Dockchain Wight

Field account

We heard the capstan turning in an empty yard. One click, pause, one click, pause, though the chain had rusted solid decades ago. The Wight rose through the planks beneath it, built like a dockhand remembered by cold water: shoulders broad, face washed blank, jaw pinned shut by three links of black chain. Every length in the yard answered its hands. Moorings uncoiled from cleats. Anchor chain climbed the seawall. Even the little brass pull on my coat stretched toward it. When Saye ran, a wet loop appeared around her shadow and tightened at the throat. The Wight never hurried. It hauled each of us back toward the number stenciled on the drowned piling. I broke the painted digit with a maul. The chain fell slack, and the thing looked at me with the exhausted gratitude of someone whose shift had finally ended.

Observed behavior

A Wight patrols the boundaries of a former workplace and reenacts its final assignment. It fastens intruders to locations, objects, or promises, then reels them back whenever they attempt to leave. The dead worker's habits survive in small gestures: testing knots, straightening hooks, pausing at a whistle no one else hears. A Wight becomes violent when records are altered in its presence or when someone steps across a painted tally without acknowledgment. It ignores honest labor performed safely. Speaking a victim's full name may halt it, but false names make every loose chain in the area strike at once.