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JEREMIAH PERCIVAL STANTON
Second October, Seventeen-Nineteen
Porthmeor, at Saint Ives
On my way to my dear Beatrice’s wedding yesterday, a strange man approached me. He was an eccentric of an uncategorizable sort. The face upon his head took resemblance uncannily of both life and death. The man’s ghastly complexion gave me the stark impression that he was, in fact, dead. The bony hand he raised to me had neither flesh nor fat upon it, and merely the sight of such a thing sent terrible shivers through my own body. The wispy beard of grey that rested on his chin seemed like the final hairs upon a corpse as it is laid into the ground.
But as much as he seemed to be a living corpse, his spirits were mightily high. I could nought but look away as he seemed to stare into my very soul and reassign my attention from this very important event, the wedding of my own sister!
I did my best to have this person leave me be, but it was all for nought. With one single glance, his silvery eyes entrapped me. Left in a trance, I had no choice but to be taken by his words and guided through a story of which the likes are so fantastical I scarcely believed him. But given the man’s pallor demeanor, I was truly enticed into believing perhaps some tragedy had befallen the man.
At this point, I was hardly late to arrive at Beatrice’s wedding. The wedding band would have been almost an hour behind me and Beatrice was not supposed to arrive even for longer after that! I was merely the ‘scouting’ party who was supposed to help set up. Between this man’s piercing, hypnotic gaze, and the lack of any other activity to pass the time, I decided to stay and listen, perhaps only for a while.
However, it did not turn out to be a while. For hours, I stood, or sat, captivated by this seafarer’s tale. Was it true? Was it a farce? That is not my place to decipher, for the epic is a tale that belongs to the mysterious mariner alone.
Hours there I stayed! Hours! An interesting tale, true, but I plead my Creator, the good Lord up in Heaven, He who have his Son for man, to give me those hours back!
Listening further to this man’s story, it truly becomes apparent that he believes his own tale. The man is truly accursed.
At first his gaze truly did hold me, but as the hour wore on, as the music began to play, as the bride took her vows…
I began to have the distinct feeling that this was all a tall tale. Some poor stranger, a tradesman or mariner of old, had been left disheveled and penniless, and this was his solution. For certain he would ask for a shilling or two after he was finished, but to this point had merely bored him.
His tale was the same after he kept speaking for a half-hour. Some sort of tragedy would occur, and by some miracle, this seafarer would be the only survivor left. The first tale was intriguing, who could survive such a calamity? I do, however, doubt that there exists a place on our Lord’s magnificent creation that houses such mountains of ice as he claimed. As tall as a ship’s mast? Outrageous! If any great man from this country verifiably sights such an object, I shall forfeit my inheritance. A sum of a hundred pounds! I am soundly assured that at the very least this portion of the epic tale was not an honest portrayal. However dishonest the man was, some otherworldly power kept me affixed there. Was this man a demon? An angel? I tried as I could to take even one step away, but the man simply reached out with his bony hand and my gaze was once again firmly on
him.
His eyes stared. They stared deeply into my soul. This man is not of this world, I conclude. No natural born man can possess such an otherworldly quality about him. That’s when it was all revealed to me: this man is a warning from out good Lord Himself. Man must not venture past what we are meant to. Had this crew broken the sacred firmament between Earth and Heaven? His alien description of lands unseen, lands untraveled, with such ethereal sights and events, leads me to believe man is not made to venture so far.
But to think, O God! that our Lord in Heaven has chosen me to receive this foreboding tale. Is it an honor? Or might it be a warning? What have I done to attract such a visit? Was I pious? Was I sinful? I will never get to relive such an important moment in my life, one that my family has already shunned me for. They do not accept my reasoning as an honest recount. But I can only relate that I feel now a sense of duty to share this caution with others. I sit here with my hand bound to my pen, and my pen bound to the page.
I write in the dim light of my inn’s study, the candle next to me flickering as if disturbed by wispy, ghostly breath. The air is still, though I feel movement of spirit all around me. Ever since that encounter, I have not been the same. I fear I shall never be the same.
The seafarer’s tale, though fantastical, has rooted itself in my mind like a thorn from a rose. I cannot sleep without hallucinating the gentle creak of his ice-bound ship, nor eat without imagining the parched tongues of his doomed crewmates. I see his striking eyes in my own reflection, and I dread the silence between conversations, for it is then that his voice returns to me: low, deliberate, echoing with the weight of centuries.
He spoke of a sun that burned blood red, waters that danced with pillars of fire, spirits that moved the ship without wind in sail. He described the death of his crewmates not with sorrow, but with
reverence, as if their passing had elevated them to some divine plane, and perhaps they had been. And he, the lone survivor, was not spared out of mercy, but out of necessity. He was chosen to carry the burden of remembrance, to spread his story.
My family has not forgiven me. Beatrice, beautiful in her bridal gown, looked upon me with such disappointment that I felt her cut my own heart in two. I wanted to explain, but how does one explain the supernatural? How does one justify abandoning one’s sister on the most important day of her life to listen to a sickly ghost’s lament?
They think me mad. Perhaps I am. Likely I am. But if madness is the price of truth, then I must pay it gladly.
The mariner spoke of his penance, but not the kind administered by priest or prophet, but a deeper, eternal kind. He wanders not to seek forgiveness, but to warn others. His tale is a curse, and those who hear it are marked. I feel that mark, that curse, upon me now. It is not visible, but it weighs heavily on my soul. I feel it in my bones, in my breath, in the way the birds no longer sing near my window in the morning.
I tried to return to the church today, to pray for clarity. But the doors were locked, and the priest was away. I sat on the steps and wept. A child passed by and stared at me with wide eyes. I must have looked a fright. Unshaven, sleepless, a wild spirit. I fear I am becoming like the mariner himself.
And yet, part of me is grateful. Grateful to have glimpsed something beyond the veil of ordinary life. His tale, though terrible, is a reminder that the world is vast and mysterious. That there are forces at play which we cannot see, and destinies we cannot escape.
I wonder now if the mariner was ever truly alive. Perhaps he is a spirit, condemned to walk the earth until his tale is heard by one who understands. Or perhaps he is a figment of my own guilt, conjured by some deep part of my soul that knew I was not ready to face the joy of Beatrice’s wedding. Perhaps I feared happiness, and so I sought sorrow.
But no, that hand was real. Cold, bony, but real. His eyes were not mine. They held knowledge I could never possess. He was no hallucination. He was a messenger.
I have begun to write down his tale, as best I can recall it. I feel compelled to preserve it, though I know not why. Perhaps it is part of the curse. Perhaps I must pass it on, as he did to me. I do not wish to burden another soul, but the words pour from me like water from a broken jug.
I dream now of emerald icebergs, of dead men rising and falling, of stars that sing. I wake with the sense of salt on my lips and the taste of brine in my throat. I cannot escape the sea, though I have never sailed it. It lives within me now.
I fear I shall never again be welcome among my kin. They whisper when I enter the room. They hide their children from me. They speak of doctors and asylums. But I know the truth. I know what I saw. And I know that the mariner’s tale is not merely a story, it is a warning.
“Beware the pride of man. Beware the temptation to conquer what is sacred. The sea is not ours to command. Nature is not ours to bend.” The albatross was a symbol, a test, and we have failed it.
I write this now not for sympathy, nor for forgiveness, but for posterity. Let it be known that on the day of Beatrice’s wedding, I was chosen. Chosen to hear the tale of the ancient mariner. Chosen to carry his burden. Chosen to remember.
And so I shall remember. Until my dying breath, I shall remember.