The Mariner

“But you didn’t do what he asked,” she said, smiling at the angel of death at her side. “You hurt yourself instead.” And with that she leaned forward and kissed the Mariner upon the cheek, her lips passing a soft comfort utterly unlike anything he could have comprehended before. “Don’t you remember?”

Tears broke from his eyes with a surge of emotion so powerful he bent over as if in pain, hands clasping his head and eyes scrunched up tight. He sobbed. Sobbed for everything cruel and wrong in the world. He sobbed the way he felt he couldn’t as a boy, suffocating in the dark. He sobbed because the moment her lips had touched his skin he remembered intimacy without lust, friendship without sin. It was possible to love without destroying.

“I remember,” he said as he openly wept. “I remember.”

“You remember! You remember!” the girl was shouting at his side and jumping up and down. The Mariner opened his eyes in confusion and saw Grace pointing out to sea. At first he couldn’t make it out through the tears, but soon a shape formed on the horizon.

“It’s back! You brought it back!” she cried and dashed across the gangway and onto the Neptune.

The Mariner looked on in wonder. An island had appeared, far in the distance, but definitely there. It sparkled in the morning light. Grace’s zoo.

“Sweet Jesus.” McConnell was paralysed in dumb amazement. He looked from the island to the Mariner, face grey and mouth slack. “Are you him?”

The Mariner strode hastily after Grace, aware the devils might devour her as she stepped aboard. His heart leapt in his chest as he saw one run up to her, bounding in its strange hopping-run. His hand went for the Mauser, but paused as the beast obediently sat.

Grace giggled and leaned down to pat it on the head. “This one’s called Basil.”

“Is that so?” he muttered, unsure of the reality around him. All the other devils gathered around them like sentinels, watching with silent nobility.

Neptune’s crew were ready to sail.

From the dock, McConnell suddenly snapped into sense and dashed towards the ship. “Are you him?” he shouted. “Have you returned to bring us forgiveness?” He ran up the gangway and joined the man, girl and bestial disciples aboard. “Are you Jesus Haych Christ?”

“I don’t know,” the Mariner replied honestly. “But I’m searching for something better than forgiveness and it can’t be found here.”

“Where then?” McConnell asked, tears of hope beginning to run down his own cheeks.

The Mariner took Grace’s hand and laughed though his sobs. “I guess the first place to look is the zoo.”

Grace beamed at him, the smile an experiment upon her features, and laughed too. The three lost souls stood like that under the endless sky, their cheeks wet as if in early morning dew. In a world drifting apart, they’d suddenly been pushed together.

And so the Neptune’s crew set sail and left Sighisoara, a town awaking to death and murder, upper peak burning like a candle; and they sailed into the brilliance of an early morning light, with nothing but their haunted past behind them.

PART III GRACE O’HARA’S ZOO & THE MONKS OF DÉJÀ VU

“Doctor, doctor, I think I’m suffering from Déjà vu.” “It’s a brain tumour.”

Hilarious Joke

24. THE WASP WHISPERS

WHEN AT SEA, THE MARINER dreamed. There was naught else to do, the ship tended to sail itself, and the endless horizon brought little comfort. Sometimes he dreamed of his mother holding a pillow tight across his face, other times he dreamed the sins of his ship, the Neptune. Tonight he dreamed of a man named Absinth Alcott, a pirate who’d once roamed the ocean and now only existed as tiny fragments lodged deep in a Tasmanian devil’s colon.

In life, Absinth had worn grubby t-shirts looted from cargo ships and countless victims. In death he wore beautiful elegant robes that flowed in the wind. Skin, once old, scarred and dry, now glowed with hidden energy encased beneath jewels and ribbons. In death he’d become a picture of health.

This was because Absinth Alcott was dressed as the Oracle, a woman who’d deemed to steal his mind.

And now the Mariner was once again within her tent, arranged just as it had been before, candles and pillows surrounding a central platform from which the Oracle could hold court. There was no Oracle here though, nor any disciples; just Absinth, who watched the Mariner approach with keen interest and a wry smile upon his lips.

He spoke, and although his voice remained the same, all pauses, inflections and mannerisms identical to before, it still seemed as if something else had seized control of his reigns. Whomever the master, they operated his vocal chords like the strings of a puppet, enacting their own play with expert precision.