Crow Shine

by Alan Baxter

  The crew stood stunned. The blood drew sharks and Harkness began to thrash and buck in the water as they found him, but Reeve would not let go the rope. “Anyone else care to challenge my orders?” Reeve shouted over the first mate’s high-pitched, agonized screams.

  I could see some men wanted to rush the deck and take the captain down, but they lacked the courage. Others’ will was broken by Harkness’s gurgling yowls. I could not believe Reeve had so quickly and casually sacrificed a man who had been for years and years his second-in-command and his friend. My captain had changed beyond recognition.

  Reeve let go the rope at last and the sudden silence was far worse than Harkness’s blood-curdling shrieks. “Then it would appear a position has opened on this ship. Any volunteers?”

  It seemed a handful of the crew were still loyal, maybe even more so after that display of strength and determination. One man stepped up. “I will take that role,” he said in a deep baritone voice.

  Reeve smiled, and it was terrible. “Atkins. One of my original men, still with me, still true.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Then first mate you are. You know what to do and you know our heading. Make it so.”

  Without waiting to see if the crew would follow Atkins - knowing, for now at least, they would - Reeve returned to his cabin and his study.

  *

  That night the Scarlet Wind followed the dread bearing toward a place in the ocean where even small fry like me knew ships should never go. Reeve’s obsession appeared to be taking its toll on his mind and body. For all his strength, he looked somehow diminished by nightfall and tumbled into his bunk clutching the map and fell straight into a deep sleep. For the first time in a week, he didn’t stand on deck and study the stars.

  From my sack I heard some scufflings and whispers and I was scared, but did not move to look. There was nothing I could do, so I listened until there was only the creak of timber, the slap of the waves, and the muffled clap of rigging. I sank back to sleep.

  *

  When I rose as the sun lanced across me I found Atkins standing there, ashen and trembling. It turned out he was now the first mate of a four-man crew. When the rest sloped off in the night they had knocked those few loyalists senseless and stolen food and water. It speaks volumes of Reeve’s reputation as a killer that after Harkness’s murder they were too scared to even try en masse to take the ship from him. They instead took most of our supplies and all but one rowboat. Perhaps that was a small mercy, those mutinous dogs leaving that boat in case the last remaining of us should think to abandon Reeve to his mania. But we were the truly loyal, more fool us.

  The captain rose and growled his displeasure, but his voice sounded weak and his eyes were dim above bags even darker than his skin, despite the long night’s sleep he had taken. “Move on, there’s enough of us to continue,” he said.

  “Should we not strike for land and more hands?” Atkins asked.

  The captain spun, grabbed a handful of Atkins’s grubby shirt. “And how far is land, eh? And how close are we to our goal? Do as I say.”

  “I don’t rightly know what our goal is, Cap’n.”

  “It is to sail that way and ask no questions.”

  “And should the wind change? We don’t have the hands - ”

  “It will not change.” Without waiting for further conversation, Reeve returned to his chart.

  That night, we crossed an unseen boundary and entered the region of sea where men knew not to venture. Our small crew, stretched thin, pushed on. Their faces were masks of trepidation, but a modicum of greed lived there as well and that should ever be taken as the lesson of this folly. The tiniest speck of avarice will undo the most determined man.

  Reeve stood upon the deck as night fell and held his map. He stared upward and began to laugh and laugh. He ran back to his cabin and through the window I saw him scratch more lines and curves on his design. And I watched the last sanity leave his eyes. I ran to cower behind barrels as he strode out on deck, adjusted the wheel, and tied it off to fix our heading. He called his remaining men forth. As they ran to him, he drew his twin blades and danced between them, severing limb and artery with artistic precision.

  He took up their bleeding corpses one by one, opened their throats, and drained them into the waves as an unnatural wind picked up. From my place between barrel and rail I could see the men’s blood swirling and gathering against the flow of the currents, growing and spreading in the water. It tied itself into a thick, dark thread, almost black in the night, and wormed across the ocean ahead of the Scarlet Wind.

  Moonlight silvered the waves as the wind whipped them up and clouds began to roil on the horizon. Starlight glittered from above and lit the trail of blood as it seemed to draw our ship along. Reeve stood in the prow, leaning forward, arms wide, and began calling out words I could not understand and did not like. They felt like nails driving into my ears. In one hand, the mad vagrant’s chart flapped like an angry wing. The foul pattern that should never have been revealed. No mortal mind should be able to conceive its instruction. And none would have but for a moment of partial clarity held by a running man, combined with the will of a captain of powerful drive finally finding something to fill the void of love most heinously lost. A man driven. Standing at Reeve’s side, shimmering gossamer in the night, stood Esme, terrible and beautiful. Her shining hair streamed in the wind. She reached out and laid one ghostly hand upon his shoulder.

  The Scarlet Wind plowed on, and dread pirate Reeve sang forth. The blood of his most loyal dragged us forward on stranger tides than any I have ever known and in the ocean before the ship, like a gargantuan yawning maw, a desolate portal to a nether Darkness split open.

  My bladder opened, too, and I had seen enough. Realizing the last remaining rowboat was but a few paces away, I clambered in and used my small dagger to cut the rope. The only thing I owned became my salvation from the man who had gifted it to me. Who had been lost, really, since the dark and beautiful Esme fell.

  The boat dropped to the churning waves with a bone-jarring impact as a storm howled forth from that unholy rent in the ocean. I grabbed the oars and rowed for my life, forced to watch that from which I ran as I worked. Foul, black, winged beasts surged through that maw and into the stormy sky as the Scarlet Wind was drawn into the Darkness. The ship that was my life, my home, with the man who was the closest thing to a father I had ever known, tumbled, cracked, and split as it went over that profane edge.

  As I rowed away, powerless but to look across the churning waves into that yawning gulf, the great winged creatures flapped determinedly across the night sky, blanking out the stars with their massive presence. The downdraft from their beats pushed against me as they headed west toward the islands and the New World. Terrible, hungry creatures like no bird or flying mammal I had ever seen, indistinct yet hideous in the night sky. And as they passed I had the inexplicable yet certain realization that these were but heralds for some far more vast and ravenous evil yet to be released. And I wondered, should the madness of any men eventually facilitate that escape, as Reeve had done with these, would that terrible leviathan’s shadow ever be removed when it fell across our sun?

  I rowed on and on, away from the unnatural swirl, until my muscles were as jelly, my eyes hazy, my mind blank. And then a different kind of blackness stole over me and I fell unconscious to the bottom of the small vessel.

  For days I drifted, burned by the sun, starved, desperate for water, and I almost did that one forbidden thing and drank the ocean, when finally a Navy ship came by. British. The irony was not lost on me as they hauled me aboard. I was the son of a merchant, I told them, whose ship had gone down in a storm. They asked how many escaped and I honestly told them I did not know, for how many might have survived that mutinous exodus under the cover of darkness? They smiled on me, fed and watered me, and returned me to New Providence.

  Now I am the vassal of their leader, a general with buck teeth, white hair, and a most rid
iculous uniform. But he is not unkind and I have a shack of my own to live in when I am not required to wait upon him, or clean, or labor.

  And in that ramshackle hut I call my own, I huddle in the shadows of night, listening for those terrible leathery wingbeats. When they don’t come, I rise with the sun and bask in its glory all day, dreading the next inevitable night, for one day they will surely make their presence known. Perhaps one day they will lead that which they serve to destroy all we know and hold dear. And I can’t help wondering if maybe that is not what the human race deserves for its avarice and hostility.

  But whatever may happen or not, I will never set foot again on any vessel that would remove me from this solid, dry land.

  The Darkest Shade Of Grey

  1

  Towering brownbricks shielded David Johannsen and the old man from the rain. The red and white neon of a Coca-Cola sign pulsed like a giant life-support machine behind them, coaxing hapless tourists and broken people into the plastic promises of an urban pseudo-Eden. “That’s where she was killed, Mr Curtis?” David asked, clicking on his Dictaphone.

  Curtis, a waif of an old man in striped cotton pyjamas, nodded. Pale, diaphanous colours shivered around the old timer, colours only David could see. The translucency of the shades around Curtis showed his fragility and age, but the pale blues and greens were all calm contentment.

  “That’s the blood, you can still see it.” Curtis pointed to the stained bitumen. “I was up there, see, and I heard this shouting.” He indicated a first floor window that looked out over the road, multiple lanes of traffic crawling through the downpour, going nowhere fast.

  David looked up. “That’s your apartment?”

  “Yup. Lived there over thirty years. I heard this shouting and carry-on and I could see these two boys yelling and shoving. I couldn’t see the lady, but I could hear her, yelling and cursing back. I tell ya, the language of people these days!”

  David laughed. “You can’t live in King’s Cross for thirty years without getting used to foul mouths, surely?”

  “But from people so young? And ladies? The world moves on without us, I suppose.”

  “I suppose. So you couldn’t see the girl? You didn’t see them cut her?”

  “Nah. But I saw the one lad pull a knife out and then there was scuffling and she was screaming and then it cut short into this sort of gurgling sound and the two boys ran off like scalded cats.”

  “You came downstairs then?”

  The old man laughed, flapping a hand. “Fuck no! I don’t come out of my flat after eight o’clock at night any more. I called the police. When they pulled up I did come down and there she was, lying up against that wall with her throat wide open and blood all around her. Soaked in it, she was. I can’t believe they haven’t cleaned it up.”

  David shrugged. “They have private contractors for that stuff nowadays. Like everything else, it gets outsourced and then it takes twice as long to happen. The company’s probably hoping the rain’ll do the work for them and they can get paid for fuck all.” He studied the blood stain, sensing the terror and pain that floated around it, an echo of violence. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  Curtis’s old eyes, yellow and grey around faded irises, were sad and wet. “What else is there to tell?”

  “You hear the argument? What were they squabbling about?”

  “Something about drugs and she wouldn’t get away with not paying back what she owed. She must have fought back because they all started cursing and hollering and the boys were telling her to get off and stop being crazy. Then they killed her.”

  David clicked off his Dictaphone. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Curtis nodded and shuffled back around to the front of his building. “You gonna write a story about it?”

  “Sure. But it’ll only be a paragraph or two on page three or four I expect. This sort of thing isn’t really big news.”

  The old man nodded again and turned inside without another word. The glass panel door clicked against the security lock as Curtis laboured his way up the stairs one at a time, resignation hanging off every step.

  David returned to the blood stain, crouched, put a palm flat against the gritty road. Images and emotions flooded his mind, rocked him back on his heels. She was only young, the poor kid, a teenager. He felt her bravado, her fuck you attitude and her fear. She’d sobbed for her mother as she’d held her rent throat closed, hot life flooding through her fingers as the two men fled towards the city. She’d wondered why she wasn’t crying tears as she sobbed and called for her mother again, but only a muffled bubbling sound emerged, and then blackness.

  David staggered to his feet, stumbling off the kerb. A car horn blared with shattering volume. He threw himself forward with a howl of panic as a wing mirror spanked his hip like a piece of two by four.

  “Fucken drunken idiot!”

  He didn’t look around for the voice and the car didn’t slow. Gasping quick breaths, hand pressed to his hip, he limped back to the building, leaned on the wall. “Fuck me.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face. He found himself doing so more and more recently, like he was trying to wipe something off. Eventually he stepped from the shelter of the building’s porch back out into the rain. He headed up towards the red and white corporate god of consumption and the numerous bars in its shadows.

  A shiver passed over him. In the shelter of the next building sat a homeless man, hair and beard knotted with grime. The hobo muttered frantically and stared at David with an intensity that froze him to the spot. “Can I help you, mate?” David asked after a moment.

  The hobo still muttered, drilling holes through David’s soul with large, bright hazel eyes. A miasma of shivers in the air encased the man. The shades kept switching and morphing, yellows of fear, twisted purples and reds of anxiety and confusion, painting patterns of madness and a sense of desperation. David shook himself and walked past. Those hazel eyes followed him, dirty lips muttering, until David tore his gaze away, hurrying up the street.

  Today was turning into a real son of a bitch and the sooner he got a few stiff drinks into him the better.

  *

  He got back to the office more than an hour later, nicely warmed inside from four rapid fire bourbons. He knew he was bitter and twisted, but at least now it was bitter and twisted with the edges filed off. As he turned into the front door of the building something made him look back. On the opposite side of the street stood the homeless man from the Cross. David’s heart hammered a quick tattoo of panic against his ribs. “What the fuck?”

  Had this weirdo followed him? A ten minute cab ride? David yelled across the street. “You following me?”

  The homeless man stared and muttered.

  David stared back, unsure what to do. What could he do? He turned into the building and headed for the lifts.

  As he stomped through the office past reception Mandy raised a hand at him, jabbering away into the headset mic of her switchboard. He stopped, waiting while she rambled about some guy and some bar and some stupid friend.

  Mandy was nineteen, blonde and hot as hell. David wasn’t quite forty yet, but Mandy looked like a child to him. A child who made his cock heavy as he stared at the swell of her breasts through her white blouse. A child he had often pictured in his mind, naked, sweating and loving him as his hand took momentary care of his frustrations in his bedsit late at night. Or early in the morning. A child who represented everything he would never have again now that he was aging, divorced and broken by a bitch wife, saddled with two hateful kids. All of whom despised him for his ‘hoodoo shit’. And his drinking. He stared at the smooth, unblemished flesh of Mandy’s cleavage wishing she would hurry the fuck up and tell him whatever it was she had stopped him for.

  She looked up, smiled apologetically, holding up one hand again. “Look, babe, I really have to go . . . I’m working! All right, bye, babe.” She looked up, tapping a button on her switchboard without looking at it. “I’m so sorry, that
was rude.”

  David smiled back, half of him imagining her seeing him as a rugged, desirable older man, gritty and sexy. The other half called himself a fucking idiot. “No worries. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to let you know that Miriam, from the post room, she’s retiring on Friday and we’re having a whip-round.” Mandy held out a large manila envelope. “Could you afford a donation towards a present for her? We’ll pass a card around later.”

  David forced a smile, cursing her for stopping him just to beg money for some old bat he didn’t even know. He pulled out his wallet and was greatly relieved to see a five dollar bill in there. Dropping the note into the envelope he noticed coins in the bottom. He could probably have got away with dropping two bucks in.

  Mandy almost bounced in her chair. “Thanks!”

  He walked into the office, glancing back from the door. She was already talking animatedly on the phone again, probably telling some other friend about the creepy reporter who was always ogling her cleavage. Well, if she didn’t like it she could button up her fucking blouse.

  Waking his computer, he checked his email. He was soon grinding his teeth, hating Stella all over again. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she’d taken the kids and the house and even the fucking dog, now she had to email him shit like this.

  You earn more than you’re letting on, her email said, and I’ll have a court force you to pay more child support if I have to.

  He sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. His life in the toilet. He angrily tapped out a response. I’m writing bullshit, hardly deserving of the crap wage I do get. If I earned more I’d move further away from you. See you in court. He stabbed at the mouse to click the send button like he was driving a finger into her brain through her eye.