by Rick Hautala
The tape played back the heavy clump of footsteps on either the front steps or a wooden floor of the lighthouse. They were halting, as though the person was hesitant, unsure if he should proceed. Then, with a low, fear-tinged voice, the writer’s recorded voice said, “What the hell is that?”
There was another loud banging sound, and then several seconds of hissing silence on the tape. Everyone in the bar seemed to be holding their breath as they listened. Glenn was so focused on the tape, waiting to hear the writer’s voice again, that he realized he’d been hearing something else for several seconds before it finally registered.
“Hold on a second,” he said.
His hands were tingling as he stopped the tape, pressed rewind for a few seconds and then started the tape again.
“Listen,” he said. His voice was a raw whisper as he leaned forward with both elbows on the bar. He raised the small tape recorder and held it close to his ear.
The sound was so faint it was all but nonexistent, but it was there. Glenn recognized the echoing, tinkling sounds of an out-of-tune piano. It took him a heartbeat or two to acknowledge that the sound was actually on the tape, not coming from the next room or outside. He turned the volume up as high as it would go, but the faint, teasing sound faded away, lost in the static hiss of the otherwise blank tape.
“You hear that?” Glenn’s eyes leaped back and forth from Plug to Butter to Shantelle and back to Plug.
“I didn’t hear a goddamned thing,” Butter said. His forehead was furrowed with confusion, and he cocked his head to one side, looking like a dog that was listening to a high frequency whistle that humans can’t hear.
“No, no. Listen again,” Glenn said.
He rewound the tape and played it again, making sure the volume was turned all the way up. Once again, he heard the writer say, “What the hell was that?” followed by the loud bang and then utter silence until, through the tape hiss, there came the unmistakable sounds of a piano playing “Listen to the Mockingbird.”
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Butter said, gasping as he sat back and let his shoulders slump. His mouth hung open, exposing his single yellow tooth. His eyes were wide and held a wild, confused gleam.
Glenn quickly rewound the tape, and they all listened one more time. This time, everyone in the bar confirmed that they heard the faint strains of the distinctive tune.
“You ain’t fucking with us, are you Glennie?” Shantelle asked. Her eyes were wide, dark pools in the dim barroom light.
Glenn couldn’t speak. He could barely shake his head, no. His fingers were tingling so badly he’d all but lost his sense of touch. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold onto the tape recorder. A numb, hollow feeling slid open inside his chest, and the cold sensation between his shoulder blades spread like invisible fingers up the back of his neck.
Glenn clicked the tape off and looked around at his friends. They had all heard it, and they were all staring at him as though they expected him to say something profound. But it was Plug who finally spoke up.
“Wanna know what I think?” he said gruffly. Before anyone could draw a breath to speak, he continued, “I think, if you ain’t fuckin’ with us, if this is for real, there’s only one thing you can do.”
“’N what’s that?” Glenn looked at him, his eyebrows raised in desperate query.
“I think you oughta take that damned tape recorder, zip it back into that carrying case with all that other shit, put a heavy stone in ‘n drop it overboard when you go out lobsterin’ tomorrow mornin’.”
Plug raised his hand and pointed a gnarled forefinger at Glenn, shaking it like a schoolteacher who was scolding a child.
“’Cause if that tape’s for real,” he said, “there ain’t no one ever gonna see that writer fella alive again. Not on The Nephews ‘n not anywhere else.”
Plug tipped his head back and drained his beer glass with a few deep swallows. After wiping his chin and beard with the flat of his hand, he leaned forward and pinned Glenn with an intense, earnest look.
“That fella drove up here, you say?”
Glenn’s throat was so dry he could barely swallow as he nodded and said, “Uh-huh.”
“Well, then,” Plug said, heaving himself up off the bar stool, preparing to leave. “If I was you, while it’s still dark, I’d think about drivin’ his car out to Nickerson’s Quarry and pushin’ it off Big Derrick Ledge where the water’s deepest.”
Plug was unsteady on his feet as he took two twenties from his wallet and dropped them onto the bar in front of Shantelle. Before he left, he belched loudly as he leaned close to Glenn. His breath was sour with beer and stale with chaw when he whispered into Glenn’s ear,
“’N I’d think ‘bout movin’ them thirty or forty traps you got out there by the Nephews a bit to the south of the harbor.”
A Good Day for Dragons
The waves hissed and writhed like a nest of snakes as they washed across the wet sand, leaving behind dirt-flecked froth that bubbled for a moment before it disappeared, pulled back into the waves. The dragon walked along the beach close to the water’s edge, leaving huge, round craters wherever he stepped. The holes were soon swept away by the next rush of the rising tide. The dragon’s name was Benedict—Benny, for short. The boy who sat confidently astride Benny’s back between his large, leathery wings was called “Alfie.”
The day was picture perfect … a good day for dragons. If it hadn’t been for a very slight chill that blew in off the water, the day would have been beyond compare. But now the sun was dropping low in the western sky, casting Benny and Alfie’s shadow across the sand dunes like a rippling wash of deep blue ink. The salty tang in the air was laced with adventure, but so far Benny and Alfie had been disappointed. They had spent the entire afternoon lying on the beach, enjoying the sun and sand, and taking an occasional dip in the ocean. But all day, they had been expecting the pirates to return to Mockingbird Bay. And all day, there hadn’t been even the slightest hint of their black-hulled ship on the horizon.
“Maybe we scared ‘em away for good yesterday,” Alfie suggested, leaning close to Benny’s ear so the dragon could hear him above the gentle roar of the surf.
“I doubt it,” Benny replied. He had a deep, booming voice that sounded like distant thunder. “They don’t scare easily.”
“Neither do we.”
Benny paused and turned to look out to sea. The ocean heaved with tall, white-crested swells that rippled like flame in the light of the setting late afternoon sun. Out past South Port Head, the sky and water blazed with a dazzling display of orange and yellow that blended so perfectly that it was all but impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. The setting sun shone warmly on their faces, the last traces of this perfect summer day. Alfie sighed as he wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead with his bare forearm. His other hand rested gently on the hilt of the wooden sword he wore under his belt.
“What if they landed on the other side of the headlands?”
Alfie waved his head in the direction of the huge, rounded hill that jutted out into the ocean. Waves crashed against the rocks, sending white plumes of surf up into the sky.
“What if they’re sneaking up behind us right now?”
A shiver rippled like an earth tremor through Benny. He belched. He did that whenever he got nervous. It was usually followed by a burst of flame from his nostrils but, thankfully, that didn’t happen this time. Benny realized it would have been all right if it had. He was facing out to sea, and he wouldn’t have burned anything except perhaps a swatch of sand and seaweed, or maybe he would have made the seawater boil and bubble a bit. When he really let loose, his breath was hot enough to turn beach sand into tiny beads of glass, which Alfie simply loved. He told Benny he took those glass beads home to his mother as gifts, and she would string them in her hair and around her neck. But Benny had never seen Alfie’s mother, and he began to wonder if she existed at all.
But glass beads and burned kelp and i
nvisible mothers were the furthest things from either of their minds.
The pirates, led by the vicious captain known as “Skipper Black,” had come ashore yesterday morning, shortly after sunrise. It had taken all of Benny and Alfie’s bravery and skill as warriors to defend the beach. Only after a hard-fought battle that had lasted for hours and hours, when the sun was at its hottest, did the pirates finally retreat to their ship and sail away. Benny was so exhausted from the fighting that he didn’t have any flames left to burn the pirate ship before it sailed out of the bay. Alfie reminded him to save some of his fiery breath if the pirates showed up later, but yesterday afternoon had passed peacefully, as had today, and evening was drawing on.
“Should we go around the headlands and check?” Benny asked, turning his head, which was the size of a small pony, so he could look back at Alfie.
Alfie cupped his chin with his hand and was silent for a long moment as he stared out across the glittering water. The sunlight was so dazzling that it would be easy not to see the pirate ship heaving over the waves until it was too late. Dark red clouds were closing in fast, looking like the slashes of angry claw marks across the sky. Alfie had a far-away look in his eyes, and Benny wondered if his friend could see better than he could. Alfie claimed that he could, but Benny wasn’t always sure he trusted everything Alfie said. He’d been known to exaggerate on occasion … like the time he told Benny about the fairy fruit he had stolen when he surprised a group of fairies having a midnight picnic.
What’s a little boy doing out in the woods at midnight? Benny wanted to know.
And if he had eaten fairy fruit, he wouldn’t be here today to talk about it. He would have been taken off to the fairies’ home, under the hill.
Before Alfie could say anything, they got their answer.
A cannon boomed from somewhere far off in the distance. The sound rolled and echoed within the small, sheltered cove so at first, neither Benny nor Alfie were sure from which direction it had come.
“From the north,” Alfie said, pointing in that direction, but Benny shook his scaly green head and said, “No. From the south.”
“Are you sure?”
“A dragon’s ears are much sharper than his eyes,” Benny said knowingly. “And his eyes are sharper than an eagle’s.”
His shoulders and back grew rigid with tension. His wings, which were tucked up close to his body, began to twitch.
“What say we fly there?” Alfie said, his voice pitched high with excitement. He was never happier than when they were flying together … especially if Benny was also breathing flames down on their enemies. Yesterday and—hopefully—today it was pirates, but the day before that—and maybe the day after tomorrow—it would be Indians … or aliens from outer space. It didn’t matter who they were fighting, whenever they were in the air, Alfie whooped and hollered and waved his arms with delight as Benny soared above the earth and belched his fiery breath upon their mortal enemy du jour.
“I suppose we could go up and have a look around,” Benny said. He knew how much Alfie loved to fly and was teasing him. “Are you sure you want to?”
Alfie nodded with excitement lighting his eyes.
“Hold on tightly, then.”
Alfie clung to Benny’s neck and dug his knees into the dragon’s scaly flanks as, with a few quick hops followed by several powerful strokes of his wings, the dragon became airborne. The ground receded at a rapid, dizzying rate. The higher up into the sky they went, the stronger the wind blew in their faces. Alfie’s long, dark hair was pulled straight back, and he narrowed his eyes to mere slits so he could see better. The patchwork of sand and sea grass and surrounding forest and ocean quickly receded, growing smaller and smaller by the second.
“Look!” Alfie called out with delight. “I can see my house from here!”
Benny chuckled. Alfie always said that even though he had never invited Benny to his house, and all he could see for miles around was sand and sea and forest.
“Do you see the pirates?” Benny asked.
Alfie took a moment to look around and then, raising his arm and pointing—even though everyone knows it is not polite for children to point—he cried out, “Over there!”
Benny turned in a wide, swooping circle and scanned the bay until he saw the ship. It was anchored close to shore on the lee side of the headlands, almost—but not quite—hidden from sight in the gathering gloom. The ship’s hull was painted black, but its brightly painted spars glowed like ice-fire in the setting sun. On the deck, the pirates were swarming about in a flurry of activity. It didn’t take Benny or Alfie long to figure out what they were doing. They were priming their cannons, getting them ready to shoot.
“Do you think they’re going to shoot at us?” Alfie shouted.
The wind whistled past their ears, making it all but impossible for either of them to hear, but Benny caught the gist. He considered for a moment what to do, and then he nodded sagely.
“Why else would they get their guns ready?”
“Maybe they’re going to attack the town,” Alfie said.
Even from this high up, they couldn’t see the tiny town of South Port, but it was a short distance down the coast.
Alfie and Benny didn’t have to wait long to find out what the pirates intended.
Far down below them, they heard one of the pirates shout a command as he pointed up into the sky with the hook that used to be his left hand. A black tri-cornered hat with a billowing white ostrich plume that draped down his back identified Skipper Black immediately. Within seconds, several of the pirates rolled the cannon backwards, angling it up … and up … and up into the sky. One man—a short, squat man wearing a red and white striped jersey and brown canvas pants torn off at the knees—touched the fuse with a torch. A second or two later, a blue puff of smoke issued from the mouth of the cannon. The cannonball hurled past them with an angry scream, close enough so both boy and dragon felt the wind as it passed. Then, as though from the bottom of a deep well, there came an echoing boom that was actually more frightening than almost getting hit by a flying cannonball.
“Let’s get out of here! Quick!” Alfie shouted, but Benny ignored him. Swooping first to the left and then to the right, he gave his wings several powerful flaps until he was directly above the pirate ship.
“Are you crazy?” Alfie shouted.
His knees dug into Benny’s back, and he had to hold on for dear life, but Benny ignored him as he stalled in the air and then plummeted straight down, heading directly toward the pirate ship like an arrow in flight. The wind shrieked in their ears.
On board the ship, there was a flurry of action as the pirates scrambled for their weapons. Guns and swords and knives flashed like angry flames in the setting sun. The clash of metal against metal rose into the sky. Alfie clung tightly to Benny’s neck, positive that the pirates would get in a few good shots before they were within range of Benny’s fiery breath.
“We could get hurt!” Alfie screamed. He didn’t say the word “killed” because no one ever died when they fought the pirates … except pirates.
Below them, a few muskets smoked, and lead balls whistled past Benny on left and right. The popping sounds they made were like a string of firecrackers going off. The pirates’ upraised swords made the deck of the ship bristle like a silver porcupine. A mighty roar went up from Skipper Black’s scurvy crew as Benny swooped down on them, gathering speed as he fell with a few gentle flaps of his wings. Benny waited until he was less than fifty feet away from the bow of the ship before unleashing his fire. Flames belched from his nostrils and mouth, roaring like a tornado as they swept across the upper deck.
Moving as fast as he was and coming straight down, the heat of Benny’s breath washed back over them, but both dragon and boy watched, laughing, as the pirates scrambled about, their shabby clothes on fire. They screamed as they dove overboard into the ocean to extinguish the flames. The deck was set afire, and those few pirates who were still on board tried mightily t
o extinguish them, but Benny and Alfie both saw the small line of flame that ran across the wooden planking, heading toward the stack of gunpowder barrels.
“Oh-h-h … This is going to be fun,” Benny said, loud enough for Alfie to hear him above the sounds of mayhem on the ship.
They swooped to the right, swinging out over the water past the headlands. Benny was braking and coming about, his left wing touching the water, when the first barrel of gunpowder exploded. A terribly bright flash of orange and red lit up the sheltered cove just before a thunderous roar shook the earth, sea, and sky. Alfie clung tightly to Benny’s neck, and they were both laughing as they watched one keg of gunpowder after another go off like tumbling dominoes.
Pirates howled and wailed, their burning clothes turning them into tiny comets as more of them flew through the air and landed with loud sizzling hisses in the heaving ocean. All the while, Skipper Black stood as though rooted to the deck, glaring up at his enemies. He raised his good hand in a fist and shook it at them.
“Come down here, you scurvy knaves!” he shouted. “Come down here ‘n fight, if’n yea be a man!”
Both Alfie and Benny chuckled because, between them, there wasn’t anything close to a man … They were just a boy and his dragon … or a dragon and his boy.
“Shall we oblige him?” Alfie asked in a voice that was too high-pitched to sound really brave. But the expression on his face, in his eyes, was one of grim determination.
“Oblige,” Benny echoed. “Such a fancy word for what you and I want to do to Skipper Black.”
Benny sailed around in a wide arc over the burning pirate ship. A huge column of black smoke spiraled into the darkening sky, bending toward the shore with the Easterly breeze. Some men, their hair and clothes singed, their faces smudged with soot, splashed about in the water while others still on deck struggled to extinguish the last of the flames.
“Well, it’s not very sporting to blast them with fire and not give them a fighting chance, now. Is it?” Alfie said.