Ghost Ship, short story

GHOST SHIPPaulWe crept along in silence, I couldn’t even hear Robert’s breathing behind me. It was almost like when we crept around school pranking people apart from the fact that we were on a big old rusty naval ship and for all we knew, alone on it as well. I wondered what was going through Rachel’s mind, who was in front of me, maybe she was thinking what I was thinking except about Mark who was in front of her.

“Are we nearly where we got to last time” Whispered Robert. I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard a bit of fear in his voice.

“No” Mark whispered back “Remember that’s the computer we saw last time, let’s try and switch it on”. So I slipped past everyone else miming a gun with my hands and quietly humming the James Bond tune then I started to hunt for the on switch on the ancient looking computer.

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“There’s no on button” I said quietly with a worried look on my face.

“What! Let’s see-” But as if it could hear us the computer suddenly buzzed and whirred as the screen burst into life. Ding ding dang ding, we stared at each other with worried looks on our faces until the silence was broken by a shrill foghorn that seemed to come from everywhere.

“Run” shouted Rob.

“I am running you dimwit” I shouted in return. Then suddenly the ship gave a violent lurch and I was nearly thrown of my feet as its engines grumbled into life like a sleepy dog woken up from a dream of eating bones and chasing cats. 100 metres left, c’mon, I could see the gap which had the pier beside it closing up. 50 metres, 40 metres, 30 metres now I could hear...