Tales of Terror from the Black Ship Read online

  ‘Throw us a line then, damn you all!’

  ‘The snails can have you!’ shouted the first mate. ‘It’s no more than you deserve, you cowardly scum!’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ shouted one of the men in the lifeboat. ‘Show some mercy!’

  ‘Throw them a line, Matlock,’ said the captain.

  ‘But, sir –’

  ‘If we are to die, let’s all die together,’ he said quietly. ‘Throw them a line.’

  The word ‘die’ tolled like a bell in George’s mind. Were they really in danger of dying? But of course they were. They were trapped. They could not keep these monsters at bay for ever. Was this how he was to die, unknown and unsung – his passing marked by nothing but a faint ripple in the ocean?

  The first mate ordered a line to be thrown, but before the rope reached the side of the ship there was a cry from the boat. One of the deserters stood up, screaming and tugging at his clothes. When he turned we could see the cause: a snail had crawled on to his back as he sat in the boat and had clearly bitten into him halfway up his spine.

  One of his fellows grabbed the snail and tried to pull it off, but this merely increased the poor man’s torments and he flailed wildly about in his panic, striking the other a blow to the side of the head and knocking him out of the boat.

  The man in the sea tried in vain to get back to the lifeboat, but every movement simply served to further ensnare him in the green tentacles of the floating mass of weeds. He stretched out a hand towards the ship, shouting for help, but he was too far away for his friends to pull him aboard. All this was illuminated by the ghastly glow of the boat’s swinging lanterns.

  Meanwhile more snails had begun to creep on to the lifeboat and the efforts of the men to halt their entry and the wild spasms of the man with the creature gnawing into his back caused the boat to rock violently, and to no one’s surprise it soon tipped over, spilling all the remaining men into the weed-choked sea.

  A line was thrown from the ship and one of the deserters even managed to grab hold, but no sooner had he done so than he cried out in agony as an unseen snail took hold of his flesh. His screams were echoed by the screams of his fellows as each in turn fell victim to the creatures.

  Tears sprang readily to the eyes of the crew who had only minutes ago wished these men would rot in hell. But hell itself could not hold torments worse than those souls underwent, eaten alive by the slimy demons.

  George and the others stood and watched in a trance as each man writhed in his death throes and then went limp, held fast by the weed, heads lolling hideously atop the green carpet. It was only when the snails began to slide across the faces of their former comrades that they turned away. No man among them had the stomach for that sight.

  It was as if the glut of food brought about by the sailors’ escape attempt had driven the snails into a kind of frenzy of bloodlust. As soon as they moved away from the remains of the lifeboat crew – remains which a quick glance told George were picked to the bone – they renewed their assault on the Swift.

  They now came in numbers that made their previous attacks seem tame by comparison. There were thousands of them. They slid over the gunwales, over the deck, the rigging, the bones of the fallen. The dreadful ponderousness of their movement only made the invasion more nightmarish.

  A sailor who foolishly panicked and sought sanctuary in the crow’s nest was simply pursued there by the snails, who slowly and relentlessly attacked him in such numbers that he threw himself off rather than be eaten alive.

  He landed with a sickening thud on the deck, where the blood immediately attracted the attention of every snail in the vicinity. Some men moved to try to stop their advance but the captain called to them to halt.

  ‘Better that they feed on him than us,’ he said grimly. ‘He knows no different.’

  Something in George snapped. He did not know what to do, but he could not stand there and watch death inch towards him in this way: to have that slow torture of knowing that the most excruciating end was laboriously approaching.

  As the captain called them to the middle of the deck to form a protective circle with lanterns at their centre, George grabbed a lantern too before ducking out of sight and heading below deck. He had to sidestep several snails along the way; they altered course as soon as he passed and set off slowly after him.

  George, almost hysterical with fear, threw himself headlong into a cabin and bolted the door behind him. He slumped exhausted on to a bunk and then realised he had not checked for signs of snails and set about doing so with a racing heart, and only when he was positive that he was quite alone did he lie back down on the bunk.

  George put hands over his ears to block out the cacophony that throbbed through the fabric of the ship: the terrible distant screams of his crewmates as they eventually succumbed to the army of snails.

  Worse still was the dreadful almost-silence that followed, in which the soft slither and rasp of the retreating snails could be heard on the decks above.

  It was hours before George built up the courage to even consider stepping outside, and when he did, the eerie mother-of-pearl light of daybreak was seeping through the open hatch.

  As he climbed the ladder to the weather deck above, George slipped on the slimy remains of a snail and cracked his head against the wooden handrail. He allowed himself a wry chuckle as he imagined the irony of having survived the onslaught only to break his neck in a fall.

  George was grateful that he could see no sign of living snails, but the results of their passing were everywhere. It was like a battleground. The white bones of the crew lay all around: skeletons picked clean of all flesh so that they looked as though they were the sleeping crew of some ghost ship.

  George went to the rail and looked over the side. The weed was gone, completely gone. The ship was free. A breeze ruffled his hair for the first time in days. But what good was it? He could not sail the ship alone. He was little use when there had been a full crew, but alone he was worse than useless. He was destined to drift in the open ocean until starvation or shipwreck did the work he had denied the snails.

  Something trickled down George’s cheek and putting his hand to his face he realised he was bleeding from the blow to his forehead when he had slipped. A droplet of blood dripped from his hand and fell to the deck, striking the bleached boards with a small crimson splash.

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  George became aware of a curious sound he could not place at first. It was a hollow rattling and rumbling that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the ship, and he wondered whether it had drifted towards hidden rocks.

  But he soon realised that this was not the case. The sound was not coming from the hull but from the holds, and he saw, emerging from every hatch and hole, a million hungry snails creeping slowly, inexorably forward.

  *

  Cathy’s face was even paler than before. I am sure I was in no better condition. I had always had an aversion to shellfish of any kind, quickening my step past the whelk and cockle stalls in the market, repelled by both their smell and appearance; it was a revulsion I feared this story would only compound.

  ‘Were you never tempted to go to sea, Ethan?’ said Thackeray, sitting back, and running his fingers through his raven hair. ‘Being as how you lived so close to her shores all your life and how these rooms have been filled with mariners and their tales, did you never want to venture forth and see what lies beyond that horizon?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. For how could I have gone to sea, leaving my father to cope alone and Cathy to deal with his drinking? What right had I to choose that path?

  Thackeray nodded and smiled a sad smile that seemed to say that he guessed my thoughts, and though it was a sympathetic smile I still resented it.

  ‘Maybe it is for the best,’ he said. ‘For the oceans are well stocked with dangers o
f every species and it is an act of blessed fortune to see through a natural life.’

  ‘It was not cowardice that stopped me, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Ethan,’ said Cathy.

  ‘Now then.’ Thackery held up his hands to pacify me. ‘Don’t get yourself so riled. I did not mean to suggest anything of the sort. There are many kinds of bravery. It takes as much courage to bring a child into the world as it does to cross swords or sail into the teeth of a storm – more, maybe. I can see you are no coward, Ethan. No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken,’ I said after a pause. ‘Forgive me. I have my father’s temper.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Thackeray. ‘Your father. There is still no sign of him.’

  ‘He will be here soon enough. Never fear.’

  ‘Of course.’ Thackeray drained his glass.

  ‘You seem mightily interested in my father’s whereabouts,’ I said, despite Cathy’s shushing.

  Thackeray smiled.

  ‘I have no interest in your father, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Besides, he might not be so welcoming as you and your fair sister. He has a temper, you say?’

  ‘No more than most men,’ I lied.

  ‘But what about the cat?’ said Thackeray with a mock puzzled expression. ‘I thought he almost killed it.’

  ‘Oh, but he was drunk,’ said Cathy by way of explanation and then clamped her hand over her mouth, realising that she had said too much.

  ‘Cathy!’ I said, louder and more roughly than I’d meant. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  Thackeray poured himself another drink. I put my arm around my sister. She pushed me away.

  ‘My father is a good man!’ I said, turning to the sailor.

  Thackeray nodded.

  ‘He can forget that sometimes when he drinks,’ I continued. ‘But at heart he is a good man.’

  Something happened, though, in the saying of these words – which were passionately meant. I had the strangest sensation that I no longer believed what I was saying. I searched my mind for happy childhood memories, but my father made no appearance in them. I had convinced myself that drink had changed him, but had he ever been the good father I wanted him to be?

  Thackeray ran his fingers through his still-wet hair.

  ‘As I say,’ he said in a bored voice, ‘I do not know the man. Your faith in him does you credit, Ethan. No doubt he is on his way home, safe and sound. But in the meantime shall I tell you another story?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but not quickly enough.

  ‘Oh, I was hoping you would,’ said Cathy, clapping her hands together.

  g

  Mud

  Ben and Peter Willis were twin brothers. They had been brought up on the north Norfolk coast and knew those creeks and marshes like they knew the pores and creases of their own grimy skin – skin that seemed to hold the stain of that mud in its every crevice.

  It felt to Ben that they were tied to one another by some invisible bond. He could not remember a time when they had been more than a dozen yards apart. Peter regularly used the word ‘we’ when another person would have used ‘I’. He would say ‘we’re hungry’ or ‘we’re tired’ and simply assume that Ben shared these feelings, which, to Ben’s annoyance, he invariably did.

  Ben had never felt truly alone. He had never felt that he existed as a single entity, independent from his brother. It was as if it took two of them to make a whole, and, without Peter, he was incomplete: a half-thing.

  He had never expressed these concerns to Peter; in fact this secrecy was a form of rebellion, as it had always been assumed that they would share everything. Ben concealed his feelings whenever possible and considered every hidden grievance a small victory over the tyranny of twinhood.

  But far from freeing him from these thoughts of being forever bonded to his brother, Ben had become obsessed with the notion that they were two opposing parts of a single personality. He had come to believe that Peter was the corrupt, venal and irksome part of himself, the tainted part of his own soul.

  This was not a view that many who knew the twins would have shared. For the truth was that both the brothers were rogues, and if anyone had bothered to try to differentiate the degree of their delinquency, they would certainly have said that it was Ben rather than Peter who seemed the one most lacking in any redeeming qualities. For Peter did at least have charm. Granted, it was a charm that was manufactured at will as a distraction from his true character, much as a stage magician distracts the observer from his sleight of hand, and consisted mainly of an incongruous, dimpled smile, more suited to a choirboy or a gilded cherub, and a disarming honesty about his dishonest ways. But it was a charm that Ben entirely lacked.

  Ben saw Peter as the demon on his shoulder who led him reluctantly and unwittingly towards misdeeds and wrongdoings he would otherwise have shunned. He attributed to his brother an almost supernatural ability to tempt and persuade that served as an excuse for his own craven and weak-willed nature.

  Every time he stole, or lied, or struck some poor unfortunate with a cudgel or threatened them with the blade of his knife, he let himself believe that he would never have done so without the malevolent influence of his twin. Broken bones or broken promises, it was never his fault.

  Peter was fond of smiling his dimpled smile and saying, ‘I’m right here, brother. Don’t you worry.’ When they were small it had been a comfort. Peter had always been the braver, always fearless in his defence of his brother. Now it sounded like a threat, like a life sentence.

  Ben and Peter had gone to sea together, sailing aboard the merchant ships that plied their trade between Norfolk and the Low Countries. It had been an escape from a dull and joyless life, but every time a storm engulfed them, Ben reminded himself that this too had been Peter’s idea and that left to his own devices he might never have left the relative safety of dry land.

  But whatever the truth, the twins were mariners now, and in spite of the dangers the life seemed to suit them well enough. Sailors were not entirely bound – or at least did not feel entirely bound – by the same rules as those ashore. The brothers were quick to take advantage of all the ‘opportunities’ that a sailor’s life provided.

  Back in their home port of Lynn once more, Ben resentfully told himself that the meeting they were about to have with local smugglers was, again, solely Peter’s notion – though Ben’s hunger for the promised cash had, if anything, been keener than his brother’s.

  The smugglers thereabouts were as secretive and mysterious as masons, but the brothers had a contact – a childhood friend – who had acted as a go-between. The Willis twins had arranged with Tubbs, the quartermaster aboard their ship, to load a boat with some of the contents of the hold while the captain was ashore in Lynn, being dined by the mayor.

  At the appointed hour the boat was duly loaded and Ben and Peter climbed stealthily aboard and began to row towards the shore. It was late afternoon; the sun was low in the western sky and the sea was as smooth and burnished as a silver platter; the noise of the oars and the call of distant curlew were all that broke the tranquillity of the scene.

  This peacefulness was all external in Ben’s case, for he had a rising dread of meeting the smugglers; smugglers thought little of murder, especially when it came to boys like him and Peter.

  Peter, by contrast, seemed to be positively enjoying himself, grinning from ear to grubby ear.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, stopping rowing for a moment and letting the boat rock to and fro on the grey waters. He cupped his hands around his mouth and made a startling impression of an oyster catcher.

  From out of the marshes came the sound of a curlew.

  ‘They’re here,’ Peter said, rowing once more, and he steered into a narrow creek, hidden from the sea by a mud bank. ‘Come on,’ he said, tying the boat t
o an ancient, lichen-encrusted stave and jumping on to the bank.

  They covered the merchandise they carried in a rough blanket and pushed the boat into an even narrower channel so that it was entirely hidden from view.

  Then Ben found himself, as usual, following Peter into the unknown – up a rough track towards a small tavern, whose flint walls faced out to the sea, bathed in the warm low sunlight. Black smoke coiled from massive chimneys.

  Walking into the Black Horse was like walking into a cave, and it took Ben a while to see anything at all. Slowly, out of the gloom, a stone-flagged floor appeared, a low black-beamed ceiling, a dark wooden bar and a burly, grim-faced barman.

  ‘Gen’lemen?’ he asked, in a rasping voice that sounded like a threat.

  ‘We’re looking for Daniel Hide.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said the barman. ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘If he comes by, tell him Peter Willis and his brother were here looking for him.’ He tapped Ben on the arm and they made to leave.

  ‘Hold your horses,’ said a voice from a room to their right.

  Ben turned to see a man step out, ducking under the low doorway as he did so. The stranger took a deep breath, half closing his eyes, and then grabbed Peter by the throat.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ he asked quietly, looking at Ben. Peter choked and grimaced, turning beetroot.

  ‘Aye,’ said Ben.

  ‘You weren’t followed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Ben, looking at Peter, whose eyes were rolling back into his skull.

  ‘Good,’ said the smuggler, letting go of Peter. He staggered back, holding his neck and gasping like a cat with a fur ball. The smuggler whistled and five men appeared from the shadows.