eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Figurehead (Reply)

It had rained during the night and now, as the sun began to climb and wake the sleeping earth, a heavy mist began to form over the damp soil. The upper slopes of Wolf Mountain were wreathed in white streamers and undulating banks of water vapour hung over the glassy surface of the ornamental pond in Deadwood Park. The shadowy forms of water fowl cut dark shapes through the haze and muffled splashes marked where they dived. An ice-cream van tinkled up on Main Street and the loading doors at the back of the Loyal Order of Corn rattled open as a fleet of delivery trucks queued to deposit crates of alien-influenced technology.

The fog horn was sounding out on Lake Eerie, warning the ghost ships of ghost reefs and ghost shallows that could, presumably, lead to a ghost-wrecking. The dark-light beam of the lighthouse swept across the lake, a knife-blade of blackness diffused by the mist into an amorphous glow of other-worldly malevolence. The Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar had been coated in a protective layer of reflective paint, and the glittering illumination bounced harmlessly against the ramshackle hut’s wood and metal walls. In the distance, the ghost pirates rasped Holy Stones across the deck of their translucent galleon to rid it of ghost barnacles, demonic possessions and lingering spirits of ill-intent.

A drifting tendril of black brushed against the ghost ship’s painted figurehead, and the wooden lady gasped into shuddering salt-stained life. No longer tethered to the incorporeal vessel, she plunged screaming into the grey waters, flailing her newly acquired flesh and blood arms in panic. The ghost pirates tugged their piratical beards in anguish as she struggled, her warm living fingers passing straight through the ropes they threw down to her. A long eternity passed while she slowly drowned, weighed down by her heavy flowing gown and gilt-painted jewellery and unfamiliar limbs.

When her thrashing stopped, and her clouded eyes turned up to stare into the hazy air, an azure blue spectre pulled itself from a body that was already changing back to carven oak, pushed its heavy hair back from its pale face, and glared up at the ghost ship. The ghost pirates leaning at the railings drew back and watched apprehensively.

“Well,” said the newly-minted spirit of a recently-animated prow decoration. She turned to look at the lighthouse, then the shore, then back at the seafaring apparition. She heaved a deep sigh with the memory of lungs that had only briefly known the touch of air, squared a set of shoulders new to any range of motion other than that of a boat upon the waves, and stepped out of her stiffening sculpture-corpse onto the surface of the lake. Ectoplasm steamed and spat on contact with the water and the lady squealed a little in fear as she made her unsteady way towards a lifeline that bobbed in the current. Ghost fingers finding easy purchase on ghost rope, she pulled herself on board and surveyed her surroundings.

“Do you know, I haven’t seen the ship from this angle since it was on dry land,” she said. Her high, smooth forehead wrinkled with distaste. “It was a lot less... ghosty back then.”

The assembled pirates shuffled their feet and looked shamefacedly at the tattered sails, cobwebbed masts and scattered bones that had tumbled from the crow’s nest during the recent storms and never been picked up. The spirit of the figure-head didn’t seem to notice their discomfort. She was holding her arms outstretched before her, flexing her fingers and rotating her wrists.

“It’s awfully nice to have a full range of motion,” she said, more to herself than the onlookers. “Hundreds of years with one’s hands clasped in prayer, never able to so much as scratch one’s nose or dislodge a barnacle from an inconvenient crevice.”

The gathered pirates mumbled in sympathy. The figure-head’s ghost ignored them, drifting back to the railing to stare down at the rippling waters. The mermaids who floated just below the waves waved up at her, grinning their sharp, seaweedy grins. The figure-head waved back. One of them, an old fish-wife with cockle shells in her long grey-green hair, whose skin was fish-belly pale and criss-crossed with thin white scars from a thousand fisherman’s lures, broke the surface. In the black-nailed fingers of one webbed hand, she held a small rectangle of white card inside a transparent plastic bag.

The recently-born, newly-dead figure-head reached down and took it. The salt water had seeped inside despite the protective packaging and the ink had run, but the words printed in heavy bold-faced type were still clearly legible.

“Mary C. Carter’s Home for Displaced Spooks. Serving the spirit of our community since 10th November 1991. No appointment necessary.”

The spectral figure-head hiked her heavy intangible skirts above her ghostly knees, swung two translucent legs over the worn wooden railing, and dropped overboard, connecting with the surface of the lake and sinking beneath the waves without the barest splash. The mermaids scattered like a shoal of fish startled by a predator, bright tails flickering amidst the pondweed and seafoam.

On the lakebed, down amidst the Lorelei’s discarded driftwood combs and the broken eggshells left by the sea-serpent’s latest hatching, a flicker of blue ghost-light moved through the murk, heading towards the shore and the small town that lay beyond.

Janet

A Ghost in Pink by