Somebody Fell From Aloft

Somebody Fell From Aloft is a story from More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The story is told from the perspective of a seaman who hops aboard on a merchant ship, and mentions an incident that happens while out at sea.



The Story
I had signed on as an ordinary seaman on the Falls of Ettick; a merchant ship bound for England. First time I saw that ship, I knew her right away. She was the old Gertrude Spurshoe. I sailed on her years before when she was painted brown and gold. Now she was painted black and had a new name, but it was the same ship for sure.

We had a pretty good crew for that voyage, expect for one hard-looking ticket named McLaren. He was a pretty good seaman, but there was something about him that I didn’t trust. He was kind of secretive. Kept mostly to himself.

One day, somebody told him that I worked on the old Gertrude. For some reason, he got all a-tremble over that. Then I ketched him giving me all these ugly black looks as if he was itchin’ to knife me in the back. I guessed it had something to do with the Gertrude, but I didn’t know what.

Well, this one day we was tryin’ to work our way through a drippin’ black fog. You’d scarcely know we had all the lights on. And it was dead calm There wasn’t a breath of fresh air. The ship just lay there wallowing in a trough, a-rollin’ and a-rollin’ goin’ nowheres.

I was standing my watch around the midships, and McLaren was doin’ his trick at the wheel. The rest of the crew was scattered around one place or another. It was as quiet as could be.

Then, all at once — WHACKO! This thing hits the deck right in front of McLaren! He lets go a screech that turns my blood cold, and he falls down in a faint.

The second mate starts yellin’ that somebody has fallen from aloft. Layin’ out there, just forward of the wheel, was someone, or something, dressed in oilskins with blood oozin’ out from underneath. The captain ran to fetch a big light from his cabin so we could see who it was.

They kind of straightened him out to get a good look at his face. He was a big, ugly lookin’ devil. But nobody knew who he was, or what he was doin’ up there. At least nobody was sayin’.

When McLaren came to from his faint, they tried to get something out of him. All he did was jabber away and keep rollin’ those big, wild lookin’ eyes of his.

Everybody was gettin’ more and more excited. We all wanted to heave the body overboard as quickly as we could. There was somethin’ weird about it, as if it wasn’t real.

But the captain wasn’t so sure about getting rid of it that way. “Could it be a stowaway?” he asked. But the ship was so filled of lumber we were carryin’ there was no space where a livin’ thing could hide for three weeks, which is how long we’ve been out. Even if it was a stowaway, what was it doing aloft on such a dirty day? There was no reason, for anyone, to be up there. There was nothing to see.

Finally, the captain gave up and told us to heave him overboard. Then, nobody would touch him. The mate ordered us to pick him up, but nobody made a move. Then he tried coaxin’ but that didn’t do any good.

Suddenly, that loony McLaren starts yellin’ “I handled him once, and I can handle him again!” He picks up the body, and staggers over to the railin’ with it. He is just about to throw it overboard when it wraps it’s two big, long arms around him, and over they go together! Then on the way down, one of them starts laughin’ in a horrible way.

The mates are yellin’ to launch a boat, but nobody would get into a boat, not on a night like that. We threw a couple of life preservers after them, but everybody knew they wouldn’t help. So that was that. Or was it?

The first chance I had to go home after that, I went right over to see old Captain Spurshoe, who was captain when the Gertrude was around.

“Well,” he says, “one trip these two outlandish men shipped aboard the Gertrude. One was McLaren, the other was a really big fella. The big one was always pickin’ on McLaren and thumpin’ him around. And McLaren was always talkin’ about how he would get back at him.

“Well, this wet, dirty night the two of them was up there alone, and the big one come flyin’ down, killed himself deader’n a herring.”

“McLaren says the foot rope they were using parted and how he almost fell himself. But everybody who saw that rope knew she didn’t give away on her own. She had been cut through with a knife.

“After that whenever we came into port, McLaren thought we were goin’ to get the police after him, and he’d get pretty scared. But we couldn’t prove anything, so we didn’t try. In the end, I guess the big fella took care of things in his own way. If he was a ghost that came back, that’s what he was—if there be things like ghosts.”