The Sea Hag

A couple of years ago I wrote this ghost story to tell my friends children on our annual camping trip. Given that I tell it from memory around the campfire, I get to tone it down some for the kids. What follows is the original uncensored version.



The Sea Hag

by Pete Lyons



The hag, in her cloak of kelp and shoes of shells, watched as the tiny fishing boats sailed past her rocky point. Black eyes, dark and soulless, scanned the horizon, marking time; waiting in inscrutable contemplation for Neptune’s sign.



A gray sky and a chill wind woke the sea hag from her diabolical watch. At last a storm was brewing. The small fishing vessels had noticed too, and with sails reefed, they were running down the onshore gale, trying to make a safe harbor.



Thirsty for the carnage to come, the sea hag leaped to her fetid cave and took up her hurricane drum, a wicked barrel made from whale bone and sailor’s skin, strung together with the sinews of sea weed and shark. She stood on that head land and beat her drum with a stick topped with a dogs skull - BAM, BAM, BAM - she beat it and cackled an evil laugh.



The sea blackened and the wind whipped to white capped spume. The sails of the small ships tore and their masts snapped like twigs. The tiny boats rose atop the black mountains of water and dipped down deeply into the great maw of the raging ocean. As the drum beat the storm grew stronger. BAM, BAM, BAM. The wind howled a terrifying pitch and the mountain of water turned to great volcanoes of angry sea - ejecting salty foam in a horrid fury.



Mere flotsam to the storm, the schooners, sloops and ketches of the fishing fleet were torn apart and consumed by the furious sea. Not until the last ship sank beneath the waves, did the sea hag stop her beating.



All along the rocky coast, the tattered remains of the once proud vessels and their sailors were washing ashore. Some sailors were still alive, others were not. But even the corpses still had the look of life. The sea and sun had not had time to start the inevitable decay of dead flesh.



The sea hag moved among the bodies, prodding with her tri-tipped stick. The men still alive she stabbed in the throat and filled a wooden bucket with their spurting blood. Other young bodies she flayed for skin and took chunks of thigh and buttock for her winter larder.



No one from the fishing fleet was ever seen again.



When you go to sea, beware the sea hag and her hurricane drum. She’s always waiting, waiting for fresh meat and new skin for her drum. BAM, BAM, BAM. BAM….


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