The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock

Strange things keep happening in the permanently fog-shrouded seaside town of Hallowind Cove, earning it the nickname “Harbour of the Weird”.

When Paul comes Hallowind Cove, after inheriting an old house from an uncle he barely knew, he doesn’t put much stock in those stories. But then he finds himself hunted by an angry zombie, who is looking to avenge a century-old crime…

 

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Some background information:

• The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock is a short story of 4300 words or approximately 16 print pages. This story is a digital premiere and has never been published previously.
• I initially wrote this story for a shared world project, which fell through. About a year later, I pulled out the story again, removed all links to the shared world setting and finished it. Eventually, The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock became the first story in the Hallowind Cove series about a seaside town which is a magnet for weird happenings.
• The talking raven is the only thing which still remains from the shared world setting, though I changed his name.
• Hugo, the raven’s new name, is a reference to the Hugo Awards, science fiction’s most prestigious awards (at least, that’s the idea), which were embroiled in a massive controversy at the time I finished the story.
• Wrecking via false lights has a long and often bloody tradition in seaside towns in both Europe and America and occasionally shows up in fiction such as Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn or Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers.
• The story was also influenced quite a bit by John Carpenter’s 1979 horror movie The Fog. I saw a clip from The Fog on TV as a very young child and was terrified for years, until I finally figured out which film it was (I initially suspected The Shining) and could exorcise my fear.
• Alas, the Mary Durban, the ship whose captain the vengeful revenant used to be, is entirely fictional.
• There are various recipes for making Grog, the traditional hot sailor’s drink. Ian mostly follows the standard North German recipe of rum, sugar and hot water, though he also adds in a dash of lime juice borrowed from the Royal Navy’s recipe.
• The cover is a drawing of a zombie pirate by Sara Room.
• The original cover was an altered photo I took at the town of Bensersiel on the German North Sea coast. The original unaltered photo may be seen here.