Hook's Tale

by John Leonard Pielmeier

  * * *

  “Mr. Darling? Mr. George Darling?”

  “Yes?” The man turned in my direction as I approached him.

  “Might I have a word with you?”

  He cocked his head slightly at the sight of me.

  “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “You do know me in a certain way, and then again you don’t. I believe I’m your half brother.”

  I might have been gazing again into Slinque’s bathroom mirror. That is why, I explained to myself, I experienced such an odd feeling of déjà vu at the sight of him. He was slightly heavier than I, and his coloring a tad paler, but anyone seeing us side by side would know at once we were brothers. (This is one thing that wretched play got right: by a remarkable coincidence the conceited actor playing the Pirate Moi decided that the leading part of Villain was not enough for him; he demanded he play the children’s father too.)

  Whatever I was seeing in him, George Darling was likewise seeing in me.

  “My God,” he whispered and turned even paler. It would not do to question my claim; the evidence was standing before him.

  * * *

  We breakfasted at a club not far from his Fleet Street office. He sent a message to his secretary saying he would be delayed indefinitely due to an unexpected client meeting. Both of us ordered the same meal—tomato omelet, dry toast, fried onions, no potatoes—and both our orders sat untouched before us as we talked.

  My existence, though surprising, was not altogether unexpected. He knew the circumstances of his mother Angela’s death, and as an adolescent had found a series of love letters written to her by our mutual father. George knew he looked nothing like his legal father. As a child he had been told over and over how much he resembled his late mother, Angela, with no mention ever being made of George Darling Senior—and when he found the love letters he fell upon the truth. This was more a relief than not—he respected George Senior, but did not care very much for him, as they had little in common. George Junior entertained fantasies of his birth father’s identity, but he never knew the man’s full name—the letters were signed only “Your loving James”—so it was with great excitement that he listened to my story.

  I illustrated our relationship on the back of an envelope as I explained it. “It’s quite simple, really. Two sisters, Angela and Margaret, met and fell in love with two brothers, James and Arthur Cook. Margaret married Arthur, but Angela was already married, to George Darling Senior. James too had commitments; namely, my mother and myself. Still, he and Angela loved each other, and you were the happy outcome.”

  I admitted that I had learned of his existence only days before. I told him that our father was captain of a ship that had been lost at sea, and that we were quite possibly direct descendants of the explorer James Cook. I said that I too was a sea captain, and my visits to London were rare. He was astonished to learn that we were nearly the same age. We parted with a hearty handshake, and he left me with an invitation to dine with him and his wife that evening. His daughter, he added, would be thrilled to meet her new uncle.

  * * *

  I arrived at Number 14 with flowers for his wife and a smaller bouquet for his little girl. She was three, and a lovelier child I have never seen. She was so delighted with her nosegay that when I presented it to her, once we were seated in the parlor, she danced around my chair and under it and over me. She called me her “new friend,” but her lisping vocabulary could not yet make sense of the word friend and so I became her new “fwendy.” I in turn called her my Wendy. The name, fortunately, stuck.

  They had acquired a Newfoundland puppy the previous Christmas, an intelligent creature whom they named Nana. She was in training, they joked, to become their daughter’s nursemaid, and if successful would act in this capacity to the newest addition to the family once he or she arrived. (Mrs. Darling—who insisted I call her Mary—was expecting another child quite soon.) The dog put me in mind of my own dear pet, and when tears sprang to my eyes Little Wendy asked what had made me so sad. I told her that I had recently lost my own Nana, and she climbed onto my lap and embraced me in consolation.

  Once Wendy (and Nana) were put to bed, George and I had a frank discussion about our father. Mary, I must admit, did not express wholehearted approval of the man, but she did not condemn him either, since his womanizing had resulted in the fellow she loved most in this life, not to mention Wendy’s new half uncle (me). I felt welcomed and appreciated by both of them. I must remark here that George’s character was much warmer than eventually depicted by that gullible Scotsman, but I suppose the fictional George’s infantile blustering was created by the author in order to justify certain preposterous plot developments. Feeding the dog his medicine indeed! The real George Darling was a delightful human being who took his medicine without complaint, and I am proud to think that we resembled each other in so many important ways.

  The dinner was exquisite, the company charming, the evening unforgettable. I can’t say if My Plan was born that night, but I’m sure the seeds of it took root, even though it was some time before it blossomed into what would be my revenge on the murderous Peter.

  * * *

  I left Number 14 around ten o’clock and only then realized I had no place to go. I returned to the Slinque residence, which stood a dark and foreboding silhouette against the night sky. From there I walked to the Kensington town house where I was raised, but I could not remain for long; looking at it brought back so much sadness. Eventually I walked to London Paddington, where I secured a cab to take me—for an enormous sum—to Eton. On my arrival I headed straight to the Eton Wall, which I had found so oddly comforting as a student. I hoisted myself onto it, and remained there for several hours.

  I tried to think of happy things, which meant I could not think of Tiger Lily, or of Daisy, or of my mother, or of my grandfather and Aunt Margaret. I could think only of George and his charming wife and his sweet little girl. I marveled again at how familiar George looked, even though I had gazed at my adult self but briefly in Slinque’s bathroom mirror, and then later in the men’s washroom. That’s when the truth of it struck me like a shot. Tears sprang to my eyes, I hugged myself tight, and my new body was racked with sobs.

  I now began to understand the lies I had been told, and the secret that lay behind them. I suspected the identity of the Great White Father. I understood why I had found the watch and how it had come to be there. I knew at last that, in order to move forward with my life, I had to return to my past.

  What, dear reader, was that realization that struck me so vividly on the Wall? In time, begging your patience, all will be clear. Suffice it to say that, from that moment onward, my mind was made up: I must revisit the Never-Isles. But the only way I could manage that was with the Flying Sand, tucked away in my father’s valise—which valise remained with Slinque—unless, of course, he had tossed it in the rubbish, seeing that it contained only some ragged clothes and a pouch of grainy dirt. Never mind—I had to secure it somehow.

  I caught the first train back to London.

  * * *

  Slinque’s house was dark and silent. I knocked at the front entrance. No one answered. I walked around to the rear and pounded on the back door. Nothing. Useless. I considered moving the cast-iron bench beneath a back window and smashing the glass to gain entrance. The sound, however, might alert neighbors who would call the police. And then I wondered if there might be a way inside via the basement.

  I circled the house again, looking for a door or a window leading below, and found nothing. I did discover, however, a garden shed under the backyard stairs. In the rear of the shed was a door—opening, I hoped, into the basement. It was locked, but I already knew that Slinque’s locks were no match for my determination. With a few well-placed kicks the door flew open.

  The room was dark, low-ceilinged. There was a stench of decay, and the earthen floor was soft and damp. In one corner rose a mound of loose dirt—humped as one finds on a freshly filled grave—an
d I began to fear that Slinque’s experiments with vivisection may not have been limited to the lower primates. (I have since come to suspect that he may have been involved in the Whitechapel affair.) As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed several other grave-like mounds scattered around the basement. But I could not dwell on this discovery. I was on a mission.

  I felt my way to a set of stairs. I mounted as silently as I could, wincing whenever a creak in a tread announced my presence. At the top of the staircase I pushed open the cellar door and entered the ground floor proper. I found myself in a kitchen, spotlessly clean, too clean. Whoever cooked here needed to be certain that there was no trace left of whatever he had eaten. I walked from here to a hallway, to the stairway leading to the first floor. I mounted the steps slowly, rounded the banister, and continued my careful ascent. I still heard not a sound. On reaching the next level I tiptoed into Slinque’s bedroom, fearful I might find him awake in bed, waiting for me with his pistol. But his bed was empty and had not been slept in. My valise was nowhere to be seen. I walked to the bathroom, expecting to find it there. Again I was disappointed.

  The only other place for me to look was the surgery. I braced myself: the last thing I wanted to find was Daisy’s corpse, freshly dissected—or worse, sliced open and splayed, like the frog of my childhood. I paused at the bottom of the dreaded stairs. I heard a sound now: someone was above, moving slowly. Slinque knew of my presence, and was waiting, with gun or scalpel. There was no weapon of defense in sight; all I had to protect myself were words. I would thank him for the clothes and the money. I would express forgiveness (falsely) for what he did to Daisy. I would humbly ask for my father’s valise, and I would leave. Revenge, if it were to come, would arrive on some future date.

  I climbed the stairs, making no attempt to conceal my presence. I opened the surgery door. The sight that greeted me was the worst I had ever seen, far outstripping the murder of the Never-Isle leviathan or the carnage of my recent sea battle.

  The attack must have been swift. I have imagined it in countless nightmares, envisioned it again and again in fantasies of horror. What really happened I’ll never know; what I see in my mind’s eye is quite sufficient.

  As he prepared the chloroform, she seized his ankle and dragged him to the floor. From there the consumption was slow and inevitable. First the foot, or possibly as much as a leg below the knee. Then, while he screamed in horror, she moved on to the other foot, followed by the other leg in its entirety. Once the femoral arteries were severed, blood spurted everywhere, coating walls, floor, even spattering the ceiling. After the legs had been consumed, and the man I knew was but half of his former self, he tried to drag himself away. It was then that she took hold of his middle parts and shook him like a puppy bothering a stuffed toy, after which she opened her maw in an attempt to swallow him whole. He must have died before she bit off his torso at the neck, leaving his head and one arm uneaten. Even a crocodile can devour only so much of a man, wicked as he might be.

  She gave me a ROAR of greeting, and—I swear to you, dear reader—actually wagged her tail. I fell to my hands and knees, crying out with joy, and hugged her close, or as close as one can hug a crocodile. She was full size now, and quite as big as her mother had been. When we were done cuddling, I searched the surgery for some kind of rope to tether her to me for our journey. Oddly enough I found several dog leashes—it seemed that Slinque may have been guilty of canine-napping (the least of his many crimes, I later learned)—and I figured out a way to fasten them together into a kind of crocodile collar. Another leash stretched from this collar to my wrist. I peppered us both with Sand—yes, dear reader, my valise was in the surgery and only slightly bloodied, standing next to a jar labeled HALF A HUMAN KIDNEY—and ascended the stairs to the roof. As the sun rose I aimed us both toward the second star to starboard and headed far, far away.

  PART THREE

  PETER AND WENDY

  Chapter Eight

  We found the Roger anchored between Silly and the Other One, and as we swooped down from the sky I could see that there was trouble aboard.

  Originally I intended to wait until nightfall before I made my way onto the ship, thinking that were I to arrive by daylight, my old shipmates—once they saw it was no bird descending but a strange man tethered to a flying crocodile—would point Long Tom at me and fire away. But I could see from a distance that they were otherwise occupied, and could hear from that same distance the clank of swords, the shouts of attack, the cries of agony, and the lonely howls of death. Daisy and I settled into the crow’s nest without anyone being the wiser. Below me the men of the Roger and the crew from the Princess Alice were fighting fiercely among themselves, but it was unclear to me exactly who was trying to murder whom.

  Captain Starkey and Edward Teynte, for example, sworn enemies the last time I had seen them, now seemed to be fighting side by side against Black Murphy (of the Roger) and Charles Turley (of the Alice). Cecco was screaming unintelligible words at Bloody Pete as they crossed swords, while Smee was darting everywhere sticking everyone with needles and pins whenever he got the chance. At the center of it all was Arthur Raleigh, shouting orders and waving his scythe, though as he stood alone it was difficult to learn for which side he was cheering. A few representatives of both ships lay dead or dying, and nearly everyone else (with the sole exception of Bloody Pete, to my surprise) was streaked with gore, much of it seeping from wounds (their own) both major and minor. In short, it appeared that the conflict had been raging for some time and, unlike legendary battles of fiction and folklore that burned hot for hours at a stretch, this one was decidedly flagging. Swords were dropped by exhausted seamen, and their opponents simply allowed the enemy to stoop and retrieve them while they caught their breath in the blessed respite. Those coups that succeeded in finding their targets were inflicted with the flat of the weapon, not the point—slaps of admonishment rather than thrusts of deadly intent—killing someone takes such a lot of energy, most of which had long since been expended. In short, it was plain that no one wanted the fight to last much longer; it was Honor alone that kept them at it.

  Being fond of several of these men and not wanting to see them suffer, I allowed sentiment to get the better of me. Tugging Daisy along, I stepped from the crow’s nest into the air and slowly descended to alight gracefully (in dancer’s first position) on the roof of the Captain’s Quarters. Those who saw me stopped their fight midswipe and -swoop. Those whose backs were to me, on seeing the wide eyes and gawping maws of their opponents, turned to look for themselves. Everyone gasped, like a group of ladies at a tea party when an elephant enters the room. In less than a minute all fighting ceased and silence, but for a few weak moans from the dying, fell over all.

  “Greetings,” I announced, and Daisy let out a terrible ROAR.

  Unfortunately that was all that was needed to send Bloody Pete, overweight and absolutely gasping for breath, into the arms of Death. His heart exploded at the shock of my unconventional entrance into the scene, and he crashed face-forward, landing at Cecco’s feet. Poor Pete would bleed no more.

  “What manner of thing art thou?” Gentleman Starkey asked.

  “An angel, are you an angel?” Smee exclaimed.

  “With a devil on leash,” Charles Turley muttered.

  “We are neither, good Smee, Mr. Turley.” Both were astonished that I knew their names. “We are James Cook, once a friend to some of you and soon, I pray, a friend to all—and Daisy, who can be very sweet as long as she’s fed.”

  No one said a word.

  “So—Captain Starkey—what’s all this about? When I last saw you, you left me bound to the mainmast on a burning ship. Following my demise, you intended to hang the crew of the Princess Alice, or at least most of them. Your mind was changed, it seems. Please explain.”

  Starkey was as surprised as any of them were at the sight of me. “Begging your pardon, sir—Mr. Cook—that man pleaded for mercy.” He pointed at Arthur Raleigh. “We nee
ded the extra hands, he said, since many of ours were lost in the Alice’s midnight attack. In addition, he reminded me that since our attackers were sailing under Her Majesty’s colors, it was Bad Form to murder them. Being a Christian man, who sheds blood only when it is in Good Form to do so, I pardoned them all.”

  “I see,” I said calmly, “but that hardly explains where we are today.”

  “Yes, well, in short, I could tell that some of them did not trust him,” he continued, still referring to Raleigh, “but were not in a position to complain since he had saved their lives. He then proceeded to work among them, whispering mutiny to those of the Alice who had his sympathy, as well as to those crewmen of our own dear Roger who might be supportive of his cause.”

  “Which was?”

  “Captaincy,” Raleigh announced with conviction. “I declare myself the new captain of this ship. You, dear James, may be my first mate.”

  “I don’t think I’m equipped for that,” I told him, adding, “but we’ll discuss that later. What do you intend to do with those who oppose you, once you’re captain?”

  “Hang them,” he said. “I don’t give a d—n about Bad Form.”

  There was muttering now among those whom he summarily condemned; at last I could identify the various sides of the conflict.

  “Captain Starkey,” I said, turning back to the good Gentleman, “I was present when you first laid eyes on Raleigh here, and couldn’t help but notice that you drew back in alarm, as if you recognized him.”

  “I thought I did,” Starkey answered, “from the cricket fields of England, though this man seems a bit young to have been at school when I was. Perhaps it was his older brother. We played against each other in a public school match, and he cheated abominably. How could I forget such monstrously Bad Form?”