Dead Sea

Even when the men called to him from the foredeck and put a boat down, he did not believe. Not until they rowed over to him and touched him with damp, chilled hands.

And then he screamed.

2

Styles did not remember much of his rescue.

Only that there were hands on him and voices speaking, but he couldn’t seem to hear them or understand them when he did. They sounded like a foreign language even though he knew they were not. But he was feverish and his teeth were chattering, his limbs leaden and rubbery and he could hear his voice saying things in a high, whining tone about people in the fog and voices in the fog, eyeless faces and cold, white fingers. The mate told him the name of the ship and the name of the captain, but Styles could make no sense of it.

Awake, then asleep. Awake, then asleep.

That was Styles’ life for several days. Sometimes he awoke to find his eyes wide open and staring at shadows in the corners of the cabin, the peculiar way certain angles met and mated, breeding right angles that turned back into themselves and did not exist. Other times he dreamed about things in the fog, immense things that were not man or beast, but grotesque cosmic wraiths like sentient monoliths and pestilent shadows that crawled from one world to the next.

In his moments of clarity, the captain’s wife would come and feed him hot beef broth with a wooden spoon. Sometimes she would sing to him and talk in low, muted tones of places far away and unreachable. Styles was certain that more than once he heard the reedy, melancholy tones of a harmonium from somewhere in the ship. The mate looked in on him at times, asking questions about where Styles had come from and the name of his ship and how they had come to be trapped in the fog. The mate liked to talk about the fog and Styles was certain that the fog frightened him, that maybe he, too, thought it was a living thing. Something vast and hungry.

One night, the mate came in with a lit candle in his hand. The light thrown by it flickered and jumped and that was because the mate’s hand was shaking so badly. He had a pistol and he put it under the blankets with Styles. “Be careful now, sir, yes be careful. There’s only ten of us now… the others are gone… gone into the fog… soon, soon I’ll be gone, too. The fog calls out my name, tells me to come to it, tells me how it will be when the end comes.. . how I’ll scream and scream…”

When Styles woke briefly the next day, he could hear a great activity above deck. The sound of hammering and sawing, footsteps rushing about and frantic voices shouting. Perhaps, perhaps the fog had blown clear and there was a wind. Styles hoped for this but did not believe it.

For in the dead of night, he heard screaming and a great, hollow booming sound. And a hissing, breathing sibilance blowing over the ship. He thought he heard a sound of buzzing, too.

But he was never sure what was real and what was imagination.

All things considered, that was for the best.

3

Styles woke and knew, but did not know.

He fell out of bed, sweating and shaking, his head filled with some crackling static. He was nauseated and weak, but still he made it up to deck and leaned there, against the bulkhead, staring out into that ashen mist.

The ship felt empty.

Abandoned.

Just some immense and empty coffin, creaking and groaning, the fog settling over it like a morbid growth of fungi, dripping off the yards and masts and bowsprit in ribbons.

Styles called out, but his voice echoed off into nothingness.

Alone again.

Alone on a derelict in this haunted sea.

His heart racing and his head spinning, he made it to the main cabin… saw immediately that the windows had been boarded-over as if the ship were under attack. But the door was not bolted. Inside, all looked to be in order… charts and tools, furniture and clothing. Styles stumbled from the mate’s cabin to the captain’s cabin and they both looked as if their owners had just stepped out for a pipe.

He made it back to the door and heard sounds coming from the fog. .. voices whispering and muttering and chanting. Yes, not coming from the ship, but off in the fog itself as if a boarding party was nearing. But those voices… they were not right. They were flat and hissing and artificial like recordings, scratching and repetitive.

Styles told himself they were not real.

He turned away from them, leaning there in the cabin doorway, knowing that whatever had taken off the crew of the ship was now coming for him. But he would not turn, not look, did not want to look whatever it was in the face. But it was coming, coming on now with a sound of rustling and footsteps and fingernails scraping wood.

Then he did turn, a scream venting itself from his lips.

There was nothing.

There was no one.

Yet, he could hear them whispering like spirits. Hear the sound of their bare feet slapping, the rustle of their clothing. And then out in the fog, there was a cold light. A glowing, thrumming luminosity like some malefic eye watching him through the mist.