“Are you certain?”
“Aye.I fear we’ve been tricked by…by…whatever forces we are playing with…or are playing with us.”
Dinesh looked physically shaken.He gazed out to sea as if the vessel might reappear.But the ship had truly disappeared.Or had never been there to begin with.
The crew gathered along the rail, searching the open ocean.
“Well, I’ll be fucked.”
“This is…not right…”
“Of all the bloody tricks!”
I stood with my back to the rail, my gaze locked on the captain’s.
“What is going on?”I asked with a helpless gesture.
“I don’t know,” he said.“But I don’t like it at all.”
He took my hand and led me through the muttering and confused crew and down to our cabin.
The occurrences of the day caught up to me.The missing dog, her discovery in such a strange and uncomfortable predicament, and then the ghost ship or whatever the fuck it was.Surely that was enough to deal with in the span of six hours.Exhaustion overcame me.
The captain stripped me and put me to bed, wrapping the soft red rope around my wrist and tying the ends to the bed post to ensure that I stayed in one place.
“Pearl,” he said, patting the bed beside me.
She jumped up and curled into my side.I wrapped my free arm over her.
“You’re going?”I asked.
“Yes.I have to make sure the men are all right.And find out what we can,” Dinesh said.“I’ll make sure Squid is at his post.And I’ll check on you, I swear.”
“All right,” I said.
Now that I was still, and after the strange events of the day, emotion made my throat thick.A tear squeezed out of the corner of my eye as I contemplated our situation and the chaos and danger of the unworldly influence we were under.
***
Idreamedofthemonster:Inky, slimy, cold skin touched me.Tentacles reached to enfold me.A mouth stretched open and swallowed me.
A scream echoed in my ears and then…silence.A thick, gooey, eerie lack of any sound remained, as if my ears had filled with wax or water.Then voices came from somewhere and I couldn’t make sense of them.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Dinesh’s voice.
“I don’t know.I heard noises and I came to check on him.He was trying to untie himself from the bed post.”
Squid.
“But he wasn’t awake.He was dreaming still, and I didn’t want him to go wandering.”
“Quite right.He’s still not awake.Look.”
“Aye,” Squid agreed.
But I could hear them.
