Little Agnes and the Ghosts of Kelpie Wharf

by Stella Drexler

end of the wharf, near the lighthouse. She glowed and floated like a spectre in the night, but there were no lights anywhere. She was just lit up.” His eyes slid away wistfully. “She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

  Agnes lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you said it was horrible.”

  “It was horrible, young lady! I am getting there.”

  “Not very expediently.”

  “You have to build it up. It's no fun just jumping into it.” Luther huffed. “Right, then. There she was, that beautiful, spectral woman, and I thought I was looking straight into my heart's deepest desire.”

  Agnes interrupted with a scoff. “Your heart's deepest desire is a creepy glowing woman floating on a pier?”

  “Maybe it is! There's no shame in that! Anyway, as she floated there, glowing in the dark, foggy night, I moved towards her, my heart thundering as though it might simply leap from my chest.”

  “Histrionics,” Vic moaned.

  “A fine thing for you to say, cadaver,” Luther snapped. “What do you know about dramatic flair?”

  “He knows a lot about that,” Agnes said positively. “When he was alive, I think he was some sort of famous thespian. We got him out of a rubbish bin behind a theatre in London.”

  “Shakespeare,” Vic added.

  Luther rolled his eyes impatiently. “As I was saying, I moved towards the ghostly woman, and she lifted a hand to beckon me.”

  “What did she look like, Luther?” the publican asked wearily.

  “Why, like a vision from my wildest, most intimate dreams. Mind, she was the colour of the moon, but her hair was long and curling, and her face was the sort that could turn a man to drink or suicide with the merest flash of her eyes.”

  “I thought you said she was ginger before,” Elaine put in.

  “Shut it, Elaine. She had the fiery passion of a ginger, but I couldn't rightly tell what colour her hair was, could I? She was all pearly and shimmering.” He leaned towards Agnes, and his voice dropped. “As I approached her, she never moved, but her song grew louder until I couldn't rightly hear the waves or the ships bobbing in their slips. She filled my eyes and my ears and my senses. Then, when I got close enough to touch her, I reached out a hand to her. That's when--”

  “Is this the part where things get horrible?”

  “Young lady, you make it very difficult to tell a proper yarn! Yes! That's when things got horrible. Her eyes turned to slits, and her mouth opened on long, sharp, jagged teeth until I was sure she would snap my head right off its stump.”

  “Your head doesn't sit on a stump. It only becomes a stump when your head's off, right, Vic? Vic knows all about that. See those stitches? We've reattached his head to its stump loads of times. Before that, it was just a neck.”

  “My neck then! It doesn't much matter! I was certain she was going to bite my head clean off!”

  “But she didn't because you still have a head and neck and no stump.”

  “That is beside the point! I couldn't move. It was like she had trapped me in some sort of force field.”

  “What, like magnets?”

  “No, not like magnets. Like ghosts. A ghost force field.”

  Agnes considered this. “I suppose a ghost could have a force field, but it would have to be made of matter, not spectre. I suppose ghosts could be made of some sort of plasma or something. Even gases are made of matter. Maybe she was a gas, but gasses don't have significant force fields, really--”

  Luther shouted over her. “As I was saying! I couldn't move, and then her song turned into a scream, and I could feel the sound reverberating inside my body as though it would be blasted apart by the noise. Dreadful, it was. It was as though she was singing my death.”

  “Banshee,” Vic put in helpfully.

  “Yeah. Yeah, Luther, it does sound a lot like a banshee,” one of the rapscallions remarked.

  Luther thought about this. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose she might have been a banshee.”

  “But banshees foretell your death. You aren't dead.”

  “Not yet, I'm not! But when I see the banshee woman again, I know she will be the last thing I ever see in this world.”

  “What makes you think you will see her again?” Agnes asked.

  “She's the Ghost of Kelpie Wharf.”

  “She ain't, either,” the publican argued. “No one else has ever seen her.”

  “But they've seen other things. She might come to everyone in different forms. Maybe the form that attracts them or scares them the worst.”

  They all thought about this. “How did you get away, though?” Agnes demanded. “I thought you said she was singing your death.”

  “She was. I could feel it. It was coming. My head felt bursting to explode. But then, just as I thought I couldn't bear it anymore, I heard a foghorn in the distance. My ship had come home. The lighthouse illuminated, and it flashed across the wharf. The banshee woman gave a last shriek, which felled me to my knees, and then she leapt over the railing and disappeared into the water.”

  Everyone was silent a moment. Agnes peered contemplatively into her cider. “But no one else has ever seen her? Maybe you imagined it.”

  “I didn't imagine it! There are ghosts; anyone will tell you. And I saw one! And she was horrible, and she was going to kill me. It was only my crew coming to port that saved my life that night.”

  “Luther, that never happened. There's no Ghost of Kelpie Wharf,” the publican growled.

  Suddenly, another voice rose in the din of the argument. It was soft, but it carried over the crowd with uncanny clarity. “There is,” the young woman said. “I saw it. But it wasn't a woman. It wasn't anything like that.”

  Agnes swivelled in her seat to peer at the young woman. She was shockingly thin and pale, as fragile as porcelain. She looked eerily haunted, terribly sad, and Agnes could surely believe there were ghosts lurking around this woman. “What did you see?” she breathed keenly.

  “Sarah, don't,” Elaine said in a voice that was curiously kind.

  Sarah waved her hand. “It's all right. I saw the ghost, but it wasn't a woman, and it wasn't the middle of the night. It was a dark day, foggy like today.” She took a hitching breath, and her gaunt shoulders trembled. Her voice was a pale, reedy whisper. “Just like today.”

  “What did it look like?” Agnes pressed.

  “It was not a woman. It was a man.”

  “Sarah...” Elaine murmured.

  “Did you know him?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No, I didn't know him. But it was...it was like Luther said, though I couldn't see his face at all. He just...stood there, on the wharf. He was alone. He was looking out over the sea, as though he was looking for something. There was something about him...I knew he wasn't a normal man. He sort of shimmered and shifted like the fog, and I could almost see the sea straight through him.

  “Suddenly I felt as though if I did not go straight to him, I would simply die. He drew me, so forcibly I thought my heart would surely burst if I did not get close to him. It was as though he embodied everything I had ever wanted or dreamed. And so I moved closer, and then...” She took a hitching breath and suddenly seized her head as though it was paining her greatly.

  Elaine reached over and squeezed Sarah's frail shoulder. “It's all right, Sarah.”

  “No, it isn't!” Agnes snapped. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

  “Climax,” Vic added mournfully.

  Sarah looked up through her thin fingers. She sighed. “All right. I got closer, and I reached for him, and then...then he spun suddenly upon me, and I saw he wasn't a man at all but a beast with horrible, white flesh, long, sharp teeth and huge, wild eyes. He came at me, and I stumbled back, but it was too late. He leapt upon me, and I...”

  Agnes slapped the table with her hand as Sarah choked off again. Sarah jumped in alarm. “What happened? Finish the story.”

  “That is the end. I fainted dead away, and when I woke up, he was gone, but...”

/>   “Did he do something to you?”

  “No, not that I know of. I must have hit my head, but I was all right. Nothing had happened to me. I don't know...I don't know if he went away when I fainted or if someone came to rescue me. No one ever claimed to know anything about it, but...something must have stopped him.”

  They all considered this in silence a moment, but no one scorned Sarah or insisted her story was a lie. She looked as though she might shatter to pieces or shards of white glass at the merest harsh word or strong breath.

  “What's on that wharf,” a man with a thick black beard and startling blue eyes added darkly from a corner, “is a not a ghost. It's a monster.”

  They all turned to him in surprise. “Matty? What do you know about it?” the publican demanded. He was quite alarmed, for Matty rarely spoke to anyone, not since the night his wife had cast herself out to sea.

  “I know my wife didn't throw herself off that pier that night. Something took her.” Matty's eyes were shadowed by the wide-brimmed black hat upon his head, but he swept it off his head and stared around at the shocked patrons with glittering intensity.

  Agnes was quite delighted by this unexpected turn. These people were far more interesting and far gulpier than she'd imagined. “What happened to her?”

  “Denial,” Vic moaned.

  She nudged him. “Do shut up, Vic. Let the man tell his story.”

  “Matty?” Luther asked, lifting bushy, grizzled eyebrows.

  Matty inclined his head. He was not an old man, but there were deep lines around his eyes, as though he'd aged quickly and harshly. “Evangeline was...a troubled woman, but she would