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Chapter 1: What is the legend of the Flying Dutchman?
Spectre Vision Radio. Hello, fellow lover of dark matter. If you've been suffering from a persistent desire for just a little more unpleasantness in your life, we have the answer. The Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast. It's a celebration of horror and just good old-fashioned storytelling. Aliens. Bullshit. Oh, come on, Mr. Joint Chiefs Chairman.
You were just in your bedroom one moment and in the President's bedroom the next. Who on this backwater planet could have done that? It was crawling towards him. And in the pale glow of the flashlight, the man saw a frightful gargoyle face thrust into his own. It was the passionless death's head skull of a long-dead corpse. The Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast.
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When I was five years old, I became terrified of something in my room.
There was a disembodied voice sighing, and I moved around the room and the voice moved with me. When I was a little kid, I used to see the medicine men have to go outside and chase away skinwalkers. Clairvoyance is seeing mental images, symbols. Why is it that so many DMT experiencers report being pulled into alien realms? We have hundreds and hundreds of people who have seen these UFOs.
I am desperately afraid of being seen as crazy. The weird borderline between dream and reality. We're at the cemetery. There's something moving through the woods that's staying right outside of our lights. From behind the fridge door comes a big, dark figure, and I could just see the small, red, beady eyes. He got really close to my face, and he said, stay away from things you don't understand.
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My name is Ambrose Nast. At half past seven o'clock on the night of the 9th of September of the year 1870, I set about my habitual duty of securing Florence Morrow inside her house beside the North Road.
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Chapter 2: How did the Flying Dutchman influence storytelling in various media?
Fearing for her delicate health, I wrapped my topcoat around her awkwardly. Even as I did so, she continued her ministrations with the fire as if utterly unaware of my presence. Finally, as I'd had to do once before in the past, I seized her by her shoulders and turned her directly towards me, attempting to shake her back into awareness.
The firelight flattered her soft, confused face in the most heartbreaking way. It's him, she told me breathlessly. He's come. And she lifted her small hand to point far into the darkness. I turned to the horizon line, which was shrouded in the darkest nocturnal grays and blues. A full moon cast serene ripples across the bay. There was a ship out there.
perhaps a mile away, an old three-masted trader with three cannon ports. It appeared quite still in imposing silhouette. He's seen his chance, Florence whispered, transfixed by the sight. I guided her away from the fire as she struggled meekly against me, her body so frail. The panic over possibly losing her once again made me more cruel with my tongue than I would have been otherwise.
I admonished her for her nonsense, said she could regale me with her absurd beliefs in the good light of day after sleep. For now we were going back to the house, and she was getting into bed before she harmed herself. You can't keep me from the Dutchman, she cried. And at the speaking of that name, I confess I felt a real chill in my bones.
For while the poor creature in my arms was quite mad, the force of her conviction nevertheless summoned frightening images and possibilities. I lifted her off her feet and swept her up to cradle her in my arms.
This was half a pragmatic action on my part to reduce her struggles, but perhaps half of it was the summoning of a dormant daydream into reality, the daydream of a lover who knows he can never be. This was the only way I or anyone would ever carry Florence Morrow, to return her not to a marriage bed, but to a lonely room where she must remain forever guarded against her own delusions.
She cried against my chest as I walked her back toward the North Road. Beverly came running up to meet us, heaving great breaths of relief and exhaustion. Together we returned to the miserable little house Florence's father had bought for her on the mostly empty lane. Once inside, I finally had to release my hold on my precious cargo, lest the burning pains in my back overwhelm me.
Florence was more docile by then. The greater pain was letting her walk away from One hand locked firmly in Beverly's, she trudged obediently up the stairs. I informed Beverly I was bolting them in for the evening, and scolded her gently for being so loose with the locks. Donning my topcoat again, I returned to the beach, shrinking against the wind.
The fire Florence had built was a bit of a comfort. I took my spyglass from my pocket and peered beyond Galway Rock, A gentle haze had settled around that faraway ship, a haze oddly tinged with the green of spring moss, enshrouding it in a curious soft reverie. I was not able to determine how it had moored, yet it was certainly unmoving, no souls on deck. Then I saw the robo.
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Chapter 3: What personal experiences shaped the narrative of the Flying Dutchman?
He told me the ship would come no closer for fear of hull damage that made scraping a shoal too dangerous. He sought merely a meal and to perhaps describe the ship's current malady to some talented shipwright to determine if it was safe to push onward toward Nantucket Sound and point south. His hull carried barley, black pepper, and hemp, with sixteen men under his charge aboard ship.
His accent suggested he was from the Netherlands, though his English was excellent. I told him I could take him to the harbor office and there he could report his cargo. He protested quietly that surely his arrival on shore without the ship itself precluded that legal necessity. But I told him it did not. Visibly displeased, he looked at me long and silent.
Who is she who built the fire, he asked me, who I saw from the ship? With much hesitation, I told him that it was a local girl who should not have been out. The captain took a step towards me. I desire to meet her, he said, and give thanks for guiding me in. Without her I might have foundered elsewhere, as this coast is poorly lit.
I told him I would relay his gratitude, but that it was not possible to meet her, it being well past eight now, and she being safely in her bed. The man changed then, in a subtle but tangible way. There came an aura of threat about him. He appeared to me then a man versed in the ways of the low-throated bully, yet perhaps bullying was sometimes not where he stopped.
I want to meet her, he said again. I won't accept otherwise, and for this I'll pay. I stood my ground. Even a meal was a tall request at that hour in Wellfleet, so I suggested we concentrate our efforts on satisfying that particular need. Florence, I told him, foolishly using her name, had no wish or need for gentleman callers at any hour, and in fact was to be duly protected from such.
He reached into his coat, and I heard the clanking of coins. From his pocket he pulled out several, and opened his palm to reveal more than a dozen of a kind I did not recognize. They were silver and rough-edged. "'Do you understand? I will pay handsomely,' he said. "'Take these, friend.' I did my best not to stare at the coins."
I will take a pittance to direct you to her father's house up the road, I said in placation. You can request anything else directly from him. "'That I accept,' he replied. "'I pointed to the west, along the coast road, "'and instructed him to walk over the rise to the village, "'a journey of only a mile. "'Colonel Morrow's house was the second he would meet on the road.
"'He pressed the coins forcefully into my open palm. "'His hand was dry but cold to the extreme, unnatural. "'It sickened me to take those coins.' Into the name of your vessel, I asked the man as he turned away without either one of us thanking the other, for the customs log. De lagoon Norden, he responded, and began to walk with a very slight limp into the dark.
He was not more than twenty paces away when I began to hurry in the opposite direction, toward the harbor office. I shoved the coins into my coat and tried to forget them. It was now 8.25 p.m. by my pocket watch. I detoured only briefly, because I could not bear to let Florence's fire burn, even if it was now not much more than a lonesome trifle.
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Chapter 4: What supernatural elements are intertwined with the Dutchman's story?
We need to find records of when it may have last docked, either here or anywhere on the Cape the records may mention, and we need to sit quick about it.
somewhat meek by nature rankins accepted my direction without much question though i had essentially requested he find a needle in a haystack as he went to the shelves brimming with ledgers and loosely bound volumes whose ciphers only he himself likely understood
I advised him to focus his energies first on the specific date of the 9th of September, in any year when De Lagoon Norden might have come, no matter how far back the customs records went. This unusual proviso caused Rankins to slowly remove his spectacles and ask me to clarify. I did so only tersely. I offered to assist his search in order to speed the matter as much as possible.
In recovering himself, he gave me simple instructions on how to best isolate the desired volumes. I fired another lamp to banish the musty gloom in which he had grown accustomed to laboring. We went hunting. Rankin seemed to sense that I was not willing to answer any more questions in this critical moment.
The only sound became the flipping of pages and the thumping of heavy books upon messy tabletops. The indices referring to the contents of volumes more than ten years old I found to be maddeningly incomplete. The minutes passed. I was painfully aware of the ticking of the clock on the wall behind Rankin's head. Here, he said finally from across the room.
I moved so swiftly towards him that I bumped a stack of ledgers off the table and swore angrily without stopping to write them. De Lagoon Norden, docked 9 September 1814, Rankins reported, running the tip of a finger across a line of script. No cargo given, no crew count given. Odd.
I peered at the faded script that had been set down in the ledger, not by Rankin's predecessor, but the predecessor of his predecessor, a man neither of us had known, one Charles Poldrice. It was likely Rankin's had never had cause to see this entry, lost among thousands in the distant past. The name of the ship's captain was written as Van Delden, no first name noted. Its origin? Amsterdam.
What does this mean, no B.R.? I asked Rankins, squinting the lamplight. No boarding, he replied. Likely it stayed offshore for some reason. How does this relate to the ship that's come tonight? I believe, I told him, it is the same ship. That cannot be, Rankin said gently. It's age. I interrupted him to ask if he had his colt with him or at his house.
"'Luckily it was in the locked lower drawer of his office desk. "'I told him to retrieve it. "'We were going to Florence Morrow's, and we didn't have any time to spare. "'The delaying gambit I had attempted with Captain Van Delden "'seemed in retrospect more and more dangerous with each passing moment.
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Chapter 5: How does the character of Florence relate to the Dutchman?
It was when she looked like this that she was most likely to speak of her belief that wolves were plotting to carry away Wellfleet's children, that the sun spoke to her and told her about beings living on other planets, that her dead mother sang Nellie Was a Lady atop Galway Rock to an audience of mermaids.
It had been almost a year since her father had condemned her to live in this house, unable to endure her madness, yet not so cruel as to have her committed to Worcester State Hospital. He visited once a week, and once a month attended his poor daughter at chapel, the only times she saw a town. No doctor had come to explore her mind for many months now.
Will you send Beverly in to help me pack my things for the journey? Florence asked me. What journey would that be, miss? I asked, unable to meet her gaze. The Dutchman will take me away before it gets light, she said confidently. Oh, sad Ambrose, I wish you could find a love like ours someday. You've suffered too, I know it, but not like he has.
Do you understand what it must be like to have suffered like him? It was too much for me, standing there above her, and I nearly broke down. Her conviction was total unquestioning. Behind me, Rankins bowed his head, embarrassed, out of place. No one is coming, Florence, I told her finally, and summoned the strength to place my hand atop her own for comfort.
I said as gently as I could that the man from the ship tonight was just a sailor like any other, and would soon have to be on his way. It does no good to lie, she said, pulling her hand away slowly. He whispered it to me from the ship, hours ago, all the way across the water. Keep me from being set free, Ambrose, and I'll put out your eyes. Further discussion was pointless.
Rankins and I left the room. I instructed that he stay in the house and watch over Florence until I returned from Colonel Morrow's house, and to let no one in unless I was with them, not even the colonel himself. The light of true understanding seemed to be dawning in his eyes. He followed me to the front door and out onto the step while Beverly shrank back in the gloom of the bottom floor.
She said, the Dutchman, Rankins whispered, casting a glance over my shoulder to make sure Beverly could not hear. Yes, I confirmed. My mind for math is not nearly what yours is, Tommy, but I think I'm correct that 9 September 1814 was 56 years ago to the night. He shook his head, trying in vain to deny my logic. You can't really think. I cut him off. I touched his hand, Tommy, I said.
It felt like nothing I can describe. Is there anyone who can watch the ship from the beach? Alas, he told me no, no one we could rustle at this hour. That made me nervous indeed. I thought about having Beverly go out to keep watch, but I wanted them both to stay as close to Florence as possible.
Rankins would be consigned to spying out the upper south window from time to time, though the silhouette of the ship would be little more than a moat on the horizon from this distance. I told Rankins I'd come back as soon as I possibly could and began to walk toward the shore road.
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Chapter 6: What role does Ambrose play in Florence's fate?
As I heard his words again, I was assaulted by a new wind blowing in towards shore. Gusts rose every 10 or 15 seconds as I walked the road. The first dim lamp glow appeared far in the distance from the tavern. The wish for a glass of whiskey was overwhelming. There was violence, my grandfather had told me. Or maybe the ship broke up and went down, down, down. But the devil had heard the Dutchman.
Oh yes, you can't make such a vow under circumstances like that. The devil always hears. And the Dutchman got his wish. Him and that ghost crew of his have been going to places the living can't hope to reach in a lifetime. Never saw the boat myself out there, but I saw some other strange things, God knows. Saw a squid one time, bigger than not just one man or two, but three, three men.
It was my father, rest his soul, who tried that night in his clumsy way to comfort me a little as he pulled my covers over me. I asked him if the Flying Dutchman was out there somewhere now. If he was still angry after two hundred years, I thought, he might hurt anyone, and our little house was only a stone's throw from the port of Salem.
So it was from him, and not my grandfather, who was a much better storyteller. that I learned of the grace of angels who had bargained with the devil to allow the Dutchman ashore once every seven years, only briefly, to seek out a woman whose true love could redeem him and set him free of his torments. My father said to me, he's had a lot of chances to find a woman like that, seems to me.
So I'd wager he has. And I'd wager they're both long at peace now. Nothing to be scared of. Yet I, a boy utterly entranced by the sea, who yearned for the day I might volunteer to serve on the smallest clipper, had been given my first glimpse of something to fear out there. I needn't have worried, though. My sciatica would keep me on land forever, breaking my heart more so than my bones.
when my grandfather was withered away to almost nothing and lay in his deathbed, and often spoke to people who weren't there, including, to our great embarrassment, an Easton prostitute whose skills he had apparently been especially fond of, he contradicted himself on one point of the story he'd told me when I was a boy, speaking to the ceiling high above him just moments after he'd been brokenly reminiscing about his old schoolhouse.
Damned Dutchman's crept up port side, Eric, he whispered. I had no idea who Eric was. His stare had become stony. He looked terrified. Find Reynolds, and for Christ's sake, don't look in their eyes, he'd finished, and slipped away into a heavy sleep. I recall it was only a few days later that he died. A strange visual aberration manifested beneath my feet as I walked the shore road.
Clouds had moved over the moon, making my path much darker, yet I could see vividly the image of each individual footprint made before me, as if some artist had painted those images in multiple coats of tar.
Stopping to look more closely, I saw that while my own boots had left little evidence of their passage behind me, Van Delden's were so vivid as to seem not fully imprinted in the dust, but rather almost hovering a fraction of an inch above it. I was afraid to reach out and touch one, and here was something even stranger.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the Dutchman's crew in the story?
Yes, but he croaked finally, seeming unsteady on his feet. He looked terribly old then. The matter has been already decided, to mutual agreement. What can you possibly mean? I asked him. His words came slowly and shamefully. The offer for Florence's hand, he told me, was 30,000 Dutch guilders. And I accepted.
I cried with anger then, anger at this man who paid me to appraise his daughter's situation and safety, to alert him if she ever came to distress or her mental fits became too disruptive, and to protect her from prying eyes. Do you know what you've done? Do you know who you've given her to? I shouted. The wind blew the few remaining strands of his gray hair into his eyes and he closed them.
I know the tale, he said to me. I believe he is who you say he is. My grandfather saw his ship once, on the Bay of Biscay. Then why, I asked, and had to restrain myself from shaking him. Florence is past hope, he said. No one on this earth can help her. Do you think that poor girl can ever find happiness here? Isn't it kinder to let her go? He is a demon. He is undead, I retorted.
No, Morrow said softly, looking up at the moon. Undead, yes. Damned. But I think only a man. Shouldn't Florence have a love of a kind? I told the colonel to return to his solitary house, as he was of no use to us tonight, Rankins and I. In his words, I heard only the wreckage of a man who no longer wanted the burden of caring for his only daughter. I touched his hand.
He said to me, Maybe she can redeem him. She can have something in this life. She can give something in this life. Those were the last words I would endure. I turned away from him, left him standing in the road with no reason to go forward and no reason to go back. If the Dutchman had come back down the shore road, surely I would have seen him.
Surely there would have been more strangely spectral prints to mark his progress. But there were none. I should have there stopped wasting time attempting to apply the rules of reason and science to such a being. But the mortal mind cannot so easily make that severance. I could at least stop uselessly tracking the minutes.
Again I ran, sure it would be the final time it would be necessary, and regardless the final time I could accomplish any great distance in my state. By the time I reached Florence's house and pounded on the door, I was so winded and in pain, I would not have been able to speak to whichever of the three souls inside answered the door. but none of them did.
I turned the knob and the door opened freely. There was no lamplight inside on the lower floor, as was usually the case. I called out for both Beverly and Rankins and was met with only silence. Feeling it to be a useless gesture, I took my colt from my pocket, then advanced to the staircase and ascended, continuing my calls for response, now expecting nothing in return.
A window was open somewhere. The draft sent a cold river of air across the back of my neck.
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Chapter 8: What are the final revelations about the Dutchman and Florence?
Beverly and Rankins were both in Florence's bedroom. They lay atop the bed, fully clothed, close to one another, as if they were husband and wife. Arms to their sides, their grey faces were turned to the ceiling, looking up with vacant stares. They were cold and dead. I reached for the lamp beside the bed and brought the beam close to Rankin's.
Now the large patchwork of bruises on both their necks became apparent. They had been strangled. Strangled and then laid gently on the bed with a kind of demented courtesy. One of Beverly's eyes had gone red. Of Florence there was no sign. A hand mirror and a bottle of lavender water had fallen to the floor from the dressing table. The south-facing window was open.
Much later, the police would find that the sill was splintered where Rankin's single bullet had slammed into it. His gun had been removed from his hand at some point after the shot and placed indifferently on the table among Florence's hairpins. To the beach it was then. I found myself hurrying no longer, all hope leaving me.
In shock, I believe I walked like a marionette whose feet were guided by an amateur puppeteer. Colonel Morrow had pressed upon his coachman to drive him directly toward Galloway Rock, and he now stood in the blue darkness near the crushed remains of Florence's fire. looking out over the bay while the coachman lingered well behind, yet he witnessed the scene on the horizon as well.
It was impossible to not see, for the clouds had relinquished their cover of the moon again, and it shone down at full strength. I came up close behind Morrow, yet transfixed he did not move. Less than 100 yards from the ship De Lagoon Norden, the Dutchman's lost crew stood on the surface of the bay.
There were sixteen of them, a loose assembly of the dead, unmoving, merely watchful, present only to guide and protect. The gentle roll of the current flowed over their feet as they stood like rooted sacrificial stones. I did not use my spyglass to attempt to see their faces, out of simple fear of what might burn into my memory.
defying the laws of both god and nature the crew waited patiently for their captain to return using the rowboat he'd dragged back into the bay The Dutchman was ferrying Florence toward the ship, whose warm, blotchy aura remained. The oars cut into the water. He leaned back in a long stretch to pull them through, and then he leaned forward again, over and over, dogged but determined.
seemingly not in haste. Like Florence, who sat facing him, he was little more than a featureless shadow. The wind, which had been blowing in towards shore an hour before, now blew outwards, aiding their progress. Morrow and I watched the entire journey, joined soon enough by his coachman,
When the rowboat reached the spot where the crew impossibly stood, they all turned to walk across the water around it as if on dry land. The sky seemed to grow darker then, and much detail was lost. but we believed they climbed up the rope ladders methodically and helped both captain and bride up into the ship, which began at long last to move.
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