The Cemetery Diaries
Between Tragedy and the Shore
From an early age, my life was centred on death. My father died when I was small, and being a sailor on a steamship was like shovelling coal in the deepest pits of the inferno. Sickness was taken for granted in the only job I was qualified to do. It was a part of the maritime experience that pervaded everyday life, along with the rocking tide and the diet of salty biscuits that turned our stomachs on trips of two, three, four and six months long. Death came easily at the hands of storms and sea monsters, for the sea is a cursed place, full of devils. The many slippery riggings doled out maimings as readily as the pirates– I was fortunate that I only lost my mind on the open ocean, and not my limbs as well.
Finally, I decided that I wanted to die, too, just to know what it felt like. I was twenty-seven then, and convinced that I would never make twenty-eight. Death was just the next step in life to me, and I was tired of the aches and miseries of living, in poverty, no less. With perishing in mind, I signed up for a voyage to Australia, whence the remains of my family had already gone to live as free settlers, or been taken as convicts and later reborn as emancipated men. I signed up with a coal collier, one drenched and fateful day in London’s miserable docks, and marched along the bowed plank with the other sad men into the twisted darkness of the ship’s bowels. There must have been a hundred boxes there, the size of coffins and laden with earth, which was a shock. I was not the only one to enquire about such a curious cargo, but I was none the wiser for my questions. The captain was a cool man with a steely demeanour. There was no more prising answers out of him than letting blood from a stone or cracking rubies from an oyster.
Across a thousand leagues of waves and over a thousand more of terrible depth we ploughed, churning out the black smoke of the Industrial Era from our chimneys. A month in to our journey, a voracious storm blew up, lightning striking the water in clawed hands and turning the shape of our vessel into silhouettes and ghastly reliefs. Stark light lit up the deck, drowned only by the rearing wave that crashed down catastrophic, wiping out half the crew. I stared into that wave and its successor, hungry for destruction as the others fled to cabins or scrambled starboard, hoping to free lifeboats from the berth of the soon-to-be wreck. While my crewmates shouted and barked insults at the storm, I alone stood silent, receptive. I lashed myself to the great wheel up on deck, and waiting for obliteration.
It never came. The storm subsided, and I quickly learned that was the only one left. Dripping wet and with boots full of water, I sloshed up and down the deck, searching for survivors, but I only found the corpses of those who had waited too long to dive, or had persevered on board for fear of drowning. The ones who could not swim were most vulnerable, and once the salt parched their mouths and the storm deprived them of stored foods, the midday sun dried them out like seashells. Souls evaporated in the heat of the unabated day, and soon there was nothing but the stench of decay on board the Paragon.
I lasted three more days, tired and hungry, but too weak to take my own life. In the middle deck, I was oblivious to the happenings below me, where ten dozen boxes of soil from mother England had spilled and turned to mud. I did not see the shadow, long-fingered and sharp-eared, lurking in the cargo hold, awoken prematurely from slumber. I did not see him coming up the weathered stairs, and put the creaking of the boards down to the ship’s adjustment from saturated to sundried. Only when his cold hands arrested my throat did I cry out in vain that a monster had found me.
I don’t remember the rest of the days between tragedy and the shore. I only know that my family mourned for my loss, as the fishermen who found the wreck grieved for all the crew unaccounted for. My mother and sister brought an empty coffin inland, and filled it with my scant possessions in the hopes of burying something near their farm, but I was not inside it. I tailed them all the way, still unaware of my changed nature, which I was to discover gradually as the sun and moon chased each other around the heavens. In graveyards where I lurked I met others like me, but I never saw my creator again.
And that, Trixie, is the story of how I came to be. I can only hope it puts some things in perspective. Cling tightly now, because our ride through the skies is over. Out of the blanket of high drifting sea foam, we descend.
Finally, I decided that I wanted to die, too, just to know what it felt like. I was twenty-seven then, and convinced that I would never make twenty-eight. Death was just the next step in life to me, and I was tired of the aches and miseries of living, in poverty, no less. With perishing in mind, I signed up for a voyage to Australia, whence the remains of my family had already gone to live as free settlers, or been taken as convicts and later reborn as emancipated men. I signed up with a coal collier, one drenched and fateful day in London’s miserable docks, and marched along the bowed plank with the other sad men into the twisted darkness of the ship’s bowels. There must have been a hundred boxes there, the size of coffins and laden with earth, which was a shock. I was not the only one to enquire about such a curious cargo, but I was none the wiser for my questions. The captain was a cool man with a steely demeanour. There was no more prising answers out of him than letting blood from a stone or cracking rubies from an oyster.
Across a thousand leagues of waves and over a thousand more of terrible depth we ploughed, churning out the black smoke of the Industrial Era from our chimneys. A month in to our journey, a voracious storm blew up, lightning striking the water in clawed hands and turning the shape of our vessel into silhouettes and ghastly reliefs. Stark light lit up the deck, drowned only by the rearing wave that crashed down catastrophic, wiping out half the crew. I stared into that wave and its successor, hungry for destruction as the others fled to cabins or scrambled starboard, hoping to free lifeboats from the berth of the soon-to-be wreck. While my crewmates shouted and barked insults at the storm, I alone stood silent, receptive. I lashed myself to the great wheel up on deck, and waiting for obliteration.
It never came. The storm subsided, and I quickly learned that was the only one left. Dripping wet and with boots full of water, I sloshed up and down the deck, searching for survivors, but I only found the corpses of those who had waited too long to dive, or had persevered on board for fear of drowning. The ones who could not swim were most vulnerable, and once the salt parched their mouths and the storm deprived them of stored foods, the midday sun dried them out like seashells. Souls evaporated in the heat of the unabated day, and soon there was nothing but the stench of decay on board the Paragon.
I lasted three more days, tired and hungry, but too weak to take my own life. In the middle deck, I was oblivious to the happenings below me, where ten dozen boxes of soil from mother England had spilled and turned to mud. I did not see the shadow, long-fingered and sharp-eared, lurking in the cargo hold, awoken prematurely from slumber. I did not see him coming up the weathered stairs, and put the creaking of the boards down to the ship’s adjustment from saturated to sundried. Only when his cold hands arrested my throat did I cry out in vain that a monster had found me.
I don’t remember the rest of the days between tragedy and the shore. I only know that my family mourned for my loss, as the fishermen who found the wreck grieved for all the crew unaccounted for. My mother and sister brought an empty coffin inland, and filled it with my scant possessions in the hopes of burying something near their farm, but I was not inside it. I tailed them all the way, still unaware of my changed nature, which I was to discover gradually as the sun and moon chased each other around the heavens. In graveyards where I lurked I met others like me, but I never saw my creator again.
And that, Trixie, is the story of how I came to be. I can only hope it puts some things in perspective. Cling tightly now, because our ride through the skies is over. Out of the blanket of high drifting sea foam, we descend.