"Mack!"
Katie ran down the jetty as the young man threw the painter to his father to secure. As she called his name he looked up and treated her to one of those dazzling smiles that made her knees go weak. He bounded on to the jetty and caught her in his arms.
"Miss me?" He asked, knowing perfectly well she did.
Just so there was no doubt, Katie kissed him, and showed him exactly how much she'd hated the two weeks he'd been away.
"Mack." They both turned as his father called him back, they may have been trawling for a fortnight, but the work wasn't over.
"What's that?" Mack suddenly asked, looking passed his Dad.
The sky went dark, the flag that adorned 'The Mistress' snapped in a sudden wind, and coming into port glided a black ship.
"That's impossible," the father said. "Its coming in against the wind."
Katie shrank in to Mack's side, trying to find comfort in his strong frame. But Mack's blood ran cold, and he shook.
There was no relief in the blackness, the ship, it's sails, it's flags. Lightning shot the three masted ship into sharp relief.
'Where's the crew?" Katie asked quietly. Neither man answered her.
Behind them, more dock workers gathered, staring at the spectacle.
The cloud that fought itself around the masts moved away from the ship, passing over Katie, heading inland.
She heard a breath, a sigh, a whisper.
Back beyond the docks, in the town proper, the screaming began.
oooooooooooooooooOOOOOOooooooooooooo
"Hey Sam! Get over here."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Thanks," he said to the girl and carried their coffees over to wall Dean was currently straddling.
"You yelled?"
"So we've got another black ship sighting, and this time ten healthy men dropped dead."
Dean turned the lap top so Sam could see it.
"Still along the Atlantic coast, this time a small place called Greenfield, North Carolina."
"They just dropped dead? Like that?"
"That's the way they tell it."
"Hell of a drive."
"Let's get moving."
ooooooooooooooOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo
Dean dumped his bag on the bed.
"So, the way the guy tells it, the ship was seen by half the town. It came against the wind right up to the jetty, a cloud came into the town and settled on the men, he said they screamed for five minutes before the cloud lifted and they were dead. Then the ship just left."
Sam jumped as Dean threw the second key at him. He shot him an irritated look before going back to his research.
"Well that's new. No mass deaths at any of the other towns."
"Any deaths at all?"
"I'm still checking."
Dean shrugged out of his jacket and walked over to the window. They'd struck lucky for once, they were in a hotel off-season and their room over looked the coast. Off to the right the little town of Greenfield huddled in the drizzle, still in shock after the tragedy that had only struck four days before. The press and the scientists were all ensconced in town, giving the brothers an easy legend to tell when ever they needed. A few fishing boats sat miserably in the harbour, a trawler was just making it's way in, while another was already unloading.
Forest pressed in on either side of the town, and the hotel looked out over a few stunted trees before the land dropped away into the Atlantic ocean.
"Great view."
"I guess," Sam answered, preoccupied.
"Come on Sam. You don't like the beach?"
Sam shook his head. "I just don't see what's so special. It's where the sea meets the land. So what?"
"So what?" Dean asked. "Dude - bikinis, short shorts..."
"I might have guessed." Sam laughed, not so much out of humour than the sheer predictability of his brother. "Here we go. In each of the other towns there was one unexplained death. Each time it was a man, all between 45 and 55."
Finally Dean sat down.
"So what ever this thing is, it's escalating?"
Sam tore his eyes away from the screen.
"From one to ten, I'd call that an escalation. And the sightings are getting closer together, the first few were only seen over a year or so, the last was only three weeks."
"So what's doing it? A ghost ship?"
"That's the problem, this area is called the graveyard of ships, but for all that there aren't really many stories. They've got 'The Carroll A. Deering' which is a Marie Celeste-type case, but no real ghost ships. Unless you count the ship of Captain Don Sandovate."
"That's just a ragged ship with the souls of pirates crying out for water," Dean dismissed. "There's always 'The Flying Dutchman', people are supposed to die after seeing that."
"It doesn't matter, ghost ships are specific to the sea, they don't come in to land and kill people."
"Hey, may be this is like 'The Fog'."
"Until Stephen King is proved to be an investigative reporter I think we can forget about that."
"Well may be we shouldn't, if that's all we've got."
Sam put the lap top aside, frustrated.
"May be we're going about this wrong. Maybe this isn't a ghost ship at all, may be it's something else."
"Yeah, and may be it's something new," Dean answered. "But if we don't figure it out more people are going to die."