by Jacob Nelson
Ah, Diana! With her dark hair and auburn highlights, her electric blue eyes and that perfect form that comes from years of training in pursuit of perfection, in this case as an Olympic swimmer. Little did he know that her obsession for the gold was driven by her desire to become his equal, or at least as close as she could become without the help of his superb gene pool to rely on. Why, they were childhood sweethearts. Having met her when he was shipped as a youth to America to live with his mother’s in-laws, to earn an education and prepare his mind and body for the eventual role of assuming the legacy of the Phantom.
And yet here he was, having taken over for his father upon his father’s death. The Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, the Keeper of the Peace, the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol… the list went on. Yet for all of it, he stood alone. Only now he was truly alone.
Though dressed in his skintight attire of the Phantom, he currently had it covered with his urban attire: a soft fedora hat, wrap around sunglasses, a long overcoat cinched at the waist, and tan slacks that covered his boots to below the ankles. His right arm, though not visible to the public, was bandaged, having had a bullet graze him; not enough to do any lasting harm, but enough to keep it covered while it healed.
He half pitied the man that had shot him. He knew he had punched him much too hard. A normal punch by the Phantom is enough to tattoo a man’s jaw with the death’s head motif ring he wore. But this time he had heard the thug’s jaw shatter. On the other hand, he certainly deserved it, and he did get off a lucky shot.
The Phantom caressed his arm as he thought through the events: Not caring who saw him or not, and without the desire to live now that Diana was gone, he had no reason to curb his anger. He saw no reason for anything anymore. All he had wanted was some means to forget. Unfortunately he wasn’t a drinking man, nor were any of his ancestors for as far back as the chronicles went. So without an outside means to drown his woes, instead he had sought out the worst of the worse. He went straight to the Mexican cartel and with guns ablaze dropped down into the midst of them. When he had smashed them, he moved onto the next group… And the next. Never had so many self made men been put into their place so quickly.
The Phantom laughed aloud as he thought of how wide the officer’s eyes became as the Phantom dropped off the first load of trussed-up out-cold men at the precinct’s office.
The therapy worked in part. He now felt a bit less angry, a bit more in control. Plus, the wound on his arm reminded him of his mortality, and despite the loss of Diana, he had a family legacy to adhere to… didn’t he? Well, didn’t he?
The thought kept running through his head.
‘The third nearly quit the line. It has been some 21 generations of Phantom now. Should I quit now? But if I did, what would I become? I’ve all the riches I could ever use, but really, would anything else be as rewarding or worthwhile?’
Thus thought the Phantom as he made his way through Charles de Gualle International Airport. He continued in his thoughts as he left the smaller section of Terminal 3 for the international Terminal 1. There he had purchased a ticket for the next flight to Bangalla. Always alert to his surroundings, it was no surprise that he noticed the headline of the Paris Le Monde Newspaper at the kiosk to his right.
Nestled in among other news that had made the front cover of some newspapers, including, “Mob ring decimated. Masked crusader named Hero” (his latest work), and “Guard found dead, while Whitby Abbey cemetery desecrated” was the main headline: “Pirates steal Columbus’ Pirate Gold”.
The headline instantly caught his attention. He picked up the paper, and handing the proprietor some money, walked away.
“Hey, monsieur! Your change!”
The Phantom didn’t stop. Since Diana’s departure he wasn’t worried about his surroundings; besides, he was much too engrossed in the article. Purposely. Anything to help forget the woman that haunted his dreams and made his body desire to be close to hers. By the time he had walked the short path to where he had to wait to board his plane; he had read the paper completely. By result of 21 generations of superior genes being passed on from Phantom father to son, not only did he have a perfect physique, but he had a perfect memory with perfect recall as well; and could speed read to boot. By the time he had taken a dozen steps he had the whole newspaper read, stored and ready for retrieval at any time.
Upon arrival at the airport in Mawitaan, the capital of Bangalla, the Phantom shed his urban attire. In place of the overcoat, slacks and fedora stood a mountain of a man. Leaving his clothes with Toma, the stable boy, the Phantom rose, settling his holsters on each hip. He inhaled the Bangallan air, inflating his massive chest, relishing in the scents of the Jungle and the lack of smog and other impurities commonly found in the cities of the world. Then he strode over to the stables, with a light tread peculiar for so large a man; yet with perfectly proportioned muscularity, that carried his giant frame effortlessly.
At the stables he picked up his horse, Hero.
Hero, a rare true-white Anglo-Arabian, was a large horse encompassing the best examples of its breed… having inherited the refinement, bone and endurance of the Arabian, and the speed and scope of the Thoroughbred. There was no other horse in all of Bangalla that was more intelligent and faster; it had no equal. Similar to its master. Hero loved the Phantom as much as the Phantom loved Hero.
As he mounted Hero he whistled for Devil who had been eagerly awaiting his return. Bidding goodbye to Toma, off they shot, as if racing against time itself, while Devil, the pale-blue eyed, iron jawed, tireless mountain wolf that the Phantom had raised from a pup paced them down the Phantom Trail.
It is from this swift movement that legends grew. For a jungle hunter or traveler would see a flash of motion followed by a muted sound. Only an insubstantial imprint of a huge man on a great white horse followed by a wolf would be left upon the retinal imprint. It must have been the Phantom! Oh, let me tell you the story! Yet with each retelling the story became more, larger, until the legend surpassed the reality.
Through the jungle he fled. The Bangallan jungle is not a place for the timid. A land of snakes, warring tribes and large carnivores, not to mention physical dangers of every kind abound there. Yet for Kit, the ride back was nothing but therapeutic.
The Phantom Trail followed a varied terrain: the wide open grasslands, followed by the wooded hills, skirting the Great Swamp, and finally into the Deep Woods. Each hoof beat bringing him closer to the land of the Bandar, the Phantom forest, the crystal waterfall, and Skull Cave…bringing him home.
By the time Kit arrived back in the Deep Woods, he finally felt relaxed.
However his relaxation was short lived. Upon his return, he found a number of small matters to attend to. As Keeper of the Peace, a title bestowed upon the first Phantom, he had a small tribal matter to judge. As the Ghost Who Walks, he was expected to attend the coronation ceremony of the Mori, a local fisher tribe, elder’s son. Meanwhile, the pygmy Bandar insisted on a feast in his honor; and the Jungle Patrol’s activities had to be monitored. Among the many duties he had, he still had to find time to chronicle the events that lead up to his bandaged arm. All the while looking forward to taking a little time to himself. The only consolation was that the constant need for the Phantom to intervene kept his mind free from the thoughts that had been plaguing him since Diana’s departure.
Chronicling his own last few months took some time, especially as his thoughts kept returning to Diana rather than the most recent past escapade, yet by the time he was done with it he was ready to allow his mind to work on something new.
Again his thoughts turned back to Diana, and with conscious effort he centered his thoughts instead on the newspaper article he had read on the plane.
For some, a challenging Sudoku puzzle or crossword puzzle is enough to get them going in the morning. For others, investigation is something more. Those types of people quench their mental necessity through work as historians, genealogists, scientists, detectives,
and more. The Phantom encompassed all of those roles rolled into one.
Kit mentally brought up what the newspaper had printed:
…"Intrinsically, for coin research, it's a very exciting find," Sosa told La Nación. "This is an amazing numismatic find. The coin is beautiful and in excellent preservation. It is the heaviest gold coin with the highest contemporary value of any coin ever found in the Americas."
Sosa said the coin weighs almost one ounce (27.71 grams), while most pre-Columbian gold coins weighed about 4.5 grams. Where it was minted is still an enigma, as well as how it arrived at its present locale.
The obverse, or 'head' of the coin, portrays a death’s head, lower jaw intact, mouth closed.
The reverse, or 'tail,' illustrates two "crossed sabers, resembling rotating capital ‘P’s," according to the AASA (Association of Antiquities of South America).
In the parlance of antiquities experts, the coin's denomination is currently registered as "unknown," and as of yet it is being cross-referenced with known coins for categorization…
To Kit, the coin depicted in the newspaper was clearly of the same origin as his own rings. The crossed sabers and death’s head were made in exactly the same manner.
And yet it appeared to be a type of pirate treasure. The placement of the coin also suggested the same, but the date assigned to the coin was that of around the time of Columbus, assumedly around 1490AD— 1520AD.
‘That would place it around the time of from the Grandfather through to the Father of the First!’ he mused! ‘So the First obviously took those two ancient symbols from another source…’
But what source? Pirates? Why? That didn’t seem to make any sense, as he was the nemesis of all pirates.
‘Maybe I could get Diana to research…’ he began and then mentally kicked himself.
It was time to search the chronicles.
In the interior of Skull Cave, the Phantom settled back to read from the chronicle of the First Phantom. He lounged back against the natural stone seat, an outcropping of the wall, sinking into the soft alpaca throw. Above him, propped high on the same wall was one of the many brightly burning torches that lined the cave. Across the interior of that grand chamber were bookcase upon bookcase filled with large tomes of his ancestors; chronicling the births, adventures, and deaths of generations of men that called themselves the Phantom.
He crossed his feet at the ankles under the desk that was positioned in front of the ‘chair’. It was an antique oak writing desk, blackened through age, which was brought back from England; and as he understood it, was the very writing desk of the Grandfather of the First, a man whose name had been erased through time.
The heavy leather book he propped up on it, and having opened the first vellum page read the first entry, dated “13 October 1536”. Kit read on, noting the firm longhand of the First.
The first entry was that of the Oath of the Skull. Kit paused. To him, the oath was his reason for being. Diana aside, it was as symbolically important to him as many religious texts are to their followers. Though he had read it a thousand times, and could have recited every word easily from the first reading with his near perfect photographic memory, he never tired of the story… of the way it made him feel, of the sheer awe and magnitude that those simple words had on so many lives through so many generations. It made him reflect again on why he wore the Phantom mantle.
The story, as it was unfolded throughout the chronicle as told by the First, was a simple one. The sole survivor of the Singh Pirate attack was a young man named Kit, who, as he fell off the burning ship, saw his father killed by a pirate. Kit was washed ashore, half dead, and friendly pygmies found him and nursed him to health. They took him in and gave him a home. In return he gave them freedom.
Then, walking on the beach one day, he found a dead pirate dressed in his father’s clothes, and realized this was the pirate who had killed his father. Grief-stricken, he waited until vultures had stripped the body clean…
13 October 1536 – Today I swore an oath on the skull of my father’s murderer. I swore, ‘I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, and my sons and their sons shall follow me.’
The Phantom stopped reading for a moment, trying to visualize what the First must have had running through his mind at that time, trying to savor that which drove generations of men to take up that same oath. This was the Oath of the Skull that the First, Kit, and his descendants would live by. This was his oath, his legacy.
This was a story Kit never tired of reading. However the chronicle was large and somewhere in there was the answer to the origins of the rings and thus the gold coins.
It was the events that led up to The First’s return to the shore that the Phantom was after. Returning to the text, he skimmed through the opening pages.
My life began anew on the 17th of February in the year 1535, the day my father was murdered…
…After I was sufficiently recovered from the effects of the pirate attack, I turned my thoughts to how I might proceed in returning to my homeland. Though grief-stricken I was determined to outfit a ship of my own and exact revenge upon the murderers of my father and the crew. Upon such cognitive reflection, I decided that I would have to make a sea journey back to the land of my inheritance, which was in the English coastal towne of Whitby.
Around me the vestiges of the wreck had washed up on the shore. The remains were such that there was little possibility of making any part of the wreckage seaworthy. As I contemplated this, I was beset upon by a number of small dark men. Pygmies.
At the sight of them I gathered up a broken beam to use as a weapon, but seeing me, they stood there pointing and ran up to me with wide smiles. Their friendly smiles made it known unto me that they meant me no harm. My strength ebbed and I fell to my knees.
The little people immediately came to my aid, taking care of me in every way.
I attempted to make my request for a homeward journey known to the friendly pygmy people, who appeared to understand. Immediately they gathered their supplies, and leading me along, we journeyed across the wilds of the jungle.
…But first I must scribe a bit about these wondrous little people. The Bandar, as I learned later that they were called, were but a small band of warriors that had been able to escape from their slavery to a race of giants known as the Wasaka. From the moment they found me, bruised and torn on the beaches of this seemingly inhospitable part of the world, they treated me with the care of a deity, which perhaps I must have appeared to them; for they must have never seen a white man up close before. Yet they must have had some vision of a white man, whether through legend or otherwise as they immediately called me by a local given name; which as I later discovered could be literally translated as Ghost Who Walks; or perhaps in the English tongue as Phantasm or possibly Phantom.
Having nursed me to health, they transported me through the jungle.
We traveled for a time, until finally we came to a large field that was surrounded on our side by dense jungle and on the other side by the walls of a large village.
‘Wasaka,’ stated the pygmy Buran to me, as he pointed to the enclosure. Buran I learned was the youngest son of the chief.
Wasaka I learned was the name of the people that lived there in that village. Even from the distance of the jungle fringe, I could see that the Wasaka were giants; easily seven feet tall at average.
Within the fields worked the small pygmies alongside of their masters, their tiny frames made even smaller against the towering frames of their masters.
It was after the fact that I learned the true story of the Bandar versus the Wasaka. But as it has relevance here, I submit the story of the two factions.
For many generations the Wasaka Giants had lived nearby the Bandar pygmies. Throughout all this time they had raided the Bandar and stolen the young and old as slaves to be used for hard labor, tending flocks and working in the fields; in essence, used to serve the giants.
It
was the time of the Bandar feast of thanksgiving, a few days before my arrival that the Wasaka went too far. They carried off the Bandar chief’s daughter.
With a feast to be held at moonrise, the tribe bid Suran, first son of the chief Turan, farewell in the early morning hours as he led a band of braves into the woods in search for her. However, by dusk he had not returned. Scouts were dispatched to ascertain their whereabouts and returned with the dire news that the chief’s son and his fellow braves had been caught by the Wasaka.
The Wasaka were disciples of the death god Kua. A god that they claimed demanded the occasional human sacrifice. The chief Turan knew that once the Wasaka found out the true identity of his son, that his son Suran would become the next sacrifice. Now fearing for both his son’s and daughter’s lives, the Bandar chief beseeched the other tribes for help, but they turned their backs to them.
It was at that time of dismay and hopelessness that Suran and a few of the braves were able to escape with the daughter of the chief. They purposely traveled in the opposite direction of the camp, in hopes of eluding their captives when they arrived at the sea shore. Turning inland they finally made their way back to the Deep Woods, but due to a great sickness that shortly came upon them, through the insistence of the medicine woman the youngest son of the Bandar chief and a few of the still healthy braves were sent back to the sea shore to seek out the Ghost Who Walks…where instead they found myself, having watched me from the fringe of the woods as the final moments of battle took place.
To them I was legend incarnate, as I will later describe. There, half dead and weaponless, they led me, deep into the woods and deposited me at the edge of the Wasaka village, all hope centered in my direction.