The chill, sharp as a knife, cut straight through my woollens and oilskins as if they were thin linen. It bit at my flesh, gnawing deep into the marrow of my bones.
The fog had turned the deck into a blinding white void. Unable to see my own hands before my face, I stumbled forward, the cold mist freezing on my eyelashes.
“Christian!” I screamed, my voice cracking with desperation. “They were right! Erik and Johan, they were right. The boy brought this on us. He’s the curse.”
My hair stuck to my scalp, tacky with blood from the fall. My elbow throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, but I pressed on.
Numb fingers finally brushed against the cold, rough iron handrails of the quarterdeck ladder. Descending the short ladder, the coarse wood of the bulwarks scraped beneath my fingertips, guiding me safely along the edge of the main deck.
“Christian!” I called out again.
Suddenly, a shrill, chilling scream erupted, slicing through the oppressive silence. Goosebumps prickled across my skin as my eyes squinted, straining to make out anything in the intense whiteness.
The heavy thud of footsteps thundered across the deck before falling suddenly silent.
As quickly as I dared, with boots skidding on the frost-covered planks, I rushed towards the sound, my hand tightening around the leather-wrapped, whalebone haft of my belt knife.
The fog thickened with every stride, pressing against me like a damp shroud. Leaning my shoulder into it, forcing my way forward until out of the swirling gloom, the grey shadow of the mainmast loomed above me. At its base, a dark figure lay slumped and unmoving.
Dropping to my knees, I pushed through the churning mist to get closer.
Johan’s face stared at me through dull, lifeless eyes. His white fearnought jacket was stained a dark crimson that reeked of iron and blood. His legs splayed out to the side at an unnatural angle. His neck had been snapped and his throat torn completely out, leaving nothing but a gaping void of shredded flesh and jagged cartilage.
A rustle behind me seized my attention. Snatching my heavy knife from its sheath, I spun around, thrusting the blade forward.
“Johan!” a voice cried out.
My blade stopped just inches from a heavy woollen chest. Erik didn’t even see me, his one eye fixed on the body of his twin brother. His other eye was gone, reduced to little more than a mutilated socket of weeping gore.
With a pathetic whimper, he sank down against the mast collar beside his brother.
“What happened?” I demanded in a shaking voice. “Was it the boy? Did he do this?”
Erik said nothing. His shoulders quivering, he wrapped his arms around the broken form of his brother, pulling him into a tight embrace.
“What happened?” I pressed.
“Draugen!” was the only answer I received.
“Where is Christian?” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him. “Where are the others?”
Erik didn’t look up. He just crouched there with the rough wool of his brother’s blood-soaked coat pressed to his tear-streaked face, rocking the lifeless body back and forth.
Pushing myself to my feet, my voice boomed out into the void. “Christian? Thomas?”
“Captain!” came a frantic, ragged reply. “Go! Run!”
“Christian,” I shouted back, my knuckles turning white around the haft of my knife. “What in the name of God is going on?”
No reply ever came, only a low grunt followed by a solid thud.
Launching myself blindly into the whiteness, my boots crunched sharply on the ever-thickening frost.
The stench hit me before I saw anything, the rancid stink of stale bilge water and rotten krill.
A dark square emerged out of the shifting veil, the midship companionway. Before it, Christian’s body lay prone, his limbs twitching weakly.
Bending over him was the silhouetted form of a creature, for I could think of no better way to describe it. The thing’s body twitched and jarred in unnatural spasms before its head snapped up. A featureless face looked at me for a single, breathless moment, then it bent down and with the soft scrape of claws on wood, it scuttled back into the companionway, disappearing into the dim depths of the steerage deck below.
Christian looked up at me, his pale lips, slick with blood-speckled spittle, quivered as he tried to speak. There were no words, just a bubbling gurgle from his throat. Then, with one final rattling breath, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell silent.
His body had been torn open. A red, gleaming mass of entrails scattered over the deck’s surface, steaming in the frigid air. The rancid, hot stench of raw flesh assaulted my senses. Bile rose in my throat, my vision swimming as I stumbled backwards, my knees buckling beneath me.
I had caused this. I had brought the cursed boy aboard. There was only one way to finish this, only one way to save my ship and the remnants of my crew.
The rough wood of the planks pressed against my palms as I pushed myself up, the ship creaking all around me. I forced my feet to move, forced them towards the steep steps leading down into the dim shadows of the midship.
The moment I set foot on the steerage deck, the air turned thick and foul with the heavy, metallic tang of blood, a cloying scent that mingled with the foul stink of human waste. My gut lurched and twisted, my stomach heaved, emptying its contents with a wet splatter at my feet.
Three bodies lay in a mutilated heap of torn meat, shattered bone and glistening gore on the ground. Propped up against the side of the bunks was Thomas. The Englishman’s eyes were closed, both arms torn from his body, leaving nothing but bloodied stumps of lacerated flesh. Where his legs had once been, there remained only a pulverised mass of bone, muscle and sinew.
Then I saw him.
Cowering in the black depths of Thomas’s bunk, he stared out at me with cold, hollow eyes.
My fingers tightened around the hilt of my knife. The soles of my boots stuck to the already congealing mess which covered the deck as I took my first step towards the boy.
“You!” I growled, leaning into the cramped shadows of the berth.
He didn’t move. He didn’t cower, and he didn’t attack. With his bible clutched to his chest, he simply opened his mouth and uttered that infuriating phrase, “Ma bro-tha.”
“Nobody can help your brother,” I thundered, the sound echoing in the tight space. “He’s dead, and now you’ll join him in hell.”
Before I had even realised what I was doing, a warm gush flooded over my hand. The resistance gave quickly as cartilage popped and my blade ground past bone. Leaning forward, I pressed all my weight onto that knife, forcing it deeper.
Samuel’s wide eyes met mine as a thin trickle of blood traced a crimson path from the corner of his lips. His eyelids grew heavy, slowly drooping shut. The worn leather Bible slipped from his lifeless grip, the pages splaying open on the blood-soaked blankets.
Pulling the knife from his chest, I stood, turning to glance around the compartment.
The mould-covered biscuits still littered the table. The cursed fog still boiled above deck.
Nothing had changed.