by Don Sloan
He returns up and down the ladder seven more times, loading and reloading, before he finally finishes the job, saving the last five shots for any that are still twitching and moaning. The bluebottle flies, already thick on the human dung that is everywhere in the hold, now find new and fresher sustenance, and begin to swarm busily among the heaped and scattered bodies, preferring to light on the fresh, bloody wounds or on the still-wide eyes of the men, so white in their black faces.
Willingham now considers his final move: the one that will bring him to shore while the Elizabeth Ann goes to the bottom of the Atlantic. He originally had considered spreading gunpowder around the hold and then lighting a trail of it once he got the lifeboat for himself ready. Now, he thinks of a much more simple solution.
He goes to the carpenter’s berth and finds a heavy hammer and an awl and with these simple tools he begins bashing holes in the sides of the schooner, first allowing only a small stream of seawater into the hold, then still more as he widens the hole. He does this eight more times in different places around the hold and, as he surveys the mounds of lifeless black men, swarming with flies, he also notes with satisfaction that the water is already a foot deep in the hold.
This will give him plenty of time to make his way to his own locker and to pack provisions into a lifeboat before the ship finally sinks. And, it will allow time for him to break into the captain’s safe, where he knows that more than $10,000 waits in new bank notes―money laid aside to pay the crew and to buy provisions, along with the Old Man’s life savings. Willingham even begins to whistle a tuneless melody as he works, beginning to look forward to his new life as a prosperous landowner in Cape May, New Jersey.
As he turns to climb the ladder, however, something floating on the rising water bumps his leg. He looks down to see a small polished mahogany carving of a man, perfect in every detail, and rubbed smooth as glass, as though it has been stroked thousands of times. Willingham picks it up and examines the idol, apparently brought on board by one of the slaves as insurance—a means of keeping its former owner safe against harm. The idea makes Willingham give a sharp bray of laughter and he thrusts the carving deep into his own pocket before climbing the ladder to freedom.
the strangest thing happened last night
what was it, my dear?
a young man came to the shore with the intention of
throwing caution to the four winds, and he danced on the balcony stark naked while the moon shone full upon
their captain who crouched with his muzzle-loaded pistol at the ready, waiting
for the endless stream of conversation to reach that point in any good party where you have to shout into your partner’s ear to be heard.
And so what happened, darling?
The shots were fired: bang, bang, bang, bang, but the towel that was wrapped around the barrel deadened the sounds and
ended with the young man floating face up in the surf, wearing only a tuxedo coat with tails
well, at least he was dressed in style
my dear, that was in bad taste
yes, but the taste of the oysters was divine in season and you know how little China Miller would cry until she had her fill
of men three times her size and when she was done, she enjoyed licking the blades of the meat grinder just for the salty taste.
The voices were running day and night, up and down the shoreline, racing to keep pace with the surf that pounded on the gritty, snowy sand, the waves that had borne in with them so long ago the small dark cargo of malice and dread.
But not all the voices that chirped approval now were in accord, and, for the first time in more than a century, in the midst of their giddy, exultant girl-talk, at least one voice had fallen silent and now only listened in sad resignation.
Chapter 6
Nathan rapped his bare knuckles against the freezing panes of Sarah’s front door, rattling the glass. It was just past 2 p.m. on Tuesday and he wondered if Sarah might be taking a nap. But her lithe frame suddenly appeared in the hallway and she came to the door quickly.
“Hi,” she said. She was dressed in jeans and a bulky fisherman’s sweater the color of vanilla bean ice cream. But her hands were covered from fingertip to elbow in yellow rubber gloves. The overall effect was that she had just stepped off a seagoing salmon trawler, but Nathan decided to keep the observation to himself.
“Doing a little spring cleaning?” he asked.
She pulled a wry face and answered, “Funny. As if spring has any intention of ever getting here.” She opened the door for him and then shut it behind him as he stepped into the foyer. “Just sprucing up the place a little.”
He noted a pail and mop in a doorway just under the stairs. “Well, if no one’s been here in five or six years, I’d say you have your work cut out for you. Need a hand or a break?”
She smiled and Nathan saw she was as beautiful as he remembered, with facial skin the color of roses and milk.
“A break would be welcome. Come in and have a seat. Want me to build a fire?”
“Not now, thanks. Do you have any coffee?”
“Coffee sounds good. I’ll brew up a fresh pot.” She disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen.
He followed her into the kitchen. She busied herself with the preparations.
“The coffee’s perking, or whatever they call it now―dripping? Yuck. That sounds terrible,” she said, and laughed, glad Nathan was here and glad to be spared for a while the task she had undertaken for the day: scrubbing the downstairs bathroom floor.
“How did you survive the storm last night?” Nathan asked, seating himself on the sofa in the parlor. Sarah sat down close by.
“It was a pretty weird night. I had dreams that seemed so real. And they weren’t all good dreams. In fact, I finally had to make myself wake up from one of them.”
“Sounds like my night,” he said. “Only I didn’t have a dream—just a strange hallucination or something. I think maybe our imaginations must be getting the better of us and I’m just glad it’s daylight, even with a storm still blowing outside.” He remembered the smell and the slithering, dragging noise only too well. He glanced over at a window, draped in a sheer cotton fabric that permitted thin daylight into the room. “Looks like it’s finally winding down out there.”
“I hope so,” Sarah said. “I really don’t miss television or radio―or even Internet―i left my SmartPhone at home, can you believe it? But I’d like to know there will be an end to this snow sometime soon. My vacation here won’t last forever”
Nathan laughed. “I feel the same way. I’m without my Blackberry for the first time in months, but I wanted no distractions. I enjoy my work, but when you pack your vacation into two weeks right before the busiest tax time of the year, you want it to be relaxing.” He smiled at her and said, “You really are a thorough housekeeper, scrubbing the floors down.”
She laughed again, but this was a more nervous sound, forced out rather than uttered naturally. “Not really. If you want to know, it has to do with the dream I had last night.”
They walked back into the kitchen. Nathan took the steaming mug of coffee from Sarah’s hands and held it gratefully up to his nose, sniffing it like a connoisseur with a rare vintage in front of him. He took a sip and said, “This is great. Thanks. So, tell me about this dream.”
And Sarah recounted it, exactly as she had experienced it, right down to the unfortunate incident in which the entire dinner party had been interrupted by the shrieks of Mrs. Presbury in the bathroom doorway.
She was grateful when Nathan did not laugh or ridicule her. Now that she had told it, the whole thing sounded like foolish nonsense. “I’m overreacting, I know.”
Nathan shook his head and set his coffee mug on the kitchen table. “I’m not so sure.”
“What in the world does that mean?” Sarah said, eyeing him carefully over the rim of her coffee mug.
He fell silent for a moment, thinking. Sarah looked at him, and noted how
boyishly handsome he was―again, in a Peter Parker, boy-next-door sort of way. His brown hair poked out from under his Phillies ballcap and his startling blue eyes―almost the color of reef water in the Mediterranean, she thought―were now unfocused and dreamy, clearly reflecting his thought process. She sipped her coffee and waited.
“Sarah, when you were growing up and coming to the shore as a child, did you ever hear ghost stories about these old houses?”
Sarah laughed. “Well, sure. My cousins tormented us in the dark with these terrible old stories about people getting killed here—but they were just stories, right? They weren’t real.”
“I don’t know anymore. I came across some old newspapers in my attic yesterday that talk about some incidents just like you describe from about the time you’re describing. Maybe there’s a connection.”
“A connection? What kind of connection?”
“That’s what I’m not sure of,” Nathan said, shaking his head.
“Oh, and somehow my dreams here suddenly have become the catalyst for the recreation of them? Nathan, I’m not buying that. Do you believe in that sort of thing?”
Nathan looked unsure of himself. He was not by nature a believer in the occult or superstition. And yet something inside his mind had just clicked when Sarah told him about the dream.
“Look, this may be a crazy thing to do, and it may or may not make you feel better, but I think we should go back to my house and check something out.”
“What, now?” Sarah turned off the coffee maker and followed Nathan out into the hall. “What about this coffee I just made?”
“We’ll take it with us,” he said with a grin. Come on.”
And opening the front door for Sarah, they went out into what had become—at least for the moment—a light snowfall.
Chapter 7
October, 1890
One hundred yards out to sea, directly in a line with the Cape May Point light, a lone seaman is laboriously fighting his way through the heavy surf and brutal storm in a sturdy wooden longboat with a tall prow. Every dip of his oars brings him closer to the shoreline, only to be swept back another 15 feet. The swells are huge, and are getting larger as he nears the shoreline.
He has been pulling on the oars for more than two hours and the ship from which he came has long since vanished from sight in the wind and rain. His knotted muscles are cramping and every stroke is an effort. Finally, some luck comes his way in the form of a cresting wave that bears him almost straight up one side and then down the other, tilting him just a bit to bring him more on a straight line with the crest. It is as though a roller coaster ride has begun for the seaman, and he ships the oars and hangs on for dear life. Straight down the wave he shoots in the longboat, like an arrow from the bow of a master archer, down and inside the curl of the wave, so that all he can see is a foaming, churning pipe full of angry water.
On and on he rides, clinging to the gunwales and crouching in the sheets. The sound is deafening, and still he rides on, until at last he reaches the end of the curl and finds himself bobbing harmlessly in a shallow line of hissing surf. Seizing the moment, he jumps from the longboat and pulls it far up the sand bar. Then, he flings himself down on the beach and lies like a dead man. The rain continues to pelt him and the surf rises up now and again to touch his feet, but it always recedes quickly, until finally the storm moves back out to open water, taking with it the tide and the rain. The seaman is left alone on the sand, right in the shadow of the Cape May light. Darkness comes, and still he lies there, trying to make himself move.
And so it is that he dimly perceives her standing there: a seventeen-year-old girl, whose life was changed forever seven years earlier, when her father was killed by an Italian craftsman. She looks down with curiosity at the bedraggled seaman, wondering why the voices in her head have sent her to this place, at this time. Now the voices coo their approval, and Moira stoops to fill her straw hat with seawater. She stands for just a moment within arm’s reach of William Willingham, then silently upends it over his face.
Chapter 8
Bundles of newspapers lay scattered about the hearth rug in front of Nathan’s fireplace. “Well,” Nathan said, as he threw another log on the fire, “we’ve been through papers as far back as 1880 and sifted out all the possibilities. I never knew Cape May had such a violent past.” They had been at it for more than two hours, reading the old papers and trying to draw a connection—any connection—between their experiences and the documents in Nathan’s attic.
Sarah took a sip of hot tea and drew a pensive expression. “I suppose you could say that about any town of any size. Remember, we’re only looking for the articles on violent happenings. There have also been a lot of garden clubs and sappy accounts of visiting relatives.”
“True,” he replied. He picked up one of the bundles and began untying the twine that held it together. “What seems funny to me is that none of these accounts bear much resemblance to your dreams, or to my weird experience. I think maybe we’re just chasing ghosts that don’t really exist.” He shrugged. “I’m no crime scene investigator or forensics specialist. I imagine if it comes to it we can remove a plank from your bathroom and have it analyzed. But right now, I don’t relish the idea of going into the local police station with a board in my hand and a wild story about a dream.” He smiled to soften the words.
Sarah smiled back. “You’re right. Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s finish this stack and then go to dinner. I’m starving.”
“Sounds good. You take half and I’ll take half.”
But they had not been skimming the contents of the papers―all from the 1920s and 30s―for very long when Sarah gasped and put a hand up to her mouth. Without a word, she handed the paper’s obituary section to Nathan. There, side by side, were photos of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Presbury, late of Philadelphia. The account made no mention whatsoever of the manner of death, and only went into detail about their families and burial arrangements. For a long moment, neither of them knew what to say. The date on the newspaper was May 23, 1925. Arnold had been born in 1888 in Philadelphia, and had worked as a trader in tobacco futures. Mrs. Presbury, who had been born Naomi Irene Thorndyke in 1890, was a homemaker who had apparently grown up in suburban Philadelphia, attending all the right prep schools for women of that era. They had two children, a son and daughter and no grandchildren at the time of death. Various other relations were mentioned, along with details of the interment in a Philadelphia cemetery. But nothing was said, either in that section or any other, about the cause of death.
“Holy cow,” said Nathan. “You even had their names right. Sarah, how could you know this?”
Sarah had gotten up and was warming her hands at the fire. “I’m not sure,” she said with sudden passion. “I have no earthly idea or explanation for it. But, Nathan, I was there. I was there when this man stabbed his wife in the temple and then finished killing himself. They were guests at my dinner party, for Christ’s sake!”
Nathan crossed the room and put an arm around Sarah, who had begun shivering uncontrollably. “Listen, it was only your dinner party in a dream, remember? It’s not as though you were responsible for these deaths. We don’t even know for sure how the Presburys died. For all we know they died in a car accident or from a hundred other possible causes. My guess is that somewhere in that old house you ran across a reference to their names, maybe on a newspaper like this, or an old address book, probably on some other visit to the shore. I’m not saying you didn’t have the experience you had last night in your dream. All I’m saying is that there is a rational explanation for two people dying and the coincidence of your populating two people in your dream with the same last name. That name was buried someplace in your subconscious and you just happened to put it into place at the right time.”
Sarah’s body relaxed a bit. “I know you’re right. And it really doesn’t prove anything. It’s just―I wasn’t expecting this.”
Nathan turned her toward him. She was so beauti
ful, but he also knew she was very vulnerable at that moment and he didn’t want to cross the line between friendship and something more. “Let’s take a break and have dinner. I know a little Greek place in town that will fix us both up.”
Sarah sighed heavily and smiled. “Sounds good. Let’s get out of here.”
They bundled up quickly and left the house, crossing Nathan’s front yard to the front gate and then turning right onto Beach Avenue, then another right on Howard. Nathan purposely changed the subject from crime research to questions about Sarah’s job in Philadelphia as they walked. The snow had now stopped entirely and the last streaks of sunlight were lighting up low-hanging clouds in the west. They took a right on Sewell and a right on Franklin Street and suddenly Nathan pulled up short before a nondescript little restaurant named Sophia’s. A red and green awning had been brushed free of snow and the entry door opened wide to admit them from the cold. Right away a lovely young woman with olive skin and large eyes greeted them and conducted them to a table near the front window. Surprisingly, they were the only ones in the restaurant. The time was not late, only about a quarter past five. Sarah squinted at the menu and admitted that it was all Greek to her.
“Well, at least you give new meaning to an old joke,” Nathan said with a chuckle. He turned to the young woman. “We’ll have a bottle of red table wine and split a spinach salad―if that’s OK with you?” he asked Sarah.
She raised her hand in a brief wave and Nathan gave the menus back to the waitress, who departed. “You know, this vacation of mine is turning out both better and worse than I expected,” she said.
“How so?” Nathan asked. The waitress had reappeared with the wine and poured it into two large wineglasses. As she left, Nathan raised his glass and tinked hers. “To adventures.”
“To adventures, indeed,” Sarah said. She took a long sip of the wine and felt the warmth from the fruity blend course down her throat and into the upper part of her stomach. “We’d better get some bread to go with this wine, or you’ll have to carry me home.”