(№1.2)

Too strange to believe, too dangerous to explore, a tale, forgotten in a box in an attic long gone, a box of dusty oak wood purposely left to rot and disintegrate and people who told and retold the story a billion times now crumbled to dust and ashes, reunited with the soil and long-lost forgotten too.

The Ballad of the Skeleton Crew is one of those forgotten, deceased stories, once famed for filling with anguish both the listeners and tellers alike, as seated around a bonfire or pub just as, and macabre flanks of flames dancing across their pallid limbs and tanned skin any season alike, incarnated once again in all its gory glory and chilling thrill to be told and retold, swept over even the lands and villages they could not reach, like the most contagious ailment.

Even expert navigators and their captains, along with the passive folk of the countryside, eaten up and impressed far quicker with freaky fables of maritime theme – when passing especially the shores of young America in the 17'0s and enjoying the wild and untamed existences near the Atlantic, unmarked by European history of influence, tragedies and horrors often never connoted with the vast and eternal grounds of the place where all dreams would come true - marched along confident and fearless, until they came across the saga and myths of the Skeleton Crew, sailing the shores of even the most tricked landscape and the most precious beaches indifferent, upended in many mouths, shaped to sound even more gruesome for innocent travellers or immigrants and lessened for the children as bedtime stories to not unsettle their minuscule moods all in its entirety.

They'd have a good laugh about it, drinking a few whiskeys to maybe consider it a moment, fingers although trembling a little bit more than before to the attentive eye, perhaps from the whiskey or rum or beer, or really because shivers catapulted down their spines and they shortly might regret a little the decision made to come to America or wherever else they have come to listen to it in the first place, before again bursting into laughter and giggles only adults could produce when concerned with such serious matter of life and death, for they were far too close to their end then they all cared to admit and recognise.

Of course, no one believed it really. Only by living through it and surprisingly enclosing a survivor, against all odds, could one start to.

Merely from the second they explored it with their own eyes, felt the dread in their veins, boiled blood roaring and impulses begging to get away, feeling the horror sink in till it stirred action and deed, would they apprehend and consider their faults, commencing with prayers for mercy on last time, since they terribly sinned and figured their errors, although no message to any kind of god will aid you in that intricate position of yours.

No one knew where they came from, the members, the crew, nor who they actually were, but what they would take – or in that case give - was as crystal clear as sky and water are right before a raging, hungering, avaricious storm, much taking and bestowing what that Cursed Crew did upon them.

Death always was to follow immediately after their arrival.

It started out with a beautiful melody, out of this world, akin to the chanting of angels, a soft hum carried by the wind to the ears of any foolish, gullible villagers, asking, begging, screaming to be adored and noticed, almost manipulating them to walk towards the huge cliffs boarding and throwing themselves in the sea to drown, for their hearts vilified and revelled upon hearing this god-like, sweet, compelling, unutterably beautiful song, luring and chiming the night with subtle sounds stemming right from a tropical paradise itself. Flowers would bloom in the middle of the darkest, saturnine night, bewitched and drunken, enchanted, birds would wake to twitter and mutter, their chirping compared now cheap, childish, in comparison to the whole, musky, inebriating note the music of the strangest instrument would partake.

It was indeed out of this world, filled with sorrow and joy, fulfillment and tormenting anguish and the humans would love it every single time. At least at first.

Smart, crashing danger always deceives with the most pretty disguise.

It was an invitation to a dance, a banquet with dreadful ending, their velveteen coffins readied and awaiting their bodies to unite.

People tend to give in the weakness the foreign, ancient sounds provided sweetly with an allegro rhythm and enthralling melody and gathered all around the sea, with tilted heads and closed eyes to enjoy the lonely, lovely, delicate instrumental song bursted out into the tender night, produced by something seeming not belonging on Earth, as it sounded too divine, too heavenly to brought upon here, with all the dirt and human filth surceased on the streets and horrid betrayal and hideous enmity regularly challenging the inward piece and atmosphere, for everyone much didn't care what happened out of their membranous shell nor considered to intervene.

In this, they erred, people nowadays and in the past alike, too ignorant, too selfish, no one tends to see the truth, the warning signs screaming up at their faces, yelling they are coming, closing the distance to the unlucky village more and more, taking all their glory time and letting the rippling tide pool them right on the flanks of their next target endowed with demise and doom in check.

Wind was to refresh, a light breeze cooling the villagers with playful facility, air scented with the perfume of summer, tepid and mild a cover, albeit the sea remained calm and as smooth as a greek glass platter, with the white tips of water crests foaming at the surface lazily, tranquillity musing, retrieving its wild elements away from what was to come, as when bothering it, disturbing them the slightest, in reality the consequences for the sea even, normally unbridled, unmastered, unmatched, violent and loving, it would courtesy in respect and tremor curbed and renounced, to the most friendliest and amiable creature of all time, when faced by the ire of these special strangers.

It was always calm when they'd come eventually, the quiet before the storm.

There was not even mist on the beaches or around the cliffs, as they demanded to be seen, to be adored or claimed to shoot a good last glance on what they would destroy.

The horizon was always crystal clear when they'd show up for the symphony of the apocalypse and impended downfall.

For they only came at night, in the middle of the night, always at the same time like adjusted clockwork, to the hour beyond retrieval and hope, where children would be stolen by nimble faeries and mellow elderlies would drop dead for the upheld pressure of dark shattering glass and the will to live gone beyond, indulging to the daring and rapturing abyss far beyond, the paradise they despaired to attain. Entire flocks of sheep would be wasted and slaughtered, for the massacre to be discovered in shocking indignation when the sun meets again at dawn the next day.

Nobody ever saw them during the day – or did and just failed to recognize them, yet that would be highly unlikely as you, courageous and infamous explorer, are going to find out very soon - and long before dawn would come and redeem the damage of the setting sun yesterday, upon they would have sailed away with grim gloating, carrying more secrets, more unanswered responses and prayers, and entreaty to spare with them.

A huge boat would firstly appear, but no. It is not quite a boat.

It isn't even a ship as no one had ever seen this special form of it – at least back in their earlier days.

It looked foreign, mystical, ripped out of other times and entirely false to catch a glimpse of it, forbidden, forsaken, enticingly wrong, but that's where temptation finds fruit and base to feed the hungering villagers with poisoned apples and whilst succumbing, they would beg you even to feed them further. For the illicit disaccord is the one most wished.

As the song would grow louder, the ship neared and was manoeuvred towards the town with unknown grace, the people watching in awe as it elegantly turned half way through to almost stay, still yet passing slowly, not from afar for it wanted to be spectacled, drooled on, anyhow ample and rooming for longing so no unwanted details would be enclosed nor confirmed.

A huge ship – several feet high, sixty feet at all, if not more.

The deck and mast and whole ship made out of the darkest wood, a wood so dark it appeared to be almost black, rotting dead wood, glad to still be in form and intact.

But any wood used was dead already anyway.

At the edges, the ship went blurry, almost as if it would circle and muse about disappearing again when it only had arrived a couple of seconds ago and again not leaving a trace left where it floated.

But the weird, ominous thing about it was the faint glow, ambiguous, turning the edge and dimming the squinting, strained view of humans glancing and glaring in the dark, a halo of shimmery blue light penetrating the air and shining through the nocturne that was breathtaking.

Some people – normally children, equipped with sharper eyesight unwillingly, who were almost under cries forced to listen by their foolish parents, as they knew truly what their arrival meant – spotted a small light, a lantern perhaps with blue light on deck, a bit too far away to be certain anyway, a tiny beacon of a night light, tempting, purring forms and shapes of the deck without showing these, giving only the hint of an idea to let them explode with bolding, bending curiosity, bursting aspiration having so deeply to know, exactly what the Skeleton Crew wanted them to suffer from, woe on their own accord and pain beyond daily sensations, before helping out a bit more in future.

Yet what people most wondered at these occasional concerts was, what angels were playing akin to melted heaven from above? Who were these people and where did they come from?

What were these weird, heavenly-like instruments and why were they never showing themselves, showering gold and glory and content, devoid of reaping their belonging laurels for welling up such consuming pleasure and buried emotions?

Some people thought it was an abandoned ship if constantly held in such a rough state, now only controlled by the sea and monster's will, but this wasn't explaining the fact the bit, where the music came from and who conjured this mystical, too angelic notes to be played on Earth. An evil trick of noise, a hoax of echo from far further shores only replicating other cultural apprehensions?

However, they always played their personal chant at first, taking some time to finish, it was what gave them away in fact, always this particular piece.

Sometimes, they'd stay a bit longer and continue playing several old songs, wonderful songs people never heard of or had the chance to listen to, but the future may reveal, it was better when they wouldn't stay long, only come by and go, as quickly as they could. The longer they played, the more and merrier the mischief and nemesis.

Important enough, bound by some figurative, loose threads simply and nothing more, it wasn't like they had to serenade entire common folk with such fine hymns, but rather wanted to, another twisted twist of uneven lore to the many encounters of the Crew of the Dead, playing to punish the villagers for liking falsity and malice within beauty, solely for the package being pretty.

At their first fatal concert, they played two other songs and were granted with the loudest applause and joyful shouts the Atlantic had ever heard.

The people stayed a bit there frozen in awe-filled trance, curious as to what was about to happen, but nothing occurred, more or less. The ship became silent and felt more gone than ever, the short-lived flame of life burned out to a stump and gone out, as the mortal, undead ship merely be a vessel for the fallen angels, faintly attend to their acumen for music, sad and abandoned only once in a while let out to come play a bit, how it sadly drifts near the shores, paining even the most dispassionate hulk - but not so far as people could throw things on deck - and continued its lone and dark journey, crawl from what gloomy place it originated from.

Eventually, the people would be freaked out by the silence, by the coldness of the blue light and the halo, sensing ruin and decay prowling between their ranks and unnoticed, nestling to remain for a bit longer, which made the whole scene even more sinister than anticipated.

People, no, not really, rather monsters, creatures of hell on the ship observed them silently, lurking in the shadows like smiling predators, knowing their prey was to be theirs soon.

On that Day in July, the villagers would leave the cliffs one by one in a hurry, as they felt how the lion in front of them got bored, was annoyed by their presence, and wanted them to run and go hide in their sheets and pretend to feel nothing, for denial would be of use for nothing in this committed ploy.

They did not know how, but they knew it was more than one person, forgive me, mysterious creatures, on board, but like the sheep they resembled, they went to bed only with the melody in their ears and minds, soft sounds humming them to sleep.

Some of them forever.

The next day, the village woke up to find a good quarter of the small town missing at such a young hour, which was to say it decent, quite abnormal behaviour for such putrid folk, when the first screams came from the beach and they suspected the most futile of events had eventuated. Their fantasy spoke volumes of horrid pictures and depicted cruelty. 

It was worse, far, far worse than anyone could have ever attempted to imagine.

In a crowded group; women, children, and strong men ran to find the unthinkable resting in the sand, dead and cold and polished.

Skeletons.