Hell Ship The Flying Dutchman

by Ben Hammott

  Turning his attention to the lid, Crowe tried to open it without success. Another concealed catch, he thought. His fingers went straight to the skull and twisted it. It turned, as he thought it would. Click! He raised the front edge of the lid and looked at the weapons laid out in the middle top drawer blocking what was beneath. He pulled open the wide thin drawer and got his greatest shock of all since finding the chest.

  Shackled by its wrists and ankles was the creepy figure of a tall, thin...Crowe stared at the face for a clue...ghoul or golem for lack of a more fitting description. With the space too short for its long slender legs to stretch out, they were hunched up, almost to its chest. Aiming the magnifying glass at its nose-less face, he took in its closed eyes and thin mouth. Whatever it was, it was completely hairless. Its skin had a leathery appearance. The tiny shackles that tethered its arms and feet to the four corners of its small prison, had locks on the bands around its limbs. Peering closer at one, Crowe looked at the Star of Solomon on the lock with a star-shaped keyhole in the center. The lock and the chain seemed to be fashioned from iron.

  Overloaded with exciting discoveries, Crowe sat back on the sofa and contemplated what he had found. The casket’s contents are, to say the least, strange. Is it a child’s toy fashioned by some amazingly talented miniaturist, or did they have another purpose? He glanced at the cupboard’s demonic carvings and its, still open, secret compartment covered in runes. Something sinister perhaps?

  He refocused his gaze on the mysterious casket and the five drawers he hadn’t yet opened. For the life of him, even with his, at times, overactive imagination, he couldn’t guess at what mystifying wonders he’d find in them. Though tempted to open them to find out, he was keen to start writing about what he had so far discovered.

  Tomorrow he would do some research on the house and its previous owners to hopefully shed some light on these strange discoveries. Feeling excited about the cabinet, the small casket and its unfathomable contents that had provided him with the inspiration he desperately needed, Crowe crossed to his desk and started writing.

  Two hours into his writing, Crowe paused his fingers on the keyboard and reread the last paragraph. He made a couple of edits and corrected a spelling mistake. Though he had only written a little over three thousand words so far, he had a good feeling about the book and hadn’t been so excited about his writing for a long time. Confident this would be the novel to rekindle his popularity as an author, he continued writing.

  Barely ten minutes later, he stopped typing and cocked his head at the soft scratching sounds that had dragged him from his writing frame of mind. An almost imperceptible jangle of chains turned his head to the casket. After his puzzled expression had gazed at it for a few moments without hearing any further sounds, he climbed from his desk chair and crossed to the chest. Staring at the strange sinister figure chained inside, he focused on its head that was now tilted to the side. The head had been upright and facing forward before. He leaned in closer and peered at its slightly open lips that he could have sworn were closed previously.

  With a certain amount of apprehension, he moved a finger towards it and prodded its chest gently. He jumped back in fright when it moved and laughed at his nervousness. It had just shifted from his touch. He closed the weapon drawer and shut the lid. It clicked when the hidden catch engaged, and the skull returned to its original position.

  Crowe moved to the fireplace and wondering how it fitted in with the mysterious casket, looked at the painting. Though the slightly spooky trees and lighting created by the artist bathed the scene in a slightly foreboding atmosphere, to all intrinsic purposes, it seemed to be a rather dull, landscape depicting the view from the back of the house.

  The frame though was much more stimulating. In each corner was what seemed to be demon faeries in various poses of tormenting the skeletons and corpses adorning the straight edges of the frame. Like the human figures, they were in high bas-relief and encroached over the edges of the frame and painting. Though all were adorned with evil expressions, all were different. There was a red, green, brown, and a particularly evil looking black one perched on the top right corner, that was stabbing at something with a spear. Leaning closer, he saw it was a similar ghoul figure to the one in the casket. The faerie’s spear had pierced the ghoul’s shoulder.

  Fascinated by the amount of detail, Crowe turned his attention to the skeletons and corpses, which varied in height from about two to six inches, and included men, women, and children, and surprisingly, two large, strange, black dogs, wolfish and vicious, they were depicted snarling and baring sharp teeth at the red demon faerie. The expressions of the skeletons and rotting cadavers were of terror and pain. Mingled together, they seemed to be clawing at each other, perhaps climbing, as if they were trying to escape some hellish terror.

  Suspecting there was more to the painting that met the eye, Crowe used the magnifying glass to take a closer look. Starting from the top left corner he moved along the top and then started another line lower. He halted on the left side of the forest when he noticed a faint detail. He moved the magnifying glass backward and forward to try and bring it into sharper focus, but without success. He took a photograph of the area with his phone which sent it to his Dropbox in the cloud. He crossed to his PC, downloaded the photo, and loaded it into Photoshop. After trying a few different enhancing techniques, he met with success. Though faint and a little grainy, it was obviously a gravestone. Blurry details of more gravestones indicated the area was filled with them. If Pete knew there was a graveyard on the land, he hadn’t mentioned it. Its inclusion could be another reason why he deemed the house unsaleable. He then noticed something else in the forest to the right of the graveyard. Though little more than a faint smudge, it seemed to be a figure. Wondering if it was just something unintentionally formed by paint stokes, Crowe enlarged the detail and stared at the chilling figure. Two tiny dark smudges on its blurry head were unmistakably intended as eyes.

  Saving the enhanced image, Crowe closed Photoshop and glanced at the rain pattering the window. Though he would like to go and check out the forest to see if the graveyard was really there, as it might reveal some information about the previous occupants of the house, he would have to wait for the rain to pass. He switched to his writing program and after reading the last few paragraphs he had written, began typing.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING it was still raining and typical for the English climate showed no signs of abating. Crowe sipped his tea and glanced at the painting. Noticing something, he moved over to it and stared at the possible figure standing in the forest that was now a little clearer. Slightly larger, as if it had moved closer. Wondering if it was his imagination, he crossed to his computer, brought up the photograph of the painting he had taken the day before and printed it out. Collecting it from the printer tray, he crossed to the painting and held it up. Flicking his eyes between the two images, it was clear the painting figure was different.

  Picking out the twig protruding from a tree branch, in the photo image it was in front of the figure, but in the painting, it was now obscured by the figure, it was behind it. A shiver ran down his spine. Puzzled by how this could be possible, his thoughts flicked to horror novels and movies that featured such an oddity. Some ghost or phantom would gradually move towards the front of the painting before appearing to kill or scare the pants off the unfortunate owner. Is this what he had, a painting featuring some evil entity coming to get him now he had removed it from the cabinet that perhaps had kept it at bay?

  Aware he was letting his writer’s imagination get the better of him, Crowe pushed the ridiculous thought away. His eyes flicked to the hearth when a log being consumed by flames crackled. Maybe the heat was affecting the oil paint somehow. Heating it up and making details stand out clearer. That though, wouldn’t explain the twig moving behind the figure. Crowe stared at the mysterious detail while he fathomed a solution. Maybe what he was seeing was the ghost of something the artist had painted but then, for some
reason, had covered up. The heat from the fire had caused it to materialize through the overpainted layer. Satisfied with his explanation, which was far more believable than the creepy alternative, he gently touched the figure to see if the paint was soft. It wasn’t. Though a little warm, it was as dry and brittle as the rest of the painting. He shifted the painting from the mantelpiece and propped it against the cabinet it had been stored in. No doubt when it cooled it would return to normal.

  After donning his coat, he nipped outside to collect some logs from the woodshed. With an armful clutched in his arms, he shouldered the shed door shut and flicked the catch in place with his elbow. As he turned to head back to the house, he glanced into the forest and stared at the spot where the painting figure would be standing. He halted when he thought he saw something. Something slightly paler than the gloomy surroundings. Ignoring the rain drumming on his waterproof coat, he kept his gaze focused on the spot while he edged closer to the pond for a better viewpoint. A chill ran down his spine. Though indistinct, there did seem to be something there. A tall blurry figure staring at him. It must be a trick of the light, nothing more. Cursing his overactive imagination, he turned away and headed for the back door. Wiping his wet shoes on the doormat, he peered back into the forest. Everything was back to normal. Keeping his eyes focused on the forest, he closed the door.

  After stacking the logs by the hearth, Crowe crossed to the painting and stared at it again. The figure was still there exactly as before; neither bigger or smaller. He glanced at the window and peered out into the forest. He saw only trees. When he refocused on the painting that had begun to unnerve him, an idea came to him and he went to collect what he needed.

  Placing the painting on the armchair, he positioned the camera on a stack of books and lined it up until the painting filled the frame. He stepped back. He had set the camera to take a single photograph every minute. If anything happened, not that he thought it would, it should be recorded. He waited for the camera to take its first snap and then retired to bed.

  CROWE AWOKE AND WAS pleased to see a sliver of sunshine seeping through the gap in the curtains drawn across the window. He climbed out of bed, his feet gliding into his slippers automatically, and donned his dressing gown. He crossed to the window and drew back the curtains. Bright sunshine filled the room. After the prolonged bout of rain, he would finally be able to check out the graveyard.

  Remembering the painting, he hurried downstairs and entered the living room. Crossing straight to the painting, he examined it to see if it had changed. To his shock, it had. The figure had moved closer into the foreground and was now clear enough to identify it as the ghoul from the casket. For a few moments, he was so stunned he just stared at it.

  The click of the camera snapped him out of it. He switched off the camera and stoked the fire, adding a couple of logs to the red embers.

  Feeling perplexed, he went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and returned to the living room. A glance at the painting revealed he hadn’t imagined it. The ghoul had moved. He drained his tea, picked up the camera and removed the SD card. After switching on his PC, he slid the memory card into the card reader and transferred them into his pictures folder.

  Clicking on the first image, he selected sideshow mode and held a finger on the right arrow key to speed through the hundreds of images with his gaze glued on the faint figure. He gasped when it popped forward. He sat back and stared at the ghoul. After recovering from the shock, he navigated back until the figure was as it was when he went to bed, and then one image at a time, he scrolled forward. Over five pictures, five minutes in real time, he watched the figure take two steps forward. A cold shiver crept down his spine. He replayed it a few times, watching the feet lift from the ground, the knees bend, and the leg moving forward with each jerky step. It was like he was an unwilling participant in a horror movie. Now certain the ghoul would eventually, however improbable that seemed, emerge from the painting with murderous intent aimed at him, he had to do something to stop that from happening. His eyes flicked to the flames licking at the logs in the hearth. He could burn it. No. That rarely worked in books and movies, it was too simple a solution. He turned his gaze to the cupboard that seemed to have kept it trapped before. He would lock it up again. Confident that would solve the problem, he fetched the painting, hung it back in the cabinet and locked the door.

  He returned to his PC and looked for the timestamp on the image currently showing the ghoul, 12:05. It moved at midnight, of course it would. He’d check tomorrow and if it hadn’t moved, he’d know that locking it in the cabinet worked.

  He took a deep breath to calm his nerves. Breakfast and then he’d head into the forest to find out if the graveyard in the painting existed in the real world, something he thought was a distinct possibility.

  (End of excerpt)

  IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY on my mailing list and would like to be informed when Strange is available, send me an email with the subject heading Strange to benhammott@gmail.com

  Also by Ben Hammott Horror Island

  Where Nightmares Become Reality

  Sarcophagus

  Their mistake wasn’t finding it, it was bringing it back!

  ICE RIFT

  ICE RIFT - SALVAGE

  ICE RIFT - SIBERIA

  The Lost City Book Series EL DORADO Book 1: Search for the Lost City - An Unexpected Adventure EL DORADO - Book 2: Fabled Lost Treasure - The Secret City

  Solomon's Treasure Series BEGINNINGS: A Hunt for Treasure THE PRIEST'S SECRET

  (The Tomb, the Temple, the Treasure Book 1 and 2) An ancient mystery, a lost treasure and the search for the most sought after relics in all antiquity.

  A full list of Ben Hammott’s books can be found on his author website here: www.benhammottbooks.com