This was a fun prompt! I haven’t read much in the mystery genre, so I definitely failed to incorporate that aspect. I think that ghosts are mysterious; and I do love a ghost story. I really like what I named the ship. I might swipe it for other stories. If nothing else, this exercise creates great fodder for other stories.
As always, if you end up using this prompt or any of the other prompts we’ve tried, please let us know – we’d love to see what you come up with! Here’s the format we’re using, if you need a refresher!
- Character: Sailor
- Object: Thumb Tack
- Genre/Tone: Fantasy/Mystery
Mudd Hudgins’s hut sat near the water. It leaned on its foundation and smelled saltier than the sea. The sea was the only thing that made him happy, ever. But he could not sail since his injury and retirement. It used to be that he would stamp around on the wooden boards of the porch with his wooden leg clacking, yelling at the local children to stay away from his property. He considered the whole beach his property though, and when he died the townspeople sighed collectively with relief and went to clear out his effects.
Mudd watched them from the shadows. All his stamping and cursing came to nothing now; ghosts cannot often communicate with the living. He glared, and a few times the men carrying away the old sea-trunks and other flotsam and jetsam he’d accumulated, twitched looks over their shoulders and walked out faster. Soon nothing remained. He cursed the backs of them that had taken his things away from his property. But it did not bring them back.
At night when all was shadow, he was able to move around the whole hut, he found that he could not leave the hut to go after his things. He could float out onto the porch, but not past the front stoop. He watched people walk up and down the beach at night. And watched them through the windows during the day. Sometimes it seemed that people felt him glaring and stamping at them and moved more quickly past his hut. After a few nights he found that one thing had been left. A little brass thumb tack was stuck in the wall; it had once held up some map of the sea. He was able, somehow, to pry it off the wall. It remained in his transparent hand. It even stung for a brief moment when he closed his fist over it, and the point sank into his palm.
He tried the door again, and he was able to leave, with that tack in his palm. His perpetual glare transformed into a grin, and he started toward town. He would get his things back. He would be able to chase away trespassers. But the sea was so close. He started drifting toward the harbor instead, and found a new, stout, hearty vessel, – the Jasper Swift – looking prepped to leave on some long voyage. He settled into the hold and pushed the thumbtack deep into a plank in a shadowy corner.
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The townspeople were relieved when they realized that Mudd’s old hut was no longer haunted.
“He must have made his peace,” they said.
The sailors on the Jasper Swift were mystified. This was a new ship, but she seemed haunted already. Granted, the ghost seemed indifferent to their presence, and did not cause real problems. But late at night, those keeping watch would often report that they heard someone stamping back and forth, like an old sailor on a wooden leg. Though they never saw anyone.