Chapter 9: The Ifrinn

The wooden sailing ship had a different name once. When the captain, Arrais Dubh, had been cursed by the voodoo priest, he changed its name to Ifrinn, after the Scottish Gaelic word for the cold, dark hell he spent every day of the year ... except for one. He was going to live forever, just like he'd been promised. But not at all the way he had expected.

As soon as the sun set on All Hallows Eve, the underwater remains of the Ifrinn and its crew glowed with a pale blue light. The sand stirred as the ship slowly rolled to sit upright again. Bits of wood and rope and cloth came together out of the swirling sand and muck, restoring the ship to the exact state it had been in when the curse was laid on its captain in sweat, blood, and pain.

The ship rose through the water while the bodies of the crew coalesced out of sand and salt to grow bones and then flesh, writhing with contorted faces as the ship broke the surface like a breaching whale. Being dead was torture, but it was pure agony to be restored to life. The only surcease in their suffering was the one day a year they returned to the site of their cursing—the Isle of the Damned. Or in the captain's native Gaelic, Eilean D'maichte.

Arrais took his first breath of air and spat the gritty salt water from his mouth as the ship settled under his boots. The dripping sea water that covered the ship dried at a supernatural rate as the blue glow faded.

"Cac! I need a drink and a woman. Set sail for the island!" He spoke English to be understood by those in the crew who weren't fellow Scots, but his accent was flavored with a thick Gaelic brogue of his homeland.

"Aye Aye!" The crew groaned as they leapt to their work.

The captain was always in a bad mood at the start of their day and had been known to pitch those who irritated him into the sea. Dying only returned them to their watery hell a little early to await another year, which was a punishment they were all desperate to avoid.

"I wonder what year it is?" Sean asked. He was the first mate and stood next to Arrais, just behind the large wheel of the two-masted schooner. The barefoot sailor at the wheel was turning to port while watching the brass compass on the wheel post. The sails snapped as the ship came around to catch the wind.

"What does it matter?" Arrais had a sour expression under his scraggly black beard as he stared towards the distant island. His damp hair hung like oily curtains around his shoulders. Salt crusted the tattered black great coat, its brass buttons corroded green. He swept the coat back to pull out the wood and brass spyglass he carried in a leather tube at his belt and set it to one eye. "I thought so..."

"What is it?"

"Lights." Arrais growled in his throat. "Things've changed. I see a fortress there now."

"How could they build a fortress in a year?" Sean asked and held his hand out for the spyglass. When Arrais handed it over, Sean peered towards the island. "It's enormous! How could this be?"