Spirits in the Park

by Scott Mebus

  Hendrick stood up as the crowd began to rumble.

  “Now, those are some hard words, boy. I never kidnapped anyone. What do you think I am?”

  Simon stood up next Rory. “We think you’re a pirate.”

  “A pirate, yes, but a kidnapper? Please.” People began to drift away, not wanting to get mixed up in a fight. Hendrick shot Rory an angry look. “You’re messing with my gold, boy.”

  “You messed with my life!”

  “Hey, you got away, didn’t you?” Hendrick spat. “With the help of that magic bear or whatever it was. And now you’ve scared away my day’s take. So we’re even, okay? Beat it!”

  “How can you call that even!” Rory cried. “I got lost in those tunnels! I was almost run over by a subway train. You owe me!”

  “I don’t owe you nothing except a knock for costing me money,” Hendrick replied. He balled his fists and Rory belatedly realized that he was picking a fight with a pirate, and that wasn’t the best path to a long, pain-free life.

  Suddenly a loud laugh boomed behind them, making Hendrick jump in his boots. Strolling through the thinning crowd came an older man, dressed expensively in seventeenth century clothing, with hose from his knee to his boots and a white wig atop his head. He slapped Hendrick on the back, so hard it almost knocked the smaller man clear across the dock.

  “Don’t be such a grinch!” the man announced. “You owe this boy an apology. Say you’re sorry!”

  “I’m the one who lost money,” Hendrick replied, his voice sullen now. The man in the wig winked at Rory.

  “Hendrick . . .” the man warned, his voice tinged with laughter, though his eyes flashed angrily. “Never let it be said that Captain Kidd’s men kidnap children, especially his first mate!”

  Rory had to keep from staring. This was the famous Captain Kidd, the great pirate and privateer? The man who had apparently marooned Thomas Tew and left Rory’s father for dead?

  “Hendrick,” Kidd continued, still scolding his first mate. “Go on. Say you’re sorry you tried to kidnap him and sentence him to a life of hard labor far out to sea!”

  “I’m sorry I tried to kidnap you and sentence you to a life of hard labor far out to sea,” Hendrick muttered, looking everywhere but at Rory.

  “So there you have it,” Kidd said, smiling broadly. “An apology. Not enough for the pain you endured, I’m sure, but it’s something.”

  “Simon! What are you two doing!” an angry voice called out behind them. It was Alexa, sticking her head out of the hotel window. Simon flinched and grabbed Rory’s shoulder to go. Kidd smirked.

  “I see your mother calls.” He winked, then frowned. “You look familiar, boy . . .”

  “Gotta go, sorry!” Simon pulled Rory away from the pirate as quickly as he could. Rory glanced back. Captain Kidd was already walking away, his chastised first mate in tow. Kidd glanced back at him, his eyes narrow, and Rory quickly turned his eyes forward again.

  Alexa was yelling at Simon.

  “You call that not being noticed!” she said, giving Simon a hateful glare. “I could kill you! Come on, we finally found the guy. Let’s see what he knows and then get out of here!”

  She led them into the hotel. The inside of the building wasn’t much nicer than the outside. Rotted stairs led up to rooms in the back, while the lobby was dark, musty, and empty. An old woman manned a desk where one could check in, and behind her was a small room with tables for meals. A man sat at the only occupied table, his forehead resting on his dinner plate. Fritz stood by the plate, shaking his head at the sight, while Sergeant Kiffer stood on the other side, arms crossed. Alexa nodded toward the prone man.

  “That’s him. It’s taken us this long to rouse him from his stupor, and now it looks like he’s fallen right back into it. One thing, Rory.” She leaned over to give him her complete attention. “Apparently Hans and Kiffer were only able to get this guy to talk because of you.”

  “Me?” Rory was confused.

  “Hans was becoming desperate, so he started mentioning up and down he docks that Meester’s son was looking for him. And that’s when this man approached them. I just thought you should know that. Come on.”

  They walked up to the man and Alexa jostled his shoulder.

  “Hey, Farhad, wake up,” she said loudly. “You’ve got company.” The man groaned but did not stir. “I think he may have drunk too much.”

  “Really?” Simon’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I thought he was just sleepy.”

  “Why is he like this?” Rory asked.

  “Because this is what drunkards do.” Farhad’s voice rose up from his plate, though his head didn’t move. “We drink. A lot. And we say things we should not.”

  “Just tell us what you know and we’ll leave you to your cups,” Fritz said, his voice ringing with disapproval. Farhad’s head rose up from his plate. His face was beet red, and puffy, with a long vein-riddled nose poking out of his thick curly beard. The outline of the plate had imprinted itself on his forehead. Rory would not have been able to take this man seriously if not for his haunted eyes, which spoke of some ancient pain that never stopped aching.

  “You do look like him, a little bit,” Farhad said. Rory felt a shock run through him. “I knew your father, boy. We sailed together, long ago, with Captain Tew. Until Tew met his fate on that damned piece of rock out in the mists and we were left adrift, the twelve of us.”

  “What happened?” Rory asked. “What did Kidd do?”

  “We swore an oath out there, clinging to that piece of plank,” Farhad said. “An oath that has haunted us ever since. I cannot speak of it, on pain of my soul. I sailed with your father many times, on many voyages out into the mist. We both changed our names as often as we changed shirts, which is to say not as often as we should have. He was Ronald Flint and Michael Lee and Otto Kruger and Isaac Weinstein and Jean-Paul LaRoche and so many others. I won’t bore you with my many names, as I can barely remember who I am now, let alone last year or last century. I do remember one voyage—I don’t recall the name of the ship, though I believe it’s been a good sixty years since that boat was lost forever to the outer reaches. On this one voyage I was Raheem something-or-other, and your father was Peter Hennessy. He liked that one, I remember. Not surprised he went back to it. Good man, your dad. Good friend. Are you all right, boy?”

  Tears were running down Rory’s face. He quickly wiped his cheeks clean and sniffed away his pain. He didn’t care, he told himself. He didn’t care that he hadn’t seen his father in eight and a half years, that he’d never had a chance to know him, while this red-faced, booze-drenched mess spent years, decades, with the man.

  “I’m fine,” he replied finally, gathering himself. Alexa put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off before her attempts at comfort made him cry again.

  “Do you know where he is now?” Fritz asked the man.

  “I haven’t seen him since he stopped sailing fifteen years ago,” Farhad said, shaking his head. “A few of us have passed on, you know. Usually the drink devours us. Our oath is heavy and weighs upon our soul. The drink is all that can soothe us. Just the other day, one of my old companions passed of it.”

  “He was the one who told us to look for Harry Meester,” Alexa said.

  “Oh, Alberto,” Farhad said, shaking his head sadly. “Just doing that much must have cost him. No wonder he drank himself into oblivion.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Rory said. “What happened back then to do this to you?”

  “You will have to ask your father when you find him,” Farhad said. “I know I cannot tell you or I will surely follow Alberto to the grave.”

  “Can you give us any idea where Meester might be now?” Fritz asked. “Rory thinks he saw him on the Half Moon a month or so ago.”

  “Really?” Farhad whistled, his head swaying from drink. “Now, that is desperation. No one signs on to that ship unless he has no other choice.”

  “Isn’t there anything yo
u can tell us that might help us find my dad?” Rory asked. “Anything at all?”

  “Well, maybe one thing.” Farhad’s voice was slurring.

  “What?” Rory bent down to look Farhad in the eye and force him to answer. Farhad smiled slightly.

  “You really do look like him, you know that?” he said softly.

  “Please help me,” Rory begged him.

  “Well . . .” Farhad took a deep breath, steadying himself for a moment. “Your father had a routine, something he had to do every time we shipped out. Somehow, he got the captains of whatever vessels we signed on with to agree, I don’t know how. Most sailors would never set foot on that island, it is one of our strongest superstitions. But your father never cared about that. See, when you sail out into the mist, there are two final pieces of New York you pass before you disappear into the fog. Two islands: Hoffman, which has remained desolate for a hundred years, and Swinburne, the last dry land before the mists.”

  “I know Swinburne Island,” Simon exclaimed, and Alexa nodded agreement. “That’s where the convent is!”

  “Yes.” Farhad didn’t look away from Rory. “We don’t go onto the island because the nuns put a curse on any men who dare set foot on their soil. Your nether regions shrivel up and fall off. Don’t laugh!” This was to Alexa, who had let out a scoffing chuckle. “I’ve met men who knew men who talked with men it’s happened to. You couldn’t get any sailor to go anywhere near that cursed beach, not for a million dollars. But your father was different, Rory. Things like that never touched him.

  “Somehow, your dad talked every captain we ever sailed with into dropping anchor near the island so he could take the skiff and row himself up to the little dock that poked out of that deserted, fog-drenched beach. There he’d disappear into the depths of the island for a few hours, then reappear, row back to our ship, and we’d sail off again. I never knew how he convinced the captains to do it . . . the sailors were never happy about it, I can tell you. But your dad always managed to work it out. So time and time again, he’d get his shore leave on Swinburne Island.”

  “Why did he go there?” Rory asked.

  “The way he looked forward to it, the way he appeared both at peace and unbearably sad when he returned, it could only mean one thing. There was a woman he loved in that convent. I asked him and he didn’t deny it.”

  “Did he tell you her name?” Alexa asked. Farhad shook his head.

  “He wouldn’t speak of her at all. But I do think that if anyone knows where your father is, it will be that woman on Swinburne. If not her, then no one, and your father is gone for good like I always feared.”

  With that, Farhad’s head fell gently forward to rest on the table and he would speak no more.

  16

  SWINBURNE ISLAND

  Peter Stuyvesant nibbled at a small biscuit his wife had baked him as he rested beneath his pear tree on the corner of 13th and 3rd. He was taking no chances; he knew poison when he saw it, and Whitman and the others were definitely poisoned. Although they were already improving—they were gods, after all—it would be days before his fellow council members would be up and around. Until then, Peter had to shoulder all of the load himself.

  And the load was getting heavier. The rumors about a Munsee assassin roaming free had been replaced by actual sightings of bands of Munsees, causing general mayhem throughout Mannahatta. Peter knew they weren’t Munsees, of course. Probably hooligans in war paint and feathers, he figured. But it spooked people, and when people got spooked, they panicked. And when they panicked, well, that’s when people got hurt.

  Folks didn’t scare so easily back in his day, he thought sourly to himself. We had real courage, back then, he thought. All these namby-pamby new gods just didn’t have any stomach. So he had to run around, keeping the peace and reminding people that just because some underworld thug put on a headdress, it didn’t mean the city was under attack.

  “Mind if I join you?” Peter looked up in surprise to see Caesar Prince smiling down at him.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” Peter told Caesar, relaxing. “I thought you’d fallen down a hole through the center of the earth.”

  “Nope,” Prince said, settling beneath the tree beside Peter. “Just biding my time.”

  “I could use you, you know,” Peter told him. “Everyone else is sick as dogs. Poison, you know.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Caesar said. “Something big’s coming and you know Kieft would want the big guns out of the way.”

  “I know it,” Peter said, preening slightly at being called a big gun. “You don’t get the same caliber of god anymore. God of Parking Meters? God of Text Messages? God of Co-op Boards? That last man is a real weasel, by the way. They’re just not the same.”

  “I’ll help all I can,” Caesar promised. He pulled out a large sandwich. Peter sniffed the air; it smelled like pastrami on rye.

  “Is that Mr. Katz’s pastrami?” The God of Delicatessens made a mean sandwich.

  “No, I made it myself. You can’t trust anyone, you know?”

  Peter looked longingly at the big, bursting sandwich, and then glanced down at his sad little biscuit. Caesar was right; you couldn’t trust anyone. But he’d known Prince for so long. And he was so hungry for anything but his wife’s cooking.

  Caesar noticed Peter’s sidelong glances and smiled.

  “Want a bite?”

  The small boat rocked violently beneath Rory. Even though the skies were clear, the wind whipped the waves into whitecaps that threatened to overwhelm the small vessel. A particularly large wave sent them careening up and down, prompting a cry of pure terror from the galley.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t out in open water!” Simon cried, huddled miserably in the bottom of the boat. Alexa shrugged from her place by the tiller, smiling apologetically as she wiped spray from her eyes.

  “I know you.” Her lip twitched as she struggled not to smile at Simon’s distress. “You’re a big baby about boats.”

  “If I sink, I’m not strong enough to will my way to shore!” Simon shot back, ducking as another wave crashed overhead. “I’m not a god, remember!”

  “And you never will be,” Alexa replied, which seemed to Rory to be a strangely obvious statement. But Simon nodded glumly and looked away. Fritz glanced over at them from his place near the stern, shaking his head before returning his gaze to the ocean. Rory stood at the bow of the tiny vessel, clinging to the mast. Even though he’d never been on a real boat before—somehow the Circle Line just didn’t count—he wasn’t scared. He felt at home on the boat, moving with it as it fought the waves. The wind sent spray flying into his eyes, but he didn’t flinch. Maybe his dad was out there staring down the sea, too. He’d never felt this connected to the old man.

  Swinburne Island proved to be way past Staten Island, almost out to sea. Alexa hadn’t wanted to hire a boat down at the docks because of the number of people who would witness the transaction, so instead she rustled up an old two-person sail-boat her father had owned. They’d all piled into the boat and pushed out into the river from an old pier by Battery Park. As they sailed away, Rory had thought he’d seen someone step out of the shadows beneath the pier to watch them, but he blinked and whoever it was was gone. He must have been imagining things, he hoped. Still, he kept a watch behind them, and at one point he thought he saw another sail in the distance. But when he went to point it out to the others, it was gone and it never returned. Neither did Rory’s peace of mind.

  The voyage quickly grew more dangerous as they drifted out into choppier waters. Now the waves tossed them about as they sailed under the great Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connected Brooklyn to Staten Island (thinking of its grouchy namesake made Rory smile). Beyond the bridge lay the open sea. Mist clung to the horizon, covering the distant water in fog.

  “I can’t see anything out there,” Rory shouted over the wind. “Will the mist clear up later in the day?”

  “The mist never clears up,”
Alexa replied. “It’s always been there and it always will be. It’s the last great frontier. Great mariners sail into its murky depths in search of the secret islands where, supposedly, strange hermits hold caskets of treasure. Others hunt great whales the size of ocean liners. And the bravest souls of all search for the lost gods, who left never to return.”

  “Lost gods?” Rory had never heard of any lost gods.

  “Not all the gods who no longer grace Mannahatta faded away with the passing of mortal memory,” Alexa explained. “Some tired of their days trapped by their blood and set sail for new lands out in the mist.”

  “Like Europe?” Rory asked.

  “There is no Europe out there,” Fritz said, his eyes distant. “No other side. Just mist, forever and ever.”

  “That’s where Wampage went!” Rory suddenly understood his friend’s parting words. “He’s looking for his old leader.”

  “Many great gods went off into the mist,” Alexa said. “Henry Hudson, Peter Minuet, Adriaen Block. Most of the first gods left before they could be bound to the land, or so my dad told me.”

  “What do you mean, bound to the land?” Rory asked.

  “I’m not sure, myself,” Alexa said. “My father mentioned it once and then refused to speak of it again. Something happened in the early days to send many of the first gods off into the mists. None of the other gods who were there will speak of it, either. Maybe it’s something they’re ashamed of.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s long past now,” Simon said. “No use worrying about it. You couldn’t pay me enough gold to get me to sail off into those mists. There’s no treasure, no heaven, on the other side. I don’t think there’s anything out there but water. Endless water.” He shuddered at the thought, his hand playing with something in his pocket. Alexa shot him a sharp look, and Simon started, before pulling out an old penknife from his pocket with a shrug. Alexa pursed her lips and returned to steering the boat.

  Rory stared out at the wall of mist slowly approaching, feeling his heart stir. His father had sailed out into that fog. Rory wondered what he had discovered out there. Maybe when he found him, the elder Hennessy would tell all his stories. Or maybe Rory would sail out there himself, one day, and find out firsthand.