.
“Men. Always taking what’s not yours!” Another flash of light, and I watched her upper body rise from the deck, her eyes rolling in the back of her head as she bared her teeth as sharp as knives. Her black hair fell over her face as she cocked her head, and her bones cracked as she extended her long arms toward me. “Now I understand why you fools are superstitious about letting women aboard... you should be.” She gave another hellish grin as she sang,
“Way, hey, and up she rises.
Way, hey, and up she rises.
Way, hey, and up she rises.
Early in the morning.”
Comments