The thick, acrid reek of powder smoke filled the steerage compartment, burning my nostrils and clawing at my already parched throat. My ears rang with the high-pitched lingering whine of the shot.
The body of the second mate lay sprawled on the deck, his vacant eyes fixed on the thick oak beams overhead. Around him, an oozing puddle of crimson gore had begun to seep outward, staining the worn deck boards.
Ashen faces stared at me, wide-eyed from the gloom. Seemingly frozen in place, the only movement being the occasional shuffle of feet.
Jens’ voice hissed from over my shoulder, “Get him up and over the edge. Traitors don’t deserve a proper burial.”
“Jens, stand down!” my voice echoed in the cramped space.
The men didn’t move, their gazes were fixed on me.
“He’s gone crazy,” Erik snarled through gritted teeth. “He hasn’t been right since we got back from that English wreck.”
“The rot has gone into his mind,” said Johan, stepping to his brother’s shoulder.
“Easy, lads. We don’t want anyone else getting hurt,” Christian said in a hushed tone, stepping between Jens and the twins. “Captain, let me have that pistol.”
He didn’t spare the first mate a glance; his eyes were firmly focused on me.
“Hand the pistol over, Jens,” I demanded. “This isn’t how we settle things on this ship.”
A low murmur rose up from the gathered crew members.
“Who are you talking to, Captain?” Christian said softly, his head tilting at a slight angle. “Jens is dead.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, man!” I retorted, glancing over at the big, bearded man standing at my shoulder. He was so close that I could feel his breath on my neck.
“Torstein, listen to me,” Christian’s voice took on a hard edge. “You saw him fall into that crevasse. How could anyone survive that? I pulled his frozen body from the ice myself.”
Thoughts tumbled through my mind like a maelstrom of swirling colours and fragmented images. His scream echoed inside my skull, a raw, piercing sound. The look on his face as he vanished into the blue-black darkness of that crevasse flashed before my eyes.
How could Jens be dead? It didn’t make sense. I had been speaking to him. He had been standing here just moments ago.
But now he was gone. He had vanished.
My breath slammed into my chest like a sledgehammer, my heart pounding out a staccato beat.
My gaze dropped, trailing down my right arm. My fingers were locked in an intense, clamping grip. Pressed into my palm was the heavy walnut stock of my percussion pistol, my finger still pressed hard against the cold, hard wrought iron trigger.
Thomas’ words from earlier in the day screamed in my mind, ‘Eight tolls of the bell for eight dead men’.
Six for Gunnar and his whaleboat crew, one for young Henrik and one for…
The pistol slipped from my soot-blackened grasp, hitting the wooden flooring with a solid thud.
I scrambled for the hand ropes, pulling myself up the steep ladder, my limbs quivering as I hauled my body onto the main deck.
Somewhere in the distance, faint and muffled, a bell tolled. But paying it no heed, and with boots slipping on the frost-covered deck, I bolted for the quarterdeck and the aft companionway.
The fog pressed in around me, thick and suffocating. The stench of stagnant bilge water and dead krill hung heavily in the air. Pushing through it, I flung open the heavy hatch of the companionway. Taking a step forward, my boot suddenly slipped on the slick iron runners. My leg shot out from under me, and for a sickening moment, I was weightless, just hanging in the air before plummeting into the pitch darkness below.
My elbow cracked against the hard wooden steps. The searing white heat of pain shot up my arm. Tumbling down, I crashed into the deck boards. The impact was brutal, knocking the breath from my lungs. My head slammed hard into one of the bulkheads, and for a dizzying moment, there was nothing but an empty, ringing void.
Pulling myself to my feet, desperate to prove my own sanity, I scanned the room until my eyes landed on the large dining table. My chest twisted as I saw Jens’ massive figure, sitting exactly where I’d found him on returning to the ship. His glazed eyes stared blankly ahead. Small, glinting crystals of ice and salt had begun to form on his skin and clothes, while a puddle of ice shimmered around his feet.
“Captain,” a voice rasped from the shadows.
Not Jens, something else moved towards me. Its dark, wispy shape writhed and morphed, its form vaguely resembling Jens but somehow different.
Trembling, I stumbled back against the dark-stained wooden wall. An icy shiver surged through my body.
“Wha…” my lips desperately tried to form the words, “what are you? You did all this? You killed the men?”
“No,” it hissed, getting closer. “You killed them.”
“Me?” I said, pressing my back into the bulkhead, desperately trying to escape its encroaching presence. “What are you?”
“I am whatever you make me. I’m your shadow, your greed, your recklessness.” Its breath was a chill frost against my skin as, leaning in, its face came to just inches from mine. Features twisting, its black beard faded to white, the wrinkles around its eyes deepened until I saw my own face looking back at me. “I am you. While you act the respectful captain, I am the darkness that lurks beneath. I am what you hide, what you deny.”
“You killed them,” it wheezed again, its voice ragged, like the wind through tattered sails. “Your greed demanded one last hunt; your greed demanded three kills. You forced your men onto that English wreck. You brought the evil back to this ship. They all died at your hands.”
“Evil?” I repeated the creature’s word. “What evil?”
It didn’t answer. Its form shimmered and began to dissolve before me. What one minute had seemed solid, now unravelled into slender tendrils of black mist. They stretched and twisted, fading until there was nothing left. The last of the wisps of vapour slipped silently into the cracks in the woodwork, and it was gone.
Evil. The word rang in my ears.
Could it be true? Could the men have been right all along? Was it possible that the boy was a Jonah? Was he really the cause of everything?
“Christian!” my voice screamed in panic as I burst onto the quarterdeck.
But it was too late.