

A REUNION

EC BYRNE

2019 ©

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

To Anon

You know who you are

# Contents

I 4

II 16

III 33

IV 38

A REUNION

Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.

"I am the last," he said.

No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep.

Lord Dunsany

In visions of the night, like dropping rain,

Descend the many memories of pain

Aeschylus

# I

John Walsh sits in his office and blows clouds of smoke at the ceiling. He watches, with a placid expression, the leaden tendrils curling in the evening light, eventually forming heavy grey coils hanging overhead. He yawns, absentmindedly scratching his chest and leaning back further into his armchair, and, after a brief moment of hesitation, readjusts his gaze so that he now examines his worn-out ankle-boots that are carelessly propped up on his desk. Something like a smile plays on his lips. He is a contented creature perfectly at ease in an environment of his own making.

This peculiar look turns to a definite frown when he hears someone knocking on the door behind him.

"Come in," he raps out. It is not an invitation, but a demand.

The door slowly creaks open and John Walsh can see clearly, in his mind's eye, the little, old woman nervously tottering through the doorway; perhaps stopping to sniff in disapproval of the gathering cloud cover, but more likely than not just standing there with her scrawny arms clasped behind her back and her wrinkled face bent low to her chest. It is this image of complete submission that makes his blood feel hot in his veins. When he doesn't hear her speak immediately; he bangs his pipe against the armrest and smiles at the sound of her gasping.

"And a good evening to you, dear Moira," he says, affably enough. "And what had brought you here? Hmm?"

Moira sniffs. "Mail, sir."

"And what portents does the tide bring in, dear?"

"Sir?"

"The mail, what of it?"

"Oh, yes, sir." The old woman squints at the envelopes and carefully sifts through them. The flesh of her bony fingers is stretched and left taught by the large joint's underneath – her digits are like thin, knobby tree trunks. When she speaks, her voice is low, tremulous, and deferential. It is this latter quality that her master appreciates the most. She clears her throat before saying: "The first letter is from Vicar Pemberton..."

Walsh makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Asking around for donations, most like." He sighs. "Another one for the rubbish heap."

Moira winces. "The next letter is from Hodges & Sons... the bank, sir."

Walsh grimaces at this mention. He does not deign to give her a response.

"Umm." Moira flips to the next envelope in the stack she clutches; she pauses, looking furtively at John Walsh who is still facing away from her – the only parts of him visible being his boots on the table and red mop of hair peeking from the top of the armchair. "This one is from Ms. Crawley, sir," she says and takes a deep breath, "of the Mariner's Relief Fund, sir."

Walsh's reaction is immediate. His feet fly off the table in a flourish of flying papers and falling pens, and he is on her – his grey eyes wide and bearing down on her in a cold rage; his usually ruddy face now possesses a bright, scarlet hue that startles her in its intensity; she realizes, belatedly, this his fists are curled. Moira holds the handful of mail up to her face, hiding behind the yellowing, fibrous shield.

Gradually, by degrees, Walsh composes himself. His face is still red but, mercifully, his hands aren't balled up fists anymore. "I don't want to hear anything from that collection of misbegotten brats and mewling women," he hisses down at her. "I don't owe them anything."

"Of, of, of course, sir." The Fund's envelope flaps in Moira's trembling hands. "N-not a c-copper, sir!"

Walsh's countenance quickly softens. When he speaks, it is as if his outburst had been planned all along as part of some obscure and esoteric joke. His voice is affable and welcoming; he stands at ease and carries a ghost of a smile. Nodding to himself, he sits back down and slouches in his seat. "You get another letter from those beggars, toss it in the fire."

"Yes, sir."

"And you don't have to inform me of everything that comes in through the door," he says kindly. "But can you tell me, dear, if Ian Hafford has sent me anything?"

"No, sir, nothing from Mr. Hafford."

Walsh's jaw tightens, and he opens it after a long moment of deliberation. "Come to me as soon as you've heard from Hafford, don't bother me with anything else."

"Yes, sir, of course, sir," she says and scurries away.

Alone, Walsh hisses out his breath and turns to the window – it is half obscured by heavy, dusty drapes and the light pours weakly through and yet, judging by the fine orange slivers, he can tell that it is time. Quickly taking his coat off the hook, he hurries outside and is greeted by a crisp seaside breeze. It will be quite a winter, he thinks, and breathes in the fresh air, relishing its purity. It is more invigorating, more revitalizing, than anything he has ever known. It was worth it to buy the house here, to take the loan from the lenders (and that problem will sort itself out when Hafford writes him), and while the actual building wasn't anything to boast of, the location more than made up for it. He follows a narrow, sandy path that cuts through a field of tall grass that flows in the wind around him like an animated, golden tapestry. The sky is a dark blue streaked with scarlet clouds, all emanating from the explosion of color on the horizon that is growing in its intensity. Walsh quickens his pace; he has never missed this and will not for as long as he lives.

He hears it first: the waves in their multitudes crashing against the cliffs and the seaborne wind flowing up the intricate series of crags, cuts on the cliff faces, grooves, and depressions – creating a high-pitched fluting noise possessing a distinct, ethereal resonance. No man can create it. He reaches his favorite clifftop – one that juts out farther than the rest – just when the fluting reaches its crescendo, sending notes high into the air. In natural accompaniment to this wonderous sound is the sun – turning to a dull crimson as it falls to the horizon; it descends slowly, as if escaping the grip of the low hanging clouds over the sea, and at each stage of its fall a new color is revealed. First orange, leaking through the few openings in the dark clouds, then, as its bottom portion pierces the open space between cloud and sea, all is lit up: the cliff faces shine with a blinding radiance, the golden waves crashing against them send up twinkling spray, and the stratus shines – a polished plate of brass stamped onto the sky. This is what he lives for. The fluting goes on at a mad pace and a sudden, rising gust of wind nearly sweeps him off his feet, but he is smiling now. Truly smiling. In this moment all is forgotten; it is just him now, one with this marvel of nature. His heart is lifting, lifting, and then it falls with the sun that is now crashing into the horizon. Everything takes on a pink tint that darkens; the purple cloud cover rushes over him and the sea is a broiling mass of indigo. The spectacle is ending, and John Walsh is brought back to earth.

Nevertheless, he remains on his solitary mount and keenly listens to the winds' dying notes. The line between sky and sea is blurring now, their only being a faint afterimage of the sun's glow, but he thinks he can make out a peculiar blot just over the edge of the world. A storm most like, he concludes confidently, a better part of a lifetime spent at sea taught him to recognize such things. The airy notes fade away when he expects it, but there is a final note that makes him frown and scratch his nose. It sounds vaguely familiar, like a voice, maybe. Walsh turns around and walks back to his house.

He stops in the middle of the trail, shakes his head, and continues on his way.

The days march by as stolidly and organized as any column down a wide thoroughfare. Walsh wakes up later in the morning, spends a fair amount of time lounging in his office, listening to Moira listing off his mail and, late in the afternoon, watching the spectacle of the setting sun. Yet even this latter activity begins to lose its luster; the performance gives way to entropy, until all is just a jarring clash of contrasting colors and hues that gives him a splitting headache. This does not diminish his enthusiasm in the slightest; if anything, he becomes a more reliable audience, stubbornly persisting in his attendance against what is devolving into a garish and vulgar display, he will not let something thuggish like nature bully him into submission, to rob him of his enjoyment. Just being there, at the right time and place, is enough to lift his spirits. Indoors, he is much less resolute. At times he finds himself standing amidst an empty room; always in the middle of some activity he had forgotten about. It is in this stillness that old memories resurface: the creaking of the hull, the harping of the rigging in the middle of a gale, the great billowing of the white sails... He feels them as distant things – specters from an unnamable place that rear up their ugly heads at the most inopportune times. Yes, he thinks, ugly. What had happened occurred but just once; no reason it should haunt him.

Still, they do. Never at night, but in the middle of the day. He can be in the middle of fetching a coat from a closet or looking for Moira in the kitchen and, unfailingly, he will stop, glancing about him as if divining the meaning of what lay inside.

Ian Hafford, where are you?

Where was he indeed? John Walsh does not hear from the man in days, then weeks. He starts to interrogate Moira – asking the trembling crone whether she has not possibly misplaced a letter from the rat faced bastard of a man in question or, God forbid, she is hoarding Hafford's messages to herself, keeping them as evidence for a terrible end that Walsh dares not voice even to himself. "So dear," he asks her in the same condescending yet casual tone he always uses for her, "you wouldn't be hiding anything from me now, are you?"

"No, sir!" she squeaks.

"Because if you are, dear, I'll have to take matters into my own hands."

"Of course, sir, very good, sir."

"So, you haven't gotten anything from Mr. Ian Hafford?"

"No, sir. 'Pon my soul, no."

Walsh takes a deep breath and stares at her for a long time. He gestures at the letters in her hands. "Give it to me."

She does and scurries off.

He heaves a sigh at her departing back and relights his pipe before sifting through the mail. With his head down and his brow furrowed, the pipe clenched tightly in his mouth and his eyes squinting and his fingers carefully sifting through the thin paper, he resembles a scryer, sitting alone in the dying light of his office and fruitlessly seeking a desired auspice. Nothing, he finds nothing. Even worse, he notices the scarce light trickling between the drapes changing ever so slightly in hue; he is going to miss his cliffside spectacle! Without bothering to grab his coat, he rushes outdoors and nearly sprints to his favorite precipice.

Upon reaching his desired spot, he finds that everything seems to be a subtly askew. It is as if he dwells in a portrait where the shading is a bit too dark or too bright, where random shapes and figures lurk in the corners. The usual gap between cloud and sea is gone; the horizon a barely distinguishable white line threatening to be extinguished by the spray of far off waves and a low hanging mist. The clouds are not merely dark, they are black. It looks to him as if someone smeared the sky with charcoal. There is no wind; the black clouds just hang where they are. Bringing this desolation into sharper focus is the lack of sound: no whistling of the wind or the smooth crush of waves, no squawking auks, or albatrosses; not even the miniscule sound of a rock tumbling down a cliffside can be heard.

Walsh takes a deep breath and walks forwards, looking over the edge.

The waves down below are few and far between, but the ones he sees are large and their crests are very, very white. The roiling sea moves silently and shines a bilious, faded green when the pallid sun briefly slides down the horizon. Belatedly, the chorus sings a few weak notes that degenerate into asynchronous, husky outbursts. Voices, he thinks, why do they sound like voices?

John Walsh shivers; it must be because he forgot his coat.

No point in watching this dismal affair; John hurries away before sunset ends. A storm is coming, he feels sure of that, a serious one, and he'd have to tell Moira prepare the house to receive it. That's all there is to it. He'd wait it out, no problem. After all, hadn't he seen worse?

Upon reaching his office, he finds a tidy stack of envelopes lying on his desk. Moira evidently did not want to read these to him and it soon becomes clear why – they were all from his lenders, and just by skimming through them he sees their building insistence, can hear their impertinent voices. Moira was wise not to bring these to him; his face grows red with a raw rage that wells up deep inside him; his hand clinches a letter so tightly that it shakes and then he tears it up before doing the same to all of them. He stomps around the room in circles and mutters wildly to himself. One name is on his lips: Hafford. Where the fuck is he? The businessman owes him so much, so bloody much!

Walsh spends the night dreaming, tossing and turning in tandem with the waves of the overfilled whaleboat that is flooding with claggy flesh and chilling saltwater. He is perched near the bow; drunken with exhaustion; intoxicated by the stench of piss, sweat, blood, and wet wool. Haggard and hollow-eyed men, sick with exposure and desperation, jostle one another for space and struggle to get their feet clear of the filthy slush sliding around their ankles. It is no use. Many call out to the surgeon, complaining of frostbitten toes, and the wiry medical student performs acrobatics as he makes his way between the jumbled bodies and to his chattering patients. Upon reaching a forlorn soul, the surgeon removes a pair of pliers he had kept carefully hidden from the elements in an oilcloth rag and without further ceremony, proceeds to amputate the grey-black toes – crack, like the sound of an icicle being snapped of a branch – plop, as the useless phalanges go over the side and hit the black water. Hedging them on all sides are the massive cliffs of ice – a glowing blue near their bases and, as they rise higher and higher, they turn paler and paler until they are each capped with brilliant, blindingly white summits.

For the first few days, Walsh commands them to row around this desolate body of water in search of leads that may take them out of here. When the wind permits it, they raise sail and risk colliding with many of the boulders that have fallen off the cliffs and aimlessly follow the dark, inscrutable waves. There is no escape. The first mate volunteers to scale one of the cliffs, on account of his good health, he says, and Walsh reluctantly gives his acquiescence. They row towards a cliff that is slightly shorter than the others and latch onto it with a complex series of cables – one of the few pieces of gear they managed to salvage from their ship before it sank – and they slowly warp themselves over. There is a heart-stopping bump as they softly make contact with a wall of ice, and the first mate wastes no time hammering picks into its stolid surface that he will use to scale the glistening face and reach the top.

"There may be rescue ships on the other side," he assures them as much as he assures himself, "I can signal them."

As if answering in turn, a massive, white object frees itself from their chosen face in an explosion of shrieks, falling shards, and rushing air. They can all feel this frozen meteor's descent. All those on the starboard side cut the lines and leave them trailing behind where they hang limpid on the water, near the stern, where their rest is disrupted by the falling projectile slamming into the water and dousing them all in a wave of numbing water that floods the deck and sends the whaleboat rocking away. The sudden force nearly makes them capsize, and men scream and fight to stay in the center of the boat as freezing water splashes over the gunwales. Walsh has to shout himself hoarse when ordering the men to cease their panic, to evenly distribute their weight so that they all just might not be hurled over into the indifferent waters threatening to spill over the sides. Accomplishing this, the men take turns throughout the following day and night using pewter cups to toss the water and, too often, their own bits and pieces, over the side. Now useless digits are being discarded. A fight nearly breaks out when the carpenter accuses the surgeon of lifting the wedding ring from his amputated finger. Like a pack of starving dogs, cheekbones protruding and thin lips curling back to reveal the menacing canines, the survivors turn on the surgeon.

For the first time, Walsh takes out the pistol from his greatcoat's pocket and waves it at them.

All is silent: the quivering men, the still rocking whaleboat, and even the near non-existent waves.

Walsh's right hand is locked into an exaggerated, claw-like grip when he awakens. His cheeks are wet and, even under all the covers, he is shivering. He flies out of bed and descends the staircase with the vague idea of going to his office. Halfway down he hears a frightened squeak and sees Moira, a flickering candle in one gnarled hand, gaping up at him like a suffocating fish.

"Well? What is it woman?"

"Nothing – just...You look like a ghost in your nightclothes, sir."

John Walsh laughs; it is a harsh and grating noise.

"The only ghosts are in your head, silly woman."

Walsh, the silky ends of his nightgown trailing behind him on the marble floor, glides off to his office. Moira follows, her own slippers marking their own pattering beat. He plops down on his armchair and dictates to Moira a terse message to be sent to Ian Hafford posthaste; in no uncertain terms, Walsh makes it very clear that he wants, no, demands to meet Hafford in his country home so as to better discuss the...business matter that was surely weighing on the ship owner's mind as heavily as it did on Walsh's. When he is done, Walsh taps his fingers on the desk as a sign for Moira to leave and it is only after the old woman scurries away that he allows himself to relax. Sleep is out of the question, but he sure as hell isn't going to allow that nightmare to bother him. It was but a dream, and therefore destined to be forgotten in due time. The heavy drapes flutter and sigh; he watches the guttering candles. He checks the clock and frowns – it is past midnight – winds this early can only mean the early arrival of what might prove to be a ferocious tempest. It may arrive before Hafford's arrival or just when he arrives...It is no matter, Walsh thinks. The picture of Hafford struggling to rein his horse in the middle of a dreadful flurry pleases him beyond measure. Let that bloated toff sweat for once, so long as he delivers on his promise.

Haven't I suffered enough?

Walsh props his feet on his desk and sinks further into the frayed upholstery. He closes his eyes and listens to the sibilant hiss of the drapes flowing in the cool night, whose movements are presently accompanied by the drip-drop of melting wax hitting the candle holder. Hypnotic, lulling...

His men are convinced that nature herself is conspiring against them. Her clammy nails are clawing at the gunwales, digging into the swollen planks, working frantically to climb over the side and freeze their blood while they sleep. The towers of ice, omnipresent and everlasting, are an indifferent jury at best and silent harbingers of fate at worst. They huddle together for warmth like so many miserable orphans in the night while her frigid breath lashes their hunched backs.

And the darkness is growing longer with winter's impending arrival.

Those who suffered the brunt of the falling ice block's splash are the first to die. In the brief mornings – now more closely resembling an empty, grey twilight – the stiff, grey, blue-lipped bodies are separated from the clinging mass and dumped overboard. After doing so to the first mate, who had so stubbornly clung to life, a heavy silence smothers them all. They no longer grumble or complain, and any mariner who has spent more than a day at sea knows that this is one of the worst things to happen to a crew.

"Sing," Walsh tells them from on top his perch.

He is met with sullen refusal. So many have died that there's enough room for everyone to sit on the thwarts, jammed shoulder to shoulder yet out of the briny slime collecting below them; the tallest sailors lift their legs and hug their knees to their chests. Some of them look up at him rather cluelessly, as if surprised their captain is capable of speech.

"Sing you bastards," he growls at them, drawing out his pistol and taking off the oilcloth wrapped around the cock so as to keep the priming dry. "Sing for our salvation!"

What's left of his crew begin a ragged, discordant chorus. They sing of angels and saints, heaven and glory everlasting, of the cross and His promise. Walsh smiles at their combined earnestness; he bobs his head up and down and sways to and fro with the beat. He joins in when they reach the final verse, adding his own deep baritone to their softer, chiming notes. From where he sits in the bow, Walsh imagines himself to be a unique kind of waterlogged priest, attending to his soggy congregation sitting before him on rows of thwarts now serving as pews. This fancy inspires him, and without open acknowledgement, the singing of hymns becomes a daily ritual. Walsh is a believer, in himself, anyway, and it is only natural that he takes on this new role. He makes them sing cheerful shanties when they finish suckling on the freshwater caught in their canvas sail, and he encourages them to sing canticles for the dearly departed when their food casks run empty. He prevents his crew from tossing them overboard, there may be food yet, he tells them. The drawn, pale faces star back listlessly, until the carpenter breaks out into song and they all join in as if their lives depend on it; the carpenter's eyes are filled with tears.

And John Walsh's own are too when he awakens on the floor. His chair had fallen over sometime during the early hours, and he scrambles to his feet before Moira can find him in this embarrassing situation. Damn! Not another one! He was not a romantic, not one to indulge in, even unconsciously, any unnecessary flights of fancy. These nocturnal occurrences are not only peculiarities, he thinks, but abnormalities – symptoms of an intangible sickness of his being. His anger at himself may explain the abrupt arrival of the need for, in this case, drink. Tobacco won't cut it anymore, not even the exotic stuff he has hidden away...No, but, he remembers, their is the sizeable quantity of wine he keeps down in the cellar – in bottles stacked neatly on shelves carved into the rock and in barrels of aged wood – and while he would prefer something much stronger, he does not want to leave his house and be cut off when the future deluge comes down and floods the roads.

Still clad in his gown and slippers, Walsh crosses the foyer – a lavish, open room composed of redwood paneling and a multitude of rich rugs and carpets, all in warm colors – and ducks into the entranceway leading down to the cellar.

Immediately, he can tell something is terribly wrong.

Upon passing through the threshold, the little flame on the sole candle he carries struggles and nearly extinguishes itself, and an uncomfortably alien damp soaks through the thin fabric of his clothes and settles on his cool flesh. He lifts the light and sees his clouded breath. Too stunned even to breath, he cautiously steps down into the gloom. There are no torches down here, he always relies on memory, instincts, and his eyes naturally adjusting to the dark, but now everything is misconstrued. The humidity throws everything off, making the time where he could grab his favorite vintage with his eyes closed a distant, far-off memory. He barely suppresses a groan of disgust when his feet fall into still, tepid water reaching up to his ankles.

A fucking leak!

It's ruined, all ruined. If the floodwater hasn't already tainted it, mold is most likely growing in these conditions, rotting the wooden barrels and poisoning everything within. All that money – which came from the lenders', not from his illustrious career on the high seas that was so tragically cut short – is wasted! I should've had this insured, the thought, in spite of everything, brings a humorless grin to his lips. If only. At least he can recover the bottles; those are sealed and safely kept away in the back. As for the leak, that's something best left up to Moira's two boys. Something for them to do after the storm, of course. Anyhow, after the Hafford meeting, the question of money will no longer be an issue; of that he is sure. So, with a new sense of confidence and purpose, he sloshes onwards.

The water is rising; progress comes with increasing depth, and he is around the middle of the cellar when he feels the water tickling his knees. Christ, he thinks, it's worse than I thought; I might find the bottles floating around. Wading through the steadily growing body of water, he struggles to keep his candle lit. Cupping his hand around the miniscule lick of flame does not help. Sweating stone walls, the dim outline of jutting barrels, and his bone-white hand clutching the candleholder are all that is visible.

He keeps going down, travelling deeper. His gown rises with the water, spreading and trailing behind him like a shroud thrown overboard. It's getting colder – he can tell by his gooseflesh and chattering teeth – yet, oddly enough, it doesn't really bother him. It's not so much about retrieving the wine bottles anymore; to go back now would be to concede defeat. To what, though? Moira, no, not her. Himself? Probably, he recognized himself as a prideful man, but he was no fool.

The voices he heard the last time he was on the cliff?

John Walsh halted and shook his head in amazement at this thought leaping, unbidden and so quickly, into his mind. Where the hell did that crazy notion come from? Nowhere good. He forces himself to focus on the task at hand and moves on. The end of the cellar can't be far now.

The dying light finally goes out just as he unexpectedly lurches forwards, inadvertently dropping the candleholder and splashing his face as he desperately flails around for balance. "Shit!" he cries, and the oath bounces off the walls and crashes back against his ears. Only then does he realize how confined he is, can imagine the truly claustrophobic nature of this environment. Christ, he thinks, but where is the wine? Blindly groping about like a drunk stumbling home from the pub after a particularly hard night, he only succeeds in grasping air. With a heavy sigh, he lowers his hands to the water, and feels around in the wet murk, ignoring how it makes his skin crawl.

He stops when his right-hand bumps into something. Only one, he can count it as a victory if he can bring up just one for himself. He moves his hand towards it but the ensuing wake makes the object float away. Swearing under his breath, he lifts his hand clear and reaches out and grabs what is decidedly not a glass bottle: it feels like wrinkled leather, and, turning it around, he finds that it is not too long and very lightweight. Naturally curious, he holds it up to his eyes; blinking, adjusting them to dark, he can make out a small thing resting neatly on his palm. He brings it closer, squinting, and sees a finger – mottled but well preserved, he can feel the wet bone at the severed end of it.

A wedding finger, if he has to guess.

He shrieks and hurls it away, hearing a reverberating plop not a few inches away from him. He whirls around, sending up a tidal wave of stale, black water; and against that background he fancies seeing dozens of truncated shapes. Frenzied wailing is indistinguishable from the resounding echoes. He runs out, or tries to; the wet gown weighs him down and he is gasping for breath after taking a few steps – the water is sucking at his feet and dragging his legs down. It is like so many nightmares where, no matter how much effort he puts in, he cannot move the least bit away from the impending danger. And danger there is. He hears, no, feels something surging behind him. Gaining speed; its progress marked by the patting of dismembered digits slapping against the wall, upset by its rushing mass. He stumbles and staggers out into a wide, empty space, and for a debilitating moment he cannot tell where he is. All he knows is that he must get away from the thing rising from the depths and is closing in on him. He throws off his sodden gown and, free of that restraining fabric, sprints away with high, loping strides.

He falls face down on the steps; his jaw slamming on solid stone and his body scraping against its rough surface. Dimly aware of his own, warm blood running slick down the steps along with the dredged-up water, he heaves himself upwards, to safety, and upon reaching the top he looks over his shoulder and catches a glimpse of his gown – now, in this half-moment, standing upright, rigid, so damnably erect. John Walsh lets out a final scream and hurls himself away.

Moira, hearing the commotion in the foyer, gingerly tip-toes to the disturbance and finds her employer naked, wet, and shaking on the floor. His knees are kept firmly against his chest and his long arms are wrapped around his white legs. His exposure and vulnerability reminiscent of a freshborn babe. "My word!" she exclaims.

Gunmetal eyes lock on her.

"Lock the door! Lock the cellar door, woman!" John Walsh bawls up at her, "Lock that fucking door, TIGHT!"

Moira fusses over the trembling man, but he won't have none of it until she does as he says. She patters to the cellar, looks within, shakes her head, and closes the door, locking it shut with a key kept safely in one of her aprons many pockets.

"Did you see it?" Walsh's voice is a hoarse whisper when Moira returns, fussing over him with a towel.

"I've certainly seen the mess you made, sir," she softly chides.

"No," he rasps. "Not at all. I'm talking about the cellar..."

"The cellar, sir?" she sounds surprised. "You know it's too dark to see anything down there. After the storm, I can have my boys put in some torches."

"Oh."

"Or, even better, we can look into installing some of those new cheh-mick-ul lamps," she says excitedly while dabbing his cuts with a cloth. "Of course, we'd have to take out another loan."

"No," he shouts, but it comes out as barely a cough. "No, we can't afford more."

"Can you walk, sir? We need to get you to your room."

He leans on Moira's shoulder and the old woman bends under the weight, but, surprisingly, supports him and together they go up the stairs; precariously swaying ontop each step and, just as it looks like they are going to roll downwards, they pitch ever onwards. The only sound marking this haphazard passage his labored breathing.

"Oh dear," Moira says as they go down the hallway, "we're tracking water."

He ignores her; keeping his head down, and forcing his feet to move across the richly embroidered carpet. Moira shoulders the door open and they barrel into the bedroom. Walsh happily loosens himself from his servant and flings himself upon the bed. Immediately above him are two crossed harpoons, gleaming even in this fading candlelight

My God, how long have I been down there? How long did it take me to get up here?

All along the walls are shelves lined with books, tables covered in nautical bric-a-brac, and various oil paintings – all of them so unfamiliar. He peers up at them, trying in vain to discern their origins, their nature, and only gives up when Moira pulls the sheets over him.

"You need to get some rest, sir," she says and feels his forehead. "Looks like you have a fever, I'm afraid. Best to keep you wrapped up." Ignoring his feeble protests, she goes around the room, blowing out each candle one by one. "Did you know, sir, that during the plague, the Pope hid away in his room, surrounded by two braziers of fire set on both sides of him. To keep his bodily humors in balance, you see. All alone, surrounded by those twin flames while pestilence raged all throughout the entire continent...I really do wonder, sir, what was going through his head in those moments? Maybe nothing, I don't know whether he lived or not. The Vicar of Christ may have faced eternity the minute he was locked away. Since I cannot be so certain whether those two flames of his saved his life, I shall plunge you in absolute darkness, sir. If you don't mind."

"Leave me," he croaks. "Prepare everything for Mr. Hafford."

"Shall I call on you when our guest arrives, sir?"

"I'll be down."

"Very good, sir."

Moira is near the door; lengthening shadows obscure her features. It is hard to tell what is playing across her face. Slanting light from the hall reveals a glassy eye, half of her nose, and a corner of her lips, and she vanishes; the door closing shut and fulfilling Moira's promise. He is alone now in the darkness. At long last, he is safe. But the proper precautions must be observed, lest that thing come creeping up and take him unawares. So, he sleeps with one eye open. His lids are heavy, but he keeps them half-open and trains his eyes on the opposite side of the room. His heartbeat builds in speed and intensity as all else drifts away.

Foreign hands are patting him down. Instinctively, in a single, fluid motion, John Walsh draws out his pistol from within the folds of his greatcoat, presses his muzzle against the chest of the intruder while he himself is still opening his eyes, and fires. The report comes out as a curiously muffled sound. He draws himself up and stands, legs firmly planted either side for balance, and watches the carpenter fall back into the hands of his crowded mates. Walsh watches in idle fascination as a bright red rose blossoms over the carpenter's heart. A direct hit; the bristly craftsman lays dead in the surgeon's arms. So, it has come to this. Why is he not surprised? Considering the matter, he realizes that it was really only a matter of time.

The men, nevertheless, huddle around the fallen body and hold onto him, doing their best to keep him clear of the accumulating filth below and removing his layers, granting the surgeon better access to the wound. They are like a frantic herd of cattle crowding around their fallen. They ignore their captain as he takes out a cartridge bag from under him – he is sitting on a growing pile of cast-off material the men deem useless; he appreciates how it slightly elevates him over everyone else – and takes his time reloading the pistol. He is all too aware of how they can all rush him at any moment during this drawn out process, but they are too busy occupying themselves over their useless task. No need to rush. He makes sure the cartridge is dry, tears it open and pours most down the barrel, pulls back the cock, blows off the pan, and charges the pistol with what powder is left in the cartridge. The flint is dry and uncracked, there is no chance of a misfire, but he swaps it out for a new one just in case. Nothing is left to chance. Only when all is done does he stare silently at his frightened flock. The fragile bravery of an individual in contrast to that special hysteria endemic to crowds is not lost on him. He decides it is better not to speak, to let nature run its course.

The men take turns pressing their hands against the profusely bleeding wound, making an effort to stem the blood flow. An admirable, but ostensible display. Their true intentions reveal themselves, however, when they remove their mittens and gloves and press their bare flesh against the blood – it is no longer a matter of treating the wound, Walsh sees – taking them away to, perhaps unconsciously, rub their hands together. The blood, he knows, is warm; he can feel the heat's radiance pouring out of the carpenter's body, and it's only with an extraordinary amount of self-restraint that he resists going down and joining his crew in their bright ceremony. In this ever-shrinking period of half-light the blood appears to be a bright scarlet. All the men's hands carry stains of it – caught red handed, Walsh observes with a hint of humor – but the marks mean so much more. The spilt blood is uniting them, creating bonds more unyielding and real than any captain's tenuous authority. The men's drying, crimson hands are all badges proclaiming their allegiance to a new society still taking shape; one born from the blood of a martyr in a far-off sea.

It is time.

Walsh beckons for the body with his pistol and the men, unthinkingly, oblige. He pulls his mittens off with his teeth and eagerly wipes his numb hands against the remainder of the gore. The sensation is so strong that feeling not only returns to his hands, but shoots up through his arms; it is almost painful. He revels in it for a while, craning his face upwards to the silent, yawning sky and mouthing a grateful prayer. Awareness of prying eyes brings him back down to the north water where he finds that the wound has stopped bleeding. He looks into all their eyes, commits every face and name to memory, pauses for a significant moment; and spreads his arms, opening his hands and turning his palms upwards. Between his arms and laying on his lap is the fallen carpenter, a red dot over his heart. The falling sun lights up the ice and they shine, like a host of mirrors, all around the two figures.

"There is more blood," John Walsh announces to his captive audience. "This is not the end."

He hopes they don't notice the irony – the carpenter acting as host to a rite he found obscene – but if they do, they pretend total unawareness. The surgeon removes an assortment of blades from his valise; Walsh relinquishes the body and the carpenter is passed around; the air swells with a coppery stench. They are not mates anymore; they are brothers now, sharing the blood of another. They are coming together, like how a disorderly mass of lines and tackles can come together to form a three masted ship's rigging, and he no longer worries about mutiny. Although, it certainly helps he is the only one with a functioning firearm. When his turn arrives, the portion is so pungent that his body turns against him. His head rolls around and he emits a gurgling cry. The warmth goes down his throat, into his chest, and burning vines crawl over his bones, choke his guts, and tear up his insides. But strength still goes out from your thorns. A conflagration consumes his innards and he chokes on the flames. It is as if someone is pressing a burning coal to his lips. His eyes roll up and flies off his haphazardly put together chair and is whisked away to pitch darkness.

#  II

There is a horrifying moment of disorientation and confusion. He cries out for his men and receives no answer; it must have been lost to his whistling breath or the blood rushing in his ears. He swings his arms all about and grapples with empty air. He falls down and shrieks, fearing that he will fall forever, but he softly lands on a pile of pillows and cushions. Instead of the rough canvas and wretched odor of salt and bodily fluids, there is only the smooth touch of satin and the cloying scent of fresh linen. He is home. What's more, he hears the steady pattering of raindrops outside; the monotonous rhythm pervades the room and fills the shadows. He shuts his eyes and listens to the rainfall, wondering how long he was trapped in that nightmare. He opens his eyes and imagines that he is in another room of his, one that he hasn't been in for decades; what he is experiencing has more in common with the night terrors he suffered from as a child. After all these years, he remembers. He reflects on the past, and, eventually, the future.

Hafford!

The very thought jolts his body forwards. The businessman must be here by now, if he hasn't already been here for a while. An alien sensation fills his breast, and it takes him awhile to recognize it as hope. It is no longer a desire for alleviation of life's burdens, but a cure for these nervous symptoms. How Hafford, of all people, can do this, he has no idea, but nothing really is making sense anymore. Walsh tosses the blankets off of him and finds his body drenched in a cool sweat, the perspiration cooling his body and making him shiver. It is sweat, isn't it? he cannot help but wonder; and he shudders, wrapping his arms around his broad frame, acutely conscious of his heart hammering against frail ribs. This is nothing like waking up from a deep sleep: he actually feels more like a captain again, returning from a long and arduous voyage to some hellish sea at the end of the earth. In many ways, this is not an exaggeration. A bewildering wave of déjà vu washes over him.

A pair of half-heard voices bring him back – one is undeniably a man's, being loud, deep and loquacious; the other definitely belongs to Moira, possessing her usual meek tone and fastidious way of speaking. The fact that they may be talking about him while he is not personally part of their discussion is all he can think about as he gets out of bed, cleans himself off, puts on some clothes, and leaves for the foyer.

He finds them on the first floor, sipping tea and making pleasantries in the sitting room. Moira squawks and leaps to her feet at the sudden appearance of her employer on the threshold, her porcelain cup and saucer clattering to the floor; nimble hands reach out and catch them before they can shatter, and Walsh hears the familiar noises of amusement – a kind of hollow noise echoing from the back of the throat – and Ian Hafford springs forwards, clasping Walsh's hands firmly in his. The creases and wrinkles of his face, crisscrossing his visage like lines on a topographic map, deepen and stretch as a large smile crosses the old man's face. The downy, cotton-white tufts of hair bob up and down when he energetically pumps Walsh's own, clammy hand. All the candles Moira has so conscientiously setup all around the room, covering almost every space of it – melting wax pools on windowsills, empty shelves, tables, and old pans placed on empty chairs – put up a valiant, but vain, fight against the darkness brought on by the torrent of tears crawling down the window, their magnified and distorted shadows swirling about the rug beneath everyone's feet. Walsh sees that it is still not so dark as to hide the bright, pearl buttons on Hafford's tailcoat or the jeweled rings on his fingers; it seems that the pair of immaculate, white cuffs possess a phosphorescent sheen in the midst of this whirling play between light and dark.

"Your hand, John, is so dry, so cold, that I thought I was shaking my own," he beams up at him the same way he had done when they finalized the specifics of their professional relationship. It is the reminder of this, and not any desire for goodwill on Walsh's part, that causes him to grasp the ship owner's hand tighter. "Oh!" he sounds very pleased. "I see you haven't lost your grip! But I am no harpoon to be thrown away, at least not yet, so sit down. We have so much to discuss, don't we?"

Walsh does not move. He allows his hand to drop to his side and he says, slowly, "I trust I didn't keep you waiting long, Mr. Hafford?"

The guest stiffens at the use of a formal address, but quickly recovers. "Not at all, I just got here before the worst of the storm came on; which will be soon, as Moira tells me." Hafford returns to his chair and sits down comfortably, crossing one leg over the other. "You cannot believe how hard it was to find a coach to take me here. One rain cloud and the whole village is cowering in their hovels. Please forgive me, but I seriously considered not arriving until later, when everything blew over..." He stops, peering closely at Walsh's face, illuminated by a lone candle placed near the door, giving it a sallow, feverish appearance. "You look absolutely terrible. Moira was right, you have been looking like a ghost. Would you care for some brandy?"

"There is nothing to discuss," the words, sounding unnaturally deep, spaced apart and strongly emphasized, seem to come from someplace far away.

Hafford makes that queer noise of his, but it's not exactly the same. It's a little too loud; the tempo is off. "You always were a man of few words," he says in his sonorous, sing-song voice, made all the more startling by the age of its speaker, "that's what I like about you."

"There is nothing to discuss. I want an answer."

Hafford frowns deeply, making black cuts lengthen across his forehead. He nods to himself, then crosses his legs. "Moira!' he calls out even though she is right beside him, "forget the brandy. Will you be so kind as to prepare us a dinner? Nothing fancy, we will only be having one course. John and I will be having a tour of the grounds, then we will invite ourselves to the dining room."

"I will have something ready," Moira says, awkwardly sidling around Walsh's imposing form and hastening away.

"I know you will." Hafford's eyes never leave Walsh. "I know you will, dear."

A distant rumble shakes the window, and a booming crash of thunder breaks the silence. The pattering intensifies, turning into a steady beat.

Hafford cocks his head at the doorway. "Is there someplace private?"

"Smoking room."

Walsh turns and, without checking that Hafford is following, guides him to a small, forgotten place in an obscure corner of the house. What little light there is comes down from a lamp forlornly dangling from the high ceiling. They sit in high-armed, leather chairs and for a while they both stare at the ebony paneling, the weak light pulsing across sections of decorative grooves and engravings and stylized motifs. Walsh admires them and chuckles, imagining he is within the depths of a whale – the curves and angles belonging to the leviathan's countless ribs, the tell-tale signs of the mammoth arches of an ivory arcade stretching away into a pressing void. More thunder is heard, sounding like the distant reports of artillery in this secluded part of the house. A breeze picks up outside, the end of it seeping in through tiny cracks in the walls and the dying breaths stirring the lamp's flame ever so slightly, making the shadows writhe. Walsh watches them dance across the walls. The whale is alive, he can feel the creature's breaths, he is part of them.

There is the sharp strike of a match and Hafford's face glows in the dark like a solitary ember rising from a night time bonfire. He takes time lighting his pipe, apparently waiting for Walsh to speak, but the latter refuses to give him the pleasure. Hafford stamps his well-heeled shoes against the hardwood floor. Clack-clack. He places the stem in his mouth and twists it around in his pallid lips.

Two can play this game. Acting from memory, Walsh leisurely feels around for and opens a cabinet at his side, takes out a box of cigars and selects one from it, returns the box and closes the cabinet. Holding Hafford's sooty eyes in his own, he reaches over and takes out a match from his guest's breast pocket, lights the cigar, and puffs contentedly; he lazily shoots clouds of smoke at the lusterless pair of doll's eyes staring across from him, humming when Hafford breaks down in a coughing fit.

"Cunt," he says as soon as he recovers, the monosyllable rolling off his tongue with the ease of experience.

Walsh does not so much as laugh, but rather, barks with glee, bearing a long row of uneven teeth, showing all the more distinctly amidst the smoke and shadows.

"Could've offered me one, John."

Walsh snubs out the cigar, along with that prospect, in an ashtray.

Hafford sighs and concedes defeat. "The underwriters have not been cooperative."

Thunder rumbles off in the distance. Hafford lights another cigar. "They never are. I told you, Mr. Hafford, that insuring the ship for so much money all at once right before the voyage was a bad idea. Looks suspicious. So how long will it take to shut them up?"

Hafford purses his lips and looks over Walsh's shoulder, crossing and uncrossing his legs, then he takes out his pipe and taps out the ash in a neat, copper bowl sitting on a low table beside him, making a series of feeble clicking noises. He takes out a pinch of tobacco from his pocket and, just about to stuff it in his pipe, his hands freeze, and he turns to glance over his shoulder.

"Well?"

"You...we, for that matter, won't be receiving anything anytime soon." Hafford smiles apologetically. "I've been asked, really politely, you know, to attend a court of inquiry. Don't worry, they don't want to see you and I've got friends on the maritime board. Nothing will come of it except for valuable time wasted."

"But what about the money, Hafford?" Walsh growls, abandoning all pretenses. "You promised-"

"Nothing," Hafford points out, silencing him with an upraised finger. "I cautioned you that such activities were risky; you never know how these things will turn out. I warned you, John. Remember?"

"I remember you assuring me that whatever happened, the profits would be far more than anything I could normally make." Walsh speaks heavily, his enunciation wooden and laborious, he leans over. "You never mentioned anything about a goddamned court of inquiry."

"I didn't want to worry you about something that was most likely never to happen." Hafford lifts and spreads his hands in a defensive manner. "I'm sorry, I really am." He pockets his pipe and rises to his feet. He places a tentative hand on Walsh's shoulder and smiles down at him, the lamp framing his head in a wavering halo. "I'll write you a letter of recommendation. I can't get you anything glamorous, but the packet service between here and the continent is always looking for experienced men."

Walsh blinks at him in confusion. "That is all you have to say?" He's not enraged, only shocked that after all of his trials and tribulations, this is all his patron has to offer him: a meaningless apology and an offer for a dead-end job ferrying coal and letters back and forth. "After all I've done...what I did...this is it?"

Ian Hafford takes his hand away and offers a slight shrug. "I never forced you to do anything. I made the offer; you accepted it."

"I did." Walsh's voice is barely a whisper.

Hafford claps his hands. "I do believe I smell something in here besides smoke. Come, let's see what Moira has to offer us."

Walsh follows him in a trance; he cannot make sense out of any of the words spoken to him. He walks softly, noiselessly; his eyes are bloodshot saucers dominating his white face, swerving this way and that; he looks like a man who has been abruptly and unexpectedly slapped. He floats into the dining room, after Hafford, and is greeted with the nauseating stench of roast pork. Moira is sitting at the end of the long table, blissfully unaware of what is transpiring. Far away from her, at the other end, two chairs are set across from each other with the main course on a silver platter, clean silverware, full plates, fresh napkins, and sparkling glasses set between them. The heavy drapes of the wide, vertical windows going from floor to ceiling are spread open, revealing a wall of waterfalls, an endless tide of falling rivulets sliding down the glass, their shadows scouring everything in the dining room.

The two men sit down and pick up their silverware.

The cutlery is all neatly laid across the table, reminding Walsh of the pictures he's seen in the newspapers of surgical instruments all laid out inside the operating theatre, usually resting on a little tray. All these utensils, on the other hand, are laid out on delicate damask; the intricate patterns on the tablecloth all but obscured by falling, fluid silhouettes. Towering over all this is the abominably incongruous sight of the roast itself: fat sizzles down the sides and into a sticky puddle of grease and cut off gristle; this is where the inedible material falls and coagulates. He makes an odd face and sets down fork and knife, opting to peck at a bowl of bread.

Hafford makes his singular noise, sounding like the distant echoes of a pair of boulders knocking against one another in a spacious cavern. "I've never known you to pass up a meal," he laughs.

"I've caught a small fever. Nothing serious," he mumbles.

Hafford smiles knowingly as he grasps the handle of a long, straight-edged carving knife lodged in the roast; he happily slices off a generous portion and places it on his plate. He opens, hesitates, then closes his mouth; restraining himself, he nods in Moira's direction and says airily, "My compliments to the cook" and, without further ado, cuts off a slab and clamps his maw upon it. John Walsh cannot bear to watch; he pretends to carefully study the floral patterns on his empty plate – an orchid of blooming violets run amok across an empty, white space.

Hafford smacks his lips. "You don't know what you're missing, John."

But he does, all too well. The memory of flesh and meat and their warmth haunts him still, awakening the dormant hunger that had been residing within his breast. A kind of sharp, acute craving that cuts across physical boundaries and attacks his very soul. Long ago he promised himself that he would never go hungry again, but the bread turns to ash in his mouth. The sensation frightens him; he finds the hunger to be utterly disgusting in its ardor; it's a malignant disease that won't go away. He shuts his eyes and braces himself against it; he cannot tell how long this unwelcome desire has been there; maybe it always has been. Hafford keeps on gorging himself, seemingly unaware of and unheeding to his distress. He cringes when the old man smacks his lips after peeling a bite away with his incisors to the accompaniment of an audible, sinewy, straining noise. He grinds his teeth, trying and failing to mask the sound of Hafford's own chewing and breaking down of his meal. Christ, will he ever finish? No, he hears the carving knife sawing, metal on tissue, and a fresh piece plops on the porcelain. He is vaguely aware of Hafford saying something condescending, so he forces himself to open his eyes and put on a show of composure. I will not be shamed by this rat, Walsh declares inwardly, and a new feeling rises to supplant the hunger:

Anger.

Here he is, in his own house purchased by his sweat and blood and tears, cowering in the face of an old man who made his fortune sitting on his ass while real men sailed to the north water and risked their lives killing the mighty whales, all so that greedy bastards like Hafford could have some oil to burn at night while they entertained themselves in their studies full of unread books collecting dust and bottles that were always empty and being replaced by servants. John Walsh knows better than most about the fundamental unfairness of life, but having this gross misjustice taking place right in front of him, so blatant and shameless, is too much. He forces his eyes open, making himself watch Hafford – the slap of bafflement and surprise he had given him in the smoking room still stung – devour his food, dine on his fancy plates, grasp his nicely shined cutlery in his withered paws, all the while giving him nothing in return; all this enrages him. Had Hafford not come here on his whim? Did his former boss not owe him anything for his selfless service? His throat is sore, and his hands form fists that he hides under the table. It is time. He catches his guest's eyes in his own.

"Do you take me for a molly man?"

The old man cocks his head forwards and gives him an appeasing, servile grin; probably pretending to be amused by what he takes for a joke.

"And why do you ask?"

"Because you've fucked me through and through, Ian."

The old man frowns.

"Oh, my Lord!" squawks Moira, who sits up and makes herself scarce. The distant echo of: "My goodness!" wafts down the hall.

"Now look what you've done," Hafford chastises, "is there really any need for this unpleasantness."

"I'm all out of money," Walsh calmly informs him, pausing for a second to allow the news to sink in. "You're gobbling up the last of my stores."

"Stores...I like that. Still thinking like a captain."

"Do you know what kind of correspondence I have? At first it was widows bothering me; now it's the money lenders, bankers, barristers and solicitors...You enjoy having a seat at this table? If my circumstances don't change, I'll be selling the table along with the chair out from under your ass and even this whole goddamned house." His hands are shaking wildly in his lap and his voice is quivering with passion. He dabs his face with a napkin. "And that'll just keep my head above the water. Barely."

The focus of all his hate, all his hope, merely shrugs with the same stunning indifference. "I can't be blamed for how you spend your money. You were always a good captain, but a piss poor businessman."

"I did it all with the understanding that I'd be paid for doing my job. Now, where is it?"

"I offered you a fucking job, didn't I?" Hafford slams his open palms on the table, rattling silverware and making his glass fall over, staining the tablecloth. "What more do you want?"

"What you owe me."

"I don't owe you tuppence!" Hafford rises to his feet; his hands are still planted on the table and he bends forwards, glowering at Walsh. "We tried, and we failed. I did my part and you did yours. We couldn't have predicted this going sour. You should be happy that you aren't swinging for what you've done."

"What I've done?" Walsh clutches his chest and doubles over in a fit of raucous, baying laughter. "What...I've...done?" Walsh bites down on his fist and straightens up, panting. "I think I'll invite myself to your court of inquiry, and give my own account of what happened."

The old man's expression doesn't change, not in the slightest. "You're not an idiot. You won't risk ruining us both."

"Who says the two of us will be going down?" Walsh smiles up at him. "You're right, I'm not an idiot. That's why I held on to some papers – bills, shipping manifests, that sort of thing – but enough to use as King's evidence."

Hafford's sullen expression flickers, then contorts into one of outright hate. "I still don't know how you did it. Whether you sailed your ship straight into the ice pack or opened the lower hatches or took an axe to the hull, but no matter what you say, you'll be staring at a long sentence. You'll end up wishing, no, you'll get on your scabby knees and pray for the gallows."

"I am serving my sentence!" Walsh roars at him, pushing the chair back with an ear-splitting screech and rising to meet his accuser's gaze. "I've been in hell for the last few days, and I'll take the worst prison, the darkest, dankest fucking dungeon over this!"

Hafford opens his mouth wide, preparing to return a louder salvo, but he checks himself. A knowing smirk crawls across his face. Searing fingers of lightning cross the window behind him, there is a distant boom, and the glass rattles the glass in its sill.

"Is that so." The old man's posture relaxes slightly. "I imagine you have much to be ashamed about. Who could've predicted your ship going down so fast, and taking so much of your, ah, stores with it." The smirk stretches into a maddening smile that sets the erstwhile captain on edge. "You've done nothing that the boys on the Essex didn't already do, indeed, what any other desperate group of sailors would've done in your situation."

"Don't." Walsh's voice is crystal clear, the threat explicit. "Don't you dare."

"But what I wonder is..." Hafford's inquisitive voice trails off as he taps the table with a finger. "How was it that you were the only survivor?" He frowns and cocks his head. "Surely, a fight against the elements is a group effort, is it not? I always thought that at least one man should've been found beside you, but I never asked you about it. One does not question providence after all."

Walsh averts his eyes from his guest's questioning face and sees the carving knife, its honed edge reflecting far off lightning, sticking out of the roast. How he hates that slab of meat, how he would love to throw it away. Only God can judge me a voice rings inside his skull, whether it is his or that of someone he knew, he does not know.

"However," he pronounces this word very carefully, wallowing in his honed elocution, "if you persist with this foolish course of action, I may find myself voicing my own thoughts about your..." His eyes shine, and he snorts in amusement, shaking his head ruefully and straightening up. "Miraculous survival? But you're no saint, am I right, John? Neither of us are. But we'll see whose word is worth more: that of the old crook or, well, you can probably guess who you are."

Far-off lightning flashes, revealing the opposite side of the table where Walsh sits, a graven image, the contours of his stony face thrown into stark relief by the harsh, blue brilliance that is already fading; his hands rest on the table cloth where they are set firmly side by side. Tapping rain and an oscillating roar heralds the return of the shadows. Hafford resumes his part of the conversation with the same playful tone that would've been more appropriate coming from one of the many teasing youths that were the bane of Walsh's childhood; he can hear their voices, gaily jingling and ringing, informing him in their own, sensible way that even though he could do everything they were fond of doing, he would never be a gentleman with a fine estate to his name, much less the master of a ship. He was too humble in his origins, and it didn't help that his family – as they so politely whispered behind is back; far enough away to avoid his already budding rage, but close enough to let him hear – had supported Wolfe Tone back in the day. An upstart like little paddy Johnny was not to be trusted. He had spent a lifetime proving them wrong and now, in the sanctity of his own home, someone who may very well be a father of one of those spiteful little bastards was mocking him! It always seemed so much darker after the lightning, a solid black curtain falling across the stage, and in this interval, he imagines himself in the presence of a truly loathsome creature: a short, stunted thing that enjoys crooning to spiders as he plucks their wriggling legs off, one by one.

"Mine is a risky line of work," Hafford speaks in a casual manner, "more erratic than what used to be yours, in a kind of way." He sits back down, propping his elbows on the table and holding his face in his hands, then he leans forwards. The window behind shines for a moment, showing his face to be uncomfortably close to Walsh. "Do you ever wonder about who I most relate to? You must be, given that we are not exactly on friendly terms anymore...As you might've already guessed, it is definitely not with people of your ilk. Oh no, John...I like to believe that years spent in my trade has gifted me with some insight into the inner workings of the human heart."

Walsh cannot see him, but he smells his moldy breath, the invisible approach of the eroded mask that had beguiled him so long ago.

"A trait I share, believe it or not, with our benighted clergy," Hafford declares with not a small amount of satisfaction. "I've never sat in a confessional, and yet I've heard things that would make a priest speechless. These penitents – most of them my accomplices, more often than not – who came to me knew that I couldn't save them, but they still insisted on spilling everything. Of course, I couldn't help them; what I learned would grant them no peace..." He raps his knuckles on the table and the sound is startlingly close. "To tell you the truth, I don't think we are ever really in control of our higher faculties. Any man who claims to know and comprehend the reasoning behind a particular action of his is a fucking liar. Any man who really, wholeheartedly and undoubtedly, believes in the justification he gives for the evil that he does is an utter lunatic. We all know this, on a deeper level, and it bothers us. The strong ignore this annoyance while the weak are driven mad with doubt. The latter group second-guesses themselves, agonizing over what cannot be undone. There is no cure for these feeble people. Right when they are at peace, imperceptible and mercurial forces drag them this way and that. They are nothing but playthings for imaginary angels and demons. No relief John, no relief at all."

Ian Hafford's chair creaks as he shifts his weight, craning his head forwards and holding it, waiting expectantly for a response that never comes. A deafening silence is all that answers. He fidgets in his seat.

"Well? What of it?" Frustration seeps into his tone. "Swallow your tongue? Never mind, it doesn't matter." He juts an accusatory finger at Walsh. "I sure as hell know what your problem is. It's not any kind of guilt, a hard bastard like you doesn't feel shame. No, it is, I'm sure, a matter of indecision. Even though you were there, you still can't figure out what exactly happened. How queer! Is it not? No need to worry yourself, though. I can help you, if only to dispel these silly notions of you talking nonsense at the inquiry. So, here it is: Was it done out of survival? Or was it an excuse to eliminate potential-"

His voice is lost to a sudden surge of light and fury, and he is blinded by the raging fight between the invading electric glare and the stalwart shadows who flee from the windows and disburse when caught out in the open, falling away and scattering into small shreds rallying around small, dismal corners and seeking the dubious cover found beneath plates, platters, and the legs of the table and chairs. All is laid bare, and there is no mistaking the sight of Walsh rising with the onrush, springing out of his seat with the same graven expression etched across his face. Hafford is speechless, and his eternal silence is assured when the other man pulls him off his feet and onto the table by his cravat, his other hand grasping the carving knife and tearing it free. The old man opens his mouth and succeeds in making a few wild gasps; the neckcloth constricts him like a vice. The hand at his throat jerks upwards and his asphyxiating body answers the pull; instinctively, he allows himself to be rolled over onto his back where he is able to stare into a pair of steely eyes, their metallic sheen dying with the diminishing roar of thunder. The shadows launch a counterattack, swiftly retaking large swathes of territory with quiet precision, leaving their mark behind on all their gains. The curtain falls.

John Walsh does not need to see; his muscles ignite, inflamed by memory, and he works smoothly and efficiently, only pausing when his catch struggles beneath his grip, but these are minor inconveniences occurring less and less often. The flensing of a whale is a demanding task: it is not mere butchery, but the careful separation of blubber from the beast's fat. Only in this fashion can any whaler hope to make a profit. Unfortunately, there proves to be not much of either on this sorry excuse for a specimen. He wonders how such a lightweight is still able to put up such wild spasms, as intermittent as they are. He continues his work with full knowledge that little, if anything, can actually be salvaged, but he was never one to leave a task halfway done. Blood dries under his fingernails and seeps into the damask, making it stiff and crusty; his hands are sticky, yet they still work nimbly, forming white lines on his palms where dried blood cracks and sprinkles to the floor, in a flurry of crimson flakes, as the hands open and move on to a new section. The quivering flesh is slick to his touch, slippery and unwieldy. All his senses are condensing, folding into themselves until there is only touch and smell...Christ! That smell! He inhales, soaks up the essence, and exhales as he cuts deeper – descending into a breathtaking frenzy. Fallen cutlery and porcelain clatters and shatters around his feet; cloth, trapped in a death grip by white-knuckled hands, tears; the roast topples and rolls overboard, a sickening splat is heard soon after...The flensing goes on at a frenetic pace, heedless of all else except its own transformative motions. In this moment, he is the practitioner of a ghastly metamorphosis taking place upon his own altar...

Rain thrums against the wide windows and fresh rainwater slides down crystal glass, unceasingly, indifferent.

Sound slowly dawns upon him with a sibilant sigh – the rain has moved off to the fields where the long, wild grass twists and shudders under the heavy downpour. The thunder has abated, if only for a little while, and it is much darker outside, as if a layer of soot had fallen over the horizon. With the absence of sight, and the soft murmuring permeating this pitch-black space, he is overwhelmed by the quiet intimacy of the backstage. The ordeal is over; he breaths easy. The smell is still there, of course, he fears that will never go away, but it has lost most of its pungency. It is the kind of scent one finds in lonesome, rundown wharfs or docks smoldering away in dead fishing villages, the layered fragrance of white bird droppings, dry scales sprinkled haphazardly about the ground, and empty shells stolen from the backs of multi-limbed and bulbous-eyed creatures – the phantom signs of prior slaughter.

A creaking noise off to the far-side disturbs the peace, and a weak beam of light spills across the floor, heaves itself on the table, and fades away, but not before highlighting the outline of a confused, jumbled mess staining the entire table. Mysterious shapes, like mounds of indeterminate size seen from a distance, rear their glistening heads out of the splatter and he follows their gaze, turning to see the always dependable Moira in the doorway. She clutches an ornate candelabra draped in cobwebs, holding it outstretched as if warding away some unseen threat. Rather uncharastically of her, she had only bothered to light one candle, she must've picked the dusty thing up in a hurry. Her face pulses in the candle-light, a drawn image on flaking gold leaf.

"Moira, dear," his voice sounds small and tinny in his ears, "I did not call for you. Nevertheless, I am glad you are hear. C'mere, will you?" He has trouble forcing the turgid words out of his lips. "Come hither, dear, I didn't mean to scare you away." He falls on his chair, the table legs groaning under the sudden weight, their feet scuffling against stone. "It's improper to be shy around fine company."

Moira seems to ignore him. Instead, she strikes a match and he sees it burning in her hand, crystal clear, the small flame wavering as it moves to each candle in turn, calling forth more light to the dining room. She takes her time, not pausing to admire the new, intricate maroon designs on the tile, like overlapping explosions of color, or, as the light grows stronger, the new dishes that lay revealed and resplendent amidst the eviscerated tablecloth and shattered porcelain. Grim faced, like an executioner, she moves the match across the candelabra in her steady hand, gazing sightlessly ahead. It is not the miniscule pieces of ruined china blown all over the place like snow drifts that moves her, nor is it the sight of her employer slouching next to the wreckage, his face wan and white, eyes shrunken and half-lidded, that breaks her vigil. Ultimately, when the final candle is lit, embracing everything in its revelation, it is the gruesome spectacle dominating the tabletop that etches her face with firm, undeniable lines of fear.

Ian Hafford was not slain; he was processed. He does not lie in silent repose, for he is all over the place, the myriad tawdry scraps winking back at their elderly light bringer.

John Walsh catches her shining, glassy eyes. "On second thought, I'd advise you to bring a mop. I'm afraid we've made a bit of a mess."

Moira screams, the force of her shrill wailing extinguishing the candlelight, obscuring the awful sight as quickly as it appeared. Walsh flinches and covers his ears against the racket; her voice is so damn grating, like a cat being strangled – not that he has ever done such a thing, mind – and he has to force his sluggish legs to move against the cacophony. "Moira, Moira, Moira, please come here." He stretches out his hands and carefully feels around. In his mind's eye he can see himself in the dark, his spindly arms ponderously swaying this way and that like the antennae of a lobster. A lone, white figure speckled with scarlet flying through the shadows, he thinks, that's what he is. "Moira, dear? Don't keep me waiting..." He hears the pitter-patter of footsteps, and he moves in their direction. The silly old woman was hysterical, as their kind was wont to do, and if he could get ahold of her, if just for a moment, then he can make her understand. "Moira?" he makes his voice firm, he has been soft on her for long enough, a master must be strict, lest those on the bottom perceive him as weak. "It would be less frightening if you came to me."

"Then I shall." Her voice is near.

Walsh sets off in her direction without a word. Servants must be obedient to their masters, says so in the Scriptures, and it is high time some order came to this house. Enough is enough, all this nonsense has to end. "Moira," he growls while taking the final steps, his footsteps falling to his beating heart, the two sounds indistinguishable from one another.

A door swings open and he throws up his hands and recoils from the blinding glare. Now he is the one screaming and howling, all the while footsteps pitter-patter away, off into the distance where all recedes to nothing. He risks opening his eyes, hisses and closes them again, watching the parade of color behind his eyelids for a while, and then squints. The whole room beyond, the foyer, is all aglow. The unruly bitch must've gone behind his back and taken all the bloody candles in the house – big and small, new and old – and lit them here all at once. This constitutes a gross disrespect of his person and a misappropriation of his property, he was going to have a word with the magistrate about this! Cupping his hands over his sensitive eyes, so unused to so much intensity, he leaves the dining room. The candles are everywhere: dripping all along the balustrade, gathering at the stairs and in small groups on the floor, lining the walls all the way to the passageway leading down to the cellar...where the light ends. The collection of little flames lean this way and that, he watches them, his eyes growing more accustomed, hypnotized by their movements, and the spell is broken by a hammering from the front of the house. He hurries in that direction, cursing himself for his carelessness, and he finds the front doors of the entranceway banging on their hinges, helplessly receiving the storms blows while rainwater and small branches shorn off by the wind blows through unopposed. He darts through and wrestles the swinging doors shut behind him. Protected by the eaves of his house and feet firmly planted on the front terrace, he looks out upon the gentle, undulating gorse-choked moors languishing under the weeping clouds – desolation incarnate. And somewhere in that bleak expanse, there is no doubt in his mind, Moira is hurrying to civilization.

Once again, more woe is heaped upon him. The foolish creature, like many of her kind, was always a notorious gossip, and is currently bound to speak all manner of slander against him wherever she washes up at. That much is certain. He can already see her barging into a tavern, wet grey-hair plastered to her breathless face, her fainting into the arms of the barman and gasping a whole bunch of nonsense to the assembling crowd. Even worse, given her excitable nature, she may give a few untoward and exaggerated words to the magistrate, and then all would be lost. Everything he ever strived for, the libations of sweat and blood poured into the grey-green sea, all for nothing. It must be nighttime, the realization comes slowly, cold and sobering; there are patches in the sky even darker than the clouds, like gaping holes in a beach of black sand, and through one of these comes an ivory shaft of moonlight, making a bright square on the uncultivated land stretching out all around his little island of stone and wood and glass. It has to be a full moon, he thinks, and watches in wonder as more moonbeams lance the night sky, creating a patchwork of white light on the soaked earth; he imagines a damp, patterned quilt rolled around the entire globe. These small victories against the overhanging tenebrosity inspires him and he hurries back into his home, shutting the doors behind him for the last time. He has come to the conclusion that the life of a genteel, country gentleman is not to his taste, and that all his misery stems from his wearing a ill-fitting mask – one that bites into his flesh while choking the life out of him, instead of setting him free. It is essential, vital even, that he don a new one before it is too late. The fever, all the misfortune, his misplaced trust – all of that, he rationalizes, stems from this crisis of identity.

This is a flaw, not only of mine, but of all people everywhere: we can never be who we want to be.

First things first, he needs to make sure that everything is taken into account, that Moira has not left anymore surprises for him. Besides all the candles, and the melting wax pooling everywhere, the foyer is orderly and free of dust. A testament to Moira's diligence, he reluctantly admits, but what about the doorways? There are four of them: the one to the office, the one to the dining room, the one to the hallway where the sitting room and the back exit are...and the one to the cellar, not that it matters, he had given up on that part of the house a long time ago. All the doors, except for the one to the dining room which is still ajar, are closed and secure. Not really knowing why, he takes his time creeping to the threshold of the dining room – like he is a child again, sneaking to his parent's bedroom after having a nightmare – and with his hands on the doorknob, he eases the door shut as gently as possible, making no noise. It is impolite to disturb a guest, after all.

Now that everything is settled, he pauses and rests, leaning against the wall and catching his breath. With every wheezing inhale and exhale, he grows more aware of his surroundings. It's raining harder, but the worst of the thunder is over, apparently. Gone a ways away, over the water now, maybe. He crosses his arms and wills them to be still. It's eerily quiet now; the only noise coming from the enveloping ambience: the forest of burning candle wicks sounding like a lit fuse, the stalwart walls grumbling against unseen pressures, and the lapping of water...like waves. His breath catches in his throat – the cellar! He had neglected to inspect the descending passageway. All the rain may have caused the flooding to rise, murky water crawling up the stone steps to the glory of the foyer. That will not do, he thinks, not at all. It is important that he leaves his property undamaged and, mostly at least, clean. He none too eagerly shuffles to the cellar passageway, vainly attempting to block out the scourge of memory, but the waves are slapping against the stone now, as if in anticipation of his arrival. Lord in Heaven, what will I do if the flooding has gotten worse? Leave it, he decides, regardless. And yet, he is driven on by a morbid curiosity that is only excited when he hears a medley of throaty and subdued notes, the mournful and distant echoes in perfect harmony with the invisible waves. He approaches the sound as though in a trance, one foot slowly falls in front of another. How easy, he wonders with detached fascination, would it be to dismiss this all as a dream, that he is really sleepwalking and soon, very soon maybe, he will be making leave of dear Hypnos, forever.

That is, if circumstance, which was proving to be an uppity bastard as of late, didn't interfere.

The flooding has not risen; what he sees is so much worse. The door, the fucking door he told Moira to lock up tight, is open, and the light spilling in from the foyer sparkles on the dusty, grey waves. For the life of him, he can't remember the water being so upset when he was last down there. Sure, there were some waves, but those were caused by him running out of the dreary place with the Devil on his heels.

And the Devil is undeniably here.

Blasphemously rearing up out of the ashen pool, casting its threadbare shadow over the bobbing collection of bottles and barrels, is his old cast-off nightgown. Just as before, it is standing tall, the peak of its head nearly reaching the narrow archway at the bottom of the passageway. This time, though, it's decaying glory is shown off in all its splendor – he can see clearly where the fabric has turned yellow at the edges, how the whole thing is patchy with mildew, the beads of water catching the light like a woman's pearl necklace at a ball. He is transfixed by the sight; he cannot resist looking at his gown, seeing how the mold and rot gives it the consistency of worn canvas, like the kind they used to wrap the bodies in before committing them to the deep. But it is not his gown anymore. Just as appraising a gem from a new angle reveals a new, hidden facet of its being, so he cocks his head and makes out the unmistakable curvature of a shrouded skull.

Only a herculean effort is able to stop him from screaming; he clenches and grinds his teeth, painfully swallowing the uproar in his throat. This is not happening, he thinks, I will not tolerate this. Life may be unknowable, but it operates on a series of natural laws, as esoteric and opaque as they may be. Hell, he made a living following those laws not only as a captain, but as a master's mate, then an ice master himself in the earlier years of his career. It's possible to entertain superstition out on the water, when part of a tiny, fragile vessel of humanity in the middle of a limitless expanse, a world without end, but such foolishness was not brought back to port. My nerves are frayed, that's all; I'm not suffering under a malevolent hand, I'm not living in a nightmare. And yet he has not an inconsiderable amount of trouble disabusing himself from this notion. His legs are manacled, his feet are chained to the floor, his eyes are wet and stinging, unable to free themselves from the dead thing with its rotting cape.

For the first time in his life, he makes a compromise. Not a concession, far from it, but a compromise – there is a key difference between those words. Ever since he was a cabin boy, John Walsh has never bent over, both figuratively and literally, for anyone; even when it would've been so much easier to give in, or if he was behind closed doors where no one could witness his submission and shame, he never forgot who he was and what he wanted. Being a stubborn bastard is not a bad thing. When his cleverness – as innate and animalistic as it was – and strength failed him, obstinacy always saw him through. That quality will not fail here, and yet, present matters are forcing him to venture into the realm of the unorthodox. Before he can disappear and reinvent himself, he must complete one final task.

The shrouded thing does not appear to be moving, so he takes the opportunity to slowly back away to the infinitely more comforting environs of his office. Nothing follows him, but he doesn't turn his back until, at the last instant and in a single motion, he pirouettes and slips away.

The darkness here doesn't bother him; this part of his home is more familiar to him than his own bedroom. He fumbles for a match, draws one out from a waistcoat pocket, and lights an oil lamp resting on his desk. The room fills with the smell of paraffin. Not whale oil, not anymore, and there hasn't been too much demand for it lately, at least not enough for men like Walsh to continue making a living. He saw that, even if he was never savvy about business, he would've been blind if he hadn't noticed the changing trends. They dashed his bread and butter off the table in favor of coal, paraffin and petroleum. His was a 'dying industry', according to Hafford, diving to extinction along with the whales themselves. He did not give into that old cunt, never conceded anything, the two of them nearly recognized the vicissitudes of life and acted accordingly. The only mistake he made was not planning for any kind of contingencies, and as a result, being caught wrong-footed. He may have been fucked, good and proper, but there is still time to rectify the worst effects of this almighty disaster. There is only just enough light to see his desk, and that is enough. He takes out some stationary and fixes a new nib on a fountain pen. This is not defeat, he reminds himself, he is merely partaking in a game whose nature is vague and whose boundaries and rules are intrinsically nebulous and arbitrary. It is much like Hafford's teasing – there is no clear way to respond, but whatever one does, they must act with an unexpected decisiveness. He puts pen to paper; this is not defeat. He will take leave of this place and spend the rest of his years in Arcadian bliss. Perhaps he will live among the Travelers, the walking people, and forge a new identity with them. But, then again, now that he thinks about it, he may just not like other people that much. Perhaps a life of solitude is in order. He could gather some lost sheep and become a shepherd, leisurely composing poems about his works and days while his livestock grazes below him. He'd abandon this gilded cage and soar throughout a pastoral paradise.

He hears some kind of sloshing noise outside the closed door; far away but disturbingly distinct.

He reads the words aloud as he writes; both out of a need to cope with his rising fear and to make up for the absence of Moira. He never particularly liked the decrepit woman, and yet, he'd be remiss in not recognizing (and admiring, albeit discreetly) her perennial quality. In spite of her timidity and meekness, she had always remained attached to this property, sticking to it while different owners came and left, never dreaming of leaving when pestilence or famine raged throughout the land. And while she may be gone for the time being, she will no doubt return, like a moth to flame. She has been here before his time, as if in wait for him, and may endure long after. If she were born a man, Peter would've of been a very appropriate name. The nib flashes in movement.

"To Moira..." What is her surname? "To Moira...my servant...I bequeath my house and all its surrounding property." And the meek shall inherit the earth, he wryly notes to himself. The ungrateful cretin has treated him most poorly, however, in his magnanimity, he will leave her with what she has labored over for so long. That way, no matter her scandalous babbling, no one can say John Walsh was an abusive master who subjected a lonely widow to any kind of mistreatment.

His ruminations on charity are interrupted when something heavy and damp slaps against tile. There ensues a sickening series of moist, organic-like snapping, like a gelatinous and semi-solid creature, freshly hauled from the deep, being peeled off the floor. He knows, with dread certainty, what this could be. What the fuck, he thinks, what the fuck. Hasn't he, in a few spurious strokes of his pen, relinquished his home and, by association, all the problems infesting it? No venture was ever undertaken without a certain amount of daring, no success gained without taking a risk: he must go farther, there is no backing down now.

He starts on a new document. "To Vicar Pemberton," he begins with all the austerity of a stately manor whose foundations are safely and clandestinely crumbling out of sight, "it is with great honor that I turn over to you my dear mother's rosary..." A loud clapping is steadily increasing in intensity, disrupting his thoughts and silencing his voice. A vision of frostbitten feet – toes brown and black, bloated like small, rotten fruits attached to a larger, peeling body – thrusts itself upon him and nearly sends him reeling from his work. But it is not yet finished, He loudly clears his throat and, in an ostentatious gesture, picks up his pen and hastily scribbles a few more lines: "And all my cut crystal glasses, fine porcelain, silver plated cutlery, and all other miscellanea relating to the good and civilized practice of observing a communal meal," he mumbles to himself in a very confused and convoluted manner, "will be entrusted to the hands of the refectory of any church, monastery, or cathedral that the vicar – in his power as chief representative of the bishop of the diocese encompassing this land – believes to be most deserving..." The clapping stops, and he takes a deep breath, silently praying to every deity he has ever heard of during his travels that this gauntlet of terror is over. For a heart stopping moment, he doesn't hear anything, then something brushes past the door. He holds his breath, maybe it will go away if it thinks the room is empty, but the door slowly bulges inwards, straining and whining against its hinges, as something heavy rests against the far side. The creaking is nigh intolerable, he clasps his hands over his ears and stares at the floor.

To where, weakly reflecting the lamplight on the dark surface, shining like stars in the night, lay a few pools of water. They were spreading, fed by the dripping thing on the other side. There is another bump, then another, and another.

He forces his wooden, unresponsive hand to take out a new sheet of stationary, and the nib makes irregular and fantastic black scars against frail, sallow fiber. "To the Mariner's Relief Fund," he whispers, his voice similar to the rustling of the paper on his desktop. Without warning, the door starts shaking on its hinges under a salvo of forceful thuds. "To the Mariner's Relief Fund," he repeats, louder this time, in protest to the thing outside. "I donate all of my mother's jewelry, which can be found in my sea chest located under my bed in my private quarters on the second floor. The chest is locked. The key can be found...in my office." He opens a cabinet, reaches in, and retrieves the key from a secret compartment; there are many more of those hidden in the desk, but all they contain is a collection of controversial correspondence. Nothing useful to anyone and, most importantly, unlikely to be found by anyone. With all due reverence, he places the key squarely on his desk and waits.

Man is not saved by faith alone; he further justifies himself by his works, good or ill, and I, Walsh thinks, have done much good. He has done more than follow all the lofty, immutable laws that bind the world like an unseeable yet omnipresent latticework. So why on earth is his office door groaning on its hinges? Why is the doorknob jiggling and clacking? He can smell the rising humidity: thick and stifling and heavy, burdening his senses – the aroma of a drowning crypt. The wood is swelling, the metal knob is sweating with effort; it stops, taking a break from its spasms, then slowly, deliberately, rotates. He can't tear his eyes away from the sight. His chest expands and sinks, issuing a formless, baritone groan whose extraordinary depth defies both scale and emotion – or at least no human feeling a bystander might empathize with. For it belongs to an obscure language that is, nevertheless, universal. And this is just one of its most interesting peculiarities. Some are only able to learn it later in life while a precocious few pick it up surprisingly early; it belongs to no nation, no people, is not spread by missionaries or migratory groups, but has sprung up throughout history in different places and at different times, all these occurrences happening independently from one another. And its history goes way back; it may be the oldest language in the world. It is the tongue of the gallows, the guillotine, the garrote and the chopping block. There are countless local dialects spoken by the men, women and children of a million different locales, but in the center of this tangle of tongues is an underlying and extremely singular pathos. It is the cry of the damned.

"Why won't you leave me alone?" he pleads to the assailant just beyond the partition. "Haven't you listened to what I've done?"

There's no reply, not that he is expecting any. The doorknob continues its inexorable revolution; its squeaky progress as disregarding and final as the footsteps of the hangman ascending the scaffold.

"But I'm a good person, you hear!" he screams, blinking past tears. "What more can I do? I'm trying, damn you, doesn't that count for anything? I mean, no one's perfect..."

The doorknob stops.

"Can't you believe that I can change?"

The door moves a small fraction, showing a sliver of stained white.

He does not wait any longer. Powerful legs propel him from his seat and he spins and turns, seizing the chairs legs and lifting it high above his head. Sinewy arms bulge beneath the thin fabric of his striped shirtsleeves, their strength having developed from childhood when, at the age of twelve, he spent his days shimmying along the yardarms and swinging along the ratlines; and later, as a young man before the mast, when he heaved at the capstan and hauled on the thick, rough cables that cut up the uninitiated flesh and calloused the rest. Even when grey strands started appearing in his hair, he insisted on joining the whaleboats where, poised in the bow and straining forwards like a leashed hunting dog ready to be let loose against a fox, the oarsmen swearing and uttering all kinds of horrid oaths behind him, the waves roaring and buffeting the fragile vessel this way and that, his keen eyes would lock on the far off and vaporous spouting of a whale and he'd scream at the oarsmen – demanding and begging, threatening and cajoling – to go faster; all the while the harpoon, heavy and long, its barbed head moving predatorily up in down with the rising and falling of the boat, was held aloft. As soon as the leviathan's dark sides were visible, grey and marred by white scars from past battles, and the flukes visible under the roiling water, their white undersides winking at him, he'd throw the harpoon and for a gravity defying moment it would fly, slicing through the tumultuous air, before sinking into the flank of the beast, the barbed head burying itself in its thick skin. Triumph was not marked by laurels, but by the bloody spume washing over the gunwales and the sound of lances penetrating the kill with wet shunks. The smell was intoxicating. It is with the same mindless determination that he flings the chair at the office window and shatters it completely. The door opens, but he leaps on his desk and dives past the billowing drapes into the storm beyond.

#  III

The lightning and thunder are gone, and, as if to make up for its absence, it is raining all the harder. He is stunned and confused by the torrents of water sluicing down the wide facade of his abandoned home and splashing on the soil, the untamed grass waving as the wind whistles through it, and the mystifying moonlight filtering through the low clouds and diffusing across the land, giving it a pallid sheen that all but ruins his depth perception. He has to leave all that he has ever known behind, to walk as far as he can away from this cursed place. But where to go? he wonders as he trudges down a muddy path that sucks at his ankle boots. Certainly not to town, where Moira is most likely already rounding up a search party. He must take to the barren sanctuary of the heaths, where rabbits and badgers will be his only company. At least all the wolves and bears are gone, driven to extinction whereas the whale, able to dive to depths that defy any human comprehension, still live on. If only he could do such a thing! To vanish from the face of Creation and dwell where no man has ever been; alone in the comfort that he is gone now, but with his identity still intact, still able to be who he always was.

And what was that, exactly?

A Jonah, a crew of mariners might say if serving as a chorus in the play of his life, but he, rather, believes Ishmael to be a more fitting epithet: A man destined to roam the wilderness for the rest of his years, sleeping in caves and feasting on roots while his hair bleaches white under the blazing sun and his skin turns brown and leathery in the harsh wind. It doesn't matter how his physical appearance changes or what costumes he wears, or even what new company he may keep and the unfamiliar name they'll call him, he will always carry the stigma of an exile; one who is running away from his denouncers, instead of graciously departing as he had previously imagined. He braces himself against the lashing wind and rain, crossing his arms and bowing his head to the onslaught, and marches on.

If all the world is indeed a stage, he certainly more than conforms to his role. A fierce gale, forged in the heart of the ocean and carried over thousands of leagues, imbued with some of the Atlantic's foul temper and cruel ways, flows over and through him, biting his bones and smothering his lungs. The cotton shirtsleeves stick to his arms like a second, itchy skin and his waistcoat is molded to his chest by the clashing elements. His feet, made blocky and clumsy by layers of mud that is continuing to be dredged up by his soles, sluggishly rising and falling in the morass, are encumbered by an exhaustion that is both physical and mental. He can't feel anything below his knees, his boots may have been pulled off by the clinging soil a long time ago, for all he knows. He imagines he is walking on a pair of rickety stubs, but, nevertheless, he keeps moving by his own power alone. There is nothing graceful about how he conveys himself down the path, but it cannot be denied that the sight of him, alone and stubbornly gaining ground in spite of nature, in defiance of everything, possesses a grim grandeur. He is the proverbial wanderer – forever marching towards a destination that will never be.

Or so he thinks.

He hears them first: low, grey, and indistinct, their sighs coming from someplace very far away. For want of any better course to take, he heads in the sound's general direction, bending his head down further and half-crouching in the face of the rising gale that is becoming so ferocious it threatens to send him falling back head over heels. Instead of flurries of flying leaves that cut his exposed flesh, there are stinging clouds of spray that leave the taste of salt in his mouth. A distant memory of the cliffs comes to him. The cliffs...he rolls the word, and everything associated with it, over and over again; it feels like a stranger's dream, lifted out of a sand-ridden sarcophagus and carried to him over the dunes of time. With an afterglow of the joy those formations of rock, painstakingly hewn for his pleasure by wind and sea over thousands of years, pulsing in his chest, he unconsciously returns to his favorite spot, his muscles playing to the memory engraved in them by experience.

The sighs expand and reverberate throughout the hollow of his skull, causing him to lift his head against the tempest and see them for the first time: Perversely pellucid, their fluid forms flawlessly melded to the ebbing and flowing sheets of rain; their bodies expanding and receding as the wind blows schools of moving droplets this way and that, but they never leave, and they never fail to return to form. They are all lined up along the cliff, glass marble eyes unfocused and fixed, dressed and carrying all the panoply of their trade – malleable lances, marlinspikes, harpoons, boat axes and knives, bundles of canvas and coils of cable, anchors, belaying pins, and caulking mallets are all held in shifting hands. Translucent peacoats hang on ill-defined shoulders; their hazy forms loom up out of the air like a grand mirage. They are singing a jerky, gasping and moaning melody that rises in volume as he blinks past rain, sweat, and tears, but he sees that their lips – at least, that's what he presumes the thin black lines etched across the lower portion of their waxy faces to be – are not moving, are not even open. They keep swaying this way and that, in unison, like a row of shivering metronomes, matching the woeful beat with hypnotic precision. His aches and pains, his corporeal existence, are but dim memories – inconvenient nullities assimilated by a greater unity. The haunting chorus grows louder, but never changes in mood, insistently holding onto all the pensive notes, who hold onto their emotions even as they dominate the scene, forming a truly profound, yet minimal composition. Its sorrow brings him to his knees. His face is still raised, eyes wide open, expression locked in a singular agony. Just as the music is about to reach a dizzying zenith, where it must all surely collapse upon itself, it terminates with an inhuman abruptness. A shade flitters over his heart. The ensuing silence is somehow even worse. There is nothing now; nothing but him and his old crew.

The diluted wraiths can be no one else. Luna is spying on them past a loophole in the clouds, her beaming eyes throwing into relief a section of the cascading cortège that is directly in front of him. Walsh spots the young surgeon off to the right, his valise still in one hand (the medical student, he remembers, was always too poor to afford a proper instrument chest); the shimmering edges of a variety of surgical tools – amputating knives, scalpels, catlins, and tenaculums – stick out from between the folds and layers of his clothing; death has transformed this bookish fellow into an effigy of artificial thorns, a thin hedge work of scintillating steel. This was not what the young man had wanted: the ambitious lad, so like his captain in many ways, aspired to have his own private practice, and Walsh, who couldn't help being fond of the boy in spite of himself, promised him that his desires would be more than fulfilled – all he had to do was sign on, and everything would pass by like a cruise down the Danube. Walsh feels sick, he clutches his guts and dry heaves. When he lifts his face again, he sees his first mate crazily jerking and twisting near the surgeon, threatening to impale himself on the younger man. He is racked by a series of spasms that occur so viciously, so unrelentingly, that he appears to be strobing in and out of existence, fundamentally at odds with the cosmic stuff that makes up reality. The first mate is shivering, the truth is a shackle that bites into Walsh's ankle, compelling him to see, like all the others who were splashed by the falling ice block. How madly they all shivered before the end, how tenaciously the first mate resisted the call, first shaking, then feebly squirming – as if motion alone could ward off the irrevocable spell of death. The truth does not set John Walsh free, it is a Gordian knot of fetters that constricts him to this specific spot, this particular moment, where he can do nothing else but face this horrible menagerie. For how long? he asks everything and nothing, how long must I endure this? But the phenomena refuses to acknowledge him. He doesn't even know if they are aware of him in the first place.

It may have been hours, or maybe just a few minutes, but eventually, a body detaches itself from the strung out throng and presents himself before Walsh, who stands up on unsure feet and squints at the newcomer; it's hard to make sense of the rippling visage – the pseudo-flesh being bombarded by droplets, creating craters that open, close, then reopen in the span of a breath – and the mouth is obscured by a stubbly outgrowth of baleen-like filaments, softly undulating like the colorful tentacles of a sea anemone. Walsh backs away, his eyes never leaving the false ones, wary of the apparition attacking him if his eyes so much as wander. It is when he can see the thing in its entirety that he halts in his tracks and gapes not at its face, but at its torso. It is the carpenter, who is dressed much like the others except for what Walsh takes to be a bright carnation pinned to his chest; this wonderful little accessory seems to be lost here, amid this backwash of watery grey, white, and black, but within is not affected in the least by without. Captivated, he draws closer to the man, or the echo of a man, that was once a carpenter. The ruby smolders underneath layers of interconnected skeins; the complicated weave reflecting a blood-red glow tinged by silver moonlight. Extremely entrancing. He goes after it with the quiet relentlessness of a somnambulist, and, as if this really is a dream, this burning heart is always just out of reach. He widens his steps, and along the way discovers new insights: To think that he took it for mere decoration, or a worthless piece of rock, when in actuality it is a throbbing organ, a human heart, immaculate in its perfection and operation. He wants to touch it. Alone and bereft, deprived of everything, he craves this above all else. The allure of it is enough to banish a lifetime of loneliness. All he needs is a touch.

Has a mortal wound ever brought such happiness?

He imagines the heart yearns for him too; the threads of the peacoat are magnifying the glow, making the heart look distended and ready to plop out into his hands, but he can never get close enough for that to even be a possibility. The rain is finally failing and the spectre drifts in and out of sight, always reappearing a step away, seemingly unaware of his pursuer's desire. The carpenter rejoins the ranks of his fellows and stops. He is facing Walsh, and his former captain refuses to back down, returning his own steely gaze. How Walsh wishes he could see past the doll eyes and the luminous hair and see what's going on within the skull of this unreadable shade, and he is tempted to cross the few inches between them and, quite literally, wring the carpenter's intentions out of him, but his impassive crew forms a barrier that holds him back. He can't bear to be in their presence any longer; all he wants is the heart and then he can run away – from them, and from the shame. He can carry the heart in his own breast, and it'll revitalize his flesh, his tainted blood being filtered by its inner workings. Maybe it is only the light playing across the water, but he thinks he sees the carpenter's lined brow easing, and to his astonishment, the carpenter relents, reaching out and offering him a hand. His mates wait, expectantly. The implication of this gesture turns his shame to rage: What the carpenter is offering, and all of his crew for that matter, is abominable, vulgar, unbelievable in its audacity – he cannot even begin to voice his indignation. But while passion overwhelms his mind, the lips move of their own accord.

"No."

The hand remains outstretched.

"I said no!" he grates.

The carpenter does not withdraw his offer. A gust blasts from the sea and the rain billows past; the crew leans in attentively. The heart is pushed outwards, and his eyes are drawn to its luminescence, so much like how the warm waters around the East Indies would suddenly explode into color in the darkest hours. He can clearly recall how, as a cabin boy, he'd spend all the watches of the night watching the phantom flames dance underneath the waves, their tips licking and curling underneath a still surface like pressed glass. Saint Elmo's fire caught beneath a microscope, he had thought at first, but the old surgeon who had introduced him to that fine instrument – a self-proclaimed 'polymath of the Renaissance tradition' who was fond of walking circuits up and down the starboard gangway after an evening of boozing in the wardroom, so that he may, in his own words, 'air out' – had taken him aside and explained to him that this was not meteorological but, more accurately, biological phenomena. Even now, he can smell the port that was on the man's breath as he praised to no end the vast multitudes of marine life that were too tiny to be seen by human eyes, but, when gathered together in the middle of a careless black sea, or in the loneliest stretches of ocean where ships seldom crossed, create a light strong enough to drive away drive away the dark and bring light to where there can be no fire. The surgeon's breathless face, cast in bright blue, hung before him, and the young boy had known that this glorified butcher of men, this failed naturalist who never spent more than a month on land for fear of being thrown in debtors' prison and sought refuge on the Company's outgoing Indiamen, was somewhere else, his elucidation taking him someplace free of vice and mortal degradation. And Walsh sees this flawless world, free of that species of evil only perpetuated by human hands, in the chest of a murdered man. Interlinking cells coexist in harmony with one another, their insignificant sparks combining, creating a healthy fire defying any earthly force. He wants to touch it. But the damned carpenter is warding him away with that accursed hand of his.

"I will never!" he cries. "No, no, no, a thousand times no!" His head swings back and forth, taking in the entirety of his crew. "It's not my fault! I was put up to it, I am as much a victim as you all are!" If they heed his words, they don't show it. Their silence fuels his rage. "I did not kill you!" he cries again. It's not fair, how can they blame him for his survival? There is the living and the dead, and the former is destined to join the latter regardless of a how a person conducts themselves – for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. So, what if he staved off the inevitable whereas they failed? If they are all so starved for company, they can take comfort in him joining them later, much later, if he has any say in the matter. He weeps at the injustice of it all, tears chasing the raindrops down his face. "I swear upon my everlasting soul, I did not kill you!"

The carpenter's hand recedes, along with the rest of him. The rain is letting up, and the moon, full and bright, dispels the gloom; a few of the lost souls at the ends of the line have vanished entirely, their moist bodies perspiring into hanging nothingness, and those next to them are following suit. As the carpenter fades, the heart beats faster, its color brightening, straining against the few wisps of evaporating peacoat; mist rises and coalesces all around, but he never loses sight of the heart that shines like a lighthouse over an obscure and treacherous bay. He chases after it, hands outstretched, body leaning, but his object of desire keeps alluding him. The mist becomes more and more thick; maybe the carpenter has disappeared, leaving the heart behind, and he breaks out into a run, fearing that the heart will follow its owner to a diluvian grave. The bejeweled organ winks out, and his own stills in despair, but the air around him is choked and muggy – this foreign heat must be coming from the heart! Where else could it come from? He practically leaps forwards and is suddenly greeted with the sight of the glaucous sea: specks of white are strewn all over the simmering waters, marking where once mighty breakers rampaged under a thunderous sky, but the storm is over, and wanton violence is not enough to rescind nature's decree; the white caps, so stout and strong, now lay prostrate across the sea they've so joyously rent asunder a scarce few hours ago. The water is still uneasy, its surface fidgeting and shuffling as far as his eyes can see, to where grey clouds hang low over the horizon; the tide beats an irregular rhythm against the rocks. The winds are gone. And so is the heart.

Dejectedly, he tries to turn back and, for a split-second, is annoyed when he learns he cannot, in fact, walk on air.

How embarrassing...

He plummets to the crashing surf, and there is no more time to think. Scrawling lines of efflorescence races past him and his body, with a will of its own, braces for impact: muscles tighten, air vacates the lungs, toes curl, legs rise to the chest, and eyes close; he watches a crazed borealis dance behind closed eyelids, maybe it'll be the last thing he'll see – he's heard that some sailors, when they fall off the main topgallant yard, faint before they hit the water. But the tide is always going in and out and, especially after a storm, the movements of the tidewater in general can be pretty erratic...what will he land on exactly? Water or rock? Who's to say what alternative will be worse? Another fragment of hearsay comes to him, this from someone who claimed to be a marine in his youth, what was it they said before receiving a broadside?

Oh God, prepare us for what we are about to receive.

But he receives nothing; the wind howling past his ears goes silent, gravity's invisible grip loosens, and he feels weightless, one of the self-styled naturalist's specimens suspended in aqua vitae. He suspects that this is not how it's supposed to go – something's wrong, there's a minor hiccup in the clockwork, he must've slipped through the fittings and gotten stuck between the gears of a vast and intricate machine. He dares to open his eyes, and is confronted by a teeming, labyrinthine expanse of glossy black wings, lugubriously flapping with the same calculated indifference he usually associated with the movement of the stars or the hurtling of the planets through the void, the automatic sweeps of movement going on and on...This utterly inhuman sight, devoid of any relatable qualities or reason, is more horrifying than any vision of Hell. He screams and hears nothing; he shuts his eyes, seeking refuge within himself. Unwelcome thoughts intrude upon him; maybe he fell through the earth, through water, seabed, and bedrock, and somehow lodged himself near the center of the earth, irretrievable and lost, embedded in the spine of the world like the musket ball that killed Nelson. How many leadlines had he seen cast over the side to measure the depth, only for them to be hauled up and it discovered that the lead weight tied at the end had disappeared? How much rubbish gets tossed overboard, and never washes ashore? He resists the urge to scream again. Time is marked by the rise and fall of panic, and suppressing his emotions is all he can do to remain sane. There is no future, nothing but this struggle. Heart and soul are conducting a balancing act between two bottomless chasms.

It ends not with victory, but with a touch. Cool hands caress the nape of his neck, his cheeks, his shoulders, his mind. He tries to take one of these hands in his own, and ends up touching himself. From a few disparate particles, he is coming together, first taking root, then form. He relaxes, fills his lungs with crisp air, stretches his long legs, flexes his toes and fingers. Everything is going to be alright, he tells himself, everything is going to be alright. So why worry? Blessings are to be welcomed, not sneered at; good tidings should always be embraced, no matter how strange they feel, and he is in a very thankful mood. He's willing to accept, and latch onto, anything.

External stimuli returns in merciful increments; there is no grand scale to overwhelm him. First comes touch, perhaps the only thing preventing him from going mad in his blindness is the feel of the fabric he wraps around himself, then he opens his eyes and appreciates the shapes and colors coming into focus. He props himself up not on rock, but on a sheet of bumpy, rough cloth – it is the coziest bed he has ever been on, stuffed silk does not compare. He languidly adjusts himself to a more cozy position and waits as the new world comes into being. A unique environment is being made for him, one that is assuring in its familiarity.

There is no fear. The past is remote and distant, replaced by an incomprehensible déjà vu.

And, in good time, even reckoning and sense vanish.

#  IV

He can hear the waves now: soft and simpering and obsequious, never daring to enter his craft. Not anymore, for now it is well and truly his. They are all gone now; the only sign of their ever having been there are a few scraps of clothing floating around in the filth and, in time, that detritus will soon follow their predecessors overboard. But only when he deigns to descend from his throne, and right now he feels no such urge. He is watching the sunrise, or rather, it's weak tell-tale signs. The ice-caps catch the dying light, appearing to be faded gold crowns on a row of dirty, jagged teeth. The sky is a dull grey in the east and a heavy brown everywhere else. When he squints, he fancies he can make out the shining curve of the sun...or, just as likely, it's only the ice playing tricks on him, like it always has and will. When it goes down, he knows deep within his soul, it won't come again for the rest of the year. May never rise in his lifetime. It is no matter. The casks all lined up along the thwarts are a testament to his foresight, his preparedness, which is perfectly natural, for those are two qualities found in captains everywhere.

He remembers the Greek lessons he received as a boy. His family was never especially wealthy, but they valued education so much that they took portions off their plates so that a pedantic old spinster may come and teach him a few fancy words. The old language was never exciting; it was the men and women who caught his attention: gods and demigods, heroes and monsters, creation and destruction. Now, he sees himself as a modern Charon, but for the life of him he can't quite recall what the ferryman was supposed to do when the age of humans ended, and there were no more souls to ferry to the other side. He faces that dilemma now; it is the only one facing him, yet so incredibly irritating.

I will sleep on it.

He has all the time in the world to ruminate on this problem, and all the sustenance to last him through the winter. The evening greyness is going away now, and the winds are settling, making the edges of his poor weather cloak lift ever so slightly and his hood to open a bit, revealing a skull-like, sunken eyed visage, then the breeze dies down and everything is like it was before...but darker. The tops of the ice cliffs are disappearing into the depths of the fuliginous sky. He sits up awkwardly, pulls out a blanket he has been keeping dry with his body, and pulls it over him. He is not cold, nor hungry or wet. He is just fine.

Settling down onto a bed of discarded canvas, he plans for the future, and decides that if leads don't open come spring, then he'll just have to open one himself through sheer force of will. It is through will that he lives and his crew's lack of it that damned them. They should've kept the faith, all they needed was some goddamned faith.

He can't see anything, not even his own hands or the thwarts or the oars he knows he left lying nearby. He is floating in a cold abyss where it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell which way is up or down. Maybe, he thinks, he is the last man; not of his crew, but of the entire human race. Right here, in this moment, he finds it easy to believe that everyone else – every woman, child, man, even animal – has simply ceased to exist without his immediate presence. A melancholy mood disrupts his equanimity, and he stirs uneasily, pulling his layers tighter about him, burying his frail form within their voluminous folds. Suddenly, preposterously, Ian Hafford's grinning face materializes before him, and he realizes that, surely, he must have gone away with everyone else; and if his fellow conspirator is gone, then the crime is gone, his hands are washed of the whole matter. No one will know.

It's a comforting thought; one he clings onto in his neverending dreams.

There is only the push and pull of unseen currents.

End

EC Byrne can be contacted through his editor at:

emilemarchand952@gmail.com

or you can visit his website at:

https://emilemarchand952.wixsite.com/inkstains

Thanks for reading!
