Senku Ishigami | Ghost Please?

The October air over the Pacific carried a damp chill, and somewhere along the Perseus's voyage, the crew had decided that Halloween was an excellent excuse to start telling ghost stories.

Senku Ishigami considered this a waste of perfectly good evening hours.

Not because the supernatural was inherently ridiculous. He'd heard the stories, read the folklore, and entertained more than a few hypothetical scenarios in his spare time. An afterlife? An entirely new form of energy? Consciousness persisting beyond biological death? Ten billion percent fascinating.

The problem was that nobody ever seemed to have any decent evidence.

And now, apparently, his ship was haunted.

"You're doing the thing again," Chrome said, dropping onto the bench beside Senku in the navigation room.

Senku didn't look up from the components spread across his workbench. "Gonna need you to narrow that down. I do a lot of things."

"The thing where you pretend you don't care about something when you obviously care about it."

"That's called having standards, four-eyes. Now spit it out."

Chrome leaned forward. "Kaseki heard something scratching inside the hull last night. And Ryusui's lookout swears he saw a ghost light near the bow."

Senku's hand paused.

"...A ghost light?"

"That's what they're calling it."

"Well, that's a stupid name."

Chrome's shoulders slumped. "There it is."

"Could be bioluminescence. Could be reflected light. Could be somebody waving a damn lantern around for attention." Senku set down his tool. "And the scratching?"

"Sounded like something dragging itself along the inside of the ship."

"Cool. Let's go find out what it actually is."

He was already on his feet.

Kaseki waited near the stern cargo hold, arms folded across his chest. The old craftsman looked more irritated than frightened, which Senku considered a promising start.

"Describe exactly what you heard," Senku said. "Not what you think caused it. Just the sound."

"Slow scraping," Kaseki answered. "A pause, then another scrape. It repeated several times. I checked the ropes and the storage crates, but couldn't find anything."

"Any pattern to the timing?"

"Not that I could determine."

Senku crouched beside the coils of hemp rope stored against the starboard wall. The Perseus creaked around them as the hull rose and fell over the swells.

He waited.

A low groan traveled through the timber. Somewhere nearby, a rope shifted with a dry rasp.

Then came the scraping sound.

Senku's expression sharpened.

There it was again: a rough, dragging noise, followed by a pause.

"Chrome, grab that lamp. Kaseki, show me exactly where you were standing."

They examined the cargo hold together. Senku checked the lashings, inspected the rope coils, and ran his fingers along the timber joints. He asked Kaseki to identify which parts of the hull had been repaired recently, then compared the sound's location with the ship's structure.

A heavy coil of rope had been secured against a wooden support near a seam in the inner planking. The rope's outer fibers had caught against a rough patch of timber. Each time the ship rolled, the coil shifted a fraction of an inch before catching again.

Senku wedged a folded scrap of cloth between the rope and the timber.

They waited.

The ship rolled. The ropes creaked. Water slapped the hull.

No scraping.

Senku removed the cloth.

Scrape.

He replaced it.

Silence.

"Well, look at that." Senku grinned. "A contact surface, changing tension, and a moving ship. The rope slips when the load shifts, catches on the rough wood, and drags until the tension changes again."

Kaseki examined the contact point, then nodded thoughtfully. "The rough patch must have formed where the timber was repaired."

"Exactly. We'll smooth it down and secure the coil properly. No reason to let the ship damage its own equipment."

Chrome peered at the wall. "So it's not something crawling around inside the hull?"

"Unless you've discovered a species of ghost that operates by repeatedly rubbing hemp rope against wood, no."

Chrome laughed, visibly relieved.

Senku packed away his tools.

It was a perfectly good explanation. Reproducible, testable, and useful.

Still.

He'd be lying if he said a tiny part of him hadn't hoped they'd find something with more teeth.

Ryusui made his entrance an hour later with all the subtlety of a man announcing the discovery of a new continent.

"Senku! My ship has acquired a mysterious nocturnal visitor!"

Senku kept writing in his notebook. "If it's another hole in the hull, I'm charging you for the repairs."

"A light!" Ryusui declared. "Pale blue-green, moving along the port bow before vanishing into the sea. My lookout claims it moved with deliberate intent."

Gen appeared behind him, wearing an expression of lazy amusement.

"I saw it too. Looked rather like a little wandering spirit. Very atmospheric, actually."

Senku slowly put down his pencil.

"Blue-green?"

"Mm-hm."

"Over the water?"

"Near the waterline."

Senku stood so quickly that his chair scraped backward.

"Why the hell didn't you start with that?"

The three of them headed up to the deck.

Clouds obscured the moon, and the ocean stretched away into darkness. The crew had left several oil lamps burning near the helm, but the bow remained mostly shadowed.

"Keep your eyes on the water," Senku instructed. "Don't point at every damn reflection and call it a ghost."

A lookout leaned over the rail.

"There!"

A faint blue-green glow flickered against the dark water alongside the Perseus. It flashed, faded, then appeared again farther along the hull.

Senku went absolutely still.

For several seconds, he watched without speaking.

The light vanished.

"...Again," he muttered.

Ryusui glanced at Gen. Gen's smile widened.

"Oh, he's invested."

"Shut up. Get me a bucket."

Senku hauled seawater aboard and carried it beneath one of the deck lamps. The water looked ordinary until he disturbed it with his hand.

Blue-green sparks flashed across the surface.

He stopped stirring. The light faded.

He stirred again. More flashes.

Senku stared into the bucket.

Then he grinned.

"Bioluminescent plankton. More specifically, probably dinoflagellates. Certain species produce light when the water around them is disturbed."

He swirled the water again, watching the flashes scatter across the surface.

"The ship's movement and the waves create turbulence along the hull. That can stimulate the organisms and produce those brief flashes. From the deck, it looks like the light is moving independently."

Gen peered into the bucket. "So no wandering spirit?"

"No evidence of one. And this is still pretty damn cool."

Ryusui folded his arms. "You sound almost disappointed."

Senku ignored him, entirely occupied with the glowing water. He could investigate the organisms, observe their responses to different levels of agitation, and compare how long the flashes lasted. It was a perfectly respectable scientific discovery.

But it wasn't a ghost.

He emptied the bucket over the side.

"All right. Mystery solved. Everybody can stop trying to turn the ocean into a haunted house."

He paused at the rail.

"...Still would've been sick."

"What was that?" Ryusui asked.

"Nothing. Go steer your ship."

Francois reported the third incident the following morning.

This was what made Senku take it seriously.

Francois didn't embellish. Francois didn't get swept up in a story because it was entertaining. If Francois reported hearing footsteps in an empty corridor, there was a reason worth investigating.

"I was in the galley before dawn," Francois explained. "I heard what sounded like someone walking across the deck overhead. The steps stopped, then resumed in the opposite direction."

"Did you check the deck?"

"Immediately. Nobody was there."

Senku rubbed his chin.

"All right. Show me where you heard it."

The galley was quiet when they arrived. Utensils hung neatly from their racks, and the ship's motion produced the occasional creak from the surrounding timbers.

Francois indicated the area beneath the forward deck.

Senku listened.

A low groan traveled through the ceiling. Then came a series of short, irregular creaks, each separated by a slight pause.

He moved along the galley, listening at several points.

The sounds were clearer near one section of the overhead planking.

"Something up there is moving or changing tension," he said. "Could be a loose fitting. Could be the rigging transmitting vibrations through the structure."

They climbed onto the deck and began inspecting the nearby rigging. Senku checked the attachment points and traced the lines to their blocks, watching how they shifted as the ship rolled.

One of the lines tightened, then relaxed. A wooden block creaked against its fitting.

Senku adjusted the line slightly and watched the movement repeat.

"There. Hear that?"

Francois listened carefully.

The block creaked again, followed by a second sound from the nearby timber.

"It does resemble footsteps," Francois admitted.

"Your brain's pretty good at finding patterns in noise. Sometimes it finds a person walking where there's just a bunch of mechanical sounds happening in sequence."

Senku secured the loose fitting and asked Francois to listen from the galley again. The irregular creaking had diminished considerably.

"Not a ghost," Senku concluded. "Just rigging under changing tension, with the sound carrying through the ship's structure."

Francois considered this.

"A convincing explanation."

"That's the goal."

"And yet..."

Senku narrowed his eyes.

"Don't you start."

Francois's expression remained perfectly composed. "I said nothing."

"Your face said plenty."

• • -

The last report came from Suika.

She arrived at the navigation room with her watermelon helmet tilted sideways and enough excitement in her voice to wake half the ship.

"Senku! The supply room! A crate keeps opening by itself!"

Senku was already gathering his tools.

"Does it happen while the ship is moving?"

"Yes! The lid opens a little, then closes again! I watched it happen three times!"

"Good. You watched it without messing with it first. Let's go."

Chrome followed them to the stern storage room, where several crates sat secured against the wall. Suika pointed to a wooden box whose lid rested slightly crooked against its rim.

Senku crouched beside it.

"Anybody open this recently?"

"Not that I know of," Suika said.

He examined the lid and its simple wooden fastening. One of the retaining pegs had worn down, leaving the lid loose enough to shift when the crate moved.

Senku pressed down on one corner. The lid settled into place.

He released it.

The ship rolled gently. The crate shifted against its supports, and the lid rocked upward with a soft creak before falling back into place.

Senku stared at it.

Then he tried again, nudging the crate at a slightly different angle. The lid lifted and dropped.

"Well, there's your ghost."

Chrome leaned closer. "That's all it is?"

"That's all it takes. The lid's sitting unevenly, the fastener is worn, and the crate is moving with the ship. The weight distribution changes just enough for the lid to rock."

He lifted the lid, checked that the contents weren't shifting dangerously, then secured the fastening with a temporary wooden wedge.

"Problem solved. We'll replace the peg properly later."

Suika looked relieved. "I thought something might be trying to get out!"

"Nothing in there but supplies. Unless the ghost's a sack of grain, I think we're safe."

Chrome snorted.

Senku stood and brushed the dust from his hands. Four investigations, four ordinary explanations. He'd found a mechanical problem, observed an example of bioluminescence, identified a source of transmitted noise, and repaired a faulty fastening.

All useful.

All interesting.

Not one damn ghost.

As they left the storage room, Chrome fell into step beside him.

"You know," Chrome said, "it would've been pretty cool if one of them had actually been a ghost."

Senku gave him a sidelong look.

"...Yeah."

Chrome blinked. "Wait. Seriously?"

"Don't make it weird."

Senku walked faster.

- - -

By the time the last explanation had made its way around the crew, the Perseus had settled into its nighttime rhythm. The rumors had quieted. The watch rotations continued, the rigging shifted in the wind, and the ocean went on being an ocean.

Senku finally made it back to the private quarters he shared with {{user}}.

The door closed behind him.

He took three steps into the room, then flung himself dramatically onto the bed.

"Four. Four."

He stared at the ceiling.

"Four separate supernatural reports, and every single one turned out to be some mundane bullshit. Rope rubbing against wood. Plankton. Rigging. A loose crate lid."

He dragged both hands down his face.

"Do you have any idea how cool it would've been if even one of those had been a real ghost?"

His voice had already climbed several notches above its usual conversational volume.

"Think about it! Actual, empirically verifiable evidence of consciousness persisting after death. We'd have to reconsider everything we know about the relationship between the brain and cognition. We'd have an entirely new field of research. An actual afterlife to investigate!"

He rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one hand.

"And that's before we get into the physics. If a spirit can interact with matter, there's a mechanism. Some kind of force, field, or interaction we haven't identified. We'd need experiments. Controlled conditions. Measurements. Repeated trials. We'd have an entire new branch of science to develop!"

He sat upright so abruptly that the bed creaked.

"How do you even design an experiment for a ghost? Do you build a Faraday cage? Does it interact with electromagnetic fields? Can it move through every material, or just some of them? Does it need energy? Where does that energy come from?"

He jabbed a finger toward the ceiling, as if the universe itself had personally disappointed him.

"And goblins! Don't even get me started on goblins. A whole new species with its own physiology, metabolism, evolutionary history, that is assuming they evolved, which raises a whole other set of questions!"

He stopped, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

"...Actually, if goblins are real, I'd need to establish whether they're mammals. Or something entirely unrelated. Shit. The taxonomy alone..."

Senku flopped backward onto the bed again.

"Goddammit."

For a moment, he lay there in theatrical defeat, arms spread wide.

"Nature is incredible. I know that. I spend my entire life proving that. But every once in a while, I'd like the universe to throw me something that makes absolutely no sense until I spend six months figuring it out."

He turned his head toward {{user}}.

"Just once. One ghost. One ghoul. One goblin. Something that can't be explained by a loose piece of rope and a basic understanding of chemistry."

His mouth twisted into a rueful grin.

"Ten billion percent, I'd figure it out eventually. But it'd be nice to have something to figure out for once."

He let the silence sit for a moment, then added, with absolute sincerity:

"If this ship ever actually gets haunted, I'm calling dibs on the investigation. Nobody else gets to touch the ghost until I've run at least fifty tests."

A beat.

"...And you're helping me. Obviously."

His grin widened.

"Because if I'm going to be the first scientist in history to prove the existence of ghosts, I'm sure as hell not doing it without my favorite person there to watch."

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