Grim tides I

There are spring tides, the point in the month when the tide is highest, and there are neap tides, usually about a week later when the tide is lowest.  And then there are grim tides….

There was a point during the neap tide when the tide was so low that Nathanial – Nate to his friends, but always Nathanial to his daughter – didn’t bother taking his boat out.  Instead he would use the day to sit down and catch up on the chores that had built up through the rest of the weeks; he would repair nets, softly cursing over every knot like a charm to ensnare the fish, or he would paint the boat a little more, or he would sew up holes in the sails, or scrub barnacles if the weather was nice and he’d slept well the night before.  There were always jobs to be done, and the day of the lowest tide there were least fish to be caught so it made sense not to go out.

Two days after that low tide though, his daughter’s husband would come and visit him late on in the evening, and the two men would sit outside for a while on the porch, saying little but drinking copiously.  Robin, his son-in-law, was the undertaker for the town and was considered a solemn, solid chap by everyone who knew him.  He dressed soberly at all times, and could be relied upon for solemn words on solemn occasions, and gentle, usually punning, jokes on happy celebrations.  His eyes were grey and his hands were strong, and overall folk felt secure knowing that this man would see you properly into the next life.  They would sit and drink until the moon rose fully above the horizon, and then they would walk out to the boat and push it out, and sail off into the night.

When they were out of sight of the land the grim tide would become visible as a silvery haze above the water.  Silent as the grave the two men would steer towards the haze and eventually into it, where it became apparent that the haze was actually hundreds of ghosts, milling around atop the waves.  Robin would then move to the side of the boat and cast out the nets, throwing them to catch at many of the ghosts as he could.  Where the nets fell they pressed heavily on the ghosts pinning them to the surface of the water, where they held the nets and prevented them from falling down.  When all the nets were out, Nate would step up and the two men would draw the ghosts in, pulling them aboard the boat and letting them drift gently down into the hold that smelled permanently of fish and fish-guts.  When all the nets were in, Robin would cast them out again, and Nate would marvel at the light that limned each rope that formed the net, and how that light danced on the surface of water when the net fell and didn’t catch a ghost.  Two casts was all they got; then the moon’s light would break through the haze and the ghosts would drift away, slowly at first but then gaining speed, dissipating in the nighttime air and becoming nothing more that tattered blades of light reflected from the choppy waves.

They still couldn’t head back to land though, as the hold was full of ghosts now.  They would descend together, their nervousness palpable but unspoken, pressed tightly in a staircase intended for two men to only pass in opposite directions, and push open the door to the hold as though opening the door to the lion’s cage.

In the hold Nate would stand watchful, alert and aware, and Robin would greet each ghost in turn as though meeting an old friend, and bid them welcome.  Sometimes he did greet old friends; men who’d died at sea and only now found their way back home, or people from the village who’d simply disappeared without trace.  Their ghost being here explained where the body had gone, even if it didn’t explain how the body had got there.  But most of the time the ghosts were hoary-headed, desperate-eyed strangers, whispering in foreign tongues and clutching at the living with cold, insubstantial fingers.

Robin blessed each ghost, his fingers tracing out a seven-pointed star on their breast as he did so.  Each ghost seemed to thicken, becoming milky white, and then ran like candle was in a hot room.  As they became just an ectoplasmic puddle on the floor of the hold new light would emanate from it, soft, pales rays like a new moonrise, and the ghost would evaporate altogether.

Only when they were done, and all the ghosts sent on their way did the two men return to the deck and turn the boat around to go home again, each checking the moon against the stars in the hope that they wouldn’t be too late in getting back.

And then there came the day when both men recognised a ghost.

Turning tables II

“Do you think he’s just here to have an orgasm with us?” asked another voice from around the table, this one female.

“No,” said the first woman.  “No, he wouldn’t be able to org….”  Her voice trailed away as she realised that was revealing too much.  All the faces around the table had turned to her, and though a couple looked shocked, several looked interested and one looked revolted.  “Arthur?”  she said, abruptly.  “Is that you Arthur?”

The table rocked enthusiastically from side to side, which Madame Sosotris knew for certain she couldn’t make it do with her pedals.  She treadled them a little anyway, and found them squishy, the hydraulics clearly failing to engage anything.  She treadled a little harder, just in case, but the table just ignored her.

“Itchy legs?” whispered a voice, a woman next to her leaning in to her.  Madame Sosotris’s skin crawled at the proximity of the woman, and she pushed back in her chair.  The legs groaned as they stuttered against the uneven floorboards.  She nodded, and to her relief the woman leaned away again.  The table started to rotate, rocking on the floor about half-way round the circle, and definitely gaining a little height.

“Arthur?” A man’s voice now, one Madame Sosotris recognised.  More voices around the table joined in, all asking if the spirit rocking the table was Arthur.  She cleared her voice, about to tell the room that the spirit’s never spoke directly, only through the medium, when the table suddenly stopped dead and dropped onto the floor.  Someone screamed, a tiny little scream that was heartfelt, and the people on either side of her tightened their grip on her hands.  All of the lights went out, and the curtains fell across the windows with a sound like a sail flapping in the wind.

“Arthur?” asked Madame Sosotris, her voice quavering.  She was instantly annoyed with herself, but as she was clearing her throat, which sounded a little like a tubercular cow, light returned and she fell as silent as the rest of the room.  On the table in front of them tiny motes of purple light were swirling around, drifting, a hologrammic Brownian motion.  For a moment there were just enough to capture attention, and then suddenly they were a column of light, thick and coruscant, that reached to the ceiling of the room.  Madame Sosotris squinted, trying to see if there was something in the light, and then chips of light seemed to slough away, falling to the table where they splashed and vanished.  This unnatural sculpting persisted for five minutes, after which the light presented the image of the statue atop Nelson’s Column.

“Arthur!”

“That’s Arthur?  Wasn’t he… well, fatter?”

“He was fat!  Very fat!  That’s not Arthur.”

“Oh come on, he wasn’t that fat.”

“He had to have help standing up.  How fat do you have to be before you’ll call someone fat?”

“Well…,”

“Hey, he’s pretty fat too.  Maybe Arthur really didn’t look so fat by his standards.”

“Lady!”

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Nelson, his voice rolling around the room as though Madame Sosotris had a sound-system.  Heads turned, looking into the darkness that surrounded them, but they were all drawn back when Nelson spoke again.  “Why have you summoned me?”

“We have questions, Arthur,” said the female voice who’d identified his orgasm noise.  “You fell rather suddenly.”

“I was pushed,” said Nelson, the table shaking as he spoke.  Madame Sosotris flexed her fingers, trying to see if she could break the circle, but the people holding her hands tightened their grip.  “I was pushed, by my lieutenant.  It could happen to you all.”

“Not me,” said a male voice.  “No lieutenants.”

“Hah,” boomed Nelson.  “He was inspired by La Reveille, who I see has not accompanied you today.  Beware La Reveille.”

“We know,” said the woman who’d identified the orgasm noise.  “We know how you fell, Arthur.  You were lazy, you were incompetent.  It is no surprise that the Throne passed to another.  But we don’t have enough data on your Throne, and your little… ah, surprises, are causing us issues.”

“You knew?  You knew that I was targeted?”  The indignation in Nelson’s voice made it louder, and a couple of people around the table cringed.  Madame Sosotris pulled at the hands holding hers, now trying her best to break the circle, but still her neighbours gripped her tightly, squeezing.  “What honour is there amongst Thrones?” screamed Nelson, his face distorting with rage.  “And now you come here to ask me for my help?”

Madame Sosotris let herself fall off her chair and landed heavily on the floor, banging her tailbone.  Her arms ended up above her, her hands still held firmly in place.  She cursed softly under her breath.

“Arthur, you’re dead,” said the female voice.  “The concerns of this world aren’t yours any more.  Why don’t you be a little reasonable?”

“Hah!” Nelson’s face twisted into something that might have been a sneer.  “Hah, I might be dead but I’m certainly not impotent.  Each possessor of a Throne becomes part of the Throne when they die!  You haven’t seen the last of me!”

The hologram of the statue disappeared with a sharp crack and a sudden sea-fresh smell of ozone, and everyone’s hands were suddenly thrown apart, breaking the circle.  Madame Sosotris, her hands above her head, ended up clapping them together involuntarily, which drew everyone’s eyes to her as light leaked back into the room around the edges of the curtains, and she clumsily pulled herself up from the floor and back on to her chair.

“Payment,” she said, “needs to be made before you leave.”

Ghosts

I live in a haunted house.

I quite enjoy it, if I'm honest. A lot of the aspects of the hauntings don't bother me very much. I never wake up to find ghostly people standing at the foot of my bed eyeing me suspiciously, and there are no especially cold spots in the house anywhere. I've never noticed the temperature drop while I'm watching TV, and the electronic equipment around my house functions perfectly well (if you keep my house-mate away from it, because she seems capable of developing a charge of static electricity even when she's standing perfectly still on an conducting surface). The ghosts tend to communicate through the fridge magnets, and even then they're a little oblique about the things they say. We regularly find messages warning us that food in the fridge is nearing it's expiry date, and I've had recipes before now as well (the sausage and mayonnaise casserole was... indescribable). One of the ghosts keeps trying to flirt with my housemate through the fridge magnets as well, but as it appears to only speak Swedish and she has trouble with long words, I don't think it's going anywhere so far.

The thing that tends to cause us most trouble is trying to explain the toilet roll to guests. One of the ghosts likes to write on it, so when you sit down, you'll find essays and calculations running along in blue biro. We think that the ghost somehow manages to write on the sheets without unwinding the roll, but I'm not completely sure: a couple of rolls ago I found eight sheets of it that seemed to be a study of the maximum tension you can put toilet paper under before it rips, and there's some stuff I didn't understand except for the word torque. Some guests think we do it ourselves (we don't; neither of us could stand to use a pen as crude as a biro. I hand-sharpen my own fountain-pen nibs and mix up my own inks from acorn-gall, and my house-mate uses japanese calligraphy brushes). Others think we purchase it printed like that and want to know where they can get hold of it. Occasionally they steal rolls when they've got particularly interesting stuff on (like the eye-witness account of a fire in 18th century Leeds).

The message on the fridge this morning though was unusual even by our standards. It was a call-to-arms for all the ghosts in the house. Granted there's only so much you can say in 128 luminous Fisher-Price magnetic letters, but it looks like we're about to become the battleground for a war of ghosts. I'm wondering what that's going to be like...