The Ballad of the Sunken Bells

THE BELLS OF KINGSMOUTH

A LOCAL TRADITION (TRANSCRIPTION)

[Scribbled on a soggy napkin found in a booth at the Kingsmouth Diner. The handwriting becomes increasingly erratic toward the end.]

Oh, don’t you go down to the harbor tonight,
Where the fog is a blanket of grey and of white.
The Lady Margaret came home with a chill,
And the bells in the steeple won’t ever stay still.

"One for the sailor who walked in the sea,
Two for the secret he brought back to me.
Three for the hunger that never will end,
And four for the fog that makes foe into friend."

The Draug are a-knocking with fingers of bone,
They’ve come for the hearts that they once called their own.
The salt is a poison, the oil is a stain,
And the sea only gives what it takes back in pain.

The Polaris is groaning, she’s stuck on the reef,
With a hull full of madness and pockets of grief.
So bolt up your windows and turn out the light,
For the bells of the sunken are ringing tonight.

— Recovered from a waterlogged notebook, Solomon Island. Note: The ink smells faintly of dead fish and ozone.