She must be a siren, he thought. He had always imagined them to look like mermaids. The siren was frantically trying to rouse Blackbeard, shaking him when James finally reached them. Blackbeard was lying motionless on the ocean floor, lifeless and ghastly pale. Beside Smee, this was the closest friend he had, and he wasn’t ready to lose him.

“Is he dead?” he asked, but Blackbeard’s pallor answered his question: he had deep bruises around his neck from the leviathan’s tentacle, his skin was a bluish white, and his eyes were protruding from their sockets.

The siren whipped her head around and scowled at something James could not see. He’s coming! she mouthed silently, looking panicked and inching farther away from them. We have to go now.

“Who is coming? I can’t leave my captain here,” said James as the siren swam quickly away. “Don’t leave, I need help getting his body back to the ship!” But the siren was well out of sight. James tried to drag Blackbeard’s body, but it was too heavy; there was no way he would be able to swim him up to the surface. “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll figure something out, I won’t leave you! This is not our fate.”

“But this is your fate, James,” said an ominous voice, slicing through the water like a shock wave. “This is where the dead come so they may be led to their final rest.”

James looked around startled, wondering where the voice was coming from, but saw no one there. “I won’t let you take him!” said James, frantically looking around to see whom he was talking to.

“You have no choice, and I shall take you both,” said the voice, echoing through their under-water grave.

“But I can’t be dead.” Can I? “This isn’t the end of my tale.” James wondered if he was dreaming. None of this seemed real.

“Well, you know what they say about dead men,” said the voice, now laughing.

“Who are you? Show yourself!” said James, squinting, trying to see through the murky water. A massive ship materialized out of the darkness in front of him. The ship looked both alive and dead, like the skeletal remains of a once-beautiful ship, now twisted and made grotesque by decay. The stern looked like a great gaping mouth ready to devour anything in its path, and its deck was populated by hundreds of seafaring men and women who had lost their lives to the perils of the sea. The Flying Dutchman! James was sure he must be dreaming; he had read stories like this but never believed they were real. Standing at its helm was a spectral captain with a grave smile on his face that sent a chill through James’s core. The ship’s massive sails floated like ghosts in the water behind him.