The candles of Dormir were weakly burnt upon that night.
Death had emerged from its shadow and now wore darkness as if it were a cloak, it stalked through the canaled streets of the Port and laced its footfall with the sound of dread in each step, a silent language of cold malice, a quiet whisper of terrible things muttered into the ears of men too weak to find slumber; it was a murmur that spoke of evils, spoke of hexes, it wove a curse upon the air that shall forever be remembered upon the sightless wind; it was a crack in what is real, a thing caught just beyond the sight of a human eye.
Dead sailors lie in watery graves and the lord of rest holds no dominion over the sea. They’re a fine old god Dormir, but I all too readily know that it is he who accounts for our lives, and it is he who will eventually turn his patient gaze toward us as we await judgment. A god that blesses us with rest and with rainfall. A god that blesses us with death. He is death, he is rest, and he is the rain.
Such was the deluge upon that night that you may think that he hath wished to drown the sky itself. Water swelled over the roughshod gutters and washed merrily down the street as the barroom of a the Dirty Three sat in deafened silence; the distant light of the street faltering as the Port’s lighthouse wavered in the ocean haze; each candle in the city now too damp for the lady of fire to hold onto the heart of her very own wick.
‘They say that the creature of dark is birthed from the very depths of sea, it is a being both malicious and unknown,’ an old sailor barked from his darkened corner, ‘it means only for our death and will not stop hunting until its twisted hunger is sated. We’ve all been marked by tempest unnamed, and no god may change what is wrote.’
Not a soul in the tavern moved; fear had nailed invisible threads across the tavern’s entrance and by no strength of any among the gathered throng could they stand to walk beyond the door.
‘It’s toying with us,’ a short Garan man wavered in fright from the barroom, he wore a patchwork coat and shone with the illuminated nose of a bibulous drinker, ‘it got Henry and it will get us too. We’re trapped in this place and by no wail or woe will we see the light of morning again.’
The huddle of patrons began their prayers and took the droning of the rain outside to be as if the static of death’s final knell, all hope was dampened by unrelenting tumult. The maw of inescapable abyss loomed within the rain and greeted each patron openly, for soon it would find its way inside.
A bucket, so filled with water that the falling drips cascaded from its rim and onto the floor, became the only voice that dared speak in that sullen moment. The rain doubled, tripled, cried out in its fall, pounding upon the tiled roof as if desperate to find a way within, tearing its knuckles against anything that it could readily destroy, it growled with a rage, screaming, inhuman, and mad.
What craven existence would I suffer if I did not meet with this night readily? Although still young I had sailed the Mallard’s run, looked a bully shark within its unblinking eye, and saw no fear in that which could be named. Woeful creatures of illusion and rime are seen to prowl the decks of many a storm, phantoms that lure good sailors toward the sea, drowning them with frightened eyes, shaking them awake so that they may best feel their mortal coil unfurl.
I do not fear a creature of the land. We know the land, it beats in our chest and is felt beneath our feet. From the earth grows the roots and from those roots we grow trees. At sea we stand on the woods of land and hold their connection to the earth, an ancestral root that binds us all by the mark of our boot. At birth we are equal and with porter in my stomach I knew no fear of mortal tyrant or beast that had walked upon land.
‘What cowards are ye?’ I shouted to the cowering bar, each candle wavering under the suddenness of my call, ‘Night as black as iron, in storm that may drown and fill ye wood with rot, I challenge the fortitude of any that wallows from spectre or denies the fate of Dormir’s guidance. That which takes from life must be real, and we do not accept the affliction of curse. We here deal with that of a cruel hand and our own frightened imagination, nothing more.’
Standing from my seat I moved to the hearth and retrieved a small axe, once used for the cutting of kindling, now hung as an ornament, a symbol of this city.
‘We stand within the Port of Nations, and the axe is the tool that separates us from cowardice. I stride into the depths of night and no stalker shall dare approach me.’
The barroom, roused from my speech blossomed into a rose of excitement. A strong lad, as nearly tall as he was broad of shoulder, kicked his chair backward in defiance and announced to the tavern with melodious baritone that he feared nothing, thumping his chest and marching into the storm with the determination of a warrior. He bellowed with pride and the bar erupted into merry cheers of victory. As one we roared as he strode into the street to meet with his folly, only becoming halted as the man was picked up by a gale of wind and flung away from sight.
‘Although,’ I began, noting that the attention of the room had turned away from me somewhat, ‘maybe things will look a bit more cheery after another drink?’
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 