Ferrier of Souls
Chapter 7: Discord
Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean characters are not mine, they belong to Disney. I am however borrowing them for this story…yadda yadda yadda…no copyright infringement intended…yadda, yadda, yadda: please don't sue me.
Author's Note: I changed the rating of this story. Things are getting grimmer and younger readers may not want to read this. Consider yourselves warned.
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Captain Turner gasped awake and looked out the port hole. It was already daylight. Had he really slept that long? He rubbed his face trying to wake himself up even more. "Ahhhagggah." He shook himself and got up off his make-shift gunny sack bed.
The cargo deck was empty and yet he could not shake the feeling someone else had been there. It was the same unnerving feeling that he had in the pit of his stomach that something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. This time, however, he wasn't just going to shrug it off. It was time to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Since his father believed the problem merely lied with Elizabeth, Captain Turner decided to once again trespass into the lower decks and seek out Wyvern. Since he had spent so much time as part of the crew and part of the ship, Wyvern could still hear the wooden planks tell their tales despite his mortal ears. If anyone was to know the old other-worldly tales on his ship, it would be Wyvern.
"Wyvern!" the captain called out into the dark shadows. No answer. "Wyvern! Your captain is commanding you to show yourself!"
A ragged voice finally whispered a response. "Ferry the souls, Capt'n, but only the dead. Only the dead souls can you ferry. Fly, birdies, fly. The Flying Dutchman holds no cages. Ferry souls, Capt'n, but never your own and always your own…"
"Wyvern! Focus!" What had gotten into this man? He was by far more cryptic than he had ever been. "What has spooked you so?"
Wyvern's eyes suddenly seemed to focus. "The daughters of Achelous." After that he said no more.
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A scream came from above. Captain Turner immediately rushed towards the source of that blood curdling scream. On one of the upper decks a crowd of men and the young lass called Martha stood gapping around some thing, a mauled and clawed thing sitting in a pool of blood. Martha's husband pulled his wife away from the scene and let her weep into his shoulder.
As Captain Turner neared, he smelled the foulest odor, the scent of real death. Sure they all knew the smell, it was an odor that attached itself to every new arrival on this side of the horizon, but this…this was carnage. This was not a mere scent, but an overwhelming obnoxious fume. It was the smell of one twice dead, the death of an undead.
"Move!" Captain Turner shouted to the crowd of people. He had to see for himself what or who was giving off such a stench. Then there, in the middle of crowd, was the remains of a man lying in his torn blood soaked clothes. The man was nearly unrecognizable. Yet as the captain went in for a closer look, he recognized the buttons of the departed's waistcoat. Bale.
Bale, the newest member of his crew, was dead. The scratching and the clawing, the sheer battering of his body suggested…no, it was too gruesome to even think about…but it appeared as if he had be eaten to death. Bale, who had feared death and not his captain, was now something other than dead, for his soul had been devoured—truly a thing worse than death.
Now was not the time for mercy nor sympathy. Now was the time for action. "Answers!" he shouted toward his crew. "I want answers, now!" When no one answered, Captain Turner began to seethe. "He's one of you, can't you tell? That…thing there was one of my crew! I want to know what any of ya saw or heard last night. I want to know who was the last to see Bale alive!"
"Nobody knows nothing, Capt'n," answer a courageous mariner after a few moments of disquieted silence. "The last anyone saw of young Bale, he was leaving the dice game, said he heard something."
"Then what?"
"Then nothing, Capt'n," another sailor answered. "The next thing anyone knows was the scream."
"Bale's?"
"No, sir, the young lass there. She be the one who found him."
Captain Turner looked over his crew's faces. "Are you all telling me that whatever did this to Bale didn't make him scream?" He was angry.
"Did you hear anything last night, Capt'n?"
His anger suddenly vaporized. No, he had been asleep. He hadn't heard a thing. While he didn't say a word, his crew knew he hadn't heard the slightest noise, just like the rest of them. Last night had been one of the calmest, quietest nights they had had in a long time.
So, instead of answering their question, Captain Turner ordered, "I want all my men to be on your guard. Something is on my ship and I want it gone. You hear the slightest murmur of something fishy and I wanna know about it. Is that understood?"
A general buzz of ascent answered him. "I said, is that understood!"
"Aye, aye Capt'n," the mob shouted somberly. Despite them all being on intimate terms with death and the dying, none of them expected this. The undead were not supposed to die, especially not like this. Death was supposed to loom ahead of them like a fearful beast, but that beast was supposed to be tamed, not wild, not like this. They were supposed to be in charge of their own souls, but as everyone now knew, "supposed to" no longer applied.
"Disperse," Captain Turner further ordered. "Manning, Greenly, clean up this mess."
The crowd began to dissipate into smaller numbers grumbling and whispering worriedly. Some began to question the captain and his protection from death. Others sent furtive glances at anyone that looked at them the wrong way, but the most telling words came across the rabble loud and clear.
Not all monsters are scales and bone; sometimes they are made of flesh.
