A double-edged knife thrown at my head by a drunk in a tavern where we tried to restore order, sliced my ear, and stuck in the wall behind me. A near miss. We took them all to the dungeon. I’d had my fill of this kind of work.
Still a young man in 1111, a year I thought lucky, since it would be over a thousand years before all numbers aligned again, 2222. I, Dom Miguel Henriques, resigned from the service of the Court of Portugal. In truth, the House of Burgundy ruled us, but I cared little for politics. Freedom and the sea are called louder.
Along with my companion Antonio, a fellow discharged soldier, we purchased a small, aging wooden boat. It had once been a shore craft for some great galleon, but to us it was liberty. We both wore knives in scabbards on our belts. Handy for cutting many things from rope to tough meat, not the least of which being defense from a muscled drunk wanting to fight it out. Our boat had a single sail, room for four oarsmen, and the promise of Portugal and Spain’s ragged coastlines stretched out before us. We lived like sea gypsies, never out of sight of land, putting ashore where villages beckoned, eating what we carried, and drinking local wine and carousing with willing women in the evenings.
Barely two weeks of enjoying our freedom to choose anyplace we wanted to be when not on the water, Antonio and I sat at a table with large frothy drinks in front of us when a woman caressed my shoulder. She wore a patterned skirt and a white top with puffy shoulders that was cut low enough to cause a man to think of many pleasures. Instead of a smile, there was a look of concern on her face.
She whispered, “Come with me into that side room.” She motioned with her head to the beaded door. “If you must hear of the aura I have seen emitting from you.”
I excused myself from Antonio, and followed her into the small room with a round table. Candles burned brightly on the walls and a large red one in the middle of the table. The room smelled of pine and incense
She motioned to the chair opposite her. “Please sit. What I have to say is important.”
“Are those the skulls of rats on the mantel?” I asked.
“They help me focus my visions.” Her eyebrows dipped lower with concern.
“You’ve come by boat with your friend?”
I nodded. Anyone could have guessed that.
“I see you weathering a wicked storm. You don’t die, but something so evil will face you after that, it is unspeakable. My warning is, don’t get caught in a storm in the coming few weeks in your craft. If you do, your future is…” She paused, put her hand on her forehead. “Just avoid the water on stormy days for at least two weeks. If you do, my vision may not come to pass. The future can be altered, otherwise, I see your future in a mist of unspeakable horror.”
She let out a large breath and dipped her head. “That’s all I can tell.”
I rose to leave, dropped a few coins on the table, not sure of whether to believe her or not. I rejoined Antonio to enjoy more of the spirits, doubting I’d tell him anything of what was said. Not discussing the warning would help me clear the ghosts from my mind.
Tomorrow, we’d set out for another sail south and steer our craft to fresh places and adventures.
But fate is a cruel steersman.
On our twenty-first day, a storm rose from nowhere, black clouds rolling and growing, lightning slashing the sky, the sea raging like a beast unchained. I remembered the warning from the wench in the tavern, barely a week ago. A chill ran down my spine, for here we were, exactly where she said we should not be at any cost. But we had no warning, not a chance to make it to shore. All we could do was try to head into the growing waves while the icy wind and ocean spray hit us in the face while rain pelted us from above.
A wave vast as a cathedral shattered the mast and wrenched the stern away. By miracle of oak planks and keel, we did not sink outright, though half the boat drowned beneath us. We clung, half-submerged, to what remained.
In time, the storm eased, and shortly the sun broke out again. We took stock. Only three wine bottles, swaddled in goatskin beneath the forehatch, survived. They were our last comfort.
Ten days passed. The wine was gone in six. Our lips split, tongues swelled, and every word we spoke was dry as parchment. There was no way to rig a sail out of the torn remains of the canvas. We gathered what planks of wood we could and tied them with pieces of rope.
“We’re going to die,” Antonio croaked one morning, staring at the flat horizon with cracked eyes.
“You cannot say that,” I snapped. “Any day we might see land. If we do, the two paddles remain.”
Antonio laughed like a crow. “We’ll be nothing but shriveled husks when they find us.”
His despair was a knife in my hopes, but then, Providence! On the horizon, I spied uneven shapes, palm crowns against the sky. I pointed, my heart galloping. “Land! There. Paddle, my friend. This might be one of the tiny islands off the coast of Morocco.”
Hope gave us strength. We made shore, exhausted but happy, and like children, wept as we drank the milk of coconuts, carved out chunks with our knives and ate the sweet insides. We later found a freshwater stream inland. We would live. We even dared call ourselves fortunate. I thought of the maid back in the tavern, and wondered if she had a future vision. One that saw us weather the worst storm anyone might have predicted and to find this island and survive nicely until, sooner or later, we’d be found or find a way off the island.
But fortune has a twin—misfortune, veiled.
***
A month later, just as dusk bled over the sea, Antonio spied something drifting into our lagoon. A long, low boat. One much larger than ours battered by the storm. We rushed into waist-deep water to meet it, thinking it empty, abandoned.
It was not.
The craft was filled with men—dead men, arms crossed on chests. They lay in rows, side by side, head to toe. The stench rolled like smoke. And over every closed eye gleamed a gold coin, bright as the sinking sun.
Antonio recoiled, gagging and holding his hand over his mouth.
I made the sign of the cross. “Holy Mother…”
I knew the Greek tale whispered in ancient monasteries. “This is no fishermen’s grave,” I said, crossing my heart with my finger. “It is a ship of the dead. The coins—payment for Charon, ferryman of the River Styx, for passage to the underworld, Hades. Families and armies don’t want their souls to wander aimlessly in the afterlife. Touch them or the coins, and their curse clings to your soul.”
Antonio’s breathing steadied, but his eyes glittered with hunger. “Dom… look at them. Solid gold. Enough to buy a vineyard, maybe two! To hell with your ghost stories. These men are beyond caring.”
I seized his wrist. “Don’t. To steal from the dead is to walk with them. We’d be doomed.”
He wrenched free, snarling. “Then walk away.”
And he did—prying the coins from every lidless skull, stacking them in a goatskin, the same that once kept our wine. The sound was horrible: clink, clink, clink, echoing over the water as the sun sank lower.
I watched in horror as he completed his task, and slowly my apprehension eased. Some group of men set these souls adrift, believing the myth and they’d come to our island.
It was a seaworthy boat carrying the dead, and it could carry us to another island when we felt the time would be right. The first thing we did was to secure a line from the ship. Pull it as far as we could into the sand, then tie it to a tree. But we had neither the tools nor energy to bury those dead souls, thus, with some of our torn clothing tied around our noses and mouths, we gently lifted the stiff corpses into the lagoon and watched the light shells of what was left of them drift out to sea.
That night, Antonio buried the sack beneath a palm, marking the place with a rock. He bubbled of how rich ‘we’ were, but I cautioned him it was all his. Nice of him to consider me, but I still had strong misgivings about this new treasure of his. He slept sound as a king.
I did not. I dreamed of oars creaking, of skeletal hands reaching, of a gaunt figure whose eyes were hollow caves. They pointed, and their specter voices whispered, Mine. Mine. I woke up in a sweat, gasping for air.
***
In the days that followed, Antonio changed. His eyes yellowed. His skin grew gray as driftwood. He muttered in the shadows. At night he whispered to the buried coins as though they called his name.
One evening I found him standing waist-deep in the outgoing tide and gentle waves, staring out at nothing. “They want me,” he said flatly. “The boat waits.”
“The boat’s on shore where we beached it.” I touched his shoulder. “Antonio, you’re fevered,” I begged.
He turned, teeth bared in a rictus. “No, Dom. I’m rich. As rich as kings.” Then, laughing madly, he strode into the sea. I screamed for him to stop and waded chest-deep after him. The waves closed over him, and I never saw him rise from the blackness of the moonless night.
***
I thought the horror ended with him. Now, totally and miserably alone, I continued to survive. Even in his crazy last days, he was companionship. No one to speak a single word to anymore, so I mumbled to myself, just to hear a human voice.
But days later, walking the beach in a heavily fogged dawn, I found the long black boat waiting, partly on the sand, the rest in the water. The coins—every last one—were gone from the grave where Antonio buried them. An open hole at the base of the tree remained.
A shadow sat in the stern.
Charon. Skin stretched taut, burning red beads in the hollow sockets, his long pole resting across his knees.
“His debt was paid,” he said, voice like an echo over a coffin. He pointed a bony finger at me. “Yours is not.” Then he turned his hand inward, and his forefinger beckoned to me.
My feet skidded on the sand, an unknown force pushing me into waist-deep water beside the boat. The tide swelled around my body. My arms and feet froze as if bound in chains. The boat rocked gently, welcoming.
I thought for a moment of that evening with the woman telling me of the terrible things she saw in her vision. I wondered if she saw any of this and feared speaking of it to me.
I screamed, but the sea swallowed the sound. This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t want the coins and never laid a hand on any of them.
An unseen force lifted me from the water and placed me in the boat, hands folded across my chest. I felt the life draining out of me. The last thing I saw was two coins gleaming in the ferryman’s hand, forcing my eyes shut.
[END]
Bio: M.D. Smith of Huntsville, AL, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. https://mdsmithiv.com/