A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: Part 2 | serial
A rescue crew has set sail in search of salvation for their crumbling seaside village, but the uncharted ocean has an unsated appetite for mystery that just might swallow them whole.
It was midnight upon the salty deck.
Or so it was assumed, as all our clocks and watches had stopped.
In the depths of the night—the coldest and the darkest—we began our wayward procession, the funeral that would lay our afflicted crewmate to rest. The eerie atmosphere of this uncharted region of the sea matched the dour mood; the sky above was alive with foreign stars and mocking planets that guided our eulogy. A kind of contradiction, given all this death.
My sermon was simple. Hardly memorable. Not worth retelling.
As we lowered the gruesome carcass into the still waters, wrapped in a tattered shroud of sail and frayed rigging, I could not shake the grip of direness that seemed to linger in every gulp of air we inhaled.
The supine body bobbed in the water as the Ex Nihilo continued onward, propelled by buoyancy alone, and banged against the wooden hull with a rueful resonance. A most unromantic ending for the one we called Loblolly.
I hardly knew the man; barely a man at all. The boy’s past. His life. His family. The dreams he coveted. The hopes that kept him afloat.
I felt no sadness then. Little remorse. My sympathies, elsewhere.
In truth, he was just another regrettably forgettable shipmate. In a day’s time, the body will be recycled, consumed by predators or dissolved in salt. His bones will lie amongst the exposed ribs of the countless ships lying encased in silt.
Swallowed up by the hole at the bottom of the sea.
The men stood silent, watching it float by with their hats off after I had spoken, crushed over their hearts, the ones who had them anyway. They stared out across the open ocean, their cold, stone faces with red ears and dripping noses listening and smelling the air for anything redeemable.
Another shipmate, whom the crew called Green, provided a solemn tune on his well-worn fiddle. There were fewer men than needed now, less than thirty. The Ex Nihilo required maintenance, after all.
When the shrouded corpse could no longer be perceived in the sallow moonlight, the men disbanded back to their sleeping quarters, while I did the same, returning to my study. The useless map was still sprawled across the wooden face of my desk, and though it was late, I was too restless to sleep. I imagined the crew would largely have the same convictions.
Tonight, we all suffered.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Cross My Heart And Hope To Write to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.