Ghost Ship
Written by: BandE
Away from the tour group for a few hours, he spent time walking and taking pictures of the tall modern buildings that crowded the old harbor. Once a bustling seaport during the age of sail, all vestiges of that era had been swept away by the government. Now the emphasis was on banking, tourism, and e-commerce.
For a moment the clouds rolled away and intense sunlight bounced off the buildings and reflected into the water. A beautiful shot which he quickly captured with his new digital camera. Still not too sure how the damned thing worked, he nervously checked the memory, There it was. The perfect travel magazine picture: dark sky, brilliantly lit buildings and an absolutely deserted harbor. Perfect. Something to show the folks back home.
Rejoining the group and heading back to the hotel, he went into the cool, dark bar with some of the more tolerable types he had met on this “Nine Olde World Capitals in Nineteen Days” tour. Had Doris still been alive, he would be traveling with her , enjoying her easy company, not the forced gaiety of this group of strangers. Still, George and Al were amiable enough, and as they sipped their beers, he showed them his afternoon’s work.
He clumsily worked the camera memory, still marveling at all that digital stood for when George spoke. “ Jesus, Al, look at that boat. Must be 200 years old! Man, somebody musta had a lotta bucks to restore that baby.”
“Great shot”, said Al, “you silhouetted that thing perfectly against those buildings. You got a good eye, old buddy.”
Don stared at his camera as if it were a meteorite that had just come through the ceiling and landed on the beer -soaked bar. His perfect deserted harbor with buildings in the background snapshot now had a sailing vessel in it!
Next day, he skipped the tour [Churches, Cafes and Cathedrals] and went to a tiny, almost hidden building that he had seen near the waterfront. A cracked and peeling sign stated that it was the maritime museum. Entering, a distant bell sounded, but the room seemed empty. Sunlight struggled to gain entrance through windows seemingly not washed since the days of sail. Lining the walls were floor to ceiling shelves, packed full of leather bound volumes, their edges crumbling and dusty with age.
Coughing preceded the slow, shuffling footsteps of an aged man, cadaverous looking , sunken of chest and bearded. His breath came in gasps as he spoke. “May…I…. assist..Sir?”
Explaining his interest in the harbor history and the ships that had used it, Don inquired if any of the volumes surrounding them contained paintings or drawings of sailing vessels from some 200 years ago.
Wordlessly, the man coughed/shuffled to the shelves and extracted a crumbling volume. He laid it on a small teetering table in the center of the room, turned, and was gone.
Leafing through pages of ship images without finding what he wanted, he closed the volume, releasing a little dust cloud. Discouraged that he hadn’t found the vessel, he turned to leave and was startled by a voice asking, ”Did ….you… find what you..were …looking ….for?”
“Well, no, I was looking for this”, Don said, pointing to the ship’s image on the camera display.
A cascading dust storm of coughing and choking nearly doubled over the elderly fellow. Wiping his eyes,he finally spoke. “The Scimitar. One of the finest…. trading vessels… of the early 1800′s….I..was the last…Ca…”, an explosion of coughing overtook him again, and making drinking gestures, he disappeared through a door and never returned.
“I think you’ll find what you want in here.” Don was back at the museum on the last day in town before his group returned home . His final chance to solve the mystery surrounding the digital image nestled in his camera. The person who brought these dusty volumes to him today was the only employee of the museum, and no, he did not know of any shuffling, coughing , elderly man who worked there. In fact, the museum was closed yesterday!
Don began scanning the old harbor history books he had requested. He came upon a page that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Titled Ghost Ship Scimitar , the writer described the day the ship had first floated into the harbor on the incoming tide, two hundred years ago tomorrow. A boarding party found the cargo intact, passengers and crew gone.
Broken furniture and glass littered the floor of the Captain’s cabin. The most horrifying discovery was the partial last entry in the bloodstained log: Crewe rfuse my absolute authority as Master Under God have denied them shor leave and… A human heart was stuck to the page by congealed blood!
Fleeing the ship in terror, the boarding crew spread the word. The log page and heart convinced all that the ship was cursed. The vessel floated out on the evening tide and was assumed to have eventually sunk. The heart was preserved in rum and saved along with the bloodstained log.
Don, questioning the museum curator, found that the heart and original log page were in a safe at the museum, and that sightings of the Scimitar were reported through the years. Disappointed that he couldn’t view the contents of the safe but satisfied with what he had discovered about the mystery ship, he returned to his hotel to pack for departure home next day.
They had been airborne for about an hour when he overheard George and Al discussing the theft from the museum.
“Yeah, they said the safe was open and the contents gone… alarm never went off…didn’t say what was in the safe.”
“Money or somethin’ maybe…said a tourist was suspected…some old bearded guy with a cough…can you believe it?”
“Somethin’ about a curse …every two hundred years…sails back…”
Don smiled knowingly as he looked at his prize photo of the skyscrapered skyline, the harbor almost empty, as the Ghost Ship slowly faded from view.
