“Oh my God, look!”
Chelsea’s yell made both men pause, then they froze, staring. A pole, something like a bigger version of the boathook, was rising out of the water about thirty feet off the left side of the boat. Another two poles appeared, spaced wide apart to either side of the first one. Then Randy saw ropes and shorter, thinner lengths of wood attached crossways to the first three.
The three poles were masts, he realized. The hull of the ship was surfacing, water cascading off its deck. It was impossible, but he was watching it happen. The ship was old, not merely a sailing vessel but one of a design that was centuries out of date. It had a high stern, an up-curved bow with some kind of figurehead, and as he watched, gun ports opened along its black, glistening hull. Little round cannon muzzles gleamed in the moonlight. A black flag hung limply from the mainmast. And the rail of the black ship was lined with what looked like motionless figures.
Jonas let go of the boathook and grabbed the wheel again, but as he tried to increase speed, the engine died. Jonas pushed the starter, but there was no sound from below deck. He kept pushing as they all watched the black ship move despite a total lack of wind, gradually pulling alongside the Cormorant, dwarfing the boat. Chelsea was by Randy’s side now, clutching his arm. He felt her shivering and realized that a dense fog wreathed both vessels. The moon and the shore were gone. They were alone with an impossible ship in a world of silvery whiteness.
“Could this be—some kind of tourist thing?” Chelsea whispered. “Like a submarine made out to be an old-time ship?”
“I don’t think so, sugar,” Randy replied, keeping his voice low, his anger forgotten. “I don’t see how the locals could rig up something like this. This is just—it’s just wrong.”
“It is the Devil Ship!” wailed Jonas. “Devil Ship! He has come for one of us!”
He looked at Randy, pointed an accusing finger.
“It must be you!” yelled the boatman. “I cheat nobody, hurt nobody, I do honest business! Lemaitre claims his own—like calls to like, evil to evil!”
Chelsea screamed, and Randy looked up at the ship that loomed above them. Heads appeared, one by one, hard to make out in the darkness. Randy grabbed a spotlight fixed to the fishing boat’s rail and turned it on, swung it up. Chelsea screamed again as the beam flickered over a face that seemed to be devoid of lips and eyes.
“We can lock ourselves in the cabin, Miss, but we must hurry!” Jonas shouted, and leaped to the deck, fell, then stood up and limped toward the cabin door.
Chelsea followed him and jumped, but Randy did not dare risk it. He clambered down the ladder as Chelsea hesitated at the doorway. Then he saw her eyes open wide in horror, and she was gone. At the same moment, he heard a scampering noise, stealthy and, quick. He looked up to see a tiny, black shape moving rapidly across the cabin roof. It took him a moment to recognize a full-sized monkey, its broken neck bobbing, red jacket flapping as it ran.
The hatchway slammed shut with Chelsea on the other side. Whimpering in terror, he grabbed the handles and tried to pull it open, but it would not give. A chittering sound made him look up again, and he saw a tiny face contorted with rage, small arms gesturing wildly.
“Screw you!” he yelled, partly in panic, partly in terror.
A heavy thud sounded on the deck behind him. He spun around to see a tall, slender silhouette, framed against a silver-gray background. It limped forward slowly, raising an arm that held a massive, curved blade. A cutlass. Another figure appeared, then a third. Randy’s heart was pounding so hard he felt sure it would burst. He climbed out onto the rail that ran around the boat, wondered if he would sink if he jumped overboard fully clothed. He hesitated, whirling his arms as he tried to keep his balance.
A bloody triangle of metal emerged from his chest. He looked down in wonder just before the pain hit. The point of the cutlass vanished back inside his chest and blood gushed out, sprayed over the placid water. Randy fell forward but never heard the splash.
Chapter 1: Welcome to Sainte Isabel
The seaplane soared high over the island so that the passengers could look down and see what the pilot called ‘the peanut of the Caribbean.’
“Looks more like a diseased kidney,” yelled Ryan Gale over the roar of the engines. “Not that I’d know much about that kind of thing.”
Sara Hansen stopped herself from indulging in another eye roll. She had exhausted her repertoire of disapproving expressions and just wanted to land. Keri, Ryan’s current girlfriend, nudged him in the ribs.
“Don’t,” she warned. “It’s a beautiful island, like something out of a movie.”
Keri, too, got on Sara’s nerves a little. Everything was like something else. But at least Keri had the excuse that she was a nineteen-year-old lingerie model, whereas Ryan was the same age as Joe and herself, a thirty-something who should have sorted out his life by now.
“Not long now, honey!”
She turned to see Joe giving her the thumbs up. Her husband knew she hated flying, hated confined spaces, and that this flight from Trinidad was making her touchy. She smiled back at Joe, glad that he was the one constant in her life, the regular guy she had decided to marry and make a family with. If only Joe’s best pal had been someone more like Joe.
“There it is!” shouted Keri, pointing. “That must be Pirate Cove!”
The kidney-shaped island had a small bite taken out of it at the southern end. There was a golden beach, visible at low tide, and a coral reef offshore. The reef was defined by white breakers as they skimmed a few hundred feet overhead. Sara also glimpsed buildings, not all of them complete, as well as some trucks, and a bright yellow backhoe.
“Place is still a construction site,” Joe shouted into her ear.
She nodded, wondering how far behind work on the resort was. They had sunk so much into this project, all on the say-so of Randy Hobart, who had promptly vanished nearly a month ago. A year before, Sara had sold her realtor business, while Joe had sold his construction firm. Both had staked their futures on what Hobart called ‘a place in the sun,’ catering to rich vacationers on an island off the main tourist track.
And now, she thought, we might find out the whole thing is a white elephant, a bust, a total disaster.
As the seaplane swept over the bay and approached Port Louis, Sara found herself praying for the first time since she was a little girl. She prayed for a perfect landing. Then, as the keel of the aircraft cut through the clear blue water, she started to pray for a good outcome for their venture.
“It’s so beautiful!” exclaimed Keri as the plane’s engines sputtered and died. “I’m sensing this is a good place. Kind of blessed, you know?”
Sara nodded and smiled, prepared to indulge the girl now that they were no longer airborne. She looked down and saw that she was gripping the back of the pilot’s seat, and let go, watching her knuckles shed their whiteness. One ordeal was over.
Now for the hard part.
***
“Rudy can’t fail!”
Sara looked at the short, smiling young man in a faded New York Knicks t-shirt.
“I beg your pardon?”
She was waiting while Joe and Ryan helped Keri unload her luggage from the seaplane. The girl had brought more stuff than the other three put together. Sara had not exactly refused to help—she had simply picked up her luggage and said she would try and get them a cab. So far, she had found precisely one, and its driver seemed pleasant enough.
“Rudy can’t fail—it’s my unique selling point, also my motto. The power of positive thinking!”
He picked up her bags, took them over to a battered, yellow Ford, and carefully stowed the luggage in the trunk.
“Glad to hear it, Rudy,” she said, holding out a hand. “I’m Sara.”
“Yes, I know, Mrs. Hansen!” he replied, shaking her hand for half a second then letting go quickly. Seeing her surprise, he laughed. “Everybody knows about the wealthy Americans, the whole Pirate Cove thing. An
d this island, it all runs on gossip! That, and bootleg rum.”
They both laughed at that, and Sara relaxed. Even if this was a scam artist of some kind, he seemed like a pleasant one. She guessed Rudy was in his twenties, and he reminded her a bit of Joe from when they had first met. The young man was full of energy and probably had a lot of great plans. She felt herself hoping fate would not deal too harshly with Rudy’s dreams, realistic or otherwise. She hoped he could not fail.
“You’re going to need a bigger cab,” she pointed out, as Joe and Ryan staggered along the jetty carrying most of Keri’s stuff. Keri followed along, hefting two suitcases, still rhapsodizing over how amazing everything was.
“No problem, plenty of room on top,” Rudy replied, tapping his cab’s roof rack.
Soon, they had loaded the taxi to the point where Ryan wondered loudly about its suspension. Rudy laughed off any suggestion that he make two trips, though, and soon they were bumping along a potholed road through the middle of Port Louis. People turned to stare, some waved, most smiled.
“They’re so friendly!” Keri said, waving back at a line of Catholic schoolgirls in sober blue uniforms. “We’re so materialistic in America, we’ve forgotten how to just be nice!”
Sara resisted the urge to groan. She was in the back, squashed between Keri, who was a shade under six feet, and Joe, who stood three inches taller. Sara, at five-foot-six, was a couple of inches shorter than Ryan, who had somehow charmed himself into the front seat by simply crying shotgun. Rudy, meanwhile, was giving them all a running commentary on the city hall, the library, the various churches, and especially the bars, as they passed.
“The Barracuda, that’s a good place for young people like you to hang out, sample the nightlife, hear some beats,” he said. “Then there’s the Lamb and Flag, that is an English pub, more for the mature visitor, you know?”
“Thanks,” said Joe, “but some of us are going to be too busy to do much partying, even the mature kind.”
“Not all of us, though, you know?” Ryan put in, nudging Rudy in the ribs.
“And there’s the beach, on the left,” the cabbie said, as they reached the outskirts of the tiny capital. “That’s where most of the tourists hang out, sunbathe, whatever, when they’re not in their hotels. Lots of people here work in hotels; it’s seasonal work but good money.”
Joe started to ask some pertinent questions about the local economy, which Rudy answered with great enthusiasm. Sara wondered if he knew what Sainte Isabel’s gross domestic product was, but the cabbie certainly sounded convincing. Then Keri interrupted by asking about something dangling from Rudy’s rearview mirror.
“Oh, that’s just a lucky charm, Miss,” said Rudy, turning his head around to look at Keri. “Everybody has them here.”
“Why is it a monkey?” asked Keri. “I like monkeys!”
“Yes, Miss, people do like monkeys,” beamed Rudy. “You’ll see a lot of them in the tourist shops in Port Louis. I can get you an excellent price on a plush monkey, Miss, if you want a souvenir? Or one that says amusing things? Or just the little necklace pendants, perhaps? Many people like them.”
He suggested they get one monkey charm each, and Keri and Ryan promptly agreed. Joe and Sara smiled at one another.
“Joe and I have our own charms already,” Sara said. “A bit cheesy, but I kind of insisted.”
She held up her pendant, which consisted of half a gold heart on a chain around her throat. Joe dutifully held up the other half, then dropped it back inside his shirt.
“That is very charming,” Rudy said, beaming over his shoulder. “Two hearts beating as one, yes? And you both have hearts of gold, I am sure. Yes, I like that. It is truly romantic!”
“But what about the monkey?” Keri persisted. “Are there monkeys on this island? Oh God, are there monkeys living in the forest?”
“No, Miss,” Rudy said, producing a sad pout from the model. “The monkey here is supposed to be a kind of demon, a tiny one. It is troublesome, you see, so people ward it off by showing it its own ugly face. Well, that’s what some say.”
An oncoming bus blared at them, and Rudy swerved the Ford to the edge of the ditch, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Rudy waved at the bus driver, a stern-faced woman who mouthed something at him. Sara was not sure of the precise wording, but it was not a compliment.
“She’s my auntie,” Rudy remarked. “She’ll tell my mama that I’m a bad boy. Now I’ll have to do the washing up for a fortnight!”
“You still live with your mom?” Ryan asked, incredulous. “Handsome guy like you, all those beautiful girls we saw back in town? What gives?”
Rudy shrugged, looked slightly bashful.
“Ah, I work too hard to do anything else, sir! Got no time for the ladies, and no money to spare neither! As I was explaining, the local economy is very erratic, all depends on how good the tourist season is…”
They passed a dilapidated house set back from the road, its once-white façade now weatherworn and half-obscured by moss and rampant foliage. The jungle was reclaiming the building. Keri observed that it looked kind of sad and might be haunted. Sara asked why it had been abandoned.
“Ah,” said Rudy, “the old plantation, it failed a long time ago. Not enough good land here to grow sugar, you see? People tried to find another use for the big house, but nobody wanted it. It’s been empty for years and soon it will fall. Sad, but plus ca change.”
“Oh, you speak French!” squeaked Keri, as if Rudy had pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
“This was once a French island, Miss,” Rudy replied. “Then the British captured it from Napoleon, along with a lot of other islands. English people came in and took over, but some of the French did not leave. And the slaves, they had no choice but to stay, right? Emancipation did not come until later. So now lots of people speak both languages. I prefer English, myself. It is the language of William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens, and the great Dame Agatha Christie.”
“A Caribbean Mystery,” Sara remarked. “Miss Marple, right?”
“Not one of her best, Madam,” Rudy replied. “I prefer Murder in Mesopotamia. I like reading about exotic, faraway places.”
They veered around a corner, sending an old man on a bicycle careering to the side of the road. The man almost fell off, stopped, shook his fist.
“Don’t tell me,” said Sara. “That your grandpa?”
Rudy laughed and admitted that he was not related to everyone on the island.
“But if you need something, I know someone—Rudy can’t fail!”
He flipped on the radio as the road fell away to one side and the Caribbean appeared, aquamarine under the lighter blue of a cloudless sky. Everyone fell silent as a pulsing reggae beat filled the car. Sara looked out at the sea and suddenly felt less anxious about their future.
Breathtaking beauty makes you happier, she thought. Who could have guessed?
Rudy swerved again, blaring his horn, and Sara twisted around to glimpse a black hen or rooster flapping in their dusty wake. It seemed undamaged, but every bit as annoyed as the old man or Rudy’s aunt. She turned back, caught sight of the monkey bobbing wildly under the driving mirror. She saw some of her face above it in the mirror, brown eyes pensive, mouth unsmiling.
Lighten up, she told herself. This party doesn’t need a pooper.
***
“Oh, this is too cute!”
Keri’s voice seemed to cut right through the wall of the bungalow, and Sara wondered if the building was up to standard.
“Maybe it’s all cardboard,” she suggested, putting her clothes in the closet. “After all, Randy Hobart turned out to have been less than honest.”
Joe shrugged, staring out of the bedroom window across Pirate Cove. The south-facing view was beautiful. But the incomplete resort complex was not so great. Sara stood by Joe and took his arm, massaged it a little, feeling how tense he was.
“I was joking,” she said. “But he was a bit of a sleaze. That fire in M
exico—seems like he bribed local officials to ignore all those code violations. Guess we’ll have to be extra careful here, right?”
Joe grunted what might have been a yes. Sara went back to unpacking, then stopped. Rudy had mixed up a couple of items, and she had one of Keri’s. She stared into the case, wondering if she was hallucinating. Then she closed it and took it into the other bedroom. She almost bumped into Ryan on the way out, and he sashayed around her, winking as he headed for the kitchen in ‘a quest for beer.’
“Oh, thanks,” Keri cooed. “I haven’t unpacked yet.”
Sara put the case on the bed and opened it again. She looked at the books lying on top of an impressive collection of skimpy bathing gear.
“I didn’t know you were into Freud. Or Jung,” she said, “or Nietzsche.”
“It’s pronounced Neetch-uh not neetch,” Keri said, then giggled. “Sorry, correcting people is a bad habit. But yeah, I’m trying to improve my mind. Because it sure needs some improving, right?”
Sara felt herself reddening slightly and tried to laugh off the remark.
“No, it’s just kind of heavy stuff for holiday reading,” she protested. “I had you down as more—more of a John Grisham kind of girl.”
Keri sat on the bed and started taking books out of the case, putting them onto a shelf above the bed.
“Nah,” she said, not looking at Sara, her tone still upbeat, but with a hint of emotional strain. “You look at me, you see a bimbo. The hair, the lips, the boobs, the legs. And I am a bimbo, in a way. I started modeling when I was still in high school and then… well, let’s just say I had a lot of problems. Now, I want to go to college, get some qualifications, maybe become a therapist. Do something useful with my life, help other people get through stuff I had to get through on my own, you know?”
Sara sat next to her.
“Hey, I’m sorry I’ve been kind of—not nice to you,” she said awkwardly. “I think it’s great that you want to do all that. I hope it all works out.”
Devil Ship: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Devil Ship Series Book 1) Page 2