I was born William Pratt to an ancient English family of some lineage. This afforded me a decent schooling and to attend the University of London where awakened my fascination with literature considered occult, arcane, and generally taboo. My family’s complaints that I was squandering both my time and their funds in no way deterred my growing obsession for plumbing the depths of mysteries unknown, and some said unknowable.
The circle of people with whom I acquainted myself was not commonly considered acceptable for a proper gentleman but afforded me access to information and volumes which would otherwise not be available. Thus I delighted in perusing rather dark books generally obscure to the public but germane to my researches such as copies of Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis, the frightful Necronomicon by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred and a disquieting treatise known as Cultes des Goules. There was one, however, that evaded me and was said to contain fabulous expositions of the deepest mysteries from the very viscera of the universe we know and beyond: the Book of Eibon.
When my parents passed into the next realm I used all they had left at my disposal in a search of Europe for a copy of the fantastic book. Then I received a letter from my American friend, Howard Phillips, to whom I had mentioned my search. He related certain hints of a copy of the tome being somewhere in the Caribbean. I was fortunate enough to have an uncle who was captain of a merchant ship which made regular trips to the west. He allowed me to work aboard his vessel in trade for passage to America as long as I studied navigation, a suitable profession in his eyes. Being a quick study I mastered the art in a single crossing of the Atlantic.
I met with my friend, Phillips, in Providence but he was unable to tell me much more than that the book had been seen, but was in unknowledgeable hands as it was in the original Latin. This served to whet my thirst for it and I soon found a position on a merchant vessel that plied the waters of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Much to my delight I was told our first port of call would be Port Royal, Jamaica.
On the second night there my discreet inquiries had apparently found their way into the underworld for I was a approached in a tavern by an unsavory old salt with but a single eye. He told me the tome was in the possession of he himself and that for an appropriate sum it could be mine. While I doubted that the rum stinking old curmudgeon was telling anything other than a lie I was at a dead end and had little to lose but my time so I tagged along with him into the night. Dark alley followed dark alley in our trek through the seamier parts of town until we entered the tattered rooms of his abode. When I bade him show me the book he lit a candle and pulled a huge volume from a rotting chest. It was bound in what could only be human skin and locked with a great iron clasp and I knew that at last I held in my hands the object of my long and costly search.
He named a price, but as I began to count pieces of gold from my purse he reacted with extraordinary agility, drawing a large, nasty looking dagger. He attacked but my months at sea had taught me more than navigation and we fell to the floor grappling. He cried out and when I withdrew I saw where the knife had pierced his side and he was struggling to get it free. In a flash I saw my chance and seized a small piece of statuary from a table smashing it down upon his head. His blood looked black oozing from the wound in the dim light of the guttering candle. He lay still. I checked but there was no breath or pulse. I quickly gathered up the book, hiding it in the folds of my cloak, and made my way back to the ship.
The next morning we sailed making good headway until late evening found us becalmed. It was unusual for this part of the sea and I employed my instruments to exact our position. Surprisingly, I as unable to do so for I found the stars strangely misplaced. The crew didn’t seem to mind and in the captain’s company opened a cask of rum to wash away the day’s pains of loading. I took the opportunity to retire to my cabin and study my prize.
The lock came open after some effort and I set to translating the text written in a strange crabbed hand. The translation was straight forward enough though the content was outlandish and sometimes shocking. Working for hours I came to a series of chants much more difficult to translate than the text. I had a great deal of difficulty puzzling out the sounds until actually tried pronouncing them. Then, by some unseen agent the work became almost as child’s play. I read on aloud writing quickly what came so easily to my mouth. Page after page went on and I left off the writing for the pure joy of being able to read the invocations so plainly.
Suddenly I stopped. I had heard nothing, seen nothing, but knew instinctively that something was amiss. I was drawn to the port hole without reason, drawn irresistibly, and when I peered through the glass there it was: a glowing cloud out at sea. From within the glow an image began to emerge, a ship. It was no Earthly breeze filling the sails of that vessel as it glided silently above the waves!
Gazing through the glass at the fantastic apparition I wondered for a moment if the wild incantations I had been reading had somehow effected my senses. Then it occurred to me that I had gotten quite carried away with the joy of being able to read elaborate passages in such strange phrasings far more easily than my normal ability to translate and had ignored the content of my utterances. What exactly had I said? I was unsure of all but a few bizarre phrases. Had adrenaline gotten the best of me? I opened the port hole for a better view, for confirmation that the phantom vessel was not a trick of my imagination.
No breeze blew in through the opened port hole, and no sound met my ears. Yet I saw the ship emerging from the spectral mist most definitely. Moreover its course would bring it closer, indeed it was moving directly toward our ship. I rubbed my eyes but the vision persisted and it drifted ever closer in smooth silence a few feet above the sea.
As it approached I observed that there was no one on its decks, what little there was left of them for it was revealed as a derelict in the worst condition. Huge sections of the hull were missing and many of its holds and cabins gaped open to the elements. From somewhere within a light shone but I was unable to determine the source. It was as if the entire inside of the ship was aglow with an eerie golden light. That radiance poured out through the myriad of holes large and small that peppered the entire ship. I watched the sails billowing as if filled with a steady wind. Nearer she came, still without a sound.
Then the thought crossed my awed mind that whoever stood watch was surely seeing this as well and could confirm that I was not in the embrace of delusions of delirium. Leaving my cabin I heard the loud snores of the captain from his quarters. In fact all the crew were asleep, but not in their bunks. I had to step over many in the narrow hallway for it was as if they had passed out and fallen right where they sat, or even stood. Climbing passed one crewman on the stairs I finally made my way up and outside. A quick glance around told me there was but one watch, but even he was unconscious on the deck near the wheel. Try as I might, I was unable to arouse him; too deep was his slumber. Then I turned my sight to the west.
The night was so dead still that even in the crow’s nest the flame of a taper would stand up straight unflickering. Yet as I looked out over the rail at that ghostly craft I was suddenly bathed in an air blasphemously fetid which had me instantly retching with violent spasms. So foul was the stench with death and decay it did poison me to the core and all my senses went reeling out of control. I could barely maintain consciousness as the world spun about me – the deck, the stars, the blur of that cursed ship, the railing, and then falling for what seemed an eternity. I heard a distant splash and experienced a curious, relaxing floating sensation.
Somewhere in the distant back of my mind an alarm was sounding, but for a time I was too absorbed by this wonderful floating sensation to pay it any heed. Soon, however, I began to come to my senses and realized the alarm was trying to alert me to the fact that I was inhaling water rather than air and a fully conscious panic supplanted my reverie. I virtually tried to climb the sea water at first, then realized I had sunk too far for such quick measures. I had to concentrate and swim to the surface several meters above but was hindered by my body trying to cough out the fluid I had taken on. My frantic struggle for what seemed hours was seriously draining my strength and doubt of my survival had begun creeping in when at last I broke the surface. My breath having been depleted, I instantly reacted with an attempt to gasp in the air I desperately needed but only choked on the water still in my throat.
Even as I gagged suffocating in a frenzied attempt to breath, I noted with alarm and despair that somehow I had become separated from my ship by a great distance. Where from then came the light, for the sea immediately surrounding me was fairly ablaze in a golden glow. Then I turned.
I sputtered and choked and drank in more water as I looked up in abject terror, for the phantom vessel was well-nigh upon me. The heavy poisonous stench of death did nothing to aid my need for breath and as my limbs began to fail from exhaustion I cried out for help with every last bit of my energy reserve. There was, of course, no one to hear my plea, no living soul to aid my slipping grasp on life. My strength sapped, my arms and legs moving more and more slowly and ineffectually I gazed up through the increasing depths in horror at the bottom of the ship, with its look of the ribs of some great, long dead beast. More and more blurred were they and more dim my vision and consciousness, and colder my limbs. I barely noticed the searing pain of the salt water rushing into my lungs.
Water dripping.
Water dripping from my fingertips, from my chin. I was standing . . . . or not. It was difficult to tell for my senses were almost nonexistent. I was not warm, nor cold. There was no pain. Neither was there the normal sense of well being. There was . . . nothing. Looking down I could see a body standing, my body, though not looking at all well. It was in fact a corpse. I was a corpse. My call for help had been answered after all, in a sense. Then I raised my eyes. Before me was the single most horrifying vision of nightmare lunacy in all my experience. This standing cadaver was in as derelict a condition as the ship, upon the deck of which I suddenly realized I was standing. It stared at me with the remains of an organ of vision. Its clothing, for it was indeed clothed, was at once the finest I had ever seen and a miasma of rotting fabric.
We stood thus gazing upon one another for many moments. Though no word was spoken I could somehow feel what it felt, and more amazingly – know what it knew! In a flash I was endowed with a knowledge of the seas that surely no man possessed, no living man at least. I knew the four corners of the globe and the strange, alien creatures that inhabited the realm beneath the waves as well.
Then, in a slow movement, it drew its sword and proffered it to me on the flats of its bony hands. I saw in its eye and felt in my unbeating heart its centuried weariness, its longing for oblivion. I took the sword by the hilt. The thing looked at me with a barely perceptible expression of gratitude, and one also of relief. Then its remains clattered to the deck in a heap, some falling through the ribs of the ship into the water far below.
I put the sword in my belt and for the first time since my arrival on this craft, took in the view around. The ship I had been on was nearing the horizon, but I could discern her crew scrambling on her deck and shouting in excited distress. It didn’t matter. All about my life was irrelevant. I had a new role. Now I was the Captain, the Lord and Master of . . . . .
The REAPER!
His blood looked black oozing from the wound in the dim light of the guttering candle.
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