“Nice speech,” he said.
“And short.”
“That too. But this is an audience that likes brevity.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Mike was in the throes of some kind of proprietor’s ecstasy. He had probably made a killing with his wife’s fresh donuts and fishcakes and was now hawking bread bowls filled with chowder to the crowded table he waited.
To Bryson’s amusement, I ordered grilled cheese and a salad. They are taking bets about when I will learn to like shellfish. They don’t know it, but that will be never.
“So, tonight’s the night?” Bryson asked suddenly. I noticed that he wasn’t volunteering to be my right hand any more than Harris had.
“Yes, the moon is full. It seems inadvisable to let this continue indefinitely. What if it drives the fish away?” Or more people died?
He nodded and said nothing else.
I would have preferred the crème brulée for desert but am not inflexible and the chocolate ganache was heavenly. I couldn’t stick my spoon in it and not give it full attention which means that whole gluttony is a deadly sin thing slipped my mind for a while. It would have stayed slipped if Reverend Ezekiel Burke hadn’t walked in and reminded me.
The reverend was not looking good. Even by candlelight he appeared haggard, like someone had washed his insides in hot water and made his bones shrink. And I recognized the look in his eyes. This was a fanatic who was terrified of something beyond human sin.
“Oh hell,” I said and put down my spoon.
Bryson turned his head and took in the black-clad skeleton with wild eyes.
“What’s he on about now?”
“I’m betting pirates. Or maybe ghost ships. I better take him outside before he scares the tourists.”
“Have you actually seen them?” Bryson asked, surprising me.
“Felt them. Or something.” I met his gaze. It was a relief to be with someone who understood, even if that meant that the impossible was once again upon us. “Ben will hate me, but I think I’m going to have to give the box back—treasure and all.”
“It won’t do any good,” Bryson warned. “Not long term. Kelvin tried.”
“But I can’t keep it. We can’t keep having these storms. Someone else will die. And maybe this time it will work. I’ve found a piece of the missing treasure. Maybe now the collection will be complete and they will finally go away for good.”
Bryson was still blinking with surprise when I got up and approached the wild-eyed minister.
“Reverend Burke, let’s step outside and get some air. You’ll feel better.” Sometimes a strong suggestion can be efficacious. But not this time.
“The damned have come! The spawn of hell are—” I grabbed his arm and spun him around so he faced the door. He had lost a lot of weight and I am not a small person. Shock was also on my side. He wasn’t used to being manhandled and I had him out of the chowder house before he had attracted too much attention from the visitors. The locals were, of course, watching with interest. But no one was going to interfere. They all agreed that this affair was mine to handle.
“Get a grip,” I ordered him, keeping my voice low as I marched him around the side of the building. “I know about the spawn and will be taking care of it tonight.”
“Satan must be rebuked! Evil must—“
“Reverend, I’ve got it covered. You need to stay away from Satan and the spawn and let me deal with it. It isn’t safe for you to be out at night.”
“God is my shield. He shall protect me when—”
I got right up in his face.
“Stay away from the sea. Stay away from the shore. I mean it. And not another word about any of this in front of the tourists or Bryson will arrest you for a drunk and disorderly.”
With that I turned and went back inside. I hoped he saw reason, otherwise Bryson really might have to arrest him for being crazy and disorderly.
Mike gave me a relieved look when I came back in the door alone. I smiled reassuringly and went back to my table.
“I ordered you another ganache, but Mike says lunch is on the house,” Bryson said, pushing the fancy dish my way.
“Thanks. This is the kind of day that calls for double dessert.” And I ate it. If anything happened, I wanted it reported that the condemned had enjoyed a hearty last meal.
It was only a little after one when we left the chowder house but the horizon was already gathering clouds along the margins. Another storm was coming.
I felt a small trill of nerves. As I had told everyone, it was the full moon and tonight it was the night that I returned the damned box to its even more damned owners.
“Home?” Bryson asked me.
“Yes, please. I have some things I need to do.”
I didn’t really and was glad when he didn’t ask me to elaborate. I had been good and brave all day long. I needed some time to pet my dog and do some private panicking.
Chapter 10
Most tymes a good blade doth put heart in a man, but though we had blades aplenty and many a deck gun and cannons, yet we dyd not feel safe from the evyl that stalked us. And I knew no means by which our eventual fates could be bettered. Every nyght they grew more real to me and I came to wonder if someday they shall have th pow’r to walk through woode and stoene. What are these ab-natral creature?
—from the unbound journal of Halfbeard
Sunset. The clouds moving on the islands were purple, livid with threat and streaks of fire, but the glowing fog soon hid this masterpiece of rage from my view.
I waited for full dark before stepping outside. I did not want to chance being seen and questioned by Mary or Ben.
Part of me expected to find water-logged zombies rotting on the doorstep when I opened the door, but there was nothing there except a few fingers of mist. Something was keeping the clouds away from the house. That was good. I needed to know that I had a safe retreat if I was going to keep my courage. I tried not to think about the strange sea wrack that had moved closer to my door with each passing night.
The fog closed in as soon as I left the narrow perimeter of light around the house. Though stifling and airless it was also extremely cold, almost an ice fog. I had trouble breathing as I inched down the path but suspected the problem was as much psychological and maybe psychic as it was physical. I was very frightened under my robe of calm intention. It wasn’t my first ghostly encounter but it was the first time that I felt menaced, that the other meant me harm. What are these ab-natual creatures? Halfbeard had asked. Something more than ghosts, surely. But could they become corporeal? It had me belatedly rethinking my assumption that the family bane could—and would—keep me safe.
There was a flashlight in my jacket pocket but I have learned that in dense fog, all it does is light up the upper half of my body and is actually a deterrent to sight while marking me with a spotlight. Also I needed both hands for holding the chest which I had wrapped in my ruined coat. It was going to be left on the beach too. I didn’t want it anymore.
I looked back once. The house lights were still on but they were vague and indistinct. The fog was also swallowing sound. That was by design, I was sure. Fog to hide the enemy here and rain everywhere else in the islands to deter witnesses. There were lights in the other two houses, which seemed very far away, but they were swallowed up by the thickening stench and I had a suspicion that in them, my neighbors slumbered in a deep, unnatural sleep.
I could barely hear Barney’s braying and Kelvin’s howls of warning and indignation. I knew my pets wanted to be with me and would defend me to the death. And that was why I had locked them in the pantry. If there was any dying that night, it would not be done by them.
Up from the beach there crept a hideous bouquet of rot and sea wrack. Since there was no wind I had to infer that the stench was growing because something horrible was getting closer. That was expected but my legs were shaking as the fear grew.
I forced myself down to the beach. The tide was
out but I didn’t trust the water at all. The usual physical laws did not seem to apply that night. It took all my effort, but I put the box out at the high-tide line about ten feet from the churning water. My limbs simply refused to move me any closer to the surf. I knelt in the wet sand and opened the chest so that whatever was out there in the waves could easily see inside. In the rising light of the green phosphorescence coming up from the sea I could make out the three coins, the necklace, and to one side the shriveled glove that looked like it might well have fit the denuded monkey paw.
Then I climbed on a distant rock to wait. My rational mind kept screaming at me to flee, but somehow I knew that I had to remain as a witness, if this handing over of cursed treasure was to work. I sat on my high rock with my flashlight clutched in my hand, though I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to turn it on. I looked and looked into the fog. My eyes have never stared so hard, but the vapor’s density defeated me. It was left to my nose and ears to tell me when danger came and when it was gone.
I know that we are all going to die. Of course we are. But there was a big difference between we are all going to die someday and I’m going to die now. After a while it wasn’t courage that kept me on that rock, it was terror. Paralyzing, stop-the-breath horror.
I’m not saying I ever saw Halfbeard’s shadders in the deep. I finally lost what nerve I had and buried my face in my knees and clapped my hands over my ears in an attempt to keep the stench from choking me and also to spare my eyes if they managed to actually see any of things I heard moving in the mist. But I knew they were there—very close—and when the tide went out and the mist rolled away, the cursed box was gone.
By then my limbs were asleep and I had a terrible pain shooting through my back and neck. But I was alive and alone.
I fell off my rock as I tried to climb down and bruised my knees on the smaller stones. I had to stagger crab-wise back to the house, but I was euphoric and wept with happiness when I opened the pantry door and saw Barney and Kelvin looking up at me with frantic eyes.
Chapter 11
I knew the nyght that the Calmare was lost. It took four days for word to reach the island, but I already kenned what fate had befallen her and my crew. I can but pray that the evyl is avenged now and wyll come no more to the island seeking the last of the treasure.
—from the unbound journal of Halfbeard
I went down to the beach the next morning to look for tracks around my rock, but the tide had swept the sand bare, supposing that ghosts actually left footprints. My coat was gone too. That was no great loss since I would never have worn it again.
Evidence of my encounter would have been nice, but it was enough that the chest was gone and that I was alive.
Ben joined me as I stared out at the sea which was beautifully calm and the horizon completely clear of atmospheric blemish.
“No more storms?” he asked.
“Not today anyway.” I looked down at him, kneeling in the sand and petting my dog. Ben was a good neighbor. I was sorry that I had had to give his treasure away. “Want some breakfast? I could make blueberry pancakes.”
“That would be great. I had barely started my bowl of dinner vegetation when I fell asleep. I guess I got too much sun yesterday,” he said, getting to his feet. I noticed that he looked refreshed. Whatever had been ailing him had departed. “How about it, Barn? Want to share some grub?”
Barney barked and wagged his stumpy tail. He always wants to share some grub.
* * *
I stared at the phone as though I wished to be certain that it wasn’t telling lies. The news shouldn’t have shocked me, but somehow it did. I thought the weirdness with the chest was over.
“Tess?” Bryson’s voice was worried.
“I’m here.” But I said this to the air.
Reverend Burke was dead? Had the idiot come down to the sea after my warning and tried to rebuke the waters? Should I be horrified? Relieved that he was dead? Of course, it might be that his demise was not related.
“It wasn’t a lynching or something normal like a plain old murder that got him?” I asked at last, hardly daring to hope that it could be unrelated.
“It looks to be another accidental drowning. He was tangled in seaweed.” Bryson’s voice was dry.
Seaweed.
“People are going to start avoiding the Founders Day Festival.”
Bryson grunted.
I should have been more upset at the news of the reverend’s passing, but I hadn’t cared for the man and was glad the dead man wasn’t someone I liked.
And, if the legends were true, then his was the third death that came with these visitations and everyone else would be safe.
Until the box came back.
If it came back. Maybe it was gone for good since I had found the third coin.
“Are you going to do DNA tests on this body?” I finally asked, taking a seat at my desk. My slumped posture would have brought reproof from my grandmother.
They hadn’t run tests on the last victim and I was actually curious about what such tests would reveal, though I knew it might well open a Pandora’s box of outsider questions and official interest if the results came back with some whacky three-hundred-year-old Spanish DNA, but it would be really nice to know what the hell it had been out there in the fog.
“It’s a clear case of accidental drowning. The coroner will do an autopsy, of course, but I don’t think we need put anyone to the expense of genetic testing.”
Yes, he was drowned, but by whom? Reverend Burke wasn’t a drunk and he didn’t own a boat so there would have been no reason for him to be down by the shore or docks.
Except that he had probably felt the need to confront evil and, this time, evil had been stronger than his indignation and righteous threats.
“I’ll let you know how things go, but I don’t think there is anything to worry about.”
The death was highly suspicious, but I was betting that the new coroner would see it Bryson’s way. He was originally from Great Goose and understood how things worked. Bryson and Everett are the law in the islands and what they say is truth is the accepted reality. The old coroner, Samuel Shawley, might have been more troublesome being from away, but he had gotten conveniently absentminded and even incompetent. Not that anyone in the islands had complained too loudly about his inefficiency. It mostly suited us, as the post was just something we needed filled to keep outsiders happy. But the old coroner had a wife, just enough younger and slightly less absentminded, who forced her husband to retire before he had an accident on the job. So now we had a new examiner of deaths, Nathan Shipp. Nathan is very aware that Maine is proud of the fact that we have the lowest violent crime rate in the United States.
“Let me know when the funeral is. I’ll send flowers.”
“Will do. Doubt there will be much of a turnout for this one, so no undue attention.”
I suspected he was right.
“How is the silent city today?” I asked. “At least it isn’t raining.”
“Not as quiet as I’d like given that most of the people are dead,” Bryson said. “Everett will have to mind the reverend’s paperwork. I need to be off before someone else gets territorial about the tombstones and we have an incident of domestic violence. People—honest to God. They have no respect for the dead.”
I wondered if he was aware of the irony in that statement given what we had just been talking about.
“Okay. Well, don’t be a stranger,” I said and hung up the phone.
Kelvin and Barney were both waiting patiently, eyes fixed on my face. It was clearly time for a snack. I have found that when one is an animal, apparently almost any time is right for a snack. This seemed a sensible attitude to me given they didn’t care about weight gain.
“It’s going to be a beautiful day,” I said. “Shall we have a picnic on the beach? We can drop the pirate’s papers off with Ben on the way. He’d like that.”
It had taken me a few minutes to remove all papers
with references to Nicholas’s wife and the necklace. The expurgated account was still pretty sensational and proved his supposition.
Barney barked and wagged his tail. Kelvin stalked away. He didn’t care about Ben’s book and liked napping a whole lot more than picnics.
“Fine. I’ll leave your lunch in the pantry, party pooper.”
I swear, he snorted.
Epilogue
I finally found one of great-grandfather’s journals along with a few more notes from Nicholas, who sounded ever less sane. This journal was from the late nineties. After reading the first few pages of spider prints, I decided that I was rather glad that I hadn’t discovered the thing before my moonlight encounter with Halfbeard’s cursed ghosts. Nicholas had been out of his mind with guilt and superstitious dread, which might cause him to imagine things. My great-grandfather didn’t come across that way.
Kelvin didn’t specify that he was talking about the chest in his entry, but it was pretty obvious what he meant and his words were scary.
The centuries have strengthened the monstrosity, given it power over the weather—even here, at least at night. I don’t know what else the damned thing wants, why it sends its pawns ashore. Perhaps it searches. Every ten years it casts its chest upon the beach and at the next full moon I throw it back again with something else added, this time a monkey’s paw, a charm which my father purchased from a South American seaman. But nothing pleases it.
I think what it, or maybe they—since I see figures in the unnatural fog—chiefly want is the pirate who killed them and stole the cursed treasure they were bound to by that wizard’s blood magic. But it is not within my power to give him to them. If I could do it, I would. The man was a damned villain. It may be that I shall have to dig up his bones and add them to the chest if any actually remain.
Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4) Page 9
