Go For Stories

Cold. Dark. His lungs burned. He woke, choking and struggling, submerged in briny water. He tried to move. Pain seared through his wrists bound behind his back. He bucked and seized, fighting against his bonds. His chest felt ready to explode, his throat tightening with the effort to hold his breath. He thrashed and shouted. A thick stream of bubbles escaped his mouth and rolled over his face and through his long, floating hair. The bubbles obscured his vision before disappearing upwards; rising to the light above.

His vision blurred at the edges and his head felt heavy. It wouldn’t be long now, he couldn’t fight anymore. The knots were too tight, his muscles too weak. He put all he had left into a final strain against the ropes. He felt his final breath forcing its way out of him, his cheeks and veins bulged, his head grew hot and dizzy. With a groan, he gave up and released the breath, replacing it with a lungful of seawater.

His head felt near bursting, images played across his eyes; images of his past and things that would never come to happen. Flashes of light and streaks of colour dazzled his failing sense. He slumped forward, twitching. Twitching. Dying.

Or so he thought. The end never came. Eternal black did not reign and his lungs no longer burned from lack of air. He didn’t breathe, but it seemed he no longer needed to. Captain Bart “Gold Shanks” Williams, it appeared, was one with the ocean upon which he thrived for so long. He opened his eyes and lifted his head. Despite the darkness of the ocean, his vision was clear and strong.

He was surrounded by the floating remnants of his ship, his beautiful ship. He cursed and a jet of water spewed from his mouth. He had fought his whole life for that ship. And it was a well-won vessel to be sure. The Whore’s Drawers was the finest craft this side of the Caribbean. With even the scantest of crews, she could sail faster and fight harder than any he had seen. But she had not such a crew, boasting a belly full of pirates, she was the terror of the seas and any port she came to visit. Now pieces of her drifted by him, back and forth, singing silent songs of anguish and loss. It was enough to bring forth a single tear from his eye. A tear that washed away and would never be seen, or tasted upon his dark moustache once he was done with his lament.

Amongst the wreck, his crew bobbed in the water. Most floated by lifeless and incomplete, leaving behind wisps of blood that faded into the brine. This sight quickened his heart. Where there was blood, there would be sharks come to feast. Bart may not be drowning, but he sure as brimstone would succumb to the bite of the white death. He turned his head from side to side, thrashing against his bonds, straining to free even one hand, anything that he could use for defence.

It was fruitless, his arms were weaker than a minnow’s fart. All he served was to cut his wrists to bleeding. The blood now swirled about his body, a perfect lure for a perfect creature of death.

He wasn’t left long before his fears came for him. At first, it was a sliver of grey that flashed past in the distance. Then another. And another. Each time getting nearer. A crewman disappeared in a fine mist of red, torn to pieces before him. Something touched his leg and he screamed. Looking down, he saw the fin of the shark come for its meal. He had seen sharks up close before. Many a time they had caught the large ones for food and sport. He knew how big they were. But down here, down here it was much larger. Much more terrifying and real.

It flicked its tail against his leg and spun towards him, its spine bending near in half as it did. Row upon row of teeth sharper than any cutlass revealed themselves. Each row cutting the path to the pink throat of the shark.

He kicked out, missing the mark by a long shot. The shark opened its mouth wider and surged towards him. Captain Goldshanks screwed his eyes shut and turned his head away. If nothing else, he hoped it would be quick and thanked his fate that he would die at sea.

It was not his time. Death was not swift. He unclenched his jaw and his arsehole as he opened his eyes. The shark lunged and bit, snapping its jaws shut not a foot away from him, stirring the water into a vortex with each bite, unable to reach as if stopped by a wall of glass.

Bart didn’t know what had happened, but he knew that he was still alive. That was enough.

“Hah!” he shouted, not thinking it strange that his voice was clear beneath the waves. “Eat shit, ye filthy beast.”

The shark made two more attempts before giving up and swimming away with a swish of disdain. It made quick sport of a floundering sailor and disappeared into the dark below, leaving a trail of crimson in its wake.

Now that he was safe and there were no more sharks to be seen, he took the time to consider his surroundings. There was no denying his position under the waves in what must be a hell of a storm. The ceiling of water above rose and fell with a choppy fervour, sloshing detritus and bodies back and forth. Some of his crew still fought the waves, stirring their own little eddies with their furious kicks. Some were lucky enough to have caught a floating piece of the Whore and their lower halves were calmer, yet still gave the occasional kick to keep on course. To where, Bart could not say. They were days out of port and anyone caught in this water would be dead by nightfall, whether from predatior or the cold, it made no difference.

Sections of sail drifted beneath the waves, still clinging to masts and booms. They billowed in the waves like the ghosts he was so frightened of as a wee child. He shuddered at the thought. It was these very ghosts that sent him to the sea in the first place. He had thought ghosts afraid of the water. He had soon discovered the error in his thinking. Sailors were more superstitious than land dwellers, only rightfully so, it seemed.

His focus shifted downwards. Though not so deep that he couldn’t see the surface, he was deep enough that the inky black had a firm hold on his senses. He was strapped to a tall pole, not unlike the mast on his beloved ship. Looking to his feet, he could not see more than twenty feet below. The depths owned everything that fell below, devouring ship and crew alike; a tale all too common to such a seasoned sailor as he.

He was propped atop a wooden carving that held more than a passing familiarity to him. The beak of the figurehead was his perch; the outstretched wings framing his view of the darkness beneath, curling out beside him as if they were his own. Here, standing on his own symbol, the bizarre situation in which he found himself struck home. He floated beneath the waves he ruled for so long, unable to breathe, but not needing to. His crew struggled and died above him in bursts of bubbles and blood. His hair floated with grace about his head as time stopped and he took in his lot. This was not an ordinary day for Ol’ Goldshanks.

But how had it happened?

The witch. It had to be her.

What was his last memory before finding himself submerged thus? He was on the deck, they were all on deck, gathered around a lone figure lashed to the mainmast. Her hair was wild and her eyes wilder. She spat at them with a gibbering tongue. Some ancient dialect forgotten by civilisation, no doubt. Bart stood before her, cutlass aimed at her dark throat. Her skin, he remembered, looked soft and inviting. He would have her there, he thought, were it not for what happened last time she was touched. His first mate stood back, still cupping his bleeding face, the teeth marks hidden by his hand.

“What would ye have me do, little lady? Set ye free?”

She spewed  more of her gibberish. Then, taking a sobering breath, she smiled.

“Aye. Free. Free me, live you.” She licked her cracked lips and cackled. “Live. Die. Live, die. Free. Free. Free free free-”

“Shut yer yap, woman, lest I shut it for ye.”

He poked the tip of his sword into her flesh. It bit in, revealing a single drop of blood. She stopped her chant and looked down, charting the progress of the blood as it ran down her chest and into her torn shift. There, it soaked into the cloth, the red patch growing and growing until it covered her entire front. Down the bottom of the fabric, another drop fell. Perhaps it was the same drop, escaping now that it had done its work. Bart’s eyes and the witch’s were as one, watching it fall through the air before it hit the deck with a little splat. Her smile widened and she shuddered before them all.

“No live now. You die. All die.” She looked around with a slight shrug. “Sorry.”

The last thing Bart could remember from that moment was her laugh, echoing out across the wide blue yonder. It sounded all the way to the horizon and back again, echoing through his head and bringing his hands to his ears.

Now, he screamed as the very same laugh clawed its way back through his memories. He shook his head and bellowed as his brain fought to relieve itself from his skull. Laughing and laughing, her voice rattled through his head, before spreading through his entire body. He screamed and thrashed. Thrashed and screamed.

“Aarrrrgh!” His throat hurt with the shout, but it was all he could do to relieve the pressure building in his head.

And then …

… there she was, floating before him in perfect silence. The same wildness could be seen in her countenance, though she now radiated calm happiness, her face aglow with beauty. Her hair, like his own, drifted through the water, dancing with the rhythm of the sea. She held out her arms to him.

He couldn’t stop himself. He pulled his hands free of the bindings with remarkable ease and reached for her hands. He tried to stop, to pull back with righteous indignation, but he was compelled. He took her hands in his own and glared at her with his one good eye.

“What is it ye want, harlot?”

She cocked her head to one side.

“What I want?” Her voice was smooth and ancient, full of wisdom beyond her evident years. “I have it. What I want is … you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You.” She released his hands, which snapped back together behind him. In an instant, he felt the bonds once more around his wrists. Free of his grip, she held her arms outwards. “You … and them.”

“Them?”

He tore his gaze from her eyes and looked beyond his normal field of vision. In the distance, a shape formed. It was tall and narrow, like a mast, like the mast to which he stood strapped. As the vision cleared he saw another man on this. His stood, bound as Bart himself, with his head slumped to his chest. But he wasn’t dead. Skeletal and rotted, aye, but not dead. To the side was another such man, victim to no less rot than the first. To his side was another and to his side another. As Goldshanks’ eyes focussed they uncovered more and more bound men in various stages of decomposition. They formed a large circle under the waves, coming all the way back to him. Some stood upright, staring at them with interest, others appeared to sleep, yet more growled and thrashed where they stood. These last were the ones that retained most of their flesh.

“What? What is it? What is the meaning of …” The words eluded him.

“I bleed,” the witch said, her voice innocent and sweet. “You make blood. They make blood.”

“They, they hurt ye too, did they?”

She nodded.

“Gods bless ‘em!” he snarled. Drawing back, he hocked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it at her face. It caught in the water just before him and drifted away, falling to pieces in the saltwater. She ignored this.

“You are last,” she said. “Circle is made. Whole.”

“What the devil are-” He stopped short as a deep wail came from beneath his feet. It was quiet, but he felt it through the figurehead at his feet. The witch floated back and smiled.

“He come. My love.”

Without warning she vanished, her joy echoing through his skull once more, fading until gone from his mind forever.

Replacing her laugh was something else, something far more sinister. The wailing sound grew. It was sad, yet old and powerful. It was the wail of something that had gone without for so long and now it had been given its freedom. It was the sound of stories and gods. He looked down, trying to make out something through the stygian gloom. There was nothing to look at, yet the sound grew louder still, reaching a crescendo that near split his skull. Blood swirled around his head that had broken free through his ears and he fought to release his hands once more. He leaned his head to the side, trying to press his shoulder against his ear to block the side, then he tried the other. It was no good. The other stricken men around him howled and fought as well. Straining against their bonds.

Then, as quickly as the sound had appeared, it stopped. All present grew silent. Even the waves above seemed to still their undulations for a moment. Bart looked to his feet once more. From the black of the deep a single shape took form before his eyes. It snaked its way into the light, twirling and seeking. Long and thin it was, covered in scars and lumps. On the underside were hundreds of suckers, no, thousands of them. The tentacle came closer and Captain Williams realised just how large the thing was. As the writhing limb passed by his side, he saw the suckers were at least big enough to swallow his head in its entirety. They moved independent of each other, mouthing and gulping; giant leathery rings that hungered for something, something he didn’t know but could guess if pressed to it.

The tentacle curled past him and stretched out to the thrashing sailors above. They wouldn’t have seen what came for them, but they would be certain to have heard it. The tentacle reached out and plucked a crewman from the surface, dragging him down into the brine. His arms reached out and his eyes widened with horror. They pleaded with Bart as the sailor passed on his way to his death. But what could Bart do? He was no longer in charge.

The pirate Henry, blew what was left of his air out in a string of bubbles as he disappeared into the gloom. Immediately, another tentacle curled itself into view. This was faster, more confident. It shot upwards, past the dozens of desperate victims strapped to poles and snatched another sailor to his death. This was followed by half a dozen more. They writhed and curled, knotted and unknotted, fought each other to reach the food first. Crewman after crewman fought his last as the beast reached out for its meal with arms so long the body could not be seen.

Bart vomited and the mess hung about his face like the spirit of his countless victims, taunting him. He watched helpless through the sick as the last of his crew were drug down to the depths of the ocean they once ruled with fear and blood. One more, the last that Bart could see, was plucked from the surface. The tentacle coiled itself up and out of sight beneath, leaving only a few bubbles in its wake. There was a moment of silence. The screaming inhabitants of the poles had grown still, as had Goldshanks himself. They looked down and waited. Waited.

A burst of blood shot upwards through the water. It was so large it encapsulated the entire circle. They all coughed and spat as their mouths filled and their skin turned red. Bart gulped in a mouthful of blood and water, cursing the fact that he couldn’t drown in it. His head rocked back, as if thrown by the force of an exploding cannon. A large shape, a leviathan form blurred past, grazing the outer edges of the circle of undead pirates. It was so large that Bart’s brain couldn’t fathom it. He strained his eyes in an effort to focus on the creature, but it was too fast, too large. It burst out of the ocean, the force enough to draw all the water behind it, exposing Bart to the air for but a moment before it all fell in a vicious downpour.

He waited for the squid-thing to return, to finish him off. They had unleashed an unfathomable creature on the world and it would be sure to feed again before it left. He gazed at the others surrounding him. They all looked around as he did, waiting for the beast’s return.

Waiting.

Waiting for a death that would never come.