Opening Frame

The lantern passed into my hands, its flame guttering as if in protest. I let it warm my palms and flashed a crooked grin at the Circle, letting my doubt show. “I thought it was a prank at first,” I said, my voice trying for lightness. “But every story has a current beneath it, and sometimes you find yourself swept under.” The flame danced shadows on the faces around me, and I began.

Chapter 1: Rumor Like a Sickness

It started with a dare. Of course it did. You put too many bored souls on a fog-locked ship and someone’s bound to test the dark. The rumor crept through the wooden bones of the vessel, growing with each retelling: a marionette found in the half-rotted trunk of an abandoned cabin, left over from… no one knew which voyage. Someone dared a shipmate to move it, touch it, look away and look back.

I was the teacher on board, the one people called for sense when the sea or stories got to them. So I scoffed. “Just a toy,” I told the crew, brushing aside their shivers as superstition. But I heard the laughter at night, thin and high, running through the corridors where no children had ever sailed.

One morning, as I passed the galley, I saw the marionette. Someone had perched it on the pantry shelf, its wooden head cocked, its painted eyes catching the lantern glow. I made a show of poking it with a spoon, to the crew’s delight. “See? Nothing to it.” They laughed, but their eyes lingered on the door.

But the shadows in that cramped room stretched wrong, as if the lantern’s light bent around the puppet. When I left, I felt something cold brush my arm—a chill like damp earth before a storm, or old candlewax on a birthday cake that never got blown out. “Imagination,” I muttered, and tried to forget how the puppet’s hand had shifted slightly, the fingers now curled in a way I didn’t remember.

Chapter 2: The Lost Watch

That night, I returned to my cabin and found a watch on my desk. It was old, battered, its glass cracked like ice, and I knew it wasn’t mine. I wound it out of habit, then flinched: its hands spun backwards, ticking in reverse with a soft, relentless beat. The air in my cabin had the tang of rust and something sharper—like blood, though I saw no wound.

I asked around, but no one claimed the thing. When I tried to leave it outside, I found it back on my desk by morning. Each night, it ticked backwards under the moonlight, as if time itself was running away from me.

Worse, I began to notice small stains—rust red, smeared on my pillow, dotting my sleeve. I checked for cuts, but found none. One morning, I woke with a crescent-shaped mark behind my ear, faint as a bruise, and a memory of laughter echoing through my dreams. Always children’s laughter. Always coming from behind a door I couldn’t find on the ship.

I laughed about it at breakfast, teasing the cook that perhaps I was being initiated into the crew’s secret club. But when I looked in the mirror, I thought for a moment that my own eyes were just a little too wide, the pupils a fraction too round, as if someone had painted them on.

Chapter 3: The Fog Tightens

The world outside shrank. The fog pressed in, thick as wool, so that even the ship’s lamps seemed to float in emptiness. The captain called us to the main deck, hoping a roll-call would settle nerves. It didn’t. Two crewmen coughed and shivered, faces pale beneath the oilskin lantern light. Another sailor clutched his side, complaining of a cold that wouldn’t leave. I examined him, but found only a faint crescent mark—same as mine, only fresher, a little raw.

Someone had moved the marionette again. Now it sat in the stairwell, one hand raised as if to wave, the other stained with something dark and sticky. A few drops trailed away across the floorboards. I knelt to touch them, expecting tar or spilled wine, but the color was unmistakable—blood, though none of us were bleeding, and the doll could not bleed at all.

No one claimed responsibility for moving it. The captain ordered it thrown overboard, but when the deckhand tried, he slipped and split his lip. The marionette vanished before we could try again. I tried to laugh off the tension, but there was no appetite for jokes.

That night, the watch on my desk ticked backwards louder than ever, matching the beat of my own heart. I locked it in a drawer, but when I awoke, it was on my pillow, ticking against my ear.

Chapter 4: Two Stories, One Ship

I wasn’t sleeping much by then. I took to wandering the decks, notebook in hand, hoping routine might anchor me. That’s when I found the journal—old, leatherbound, crammed between two loose planks in the common room. The writing was spidery, but the story it told was my own: a teacher on a ship, a puppet that crept unseen, illness blooming like mold, time running backwards. Even the blood appeared in the entries, always described as “not ours.”

The journal ended abruptly, mid-sentence: “I looked away, and now it…” The last page was splashed with a dark stain, dried and flaking. I closed it, hands shaking, and stuffed it in my pocket. When I looked up, the marionette was perched on the table. Its head was tilted, mouth painted in a knowing grin. I tried to laugh, but the sound caught in my throat.

A voice echoed in my mind, not mine: “It’s just a story. Just a prank.” But the blood on the puppet’s hands had not dried, and the crescent mark behind my ear pulsed hot and cold, as if something beneath my skin was trying to find its way out.

Chapter 5: The Illness Spreads

By now, the sickness touched nearly every crew member. Some coughed up dark phlegm, others grew listless, their eyes ringed with bruises. I tried to keep them together, but the ship itself seemed to conspire against us. Hallways stretched longer than they should; doors led to rooms I didn’t recognize, or snapped shut behind me with a chill gust.

One night, I found myself in the galley, but it wasn’t the galley I remembered. The walls were warped, the windows smeared with handprints. The marionette sat on the table, staring at the broken watch ticking in its lap. I blinked, and it was gone. Only the smell of burnt candlewax and rot lingered.

I returned to my own cabin to find blood smeared across my pillow. I touched my face in panic, but found no wound. My reflection in the porthole glass smiled back, a beat too late, its grin stretched too wide.

I kept telling myself it was a trick of the light, or a fever dream from breathing too much damp. But every time I looked away from the puppet, or the watch, or even my own reflection, things shifted. The blood stains grew. The crescent mark behind my ear deepened. The laughter was louder now, echoing from places I could not see.

Chapter 6: The Game Revealed

The captain called a meeting. The marionette was placed at the center of the table, its limbs splayed, its strings tangled. The watch was set beside it, ticking backwards in the silence. “We get rid of them tonight,” the captain declared, but her voice shook.

Suddenly, the lights flickered. Shadows slid along the walls, long and thin. Someone screamed as the marionette turned its head—only a fraction, but enough that we all saw it. The crew scattered, tripping over benches and one another.

In the confusion, I snatched up the journal and the watch, determined to end the pattern. I ran for the upper deck, intending to hurl them into the sea. But the ship’s corridors twisted away from me; every turn led back to the same closed door. Behind it, I heard the unmistakable clack of wooden feet moving on the floor.

I forced myself to laugh, hoping to break the tension. “Very clever,” I called out, “but you’ll have to do better than parlor tricks!” My own voice sounded thin, uncertain. The laughter in the halls grew higher, sharper, as if someone—or something—was mocking me.

Chapter 7: Reflections Split

Desperate for sense, I locked myself in my cabin and faced the mirror. I raised my hand, and so did my reflection. But as I lowered it, my reflection’s smile lingered, eyes fixed not on me, but on the marionette in the corner.

I turned away for only a second, and the puppet was closer. In the glass, I saw its painted eyes blink. The laughter rose, and for a moment, I saw myself reflected twice—one figure backed away, the other stepped forward, reaching for the watch ticking backward on the table.

I spun around, heart slamming in my chest, but there was only me and the puppet. My own shadow flickered on the wall behind it, stretching and twisting, splitting from my feet and crawling toward the marionette.

Pain lanced through my head. I pressed my palm to my ear and felt blood—not fresh, but sticky and cold, as if it had been there all along.

Chapter 8: The Crossing

I made up my mind: I would escape. I packed a bag, tucked the journal and the broken watch inside, and crept toward the lifeboats. The fog outside was thicker than ever, swallowing the beacons on the horizon. I could hear footsteps behind me—soft, dragging, not quite human.

As I reached the deck, I saw a figure: myself, or nearly. Their clothes were wrong, stained with blood where mine were not. Their face was stretched in a bitter grin, eyes round and painted bright. The marionette dangled from their hand, its wooden mouth open in silent laughter.

I blinked and the figure was gone, replaced by the puppet sitting upright on the lifeboat’s bench. The watch ticked backward in my pocket, counting down to something I could not name.

I tried to lower the boat, but the ropes tangled, refusing to move. Blood seeped from the knots, dripping onto my hands. I wiped them on my coat, but the stains only spread, blooming like red flowers in the fog.

Chapter 9: The Confrontation

Driven by desperation, I returned to the abandoned cabin, determined to face the marionette on my own terms. The room was colder than the rest of the ship, air thick with the smell of rot and old candlewax.

The marionette sat on the bunk, legs swinging in time with the ticking of the backwards watch. I forced myself to sit beside it, holding the journal in my lap. “I know this game,” I said. “You want me to look away, so you can move. But what happens if I watch you forever?”

The puppet’s head lolled, eyes painted wide. I stared at it, refusing to blink. My own eyes burned with the effort, tears blurring my vision. I thought I saw my shadow detach, sliding toward the puppet, merging with it.

The laughter in the ship grew louder, echoing through every pipe and plank. My vision doubled; two versions of myself sat on the bunk—one watching, one watched.

I blinked.

The marionette was gone. The watch ticked backward in my empty palm. Blood welled behind my ear, trickling down my neck. I was alone, but my reflection smiled from every surface.

Chapter 10: The Fallout

After that night, the illness lifted from the crew, but they no longer recognized me. They passed by without a word, their faces blank, eyes glazed. The captain refused to meet my gaze. The marionette was never seen again, but sometimes, in the reflection of a porthole or the gleam of a lantern, I caught a glimpse of painted eyes staring back.

I tried to keep teaching, tried to hold on to routine, but the ship seemed never to reach its destination. The fog remained, and the beacons never drew closer. Every night, the broken watch ticked backward, and every morning, fresh blood stained my pillow.

I laughed at myself—what else could I do? It was all a prank, a joke played on the skeptic. But the laughter always echoed, a second voice inside my own.

Chapter 11: Bitter Realization

It’s taken me this long to admit it, but I was the prank’s true punchline. My disbelief fed the thing, let it crawl inside. I am not who I was. Sometimes, I catch my reflection walking away while I stand still. Other times, the marionette’s hand rests on my shoulder in my dreams.

I tried to warn the next teacher, but my throat only produced laughter—cold and hollow. The watch ticks on, and the crescent mark behind my ear grows deeper every day.

I wonder if anyone on this ship remembers me at all, or if I am only the shadow now, waiting for someone else to look away.

Chapter 12: The Circle Returns

So, was it all just a prank? I’ll let the Circle decide. I pass the lantern now, the shadows on your faces longer than before, and somewhere behind you, I think I hear laughter—thin, high, and eager for the next tale. I hope the prank never finds you.

The lantern’s light shifts, and silence settles over us all. For a moment, no one meets my eye. Then the lantern moves on, and the story’s weight lingers, like a stain you cannot wash away.