Tales from the Haunted Mansion, Volume 4

by Amicus Arcane

  When Chris opened his eyes, the faces of students, teachers, and chaperones were staring down at him. He had been moved on a blanket into the gift shop. A student saw him wiggle his finger, and burst out screaming: “He’s alive! Alive!” It was Juleen from science; she really had to come up with a new opening line.

  Ms. Fisher rubbed his hand. “You okay, Chris? Did you break anything?”

  He tried sitting up, but his body felt like one big bruise. Yet remarkably, he was in one piece. The wind had buffered his fall. “I’m okay. I must have passed out.”

  “You don’t look okay,” said Jaycie, rubbing his other hand.

  Niles added, “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  Chris looked his way. “What made you say that?”

  Then he heard the laughter. Not with him—at him. The sea of students parted, clearing a path for the old lighthouse keeper. “I found this on the beach. Afraid the pictures ya took won’t do ya much good now.” He was holding Chris’s waterlogged cell phone. Seeing the fear in Chris’s eyes, he laughed some more. “Whatever you seen’s just a memory. Just a memory.”

  A terrifying memory, thought Chris. One that would rear its decapitated head again and again and again.

  It wasn’t until they were back on the mainland, a few days later, that Chris told Jaycie and Niles about his sensational find. “I know where it’s hidden.”

  They were in Chris’s bedroom, playing a computer game called Pirate’s Blood. Niles never even looked away from the screen. “Where what’s hidden?”

  “Captain Gore’s booty.”

  Jaycie placed her hand on Chris’s forehead. “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

  “I saw the whole thing!” he snapped.

  “Before or after you fell?” Jaycie asked.

  He shot her the most irritated look he could muster. “Before, moron-ski! I saw a pirate ship crash into a sandbar, just like the old geezer said it happened. And then I saw Captain Gore and a couple of his pirate pals carrying a treasure chest into a cave. And after that…Captain Gore cut off their heads.” He did a snip-snip gesture with two fingers.

  Niles looked up from the game. “Why would he do that to his pals?”

  Chris shrugged. “I dunno. I guess to prevent them from saying where he hid his booty.”

  Niles chuckled. That word. It still got to him. “Makes sense, I guess.”

  “Excuse me?” Jaycie smacked his arm. “What he just said—that makes sense to you? That Chris saw something that happened like two hundred years ago?”

  Niles, who was mostly known for talking before thinking, promptly retracted his thought. “Sorry, Chris. She makes more sense.”

  As usual, Chris had lost all patience with his pals. Niles with his gap-toothed grin and Jaycie with her mile-long chin—they were far from perfect. Far from him. Chris grabbed his laptop, clicked out of the game, and opened up a new window. “Look and learn, moron-skis.” He took them to a website he’d found dedicated to all things ghostly. “We all believe in spirits, right?” Niles nodded. Jaycie shrugged. “Good enough.” He scrolled down the page. “It says here that a spirit is just energy that refuses to move on.” Some of us are in denial. Chris kept going: “And sometimes that energy keeps replaying itself, like a song or a scene from a movie. It’s called”—he scrolled farther down until he found the word—“retrocognition.”

  “What movie is that?” questioned Niles. “I never heard of it.”

  “Not the movie, moron-ski, the word! Instead of seeing the spirit of a person, you see the spirit of an event. Usually one that’s linked to a tragedy.”

  “Like a doomed pirate ship,” added Jaycie.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Another moment passed. “How come you got to see it?” Niles asked. Chris and Jaycie both looked his way simultaneously. For Niles, that was a reasonably thoughtful question. And Chris had spent the past few days thinking about the answer.

  “As far as I can figure, it has to do with the storm. The conditions were just right. Maybe the vision was stuck in the clouds. Or the thunder woke it up.”

  Jaycie shook her head. “That sounds pretty out there to me. Even from you, matey.”

  Chris pointed to the door. “There’s the hatchway, lassie.” He turned to Niles. “What about you? Are you still with me on this?”

  “With you where? I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

  “Take a wild guess. I’m talking about everything you ever wanted! New kicks. New digs. A trip around the world. You name it!”

  Now even Jaycie was starting to come around. As crazy as it sounded, there was always that slim chance—one in a million doubloons—that what Chris claimed he had seen had actually happened. She’d put up with enough of his nonsense schemes in the past. Why should she miss out on the one that might pay off? “I didn’t say I wasn’t in…Captain. What exactly are you proposing?”

  “The treasure. Captain Gore’s booty. It’s worth millions.” He snip-snipped with his imaginary pincers, pretending to cut off Jaycie’s nose and Niles’s ear. “Arrrrrr! I be Captain Gore, and you, mateys, arrrrrrre me helpers. Raise your left pincers and swear allegiance or it’s off with yer heads!”

  Jaycie and Niles raised their hands, making peace-sign pincers and, between giggles, pledged allegiance to the pirates’ flag. “Arrrrrrrr!”

  “The last ferry departs at six, mateys,” said Chris, and he clicked on the schedule.

  Niles didn’t like the sound of it. “You mean…tonight?”

  “I saw it on a news site. Displeasure Island is vacant because of the storm. It’s practically a ghost town right now.” Try literally….“There’re just some workers and that old geezer in the lighthouse. That means fewer witnesses to worry about.”

  Jaycie exchanged looks with Niles. Admittedly, it sounded exciting, even adventurous, the perfect Friday-night excursion. Better than miniature golf. But talking about it was a lot saner than actually doing it. And there was something Jaycie hadn’t thought of. Something the usually less thoughtful Niles had figured out all by himself. “If you’re Captain Gore, then that makes us your pals.”

  “Aye!”

  “You said Captain Gore murdered his pals. You said he chopped off their heads.”

  “Aye!” Chris made pincer fingers. “So I did, mateys.” Snip-snip.

  The trio of friends watched from the top deck of the ferry as Displeasure Island came into range. The floating dock appeared first, through a thinning fog.

  Chris pointed. “Land ho! Shiver me timbers! Me treasure awaits!”

  Jaycie wasn’t sure she liked the “me” part, but she said nothing. As usual.

  As for Niles, he was privately wondering why he and Jaycie had ever become friends with Chris in the first place, an idea that officially tipped the scales and made him a thoughtful thinker. Before hooking up with Chris, he and Jaycie had never gotten into any real trouble. In fact, Niles had been something of a teacher’s pet, which was pretty rare for a boy with middling grades.

  But after he met Chris, everything changed.

  Chris, you see, had a certain talent: a knack for talking people into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Niles was his most gullible target, but he worked the same obnoxious magic on Jaycie, as well.

  As the ferry glided into the first stall, the threesome saw the lighthouse, the 168-foot-tall pirate welcoming them ashore. Or was it Captain Gore, warning them to leave?

  “Bring the bag!” ordered Chris, referencing an equipment bag filled with gardening tools. Apparently, captains didn’t do bags. “See you on the beach, mateys.” And he ran down the ferry stairs, leaving Jaycie and Niles to deal with all the grunt work.

  With Chris leading the charge, Jaycie and Niles lugged the equipment across the sandy coastline, getting soaked by cascading waves. Even the gulls seemed to get a laugh out of it. “How much further?” Jaycie asked, doing her best I’m with the program voice.

  “Why? You got something better
to do?” asked their obnoxious leader.

  “Nope.”

  “Then no more comments from the peanut gallery.” Chris kept moving, undeterred. “Our destination’s directly ahead!”

  Jaycie could no longer hide her anger, her mile-long chin turning red. Niles just looked confused, his thoughts as empty as the enormous gap in his teeth. “I don’t see a cave, I see a mountain,” Jaycie said.

  “I’m with her,” added Niles.

  Chris rolled his eyes before pointing. “It’s behind it, moron-skis—uh, mateys. It’s directly behind it!” The “it” he’d been referencing was a massive stone obstruction, covered in moss and green slime and embedded with shells. The sea had decorated it over time.

  Jaycie dropped her half of the bag, and Niles, unable to manage the rest, dropped his half, too. “It doesn’t look like a treasure chest,” he said.

  Jaycie gave a snort. She was annoyed, feeling duped by Chris for the umpteenth time. “I hope you’re not serious. We’d need a keg of dynamite to blast through that thing.” She slapped the wall. “It’s as solid as, like, a rock or something.”

  Chris was grinning; he couldn’t help it. “Who needs dynamite?” He unzipped the bag, revealing two brand-new shovels taken from his stepfather’s toolshed. “We’re not going through it, we’re going under it.” He stepped over by the wall and made an X in the sand below it, showing them precisely where to dig. “Two hundred years ago, there was an entrance. It’s under the sand now. That’s why no one could find it.”

  He removed both shovels and handed one to Niles, the other to Jaycie. “I’ll keep watch,” he said, “just in case that creepy old geezer comes by.”

  Reluctantly, Jaycie accepted a shovel. “And why, may I ask, do we get to do all the digging?”

  “Because I’m the captain!” replied Chris. And seconds later, Jaycie and Niles were digging. Of course, it wasn’t the most intelligent answer. But truth be told, the answer worked back in pirate days, so why not now? Chris had always been their captain. Not by hire, or election, or even mutiny. He was their captain because they allowed it.

  It took a little over two hours for Jaycie and Niles to find the entrance under the sand. That’s in real time. For you, foolish reader, it only took a sentence. They were exhausted and covered in so much sand it was literally coming out of their ears.

  It was time for Chris to take over. He directed his stepfather’s flashlight—the one he had been warned not to touch—into the hole. He could make out a crawl space under the sand. An entrance, just like he’d said there would be. “See! What’d I tell ya? You guys keep watch. I’m going in!”

  This time there were no objections. If Chris was crazy enough to crawl into a pitch-black hole, he had earned his captain stripes.

  “Wish me luck, mateys.” Chris couldn’t see what lay ahead. The flashlight didn’t reveal much. But the briny scent of the sea was overwhelming. He thought he might lose his lunch. Four slices of pizza, Niles’s treat. Fortunately, visions of a buried treasure kept his stomach in line.

  Jaycie and Niles watched his legs disappear into the chasm beneath the sand. The last they saw of Chris were the soles of his cheap sneakers, and Jaycie was thinking that when it came to moron-ski moments, this one took the cake. She looked at Niles and said something similar out loud. “This is the dumbest thing he’s ever done.”

  Before Niles returned a comment, a black cloud passed over the cove, blotting out the entire sky. It was a cloud that looked hauntingly familiar.

  Chris was an obnoxious young man; it’s been well established. He played by his own rules, and sometimes others paid the price. But did he deserve what happened next? I’d say yes, but you know me. I prefer it when things get messy.

  He was about ten feet into the narrow stone shaft, worming his way through a layer of thick, slimy mud. It was like crawling through peanut butter—and with the various rocks, shells, and crab carcasses mixed in, we’re talking chunky style.

  Creeping forward, Chris wondered how long the stone tube went on for. The air was thick, putting a strain on his lungs. He took intermittent breaths. Seawater was dripping in through the fissures above his head. He could taste the salt; it made him spit. His arms were too constricted even to wipe his mouth. He knew that if he got stuck—and the tide came in—a slow death would be a certainty. But he also knew that the trek would be worth it. To be the richest kid in his two-bit town, Chris would crawl into a pirate’s cave.

  A few more feet and breathing became easier. Chris felt the walls widening as the tunnel expanded into a cave. Still on his belly, he panned the flashlight. He had made it inside a small stone recess, no more than thirty feet from wall to wall.

  “Chris! You alive down there?” It was either Jaycie or Niles. He didn’t know which. And he no longer cared. The richest kid in town didn’t need friends—or anyone else, for that matter. In fact, now that he’d made it safely inside, he regretted bringing them along in the first place. He was the one who had seen the ghost ship. He knew where the booty was. Why should he share it with anyone?

  “Chris, the storm’s coming!” That was Jaycie. “We have to get out of here!”

  “Do what ya gotta do!” responded Chris. And Jaycie immediately recognized his dismissive voice. Chris didn’t care what happened to his pals as long as he got what he had come for.

  “Did you find anything?” asked Niles.

  There was a long pause before Chris responded. “No, there’s nothing here! Go inside! This was a wasted trip! Sorry, mateys!”

  And right away, Jaycie identified that voice, too. It was Chris’s lying voice.

  He’d found something, all right. He had spotted it a second earlier with his stepfather’s flashlight: a wooden chest was sticking out of the muddy ground. It was the same one he had seen in the ghostly vision. And he had already decided to keep every last doubloon for himself. After all, he’d found it. Maybe that wasn’t the pirates’ code, but it was Chris’s. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

  And the mere thought brought him to his feet. He wouldn’t crawl to the chest; he would walk there. The rich didn’t do things on their knees. The rich brought others to their knees.

  He took a first step and went sliding, almost cracking open his head on the wall. But that didn’t slow him down. Chris could see the future; it was even clearer than the ghostly past. Untold riches were less than twenty feet away. Delicious thoughts swirled through his head. He would buy the middle school and have it shut down. Better yet, he’d have it torn down. Yes, there be a cold heart beating in his obnoxious chest. A pirate’s heart…and soon its ghost. Arrrrrr!

  Meanwhile, Jaycie and Niles had climbed to the top of a sandbar, still looking for cover, when they heard a voice cry out. “Ahoy! Ahoy!” It was the lighthouse keeper, waving frantically from the observation deck. “This way, lad and lassie! Hurry!”

  They ran to the lighthouse with their jackets over their heads, and by the time they got there, the old man was down at the bottom, handing them fresh Displeasure Island towels (available at the gift shop). Jaycie and Niles were soaked and shivering. They looked pretty pathetic, but that didn’t stop the old man from lacing into them. “What were you two thinking? Or is it that you weren’t thinking at’all?”

  At first they didn’t say. If they did, Chris would likely eviscerate them. Every boy needs a hobby. Thinking fast, Jaycie faked an excuse. “Niles here lost his wallet during the class trip and we came back on our own to find it.”

  Thinking less than fast, Niles said, “I don’t own a wallet.”

  “That’s because you lost it, moron-ski!”

  The lighthouse keeper played along. “I keep the lost-and-found box up in the pirate’s head. Follow me.” He pointed to the top of the lighthouse. “Free tour.”

  Jaycie and Niles didn’t want a free tour—not on that night. But they were in pretty deep, which came with the territory. It was just how it was, being friends with Chris.

  “Watch where you step,” the o
ld man cautioned. “The stairs can be a mite slippery.”

  Jaycie exchanged weary looks with Niles. “Up we go, I guess.” And up the spiral staircase they went as thunder cracked and lightning bolted across the night sky. They were feeling like they didn’t have a choice when, in fact, they did. When your insides tell you not to do something, don’t do it. But Jaycie and Niles shared the same weakness; it was a flaw that people like Chris preyed on. They simply didn’t have the guts to say no.

  The next round of thunder shook the entire structure, and Niles lost it. “Did you feel that? We’re going to die!”

  “Of course I felt it!” Jaycie replied.

  “The structure is perfectly sound,” said the lighthouse keeper, his voice calm and reassuring. “It was here before you both were born, it was, and it will be here after you’re both six feet under.” Okay, maybe reassuring wasn’t the right word. Jaycie looked at Niles and one of them gulped. (It was Niles.)

  They continued to climb, making it all the way to the pirate’s head without incident. “You have arrived,” said the old man. “The brains of the operation, I like to call this.” It was the level where he’d spent most of his life. He invited Jaycie and Niles to look through the pirate’s eyes…um…windows. “It feels like you’re on top of the world.”

  They each took an eye…um…window.

  The view was unlike anything they’d ever imagined. The ocean they sometimes swam in was a giant void, like outer space here on earth, stretching endlessly, concealing infinite secrets beyond its foam and crashing whitecaps. Jaycie and Niles had never felt so insignificant. So small.

  Niles had to ask: “You stay up here by yourself all day?”