"Where is the crew?" the Dane called out. I could hear the superstition in his voice, the little coward.

The small ship rocked with another big wave, and the lantern swung in the Dane's hand. "I checked the crew cabins," he said. "There's no one in them, no sign of a living soul."

"Give me the light," I said, taking it from him. "Show me."

The Dane knew his boats. He led me straight to the crew quarters. They were empty, as he had said. The chests had been thrown open, some of the goods scattered. "Looks like someone beat us to it," I said.

"That was me," the Dane confessed. Looting on his own, and no shame in his voice.

Alvaro came in, then. "No sign of anyone on board," he said. "Damnedest thing."

"I don't need your opinion, Mr. Alvaro," I said. "Grab everything that we can carry." As I spoke, there was a great wailing screech as the sea dragged the hull of one ship against the other. "Be quick about it."

My men were good pirates, and the empty ship had them scared. They had the place apart in no time.

We took the swag and locked it down. I wasn't about to be divvying it up by lantern light. Then we set the sails and posted watches. It had been too dark to tell much about the boat we'd boarded, and I wanted to be as far from it as we could come daybreak. Anyone could be looking for it.

Come morning, I was in poor shape. I had been awake half the night with dreams. Not nightmares, but dreams, dreams of my wife and daughter. I dream about them frequently, but until that night I have only been able to see them at the bottom of the sea, long hair waving in the current, fish at their eyes. Any memory of them alive had been lost to me, hidden behind how I had seen them last, and how I knew them to be now. The misery of seeing them again whole, but forever lost to me, left me shaken. Some of the other men looked as bad, save the African Jamaal.

We went at once to sorting the swag. We had no trouble with it until the bottle, a blue glass bottle, empty as far as I could tell, and stopped with a cork that still bore tooth marks where it had been pulled. The Dane wanted it at once. He had been quiet throughout, while I held things up, asked who was for what, and Mr. Alvaro kept record. There were only six of us so it went fast until we got to the bottle. The Dane put up then, and he did so with vigor.

"Who even rescued such a thing?" I asked, holding the bottle up to the sun to look through it. It was empty, as I said.

"That's would be mine, Captain." The Dane said. He wanted it so bad that I wanted to keep it back from him. It's easy to want to make the Dane suffer, with his small size and rotting nose.

"What for?" I asked. "There's nothing in it."

The Dane swallowed something and kept his hands out. "That's all I'm asking, Captain," The rest of the crew was watching me. He hadn't asked for anything else, so I threw him the bottle, although doing this pained me. As it flew towards him, I saw the crew all look after it. I hadn’t been me they'd been watching; it was the bottle.

The Dane went below with his prize. We went through the rest of the swag, but the life had gone from us. When we were done, I retired to my cabin. There were clouds off of the bow, but Mr. Alvaro could manage for a while.

I dreamed of them again. And this time, I knew where they were. I woke up. The ship was rolling, and I could hear rain. I put on my cutlass and my pistols.

Mr. Alvaro was dead outside my cabin, a dagger in his chest. I stepped over him without a thought. I went topside, where the rain was whipping across the deck like grapeshot. Two other crewmen were here, dead, but I didn't look to see how they died. The wet sails were creaking and would tear from their own weight soon, but I would be off the ship before then.

I had seen it in the dream; the blue-glass bottle was a door, and it would take me to my wife, my child.

I found Jamaal and the Dane struggling by the rail. Jamaal had the bottle in one hand. He was trying to hold the Dane off with the other. I shot the Dane in the back, the crack and boom of the pistol almost lost in the shriek of the storm. The Dane slid down Jamaal, his fingers clutching at him. The Dane pulled Jamaal's shirt off. I saw he was wearing the spirit bag he swore protected him from devils, hags, what have you.

The African saw me and called out. "Captain, the men have gone mad! It's this bottle," he said. "Alvaro tried to take it from the Dane, he said it was full of gold. The Dane swore it was full of women. They fought for it like dogs, Captain. It's empty, but they killed each other for it." I pulled another pistol and shot Jamaal in the chest. The spirit bag exploded. I watched Jamaal's eyes go wide, see death, and then, as they faded, see something else. Something curious.

I crossed the deck, grabbing the bottle as it rolled from his grasp. I pulled the cork free with my teeth and put my eye to the rim.

We were all wrong. The bottle is not full of gold or women, and it is not a door.

It is a mouth, and it is full of teeth.

The End

The Bottle is a story from The River Above: Thirteen Strange Stories by Gregory Adams available in paperback and ebook editions on Amazon.com

The River Above: And Other Strange Stories