• When the light abandons the world in those dead small hours of the morning, you can see the ghost ship; all rotting rope and jutting, blackened wood, with a bow at which no-one ever stands and a cargo hold filled with crates that are, in turn, filled with apples, all blood-red and all poisoned. You could close your eyes, and you will, and you will wish the ship away in your mind; away with you foul vessel of the drowned, but no good, the ship is there. It’s real, too. As real as the fear grabbing you and smothering you and hugging hugging hugging you in its clammy embrace, as it whispers in your ear; this ship is not leaving without you.

    I     saw that damn ship, that ugly skeletal wreck, held together by only god knows what sort of trickery, only I don’t think god knows – I believe that wherever this ship is allowed to appear is a place god has forsaken. And although I was terrified and nauseated and hopeless at the sight, I was not surprised. I felt I was beyond surprise. I think I was beyond a lot of things at that point.

    But pray that you, yourself, might be spared that sight. Only certain people see it – people who are far gone – people who won’t eat, people in the final stages of cancer, people putting the noose around their necks. And always, always when the moon is gone and time is dragging, dragging like a dying man, in the dead small hours. That is when you see the ghost ship and that is when you are dead, only on the inside yet but soon the husk you leave will follow.

    But you don’t really see it – I’m sorry. I have misled you; the ship is not a real ship – no, it is, in a sense it is, in a sense it can be everything horrible in the world – and you don’t really see it. It’s hard to put into words – it’s not quite feeling and not quite seeing. It’s a deep, deep instinct in the base of the reptile brain, a tug by a clawed hand at the string of terror. Have I lost you? Then I shall leave it at this: it is the easiest way to describe it as a ship, a ghost ship with an abandoned deck and haunted holds. Because that way you won’t have to describe it as what it truly is.

    But you see it, don’t you? Of course you do.

    And once you see that ship, (the fear will tell you,) it will cast its rusted anchor in your heart and it will not sail until you are aboard. And once you succumb and board the cursed ship, it will spread its tattered sails and embark on a journey of no end on the stretching seas of forever, on black, silent water, under black, lightless sky, in a black, windless night.

    Away with you foul vessel of the drowned, indeed.

    And what is that name on the bow?

    "Dead Gone."