Ghost Ship

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The falling moon on the horizon shone on the only other ship in the harbor.

Its silhouette lit up against the backdrop of the medieval harbor as it drifted lazily against the natural stone breakwater. The steel ship was covered in rust. It was roughly eighty feet long with a beam of forty-five. The hull showed the outline of a fishing boat, but its rigging had long ago been removed, and its decking was now a jumbled mass of dilapidated steel. It formed a jarring contrast to the pastel colored tower homes and terraced vineyards surrounding the natural harbor along the coast of Cinque Terra.

There was no name on the vessel.

No running lights and no sound of a diesel engine running quietly. The ghost ship appeared to have just drifted into the medieval harbor, blown there by the southerly winds of the Tyrrhenian Sea or the currents of the Mediterranean Sea.

Less than fifty yards away, a man on a small wooden rowboat opened his eyes. His head hurt. He felt disoriented and hungover. He tried to blink away the haze in his memory as he searched his environment. There were pastel covered buildings in the distance, a row of colorful rowboats tied up along a jetty leading to a small sandy beach. A church tower watched over the harbor and to the other side, a masonry spiral tower, the last remnants of a medieval fortress.

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