An Arctic Curse

I promised my wife that it would be my last voyage, but I said that intending to come home. It was a foreboding thing to say. I wonder if she now resents me for those words. Those simple things strung into a sentence are like a curse hanging over us. Well, hanging over me. 

That last voyage was completely ordinary, to begin with. We were on course to cut through the Arctic shelf until a snap freeze hit early and the route froze into impenetrable ice. The navigator and captain confidently planned a detour to bring the crew safely to our destination. Our navigator, old Hobbs, was fantastic. I don’t doubt that the alternative route was the safest available to us; he couldn't have planned for what happened to me.

My father and his grandfather were seafarers before me, and always told tales of sea creatures lurking in the depths and merfolk singing songs to lure sailors into the water, never to feel the cold air cut across their cheeks again.

Countless unreal stories encouraged my dreams, nightmares, and imagination as a young boy. None of those stories prepared me for my encounter, though. 

The northern waters carried chunks of ice that would creak more than our ship did. It felt like our boat was trudging through a thick paste instead of slicing through smooth water. There was so much frozen slush. 

I remember that day I had lost the feeling of my feet. The boots were heavy but provided no warmth. It was painful to walk, horrific pain… but I didn’t dare remove my boots to see what was causing it. I knew. A couple of crewmates also complained of the pain and took their shoes off to reveal their dead, rotting, blackened flesh. The frost was making a quick meal of them. The doctor fell to sickness a couple weeks prior and his assistant tried to cut off the rot from the ankles... Like I said; I didn’t dare remove my own shoes. It was better not seeing.

My gloved fingers I tucked into my armpits to keep them warm, my beard was frozen on my face, and my lungs strained under the chilly air sticking with every breath. It felt like daylight wouldn't return. One night, I felt despair take hold, and I wrote a goodbye letter to my wife, should I die.

I imagine she reads it every night, and may keep it to show our baby when they are grown. Or maybe my words of regret, love and sorrow on paper weren’t something she wanted to read again, so she tossed it into the fire.

Either way, I am glad I wrote it. I must have sensed doom. The entire crew did, I think. 

The air was deadly quiet, with only the creaking ice and groaning of our wooden ship breaking the heavy silence. We felt no progress. Hobbs tracked the stars more than the sun, but despite his reassurances, we were convinced we hadn’t actually moved for weeks. Every chuck of ice looked like the next. The horizon never got closer, just a white icy line meeting a blue sky in those few hours of daylight, and a mottled sheet of glowing ice at nighttime. Everything was ambiguous at night; it was easy to mistake a dark gap between the ice as a creature, or a shadowy blot ahead as a ship in the distance.

At first I was one to scold my crewmates, constantly reminding them that ghosts and merfolk aren’t real. However, the sound of the water lapping at the belly of the ship sounded like whispers. I was so loudly denouncing everyone’s concerns I wasn’t brave enough to ask anyone if they heard it, too.

I don’t think they did. I feel, now, that it was targeted to me. Why me? I will never know.

On a fateful night, I peered over the ship’s edge to spy a man flailing in the water. He wasn’t calling out for help, but I could see his mouth like a little black hole gaping desperately. I threw a rope down at him and braced myself on the edge, ready to heave him up. Like I mentioned, my feet were in so much pain, my legs were weak… I never stood a chance. I doubt that was ever a man in those waters; the shadowy night can play tricks on the mind. 

I fell for the trick, and as the figure between the icebergs gripped the rope, it used its unnatural strength to rip me down from the boat and into the icy depths. With a vice-like grip, its long bony fingers dug into my arms and it left me breathless in fear, paralysed in the cold water, staring at the face with a black hole, a void, opening and closing. It neared. I was swallowed by the void, reborn into… well, I don’t know what. A ghost? I don’t know. I still exist, but in what form I am unaware.

Its gaping void transformed into a familiar smile after it consumed me, and I was looking at myself, drenched in water, an expression of overwhelming relief and happiness as it called out with my booming voice for help. My crewmates assisted it, all hands on deck, hauling it up into the safety of the ship. I was powerless to stop them. My voice was lost, my bodily awareness disappeared. 

I don’t know what I am anymore. I feel hollow. For what feels like an endless period of time, I have waited in the Arctic for another boat to come by and save me, but I have seen nothing. I am trapped in a forever darkness, an eternal nothingness. I don’t think I even have a body anymore, for my limbs aren’t frozen in the water.

All I can do is wait for help, screaming a soundless scream from the void that is my mouth.