The Weeper At The Wake

Flash Fiction - Supernatural

NOTE: All flash fiction and stories based on writing exercises/prompts posted to the Talebones homepage are free for everyone to read!

This little ditty was inspired by two prompts: the

Fictionistas

July Prompt, and

radicaledward

’s prompt via Notes: “Behind the cellar door”

(While this story is too long to be eligible for the Fictionistas monthly challenge, I highly recommend all interested writers head over there and create your own stories to be included this month!)

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Photo by Carolina Pimenta on Unsplash

The Fishmaid’s Wake squatted on the Port Salish wharf, its neon sign blinking in the darkness, drawing the usual Friday night clientele like moths to a flame.

The dive bar was packed, mostly with the island’s commercial fishermen along with a handful of curious tourists. The smell of cigarettes lingered in the air from people smoking right outside the doors and windows—no one enforced the 20-foot rule here—and the old jukebox choked out Spirit In The Sky to an uncaring crowd, spilling out into the night where it echoed over the waves. 

In the corner booth, Caroline traced swirls in the condensation on her beer glass, stealing glances at the short, sharp hallway nearby where the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY stood. She had been nursing her drink for almost an hour, keeping an eye on the owner of the tavern, Ezekiel Shy, as he passed to and fro behind the bar, making small talk with the regulars and filling shouted orders. 

Zeke—no one called him Ezekiel to his face—was a giant, well over six and a half feet tall, with the tattooed arms of a former sailor and the silvery hair and beard of an aging warrior. In the glow of the beer logos behind him he evoked a sort of alien gravitas.

He may have been getting up there in years, but there was nothing elderly about his eyesight; Caroline knew that if she got caught, he could end her career.

Thankfully, Caroline was blessed with a journalist’s patience, and waiting suited her just fine, watching the ebb and flow of drinkers approach and then leave the bar. 

But her luck struck swiftly and her moment arrived when a gaggle of college girls approached the bar in a chattering crowd, lining up to give their orders, the old-timers giving them ornery looks as they shuffled and nudged each other. Zeke would be occupied for a while.

Caroline rose, shouldered her purse, and walked with casual purpose toward the hallway. She pushed open the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, shutting it quickly behind her, then paused for a moment to listen. 

There was no rush of pursuing footsteps, no upraised shouts of anger. As far as she could tell, she had made it in unseen. 

Caroline looked around. She stood on a landing. There was a bare bulb overhead and a flight of stairs leading down into the Wake’s ancient cellar. 

Nowhere to go but down. 

The stairs creaked under Caroline’s sneakers and a blast of cold, earthy air rose to meet her as she descended. On the way down she opened her purse and pulled out Scully, her trusty digital camera, turning it on with a cheerful chime. 

At the bottom of the stairs, Caroline paused. Another dim bulb hung from the low ceiling, the glow desperately reaching for the shadowy corners of the cellar and not quite managing to touch them. Whatever renovation work the tavern had undergone over the years did not extend to this original part of the building. The stone floor was littered with kegs and crates and shelves of cleaning supplies, all the ephemera of managing a respectable drinking establishment. The sound of the crowd upstairs was distant, like hearing the sounds of a party through a radio underwater. It was a lonely place, a tomb of stone. 

Caroline sat on the bottom step, resting Scully on her lap.  

“So,” she said, her voice falling strangely flat in the thick-walled cellar. “Is anyone here? I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to say hello.”

Caroline waited. Her eyes began to adjust to the dim light, and she tried to listen for any sound over the muffled din from upstairs. But all was still, breathless. 

Then, a quiet sound, like the slight turn of a bare foot on stone. 

Caroline froze, listening. 

The sound rose to a slow shuffling in the dark, footsteps moving between the shelves just outside of the circle of light. A wooden thunking, like knuckles passing along the oaken barrels, a rippling sound of fingertips tapping on the steel kegs. 

A sighing breath.

The temperature in the already-cool cellar dropped a handful of degrees, and goose-pimples rose on Caroline’s arms. 

Her hands trembled, but she waited. Not yet.

Right at the edge of the bulb’s furtive glow, a shape began to materialize, like a mist or a vapor rising from the floor. The air rippled. Caroline blinked to make sure that she wasn’t seeing things.

But she wasn’t.

Slowly, afraid to break the spell, Caroline lifted Scully’s viewfinder to her eye. Trusting the camera to do the work, she tapped the shutter about a dozen times, watching the cloudy shape blur and coalesce into the form of a person, a woman.

For a moment the shape hung there, suspended beside the kegs and barrels, bare feet inches from the floor. There was no sound except the digital shutter-click of the camera. 

And then—as though disappointed by Caroline’s presence—the apparition silently vanished into the dark. 

Caroline lowered the camera and stood up. Her heart was racing, but she couldn’t help but bark a shocked laugh.  

“Thank you, thank you,” she whispered, exhilarated. “Gorgeous.”

No time to look at the photos; she needed to get out of there before someone found her out. Caroline took the stairs two at a time on her way up, pushing open the door, shoving Scully halfway into her bag. 

She stepped straight into the broad chest of Zeke Shy. 

The barman glowered down at her, outranking her by at least a foot and a half, regarding her with sullen irritation. 

“You,” he said, clearly trying to keep his voice down. “I know you. You’re that one from the Chronicle. That journalist.”

He spat the word; it was not a compliment.

Caroline tried to force a disarming smile. “I thought the bathrooms were down there. My mistake.”

But Zeke’s eyes flicked down to the camera, which was not fully hidden inside Caroline’s purse. 

“Do you regularly bring fancy cameras when you go drinking?”

Caroline shrugged. “I’m doing a story on historic Ferris Island taverns. I could include a photo of you, if you want.”

But Zeke was unmoved. “Did you see her?” he asked. 

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Of course you do,” he said. “You sharks are always trying to get a glimpse of her. For that matter, how would the Chronicle feel about you ghost-hunting on the side?”

Caroline swallowed, but kept her poker face. That was all she needed; her editor already had her on notice for indulging in this stuff. He was the humorless type, and the paranormal fell neatly outside his strict boundaries for serious journalism.

If he found out, there was a good chance her time at the Port Salish Chronicle would be well and truly over.

“I’m sorry, truly. It was just a misunderstanding,” she said, trying to push past him. Instead, he rested a giant hand on her arm. She expected a grab, but instead his touch was heavy, yet gentle. 

“If you have any decency, you’ll delete those photos,” he said.

“And why’s that?”

“Because she’s been through enough,” Zeke replied, his face unmistakably softening. “Because she ought to be left alone. Because it would be the kind thing to do. Do you need any other reasons?”

Caroline sighed. It was tough to feel any sympathy for a ghost. Besides, those pictures were gold dust. 

“What’s it to you, anyway?” she asked. “You’re thinking about this all wrong. When I publish these photos, your bar will be a ghost-hunting destination for people all over the region, maybe even the country. Is the Wake too good for the paranormal business? I’ve heard the money is unreal.”

Zeke let his hand drop from Caroline’s arm. His icy blue eyes were full of pain. 

“She deserves peace,” he said. “I…I owe her that much.”

Caroline caught the hint of something in his tone, something unexpected. Her heart squeezed, but she hardly knew why. She had to get out of this place; the crowded heat, the smell of body odor and stale nicotine, the raucous bargoers singing along to Once In A Lifetime were all starting to make her head throb. 

“Tell you what,” she said. “You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone at the Chronicle, and I’ll delete the photos. Deal?”

Zeke gazed at her for a moment, as though taking the measure of her. He was old enough and sea-savvy enough not to trust a seemingly smooth tide without question.

But either he realized he didn’t have an option or he couldn’t think of any other arguments, because he nodded. “It’s a deal.”

He stood aside, and without another word Caroline shouldered past him, making sure that Scully was tucked safely the rest of the way into her bag. She pushed through the crowd and out into the cold air off the Port Salish harbor, not pausing for breath until she reached her car, slipping into the driver’s seat and locking the door behind her. 

Caroline breathed deeply, her hand on her heart, willing herself to relax.

Finally, when her breathing slowed and her heartbeat calmed, Caroline pulled Scully out of her purse and turned the camera on. Then she flipped back through the photos. 

The camera had worked its magic again, and the photos were incredible. As clear as they could be in the gloomy cellar, depicting a ghostly woman standing beside the kegs, her long dark hair pooling around her shoulders, her wide eyes staring straight down the lens. 

“Hello, beautiful,” Caroline murmured. Scully had caught apparitions before, but these were absolute dynamite. According to her informant, paranormal bloggers and investigation teams would pay top dollar for this kind of thing. It was almost worth pissing off her editor for. In fact, it might even be the making of her. 

Caroline flipped through the photos over and over again, amazed at the clarity. But the longer she stared into the ghost’s eyes, a persistent thought nagged at her.

She’s not weeping. 

In all the stories she had read online about the Weeper at the Wake, they all repeated the same sad tale: a wailing woman, so bereft that her fisherman lover had shipped out to sea that she died, her soul trapped in the cellar of the Fishmaid’s Wake forever, grieving. 

It was typical ghost story stuff, the kind Caroline usually rolled her eyes at: women who are so fragile that they die because they can’t handle being alone for a few months. Immortalized for the rest of local history as an eternal mourner. The clue was in the name.

But this woman, this face was not weeping or wailing. The woman’s wide, dark eyes stared through Caroline into the past, a certainty on her face, a contentment. 

She’s happy where she is. 

This was not a young woman swept away by fragility and sorrow. This was a woman who had lived a life, loved deeply, and left the world before it was ready to say goodbye to her. Perhaps she got sick. Perhaps it was an accident. But Caroline couldn’t see this face dying of a broken heart.

This woman was holding on to the Wake—to the world—with both hands.

Caroline thought of Zeke’s earnest expression, his serious tone. 

“I owe her that much.”

It was love that had lingered in his voice, the unexpected note Caroline had briefly caught. In all the online ghost stories, rumors, and blog posts, the fisherman was never named.

Caroline lifted her head and looked out past the windshield, through the dark to the blackness of the sea, the lights of Port Townsend glittering in the distance. She could publish the photos. Maybe the money would be worth it, even if she did lose her job over it. Maybe it would be enough income for her to find something else, something better. 

It might even be the making of her. 

But when she looked back down at the camera, the ghostly woman gazed back at her. Through her. 

She wasn’t weeping. She was right where she wanted to be, near the man she loved. She was at peace in the dark.

Caroline sighed, balled her hand into a fist, then relaxed.

You’re a soft touch, Caroline Phelan, she thought with a grim smile. 

Then she deleted the photos, one by one. 

Thank you for reading!

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