NOTE: All short fiction and stories based on writing exercises/prompts posted to the Talebones homepage are free for everyone to read!
This story started as a 100-word “drabble” that I posted on Notes a few weeks ago. To turn it into a longer piece, I was inspired by the second prompt of the Gibberish Writing Competition hosted by , in which he invited the competitors to write a “bottle episode” with one character trapped in one location. While I took a few liberties with the prompt, it was still a fun basis to draw from!
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The groan of the Sparrow’s ancient engine reminded Linnet of the snore of an old woman, a deep rumbling from the guts, the waves rocking and creaking the heavy rust-red boat side to side as it heaved its way through the dark water to the dim lights of Port Salish.
It was near midnight, the final run of the day. Red light bathed the ferry’s bridge in a sinister glow. Beyond the window, all was starless, sea-spray, wind-sharp. Within, too warm. Stifling. During the day, the knowledge that other humans were present, sitting in their cars or milling around the passenger deck, would have filled Linnet with subconscious comfort. But it was a drizzly Sunday night, and the ferry was empty of passengers. It was just Linnet in the bridge and a skeleton crew, enough to run things properly and dock the boat at the other side.
Linnet leaned back in his pilot’s chair, keeping an eye on the bearing. He didn’t trust the old instrument panel. The sooner this relic retired for good, the better.
The radio crackled, and Pam’s voice said, “Galley to bridge, over.”
“Bridge here,” Linnet replied into the receiver, wincing at the hiss of static. “Go ahead.”
“About to shut down the coffee pot for the night, Captain. You want one last cup?”
Linnet imagined the acidic sludge of the coffee pot’s final dregs against his teeth and shook his head. “I’ll pass, Pam. Thanks.”
“Anything in particular you need us to do different, tonight? For clean-up?”
It didn’t matter. The only reason they were using the Sparrow at all was because the newer, state-funded Pilapila was in drydock for scheduled maintenance for the week. It had been a rough several days of nursing the ancient Sparrow through a routine it had long-since forgotten, multiple daily passages back and forth from Port Salish to Port Townsend and back again. A finicky engine, a squirrelly navigation system, electrical glitches, power outages. A complete nightmare.
Linnet could not wait to have the Pilapila and her sleek, fully-automated brilliance back.
“Nah, just the usual. No need to spend too much time on it. Pretty sure no one’s gonna see that galley ever again, after tonight. At least not for a while.”
“Roger that, Captain. Galley out.”
Linnet put the receiver in its cradle and sat back in the groaning pilot’s chair again, peering into the darkness beyond the window. The quiet and the stillness of these late-night runs always felt like a weight. On his worst nights, the nights when a subtle desolation nipped at his heels with nothing to distract him from it, the futility of it all nagged at him. Back and forth, back and forth. It was one thing to carry passengers, to have the lives of others in your hands. A purpose. But a ferryman of an empty boat is a strange thing. Wrong, somehow.
It didn’t help that the Sparrow herself was wrapped in tales and superstitions. The only way for an old boat to escape rumors is to never sail in the first place, and the Sparrow had run this passage day after day for decades, back in her freshly-painted years. She had been built in the fifties to replace an even older, smaller boat—the island’s first official ferry—that had capsized in the middle of the passage. A new start on a fresh grave.
The radio hissed, and Linnet glanced at it. Waited. But no voice followed.
Despite the uncomfortable warmth, he shivered. The lights of Port Salish didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
He glanced back up from the radio to the window just in time to see movement on the deck outside that ringed around the pilothouse, just a shiver of darkness.
Linnet stared, confused. There shouldn’t be anyone up here. He picked up the radio.
“Bridge to Chief Mate, over.”
There was no response.
“Bridge to Chief Mate, over,” he tried, again. “Tom? Rachel? Anyone there?”
But there was only silence.
Linnet stood up from the chair and crossed to the pilothouse door. He turned the knob to open it and it would not move. He checked the knob; it was not locked. He turned it, pushed again, but the door refused to open. It was as though a tremendous weight was leaning against the other side, keeping the door firmly in place.
That’s when the radio hissed again, static spilling into the pilothouse, before a faint whisper spoke, barely audible.
“Hello? Hello? Please help. It’s so dark and so cold, down here.”
Linnet felt a chill spread from his tailbone to his scalp. But he crossed back to the radio, picked it up with more fervor than he meant to.
“Bridge to crew,” he said. “Whoever is listening. While I know this has been a tough week for everyone and I’m all for letting off some steam, this isn’t an appropriate prank. I’m going to need someone to remove the obstacle from the pilothouse door. Now.”
Silence, watchful and empty.
“That’s an order, folks,” Linnet said, feeling like a bastard as the words left his lips. He had always gotten along so well with his crews, over the years. Treated everyone fairly. Never threw his weight around. He couldn’t imagine why they would want to play such a mean-spirited joke on him. Mischief is normal, but nothing like this.
He put the receiver away, sat heavily down in the pilot’s chair. Nothing to do but let the prank play out, he supposed. Try to accept it as graciously as he could. Let them have their fun, if that’s what it would take to get through the last hour on this old ruin.
Linnet looked up, but the lights of Port Salish were completely obscured by a shape, looming in the darkness just beyond the window. The more Linnet stared at it, the more he felt he could see a face, empty eyes reflecting nothing, dimly illuminated by the red light in the bridge, features impossible to make out.
The radio sizzled, as though a crowd of voices were murmuring together, before one voice rose above them all to speak.
“Please,” came the whisper. “May we have permission to board?”
Linnet stared at the face outside the window, which had not moved. If it was a crewmember in a macabre mask—which he suspected to be the case—he figured it would be best to play along. He picked up the radio.
“Who am I speaking with?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light, unbothered.
There was a brief pause, before the voice replied, “Passerine.”
The word landed on Linnet’s memory and tucked its feet under itself. Passerine. The name of the Sparrow’s predecessor, the old ferry boat that had capsized. He wanted to admire his crew’s dedication, to dig up such old history for their prank.
“Passerine, huh?” Linnet said. “And what is it that you want?”
“All we ask,” the voice said, “is permission to board.”
“Why?”
“Courtesy,” the voice said. “From one ferryman to another.”
It was then that the shape outside the window stepped forward, but the movement was smooth, not like footsteps at all. And in the red light Linnet could see the shape of a man in a uniform, an antique, encrusted with barnacles, mussels clinging like medals on his chest. A long, gaunt face, beard woven through with glistening seaweed—witch’s hair, whip tube—and eyes as dark as the seafloor, missing from their sockets under an official cap, emblem long since tarnished by the saltwater.
It was not a mask. It could not be a mask.
Linnet let the radio receiver fall, clattering as it swung lifelessly on its spiral cord, tripping over himself backward away from the window. He pinned himself against the rear wall of the pilothouse, terror tingling in his hands, his feet, his lips.
“We never finished our crossing,” said the voice on the radio, though the mouth of the apparition outside the window never moved. “Please. We request permission to board.”
The empty eyes stared keenly at Linnet, fiery in the red light. But despite the fear of it all, the horror, there was a subtle sadness in the ghastly expression. A desolation. The type that nips at the heels in the silence of a late night passage, full of futility.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Linnet recognized the look. It was not unfamiliar. A captain with an empty ship, souls slipped from the deck into the sea, and no way to bring his passengers home. A voyage, interrupted, reduced to bones and beams. Purpose, left eternally undone.
On shaking feet, Linnet left the rear wall, moved closer. He picked up the radio receiver.
“How, um…how many to board?” he asked. One captain to another.
The voice replied, “Fifty-two passengers. Thirteen crew.”
Just a small boat, the Passerine. Early days. Island history.
Linnet nodded, met the gaze of the eyes in the window.
“The passengers and crew of the Passerine are welcome aboard,” he said. “Permission granted.”
A faint sound, like a sigh, like a sob of relief carried on the wind, filled the pilothouse for a moment. Turned the red light to dawn, to resurrection. Turned the face outside the window to a monument, statuesque. A being of myth. The ferryman, deep in a peace-filled underworld, soft currents carrying the souls home, rising from the bones and beams to ride the waves.
But it shattered when suddenly there was a pounding on the door, a harsh and upraised voice from the other side.
“Captain Linnet! Bob, are you okay?”
Linnet set the radio down. Even as he headed for the pilothouse door he could see that it had been locked from the inside, somehow. He unlocked it, opened the door to see his chief mate, Tom, staring at him, eyes wide and haunted.
“Shit, Bob. You scared us half to death. What the hell is going on?”
Linnet stared. “What do you mean?”
“You weren’t answering the radio. Why was the door locked?”
Linnet looked over his shoulder. The ghostly face was gone from the pilothouse window, the radio sitting silently and innocently in its cradle.
He turned back to look at Tom. “You didn’t…hear me calling you? Before?”
Tom shook his head, peering through the gloom into his captain’s face, concerned. “We’re about to start docking procedures. You good, man?”
Linnet pushed gently past Tom to the deck that ringed around the front of the pilothouse. It was empty, nothing but a handful of seagull feathers fluttering past him in the wind. But down below, on the main deck, he could almost imagine the shadows of movement, of fifty-two passengers milling to and fro, thirteen crew standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the living to finish their tasks, faces tipped ahead to the future. A skeleton crew, indeed.
The lights of Port Salish were looming, now, the distance closing as the Sparrow carried them all to safe harbor.
Linnet turned back to his chief mate and mustered a smile.
“It’s just an old boat, Tom,” he said. “We know by now that this old bird has her quirks. Tell everyone to get to their stations. It’s time to go home.”
END
Oh my God, girl! That was amazing. I didn't know where to run, because I tell you, I wanted to. It was so well done. The history of the old ship mixed with the older ship. Beautifully written. I could taste the last cup of coffee she offered him. I loved it.
The face in the window really got me. Creepy faces appearing from nowhere is at the top of my list of terrifying things. 😂 But with the creepiness, it was still a beautiful story!