by Alexie Aaron
“Sir, where are the other boats?” the crewman operating the skiff asked.
Anders scanned the water and only saw the boat filled with the college kids. They were almost past the reef. The water around the boat burbled, and a long snakelike tentacle exploded out of the water and fell across their boat. It wrapped around and around the screaming mass of people as it dragged it underwater.
“Sir, permission to head for open water,” the crewman asked.
“Permission granted. Hold on everybody,” Anders said, squatting down and pulling two orphaned children close to him.
“He’s leaving us,” Jeremy moaned.
“He’s got no other choice,” Karl told his son. “We’ll just have to hang on until he can send help back. I figure we’ll stick to the rocks. Whatever moves in that sand and water won’t be able to get us here.”
Karl put his arm around his son, and the two watched as the boat sped away. The pilot skillfully maneuvered the boat as close to a zigzag route as he could considering the waves. They pushed past the depth where the other boat had been taken. Anders’s satellite phone came to life. He unwrapped his arms from the two children to send an SOS.
The boat lurched to a stop. Two of the larger kids fell to the bottom of the boat. The water burbled again, and a large tentacle, like the one that had taken the boat of college kids, started to wrap around the skiff. It created a seal, and as it dragged the boat underwater, there was very little if any seawater getting in the boat. The passengers screamed, and their pleas for help and mercy bounced off the metal of the boat before being muffled by the thick skin of the monster that had hold of them.
The crewman produced a knife and raised it to stab at the arm.
“Wait, we’re underwater. We stand a chance once it drags us to land. There must be a reason for not drowning us,” Anders reasoned.
“I’m keeping this,” the crewman said. “I’ll wait for the right moment, and then I’m getting the hell off this island.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
The sun was heading for the horizon. The Gables mourned the loss of Marie and Bruce. Karl managed to erect a small shelter out of pieces of the marquee that had blown down the beach and smashed up against the rocks. A few ice chests ended up there too. Unfortunately, all they had in them was a few wine coolers and malt beverages. Jeremy was plowed by the second beverage. Karl limited himself, trying to keep his wits about him. He had just settled down under the awning when sounds of industry started coming out of the jungle.
An old boat was being dragged out of the foliage by two men. They pulled the boat across the sand towards the water. The two men looked over at the Gables.
In the fading light, Karl could have sworn the tall one was the Event Manager. But how could this be? He saw him drown.
“Hello!” the EM shouted. “We found this boat. We’re going to try to make St. Kitts. We could use two more oarsmen.”
“How did you get away?” Karl asked.
“It let us go. Seaman Baily and I thought we should take a chance and get the hell out of here.”
Jeremy looked up at his father. “What do you think?”
“We can’t stay up here much longer. Tomorrow’s sun will bake us. Without water, we’re not going to last long,” Karl said before calling to the men, “We’ll go with you for help.”
The two Gables climbed off the rocks and approached the boat. It was a wooden boat more akin to the sixteenth century than modern times. Still, it was a boat. The four continued to drag it towards the water. In the last burst of light before the sunset, Karl looked at the crewman. He didn’t remember a Seaman Baily being in the excursion crew. He now knew why. Bailey was indeed a sailor, but he wasn’t from this time. The setting sun pushed through him. He was nothing more than a phantom. Karl looked at Anders, and although the man was solid, he wasn’t the man who they set out on this trip with. Two bloodshot eyes looked at him, but the irises weren’t the sky blue of the Swede; they were as orange as the setting sun.
“I don’t have to tell you that there’s no use running, but if you’d like to try, I will give you a sporting chance,” the possessed EM promised.
“Who are you?”
“Would it be a better question if you were to ask, what am I?”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“Who denotes an entity with a name. I have no name. I’m the demon-with-no-name. Doomed to this island for an eternity. Problem is, I don’t know how I got here or who decided this was a good idea?”
“Why don’t you let us go, and I’ll come back with those answers,” Karl said.
“I’m sorry. As much as it would be worth the gamble, you could also call in an airstrike.”
“I’m a salesman. How would I accomplish this?”
“Don’t underestimate yourself.”
“Dad, if this dude has been stuck on this island, how would he know about airstrikes?”
“Good question. Who’s bullshitting who here?” Karl asked.
“Simple. I keep up to date by probing your simple little minds before I eat them. This is how I know that Marie got it on with Alberto the lifeguard behind the waterslide last night.”
Karl groaned.
“Dad, don’t let him get into your head,” Jeremy said, swinging the oar he had picked up and knocking the EM over.
He scrambled back up the rocks and watched as his father ran in the other direction, leading the two away from his son.
When they were halfway to his dad, Jeremy ran back down, dragged the boat into the water, and started rowing.
Karl jumped the first tentacle that shot out of the ground. He was caught by the second, and as the sand swirled, he yelled encouragement to his son. He stuck up his fist. In his mind, this was his way of showing his son that he fought until the end.
Jeremy pulled hard on the oars. He couldn’t tell how far he had gotten. The Caribbean was kicking up a fuss around him. Either the tentacled monster had found him or a storm was brewing. Either way, he continued to row as hard and fast as he could. He ran the boat aground in the retreating tide. He was stuck out on the sandbar. The boat leaned to the side as the water rushed away.
The crescent moon gave him a beggar’s portion of light. He saw the island, and he saw the sea. The island was certain death. The sea still gave him a chance. The boat was useless, but he took an oar with him and ran away towards the deeper water. With luck, he could float with the oar out into a shipping lane or over to one of the smaller islands. He had to try.
He made it past the reef. Jeremy felt giddy with relief. And when the sharks took him, his last thought was, “At least I escaped that goddamn island.”
Chapter One
Sabine looked at the island from the safety of the sport yacht Azure’s fly bridge. She tucked the long tendrils of her shiny white hair into the sports cap and adjusted the bill to reduce the glare of the sunshine reflecting off the water. Sabine watched the Zodiac bouncing over the waves as it carried the three men towards the shore.
The two Callen brothers were so similar physically that it was hard to tell them apart at this distance. Their naturally lean bodies hid the strength both had to draw upon should they need it. Their brown hair had lightened in the short time they were at sea. It was only the younger brother Mason’s penchant for wearing his stretched-out, discolored, lucky t-shirt that set them apart. Patrick had assimilated to the yacht culture quickly by wearing the traditional expensive polo shirt and shorts. His eyewear was a gift from Sabine. She had Ted Martin incorporate his ghost-viewing technology into the lenses housed in the Wayfarers. Both men resembled the PEEPs ghost Stephen Murphy, of whom they were distant relatives by way of the ghost’s paternal grandmother. They had the same chiseled chin. Mason’s face was a mirror image of Murphy’s when the young man smiled. They had a similar twinkle of mischief in their steely gray-blue eyes.
The yacht tender, Bob Morris, piloted the boat over the waves with a practiced hand.
The weathered professional seaman promised to stay with the craft until the Callens returned from their scouting mission.
Sabine had declined the first trip ashore to the small island. Even before they dropped anchor, her sensitivity caught a series of echoes wafting over the water. None of them were without screams of terror attached.
The people of the region had called this island Lanfè – Hell.
“It’s true,” she had said, grabbing hold of Patrick’s arm. “This is part of Hell.”
Patrick and Mason looked at Sabine skeptically. All they saw was an island with a beautiful sandy beach on the southernmost side and craggy cliffs where waterfalls fell dramatically into the beautiful turquoise Caribbean on the north side. The sand and the rocky cliffs protected the rainforest interior – a place where even the most daring of the locals would not tread. The few who had ventured on the island, and had returned, told them to avoid the sandy beaches. If you had to venture on Lanfè, they recommended that you put your feet on rock and only rock.
The international wheeler-dealer and financier of Father Santos’s professional ghost-hunting group, Gerald Shem, had made the Couach 3700 luxury sport yacht available to the small team of explorers. He approved of the trip wholeheartedly and commented to Sabine that this little vacation without her girls would do her good. It would stretch her social skills while honing the talents she had let fall into disuse. Her mother, Beverly Cooper, a noted sensitive and a colleague of Gerald’s, was enjoying a great influx of cash with the offering of her skills in the United Kingdom. He wanted to get Sabine, who was a powerful sensitive in her own right, back into the ghost-detection business. Sabine didn’t need the money, but it couldn’t hurt to put some away for the futures of her triplets.
This treasure hunt was being financed mostly by Gerald who cashed in quite a few favors to give Sabine, whom he thought of as his daughter, the comfort he appreciated himself. The two other financiers, Pavel Matveev and Bea White, preferred to let the small team of Sabine and the Callens do most of the legwork. The trio of treasure hunters mentioned that they would be taking with them other help but assured Gerald that the two would not need accommodations.
Lanfè was not the team’s original destination. They had set out to search an area of Guadeloupe, looking for any reference to a large amount of valuables being stored in the area. Unfortunately, the Santa Rosa area, which all the clues seemed to point to, had experienced a major earthquake. The rebuilding of the area all but obliterated any structures that would have stood in 1788-89, when Olympe de Gouges’s agent would have arrived with the Wall loot.
Patrick had expected this and sought out other avenues of information. He sent Mason, who had a working knowledge of French, to a private maritime museum to check the manifest of ships moving in and out of the French-controlled Caribbean.
It took Mason four days of careful study of the bills of lading and ship manifests before he hit pay dirt, but dirt was all it was worth. The America, a Téméraire-class seventy-four-gun French naval vessel arrived in Guadeloupe with several large crates of de Gouges’s, but it also left with them. The ship only stopped long enough to take on water before it left. As far as Mason could tell, it was to stop at an isle the locals called Lanfè before it was to continue up the coast of North America on patrol. Why did the ship sail all the way across into the Caribbean if North America was its target? Did Olympe de Gouges have that much pull with Louis XVI? “Never doubt the power of a well-turned ankle,” Mason said aloud.
“You can say that again,” Fergus agreed.
Mason whipped around. He didn’t see Fergus. Not having the sight was a disadvantage when dealing with the two pre-Chicago-Fire ghosts. Kevin Murphy, Stephen Murphy’s long-lost father, and his best friend Fergus O’Connor had decided to join the team in search of the Wall treasure. The fact that they were dead, and their remains were soon to be reburied, did nothing to dissuade the ghosts. This was an adventure. The only sea they had crossed was the north Atlantic, and that was in the belly of a New-York-bound ship taking their families from Ireland. There were no turquoise seas to look upon, nor shapely ladies of color.
The yacht they cruised on was amazing. Kevin, who didn’t like being on the water, said he couldn’t stop the horizon from rising and falling. But Fergus was in his element. He followed the captain and learned all he could while Kevin was administered to by the fair Sabine.
She kept him distracted by telling him stories of his son Stephen, most of which were things that she had heard secondhand from Mia.
Kevin told her about his life and his childhood, about how he had forgotten that family was everything. He lamented that he had failed with his son but was determined to be there for the Callen boys, who had embraced the idea of ghosts tagging along with them.
“Stephen will forgive you,” Sabine assured him. “I’m not sure he hasn’t already.”
“Sweet Sabine, he looks at me like I’m a stranger and not his pa.”
“I think it must be a hard adjustment to make. He lived longer than you and, to my understanding, didn’t have much of a life of his own. The problems of his arranged marriage still weigh heavy on him. His mother, your wife, was, so I’ve heard, a severe woman of unyielding principles who choked the life out of the young couple when it became apparent that one of them was barren.”
“Catherine changed quickly after we were married. She laid the blame of our poverty on my shoulders. True, I should have drunk less and saved more, but I thought I had time. I wanted to still live and enjoy what this new country had to offer us.”
“Well, since only a few can go backwards in time - and they certainly can’t change the past without repercussions - I think you just need to keep at it. Soon, Stephen will appreciate having you in his existence again.”
“But maybe it’s too late to toss a ball with the kid,” Kevin said wryly.
Sabine smiled. “It’s never too late. I suspect that one of the reasons Stephen is attracted to Mia is because she will toss a ball with him.”
“I think it’s more primal.”
Sabine thought about this a moment. “No, it’s something else. I’ll not discount the mutual attraction, but Mia’s moved on, and I don’t see her looking upon him as anything other than a friend.”
“She chose an interesting lad.”
“He chose her. He had the courage to take on the most complex creature around. Ted’s adoration gives Mia the air of normalcy that she needs. My cousin’s path will never be a straight one, but I know, as long as she is with Ted, it will be a happy one.”
“Aside from the white hair, you don’t look like cousins.”
“We aren’t blood cousins. My mother, Beverly, still doesn’t know that she was secretly adopted by Mia’s grandmother. When I found out from Stephen, I was shocked, but it doesn’t change Mia’s and my regard for each other. I love her like a sister. One of my daughters carries the reincarnated soul of Mia’s deceased daughter.”
“Mia had a baby out of wedlock? I can’t see Stephen putting up with a woman with such loose morals.”
“In this time, things are different, more relaxed. I believe Mia’s love for Neil Hansen, the bedridden father of her child, was all she needed to commit herself to him. Marriage doesn’t need a piece of paper. That’s just the legal end of things. Love comes first. Neil was killed by a vengeful ghost. Mia was pregnant when she tried to save him. She lost her child in the battle. Fate may be unkind, but the universe finds a way to heal. It took the child’s unborn soul and eventually gave her to my late husband and me. My daughter Maisha Violet has many of Mia’s qualities.”
“This doesn’t bother you?”
Sabine looked over at the ghost, and her eyes were soft. “No, I have three beautiful, talented daughters. I have been blessed.”
“Children are indeed a blessing.”
Sabine looked for Kevin on the deck of the yacht but didn’t see him. He could be down below, or had decided to travel with the men on the Zodiac. She saw
Fergus jump aboard. She didn’t see Kevin join them, but he could have been in the veil.
“I’m very worried about this,” she said to herself.
“Ms. Norwood,” the captain said, approaching her.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I wanted to tell you that we we’re going to pull away from the island. We noticed that our instruments weren’t performing at their best. There may be some magnetic interference emanating from the isle.”
“By all means, take us to a safe distance. I’m sure the men will be able to locate us without any trouble.”
“We are kind of hard to miss,” the captain said. “This is such a beautiful spot. I’m puzzled as to why we haven’t seen other watercraft taking advantage of that beautiful beach.”
“Captain Billard, that beach is a smoke screen. Its beauty hides something horrible.”
“So that’s why your partners are landing on the rocky side of the island?”
“Yes. But I fear that will only delay the conflict to come.”
The captain turned away from the woman. He had been informed that one of his passengers was different and to treat her like everyone else. Was it because she was crazy? If so, he would exercise caution. Or was it because she was prophetic? In that case, he would resurrect his St. Erasmus medal and start praying for guidance.
~
Mia stared at the four people who stood before her. They each had rehearsed a statement and demanded that Mia and Ted hear them out.
Mia, against her better judgement, had let this farce get this far by allowing them over to speak their piece, instead of rejecting the idea they presented to her and Ted on the phone.
Ralph, her beloved godfather, stepped forward and cleared his voice before starting, “As you know, I have had a part in your raising and have spent a lot of time with Brian.”
“Who wore you out,” Mia interrupted.