The Drowned Chorus

  

 

PART I

Eleanor Voss arrived at Blackridge, the coastal town where her family’s history ran as deep as the jagged cliffs that framed the shore. The house had been empty for nearly a decade, yet it had been waiting for her—dust settling in corners, the scent of salt embedded in the wooden beams. Her mother’s family had owned the place for generations, but Eleanor had no memories of them. They had all passed before she was old enough to remember.

It was the perfect place to practice her craft.

She had spent years training her voice, shaping it into something worthy of the stage, but New York had been a waste of time. Her instructors were unimpressed, the opportunities were scarce, and every audition ended in polite rejection. She needed solitude. No distractions. No reminders of her failures.

The house sat on the highest ridge overlooking the sea, its back porch opening to a sheer drop of dark stone. Below, waves crashed against the rocks, unrelenting. From the windows, she could see the sea stretching toward the horizon, an expanse of gray under the dimming sky.

That first night, she dreamed of drowning.

She was deep below the surface, weightless, and sinking slowly. She should have been panicked, but there was only quiet. A sound, distant yet distinct, hummed beneath the waves. It wasn’t random noise—not the churn of the tide or the crack of shifting currents. It was melody.

Eleanor woke up with the taste of salt on her lips.

* * * * * *

The town was small and insular. No one seemed particularly eager to welcome her, but she didn’t mind. She had never been good at small talk. She made a point to avoid conversation when she went into town for supplies, keeping interactions brief and impersonal.

She met Martin Hale during her second visit. He worked at the general store, and had been unloading crates of dried goods from a truck when she walked past. He looked about her age—early thirties, maybe a little younger—lean, with dark, wind-tousled hair and a look that suggested he knew every inch of this town.

“Moving into the old Voss house?” he asked, resting an arm on the truck bed.

She hesitated before nodding.

“I used to mow the lawn when I was a kid,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Place always gave me the creeps.”

Eleanor frowned. “Why?”

Martin shrugged. “I dunno. Something about how quiet it was. Felt like someone was always watching from the upstairs window, even when no one was home.”

She didn’t respond.

“You a singer?”

She stiffened at the question. “Why do you ask?”

Martin nodded toward the bag in her hands—vocal exercise books, blank sheet music, and a pack of throat lozenges.

“I guess that’s obvious,” she muttered.

“You hear the stories yet?”

“What stories?”

His expression darkened slightly. “The ones about the water. The old fishermen talk about The Drowned Chorus.”

She let out a dry laugh. “That supposed to scare me?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t go singing too close to the cliffs if I were you.”

She rolled her eyes and left without another word.

* * * * * *

The house absorbed sound. She could tell the moment she started singing.

The acoustics were incredible—the high ceilings, the thick wood absorbing nothing, allowing her voice to carry. She sang arias that had once been beyond her range, feeling her voice resonate in her chest. She was so absorbed in her performance, in fact, that she barely noticed when the sun started dipping below the horizon.

The first time she heard the voice, she thought it was her own echo.

She had been running scales, pushing her range, when she hit a high note and held it. It rang through the house, clear and unwavering. But just as she drew breath to continue, she heard it—a faint, harmonic tone beneath her own.

She stopped, and was met with silence.

Had she imagined it?

Eleanor walked to the back door, stepping onto the porch. The night air was cool, the sea restless beneath her.

She inhaled and sang again. The note soared, pure and strong.

This time, it answered. A harmony—delicate, layered beneath her own sound, as if something beneath the waves was singing with her.

She backed away from the railing and slammed the door shut.

The house swallowed the sound.

She stood in the quiet for a long while, pondering what was happening.

* * * * * *

Eleanor stopped singing.

For two nights straight, she resisted the urge to test whether she had imagined the strange harmony. She went about her routine, forcing herself to ignore the way her mind kept circling back to the sound. But the silence was unbearable.

On the third night, she gave in.

She went to the cliffs just before dusk, when the tide was low and the air smelled of brine and wet stone. The wind carried the rhythmic crash of waves against the rocks below. The horizon stretched endlessly, the sky darkening at the edges.

Eleanor inhaled, and softly, tentatively, she sang a simple melody.

The response came almost immediately. It wasn’t an echo. It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t something logical or explainable.

The voice beneath the waves was real.

It followed her melody, weaving seamlessly through her notes like a thread through fabric. The harmony was delicate and inhumanly perfect. She heard no breath breaks, and identified no flaws.

She staggered back, and the song stopped with her.

The ocean remained restless, indifferent to her terror.

Sleep didn’t come easily.

Every time Eleanor closed her eyes, she felt the pull of the water. It wasn’t fear—not exactly. It was something deeper, somewhere between longing and recognition.

The next morning, she found wet footprints leading from her front door to the foot of the stairs.

Her stomach tightened. She checked the locks—deadbolted. There were no signs of forced entry. In fact, there were no signs of anything at all, except for the water soaking into the wood.

She didn’t tell Martin.

* * * * * *

The changes began subtly.

Her voice grew stronger—unnaturally so. She could sing for hours without strain, her range expanding beyond anything she had been capable of before. The resonance in her chest was sharper, fuller.

And it wasn’t just her voice. She no longer felt winded after long walks into town. She barely needed to eat. Her body felt weightless and fluid, as if something inside her had shifted in a way she couldn’t quite define.

She started avoiding mirrors. Her reflection felt wrong. Her eyes looked darker, the irises too deep, and the pupils were slow to contract in the light. Some nights, she thought she saw movement in them, like the shimmer of water over glass.

She began to hum absentmindedly while cooking, reading, or staring out the window. The harmonies always followed, a whisper just beneath her own voice.

She stopped questioning whether the presence was real. It had become undeniable—and it had already settled inside her.

* * * * * *

Martin showed up unannounced one afternoon, knocking loudly, his stance wary.

Eleanor hesitated before opening the door.

“You look… different,” he said after a long moment.

She forced a smile. “Bad?”

“No. Just… pale. Like you’ve been sick.” He glanced past her into the dim house. “How have you been sleeping?”

“Fine,” she lied.

Martin’s expression tightened. “Eleanor, have you been hearing anything out here?”

She stiffened. “Like what?”

He exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. “A few people in town swear they heard something the last few nights. Some kind of… singing. Out by the cliffs.”

“Maybe someone else moved in nearby,” she said.

Martin shook his head. “Nobody’s moved out here in years.”

They stood in tense silence. Then he sighed. “Look, just—stay away from the water at night, alright?”

Eleanor swallowed, nodding.

Martin lingered for another second before turning and walking back toward his truck.

She waited until he was out of sight before shutting the door.

She had no intention of staying away.

 

***

PART II

The next time Eleanor stood at the cliffs, she didn’t hesitate.

She sang.

And this time, the voice did not merely follow—it led.

It was no longer content to be an echo. It wove its own melody around hers, an intricate harmony of impossible precision. The longer she sang, the more she understood it, though she could not say how. There were no words, only tone, only sound. But there was meaning in the way the notes curled around each other, something ancient and knowing.

The voice belonged to something waiting beneath the waves.

She didn’t stop singing, not even when her vision blurred at the edges. Not when her skin tingled with an unfamiliar electricity. Not even when the wind shifted and the waves grew still, as if the ocean itself was listening.

By the time she turned away, her lips were numb.

* * * * * *

Eleanor woke in bed, unable to recall how she’d gotten there.

Her sheets were damp.

She sat up slowly, staring at her hands. Her fingertips were pruned, as if she had been in the water for hours.

She pulled herself out of bed, walking unsteadily to the bathroom.

The mirror confirmed what she had been afraid to acknowledge: she barely recognized her own face. Her skin had lost its warmth, paling to something just shy of unnatural. Her eyes were darker still, the whites tinged faintly gray. But worst of all was her mouth—her lips were colorless, the corners stretched slightly too wide, as if her face was still shifting, still finding its final shape.

She gripped the sink, swallowing back nausea.

The house was silent, but she felt it—something coiled in the walls, just beyond hearing.

She had invited it in.

She didn’t go into town. She didn’t leave the house at all.

Her reflection became something to avoid entirely. Every time she passed a mirror, the urge to look too long gnawed at her, as if some part of her was waiting to catch her own gaze, to see something that shouldn’t be there.

Instead, she sang.

She did not decide to. She simply did—humming under her breath, whispering melodies to the air, feeling the way the harmonies responded like a second voice trapped beneath her ribs.

It didn’t matter that she seemed to be alone.

She wasn’t.

* * * * * *

Martin showed up again, pounding on the door with more force than before. Eleanor hesitated before answering.

His expression darkened the moment he saw her. “Jesus, Eleanor—what the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t?” His voice was sharp and unsteady. “Because people have been hearing you at night. And I don’t mean just around here—I mean out in the harbor, miles offshore.”

Eleanor said nothing.

Martin’s jaw tensed. “What are you doing?”

The question sent something crawling under her skin. What was she doing? She had barely thought about it.

She should have been afraid, but all she felt was irritation—an unwanted interruption, something pulling her from where she belonged.

Martin stared at her, waiting. When she didn’t respond, he stepped forward, lowering his voice.

“Eleanor, I know you feel it.”

Something in her stomach twisted violently. “Feel what?”

His hands curled into fists at his sides. “The pull.”

She inhaled sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know what happened to your mother.”

There was silence then—a deep, aching silence.

Eleanor’s mouth went dry. “My mother—”

“Vanished,” Martin said. “Same way you’re about to.”

Eleanor had never met her mother. She had never known anything about her, only that she had died young. That was what she had always been told.

Now, the lie was unraveling.

Martin exhaled, stepping back. His voice softened. “I’ve seen this before. I’ve heard it before. You have to fight it, Eleanor.”

She could barely process the words. She had never had a choice.

The door shut in his face before she even realized she had moved.

Eleanor barely slept.

She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of the waves below. They were speaking to her now, even without song. She could hear them in a way she had never been able to before—not just the crash of water against stone, but the movement beneath.

The ocean had a voice. It had always had a voice. She had just never been listening properly.

She left the house at dusk.

Martin had tried to warn her, but the words had unraveled in her head like fraying thread. He didn’t understand.

Her mother had been part of this, too. Whatever happened to her—whatever she became—had begun long before she was born.

She had never belonged on land.

* * * * * * *

Eleanor reached the cliffs, stepping closer to the edge than she ever had before. The wind pressed against her back, urging her forward.

She opened her mouth, and the song came without effort. It was not the delicate melodies she had practiced for years, nor the carefully honed technique drilled into her by instructors who had never heard something like this. This was not human.

The response came instantly. The ocean answered in full force, harmonizing with her voice, lifting it higher. The water below churned, shapes rippling beneath the surface.

She felt the change as she sang.

Her feet numbed where they touched the ground. Her spine lengthened, her skin tingling as though her body was realigning itself.

She wasn’t afraid.

Quite the contrary, she had never felt so right.

Just then, a hand seized her wrist, yanking her back so hard she nearly collapsed—and the song snapped, severed mid-note.

Eleanor turned sharply, disoriented, her vision blurred from the sudden break in connection. Martin was there, furious and terrified.

“You were about to jump!” he snapped.

She blinked slowly, as if the words didn’t quite register. “No, I—”

Martin’s grip tightened. “Yes, Eleanor. You were!”

Something between them cracked. The wind died, and the ocean went still.

Eleanor’s chest ached at the loss of sound, at the emptiness that filled the air without it. She hadn’t been about to jump. She had simply been… going where she was meant to go.

Martin stared at her. His face was tight, his jaw locked, but there was something else in his expression. Something closer to grief. “I can help you,” he said quietly.

Eleanor swallowed hard. She wanted to tell him that was impossible—but she didn’t. Instead, she let him pull her away from the cliffs.

The ocean did not fight him—

Not yet.

PART III

Martin didn’t let go of Eleanor’s wrist until they were inside her house, with the door shut behind them.

He stood between her and the exit, breathing hard. His clothes were damp from the ocean spray, his jaw clenched so tightly she could hear his teeth grind.

Eleanor didn’t move. She felt hollow, like something had been scooped out of her chest the moment she had been pulled from the cliffside. The house felt dead, devoid of sound.

She had lost the song.

“I need to show you something,” Martin said.

He stepped away from the door and grabbed a chair, dragging it toward the old bookcase that had stood untouched since she moved in. He climbed up, reaching for something behind the top row of books.

When he came down, he held a wooden box that Eleanor had never seen before.

“Your mother left this,” Martin said, “before disappearing.”

“How do you know that?” Eleanor asked.

Martin exhaled sharply. “Because my mom saw her leave it.”

Eleanor sat down without thinking. Her hands trembled as she reached for the box, the wood cool beneath her fingers. It wasn’t locked. The latch lifted with an unsettling ease, as if it had been waiting.

Inside was a photograph. Eleanor recognized the woman immediately—her mother. She had never seen a picture of her before, but she knew. The woman in the photo stood on the cliffs, her hair tangled by the wind, the ocean stretched behind her. She was beautiful. Haunting.

Her eyes were the same as Eleanor’s—but that wasn’t what shocked her the most. Rather, it was the second figure in the photo. Standing at the water’s edge was a woman—or something like one. Her face was pale, her limbs elongated, her hair slicked against her skull as if she had just emerged from the depths. Her mouth was slightly open, and her lips stretched too wide.

Eleanor knew her, too. She had seen her in the water.

“Do you get it now?” Martin asked softly.

Eleanor’s throat tightened. “I don’t—”

Martin’s expression darkened. “You do.”

She didn’t sleep.

The box sat on the table, the photograph staring at her no matter how many times she turned it over.

She could hear the ocean again. Not just in the distance, not muffled by walls or glass. It was inside her—calling.

She curled in on herself, hands tangled in her hair, trying to drown it out. But there was no drowning something that had already claimed her.

The storm rolled in just before dawn. Eleanor woke to the sound of rain hammering against the windows, thunder shuddering through the house. The ocean was alive with movement, the wind screaming through the cliffs.

She didn’t think; she simply moved. Barefoot, she stepped out onto the porch, her thin nightgown clinging to her skin. The rain soaked her instantly, but she barely felt it.

She walked down the narrow path and across the wet grass to the edge of the cliffs—and there they were. Black-eyed figures emerging from the water—too many to count. Their bodies shimmered under the storm-lit sky, too long, too smooth, too wrong. Their hair floated weightlessly despite the wind.

They sang. The sound was beautiful—perfect.

Eleanor parted her lips.

And answered.

* * * * * *

Martin reached the cliffs too late.

The storm had torn through Blackridge with a violence he hadn’t seen in years, the wind howling through the trees, the ocean frothing beneath the lightning-lit sky. He had known—somewhere deep in his gut, that Eleanor would be out there.

But by the time he arrived, she was already standing at the edge, her nightgown clinging to her rain-soaked frame, her bare feet inches from the drop. The ocean below was writhing, filled with shapes undulating just beneath the surface, too fluid to be human, yet too familiar to be mistaken for anything else.

Martin could hear the song even through the storm’s relentless din.

It wasn’t natural.

The melody curled through the wind, layered in impossible harmonies. It vibrated in his bones, pulling at something buried deep in his mind—a feeling like nostalgia, like he was hearing something he had always known but had long since forgotten.

And Eleanor was singing with them—except, her voice wasn’t hers anymore. It was something beyond human, woven into the tide, that had never belonged to land.

Martin ran. “Eleanor!” he shouted.

She didn’t flinch or turn, didn’t stop. Instead, she stepped forward.

Martin lunged, catching her wrist just as she tipped over the edge—and she screamed. Not in fear, but in agony.

Her body convulsed, writhing in his grip. Her skin was like ice beneath his fingers, but worse than that—it was changing. Before his very eyes, she was shifting, coming undone.

Beneath the wet fabric of her gown, her limbs elongated, her spine arching in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. Her eyes snapped open—black, endless, and consuming. And yet, Martin held on.

The ocean surged, the figures reaching for her. And Eleanor—

Eleanor reached back.

Her fingers wrapped around Martin’s wrist, but she wasn’t pulling away. She was pulling him with her.

Martin braced his feet against the slick grass, fighting to stay grounded. “Eleanor!”

Her mouth opened. And in that moment, he caught a glimpse of her teeth, sharpened into delicate points, and of her lips, stretched far too wide.

She was almost gone. He was running out of time.

Something flickered behind Eleanor’s gaze as Martin watched, something human—and terrified.

She hesitated for a fraction of a second, and that was enough.

Martin yanked, and with all his strength, he pulled her backward, ripping her from the song, from the voices, from the arms waiting in the water.

She collapsed against him, sobbing, as the ocean roared in protest.

The figures reeled back, their song fracturing. The wind howled through the cliffs, the waves crashing against the rocks with violent force.

And then—silence.

The storm broke, the wind died, and the ocean stilled.

The figures vanished.

Eleanor didn’t speak for days.

Martin stayed. He didn’t leave the house or let her out of his sight.

The ocean was quiet for now, but they both suspected it wasn’t over.

It had let her go this time, but the song had already been sung.

And one day, it would call again.

Eleanor departed Blackridge before the first frost, without saying goodbye to Martin. She didn’t see the point. In her mind, there was nothing left to say.

The town had already decided what had happened—the storm, the madness, the way she had nearly thrown herself into the ocean. They didn’t ask questions, nor did they desire answers.

And Eleanor had no intention of providing them.

She moved inland, far from the coast and tides. Despite her efforts, however, the ocean never truly left her. She still heard the song in her sleep, still woke with her mouth half open, mid-note, as if she had been singing in her dreams. She caught herself humming melodies that weren’t hers at odd hours, producing harmonies that had no place in the world of men.

Her reflection still wasn’t right. The irises of her eyes held a depth that hadn’t been there before, something too dark and deep, as if she could see past the glass, beyond the surface, into something waiting on the other side.

She did what she had to to salvage her sanity—

She stopped looking.

* * * * * *

The first time she heard it again, she was standing in the middle of a crowded street.

Traffic rumbled around her, engines coughing, voices rising in a dull roar. People pressed in from all sides. The noise should have drowned everything else out.

But it didn’t.

The song came calling anyway—soft, gentle, and distant.

Her hands clenched into fists, turned away from the sound, and continued on her way, doing her best to put it behind her.

But no matter what she did, and no matter the distance she put between herself and the sea, she felt it waiting.

One day, she knew, the ocean would find her again.

And when it did—

She wouldn’t be able to walk away..

 

---

Credits

Straight On Til Mourning

  

Flora Sampson still wasn’t sure what she was doing here. Come to that, she wasn’t sure if she’d lost her mind. Most people she’d spoken to certainly thought she had.

Though to be fair, that was nothing new: the idea of a lady writer, let alone a reporter, was something people still couldn’t quite seem to get their heads around. Her poor dear mother certainly couldn’t.

“A reporter indeed!” The old battleax had said more times than she could count. “Really, Flora! What man of quality is going to want to marry a woman who tramps about in dark corners getting soot on her petticoats? Absurd!”

“Absurd,” Flora thought as she stretched her legs in the handsome captain’s chair emblazoned with the Eton College crest. “Yes, mother. Absurd is right. if you only knew how much, you might die of shame.”

But Flora did know. It was only the fact that she would die of curiosity before she died of shame that had brought her here. Because when you got right down to it, the reason for her visit to Eton College, now, in the spring of 1930, was truly absurd. It was only her inveterate capacity to follow a hunch which told her it might be true, and that might just be madness superceding whatever genius she possessed as an investigator. To even voice the hypothesis which brought her to the door of Master James Hawkins, Eton’s new teacher of religion, would be enough to make anyone else break out in peals of derisive laughter. To most people, that would be the end of it, but to Flora, that just made it more fun.

Though of course, she wasn’t stupid. She knew that if what she suspected were even conceivable, she would need evidence that would break through not just the disbelief of her colleagues, but the shell of an identity Hawkins himself had constructed. And so, she had dug, and dug, before the meeting, trying desperately to validate any piece of the teacher’s scrupulously vague background she could snatch. It was only when she discovered that most of it either couldn’t be proven or flatly contradicted public record that she began to think she had her man. Which had brought her, inexorably, here, to a meeting with Hawkins himself, and the exposure of what might be the greatest historical coverup (as well as the most cast-iron proof of supernatural elements beyond man’s comprehension) ever conceived. If she could only get him to admit it…

“Miss Sampson?” The secretary’s polite, crisp voice jarred Flora out of her thoughts. She looked up.

“Yes?”

“Master Hawkins will see you now.”

Anxiety pooled in Flora’s stomach, but she only nodded crisply. “Thank you.”

She stood up and, as the secretary pulled the door wide, walked into the lion’s den itself.

A first look around the room made excitement blossom in her chest. Because if any teacher’s apartments could have confirmed her suspicions, it was this one. It was nothing like the staid quarters kept by other Eton Masters. Maps littered the walls. A perfectly constructed ship in a bottle reclined across the desk. Endless, yellowing copies of the Eton Chronicle sprawled on the floor, and to crown all, over the mantlepiece, there hung a rusty, visibly dulled cutlass. However, there was no sign of the Master himself. No sign at all.

“Miss Sampson?”

Flora jumped at the smooth, aristocratic purr behind her and turned to find Hawkins himself standing behind the open door, which he slid closed with a casual smirk.

The sight of him made butterflies rise in her stomach, and not entirely from nerves. He was a true specimen of a man, with long, dark, untamed hair, a wiry, muscled body which seemed to cling to the inside of his staid Master’s dress, and a face that might as well have been chiseled from marble, so distinct and graceful were the line of his cheekbones and the cleft of his chin. A pair of glittering forget-me-not blue eyes regarded her with supercilious pleasure. Only two imperfections marred his stunning good looks: his skin, which carried the distinct yellow of fading parchment, giving him the appearance of a man who’d been not so much well-preserved as mummified; and the obviously false wooden hand which sat at his side. Yet striking though he was physically, what was far more exciting to Flora was that not one detail — not one detail — of his appearance argued in any way against what she suspected. She held out her hand.

“Master Hawkins. A pleasure to meet you.”

Instead of simply taking her hand, Hawkins bent at the waist and kissed it with roguish savoir-faire. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

He straightened, slouched around his desk, and sat down. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

Flora swallowed and sat down opposite him. “Master Hawkins, I’m afraid you’ll think me quite mad.”

Hawkins’ eyes glittered. “Mad? Oh, Miss Sampson, I doubt that. You’re far too young. Madness is, after all…what did Shakespeare say? Ah yes, second childishness and mere oblivion. The prelude to death. And you, Miss Sampson, look very much alive.”

He winked and Flora felt color rise in her cheeks. “In that case, Master Hawkins, perhaps you’ll entertain a few questions?”

“Naturally. Anything for an intrepid member of the press, particularly one so…” His eyes flicked to her dress for a second, “…unconventional. Though I fail to see why you should be interested in me.”

“You’ve cut quite a figure since arriving at Eton.”

“I suppose.”

“There’s quite a lot of local gossip about you.”

A glittering smile. “Nothing good, I hope?”

“I think we both know the answer to that.”

Hawkins leaned back and sighed. “I know what people say. Particularly my colleagues. Rather boggles their mind that someone like me — someone without what they think of as ‘good form’ — would be teaching at a place like this. I suppose it was inevitable that someone like you would come knocking eventually.”

“Master Hawkins, with respect, it’s not simply complaints about ‘form’ that have me here. If I investigated every teacher with new ideas, I’d never get anything done.”

“Then why me?”

Flora drew a sharp breath. “Well…your background for one. Or should I say, your lack of a background.”

“My background? Heavens, Miss Sampson, you could’ve asked anyone about that. I’m not so different from any other teacher here, really; just an old alum trying to give back to the institution which gave him the best years of his life.”

“Well, yes, about that.” Flora pulled out her notes. “I’ve been through every edition of the Eton Chronicle and class notes for the past 30 years. There’s no James Hawkins mentioned anywhere.”

Hawkins raised a hand to his breast in mock shock. “Are you accusing me of lying about my attendance, Miss Sampson?”

“No. I’ve spoken to the other teachers. They say you know things no one but an Old Etonian would know. And not just an Old Etonian, either. A Pop. It’s obvious you went here.”

“Then what are you suggesting? That I’ve taken this post under a pseudonym?”

“Well…yes, exactly.”

“And forgive me, Miss Sampson, but why should I do that?”

This was it. The moment when she had to either abandon her entire theory or risk seeming insane. And she knew which she had to do. She smirked back at him knowingly.

“You tell me…Captain.”

Thank God she hadn’t blinked when she said, because in only one tiny, infinitesimal fraction of a second, something like dread flashed in Hawkins’ eyes. Then, like nothing, it was gone. He laughed.

“Captain? I’ve no idea what you mean, Miss Hawkins. I come from thoroughly landlocked stock, I assure you.”

“I didn’t say you were a naval captain.” Flora’s smirk deepened. “You got there on your own.”

“Well, it’s a natural assumption! I supposed you must’ve seen all my decorations and assumed I had some unspoken maritime past.”

“I think you do.”

“For God’s sake, doing what?”

“Piracy.”

“Piracy?!”

“Yes, piracy.” Flora reached into her handbag and extracted something — a visibly aged copy of the Eton Chronicle. “You see, Master Hawkins, I didn’t just go back through 30 years of the records here. I actually went back almost a hundred. And do you know what I found?”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, I beg you.”

“That beginning in 1853, this school has no record of its pupils. None at all. The pages listing them have all been ripped out. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Because you removed them.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. And also, I even had a telephone call with the Headmaster some weeks ago. He would only say you came highly recommended.”

“I don’t see what crime that is!”

“Highly recommended…by a Mr. J.M. Barrie.”

Hawkins stared at her. “Miss Sampson, I’m afraid I really am confused. Are you suggesting that a man of my youth and vigor is actually nearly a century old, not to mention none other than the real, living embodiment of…of some story by the estimable Mr. Barry?”

Flora smiled. “Yes, Jas. Hook,  Captain, that is precisely what I’m suggesting. You can call me mad if you like. Everyone else has. But I think we both know I’m right. But don’t worry, I’m not here to expose you.”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” Hawkins said with a roll of his eyes, though Flora could tell there was something slightly intrigued in his face. Slowly, he regarded her, his eyes narrowing in scrutiny before speaking.

“Well, alright, I’ll play along. Supposing I was who you say I am, Miss Sampson, despite the fact that even in Mr. Barrie’s play, Captain Hook is dead. Supposing I was him, tell me this: why should an infamous blackguard of the Spanish Main — the Captain of the Jolly Roger, a fiend so infamous that to even speak his real name would be to set the country ablaze — why should he be willing to trust you?”

“Because I don’t believe Mr. Barrie.”

“No?”

“No. There are two sides to every story, Captain. And frankly, if your cover story has holes in it, then Mr. Barrie’s play is practically littered with them.”

“For instance?”

“Neverland is supposed to be a place without grownups, for one. So how did a crew of grown pirates get there? How did a tribe of Indians get there? And why, when there are untold treasures, should they — let alone their desperate and dangerous captain — all fixate on one small boy?”

“Has it occurred to you that it’s only a story for children?” Hawkins asked. “That you might simply be driving yourself mad looking for logic in fairy tales?”

Flora chuckled. “Captain, I don’t believe in fairies.”

The effect this simple sentence wrought on James Hawkins was incredible. As soon as she said it, a smile of utter, savage relief floated across his face, and he leaned in across the desk.

“Ah, and now you have my attention, Miss Sampson.” Cold triumph flashed in his eyes. “Good. Go on not believing in fairies. If you can, make sure no one does. Because every time a child says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’…” The triumph gave way to dark rumination, “one of those things falls down dead.”

And Flora felt her breath catch as the mask of James Hawkins melted away, and Captain Jas. Hook of the Jolly Roger, cadaverous, blackavised, and yet beautiful, met her eyes.

“What happened to you, Captain?” she asked. “What really happened to you?”

Hook only smiled, and stared down at his wooden hand. “Tell me something first, Miss Sampson. Just for my curiosity.”

“Yes?”

His eyes lit with flickering, half-forgotten fire like the spark in a long-disused kerosine lamp. “What gave me away?”

Flora grinned. “Mr. Barrie’s speech about you a few years ago. ‘Hook at Eton.’ It sounded detailed enough that he got it straight from the source. After that, finding the years with the records ripped out confirmed it. Not to mention the name. Jim Hawkins? From Treasure Island?”

Hook chuckled. “Another work on which I am happy to have been a source. Knew Barbecue and Flint personally, you know. Not sure they ever feared me, whatever Mr. Barrie says, but I did know them. Before the…other things happened.”

“And what ‘other things’ are those?”

Slowly, Captain James Hook sighed and began to finally tell his true, incredible story.

“Let us be clear about something before I proceed. Mr. Barrie is not wholly to blame for his rendering of my story. A playwright is not a journalist, and though he has taken liberties which excise the story’s true moral, nonetheless, he has been kind to me. A share of the proceeds from his version have been mine since it first premiered on the London stage, not to mention he helped win for me the modest scholar’s life which I now possess. A man who knows what it is to be deprived of the milk of human kindness as painfully as I do cannot be too choosy about such mercies when he finds them. Whatever his failures as an artist, Jim Barrie gave me a life worth living, and that’s an end to it.”

He sighed and in that instant, it seemed that every instant of the century he had lived appeared on his face.

“However, while I cannot reprove him personally, neither can I approve of his play or his novel. Both are dangerous; more dangerous than they should be. And all because of that infernal section when his fairy dies. I begged and pleaded with Jim to take it out, but the man has a bit of pirate in him, and like all playwrights, he simply cannot bear to grudge his audience an opportunity for applause. Were the play only viewed by adults, this would do no harm, but its popularity among children is a great concern to me. Because I know all too well what children clapping for such creatures can produce.

“But that is a matter for later. You’re here for me, after all, not my complaints. And I’ll grant you I’m an interesting subject. A man whose true identity would set the country ablaze, Jim calls me, and perhaps he’s right. Unfortunately, even I have only the vaguest clues; more than a few have remarked, for example, upon my resemblance to the late Queen Victoria, or to the manner in which my curiously yellow blood was also noted as a feature of a certain lord who fell out of favor with her Majesty shortly after my birth. Even my true surname — “Gordon” — holds no answers, for the last man who held it died long before my birth. All I know is that whoever I am, I must be somebody. Because only somebody would be raised, as I was, in a secluded manor house, with a rotating army of nannies, masters, and servants to look after my every need. Well, perhaps not my every need. They did leave one out: the need to be loved. And perhaps that was the beginning of all my woes.

“From there, followed my time at Eton — the happiest days of my life, as you already know from Mr. Barrie’s account — and thereafter my premature departure from Balliol College. About that, too, there is not much to say, save that I soon determined upon my arrival that the academic life held no true interest for me. The irony of my current post is not lost on me, I assure you. But no. What curiosity I had was reserved for things which could not be learned in books. Not to mention, I knew that given the unanswerable issue of my birth, my career in respectable society would always be one which took place, as it were, in a terrarium, for there was an invisible and yet immovable ceiling on what I could accomplish. Whereas life outside of polite society, in the bellum omnium contra omnes, with its ruthless hierarchy of strength? Ah, there I might find my place without impediment. Which is why, as soon as I caught wind that a naval ship bound for the Spanish Main was docked in a nearby harbor, I immediately volunteered my services.

“I did not stay on that ship long, though; only long enough to learn the most basic aspects of sea life, and to gain for myself such calluses and bruises as would compensate for my irretrievably Etonian accent. I’m afraid that my seamates also thought me quite useless at first, and made no secret of their opinion. Indeed, they often expressed it in the cruelest of ways, which is why, by the time our ship was eventually attacked by pirates, I had no scruples left for their lives. My training under Eton’s fencing master made quick work of my former tormentors, and indeed, even some of the officers were no match for me. Only their captain — himself an old Etonian — proved to be too skilled, yet by the time he disarmed me, it was too late. The pirates had taken most of the ship. He went down fighting, but he went down all the same.

“Which was, of course, right when the pirates themselves noticed that I wasn’t one of theirs. That, in fact, I wore the uniform of the enemy. A few of the stupider ones tried to kill me, thinking I’d only turned on my comrades because I was crazed, but I dispatched them with barely a thought. Which is when their captain finally took notice and called for them to leave off. He approached me, and called for parlay. I agreed. Then he asked what I wanted, so I told him. I wanted to join him.

“The man laughed at that. ‘You?’ He asked. ‘Some toff’s bastard what’s barely more’n a lubber?’

‘Aye,’ I said.

‘Thou’rt a fool.’

‘A fool who cut down your men.’ I raised my sabre. ‘But very well. Try me yourself, if you wish. If you kill me, you’re short an enemy. If you don’t, you’ll take me with you.’

The grizzled old scoundrel looked very surprised at that. Yet for all that, he drew his cutlass and did as I suggested. His first few strikes were easy to avoid. Barely more than idle pokes. Yet after some minutes, when he saw I was no green swordsman, he did eventually put up a fight. And what he lacked in technique, let me tell you, he more than made up in ferocity and long practice. I only barely managed to slice his arm before he disarmed me. But I was not done. As he tried to close with me, my boxers’ instincts took over and I threw a fierce left-hook, knocking him backwards. A frightful look came into his eyes at that, and he strode toward me, saber held high, as if he meant to kill me…before dropping the sword and embracing me like a brother.

‘By thunder, green as thou look’st, thou’rt a demon,’ he laughed. ‘What be thy name, me heartie?’

‘James Gordon.’

‘James Gordon? Pah!’ He spat. ‘A pox on that! Thou’st knocked one o’ my teeth loose, lad? You see that?’

He raised his mouth, lip to expose the spot where one of his blackened teeth had fallen out from my blow. I could only grin.

‘Your bloody fault for getting on the wrong end of my left hook.’

The captain began to laugh and seized my left hand, clasping it in his own. ‘Aye, and that shall be thy name from hence!’ He shouted. ‘James Hook! Our new shipmate aboard the Jolly Roger!’

A roar went up from the men, and from then on, I was indeed one of them. I sailed with them for decades after that, and served many duties, though my first and most important was training the men to fight as I did. And that dear old Captain — Red Hand, as I learned he was called — treated me less like a shipmate and more like a son. He would train me to fight with a pirate’s cruelty every night when he got the chance, and by the time he died of a pox caught off some whore in Tortuga, the men chose me unanimously to succeed him. Which was how the reign of Captain Hook truly began.”

Hawkins paused and looked up at Flora with a sad expression. “Now, I don’t suppose you can understand this, Miss Sampson, never having been a pirate yourself, but the bond between shipmates engaged in that peculiar enterprise is not one of friendship. It transcends that. It’s more like brotherhood, in the truest sense of the word. You may not like your shipmates all the time; you may not even trust them. But you love them. And even moreso as a captain. There wasn’t a man on the Jolly Roger I’d not have died for and considered it fair wages. It is essential you understand this, if the rest of my story is to make any sense at all.”

Flora nodded. “I understand.”

“Very well. Then to the point. As you already know, the name of Captain Hook spread far and wide. There were many in Her Majesty’s Navy, or among the Spanish, or even among those who wanted the gold from one of those two countries, who would’ve happily seen me hanged, and if not hanged, then at least dead. I was more than infamous, Miss Sampson. I was wanted, dead or alive, and by extension, so were my crew.

“Which is how the whole episode began. The Spanish captured one of my men. They obtained, by torture, the knowledge of my movements and sent their fleet to sink me. To be honest, I wish they’d managed it. It would’ve made everything to come so much simpler. But alas, they did not have the mercy for that. No, instead, once they had boarded and slaughtered their way through most of my crew, they made me watch as they butchered the rest, before breaking my ship’s wheel, and leaving me drifting into open water. They laughed as they tied me to the mast. ‘El Capitan se hunde con el barco,’ they taunted, and even not speaking much of their tongue, I knew what it meant: ‘The captain goes down with the ship.’

For days and nights after that, I floated in agony, helplessly praying for the sun, or my own starvation, or even for the waves to kill me just so it could all end. You cannot imagine it. In the words of Coleridge’s ancient mariner, ‘water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.’ You do know your Coleridge, don’t you, Miss Sampson?”

Flora nodded, and Hawkins’ already bitter expression grew haunted.

“Good. Because once you’ve finished with me, that might be another little errand for your peculiar brand of investigative genius. Knowing what I know now, I cannot help thinking that Coleridge’s ancient mariner must’ve also been a real person. An unlikely muse for Coleridge, just as I have been for Mr. Barrie. And oh, what I would give to meet him, to talk with him, to tell him he is not alone in holding those dreadful memories, nor in being cursed to hold them for an unbounded eternity. I think he and I alone among the human race can know what truly lurks on the dreadful frontier of open water.

It was on my third day of restless tossing that it appeared. That dreadful sail. That monstrous ship. And, oh horror, the two passengers who crewed it, playing dice for my soul. Death and…oh God oh God, for this reason alone, I know Coleridge knew whereof he spoke. What is it he says? ‘Her lips were red, her looks were free, her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, the Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, who thicks man’s blood with cold.’ Yes, yes, Death’s companion certainly answered to that description. Yet unlike the ancient mariner, who became her prey solely thanks to her skill at the dice, Miss Sampson, I was infinitely more foolish. For you see, she lost the game for my soul. I would have died, had not I, in my foolish terror of Death and recognition of his fearful companion, cried out to her.

‘Wait!’ I rasped, through parched lips and a ruined throat. ‘Parlay!’

The ship stopped, and Life-in-Death turned her eyes upon me, curious. I pressed my advantage.

‘Take me!’ I cried. ‘If you will only give me back my crew and my ship, then I will endure life-in-death willingly. Please, restore what I have lost, and I am yours!’

There was a moment’s pause, as if all existence had held its breath. And then — oh God — the fiend, the monstrous Life-in-Death herself, began to cackle and caper before me.

‘The game is done,’ she cried, in a voice that was that much more monstrous because its unearthly echo was tinged with girlish glee, ‘I’ve won, I’ve won!’

And this, Miss Sampson, is when the nightmare which Mr. Barrie renders as a children’s story truly begins, for that very moment, she reached up to her hair, and shook it. Only it was not hair, no, those golden locks were mere illusions which the human mind concocts in order to hide what it dare not face. For every strand of that shimmering golden, sunbeam ‘hair’ was naught but endless atoms of light, falling down her shoulders like endless pouring grains of sand. No, not sand. Dust.

For you see, it was not the head of Life-in-Death that those rays of light cascaded from, but rather what nested atop her head. And what was that? Nothing but thousands of small, scarab-like forms with golden wings. And it was these which, in shaking her head, she dislodged, revealing the gnarled, mangled, miniature parodies on the human form beneath their wings. They swarmed the ship — they swarmed me — as millions of radiant dustmotes fell from their shapes. And I, still tied to the mast, was obliged to spend hours that felt like years screaming as they ate their way through the flesh of my now forever undying, and cursedly immortal body. I was not even allowed to pass out, but only scream in endless, pealing, parched accents as my mortal flesh and organs were slowly, viciously gnawed away.

But ah, they made one mistake, Miss Sampson: one great and generous mistake. They left my eyes and ears for last. And so, the last thing I remember seeing before the things went for my eyes was Death himself begin to turn the ship beside us to sail away, and from the bottom of his cloak, I saw something poking out: something black, and scaled, like a great lizard. And even as my sight went and my own screams echoed, I fancied I could hear something ringing in my ears from the boat beside me. Something soft, and tremulous, but unmistakable in its regularity: the tick, tick, tick of Death’s great clock — of time itself — winding out. For, I realize now, Death had won the game for my soul before my foolish entreaties, and meant to give me the small mercy of being able to recognize Him, should I ever wish to face what my unmanly cowardice had postponed forever.

How long I floated in black, soundless agony after that I cannot tell. Nor can I begin to describe the sensation of feeling new muscles restring themselves across my bones, of new flesh creeping, with fiendish itching slowness up those muscles, and of new organs sprouting, agonized, inside it. I only know that when, at last, my new eyes squeezed themselves into my aching sockets, the sight which met my eyes was so sweet it almost made the hellish ordeal worth it: my crew.

My crew was alive again. My ship was at full sail, the skull and crossbones flying triumphantly atop the mast. I was no longer tied to the mast, but — I now realized — had fallen to my knees before it, but was free again. And I was cold, for I soon realized that while my tormentors had allowed my body to grow new flesh, it had not been able to grow new clothes, which meant that I was entirely naked. Can you imagine, Miss Sampson? I, a captain, naked before my crew!”

Now that he mentioned it, Flora could imagine it, which was precisely the problem. Despite the soul-searing terror of the narrative up to this point, she could feel a faint scarlet blush stealing up her neck at this last detail. She coughed.

“It sounds dreadfully embarrassing.”

Hawkins laughed, “Embarrassing? Yes, I suppose it might have been. For another man. At another time. But I was so grateful to be free of pain, and to see my crew alive, that it only made me laugh. I sprang to my feet and tried to embrace the first man I saw, but he quite reasonably jumped back, shocked that his captain should try to embrace him, let alone in his natural state. It was then that I began to wonder if they’d been aware of my presence at all before then, or if Life-in-Death had simply veiled my agonized form from them until its awful metamorphosis into undeath was complete.

But either way, all was soon set right. My boatswain took me in hand and guided me to my cabin, where he helped me to dress, albeit in a set of clothes so ornamental that, even at my height of infamy, I would have considered them excessive. I would not remark upon it, except that it was in noticing that inconsistency that I began to notice all the others. For one thing, my cabin was piled high with old issues of the Eton Chronicle, as if the dear old masters had somehow managed to find a carrier willing to take it to the Spanish Main, let alone onto a ship owned by an infamous privateer. But more than that, when I actually tried speaking to my boatswain Smee, who I remembered as a cussed old salt known for his facility with the Cat, I found that his personality had somehow become not merely gentle, but actually childlike. 

I had much the same experience when I left the cabin and called the ship to assembly. Or rather, tried to call it, only to discover that discipline on the ship was nonexistent because the crew — while they looked like my crew and sounded like my crew — had also regressed into seeming childishness. In fact, when I spoke sharply to one or two of them and told them to look sharp, tears came to their eyes and one fellow even began to suck his thumb! I might have laughed, only when I saw it, I began to fear that a terrible trick had been played upon me due to a careless omission on my part. That is to say, I had asked Life-in-Death to return my ship and my crew, but I had not asked for my crew to come back sane. Which was why, instead of my old crew of hardened pirates, I now found myself saddled with a ship full of childlike halfwits in their guise.

A part of me was tempted to despair right then, but my manful spirit overcame the urge. So I had what was effectively a crew of boys. So what? Boys might learn as well as anyone, might mature as well as anyone, even if I’d have to be gentler with them, and anyway, what did it matter? We’d all been granted Life-in-death, after all, hadn’t we? We could not die. Could not be killed. I had forever to teach them to return to their old ways, if I wanted it, and none could take it from me. And so, I resolved to be patient, and gentle, until such time as they could recover their old natures. Oh, a lesser captain might have forced them all off the plank, Miss Sampson, to be sure, but not me. Not Jas. Hook of the Jolly Roger. I loved my men. For them, I had endured Hell twice. To reawaken their old souls after that was nothing.

And I will say this, for all their lack of maritime discipline, their old instincts for how to sail a ship did at least seem to be intact. What’s more, discipline turned out to be unnecessary, because none of them seemed to have any desire to slack at his duties. Rather, they treated the sailing of the ship as one great, delightful game, and played their parts without complaint as we drifted pleasantly for almost an hour, when a cry went up from the crow’s nest.

“Land!” The voice above shouted. “Land to starboard!”

Now, you must understand, while I was relieved by this — what captain does not feel relief at the prospect of restocking his provisions — I was not particularly surprised. We had, after all, been attacked off the coast of Florida. It was not impossible that in the days of agony since then we had drifted toward some island, or perhaps toward Florida, itself. When I drew my spyglass and looked to starboard, I expected to see one of any number of a dozen familiar ports growing closer.

But I didn’t. Quite the opposite. The island I beheld then was no island I had ever seen in my life. In truth, it did not look like any island on any map I had ever beheld, nor was there any sign of civilization to be seen at a distance. At this, my heart grew apprehensive. How far had we sailed while I writhed in agony, and for how long? I decided I would have to wait for night, and judge by the stars, for it would not do to leave my ship docked at a savage island indefinitely. However, having resolved this, the thrill of discovery took me, and I began to think of the stories told by boys of unknown islands where pirate crews might secret away treasure. Or even of Columbus and Pizarro. Might I, James Hook, join such august ranks as a discoverer of new worlds, and after facing down Death and his companion? I would be the stuff of legends, Miss Sampson. The stuff of children’s stories.”

Hawkins began to laugh bitterly. “And oh, how right I was, and how damnable the results. Yes, indeed, I was the first to discover that hellish place, that haven of infantile cruelty, that eternal torture chamber, that Netherland. Had I know what awaited us on that island, I would have seized the wheel and tried to drag the ship off-course, or perhaps even to wreck it rather than go one yard closer. But I did not know, and so permitted Life-in-Death’s true torment to begin.

We made landfall within a quarter of an hour. And no sooner did we drop our anchor, than the wind which carried us stopped instantly. It did not rise again. No, not once in years — perhaps centuries — did the wind ever rise. Which meant that we, poor devils, were left marooned on that island. This might have been an escape under other circumstances, for at least it might have led the poor devils under my command to starve, but not there. For, you see, our stores never ran dry. No matter how indulgently we plundered them, the day after, they would always be as full as if we had not touched a crumb or drank a drop. And as I was soon to learn, that was the least — and the least terrible — of what each new day would restore.

Naturally, I organized a search party to explore the island, planning to make a map of its dimensions and to see if it were truly as deserted as it looked. But here, I don’t suppose I can manage to keep you in suspense. You know, of course, that it was not deserted. No, as I was soon to learn, it was very much inhabited, but not by men: by demons, deliberately selected and encouraged by Life-in-Death herself to plague me.

The first of these demons we encountered were the Natives, though quite honestly, I hesitate to call them that. I am a pirate, Miss Sampson. I have had dealings with native tribes; after all, there was kinship between people like me and people like them in our desire to plunder the respectable European settler for all he was worth. I even know a few of their tongues, and understand too well the queer species of warlike honor which attends the Native mind.

These Natives, however, had no honor, warlike or otherwise. Indeed, they were less like a real tribe than like a particularly nasty child’s idea of one. Yet for all that, they fought like devils, and had the minds to match, for their ambush caught us completely by surprise and before we even knew what was happening, three of my men lay dead. I tried desperately to mount a counterattack, but my men, being mental children, were so frightened that they broke into a panicked retreat, which became a bloody rout. I was lucky to get back to the ship with a handful of men still alive and to draw up the lifeboats before our attackers could commandeer them. I thought surely, this would be enough to keep us safe. After all, surely no man — native or European — could cross deep water without drowning.

Which was true. No man could. But that was before I met the Boy.”

Hawkins’ hands began to shake and he stood hastily from his desk. “My apologies, Miss Sampson, but if I’m to continue, some liquid courage is in order.”

He crossed to a large globe in the corner of the room and pulled it upwards to reveal several decanters full of unidentifiable spirits, with glasses to match. Hawkins uncorked one and poured himself a generous glass before knocking it back in one gulp and pulling a face. Then, he held an unspoiled glass out to Flora.

“Anything for you, Miss Sampson? Rum? Whiskey?”

Flora shook her head, half in answer and half in disbelief at being offered rum by Captain Hook. “No, thank you.”

Hawkins nodded, already in the act of refilling his glass. “As you wish.” Another swallow. “Right. To the most important part of the story, I suppose.”

He reseated himself and sighed. “You know, when Mr. Barrie first showed me his play, Miss Sampson, I was furious with him. It felt like a betrayal of everything I had told him about my singular experience.

‘How can you make that thing your hero?’ I bellowed. ‘If I still had my hook, I’d open your throat for it!’

The poor fellow took it quite well, though. ‘Now, Jimmy…’ that was what he called me in order to differentiate his name from mine, ‘be reasonable. Think what you’ve told me of your exploits. old boy. I simply can’t make people root for an infamous blackguard of the Spanish Main to kill a child.’

‘But it wasn’t a child!’ I shouted back. ‘It was a demon, Mr. Barrie! A demon! You know that better than anyone!’

‘It doesn’t matter what I know, Jimmy. What matters is what I can convince people to believe. And you do me a dishonor in saying I’ve made Peter my hero. If you’ll turn onto the end, you’ll see he ends up a worse scoundrel than you. I’m being practical, Jimmy, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to twist your story beyond all recognition. The central theme is that children are cruel. It may take a bit for people to see how much that’s true, but it comes in at the end.’”

Hawkins shook his head. “Well, of course, he was telling the truth, and he knew his business better than I, Miss Sampson, for his play has made both of us rich men. And I suppose there are limits to what the stage can show; limits which make my story very difficult to convey in a convincing way.

But that does not change the truth. Which brings me back to my first meeting with the Boy. With Pan. Which, believe me, is the only name I ever called it; Jim Barrie invented that ‘Peter’ part to humanize the Beast. But you cannot humanize what is not human. And Pan was not human. I knew that the moment I first beheld it soaring towards us, its childlike body held up by the same ghastly sunbeam-dust which fell from the wings of my scarab tormentors as they ate my body. But worse still than that was the thrill of recognition I felt when I saw its face and realized this was no mere child. For in its leering, cruel, juvenile features I beheld nothing less than a perfect replica of my own features when I was a boy.

It landed on the ship and brandished a sword. Well, what could I do? I ordered my men to kill it, whatever it was, and God bless them, they certainly tried. But here, too, fresh horrors were to be found, for when it began to fight, I saw in its effortless, graceful, perfect good form a perfect image of how I must have fought when I first struck down my comrades on that first naval vessel. It even knew how to box as I did, complete with the mighty left hook I had perfected. And as it cut through my men like butter, I finally understood the full depth of Life-in-Death’s cruelty.

She had returned my crew and my ship to me, but only to deliver us into battle with the embodiment of what had gotten my crew killed, and me damned, in the first place: my own childish inability to bear authority, or to accept limitations of any kind. After all, had I not become a pirate because I wanted to rise higher than I could in “polite” society? Well, if rising higher than I ought was what I wanted, then naturally the demon sent to mock me would take the form of a flying boy. Had I not slaughtered men who trusted me, and their captain with them, out of pique? Why, then the demon would exact the same revenge on me now that I was the captain. Of course, I had also refused to accept death, willingly damning not only my own soul, but the souls of all my crew, in order to avoid that last shred of consequence for my actions, but this, I admit, I did not see how the creature could imitate, at least not yet. All I knew was that I would have to close with it — with this awful mirror of the cruel, callow, thoughtless boy I had been — and kill it, if I could.

But I could not. God, not even if I had a hundred men could I have done that. The creature was so devilishly quick, so infernally graceful, and so utterly fearless that I could as soon have fought the wind. It disarmed me in seconds, pinned me to the ship’s deck with an agonizing swordthrust into my gullet, and then began what I was soon to learn was its favorite grisly “game.” It pulled my organs out, just as Living Death’s fae accomplices had done. It flayed away my skin with a carving knife. It pulled my muscles from my bones and sliced my eyes, and tongue, and ears away, with all the careless, cruel curiosity of a child pulling wings off a butterfly. And then, it left me, once more in soundless darkness, to scream and suffer on the deck of my ship.

And here, the full extent of the nightmare revealed itself. For, like Prometheus screaming each day under the ministrations of the hawk, once more my organs regrew, my muscles restrung themselves, and my flesh crept back. And once more, when I opened my eyes, to the sound of a child’s imitation of a cock crow, I found myself standing naked, among my men — alive, again, and childlike as before, with a ship beneath our feet where no sign of blood or pain was to be found. In fact, I soon learned that my men remembered nothing at all of the previous day or of its horrors. In their minds, we had simply docked at Netherland and been there forever.

Ha! Well, even if they didn’t remember, Miss Sampson, I did. And because I was still a fool, with a fighting spirit, I fancied that the prison I found myself in could somehow be outwitted. That if I were clever enough, or discovered the right stratagem, I could conquer the entire island, kill its demonic inhabitants, and make it a safe haven for me and my men to spend eternity. And since I soon discovered that the hold was full, which obviated the need to go ashore, I spent the rest of the day drilling my men in tactics and fighting, until well into the night. And when I finally went to sleep in my cabin, I dreamt of vengeance.

But when I woke, once more to the sound of that damnable child’s crowing, such dreams faded with the rest. For once more, my men remembered nothing of the previous day. However, this time, I didn’t even have time to try to re-teach them, because in mere hours, the ship was under attack again. Which was when I discovered the first of several things which would ultimately permit my escape: Pan was not alone.

Well, really, why would he be? After all, Life-in-Death had not only me, but my entire crew to torture, if she liked. It was not so impossible to imagine that she might have created child versions of all of us to aid in the torture. Yet when I beheld the boys who fought at the demon’s side as it landed on our ship and began its merciless attack, I knew that this was not the way of things. None of these boys acted in the least bit like any member of my crew. They did not, indeed, even resemble them. They really seemed to be just…normal boys, albeit under the spell of the demon. Which, despite the ruthless efficiency of their assault, made my curiosity bloom: if these boys were not creations of Life-in-Death, but were rather actual children, then how had they been brought to Netherland, and for what purpose?

Of course, this thought did nothing to prevent their cutting their way through my men with ridiculous ease. Nor did it prevent the demon from once more humiliating me and stripping away my body with its usual sadistic glee. But even as I howled in agony for yet another awful night, until the thing’s crowing roused me again, that thought kept me sane. For in it, I saw just a glimmer of hope: after all, if those boys had come from somewhere, then there must be another way in to Netherland. And if there was a way in, then surely there was a way out. It was small hope, but it was hope I needed as the countless days, and countless defeats crashed down upon me, despite all my best efforts at preparing my men or securing the ship against attack. I could not understand it at the time…but I do now.”

Hawkins’ eyes burned and he crossed to the globe, filling another glass with rum and knocking it back greedily. Then, he turned to Flora, his eyes haunted.

“You know, I assume, Miss Sampson, that when children play at Peter Pan,” he spat the name, “the strongest always choose to be Peter. They force the baby to be Hook.” His hands clenched. “The baby, Miss Sampson. That’s where the canker gnaws, and not, as Mr. Barrie would have it, because it hurts my pride. No. That canker gnaws because only now do I see that in those children’s games, the fate of my men was constantly decided. The fact that the pirates never win when children play at ‘Neverland,’ as Mr. Barrie calls that circle of Hell, was the precise reason why my stratagems availed me nothing and I was forced to watch my poor crew die. Again, and again, and again, sometimes in the most horrible ways, and always to cursedly be reborn in their old childlike state the next day. It was the stuff of the darkest hole in Tartarus, Miss Sampson, my dance with Pan, with him as the boulder and I as Sisyphus. And for long eons of time, I truly despaired of ever escaping that Hell.

However, despite the grotesque tedium and monotony of my existence as a perpetual sufferer of cruelties at the hands of Pan and his Native allies, I remained a thinking man. Which was what finally permitted me to escape the tedium and monotony, if not the grotesquery.

Alright, I said to myself, so I will be forced to suffer most every night until Pan crows, only for the exercise to repeat itself the next day. Let us take that for granted. If that is the case, then there is no reason for me to care for my safety, which will be compromised no matter what. Yet I still have on advantage: unlike my men, I can remember. I can learn. And therefore, I can learn where the walls of this cage lie, and perhaps perceive what holes might be found within them.

So, when next I awoke, screaming from my near-nightly agonies at Pan’s hands, I did not stay on the ship. Instead, I led my men into Netherland again, and this time, because I knew where the Natives had laid their traps before, I avoided them. Oh, it took us no more than five minutes to find more traps, to be sure, and to die in yet more horrible ways, but the next day I avoided those traps, as well. I spent years memorizing every single dishonorable trick the island could throw at me to thwart my progress, and then years more learning its geography. And only then, after years of endless, frustrating pain, did I begin to strain at the bars of my cage.

My first plan was obvious: I would capture one of Pan’s boys and torture the location of his leader’s hiding place from him. But all attempts at this failed; even when I could catch one of them, Pan would always arrive too quickly for me to break him. Though I did learn one useful thing from these failures: the boys feared both pain and death. They did not know they would revive upon the morrow, no matter what happened. Knowing this, I immediately set about capturing a native, and seeing if the same was true of them. Yes, it was. Which was the first moment I began to realize that my knowledge of how the prison worked was an advantage. I knew I would suffer, no matter what happened, and be reborn, but my enemies did not. Which meant I could threaten them with tortures and deaths that, while impermanent, still had the power to compel truth. Oh yes, I would never manage to carry them off: Pan would always arrive to prevent that. But my enemies never remembered this, no more than my men did.

Unfortunately, however, torturing and killing the natives proved as useless as the boys. They had no knowledge of the subjects I was most keen to understand. No, they did not know where Pan’s boys came from, no more than I did. No, they did not know how he flew. No, they did not know how to leave Netherland; they had no consciousness that there was anywhere else in the world. The only thing of use I was able to get out of one of them was that their princess might know how to reach Pan’s hideout, but even this was cold comfort, for without years more of memorizing the natives’ movements, I could not possibly hope to capture the girl in question. Yet what other choice did I have? If this was my only way to make the fiend vulnerable, then it was what I would have to do. So, with a great deal of fatalistic dread, I started once more trying to fight the natives, fruitless as it always seemed.

It took years of dying in agony before I could fight them to a standstill. It took a decade more to rout them. And it took yet one more decade to defeat them and keep their princess alive. But she, oh, she was made of sterner stuff than I expected. Even the few times when I was able to put her to the question, she held up under torture as a queen ought, and never once revealed any knowledge of Pan’s whereabouts. However, I do not begrudge the child — or illusion of one, or whatever she was — that, because in my efforts to question her, I inadvertently learned something far more important.

You see, Miss Sampson, Pan did not like how thoroughly I refused to be broken and nor, I assume, did his mistress. And he particularly did not like that I was able to hurt his fellow tormentors, however briefly. Which was what led him, finally, to slip up in one of our countless duels aboard the ship. For you see, once he beat me, he’d grown bored of pinning me to the deck, at least right away, and had since taken to chopping off my limbs, which would — of course — always grow back the next day. However, one day, when he managed to sever my left hand — a sensation I was so used to that I managed to choke back my cry of pain — I heard something I did not expect. Something I had almost forgotten could exist, in my countless years of savage combat with Netherland’s many cruelties: the sound of a ticking clock, coming from beneath the ship. And, because I was not yet pinned to the deck, I managed to back away from Pan just enough to sneak a single look over the edge of the ship and behold the great, black crocodile beneath, staring up at me with the hollow eyes of Death, and the sound of the ticking deep within its gullet. Which was when an idea finally struck me.

‘Oh, mercy, Pan,’ I cried, trying as best I could for the terror of my early days in the fiend’s clutches. ‘Mercy! Do what ye like with me, you heartless boy, only don’t. throw me hand to that crocodile, I beg ye!’

And of course, because for all his immortality and strength, Pan was still a spiteful, hateful, cruel child, he laughed. And then, without so much as a second thought, he threw my hand down into the water, where the crocodile snatched it in its jaws and swallowed it whole. And though I screamed and cried and blubbered after that, as I had so many times before under his ministrations, in my heart, Miss Sampson, I had hope for the first time. For when that croc had swallowed my and, an experiment had begun, and I had only to wait to see if it bore fruit.

So you can imagine my utter delight when Pan crowed the next day and, instead of waking to find myself restored completely, oh, wonder, my hand still pained me because it was still missing. My experiment had worked, and thanks be to God, I now knew that there was a way of escape, should I ever be desperate enough to take it. Which was that, I were to throw myself to that crocodile — to Death, as I should have done when first he sailed by — I would finally be free of the horrors of Netherland.

Oh, I almost threw myself into the croc’s jaws that very second, Miss Sampson. But I was held back, not just by fear, but by remorse. After all, to give myself up to death, while it would free me from the horrors of Netherland, it would leave my poor childish crew with no hope of escape. No. No, for all the many lines I had crossed since arriving in that dreadful place, I still cared for my crew as if they were brothers, or even sons, Miss Sampson, and I could not bear to do something so selfish. Not when the only people who had ever loved me in my life would be left to Hell.

At first, I considered making them all walk the plank only to follow, myself, when the last had been eaten, but the mere thought infuriated me. The poor devils would be terrified. They would not know that their captain did it as mercy. They would not understand that their captain did it as mercy. And why should they be forced to endure it? Why, after all the pain that we had all been through, should we have been required to accept such a dreadful end? It would make the whole thing pointless. It would insult all we had already endured.

No. No, throwing us all into the jaws of death was not the way. It might suffice as a last resort, but not until we had tried everything to achieve what I now suspected would truly defeat our captors: the death of Pan, and of the fragment of Life-in-Death that attended and protected him. Yes, yes! If I could accomplish that even once, even if it didn’t take, then the torture chamber would lose its meaning. I would have every entity within Netherland at my mercy, then, and Life-in-Death’s cruel game would be defeated on its own terms. She would have no choice but to release us all, simply to avoid my compounding the humiliation.

And so, now finally possessed of a plan, however difficult, I returned to my endless game of attrition with Pan and his mistress. And even though they kept visiting agony upon agony on me, now, I began to almost relish the frustration with which they inflicted it. They, after all, had to win this game every time, whereas I only had to win once. What’s more, now that I had my way out, I no longer felt like a prisoner to their ministrations, but rather like a willing participant, who was simply biding his time until he could turn the tables. Which is why, slowly, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, stroke by stroke, and scream by scream, I began to learn how to fight Pan himself, and to begin to penetrate his good form, which had once seemed invincible.

And then, one day, in a blast of pure luck, the final puzzle piece snapped into place. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday; the moment when, peering through my spyglass, I caught sight of Pan soaring down to Netherland’s surface. But not alone, no, this time he had company: a girl, and two boys. Well, that answered one question: where did Pan’s companions come from? But there was yet another, more tantalizing detail: the fiendish shard of Life-in-Death which accompanied him tried to send the girl to her death almost as soon as they got within sight of the island. It was a maddeningly suggestive detail, and it sent my mind whirring such that I barely even noticed my surroundings for hours. But at last, something occurred to me — something blindingly obvious, and yet only noticeable now that it was no longer true — the fiend only ever took boys. This was the first time he — it — had brought back a girl: a living girl, not an illusion like the Natives’ princess, or the mermaids. And something in that threatened Life-in-Death, though for what reason, I could not imagine.

Mr. Barrie, of course, credited the whole thing to romantic jealousy in his play, which he knows is an absurd notion as well as I. Still, if the motive is not real, the actions are, and it was only in spying on the boys with all the tools of stealth and skulduggery I had learned to employ that I began to suspect why. Because you see, Mr. Barrie tells the truth one point: Pan had brought the girl back to be a mother. And in that little detail, I began to spy the truth. For what is a mother, Miss Sampson, but a giver of life? Real life, not the counterfeit mockery of Life-in-Death. That child’s very presence on an island full of boys was an implicit challenge to the order of the fiend which ruled Netherland, for should she accept a union with any of those boys, life would intrude in full, and potentially break the power of Life-in-Death forever.

But it was only when I woke the next day that I realized what a challenge she truly posed. Because for the first time, when I checked our stores, I found that they were depleted. I questioned my men and found that they remembered the day that had passed. Which is when I knew what my next step must be: I must capture the girl. Oh, not out of some perverse desire, but for a simpler reason. Because Pan would come to save her, and because I had not yet found the means to beat him, he would succeed. Which meant he would make the child desire him, and set in motion the means by which Life-in-Death’s hold on Netherland might be broken forever.

Oh, yes. If I could make the whole pantomime convincing enough, then there would be no need to defeat Pan myself. His very urges as a boy, if boy he was, would do the work for me. And so, with planning as careful and devious as any I had devised when I was still the terror of the Spanish Main, I set about laying my final trap. I kidnapped the girl. I took steps to kill Pan which I knew would not succeed, but which I knew would make her despair of his survival. I even managed to use the wedge that the girl’s presence drove between Pan and his fragment of Life-in-Death to make the hideous sprite reveal the location of his hiding place before trapping it in a lamp and tossing it to the bottom of the sea, so that if it were possible to kill Pan, I would accomplish it and free us all no matter what happened. Then, I waited.

As I predicted, Pan came. He fought me. And while I came as close as I had ever come to defeating him, even at my best, I knew I was still no match for him. But what was more, I knew that my plan could not work if the girl believed he had spared my life. So I lured him to the topmost part of the ship, until we were overlooking the ocean, and when he finally showed his frustration and kicked me into the ocean, I could hardly contain my glee.

‘Bad form, Peter!’ I shouted as I plummeted toward the open crocodile’s jaws, laughing as I thought of how, in finally accepting the embrace of death, I had finally sprung a trap which might unravel my great mistake once and for all. I did not even bother to struggle as Death caught me in his jaws.”

He paused and smiled softly, a hint of mourning entering his face. Flora, however, was too fascinated to let the moment pass. She leaned forward in her seat and, without thinking, immediately asked, “And then?”

Hawkins looked up at her in mild surprise.

“And then?” he repeated, as a hollow look came into his eyes. “Then…there was pain, Miss Sampson. Pain beyond all other pain I had yet experienced. Pain that could unman any man, even a terror of the Spanish Main. I felt every bone crack beneath the crocodile’s teeth. I felt the acid of its stomach peel away my flesh. Every inch of my physical form was violated, and I was sure that this time, I would not wake, for it was Death himself who inflicted the wounds, not his cruel counterpart or one of her minions.

But as you can see, I was mistaken. For my soul still belonged to Life-in-Death,  even if my body was no longer her prey. She had not broken her bargain with me, even if I had fled from it. Which is why, when I woke next, it was to find myself shivering, naked, and yet alive. But not, this time, in Netherland. No, this time, I recognized the land I was on — dimly, as if from a dream — as the soil of what was once the Spanish Main. Florida, to be exact, though certainly not the Florida I remembered, for as you so cleverly realized, I am a stranger in this century. As for how I managed to steal, and rob, and fight my way back to England? Well, that tale alone could take hours in its own right.

What is important, however, is that I made my way to Eton, where as you so cleverly noticed, I ripped the records of my attendance out, just as Mr. Barrie says. In fact, it was thanks to my return to Eaton that Mr. Barrie and I first met, for he found me sitting on the college wall — the low one, on which only members of the Pop Society may sit — and there saved me from being accosted by a policeman. It was from there that I told him the story I have just told you, and bless him, though a lesser person would have thought me a madman, Mr. Barrie took me in hand and gave me a home and comforts until such time as he could find me a more suitable, more decent engagement.”

He smiled and sat up in his chair, spreading his hands. “Which is what brought me, at last, back to dear Eaton permanently, where you find me now. They say I teach religion, and I do, though I fear it’s rather an overly polite way of describing my true scholarly pursuits, which the other masters frown upon a great deal. You see, Miss Sampson, what I am truly a scholar of is not religion, writ large, but rather a scholar of the geography of Hell.”

He raised one finger and pointed at the maps on the walls, and when Flora looked closer, she saw immediately what he meant. These weren’t maps of anywhere on earth. Rather, they appeared to be hand-drawn maps of various versions of Hell, some of which even she recognized — Dante and Milton — and others which looked wholly foreign and frightening. A dark smile twisted Hawkins’ mouth.

“I have read every book, in every language a man can learn, on the subject of Hell, Miss Sampson, and for one very simple reason: because I know that my final stratagem failed. Wendy Darling — though that is not the girl’s real name — did not conceive a child with Pan. I know, because I found her some years ago, in a hospital. She was old and grey, and her eyes barely worked, but she knew me in an instant, and I had to take great pains to assure her of my kind intentions before she would talk, but eventually, talk she did. And because I know what happened after I was eaten, I know that my men are still suffering somewhere in that hellish Netherland where boys never grow up and pirates always lose their battles and die screaming for their mothers. So I have taken it upon myself to learn all I can of Hell, not so that I may avoid it, but so that I may know how to enter it again, and in which damnable circle I must look to find the island where the souls of my crew are trapped. What else can I do, Miss Sampson, knowing that it is only my folly that put them there? I ask you, what else?”

Flora wait for him to go on, but when he didn’t, she realized the question wasn’t rhetorical. But what could she say? She was almost too riveted by the story — and by the haunted, dark eyes of James Hawkins, or Gordon, or Hook himself — to speak. She tried to speak, but her mouth felt dry.

“I, uh…I don’t know, Captain.”

“No? What would you do, then, Miss Sampson? Not to save your crew, but to save your family. Perhaps your husband—”

“I’m not married.”

A slight wolfish twinkle entered Hawkins’ eyes, then vanished. “I beg your pardon. Your mother, then? We all have mothers, after all. Except Pan. What would you do to save her from Hell?”

“Mum and I don’t get on very well, but…but if she were in Hell, Captain, I’d do anything to get her out.”

Hawkins relaxed, his eyes closing with relief.

“Thank you, Miss Sampson.” He reached into his desk idly, and a moment later, she heard a faint metallic click issue from within. “Thank you. You have eased my heart on a very important point.”

Flora smiled. But unbidden, fear was rising in her at the queer, almost predatory look in James Hawkins’ eyes. “I’m glad.”

She stood. “Well, Captain, this has been most enlightening, but if there’s nothing else—”

A dagger whizzed by her ear as she turned toward the door, burying itself in the wood. The sight froze her for a second before her feet worked again, and she tensed to run, but the movement came too late. The bite of something curved, metal, and razor sharp was already at her throat.

“You are not going anywhere, Miss Sampson,” purred Jas. Hook, Captain of the Jolly Roger. “Not now. I’m sorry, but you are simply too valuable.”

“Captain? What are you doing?”

“Exactly what you said a man in my position should do, Miss Sampson. Anything. You see, the one thing I didn’t mention about my little journey through the crocodile’s gullet is that I didn’t make it alone. No, that lamp containing the living shard of Life-in-Death got swallowed, too. I’ve kept it — and the fiend within — ever since. Until very recently, I had no idea how to use her, because I had no idea how one might return to Netherland, but just a few nights ago, I had something of a breakthrough. It was Mr. Barrie’s play that did it; faeries — Life-in-Death — are bound by belief. Well, the entire world now believes that you can get to Netherland by following the second star to the right. Which means I should be able to, as well. I have been waiting for an opportunity like this.”

“An opportunity for what? Captain, I don’t—”

“Ah, Miss Sampson, but don’t you remember? The one thing Life-in-Death cannot abide in her realm is a woman. A mother. And ideally, a mother with child. Oh, I could have snatched any tramp off the street, if I wanted, but when you came right into my lap? I’m a pirate, Miss Sampson. I not only take what I want; I take it where I want.”

“Please…” Flora stammered, tears of fear suddenly coming to her eyes. “Please, I—”

But her words were cut off as Hook’s one good hand came into view above her and s

he beheld what was in it.

It was just as he’d said: a horrid miniature mockery on the human form, its gangly limbs twisted, its mouth lined with razor sharp teeth, its skin white as leprosy. And from its wings — golden and scarablike — a hail of motes of sunlight fell down onto her eyes.

“Don’t cry, Miss Sampson,” breathed Captain James Hook, his voice pregnant with cold mirth. “That’s not the way to get to Netherland. You know the way from Mr. Barrie’s play, don’t you, Miss Sampson, and it’s not tears. No. You think lovely, wonderful thoughts…”

The room began to spin, and the last thing Flora saw as her body rose into the air was Hook’s terrible, beautiful smile.

“…and up we go.”

----

 

Credits

My Daughter Had Her Wisdom Teeth Removed...

 

I (37f) have two children: Nathan (12m) and Anna (14f). A couple of months ago, I took Anna to a private hospital for a procedure to have four of her wisdom teeth extracted. Teeth that were well-embedded in my daughter's gums, necessitating the use of a general anaesthetic. Necessitating, in fact, a visit to an all-hours private clinic; time was of the essence.

Frustratingly, there were unforeseen delays with other surgeries that day, so Anna endured an agonising wait for what ended up being an extremely late surgery. An extremely involved surgery. The extraction of those impacted molars lasted two hours, all in all, and was rather anxiety-inducing for me too.

Now, anybody who’s seen the aftermath of such a procedure, in either reality or the YouTube footage of a sadistic parent, knows that it often involves wonky, witty remarks from the recovering patient. And, whilst I didn’t have a recording phone at the ready, I’ll admit that I was hoping for some bizarre wordplay. But my daughter instead uttered something vile.

Before I repeat her confession, here's some context:

My husband, Ed, used to go white water rafting with our two children and his brother, Darren. Some years, I’d go with them, but work commitments often clashed. Anyway, Ed wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer, so I always felt a little uneasy about the idea of him out on such unforgiving water without me.

In late 2022, my worst fear came true. A strong current pulled my husband under. And by the time Darren had recovered his brother's body, it was too late. Ed had drowned.

The following months were unspeakably awful for the entire family, but Anna was affected the most severely. To eke even a handful of words out of her became an impossible feat. But that didn’t stop Uncle Darren from trying. From helping the family, in Ed’s absence, to survive; mentally and physically. It was no surprise to me when Darren offered to accompany us to the hospital for Anna's surgery — offered to keep Nathan company whilst my daughter underwent the procedure.

And around eleven in the evening, when my daughter woke from the anaesthesia, all of those factors were filling my mind.

“Hello, darling,” I said softly, using a pinkie to hoist Anna’s sweaty bangs out of her listlessly-rolling eyes. “How are you feeling?”

My daughter's doped up face observed me absently. But within the teary pools of her wandering eyes, there swam thoughts. Loose, spiralling thoughts of a mind disarrayed but not disillusioned. And certainly not duplicitous; I trusted the words which would, eventually, spill from her puffy cheeks.

Firstly, of course, came confusion.

“The house looks empty…” Anna said in a half-muffle, wafting both of her hands at the right-hand side of the hospital room — an unlit space lined with empty beds.

“We’re not at our house, sweetpea. We’re in the recovery room,” I explained. “This is a hospital, remember? Though you do have this massive space all to yourself, so I suppose it must seem quite empty.”

Anna responded incoherently.

“Everything's fine. It was a straightforward procedure,” I continued. “But you’re going to feel a little out of it whilst the drug wears off, honey.”

“Where’s the man?” she asked in a low, disoriented moan.

I smiled. “Dr Addis? He’s doing the rounds. But Joyce is here. Remember her from earlier?”

The young nurse, fiddling with various instruments on a trolley, looked up and beamed. “Hello again, Anna! You're being really brave. I’m going to run a few tests now, and I want you to let me know if you feel any pain or sickness, okay? It’ll—”

“No…” Anna interrupted. “The man.”

“She must miss Dr Addis,” Joyce teased.

I looked at the nurse apologetically. “Sorry.”

The woman grinned widely and shook her head. “Don’t be silly, Mrs Kary. Anna, I’m sure Dr Addis will be back soon, but we—”

“The man!” Anna loudly said again. “Nathan didn’t see…”

“Sweetie…” I began.

Then my daughter’s wide eyes shot to me, and she slurred a wretched confession.

“Dad didn’t fall into the water. He was pushed. Don’t tell Mum. He… He says he’ll kill us… if I tell Mum.”

There followed silence. Silence which pressed heavily against the skin, weighing both Joyce and me to the floor. The nurse clearly felt something in Anna’s words too. Something more than the drug-induced nonsense with which she must have been accustomed.

“Where is the man?” my daughter whispered, and I finally understood that she was not talking about Dr Addis.

Uncle Darren and Nathan were sitting in the waiting room. That horrifying thought circled my mind as I processed Anna's claim. A supposedly nonsensical claim. That was what any rational person would believe — or, at the very least, want to believe. However, a memory came to the forefront of my mind.

Last year, on Christmas Day, Darren made a pass at me.

“Gin and hormones, Cynthia,” my brother-in-law sheepishly promised after I spurned him. “That was all.”

I chose to accept that explanation, given that our entire family had already been through so much, but my gut never fully settled. Even before my husband's death, something about his brother didn't sit well with me. And my doubt only deepened when Uncle Darren, following Ed's death, forcibly muscled his way into my immediate family; injected himself into the main artery of our lives.

Obviously, relatives should be there for a grieving family, but Darren tried, time and time again, to go above the call of duty. He would turn up at our home, uninvited and unannounced, to take us out for luxurious meals. Would incessantly coax the children into letting him ‘sleep over’ on weekends; primarily, he achieved this by manipulating Nathan into thinking that it would be cruel for the children's dear uncle to drive home at a late hour.

Worst of all, during those untoward 'sleepovers', I would occasionally hear footsteps echo from the upstairs landing. Would occasionally see a shadow painting the crack beneath my bedroom door. And, from time to time, I would wake in a sweat to find my bedroom door ajar. Once, I opened half-sleeping eyes to see a figure sitting on my chair in the corner of the room. I told myself that it had simply been a dream. One fever dream of many. But I now know better.

“Anna…” I feebly whimpered. “Do you understand what you just told me? Was it true?”

My daughter loudly shushed me and tried to lift a finger to her lips, but her dozy limb only half-cooperated. “We don’t speak about it. He says he’ll hear if we speak about it. He's always listening…”

“Mrs Kary,” the nurse croaked. “Should I... proceed?”

I shook my head, eyes absently boring into Anna's pillow. “I... I don’t know what we should be doing right now. Anna, was this a dream that you had? Please tell me that you had—”

“This!” my daughter interrupted, showing a scar on her forearm. “This wasn’t from the oar. It was from him.”

My face turned pale as I eyed the faded scar on my daughter’s arm. A scar that Darren claimed Anna had acquired from her raft's paddle after it hit a rock, causing a large, jagged splinter of wood to cut into her flesh. I didn't want to imagine what Darren had actually done to my daughter's arm.

Things were adding up. As much as I wanted to dismiss Anna's drug-induced story, it made sense.

You see, once upon a time, my daughter talked. Talked, and talked, and talked. But she hadn’t been that way since her father died. 'Grief' had been the obvious explanation, but that never quite felt right to me. Anna's story, told from that hospital bed, was the truth. I knew that from the moment she spoke. Saw it in my her tearful eyes. She wasn’t aware of herself. Wasn’t aware that she’d just confessed a dark secret to her own mother.

“Mrs Kary…” the nurse continued, still seeming uncertain as to what she should say or do.

“I’m going to find my son,” I said calmly, standing from the bedside chair. “Please watch Anna.”

My daughter’s eyes grew as she finally seemed to identify my face. “Mum…?”

I seized her hand and squeezed. “Everything’s okay, sweetie. Just let Joyce look after you, okay?”

“Right. Everything’s okay,” the nurse agreed weakly, as if I’d said the words for her benefit. “I… I’ll do those tests now…”

I rushed into the corridor and barrelled forwards. Followed many winding hallways, deserted at that late hour, to find my way back to the waiting area. But I was so lost in my thoughts — so lost in the laces of my Converse — that I didn’t see. Didn’t lift my head until I’d almost stumbled into the row of blue, plastic chairs at the end of the hallway.

“Mum?” Nathan asked, swivelling in his seat to look at me. “Are you all right? You look weird.”

I’d been too frightened to look ahead. I would've had to plaster a false smile on face, so as not to arouse suspicion from Darren. But there was something far more frightening about seeing my son sitting alone. It was, of course, a blessing to know that I could snatch Nathan's hand and scoot him away without battling a questioning uncle. But it also terrified me. After all, Darren had gone somewhere.

I dragged my son back through the clinic. Back along the corridors, which seemed to stretch farther than before. I was ready to tear my daughter out of her bed, regardless of the nurse’s advice.

“Mum, slow down!” Nathan pleaded, attempting to wriggle out of my handhold as we rushed towards Anna’s room.

“Sorry, Nathan,” I panted as I shoved the door open. “But I need…”

I didn’t finish that thought.

The recovery room was alarmingly quiet. Anna’s segment, semi-partitioned from the rest of the space by a thick curtain of green fabric, was the only lit section of the large area. Above her bed, a solitary fluorescent light hummed loudly — the only sound in the room.

I rushed towards my unattended daughter and cried, “Where’s Joyce?”

Anna looked at me with teary eyes. “She’s here.”

Rather than unpacking that remark, I pulled the duvet off my half-conscious daughter's robed body. “We’re going home now, Anna. Come on. Nathan and I will help.”

My son slipped Anna's limp arm around his neck, and I ran around to the left-hand side of the bed. But before I reached my daughter, I slipped — trainer sole squeaking unbearably on the tiles below. Fortunately, my hand reflexively reached outwards and gripped onto the green curtain for security. However, I knew I shouldn't look down. And when I did, I wished I hadn’t.

There, starting to stain the lower half of my white Converse, was a pool of red — a pool spreading from a source on the other side of the partitioning curtain.

This wasn’t pulled so far across before, I thought, rubbing the fabric between my unsteady fingers.

A thought which only filled my mind because I so desperately wanted a distraction. A distraction from the horror of wading through that gunky liquid; a tainted river that, no matter how shallow it may have been, seemed to resist my feet as they pushed onwards.

“Mum?” Nathan asked as he helped Anna stand on the other side of the bed. “What happened?”

I answered not with words, but heavy breathing, and I lifted my twitching eyes to the curtain. Then, breath held, I tore the green fabric backwards, and the blackened side of the room was revealed once more — five shadowy beds with unlit light fixtures above. I don’t remember whether I screamed, as something in my soul disconnected when I saw what lay on Anna's neighbouring bed.

The lifeless body of Nurse Joyce.

The woman's face and scrubs were drenched with thick layers of blood. Her mouth hung open in a final cry, and her eyes were gone. Gone not in the sense that they had been clawed to ribbons, but in the sense that they had been plucked cleanly from their sockets. Two deep, blood-filled cavities filled her skull, and her body had been gutted. What remained of the blood in her body was gushing onto the floor, adding to the growing puddle.

When I turned to face my children, I was thankful that Anna’s vacant eyes were staring at the corner of the room. However, Nathan quickly saw Joyce’s body, in spite of my effort to stand in the way, and he began to cry. Began to buckle under the weight of supporting his sister.

“Look at me, both of you!” I cried, nearly slipping in the blood puddle a second time as I rounded the edge of the bed. “Please…”

Nathan bawled as I tried to sling Anna’s right arm over my shoulder, hoping to escort both of my children out of that nightmare, but my daughter shrugged me off.

Before I said a word, Anna pointed a shaking finger at the spot she'd been eyeballing. Pointed at something past the darkened beds. She might even have tried to say something out of her gauze-filled mouth — jumbled, meaningless words. My daughter seemed even less coherent than before, but I trusted her. Followed her jabbing finger. And when I finally eyed the corner of the room, I saw something worse than Joyce’s body.

There was just enough light to illuminate the recovery area's vague outline. The six segregating curtains had been drawn back to the wall, revealing the full stretch of the room. Revealing five empty beds and one bearing the nurse’s mutilated corpse. But the one light above Anna's bed barely lit a thing. The room was, rather, illuminated by light pouring through the window on the far wall. A long glass pane which invited a smidge of moonlight.

With moderate squinting, I discerned the outline of an armchair in the room's corner. A seat partially visible, much like the dark, featureless head rising above its backrest.

Somebody was sitting in the darkness. Watching us.

“He wriggled like a codfish as his lungs filled with water,” came Darren’s voice from the blackness. “But I kept one of his ears above the surface, Cynthia. That way, he could hear me explain, in great detail, all of the things I wanted to do to you.”

“RUN!” I shrieked at my children as the shape lunged forwards.

There came the crying of my son, the door handle squeaking downwards, and a man's broad shoe soles hurriedly beating against the floor. Loudening as Darren, lost in the shadows, charged towards me. There is no horror quite like an unseen thing approaching.

Then the man hurled his body — flung it as if it weren't even a part of him — into me. No matter how monstrous that ragdoll, he was, at the end of the day, still a man. A heavyset man with a bulging gut and eyes to match. I was caught so rigidly within his animalistic gaze, which saw me only as prey, that I barely noticed the searing pain in my belly. The agony came, of course, once the adrenaline started to wear off.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” the man muttered, his scentless breath stinging my eyes as he hovered an inch away from my face. “Not like Ed... This wasn't part of the plan. We have to go, sweetie. Have to go right now. Children or no children. I don't care.”

There was something horrific about trying and failing to smell the man's breath — inhuman breath, neither stale nor rosy. That was Darren. Had always been Darren. Why would his breath smell of a thing? He was nothing. An empty vessel. I’d always known that, somehow. I just didn't have proof until that dreadful day.

Once that horrifying thought abated, realisation hit. Pain hit. I understood, as my abdomen started to throb, that my brother-in-law had buried sharp steel in my flesh, falling just shy of puncturing my lung.

As Darren continued to twist the knife deeper into my gut, causing me to splutter, he lifted his free hand to my hair and brushed it off my ear — a practised idea of what it means to be human. Something he’d seen me do to Anna, most likely, but did not understand. And that made me feel sicker, for it proved that the creature before me was no person.

But that awful concept also motivated me to plunge my quaking fingers into the back pocket of my jeans.

“Don’t worry about this,” Darren whispered, motioning at the blade in my belly. “I’ll take you back to the van. Quietly. We’ll lie low, and I’ll get you fixed up. I’ll tend to you. Care for you, just as I have for the past two years. I will be better than my weak, pathetic excuse for a—”

Halfway through the man’s monologue, I did something which I expected to be the end of me. Powered by the last dregs of adrenaline and blood in my fading body, I swung my makeshift weapon — a set of keys wielded between my two middle fingers. And I did not choose a non-fatal mark. I intended to put the monster down.

When the keys met Darren’s jugular, his flapping lips froze mid-sentence. Then my husband’s killer released the fingers gripping the knife, which stayed firmly in my gut, and he moved that hand towards his bleeding neck. Tried to cover the wound as he stumbled backwards and spat droplets of blood in lieu of words.

I moved with his body as he pulled away, fearing what would happen if I were to lose that opportunity. I repeatedly thrust those brass blades into his throat, intending to inflict as much damage as possible. Intending to stop Darren from ever hurting my family again. I didn’t want him to rot in prison, as I knew I would forever live in terror of him escaping. Finding us. The next time, he wouldn’t have kept me alive as some plaything. He would have sought revenge. Would have ended me. I know that.

Moreover, I wanted Darren to drown as my dear Ed had drowned. And my brother-in-law suffered a worse fate, in fact, as he drowned in his own blood. That's how they explained it to me. They say his airways filled with it; hardly surprising, given that I stabbed the man 46 times. Let his neck a mangled, mushy mound of skin and blood. Darren was pronounced dead by emergency responders; Dr Addis had dialled 999 when my children found him in a nearby corridor and explained the situation.

Addis did, of course, immediately rush to Darren’s aid. Such was his oath. That was why I ensured that there would be no salvaging my brother-in-law. To let him live would've been a nightmare. Even dead, the man haunts me. I will always hear, as I lie in my room at night, Darren’s unholy confession of what he did to the love of my life. Will always hear an unspoken confession of what he was going to do to me.

Will always see him sitting on that chair in the corner of my room. 

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