“Yes, I say we kill him…it, right now,” insisted Walker. “How can we take his word for anything?   There’s only one vampire aboard this ship, and none of us are safe till we destroy him!”

Doc Celco, Cpt. Douglas and myself tried to stop them, as they moved toward Borg.

But three of them overpowered us and held us at bay while Peterson and Walker advanced on Borg.   Peterson held him down on the bunk while Walker smashed the three-legged stool on the deck, sharpened one of the stool’s legs into a stake with a pocket knife, then used the base of the stool as a mallet to hammer the stake through Borg’s heart.

Someone once said, “This is how the world will end: not with a bang, but a whimper.”   That’s how Borg died: there was no ear shattering vampire’s death roar as in the movies, only a gasping sigh, almost a hiccup of death.

“Well that’s the end of our troubles,” said Walker confidently, throwing down the base of the stool in nervous excitement.

I hadn’t thought that it could be possible to be a paler shade of white than Borg had been.   Yet his final death seemed to bleach him to a near-translucent white.

Before our eyes the vampire’s corpse began to flake apart.   A strange wind blew in through a porthole, which I could have sworn had been closed when we entered the cabin, and out through the porthole fluttered the crumbling flakes, taking with them all trace (bar one) of what had gone before.

Up on the main deck Peterson and Walker were heartily patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves on a job well done, knowing that they couldn’t be punished for their actions which had been vindicated by the strange way that Borg’s corpse had disintegrated and flown out through the porthole.

*      *      *

After Borg’s death, Peterson was the first to die.   We found him next morning in the same state that Thomas’ corpse had been in.   After Peterson, Steviers, Andrews and Alexander all died within the space of two nights.

Desperately we made for Whangarei Harbour on the North Island of New Zealand.   But inexplicably a violent storm blew up from nowhere: high seas, followed by pounding rain, sleet and a strange, dense, London-style pea soup fog.   It was almost as though someone, or something was controlling the elements, using them against us.

The day after Steviers was murdered, our radar and satellite-guidance systems were all sabotaged.   So, blinded at sea, we sailed around for more than six weeks while the crew were murdered one or two at a time.

The dead were buried at sea.   At first as the traditional sailors’ burial, then later, when the dead outnumbered the living, as a precaution against the dead returning to “life” as vampires.

At the end of six ‘weeks there was only Walker, Janssen and myself left.   I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of Walker being left till nearly last, almost as though the Other were rewarding him for the service of murdering poor Borg.

Now even Walker is dead and there are only two of us left.

When the killing continued after Borg’s murder, we had made a hull-to-hull search of the ship, in the hope of finding a stowaway to accuse.   But we found no one, so the vampire must be Janssen!

No wonder the cook had been so set against rescuing Borg.   But in the end we had been stupid enough to let Janssen off the hook by murdering Borg, the only one who might have been able to stop him.

Well I guess my time is just about up now.   The sea is calm at last, as the storm that has plagued us for six weeks has mysteriously cleared.   The fog is lifting and I can hear footsteps advancing slowly toward the helm.

Janssen is outside hammering on the door now, so it will only be a matter of moments before I’m dead too.   But at least I can hope that with the death of me, the last sailor aboard ship, Janssen, a cook, will be unable to pilot the ship back to land and will die here, safely out at sea.   But wait!   What is this?   It can’t be!   Out through the helm I can see something that terrifies me even more than the monster that has stalked the Macabann for so long: Whangarei Harbour!

Janssen has used his vampire powers to keep the ship sailing round in circles in the fog, only a few hundred metres off the coast of the North Island of New Zealand for six weeks!   And even as I watch, even as I hear the helm door start to splinter beneath the vampire’s pounding fists, I can see the coastline getting ever closer.

So now, as I write these last few words before dying, I know that the horror will not die with me.   For even if the Other cannot sail the Macabann, from this distance he can easily row to shore in a lifeboat to start his reign of terror up again….

THE END

(c) Copyright 2011

Philip Roberts, Melbourne, Australia