Chapter 26
The following morning, Dex again slept late waking at nine o’clock with half remembered fragments of dark dreams swirling in his head with Stanley curled up on the bed at his side. He stumbled groggily down stairs to find coffee made and a note from D.J. saying he’d gone down to the harbor.
A half hour later Dex was in the driveway tinkering with a decrepit lawnmower he’d found behind the house when Anne pulled up in her car. “Hi,” she said. “I’m going down to the grocery store. Need anything?”
Dex walked over and leaned on her door. “Yeah, I think I need to apologize. D.J. tells me I was pretty rude when you were here the other day. I didn’t mean to be, I guess I was getting a little caught up in the history of this place.”
Annie laughed. “I don’t know about rude,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone quite so focused.”
“Well, your note fixed that; snapped me right out of it.”
Annie’s nose wrinkled as she cocked her head in confusion. “My note? What note.”
It took D.J. a while to find the nearly overgrown entrance to the Old Man's property on Clark Point Road. He pushed through overhanging branches to see the little house flanked to the left by another low wooden building. There was a rusty gray pick-up parked in the rutted dirt drive that looked like it hadn't moved in years. Dex hesitated, for a long moment before mustering up the courage to climb onto the painted wooden stoop and knock on the ornate wooden door at the top. When the door swung soundlessly open, he gulped a little but looked calmly up at the old man. “What treasure?” he asked.
“You’re the very first, man or boy, that I’ve ever showed this to.” Zachary fixed D.J. with a fierce stare. They were standing in the center of the single tiny bedroom in Zachary’s shack with the neatly-made bed and colorful oriental carpet pushed up against one wall.
When the old man had answered the door, he'd gazed appraisingly at D.J for a long moment before nodding and stepping soundlessly back to allow him to enter. Inside, the house was as clean and spartan as a museum display.
“Your house is really cool,” Dex said nervously.
The old man nodded again. “Got too old to fish,” he said economically, “now I build.”
“You built this?”
Another nod. “Every stick of it. Well, rebuilt most of it. My boat 'n my shop, too; all by my own hand.” Again, he cast a long searching look at D.J. “Come with me,” he finally said walking towards the back of the house.
The bedroom, like the rest of the tiny house, was a symphony of gleaming hand-carved woodwork with neatly painted plaster walls and wide-board pine flooring that reflected the morning sunlight from a richly waxed finish. The air was fresh and alive with the scent of the wildflowers growing outside the open windows. The old man pulled a gleaming fishing knife from his belt and dropped painfully to his knees. He slid the blade into a crack, and with a grunt, levered a short section of board out of the floor. He reached into the recess and pulled out a flat wooden cigar box covered in faded paper labels. He rose without a word and walked out into the kitchen where he set the box on the table and dropped heavily into a spindly wooden chair. The chair creaked alarmingly as he leaned forward and prodded the box with a horny finger. “Go ahead. Open it and I’ll tell you a story.”
D.J.’s eyes widened as he lifted the cover and looked into the box. Lying on a bed of folded cloth was a single metallic bar, less than an inch thick but about six inches long and three inches wide surrounded by a handful of large gold coins and a few smaller silver ones. Zachary had told him there was a treasure on the pirate ship, but seeing the real thing was mesmerizing; the buttery gleam of pure gold drew him in and seemed to color the very air above the box.
“I told you a pirate ship sank in the outer harbor,” Zachary said, his voice startling D.J. a little. “I don’t know where the ship came from or why the British sank her, but it was back at the very beginning of the revolution, so that prob’ly had something to do with it. The survivors, and I suspect that there were not more than a few, were among the very first settlers of Southwest Harbor, or Tremont as it was known then. One of them, a man named Weldon Quill went from being a penniless shipwrecked sailor to the wealthiest man on the Island in the course of just a few short years. I studied him. The history books say he was a lumberman and exporter. Ha! He was a pirate, says I, and this gold is my proof.”
Zachary shifted his weight on the chair and reached into the refrigerator behind him for a beer. “I pulled up the first doubloon in 1982,” he said. “It was wedged in a lobster trap in sixty feet of water and I knew right away what I was onto. For the next ten years I dived all over that channel; scoured the bottom from Sutton Island to the shoals between the Cranberries. People called me crazy, hell they still do, but I don’t care, let ‘em. I never let on when I found timbers and cannon buried in the mud and more coins and then that ingot. And there’s more, I know there is. I don’t think Quill got it all but even if he did, he’d had to have stashed some of it.”
“How come everyone isn’t out looking for it?” asked D.J. “Why did you stop?”
“There was no town here when that ship sank, only a few scattered settlers on the island and maybe some Indians to see, and old Weldon Quill wasn’t about to advertise what she was carrying. ‘n later, when I figured it out, no one was gonna believe crazy Zachary. The old man grinned around the neck of his beer bottle. “They still don't. That’s the beauty of it,” he cackled, “there’s a treasure in this town that nobody believes even exists; and you and I are going to find it, boy! I'm too old to fish and dive anymore. If there's more out there under water mebby you'll be the one to find it, but I'm betting Old Weldon left it for us to find on dry land.”
“This one showed up the first time I came to the house, and then this one was on the cemetery gate after you left the other day.” Dex’s best guess was that the notes were part of some elaborate practical joke and he really hadn’t wanted to talk about it until he’d figured it out, but he’d let the cat out of the bag with Annie, so now they were sitting in his kitchen with the strange messages between them on the table.
Annie read both notes for the second time. “Would D.J….” she started.
“Nope, he was still in Bangor when the first one appeared and anyway, he knows I don't like practical jokes.”
“And you didn’t see anyone around.”
“Nope, and I don’t recognize the handwriting or have any idea what in hell they mean.”
“Maybe it’s a riddle. Is there danger in your past? Are you some sort of spy or something?” Annie quipped.
Dex snorted. “I’m a high school history teacher,” he said. “I don’t even have a past of my own.”
Annie sobered. “Well,” she said fingering one of the notes, “I can tell you one thing; this is not cheap paper. It looks like the kind of expensive hand-laid paper I see in the art supply store.” She looked up. “I guess I’m still the most obvious suspect, but I swear I don’t know anything about it.”
Dex sighed. “I believe you,” he said pushing back his chair. “Let’s go buy some beer.”
Chapter 27
“Come on, I've got something to show you,” said Annie as she pulled Dex across the sidewalk toward a tired looking two-story building nestled between two smaller antique shops. This is one of my favorite places in the whole world.” After picking up a few items at the grocery store and stopping at a small café for lunch, they had spent the afternoon prowling the quaint shops and alleyways of Bar Harbor, and Dex had lost count of the 'favorite' places they had visited. The building they were headed towards had a white clapboard front with a door in the center of the wall with high transom windows to either side and a small wooden signed proclaiming it to be the 'Pieces of Eight Tavern.' Inside, the single large room was cool and dim, and at first glance it somehow reminded Dex of a cross between a school and a library. As he looked around, he realized that the entire interior was wood. Floor, walls
, ceiling, tables and chairs, every surface was wood, most showing of it the dings and scars of decades of use and all with the unmistakable patina of age. There was not a single piece of plastic or fabric to be seen and the air was redolent with the smell of furniture wax, beer and -- Dex smiled -- antiquity.
“Hi, Simon," Annie called to a tall slender black man standing behind the bar that stretched the length of the right-hand wall. He was dressed in black slacks and a thin leather vest over a long-sleeved white shirt. “Good afternoon,” he said in a pleasing deep voice. “Welcome to Pieces of Eight.”
Dex nodded politely as Annie pulled him towards the bar. “Look,” she said pointing at the wall above the bar. Over the rows of liquor bottles there was a narrow shelf with perhaps a dozen small carved animals displayed in a row; some wooden, gray and cracked with age, and others glowing with the soft patina of aged bone. In the center stood a hand-carved plaque. Perhaps ten inches tall with a flat bottom and the ragged top edge of the broken board it once had been, it was carved in the raised likeness of a human face. Just under the face, two rough-edged silver coins were inlayed into the wood. “Nice collection,” said Dex. “Who's the carver?”
“No, silly. Look closer. Look at the name on the plaque,” said Annie.
Dex peered across the bar feeling a sudden chill on the back of his neck as he read the letters 'DEX' carved under the face.
“Hey,” said Annie, “look at that. It looks just like you...”
In the momentary silence that followed Annie's observation, the black man said, "All of those carvings were made by my great, great, great, great grandfather, Tobias Masters. He came here in 1768 and built this tavern in 1775.” He was looking at Dex with an odd intensity. “I am Simon Masters. My sister Melody and I are Tobias' direct descendants and, I fear, we will be the last of our line to continue his legacy in this place.”
Dex took a closer look as Simon picked up the plaque and held it out to him and realized that the man was much older than he had first appeared. His face was deeply lined beneath a short-cropped cap of snowy white hair and his fingers were gnarled and bent. "Dexter Stockford, pleased to meet you," he said taking the plaque.
"Tobias had a reputation as something of a wise man in his day," Simon said. “There are a good many examples of his carvings around the island and there are some people who believe that they bring good fortune and good health to their owners.”
Dex examined the face on the plaque which to his eye looked pretty generic. He recognized the coins as Spanish Dollars, more commonly known as pieces of eight. One of them bore the date 1739. "And you, Mister Masters," he asked, "what do you believe?"
Simon laughed. "I believe old Tobias had a pretty cool knack for carving small animals," he said. And then, sobering a little, "But he was also an interesting man who left behind writings and other things that tell an absorbing story of his life." He turned to include Annie. "Perhaps you and Miss Badger would join Melody and I for dinner one night this week and hear that story."
Dex had taken an instant liking to the old man and did not hesitate. "I think I’d enjoy that very much," he said.
"She went down right about here,” said Zachary “What I can't figure is what the hell she was doing in these waters in the first place. She must have been chased in here by the British ship that sank her, but why was a raider even off this coast I ask myself. And the only answer I can think of is that her Captain must have been looking for a place to bury his treasure. These islands were near deserted in those days; no other reason for him to be here, Portland was prob'ly the nearest trading port, mebby Halifax, but I don’t think so.”
“How do you know it was a British ship and a pirate ship? Maybe it was just like a, a trading ship that sank in a storm or hit a rock or something. My dad and I checked the internet last night and couldn’t find anything about any pirate battle around here.”
“The local Indians have tribal legends about a great battle between big ships out here for one thing, but the real proof is the wreck itself. First, there are way too many big cannons down there for her to have been a merchant ship and second, she didn’t just sink, she blew up, had to have been a powder magazine explosion. The wreckage is broken and scattered in deep water. No rocks or ledges to account for it. No, she was a pirate all right; no doubt about it and it was a British ship that put her under. Stands to reason, couldn't be anything else.”
D.J. and Zachary were aboard the 'Carcharias' drifting in the light swells between Sutton Island and the north tip of Great Cranberry Island.
“How deep is it?” asked D.J. peering over the side.
“We're in about sixty feet of water here, and it stays pretty deep until you get well into the mouth of the harbor," the old man said. "I think Quill and some others survived the wreck and then came back and rigged some sort of diving bell to get down there. We’ll never know for sure, there’s just no written history that I’ve been able to find, but Quill ended up a very rich man when everyone else around here were dirt-poor fishermen. He built that big house you’re living in and lorded it over the whole town for the rest of his life.”
Later that evening, Dex was in the living room reading and D.J. was crouched over a game on his ipad when there was the clatter of the cat door in the kitchen and Stanley stalked into the room with a plaintive yowl. He stared at Dex for a moment and then jumped to the arm of his chair and from there to one of his favorite sleeping spots on the fireplace mantle. He stretched and turned once to find his spot, but then crouched suddenly peering intently toward the chandelier that hung from the center of the high ceiling. Dex watched the cat with amusement. He had always wondered what prompted cats to stare into space as if at something only they could see. Suddenly, Stanley began to bristle. His ears flattened and his eyes widened as a deep growl rumbled from his chest, rising into a primal howl of fear and challenge. He shrank back, hissing, against the fireplace wall as if retreating from an unseen enemy and then spat at the empty space and leaped into the center of the floor and ran back out into the kitchen.
“What was that all about?” D.J. laughed.
Dex chuckled too. “Probably nothing a little tranquilizer in his cat food wouldn’t cure,” he said. Inwardly though he was strangely uneasy at the cat’s strange behavior. “Maybe he…”
Dex broke off as D.J. abruptly frowned and held up his hand in a gesture for silence. He looked toward the stairway to the second floor and, following his gaze, Dex suddenly heard it to; the eerie sound of heavy, measured footsteps in the hallway at the top of the stairs.
“Someone’s up there,” D.J. whispered hoarsely.
Putting a finger to suddenly dry lips, Dex pulled himself out of the chair and grabbed a heavy iron poker from beside the fireplace. He tiptoed to the base of the stairway raising a hand for D.J. to stay back. Ignoring him, D.J. followed close at his heels as Dex started nervously up the stairs.”
“We know you’re up there,” Dex warned pausing about halfway up the staircase. “Come on out of there.”
“We’ve got a gun,” added D.J., earning a frown from Dex.
There was only echoing silence from above.
Dex took a deep breath and lunged to the top of the stairs. He looked in the large bedroom on the left and then whirled into the doorway of the smaller front room on the right. Both rooms were empty. Gesturing for D.J. to follow and poker at the ready, Dex stepped silently to the door of the remaining small room on the right…and it was empty as well.
Chapter 28
“There’s got to be a logical explanation,” Dex muttered for the third time. He, D.J., and Annie were seated around the breakfast table the next morning. Dex and D.J. were both bleary-eyed from an extended search of the house followed by only a few hours of fitful sleep. On the whole second floor, there was only one closet, located in the large bedroom Dex was using. There was nowhere to hide in any of the rooms other than under the beds, and from the dust and debris that dropped to the floor when Dex opened the trap door t
o the attic located in the ceiling of his closet; it was obvious that no one had been up there in years. Nonetheless, he’d grabbed a flashlight from the pack beside his bed and stuck his head up into the empty attic space to be sure. Other than several cracked roof rafters and evidence of a water leak around the massive chimney, he’d seen nothing more alarming than spider webs and small animal nests in the cavernous space.
In sharp contrast to Dex and D.J., Annie was bright and cheerful. She had come over early with fresh muffins hoping to lure Dex away for another day of antiquing in Bar Harbor but instead found herself ensnared in a mystery.
“There is a logical explanation, Dad,” said D.J.
“What’s that?”
“Can you say ghost? Oscar told me this place was haunted.”
Dex grimaced, not willing to admit that the same idea had intruded into his own thoughts in the dark of the night. “I can, but I’m not going to. I’d give you mice in the walls, bad well water, mass hypnosis, even aliens, but a ghost is a little further out there than I’m prepared to go,” he said. “And who’s Oscar?”
“He’s just a kid I met down at the harbor. He said he wouldn’t stay here for anything and after last night, I don’t want to stay here anymore either and neither does Stanley.”
“D.J.,” Dex hesitated, aware that his son was struggling to keep his composure in front of Annie. “I think one of two things is going on here. Maybe both. First of all, we’re in totally new surroundings, granted, maybe a little old and spooky, and we haven’t been sleeping very well and that’s got us both on edge. We probably heard a squirrel on the roof last night and jumped to conclusions. The other thing I’m beginning to wonder is if someone is trying to scare us out of here.” Dex shot a veiled glance at Annie. He hadn’t told D.J. about the mysterious notes and he didn’t want to alarm him with talk of their contents, so he was purposefully vague. “I’ve heard rumors that maybe someone else wants this house and would be happy to see us leave.”
Bystander in Time Page 14
