Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (4 page)

‘Piroska,’ he said. ‘My love, you are not well.’

‘You called me your love,’ she said as the trickle of blood dripped from her chin. A tear mingled with the rain on Richard’s cheek.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course,’ said Piroska. ‘That is why I have saved you till last.’

Richard frowned, puzzled by what she could mean. The chatter of the passengers and the work of the crew had come to a halt, and Richard looked around to find that the whole ship was staring at him in silence.

The only sound was the gentle whisper of the waves against the hull and the creak and squeak of wet ropes and sailcloth. Richard had a falling feeling, a gut-churning unease. It was as if he were in a dream, though he knew he was awake. Every eye was turned upon him, every mouth was closed, like an audience waiting for the start of a play.

He realised that he had never really looked at these other emigrants since they first boarded the ship. Apart from Piroska they were just an amorphous mass, a single dull entity.

But now he could see their faces, pale and hungry. He saw their limpid, red-rimmed eyes. He saw the livid, ugly pairs of puncture marks that studded their scrawny necks.

When he turned back to Piroska, beautiful Piroska, her smile widened; it widened more than Richard could ever have thought possible. He just had time to register the sharp fangs – and then, with snake-like speed, she struck.

*

When I looked at Cathy her face bore an expression I knew well: one that was a curious compound of fear and enjoyment. It was an expression that I always hoped to see on ending a story, for it was as sure a sign of satisfaction as a round of applause. Thackeray could see that too, and allowed himself a rather unpleasant smirk.

‘Was my story to your liking?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy, holding her hand to her heart as if trying to steady its beat. ‘At first I was a little worried it was going to be some sort of awful love story.’ Cathy screwed up her face as if she had tasted something especially unsavoury.

‘Well,’ said Thackeray, taking a sip of rum and licking his lips, ‘it whiled away a few minutes.’

He grinned at Cathy in a most inappropriate way.

‘You never did explain how you came to be here,’ I said. ‘And on a night such as this. You say you used to live hereabouts. I know of no Thackerays in the village.’

The stern and suspicious tone of my voice seemed to amuse Thackeray and he chuckled to himself. But he made no reply all the same.

‘Do you have family nearby?’ I persisted.

‘None that’s living,’ he said.

‘Then why –’

‘Is it the one whom you loved you’ve come to see?’ asked my sister.

‘Cathy,’ I said. ‘That’s none of your business.’

Thackeray smiled, but I saw a tear twinkle in his eye.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s gone too, rest her soul. But it is true that the memory of her drew me here.’

The storm seemed to have abated somewhat while Thackeray had been telling his tale, but it returned now in force. The crashing of the sea against the cliffs sounded so close as to be waves crashing against the hull of a ship.

Indeed, with the raging sea all about us and the roaring gale whining round the eaves, it did feel as though we were in the cabin of some storm-tossed brig instead of on dry land. It was an illusion that seemed to please Thackeray. He recovered his good spirits and leaned forward with a wink.

‘As the storm has not yet had its fill of us, shall I tell you another tale?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Cathy.

‘Ethan?’ he asked, looking at me.

‘If it will keep my sister entertained,’ I said with a shrug, ‘then let us hear another. My father may return at any moment and interrupt it –’

At that moment, a cat leapt on to the sill of a nearby window and Cathy and I both flinched, much to Thackeray’s amusement. It was the enormous brindled tomcat that was a frequent visitor to the kitchen door of the inn.

‘Quite a beast,’ said Thackeray. ‘Does he belong to you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He is a feral cat. Father tolerates him because he says he keeps the vermin down from around the house. He is never allowed inside, but in any case he would not enter. He is wary.’

‘Wary?’ said Thackeray with a raise of an eyebrow. ‘Of what?’

Cathy and I exchanged glances.

‘Our father has, on occasion, become . . .
annoyed
with the cat,’ I said.

‘Your father is a bad-tempered man, then?’ said Thackeray.

‘He tried to kill him once,’ said Cathy. ‘More than once. He never normally comes so close, does he, Ethan?’

‘Cathy,’ I hissed. ‘Mr Thackeray does not want to know all our business.’ I actually had rather the opposite impression.

‘No matter,’ said Thackeray with a wave of his hand. ‘I was to tell you another tale. Now let me see. Oh yes. I think I have one that may interest you. And it concerns a cat. Would you like to hear it? I am afraid it also involves a murder, Miss Cathy. I assume you have no problem with that?’

‘Oh no,’ said Cathy eagerly.

‘Excellent,’ said Thackeray. ‘Then let us begin . . .’

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Pitch

Billy Harper had a tattoo of a death’s head on the back of his left hand – a grinning skull etched into his leathery skin. It was the hand he used for killing, or so he said, and, true or not, it put the fear of the devil in the hearts of the youngest of the
Lion
’s crew and most gave him a wide berth.

Harper did not appear especially formidable; he was no more than sixteen years of age and not particularly tall or thickset, or in any way the sort of figure you might mark out as fearsome from a distance. But he had soul-piercing wolf’s eyes and a gaze that few could hold, and men twice his age kept a cautious distance. Some people give off a scent of danger that the wise know and avoid and that the foolish are drawn to; so it was with Billy Harper.

Already at this young age he was a drinker and prone to unpredictable moods, as changeable as the Bay of Biscay, with storms to match. One moment he would be laughing and joking, and the next he would lash out at any poor lad whose misfortune it was to be near at hand.

What little gentleness he possessed seemed reserved for Pitch, the coal-black ship’s cat. It was strange to see a youth such as he, one so full of anger and darkness, with that cat on his lap, stroking his fur and feeding him scraps of his own food. The cat, for his part, was just as devoted to Harper and would follow him about as he worked, purring and mewing all the while.

The only
human
aboard the ship that Harper seemed to have any affection for at all was a young lad called Tom Webster, though Tom never understood why, for he was as wary of Harper as the next man – maybe the more so for his paying him so much attention. Tom felt as if he were forever sitting on a keg of powder, knowing that at some point it must explode.

And though Tom had done nothing to win Harper’s affection, still he was hated for it by his fellows, who shunned him and behaved towards him as if it were Tom himself who treated them so ill, and not Harper.

Tom was as sullen and offhand as he dared be, yet Harper would nevertheless greet him with a grin and a slap on the back, and all about him Tom could sense the cold stares of the crew: Harper was a curse put upon him for a crime he had no knowledge of committing.

Tom feared and resented Harper from the beginning, but these feelings grew over time, distorted and amplified by some growing malady of his mind, until finally Tom hated Harper with a loathing so intense it felt separate from him: almost a living thing in its own right. The violence of his feelings towards Harper were completely out of proportion to the youth’s actions and were all the more sinister for being concealed to those around him. He hated Harper and he despised his fellows. He was better than all of them.

That said, Tom had never planned to do it – or so, at least, he told himself afterwards. He was sure that he was not a bad person; leastwise not until that moment. He believed that things just happened to set themselves out that way. Fate lined up the skittles and he had no choice but to knock them down.

After all, had young Tom Webster not been on watch that moonless night, had Harper not stumbled past him, drunk, and leaned over the gunwales – well, then Tom might never have grabbed those legs of his and tipped him over. It was fate, pure and simple. Or so he told himself.

As Harper tumbled overboard, he shot out a hand – that tattooed hand – to grab the rail. Tom stepped back, not knowing whether to help him or not. Some pang of guilt did prick his conscience, but not enough to send him forward. He just stared at that hand and at the death’s-head tattoo, twitching and grinning as the tendons flexed and strained.

Then Tom saw that Harper’s grip was improving. He could hear him groaning with the effort of hauling himself up. He could hear Harper’s feet scrabbling to gain purchase, and now he saw his other hand reaching up to grasp the rail.

That small part of Tom – the wholly good, sane part of him – felt glad of it. But by far the greater part began to imagine what Harper would do to him when he was back on deck. In panic Tom looked about him, and the very first thing that his eyes laid sight on was a heavy hatchet left by the carpenter, embedded in a block of wood nearby.

Without thinking further, Tom ran to where it was and yanked it free. Four or five steps took him back to Harper, whose face had now started to rise above the rail, his expression one of confusion and fury and fear all mixed up together. Tom lifted the hatchet over his head and struck.

Harper had seen the attack coming. His eyes had bulged wide and his mouth opened to cry out, but the sickening blow from the hatchet severed his hand at the wrist and he instantly lost his grip and fell, hitting the water, all sound sucked under like the man himself.

Tom watched for a sign of him among the waves and if he had seen one, he might even have raised the cry of ‘Man overboard!’ – but the sea had swallowed Harper up greedily. It was as if he had never existed, and though Tom felt a strange feeling in his gut, he could not truthfully have called it guilt or shame; relief was more like it.

The severed hand lay on the deck like some hideous crab, the death’s head staring upward. Gagging with revulsion, Tom eased his foot under the thing and flicked it towards one of the nearby drainage holes that pierced the bulwarks, and then he kicked it overboard.

Tom was suddenly horribly aware of being watched and turned slowly to look, fearing that someone had observed his crime. At first he saw nothing at all but the beshadowed ship, then slight movement near the mainmast revealed the source of his uneasiness – Pitch, the ship’s cat.

Tom smiled when he saw him. Despite the fact he had never liked the creature – he was associated with Harper in his mind, and was so black as to seem more shadow than flesh and blood – he was so relieved that it was this dumb animal and not a crew member that he could have kissed the cat there and then.

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Pitch strolled slowly out into the lamplight and sat looking at him with an expression that seemed to accuse, silently and malevolently.

Had he seen what Tom had done? Had he understood? Tom knew that he should not have concerned himself with such matters, for the cat could hardly peach on him, but there was something about that creature’s cold stare that filled him with anger.