Ade Grant - The Mariner

Slowly, the row-boat began the long journey away from the shore, out to the Neptune. Soon the crew were cloaked by the night air and all Philip could make out was the small lantern bobbing with the waves.

“Should I awaken the camp, Sir?” Wandsworth seemed to have gathered his wits now that someone else was in charge.

“No, not yet. I don’t want to start a panic. Those that survived their last experience of Traill are apt to go quite mad at the thought he’s returned to finish the job. No, let’s find out what he wants first.”

So they waited in the dark for the row-boat to return, Wandsworth fidgeting nervously, whilst Philip kept his eyes unwavering upon the alien vessel.

“Governor Philip I presume?” The voice called to them from the pitch-black surf.

“Who goes there?” Wandsworth cried, jumping in front of his master with earnest concern. With the reply came the sight of a man, standing waist deep in the ocean, not far from the shore.

“My name is Donald Traill.”

“What are you doing here, Traill?” Philip asked cautiously. “I told you not to return. I made that clear to you and your crew.”

“The crew are dead.”

And in the dim moonlight, Philip knew the man spoke the truth. It was as he’d feared.

“Plague?”

“The corpses did ‘em in, that’s for sure, but not by disease. I watched each one get taken. There’s just me and the ship left now.”

“And yet my word still stands. You’re not welcome.”

“I’m not on the shore,” Traill replied with a dark chuckle. “I’m ten feet from it.”

“Go back to your ship,” Philip commanded, his voice trembling ever so slightly. Traill was mad, he could sense that, but there was something else. Something worse. Some intrinsic evil, deep down in the man’s soul. Some men were good, some were bad. It was in their eyes. It was even in their smell.

But Traill would not acquiesce. He’d come to say his piece, and say it he would.

“That ship is cursed, and it is your doing, just as it is mine, Arthur Philip. You sent it out there with a hundred corpses, you allowed those spirits to remain. Well now the Neptune is full of ghosts… and I am one of them!”

“What a load of bollocks.”

[The Mariner] closed the book he’d been reading with a disappointed sigh. The story had ridiculously spiralled into mediocrity, ruining what little promise it had shown. He turned it over in his hands to once again review the blurb. ‘The Neptune’s Curse’, a splatter-punk tale of gore and horror. He had purchased it under the promise that it was based on fact. As it turned out, the facts were thin on the ground, as were the prose. Whatever actual events had inspired the pulp tale, that was their only role: inspiration. And trashy inspiration at that.

A door opened from a small office beyond the even smaller waiting room. “Would you like to come through?” The doctor smiled warmly, looking expectant. [The Mariner] had been to several therapists and counsellors over the years, and although each had done their best to appear kind and understanding they usually proved to be useless in the end.

He stood, somewhat awkwardly, and followed, holding the trashy horror novel in his hands. As he closed the door the therapist apologised for the wait. “I’m pleased to meet you, I think I can help.”

“Thank you doctor,” he replied, absent-mindedly stroking his arm and wincing at the dull throb. “I appreciate you finding an appointment for me so quickly.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s no problem at all. And please, call me Edgar.”

[The Mariner] sat in a large comfortable armchair and looked out the window. The therapist’s office was high up, almost at the top of the multi-story building split between many private offices, and through the grimy glass he could see the skyline of London, in all its equally grimy glory.

The therapist had what [The Mariner] assumed to be his file in his lap, and he quickly flicked through making the occasional grunt. Finally he looked up, and smiled.

“I see you’ve tried medication, CBT, traditional counselling and psychoanalysis.”

“Yes,” [The Mariner] nodded, his hands folded neatly over the book. The therapist looked down at it.

“Any good?”

“The book or the therapies?”

Edgar grinned. “The book.”

“It’s ok. Started well, got a bit silly as it went on.”

“What’s it about?”

[The Mariner] had seen this approach many times. A new counsellor or therapist tries to engage on a seemingly benign topic to assess the patient’s social skills. All very standard.

“It’s roughly based upon a ship that transported convicts to Australia in the 18th century. A lot of them died on the way.”

“A true story then?”

“Not really. The author has fictionalised a couple of characters, a sadistic captain and a noble governor. There’s a supernatural element that’s pretty juvenile, lets the narrative down. I hate it when authors throw in weird shit for no reason.”

“So no good then?”

“Naa.”

Edgar stared intently. “When you read a story like that, who do you associate with?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Whose shoes do you place yourself in?”

“In this story? Neither.”

“Oh?”

“Traill appears to be evil through and through. I don’t think anyone’s like that. But Philip is just as unbelievable; I’ve read over a hundred pages and he hasn’t done anything other than act selflessly.” He shrugged. “That’s bullshit.”

“So no-one then?”

“Sounds strange, but if I had to identify with something from the story, it’d be the ship.”

“‘The ship’?”

““There’s this cursed ship called the Neptune that carries the convicts. Later it is doomed to sail for eternity, haunted by their souls.”

“Sounds pretty kooky. You think that’s more realistic than goodies and baddies?”

“Yeah, because the ship hasn’t done anything wrong. It was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now it’s damned. There’s only one thing left for that ship to do, and that’s sink.”

“Is that how you feel? Nothing left to do but sink?”

[The Mariner] looked out the window to the vast crowds below, pushing to and fro in the busy streets, and wondered if he had the energy to explain it all over again. Could voicing his corrupted mind, his stinking foetid brain, really bring any change other than further shame?

He wanted to leave and ignore the malfunctions inside his head, but he’d promised to try, he’d promised . So instead he took a deep breath, and allowed it all to come spilling out.

[The Mariner] lay in bed, awake despite the early hours. Not the early hours of horror films, usually around the one-thirty mark, but the genuine early hours. The sort that make you wince and want to poke out your eyes at a glimpse of the clock. Hours beyond three and before six. Those are true witching hours, the horrifying ones that bring despair to the insomniac.

His wife lay beside him, breathing gently. She moved slightly in her slumber and murmured. A stranger might take this as a sign of waking, but he’d been married to her for years and spouses learn their partner’s sleeping patterns better than their own. She was in deep, as far into the Land of Nod as he was out of it. Tonight, for him, that land was off-limits. He was barred.

[The Mariner] stared at the ceiling whilst idly fidgeting with his cock, trying to lure his mind into erotic fantasy, rather than dwelling upon concerns. But he failed. The pecker failed to peck. Concerns won the night.

Work was one of them. Not far off, the hours would slide by with the resistance of oil. Soon he’d be presented with what he regarded the ‘early morning apocalypse’, when no matter what the day promised, he would wake consumed by a terror of it. Only in films did people open they eyes, yawn and greet the morn with a smile upon their face. Real people kept theirs tightly shut, hoping and praying and pleading against the mechanical protests of their alarm clock. A miniature CIA agent, employing torture of the most persistent kind. There must be some mistake. There had to be. Could life truly be this dreadful?