The Dead Men Stood Together (12 page)

And it ought to have been a cause for celebration. A ship. It should have raised our spirits. But I saw the face of each man around us fall into first a look of disbelief and confusion, and then, increasingly, a look of dismal dread.

Within moments my face wore the same grim expression, for the sea was as calm as it had always been and not a breath of wind blew. And yet that ship was now close enough to give some view of its details. How could it move so swiftly?

It veered a little in its course and moved between us and the sinking sun. The effect was hideous. The ship was riddled with holes and eaten through with rot and worms. The red sunlight shone between its open boards and black spars like a fire in a brazier.

It sped towards us noiselessly, even though its thin and ragged sails hung limp from broken masts. As it neared us, its rotten hulk became illuminated by the green glow of the creatures that still squirmed about our vessel.

Night fell. The sky turned green then blue then deepest indigo and all within seconds. The blackness of the approaching ship now fitted its surroundings and it looked whole and true again. But we dreaded it.

Was this the Black Ship I had heard so much about? The fabled ship crewed by drowned sailors? I could tell I was not the only one to have such thoughts and men about me crossed themselves and made silent prayer.

It pulled alongside. A ghastly limelight now lit up the wreck and showed the . . . I was going to say ‘crew’, yet that word could not rightly be used for what we saw.

The sight of a crew made up of the drowned would have been a horror, of course, but that ship – the Black Ship – only sought out their own kind as crewmates, and we had not drowned.

There were only two figures visible on the ship and neither of them had ever been a sailor. This craft was wondrous strange, yet these two hellish characters made it appear the most ordinary sight in the world.

My lifeblood seemed to congeal in my veins. My mind was already at breaking point, unable to cope with the horrors that each new moment presented to it. Would this be one step too far? I hoped it would. I hoped my mind would snap and I’d no longer know truth from lie – that I’d fall into some happy state of oblivion, like that of the pilot’s son.

Crouched at the prow of the ship, was a woman dressed in a filthy shift that had once perhaps been fine but was now ragged and damp, green with mould in places, and clung to her pallid skin here and there.

And her skin was so white. No – not white exactly, more that queasy pale yellow and blue-white of fat on the meat hanging from the butcher’s hook. The lifeless pallor was made even more striking by the glistening redness of her ruby lips and the golden tresses that tumbled around her face.

Her eyes were large and limpid, like those of a fish brought up from the far dark and dismal ocean depths. They glinted and flickered left and right and the ghostly green light with them. They were like those of an animal that has known only night and spent each daylight hour hidden and cloaked in shadow.

She looked more than a little crazed. Her red lips shone like beads of blood on a pinprick and parted to show small, perfect teeth. The tip of her tongue appeared between them as she clapped her thin white hands rapidly together.

She was so strange a creature that she had entirely distracted my attention from the figure who sat beside her. But now he leaned forward, holding a cup, and as he did so, every one of us aboard our ship instinctively backed away to the same degree. This man – no, I cannot say ‘man’ – this thing in human form was male, it’s true, but like some reanimated corpse.

His face was more skull than anything else: what skin was left was stretched tightly like old leather, its taut surface frayed and holed in places, revealing darkened bone and gristle.

If he had eyes, I could not see them, and I was glad of it. He wore a hooded cloak that added further shadow to the night’s darkness and made it difficult to see any features other than those I have already described and this robe swaddled his body, as ragged as his face, leaving horrible glimpses of mummified flesh and dark, stained bones.

I knew who he was. We all did. King Death had come for us at last, as he must come for all men. Who the woman might be was less clear. She was not Life, that was all too apparent. She was not anything good, I felt sure of that.

Death leaned forward, his tattered robes moving with him. He held a pewter cup in his right hand and the bones of his wrist were hideously exposed as he rattled the contents and poured the dice on the deck.

It was too dark, even with the glowlight, to see the numbers on the dice, but it was apparent from the way he shook his head and sat back heavily that the score was not a good one.

The female creature took the cup from his hands with a weird little yelp and grinned, her teeth showing pale green between the poppy-red lips. She picked up the dice and put them in the cup, giving it a kiss and looking at us with bulging eyes.

She gave the cup a sudden shake and the noise it made was painful to hear in that silence. I felt it in my brain and in my gut, as if my own teeth rattled in my skull. She stretched out her arm, turned her wrist and out tumbled the two bone dice.

She stared at them in wonder, and turned to her mate in triumph, whilst he shook his head again and clenched his bony fists.

‘The game is done!’ cried the woman. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’

Then she whistled three times, sharp and harsh, into the night of a million stars strewn above our heads. Death sank back, disappointed, into the shadows and the woman turned to us – and with such a horrible expression of victory and possession that I wondered if we would not have been better off had Death won.

The ghastly woman looked straight at my uncle and smiled. It was such a dreadful smile; I wished that I could have died so that I might never have seen it. She walked slowly to the side of her ship and never once took her eyes from my uncle.

Then, with a lizard-like agility, she clambered up the side of our ship and stood upon the deck. Still she stared at my uncle. And we all followed her gaze as she walked towards him.

Everyone understood that he had brought this upon us. This creature clearly knew it and we knew it. Tears welled in my eyes – of shame and anger and a childish desire to wake from this nightmare and find myself in my mother’s arms. But I did not wake.

The woman slowly trod the deck, her feet scarcely making a sound, and all was silent in the world. Her movements were so slow and floating that it was as though she were walking beneath the waves and it seemed to take an eternity for her to stand before my uncle.

Then she made a high-pitched trill and lunged forward, kissing him on the lips. He reeled back, as the creature giggled and clapped her hands like a little girl. It was her most horrible performance yet.

I know not why, but as he backed away from her, my uncle cast a swift glance at me – and the woman saw it. With mounting terror I watched her walk towards me, her head cocked to one side, her grinning lips shimmering.

I backed away as far as I could but soon there was nowhere else to go. I would gladly have taken my chances with the slime-things in the sea – anywhere would have been better than to stay with her – but she held me in a fierce grip with her snake-like stare.

She came close – closer than I thought my wits could bear. I saw my fear-filled face reflected in the pools of her huge eyes that shone with an unnatural light.

She did not touch me. She seemed only to study me, as though I was an object of especial fascination to her. But only for a moment. For quite suddenly she clucked her tongue and turned and walked away to climb back into her own craft.

One by one, without a cry or a groan, and with that vile creature smiling on, each of the crew fell down, and I along with them. We fell where we’d stood, thudding to the deck, straddled across each other’s sun-burned and wasted bodies.

I fell in such a way that I looked back towards my uncle. He alone of us stood upright, lit from below by the green glow all about the ship. He staggered back until he hit the capstan, staring in disbelief.

Then the souls of each of my fellow mariners began to rise like smoke from the fallen bodies. They rose and began to swirl about my uncle like a tornado and then all at once they hurtled upwards with a great whooshing noise and disappeared into the night sky. Every single soul of the fallen men had left their lifeless bodies.

Every single soul save mine.

PART THE FOURTH

XXIII

That’s right. I fell down with all the others. I died along with them. Believe it. Why would I lie? I died. Make no mistake.

I felt the warm life leave me and I felt my heart turn cold at its flight. I dropped down to the deck and seemed to fall through it, through the hold and through the hull, through the cold waters beneath, to a dismal abyss below.

I sank down through this darkness until I eventually settled on the seabed – though I could see through the gloom that it was featureless. There were no stones or rocks or weed or fish. It was more like the floor of some great warehouse.

The only light was a narrow beam that came from high above. It hit the floor some way away from where I stood and I slowly walked towards it.

It seemed to take an age to reach that small patch of bright floor and when I stood beside it I looked up, trying to follow the beam’s path, but it disappeared into the murk high above.

Looking up became a dizzying business, because the darkness was so featureless all about that I suddenly had the sensation of looking down and following a light that was shining up from the depths of some deep chasm below.

I looked back at the patch of the ocean floor illuminated by the beam and as I did so I stepped into its light. In that instant, I was sucked upwards at great speed and found myself once more on the deck of the ship.

I was left emptier and darker, like a deserted house. The blood no longer surged in my veins, my lungs no longer filled with air. Only my mind seemed to remain in my control.

My soul did not flee like the others. It stayed within my lifeless body but it was as if it had been bound and gagged and loaded down with heavy weights.

I had never been aware of my soul before. I gave no thought to such things. But now I felt a terrible sorrow for the loss of its freedom and health and a great fear came over me.

My shipmates lay as empty shells – and they were lucky. They were unaware. Their true selves had gone and only the appearance of them remained. But I would see what happened next.

Each of us had fallen with eyes wide open, frozen in the cursed look we had given my uncle as we fell. What a sight that was! He stood there among us, like a murderer, wide-eyed and awe-struck, and a hundred pairs of lifeless eyes stared back at him in the gloom.

I was somehow sure that all those eyes were unseeing apart from mine, though they no doubt bored into his soul all the same. My uncle looked at me just once and shook his head. He had no idea that I was looking back – and I could give him no sign that I was.

The moon rose above us and the terrible scene was lit by its pale light. It looked like a massacre had taken place or we were the casualties in some great sea battle, but our deaths would be unnoticed by the world. No poems would mark our falling.

The ship would surely rot away in time and we would all be taken down into the depths of the ocean to be gnawed at by crabs and starfish. Would I be conscious? Would I feel their rasping mouths attack my flesh?

The Death Ship moved slowly off. I saw its ragged sails slip out of view, like the passage of a flock of bats. It made no sound as it left, like a dark cloud passing over the night sky.

King Death sailed away and took his comrade with him. I could still hear her chirruping triumphantly and the sound of it cut into me like needles.

She sailed away, until the sound of her gloating mingled with the sound of the sea and she was finally gone.

But if she had won, then why had we all died? Was this woman another Death? And why, if dead, could I still think to ask this question? I felt sure this strange limbo state was mine alone and sure too that it had something to do with the special interest that creature took in me before she left. She seemed to sense the link to my uncle and so my soul did not ascend with those of my crewmates.

She must have been some ghastly not-quite-death – some horrible merging of two states: a Life-in-Death. Was this to be my new fate? To live in death but not live? To feel the grip of Death: to know its grip and yet not have its sweet release – to feel its hold forever?

My uncle stood, his mouth twitching. He seemed to be in a daze. He stared after the retreating ship, his face cold and pale in the moonlight. His mind struggled, like mine did, to cope with the strangeness of this new world we found ourselves in.

And then he turned to us, his shipmates. There we lay, dead – all dead – and all our eyes turned as one to look at him. He put his hands to his face and staggered away.

But when he looked away from us, all he could see was the slimy, writhing sea and the horror of that sight meant he walked back to the centre of the deck and, in desperation, closed his eyes.

It did him no good. He could close his eyes but he knew we were still there, each accusing eye glistening in the moon glow. Why, even if he had blinded himself with a red hot poker, the spectacle we made would only have burned itself more deeply into his afflicted mind.