ALL ABOARD

ALL ABOARD.pdf

Download PDF • 115KB

The ship sailed over the moonlit waves. Seaspray clouded the air, salting it. As the waves were moved aside, thunder roared in the distance, like a forgotten god was looking for its lost parent.

Gale snored peacefully. Spittle rolled down his cheek. The beer on his breath stank something foul, and his hangover would surely be fierce in the morning. The bunk beds next to him housed sailors who were sprawled out, snoring, mumbling, but some were empty.

A sickening splat roused Gale from his slumber. One eye fluttered open lazily, with his snores turning into breaths. He sat upright, his eyes adjusting to the dark. Rain thudded on the heavy wood of the ship.

Gale searched the room warily, looking for the source of the sound. The moonlight did a good job of showing his surroundings, but the farther distances proved to be a challenge. He remembered his glasses, next to his nightstand fashioned from a cargo box. His hand felt through the murky light, but as he did, he saw something. As a lightning bolt split the sky for a moment, something red and something wet was illuminated. A lump caught in Gale’s throat. He put his round spectacles on. Gale turned back, to see a few bunks empty. No noise or movement came from them. It looked like only two or three men lay sleeping, while over fifteen were empty. While Gale was a light sleeper, with pranks always being played amongst his crewmates, he couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t arisen with fifteen crewmates gone. He had the keenest hearing also, it was known. Twenty-three was an age of envy amongst men of hardened and long lives. Gary was one of the sleeping crew, along with Scratch and Miles. All men older, and all men tougher. Comfort was an instant response to seeing these people he called friends, but the others . . . What had happened to the others?

Gale turned his attention yet again, to the direction of the strange sight. He carefully stood, his bed creaking quietly. Long and flat steps were made, one after the other. On his way, he picked up a wall-mounted lantern. He reached in and lit it. It emitted a faint but useful yellow glow.

He moved farther forward. It took everything in Gale’s body not to scream in absolute terror. He put his own thin hand to his mouth and whimpered like a mutt. A gory mess presented itself to the young man. A pile of heads, torsos, legs and arms were all piled together, as if sculpted by a macabre artist. People he’d once called acquaintances were lying in a pool of blood and organs. He noticed their faces, Roger and Pike, Ol’ Phillip the Captain, Small Stevie, and his brother, Big Matthew.

His nostrils were assaulted by an odor of iron and entrails. Gale’s full stomach of ale and oysters churned, but somehow, he did not vomit. He looked away, revolted. With such confusion setting in, he held himself steady so that he would not pass out. A tiny drip caught the rim of his glasses and slid down. It was green, slimy, and somehow vaporous.

Gale looked up.

Another horrific scene was above. More crewmates, but instead of dismembered corpses . . . They were . . . They were cocooned to the ceiling in webbed green honeycomb. Like flies caught in a web, some were shaking, some were motionless, and some were rotating their head in pain. More familiar faces: Callum, Fredrick, Lenny. All of them had their mouths covered with a thick goo. What disturbed Gale the most was the fact that their eyes were completely white. Irises were nowhere to be seen, like their pupils had rolled back entirely. It made Gale nearly scream, but he kept his composure once again.

 Gale was about to alert the others until he noticed something human-sized hanging from the ceiling. Instead of shouting, he made a whispering yelp. He attempted to alert Scratch, the toughest and most grueling man on the ship. He’d had a glass bottle whacked across his head many months ago. The pieces of glass were as big as a shark’s teeth, and when they were removed, he hadn’t cried or complained. He had laughed and slugged his beer.

“Scratch!” Gale’s voice tingled in his throat, tears forming in his eyes unwillingly. “Wake up!”

The humanoid shape dropped from the ceiling. It was not human. As a separate limb hung from a wooden beam, it detached silently, almost in a peaceful way.

The creature’s black, shining body glistened in the moonlight. The skin on its strange frame looked as tough as a knight’s armor and twice as mobile. Its other limb slithered down behind it’s back, looking like a type of pincer that a scorpion might wield, but it was all connected with drooping stringy tendrils.

Its face turned to Gale, its breathing coming out as an amazingly quite hum that could shake any man to his core. Its yellow eyes were squinting, all four of them. Its mouth opened so unnoticeably, that it hardly looked like a mouth at all until it had pealed back across its face in segments like an old Caribbean banana. Its face was now a fleshy cave that three fists could easily fit into. Its arms and legs clung to the floor in a way that resembled a half-dog, half-spider hybrid. Water was leaking from tiny holes in the beast’s sides, wetting the floorboards. It was beyond repulsive; it was beyond terrifying. Yet, it did something that made Gale’s blood run ever colder. It put an arm-shaped limb up to his face, and prodded one finger from under Gale’s now shrinking mouth.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” it hissed, too loudly, as if it did not know how to control its own volume.

Scratch awoke now and tried to speak.

He was cut off by two long appendages, and a third spraying his mouth with sludge. Scratch’s giant muscles tightened, his veteran’s sailor tattoo bulging out. Gale heard a whimper, like a small animal being trapped by a hunter. Scratch’s eyes were fixated on Gale as he was lifted by the abomination. All Gale could see were the scars caused by the glass bottle, and how he had once seen them as a medal of bravery. Now, they meant nothing.

Scratch was lifted higher and higher until he was put onto the ceiling and webbed in place with liquid which hardened immediately. This was the final straw in Gale’s mind, and he finally snapped. Screaming and flailing, he moved as fast as he could in the opposite direction, stumbling and knocking into boxes and pillars. The lantern dropped and flickered out.  

As Gale ran for his life, he held onto the hope of some kind of salvation on the top deck. While running, all he could hear were the screams of his crewmates, as slicing and splattering echoed below deck.

Once the cool air hit Gale’s face, and his warm and clammy cheeks turned icy, he didn’t stop there, he pushed onward. His bare feet padded on the slippery deck. He reached the portside, and thrashed his head over the side. Ocean. Nothing but darkened ocean in rough weather. He rushed to the aft, and saw the same thing. Then he did it two more times, before tumbling to his knees and sobbing uncontrollably.

He ascended again, wobbling to his feet, looking over the vast dark blue expanse. It looked so serene and otherworldly, that it would have brought a tear to Gale’s eye if he wasn’t crying already. Then a question popped into his head, as a slight whine of the floorboard behind him sounded out.

“Do I want to die on this boat, or in the water?”