Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull

by James Raney

  “Readin’ is useful, George,” Peter replied. “For civilized men like meself, that is. Readin’ is like pickin’ a lock in your mind.” Peter paused to sneak a self-impressed wink at Jim. “And besides, George, I could still out lockpick you in my sleep.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can do in me sleep, Peter,” George said, emphasizing his brother’s name as nastily as possible.

  “Too true, Georgie, too true,” Paul said seriously. “You’re an absolute master at peeing yourself in your sleep. A genius really, and I’m not just saying that, I swear.”

  “THAT…WAS…NOT…ME!” George shrieked, snatching his new hat from his head and slamming it on the ground. “That was PETER!” Peter, of course, remembered events differently and the three of them were about to descend into a brotherly brawl when a stern shout came from the stairs behind them.

  “Boys!” Lacey’s voice rang down into the kitchen. “You promised no fighting today. You’ll ruin your new clothes before we even step out the door!”

  Jim turned to remind Lacey that the brothers were destined to ruin their clothes eventually, but the words caught in his throat. Instead, his mouth dropped open as though the hinge to his jaw had broken.

  Lacey stood on the stairs looking down at the boys, a long yellow dress flowing in ruffles all the way down to her feet. White lace frosted her skirt like a dusting of snow on the first day of winter. A broadbrimmed hat framed her auburn curls and blue-eyed face like an angel from a painting. Somehow, Jim thought, Lacey suddenly seemed a great deal taller and older than she had ever seemed before. He had no idea why, but Jim felt irresistibly compelled to remove his hat. When he looked over at the brothers Ratt, they had stopped wrestling each other and held their hats in their hands as well.

  “Lacey,” Jim said, scrunching up his face, which felt suddenly itchy. “You look like, like…well you look like, like a girl, don’t you?”

  “Right,” George added, as though he’d just come to that brilliant epiphany at the same moment. “Like a girl, alright! Like a real girl!”

  Lacey, who had been blushing fiercely while her four friends stared at her, suddenly mustered a familiar, fierce glare and her hands flew to her hips. “Well what do I normally look like then?”

  “Well…you know, I…” Jim stammered. He looked to the Ratts for help – which even Jim knew in a situation like this would have been the last place to find any.

  “Which is how you always look,” Peter managed first. “I think.”

  “Right, always… you know, that’s what I meant: you always look like a girl, Lacey,” George said. “I mean, maybe not as much as right now…right?”

  Paul was even less help than George and Peter. He simply stared at Lacey with a furrowed brow and an open mouth, as though still trying very hard to figure out whether or not she was even the same person. But it was MacGuffy, hobbling from down the hallway, who set Lacey’s concerns to rest.

  “Ye look ever the graceful beauty, lass,” he said, limping gamely across the room and holding out his gnarled hand to guide Lacey down the stairs. The former pirate had done his best to tame his wild, white hair. His finest gold loops hung from his ears, and he wore his best and newest coat, which was probably only twenty years old and had been through merely a handful of storms and sea battles.

  “You must forgive ‘em, ma’am. All boys be born fools, and only one man in ten ever manages to grow from his foolery a’tall. Ye look no lov’lier today than yesterday, lassie, but it is a fine dress, if ye let an old man say so.”

  “Thank you, MacGuffy,” Lacey said. She leaned up and kissed the old man’s wrinkled face on the cheek, just beneath his eye patch. Then she stormed out the front door, leaving the boys with only an irritated snort on her way.

  “What was that for?” Jim said, slamming his hat back on his head.

  “It be the charm ye lack, lads,” MacGuffy said, a smile as roguish as the Ratts’ stretched over his cracked lips. “And I could out charm the four of ye in my sleep, and that be a fact, young pups.” MacGuffy winked his one good eye at the Ratts and followed Lacey out the door.

  “You know,” George said thoughtfully, adjusting his own hat on his head. “If it weren’t for all the preachy lessons about the ocean and gettin’ into trouble, and scrubbin’ the floors all the time, I might actually miss that old blighter.”

  “Fortunately, George, I don’t think it’ll be so long before he comes to visit us at Morgan Manor,” said Peter.

  “Why’s that?” Jim asked.

  “Well, unless he can figure out where we hid all the underwear he made us wash yesterday, he’ll need to ask us where we put it, won’t he?” answered Paul. The three brothers sniggered naughtily, nodding to each and then to Jim before marching out the front door themselves.

  Jim followed his friends, pausing at the threshold to take one last look around the old lighthouse. No more cellars or attics or closets for Jim Morgan and the Clan of the Ratt, he thought. Tonight they would sleep in the comfort of Morgan Manor – warm beds and hot dinners. Without doubt, this was going to be the first of many good days to come, Jim knew. He stepped out into the sunshine with a smile on his face, shutting the lighthouse door behind him for the last time.

  For the better part of the day the carriage bounced down the road, winding along the southern coast of England toward the town of Rye. Jim and his friends pointed and stared at the cliffs and beaches they passed, and at the waves and the gulls floating on the winds above the waters. At one point Peter attempted to read a book he’d borrowed (most likely without permission) from MacGuffy’s library. The road was so bumpy that Peter was forced to grip the book quite tightly and hold his face close to the pages in order to make out the words. It was too choice an opportunity for George and Paul to miss. George produced a good-sized rock from his pocket, the availability of which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever known a young boy or two, and hurled it with perfect timing from the window before one of the wheels. The carriage took such a start that the book snapped up and smacked Peter right in the face, sending George into the most impolite howling and cackling.

  “George!” Peter yelped, holding his nose with one hand and slamming his book down with the other.

  “It was just a bump in the road, Peter,” Paul said, without a trace of guilt in his face (he was a born con after all). George, of course, hollered like a monkey, pointing shamelessly in Peter’s face. This led to Peter falling on his brother with fists flailing and Jim and Lacey had to pull the three of them apart, as usual.

  “Can the three of you not keep out of trouble for even one hour?” Lacey shouted, clearly agitated. “Not even on a day like today?”

  “Have to stay on our toes, Lacey,” George replied matter-of-factly. “If you have a gift, not to use it is a crime. And that’s even in the Bible, in’t it? It just so happens that our gift is trouble!” At this, Lacey threw up her hands and refused even an attempt at arguing. But Peter, who was still rubbing his nose, nodded as if that made total sense.

  “True, George, true,” Peter said in a quite nasally voice. “You caught me off guard on that one – but not the next time! I’ll be ready!”

  “I’ll even sleep with one eye open,” Paul said, his arms folded over his chest. “Got used to doing it at St. Anne’s. Never knew when George was gonna wet the bed. One must stay on his toes indeed.”

  “That wasn’t me!” George raged. “IT WAS PETER!”

  The remainder of the journey passed without incident. As the afternoon stretched toward evening the Ratts and Lacey drifted off into naps and dreams of their own. Jim, however, stayed awake the entire time, wringing his hands and shifting back and forth in his seat. The closer and closer the little carriage drew to Rye, the more and more anxious and restless he became. What would he say to the staff when he arrived? The house would surely be in an uproar over Aunt Margarita’s recent eviction, Jim imagined. It was also quite possible that many of them still had no idea Jim was even alive aft
er that night Cromier’s soldiers had chased him into the dark forest.

  Jim thought back to that day his father had returned from his mysterious sea voyage. He remembered the way the former Lord Morgan had greeted each of the servants by name, shaking their hands and smiling. That was the way Jim would do it, he decided. That was the way he would do everything – just like his father. It would be as though Lindsay Morgan had never died.

  Jim rehearsed his arrival over and over again until the carriage rounded a bend and the town of Rye came into view. The red sun edged down to where the sea met the sky. The failing light painted the buildings with rust, and blue shadows leaned long into the streets. The carriage rattled down the main street to the edge of town. There the road turned to dirt and wound over a hill, beyond which stood Morgan Manor.

  Jim leaned out the window to catch the first glimpse of the north tower beyond the hill. But as he took in a deep breath of evening air, a thick stream of smoke swept into his face, stinging his nose and burning his eyes. Jim heard MacGuffy growl an order to the driver from the top seat, and the carriage picked up speed. A dark haze had settled over the hill, drifting like a black fog toward the edges of town. Like a cold gust of wind on a warm day, a pang of dread caught Jim by surprise. It snatched his breath away and turned his stomach into knots.

  “Are we almost there?” George asked in a yawning voice, groaning as he stretched awake from his nap. Lacey, Peter, and Paul all came to as well and looked sleepily at Jim.

  “Something’s wrong,” was Jim’s only reply.

  A column of black smoke climbed into view like a writhing serpent rising into the evening sky. It snaked its way into the red dusk, blowing out over the sea from the place where the road ended…from a place Jim knew well. Jim hardly breathed until the carriage crested the hill.

  What little air remained within Jim’s chest escaped in a gasp.

  “Oh, Jim,” Lacey said quietly, looking out the window at his side. But Jim said nothing. His tongue refused to speak what his heart refused to believe.

  Morgan Manor, every brick and every beam, was burned to the ground.

  FOUR

  im climbed down from the carriage on numb legs. Needling stings crawled over his body. The charred stink of burnt earth stung his nose. A dark fog choked the air over the blackened corpse of Morgan Manor. Tears fell onto Jim’s cheeks. They would have fallen even without the smoke in his eyes.

  Jim wandered toward the remains of the building. The Manor was now little more than an ashy heap, robbed of all colors but black and gray. Small flames flickered amongst the piles of burnt stone - where the kitchen once stood and along the stretch that had once been the great hall. Through his bleary vision Jim could still place every tower and every wall where it had once stood. He could remember every room and every hallway, where there now lay only rubble and ruin.

  Lacey and MacGuffy called for Jim to come back, but Jim’s legs mechanically carried him through the drifting smoke. He walked until he came to a place where the walls and roof had burned so cleanly away that only the floors remained, covered in ash. Even so, Jim knew this spot and knew it well.

  It was the hallway that once led to Lindsay Morgan’s study.

  Jim stepped over the ruined wall and walked the length of the corridor’s remains until he reached the place where the great oak doors had once barred the way to his father’s library. He remembered standing in that very place over a year ago, preparing to barge in and give his father a piece of his mind. But the oak door was now gone and Jim stepped directly into the room beyond. The great bookshelves and the voluminous library they once held lay in blackened piles upon the floor. Only the stone fireplace, over which the picture of Lord Morgan and his three friends had once hung, remained whole.

  Jim stood there, searching for any piece of the past that survived the flames, until an ashy scrap lying on the fireplace’s brick hearth caught his eye. Jim kicked at it with the tip of his shoe. Beneath a layer of soot he discovered a pair of eyes staring back from the ash. The remains of his father’s painting, edges eaten away by the fire, lay at his feet. Jim picked up the canvas. The likenesses of his father, Dread Steele, Count Cromier, and an unknown, fourth man were still visible, though scorched by the heat.

  The ruined painting began to fall apart in Jim’s hand. He turned it over to let the wind take the ashes away, but as he did, Jim found yet one more figure on the back of the canvas. For a moment he thought it was only a trick of the light upon the burnt cloth. But before the painting disintegrated entirely, he was sure that a fifth face had been drawn on the back. It was a painting of a large, black skull, a bolt of lightning gripped in its teeth. Jim saw the face for only a moment before the canvas turned to dust and crumbled to pieces in his fingers.

  Jim watched the burnt flakes drift off like black flower petals when a sudden gust from the sea chased away the smoke in the study. Like a ghost in the dark, a man appeared, standing in the place Lindsay Morgan’s desk once sat. Jim sucked in a startled breath and fell back from the shape. The man’s clothes were so black and his ash laden hair so red in the setting sun that for a moment Jim saw the form of Count Cromier, gloating over the fall of the house of Morgan.

  When the man came further into the light, though, old, sad eyes glistened beneath bushy eyebrows on a familiar, wrinkled face.

  “Phineus,” Jim said. Soot covered the man from head to toe. The old tutor looked more aged and bent than ever before.

  “If you’ve come to loot, young man,” the old tutor shouted with a shaking voice, “Take your time and take what you will. All that remains here is ash and sorrow and forgotten dreams. Steal as much of that as you wish and be gone with you!”

  “I’m not here to steal anything, Phineus,” Jim said. He took a step closer to the old man in the failing daylight. “I’ve come home. I didn’t send a letter – it was going to be a surprise.” Phineus stared vacantly at James for what seemed like an age, until slowly, a glimmer of recognition lit his eyes.

  “Master James?”

  Jim drew closer still. As though not daring to trust his eyes alone, Phineus reached out and touched Jim on the shoulders and face and hair until he finally accepted that the boy he once knew stood before him. The old man fell down on his knees and took Jim in his arms, weeping furiously.

  “Oh, Master James! All that was your father’s and his great house has been lost. I’m sorry I was not able to stop this – I’m so sorry, my boy.”

  “No, Phineus,” Jim said, fiercely hugging the old man back. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I am sorry.”

  After Jim had let poor Phineus shed tears until none remained, the pair of them abandoned the pit of rubble that had once been a great mansion. MacGuffy, the Ratts, and Lacey met them on the grassy hill between the blackened grounds and the white sand beach that stretched to the ocean’s shore. Nothing remained of Morgan Manor save for one of the stables and the iron gates at the entrance to the main road, the bold letter Ms darkened with soot.

  The Ratts stood all in a row, heads held low and hands in their pockets. Even MacGuffy, so full of pirate wisdom and earthy proverbs, had nothing to say. He but stood shaking his head, glaring at the destruction with his one good eye. It was finally Lacey who found the words to speak.

  “You must be Phineus,” she said. Her voice was thick, but she managed a polite smile and a curtsy. “Jim told us all about you. He said you were a great teacher, the greatest teacher.”

  “Once perhaps I was,” Phineus said. He bowed his old head and did his best to return Lacey’s smile. “And who might be you be, young lady?”

  “I’m Lacey. I’m Jim’s friend. And this is George, Peter, and Paul Ratt. They’re Jim’s friends as well, from London, sir.”

  “What evil befell this place, Master Teacher?” asked MacGuffy. “In a house as rich and fancee as this’un, there’d of been servants and men aplenty to stamp out any kitchen fire gone out o’ control, I warrant.”

  “This was no kitche
n fire, sir.” Bitterness seeped into Phineus’s voice. “And yes, in the days of Lindsay Morgan there would have been servants aplenty, had not that witch squandered the wealth and pride of this once great house!”

  “A witch did this?” Paul cried in dismay, shivering a little in the cool evening air.

  “Not a real witch, Paul.” Jim gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his sides. “But close enough to one. You mean Aunt Margarita, don’t you, Phineus?”

  Phineus nodded. His old lips twisted upon his face.

  “She spent every last piece of gold on parties and opulence until hardly a farthing was left. I was the last of the staff to remain, and only that for the memory of Lord Lindsay and Master James, for I thought you too were dead, milord. Madness took hold of her, Master James. When the constable arrived with a letter for the Dame, announcing her reign over this house had finally and mercifully ended, the madness overwhelmed her completely. She flew into a rage, spouting all manner of strange words - of curses and treasures and storms that would devour the world. First she burned the letter. Then she burned the house. Then she ran away.”

  “So it’s all gone, Phineus,” Jim said, staring out over the smoke-drowned hills and ruined gardens. “It’s all been for nothing. Everything my father built and fought and—” Jim’s throat grew suddenly sticky. “—and died for—all of it is gone forever.”

  “Perhaps not all, young master.” Phineus cleared his throat and stood up straight, summoning his scholarly dignity once more. “I was able to save but a single item. Your father entrusted it to me long ago. I never trusted it to any safe or cabinet, locked or no. I carried it on my person, always. Now you are the Lord Morgan, and it is yours.” The old tutor reached inside his filthy jacket and withdrew his hand, closed in a fist.

  Phineus unfurled his bony fingers one at a time until a bright blue glow shone from his palm in the darkening evening. The brilliant flame all but blinded Jim for a moment. But as the light dimmed he found a glass vial, filled to the stopper with a thick blue liquid, lying in Phineus’s open hand. Lacey gasped. The Ratts and old MacGuffy huddled close to Jim. They craned their necks over his shoulder to see the wonder Phineus had produced. The blue light threw swimming glimmers and curling shadows over their curious faces.