Aloha, Lugosi! The Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series Book #4

by Steven M. Thomas

  A red light shot over us that I thought was coming from the storm cloud at first, but it didn’t go away. The light was coming from the mouth of the cave and went directly to our little dinghy, way off in the distance. Then the dinghy turned around by itself and started heading quickly back towards the beach.

  “What the hell?” I said, out loud.

  The little boat wasn’t just drifting back towards us, it was speeding like Jean Harlow on the Sunset Strip. It suddenly slowed down and hit the beach within feet of us. Then the red light disappeared from behind us.

  We all looked up towards the cave just in time to see the little girl dressed in blue, smiling and waving to us before she disappeared back into the cave.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When we returned to the Eclipse without the little girl in the blue dress, no one questioned it. Not even Speck. We never talked about it again.

  The next day and five rocks later, Speck sent out the familiar call that I now dreaded. This time, there were no trees or plant life. But what he did see was cause for alarm.

  “There’s a large crate on the beach,” he explained. “There doesn’t appear to be anyone there. Just a very large, wooden box.” We swung in as close as possible to the rock and sure enough, there it was.

  “Should we investigate?” the captain asked me.

  “Unless my friend is in the crate,” I answered, “I can’t see why.”

  “It could be something we could use,” he replied. “And it is there for the taking. I say we send someone to at least look inside.”

  “But it doesn’t belong to us,” I answered. “And what if the rightful owners show up. It seems like trouble to me.”

  “A crate that size didn’t just wash up on shore,” he answered. “Someone left it there for some reason or purpose.”

  Being out to sea for so long and experiencing all the strange things that I had somehow changed me. Normally I would go with my gut instincts. But I was an adventurer now. And I was as curious as the rest of the crew to see what was in the mysterious crate.

  “Even a crate that size could roll around on the ocean floor for years and then wind up on dry land,” Barber said. “I’ve heard of treasure that had been lost for years suddenly being found out in the open, in plain sight.”

  “Name me one time when that happened!” Sharkey said.

  “The Ava Mier story!” Barber countered. “She found a treasure chest that had washed up on a beach in Spain in 1919. You didn’t hear about that?”

  “Okay,” I said. “The two of you go then. But be quick about it.”

  “No,” Crumby said. “This time we will send Sharkey and Alex.”

  Crumby’s evil cousin was down in the galley at the time and not even privy to our conversation, so Sharkey was dispatched to tell him the news.

  “Why can’t I go?” Barber asked.

  “Don’t question my orders,” Crumby replied. “It is Sharkey’s turn, that’s all.”

  An hour later, Alex and Sharkey rowed back to our ship in a boat stacked full of old china and other trinkets.

  “These must be worth a fortune!” Alex exclaimed. It looks like 16th century ceramics!”

  Sharkey and Alex carefully carried each piece up one at a time and sat them on the deck.

  “There’s more there!” Alex yelled. “And they are all in immaculate condition!”

  Crumby couldn’t believe it. He examined each piece with wide eyes and wonderment. Hiwanda was fascinated with the beautiful teacups and plates. In fact, the whole crew was giddy over them.

  “Maybe we should go back for the rest,” the Captain said.

  I picked up a very ornate plate and admired it’s beauty. Perhaps they had found a treasure after all. I flipped the plate over and there, on the bottom enameled in tiny letters read “Made In China 1933.”

  I took the captain aside and showed him the writing on the plate.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said. “I should have known better!”

  “I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” I replied. “I know a man who spent millions on fake art and antiques.”

  “Millions?” he asked. “Who was that?”

  “An American named Hearst,” I replied. “He filled my house with them.”

  Alex was still drooling over the treasure they’d discovered. He was particularly fond of a gold teakettle. He sat on the deck rubbing it with a cloth over and over.

  “You think you’re going to summon a genie out of that thing?” Barber asked, laughing at him.

  “This booty is worthless,” Crumby announced. “We are going to press on!”

  “Hang on,” I said. “If Alex and Sharkey thought they were treasures, maybe we should go get the rest.”

  “But they are fake,” Crumby replied. “You said so yourself.”

  “We know they aren’t real,” I replied, “but if they could fool the likes of Alex, then they may be of use to us.”

  “How do you figure?” the captain asked.

  “If we run into more natives, having these things might work to our benefit,” I answered.

  “Like the canned beef,” Crumby said.

  “Exactly like the canned beef,” I answered. “These worthless replicas may save our lives.”

  The captain dispatched a very excited Alex and Sharkey to retrieve the rest of the treasure. They spent the remainder of the night admiring each piece at length before stacking them into small boxes. I, on the other hand, just wanted to go fishing.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I was casting off the back of the boat alone when suddenly a hundred birds soared out of the water less than fifty feet from me. They sailed through the air for a few seconds in a massive flock then splashed back down into the ocean. I couldn’t even speak. I turned to the front of the boat to call out for the crew, but no words came out of my mouth. By the time I reached the others, I was able to verbalize what I’d just witnessed.

  “Those weren’t birds, you twit,” Barber quipped. “They’re called flying fish!”

  “Fish that fly?” I asked, stunned.

  “Ain’t you ever heard of flying fish?” Barber replied.

  “They don’t have those in the Hudson River,” I said. “Or sword fish either for that matter. Is there anything else out there I need to know about?”

  The crew laughed out loud, but it wasn’t funny to me. It was the scariest damned thing I’d seen in a long time. Almost as scary as the damned sword fish that nearly impaled me.

  “There are the giant squids,” Sharkey said.

  “Yes,” Crumby added. “As big as this boat.”

  “You’re putting me on!” I replied. “I might be from New Jersey, but I wasn’t born yesterday. There’s no such thing as giant squids. Right?”

  “I’ve never seen one personally,” Crumby replied, “but yes, they are out there.”

  “And electric eels,” Barber added.

  “Hold on,” I said. “One crazy fish story at a time. Tell me about the giant squids.”

  “My cousin saw one,” Sharkey said. “He was on a fishing boat off Australia. They had been out for nearly two weeks. It was a bad voyage from the start. They lost two men in the first week in a bad storm. They weren’t catching anything, so they decided to bugger back home.”

  “I haven’t heard this story before, Barber said. “Was that your cousin who joined the circus?”

  “Get on with it!” I said.

  “It was the summer of 1922,” Sharkey replied. “My cousin never worked on a boat again after that.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “It was nearly dark, so they were pulling in the net behind their boat,” Sharkey explained. “They had decided that would be their last attempt before returning home. Well, just as they nearly had the net retrieved, something very heavy hit it.”

  “The giant squid?” I asked.

  “They didn’t know what it was at first,” he replied. “It was so heavy, they couldn’t budge it. Twenty
men, Bay, pulling, and they couldn’t bring it up. Instead, it was pulling them. It drug the boat sideways through the water, nearly capsizing it in the bargain. After ten minutes of this, they finally saw its tentacles. They stretched farther than the length of their boat, Bay. Which was 110 feet.”

  “My god,” I said.

  “They never saw the body of the creature,” Sharkey said. “Just those horrible, long tentacles. Each one could have squeezed fifty men to death. Well, they finally managed to cut the net loose. Then the boat stopped dead in the water. For the next four days, they lived in utter fear that the giant squid was following them. But they never saw it again.”

  No one spoke a word for a long time after Sharkey finished his story. Even Barber seemed to be frightened by it. Captain Crumby finally broke the silence. “Flying fish are found all over the world,” he said. “But they won’t hurt you.”

  “They already did,” I replied.

  “No, they don’t even bite,” Sharkey said. “How would they hurt you?”

  “They scared the crap out of me!” I replied. “And that hurt like hell!”

  “Do you want to hear about the electric eels?” Barber asked.

  “No,” I said. “One fish story is enough for the night.”

  Hiwanda sang a few songs before we retired in a makeshift bed on the deck. I was too damned tired to climb the mast up to the crow’s nest. Just as I drifted off to sleep, I thought about the shark-man and the bird-fish. But it was the giant squid that would haunt me in my dreams that night.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I heard creaking sounds and water splashing, but wasn’t about to pull the covers off of my head. I figured if the giant squid was out there, I’d better stay hidden.

  The damned birds woke me up as usual, and I felt relieved that I’d made it through the night without being snatched from the deck by the giant squid. I felt good about that until Speck started shouting, just a few feet from where I was laying.

  “He’s taken one of the dinghies!” he yelled.

  “What the hell!” I said. “That is a fine way to wake someone!”

  Hiwanda and I pulled ourselves out of bed and looked out towards the ocean. Speck was pointing and screaming about the damned dinghy, but my eyes weren’t focusing enough to see it.

  Before I could spit, the rest of the crew had joined us, stepping all over the blankets Hiwanda and I had slept in.

  “That son of a bitch!” Crumby yelled. “Go get him! Now!”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

  Barber and Sharkey ran to the opposite side of the boat to the other dinghy and began readying it to take down to the water.

  “Would you mind getting off of my bed and telling me what the hell is happening here?” I asked.

  “It’s Alex,” Crumby replied. “He’s taken off.”

  “Let him go!” I replied. “You didn’t want him here in the first place.”

  “It’s not him I am after,” the captain said. “I want my dinghy back!”

  Crumby handed the men Winchesters and told them to return with his dinghy, but not Alex. His exact words were “get the boat and lose Alex!” He was essentially ordering the execution of his cousin.

  “Do you realize what you are doing?” I asked him. He didn’t respond.

  Crumby ordered Speck to pull up the anchors before returning to the pilot room. The masts were still down, so I knew we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. All we could do was wait and watch.

  I found Speck’s binoculars while he was busy cranking up the anchors and watched Barber and Sharkey as they rowed towards Alex’s boat. He didn’t have that much of a head start on them. I could see Barber leveling his rifle towards Alex. I knew I was about to witness a murder at sea. It was something that I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t put the binoculars down. Alex stood up for a second and began waving his arms for some odd reason.

  There was a flash in the water near Alex’s dinghy. In seconds, hundreds of flying fish appeared, and completely blocked out my vision. A moment later, they were gone. And so was Alex.

  I watched as the two men rowed the dinghy’s back to our ship. Barber and Sharkey seemed to be in shock as they boarded the vessel.

  “What happened to Alex?” I asked.

  Captain Crumby stood by silently, staring down at the deck. After a very long pause, Barber finally spoke up. “He’s gone,” he answered.

  “It was the bird-fish,” I asked, “wasn’t it?”

  “Hundreds of them,” Sharkey said, shaking. “I’ve never heard of this happening.”

  “They fly out of the water to escape predators,” Barber said. “They don’t fly that far and they can’t see.”

  “You were going to kill him,” I replied.

  “We didn’t have to,” Barber answered. “The flying fish did it for us.”

  “We saw what was left of him, though,” Sharkey said. “In the water by the boat. At least we think it was him.”

  “What do you mean you think it was him?” I asked.

  “He was beaten to death beyond recognition,” he replied.

  “We found these on the dinghy,” Barber said, holding up the gold teakettle and a leather satchel. Crumby took the satchel from Barber and opened it. It was the gold coins we’d found on Ghost Island.

  “I thought you said these bird-fish couldn’t hurt anyone,” I said.

  “Flying fish,” Crumby replied. “And no, I have never heard of a thing like this happening before.”

  “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Speck observed.

  Hiwanda finally spoke up with what was perhaps the most logical explanation of the extraordinary event. “He has always been in that place,” she said. “The wrong place at the wrong time.”

  We hoisted the sails and headed off down Hawaii Alley. Even though no one liked him, a dark cloud hung all around us.

  “Well,” I told the captain. “You got your dinghy back.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The creatures of the night in the sea haunted me. I was looking for a man who played the most horrifying monster in movies, but that was make-believe. These damned things were real.

  “Had he not stood up, they might not have hit him so hard,” Captain Jonas Crumby said.

  “It was his fate,” Sharkey said. “But I think he was standing to signal to us not to shoot him.”

  “We’ll have no more talk of this,” Crumby replied. “What happened was an unfortunate accident. We have a long way to go, so let’s move forward and put it behind us.”

  We moved in closer to the islands than we ever had before. He didn’t say it, but I could tell the captain felt responsible for his cousin’s tragic death. Nature had intervened and did the dirty work for him. I figured he thought he owed her for that. It was a burden of sorts. Certainly not something you would want to bear on your shoulders in the midst of a journey like ours. It reminded me of the old man. But out in the Pacific, the laws of nature seemed even greater than owing a favor to William Randolph Hearst.

  Hiwanda and I were up in the crow’s nest with Speck. The mood in the pilot room was just too dark for us to handle. Besides, this was our favorite place on the ship. When we weren’t in the crow’s nest, we were fishing off the back deck.

  “A green one ahead,” Speck said excitedly.

  I couldn’t wait to get off the Eclipse. Two weeks at sea had taken a toll on my psyche. I just wanted to find Lugosi, or die trying. At least the whole thing would be over.

  The island was filled with coconut and pineapple trees. It was larger than most of the rocks we’d been on and reminded me of Hiwanda’s home island.

  “I’ve been here,” Hiwanda said, smiling. “I know this tribe!”

  “I guess that means they are friendly,” I said.

  “Yes!” she replied. “Very friendly! They are the music rock people!”

  We hurried down the mast and waited to get close enough so that we could lower the dinghy.

&nbs
p; “Tell me about the music people,” I said to Hawanda.

  “They worship the god of music,” she replied. “He is there,” she said pointing towards the remains of a small volcano sticking up on the far side of the island.

  “If we aren’t back in two hours,” Crumby ordered, “you know what to do.”

  “Start shooting?” Barber asked.

  “Hard and fast until you see us coming,” the captain said.

  “She said they are good people,” I said. “You can’t go lobbing cannon balls at people who worship music.”

  “We don’t know who else is there,” Crumby replied as the three of us stepped in the dinghy.

  “No cannon balls!” I yelled to the crew. “If we aren’t back before sundown, come looking for us!”

  We were greeted on the beach by cheerful natives who seemed to be very happy to see us. One older woman recognized Hiwanda and they embraced, speaking the same native language.

  We followed them to their village which consisted primarily of huts made from bamboo and covered in dried mud. It looked very much like Hiwanda’s island except there were no seashells hanging on the huts.

  After ten minutes of listening to them yapping, I finally asked Hiwanda to inquire about Bela. The old lady listened intently then shook her head “no.”

  “Ask her to take us to the chief,” I said.

  Hiwanda spoke to the old lady again who laughed while answering back.

  “They have no chief,” Hiwanda said. “She said they have not had a chief for many years.”

  “Well, someone has to be in charge here,” Crumby replied. “Whoever he is, tell her we want to see him.”

  “I am in charge,” the old lady said in English.

  “So you do speak English?” I asked.

  “Yes, I can,” she answered.

  “Thank god,” I replied. “So you have not seen a tall, dark haired man named Bela Lugosi?”

  “Oh,” she answered, giggling. “Hiwanda asked if I had seen a bat man.”

  “No, I said. “He is not a bat man, he is an actor who portrayed Count Dracula.”