Resurrection House

by James Chambers

  And, yet, I am everything he needed me to be.

  The ships are bound for Tripoli under the command of Stephen Decatur, who himself sails under the orders of Edward Premble. The Barbary corsairs prey upon American vessels, openly defying the treaty that grants them safe passage, and nothing but force will settle the matter. Yusuf Qaramanali, Pasha of Tripoli, holds three hundred Americans in forced labor, the captured crew of the 36-gun frigate Philadelphia run aground east of the city. It’s criminal. It can’t be permitted.

  Upon Westerner a mate gazes over the bow at the vast pale emptiness that contains them. This mate’s name is James Henry Webster, just like yours would’ve been, Henry, if your mother could’ve carried on the family name. Two days out from North Africa, Webster spies a ship before them, adrift, flying a corsair’s colors, ragged and faded by the sun.

  James Henry Webster was my great-grandfather’s great grandfather, and the words in the journal came from his pen. The spyglass and coins belonged to him, as did the medal, though I have never learned what he did to earn it.

  The entries began in 1803. Many of the dates and a good portion of the text have been obliterated by time, but I’ve pieced together the broken account rendered in its pages, welded it to the story as Grandad told it and blended it as closely as possible with what historical records I could find. These include a simple listing in the Naval Archives covering the same period as Webster’s journal, enough to confirm for me that he lived and sailed as my great-grandfather described, and record of Westerner’s construction in 1799 in the books of a Virginia shipbuilding company now part of a small collection held at Annapolis.

  James Webster sailed on merchant ships, trading with the Spaniards in Florida and the Caribbean until something caused him to abandon this work and become a crewman in the burgeoning United States Navy. If he kept any logs of those earlier times, they have been lost forever. An entry in his lone surviving book reveals his intent to resign from Naval service immediately upon his return to America, and apparently he never again sailed or so much as dared set foot upon any oceangoing vessel. It seems he gained some notoriety as a poet after resigning from the sea, but is said to have burned every last page of his work on the eve of its publication. Little of his life after this is known. His son, William Webster, was born in 1829, four months after his father died under unknown circumstances. James passed no stories to William, but left behind for him the same box Grandad would give to me more than one hundred years later.

  The ships approach their enemy with guns at the ready, and fire two shots across the bow, but the warning is not returned. Even at a distance her decks are obviously clear, and some damage is visible to the hull and upper regions of the craft, though insufficient to risk her integrity. The American ships draw closer, Westerner in the lead, her crew taut with anticipation.

  Captain Franks hails the corsair as Westerner turns aside her, but no reply comes. Her decks are indeed abandoned, their rails and planking splintered in places as if crushed by a great weight. Parts of her rigging hang slack. The entire ship floats draped in an atmosphere of uncomfortable stillness. It recalls the great white shark that is but the shadow of death beneath the surface, announced only by its graceful dorsal fin before it erupts upward in a chaos of teeth and greedy maw.

  Westerner draws parallel to the corsair, which is called Yaşli Yildiz.

  The crewmen hurl grapples across the gap, and moments later the hulls bump together and men leap across, weapons in hand. No resistance materializes. Not a soul can be found. Captain Franks himself boards the pirate vessel to confront the great mystery, while several of the crew become uneasy with the bizarre encounter and wish to leave immediately. There are strange signs on deck. Fish and seaweed scattered about as if they had fallen from the sky. One fish in particular, truly startling in appearance, cannot be identified by any of the men present, though Webster’s description fits that of the deep-swimming coelacanth. Strangely no gulls circle the craft despite the ample carrion.

  Captain Franks will not be persuaded to leave by the unsettling atmosphere. In a show of resolve, he signals the other American vessels to sail on, leaving his crew to decide the fate of the captured ship and join them later.

  It is only after the Westerner’s companions have passed the point of communication that the immense black coffin is discovered in the hold. Franks’ men, in raiding the cargo in search of gold and the spoils of pirates, throw back a canvas tarpaulin to uncover a box of perfect blackness ten feet long and five feet wide and crafted from a hard, lustrous dark material like no other any of them have ever seen.

  The lid takes six men to raise. Its utterly smooth surface makes any grip upon it tenuous. The men surround the oblong box, squeeze their fingertips into the narrow lip that runs its length and heave upward, each man straining not only to move the covering, but to keep his hold fast on the material that, though dry, feels like oil against their skin.

  On deck James Henry Webster works as part of the detail attempting repairs to the rigging.

  Now the music—long sustained notes rising, cello and viola the undertow with violins the pulse—gives way to a new rhythm, a dreamy explosion of instruments as piano enters, mischievous, horns rise in a moment of discovery and percussion rattles with life. Clarinets and flutes howl and whisper like desperate ghosts.

  A man, still as death, reclines inside the box.

  Greatly disturbed, it is all the men can do to keep from letting the lid crash down. The man is old and clearly of the race of native Indians found in the Central regions of the Americas. His hair hangs long and tangled, gray-white like stone, over skin leathery from the sun and salt. Strange signs are tattooed along his cheek and around his wrists. Several pieces of gold jewelry adorn his body, all carved in the form of disgusting grotesque faces that mock human appearance and feeling. He wears tattered clothes of a style once worn by those priests who performed unspeakable rites and sacrifices in the name of fertility and good fortune. His death-grip hugs a black tome. He appears recently mummified, but for the strange flush of color in his dark cheeks. Around him hangs an air of antiquity as if he has passed long years unmolested by the living.

  Captain Franks observes his chest for any sign of breath but detects none.

  A hatch slams open in a dark corner of the hold and a man leaps forth wildly, brandishing a saber. Thin from malnourishment, he is pale, and his eyes are crazed with thirst. He wears only a torn pair of breeches and the men might have shot him dead on sight but for their shock at his arrival and the trembling of his weakened frame, clearly no threat to them.

  “¡Huya!” he yells. “¡Déjale! Por favor—Sólo ocasiona la muerte. ¡Ella nos matará todo!”

  Captain Franks commands the man to drop his sword, but the figure howls back hysterically, waving his arms and screaming.

  “Muerte!”

  The crew surrounds him. The Spaniard lunges toward the open coffin, but the men thrust him back stiffly so that he falls to the ground. He remains there on his knees weeping into his hands, murmuring to himself, until again he leaps forward, sword outstretched, this time toward a dark corner of the hold. He pushes his way through the men, who whirl to grab him, the swiftest of whom glimpse the scurrying form that terrifies the prisoner, a small vermin, fur-covered like a rat, but larger and moving as though its arms and legs are longer and strangely developed. For a moment it clambers along the wall then vanishes into the unknown recesses of the ship.

  Someone strikes the Spaniard with the handle of his pistol and the man goes out soundlessly. When he awakens, he is bound with rope.

  Among Westerner’s crew only two men spoke Spanish well enough to act as Captain Franks’ interpreter: my ancestor and an American of French descent, whom Webster called only René. Together they spent several hours with the prisoner, eventually learning a great deal about him, though of greatest interest was his account of how he came to be upon the abandoned Yaşli Yildiz. The incredible story impressed Webster considerably
and he wrote of it in his journal with such clarity that it’s almost as if he had shared the Spaniard’s experience. It remains one of the few passages not destroyed by age.

  …once given some water and few modest provisions, the Spaniard seemed to regain possession of his wits. The open coffin terrified him and he refused to be placed near it or even to look upon it and the strange figure it contained. René and I sat with him for some time, eventually with Captain Franks’ leave sending away the guards in order to gain the man’s confidence. The captain himself remained, sitting in a quiet corner of the hold where his presence was felt but not intrusive.

  The man identified himself as Eduardo Diego Velez, first mate of the Spanish merchant El Viento, at sail on return to Spain from Cuba laden with shipments of rum and tobacco. Also among its cargo, the mysterious black box now no more than ten feet from us, uncovered in the island jungles and being shipped home to a Spanish aristocrat who had paid a huge sum for its transportation. More than this Eduardo did not know. His captain had accepted the cargo only under the direct order of the Spanish governor and refused to speak of the box; indeed the full crew of their ship would mention it only in whispers when the subject could not be avoided and quickly blessed themselves afterward with the sign of the cross. The box, as Diego described, seemed to cast a weight that fell upon them all like a bout of melancholia.

  Despite this portent the weather and winds favored them. They crossed the Atlantic without incident, though their captain seemed greatly agitated as they neared the Mediterranean. Diego claimed to have witnessed the man pacing the decks at night, muttering to himself and gazing expectantly upon the black sea. Some degree of nervous excitement could be expected upon this leg of their journey as the corsairs of those North African regions under sway of the Turks were known to be savage in their plundering of European vessels and possessed of a particular enmity for the ships of Spain. Yet Diego suspected something more drove his captain to this nearly mad state. He became certain of it on the night the man dashed from his cabin, firing wildly at the walls and decks of the ship, racing from one place to the next in an unpredictable pattern like a rabid dog raging with excitement. He was shooting, Diego, explained, at a rat, though not one soul among the crew could say that they had gazed upon this devilish creature that so maddened their leader.

  The strength of four stout men was applied before the captain could be subdued and calmed. He was disarmed and brought to his cabin where Diego sat with him through the night, offering reassurance and succor, wetting his feverish brow with a damp rag and speaking sensible ideas in hope of convincing the man that he was sick and needed rest. By dawn he had fallen into a fitful sleep though several times in the night he had started as he claimed to see tiny, tortured faces peering at him through the cracks in the walls and cupboards of his cabin. He declared that the Devil had sent his imps to claim his soul, and then he wept until he lapsed into an unknowing state.

  Shortly thereafter, with the morning still young, the Yaşli Yildiz announced its arrival with cannon fire. The first shot went wide of El Viento’s bow and splashed among the waves, but as the crew scrambled to action, the second shot found home and ripped though the main mast, splintering it in two pieces. Several men perished as the rigging collapsed to the deck, crushing them with its weight. No longer could they flee, but must stand and prepare to meet the pirates who would take their cargo and their lives. Diego and his crew fired wildly as the corsair approached and met their enemies with swords, but they could not win the battle against the overwhelming force and savagery, not without their captain who in the past had always steeled their nerves. The Turks pressed them back, slaughtering one man upon another until surrender became their only avenue of release. Diego was one of four men not wounded during the melee, and the only one who could be considered an officer. The Turks forced those who could still walk to remove the cargo of El Viento and stow it in their own hold. Their leader appeared particularly impressed with the black coffin, which he hoped to present to his Bey as a magnificent gift that would earn him great stature. By means of ropes and pulleys and the exertions of twenty wounded and bleeding men, the terrible object was raised and transferred between ships. The pirates then murdered all those still living among the Spanish crew, except Diego, who they hoped they might ransom.

  They dragged the captain from his bed and in his maddened state he failed to understand the danger beset upon him, clamoring instead as though all the agents of Hell surrounded him. He sank to his knees, weeping in prayer and begging for salvation, but the corsairs pulled him to his feet and tortured him, poking him with their swords and pushing him roughly among them, until one of the pirates discharged his pistol against the man’s head.

  They placed Diego on the deck of their ship, bound hand and foot with heavy chains and forced to bear witness as a third cannon shot blasted through El Viento’s hull and the ship that had served so well on her journey from the Caribbean sank slowly beneath the water. Diego did not suspect at that moment what a merciful fate she had received. Afterward the Turks placed their prisoner in a cramped cell in the hold. A small aperture in the door provided him with a clear view of the terrible dark casket, the sight of which filled him with irrational dread.

  Later Diego peered through the window, drawn with curiosity by the clamor of men moving in the hold beyond. The vivid colors and ornate dress of the Turks’ clothing marked a severe contrast against the swallowing dark of the great box. The men drew around it in a circle, ordered by their captain. Their eyes gleamed with obvious greed, and to a man they must have anticipated that a container of such singular quality could offer only treasure beyond imagination. Only a few men, among them the captain, displayed the good sense to be puzzled by the bizarre corpse revealed within, the very same figure that rests no more than eight feet from me as I write these words. The others turned away in anger and disgust, some of the men kicking the sides of the box in frustration and one daring to spit in the face of the withered figure. Two fell upon him like jackals, seizing the meager gold that adorned her arms and throat.

  The captain ordered two men to tie the coffin lid open by securing it to a nearby beam, and then posted three of his crew to sit guard while the others returned to their duties and he retired to his quarters, perhaps to ponder their baffling haul. Time passed and the day grew long, and in the early evening, the captain returned with an elderly man, whose face bore the scars of many battles and whose white beard draped like a curtain of frost over his chest. Though dressed finely and much like the other corsairs, he bore only a small dagger at his waist, and had the bearing of a man of learning with two scrolls tucked into his belt. Though their words eluded Diego, the actions of the two men played out for him in pantomime a clear account of their discussions.

  The older man gazed a long while at the body, then conducted an examination. He felt his skin, and lifted him gently to one side to peer beneath his back. He traced the line of his tattoos with his finger and rubbed the cloth of his garments between them. The captain questioned him incessantly, yet the wizened figure remained silent, failing even to take notice of his companion’s inquiries. For some time he tested the strength of the box, rubbing his hand over it and attempting to scar it with his knife blade, but no matter how hard he struck, no mark could be left. Lastly the man turned to the ugly volume clutched in the man’s bony hands, and boldly yanked it loose. He held the cover up to the light of a lantern, but the characters inscribed there were unlike any Diego had ever seen and apparently unknown to the old sage as well. Only after he placed the book on the edge of the coffin and opened it did the patient old man betray any sign of reaction.

  Flipping through its pages, his face sank slowly by degrees into a trembling mask of sheer terror. His eyes widened. Sweat appeared on his brow. He seemed to draw comparison between something inscribed within the book and the lines and symbols inked into the dead man’s skin, and finally he recoiled from the tome as if he could not bear to look upon what he saw
there. The three guards who had been chatting quietly drew utterly silent, and the captain lunged forward with anticipation. When the old man refused to speak, the brawny Turk seized him by his shoulders and forced him back against a wall.

  What was said, Diego could not repeat, though clearly the book plunged icy fear into the heart of the pirate sage. His fear proved infectious. The captain grew pale, and in the moment he loosened his grip, the old man pushed forward, grabbing the book and thrusting it back into the coffin. A moment later he stood poised with a lantern in hand, prepared to smash it down upon the corpse and set aflame the terrible prize.

  The guards stood witless, but not so their captain. A shot rang out, and the old man collapsed to the ground, the lantern toppling harmlessly beside him. There the captain stood above his dying friend, his face, Diego recalled, twisted with grief, the smoke still drifting from his flintlock.

  Once recovered of his senses, he ordered the old man’s body removed and the casket sealed as they had found it, though only their prisoner took note of their failure to restore to the corpse its pilfered jewelry. As the men withdrew to the deck, Diego, still positioned by his window, glimpsed a small, dark shape scurry after them, no doubt a representative of the vermin that infest all ships, though for a brief moment, the prisoner wondered if he hadn’t seen something vaguely human in the features of its head. He forced the idea from his mind, and fearing that whatever madness had afflicted his captain now placed its devilish grip on him, he slumped to the floor and began to pray fervently.

  Soon hunger and exhaustion overcame him and he lapsed into a restless slumber.