Page 103 | Chapter 5 | The Ghost Ship | A Free Serialized Online Novel by Scott Telek

Now that he was alone near the side of the ship, John stepped tentatively to the railing. The dark form was now about two cable-lengths off, turning slowly in the water as she passed. He found Connor’s words in his mind as he stared at the strangely discomfiting sight of the broken ship. Its presence was surrounded by an aura of dread, an omen made concrete. This sense of malevolent portent was so overwhelmingly vivid, John found it almost impossible to believe the thing real. Yet there it was, undeniably before him. “It is just a ship,” he said to himself. But, as if in response to his thought, the form lurched suddenly in the heave of the waves, and the water just before the object welled a hideous white. John audibly gasped in fear and turned quickly away, throwing up his hand. By the time he tentatively turned back, the ship had re-settled, and the white horror had once again disappeared beneath the gray pile of water. The tombstone continued silently rotating as it passed.

John stepped away from the railing, no longer wishing to push the boundaries of his courage, and found his place once more on the hatch cover where he settled down to read. He opened his book, and tried to focus on the substance of his reading, but found his mind returning again and again to the white welling of water he had just witnessed, and the overwhelming sense of doom that had overcome him the white thing should climb out of the depths and into his world. Surely it was just the foresail of the ship, which had not been secured before she foundered, and now sailed the watery wind of current below the tide, but John felt the eerie reverberations of an uneasy tingling in his consciousness. Even the fact that the massive black masts spread like evil arms beneath the impassive surface struck him with the uncanny realization that unrecognized threats now lurked beneath. He sat facing the stern, and watched, glancing up from his book every few moments, the black form moving steadily away behind as they sailed on through the empty landscape. Within an hour it could hardly be made out at all against the strange lights and glimmers of the distant tide.