The strange part of it is that I wrote a story a few months ago - titled 'Green Hull' at random - which is remarkably similar to this, down to the steamship and sickly glow underneath the dark waters. But I really didn't begin playing this game until the last few days, and I want to stress that. It's simply coincidence!
But that has got me thinking about the story I wrote. Unlike most pieces of refuse I dredge up from the shallow scummy pond of my creativity, I think in theory it's not terrible. Written over the course of one day while already late, absolutely. Sloppily assembled? Yes. Yes it is. I also figured out exactly who the characters were (really, I only decided the narrator was the First Mate in the last third of the story) late into the story, and then didn't have enough time to go back through and retroactively add in salient moments of characterization where they really needed to go.
So it's unbalanced and wobbly, and lurches forward like a zombie with only one shoe, but I think the core there is decent enough. It's made me think about going back and editing it. But why not post this very first, very rough draft online? That way, if it does become something I can be less ashamed of, I won't ever be able to get it published. Sounds good, right? It's a good idea, right?
So sit back, relax, pop a 5-Hour Energy and enjoy the descent into hackneyed terror that is the very first draft of the future
Green Hull
What I remember most clearly is the stillness.
The rest of the crew says otherwise; Peabody says we were stuck in the middle of a howler, pelted by Poseidon as we shivered in our overcoats and held on for our lives. Francis tells it a little different every time, but always makes mention of an island he calls The Wash, where the sun shone down always, even at the darkest hour of night – that is, when he can get to that part of the story, before he ducks his shoulders and hides inside himself and asks to be taken back to his room. The Captain says... well, I guess he doesn’t say much anymore.
What I remember is the stillness, the damnable calm before a storm we never saw coming. It’s an odd thing, a still sea. Because there’s always noise from somewhere, even if it’s just the steady slap of the waves against the hull while the engine chugs over top, a duet which is the closest a man can get to peace and quiet when he’s stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, looking down the barrel of three more weeks on the waves. But that evening it was still, like the water had forgotten how to move, or it had seen Medusa and turned to stone, only the stone was translucent glass and showed us just how far we couldn’t see into its holds.
We hadn’t seen any wind or heard any clouds for a week, as best as I can recall, and we were toasting our luck each night with Peabody’s private reserve, a little secret he kept from the Captain. Did the Captain know? I can’t say. But he never said anything about it, and as it didn’t much matter to the others, it didn’t much matter to me. I remember waking that morning to anxiety and a bowl of oats. The galley was a ghost town, the deck a mourners’ gallery. We all felt it, I think. Seven days of good fortune was a blessing, but another morning with no chop nor gale was beyond strange in that part of the sea. I checked the cargo three times before noon, ensuring the crates were stowed properly. If Lady Luck was about to deliver a comeuppance, I wasn’t going to be the one left swinging in the wind.
Around noon is when it began to change, in fact, and we felt the first breath of a breeze in days, and a fine mist rolled in to smother us whole. Or perhaps we rolled into the mist; it’s hard to say, out there on the water. The mood picked up; Francis began talking to Big Peter about some lady he had ‘made acquaintance with’ in Boston, and even the Captain relaxed a bit, giving me the wheel while went to his cabin to read. He liked his books, the Captain, and not a man in the crew but respected him for it. Hell, Peabody couldn’t even read, and I had to go over the manifest with Francis repeatedly until he could speak it from memory when we reached safe harbor.
Around six bells we came out the other end of the sea mist. Soon after the escorting breeze left us, and we chugged along to the gentle rocking of small cresting hands. I looked behind and saw the fog we had left behind sitting on the ocean, a ghostly wall we had shot through, stretching as far as I could see. The sun was muted by a layer of stationary rain – must have been some low-flying clouds, they do that sometimes – and at first the shade felt pleasant, and we picked up speed. But as it continued, I began to remember my misgivings from earlier. The filtered light began to blur the edges of what I could see, and though I can’t rightly explain it, it was impossible to see far in any direction. The Captain took the helm again, leaning forward slightly as he gripped the iron wheel, knuckles the color of bone underneath. I moved down and stalked the decks, which put the men on edge, particularly Big Peter, who was a superstitious man at the best of times. I watched him shovel coal until he spent more time glancing at me than the furnace. It beat being outside.
Yet somehow at seven bells I found myself on the main deck, staring at the water. Many who know the sea only in parting believe they have her tenor, whether the fishermen of New England or the traders of the Caribbean. I don’t doubt they know their seas, the local divinities which bring riches and ruin in equal measure. Hell, I thought I knew the sea too, before I began making cross-Atlantic voyages. But it’s all bravado, boasts you tell yourself to make sense of the ups and downs. It’s only when a man is thousands of miles from land, when the deeps below him sink fathoms upon fathoms, and the dark of the depth is so black it threatens to swallow you while you stare at it from the security of an iron tub built by men just like you in the span of the few months... it’s only then you can admit to yourself, faced with evidence which admits no denial, that you are small.
That was something like how it went, at any rate, as I stared down there with the sun fighting through overhead, when the quiet came. The ship no longer chugged and sputtered, but glided silently on her belly, a steel-gray seal flowing over ice. The men noticed at once; heads whipped around to the helm, where the Captain stood behind dark glass, his face a dim mask. Affecting nonchalance I made my way inside, where he assured me that we were still moving – the valves and meters and every piece of equipment said we were still moving, the engine still running. I ran down to the furnace to check the fire, and the instruments were right – the fire raged like an angry god; the sound roared as if to make up for the silence above. I couldn’t find Big Peter.
As I climbed the ladder from the engine room, and the fury of the fire faded behind, a madly ringing bell took its place, and I felt the ship lurch to one side. I scrambled the rest of the way up. I saw the Captain, clutching the wheel and straining to turn against the pull of whatever current we had run afoul of. I ran over and added my strength to his, and the iron circle inched starboard, squealing in protest. I glanced outside and saw the muted evening reflected in the black waters, the men holding on to the port railing as they made their way below deck.
The Captain roared ‘Slow Ahead’ to Francis, who had been ringing the bell on the bridge, and he stumbled across the floor to the chadburn. I shouted that Big Peter was missing, but I couldn’t hear myself over the dull roar which had crept up on us as we fought the ship for its life. Instead I stepped towards Francis, shoving him in the direction of the wheel while I half-jumped, half-fell down the hatch leading below deck and, clutching my bruised ribs, lumbered to the galley, where I found most of the men breaking into Peabody’s stash with abandon. I pointed at Young Donald and Jackson, disregarding Peabody’s slouching form, and screamed at them to get to the engine room.
By the time I made it back to the bridge the ship had straightened, for the most part, though the Captain still fought with the wheel. We were caught in the wake of something, whether a current or trade wind or God knows what, and he was having a hell of a time shaking us free. Asking Francis to check on the cargo, I stepped towards the bridge window, peering out at the preternatural gloom, peering right out at Big Peter.
He was tangled up in ropes at the bow. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to free himself or hold on more tightly; either way, I didn’t like his chances. I slipped on one of the overcoats hanging at the back of the bridge, and tightening a pair of rope-handling gloves, I moved to the door. It didn’t want to open, like all the winds we had avoided on our journey were here in this moment, shouldered up against handle.
As I struggled the ship lurched, leaning harder to port than before. I felt something slam into my back, driving the breath out and away, and as my vision went dark I felt the door under me give way. I managed to keep just enough wits about me to grasp the handle as whatever had hit me slipped sideways along the deck and over the rail. I never learned who it was.
I shook away the stars and my way slowly to the starboard rail, slipping here and there, saved only by a snaking cable which must have popped free during the tumult. I shouted for Peter over the roar of the bubbling surf, but even I couldn’t hear my words as they left my throat. I peered back to the bridge and saw the Captain; it looked as if the wheel was the only thing keeping him on his feet, a friend and foe combined in that terrible moment.
I made it to the rail, discarded the cable and grabbed the sturdy brace with both hands, moving along inch by inch. My feet found purchase where they could. In my slow crawl Peter grew closer, until I noticed his open mouth and wild eyes, and his throat straining with a howl which couldn’t be heard.
The ship seized, and I half-jumped, half-fell into the tangle of ropes which Peter was even now clinging to. I looked down and found my feet dangling free. The deck was nearly vertical, being sucked in by a water darker than any starless night I’ve seen before or since. In a spot about twenty feet wide, a little farther up the ship, the ocean buckled accompanied by a deafening crack, like a tree falling. The surface of the water rose up, pushing out at various places, the surrounding sea stretching to keep it contained, like a great pressure was building underneath the surface that the water itself was trying to keep hidden.
A rough hand grabbed me and held on, and I was reminded of the dull ache in my arms as Peter leaned over and shouted something in my ear. I couldn’t hear a word over the fray, but I turned and looked at him anyway. His face was pale, and shone with a greenish cast, while his arms shook, not entirely due to the exertion of keeping himself on the ship, I think; his red beard stuck wildly out in all directions and made him look more than half-mad, though I suspected I might not look much better. I pointed at the bridge, shouting myself hoarse trying to be heard. He shook his head and let go of me, tightening his grip on the ropes.
I grabbed him and stabbed at the bridge with my finger once more, my fear finally getting the better of me. I told him that we had to get to the rafts, that staying entangled on the bow meant assured death, that it was only a matter of time before the stacks flooded and the ship was gone for good, and us with it if we didn’t move right then. I don’t know if by some miracle he heard me, or if the image of my face screwed up with dread and anger convinced him to move, but he began to climb to the rail above. With once last look at the scene below, where the surface of the water now bulged outwards in half a dozen places, I pulled myself up and over the side of the ship.
On hands and knees we crawled back towards the bridge and the lifeboat beside it. The sun had all but disappeared by that time, and it was slow going over the rails in the greying gloom. Peter would stop sometimes, when the ship tilted or another massive crack echoed up the deck or sometimes for no reason at all, but with a shove and an unheard shout I’d get him moving again. About halfway to our destination smoke began to roll in from underneath us; the stacks had been flooded. If there was any chance of the ship being salvaged, it had now disappeared, and so we grimly continued, coughing and moving more slowly as our path was obscured.
At some point on our doomed sideways climb, with the ship twisting and slipping underneath us, the stacks had been pulled completely under the water, and the smoke dissipated. I looked past Peter and saw, saw that the lifeboat was gone; at that moment I lost hope, for the first time in my life. I continued forward as a mechanical exercise, my body proving more stubborn than my mind, though it, too, was approaching its breaking point, for that at point I slipped and slid down the hull, losing sight of the devilry which had all but slain the old girl who, even now, was putting up as good a fight as she could. As I hauled myself back up, telling my arms to simply let go and end it, I noticed a splash of color off to the side. I turned and the sight of the small boat sitting on the unblemished sea ushered in a wave of relief which almost accomplished what my doomed will had not. It was only a few hundred feet away, by my reckoning, and though I couldn’t see who was aboard, the waving figures told me they had spotted us.
With a loud curse I hauled myself back up onto the side of the railing. Peter hadn’t noticed my fall, and so was about a dozen feet ahead. I rushed forwards, throwing caution away as the possibility of rescue loomed large in my thoughts. I caught up to him quickly, for he had stopped moving. Directly below us was that cursed Hell-spot, and he sat on the rail, looking down. That was when I noticed the light; a flickering green glow had encompassed this side of the ship, casting Peter’s face in a sickly light. I had no time to marvel at monstrosities – I shook him by the shoulders and gestured to the salvation waiting behind him.
He didn’t look, though, or respond to me in any way. He just sat there, staring down, and that’s when I realized the light was coming from beneath the surface, shining through the edges of shattered sea. The fractured water now spread almost the width of the ship, and I had the very immediate sensation that we should be gone from there. I grabbed Peter by the collar and made to slide down the hull into the water, and make a swim for it, trusting to good fortune that we wouldn’t be dragged down in the ship’s wake.
The scar of broken ocean erupted. Light poured forth from the gap as something – something – crept out, and as if Time itself was taken aback at this perversion of the natural and sacred, it seemed like hours as it emerged and unfurled itself, luxuriating in freedom from whatever dark millennium it had come from. Then the sound came, like a scream of something that came before, and the sea fled the opening, and the ship was held in the grip of that nauseating light, and Peter fell forward, and my hand released his collar, and he dropped into the light, and I turned and slipped down the hull, and was torn up by rivets and barnacles on the way down, and I swam hard against a current trying to bring me back, and that’s all I can remember until I awoke on an English merchant vessel alongside Francis and Peabody and the Captain a week and a half later.
Like I said, it’s not the only story. Each of us have one, and that’s mine. I don’t know if it’s the right one; it doesn’t seem likely. It feels like the right one though, at least to me.
What was it? Could have been anything. A man’s mind plays strange tricks, and sailors know that best of all. Sometimes it was a great fish, a winged monstrosity called up from the ancient fathoms of time; others it was the image of a heathen god, brought forth from profane idols to assert its dominance over our race once more; and still others it’s the fetid hand of Lucifer himself, come to snatch a ship of sinners down to his infernal realm. Most often, though, it’s something that can’t be seen entirely, like it exists in the blind spot of reality, the tip of some alien iceberg; an invader of our reality, one which may not even notice the comparatively small, insignificant race of man.
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