The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea

THE TRYAL ATTRACT ^{TERRY DOWLING}

The sole condition Will Stevens set for letting me spend the night in the room with the skull was telling him everything it said.

My elderly neighbour was insistent about that. “Just be honest with me, Dave. I’ve lived with this for nearly three-quarters of my life. I need it put to rest.”

“I swear it. I need this put to rest too.”

Will stood in the doorway, a tall, weathered figure with a narrow face, pale eyes, strands of white hair combed in close against his own skull, wearing tan slacks, a cardigan over a white shirt. He was holding Solly, his big Persian cat, stroking it as he watched me settle in. “Well, I hope you’re comfortable,” he said. “I had Maggie set it up when she was here. My daughter comes by every day. Stays over on weekends when she can. She’d like closure about this too.”

“It looks great.”

A collapsible bed had been set up along the eastern wall of the small square tower room, with a side table with lamp, a digital clock, a decanter of water and a glass, a torch in case one was needed by a stranger in a strange house, even eye-shades since there were no curtains at the windows this high up. And, quaintest touch of all, there was a chamber pot.

“You know where the toilet is, Dave, but it’s a bit of a hike if you’re half asleep. You might prefer this.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“And, Dave, about the skull. I’ve slept here with it many times, all the good it did. Just don’t let it upset you. The whispering, I mean. I’ll believe whatever you tell me.”

“I’ll log it all in the notebook like I promised.”

“Thanks. And don’t mind if Solly joins you in the night. He sleeps wherever he wants. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

And that was it. Will had closed the door and headed for the staircase at the end of the landing that opened into both the modest square tower and the old Victorian mansion’s upper floor. I heard the stairlift whirring as it took him to his own digs at ground level.

I changed for bed as if I were in my own bedroom seven doors further along Abelard Street, eased between the covers as if it were my own bed, then checked the time.

It was 10:07 p.m. Same street. Pretty much the same night sounds through the half-open windows on all four sides: the same chirruping of insects; the occasional tock-tock of a frog in the front-yard pond; the sound of late traffic on Ryde Road; a plane on late approach to the airport on the other side of the city, way across these late-spring suburbs.

The rush of wind in the trees was closer, of course, this high up amid their foliage. But it was a good sound, and not too loud. I’d still be able to hear the skull, Will had assured me. There’d be no mistaking it.

Which both fascinated and troubled me.

To think. A night with a whispering skull!

There can be distinct layers of unreality in how one thing leads to another. Six nights before, someone had torched a car parked on the southern side of Abelard where our quiet street bordered the playing fields of one of Sydney’s most exclusive boys’ schools, probably as part of an insurance scam or some last-recourse act of evidence removal. Local residents, myself included, had simply assumed that the white sedan parked across from Number 7 for the past week had belonged either to a neighbour or someone visiting.

But around 2:30 that Tuesday morning, a series of muffled explosions had woken most of the nearby residents, who looked out their windows to see the blazing vehicle, promptly made their separate calls to the fire brigade, then joined other neighbours standing about at safe distances like kids watching a bonfire. The fire engine arrived, a hose was deployed, the fire quickly extinguished. The police were soon there as well, asking their questions. Those not engaged in telling what little they knew continued chatting.

An elderly man on a walking stick moved in next to me, and I recognised him as the widower from 1A at the far end of the street, the “old guy from the big house,” as he was often called in front-fence conversations.

“Not something we get very often,” he said.

“Not around here,” I replied. “I’m Dave. Dave Aspen.”

“Good to meet you, Dave. I’m Will. Will Stevens. From 1A down there. You lived here long?”

“Forty-two years. A local boy. Loved your house as a kid, with that tower at the front. Called it the Castle.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’ll never forget there was a skull perched on a cupboard or bookcase in the top tower room. Dark-looking thing, more like a mask. I even borrowed my dad’s binoculars for a closer look. Definitely a human skull. Were you there then?”

Will was watching the firemen working at the car. “I was. Not my idea to put it up there, but yeah.”

“Well, that bloody skull’s been with me ever since. Still dream about it, if you can believe that.”

Now he turned to face me. “You do?”

“Once, maybe twice a year at least.”

“Well now.” Which was the appropriate step-away, leave-it-be point. But old Will kept at it. “What happens in these dreams?”

“Different every time. But when it turns up it talks. Tries to tell me something.”

“What does it say?” Will’s tone had taken on a distinct edge.

“Can’t make it out. It whispers something. But it’s important, you know?”

“How do you know that, Dave? That it’s important.”

“Just how it is. But all these years, I never quite catch what it’s saying. Bloody frustrating really. You think we would’ve reached an understanding.”

“Dave, we’ve been neighbours all this time. Pity we didn’t get to talk earlier. That skull you remember. It’s still there. Still in the tower, but one floor down now, out of view.”

“Hey, I’d love to see it.”

“I’d really like you to. Maybe tomorrow, if you have the time. Drop by in the afternoon. You see, it’s like you say. It whispers in the night sometimes.”

There was the torched car still smoking in the early hours. Police standing about. The fire crew packing up, murmuring to each other in low voices. An unexpected meeting with a neighbour. And now an odd tingling down my spine. And another at Will’s next words.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s been talking to you all along.”

Late spring in Sydney so often means November afternoons with a riot of sunlit jacaranda blooms above the rooftops, rich mauve against brooding storm-clouds as the ragged end of winter settles into its summer run.

That’s how it was when I headed along to 1A at 12:55. I’d spent the morning finishing off the plans for the Quinn-Elliot shopping mall extensions and had sent scans through to Marta and Eric at our architectural office in Brisbane. This would be my reward.

Will answered the front door on my second knock, looking more his seventy-seven years in daylight, more like any other elderly person caught outside their comfort zone but putting their best face on it.

“We’ll have a cuppa when we’re done upstairs, if that’s okay,” he said, and turned to the Stairmaster, whose track ran up the wall of the long wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. “You go up first, Dave. Make a U-turn at the top.”

I grabbed the banister rail and made my ascent, heard him whirring up behind.

The skull sat on a thin, dark blue cushion atop a waist-high mahogany stand. True to Will’s word about it being “out of view,” it was now set in the north-west corner between the tall, all-points windows, facing me as I entered the modest tower room.

“So no impressionable school kids can see,” Will said good-naturedly.

I smiled. “It’s very discoloured. That honey-amber sheen.”

“One of its owners, possibly whoever first found it, lacquered it, coated it with vegetable gums and animal fats, something like that. That’s probably what helped preserve it so well. We’ve been told that it’s older than it looks.”

“Is that silver on the sides?” For that’s what it looked like, added to the zygomatic arches, the nasal bone, and at two places on the mandible.

“Interesting, eh? We keep it polished as best we can, but that’s the extent of the maintenance. Makes it seem important, yes? A cherished ancestor or something. Despite trying to keep a low profile, quite a few museums want it. We get letters all the time. But we won’t let it out of our sight.”

“Is there a backstory? Is it from our colonial past? Brought from overseas?”

“That’s the trouble, Dave. Little is known, though maybe you can help us there. It’s definitely from a male. Its official name is the Farday Skull, after Lucas Farday, the only owner to record any sort of provenance for it in 1907. As late as that.”

“But he wasn’t the first owner?” I realised my gaffe. “First post-mortem owner?”

“Two previous owners are mentioned—not counting that original one.” He smiled, though in a distracted way, as if considering facts he was leaving out to give the shortest account possible. “But nothing can be verified. Lucas Farday sold it or gave it to my grandfather in 1919. Farday was a bit of a showman, so it came with the usual clutch of rumours you get when skulls are kept as curios, especially those in curiosity cabinets and tent-shows.”

“What kind of rumours?”

“That it screams, for instance. Or utters a prophecy every full moon. That it can only be heard by those about to die. Collectors and spruikers encourage such stories.”

“You’ve actually heard it whispering, you said.”

“Many times. So has Maggie. So did my late wife. We’ve just never been able to make out what it’s saying. It’s always just out of hearing.”

“Can it be a sea-shell effect, Will? You know, put one of its openings to your ear, you hear the ocean?”

Will chuckled again. “It’s funny how many people never want to put a skull to their ear to find out. But yes, there is the ocean effect, though a skull has surprisingly few openings where you can hear it. But the whisper is much more than white noise, Dave. It can be heard from where we’re standing now.”

I wanted to ask if there were recordings, or if it had been tested scientifically with appropriate instruments, but I was now being offered the chance to participate in something of a clinical assessment myself. I’d let that be enough on such short acquaintance.

“It’s complete, I notice. The lower jaw is wired on?”

“Glued on, actually. So it can’t bite.”

“Excuse me?”

Will chuckled. “Another urban myth you get all the time when the lower jaw is still attached. Biting skull stories. This was glued on well before Farday parted with it. Perhaps an earlier owner thought it might stop it sounding. You have to love these provenance junkies. They add whatever they like.”

“Looks to be from a natural death?”

“Excuse me?”

“No trepanning holes. No autopsy line where the top of the skull’s been removed.”

“You have a sharp eye. But I guess that’s a bit heartening, really. You can pick it up if you want.”

“May I?”

“You need to be sure. No faking going on.”

“Oh, right. I see.”

I crossed to the stand and—with only a moment’s hesitation—lifted the ale-coloured orb, rotated it slowly in my hands. I’d never touched, let alone held, a human skull before—this ultimate palace, library, vital stronghold of another being, once a complete entity, someone who had left this “container” behind when he’d vanished in death. It was heavier than I expected, maybe three pounds total, though I allowed that the silver counted for something. Apart from the lacquering and silverwork, it was very clean, divorcing it even more from the organic realities it had once been part of. It was more like a piece of décor or a film prop—an emblem of death rather than an actual artefact from it.

I turned it over and examined the spinal hole in the base. “This opening—?”

“The foramen magnum,” Will said. “Where the spinal cord entered the cranial vault. You get the echo chamber effect most there. But, like I said, Dave—it’s not an ocean effect. The whisper will come to you across the room. And you’re free to check the skull again whenever you like if you decide to help us. We know you’ll be careful.”

“So how do we do this? What do you propose?”

“You’ll have family commitments, I’m sure. But this is a chance we can’t afford to let pass. I was going to suggest you sleep over each Sunday night for as long as you can manage. Till you hear it.”

“Or dream about it again.”

“Till something happens. Will you do it?”

At 10:34, I was starting to grow sleepy.

Being this high up certainly made it easier to settle. A basement or a more closed-in space would have added a pressing, claustrophobic feel, but this makeshift tower bedroom had an airy, open quality—made the whole thing bearable somehow.

The only thing I’d done before slipping between the covers was turn the pedestal so the skull was side-on, not facing me with its empty eye sockets. Positioned in left profile, it actually looked like it was keeping watch, just as it had in my boyhood years when it gazed down on the street below.

The inevitable thoughts came, of course, but grew less urgent with familiarity.

Who were you?

Who added the silver and why?

What was your death like to cause such embellishment, if the adornment were even remotely part of the death itself?

No ordinary skull, surely. Then again, there were ultimately no ordinary deaths. No ordinary skulls. Every one was unique.

The long curtains lifted and fell, breathing in the night.

What would it be like when it whispered, I wondered, realizing that I truly did expect it to happen, expected something from those calm inner chambers, trusted that they would draw something in, produce the sighs and murmurs that supported its reputation. The occipital hole was blocked by the cushion now, though from what Will had said that made no difference.

If not tonight then in time. For Will and his daughter Maggie it had just been the whispering. For me it had been a string of dreams over nearly forty years in which a skull—this skull quite likely!—had tried to tell me something. Somehow it meant everything.

I woke several times, first at 12:02 when Solly jumped off the bed (I hadn’t even known he’d paid a visit), then again at 12:55 and at 1:23 for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.

Maybe it was Solly fussing about again, chasing insects in the balmy night, though I’d heard nothing. Each time, I’d check the green numerals of the clock, then lay considering the different sound and spatial signatures of the house, tracking the obvious things—how everything felt larger, higher, older, dustier, redolent of years of waxing and polishing—trying to fathom others far more elusive, far harder to put into words.

Each time I listened for the skull sounding, wondering if it might have done so just now, enough to waken me, but that I had missed what it had to say.

It didn’t happen like that. Rather it came on a dream. At 2:18, I was startled awake by the terrifying certainty that the skull was looming over me, poised there with jaws hideously agape and about to bite. It took a while to free myself from that terrible image, but finally I did manage to sleep again.

There was no such image when I woke a short time later, lathered in sweat, heart pounding, just the familiar night sounds through the partly open windows. But there was the chilling sense that it had been there, that any breathing, any whispering, that now came would be laden with suppressed screams, thwarted spite, ancient mischief.

The jaws are glued shut, I told myself as the panic ebbed. No possibility of biting. Or screaming. Or whispering, for that matter. It’s the mind playing tricks.

But there! Did I imagine it? I kept absolutely still, tried to calm my heart.

Like escaping gas? The hiss of a snake?

A sibilance.

There was. There was. From across the room. I didn’t dare switch on the light lest it stop.

A far rush of surf up an impossible shore.

“…sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss…”

It came and fell away, exactly like the sea.

“…ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

The curtains lifted and settled. Leaves stirred in the night. The sibilance grew stronger.

“Thissssssssssss…”

I had the word, as easily as that. This.

“…chanssssssssss…”

Chance.

“…ourssssssssss…”

Ours.

I’d never forget this moment. Such words. I remembered to grab my notebook and pen from the side-stand, made myself write them down.

“…adlarsssssssss…”

What it sounded like.

But no. No.

At last!

This chance ours at last.

Then grasped what I’d heard.

Not “Our chance at last” but “This chance ours at last.” The odd syntax. The contrived quaintness of it.

It wanted the s’s for dramatic effect. No, needed them most likely, needed them to slide along, exactly like the sea running up the strand. Economies of delivery. Working with what it had.

“I’m listening.” It sounded silly to say it, melodramatic, and part of me resolved to check for wires, a relay or receiver when this was done, some kind of set-up.

Better yet, do it now, I told myself. While it’s sounding.

I pushed back the covers, swung my feet to the floor, waited for the next word to begin. I’d move on the next word.

It came with the same rush of ocean on sand.

“…essssss-oarrrr…” The ocean slid away.

“What’s that?” I said, and moved the short distance to the skull, leant over it. “I don’t understand.”

“…essssss-oarrrr…” it said again, not even a foot from me, the force of it adding the sense of consonants it could not manage. And this time I was able to lay two fingers atop the cranium before it stopped sounding, felt a deep thrumming as it ebbed, like a real wave sliding back.

And understood.

Restore.

Spoke it, fingers still carefully in place. “Restore?”

“…eeeessssssssssssss…”

Which had to be “Yes.” And with the thrumming again, though quickly fading.

“Restore you where?” I asked, but knew the answer. “The room upstairs? Where you once were! Why up there?”

But nothing. Nothing now.

Just the night at the windows. The troubling image of those jaws spread wide, ready to bite.

Over breakfast, I asked if I could come back that night, not wait the whole week. Will was equally keen now he knew the skull had spoken.

What surprised him most was my request that we move both bed and skull to the floor above.

“You think that’s what ‘restore’ means?”

“Can’t say. But it used to be in the room above the one I’m in. Why was it brought down?”

“No idea. Mum or Dad would have done that, probably when my grandparents passed. This has been the family home for five generations.”

“Then your grandparents had it facing out like that. The way I saw it as a kid.”

“Can’t be sure. Why do you ask?”

“The dream before I woke. The skull was angry, Will. Fiercely angry. It wanted to bite.”

“You were open to suggestion, Dave. That talk about skull stories—”

“Just saying how it felt. Maybe they had it facing out for a reason. Otherwise why do that?”

“Frighten the local kids.”

I had to smile. “But it draws too much attention.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Put it back where it was. One floor up, right window facing out. Same angle, same height. I’ll carry the bed up now.”

“Maggie will be here around ten. You draw a quick sketch of how you remember it. We’ll do the rest.”

My darling Marta was good about it on the phone, asking a dozen questions about my new role as ghost-breaker for the neighbours and making me promise to keep her up to date on what developed. She admitted that she was being pressured to stay on as on-site consultant for the Quinn-Elliot mall project anyway.

After dinner, I locked the house and wandered along to 1A, but stood for a moment at the front gate admiring the modest but impressive two-storey Victorian mansion that had always been such a part of my life. In the last golden light of evening, I traced the line of the tower up from the front door to the room at the very top, below the railing and flagpole. There at the uppermost left window the skull sat in its old spot, just as I’d seen it all those years ago.

Right height, right angle now. Fiercely grinning as all complete skulls did. And facing northwest, I realized for the first time, given how Abelard Street was aligned.

Northwest. Such a simple thing to realize. Never watching me at all, really, rather scanning the horizon. The trees would have been smaller then, the view less obstructed.

It’s all about having a better view!

As I reached to unlatch the gate, I swung my gaze from the top floor down past the windows of the room I’d occupied the night before. There was something in the left-hand pane, I was certain, a smudge pressed to the glass like a thumb-print, indistinct but peering out. There may not have been eyes, but I’d been so taken with the skull that I easily imagined them.

I did an immediate double take, but there was nothing.

Just eye trickery then. Though another thought came. Ancient mischief.

After a final glance at the trickster skull looking down—no, out, northwest!—I went in to resume my vigil.

The uppermost tower room was identical to the one below it, but considerably less by way of a bedroom. My bed was there, the side table and lamp, all my things from the night before, even the chamber pot, but this room was still a storage space. Several cupboards and boxes had been pushed to the side, and the chamber needed a more thorough dusting than time had allowed.

The skull was perched at chest height on the edge of a narrow bookcase in the north-western corner, angled so it peered out the right-hand window just as depicted in my drawing. Maggie had done a great job.

Will and I spent a pleasant two hours at the spacious kitchen table enjoying the delicious casserole Maggie had left for us in the slow cooker and sharing a bottle of his vintage merlot. We talked about everything from his family’s extensive property holdings to his collection of limited editions of Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs, anything but the skull waiting for me upstairs. We agreed that this was best, though it remained the unseen guest in the room.

I went up to bed at ten o’clock, making my way up into the tower wondering what new trials the night would bring, an odd way to think about it—burdens, trials—but that’s how it was. I read for a while, but soon fell into sleep so easily that I would later wonder if the skull played any part in that as well.

I was sure that it would wake me when the time was right.

Again it came on a dream—this time of a wild storm at sea, of waves crashing against a reef, great swells lifting and falling over hard stone ridges, beating themselves into vast swathes of whitewater and foam.

Lots of s’s to make it easier, I told myself in the dream, self-aware as dreamers sometimes are.

At least there was no skull with jaws agape this time, just these ocean swells being torn into whitewater.

“Trial!” the word came, strikingly clear, known as much as heard.

No s’s now, I told myself. The skull uses dreams for the words it cannot say!

“Trial!” it came again, above the wind-lashed breakwater of the reef.

I woke with a start, instantly aware that Solly had paid another visit and now sat perched upon my chest.

No, no, way too light for Solly!

I reached for the side light, pressed the switch, saw with a shock that the skull sat there, eye cavities staring, teeth grinning fiercely, rising and falling with every rapid breath.

I would’ve leapt up, but terror locked me in place, kept me there long enough for the silver glinting against lacquered bone to make me think: Fragile and Protect!

Will is doing this! I immediately thought. Or Maggie. How else could it move?

Then the sea came from inside the skull, rushing as it had the previous night.

“…sssssssssssssssss…”

With words carried along, nothing as hard to say as “trial.”

“…see-venssss-eyessss… see-venssss-eyessss…”

It couldn’t say “Will.” Like “trial,” that name was too much.

Stevens lies!

Could it be?

And more.

“…or-essssss… or-essssss… or-essssss…”

The silver on the cheekbones glinted. The rounded hollows where eyes once sat stared, fully lit. I could see the small holes at the back where the nerves and blood vessels had gone in, was more aware than ever that this was the setting for the jewel of the person it had once carried, someone’s only life.

Northwest, of course! I spoke it aloud. “Northwest!”

“…sssssssssssssssss!”

Such urgent affirmation, harsh with emotion. And more.

“…essssss-oar!… essssss-oar!”

Northwest. Restore.

“Trial. Northwest. Restore.”

The inner ocean rushed up the shore one last time.

“…sssssssssssssssss!”

Such determination, such relief.

I instinctively looked to where the skull had been atop its bookcase facing northwest. There were two smudges there now, two thumb-print faces, one pressed to the left-hand window pane, one to the right. Not one, two!

I had not cried out when I’d found the skull on my chest, but now a frantic yelling filled the house. It truly took moments to realize that I was the one yelling, mine the only skull screaming!

When Will hurried in and learned what the skull had said, he accepted my accusations with “Please, Dave. We’ll talk about all this in the morning,” and urged me to try and settle again.

I was more surprised than relieved that I could do so. There were no more communications, no further dream messages or nightmares, though I tossed and turned for the rest of the night and came down to breakfast feeling leaden and headachy, as if with a serious hangover.

At least I didn’t need to rush home and do a Google search—Will was immediately forthcoming with the real facts about the skull—though I resolved that I would do a net search later, do my best to verify everything away from 1A when this was done.

Will said very little until he’d served us a cooked breakfast and freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Dave,” he said, taking his place at the table. “There were things we needed you to confirm without prior knowledge before we went any further. You have to understand.”

“You said you never knew what the skull was saying.”

“We never have. It’s the back-story material we misled you about.”

“Misled. Much better than lied.” I was feeling terrible from lack of sleep, the events of the previous night. “What does ‘trial’ mean?”

“It’s the Tryal. Spelt T-R-Y-A-L or T-R-Y-A-L-L, sometimes even the way we spell it now. Australia’s first recorded shipwreck. An East Indiaman taking the new Brouwer route to the East Indies. Back in May 1622, she strayed off course on her way to Batavia—Jakarta in Indonesia. Struck what we now call the Tryal Rocks near the Montebello Islands.”

“Where are they?”

Will topped up my coffee cup. “Off Barrow Island, close by Exmouth and Dampier on the coast of Western Australia. It’s said Captain Brooke abandoned ship prematurely, cast off in a half-full skiff with the silver they were carrying for trade. He reached safety, lived to be absolved of blame and command another ship. But more than half the crew were left to drown. Think of it, Dave. The ship’s only surviving longboat was already overcrowded and wallowing. Brooke and the skiff were nowhere to be seen. He reached Jakarta, reported the Tryal breaking up four hours after impact. Accounts from those in the longboat said this didn’t happen till the following morning. He lied about what happened.”

“You’ve lied about what happened! And not just about Farday being a dealer and selling it on. Was Lucas Farday the original owner? Is this his skull?”

“We can’t know for certain. He may have gone down with the Tryal. But he may have clung to wreckage, made it to the Montebello group of islands. They’re barren, hardly anything there, and it has to be another thirty miles at least to the coast. But the currents are strong. There’s a good chance that his body was washed ashore and found. Identified later from jewelry, remains of clothing. The skull came into our family, however that happened. You have to understand. We wanted to believe.”

“So what do you know about the skull?”

“It’s what’s called an attract. An object that draws things to it. There’s usually one at the site of any haunting: a chair, a book, a hairbrush, the house itself.”

“I mean genetically.”

“My grandfather called it the Farday Skull. Told us it belonged to our ancestor from the Tryal, that he was lost in the wreck on the Tryal Rocks. But, living or dead, he may have reached shore. He may have been the first Englishman to set foot in Australia.”

“Will, what did DNA tests show? You must have had it done.”

“Negative for a direct link from one. Inconclusive from another. But if it’s an attract, it can protect itself. Manage deflection.”

“You can’t believe that.”

Will set down his cup. “Those dreams you’ve had.”

“A way of communicating—”

“But of warning too, yes? Even defending?”

Biting! I thought, but kept that to myself. “I still hear wishful thinking.”

“You may be right. But, Dave, it came to us. Stayed with us. In our family. Called to you. Why?”

“You think I might be a relation too?”

“Dave, I have to ask. Is there anything?”

“Not much. A great-great-great uncle was a convict on a prison hulk, the Phoenix, moored in Lavender Bay in the early 1800s. That’s about it. Though at some point there would have been long sea voyages to Australia before it. Some contact with Brooke’s or Farday’s descendants may have been possible. We can never know.”

“We can’t,” my elderly neighbour agreed. “So what do we do?”

“Those shadows at the windows. Something’s happening, Will. So no more lies.”

“No point. It’s told you everything we were withholding. The Tryal Rocks are northwest of here, on the other side of the continent.”

“And it must be furious about that. You’ve been thwarting it. You cost it years.”

“Dave, it never spoke to us. How were we to know? What do you say? One more night?”

“One more night.”

I knew better than to make any special arrangements. The skull would do whatever it needed, whatever it could manage to do, so I left it atop its bookcase, angled out, watching the night, the far distances, as it once had for so many years.

I still felt wretched from the previous night’s events, and so, settling into welcome sleep, I was able to allow that nothing else would happen, that everything had been clarified.

I was wrong, of course, but, feeling headachy and strange, there was resignation rather than panic when I became aware that the skull was in bed with me, clutched in my arms beneath the covers, angled so its sealed teeth were pressed hard against my throat.

I did not scream, did not yell. Not this time. There was even a touch of gallows humour about the whole thing.

“Do your worst,” I said, accepting other needs, this other reality, all the while asking myself, what now? What can possibly remain to be done?

I barely remembered the charter flights across the continent to Broome, then down to Dampier. There were the vaguest recollections of a motel room at Cable Beach and another at the Mermaid Hotel, but little else. Finally, on a mild Monday afternoon, after a long-haul helicopter charter out across the Montebello group, we hovered above that roiling point of shipwreck and heartbreak, betrayal and despair, and those deadly rocks broke the surface forty metres below our skids.

It wasn’t till then that I came to myself, became aware that I was strapped in and that a charter crewman was reaching over to haul the cabin door back, became aware of Will beside me, first pulling back his headset then mine before handing over the skull and urging me on.

“It’s time, Dave. It’s time.”

I took the thing, hardly knowing what I’d been given at first. But as I prepared to throw it down to the wet rocks that came and went amid the heaving whitewater below, I found I could speak of it at last.

“Brooke’s skull, not Farday’s. Captain Brooke’s, you hear? Farday’s ghost borrowed it, possessed it, treasured it, anything so he could come home.”

Will had known to lean in close. “You’re sure?” he called above the roar of the rotors and the ocean.

“Two ghosts fighting over a single skull.”

Then I let it go, felt my twin guests leave me, slip away, saw the skull’s jaws snap wide in a scream or a shout, what it looked like, though how could we ever know? But for me it was to bite something so they were locked together, fiercely and forever, going to whatever home they could find for themselves in that harsh and unforgiving sea.