Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  That was one of the best things about sailing single-handed – there was nobody around to hear her when she spoke to her dead brother’s ghost.

  God, she was glad to be out here. Alone. Away from the stench of exhaust that flooded in their DC townhouse windows and the pissy smell of her father’s Depends. His doctors said dementia wasn’t deadly, and he could last another ten years, though it had already got to the point where he didn’t recognize her most of the time. A better daughter perhaps would have stayed and wiped his ass every day whether he recognized her or not. She couldn’t. Not after what happened. If her father hadn’t forced Michael to go to Yale, her older brother would be alive today. Every time she looked at her father, the pain of losing Michael hit her all over again. She had gone home to mend her wounds, not to break open old ones. Besides, Mrs. Wright was taking good care of him, and he wouldn’t miss a daughter he didn’t even recognize.

  Her computer chimed below to signal an incoming email. “Shit,” she said aloud, then reminded herself of her resolution to stop swearing. The civilian world didn’t look favorably at a woman who could swear like a sailor — even if she was one.

  With her satellite hook-up, she’d been able to send and receive email throughout most of the islands. It wasn’t cheap, but her work depended on it. A mug with the remains of her morning coffee stood on the table next to her MacBook laptop, obscuring her view of the computer screen. She assumed the email was from the Mercury Security Group, her employer. Mercury’s home office was in DC, but they were sending her to design a system of cameras and alarms for a perfume factory on the island of Dominica where she had an appointment next week.

  And if she didn’t finish with this celestial practice and get her boat moving, she wouldn’t make it to Point-à-Pitre tonight. She’d fall behind on her itinerary and miss her Monday appointment, or worse yet, miss her “date” tomorrow night — the one several years overdue. As important as the work was, the real reason she was headed to Guadeloupe’s capital city was to meet up with the Ivy League son of a bitch who had walked out of her life down in Lima, just disappeared without a word. Call it crazy, or call it closure. She wasn’t sure, but she had agreed to meet him. When the email had come from out of the blue after more than two years of silence, she had not hesitated. She wanted some answers.

  Riley lay back on the cabin top and looked up at her clean white sail curving against a sky so blue, the beauty of it made her dizzy.

  She didn’t feel like talking to anyone or even reading her email at the moment, didn’t want contact yet with that complicated world. Life was simpler out here. The overnight sail across the channel from Antigua had been spectacular with a moon just past full lighting the island of Montserrat, the dome of that island’s very active volcano trailing wisps of white smoke in the strong trade winds, and Bonefish charging along at seven knots under a reefed main and jib. She sighed, closed her burning eyes, and felt the growing heat of the morning sun wrap around her like a soft blanket.

  Flames consumed the bodies that danced and writhed in front of her while the foul smoke filled her nostrils and burned her lungs. Hot, so hot. She could hear their cries, see their mouths, great yawning holes of black as the lips around them curled into ashes, dropped off and floated to the ground. She flung her arms out, reaching, yet she could not touch their flames. She tried to run forward to help them, but it was as though she was on a treadmill floor. She could make no progress. Running, flat out, screaming through her parched throat, she never moved one inch closer to the dying men.

  Riley felt something touch her shoulder and her eyes snapped open. She gasped and jerked up into a sitting position. She shook her head, trying to clear away the nauseous tremors and to calm her hammering heart.

  She had reached one man that day. Danny Hutchinson. Her fellow prankster, the guy she’d watched Blazing Saddles with more than a dozen times, laughing so hard she’d almost peed in her pants. Hutch had looked like a human torch when she ran into the entry of the burning house, but he was still alive. She threw her damp towel over his head and hoisted him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  Now, she touched the same shoulder, running her fingertips over the tender ridges of the scar. When she’d lowered Hutch to the grass in front of the house, his eyes stared without blinking. The fire had burned through her shirt, melting both his flesh and hers.

  That was Lima, Peru where she had been posted for nearly a year as an MSG, or Marine Security Guard, at the US Embassy, where she had fallen for the handsome ex-pat Yalie only to find out later he was a spook and their affair was strictly forbidden. By the time she found out his real identity, though, no rules could have kept them apart. She had never opened her heart and her life to a man like that before.

  But after the bombing at the Marine House, she’d spent weeks at Bethesda in the burn unit waiting for the call that never came. She’d played it all over and over in her head. When they discharged her from both the hospital and the Corps, she told herself that she had been a fool to think he’d loved her the way she’d loved him. He had used her, and to what extent, she still wasn’t sure. It had been over two years since the bombing, and tomorrow she intended to get the answers she hoped would make these dreams go away.

  She checked the horizon for boat traffic. Nothing. She’d dozed off for — she checked her watch — shit! Nearly an hour. Her fingers went to the spot just past her scars where she had felt or dreamed her brother’s touch. He was always careful not to hurt her.

  “Thanks, Mikey.”

  It had been weeks since she’d last dreamed of the fire. The sailing had been so good for that — much better than her life back in DC — but no matter how many miles she put between herself and that life, the flames followed her.

  Riley raised her arms over her head and stretched her aching muscles. Thank goodness Mikey was always there to look after her.

  She lifted the sextant and placed the 6x scope to her eye again. The sea was unusually flat. Facing southwest, she swung the instrument around looking for the sun. Just when she found the glowing orb and started to slide the arc to bring it down to the horizon, she was startled by something waving from the surface of the sea.

  Blinking, she lowered the instrument and squinted against the brilliant sunlight dappling the surface. No doubt about it, there was a guy in the water out there about a quarter mile off, waving his arms at her. She glanced over her shoulder at the island. She was close in but still at least three miles off shore. What the devil was he doing swimming out here?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  New Haven

  April 16, 1992

  10:10 a.m.

  “Skull and Bones, accept or reject?”

  Diggory Priest nearly spilled his café latté all over his copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A hand gripped his shoulder as the deep voice spoke behind him. He attempted to squash the flinch he always felt when a stranger touched him. Though he had been expecting them, he hadn’t even heard them enter his room. He didn’t want to look rattled – didn’t know if he should turn and look at them, or continue facing forward, staring at the stars and stripes on the Bush/Quayle poster he’d hung on the wall above the desk.

  “Accept,” he said.

  The word had barely cleared his lips when a paper packet landed on his textbook and then, although he could not see them, he felt they were gone.

  Dig reached for the packet and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d waited three years for this. He exhaled, then opened his eyes. The folded paper was heavy, red, and wrapped with a black silk ribbon. He ran his fingers over the smooth black silk. It felt rich. When he turned it over, he saw the seal pressed into black wax: a skull, two crossed bones, and the number 322.

  He touched the insignia. Most of them got here by birthright, but his father had denied him that, denied even that he was his son. And now he had proven to the old pater he didn’t need him. He’d earned this all on his own.

  The words inside were written in black ink, the le
tters formed like those on an ancient parchment.

  This evening, at the hour of VIII, go forth wearing neither metal, nor sulfur, nor glass. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Pass through the sacred Pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple. Knock thrice upon the sacred portals. Remember well, but keep silent, concerning what you have read here.

  The streetlights were on but few stars had appeared when he turned off Chapel and onto High Street. He looked up at the ominous stone pillars on each side of the gate that led to the Old Campus and the Tomb. The dark clouds massing in the sky behind Harkness Tower were still tinged with an eerie sanguine glow, and a cool wind had come up from the river. In spite of the dust and leaves dancing in the gusts, the evening was pleasant. Unusual for that hour, there was not a soul to be seen on the street.

  The blue blazer had seemed the right choice back in his rooms, but now on this spring evening, he was sweating. Perhaps he was overdressed. They would notice. They would notice everything about him on this night.

  Diggory approached the steps leading to the massive wooden doors, wondering if he was being watched. He pounded three times with his fist.

  The door opened a crack but it was too dark inside to make out who was there. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say anything, so he raised the red paper invitation to the crack.

  A deep voice spoke from inside. “Neophyte Priest?”

  He started to answer, but a thick arm reached out and pulled him through the half-opened door. Someone jammed a black cloth hood over his head before he had a chance to see anything in the darkened room. Iron-like fingers clenched his arms from both sides, and he stifled the urge to squirm out of their grip. It was hot inside the room, hotter yet under the hood, and he heard heavy breathing from all directions. He couldn’t guess how many of them were there.

  The crowd propelled him forward, pulling this way and that, trying to make him lose his balance. When his feet got crossed, they held him up and dragged him through various rooms of the house until he managed to get his feet back under him. Other hands were grabbing at his arms, his shoulders, pressing into his ribs, and when his hands brushed against their bodies, he felt slick, sweaty skin. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to maintain control, trying not to demand they stop touching him.

  At last, they stood still and it grew silent around him.

  Then from far ahead in what sounded like another room, he heard a deep voice call out, “Who is it?”

  All around him a wave of voices shouted, “Neophyte Priest!”

  They shoved him forward and the arms supporting him vanished. He nearly stumbled. From behind, someone yanked off the hood.

  Diggory blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes. He was standing in front of a table in a darkened room lit only by candles and a fire in an enormous fireplace. On the table was a parchment scroll and behind it stood a man in a robe wearing a grotesque Halloween mask of the face from the Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

  As Priest turned his head to take in the room, he saw others dressed in skeleton costumes with jeering masks. To his right was a man seated in a throne-like chair and dressed as the Pope. On the far side of the room was another in the costume of a Spanish knight. Behind him, standing in the doorway through which he had come were four huge fellows dressed only in jock straps, high-top sneakers and their skeleton masks. The sweat on their skin glinted in the candlelight. In all, there must have been twenty of them in the room, and every one of them wore a mask. Except him.

  Diggory bowed his head, feigning deference. He saw on the floor between himself and the table was an inlay of mosaic tiles depicting the infamous 322.

  Out of the silence, their voices erupted. “Read it. Read it. Read it!” they shouted.

  He took a step forward and looked down at the parchment on the table. Before his eyes could focus on the writing in the dim light, they began shouting again.

  “He can’t. He can’t. He can’t!”

  Then a short character dressed as a Devil ran into the room cackling like a deranged monkey. He danced around Priest beating him with the forked tail of his costume. At first, Diggory raised his arms to fend off the blows. The others were shouting and waving noisemakers, which sparked in the near darkness when they spun them round and round. The noise was just as painful as the whipping, but he lowered his arms and stood straight, his eyes focused on the man behind the table, the man in the robe. Uncle Toby.

  The eyes staring out through the mask were so dark they looked black in the candlelight. The holes in the plastic were large enough he could see pouches of pinkish skin sagging beneath the eye sockets. While the noise swirled around them, their gazes remained locked, even when the older man’s right eye flashed white as the eyeball wandered off as though looking at someone on the far side of the room. The left eye continued to stare fixedly into Diggory’s eyes, questioning him, watching to see if he was worthy.

  The robed man reached behind him, then raised a cup shaped like a human skull with the cranium sawed off. A dark red liquid sloshed onto the table.

  He looked from the cup to the older man’s face, and while the wandering eye still showed only white, the man’s good eye shone with the challenge. He did not speak a word aloud, but Diggory thought he could hear the old man’s thoughts.

  Bastard, he seemed to say. Who let you in amongst the chosen ones?

  Diggory took the cup from the man’s hands. He wasn’t about to let some old man stop him now. Not after all he had been through to get into this place. Better not to think, just get it over with. He tipped the cup up and drained it in one swift move, the flat metallic taste causing his throat to close. The cup clattered to the table, and he forced the liquid back down his throat.

  He stared back at the black eye. There, old man, you see? A barbarian, no more. I’m one of you now.

  The skin around both the good eye and the wandering eye crinkled with condescension. Never. Fool. You don’t belong here.

  One of the brawny, near-naked men grabbed his arms from behind, dragged him across the room and shoved him to the floor in front of the Pope. A slippered foot rested on a stone skull. He understood what they wanted him to do, but the thought of it caused his stomach to roil. He lowered his head. With lips that barely brushed the silk, he kissed the foot.

  This would be the last time, he thought. His day was coming. Someday, they would all be kneeling in front of him. Especially that old fool Uncle Toby.

  His handlers jerked him to his feet again and propelled him over to the Spanish Knight, whom he realized belatedly, was meant to be Don Quixote. Again, they pushed him to his knees. The Don raised a heavy sword above Diggory’s head and brought it down fast as though he were about to take off his head. Diggory didn’t flinch. He couldn’t.

  The sword came to rest on his right shoulder. Then the Knight swung it over to his left shoulder.

  “I dub thee Thor, Knight of the Order of Skull and Cross Bones.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At sea off Guadeloupe

  March 25, 2008

  12:35 p.m.

  “Are you all right?” Riley called out after she cut the engine. Her boat ghosted to a stop.

  “Yeah. Sure am glad to see you, though. Don’t know how much longer I would have lasted.”

  The man’s face was deeply tanned, and even though his brown hair was slicked back against his skull, she could see the streaks of sun-bleached blond. His legs moved like shadowy blue scissors beneath the sparkling surface, and he was breathing hard from the exertion of swimming.

  Riley unsnapped the shackle on the gate at the stern and motioned the man around to the boarding ladder. “You can climb aboard back here. Just duck under the dinghy.” Her inflatable hung in davits above the water.

  As he swam to the stern, she scanned the water looking for another boat. All her senses were on high alert. She’d read that incidences of piracy were very rare in these waters, but all her years of training made her suspect everyone and e
verything. There was not another boat in sight.

  He pulled himself onto the swim step aft. He was stark naked except for a gold coin on a chain around his neck. Where the chain crossed his collarbone, two words were tattooed onto the brown skin, written in a script she couldn’t read from this distance.

  It wasn’t as though she had never seen a naked man before; in seven years in the service, the sight of buck naked men had grown too common around whichever Marine House she was calling home. She averted her eyes, more out of courtesy than modesty — but not before noticing he had no tan lines on his stocky, muscular body.

  “Wait there,” she said.

  She was standing by the boat’s companionway, and she backed her way down the ladder, her eyes flicking right to check for the dive knife she kept in a scabbard lashed to the bulkhead.

  She tossed him a large beach towel.

  “Here.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and he flashed her a wide, white-toothed grin. “Sorry I didn’t dress for the occasion.”

  He was standing out there drying himself off, in no hurry to cover himself.

  “You saved my life, you know. I mean it. Thank you.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. Didn’t know what to say. He was exaggerating. She’d seen those muscular thighs. The boat wasn’t that far off the island. Swimming to shore in flat water like this would be no problem for a man in that kind of shape.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said as she busied herself straightening up the main salon. Not that it needed straightening, but she had a naked man in her cockpit. She reached for her mug on the table and drained the last of her now-cold coffee. She certainly wasn’t feeling sleepy anymore.

  After grabbing a couple of bottles of water out of the fridge, she climbed back into the cockpit. She was glad to see he was wearing the towel wrapped around his waist now. She narrowed her eyes trying to read the tattoo. The curling script spelled Carpe Diem.