The Lorelei

On the third day of her supply run to the eastern out-ports, the Lorelei ran afoul of the worst gale to come raging out of the north-west in a quarter century. Squalls had been forecast by the maritime weather service, but when skipper George Harmony saw the height and color of the clouds bearing down upon the little vessel, he knew the storm was going to be worse than predicted.

He might have turned back, but they were very nearly half-way to their next port-of-call at St. Albans, and, in addition to the usual supplies, they were carrying medicines for the little mission hospital there. George, an experienced sailor, and a veteran of North Atlantic convoy runs during the war, decided to press on.

The Lorelei was a sturdy Peterhead vessel, one of the great workhorses of northern waters, and she was built to weather heavy seas. By the middle of the afternoon, however, George gave up any hope of reaching St. Albans and turned tail to run before the storm. Even with the wind from astern, and sailing with the waves rather than athwart them, the vessel was regularly losing steerage-way when she slid sideways in the deepening toughs. Reluctantly, George ordered a dozen barrels of fuel-oil lashed to the forward deck to be cut loose.

Regular meals were off for the time being of course, and, at suppertime, Frankie O’Neil, his first mate, made the perilous climb up to the wheelhouse with a satchel containing a thermos of hot tea and a cold sausage sandwich slathered with HP Sauce. He took the wheel as George wolfed down his sandwich and drank the tea straight from the mouth of the flask.

“Oh, you’re a lovely man for that, Frankie-boy,’ he shouted through a mouthful of bread and sausage. “How’s young Billy doing?”

Billy was George’s nephew. Normally, the Lorelei was crewed by three, with the third member running the galley and tending to the diesel engines. At present, however, the normal occupant of that position had taken a tumble from a wharf ladder and was laid up for a good six-weeks at least. Frankie was deputized to the engineering duties in his absence, but Billy was brought along to act as ‘scullery slut’, and to lend a hand with the day-to-day business of deck work.

“A wee bit green about the gills, he is.” Frankie chuckled. “Left two or three good loads of chum in the lee scuppers too, by my count,” he added. “Still, he’s a good young lad, though. He’s doing his job.”

“Aye, well, not much to do now but ride out the blow,” said George. “Tell the boy to get his head down for now. He won’t get much sleep with all this bouncing about, but he might as well get some rest avoid doing himself an injury fetching up against a bulkhead or the like.”

Frankie gave George a casual half-salute, passed the wheel back to his skipper, then disappeared back below. The wind had veered slightly and, as the storm wore on, it took all of George’s concentration to keep the little vessel from foundering. For nearly eight hours he battled on until, finally, when they appeared to have passed through the tail end of the storm, he gratefully relinquished the helm to his steadfast first-mate and went below to catch a few winks.

2.

It was after daybreak when Billy shook George awake. The light coming in through his tiny cabin scuttle was pale and weak, but he fancied he could see that little color had returned to his nephews cheeks. The lad also seemed unusually animated.

“Uncle Frankie says you best come up top,” he announced. George grunted.

“Alright, tell him I’m on my way,” he said. “And for Chrissake, call him Frankie. He’s not your Uncle, and you aren’t a little boy anymore.”

George swung himself out of his bunk and reached for his pea-jacket. It was obvious that the storm had abated, but he was suddenly struck by the fact that the vessel seemed as completely becalmed as if she were tied up to her berth in harbor. He also noted that the normal thrum of the engines had dropped to the low, chugging rhythm of disengaged idling, and there seemed to be no forward motion at all. This, presumably, had something to do with why he was being summoned.

“Okay, lead on, Billy boy” he said, pulling on his watchman’s cap.

Once on deck, George was surprised to see that the little craft was completely fogged in. The flat, grey sea was visible within a circle of a hundred or so yards around them, but, beyond that, there was nothing but a sepulchral, white velvet limbo. The air, oppressively heavy and damp, seemed to deaden all sound, and it had a curious electrical quality to it, like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. In this case, though, the effect seemed scores of times stronger, and it produced an unpleasant coppery taste in the mouth. It was an unsettling effect, and George felt an increasing sense of unease as he climbed up to the wheelhouse.

“So, what’s the deal, Frankie?” he asked when he swung open the door and stepped inside. Frankie, sitting hunched over the wheel in the helmsman’s chair gave his skipper a nod by way of greeting.

“Damned if I know, George” he replied. The LORAN is whacked right out of it, for a start. One minute it puts us a few miles off the coast of Africa, and the next it says were are somewhere in downtown Toronto. Same with the gyroscope and the radio. They are running and all, as in they’re getting power, but they’re all screwed up otherwise.”

George looked up at the gyroscope display over the helm and saw that the numbers were slowly but steadily climbing. If the readings were correct, then the boat ought to be changing course by a degree every second or so, but he could see, through the wheelhouse windscreen, that the vessel wasn’t turning at all.

“Odd, that,” grunted George. “You suppose we took some water into the electrical system somehow?” Frankie shook his head.

“All the rest of the electrical stuff up here is on the same circuit and it seems fine to me,” he said. “Besides, take a look at the compass”.

The Lorelei, in addition to the electronic navigational equipment, also had an old-style binnacle on the starboard side of the little wheel-house. George stepped behind Frankie and then bent to get a reading. To his surprise, he saw that the compass rose, like the gyroscope display, was slowly turning in a circle.

“Holy crap,” he ejaculated. “What do you suppose is causing all this? Some sort of solar radiation thing, or something?”

Frankie shrugged. “You got me, skip,” he replied. “Never seen anything like it before”.

At that moment, Billy’s voice came to them from the forepeak, muffled and indistinct. They looked up to see the lad leaning over the bulwark on the port side, gesturing excitedly towards something ahead. George opened the starboard wheel-house door and stepped out onto the wing.

“What is it, Billy boy?” he shouted.

“There’s a lady’, the lad yelled back at him, his voice curiously muted in the sodden air. “A lady in the water. There … dead ahead”

George peered in the direction that Billy was pointing but could make out nothing. He cupped his hands around his mouth megaphone-style and shouted back.

“Okay Billy, just keep pointing at her so Frankie can steer towards her position.” He turned to Frankie at the helm. “Bring her alongside on the starboard waist,” he told him. “Once she’s there, I’ll grab a hold. Just have Billy come down to help me once she’s where we want her.”

Frankie nodded, his eyes fixed on Billy on the prow, and George hustled down the ladder onto the starboard weather deck, grabbing a boat hook from the deck locker on his way. At the waist, he grasped the top of the bulwark with his free hand and leaned out to peer ahead. At first, he could see nothing, but as the vessel inched slowly head, he was suddenly able to make out something low in the water that looked very much like a discarded burlap sack. A few dozen feet later, however, and it was suddenly obvious he was looking at the blonde tresses of a woman floating face down with her arms stretched out to either side like sodden wings.

Up in the wheel-house, Frankie had thrown the engines into dead slow astern, bringing the vessel almost to a standstill as the corpse came alongside George. The woman appeared to be wearing some sort of thin, white garment, a blouse perhaps, and George manipulated his boathook to snag the material beneath the collar. He could hear Billy come around the aft-end of main deckhouse, and then stop, several feet away, as though reluctant to come closer.

“Is … is she dead, Uncle George?” he asked.

George bit down on the urge to ask the silly little ninny if he thought she was just out here in mid-ocean all alone for a little swim, but he restrained himself and simply nodded grimly.

“Aye Billy, she’s dead.” he replied. “Now buck up, lad, and come over here and take hold of this boathook while I get a line around her. She ain’t about to bite ye, me, nor no-one else, so look lively, and don’t let her get away.”

To his credit, Billy didn’t hesitate. He came and took the control of the hook with a firm grasp, but he took more than a quick glance down into the water before he hurriedly averted his eyes. George, working quickly, cut the line from a Kisbey ring mounted on the main deckhouse, and fashioned one end into a running bowline.

“Alright, lad,” he said to Billy. As soon as I get this over one of the arms and head of this poor woman, unhook her and step aside right smartly.”

A moment later, the operation was deftly completed and the floating woman was tethered by a loop of stout hemp running around her chest just beneath her arms. Frankie had cut the main engines as soon as he had maneuvered into position and he joined the other two on the waist just as George was making the end of his line fast to a cleat.

“Are we going to tow her, then, Uncle George?” piped up Billy.

“Jeez, no, Billy. Don’t be so friggin’ daft” sighed George. “We’re going to haul her aboard. Now, be a good lad and fetch us a good piece of oil cloth from the gear locker.”

As the lad scampered off without another word, Frankie squinted at his skipper.

“We’re bringing her on deck?” he asked. “Then what? Not much we can do for her now, is there, Georgie boy? Or were you thinking of sewing her up in the oilcloth along with some weight and then giving her a proper sea burial? I’m up for that, I guess… we could say a few nice words and give her a right proper send-off and all.”

“Oh, c’mon Frankie. We can’t do that,” said George. “There might be family wondering what happened to this poor woman, don’t you think? We got to get her to shore as soon as we can. I figure that after we abandoned course yesterday, we were headed downwind on a heading of about 145 degrees, and running at about 8 knots for upwards of ten hours. I’d say that likely puts us somewhere in the deep channel just south of the outer bank. If we steer due west from here, we should land with a dozen or so miles north or south of Chester Inlet. They got a doctor there.”

“Well, that may be,” replied Frankie. But until this fog clears, or we get the electrics back working, we can’t tell west from east. And, even if we left right this moment, it’s going to be a good haul to anywhere on shore. It’s bad luck having a woman on a boat to begin with… but a dead one… and for who knows how long? Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it, George.”

“Oh, for the love o’ Jesus, Frank. Don’t talk so loose. Next you’ll be telling me her spirit will be haunting us for dragging her onboard, or the demons and ghosties of of Davy Jones’s locker will be after us to get her back.”

Billy returned just then a roll of heavy cloth in his arms, and George turned to him. “You don’t believe none of that rot, do you, Billy boy? Ghosts of the dead and such?”

Billy attempted a confident grin as he shook his head, but he looked less than certain. George shook his head in mock despair at the pair of them and took the cloth from Billy, unrolling it and laying it out on the deck. He waved Frankie over to the bulwark.

“Alright, boyo,” he said. “Let’s ease her up slowly. She don’t look bloated from what I can see, but she may tear apart if she’s been in the water for a good while.”

The distance from the waterline to the top of the bulwark was almost five feet and the pair had to work the line hand over hand between them to haul the waterlogged corpse close enough to grasp directly. The woman, whoever she might have been, seemed not to have decayed too far as yet, but her skin had become a mottled, greenish-grey, and there was a faint low-tide smell about her. Her head lolled back when she reached a foot or so out of the water, revealing a face of a relatively young woman not seriously ravaged by immersion. Her eyes were closed, thankfully, but her mouth was agape and the tongue that protruded ever so slightly had the appearance of a turgid, grey slug.

A few more feet and Frankie and George were able to reach down and grab the woman beneath her arms and haul her over the bulwark. What had looked like a blouse to George initially now appeared to be the remnants of a nightdress. It was patent to the middle of her abdomen but had been torn to mere rags beyond that, leaving the woman effectively naked below the waist. Billy blushed at the sight and tried not to stare as the two men carried the woman over to the oilcloth and laid her gently down on top of it.

“What in Jesus has she got on her feet?” Georgie asked, looking down at the curiously antiquated boots the corpse was sporting. They were black leather and had a row of buttons up the outer sides instead of straps or laces. “Like something my great-grannie would have wore,” he observed.

“Maybe she came from one of the smaller out-ports,” Frankie shrugged. “They’re not usually up on the latest fads and fashions. Could be those boots have been handed down mother to daughter for a generation or three.”

George turned to Billy. “Alright, stop gawping there lad and come lend a hand. Let’s get her into the saloon. We can lay her out on the table and wrap her up a bit better.”

“Oh Jeez… the Saloon, Georgie?” Frankie groaned. “Right where we have our meals and everything?”

“Well, what the hell else are we going to do?” demanded George. “We can’t leave her out on the deck like she was a load of trash, can we?. Show some friggin’ respect, for God’s sake. We are hardly likely to be tucking into a grand feast at the table in the next few days. We can grab sandwiches in the galley and eat in the wheelhouse. Now quit your Jesus bellyaching and let’s get this poor woman seen to proper.”

3.

As the afternoon drew to a close, the fog seemed to become even more dense and the strange electric quality of the air intensified, producing nervous edginess and palpable sense of unease among the three men. At the normal suppertime, although nobody was particularly hungry, George insisted that they have a bit of something to keep their spirits up. Billy repaired to the little galley and managed to rustle up some bread, cheese and pickles, along with a jug of hot, sweet tea.

The dead woman had been placed upon the long table in the saloon. In a past life, the Lorelei had had a much larger crew and the old table, cork-topped to keep dishes from sliding, could easily seat ten. There wasn’t quite enough oil cloth to properly wrap the corpse shroud-style, but they were able to cover her, at least, and the result appeared sufficient for the time being. At six, when Billy announced that the grub was ready, the three made their way up to the wheelhouse.

“I think we best get used to the idea of being stuck here overnight,” George announced, after an inspection of the navigational equipment. The other two contemplated this in gloomy silence for several long minutes.

“Supposing the fog lifts this evening and we can star navigate,” Frankie began. “Think we can make a run for Chester tonight, Georgie?”

George contemplated the idea as he masticated his final hunk of bread and cheese. He was about to make a reply when the lights in the wheelhouse suddenly flickered and went out, and the soft background static of the radio set went silent.

“Ah, crotch rot on a friggin’ stick!” swore George. “Don’t that just put the cherry on the goddamn cake…”

There was very little of the day remaining and the trio were just shadows to each other in the dim light of the wheelhouse. George grabbed the heavy yellow flashlight from its place over the starboard door and flicked the switch back and forth to no avail. Frankie, who always carried a small penlight in the top pocket of his watch-coat, tried the same thing with the same result.

“Bugger me, Georgie. This ain’t right,” he whispered. George, himself a little unnerved by this bizarre turn of events, turned to Billy.

“Listen lad, run below to the locker by the galley pantry. There’s a little oil lamp in there. It should be full, I think. Grab it, and bring it back here with some matches.”

He turned back to Frankie as Billy stepped through the open doorway onto the port wing and was about to order his second-mate to go below and tend to the generators when there was a sudden sharp smacking sound, almost like an egg being thrown hard against concrete. He spun around and both he and Frankie looked up to see Billy framed in the doorway. Even in the gloom, they could see the steely glint of a harpoon head and three-inches of shaft protruding from the luckless boy’s right eye. For a horrible few seconds, the lad managed to stay upright, then, as a crimson gout welled up around the shaft, he collapsed heavily to the deck.

Frank and Georgie both gaped in horror at the crumpled body but had no time to do anything further before the Lorelei was suddenly struck hard on the port bow. The impact was vicious enough to knock the two men off their feet and it caused the little vessel to heel sharply, and steeply, to starboard. George, acting on instinct alone, scrambled up the slope of the deck and made ready to clamber out of the wheelhouse, but, after a few agonizing moments of hanging at a precarious angle, the boat began to right itself. As the rim of the bulwark dropped, George was suddenly able to see what had hit them and the sight struck him numb with horror.

The Lorelei had been rammed by a much larger vessel. Not a freighter, or a ferry, or any of the sorts of vessels one might expect in these waters, but rather a wooden, two-masted, whaler of the sort that George’s grandfather would have recognized. Its timbers were a slimy, greenish black and the sails were little more than hanging, discolored rags. It loomed over them like some dark, horrible beast, seeming almost to glow with a pale phosphorescent through the wisps of fog. It was a fearsome sight but far more terrible than the ship itself, were the grotesque horrors that were the crew.

The grim figures lining the railing of the ghostly vessel, stood silent and motionless, staring over towards the Lorelei with blank, seemingly sightless eyes. One, directly across from George, had no lower jaw, and his ragged shirt, open at the front, revealed a rib-cage that was all but stripped of flesh. He, as with all his companions from stem to stern, were in some stage of decomposition, and they all seemed to have the strange green glow as the whaler itself. George was transfixed by the sight but there was a sudden clatter on the foredeck and he looked down to see a grappling hook being pulled back to snag then under the rim of the bulwark. Behind him, Frankie squawked in terror and fled through the starboard doorway.

The crew of the nightmare ship were animating now. George could see the figure who had thrown the grappling hook pulling the line taut and making it fast to the whaler’s bow. Its motions were deliberate, but they were also curiously jerky, like rusty machinery needing oil. There was another clatter far back on the stern, signaling the arrival of another grappling hook, and, seconds later, George saw the dead men of the ghastly crew hauling on the line, pulling the Lorelei’s stern towards them.

For the moment, George was completely frozen into immobility by the impossibility of what he was seeing, but he was suddenly galvanized into action when a third grappling hook came smashing through the wheelhouse window, showering him with broken glass. He struggled to his feet and followed his second mate out the starboard door and down the ladder.

Frankie was about ten feet ahead, standing with his back to bulwarks, and visibly shaking in terror as he stared over the top of the deckhouse, watching the grotesque crew of the whaler amass along her railing in preparation for boarding. It was clear to George, see that they were going to be overrun in very short order, and looked about him in desperation, trying to see anything that might be used as a weapon. Suddenly, an idea came to him, and he shouted to his terrified first-mate.

“Frankie. The flare guns... Get yourself one of the flare guns!”

There were several flare guns aboard the Lorelei, all strategically placed for emergency deployment. There was one in the locker by the galley, one just inside the engine room hatch on the stern, and another on in a box on the outside of the wheelhouse. The latter, however, though the closest for George, was located on the port side, and was thus now only scant feet from the whaler. It would be close, but George thought he might make it in time.

He looked back, just before climbing the starboard ladder again, and saw that Frankie, had clearly not registered his words but was simply fleeing aft in a blind panic. He yelled his name one more time but there was no response, and so he gave up the effort as a lost cause and hurriedly clambered up the ladder to the wheelhouse.

Once on the starboard wing, George could see that the ghostly boarding party were already swarming over the side of the whaler and on to the Lorelei’s decks. All were are armed in some fashion, some with cutlasses, some with belaying pins, and several more with harpoons. They seemed to grin with the awful rictus of death as they clambered aboard, and those who had more than empty eye-sockets, peered upwards at George with a terrible blank malevolence, the smell of their decaying flesh filling the air.

George started to cross the wheelhouse, hoping to reach the box just outside the far door, but before he could, a half-skeleton, clothed in rags, and wielding a fearsome dagger, dropped onto the wing before him. It chattered its teeth menacingly as it advanced but George, unprepared for combat with animated bones, turned tail and ran back the way he had come with a strangled cry of horror.

At the bottom of the wheelhouse ladder he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of Frankie uttering a short, shrill scream. A moment later, his terrified first-mate stumbled backward into view from around the end of the main deckhouse and fetched up hard against the bulwark, a swarm of rotten corpses two steps behind. As Frankie grabbed for the upper railing, as though to launch himself over the side, one ghostly crewman, missing all the flesh on the left-side of his face, swung a two-handed flensing knife in a whistling arc and neatly decapitated the man. A thick jet of blood surged from the ragged neck stump, and Frankie’s head struck the deck with a loud thump, bouncing almost all the way to George’s feet.

For a moment, George saw the world swim before his eyes as though he were about to faint, but the approach of the stinking horde on the after deck, and the bony clatter of the dagger wielding skeleton behind him gave him the strength to move. There were only two choices for him in that instant. The first was over the side, which meant an inevitable death by drowning, and the other was the sanctuary of the main deckhouse. It might even be, he thought, that he could get to the flare gun stowed near the gallery and win himself some sort of fighting chance.

He pulled open the watertight door to the saloon and leapt inside just seconds before the first of the band of corpses reached him. Immediately, he pulled the heavy door shut closed him and spun the locking mechanism to prevent it from being opened again. There was a door on the port side too, and George dashed across the deck to lock it, smashing his knee painfully on a chair on the way. He could hear the mob on the starboard waist clamoring at the door behind him and he quickly engaged the locking mechanism as to prevent entry from that side as well.

George wasn’t able to hear much of anything happening outside on the port side and he stealthily made his way over to one of the little scuttles to see what he could see. There was still a little light coming in through the tiny circle of glass and, just before he reached it he suddenly saw, with an electric jolt of horror, that the oil cloth they had used to wrap the dead woman was lying rumpled and empty on the deck. He gaped at it, frozen by the terrible enormity of what he was seeing. He wasn’t just immobilized now. As he stood there in the sepulchral gloom of the little cabin, he felt an awful sense of hopeless lassitude descend upon him, robbing him of any will to fight.

All at once, the low tide smell of the dead woman filled his nostrils again, but, this time, the noisome stench of rotting seaweed and days old fish closed about him with a thick, fetid pungency. A prickly sensation caressed the back of his neck and he knew, with terrible certainty, that the dead woman was behind him. He stood there helplessly as she grasped him with her cold, clammy hands and turned him around.

As with the whaler and the rest of its ghostly crew, the woman gave off a faint, phosphorescent glow, lending her an unearthly greenish yellow hue. Her eyes were open now, and her pupils, with the appearance of silver cataracts, fixed George in a terrible, pitiless gaze. She seemed to smile for a second or two, her lips stretching into an inhuman rictus devoid of any warmth, and then she slid her hand up behind George’s neck, almost caressing him, and then pulled his face towards hers.

As the slimy mouth closed around George’s, the foulness of her breath made his stomach roil but, before he could even try to pull back, her tongue, her awful, swollen, slug-like tongue was pushing its way into his mouth, twisting and writhing its way toward the back of his throat. All strength left George at that moment. His legs turned to jelly, and he felt his spine go limp. He would have fallen, but the woman suddenly terminated the awful kiss and grasped him beneath the chin, forcing his head back against the bulkhead. She bent to him once more, but this time, she closed her mouth around his neck, and, in a bursting, rich spray of scarlet, tore away his throat.

4.

The fog began to recede in the wee hours of the morning. As the mist thinned, the ghostly whaler began to become more insubstantial and the rusted grappling hooks holding fast to the Lorelei started crumbling into powder. A wind arose out of the north and the prow of the vessel was pushed around until she was facing back the way she had come. With the freshening breeze, the ragged sails began to flutter and slowly, inexorably, the boat began to follow the fog bank southwards.

On deck, the awful crew returned to their state of immobility, lining the railings in somber silence. At the base of the mainmast, the dead sailor without a lower jaw stood beside his two newest shipmates. One, with a gaping hole where his eye should have been, faced into the mist as though scanning a horizon only he could see, while his companion, spattered with gore, held the very same flensing knife that had taken his head.

Astern, at the taffrail round the quarterdeck, the woman with the button-down boots stood alongside new first mate. Her lank, salt-rimed hair, was briefly caught by an errant gust and, in the pale light, the wry twist at the edges of her mouth might easily have been taken for a smile. Her mate, the blood drying to a rusty brown beneath the gaping wound in his throat, remained impassive. He cast a weather eye into the night and began his eternal watch as the ghastly ship of the dead sailed silently into nothingness.