The Ghost of the Mist

by Ryan Lindsay, Gungahlin College

”Why is he so calm?”

“That’s your takeaway?” Gerard turned to glare at Ignacio as he lowered his flintlock pistol. “I shoot a man in the head and you’re thinking about his tone of voice?”

***

This is not how pirates end up with an eye patch, Juan thought as a viscous bubble chuckled out of his mouth.

“Don’t worry,” he said as dark gunk oozed down his gunpowder peppered cheek. “I’m not feeling most of this. It’s okay.”

Clouds floated on the water’s edge, a gilt outline hiding the end of the day from prying eyes. Gerard scattered a trio of blackbirds with a scream as he leant against the sun-worn and talon-chipped railing of this man’s boat; like a lost Rodin sculpture, his greasy hair rested on his gamey forearms.

“None of this is okay,” Gerard whispered to some internal guide who remained silent.

***

There were long held tales that out beyond the furthest islands, there was a sunken city. Many tried and returned with fireside tales of squalls and darkness that felt personal in their fury and yet only fed the growing embers in the eyes of the young audience. Others never returned at all, fuelling speculation they’d made it to the place beneath the waves, thus ‘proving’ the stories true.

It was known, deep in the long hallways of each and every brain, that the lost adventurers were dead, sunk, bloated; but every adventurer in waiting was only ever looking for the best way to die.

Sails scattered across the impasto sea, born on the winds of their arrogant ineptitude, and lost to the expanse of their own defeat before they left sight of land.

But not Juan.

He found exactly what he was after and got exactly what he deserved.

***

i feel like i haven’t opened my eyes in days – honestly, i felt certain i was dead – but i hear them stumble down deep into the ship and they gasp as they see me – they fall silent as they close their mouths against the smell of me – my jaw creaks as i try to scream but it’s like a tree reaching out into the breeze to touch lightning

one of them touches me – touches my forehead – the skin shifts – i’m a setting sun in shades of purple

they rush out – i never even opened my eyes – i sigh

***

The men burst through the door and sprayed across the deck like a rogue wave in a storm. Their wide eyes and grabbing hands didn’t bother to pull Gerard away for any privacy. The oil fire of their information and questions and fears spilled out of them.

This crew had seen many things, and been many places, and never had their captain felt such darkness around them. Their words jumbled over each other, vying for attention and importance, like every rich captain they’d ever boarded scrabbling past his crew to the single life raft.

“He’s got people locked up!” – “There’s a bear’s head!” – “He’s been beneath the waves!” – “It’s the ghost of the mist!”

The life of Juan Burroughs was a tapestry of the strange and Gerard worried he’d not yet stood far back enough from it to truly see its scope and scale. A hand held aloft a small leather journal and Gerard prepared to dive into the unforgiving swamp of this stranger’s past.

It has been one year. 365 lives I have taken, all to save my own. Yet it feels like the one thing I have done with certainty is lose my humanity.

I still see her in the night. Her ghastly visage fills the darkness of the waves as I consider plunging into them, dropping, sinking, disappearing.

Resting.

The witch was real, the dank musk of her rot, the haunted coals in her eyes, the acrid taste on my lips.

“You will live forever.”

So long as I take another life before midnight every day. I admit I’ve been too afraid not to try, and these seas are not without many worthy recipients of my blade. I tell myself it’s a good thing I do, but my words are like stone trees planted in my heart.

Who am I now? Or…what was I all along?

And if this never ends, what will become of me next?

These men of the night had plundered bigger ships and taken from more powerful men, but they kept their distance like wolves outside a butcher shop, despite Juan’s taut restraints. Lanterns dotted the ship like constellations used to navigate the world and Juan mostly saw shadows of his attackers within the darkness of the new moon.

“What’s your next move?” Juan asked. Gerard continued to stare down into the waves that touched a monotone heartbeat against the smooth hull. He stared like the answers might be down there when he knew the answers did not even reside in the glassy heavens above.

“What’s yours?”

The answers were only held in the fragile hands of the coming hours.

A blackbird floated onto Juan’s shoulder; a gargoyle sculpted from the syrupy fear that burns through the night. Its beak drew out a ropey bridge of ocular viscera and knocked it back with a smooth swallow.

The old pirate smiled and closed his remaining eye, like a man of the sea appreciating a warm breeze off a virgin coast. His shoulders slumped and the bird flew away with a laugh.

For the first time in centuries, Juan felt rest like only the dirt knows.

***

With the captain dead, the robbers took their time with the ship, as lovers exploring on a sun-kissed morning; for a moment the vessel is their sphere.

Trinkets of coasts and knowledge of scholars were littered throughout the ship as if a god’s breath had blown through an ancient library. Gerard became dragged under by it; he had to know if they’d truly captured and murdered the Ghost of the Mist, as the legend had become. An eternal pirate, gifted a life as long as an empire, he scared children in silly stories, and their parents in buried headlines.

And if they had him, how could Gerard then become him?

What was the gift given by the ghastly sea witch of the lost sunken city?

One of his men proudly found, protected, and delivered a parchment with a crude diagram that promised a possible entry to Gerard’s next step in evolution.

“Start a fire,” Gerard demanded of his men. “Small, right here on the deck. I wish to take my meal under the forever eyes above.”

He grabbed Juan’s hand, like one might grace the hand of a lady, and his other hand slid free Juan’s blade from his hip.

***

The smell was offensive like the perfume of a relative you despised for their boorish traits. Like a ship foundered off the coast and spilling its child slaves into the waters. Like fruit from a forest tainted by the ghosts of spurned lovers. It smelt like superstition.

The blackbird returned. Standing opposite the flames, it cawed once and stared into Gerard’s eyes before pitching sideways with a muffled thump.

When Gerard started to choke and clutch at his throat like a man clawing at the clanking gates from some unnamed hell, no one moved to help. Every eye was on him, and every hand found a pocket.

Their robber captain died after two mouthfuls and silence cloaked the deck like an admission of relief. Broken only by the gasping laughter of the Ghost of the Mist who surged back to life as if a lightning strike had been issued from below. The ropes slid easily from his wrists like charmed snakes and the man stood, a statue made real.

“Forgive my theatrics, they are born from boredom not malice, I promise,” Juan said as he took his blade back from his killer’s hand. “We’ve got a few hours to work out who I’ll kill for tomorrow. For now, let’s not think, gentlemen, let’s not bother ourselves with what comes next.”

***

Noise rode the waves, and the nearby blackbirds could not parse the sounds of these men as having any difference between glee, fear, and mayhem. Neither could most of the men as the boat shambled out into the dark night.