Cast in Dark Waters

3

In the deep night, she gazes down from her snow-covered tower staring at the ice-choked sea and the splintered hulls of shipwrecks crushed against the rocks. Masts lay shattered and askew, lines flail in search of victims. Torn sails flap and hang loose as the shredded clothes of murdered men.

She glances at the cliffs and wonders if she’ll ever have the strength to leap to a complacent, satisfying death. So peaceful and extraordinary. There are dead sailors there, she thinks, drifting in the waves and crawling about on the reef. They wait with soulless gazes, gesturing to her, beckoning, always and forever watching. Some of them are her former crew members, some family.

Her mother is immersed in the rushing waters, with her nightgown floating up around her shoulders. Mama with her eyes glowing yellow and peering up at her, arms raised.

She brushes the curtains and those faces in the drapes glower and glare. No wonder Mama gave up so early, so young. No one could live for long with the weight of so much evil bearing down all the time.

The snow falls.

Turning, she hears the rustling of her husband’s entrance.

He slips inside through the bolted door and whispers for her. “Cassandra.” This has happened many times before, and yet she can remember no particulars—only the constant burden of failed responsibility. The unrelenting blackness grows thicker each night because of this.

Now she feels him here, gliding across the room towards her as his features take shape in the dark. Mama is singing so far below, one of the Irish songs about open fields of battle and dying beloved horses. The Irish whimpered over every ache but they knew how to sing of glory and tragedy. It could make you fall to your knees weeping when nothing else would. Mama goes on.

Clouds slither across the sky. Curtains snap against his collar and his long black hair is silhouetted by the moon, framing each angle of the face she knows so well. His arm reaches past and slowly closes the shutters, as though he’s aware of her thoughts. There was a time when she enjoyed that, feeling him warmly nestled inside her mind. His cloak sweeps against her thigh and she recalls dancing with him across marble verandas in Jamaica.

As the shutters squeak and ease together the light dwindles to almost nothing, until she is alone with him and the complete gloom of their attachment. Devotion is damnation. The cold intensifies until she’s shuddering violently, teeth chattering, knowing her love has found her again. She reaches out hoping to grab hold of him, if he’s there. He’s always there.

“Cassandra.”

“Leave me, Tyree.”

“No.”

“You must, for your own endless rest.”

“Never, love.”

“Be at peace.”

“Only with you.”

His voice is very much the same, most of the time, and it lifts her heart too far when she hears it. This is truly what hell is, she thinks: the living hope for the love of a dead man.

What more can God do to her?

Nothing, she decides, and with that belief comes resolution, even relief. It’s exactly what she’s been waiting for, here in her tower. She backs up to the bed and lays back against the thick covers once more. She’s as ready as she can be, and prays it is enough.

“Then come back to me.”

“I cannot,” he tells her. “I try but it is so…difficult…even this… touching you in this way…”

“What…?”

There are lives beyond the daylight, plateaus one can only reach in nightmare. Mama taught her that, back when the fever gripped her and she went off to strange and foreign places. He travels the same byways.

It has always been like this, since she lost him. The struggling about in murkiness, the driving fear, and the oppressive ballast of their passion. Desire that no longer exists in the living world.

Perhaps she’s only gone utterly insane. That, if nothing else, would be a great comfort.

Her frosted breath rises and again bursts against the jutting stone angles of his hard face. It is an image that draws her back into herself. She can taste the wine she was drinking with Maycomb and his wife. Benbow. They want her to go to the island of Benbow.

It’s a refrain of the mind that conjures dread. Haunted waters swell and surge, and the bottoms are heavy with drowned men buried in mud. Those who wait for the storms to come.

“Tyree?” she asks. “Are you there on Benbow? Am I supposed to find you there. Tell me so I’ll know what to do.”

“Let’s not talk of that now, Cassandra.”

Sometimes he can almost sound exactly like the man he’d once been, filled with the same charm and an eagerness towards laughter. There’s a slight chuckle beneath his words, the kind that always made her smile. An appealing brazenness originally drew her to him, but it was the times of quiet playfulness that kept her. She cannot help wondering how much of him is left and if, somewhere inside himself, he is screaming for her to do what must be done.

She ought to find a virgin boy, place him on a horse of solid white and lead them across the island’s graveyards. Moving from east to west, following the sun’s course. That’s what she should do. When the horse is unable to pass over a grave she’ll know what lies within. She’ll be ready to use the hoops of iron to break his limbs and, when he arises, she’ll stake the body with ash wood and hack his head off with the sickle or her cutlass. Thorns will be placed under the tongue so he’ll never drink such a sanguine brew again.

After she’s done weeping and can gather her strength once more, she’ll pull herself from the mud and finish what she’s started. This is how it must be. She’ll bury the head face down so that, if it still lives, it can do nothing but burrow into the dirt with all those teeth.

“What’s that noise?” he asks.

“Mama.”

“Your mother?”

“In the water. Trying to protect me.”

Again there’s that slight laughter just under the surface, waiting to be expressed. “She’s strong.”

He’s talking about her spirit, she understands, and how hard it is for any of them to battle through the veils of the afterlife.

“Yes, she always was, even on her deathbed before she finally relented. What is it you want, Tyree?”

“You know already.”

It’s true, she does.

His lips crush against hers but she moves aside, thinking like a fighter now as she shoves against his chilled flesh. There’s only a moment of resistance and then it’s as though he’s not even there anymore, only a puff of freezing air. Instantly he’s behind her and blocking her path. She needs to get to the pillows and the ash wood and pike hidden beneath them.

There are things that need killing here. That’s the fire that stays with her. Mama’s lament continues to carry and that gives her the will to keep going. Her hands flex and then squeeze into fists. The quaint pain of fingernails digging into her palms holds her determination in place.

He says her name again and now they’re each moving a little faster because their time is nearly over for the night. The dream is leading them towards dawn and a waking life where the sun burns away such phantoms, for a time. “Cassandra.” Tyree repeats it once more, making the word lyrical. A lullaby that shall rock her into complacency. This is what he does, drawing it out with his inhuman tongue as if sucking at it like it was her neck. She frowns, knowing they’ve passed this way many times before since his death. “Cassssssandraaa.”

She is a pirate, and she’s not afraid of blood. “Enough of that, you bastard. My name is Crimson.”

“Oh yes, yes…”

“Sweet words only count for so much.”

“…love…”

“You’ve forgotten quite a bit of it since you’ve bedded down in Davy Jones’ locker.”

She brings her knee up into his groin, hoping his instinct remains if nothing else human does. He bends and lets out a grunt of laughter as if surprised to find that he still cares about such things. At least there’s that. It’s all she needs to wheel aside and reach beneath the bed.

Those new teeth are growing in him once more, all of them curved and stuffed down his throat, perhaps into his chest as well, wrapped around his heart. He is nothing but fang, inside and out.

She goes right for the ash wood stake and the twice-blessed iron pike, filling each hand. He lets her. She knows that he’s letting her, and that perhaps this is the last act of the man he’d once been, fighting the demon. A moment’s hesitation so that she might do what she’s best at.

But she’s wrong, of course, as she remembers that now. She’s mistaken each night. He’s only allowed her this period of grace so that he might swoop upon her in one lissome pounce.

Her hands tighten on a stake of ash but she’s unable to use it as he squirms against her, already sneaking out from under the bed. His muscular forearm holds her down as if preparing for some assertive lovemaking. His mouth slips to her ear and he hisses more words, but she’s straining so hard that she can only hear the mad rush of her own desperation.

He gnaws and scratches, licking the way he used to do in the tropical mornings. This is a foreplay and hunger of a different, ravenous kind. He moves from her neck to her lips, where he forces his tongue roughly against her own. She tastes the malignancy within and tries to bite down on it, but he wafts aside. She chokes on sediment and seaweed.

Such a strange dance. Mama is screaming now. The room fills with the overpowering stink of rotting fish. She hauls her arm back and drives forward, stabbing repeatedly with the stake. But she never touches him. He is smoke, even as his arms encircle her.

“It’s time, Cassie.”

“Like hell, you sodding corpse!”

He nudges her back upon the mattress, all those many teeth biting into her chest at once. There is no pain, only a consuming sense of eternity that’s more hideous than anything she’s ever known. His tongue snakes its way deep into the wound, and she shrieks and weakly struggles as her own blood splashes into her eyes and mouth. The cage of fangs grows around her heart.

Crimson awoke with her fist throbbing, two fingernails split and peeled back. She’d gouged them into the sharpened piece of ash and it took some minutes for her to clean the splinters out of her hand. She quickly dressed and crossed to the main thoroughfare and continued on past the promontory. The rapists were still hanging, now with their eyes pecked out.

She met with a porter at the L’Hotel D’Avignon and paid him to take a note to the Maycombs and awaken them at this early hour if necessary. It wasn’t. Maycomb was already up while his exhausted wife slept on.

He met her in the lobby, gave a stilted but mannered bow, and said, “Lady Crimson.”

“All right, I’ll take you to the damned island,” she told him. “Once there, you’ve got five hours of daylight to find your daughter and compel her to return with you. If you fail to return in that allotted time, believe me, sir, I won’t wait an extra minute for any of you.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Mr. Maycomb, hold your thanks. I fear you might wind up cursing me to your grave for ever having agreed to aid you in this venture.”

His chin snapped up as if he’d been struck. “Well then, exactly what made you alter your decision?”

She started to answer and then thought better of it. There are some things that can’t be explained and shouldn’t be lied about. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning. With good weather it should only take four days. Perhaps less if the crew is worth their ballast.”

“You’ve a ship already in mind?”

“Yes, with a captain much more commendable than old Dobbins, I assure you.”

“I believe you.”

“I’ve still yet to formally hire him but he is available, and I feel there’ll be no obstacles so long as you meet his charter price.”

“I heard the fishermen saying there are storms to the south.”

Her heart raced with the idea of it, but she declined further comment. She noticed the silver cross around his neck as it clinked against a stone medallion. She didn’t recognize the odd symbols.

“And who is that helping to guard your soul?”

Maycomb’s cheeks took on a healthy pink glow. “Anu, mother of the Celtic gods.”

“Don’t know her. Are you a Christian or a pagan?”

“Neither,” he admitted. “Or perhaps both, I’m not quite certain even at this stage of my life.”

“One will get you tied in the faggots and burned alive in Mother Europe. The other might get you hacked to pieces on one of these islands.”

“We’ll have to see which happens to me, won’t we?”

She nodded. “I’ll be watching,” she said, and turned away to make preparations for a voyage into black, insane waters.