by Jamie Hawke
Fire.
Frank crept up to a heap of fallen palm branches, staying low. He pressed down some of the large palm fronds and formed a shelf in the sand, where he lay prone and looked out at the campfire.
Before him, dancing and singing around the fire, was a group of men and women. Some of the women wore silks and gold jewelry over their canvas and leather. The men wore long beards and the women’s clothes hung from their bodies in ways that revealed more skin than Frank was used to. Something about the way they moved, maybe the cutlasses that hung from their belts, made one word stick in his mind—pirates.
He frowned but kept staring at them.
Are they crazies, or is this some sort of costume party?
Frank tried to piece together the group dancing and singing in front of him. One of them—a young man around Frank’s age—was covered in brownish soot and had scratches covering his face. Large scars ran down his face, from his forehead all the way to under his chin, giving him a permanent sneer. He was dancing alone, off to the side of the group, but Frank could see he was mostly focusing on one of the other dancers— a woman!—dancing arm-in-arm with a larger, even rougher-looking man. This man had hair covering so much of his body, Frank couldn’t actually see his features. Large clumps of black hair tumbled down out of his loose-fitting, long-sleeved white shirt and bunched around his wrists, and curly strands poked through the neck of the garment.
The hairy man leaned down to the woman, and they both turned to look at the younger man across the fire. She spoke close to the hairy man’s ear, and then they both leaned back and laughed, the bear-man roaring with a guttural voice that seemed to carry out over the water even farther than the music. Two other pirates joined the circle, passing a dark bottle of liquid between them as Frank continued watching, not believing the display in front of him.
Could this be a movie? He glanced around for a camera crew and director. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a small crew to shoot some kind of indie film on the beach. Except… what beach? The closest had been Ocean Shores, and that was at least a good hour away if he remembered correctly.
Didn’t really explain how Frank had gotten here, but he was working on one mystery at a time for the moment.
But the scene playing out in front of him was too real, too accurate. These people weren’t acting. They had no care for “looking the part”—they were the part. They were just… here.
Frank didn’t understand it, but he was entranced. The pirates were laughing, joking, and drinking, all on a beach that seemed more beautiful—even at night—than anything he’d ever seen back home.
“Oy,” a rough voice said from behind him. It was more of a grunt than a word, but it was no doubt a human voice. Frank froze as the man continued.
“What’ve we got ‘ere?”
Frank’s legs shook, telling him to flee, but even as he tried to stand he realized it was useless—shadows of men and their swords surrounded him and when he spun he was greeted by the stench of raw meat, an unshaven man’s face inches from his own.
Before Frank could open his mouth or even think of anything to say, something clunked him on the head and darkness took over. The air flew past him, the soft sand caught him, and then he was out.
3
There was a time Frank had used his great uncle’s outhouse, when they’d visited him in his cabin in the woods. Frank would never forget the stench of that place—like rotten eggs mixed with cat food and set in the sun to mold over. This cell was worse. Streams of cold slime slid down through cracks in the brick-and-mud structure, pooling on the sandy rock floor and threatening to overtake the little area Frank had to stand.
And he had to stand. There was no way he was going to sit down in the foul-smelling jail they’d tossed him into, unconscious at the time. He’d woken in it, disgusted. And now, even though some was already on his cargos and the back of his shirt, he was doing his best to not get any dirtier.
He took a deep breath—difficult as it was—and looked around for the thousandth time.
They’re making me wait here to intimidate me.
It was a perfectly reasonable and logical thought, and one he figured was pretty accurate. It didn’t really help much, though. Because he was intimidated.
He considered his options.
He could yell, and hope that there was a happy-go-lucky, not-sure-what’s-going-on pirate around who would let him out.
He could try to break through the walls. They seemed old, rotting almost. He might be able to push against them, but that would mean he would have to actually touch them. He shuddered.
He could wait it out. They would either be back soon to kill him, or they’d let him die in here.
The first two options didn’t seem to be probable, and the third relied on the pirates’ not wanting to kill him immediately. Between a rock and a…
Someone shouted from outside the cell.
“You there! Boy! Why’s you just a-sittin’ there, boy? No yelling, either, from ya?”
Frank almost laughed out loud at the man’s thick accent. His primary school education must have severely failed him.
“H-hello?” he called out.
“Boy! Ah, right! You are in there!”
Frank shook his head. This has to be a cruel joke. Some sort of game.
I can play along, if that’s what they want.
He cleared his throat, summoning the deeper version of his voice, and yelled. “You ought to know, sir. You put me in here!”
“Nay, m’lad. I did no such thing. No such thing, nope, did I do…”
The man’s voice—strange accent and all—began to dance and sing in the air at the end of the sentence. He continued mumbling, the inflections taking on a melodious rant as Frank strained to listen.
“...Didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, that I did instead what I couldn’t done do…”
Frank was immediately annoyed, and he didn’t care how catchy the song was.
“Who are you?” he snapped.
The voice stopped, and Frank considered repeating the question. He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice picked up again.
“...just a beggar, I, a beggar in love… put the fire-sticks betwixt mine eyes, and sight for I was denied...”
The sing-song voice was again turning incoherent sentences into drunken lullabies, and Frank started to yell.
“Answer me!” he shouted. “Stop singing! Who are you, and why—”
A heavy pounding on the wall took Frank by surprise, and he almost fell backward onto the slime-wall. He caught himself just as he heard the voice again, this time whispering.
“Wouldn’t make the racket, boy, if I was you.” The voice was intense, direct. Without the singing, it was startling. “Cap’n Cletus is bound to be heading, no doubt.” The whispering voice was again replaced by the singing version. “...no doubt, I say, within the day…”
“Listen,” Frank said, keeping his voice down. “I, uh, don’t know this… Captain Cletus… but I’d like to —”
“You’d like to meet ‘im, you would? ‘e carries the teeth just for boys like you, ‘e’s heading in —”
“No,” Frank said, louder. “Stop. I’m not—I’m just a guy who needs to get home. Not sure where I am, but they grabbed me and stuck me inside this… hell hole.” He looked around again. “I don’t know who it is, but I’d like to speak to someone in charge.”
The voice began chuckling. Slowly at first, then building. It was a phlegm-filled, tired wheeze that started in the gut and took on sinister low notes as it machine-gunned up and out into the air.
In a word, Frank was terrified.
This wasn’t a joke. This wasn’t a game, or a movie, or even a messed-up dream.
He was here for a reason, and this was real. This place was real, and this man was real.
Frank felt the blood coursing through his body, the same feeling as when he was about to step in front of a dueling opponent. He was alive, adrenaline pumping. He was te
rrified, but he was alive.
A small rectangular window opened in front of him, washing his tiny cell in crisp moonlight. The slime took on a crimson glow, and he could see it moving and gelling toward the floor, which he now saw had tiny plants growing up from it. It wasn’t flat, either, sloping a bit where he stood but rising slightly at the corners to meet the brick wall. The bricks themselves were off-centered, each of them different sizes and shapes, all hewn and stuck together with piles of mud.
A hand shot through the window and flopped around. Frank instinctively ducked away, dodging the bony fingers as they swatted and grabbed at the air. After a moment of this, the hand was pulled back and replaced by the most gruesome-looking face he had ever seen.
The man “staring” at him didn’t have eyes. Or, at least, he didn’t have eyes any longer. Where the eyeballs once sat in the man’s skull, two round, dilapidated sockets were wedged onto a rotund face that had seen better years. A toothless grin peeled back dry, leathered lips and cheeks, revealing a tongue that flicked left and right like a snake searching for a mouse.
Frank gasped. The eye-slits blinked, a disgusting, painful-looking gesture of smashing opposite sections of face muscles together that took more than two seconds to complete, and the voice—the same voice from before—came out of the area between the lips that Frank could only assume was the mouth.
“’e has the teeth ready, lad. I ‘eard it a day ago, and it was spoke well. Nary a time I been lied to, for what’s the point? Who’ve I to tell, besides my guests ‘ere?”
“Y—you’re in charge?”
The voice laughed again, and Frank was surprised to find himself even more terrified than he already was.
“My boy, nay. Not ‘in charge’ as much as ‘in limbo,’ aye? As are you, and Willy on the other side, and—”
“You’re in jail, then? Like me?”
The face moved left to right, once. The eye-slits smashed together once more, and the voice spoke again. “Nay. Just a limbo-box, for us. Where we wait. We wait, we play, we sing, we pray...”
“Limbo? What are we waiting for?” Frank wanted to reach out and smack the face, but, again… touching.
“You’re quite the miserable lad, no? Mum leave you out to dry too long, mm? I told you, boy. We wait for Him. The Devil ‘imself shall return... and set you free.”
The voice began laughing, harder this time, interrupted by fits of coughing. Frank physically shook, then reached out and smashed his fist against the slime-covered wall. Yuck.
And it kept on like this, time a haze as he tried to calm himself, tried to say he’d be out of here soon, that he just had to survive. Or maybe wake up? He pulled the compass from his pocket, trying to figure out if it had brought him here and could send him back, but no luck. At a noise outside he hid it. Losing it would be too horrible.
There wasn’t a clock or anything like it in “the box,” but Frank was starting to feel the strain on his legs and knees, so figured it had to have at least been a few hours.
If I just, maybe, lean back…
He quickly talked himself out of it. While he had mostly gotten used to the smell, the seeping walls were a constant reminder of the filth he was standing in.
Instead, he leaned closer to the small rectangular window. He knew the man was still there, as he could hear the rattled breathing, rhythmic and strained, but he hadn’t spoken for hours.
Frank peered through the thin opening between cells and saw the man, crouched in the corner of his own cell, sleeping. He considered waking him up, if for no other reason than to help himself stay awake, but thought better of it.
Soft chanting caught his attention. He strained his ears to listen closer. He heard several voices chanting in unison, something slow and repetitive.
“...teeth. The teeth. The teeth…”
The teeth?
Frank was reminded of the man’s strange sing-song voice, muttering something about “carrying the teeth.” He wasn’t sure what “the teeth” were, but had a feeling he didn’t want to find out.
A moment of panic set in, and he started sweating as he tried once more to look for some way to escape. He began breathing faster and faster, all the while listening as the chanting grew louder.
And louder.
Then it stopped. It had reached a volume that was starting to make small pockets of dust and dirt rattle off the ceiling, and Frank could feel the tiny specks raining down on his head and shoulders.
“Open the door.”
This voice was calm, collected. It was deeper than the weird old man’s, yet no less terrifying. Frank waited, holding his breath. He heard a rattling of keys, and then a slow, drawn-out creaking as a rusted lock was opened and a bolt was slid over. A heavy groan came next, and Frank felt a short burst of air hit him in the face.
They’re opening the other cell.
He felt a wave of relief, then a moment of regret.
The old man…
He didn’t even know the old guy, much less like him, but still…
The chanting was back. “The teeth! The teeth! The Teeth!”
Still growing in volume, the voices were rising together with excitement. A buzzing noise pierced through the chanting, and Frank looked through the rectangular window that connected the two jail cells.
A long, horizontal drill was reaching into the cell, slowly creeping forward toward the old man. The bit at the end of the drill was whirring, spinning as it neared the man’s head. What’s a drill doing here? Frank shook his head, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
“No!” The old man’s voice trembled as he stood up and smashed his body into the corner. “No!”
Frank saw the man struggling to push himself farther into the corner of the tiny brick room, but the drill bit kept advancing. The drill stopped rotating for a moment, and Frank saw the end of it, glistening in the moonlight.
At the tip of the huge drill, a series of sharpened shards of metal had been affixed so that it resembled metallic shark teeth. Frank strained, trying to see the man holding the drill, but…
The man’s body pounded against the wall, slamming into the spot where Frank had been watching.
“Save me, save me!” the man shouted.
Frank found himself stepping back, pressed against one of those walls of muck, but only realizing it when his fingers pressed into cold slime. Anything to be away from that horrible noise of the drill and the man’s screams as the sound of metal on bone ground into his memory.
And then it all stopped. Frank could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage, the trickle of piss down his leg.
And then a voice…
“Captain, what say we start with the boy?”
The whirring sound of the drill died down, and the chanting subsided.
A deep voice said, “What boy?”
“Cap’n we caught a boy. In the next cell over now, ‘e is.”
“Deal with him, see what he knows. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Frank nearly fainted. He heard the familiar sounds again—the creaking and groaning of an ancient lock and door being slowly and carefully opened, and then felt the wash of cool night air on his cheek before he saw the man—the same one who’d confronted him on the beach. Now that he stood before him, a few feet away, Frank had time to notice the extra pistols holstered beneath the man’s jacket and the sparkle of a diamond on the hilt of his cutlass. This man wasn’t a low-ranking pirate, that is, if they had any sort of ranking.
“You!” The pirate snarled at him, and Frank summoned the courage to nod. “How’d you come to find yerself ‘ere, boy?”
Frank considered the question.
“You got a tongue?” the pirate asked.
“I—I don’t know how,” Frank managed to stammer the words out.
The man leered at him, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. “We got a way o’ making folks remember.”
“No, wait! Stop,” Frank said. “I don’t know why I’m here. I just showed u
p on—”
“You just ‘showed up?’” The pirate asked, his voice mocking, all traces of slang and informal speech patterns suddenly gone. “You aren’t one of these dreadfully incompetent rebels we’ve been getting reports of?”
“Rebels? N-no, not that. I’m, uh, just a college kid.”
The pirate cocked an eyebrow and then turned to the two pirates who had now joined him. One was younger than him and seemed even more dirty and disreputable, if that was possible. The other, he was surprised to see, was a woman. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Frank. Despite having tangled hair and smears of dirt on her skin, she had large eyes and a face that could make the dead rise from Davy Jones’ locker. Okay, maybe Frank had been watching too many pirate movies lately, but one thing he was certain of—women like this should not be pirates. She had to be an actress! He hoped… but the way they were looking at him, the stench of the closest man, it all seemed too real for that dream to come true.
“This boy says ‘e’s not of the rebel encampments we’ve encountered,” the older man said, his accent coming back.
The younger pirates shook their heads, eyes narrowed. They didn’t believe him, he realized. This wasn’t good.
“This boy says ‘e doesn’t know where ‘e’s from.”
Frank started to sweat.
“And this boy says ‘e’s ‘just a kid.’ What d’ye say we do with ‘just a kid?’”
“Let him to the teeth,” one of the younger pirates said.
“Aye,” the other said. “The Cap’n will get this ‘un straightened out alright.”
The older pirate turned back to Frank and leaned in toward him. There it was again, his nasty breath, recognizable even in this reek.
“Last chance, boy. Tell me where you’re from.” The pirate wasn’t smiling, and his eyes were studying him. Flicking left and right, up and down, sizing him up.
Frank shook his head. “I woke up on the beach. Back… that way, I guess. I—”
The pirate motioned to the others. “I’m done with this one. Let’s get the Cap’n.”
The two scampered off, but the woman lingered a minute. Her large eyes were dark like a storm, challenging him to come at her. They roamed across Frank’s body and she took a step closer, sniffed, and gnawed at her lip while assessing him some more.