Styles woke and knew, but did not know.
He fell out of bed, sweating and shaking, his head filled with some crackling static. He was nauseated and weak, but still he made it up to deck and leaned there, against the bulkhead, staring out into that ashen mist.
The ship felt empty.
Abandoned.
Just some immense and empty coffin, creaking and groaning, the fog settling over it like a morbid growth of fungi, dripping off the yards and masts and bowsprit in ribbons.
Styles called out, but his voice echoed off into nothingness.
Alone again.
Alone on a derelict in this haunted sea.
His heart racing and his head spinning, he made it to the main cabin… saw immediately that the windows had been boarded-over as if the ship were under attack. But the door was not bolted. Inside, all looked to be in order… charts and tools, furniture and clothing. Styles stumbled from the mate’s cabin to the captain’s cabin and they both looked as if their owners had just stepped out for a pipe.
He made it back to the door and heard sounds coming from the fog. .. voices whispering and muttering and chanting. Yes, not coming from the ship, but off in the fog itself as if a boarding party was nearing. But those voices… they were not right. They were flat and hissing and artificial like recordings, scratching and repetitive.
Styles told himself they were not real.
He turned away from them, leaning there in the cabin doorway, knowing that whatever had taken off the crew of the ship was now coming for him. But he would not turn, not look, did not want to look whatever it was in the face. But it was coming, coming on now with a sound of rustling and footsteps and fingernails scraping wood.
Then he did turn, a scream venting itself from his lips.
There was nothing.
There was no one.
Yet, he could hear them whispering like spirits. Hear the sound of their bare feet slapping, the rustle of their clothing. And then out in the fog, there was a cold light. A glowing, thrumming luminosity like some malefic eye watching him through the mist.
Styles threw himself through the door, slammed it shut and bolted it, waiting, waiting, feeling it coming now with a heat and a cold electricity that was hot and acrid and stinking. Outside the door and boarded windows, Styles could see that the decks had gone phosphorescent, that some blinding and burning illumination had consumed the ship now. He heard a high, shrill whining sound and whatever was out there was crawling through him with fire and ice and acid, coming under the door and straight through the walls in a mist of flesh and intent and malevolence.
He screamed once.
Once as it fell over him, moved through him, sorting through his brain with hot needles and knives and gnawing at his thoughts with diamond teeth. He felt his mind boil and loosen, run out his eyes and ears in a cold, smoking sap as the flesh that housed it fell to ash and his bones rattled dryly in a smoking heap on the deck.
Then there was only silence.
Maybe Styles could not remember the name of the ship, but history would. For she would drift back out of the fog and men would remember her name.
The Mary Celeste.