g

The Scrimshaw Imp

Edward Salter was walking back to his ship, waiting in the harbour at Alexandria. He had become separated from his fellow crewmen, who were all older than he, and while he had been fascinated by the exotic sights and sounds of the city, it was dark now and he had become fearful of being alone.

As Edward walked the long, poorly lit quay, a little nervous of the shadows, he saw ahead that someone was lying prone on the cobbles.

He had been brought up to believe that you should not walk by someone in distress but should help your fellow man if you’re able, and so he ran towards the figure. As he approached, Edward was shocked to see that the man looked as though he had been mauled by a lion or a bear, his clothes ripped, as was the flesh beneath, his bones clearly broken, his head crushed like a melon, his face horribly reshaped and ruined. Incredibly, though, the man was still alive.

‘Who did this?’ said Edward, bending over him.

The man groaned pitifully but made no reply. Edward could see someone walking away further along the quayside – another sailor it looked like. He almost called out, but, looking again at the man on the ground, thought twice and kept his peace.

The injured man was holding something in a ruined hand, and with all his remaining strength – for it was clear his life was ebbing away – he tried to hurl it towards the sea. It skittered over the cobbles and came to rest a yard or so from the edge.

He motioned for Edward to come closer, and this he did. The man grabbed his jacket and tried to speak, but though he moved his mouth no sound other than a strangulated choking emerged, and within seconds his grip loosened and he slumped lifeless to the ground.

Had he been at home in London Edward might have sought out a constable, or called for help. But he was not at home. He was a sailor in a foreign land with a mutilated corpse at his feet.

In that instant he decided that he could do no more to help the man. He had not seen the attacker and could not assist in his capture. Better by far that he return to his ship. But as he was walking away, curiosity got the better of him.

Edward was intrigued to discover what it was that the dead man had been so determined to throw into the water. He walked over and picked the object up, and almost as soon as he did so he heard voices. They were a long way off, but even so he did not want to be found there and, putting the thing in his pocket, he walked briskly away.

Once back on the Buck, Edward turned it over in his hand. It was a whale tooth – a big one, from the jaws of a great sperm whale no doubt – and etched into the surface was some kind of picture. Edward could not see what the picture showed because the light was too poor, but he could see that it was done with that odd mixture of crudeness and intensity that gave such pieces their strange charm. He certainly was glad it had not ended up in the harbour.

Edward went below deck. An old mariner called Morton, who had no interest in carousing ashore and little remaining curiosity for foreign ports, was sitting on a barrel, reading a book by lantern light. His eyes were failing and he was using a magnifying glass. Taking the scrimshaw tooth from his pocket, Edward asked Morton if he could borrow it.

Morton agreed and Edward held the tooth near a lantern and peered through the glass, marvelling again at the astonishing complexity and intricacy of the carving.

One side of the tooth carried a depiction of a quayside, along which was walking a sailor. Behind the figure was a tall building with ochre walls, a terracotta tiled roof and a tall castellated clock tower on which there was a weathervane in the shape of an arrow.

When he turned the tooth over, Edward found another carved scene, this time showing a three-masted sailing ship, much like the Buck, in a harbour much like Alexandria. Along the curve of the tooth, below the picture, were some words written in a neat, if a little awkward, sloping italic script. They read:

g

Behold and beware the Scrimshaw Imp.

Behold and beware thy self.

g

To his amazement, when he held the magnifying glass closer over the skillfully etched ship, he could see clearly that it was not merely like the Buck – the name on the side stated very clearly that it was the Buck.

Was the owner of the scrimshaw tooth trying to get to the Buck? Edward had never seen him before, he was sure of that. Perhaps he had sailed aboard the ship in the past. Perhaps he was the artist.

Edward turned the tooth over again, and had another look at the side showing the sailor on the quayside. He noticed something he had not seen before. On the right-hand side of the image, further along the quayside, was another, far less distinct figure.

The skill of the scrimshaw artist seemed to have deserted him in this depiction, for where the first figure was all detail, down to the buttons on his jacket and the neckerchief about his throat, the second figure seemed vague and blurred, as if caught in the act of movement. The maker had clearly not been satisfied by his work because he had tried to scratch the figure out. Edward suddenly had a vision of the injured man and shivered.

He was about to put the tooth in his trunk when he stared again at the picture engraved on its surface. Though common sense and reason told him it was impossible, he had the strongest possible impression that the blurry figure had moved. Where it had once occupied a space at the far right of the tooth, it was now further to the left and distinctly closer to the sailor.

Edward peered at the space where the figure had been, but there was no sign of a mark; the surface of the tooth was untouched and as smooth as silk. He must have been mistaken. And yet he knew in the pit of his stomach that he was not.

As Edward sat there staring at the scrimshaw tooth, old Morton stepped over to see what was the cause of his troubled expression.

‘What’s that you have, boy?’ he asked, and then seeing the tooth in Edward’s hand, said, ‘Ah – ’tis a piece of scrimshaw work, and a fine one too, by the looks of it.’

He asked to take a closer look, and Edward passed it to him, calmed by being brought back to normality. Already, with Morton beside him, the possibility that he had simply misremembered the image seemed the more likely explanation than that it had somehow moved.

‘Did you do this?’ said Morton.

‘Me?’ said Edward. ‘No. I have no skill in such things. It was . . . given to me.’

‘That’s quite a gift,’ said Morton. ‘That’s the Buck and no mistake. What does it say there? It’s too small for my eyes.’

Edward told him. Morton sucked the air between his teeth with a whistle.

‘What do you think it means?’ said Edward.

‘I don’t know,’ said Morton. ‘I don’t like the sound of it though. You say someone gave it to you? Who?’

Edward licked his lips and looked at the floor.

‘I . . . in a way, I found it.’

‘Did you – in a way – steal it?’ asked Morton.

‘No!’ said Edward. ‘Not really . . .’

With a big sigh, Edward told Morton what had happened: about the injured man and the scrimshaw tooth. Morton shook his head.

‘There’s something bad here,’ he said, turning over the tooth. ‘This figure,’ he went on, seeing Edward’s confusion. ‘Supposing that’s you. It looks like you, come to think of it.’

Edward had noticed that already, but then, with its neckerchief, jacket and trousers, it could have been any sailor.

‘And what about that figure following behind?’ continued Morton.

‘Following?’ said Edward, though he knew it was true. He could not bring himself to tell Morton that it also appeared to move.

‘Maybe that’s the Scrimshaw Imp,’ said Morton, handing the tooth back. ‘Maybe that’s what you have to beware.’

The thought of such a thing following him anywhere made Edward’s guts clench and troubled his sleep when he eventually lay back in his bunk and closed his eyes. He opened them five hours later to find Morton looking into his face.

‘Get rid of it, lad,’ he said, pointing to the tooth, which lay on top of Edward’s bunk. ‘Get rid of it if you know what’s good for you. There’s sorcery in it. Take a hammer to it, lad. Smash the thing and be done.’

Morton was already going before Edward had fully come to his wits, but he knew there was something in what the old man had said. He followed Morton up and out on to the deck just as the call came out that they were setting sail.

Edward walked to the side of the ship and took the scrimshaw tooth from his pocket. The eerie light of daybreak shimmered across its surface and gave it an even more unearthly quality. The whale tooth took on a weird lustre, as if lit from within.

The little boats of local traders and fishermen clogged the harbour. They had all made their last attempts to sell their wares to the foreigners and now they watched them leave, readying themselves for a new ship and new customers. A boy on a nearby fishing boat waved and Edward waved absent-mindedly back at him.

Morton was right, he thought. No good could come of keeping such a thing. It was bewitched in some way, he was sure of it. It had clearly done the previous owner no good, a fact acknowledged by the dying man’s desire to get rid of the thing. Perhaps Edward should do what that man was trying to do but could not.

Edward held the scrimshaw tooth over the side of the ship and let go, letting it fall into the shimmering sea. It struck the water, point down, with barely a splash, and Edward walked away, feeling as if whatever spell the tooth had cast over his life was now ended.

He had not taken two steps, however, before he was overcome by the strangest sensation. He felt suddenly cold, despite the heat of the morning, but worse – far worse than that – he could not breathe.

Edward choked and reached for his throat, feeling for some blockage but knowing that the sensation was different. It felt as though the very air he was trying to breathe had become solid; as if, instead of air, he was swallowing water.

Edward staggered back to the side of the ship and looked at where the tooth had fallen in.

The Egyptian boy on the fishing boat had seen the whole scene, and while he had found Edward’s behaviour baffling – as he did so much of the behaviour of these foreigners – he had an eye for an opportunity and, speculating that the sailor might be pleased to have whatever it was he had dropped returned to him, he dived into the water and emerged, waving the tooth in the air.

As soon as the tooth was above the water, the air flooded back into Edward’s lungs. He leaned over the rail, coughing and thanking the boy profusely and waving for him to bring the tooth aboard.

Edward gave the breathless, smiling boy a handful of coins – more money than the boy might normally see in a year – and sent him back to his father aboard the fishing boat, where they both waved back at the crazy Englishman with broad grins.

Edward acknowledged them, but he could not share their smiles. His fate seemed to have become entangled with that of the tooth he held once more in his shaking hand. He thought of Morton’s exhortation to ‘take a hammer to the thing’ and felt a shudder run through his body.

Looking at the carvings again, he saw that in the image of the Buck the ship was preparing to set sail – just as the actual ship was. The fishing boat was also shown, father and son waving. And there was a sailor at the gunwales, waving back. Edward stared wide-eyed; was his life being mirrored in the scrimshaw tooth, or was it being determined by it, controlled by it?

If so, was he doomed then to stand idly by as a spectator while his destiny was made a puppet to this infernal creation? But what could he do? He clearly could not destroy the thing, but neither could he discard it, for who knew what accident might befall it, and what effect that could have on his life?

No – he would have to keep it by him at all times and take especial care of it. Perhaps, when he had calmed a little and understood more of its power, he might glean something that would provide an escape route from its grip.

And so the Buck sailed on, moving west along the Mediterranean and calling at the port of Naples, one of half a dozen stops they would make before heading home to London. Vesuvius reared up behind the city, smoke still belching belligerently from its cone after one of its frequent eruptions.

As they moored Edward looked at the volcano in the distance, and the idea that it might at any moment explode into violent life, showering rock and ash down on the city, struck a chord with him. He felt able now to appreciate something of the nature of living in the shadow of such a monster. Perhaps the secret was in accepting his fate as the Neapolitans had done. Perhaps the scrimshaw tooth really did show him what would happen in any case, no matter what choices he made. Perhaps he had never been as free as he thought.

Edward took the scrimshaw tooth from his pocket and turned it over in his hand, feeling again the weight of it, the smoothness of the untouched areas, the texture of the incised drawing.

He looked at the image of the Buck and saw – as he knew he would – that the ship was in the Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius scratched into the background. He registered this with a calmness that surprised him. Was it possible, after all, that even something as dark and strange as this could be accepted?

He did not look at the drawing of the sailor. He did not find that image so easy to accept. The scene with the ship seemed simply to reflect what he could see around him and, miraculous though that evolving drawing was, it did at least have its roots in the world he knew.

The drawing of the sailor and the thing that followed him – the Scrimshaw Imp, he supposed – portrayed a mystery, and a mystery that troubled him both in its inscrutability and in the sinister nature of what it illustrated.

Edward’s mind was still buzzing with questions as he stepped ashore. What was it that the picture represented? Did it show an actual event or was it symbolic in some way? What did it mean? Was it a warning? Was the scrimshaw tooth signalling danger or luring him towards some kind of unknown and unknowable peril? Then, all at once, as if in answer to these questions, he looked around and noticed for the first time where he was.

A sense of dread numbed his entire body as he gradually recognised the scene around him. He felt like he had when the scrimshaw tooth had been dropped in the ocean. He felt as though he were drowning.

This was the quayside depicted on the scrimshaw tooth. There was the tall ochre building with the clock tower, the pantiled roof and the arrow-shaped weathervane. One of his crewmates was up ahead. He had an urge to call to him, to tell him of the dread that was mounting in his heart – but how could he? He would sound deranged.

It seemed utterly incongruous that on a day such as that day – with the sun high in a cobalt sky, with seabirds crying and fishermen singing as they brought their catch ashore – that on a day like that there could be something so dark and from the sunless world of shadows so near.

And yet he knew with every fibre of his being that the thing from the scrimshaw tooth, the Scrimshaw Imp, whatever it was, was there. If he turned now he would see it, the shadow-thing, and the fear and dread of seeing the terrible vagueness of it was almost unbearable. He could feel its breath on the back of his neck.

In desperation Edward took out a clasp knife and, opening it with shaking hands, he began to gouge and scrape away at the image of the Scrimshaw Imp on the tooth. Why had he not thought of this before? He felt a giddying sense of triumph. In seconds, all that was left of the shadowy form was a collection of deep scratches. Then the pain began.

Every inch of his body was aflame with agony. Blood was pouring from him, dripping on to the scrimshaw tooth and the cobbles. His legs would no longer support him and he fell to the ground. As he lay there, his life draining away, he could see his arms and hands were slashed and scratched as if by some giant blade, and he knew he was not the sailor in the picture. He was the Scrimshaw Imp.

Edward’s vision blurred . . . He became aware of a face, of someone leaning towards him, asking him who he was and what had happened. The face was full of horror at the sight of such injuries. It was the expression his face must have worn in Alexandria.

With his dying breaths he tried to warn the sailor, who even now was picking up the scrimshaw tooth. But his mouth would no longer answer the brain’s call, and was so entirely ruined that were it still connected it could not have formed the words.

Just as Edward had, the sailor saw that there was nothing he could do and, not wanting trouble, he chose to leave. The last thing Edward saw, as he lay with one ragged ear to the ground, was the image of the sailor stopping to look at the scrimshaw tooth, putting it in his pocket and walking on.

*

‘Ethan,’ said Cathy, ‘you’re hurting.’

I had been holding Cathy’s hand to comfort her during the story, because I could see she had been unduly frightened by it from the very start. But the tale had clearly had an effect on me also, for I was now crushing my poor sister’s hand as every muscle in my body contracted with dread.

g

As always, Thackeray looked mightily pleased to have caused such a reaction in us and again I had to fight the urge to punch him on the nose. Outside, the storm was easing and there was a welcome calm about the headland and our inn. The branches at the window had ceased their fidgeting and clawing.

‘It seems the storm has had its fill of us,’ said Thackeray. ‘My ship will return soon and I will be on my way, and you good folks will have the place to yourselves once more. I thank you kindly for your hospitality.’

‘You are very welcome,’ said Cathy. ‘I wish you would stay and meet our father.’

‘Mr Thackeray does not want to meet Father, Cathy,’ I said. ‘He must not keep his ship waiting – whatever ship that is.’

I said this last in a particular tone that I hoped would signify that I personally doubted that he was even a sailor and was more likely some sort of vagabond or con man.

‘Is there something you want to say, friend?’ he said.

‘Only that I still wonder at how you came to be here on such a night,’ I said. ‘The weather has been far too wild for any ship to reach the harbour. How is that you came ashore?’

‘I swam,’ he said.

‘Very funny,’ I said. ‘But I wonder why you do not wish to say.’

Thackeray closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. When he opened them he looked at Cathy, and when he spoke his voice was cool and quiet. The wind had dropped as if in response, and there seemed to be a hush of expectancy in the air.

‘Storms are part of a sailor’s life,’ said Thackeray, ‘and every mariner, from fisherman to admiral, has his mettle tested some time or other. Storms come and go. A ship like mine would not normally be troubled by them. But some storms are exceptionally powerful. Such was this one.’

I opened my mouth to interrupt him, but there was something about his expression that made me think better of it.

‘Perhaps I was distracted by the proximity to the place where I was born and spent my tender years. Perhaps I was thinking about Cathy and the life we might have had. Perhaps I was looking towards this very inn perched up here on the clifftop.’

He took a drink and slowly lowered the empty glass.

‘Whatever the cause,’ he said, ‘I did not see the wave that knocked me overboard.’

‘Goodness!’ said Cathy. ‘You were thrown into the sea in that storm? How did you survive, Mr Thackeray?’

‘Yes, Mr Thackeray,’ I said with a raised eyebrow. ‘How did you escape drowning?’

As usual he ignored me and addressed Cathy instead.

‘Time and again the rolling waves crashed over me and dragged me under, but each time I surfaced again. I saw the inn on the cliff and knew that I was heading towards the shore. In no time I was standing in the surf in the bay at the base of these cliffs.’

‘And how did you get from there to here?’ I asked. ‘The cliffs are high and treacherous.’

‘I climbed,’ he said calmly.

‘You climbed?’ I laughed.

‘Ethan!’ chided Cathy.

‘I cannot tell you what to believe,’ said Thackeray, sitting back in his chair. ‘I can only tell you what occurred.’

The storm was over now and there was a silence such as I had never known before. The sea had ceased its roar and the gulls their crying. Thackeray looked down at the table, his face veiled by shadow.

‘I knew this inn as a boy,’ he began, without looking up, ‘in happier days. I thought that I might see it one more time.’

He seemed so sincere in these reflections that I had to remind myself that he can only have been a few years my senior. If he had been here often enough to have grown sentimental about it, I would have remembered him. Cathy was clearly having the same difficulty, despite her desire to believe in this strange visitor.

‘But we would have been here when you came,’ she said. ‘I may have been so young as to have forgotten – though I am known for my good memory – but Ethan would surely have some recollection, what with you both being boys. Don’t you remember us?’

There was a pause. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ he said quietly, ‘as I have said. Such things and the memories of them are the wake a life leaves at its passing.’

I am a little ashamed to say I took some satisfaction in seeing Thackeray struggle to come up with any sensible explanation, and in seeing the look of disappointment that clearly showed on my sister’s face.

‘The storm has blown over, Cathy,’ I said. ‘Mr Thackeray should be going.’

‘Ethan is right, Miss Cathy,’ Thackeray said, standing up. ‘I must be on my way.’ He gave me another of his patronising smiles.

‘But surely your “ship” will be long gone, Mr Thackeray,’ I said, unable to resist the temptation to pick further at the fabric of his tale.

‘She will come for me soon enough,’ said Thackeray. ‘She is not a ship to leave her crew behind.’

He smiled and moved towards the door. But he had barely left the table when Cathy grabbed him by the arm, surprising me and herself by her boldness.

‘Oh please, Mr Thackeray,’ she said in her most pleading voice. ‘Please, please, please. One more story before you go.’

I sighed loudly, glaring at Cathy, but she paid no heed.

‘But I thought my last tale frightened you, Miss Cathy,’ said Thackeray.

‘So it did,’ she said with a giggle. ‘But I do so love to be frightened!’

Thackeray grinned and, to my dismay, sat back down.

‘Very well, then, Miss Cathy,’ he said. ‘One more story. Just for you.’