The Banshee

Australia, 1884

My dear sister,

I write to you with heavy news. I am currently staying at an inn on the docks until my Jim has regained his strength for indeed he is quite poorly and I fear the worst.

I do not know what to think. The captain and crew of the Nemesis were all quite shaken, and many besides my Jim have taken ill or have sworn off whaling for the rest of the season. It is all quite strange.

Even stranger is that they returned with a woman on board, an American, or at least she sounds like one, who introduced herself as Ms. Yvette Smith. She is a strange woman and the only reason why I worry for my son as much as I do for I fear his affliction stems not from any physical ailment.

You may think me senseless dear sister but after what Ms. Smith has told me about her terrible voyage along with Jim’s private journal you will find that I have good reason to believe that my son is indeed cursed.

I have transcribed Jim’s journal entries as best I can below as they pertain to the voyage after Ms. Smith joined them.

Aug 10, 1884

Capt. fished a young woman out of the sea today. Said she was from an American trading ship headed back from China. Didn’t say much else, but if she did I didn’t hear. Some of the men say that she is really pretty and others whisper that she’ll bring bad luck to the voyage. I think she just looks like a drowned rat.

Aug 12, 1884

Saw the woman talking to the navigator today. Looks much less like a drown rat. Heard her say she was the trading ship’s interpreter but that they cast her out in a dinghy with very little food and water over their belief that she had brought misfortune to their venture.

I was able to ask her later what the misfortune was but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it and only mumbled about fog.

Aug 15, 1884

No whales have been spotted for a week, Capt. has set a new course heading west. The woman introduced herself as Ms. Yvette Smith. Seems really nice and has been helping the cook with meals. Not sure if the food has improved or not but the rest of the crew thinks so.

Aug 30, 1884

Caught a whale and spent a good many days harvesting the oil. Everyone was very careful not to fall into the water as sharks came to feed on the whale have been circling the ship since we hosted the massive animal.

Ms. Smith didn’t care for the smell and kept herself confined to her quarters or the cook’s galley.

Sept 2, 1884

Fog bank was seen rolling in from the north. Ms. Smith has been acting agitated. Must remind her of when she was tossed overboard. The Capt., the cook, and myself, reassured her that we were not going to do the same over a little fog.

Sept 3, 1884

Woke up to the heaviest fog any of us have ever seen. Ms. Smith has become very uneasy to the point that the Capt. had me watch over her all day. A most agreeable task, but Ms. Smith barely spoke to me today. She kept scanning the fog instead. I finally convinced her to go below deck but I don’t recall her eating at all today. I hope she improves tomorrow.

Sept 4, 1884

May the Lord preserve us! I finally got Ms. Smith to tell me what happened to her and she spun such a tail that I can scarcely believe it!

A ghost ship, she claims treads the waters. Cursed to never find land including the ocean floor and so she never sinks! Ms. Smith says her ship, captained by her father, met up with this ghost ship and was hounded by it day and night despite the ghost ship having no crew!

When the rations started to run out the crew turned on her, saying that through her communication with the heretics over in China she had cursed them to suffer. The crew had wanted to tie her up and throw her overboard to drown but her father at least managed to convince them to set her afloat instead. She said we found her two weeks later.

I do not understand what kind of man could set his own daughter adrift but in a way I am glad. I have grown fond of Ms. Smith and am glad to have met such a strong willed woman. I am not sure I believe in her ghost ship but I hope the fog disappears soon so as to ease her nerves.

Sept 5, 1884

The Banshee is real! Ms. Smith’s ghost ship made an appearance near twilight. At first we believed it to be another whaling ship, lost in the fog. Closer inspection revealed her to be a trader ship in sorry state and in need of repair.

Capt. ignored Ms. Smith’s pleas to leave at once as the Capt. wanted to salvage the ship and sell it at port and ordered three men to go aboard and see if the ship was truly deserted. They never came back from the Banshee. The Capt. then sent eight more men to investigate, myself included. Ms. Smith tried to keep me from going onboard but I’m afraid my curiosity was too great. We did not find our missing shipmates, they seemed to have vanished into thin air, but we did find the Capt.’s log and a journal from one of the crew of the ship.

We secured the tow lines and made our way back onto the Nemesis without further incident.

Sept 6, 1884

Fog continues to worsen. The night watch has reported that Ms. Smith has taken up pacing the deck at night watching the ropes that lead to the Banshee as the fog makes the ship impossible to see even in the day.

Sept 7, 1884

The fog became so thick that we could not see across the ship. I do not think Ms. Smith has slept since before the Banshee appeared. All she does is pace the deck, sometimes she prays as well. I think the crew would take more notice of her if they were not so put off by the strange weather. I have not felt myself today and Capt. gave me leave to rest. I hope I am better by morning.

Sept 12, 1884

I hope that Mr. Carter will forgive me in writing in his journal, but I fear that it would be a disservice to him and the rest of this crew if I did not keep a record of what has transpired on this ship before we disembark tomorrow. As I have not read the earlier entries in his journal out of respect for his privacy I will have to start at the beginning.

My name is Yvette Smith, I was fished out of the ocean by the crew of the Nemesis, after being put there by my own father and his crew for the sole crime of speaking a foreign tongue and being a woman when we were plagued by a ghost ship. Thankfully the crew of the Nemesis had proven to be upstanding and God fearing men and I have spent many pleasant days with them after my ordeal before the ghost ship, the Banshee, followed me here. I have no other explanation for it appearing than that. I pleaded with the Capt. to leave the cursed ship behind us with all haste but he would not hear of it. I could do even less to persuade Mr. Carter, whom I must admit a certain fondness for, from boarding it.

They do not understand as I do the cursed nature of the ship and those who board her, and anyone I have ever tried explaining it too has, at best, written me off as a woman with an over active imagination, or diagnosed me with hysterics at worst. As such I carry such guilt for not trying again here in an attempt to spare Mr. Carter and the rest of this kind crew this terrible misfortune.

I had heard of the Banshee before. She was a tea and opium trader between my United States and China. She left Boston Harbor in 1837 Captained by a cruel man named Scarch and a crew of 28 men. She was never seen in port again.

There was a rumor, however, that the Capt. Scarch and his officers stole ancient pagan relics and were cursed by the pagan worshipers to never sail to, or set foot on land again.

Slowly the crew died from hunger and thirst but not before tying up Capt. Scarch, throwing him, and the gold pagan figurines, overboard to drown in an attempt to break the curse, a fate I narrowly escaped myself.

Rumor has it that the story came from a young cabin boy, the only surviving member of the crew who had jumped ship, whether in an another attempt to break the curse or in an act of desperation I do not know, but it is said that the crew who picked him up described him as mad beyond all reason, rambling on and on about the Capt.’s ghost walking the decks at night damning them all to Hell.

Now that Mr. Carter has taken ill along with the other seven men who went aboard that accursed ship I have been in fear for his life.

The only bright news I can finish this entry on is that as some point in the day on Sept 8 the ropes towing the Banshee went slack. The rope was uncut. The ship had simply vanished and the fog dissipated allowing us to find our heading once more and return to their native Australia. I hope that we arrive soon and that Mr. Carter can recover quickly once we reach land.

My dear sister, pray for our deliverance from this plague. I would end my letter there but there is yet one more thing in the journal that chills me to the bone. It is not written in my Jim’s strong letters, nor Ms. Smith’s graceful ones, but in a strange hand on the last page,

IT SHALL BE MINE.