The First Sighting

Hannah Cochrane | Prose

The First Sighting: Hopecliffe, 1881

An eerie gale swept around Hopecliffe on the night of the sighting. Earlier in the evening, the local fishermen had raised their heads, brows furrowed and nodded in unison: something had changed in the air. All in the small coastal village had felt it. As such, boats were anchored high up the shoreline, tavern doors were sealed early, and all the children were tucked up safe in bed. All, that is, except one.

Adeline watched as the streetlamp candles extinguished, one by one, the buzz of anticipation consuming the young girl’s slight body. Having been plagued by insomnia since a small child, Adeline was all too grateful for the distraction of the cool September night. Ritualistically, she always watched the transitional nights, the shift from one season to the next — as was this very night — as if some hidden secret of existence would be unveiled to her alone.

A sliver of strengthening wind seeped through a crack in the window, causing Adeline to grab her woollen gown and wrap it around herself tightly. She resumed her post at the window, with her chin resting on folded arms. With the world unsettlingly still outside, and not another soul awake, gentle, false fatigue enticed Adeline. How wonderful it would be to settle down under the bed covers, warmed by the layers of quilts and blankets her grandmother had so lovingly arranged…

A sudden noise. As loud as a cannonball, or so Adeline imagined. It shook her from sleep, the very concept of rest discarded. Her eyes, a deep hazel, were now wide open — wide open and searching the night for the source of such an earth-trembling sound. Yet the edges of the window weren’t far enough apart to view the whole street, let alone the entire village. Unlatching the creaking catch, Adeline pushed the double windows open, welcoming a rush of wild air.

Now, she could hear the crashing of the sea against the rocky headlands, rushing in haste over sandy beaches. High tide, judging by how close the sea sounded.

The awakening noise repeated, now clearly audible to Adeline; a sound she recognised, having lived by the sea since birth, a whole twelve years. It was the scraping of a boat’s hull along the boulder-sized rockpools that adorned a large section of the main beach. Impossible to avoid at high tide.

The sight Adeline caught was ever more impossible, beyond improbable. All she glimpsed of the boat — the ship — were high wooden masts, sails shredded by a far-off storm, a foreign flag flying proud.

Breath trapped in her throat, she moved quickly, wasting no time. She slipped on her old shoes, and raced past her parents’ room, asleep and not worth waking, rushing out the back door. She enclosed the icy key in her sweat-slick palm.

Cats prowled the streets of Hopecliffe, startled as Adeline chased down the road to the centre of the small village, before turning into a narrow, sand-covered track and picking her way through the grasses to the beach.

She regained her breath as she was greeted by the onrush of the full force of an ocean gust; salt lingering on her lips and clinging to her eyelashes. A full moon glared down on her, thin wisps of cloud hardly sheltering her from the threat of maternal scrutiny.

In awe, she made her way along the beach toward the shipwreck. Though she longed to search for shells and sea glass brought in by the high tide, she ignored what was beneath her and, instead, looked ahead. A towering, ocean-going vessel — unlike anything she’d ever seen outside of her father’s books and her own imaginings — was stranded on the rockpools she went crabbing in as a little girl.

The wind blew a little stronger, a little stranger as it passed through the gaping gashes in the ship’s sails, eliciting a harrowing creak as the ship’s timbers seemed to rattle against one another. The odd quietness was what terrified Adeline the most. She’d seen other shipwrecks, though never of this scale, and usually, there was more clamouring around, men jumping ship, grabbing belongings and shouting for help.

No such sounds could be heard.

An awful chill overcame Adeline as she stared up at the ship, barely a hundred metres away now. The thought crossed her mind, in a rapid flash: what of the men on board? It seems there are none.

Against all sense and reason, she reached out her hand to touch the ship’s hull, fingertips searching for the grooves in the wood she could so clearly see. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, as her hand passed directly through the ship’s flickering hull.

With a short, sharp scream, Adeline turned and ran away from the ship. Yet, with her heart hammering from excitement, she could hardly stand to return home and ignore the mystery of the strange shipwreck, unlike anything she’d ever known. Perched on the edge of the promenade, she watched the ship all night long, with its deathly insignia flag stretched taut by the wind.

Adeline wasn’t to know or even comprehend the door in her mind she had opened by staying there. The girl was to become burdened with the curse of unnatural sight, having unwittingly brought great risk upon herself — for in no way would this sighting be her last.

 The eerie gale that had been winding its way around the village all evening suddenly dropped, and yet the flag rippled in its own ghostly breeze all the same.

Hannah Cochrane is a 20-year-old English Literature & Creative Writing student at Lancaster University. She's been writing prose since her mid-teens, and occasionally writes poetry when inspiration strikes. Amongst writing, she also enjoys reading, physical exercise, and spending time outside.