Cursed Ring

The field after war was a gruesome sight. Had the Honorable Captain Johnson been a more squeamish man he probably would never have set foot on it. The battle was long over however, and the armies had moved on. Most of the bodies had been buried, but not all of them. Most of them had also been looted already, but Captain Johnson figured that there was always the off chance of a small amount of loot at least.

This civil war was so stupid, people killing each other when they could be making a profit off of both sides, the valiant captain thought. He had long since discovered all of the profit that could be made off of other people’s misfortune. Looting battlefields was only one example of this. Something to do while his ship was in winter dock on Lake Huron.

The field had been picked over so many times he was almost in despair of finding anything until he saw a single body laying under a bush. He wouldn’t have spotted it at all if the boots hadn’t been sticking from under the shrubbery. The body was in horrible condition but that didn’t stop Captain Johnson. He was used to such things by now. Perhaps if he was a new hand at this business he might have been scared away, but now all he had eyes for was the ring that the man had most likely worn on his finger. It wasn’t on his finger any longer however, which was something to be thankful for. Cutting fingers off for the rings was a messy business best avoided when the opportunity presented itself. Instead the man had died clutching the ring in his hand; it looked as if it had been touching his lips. Maybe a final thought for some loved one. Well he was no longer in a place to prevent the ring from being stolen away.

Captain Johnson didn’t sell the ring as he had intended. Jewelry wasn’t selling as well any longer, not now that so much of it was on the market. Not only from the pillagers of battle fields such as himself but also from poor women trying to support families now that their men were either gone to battle or dead. He had taken a liking to the ring anyway. It was proudly displayed on his finger when he again took command of his ship for the first voyage of the season. There was a lot of trade to be done on the Great Lakes with so many ships being taken by the armies. Being one of the first ships to leave dock after the winter equaled a definite increase in profits.

A week after they left dock Captain Johnson was sitting in his cabin, figuring his accounts when he heard a rap on his door. He got up and opened it, a figure stood there, obscured by the dark and lightless night.

“Well come in and state your business,” Captain Johnson snapped. The figure obeyed. A corpse of a figure, in a union solder’s coat, with a face that Captain Johnson had last seen in sure death, and it advanced. Captain Johnson backed away quickly, his thumb passing over the ring subconsciously.

“What are you doing here? Leave here ghost, you have no business here.”

“You invited me in,” said the thing. He might have chuckled but it was far more like a death rattle and made Captain Johnson turn white with fear. “You have something of mine.” Captain Johnson tried to pull the ring off of his finger but it was stuck fast, no matter how he pulled at it there was no way to get it off. Again the thing laughed.

“You don’t get away from William Scot so easily.”

The next few days Captain Johnson shocked his crew by spending more time on deck then he ever had. The decks were cold and frozen but for some reason the captain looked far paler when he entered his cabin out of the cold.

To be continued...