Spirits of the Pirate House

by Paul Ferrante

  T.J. and LouAnne had met Mike quite by accident the previous summer when Weinstein, having barely escaped being murdered by the ghostly Major Hilliard on a midnight expedition in the battlefield park, overheard the teens discussing T.J.’s own paranormal encounter with the phantom horseman. Though Weinstein had played no role in the solving of the Hilliard case, they made sure to call him and proudly tell their tale, reaffirming Mike’s already strong belief in the supernatural and keeping them on his radar. Weinstein could be a bit over the top at times, but T.J. and Bortnicker loved watching Gonzo Ghost Chasers, secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t all a bunch of baloney after all.

  “Oh, yeah. Hi, Mike. What’s new?”

  “Well, as you know, the show’s doing great. The episode last week at the mental asylum in Alabama was off the charts in the ratings—”

  “Yeah,” said T.J., “that was pretty intense when Josh thought he was getting possessed by the ghost of the axe murderer.”

  “No doubt. That was a real creepy place. Anyway, like I said, the ratings are great, and The Adventure Channel’s making big bucks on us. Have you seen their online store lately?” Indeed, Gonzo Ghost Chasers hats, tee shirts and other accessories were popping up everywhere—even at school. The boys found it especially amusing, what with their real-life adventure in Gettysburg and all.

  Bortnicker had now come to the phone, and T.J. put them on speaker. “So, what can we do for you, Mike?”

  There was a pause, surely for dramatic effect, then Weinstein said, “How much snow is on the ground there?”

  “Eighteen inches, give or take,” said Bortnicker.

  “Kinda makes you wish you could go somewhere warm and tropical, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said T.J. slowly, raising an eyebrow at his friend. “But, what’s the point?”

  “The point is, dude, that The Adventure Channel, in its infinite wisdom, is thinking of having some kids accompany me on a case, which might lead to a spinoff of my show!”

  “You mean, like, Junior Gonzo Ghost Chasers?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Sounds cool,” said T.J., “but what does that have to do with me?” Bortnicker quickly cuffed him on the shoulder. “I mean, us?”

  “Well, when the suits pitched the idea to me for, like, a pilot episode, the first thing I thought of, honest to God, was the three of you guys. Why go through the trouble of conducting a nationwide search for serious ghost hunters when I know three dudes who’ve already done it?”

  “Makes sense. But we have this thing called school—”

  “No problem. How does Spring Break in Bermuda sound?”

  Bortnicker was jumping up and down, feverishly whispering, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” when T.J. shook his head. “Can’t do it, Mike. First of all, the district superintendent has already cancelled spring vacation because of all the snow days we’ve had to take. Second, I’m playing baseball in the spring, and that’s when the season starts.” At which point Bortnicker collapsed to the floor, rolling around in agony.

  “Hmm,” said Weinstein. “Well, what about the beginning of June?”

  T.J. winked at his friend, who immediately ceased with the histrionics. “That could happen. I’d have to ask my dad, of course, and Bortnicker’s mom probably wouldn’t mind. But what about LouAnne? Is she invited?”

  “Invited? Dude, without her you have no shot. Don’t you understand how TV works? You need at least one girl, and it just so happens your cousin is a teenage fox. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  Bortnicker was now grinning from ear-to-ear, nodding his head knowingly.

  “Yeah, well, I’d have to talk to her and her folks. That’s near the high season in Gettysburg, and she works in that inn doing the reenacting thing, remember?”

  “Dude, she’ll make a summer’s worth of loot in a couple weeks, which is how long I figure it’ll take for us to shoot.”

  “Well, I guess it’s worth exploring,” said T.J., who was cautious by nature. “But why Bermuda?”

  Weinstein’s reply got their blood running: “Pirates.”

  “Get out.”

  “No joke, dude. And oh, another thing ... are any of you guys certified SCUBA divers?”

  Chapter Two

  “Pirates? You mean like, ‘Arrgh, matey’? You can’t be serious,” said LouAnne as she painted her toenails before a crackling fire in Gettysburg.

  “This is the real deal, Cuz,” answered T.J. as Bortnicker stood by. “According to Mike Weinstein, The Adventure Channel will put us up in some beachfront apartments for the whole time we’re there filming. The hotel and airfare are free. We’ll just need one adult to come along as a chaperone.”

  “Well, you can count out my parents. Mom’s afraid of flying, and Dad’s not going to take time off as a park ranger during the Battlefield’s high season.”

  “We’re going to work on Mr. Jackson,” offered Bortnicker, “and save my mom as a last resort.”

  “I don’t know, guys,” said LouAnne, “you know how it gets in Gettysburg near Reenactment Week.”

  “You’d be back with a couple weeks to spare,” assured T.J. “Besides, Weinstein said we’re gonna get paid for this. Just think—getting paid to go to Bermuda and hunt ghosts!”

  LouAnne chuckled. “Listen, Cuz, I know it sounds too good to be true, but don’t you think it’ll just be a cheesy TV thing? Do you really think anything like last summer could happen again?”

  “Probably not,” said Bortnicker, “but even if it’s a wild goose chase, who cares? Look out the window, my dear. How cold is it in Gettysburg, like 20 below? Can’t you just see those palm trees swaying in the breeze? And that famous Bermuda pink sand? The turquoise water—”

  “Okay, Bortnicker, I get it. It’s a vacay opportunity I’d never otherwise have, at least until after college. And you’re sure you two can’t do this without me?”

  “That’s what Weinstein said,” answered T.J. “And besides,” he added, shooting Bortnicker a wink, “we’re a team. No way can we function without you.”

  “All right, I’ll work on my parents. But, guys, one thing I’m going to have to hold firm on—there’s NO way I’m scuba diving. It’s hard enough for me to stay on the surface with a snorkel.”

  “Fair enough,” said T.J. “Talk to your folks and get back to me ASAP so I can call Weinstein and tell him it’s a go. Then Bortnicker and I can book some SCUBA classes. You’re sure you’re not into diving? The Adventure Channel’s picking up the tab.”

  “I’m dead sure, Cuz. When I was little I almost drowned in a lake, and ever since, I’ve been terrified of being underwater. I’ll swim in a pool and occasionally salt water if it’s crystal clear, but that’s where I draw the line.”

  Bortnicker, trying to lighten the mood, broke in. “What was the original name of Help!”

  “The song or the movie?”

  “The movie.”

  “Eight Arms to Hold You.”

  “Right again.” He frowned, then produced a devilish grin. Affecting his best Beatle voice, he said, “You know, luv, we’ve never been told which one of us Liverpool lads you fancied as your fave. And who might that be?”

  T.J., a dead-ringer for the young Paul McCartney, smirked at his friend’s obviously leading question.

  “That’s a no-brainer,” she said airily. “It’s gotta be Ringo.”

  “Ringo!” the boys cried in unison.

  “Oh, definitely. Without his backbeat they were nothing. Besides, I always go for the underdog.” She chuckled. “Gotta go, boys. Dad’s cranking up the snow blower and he’s gonna need help with the driveway.”

  “Keep thinking of the swaying palm trees.”

  “I will. Talk to you soon, guys.”

  As T.J. hung up the phone, Bortnicker started rummaging around in the pantry for the ingredients to create his masterpiece snack, spiced beef nachos. He’d really gotten into the cooking thing after whipping up a series of gourmet-quality breakfasts with LouAnne’s mom the
previous summer in Gettysburg, and though he never seemed to gain a pound on his spindly frame, both of the Jackson men looked forward to his impromptu feasts. Removing a can of refried beans from the top shelf he asked, “So you think this ghost thing’s gonna happen?”

  “I’d say right now it’s 50-50. But I’ve got an ace up my sleeve. I went online and checked the Bermuda tourist calendar of events, and the second week of June there’s a 5k road race for teens. I’ll bet she’ll want to enter, especially if I say I’m entering too.”

  “Yeah,” said Bortnicker with a smile. “I remember you two got pretty intense last summer on those morning runs through the battlefield. So you’re figuring she’ll want a little friendly family competition?”

  “You got it. If chasing pirate ghosts doesn’t get her psyched, kicking my butt in a race will!”

  Chapter Three

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” moaned T.J. as the dive boat rose and fell in the blue-gray swells of Long Island Sound.

  “Yeah,” said Bortnicker, wiping his mouth after he’d heaved up his lunch over the side, “you’ve got an interesting shade of green going there.”

  The boys were part of a group of six heading to the mouth of Bridgeport Harbor to take their final SCUBA junior certification test. This cold mid-May Sunday was the culmination of a comprehensive training course that had begun with four long classroom sessions, followed by a written exam which both boys had passed with flying colors.

  The local dive shop owner, Capt. Kenny Ali, a burly, bearded character who hailed from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, had left no stone unturned or ego unbruised in imparting his vast knowledge of diving accumulated over the past 30 years. Again and again as the group, comprised mostly of fit men and women between the ages of 25-40, were drilled in the complexities of water pressure and breathable gas mixes, Capt. Kenny hammered home the fact that miscalculations in equipment preparations, bottom times, and ascension speed could lead to dire consequences. “You don’t get second chances like topside,” was his mantra.

  The boys looked forward to their weekly lessons at Capt. Kenny’s Dive Shop, a white cinderblock bunker plopped in the middle of a busy Bridgeport thoroughfare. The place had a certain ambience that made you just want to strap on some tanks and jump in. Up front was a showroom with equipment, both new and used, for sale—everything from dive watches to knives to wetsuits, which the boys probably wouldn’t be needing in Bermuda’s warm June waters. Kenny’s prices were fair, as far as the teens could determine. He could have charged a lot more, as his customers were primarily from wealthy nearby towns like Westport and New Canaan, but the captain’s main goal, it seemed, was to not discourage newbies to the hobby with steep prices or unnecessary equipment that would make an already expensive pastime even more so.

  But what really attracted them, and what caused them to hang around way after their lessons, were the thousands of shipwreck artifacts on display from Kenny’s diving career, arranged on shelves and in glass museum cases. Every piece, it seemed, had a story, and the Captain reveled in each telling. The somewhat gloomy lighting and strong smell of saltwater that permeated the low-ceilinged rooms only added to the atmosphere as he spun yarns of dangerous dives to merchant ships, German U-Boats, and his personal favorite, the Andrea Doria, which lay about 50 miles off the coast of Nantucket in icy North Atlantic waters. He’d get this kind of faraway look and effect a reverential tone in describing his harrowing descent and penetration of the palatial Italian ocean liner which had sunk in 1957 when struck by a Swedish ship on a foggy night, causing the deaths of some 46 passengers and crew.

  “See, the Doria lies in over 200 feet of water,” he’d explained, fondling a tea cup snatched from the First Class section of the ship. “When I was ready to finally attempt a dive on her, I hooked on wit’ a charter boat out of New Jersey with some of my most experienced diver pals. We’d all been diving for a while, but the Andrea Doria is somethin’ you got to work up to. Part of it is the depth, which at the deepest is like 250 feet. But also, once you get inside it’s a freakin’ mess. First of all, the ship lays on its side, so everything from engine parts to machinery to furniture is trown all over the place. Then you got miles of wires and cables reaching out for you like snakes. Get snagged on that stuff and you’re a goner.”

  “How come?” asked Bortnicker. “Don’t you have a dive buddy with you?”

  “Nah,” said Kenny. “What you guys are learnin’ is basic recreational diving, which seldom exceeds 100 feet. So the buddy system is a must. But in deep sea wreck diving, you’re squeezin’ through openings that are only big enough for one guy. And even if there was somebody wit’ you, what happens is the guy in trouble could panic and rip off the other guy’s regulator if he knows he’s low on air. So now you got two guys in trouble.

  “Another problem is, at that depth, as you two are learnin’ in your dive chart study, you can’t just shoot to the surface after 20 minutes of bottom time at 200 feet. You have to decompress by climbing the boat’s anchor line in stages, stopping off at certain levels and hangin’, so your system equalizes. If you come up too fast you suffer ‘the bends’, which is the buildup of gas bubbles in your system. Remember the comparison I gave you in class?”

  “The seltzer bottle thing?” said T.J.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Like I said, think of what happens if you quickly open a seltzer bottle. You can get a violent overflow of bubbles. Well, underwater that takes the form of an embolism in your bloodstream, which can cause blindness, a stroke, or even death.

  “But if you twist the cap slowly, letting the air out a little at a time to ease the pressure, you’re all right—no spill. That’s what decompression stops are for, to let your body equalize. At the depth of 200 feet, you’d have to do roughly an hour of decompression on your way up; with each measured stop, the time you hang there increases, from five minutes to 25 or so.

  “What’s happened is, some guys get disoriented down there; they panic, lose their sense of reason, and figure they don’t have enough air left to decompress. So, up they go, like a freakin’ rocket, and only bad things can happen from then on.

  “What’s good about youse guys is that with your basic certification, you’ll be good to go in shallow water, so a lot of this won’t apply. But you gotta learn it, anyway. So, what is it this TV show’s gonna have you do?”

  “Well,” said T.J., “as near as I can figure it, there was this pirate named William Tarver in the 1700s who used Bermuda as a safe harbor between trips to Jamaica and England. He later established an estate on the island that’s said to be haunted, which is why we’re going there. But, a year or so ago a guy with a dive shop business like yours found a wreck, mostly by accident, way out past the reefs of the South Shore—”

  “And they think it’s this pirate’s?”

  “Exactly,” said Bortnicker. “According to records they uncovered in the Bermuda Maritime History archives, the ship suddenly went missing in an area near where the dive shop captain found the remnants of a wreck. So it could be the one.”

  “Was it sunk by another ship, scuttled on purpose, or lost in a storm?”

  “They don’t know,” said T.J. “Kinda mysterious.”

  “Well,” said Capt. Kenny, “not for nothing, but what light are you two greenhorns supposed to shed on this?”

  “I don’t think they want us to do any scientific stuff at all,” said T.J. “The show’s mostly about the pirate’s estate house. I think they just want us to cruise by the wreck to add to the show. Gonzo Ghost Chasers does that all the time for like the first ten minutes of an episode. They call it ‘local color’.”

  “Humpf,” grunted Capt. Kenny. “I still think they’re asking you to do too much. Just make sure you learn as much from me as you can for as long as we’re here.”

  As T.J. and Bortnicker came to realize, there was so much that could go wrong on a dive: a leaky face mask, a tear in your buoyancy vest, running out of air, slicing your air hose on sha
rp coral, rip currents and sharks and barracuda and moray eels ... but oh, the rewards! Capt. Kenny’s thrilling diving stories had prompted the teens into watching reruns of shows like Deep Sea Detectives, which featured wreck dives hundreds of feet down. Bortnicker also haunted the Fairfield Public Library, bringing home armfuls of National Geographic and History Channel specials with a diving (preferably also pirate) theme which they hungrily devoured during the dreary days of March and April, when it seemed to rain as much as it had snowed in January and February.

  Somehow, despite their dive fever, they had still managed to keep their grades up, and both had been chosen for the JV baseball team, T.J. as a centerfielder and Bortnicker as a statistician. But their upcoming adventure always loomed in the background.

  After the written test had come some intense water training at a local college’s Olympic-sized pool. To even qualify for that the boys had to swim the length of the pool six times without stopping, a gargantuan task for Bortnicker, whose hobbies of model railroading and video games hardly left him in the best of shape. Fortunately, unlike a couple of their older classmates, neither boy had panicked on their first dives to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. In fact, Capt. Kenny, who was always cognizant that the teens were in training for an Adventure Channel appearance, took special interest in technique and safety at every step.