Gaius watched her go. Then he looked back and forth from pirate shades to Dutch ghosts to ghoulish brides. “Wish I had thought to invite William along. This might have been a great place for his people to test out their new project. Of course, having an O.I. rapid response team come rushing in here, testing their latest invention, might have rather spoiled the mood.”
A dandy dressed in British garments from the period of the American War of Independence, lace and vest, tight pants and high boots, stood near the door to the ballroom. He had a sorrowful demeanor and a noose around his neck. A terrible cold accompanied him. Rachel and Gaius both began to shiver.
The ghost reached out and attempted to grab Gaius. “Why did they hang me and not Arnold? He was the traitor! I was innocent! Why did they hang me instead of Benedict Arnold?”
“I…c-can’t h-help you.” Gaius stepped back, his teeth chattering.
The ghost continued to drift closer, imploring. The chattering of Gaius’s teeth grew louder, but he stood in front of Rachel, keeping the spirit from moving toward her.
“Wait. That’s Major Andre. I know what to do,” Rachel cried. “It was in the book.”
She stepped around Gaius and looked the handsome yet haggard ghost in the eyes, asking loudly, “What party are you?”
The ghost’s pleading fell silent. The cold dissipated. The figure of the forlorn British major vanished, leaving only the scent of peaches.
“Wow! That was…rather good,” Gaius had stopped shivering, though he stomped in place, hugging his arms, in his attempt to regain his warmth.
“It was in the book,” Rachel repeated. “Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley. That was the phrase used to catch the major when he was traveling in disguise: ‘What party are you?’. I guess he remembers where things went wrong for him when he hears it. Still, it’s very sad. He had been cajoled into going in disguise and had objected because he did not want to stoop to spying. But the British had killed an American spy, so the Americans executed him.”
“And this happened almost two hundred and fifty years ago, and he hasn’t moved on?” Gaius whistled. “Poor guy.”
They approached several other of the less hideous denizens, but the shades either ignored them or, like Major Andre and Gertji, merely repeated the same few phrases continuously.
“I wonder if this is what Bedlam is like,” murmured Gaius.
Rachel met his gaze and nodded wordlessly.
The music began playing again, this time with a music hall piece Rachel recognized called “I’m Shy, Mary Ellen, I’m Shy.” It was a song her grandfather used to sing occasionally. He had told her it had been a favorite of a band leader friend of his who had died a tragic death. Rachel hummed along with the humorous tune.
With the return of the music, a change came over the spectral crowd. The old seamen lifted their heads; the white ladies raised a hand to their tear-strewn faces and looked about them; the floating girl swayed to the music, a peaceful look on her pale face, which had a blue cast from the flickering flames the color of burning brandy.
One of the sailors, a near-toothless old man with a long tangled beard, actually looked right at Rachel. He even gave her the kind of smile that a fatherly man might give a pretty child.
Rachel crossed to stand before him and curtsied. “Hallo. Who are you?”
“Old Thom,” said the old sailor. “Sailed on The Swallow, carrying iron ore for the blast furnaces up river. Ship went down at World’s End.”
“World’s End?” Gaius asked, intrigued.
Rachel pointed out the empty window and down the Hudson. “I read about that in the books, too. It’s what they used to call that section of the Hudson just north of West Point, where the wind comes down off the Highlands, and the water is over two hundred feet deep. It’s where the Heer of Dunderberg used to attack. Many ships were lost there.”
The grizzled old sailor nodded. “You can still see a few of the wrecks at low tide. Not the ones that went down in World’s End proper, mind you.”
“Tide?” asked Gaius. “Isn’t this a river?”
“Don’t you know about the Hudson, boy?” The grizzly sailor scratched his immaterial beard. “The Hudson has a tide clear up to Albany. The natives that lived in these parts called it Muhheakantuck, The River That Runs Both Ways. They say if you toss a log on the waters up that way, it will take a year to reach Manhattan. Goes eight miles south each day and then seven-and-a-half miles north again.”
“I had no idea.” Gaius blinked. “Been here over three years.”
“Where you from, boy?”
“Cornwall, England.”
A grin split the old sailor’s face. “From Cornwall, England, to Cornwall-on-Hudson, eh?”
“Yeah,” Gaius nodded. To Rachel’s puzzled look, he said, “That’s the name of the town to our left, where Storm King Mountain is.”
“Cornwall-on-Hudson? Really? So, is that where Roanoke is?”
“Oh, I think Roanoke’s at Roanoke,” Gaius replied. “We have our own post office.”
The music changed again. The band launched into the “Blood Waltz”. Ghosts and ghouls floated or shambled into the ballroom beyond.
“Nice band,” said Rachel to the old sailor. She wanted to talk to him more, but she was not sure what to say. “Where do those musicians come from?”
The old sailor grinned his near-toothless grin. “They haunt a wreck in the Atlantic.”
“Say, Mr. Thom,” began Gaius.
“Just Old Thom.”
“Old Thom…do you know any of the others here? Can you tell us who they are?”
“Sure I do! Been coming for years. Now, let’s see…” He turned and examined his fellow spooks. “Most, as you probably know, are sailors whose ships went down in these here waters. The Hudson takes his toll, especially back when Old Dwerg was free.”
“Dwerg?”
“The Storm Goblin.” The old man glanced nervously at the tor, but it remained silent.
“That there Indian woman,” he continued, pointing at the Lenape maiden. “She’s a spirit from Raven Rock. So is the one made of leaves and wind. And the shrieking one is from Spook Rock. They all died lovelorn. Lost their sweeties, one way or another. You scared Major Andre away. Figure you already know who he is.”
“And the floating girl?” asked Gaius curiously.
The old seaman shook his grizzled head. “Don’t know ’em all.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” inquired Rachel, “how is it that you are here…and not gone on to wherever the rest of your crewmates went? What holds you here?”
“Well…” The old seaman looked sad. “When The Swallow went down, that left my Sally and the little ’uns all alone. So I thought, before I went on, I’d fly by and take a last look at ’em.”
The old sailor paused, working his lips back and forth, a habit he might have developed before he lost most of his teeth. “When I got to the farm, there had been a fire. Whole place burned down. No sign of Sally. No sign of the little ’uns. I looked and looked, at Aunt Jane’s, at her brother’s place.” A single pale tear slid down the ghost’s face. “I couldn’t find ’em.”
Rachel crouched down in front of where the old sailor was sitting. “I’m so sorry, Old Thom. Do you…” she took a deep breath, “do you remember where the farm was? Your children’s names? Your family name? Anything that might help?”
Tears streaming down his face, the ghostly sailor recounted what little his memory still retained. Rachel listened intently.
“That’s all of it,” he finished, wiping his face savagely. “Not that you’ll remember.”
“I will remember.” Rachel rose to her feet and spoke seriously. “I remember everything.”
The band reached the rousing end of the “Blood Waltz,” with the thunder rolling off the tor providing the percussion. Gaius and Rachel stopped for a moment and listened. As the music stopped, the shades around them, including Old Thom, went back to their previous i
nsular behavior from before the music had begun.
No amount of talking would rouse the old seaman.
“That is very kind of the band members to come so far,” Rachel murmured. “From a wreck in the Atlantic. That’s a long way. Most of the other entities here seem to be local.”
Gaius looked back and forth between the ghoulish sailors with their barnacles and seaweed and the cheerful musicians bustling about on the dais in their top hats and bow ties, tuning their instruments and chatted. “Why are they so different from the others?”
Rachel glanced over at them. In the blue-violet light, the musicians hardly looked any different from her or Gaius. Had she not been able to see through them, she would not have known they were ghosts.
“I don’t know.” She grabbed his hand, pulling on it as she went. “Let’s go find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Five:
They Died at Their Posts Like Men
Rachel and Gaius crossed the floor hand-in-hand, dodging hard-faced Dutchmen and hand-wringing ladies in white. The mansion smelled better inside, musty but not rotten. By the dais, where the band played, a fresh breeze blew with a hint of the sea upon it. Rachel breathed deeply as the two of them approached the nearest musician, a man in an Edwardian suit. He greeted them cheerfully, despite his enormous, evil-villain style mustache. He had a pleasant face, a receding hair-line, and he rested an elbow atop his cello.
“Hallo, what have we here?” He smiled at Rachel. “A wild kitsune visiting from the East?”
Rachel, who had not thought about the fact that her face was still painted to look like a fox, giggled with delight. Gaius, who was standing beside her, looked from the ghost’s tux to his patched robes and winced, as if he felt underdressed.
“Miss. Sir.” The ghost bowed. “In life, I was Percy Cornelius Taylor. How do you do?”
“Hello, I am Rachel Griffin,” Rachel curtsied politely, “and this is my boyfriend, Gaius Valiant. We are honored to hear you play. I hear that you come from a wreck in the Atlantic. Have you haunted a ship for a long time? What is it like?”
“Cold. And dark,” replied Percy Cornelius Taylor cheerfully. “But it gives us plenty of opportunity to practice. Looking forward to the last of the passengers disembarking. You know how it is: people fret, worrying they left something behind. Or they’re just not sure what awaits them at the new port. It’s all bully, though. We’ll keep playing till the last of them is comfortable enough to go.”
“What kind of a ship is it?” Rachel asked. “Is your wreck in the midst of the barren depths all by yourself? Or are you near other sunken ships?”
“There are quite a number of vessels resting in our part of the Atlantic. Sadly, many of them still have passengers. Sometimes we go and play for the other ships, too. We are not held to a particular place, as they are. So we can travel more freely all year, not just on All Hallow’s Eve and Walpurgisnacht. As for our ship, it is the greatest ship beneath the waves,” Percy Cornelius Taylor twirled his handlebar mustache, “the RMS Titanic.”
“The Titanic?” Rachel cried in surprise. “The Titanic itself?”
“That is quite amazing,” murmured Gaius.
“A friend of my grandfather’s died on the Titanic,” Rachel murmured, stunned.
Gaius squeezed her hand. Then he addressed the ghost. “Wait, I’ve heard of you! You and your band played while the Titanic sank. You refused to go on the life boats, unless everyone else was saved first, and you kept playing to keep the crowds calm. There’s a memorial to you in Southampton. I’ve seen it! The inscription reads: ‘They died at their posts like men.’”
“Does it now?” The ghostly gentleman looked humbled yet pleased.
“It does.”
“That’s quite flattering. And yet, truly, does it not describe most of those here?” Percy Cornelius Taylor spread his arms, indicating the gathering. “Are not the majority of those gathered tonight sailors who went down with their ships?”
“That brings us to the question we came to ask,” said Gaius. “How come you and your companions are so different from the other ghosts?”
“I was not afraid of death.” The ghost gestured at the other musicians. “Neither were my band mates. Because of this, we are not unwillingly trapped on this side. We can wander the world as we see fit. Most of the time, though, we stay with our ship and play for our fellow passengers who have not been as lucky. Who I was before is not very important. What is important is not to fear death. You don’t want to end up like these poor fellows.” He waved his hand toward the crowd of white ladies and ghoulish seamen.
“You gave your lives up willingly, sacrificing them for others?” Rachel’s eyes shone with admiration. “How wonderfully brave. I hope someday that I can live up to your fine example.” She slipped her hand into Gaius’s and squeezed it. He squeezed back.
The ghost gazed at her kindly. “I hope that you will live a good full life and never be called upon to do so, Miss Griffin, but I thank you for your kind sentiments.”
“You are welcome.” Rachel glanced down shyly.
“You are brave young people, to come tonight. It has been many long years since living students have come to dance with us. Probably due to fear of him. Let’s see, how long has it been?” The ghost tipped back his head. “I’d say not since Marigold Merryweather Moth’s wedding, which was not long after our first engagement here.”
“Living students used to come?” Rachel asked in surprise.
“That was the purpose of this assembly, originally. Those dead sailors still attend out of memory of the event they visited in life.” He gestured toward the hard-looking Dutchmen Rachel had taken for pirates. “Once the living stopped coming, other ghosts and spooks in the area began to gather here as well.”
“What was the original purpose of the Dead Men’s Ball?” asked Gaius.
“You don’t know?” The ghost’s semi-transparent face registered surprised. Rachel could see a broken window behind him, and the lights of the distant Newburgh-Beacon Bridge twinkled through his head. “Then you must not know the story of how the once-floating island of Roanoke came to be moored in the Hudson.”
Gaius looked chagrined. “We haven’t gotten to that in True Hiss.”
“You’ve been to Dutchman’s Cove?” Percy Cornelius Taylor asked.
Gaius shook his head.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “There’s a cave with an ogre and a hulk of a man-o-war in the bay.”
“And do you know the name that good ship bore when it sailed the seas, Rachel Griffin?”
Now, it was Rachel’s turn to shake her head.
“Ah, child,” Percy Cornelius Taylor’s eyes sparkled, “that cove is the final resting place of the most famous ship to ever sail the Hudson. Some would call her the most famous ship to ever sail the Seven Seas.”
“Even more famous than the Titanic?” asked Gaius.
“Even so,” the ghost replied.
“The Storm Ship,” Rachel breathed.
“The what?” asked Gaius.
Rachel said, “Diedrich Knickerbocker mentions it in A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. He said that it finally found a safe port in the Hudson! He even said it was near Pollepel Island!”
Gaius looked her blankly. “Famous? I never heard of it.” Then he added, “But I’ve heard of Diedrich Knickerbocker. His real name was Washington Irving.”
“Perhaps you’ve heard of this ship by her real name, too,” said the ghost. “She was called The Flying Dutchman.”
“The Flying Dutchman?” cried Gaius. “The one whose captain is that squid guy?”
“Siggy said the same thing.” Rachel gave him an odd look. “There was no squid.”
Percy Cornelius Taylor said, “The ship of the cursed Captain Hendrick Vanderdecken.”
“What happened?” asked Gaius. “How did it come to be here?”
“Well, as you know, Captain Vanderdecken was cursed that he could never c
ome to port—unless a maiden proved true in love and waited for him for seven years. He was only able to touch dry land for one day out of every seven years. However, the power behind the curse did not consider Roanoke dry land—because it was a floating island.”
“Oh!” breathed Rachel.
“Captain Vanderdecken would dock here for supplies. This ball, originally called the Dutchman’s Ball, was held every year in his honor, in the hopes that he would meet a young woman and fall in love. So that the curse could be broken, and his crew could go home.”
“What happened?” Rachel asked.
“He fell in love with a lovely young lady named Marigold Merryweather Moth. Merry-Merry Moth for short. When she was still waiting faithfully for him, seven years later, the curse broke. He was set free.”
“Wow!” Rachel cried in wonder. “I know their granddaughter, Rowan Vanderdecken. She’s in my class at school. And it happened right here?”
“Yes, indeed! But when the spell that made Vanderdecken’s ship wander ended, by some quirk of fate, the spell that made Roanoke Island wander also ended.”
“So that’s why we’re grounded here?” breathed Rachel.
“It is, indeed.”
“And they kept holding the ball, even though the Dutchman himself no longer attended?” Gaius asked.
“The living members of his crew went home, but the dead members continued to return each year. They do not understand that they are free.”
“Where do they go normally?” asked Rachel. “Do they haunt the hulk in the cove?”
“Occasionally. Mainly, they travel the seas, as if blown by the trade winds. Going where they went in life. It’s a bit more interesting than hanging about an old wreck that no one visits, and it keeps them away from him.”
“Him?” asked Gaius.
Percy Cornelius Taylor shuddered. “The Horseman.”
“You mean the headless Hessian who rides around with a Jack-O’-Lantern?” asked Rachel. “He leads the Wild Hunt, right?”
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 32