INEXPLICABLE TALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Stories aboard The Eerie – Part 1
Tommy’s dance with death
It has been six hours since we rescued Tommy. His sloop capsized in the Indian Ocean, eighty miles off the coast of Madagascar. We have no idea why he was there or what put his ship in that state. We saw it go down, its sails torn and mast fractured, appearing as fragile as those first days learning to sail, when you knew nothing except to follow orders, when you felt one wrong step could lead you tumbling off the stern.
I once saw a girl break her arm. She fell from a decent height whilst trying to climb some rocks on the coast, I didn’t Know her. She landed on her arm, snapping it in two, and just lay there, not moving. She didn’t know what to make of it, all that she could do was wait for help, keep her mind off the pain and think about how she almost died. That’s how we found Tommy. If we hadn’t seen him go down, there was no hope for him.
We swung around to pick him up and watched him as he stood on the ship’s hull. Not for a second did he look at us, instead his gaze fixed on the waves crashing against the remains of the boat. He shivered in the cold but never looked up.
There are nine of us on The Eerie, all crew from England, come to Madagascar and ended up fishermen to make some money as we travelled. In an hour, we’ll share a meal and hopefully, Tommy will join. I wonder why he was out here to begin with, it’s not often you see a sloop this far out for no reason.
It’s half past seven and the sun is starting to sink below the Indian Ocean. The nine of us sit around the table, waiting to dine on a small portion of yellowfin tuna. Usually, there would be more but the interruptions in today’s ventures lured us out of the Mozambique Channel, where we tend to fish. After waiting for ten minutes, Tommy appears and sits down.
“Sorry ‘bout that — I didn’t see the time.” Tommy speaks as though we are old friends, as if we hadn’t just found him stranded in the ocean.
“Don’t worry about it mate, come join us,” I reply.
Tommy sits and tucks into his meal. Still chewing, he covers his mouth with his hand and asks what our names are.
I respond “Ethan” and gesture to Jacob and the rest to tell their names. The eight of them tell Tommy their names starting from the left of me.
“Jacob,”
“Ollie,”
“Noah,”
“John,”
“Also John,”
“Eddy,”
“Jack,”
“Bruce,”
To us we are all different, but to everyone else the same. We are all white with brown or black hair, except for Noah who is black with black hair. We are all men and all between five foot nine and six foot two. We are all within a year of each other and are all from the South of England. How we managed to form such a similar group, I don’t know. We didn’t all meet in England. No, it was only me, John and Noah when we left, the three of us being friends since school. We picked up Ollie and the other John (John Higgs), whilst walking the Camino de Santiago trail. Jacob, Eddy and Jack we met in Sri Lanka. None of us can remember the bar or how we met, just that we had each other's phone numbers the next day. Finally, we met Bruce recently in Madagascar, he’d been here a while and gave us the rundown of the place. It’s harder to travel now there’s nine of us.
Tommy sticks out at the table. He’s much smaller than the rest of us, being maybe only five foot six. He has dirty blonde hair and a small face. His cheeks sink into his mouth, casting a shadow that defines his jawline. Patches of blonde hair, which he shouldn’t want to be there, are misplaced around his face. He’s from the South of the USA. We hadn’t asked him, but we knew. His accent was thick.
We finished eating and sat around the table chatting for a while. We had a few beers and a laugh and then Ollie asked Tommy what had happened, somehow we’d all forgotten we had just rescued him.
“I’ll tell you, but it’s all quite weird. I’m really not sure what happened myself, to be honest.” He glares at the table as he speaks, eyes glazed over as if they had rolled backwards to look at his memories.
The crew sit around eagerly, we were hoping to share stories on the boat someday and now’s the time. However, as my selfish curiosity wanes, I notice the ill look on Tommy’s face. He seems dead, or at least close to death. His cheeks sunk even more, and great bags hang from his eyes, the weight of them keeping his bottom eyelid open. His voice croaks like it would have when he pulled himself from the water onto the upturned hull.
“I met a couple, husband and wife, in Cape Town. They invited me to a bar and we got to talking; they ask me where I’m from. I tell them Louisiana, they tell me they’re Spanish but set sail from Brazil, they say they like me because I’m young and if I wanted an adventure, I should join them on their sloop. I planned on leaving Cape Town in the next few days anyway, so I agreed. They were sailing for India, so I figured I’d go to India.” He looks around to check his story is still welcome and is glad to find nine faces engrossed in what he had to say.
“Cut to a while later, we’re at sea and all is going well and good then I mention about feeling alive, how being at sea and feeling that breeze through my hair makes me feel alive. They just responded:
‘Been a long time since we’ve felt that, hasn’t it honey.’
In unison, creeped me out. I asked what they meant and they refused to elaborate, said I’d understand soon enough. So I just ignore it, think to myself, Spanish people are just like this.”
Eddy interrupts, “Sounds an awful lot like you seen a ghost to me, Tommy.” The table groans and ignores him.
“Go on, Tommy,” states John Higgs.
“I have to say though. I don’t think he’s wrong. I think I have seen a ghost.”
“Bullshit!” Jacob declares. I think he speaks for most of us here, but not me.
The thing is, I feel I’ve had my run-ins with the supernatural, something I can’t explain or something too perfect to just be a coincidence. I can’t bring myself to entirely believe them, but, when someone goes their whole life telling you they don’t believe in ghosts, and then, suddenly, something happens to them, and now they believe in ghosts? Now, I don’t know what to make of it, but I know that they know what they’ve seen, and that’s enough for me to hear them out.
“Go on, Tommy, ignore him,” I say, giving Jacob a side eye as I speak.
“Well, when we got to, wherever we were. The sea. Where you found me, the two started to get scared, claiming a ship was off in the distance. I looked myself, there was no ship.”
His cadence started to speed up as if he were there again, “Then, they screamed ‘CANNON FIRE’ like all hell had laid on them at once. I heard nothing, saw nothing but the boat got hit, a rock I thought. We got hit again and again. Something shredded through the sails, hit the mast, breaking it in two. The boat started to fill up with water and sink. When I yelled for help, there was no answer, they were gone. The ship changed as well. The white masts turned a dirty yellow and seaweed, moss, rot grew on the wood. Next thing I know, I’m stood on the hull, too scared to move.”
Tommy paused, caught his breath and in that moment, Jacob spoke again.
“Aye! And that’s when we came and saved you wasn’t it, lad? Aye!”
Ollie cheered, “Aye!”
“No. It wasn’t. I don’t know how long I spent on that sunken wreck but it was too long.”
Some of the table leant in, Jacob and Ollie stayed back and held their own, drunken, conversation.
“After a while, the sun left me. It didn’t set. It reached the horizon and filled the sky with colours, great deep reds and oranges with splashes of purple and blue where the clouds lay, but the sun stayed there, and the sea rose above it. The sky stayed the same, but the sun gave off no more light and the water turned black, like ink, thick and gross, clinging to me when waves splashed me.”
I look down at his clothes and can still see little spots of ink on his shirt, he’d obviously tried to wash it off. Was he actually telling the truth? Jacob became engrossed again, gripping at his arm and turning to face Tommy, Ollie still talking at him.
“I stared at the Black Sea and the colourful sky until a green light illuminated the boat, and some apparition of a man crawled from the sea and sat down. He was glowing green, dressed in rags and covered in ink like me, he told me to sit, and I did.
‘How’d you get here then my boy?’ he asked me.
I told him that my ship had sunk. I was travelling with a man and a woman, meant for India.
‘Ah yes, I’ve met them. Met them a long time ago.’
I asked who they are and what he meant by a long time ago.
‘Isabella and Perucho were their names, from before my time. Good people. They once told me of how they set sail with the promise of India and were taken somewhere else instead. It was nice but they wanted India, so they left. Their ship was sunk in the Indian Ocean, leagues off the coast of St Lawrence.’
‘I’m not following’ I said.
‘Good, my boy, it’s best you don’t understand these things. Not yet at least. I can see it in you, what’s it like, being alive? The wind still blows against your cheek, your toes curl at the touch of the sea. We’d all give so much for that, my boy.”
‘Who are you?’
‘I am dead, my boy, that’s all I am now.’
‘Tell me your name, I’ll remember it!’
But now I’ve forgotten it. Ever since you arrived, when the ocean turned blue, the sun blinded my eyes again, it’s been as though the past few weeks of my life never even happened. Everything I did is slipping away from me. It feels as if none of it matters, but at the same time, this is the only thing that matters. I just don’t get it.”
Tommy falls back in his chair and looks forward into nothing, thinking. The whole room remains silent. I haven’t heard such quiet since before we met Ollie and John.
I sit in utter belief. The effect the experience had on Tommy rubbed off on all of us, and no one can make anything of it. Do I know what it means? No. Do I know why it happened? No. Do I believe it’s true? I think I might. All I know for sure is that what ever happened to Tommy has changed whoever he was before.
The eerie silence lingers a bit longer, then Jacob speaks up.
“You know. I said that was bullshit, and I’m still saying it’s bullshit,” he stutters, “but something mad happened to me a while back, when we were in Nepal.”
Ollie gets up and hands everyone a beer, except Tommy who is still staring into nothing, and Jacob begins to speak.
