O'Neill's Ghostories: Sea Souls

Sea Souls
from David
Hailing From: Detroit, Michigan
Where it Happened: Just Off Nova Scotia

Five years ago I served as part of a four-man crew aboard a boat out of Maine. It was not a marvel of technology, but sturdy enough. Our main business came from shuttling between Nova Scotia and Maine. On one such occasion, we had docked near Yarmouth and were making some minor equipment repairs. I had just come back to the boat with some of Nova Scotia’s famed herring and was about to store it when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Expecting it to be a mate, and happy about the dinner I had secured for us, I turned around with a big grin and was surprised to be staring into the sallow face of a stranger. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, then nodded at the ship and asked, “Is she bound for the states?”

The man told me his name was Piper Riley, and as I write this I can only guess at the spelling. It might be Reilly I suppose. He was looking for a vessel to get him back to the United States, so I called the skipper over, and repeated the story for him. The skipper looked over the neatly dressed fellow and said, “We don’t have room for passengers.”

Piper told him, with a slightly southern accent I realized, that he had worked on numerous ships around Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, but that he was ready to go home. What swayed the skipper was that Piper told him he didn’t need pay, only passage.

Two hours later, after loading the hold with lobsters, we departed Yarmouth with the addition to our crew. By that time the sun had been set a half-hour already, but the short voyage across the notorious Bay of Fundy was familiar, and the night fair. It was so fair, indeed, that we were all loitering about the deck after dinner. Piper approached me, telling me he felt ill and asking me to show him below. I don’t know why he chose me to tell, maybe because I was the first he had spoken to.

I obligingly led him down the staircase leading to the cabin.

The cabin was basically one big open space divided into sections for dining and sleeping. Piper and I sat at the long table across from each other. His face truly struck me. He must have been young, maybe early to mid thirties, but his face was heavily creased and sun-baked bronze, emphasizing even further his deep-set eyes and sharp nose.

The silence between us kept unbroken, making me increasingly uncomfortable. Our pilot called to me, and as I got up I managed to ask Piper if he’d be all right. He nodded his head absently, and I went above. I stood just atop the staircase as I talked to the pilot. I gazed back down, but could not see into the cabin. The way it was, one had to go down about eight steep stairs to the bottom, where there was a short hallway of storage cupboards before it opened up to the cabin. The pilot asked me what I was looking at, and I whispered to him the way Piper had unnerved me. He laughed and asked if I’d be too afraid to fetch some drinks from below. Embarrassed, I muttered at him under my breath as I turned and descended the stairs.

When I reached the cabin, Piper was not sitting at the table. Wondering if perhaps he went to sleep, and wondering especially if he had chosen my bunk, I poked my head through the curtain separating the sleeping area from the rest of the cabin. But all the bunks, too, were empty. Puzzled, I went above and reported it to the skipper.

Now you see, I had been standing right in front of the stairs before and Piper couldn’t have possibly gotten by me, and that was the only entrance or exit to the cabin. Nevertheless, we searched the deck, the hold, and even the cabin again, but we found nothing.

About an hour later we reached port at Maine.

Two months later I left that crew and went back to my native Great Lakes. I have not heard of Piper Riley since, nor have I sought his name or tale.