Ships And Ghosts

Crime Fiction by Benjamin Bradley

The first time I read Shadows at Dawn a chasm opened somewhere deep in the bowels of my heart. A void, one that I’ve spent the last two years trying to fill with some sort of meaning where my life lacked it. Some sort of purpose. It was weird and funny and strange how a sequence of words, a string of letters, could unearth some great unknown inside of a person. And I was embarrassed at first. Hell, I hid the book from my roommate for all of a year until the thing became a worldwide phenomenon and shattered every record known to man. Only then did I feel less alone in my sense of starting over. But I still ached for more. I ached for some depth to the words that I failed to see. A signpost in a storm. And it had taken me three months of shoestring food budgets and overnight shifts to scrape together enough to purchase the limited-fan-experience-all-access pass for Langley Bellis’ stop in Memphis. I needed answers.

Bellis had written novels before Shadows at Dawn, in fact, he had a steady run in the nineties with books that rode the NYT list for a while. For most of his new reader base, those were pleasant discoveries that satiated a bit of their desire for the now-infamous Bellis twist, but it wasn’t quite enough. There was a change in his work from those early days to Shadows at Dawn and I felt it on every page of the masterpiece.

I reached the security gate of the Memphis Convention Center a half-hour before the email told us to arrive. My heart thudded with each passerby, each person slicing my time with Bellis further, placing at risk my opportunity to really walk away with understanding and a path forward. Thankfully, only one other soul stood beside me when the hour struck. Annie Wilkerson, as she’d introduced herself. Hair like a bonfire, eyes like the sky. The imbalance struck me for a slow moment, long enough that I nearly forgot to respond to her at all. “Sammy Kirk.”

“Sammy?” she said, like she was sampling my name in her mouth before spitting it back out. “It’s nice to meet you, Sammy. This your first time meeting Langley?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And yours?”

“We met at a book signing a decade ago, back when he was more unknown to the masses.”

“Which book?”

“Gates of Kyren.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Probably in my top three.”

“Don’t worry,” Annie said. “I just want to ask the old bag two questions. I won’t spoil your chance to fanboy out.”

“No, I— No, that’s cool,” I said. “I guess it’s just me and you.”

The metallic door clicked open, and the tallest man in the world stood in its place. “IDs, NDAs and passes.”

We each forked over our IDs, non-disclosure agreements, and the entry passes on our phones. He examined Annie’s for a beat, glanced at mine, then waved us in. The giant led us down a narrow hallway with doors scattered on each side. At the end, he shoved open a door and ushered us into a cramped dressing room. “Mr. Bellis will be in shortly. I’ll return your phones when he’s gone.”

The door slammed shut, and it felt like Annie and I were the only people on earth. “What did you like about it?” she asked.

“What?”

“Shadows at Dawn.”

“Oh, I liked it all.”

“Pick one thing. If you’re going to tell somebody to read it, what would you say to sell it?”

“The twist,” I said. “But I wouldn’t tell them that.”

She smiled. “It is clever, isn’t it? I’ve written to Langley to tell him how much I liked it.”

“That’s actually one thing I want to ask him, if there’s enough time. How he came up with it.”

“Especially after all those other books he wrote. Such a big change for him, you know?”

“Totally,” I said, knowing full well that if I didn’t have the biggest moment of my life approaching, I’d be plummeting into love. “What… do you have a favorite line?”

“They’re all my favorite,” Annie said. “And I know that’s a cop out, but we—”

The tall man appeared again at the door and escorted a hunched old man into the small room. He flopped into an oversize orange chair and expelled a deep sigh. Bellis had curly gray hair, thin on top, and furry eyebrows like caterpillars. I jumped to my feet and extended my hand. “Mr. Bellis, I’m a huge fan. My name is Sammy and—”

“No touching,” Bellis said. “But it’s nice to meet a fan. And you are, miss?”

“Oh, gee. Sorry. I was a bit star struck. I’m Annie. Annie Wilkerson. It’s just… wow… it’s an honor.”

Bellis plucked an index card from his pocket and read from it. “Uh…thank you both for your generous donation to the local homelessness efforts in Memphis. It’s a rare thing to give a gift and receive something like this in return and—ah, this is poppycock. What’s the deal here? Are you two sick kids?”

“No,” I said. “Just big fans.”

“Right,” Bellis said. “Well, on with it then. What do you want to know?”

“We—” Annie started.

“Before you answer, let me get some basics out of the way. Remember that you each have signed a confidentiality agreement in that you cannot legally speak about this conversation nor profit from it in any way.”

“We know,” I said. “But we—”

“And I can’t tell you where my ideas came from. That’s like asking where the dinosaurs came from or why your mother never loved you. But ask away. I’ll answer what I wish to.”

I swallowed hard and met eyes with Annie, who nodded for me to proceed. “I’ve read the book eleven times now and from the very first time, it hit me in the heart. Like broke it, I think. I realized that I’m just as lost as Wylie was in the first part, but I don’t have anybody like Tate to guide me along the way.”

Bellis sighed. “And what’s your question, son?”

“What do I do? Where do I go?”

“That’s an impossible question, Steve.”

“Sammy.”

“Irregardless, you must blaze your own path. As you know, the ending reveals that Tate isn’t actually real. That even Wylie was a ghost when the whole thing started. That’s the twist, Sammy. And it should tell you everything you need to know.”

“That life is meaningless?”

“Perhaps,” Bellis said. “Or perhaps if you walk through life like a ghost, you’ll make friends with others doing the same.” He pointed to Annie. “What’s your burning question? You look like you’re about to burst, girl.”

“I wondered about the twist. About the plot overall but—”

He groaned. “I told you. I don’t know where ideas come from and—”

“There’s a rumor,” Annie said. “On the forums.”

“Don’t,” I said. “That’s bullshit.”

Bellis leaned forward. “And what is this rumor?”

“That a fan gave you the plot idea in a letter. That you stole the whole thing,” Annie said. “That’s why—people say at least—that’s why it’s so different from your other plots. From your other books.”

“An artist ages and grows and learns,” he said. “But people will always talk. Who am I to discourage scuttlebutt?”

“I know our time here is limited and I’m sure Sammy here is about to explode with questions about the meaning of life, or why there are no adjectives on page forty-four. But we’re under the veil of secrecy, right? Nothing you say can leave this room or you’ll sue us until our eyeballs bleed.”

“Accurate,” he said.

“I bet it would feel good to say out loud,” Annie said.

Bellis adjusted himself in his seat and shook his head. “I… Oh, what the hell. Yes, the story isn’t as simple as the rumor makes it to be, but I had some help. The bones of the story came to me from another manuscript I saw. But it was half-baked and three-quarters-garbage. I cleaned it up, added my prose, and made it worthwhile.”

I tried to pick my jaw up from the floor. “You stole the idea?”

“Let me ask you, Sammy, Annie. Have either of you heard of the ship of Theseus?”

“No?” I said. Annie shook her head, anger and frustration apparent across her face.

“It’s an old story, but it’s also a logic puzzle. A ship named Theseus sails across the Atlantic. Along the way, the crafty crew members replace each and every board. When Theseus arrives at the port, is it the same boat?”

“Yes,” I said. “The name is the same and—”
“But it’s entirely different besides the name.”
“I don’t—” I started.

“Now imagine a manuscript. There may have been a ship on one side of the water that wouldn’t have made it across, but I’m the reason it could sail. I didn’t steal anything. I built Shadows at Dawn from the wreckage and made it what it is. The original idea is hardly a ghost that haunts the finished project—it’s moreso just a distant echo with little ties that bind.”

“A ghost? But the original author,” Annie said.

“Some hack,” Bellis said. “By God, this does feel good to talk about, even if I can see the life draining out of the boy’s face as we go on. I’m sorry to break it to you, Sammy.”

“You… you were my hero,” I said, fighting tears from my eyes.

“Even heroes get tired,” Bellis said.

Annie stood and put her hands on her head. Bellis chuckled. “Why did you push me to answer if you couldn’t handle the truth, girl?”

“I thought I could handle it,” she said, pacing around the tiny space behind the oversize chairs. “I…” Annie stepped to Bellis and paused before him. “Do you even feel bad about it?”

“What is there to feel bad about?”

“Some fan worked tirelessly on their story, years of their life probably, and passed it to you, believing you’d help them. And you just took it and ran.”

“Like I said, it’s far from that simple, I—”

“And then you sit in front of fans like me and Sammy and drone on about how ideas just come to you like lightning strikes and how we should all be so lucky. But one of us was that lucky, Langley Bellis. One of us took that chance. And you stole it.”

Bellis’ face went pale, and he shrunk in his chair. “I think this has gone on long enough,” he said. “Reggie!”

Footfalls sounded in the hallway just as Annie reached to her hip. The overhead florescent light twinkled off the blade. One fell swoop, one swift movement, and the blade was no more. Only the handle that stuck out of Bellis’ heart like a badge of dishonor. I froze in my seat, panic and fear and every relative of the type flooded into my brain.

“It was yours?” I asked, just as Reggie appeared in the doorway and rushed towards Bellis’ lifeless body. Blood pooled around my feet.

Annie nodded. She raised the knife and aimed it at her heart. “I’m glad you liked it, Sammy. You’re not alone. There’s always a ghost—like me.”

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Bio: Benjamin Bradley is a graduate of the Gotham Writers Workshop Fiction I & II and the Red Bud Writing Project’s Advanced Fiction courses and an active member of the Mystery Writers of America. He’s the author of the Shepard & Kelly Mystery series through Indies United Publishing House and his short fiction has been published in Rural Fiction Magazine, Haunted Words Press, The Serulian, and other literary magazines. By day, Benjamin coaches homelessness organizations nationally on embedding healthcare for our country’s most vulnerable populations from his home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

You can learn more at His website HERE. And purchase his books HERE.

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