The Dead Men Stood Together (14 page)

After all this time, I could move again! Our dull movements were animated in bursts of light that sped them up and made it seem as though the whole ship had come to life to a crazed beat. Each flash showed the scene in flickering motion like the figures in a magic lantern show.

But it was not life. It was a cruel mockery of life. We moved but that was all. The horrible faces of the dead shone out at each new lightning burst and I suffered the pain of knowing that I looked like them. I was their kin. I was undead.

We groaned, we stirred. I had no more will in this than I had before in lying still. The air moved through my lungs and spilled out in sound but it was nothing to do with me. I was just a puppet now – the gruesome plaything of some hidden force. I supposed we all were.

Was this the grim victory of that female Life-in-Death? Is this what had pleased her so? Was it her pale hands that controlled us? Or had she simply left us as bodies without souls, dead but not dead?

And again I knew somehow that even as my comrades moved, they did so unaware entirely. Only me and my uncle had been allowed to think. As the lightning flashed across the faces of the crew, I found myself jealous of them: jealous of their empty heads.

I sensed something had changed in this strange world. Everything my uncle did seemed to have some effect and this new attitude in him – this repentance of his – had also wrought a change.

He was free of the albatross at last. Were we now free of the curse that fell on us when he killed it? Or was this just another act in the same mystery play?

The ship sailed on and, as it moved, we all took up the places we had occupied in life, whilst my uncle shrank back in terror. And who could blame him?

The sight of my old comrades lying dead on the deck was tragic and hard to bear, but this sight was worse – worse by far. This was a scene from a nightmare – a scene from the Last Days when hell bursts like a boil and madness spills out across the world.

The dead moved about the ship like sleepwalkers and me along with them. Their eyes like mine were open wide and stared without a blink or twitch. Each face was lit by the fireflies above and the glow-worms below and at each flash of lightning they burst into blinding clarity. Each staring face was a nightmare from some doom painting. No church wall had such hideous warnings of the rewards of an ill-spent life. No hell could hold more fearful victims.

We each took up our posts. The captain made no sound yet stood as though commanding us and we obeyed his unspoken orders. From a distance, we would have looked a normal, if very efficient, crew. From a distance!

The helmsman strode to the wheel and, lifting both his hands at once, grabbed hold and began to steer the ship. Or at least he gave the appearance of steering, for I was sure he was no more in control of his movements than I was of mine.

Perhaps even more strangely, my uncle – who did have a free will – chose to join us. It was as if he was trying to make the scene less horrible by pretending to be a part of it.

He took his position next to me, not looking at me once, and pulled on the rope as I did. The muscles on his arms stood out as did the sinews on his neck, where our – the dead crew’s – movements seemed effortless.

The grim crew scaled the rigging, climbing in silence. Their movements were, if anything, quicker and more agile than they’d been in life. They moved like lizards or spiders. They swarmed over the ship and my uncle clenched his jaw and went about his task, trying hard to blot us out.

Only once did he look at me. He turned his head and stared straight into my eyes, searching them for some sign of recognition. A sign I did not give him. A sign I could not give him. And so he turned away again and never looked back.

We worked as we would have done. We worked hard and the ship sailed on. I did not tire. I felt nothing. One time the hemp rope slipped in my grip and rasped its way across my palm for a minute before I took hold again. I felt no pain. No pain that is except the pain I bore from knowing I was for ever lost.

XXVII

The ship sailed on. The storm still stalked us, growling every now and then, and though we were in the windless eye of it, still the ship sailed on. The sails we worked were full, but full of what? What force filled that canvas and drove the ship? I didn’t know then and I still don’t.

We worked through that night, sailing on blindly into the darkness. Our limbs didn’t tire; our bellies did not growl for feeding. Never could a crew have worked as hard. We’d left the mass of glowing sea monsters far behind and were in open ocean. Then, whatever force compelled the crew to work, now made them stop and gather slowly round the mainmast.

All of us – all of us apart from my uncle, who stood at the stern, watching us in awestruck wonder, trying to decide what new strangeness was about to unfold – clustered together in silence.

Then the crew as one tilted back their heads and opened up their mouths and sang. The sound was like no human being could ever make: more beautiful than the greatest earthly choir. It was the singing voice of angels.

And beautiful though it was, it was yet another torment, because the sound didn’t come from me. Of all the undead crew, I was the only one who did not join this heavenly choir, and I knew then that their souls had not returned when they raised themselves up. The emptied shells that were the crew were host to heavenly spirits.

My soul had never left: my soul, with all its flaws, remained inside the husk of body, chained like a prisoner in a cell.

My fate was different to the rest of the crew. Their souls were somewhere else. Who knew where? It wasn’t as though they were all good men. Was it heaven that awaited them? I’d have gladly taken my chances wherever it was.

The singing shook the air. The sound of it was like a physical thing. As it left their mouths it seemed to me to take the form of shining angels, and they took flight like a flock of white doves, bright and pure against the sky. They were so beautiful.

The sound-angels flew off towards the rising sun and back again, flitting round our heads, their music echoing round and round, like birdsong and babbling brooks and the sound that ripe barley heads make as they brush against each other in a summer breeze. It was like the music of Nature – of everything that was good in the world.

Just as suddenly, all the crew closed up their mouths and the music stopped. The singing ceased but there was not the same silence as before. The sails breathed and sighed as the ship moved and the water lapped at our hull and again I was taken back to fields of corn and fields of barley and the chatter of water flowing over pebbles.

These noises I must have heard a million times and never thought anything of them, yet I flew back in my mind to my childish self, standing chuckling with delight and clapping my hands excitedly over nothing more than these sounds as I stood on the field’s edge with my mother. Oh, to be back there.

The ship sailed on – still without a breath of wind. It needed no further assistance from the crew. We simply stood at our place by the mast and my uncle stood at his place and on we went until the sun was directly overhead.

My uncle sought shade, but the sun beat down relentlessly on me and the other crew, making our damp clothes steam. We should have burned like martyrs on a gridiron, yet still I felt nothing. Nothing. I didn’t blink or move a muscle. I was as unfeeling as the nails that fixed the deck on which I stood.

The ship came to a sudden halt as though an anchor had been dropped. It lurched back and then forward again. My uncle was thrown to the deck and we, the undead, managed to shift our stance and stay on our feet somehow. My uncle lay unconscious as the ship stood still on a windless ocean.

I – we – stared down at him from our post. My uncle furrowed his brow but did not open his eyes. We stood over his fallen body in a strange reversal of our previous positions. We stood like a group of murderers over the body of our victim.

PART THE SIXTH

XXVIII

The silence came down again. The only movement was the rise and fall of my uncle’s chest as he lay in his faint, and the hairs of his beard trembling as his breath left his lips.

The whole world seemed concentrated on those small movements. Without them, the scene could have been a painting or a sculpture, though one that only a madman would have created.

My uncle lay insensible all that long night, but as dawn’s light began to grow and soak the whole place in yellow then it was that I heard voices. Voices. Not sounds of weird music, but actual voices.

Two people were talking. Because I could not move my head I couldn’t see where the voices were coming from. Could it be that not all of my shipmates were dead? Maybe they had been hidden away in the hold and escaped whatever foul magic had captured the rest of us?

The voices drew nearer and I realised now that they were dropping down from above. There were no living crew up in the topsails, I knew that: I had seen my undead crewmates swarm all over those masts. Nor did these voices give any sign of movement, as men’s voices will when they are climbing whilst talking. Instead they seemed to float down.

And in any case, now they were clear, I knew these voices were not those of any one of us. These were not the harsh notes of fishermen and mariners. These voices had the light sing-song tones of a parson.

‘Is this he?’ said one of the voices. ‘Is this the man?’

I still could not see who – or what – spoke, but I could see very clearly that a light was now hovering over where my uncle was lying asleep on the deck. My uncle stirred and half opened his eyes.

‘Yes,’ the voice continued. ‘It was him. With his cruel bow. It was he who slew the albatross. And the spirit who lives in the land of mist and snow, he loved that bird. And even though the bird did nothing but love these men, still that wretch killed it.’

The other voice was softer and sweeter-toned.

‘And he has done penance – and he will do more.’

‘How is the ship moving without wind to fill the sails?’ asked the first voice.

‘The air is cut away in front,’ said the other. ‘And closes in behind!’

The speed of the ship picked up. I could feel the air rushing past me as we went, faster and faster until the stars above were mere blurs in the heavens. Every timber rattled and quaked as it hurtled through the air, skimming across the wavetops like a swallow across a millpond.

‘Fly, brother, fly,’ said one of the voices, getting fainter. ‘Higher! Higher! The ship will slow and the mariner will wake. We must away.’

The ship did slow and the stars began to settle in the sky once more. The night was still and calm, the moon high and still no breeze moved our craft, yet on it went. My uncle woke and stared around in confusion, wondering what he had seen or heard or dreamt.

His eyes naturally came to rest on us, the undead crew who still stood, lit now by the moon high overhead, and he recoiled with a shudder. We must have been a gruesome sight, gathered there together silently in the moonshadows.

My uncle stared back at us, stared into our lifeless eyes, searching for some sign of fellow feeling but finding none. He seemed unable to take his eyes from ours, almost hypnotised by our gaze. It was clear from the look on his face that he would rather have looked almost anywhere, yet still he could not take his eyes away. Perhaps he feared us more in thought than in view.

But then, with an effort, he closed his eyes and turned his head, and when he opened them once more he was looking at the wide, empty ocean and I saw tears fall down his cheeks. Then he turned his back on us and did not turn round again.

A breeze blew up. But it blew in our faces. It blew across my unblinking eyes as we moved ever on, the sails above us actually filling in the opposite direction to that in which we travelled. But we were a ship of impossibilities. There were no surprises left in the world for me or for my uncle.

Or so we thought.

The first sign of the next wonder was the change that now came over my uncle. He’d been standing in his usual stance: of a man beaten down, his back bowed and bent as though the albatross was still roped around his neck.

He stood that way at the prow of the ship, looking ahead, a silhouetted shape against the cold night sky, like an ink blot on blue velvet.

Then he started to move. He craned his head, leaning forward and peering into the distance. To my surprise, he moved suddenly this way and that in an agitated manner. He gripped the rope that was tethered nearby and slapped his hand on the woodwork to his right. He muttered to himself and this muttering grew and grew until he whooped in excitement.

Then I saw what he saw. A light. A light. The dark shapes on the horizon and a light with it. It was land! It was a shoreline and a harbour and a harbour light!

And as we closed in, the wonder of this sight increased a thousandfold because I saw now, even in silhouette, that this wasn’t just any shore. I knew these shapes. Even in darkness, I knew this place. I knew that church tower jutting from the houses on the hill. I’d been christened there. This was my own town: my own sweet town.

My uncle burst into sobbing and I would have done likewise if I’d been able. I heard him mumbling and shaking his head as we rounded the end of the harbour wall and entered its mouth.