Tales from the Quay: Issue 4 - July

Ben had been told a hundred times not to go too close to the edge of the Fish Quay.

He wasn't planning to. Mum had only popped into the café for a couple of minutes, leaving him to watch the fishing boats rocking gently against the harbour wall. It was one of those warm afternoons where everything felt normal. Seagulls argued overhead, tourists wandered past with ice creams, and the smell of salt and fish drifted across the quay.

That's when he noticed the lifebuoy. It wasn't hanging inside one of the cabinets that lined the Fish Quay. Instead, it rested against the old stone wall overlooking the Tyne. At first, Ben thought someone must have taken it down as a prank, but as he walked closer he realised something wasn't right. Unlike the clean, well-maintained rings in the cabinets, this one looked ancient. The red paint had faded almost brown in places, the white reflective bands were cracked and yellow with age, and patches of green weed clung stubbornly to the rope threaded around its edge. It looked less like lifesaving equipment and more like something the sea had refused to let go of.

"Ben..." The whisper was so quiet he almost mistook it for the wind. He turned immediately. Nobody. Families continued walking past. Cyclists rode along the promenade. Nobody else seemed to have heard a thing.

"Ben..." This time it sounded warmer. Familiar. Almost comforting. Like somebody he knew calling him over. Before he realised what he was doing, he'd taken two slow steps towards the old lifebuoy.

Then another voice shattered the silence.

"Help!" Ben ran to the edge of the quay and looked over the wall.

A little boy, no older than seven, was halfway down one of the steel ladders built into the side of the Fish Quay. One hand gripped the cold metal rung while the other stretched desperately towards the water below. Floating just beyond his fingertips was the same faded red lifebuoy. Every time the boy reached for it, the ring drifted another few inches away, almost teasing him into climbing lower. His trainers were only inches above the water now.

"Don't!" Ben shouted. The younger boy didn't even look up. He climbed down another rung. Then another.

The Tyne was strangely calm. Not a ripple disturbed the surface apart from a slow circle spreading gently around the lifebuoy. Ben felt his stomach knot. Something about the water looked wrong. Too still. Too dark.

The boy reached as far as he could. His fingers brushed the faded red paint. For the briefest moment, everything stopped. The gulls fell silent. The traffic disappeared. Even the river seemed to hold its breath.

Then something beneath the water pulled. There wasn't a huge splash or a dramatic scream. One moment the boy was clinging to the ladder, stretching towards the ring, and the next he was simply... gone. It was as though the river had opened beneath him for a heartbeat before sealing itself shut again.

"NO!" Ben sprinted away from the edge, shouting for help until his throat hurt. By the time he reached his mum there was nothing left except widening ripples and the old lifebuoy drifting gently back towards the quay.

Within minutes the Fish Quay was filled with people. Coastguard teams arrived, lifeboats searched the river and police questioned everyone who had seen what happened. Ben told them exactly what he'd witnessed, but nobody believed the part about the whispering or the ancient lifebuoy. They assumed the boy had slipped, lost his grip and fallen into the water.

As the search continued into the evening, an old fisherman stood silently watching from the end of the quay. His weathered face never changed.

"It's started again," he muttered quietly.

Ben heard him.

"What has?"

The old man looked at him for a long moment before answering.

"It happens every twelve years."

"What happens?"

The fisherman glanced out across the Tyne before turning to leave.

"Depends who you ask." Before Ben could stop him, he'd disappeared into the crowd.

The next morning, Ben couldn't stop thinking about those words. Instead of meeting his friends, he cycled to North Shields Library and asked if they kept copies of the old local newspapers. An elderly librarian pointed him towards a dusty corner of the local history room where shelves of bound newspapers stretched back for generations.

Ben wasn't looking for ghost stories. He was looking for missing children.

At first, he found nothing unusual. Football scores. Fishing reports. Old advertisements. Then, buried in the corner of a yellowing page, he spotted a tiny headline.

LOCAL BOY MISSING NEAR FISH QUAY

He kept reading. Another article. Then another.

Every one told the same story. A child had disappeared near the water without explanation. One witness claimed they'd heard whispering coming from an old mooring rope. Another swore it came from a broken lobster pot washed onto the beach. Years before that, a young girl said the whispers came from an old anchor lying beneath the Priory cliffs. The object always changed. The whispers never did.

Ben reached for a scrap of paper and began writing down the dates.

July 1966.
July 1978.
July 1990.
July 2002.
July 2014.

He stared at the list for a long time before slowly looking up at the calendar hanging on the library wall. July.

He folded the paper, slipped it into his pocket and looked out through the library window towards the river.

Down on the Fish Quay, people wandered happily between the cafés and the boats. Children leaned over the railings looking for crabs. Tourists stopped to take photographs. Nobody seemed to notice the neat row of lifebuoy cabinets stretching into the distance.

Or whether every one of them still had a ring inside.

 

Collective Magazine found no evidence that The Red Ring is anything more than an old North Shields ghost story. During our research we asked to view several of the oldest newspaper archives at North Shields Library, but were politely informed they were "currently unavailable." That's probably nothing to worry about... Just to be on the safe side, though, if you ever happen to find an old, faded red lifebuoy somewhere it shouldn't be, we'd recommend leaving alone.