The Dead Men Stood Together by Chris Priestley

uncle’s neck.
    ‘We don’t all have your taste for killing. We’ll keep our souls free of that taint, for now. You can keep the bird, you murdering madman,’ he said. ‘You shall wear it every day as a reminder.’
    My uncle made to protest, but the captain took out his knife and waved the blade in front of my uncle’s face.
    ‘You either wear it,’ he said, ‘or you wear an anchor and we drop you over the side. If you so much as try to take it off, that’s what will happen. You will –’
    But the captain’s voice dried up. When he tried to speak again, nothing would come out. A man nearby called out angrily – or that was his intent, for, just as with the captain, no sound emerged.
    One by one each of us tried to speak and each with the same result. We had all – every man jack of us – been struck dumb. And when the silent commotion had settled, those dumbstruck faces turned as one to stare resentfully at my uncle.
    The captain dealt my uncle a fierce blow with the back of his hand, and with that the rotting carcass of the once magnificent albatross was hung around his neck.

XXII
    The prospect of slowly freezing to death back at the ice floes no longer seemed such a sorry fate, those who had died there simply slipping into sleep never to awake.
    We who had survived now found ourselves punished for our survival. We staggered on from one beating to another. And the sense that my uncle was somehow at the root of everything that was happening appeared to be a truth that could not be denied.
    Worse than that, he seemed to be protected by the forces that toyed with us. When he was about to be hanged, the ice melted. The captain’s voice was taken from him as he berated my uncle, and our voices too.
    The crew had gone from disliking my uncle, to despising him to hating him, and now – now they feared him. Had they not, someone would have put a knife in his back and dumped him overboard without another thought.
    Instead, my uncle haunted the ship like a ghost, relieved of any duties and skulking among the shadows with the stinking, rotting albatross glowing palely round his neck, its tattered wings outstretched, their matted tips stroking the deck.
    This was a horror to match the frozen world. The becalmed and empty sea was already unnaturally silent, save for the slippery sounds of the creatures trapped in the ooze that covered the ocean floor thereabouts.
    Aboard the ship, the only din came from the footfalls of our crew or the slight squeak in the hemp ropes as the heat caused some change in tension in the rigging. If someone dropped a tool or knocked over a bucket, it sounded like the gates of hell had been burst open and we had to cover our ears to shut out the noise. And we looked liked the damned too, our poor bodies starved and wasted.
    What next? What new sport was to be had with us? I began to wonder if we had already died back at the ice fields. Perhaps we were going from one circle of hell to another and this would go on for all eternity.
    I leaned against the bulwarks looking out to sea and barely had the strength to keep from falling down. My forehead sank lower and lower until it rested on the bleached and weathered wood.
    A single bead of sweat fell from my face and struck the deck. It was as though time had slowed and I saw its shimmering sphere plummet and hit the weathered plank, the stain it made drying in a blinked eye.
    With no water, no wind, no land in sight, things were hopeless. We did not even have the voice to offer comfort or shout curses or pray for release. The horizon shimmered like the haze over smouldering embers.
    I stared at the sea below – at the sticky writhing mass. New creatures became caught up in the dance of death, joining with the decomposing bodies of those already trapped, whilst beneath them I could see plumes of black slime rising from the ocean bed.
    I looked to my right and saw my uncle nearby and tears filled my eyes. His head was bowed over the lolling head