The House Lost at Sea

by R. J. Blain

  The captain demanded respect and held authority, and I, as the first mate, enforced it. Most days, I had enjoyed the work well enough.

  My boss had, in her infinite wisdom, reserved me a room at a tourist dive. While the place wasn’t quite ready to give up the ghost and come crashing down, I worried the next storm might tear the roof off.

  At least my room had a good view of the ocean, and I spent a long time looking out over the sea. Soon enough, I’d be able to venture out. First, I needed to find out what Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope had to offer. Since Bensen wanted adventure tourism, I abandoned everything but my keys, wallet, and new phone in my room. If something got stolen, it would serve as a consideration for his review. In a way, I hoped someone robbed the room. It would serve my boss right, as she’d have to replace everything stolen.

  I wouldn’t find anything in a hotel meant for those visiting South Africa on a budget.

  Cape Town had a thriving tourist district, and with a little help from my phone and a travel agency, I learned a few important things: impulse planning trips in South Africa sucked, and there were very few options for those who wanted to spend more money than they had sense.

  Instead of indulging in something interesting, such as a dive off the coast or a trip out on the ocean, I ended up exploring the Cape of Good Hope on foot while my travel agent, Lizzy, went on a hunt for something interesting—and expensive. She’d already booked me for a trip to go diving with the sharks the next day, which I viewed as a disaster in the making.

  The last time I’d gotten into a scuffle with a great white, it’d ended badly for both of us. I had lived to tell the tale. The other shark hadn’t.

  An hour later, my phone rang. Something about the salt in the air, the hiss of the wind, and the crash of the surf brought out the pirate in me, and expecting Lizzy’s call back, I answered, “Catalina de la Corona.”

  “Cathy?” Benny blurted.

  Crap. I grimaced, reminded myself I needed to check caller id before answering the phone, and sighed. “It’s me.” I hesitated, scrambling for some excuse for using the Spanish variant of my name. “I’m overseas, and the locals like the Spanish flair. What do you need?”

  “Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday, and you haven’t been home. Your boss gave me this number.”

  “I’m on a business trip.”

  “A business trip? Overseas? Since when did you start going on business trips overseas? When will you be back?”

  “Three weeks or so. I’m scouting some business opportunities for Mr. Bensen.”

  “Franklin has you out scouting business opportunities?”

  “Not exactly. My boss has me scouting out business opportunities. I’m doing my job. I’m just doing it a little way from home, and it happens to be for some of Mr. Bensen’s accounts.”

  I expected him to start asking questions, but instead, he sighed. “Damn. I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “I wanted to find out if you’d do a photoshoot with the Terrier. Your costume is one of the most authentic I’ve seen, and it’d be good publicity for the museum.”

  When opportunity knocked, I answered, and a photoshoot with the Terrier would get me close to Captain Maritza's half of the key. “If it can wait for three weeks until I’m back in town, I’d be happy to help you out. You still owe me a few beers. You can pick me up, drop me off, and pour rum down my throat to make it even more authentic.”

  “With a lime in it?” he asked, his tone wry.

  “Can’t risk getting scurvy, now can I?”

  “Obviously not. You’ll be back for Halloween?”

  “Easily. There’s the issue of the office party, though.”

  “It’ll be an after-hours shoot. We can do it after the party. I’ll make it worth your while, promise.”

  I sighed. If I withheld information on the joint venture, Benny would know I was up to something, especially if he verified any information at all with Bensen. “I’m in South Africa looking into adventure tourism. He said you were going into a joint venture with him?”

  “You’re in South Africa?” he blurted.

  “I’m in South Africa. It’s almost impossible to get good information on this area for what he wanted. Someone had to go in person, and I was owed some vacation anyway. So, I’m doing two weeks of work and slipping in a personal vacation on top of it. Good deal for me. So, here I am, scoping out South Africa on Mr. Bensen’s behalf. Apparently, I’m going to be served up as bait for some sharks, as that is a popular activity here. If you don’t hear from me by late afternoon tomorrow, I was eaten.”

  “How reassuring. What other things do you have planned?”

  “Good question.” My phone buzzed as someone tried to call me. “Got a call on the other line. If you’re that worried, call me tomorrow.”

  “Will do.” Benny hung up.

  I swiped to answer the incoming call, and since I’d already blown my cover once, I went two-for-two and answered, “Catalina de la Corona.”

  Maybe having a fancy name would make me sound like a spoiled rich girl looking for adventure.

  “Hi, Miss Corona. It’s Lizzy. I have an opportunity that might interest you.”

  “Shoot,” I ordered.

  “How does a tour of the shipwrecks of the Cape of Good Hope sound to you? Since you’re interested in diving, the captain of the yacht is willing to do a night dive to some of the more interesting wrecks off the coast. The tour would take you to some of the more prominent coastline wrecks and includes a five-course dinner served at sunset along with a late-evening dive.”

  “Book it.” I thought about the planned shark dive, which provided all the needed equipment. I doubted a yacht operator—who likely wasn’t captaining a real yacht, but rather a smaller pleasure boat—would have a full complement of equipment. “I’ll need to buy gear for the dive. Mine is at home. Where would you recommend?”

  Lizzy gave me the name of a shop, the location of the marina, and instructions to be there in two hours. I agreed, hanging up on her without finding out the cost to set sail. There’d be plenty of time for me to worry about expenditures later.

  For now, I would return to the sea where I belonged and test my control of the curse before exposing myself to sharks—real sharks, and not cheap imitations like me.

  Seven

  Her captain had plenty of reasons to be proud of her.

  While I would have preferred a proper sailboat, the sleek yacht Captain Naidoo led me to melded the past and present, its hull carved to resemble a sloop while fashioned with more modern materials and lacking masts. The blue trim on the white vessel came across as plain yet elegant, and I approved of the subtle signs of use and the discoloration promising the ship spent a great deal of time at sea.

  At a solid thirty-five to forty feet long, it took pleasure ship to a whole new level, and I decided I couldn’t call it anything other than a yacht, and her captain had plenty of reasons to be proud of her. The captain amused me almost as much as his ship. When I had been at sea, men as dark as Naidoo would’ve been stolen by the paler Europeans, chained, and taken as slaves, a practice I found revolting at best.

  I valued the freedom to make my own choices, and while I hadn’t been above the occasional kidnapping for nefarious purposes or hunting of other pirates, I had always disliked slavery and slavers, especially when the Calico was involved.

  My Captain Louisa refused to discriminate between white and black, taking whomever she wanted as a slave on board her ship when necessary. She had kept a few over the years, a practice that opened more ports than it closed. People could tolerate a friendly pirate. Slavers, on the other hand, crossed a line with many. Captain Louisa had found it a suiting punishment to sell white slavers to black men as often as she’d return black slaves who had attempted to stowaway on the Calico.

  On that, we had never quite seen eye to eye, and in the end, I suspected our differing opinions had
been the reason why she had sided with Captain Maritza and taken Ricardo from me.

  Bitch. I still loved her, but on days like today, I hated her.

  “You would call her, perhaps, Lady of the Lake.” Captain Naidoo gestured to the blue and gold script decorating his ship, the words in a language I didn’t know. “Her lake is a little larger than most.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to take me out on such short notice, Captain. Unexpected business brought me here, and I won’t have much time for enjoying myself.”

  “The pleasure is mine, ma’am. I have taken the liberty of having my chef begin preparing his specialties for your enjoyment for dinner this evening. Is this your first time in South Africa?”

  It wasn’t, but I doubted he’d believe me if I told him the truth. I hadn’t been to the specific port we set sail from, so I smiled for his benefit. “This is new to me. My travel agent informed me we would be seeing shipwrecks today?”

  “The Cape of Good Hope is an interesting place. Its name hides a dark history. Thousands of ships have ended their journey on the shores of the cape. On a clear day like today, when the waters are calm, you can see many of them on the bottom, an eternal reminder of ages lost, a history predating when pirates sailed the seas in earnest. The cape has many an interesting tale, including the fate of the Flying Dutchman, a rather famous ghost ship. You have heard of it, yes?”

  “I know a little about the Flying Dutchman, but I didn’t know it had history here?” It wasn’t quite the truth, but it wasn’t a lie either.

  The old ship, believed doomed to sail the seas for all eternity, could appear on any of the oceans. Curses I understood far too well, and I was in no position to claim a ghost ship couldn’t exist. The Flying Dutchman had, if stories were to be believed, set sail long after the Calico had sunk to her final resting place.

  “Ah, then I would be delighted to tell you its story, Madam de la Corona. Please, be welcome on board the Lady of the Lake.”

  Whether Captain Naidoo simply enjoyed integrating the past and present, or he just wanted to lord over the seas no man truly ruled, his yacht sported the style of wheel I expected from the Golden Age of Piracy. A lounge chair near the bow offered me an unobstructed view of the sea, and I made myself comfortable while the captain and another man stowed my diving gear and prepared the ship.

  During the bustle, the captain found time to bring me a frosted brown and white cocktail, setting it beside my chair with a flourish. “Amalyser, for your pleasure, made with Amarula, a coffee liquor, and a splash of vodka. It will be several hours until our dive, so until then, please enjoy.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured, taking a cautious sip. Its sweetness surprised me, prompting me to take care with it. Drunken diving approached the bottom of my list of things I intended to do, although alcohol often hindered the curse, giving me better control over my transformations. Not even three hundred years had given me enough time to figure out the full consequences of the curse and the intricacies of its nature.

  The Lady of the Lake’s engine rumbled to life, and within ten minutes of boarding, Captain Naidoo coaxed his yacht away from the pier, guided the vessel beyond the safety of the harbor, and took her out to sea. I breathed in the salty air, and the steady rock of the gentle waves relaxed me as nothing had in longer than I cared to think about.

  “It is said when the fog rolls off the coast and envelopes the sea, the Flying Dutchman might appear in the mists, its crew desperate to return to shore. At the dawn and twilight hours, there are those who claim they have heard the ship’s captain, Hendrick van der Decken, calling out to parley with those who might spare the ship and its crew from their doom. All around the world, men weave a different tale of the man-o-war, but one simple fact remains.”

  Captain Naidoo’s accent, thick yet rich, added a sort of mystique to his speech, and I tilted my head to catch his words over the wind and waves. “Oh? What fact?”

  “It is here, off the Cape of Good Hope, the Flying Dutchman sank during a storm. She sailed with another vessel, who found safety in the port. As though angered a ship dared to escape, the sea protested, later catching its lost prey in a tempest near where the Flying Dutchman disappeared. It is there the ghost ship’s legend was born.”

  Along the coast, where a sandbar rose from the surf, the decrepit ruins of a ship listed in the water, its wood long rotten and rusted metal cracking where the waves washed around it. I pegged the vessel as a modern craft, built after proper masts and sails made way for engines but before metal and fiberglass took over as the material of choice.

  Captain Naidoo told me the names and stories of the ships lost along the Cape of Good Hope, but the mysterious ships lost to time interested me the most. For every three ships whose history he knew, he presented one burdened with tales of drowned sailors seeking the souls of the living to warm them in their cold, watery graves.

  I sipped at my Amalyser and tried not to smile at his efforts to frighten and entertain me.

  As the sun slipped towards the horizon, Captain Naidoo brought me another African cocktail, something with a meaner bite and a harsh edge I appreciated more than the Amalyser. He also brought a salad of dark, leafy greens topped with seared fish and garnished with lemons and limes, something I approved of from my long time at sea.

  To the average sailor, limes, lemons, and tamarind kept the bleeding, slow healing, and other malaises associated with scurvy at bay. After a good raid, Captain Louisa rewarded us all with stolen wine, an extra jigger of rum, and as much fresh fruit and vegetables from the enemy vessel as we wanted.

  The time distancing me from my ventures out to sea hadn’t diminished my appreciation for something as simple as a fresh salad while on the water. The novelty filled me with so much pleasure even Captain Naidoo noticed, and he seemed to take pride in my enjoyment of the first course.

  In modern times, few approved of my tendency to eat citrus fruits rind and all, so I left most of the skins on my plate although the waste annoyed me.

  After the salad, Captain Naidoo led me on a merry adventure through South African cuisine, ranging from boerewors sausage, piri piri chicken, and pap to bobotie, a ground meat dish in red sauce topped with egg. Long after I’d eaten enough for lethargy to take hold, he plied me with the South African version of a pumpkin fritter, a dish he called pampoenkoekies, and melktert, a pastry filled with a mild but pleasantly sweet cream filling.

  To cap it all off, he brought me another Amalyser.

  “We will reach a suitable spot for a night dive in approximately one hour. This is a bit behind our schedule, but I thought you might enjoy some of the more unusual sights the Cape of Good Hope has to offer. Is this good for you?”

  Stifling a yawn, I saluted him with my drink and murmured, “Aye, Captain.”

  He left me alone to focus on his work. I recognized the dangers of sailing at night, especially in a region littered with perils lurking beneath the waves, but it didn’t matter to me.

  Even if the Lady of the Lake sank, I would survive. I always survived.

  Eight

  I’d bite a hole in his new ship, too.

  Killing me was difficult, but apparently, drugging me was not. Instead of snapping awake as usual, I remained mired in molasses-thick exhaustion, and the sensation of a heavy weight pinning me down smothered me. Nothing hurt, which I viewed with cautious optimism.

  The steady rolling ocean soothed me more than anything else, however. As long as I remained near the water, I would be fine. All I needed to do was slip into the sea and wait for the curse to take hold and tear away my humanity.

  I could choose to let go. Maybe I’d only lose a few days to life as a shark, maybe I’d lose a few years, but it didn’t matter.

  I would survive.

  The curse sometimes turned into a blessing, especially when I got snookered on what should have been an exploratory pleasure cruise with a dive. Revenge would be sweet, and I’d find Captain Naidoo’s precious Lady of the Lake, drag her out
from the safety of the harbor, and bite a hole in her hull. Once I sank her, I’d find him and bring him pieces of his lost ship, tormenting him until he replaced her.

  Then I’d bite a hole in his new ship, too.

  It took far longer than I liked to open my eyes, and when I did, the heat of the African sun beat down on my skin while the lapping of water and the distant call of gulls surrounded me. I turned my head, and the bright yellow of an inflatable raft assaulted my eyes. Stifling a groan, I lurched upright, aware of the give in the thick rubber beneath me.

  Sun-kissed seas stretched out as far as I could see with only a few birds promising the presence of land somewhere nearby.

  Had the Lady of the Lake sank, or had I been dumped and left for dead? If the ship had taken her final voyage to the bottom of the sea, where had Captain Naidoo and his cook gone?

  The raft had plenty of room for three, which led me to believe I’d been dumped and left for dead.

  Yep, I had a date with Captain Naidoo’s ship, and I’d enjoy chewing through her hull.

  I grimaced at the stiffness in my muscles and joints, and the tightness of my skin warned me I’d spent a long time exposed to the sun, which hung high in the sky. How long had I been unconscious? The faint memory of watching the sunset taunted me, followed by a big, black nothing. My clothes were as I remembered, although I needed deodorant, stat.

  I didn’t miss the old days when perfume failed to counter the stench of hard-working sailors and sweaty pirates. A dunk in the sea would get rid of most of the smell, replacing it with the tang of saltwater. Shaking my head to clear it, I took stock of the raft.

  Me, myself, and I made for a pretty poor survival combination, which led me to two conclusions: either I’d been set adrift to die or wash up on some shoreline, or someone meant to fetch me when the time suited them.