Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (21 page)

There was something equally ragged about the crew of the rowing boat that neared the shore and of the crew that was visible standing at the gunwales and who were silhouetted among the rigging.

As the boat reached the shore, Thackeray grabbed a line that was tossed to him, waded into the sea and nimbly jumped aboard, helped by hands and arms that seemed not to possess the prerequisite amount of flesh. A thought had wormed its way into my head, but it was Cathy who gave voice to it.

‘That’s the Black Ship, isn’t it?’ she said, and, though I dearly wanted to reply that such a notion was childish nonsense, my security in the rational world had taken flight and I could not bring myself to say the words.

For I knew in my heart that it was true.

‘And if that’s the Black Ship, then . . .’ Cathy did not finish the sentence, but there was no need to. If that was the Black Ship, then our storyteller, just like the crew who now crawled over the ship like spiders, unfurling the sails and hauling up the anchor, was dead.

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Wolfsbane

Cathy and I watched the Black Ship sail away, dissolving into a fog that had mysteriously built up on the horizon. So Thackeray had been telling the truth. He could not drown in the storm because he was already dead – already drowned most like, as he had no signs of injury. The cliffs held no fear for him. What had he to fear, after all?

We returned slowly to the inn and, once inside, the hypnotic strangeness of the moonlit bay, the ragged ship and its ragged crew, the storyteller and his fearful yarns – they all seemed to retreat from view like a nightmare does to the waking dreamer who, when asked what it was that woke him so afraid, can recall only the fear itself and not the cause.

And as this spectral world retreated, the real world and its concerns came flooding back, and with them the realisation that our father had still not returned. I could see that Cathy was worried and I put my arm around her shoulder to reassure her.

We went back to the settles by the fire, where we had so recently been listening to Thackeray’s sea tales. His empty glass still sat on the table. His strange aura clung to the place with such vivid persistence that we both found ourselves staring at the space he had vacated as if he might materialise in front of our very eyes. I shook my head, still troubled by his visit. Why had he been drawn to our inn? Why did he not go and haunt his childhood home, and where was that exactly?

It struck me then that if Thackeray really was dead, we did not have any way of knowing how long ago his death occurred. His uniform was old-fashioned. That must be why we had not heard of any Thackerays living nearby. Thackeray, his family, his sweetheart Cathy, were all from the past, how distant though I did not know.

But I needed to shake off the enchantment of Thackeray’s visit, if such a thing were possible, to look to the present and address the all too real predicament we had been so long distracted from.

The first faint gleaming of the new dawn would soon be appearing in the east and I told Cathy that since we were fully recovered from whatever had ailed us, we would at first light, if Father had still not returned, make our way down to the village.

The storm had passed now and whatever our father had said about staying where we were, we could hardly be expected to sit there and do nothing. I had wanted to believe that his act in racing out into the teeth of the storm to try to find help for his sick children was a turning point in our lives. He had gone away from us over the past years with his drinking and evil temper, and strangely, despite his physical absence, he felt closer to us than he had for a long, long time. But I began to wonder now if he had not simply deserted us.

Cathy readily agreed with me that we should leave the inn at daybreak. Like me, she felt the need to
do
something. Thackeray’s tales, however unsettling, had with their odd intensity fired our spirits and filled us both with a kind of crackling nervous energy.

Suddenly there was someone at the door, rattling the handle. Assuming it to be Father, we ran over, but quickly saw through the window that there were at least two men beyond. Cathy leapt to my side. Had the spectral storyteller returned? Had he brought some of his ghostly crewmates with him? No – it could not be. We had watched the Black Ship sail away.

And yet who could know what such spirits were capable of? He and his grim companions might have flown across the bay like crows or bats. I cannot recall a time I felt so afraid or so unsure of what I knew or trusted that I knew.

For Thackeray was one thing, but the thought of a dozen of those dead-but-somehow-living mariners entering the inn and occupying it with their tattered presence filled me with dread, and I could see that Cathy felt the same. We heard the sound of jangling keys.

But before I could think about a plan of action, the door burst open and I grabbed Cathy’s hand and pulled her into an adjoining storeroom, out of sight, praying we had not been seen. Crouching with Cathy at my side, we could peer through the gap between the door and the jamb.

Two men had entered the inn, both young, in their twenties, and both curiously dressed, wearing trousers as sailors do, though they were like no sailors I had ever seen. Their clothes were well made but of a strange design, as were their hats, which were domes with a narrow brim.

‘We are taking something of a risk entering the place,’ said one of the men. ‘It has been liable to fall into the sea for many years.’

Cathy looked at me and shared my puzzled expression. Who were these men and why did they not call out for assistance? They seemed to assume the inn was empty.

‘Do you know I’m sure I felt the building move just then?’ he said.

‘It is an incredible place,’ said the other man. ‘But it is deserted you say? It does not
feel
empty.’

Cathy nudged me, but I had already seen it: the man who spoke these words seemed to look straight at us as he did so, as if he knew we were there.

‘Well, I assure you it is,’ said the other. ‘Feel free to look around. We shan’t be disturbed.’

They were robbers, I was suddenly certain of it. If they searched they would surely find us, and I decided that it was time to make a move. Thackeray’s insinuation that I was not as brave as he for staying here with my family had roused me into recklessness. I stood up and walked into the room to confront them.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ I said. ‘My father has just stepped out for a moment, but will deal with you on his –’

‘The locals shun the place completely since the incident,’ continued the first man, ignoring me completely.

‘Ah yes,’ said the other. ‘The incident. And it all happened in this very place, Hugh?’

‘I must insist!’ I said loudly, stepping closer to them with fists clenched, angry beyond words that they should treat me with such utter disdain. Cathy had joined me now.

‘Yes,’ said the man called Hugh. ‘I thought it might amuse you to soak up the atmosphere. I know how fascinated you are by such things, Montague.’

‘They can’t hear us,’ said Cathy. ‘Or see us.’

‘And it was your father who found them?’ said the man called Montague.

‘Why can’t they see us, Ethan?’ said Cathy, frightened and puzzled in equal measure.

‘I don’t know, Cathy,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘And it drove him to an early grave, I always felt. He never forgave himself.’

‘But from what you have told me he had nothing to admonish himself about,’ said Montague.

‘He always felt that he should have been able to tell that the father’s drinking had gone beyond the realms of drunkenness and into madness. He was their doctor, after all.’ He had tears in his eyes now. ‘To poison your own children, Montague . . .’ said Hugh. ‘What kind of man would do a thing like that?’

‘A madman, Hugh,’ said Montague, ‘as you said.’

‘Aye.’

‘Make them stop, Ethan,’ said Cathy. ‘Please make them stop.’

I stepped even closer to the man called Hugh and was about to poke him in the chest, when he turned suddenly and walked towards the settles, where we had listened to Thackeray. He walked straight through me.

‘Ethan!’ shouted Cathy, grabbing my arm. ‘What’s happening?’ But I did not know. ‘Are they ghosts?’

‘How did he do it?’ said Montague.

‘The poison, you mean?’ said Hugh. ‘It was aconite poisoning.’

‘Aconite?’ repeated Montague, as if he were making a mental note of every detail.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘It is a common enough plant.
Aconitum napellus
. You might know it as monkshood or wolfsbane.’

‘Wolfsbane? Oh – large spikes of dark blue flowers?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Hugh. ‘The flowers are pretty enough to be sure, if a little sombre, but the leaves and roots are deadly.’

Montague shook his head. Then I pictured my father manically digging up the flowers in the garden. They were blue. I had a fleeting memory of my mother calling them wolfsbane . . . I must have unwittingly built a wall against these recollections, but it was a wall of sand and the tide was coming in . . .

‘They say that the events of that night are played out whenever there is a storm,’ said Hugh.

‘Like the one we have just had?’ said Montague, looking, I thought, at Cathy – though of course he could not see her.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘The father poisons his children all over again and leaves them to die while the wind howls around the house. I’m sure it’s nonsense.’

Cathy and I stared at each other. I was overcome with a strange sense of knowing these things to be true, of knowing and of forgetting.

‘Are you?’ said Montague. ‘You should try never to be sure of things.’

‘You say the strangest things, Montague,’ said Hugh with a smile. ‘Come on, let’s return to the land of the living.’

‘Very well,’ said Montague, appearing to look at me this time. ‘And remind me what happened to the father.’

‘Oh, he confessed,’ said Hugh. ‘Spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum. Do you know what’s really strange?’

‘He poisoned himself?’ said Montague.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Hugh. ‘How on earth would you guess a thing like that? He stole some wolfsbane from the cottage garden at the asylum. Would have thought they’d have had more sense than to grow a poisonous plant in a place like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Montague with a wry smile.

‘It’d be awful if it were true. That the poor beggars – the son and daughter he murdered – if they really did have to go through the thing over and over again.’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Montague.

‘I wonder how a spell like that might be broken?’ said Hugh.

‘By knowledge,’ said Montague. ‘Once they know the truth, they can rest in peace.’

‘Let us hope they find the truth, then,’ said Hugh.

I reached out and held Cathy’s hand and turned to see the tears in her eyes, tears that I shed likewise. But I thought of the Scrimshaw Imp and the horror of being trapped in a grinding wheel of fate. The truth was better than that.

‘I say, look at this,’ Hugh said.

Montague walked over and Cathy and I followed. Hugh was examining something on the counter and peering up at the ceiling, puzzled.

‘What is it?’ said Montague.

‘Well, look,’ said Hugh. ‘Look at these old coins here. They’re soaking wet, but there is no leak in the ceiling.’

It was the money Thackeray had left.

‘And look here.’ Hugh walked over to the settles and the table we had so recently vacated. ‘Do you see? The seat and floor here are soaking too. Look at these old books.’

Hugh picked up our copy of
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
and it fell apart at his touch.

‘Leave them be,’ said Montague. ‘We have imposed ourselves on these children long enough.’

‘These children?’ said Hugh, raising an eyebrow. ‘Oh, the ghost children. I see. Jolly good. Yes, perhaps you’re right, Montague. This place gives me the creeps.’

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