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Before we get started, this episode contains paranoia, discussions of drowning, coughing and choking sound effects, some disturbing imagery, and loud noises including screams.

Content warnings and a full transcript are available in the show notes.

The moon hung low and heavy over an unquiet sea that night. The fog, thick as smoke, wrapped the many-masted ship in a curtain of ghostly white as it sat motionless upon the gentle waves.

Not a word or cough or the sound of a breath could be heard from anywhere on board.

So perfect was the silence.

Had another vessel happened upon them in the dark, they might have thought it a ghost ship, wreathed in mist and stripped

of sails. But no, the man who walked the quarter deck with a lantern at his side was no spirit.

The veteran sailor in the crow's nest was no undead soul or specter of ill omen.

The captain?

Well, he had his own ghosts to make peace with, but he himself was still alive for now.

The wind began to turn.

The man on the quarterdeck, a Scotsman by birth and a landsman by rank, still unsteady

on his sea legs, was the first to feel its touch.

It was colder than the stagnant air that wrapped itself around the ship before, sharp

and dry as a winter morning. He stirred, raising his lantern as of looking for the source of the wind.

Of course, he saw nothing through the fog, as he'd seen seen nothing all night and so he returned to his patrol

the man in the crow's nest felt it moments later a stirring of air that crept down the back of his

...