Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead, Part Two

By Tex Daw and Herman Melville

In his forbiddingly beautiful sophomore effort, Tex Daw returns to the deck of the Pequod, where times are not our own, and whaling men have given way to vampires that subvert the conventions of the high seas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543949551

Book preview

Acclaim for Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead, Part One

If Dracula is in first place, as some would argue, in the pantheon of vampire literature, it could be argued that Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead is in second.

Every word serves its purpose, with exact ambition, much like the dots in the pointillism of a George Seurat.

Deliciously, disturbingly beautiful.

Hypnotically atmospheric.

Brace yourself for heart racing bursts of literary satisfaction.

The spell it casts transcends its existential dread.

Beautiful and forbidding.

Imbued with the gravity of self liberation.

The power of seduction as a metaphor for global domination.

Incredibly poetic.

An absorbing work built with flashes of brilliance.

Yes, it’s a vampire novel. But it’s a slow burn that transcends the horror genre.

The prose is elaborate and clever.

Seamlessly incorporates new, invigorating twists into a classic story.

Like nothing ever written, and no one else could write.

Books by TEX DAW

THE MOBY DICK CHRONICLES

Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead, Part One

Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead, Part Two

Copyright © 2018 by Tex Daw. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission should be obtained from the author prior to any prohibited means of reproduction, be it electronic, mechanical, or otherwise.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daw, Tex

Moby Dick: The Rise of the Undead, Part Two / Tex Daw

Print ISBN 978-1-54394-954-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54394-955-1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

To Herman Melville, the man behind Moby Dick: or, the White Whale, considered, by many, to be the greatest American novel of all time, even with its subversive and homoerotic undertones, much of which was conjured out of thin air.

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

- Herman Melville

In memory of my nephew Chad, who everyday gives me newfound strength to carry on in the face of what seems to be constant adversity.

If a thing loves,

It is infinite.

-William Blake

Table of Contents

Part Two: The Untold True Story

11 STRANGER

12 WE THE UNDEAD

13 THE WHEELBARROW MAN

14 FIEND

15 CORPS DE HOMME

16 A CURE FOR IMMORTALITY

17 ANIMAL

18 THE BLACK BOX

Part Two:

The Untold True Story

From the time that they wake, until dawn the next day, the rising moon lights up the world, as it chronicles the nocturnal lives of those vampires on board the whaling vessel Pequod. Holding lamps before them, they go out into the mild night air, sweetened, as it’s become, by a breeze of unusual mildness that deludes them with its promise of better weather. Blown south by a sudden storm, the ship is still and subdued, and yet somehow preluding, and there lurks in the air an incantation of contentment.

The early stars were coming out. Points of light were peeking here and there from behind the overhang of low clouds. Of the twenty or so coopers and stewards and deckhands that had taken to watching the lighting of the celestial chandelier, one pair had quietly slipped away for more monastic leanings. They were bathing together in one of the trypots, softly and secretly. What must we ask is the relationship between them? Are they brothers? Or are they lovers, as comfortable with sensuality as they are with sexuality? If these questions go unanswered, the import of their intimacy reveals an uncommonly close bond, enhanced, in large part, by the introspective setting.

Gunmetal skies are no longer enough to keep the men below decks, and bad dreams are much less of a concern.

More frankly addressing my libidinous aspirations was Keg, who, much to my delight, had enlisted my help in weaving lashings for our boat. In a style of dress that showed just how comfortable he’d become with public nudity, he crossed over into a kind of mechanical repetitiveness that drew my attention not to his work but to the gallery of finely detailed tattoos on his scrotum. In the dark that descended upon us, he drove the hawthorn pick between the lengthwise threads of the weave, while I gazed at his genitals, and inserted the loose strands of the young yarns into his closely woven yards of hemp. Standing across from where I was seated, my bluely inked companion handled the thorny length of hawthorn carelessly and unthinkingly, as if he was weaving on the loom of time, and of his own free will, ideas that sharply contrasted with the automatic and monotonous demands of his labours.

The strange sort of dreaminess that reigned over all was broken only by the driving sounds of Keg’s pick, and the heart that was beating passionately in my chest, but my job was to see to the needs of his satin twill weave, and not to the needs of my flourishing erection. I was fully hard and mindless with desire when there came from the uprights a cry so filled with fire and brimstone that I dropped the ball of yarn from my hand.

Thar they blow!

I looked up and gazed into the glory of the stratospheric dusk from whence those words had come. Tash was suspended up there, high aloft in the trestles, beholding the arrival of the fates, and calling down into the wash of the sweetly blowing winds. More of a man than an earthbound god, this prophet of whaling was announcing their coming with cries that fell out of the sky like feathers forged from lead.

Thar they blow!

Where away, harpooner?

On the lee beam! About two miles distant!

The sperm whale blows as regularly as a clock on the mantle marks the passage of time, with the same undeviating and reliable uniformity. This is one way that whalemen are able to distinguish the sperm whale from other tribes of his genus. Harbouring the same modest hopes, aching desires, and suspicions, the custodians of the Pequod mounted the rigging and everything else was put into high gear.

With his obsidian eyes, Tash followed the wave formations on the looming edge of the sea. He tracked the whales, while the men worked in silence and Ahab stared fixedly at the waters.

Thar’s a bloody school of them, captain! It’s an outpouring of sperm oil and spermaceti!

Quickly, steward! What’s the time? The time, boy?

Freshly awakened, his eyes still gunked with sleep, Fleece hurried down into the cabin to check the numerical values on the timepiece, then he reported back to the supreme officer with the information that was called for. Standing before the old man of the sea was incredibly intimidating, but Fleece knew instinctively that Ahab’s genius for digits and durations ran counter to any carder of souls trapped in a timewarp.

Ahab rocked on his stump ever so slightly, in the way that he may have done if he was caught pilfering something of cherished value. This was part of his plan, a plan of his own devising, for it fascinated him to influence the way that he was being perceived, particularly by those men who served him in an administrative capacity. Clapping his hands together, high overhead, he ordered the Pequod to be kept away from the wind, and Starbuck, combining all his other orders, made certain that she went gently rolling before it.

Of the shipkeepers not appointed to the iron tubs or other various interventions, one was sent skyward to relieve Tash of his post. Returning soon afterwards from the head of the erected main, the barefoot harpooner gave word that the whales had gone down on a leeward heading. Ahab looked in that direction, with the hopes of spotting the school in advance of our prow, but he was not worried in the least, for there was no reason to suppose that they’d been alarmed or indeed knew anything at all of our proximity.

Starbuck did not replace the watchmen in the foremast and aftermast positions. He chose, instead, to stage one of the most dramatic events I’d ever witnessed, and still managed to keep more than enough competent hands on board to see to the affairs of the ship. While he was seeing to the readiness of the three main stoveboats, his fellow officers were readying the many coils of line that had to be fixed to their places. By virtue of all that Ahab had ordered, the specksnyder saw that the cranes were thrust out, and that the mainyard was backed down, despite the fact that it was considered lunacy by some to go hunting in the water at night.

Claiming their divine right as whalemen, a reliably vigilant group of deckhands had taken up a string of positions on the afterside of the bulwarks. With no way that I could see to add to their numbers, they resembled a group of enlisted men, lined up along the structural rail of a navy vessel, waiting eagerly to jump on board an enemy’s advancing ship.

The bellies of the prepared boats went swinging out over the larboard sea like gargoyles over a grave robber’s paradise. One can only imagine what all this commotion must have looked like to the lone keeper on high, but if to his eyes it was a ship seized by devils, it was the presence of foreigners that soon made themselves felt. A startling revelation was thrust upon us, one that carried all our attentions away from the sea. Five armed strangers were standing on the foredeck in company with Captain Ahab. They’d been kept separate, up until now, by shadows long upon us from the primal moon, a force of good or destruction that brought us together in concert with the very animals that we were chasing.

Like a drill sergeant on some military parade ground, Ahab haltingly took one step back. He turned sharply to his left, and we watched him descend the stairs and whisk his companions away in the direction of the cutting stages. With sidearms drawn, the strange gang of men set to work on the spare stoveboat that was hanging from the starboard quarter. With noiseless and proficient haste, they freed what was technically called the captain’s boat from the tackles that bound it in place.

Just as the golden epaulettes on the shoulders of Ahab’s jacket symbolized his place high up in the chain of command, the furry ushanka crowning the head of the bespectacled figure standing next to him symbolized a place of eternal servitude. A tall and swarthy man, with a dispassionate face, Gagarin was funereally invested in a long Chinese coat of embroidered black cotton, even though his hat was of Russian origin. He was older and swarthier than the quartet of men who materialized out of nowhere along with him, but they shared the same wide-set, dark eyes, evoking a race notorious for a certain diabolism of subtlety. The accomplices of Ahab’s new subcommander spied on all and everything, as they orbited around him like living sputniks in a sea of evil miasma. Were they the secret confidential agents of Satan, and he their dark lord?

To the officers on the ship, this sudden unveiling seemed a kind of subterfuge. They may have rightly drawn conclusions about what had just transpired, but they did not want to appear in violation of the old man’s trust, so they thread their way through the dense throng of bystanders, in a vain attempt to arrive at his rescue.

Disorder and mayhem slowed them down, and Ahab put his hand up before they could reach him.

What say you, Gagarin?

Ready as we’ll ever be, commander!

Men of the fishery! the captain said. Lower away! Heed my words, and lower away!

Such was the thunder of Ahab’s call to order that his crew of newly arrived mariners sprang over the side and held onto the rail, where they waited for the half deck boys to finish dropping the captain’s boat into the waiting sea, and then, in a daring unknown to any other vocation, they dropped right down on top of it.

With the launching of the boats came the enchantment of the wooden oars. The slice of their flattened ends parted the surface and jumbled the water about, but the first three keels had hardly any time to draw out from under the ship’s lee, when the fourth keel, coming from the windward side, pulled around and into position. Ahab was standing erect in the stern, loudly hailing his men. So as to cover as large an expanse as humanly possible, he charged them with things he assumed they would not question, but the inmates of the regular boats hesitated to comply with his charges, and they locked their eyes on his crew of alien accomplices.

The captain looked toward the east and he looked toward the wide, then he gave orders that were even more clearly assigned. To the first boat, this was to spread out. To the second boat, this was to give way. And to the third boat, this was to pull more to leeward. First to answer Ahab was his most junior officer, who’d been ordered to take up the rear. Aye, aye, Flask said, breaking with formation, and trying in vain to have his steering oar swept around. But Ennis just sat there, staring at him blankly. Son, he said, flashing a promising smile. Relinquish your fears. Lay them to rest, and look to where I’m pointing. There be sperm whales blowing on the horizon.

By scrutinizing a deck of imaginary fortunetelling cards, Ennis was looking to throw light on the motives of Ahab’s newest crew, in the way that a medium with enough import would commune with the dead and ably predict the future, but Flask put a stop to his efforts of psychic scrutiny. Son, he said. Pay them cowardly fugitives no mind.

Oh I don’t mind ‘em at all, Mr. Flask. Didn’t I hear ‘em barking like dogs in the hold? And didn’t I then telegraph those findings? I may not know their organization, or their wheretos, and whyfors, but there’s one thing I do know for certain: they’re no longer willing to serve under a miserable taskmaster. This makes them stowaways, Mr. Flask. Fleeing from persecution. And they’re only one member shy of making up the bare minimum of a stoveboat’s crew.

With the team of oarsmen under his command showing clear signs of unrest, Stub was working to stave off an open rebellion. Men, he said. If we stay here, we die here. Never mind them animals. Put your backs into it, and we’ll show them how it’s done! We’ll restore the rule of law, and fill our tubs with dazzling eruptions of sperm! Come alive you lazy sinners, and pull! Minding that you don’t snap your paddles in two!

The second officer was confident, and keenly so, if he was anything, and his exordium to his crew is given here verbatim because of the way he exercised his authority. He talked too much, and there was a religiosity about rowing in all the words that came from him. But you must not suppose from this particular sermon that he ever allowed himself to fly into a fit of rage in front of his congregation. No. Not like Flask was apt to do. And herein do we find Stub’s chief peculiarity. The thick and stout officer said the strangest things to the men that rowed his boat, in a manner that was as confidently seaworthy as it was terribly devout. They listened intently to his every word, even at times when their heads were turned away, and they responded to the demands he placed on them by leveraging their oars seemingly for the sheer joy of it, which gave me to believe that he had charmed his way into their hearts and minds.

In obedience to the captain’s wishes, the burly second mate had his keel pull into position obliquely across the specksnyder’s bow, and when, for a minute or so, the two of them were within hearing distance, he quietly hailed him.

Ahoy, he