Author: N. Friedline, Word Count: 666
Featured in Spooky Archaeological Story Moot: Live Stream – 2024
A wooden figurehead, carved in the shape of a drowned woman, sways in the darkness at the bottom of the sea. Circled by fish in a macabre ballet, its serene face gazed into the abyss. Her ankles bound with ropes festooned with seaweed, pocked with barnacles reaching from their shells like caged prisoners.
Twas cursed to the depths by a tortured crew of sailors in hopes their bad luck would sink along with it. Their voyage was plagued with windless seas, and haunted dreams. As the food stores dwindled, delirium set in. They saw a woman at night walking the ship’s railings like a tightrope. In the morning sails were found torn with deep scratches in the mast. Rampant accusations of sabotage bred paranoia amongst the crew. Some of them blamed the figurehead as a bad omen.
When the captain was found dead in his quarters with a gruesome neck wound, they had an inquisition, but no man was found guilty. Rumors of a stow-away arose. They searched the ship from topsail to keel without finding so much as a rat.
Burying the captain at sea, gulls swarm the ship like a bloated fish. The feathered torrent grows to an ominous cloud before dispersing to the seven winds by a cannon shot. Something was attracting them to the bow of the ship. They noticed blood dripping into the water. The lifeless hands of the drowned woman figurehead bled as if its wrists were freshly cut. The crew boiled into a superstitious frenzy. Grabbing axes and hooks, they chopped it from the bow. Ritualistically bound it with rope and lashed it to a heavy stone from the ships ballast. They hoist it aloft and cast it overboard. Swallowed by the sea with a hollow ker-splunk, it sinks into shadow.
Forgotten by time. Teetering on a strand of frayed rope. A shark lunges, pinning a fish against the figure. It breaks off several teeth into the wood that protrude like arrowheads. It slowly spins and the rope snaps. For days she drifts through the dark blue waters. The waves ushering her to shore.
A fisherman walking alone on the bluffs approaches the motionless figure in the sand expecting to find a corpse. Her wooden form had turned the putrid green of rotting flesh. Woodgrain veins running down her arms swelled and split open. Crawling with tiny creatures squirming over her waterlogged surface in a living patina.
The fisherman hauls the figure ashore. He brings the twisted black skeleton of a dying match to his tobacco pipe. The crackling smoke fogs his mind under ashen clouds. He ponders over the serene look upon her face, seeping droplets of salty tears. Entranced, he drags the figure down the beach to his boat. A crab wearing a silver ring clings to her feet, and scuttles into the foaming sea. He loads her into the boat and heads back to port.
Whispers drift on the wind. The clouds grow low and heavy squeezing his little boat between the sky and the sea. A dark cloud reaches down and drinks the ocean. The whirling water spout turns the tumultuous tides. The boat spins in a vortex and slams into the waves. The figurehead rocks back and forth with fury. Rain stings his eyes. His vison blurs. A dock appears in the distance. When his boat arrives, the rain is a curtain of water. He struggles to find a mooring and realizes this is a large wooden ship adrift at sea. The storm must have turned him around cast the boat far from shore.
He looks up at the hull. Dozens of dead sailors are lashed to the bow as a horrible monstrous figurehead. He looks down and the drowned woman figure is missing. It must have fallen from the boat in the crashing waves, he thought. He glances up at a shadow in the corner of his eye. The figure is tightrope walking on the ships railing above him and he is… baffled!
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