Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

Northwest, of course! I spoke it aloud. “Northwest!”

“…sssssssssssssssss!”

Such urgent affirmation, harsh with emotion. And more.

“…essssss-oar!… essssss-oar!”

Northwest. Restore.

“Trial. Northwest. Restore.”

The inner ocean rushed up the shore one last time.

“…sssssssssssssssss!”

Such determination, such relief.

I instinctively looked to where the skull had been atop its bookcase facing northwest. There were two smudges there now, two thumb-print faces, one pressed to the left-hand window pane, one to the right. Not one, two !

I had not cried out when I’d found the skull on my chest, but now a frantic yelling filled the house. It truly took moments to realize that I was the one yelling, mine the only skull screaming!

When Will hurried in and learned what the skull had said, he accepted my accusations with “Please, Dave. We’ll talk about all this in the morning,” and urged me to try and settle again.

I was more surprised than relieved that I could do so. There were no more communications, no further dream messages or nightmares, though I tossed and turned for the rest of the night and came down to breakfast feeling leaden and headachy, as if with a serious hangover.

At least I didn’t need to rush home and do a Google search—Will was immediately forthcoming with the real facts about the skull—though I resolved that I would do a net search later, do my best to verify everything away from 1A when this was done.

Will said very little until he’d served us a cooked breakfast and freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Dave,” he said, taking his place at the table. “There were things we needed you to confirm without prior knowledge before we went any further. You have to understand.”

“You said you never knew what the skull was saying.”

“We never have. It’s the back-story material we misled you about.”

“Misled. Much better than lied.” I was feeling terrible from lack of sleep, the events of the previous night. “What does ‘trial’ mean?”

“It’s the Tryal . Spelt T-R-Y-A-L or T-R-Y-A-L-L, sometimes even the way we spell it now. Australia’s first recorded shipwreck. An East Indiaman taking the new Brouwer route to the East Indies. Back in May 1622, she strayed off course on her way to Batavia—Jakarta in Indonesia. Struck what we now call the Tryal Rocks near the Montebello Islands.”

“Where are they?”

Will topped up my coffee cup. “Off Barrow Island, close by Exmouth and Dampier on the coast of Western Australia. It’s said Captain Brooke abandoned ship prematurely, cast off in a half-full skiff with the silver they were carrying for trade. He reached safety, lived to be absolved of blame and command another ship. But more than half the crew were left to drown. Think of it, Dave. The ship’s only surviving longboat was already overcrowded and wallowing. Brooke and the skiff were nowhere to be seen. He reached Jakarta, reported the Tryal breaking up four hours after impact. Accounts from those in the longboat said this didn’t happen till the following morning. He lied about what happened.”

“You’ve lied about what happened! And not just about Farday being a dealer and selling it on. Was Lucas Farday the original owner? Is this his skull?”

“We can’t know for certain. He may have gone down with the Tryal . But he may have clung to wreckage, made it to the Montebello group of islands. They’re barren, hardly anything there, and it has to be another thirty miles at least to the coast. But the currents are strong. There’s a good chance that his body was washed ashore and found. Identified later from jewelry, remains of clothing. The skull came into our family, however that happened. You have to understand. We wanted to believe.”

“So what do you know about the skull?”

“It’s what’s called an attract. An object that draws things to it. There’s usually one at the site of any haunting: a chair, a book, a hairbrush, the house itself.”

“I mean genetically.”

“My grandfather called it the Farday Skull. Told us it belonged to our ancestor from the Tryal , that he was lost in the wreck on the Tryal Rocks. But, living or dead, he may have reached shore. He may have been the first Englishman to set foot in Australia.”

“Will, what did DNA tests show? You must have had it done.”

“Negative for a direct link from one. Inconclusive from another. But if it’s an attract, it can protect itself. Manage deflection.”

“You can’t believe that.”

Will set down his cup. “Those dreams you’ve had.”

“A way of communicating—”

“But of warning too, yes? Even defending?”

Biting! I thought, but kept that to myself. “I still hear wishful thinking.”

“You may be right. But, Dave, it came to us. Stayed with us. In our family. Called to you. Why?”

“You think I might be a relation too?”

“Dave, I have to ask. Is there anything?”

“Not much. A great-great-great uncle was a convict on a prison hulk, the Phoenix , moored in Lavender Bay in the early 1800s. That’s about it. Though at some point there would have been long sea voyages to Australia before it. Some contact with Brooke’s or Farday’s descendants may have been possible. We can never know.”

“We can’t,” my elderly neighbour agreed. “So what do we do?”

“Those shadows at the windows. Something’s happening, Will. So no more lies.”

“No point. It’s told you everything we were withholding. The Tryal Rocks are northwest of here, on the other side of the continent.”

“And it must be furious about that. You’ve been thwarting it. You cost it years.”

“Dave, it never spoke to us. How were we to know? What do you say? One more night?”

“One more night.”

I knew better than to make any special arrangements. The skull would do whatever it needed, whatever it could manage to do, so I left it atop its bookcase, angled out, watching the night, the far distances, as it once had for so many years.

I still felt wretched from the previous night’s events, and so, settling into welcome sleep, I was able to allow that nothing else would happen, that everything had been clarified.

I was wrong, of course, but, feeling headachy and strange, there was resignation rather than panic when I became aware that the skull was in bed with me, clutched in my arms beneath the covers, angled so its sealed teeth were pressed hard against my throat.

I did not scream, did not yell. Not this time. There was even a touch of gallows humour about the whole thing.

“Do your worst,” I said, accepting other needs, this other reality, all the while asking myself, what now? What can possibly remain to be done?

I barely remembered the charter flights across the continent to Broome, then down to Dampier. There were the vaguest recollections of a motel room at Cable Beach and another at the Mermaid Hotel, but little else. Finally, on a mild Monday afternoon, after a long-haul helicopter charter out across the Montebello group, we hovered above that roiling point of shipwreck and heartbreak, betrayal and despair, and those deadly rocks broke the surface forty metres below our skids.

It wasn’t till then that I came to myself, became aware that I was strapped in and that a charter crewman was reaching over to haul the cabin door back, became aware of Will beside me, first pulling back his headset then mine before handing over the skull and urging me on.