Little Agnes and the Ghosts of Kelpie Wharf

  ***

  Kelpie Wharf was dismal and grey. The fog, so dense and moist with the salty sea air, was oppressive and choking. A spooky stillness hung over the silent ships bobbing in their slips. Agnes listened in the thick, eerie silence, but there was no snarling, splashing or singing from the legendary ghost.

  She crept stealthily along the creepy, soggy, battered wooden pier, but the locals trailing behind her, whispering urgently to each other, destroyed any hope of taking the ghosts unawares. She could see nothing through the grey murk, no glimmer or faint glow in the darkness. If there was a ghost of Kelpie Wharf, it seemed disinclined to brave the desolate haze.

  When it came, what would it be for her? Would it be shambling clockwork cadavers like Vic? Angry, helpless minions like Hector? Or would it be Ambrose, her one true love...No, it wouldn't be Ambrose. He wasn't dead, after all, and he wasn't here to be snatched away by a sea monster. She didn't have any dead pets—well, unless she counted laboratory rats and the other disastrous experimental animal-like creations she and her father had cooked up in their laboratory. She shivered deliciously, enjoying the frisson of fear that chased down her spine at the thought.

  It wasn't anything. She didn't see anything. Even the sea was quiet below, and the empty ships merely looked sad, not spooky. She huffed indignantly and spun to face the barmy shanty-townspeople who had trailed her from the tavern. She scowled at them.

  “This is just a wind-up, isn't it?” she demanded. “It's a sham. You were all just making up stories to frighten me.”

  “Oh, no,” Luther murmured softly, peering around with a sort of reverent terror in his watery eyes. “It's true. It's all true. Perhaps we...perhaps only one person can see it at a time. Perhaps the ghost doesn't know what to become because there are too many of us here.”

  Agnes scowled. “That's rubbish. This whole thing is rubbish. There's no ghost of Kelpie Wharf!”

  But it wasn't rubbish, for, as she spoke, something shimmered in the murk ahead. “There!” she cried abruptly. Without thinking, as was customary, Agnes spun and raced after the creature. It was large and, though it was oddly shiny, it was deep, Stygian black, something with long limbs and sharp claws, something that moved as though it was slithering in through the fog.

  “Why is it running away?” Agnes demanded as the creature bounded away from her through the fog, leaping onto the roofs of the weathered, trembling shanties lining the wharf before disappearing into the grey.

  Agnes stopped abruptly at the edge of the pier, staring frantically out over the water. She'd not heard a splash, but the long, glimmering black creature had simply vanished over the side of the wharf, into the murk below. “It's gone! Where did it go?” She marched back to the locals, scowling.

  “You saw it?” Luther asked breathlessly.

  “Didn't you?”

  “No. I just saw you run into the fog. That was very foolish, lass. It could have dragged you down into the sea like poor Evangeline.”

  “It wouldn't have done any such thing,” Agnes scolded him. “Ghosts can't do that if they're just made of gasses and ether. Anyway, it didn't look like gas or a ghost. It was black. Pure black.”

  “Is that so? Odd, that. Did you know the thing?”

  “Of course I didn't know it! It was a weird shiny black ghost thing!”

  “Well, you do run about with a re-animated clockwork cadaver, lass. Stranger things have been observed.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why did it run away? Do ghosts run away? They're dead. They have nothing of which to be afraid.”

  Luther lifted his shoulders, but it was Elaine who spoke. “You did mention the awesome power of your weaponry. It might have heard you.”

  Agnes scoffed. “It wasn't even around then. That was a private conversation.”

  “Perhaps ghosts listen on different wavelengths than humans,” Luther suggested feebly.

  Agnes leaned over the railing, staring down at the still, quiet sea below. She huffed. There was no sign of the creature, though she was certain it had gone over the rail. Could it have been a ghost or was it simply another twisted, barmy denizen of this strange, creepy grey shanty-town? She spun. “Vic? What do you reckon?”

  Vic's gears whirred as he lifted his clockwork shoulders. “Jack?”

  “What? What the hell does that mean?”

  “Spring.”

  Agnes frowned at him. “Are your bits running down again? Do you need oiled?”

  His bulging, lifeless eyes rolled in his head. “Kelpie.”

  “Vic, stop talking rubbish.”

  Her attention was drawn, however, by a sudden cacophony of noise that pierced the murky stillness of the wharf. They spun to find the townspeople racing from town towards the wharf. She blinked in surprise and hurried to Luther's side as he threw himself against the railing beside her.

  “What on earth is going on?” she demanded.

  Luther lifted a hand to point out to sea. “The ships! The men are home!”

  She hadn't noticed the two tall ships moving slowly towards the wharf. She frowned. “Hasn't anyone turned on the light for them?”

  “No. We didn't hear their foghorns. Strange, that, but I suppose in all the excitement of the expo and that apparition you saw...”

  Agnes frowned, peering out at the ships. “But, that's quite peculiar.”

  Luther ignored her. He turned his head to call out to the rapscallions who'd followed them. “Boys! Tell the crier the Aqueous Spectre and the Wraith Alloy have come home!”

  The town crier was swift and noisy. Agnes could hear him racing through the streets, into the square with his joyful shouts of, “They're home! Our men are home! The ships are coming to port!”

  The crowd pressed against Agnes, Vic and Luther as the townspeople rushed to the wharf to meet their men. Their exuberance was excessive. The ships glided slowly and serenely to port, but there was something odd about them. Agnes knew very little about nautical ships, for her father insisted on travelling by air, but they moved towards the wharf almost aimlessly, as though their captains were napping behind the steering mechanisms. They did not collide, but once, their noses bumped ever gently against each other, sending them both careening slowly away.

  The cheers and whooping of the crowd died down, and they waited in breathless anticipation for their men to return to them. Agnes, too, was curious despite her complete apathy towards the denizens of Port Enshus.

  The ships moved nearer the port, and the whispering began. Something was wrong.

  “What's going on?” Agnes asked Luther.

  The grizzled old man frowned out at the sea. “I don't know. They aren't moving like they're 'sposed to.”

  “I could have told you that. It's obvious, and I know as much about ships as I do about gassy ghosts.”

  “Where are they?” The murmur spread through the crowd into a crescendo of nervous shouts.

  “What is it?” Agnes demanded.

  “The men. They aren't there on the deck.”

  Agnes squinted through the dense murk and spotted what the others had seen—or rather, failed to see. No sailors stood upon the deck, leaning over the railing to wave cheerfully at the townspeople who awaited them so expectantly.

  She waited, breathless, with the people of Port Enshus as the two ships moved ever closer, so slowly it seemed as though they might stop, bobbing aimlessly, before they ever made it to port. Eventually, the smaller of the two ships, its side emblazoned with Wraith Alloy in gold script, slid into port, but it did not slide gracefully into its slip. Instead, it bumped softly against the railing of the wharf and simply stopped.

  “But there's no one there.” The whispers began again, and the Aqueous Spectre collided with the Wraith, shaking the wharf at their feet.

  “What's happened?”

  “Are they below?”

  “Why hasn't anyone come out?”

  “Who is steering the ship?”

  “No one's steering it. They've all gone!
”

  “What's going on?”

  The crowd surged forward. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  A young, sturdy-looking boy with bright, blue eyes and shaggy blonde hair stepped forward. “I'll go below and see what's keeping them.”

  “Wait--” Agnes called, but her voice was drowned by the noisy crowd.

  “Rash,” Vic added beside her, looking quite grim despite his perpetual leer.

  The hasty shanty-townspeople were paying them no heed. The young boy and his eager companions dropped ropes down the side of the wharf and hoisted themselves over the railing.

  There was nothing else for it. Agnes fumbled at the tool belt on her waist and found the tiny, retractable brass megaphone she kept for just such occasions. “Everybody hold your horses!”

  Her voice boomed over the crowd, and they fell suddenly quiet, murmuring to themselves. The boys stopped dead in their tracks, looking around for the source of the voice. When they spotted Agnes yanking a gas mask over her small, heart-shaped face, they gaped at her in surprise.

  “I am Agnes Crowley,” she declared. “Daughter of Dr Nimrod Crowley, and I order you to stop what you are doing! It is not safe to go down on that ship.”

  “What?”

  “Why?”

  “We have to find out what happened to our men!”

  “Pipe down! There are only a few reasons two ships come to port with no captain and no sailors. One of them is plague.”

  The word was like the crack of a whip. The boys scrambled back onto the wharf, racing back towards the centre of town as though they might escape the sailor's horrible fate.

  “Plague?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “But that's been extinct for years!”

  “Foolish little girl.”

  “What if she's right?”

  “Send someone down!”

  “Where is my husband?”

  “Where is my son?”

  “Everyone shut up!” Luther snarled. “Little Agnes, what do you suggest we do?”

  She beamed at him, but he could not tell, for her mouth was obscured by the gas mask. “Well, we'll send Vic down. He's not alive, just re-animated, so he can't get the plague.”

  “Figures,” Vic moaned.

  “Yes!”

  “Perfect!”

  “Send the zombie!”

  “He's not a zombie!” Agnes snapped. She jerked her head at her re-animated clockwork cadaver. “Go on, then, Vic.”

  “Rats.” He curled his lip resentfully, but it was difficult to tell the difference between it and his usual gaping grin, so Agnes did not trouble herself. She watched him eagerly as he lurched over the side of the wharf, struggling gracelessly down the young men's ropes. He lumbered onto the deck of the Wraith and disappeared into the cabin. The crowd waited on tenterhooks for him to emerge, holding scarves or shawls over their noses and mouths as though it might prevent the spread of the terrible plague, should their men have carried it across the sea with them.

  Finally, after several long, breathless moments, Vic's rotting, grinning face appeared from the ship's cabin. His expression gave nothing away, but Agnes seemed satisfied. She nodded as he shambled back up onto the deck.

  “Well?”

  “What did you see?”

  “Are they down there?”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Are they sleeping?”

  “Gone,” Vic moaned, gripping the rope to climb back up to the wharf.

  “Gone? What do you mean 'gone?'”

  “Vanished.”

  “They can't have vanished! Where could they have gone?”

  “Maybe it is a new plague! A plague that makes people vanish!”

  “No!”

  “The horror!”

  “Everyone run away!”

  Agnes rolled her eyes. “Everyone shut your faces! There’s no such thing as a plague that makes you vanish. I will go down to the ship and see what is going on.” She hoisted herself over the railing and climbed down to meet Vic, who reached up, whirring and ticking, to help her down onto the slightly swaying wooden deck. “Those bunch of gulpy scaredy-cats.”

  Vic nodded in agreement. “Parochial.”

  “They're really not here?”

  He shook his head, following her grudgingly back down into the cabin. She frowned around. There was no sign of the sailors or the ship's captain, but the cabin looked pleasantly homey. There were bunks lining the walls, covered with the sailor's meagre personal items: pictures tacked to the walls above their pillows, blankets piled high, books and writing utensils, decks of cards and pick-up sticks. There were small, inane mementos and knick-knacks, which Agnes took as signs of sentimental sailors, whom, she was certain, would not have left them behind, unless they had been forced to hastily abandon ship.

  The remnants of dinner still remained in the mess hall, and Agnes frowned around at the cramped, rounded wooden room. The empty long tables and benches looked eerily wrong somehow. A pot of stew still steamed in the tiny galley. “They were in the middle of dinner. There's no plague here. This is something else.”

  “Bermuda.”

  “Rubbish. We're nowhere near the Caribbean. Something else happened here, and I intend to find out what it was. Are you with me, Vic?”

  “Shackled.”

  “So we're all in. Come on, let's see if the same thing happened to the other ship. We're going to find out what happened to these sailors.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “Are they there?”

  “Are they all dead?”

  “What's happening?”

  “Little girl, tell us what you found!”

  Agnes held up her hand to the crowd. “I'm sorry, but everyone is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “I already said that! Don't start. There is no plague here, but something has caused your men to simply disappear.”

  “The ghosts!”

  “The ghosts of Kelpie Wharf have taken them!”

  “Argh! Not the ghosts!”

  “There's no such thing as ghosts!”

  Agnes frowned at them. “Everyone pipe down. This is no time for hysterics.” She wondered if the sailors' disappearance could be connected to the figure she saw bounding across the wharf. It didn't seem likely. The figure had been on the wharf, after all, while the ships were still out to sea. She did not credit the idea that a single figure, regardless of its matter construct or purported meta-physicality could cause some fifty or a hundred men to simply vanish into the open sea with no sign at at all, especially when that figure was nowhere near the scene of the crime.

  It might have been pirates or slavers, she supposed, but how had they managed to snatch up so many men without even a tiny fight, for the mess hall and the cabins looked as though no struggle had ever occurred within their walls, was beyond her reasoning. Besides, most of the pirates were in the town square, admiring her father.

  “What will we do?”

  “We must find them!”

  “Where is my husband?”

  “Rory Everett said he was going to marry me! Is this some sort of way to welch on our deal?”

  “Everyone calm down!” Agnes scowled imperiously at them, her fists propped on her hips. “You are being ridiculous. We're going to search the other ship and see if we can uncover any clues. You lot just stay here and keep it down. You're giving me a migraine.”

  “Silly,” Vic added, waggling a scolding finger at them as the they climbed up the rigging to the Aqueous Spectre, which, having simply crashed unceremoniously into the Wraith Alloy, was quite easily accessible. There was little to be found. It looked much the same, though the dinner still steaming on the crew's plates was bangers and mash. Agnes gazed thoughtfully at the uncannily empty benches.

  “Captain,” Vic moaned.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, let's check the captain's quarters. There might be something interesting there. Maybe he's a mad scientist and slipped some sort of shrinking potion
into the crew's dinner.”

  “Cook?”

  “Yes, you're right. The cook would have to be in on it. Perhaps the cook's our man. Or both cooks and captains were conspiring together to create an army of miniature sailors to battle each other so the villains could place bets!”

  “Outlandish.”

  “Stranger things have happened, Vic. Look at you.”

  But when they located the captain's quarters, it was as completely deserted as the mess hall. A plate piled high with the captain's dinner lay upon the ornate, polished wood table set into the wall.

  “Well, that's right out,” she sighed in disappointment. “Something really weird is going on here. We'd better tell the townspeople their men are gone.”

  “Sad.”

  “Oh, they'll get over it in time.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Although, am sure there is nothing that happened here that cannot be explained by simple science. There must be some explanation for this mysterious phenomenon.”

  “Kelpies.”

  “No.” She stomped her foot. “I do not think the ghosts got them. Although...I did see something very strange on the wharf.”

  “Scared?”

  “I was not scared! Anyway, I am sure there is some perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this.”

  “Dr Crowley.”

  “No way. I'm not letting him in on this. He will take all the fun and glory out of it. Besides, he's busy smarming the fishy dregs and revelling in his genius. It's up to us to solve this mystery.” She huffed, then she looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Now, how are we going to solve this mystery?”

  Vic lifted his shoulders. “Evidence?”

  “Gee, that's helpful.” She scowled thoughtfully around the cabin. “Although...Ah ha!” She snatched up a battered leather journal resting on the slightly swaying nightstand.

  “Diary?”

  “Captain's log.” Agnes frowned over the neat, spidery scrawl. “The last entry was about an hour ago. They were about a kilometre from land, preparing to come to port. Whatever happened to them, it happened not long ago.” She slapped the captain's log against Vic's chest. “Hold this. Let's check the other ship.”

  They ignored the shouts and supplications from the Port Enshions on the wharf and climbed down the rigging to the Aqueous Spectre. Its master had not been as neat or meticulous as the captain of the Wraith Alloy, but he had notated their proximity to the Spectre at nearly the same moment.

  “Vic, something untoward happened to these ships, and we are going to discover what it is.”

  “Sit out.”

  “Stop complaining. Anything is better than mucking about in this fishy shanty town. Step lively.”

  He shambled after her as she climbed back up to the wharf, facing the anxious townspeople with her hands on her hips.

  “People of Port Enshus, I know what has happened to your men!”

  “What?”

  “Was it plague?”

  “Kelpies!”

  “Pirates!”

  “Slavers!”

  “Shipwreck!”

  “The ships aren't wrecked!”

  “They were thrown overboard!”

  “Who could have thrown them overboard?”

  “Pipe down, you lot!”

  “What was it, little girl? What happened to the sailors?”

  “Well, I don't...I don't know for sure.”

  “You said you knew!”

  “Lies!”

  “We trusted you!”

  Agnes raised her voice to be heard over the crowd before they dissolved into another foolish tirade. “All right, all right, I might have exaggerated. I do not know what happened to them. But I knew when and where it