We reached the beach with our crosses. Starkey and I both turned around slowly, still holding them on our shoulders, to face Scarecrow Man. He was pointing the pistol directly at us, holding it with both hands. To say he had a crazy look on his face would be an understatement.
“What happens now?” Sharkey asked under his breath.
“He can’t shoot us both,” I whispered. “When I jump, you shoot. Do you understand me?” I asked.
“Behold!” Scarecrow Man screamed. “I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it! Malachi 2:3!”
I moved slightly away from Sharkey and Scarecrow Man followed me with his pistol.
“Now I’ve got one for you!” I yelled. “An eye for an eye!”
I dove for the ground as Sharkey jerked his rifle up and fired it in one quick move. He put a single round through Scarecrow Man’s skull. It was pristine. He’d gotten him right between the eyes. It happened in one second.
We got into the dinghy and headed quickly back to the Eclipse.
“That wasn’t just blood on the scarecrows,” Sharkey asked. “Was it?”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t think so. Those weren’t scarecrows on the beach. They were men.”
Chapter Forty-One
The wind started picking up as we left Scarecrow Island. A dark cloud was rolling in from the East. That seemed to be where the bad storms always came from.
“This doesn’t look good!” the captain said.
Half of the sky was pitch black and moving right towards us. We hadn’t seen a storm that big since we’d gotten blown to the wrong side of the islands.
“The water was very deep all the way up to that island!” Sharkey said. “Right up to the beach! Maybe we should go back there drop anchor!”
“What the hell for?” I asked. “I don’t want to go back there!”
“It may help to be near it,” Sharkey explained. “To take some of the wind off of us!”
“He may have a point,” the captain said. “If we can get in real close and drop anchor, we may not be blown God knows how far off course!”
We turned sail and headed straight for Scarecrow Island. The thought of going back there gave me the shivers. We had to tack into the wind, so it took a lot longer than we expected. But once we arrived, we were able to moor the ship right up to the beach.
Everyone pitched in to tie the sails down as quickly as possible. Minutes later, the hurricane was right on top of us.
“Come on!” Crumby yelled. “Hurry!”
We all took refuge in the belly of the vessel and hoped for the best. It sounded like a freight train was passing over our heads. The ship was being bounced up and down like a basketball. Things were flying off the table, so we all huddled under it in horror. Hiwanda clung onto me with a death grip.
“Do you think we are moving?” I yelled.
“Of course we’re moving, you idiot!” Barber answered. “Don’t you feel it?”
“I mean out to sea!” I shouted.
“I don’t know,” the captain replied. “It will be a miracle if we aren’t!”
The thunder cracked like a thousand cannon balls being fired all at once. We could see flashes of lightening through the thick glass portholes. Speck had managed to grab one of the gas lanterns just before we took cover under the table. Otherwise, we’d have been in total darkness.
Speck tried to calm us down by telling a story. I wasn’t sure what the hell he was up to at first.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “my father and I were out fishing when a storm suddenly came up.”
“We’ve all been through them!” Barber replied. “But this may be the worst I’ve ever seen!”
“It was a bad one,” Speck continued. “And we were in a much smaller boat than the Eclipse. It happened just a mile off the coast of the bay.”
“What happened?” Hiwanda asked.
“The waves tossed us around like a paper doll,” Speck continued. “I thought we were going to capsize for sure. And even if we didn’t, I believed we would drown anyway. You see, water was coming from everywhere! Up and down, sideways and back again!”
“This is not a very endearing story to hear given the circumstances of the moment,” Barber yelled.
“When it was finally over,” Speck continued, “we stood up in the boat. And there, right in front of us, was the bay where we’d started from.”
“So the storm pushed you back to your port?” Sharkey asked.
“We were within three feet of the beach,” Speck replied. “All we had to do was hop out of the boat. But that’s not the strange thing.”
“And what is the strange thing?” I asked reluctantly.
“The storm was coming from the direction of the bay,” Speck said. “It should have pushed us away from the coastline, not towards it.”
Speck had managed to distract us somewhat from the horrible roar of the storm we were in the middle of.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Barber said.
“But it happened!” Speck said. “Storms can do very odd things!”
I thought about Pipe Man whom we’d had the pleasure of meeting on the very first island we stopped. Maybe that is how his damned bus ended up on the top of the volcano. A storm could have carried it there.
I crawled out from under the table and staggered over to a lower cabinet in the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Hiwanda asked in near hysterics.
“I’ll be right back!” I replied. “Just stay here!”
It was almost impossible to walk, but I made it. I retrieved the large bag of dried plants and the shell that Pipe Man had given me and crawled back under the table.
I stuffed the shell full and lit it with a match, taking a long draw deep into my lungs.
“Here,” I said, passing the shell to Hiwanda. “Smoke some of this and pass it down.”
“This is not the time or place for a peace pipe!” Crumby yelled.
“Suit yourself,” I replied. “But it seems like the best time to me.”
After a couple of passes of the shell pipe around the circle, we weren’t afraid anymore. In fact, we began laughing as if we hadn’t a care in the world. Barber started singing some old sea song, and despite the fact of not knowing the words, Hiwanda and I joined in.
I don’t know how many songs we’d gone through before we realized there was no sound coming from above us anymore. The storm had passed us, and we didn’t even care.
“Listen!” Sharkey said. “Do you hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” Barber laughed.
“That’s what I am talking about you fool!” Sharkey said. “The storm! It must be over!”
“Somebody should go check,” I said, lighting the shell pipe again.
“In a minute,” Barber replied as he took the pipe from me.
“Yes,” the captain chimed in, waiting for his turn. “We should make good and certain it is over, then we will go up.”
It was like being a kid again back at the Hoboken School for Boys. I was in a fort with my buddy Hobbs and some of our friends we had made behind the old barn. Sure, it was time to go back to school, but we didn’t care. The storm was over and whatever was outside in the real world could wait. So we stayed under the table and sang old sea songs.
Chapter Forty-Two
The hurricane hadn’t moved our ship after all. But she did manage to bury the fore on the beach with a ton of sand. We spent the better part of the day digging her out before we could shove off into the Pacific. Aside from the physical labor, we kept hitting bodies with our shovels. Or portions thereof. They were the skeletal remains of what we originally thought were scarecrows on the beach.
“Who do you think these men were?” Crumby asked as he tossed a shovel full of bones to the side.
“You got me scratching,” I replied. “Some poor bastards who were killed by Scarecrow Man, that’s all I know.�
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“Do you think it is possible that the treasure is here on this island?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “I saw nothing to indicate that it would be. And besides, I told you I didn’t want to come back to this island to begin with. It gives me the damned creeps.”
“Coming here may have saved our lives,” the captain replied. “At the very least, it kept the storm from blowing us all the way to Mexico.”
“We’re not off yet,” I answered. “And quite frankly, I would rather be stuck in Mexico than stranded here.”
Crumby looked at his shark tooth bracelet for a moment, and kept digging. He may have forgotten that he told me it was his good luck charm. So I thought I would remind him.
“You’re bracelet isn’t going to get us off this island,” I said. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“You have your superstitions and I have mine,” he replied.
I sank my shovel in the sand and looked up at the captain. “What superstitions do you suppose I have?” I asked.
“There’s no point in arguing over it,” he replied. “We have work to do.”
“No, seriously,” I said. “What are you talking about? I don’t have any superstitions! So don’t try to lump me in with your lucky charm bracelet. Or your damned treasure either for that matter!”
“You don’t remember what you told me when I asked you why you thought your friend was on one of the little islands?” he asked.
“Not really,” I replied. “I just remember paying you fifteen hundred dollars!”
“Bay,” he answered, “you said a psychic told you. You don’t remember telling me that?”
I grabbed my shovel and continued digging. “I don’t believe in psychics,” I said.
“And I don’t believe in treasures either,” Crumby replied. “But that doesn’t keep me from looking for it.”
A good wind picked up from the East. After nearly eight hours of digging, we managed to fill our sails with enough air to push off from Scarecrow Island. But by then, it was getting dark. I expected another overnight delay as usual, so when we kept sailing into the night, I was quite surprised. And very happy.
“We aren’t stopping then?” I asked the captain as he manned the wheel in the pilot room.
He touched his shark teeth bracelet and glanced up at me. “I hadn’t been stopping for the night for fear of shipwrecking,” he replied. “I was stopping so we could get some sleep.”
“So what made you change the agenda now?” I asked.
“Tonight,” he said, “I am not sleepy.”
The stars lit the damned Pacific up like a parking lot in Manhattan. Crumby was keeping a bit of a distance from the rocks, but you could definitely tell if they had any signs of life on them. Anything green would show up like a stop sign. And Speck was up top in the crow’s nest as always. None of us wanted to sleep anymore.
Hiwanda and I decided to sneak off to the aft while the rest of the crew went about the business of sailing. We hunkered down under some dry blankets and held each other. It was the first time I hadn’t been afraid in a long time.
A low tone called out from the distance, like a tuba, followed by a trombone. I couldn’t be sure, but it was definitely instruments. It was the most peaceful music I’d ever heard.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Whales,” Hiwanda replied. “They are singing.”
A long and elaborate song played into the night, lulling me to sleep. It was hard to imagine killing a creature that could make such beautiful music. Then I thought of Sharkey, who had been so eager to harpoon a whale and the rest of the crew who were so willing to go along with it for the money.
But it had been Sharkey who saved my life. Had he not acted so quickly, I would be just another human scarecrow on a deserted island.
Chapter Forty-Three
The damned birds were everywhere. They showed up by the thousands after a good storm. I guess they were feeding on the fish that were killed in the process. It seemed like a bad omen to me. I never cared for sea birds. Especially after seeing bird fish fly out of the water and plummet a man to death.
“They serve a good purpose,” Barber said.
“And shit all over everything afterwards,” I replied.
“Everyone has to,” Sharkey replied, “don’t they?”
The deck was covered with bird feces and I couldn’t see an end to it anytime soon.
Crumby ordered the crew to swab the deck. I took Hiwanda up to the crow’s nest just to get out of the task.
“We are almost to the end of the alley,” Speck said as he stared through his binoculars.
“Let me ask you something, Speck,” I said. “You’ve been up and down this stretch a few times. About how many more islands do you think we have to go?”
“Not many,” he replied. “A few more days, maybe.”
“Anything of interest on that one?” I asked, pointing towards the nearest island to us.
“It’s green,” he said. “I think.
I took the binoculars from Speck and focused in on the island that lay just ahead of us. It wasn’t just green. There were islanders there, and what appeared to be a village.
I handed the binoculars back to Speck and asked him to keep me informed on what he could see. It was just a test on my part. I had good reason to suspect that our lookout was going blind.
“We should stop here,” Speck said a few minutes later. “It is green.”
Hiwanda spotted people on the island without the aid of binoculars and began jumping up and down excitedly. “They are the basket people!” she exclaimed. “I have heard stories about them!”
She had a hell of a lot better vision than I did, let alone Speck. She even started describing what they were wearing and how beautiful they were.
“Who are the basket people?” I asked.
“The ones who make baskets, of course,” she replied.
We were overdue to meet some good people. Crumby agreed that we should take Hiwanda with us this time.
“I want to go, too,” Barber said.
“Bring a Winchester just in case,” the captain replied.
Hiwanda was right about the basket people. Even their boats resembled large baskets. They sent two of them out to greet our dinghy. By the time we pulled up onto the beach, fifty people had assembled to welcome us.
Fortunately, Hiwanda spoke their language. I instructed her to ask about Lugosi, handing her the ratty photograph I’d been toting around in my pocket.
“They have seen him!” Hiwanda said.
“But is he here now?” I asked.
We were corralled up the hill before I could ask any more questions.
The village was surrounded by tall palm trees and bushes. I noticed that some of them looked like the bushes that were on the very first island I’d set foot on. Before I could even point them out to Crumby, the crowd split around us revealing a young boy sitting on a huge chair.
The natives spoke to Hiwanda, who interpreted for us. “They say this is their chief,” she said.
“What?” I asked. “You mean that little boy up there?”
“Yes,” she replied. “His father before him passed away recently. He is the rightful chief now.”
“But he is just a child,” I said. “What the hell does he know about running a tribe?”
We walked towards the kid and sat down. “Can I ask you something?” I called out.
Hiwanda translated my question for him and the boy slid down from his tall chair and sat on the ground next to us.
“Have you seen this man?” I asked.
“Yes,” Hiwanda said, as the little boy babbled on excitedly.
“He was here some time ago,” the boy said. “Around the same time the men from Chi and the men from Geeshie were here.”
“Who are the men from Chi and Geeshie?” I asked. “Did they come together?”
“No,” he said pointing to the photo of Lugosi. “This man came first.”
&n
bsp; I didn’t care who the others were. We were obviously on the right track to finding Lugosi. That was all I needed to know.
“Tell him I said thank you,” I told Hiwanda, “but we must keep moving.”
The little chief walked with us back down to the beach, followed by his entire damned tribe. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other. They obviously weren’t a threat, and Hiwanda seemed to enjoy chatting with him.
As they were babbling on about God knows what, a couple of words jumped out at me.
“Did he say the Bears baseball?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied. “The Chi men taught him a game and told him about the team in their village.”
“That wouldn’t be Chicago, would it?” I asked.
The boy nodded his head in excitement.
“Chicago Bears!” the little chief shouted.
“Ask him what these men looked like,” I said.
After a bit of back and forth between the two, Hiwanda had a simple explanation.
“They wore black,” she replied. “And they were fighting with the bad men from Geeshie.”
I looked at Crumby for some help, but he just shrugged his shoulders.
“Did they leave together?” I asked.
“No,” the boy answered. “The bad men from Geeshie went under the water and the baseball men left in a big boat.”
I dug my heel into the beach and carved out the image of a swastika in the sand.
“Did they have badges on like this?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “The color of blood!”
The men who went under the water weren’t from Geeshie and they didn’t just disappear under the damned water. They were Nazis in U-boats. Geeshie was Germany. And the men from Chicago sounded a hell of a lot like gangsters to me.
Chapter Forty-Four
Basket Island left more questions than answers. It was possible that some members of the Chicago mob were running around the islands. Hell, it might even have been them who killed the three Nazis we’d found buried on Coast Guard Island.
Aloha, Lugosi! The Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series Book #4 Page 12