The Hook (1991)

by Terry Brooks

  "You! You, sir, you!"

  Every pirate tried to disappear into the ship's woodwork.

  "You!" he ignored the pin offender and pointed his hook toward a ratty little pirate hanging off to one side by a cringing, fat, one-legged pirate with atrocious taste in clothes. "Yes, you!" He forced himself to ignore the other. "You bet against me bringing Pan here, didn't you, you slimy bilge rat?"

  The pirate, whose name was Gutless, though Hook wouldn't have remembered if given a week of Sundays to try, cringed as the captain approached. "No, Cap'n, I swear on me mother's sweet soul. I didn't, I didn't!"

  Hook reached him, smiled, bent down, and gave him a fatherly pat on one shoulder. "Tell the truth now, come on, Captain wants to hear the truth…"

  Gutless collapsed in Hook's arms, sobbing. "Oh, I did, I did!"

  Hook's smile turned frosty. "Well, you made a boo-boo. The boo-boo box for you, then."

  He shoved the other away disdainfully. Gutless crumpled to the deck, wailing. Other pirates reached down for him instantly, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him away.

  Hook sauntered on, the crowd parting before him. "Don't think I didn't hear those who whispered when they thought I couldn't hear, 'He's off! Hook's finished!' "

  "Or those who said, "That limp metal no-fingers will never rise again!' " added Smee before he could think better of it.

  Hook gave him a withering glance. Off to one side, the lid to a coffinlike box was thrown open and Gutless was shoved inside, still sobbing pitifully. A bag filled with snakes, spiders, and centipedes was shoved in after him. Hook was pleased to discover that when the lid slammed shut, the cries quickly diminished.

  "Look around, you scavengers!" he advised sternly, gesturing toward the remnants of the hulks that formed the buildings of the waterfront. "Look around and take note of the trophies I have won for you so that you could live a pirate life in a pirate city."

  "It's paradise!" one pirate cried out enthusiastically.

  "Yesss, isn't it?" Hook sniffed. Such idiots. "Raise your weapons high, mates!" he shouted suddenly. Cutlasses, clubs, daggers, pistols, and blunderbusses were hoisted aloft. Hook smiled wickedly. "Proud pirates, mates one and all, prepare yourselves for a celebration! Prepare for the killing of youth, the maiming of joy, and the strangling of innocence in her fetid cradle! Peter Pan is coming soon! And when he does, I will grind his bones to dust and salt my food with the leavings. I'll hurl Pan into the blackest abyss, the deepest coldest chasm, right off the face of the earth for all time!" Hook's arms rose. "I shall have my glorious war, and I shall win it!"

  He wheeled about. "Bring up the prisoners!"

  A wild cry rose from the pirates as the hatch to the main hold was thrown open with a bang, and a winch began to haul a net from out of the black below. The net twirled slowly as it came into view, and there, imprisoned within, were Jack and Maggie, still dressed in their pajamas, wide-eyed and frightened as they struggled against the ropes. Jack carried his baseball glove. Maggie still wore Tootles's paper flower in her hair. Pirates jeered and jabbed playfully at the children as the net rose to eye level before Hook and stopped.

  "Hi, kids," he greeted with a smirk.

  Suddenly there was a commotion from behind, shouts and growls rising up as someone pushed through the crowd. Hook turned, irritated. Then his eyes went wide. That badly dressed, overweight, one-legged pirate, his eye patch knocked so far askew that it rode halfway down his nose, had thrown down his crutch and was heading straight for him!

  "Jack! Maggie! Everything's all right now!" the pirate shouted. A finger pointed threateningly at Hook. "Those are my kids! I'm their father."

  Hook stared. The pirate stumbled and his wooden leg dropped off. He kicked and twisted and a good leg popped into view! The cape he was wearing was twisted about, and the way he was squinting past his eye patch from beneath the cocked tricorne made him look like a bad imitation of a vampire. Hook was astonished. What sort of pirate was this?

  "You there! And you!" The fellow was gesturing at an incredulous Jukes and Noodler. "Lower my kids right now! And do it carefully." The roundish face lifted, a sappy smile puffing out the ruddy cheeks. "Daddy's here!"

  Hook pushed Smee in front of him, wondering if the fellow was mad, if there was danger that he might even be rabid. Then he glanced over at the net where the kids were yelling, "Dad!" and "That's my Daddy!"

  No, it couldn't be…

  Pirates closed about Peter Banning, who had charged to the rescue, any measure of common sense thrown to the winds, heedless of Tink's frantic protests from within the brim of his hat. Hands fastened on him, swords were thrust into his face, and he was hauled up short. He thrashed to free himself in vain, then sagged back helplessly as the full realization of what he had done settled in.

  Hook stared at Peter. The peg leg and eye patch were gone. The cape was torn and the waist sash shredded. All that remained was the tricorne. And underneath, a dress shirt, waistcoat, and fine English wool slacks. Hook's eyes lit up. Could it be? He came forward, peering at his captive, closer and closer until they were eye to eye.

  Hook smiled malevolently. "You? My great and worthy opponent?"

  Pirates hooted and howled about him, their laughter shrill and derisive. But Hook motioned quickly for silence.

  "No, no, no, watch out! He's in disguise!" He stepped back again quickly, hook and hand out to ward off any attack. "Remember the time he stole my voice? Remember all those tricks he played? Yes, he may look like a chubby degenerate, but careful, lads! Peter Pan is there, somewhere inside, and he's gong to explode out of that fleshy canister any moment! How wonderful!"

  He cleared a space for himself, engaged in a few hurried knee bends to loosen up, then drew out his cutlass and began to stab and parry.,

  "Stand back, you scrugs! Watch out, he'll try to fly! Pop out, Pan! Come on, I'm waiting! Out, out! Ha! Watch him, now! Come on, come on! Prepare to die!"

  He snatched a second cutlass from a pirate close at hand and flipped it blade-first at his enemy. Smee ducked away as the sword flashed by and embedded itself in the mast by Peter's head. The pirates scattered, leaving Peter momentarily alone.

  Peter looked befuddled. His voice was plaintive. "I can't fight you. I don't know how. I just want my kids back."

  Hook stopped his fencing and straightened deliberately. "Smee!" he howled. His bosun charged up to him and was grabbed by the shirtfront. "Who is this impostor!"

  "Ah, ah, ah," Smee stuttered, and began riffling hurriedly through a leather bag slung by a strap about his shoulders. "Let me see. P-P-Pan, Cap'n. Ah, here we go-adoption papers. Medical records, sworn affidavits, dental records, birth certificate, social security, business cards, all in order, sir."

  "Bah!" Hook frowned like a bulldog. "Never mind all that. Check this bloated, fleshy miscreant yourself. Look for the detail."

  Smee crossed to Peter, yanked back the cape, pulled up his dress shirt, and probed. Peter fought to keep from laughing, but Smee had found his ticklish spot. He brushed Smee away and pulled his shirt back in place.

  "The scar's there, Cap'n," Smee reported dutifully. "Hypertrophic. Right where you gave it to 'im during the Tiger Lily incident. He's Pan or I've got me a dead man's dinghy for a brain."

  Hook seemed to consider which was the more possible for a moment. Then his face reddened. "But it can't be! Not this pitiful, spineless, pasty-skinned worm! He's not even a shadow of Peter Pan!"

  Hook sheathed his cutlass dejectedly, and his gaze dropped. "Oh, what cruel hand has fate dealt me now?" he moaned.

  Peter took a deep breath and stepped forward to confront him. Hook's sad eyes raised. Their gazes locked.

  Peter cleared his throat. "Mr. Hook," he offered. "As gentlemen, we have an obligation to try to clarify this misunderstanding.''

  "This disaster," Hook amended quickly.

  Peter shrugged. "Which must be remedied nevertheless."

  Hook nodded. "Expediently. I agree."

  Peter dr
ew himself up, a new confidence emboldening him. Hard-nosed bargaining-this was familiar territory. "For me the stakes can go no higher. I want my children."

  Hook drew himself up as well. "And for me they can sink no lower. I want my war."

  "It seems we must negotiate," said Peter.

  Hook scowled. "Negotiate? Very well. 1 propose you fight me with all the cleverness and skill of the true Pan and win the brats back."

  "Fight?"

  "Pick your weapon, Pan. You can't have forgotten everything!"

  Peter gave Hook a crafty smile. "So that's what you want, is it? All right."

  Peter reached inside his waistcoat. Pirates leveled weapons at him from everywhere. Peter hesitated, then pulled out his checkbook, and flipped it open.

  "How much, Mr. Hook?"

  Hook stared at him in disbelief. Then he snatched a flintlock from another pirate, whirled, and fired. The bullet flicked the edge of the checkbook and continued on. Unfortunately a grease-stained pirate cook named Sid was next in line. Sid fell dead without a sound.

  "Who was that, Smee?" demanded Hook, casting down his weapon irritably.

  "Sid the cook, Cap'n," his bosun answered with a gulp.

  A polite smattering of applause rose from the pirate ranks.

  "Bad form!" Hook sneered, for if there was one thing he abhorred, having adopted as his own the affectations of the well-bred, it was another's impropriety of behavior.

  Forward he strode, closing the distance between himself and a startled Peter in an instant's time, his scarlet-and-gold captain's coat billowing out behind him like a sail. Pirates leaped out of the way. Hook knocked the checkbook from Peter's hand and sent it spinning off the ship and into the water. It hit with a splash and sank.

  Then he grabbed Peter and slammed him up against the mainmast, the hook coming up to his exposed throat. Peter swallowed in terror. Hook's eyes were as red as fire, his mustaches dancing, his curled black hair whipping about his lean face in a frenzy.

  "I escaped death by crocodile," he raged. "I waited, in good faith, and in perpetual boredom, here in this dreadful place, surrounded by cretins! Nothing to do besides chase and kill dirty little Lost Boys! But I waited! I waited for that special moment in time when I could fulfill the destiny that was due me…"

  Hook took a deep, steadying breath. "And now this?" he finished, barely able to form the words. "This is my reward? You?"

  His sneer faltered, and his face fell. There was a sudden tear in his eye. He took the hook from Peter's throat and placed his arm about the other companionably, turning him away from the befuddled crew. "How could you do this to me-after everything we've meant to each other?"

  "I just want my kids," Peter answered.

  Hook sighed. "And I my hand! But there are some things in life you simply cannot have back." Then he brightened. "Tell you what. Since I am possessed of more than a modicum of good form, I shall give you the chance you never gave me. I'll make you a deal, Mr. Chairman of the Board." He turned Peter toward the mainmast. "Climb, crawl, slither if you must, up to the yardarm and touch the outstretched fingers of your beloved children and I will set them free. That's right. Free. I promise."

  Peter stared up at his children, dangling in the net just below the spar. "Ah, um, well, I have a real problem with heights," he ventured.

  "Have you, now?" Hook asked sympathetically.

  "Save us, Daddy," Jack and Maggie cried. "Climb! Hurry, please! We want to go home!"

  Peter took a deep breath. "Hang on, Princess!" he called up to Maggie. "I'm here for you, Jack! I'm coming!"

  He walked to the rigging, grabbed on, and started to climb. He was only a few feet off the deck when the dizziness began. He slowed, breathing hard and sweating. Pirates began to chuckle.

  "I don't think we've explored all of our options yet," he called down to Hook. "Let's work together on this, you and me. You have prime waterfront real estate crying out for development-condominiums, time-shares, office space, you name it. The sky's the limit. No building codes! Go for mineral rights while you're at it!"

  Hook pointed. "Touch them, Pan. Just touch them, and all this will be a bad dream."

  Jack and Maggie were pleading with him to go on. He closed his eyes and climbed another few loops. The pirates craned their necks expectantly. Then Peter opened his eyes again, and the deck rushed up to meet him. He gasped and grappled with the rigging as if hanging off a cliff, unable to go on, his terror so great that it even shut out the cries of his children.

  Below, the pirates were laughing and sneering.

  Hook turned to Smee. "You see? I knew he couldn't fly. He can't do anything anymore. He's a disgrace." He threw up his hands and turned away. "I cannot bring myself to soil my hook with his blood. Someone else kill them. Go on, kill them, kill them all."

  Jack rose up inside the imprisoning net and began to shake the ropes wildly. Maggie collapsed in tears. "Fight, Daddy, fight," they yelled in despair. "Don't leave us!"

  A whip-thin pirate scrambled up the rigging, lashed one end of a rope to a rung and the other to Peter's ankle, and shoved him off. Down Peter hurtled, screaming. But at the last possible moment he was jerked up short, bouncing and twisting, inches from certain death. A handful of pirates, in stitches over the look on his face, released him, tipped him upright, and with swords and daggers in hand began to prod him across the deck.

  In the direction of the plank.

  Hook glanced disconsolately over his shoulder at the proceedings. Jukes and Noodler were swinging the brats away from the hold toward the prisons on the dock. As the netting passed over Pan's head he reached up, trying in vain to brush fingertips with his children.

  Touching, thought Hook.

  The net swung down to the dock, and the brats were dragged out and dumped into their cells.

  Truly touching.

  "I am retiring," he announced to Smee, who was tagging along dutifully. "Cancel the war. Cancel my life. Pan has ruined everything. I never want to hear his name again."

  He mounted the carpeted deck stairs to his cabin, so depressed he did not think he would ever smile at a Lost Boy execution again. He was almost to the door when a flash of light darted in front of him and Tinkerbell appeared.

  "And what about the name Hook?" she demanded. "Is this how you want to be remembered? As a bully of your enemy's small children? As the destroyer of a fat, old Pan?"

  Hook swung at her, missing, burying the point of his claw in the deck rail. In vain, he tried to yank free, cursing furiously. Tinkerbell zipped about to hover before his face, her tiny dagger drawn, the point pressed into his hawk nose.

  "Give me one week, Hook, and I'll get him in shape to fight you. Then you can have your old war."

  Smee charged up, a blunderbuss in hand. He leveled the barrel at Tink, inches from the captain's nose. Hook blanched.

  "It's a trick, Cap'n," growled his bosun. "Lemme blow the pixie vixen straight to Davy Jones."

  Tink ignored him. "You promised the war of the century, Hook!" she said, jabbing at his nose for emphasis. "Your whole life has been building to this single moment. Mortal combat-your one moment of glory-Hook versus Pan!"

  "That is not Peter Pan!" Hook sneered, indicating a terrified Peter, who was now wobbling uncertainly on the plank.

  "Seven days," Tink repeated. "A pittance of time for you, a blink of the eye to a man of your infinite patience-an important, powerful man who can afford to wait."

  She zipped away, gone in an instant's time, leaving Hook staring down the barrel of Smee's blunderbuss.

  "Smee," the captain said quietly. "Lower that, will you?" His bosun quickly complied. "Now, bring me my cigars. I need to think,"

  Smee hurried off, disappearing into Hook's cabin, baggy pants flapping like sails. Hook finally freed his claw from the deck rail and stood staring at its point thoughtfully. The faerie was right, of course. He could afford to wait. Needed to, in point of fact, if it meant getting a crack at the real Pan.

  As if
she had read his mind, Tinkerbell flashed back into view, gossamer wings spinning threads of light, "Seven days for a battle with the true Peter Pan," she whispered. "Seven days."

  Smee rushed back through the cabin door bearing Hook's favorite cigar holder, a twin-stemmed affair. Hook accepted the holder and placed it in his mouth. Smee struck a match to one cigar while Tinkerbell flashed past with faerie magic to light the other. Hook puffed thoughtfully and looked out to sea, gazing past Peter as he was prodded slowly back along the length of the plank.

  "Two days," he said quietly.

  "Four," countered Tink. "The bare minimum for a decent Pan."

  "Three." Hook's eyes pinned her. "Final offer."

  She flitted to the end of his nose. "Done."

  Tiny hand extended, she shook the captain's hook guardedly. A few of the pirates gathered on the deck had been listening, and they sent up a ragged cheer. Soon the rest were joining in, ignorant of what it was they were cheering about, but happy to be yelling all the same. A few flintlocks discharged and one final cannon. The noise was deafening.

  Hook unplugged his ears. "Listen, lads!" he shouted them down. They turned dutifully, even those who had been working Peter along the dreaded plank. Hook's smile could melt butter. "I have made an agreement in the interests of good sportsmanship and so on and so forth. This pitiful specimen"-he gestured disdainfully at Peter-"this degenerate pretender shall have three days to prepare himself to do battle with me, at which time he shall return here and face judgment by the blade."

  "Cap'n says take up the flint and powder, men, and wave the bloody shirt!" yelled Smee. "It's going to be-"

  Hook clapped a hand over his mouth. "My show, Smee." He smiled anew. "It's going to be a perfectly wonderful war, gentlemen. A war to the death between Hook and Pan."

  "A war to the death!" repeated Smee through the captain's fingers.

  "Or if not"-Hook sniffed with a glance toward the prisons on the docks-"Pan's rug rats perish in the most horrible fashion I can devise."

  Smee bounded forward. "A toast! To the ultimate battle-Hook against Pan!"

  Hook's smile threatened to rival the crocodile's. "Children admitted free, of course."