Turkey lay behind us.  The ship was dark, shuttered against the weight of night.  The sea lay far below the deck, restlessly surging by.  I lifted my face into the wet salty wind streaming past the helo deck.  Overhead, the vault of night was thickly encrusted with stars that couldn’t be seen from land.  Only out on the water, away from civilization, could such a sky exist.
     I wore my dungaree work uniform, enjoying the coolness above decks.  It was the same outfit wore by convicts in prison.  That was appropriate.  I was a captive of the USS SURIBACHI AE-21, an ammo tender out of Earle, New Jersey.  We all were, until the next port came along.  That didn’t usually bother me.  I liked being in the Navy and seeing the world—-even if two-thirds of it was water.
     The dreams had come again--that was why I was out here, alone at this ungodly hour—-but only a few disturbing images remained in my waking mind: chanting in a cargo hold…black sailors dancing as a boom box pulsed with Island rhythms…black candles with leaping yellow flames…photographs burning, curling into ash…
     I didn’t know why such things came to me.  I was Irish American, more likely to dream of leprechauns than anything else.  Hoodoo wasn’t in my blood.  It didn’t make sense, especially since the visions had started well before I’d heard the scuttlebutt about secret rituals practiced below decks.
     Well, I figured I’d stewed about it long enough.  I needed to get back to my bunk.  Some sleep was better than none at all.  I crossed the helo deck, sliding each foot ahead and a little to the side before shifting weight--an old trick to navigating the cloying darkness with confidence.
     Stairs with a chain guide led me down the fantail to the main deck atop the aft cargo hold.  I followed the side rail back to the superstructure.  Another flight of stairs took me up to an OPS birthing hatch.
     Before I could go in, I was distracted by a paleness drifting above eyelevel.  I had never been one to credit tales laden with preternatural premonitions where the hero’s neck hair bristles with dread and his heart sets a pounding pace for inexplicable reasons, but the proverbial chill ran down my spine.  My soul knew the terrible constriction of fear.  Such things had always seemed a pulp fiction contrivance, until that moment when their reality came crash in.
     It could have been that my starved eyes were deceived by the desire to see something, anything.  Wasn’t that the sensible explanation?  I’d always had a problem with absolute darkness.  I’d always felt there were things that stirred in obsidian realms, needing light’s failure to touch the human world.  As a child, I’d been afraid of a showers’ mirror door; I’d throw the light switch quickly on before entering the family bathroom, making reflective glass out of a window into an unlit hell.
     Once, at a carnival, I saw a fun house with monsters and ghouls painted on the outside in rich gory detail.  My cousin talked me into going inside, against my better judgment.  I’d bumped into walls, groping for an exit with the universe blotted out.  I couldn’t finish the unlit maze, but had bolted back out the entrance, chased by creatures my mind saw all too clearly.
     In my heart, I was that child again.  Sure, it wasn’t reasonable.  There’s little of reason in fear when it’s fed by the imagination.  This time, however, I held my ground.
     The floating paleness took on clarity, though I was sure I was seeing it by some new mechanism that bypassed the eyes.  Atop a bundle of writhing ribbons, I saw a face--like a ceramic mask--grinning, incapable of any other expression, and behind it, other spirits hovered, needing my attention, hungering for it.
     People play with strange fires, especially when they cast dangerous shadows.  But not me.  I had no love for drowning in darkness.  Call a shadow often enough, and it takes your life.  You become the shadow.  Again, there’s nothing of reason in this—-and yet I know it’s true .
     They crowded around me, on the very edge of being, needing my fear to pull them across some godless abyss.  No, I told the haunts.  I’m not one of those that called you.  Look elsewhere.  Nodding, the spirits agreed.  They left me then, wafting with the winds, searching.
     I hurried to where I knew the door must be.  My hands went out to undog the hatch.  They touched nothing.  I groped blindly, my heart still pounding.  A few steps more and…  Light.  I was inside a passageway lit by nightlights.
     Relief broke my tension even though I didn’t understand how I’d gotten in.
     I went to the tier that contained my bunk and found that someone else was in it.  Irritation surged through me.  I was running the whole gambit of emotions tonight.  Intending to shake the sleeper awake, I grabbed his shoulder.  My fingers sank into flesh, touching nothing. 
     They hit; images flashing across my mind’s eye, memories…climbing the ladder up from the cargo hold…something slick on the top rung…falling to fast to scream…a burst of pain…  I’d forgotten I was dead.  Darkness had taken me like a riptide and I was still drowning in it.