With the tip of my fork, I picked at a small scoop of beet salad on my plate, unable to bring myself to eat it. My stomach was sick, and my heart ached for poor Henry. “So, whatever happened to the Cobhams? Maria and Eric?”
Mary shrugged. “No one really knows. They raided the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St. Lawrence for years. Maria was a force to be reckoned with.” She leaned in to whisper as if someone could hear us. “The stories say she was a little off, if you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I believe it. According to this journal, she was a cold-blooded murderer and a rapist pedophile.”
“Oh, no, dear. It goes far beyond that. Maria was known to torture her captives for days before tying them up in gunny sacks and tossing them overboard. Alive.”
“Jesus…”
“She dragged her poor husband across the seas, too. Eric. Once, he turned himself in, claimed she made him do all those horrible things aboard The Burning Ghost. But Maria just came and took him, like he was her prisoner.” Mary then eyed my untouched plate. “Eat.”
“What’s The Burning Ghost?” I asked and finally scooped some beet salad into my mouth. I guess I had to eat something if I wanted to avoid another evening like last night. The few slugs of rum I’d downed earlier was all that filled my belly. The familiar taste of something I hadn’t had in years was a welcome sensation. I’d forgotten how much I loved Newfoundland food. I added a second forkful of the pinkish colored mashed potatoes.
“It was their ship. Big, but narrow. Y’know, so they could easily sneak into coves and bays that other ships couldn’t. I remember your mother telling me a story about Maria. That she’d covered the stern’s windows with blood, so they glowed a reddish hue at night.”
Aunt Mary’s words sparked an odd visual in my mind. The ship in the bottle. It was most definitely a pirate ship… and the stern’s windows glowed red.
“The name came from the fact that The Cobhams never left a ship behind. After they raided one, Maria ordered to have it burned until the ashes sunk to the bottom of the ocean, with its crew aboard. Then, their black ship would disappear. Like a ghost. It went on like that for years and years until, one day, they really did disappear. For good. They dropped off the face of history. No trace whatsoever.”
The old red chest called to me from across the room, like a heartbeat in my ears. The scattered mystery of it was beginning to piece together in my mind and I started to wonder if I even wanted to bring it back to Alberta with me. I looked down at the jacket I still wore. Maria’s jacket, obviously, and my skin crawled. I stood and grabbed my plate, looking to Mary.
“I think I’m going to get some sleep. I’m still not feeling a hundred percent,” I lied.
Mary looked surprised. “Oh? Did you need anything from the house? Pepto? Advil? I can run over and grab whatever you need.”
“I think I just need more sleep, is all,” I replied, hoping she’d catch the hint. I wanted to check out the contents of the chest again, by myself. “Thanks for the food, it was awesome. I’ll put the rest in the fridge for tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay, dear,” Mary stood and threw on her jacket, “I’ll come by again in the morning. Maybe we can spend the day together before you head back on Sunday.”
I began walking her to the door. “Sure, that sounds nice. And I can show you what gets trashed and what the museum can have. I’ll give you a hint. Pretty much all of it.”
After Mary gave me the look of disapproval and headed on her way, I ran back to my cursed pirate’s chest. The compass, the coins, dagger… I couldn’t pack them away fast enough. Finally, I slammed the lid shut and latched the keyless lock. I figured, no need to ever open it again. Nobody should touch these things, these horrific tokens from the past. But then, I noticed I still wore Maria’s red jacket and the ship-in-a-bottle still sat on the dining room table.
“Shit.”
I reached for the tiny ship, but the bell-shaped sleeve of my jacket knocked it and I watched, in slow motion, it seemed, as the bottle fell to the floor and smashed. In the stark silence of the empty house, the piercing sound of glass smashing sounded like a gunshot.
I bent down to pluck the few large pieces of the broken bottle as a cloud of strange chemical-like dust wafted up from the wreckage and I accidentally inhaled it. Coughing, I stood and made my way to the kitchen to dispose of the glass and fetch a broom.
When I returned, my blood turned to ice when I glanced down at the mess. The water that had spilled from the bottle was… moving. I watched, frozen, as the small amount of liquid poured across the hardwood floor as if it were alive, making its way to the patio doors.
“What the hell?”
I took a careful step to follow it when a strange, deep rumbling incumbered my ears and seemed to come from all around me, I could even feel it under my feet. The entire house shook and a quick glance at the patio doors, out toward the ocean, told me where the sound was coming from. My heart threw itself into a panic as adrenaline sparked to life in my veins.
A massive wave came rolling towards me, tearing up the landscape outside, an unstoppable force too large to even believe if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I was still frozen in place, entranced by the beast. A little too late, I turned to run, but I felt the wave smash through the glass doors behind me, relentless as it quickly filled the house and sucked me into a watery abyss.
Chapter Five
My head spun, and my body protested as I struggled to open my eyes. The slight rolling motion in which I moved made my stomach queasy against the hard object that drove into it. The skin on my face felt hot, burning in the warm sun above me.
My eyes finally peeled all the way open to discover that my arms were wrapped around a strange wooden object–my pirate’s chest–and it was the only thing keeping me afloat. As I glanced around, it was evident that the small tsunami had swept me out to the middle of the ocean and I bobbed there, alone, with no visible sign of land to be found.
The weight of Maria’s soaked jacket threatened to pull me under, but I had to keep it on if I wanted to avoid burning in the hot afternoon sun. Out here, on the water, the sun’s heat always intensified, giving you two things to worry about; the UV rays and the reflection off of the water. I had no choice but to hang on and hope someone would be out this far today and spot me.
It felt like hours had crawled by as I floated along, not knowing whether I was drifting closer or further from the prospect of land, when I suddenly heard the splash of something moving next to me. I managed to pry one of my sunburned lids open to spot a small boat, a rowboat, with two bodies making its way toward me. My eyeballs burned with tears of joy mixed with the dried ocean salt around them, but I didn’t care. Someone was coming to save me.
But my joy was doused when I heard them speak.
“Is that she?” one of the men asked.
“I’ll be damned. It sure looks like the wench,” the other replied. Their boat came broadside of me then, and an arm reached down to pluck me from the water, nearly yanking my shoulder out of the socket. They threw me to the bottom of the small boat like a disregarded fish. “The captain will surely want to gut this one himself.”
“Think he will?”
“Oh, you knows he will. I wonder where she’s been all these years?”
They spoke strangely. A heavy Newfoundland accent was definitely there, but one of the men had a strong mix of Scottish. They sounded rough, and I didn’t like what they were proposing their captain would do to me. Surely, they weren’t serious? The strength to move or speak evaded me.
The Scottish one reached down and pawed at my wet, matted hair to reveal my sunburned face. “Gus, look at this! This ain't she.”
“Well, I’ll be. The girl sure looks like her, though. Could be her sister.”
“Now, ye knows as well as I do, Maria Cobham ain’t got no sister. And if she did, she’d surely have murdered the likes of her.”
The mention of Maria lit up my senses. Who were these men? And
why did they speak of my three-hundred-year-old ancestor as if they knew her? I also didn’t like the idea that I resembled the sadistic woman. The very thought made me want to spew the saltwater from my stomach. A moan escaped my dried lips and I caught the faint image of a sword, some old leather boots, and dirty fabric as I rolled over, my brain threatening to pass out. I was clearly dehydrated and hallucinating.
“Grab the trunk,” the one named Gus ordered. “Maybe there’s something good in it.”
The other man chuckled; a raspy smoker’s sort of laugh. “I allow a fine lass such as she will be enough to please the captain, don’t ye think?”
“Just grab the damned trunk, Finn.”
***
My consciousness swam to the surface in short bursts as my body was pulled from one location to another. I remembered being in the rowboat with the men named Finn and Gus. But exhaustion ruled my body and only allowed me to recall brief images; being hoisted from the small boat, the strange and grimy wooden surface beneath my feet as they dragged my lifeless figure across it, and then the impact of my body slamming into an old barrel when the two men tossed me inside some sort of dank cell. The last sound to grace my ears was the loud metal clank of the cell door closing and latching.
I awoke sometime later, how much time, I had no earthly idea. The constant pounding in my head was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. No hangover or migraine could even compare to the deep throbbing I felt, like a massive heart beat inside it. Then, for a moment, I’d thought I had wet myself but soon realized that the floor of my dingy cell was covered in stale, murky water.
“What the Hell?” I cursed and sprang to my feet, not able to fully stand in the short cage.
The disgusting liquid moved in under the gated door. Through the metal bars, I could see out to the location where I was being held, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe my eyes. Barrels stacked haphazardly along the walls, sacks of things throw against them, piles of thick rope coils, and wooden crates moaning as they swayed with the movement of the very floor beneath me.
I was on a ship.
I approached the bars and peered out, trying to find someone, anyone, to help me.
“Hello?” I yelled, my throat so dry, it hurt to speak. “C-can anyone hear me?”
“No one on The Devil’s Heart can help you, dearie,” an old man spoke.
He seemed to have come out of nowhere, with his giant mop, making his way across the wooden floor of the ship. He swished it back and forth but all it did was push the dirty water around. The man grabbed a rusty milk pail and dumped its contents onto the floor; more disgusting water and began to arbitrarily plop the mop around in it.
“What’s the Devil’s Heart? Where am I? Who are these men?” I pleaded. My cell seemed to be on a slant because all the water eventually ran toward me and pooled beneath my feet. I noted the absence of shoes as my socks and pants soaked it up. I hopped up on a crate and leaned against the metal bars in a crouch. “Who do I speak to about this? You can’t just throw people you rescue in a cell. I’m not a criminal. You don’t even know me!”
“Rescue?” the man chortled. “Oh, dearie, you were not rescued. You’re lucky to even be alive. If it were the captain who’d found ya out on the water, wearing that jacket and havin’ that hair.”
“Why? Because I look like Maria Cobham?” I shouted.
The old man dropped his mop and came to the bars. “Shhh, you’re alive now, don’t ruin it for yourself by sayin’ that name around here.”
Up close, I could see the hard shape he was in, the dim candlelight highlighting his features. Dry, wrinkled skin, dirty and gnarled fingernails, missing teeth. The ones that remained were yellowed and the gaps filled with plaque. He wore strange garments, too. Soiled and worn, but I could easily see the old-fashioned cotton trousers and what was once a white men’s blouse underneath a long apron. It was like I’d woken up in the past.
Where the Hell was I?
“Alfred!” bellowed a familiar voice. The old man’s eyes lit with panic. “’Tis nearly noon and I dinnae smell food bein’ made. Why aren’t ye in the kitchen?” The Scottish man who’d scooped me out of the sea, Finn, came stomping over to Alfred’s side.
“Aye, Sir,” Alfred replied. “I was just getting to it. I had to finish up the deck. Swabbed it clean, I did.”
Finn glanced down at the murky water that skimmed the surface of the floor. “Ye did a fine job,” he said with all seriousness. “But the boys is hungry. And the captain will be sniffin’ around soon. So, get to it.”
Alfred nodded and scurried away, leaving his mop and bucket behind. Finn then approached the bars of my cell, his grin showing off teeth that were only slightly better than Alfred’s. He’d actually be somewhat handsome if he’d cleaned himself up a bit. Greasy red curls hung down from a black bandana and pooled around his shoulders. Green eyes sparkled as they stared at me, and his face, under the dirty smudges and wiry red beard, had a cherub-like appearance.
“What are ye doin’ talkin’ to our cook?” he asked me.
“I-I was just trying to get some help. I don’t understand why I’ve been locked up. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Aye,” he said with a nod and rocked back on the heels of big, brown leather boots, “But yer surely in cahoots with Maria. Look at ye.”
I glanced down at the red coat I wore. “What does a jacket have to do with anything? I found this. It doesn’t even belong to me.”
He unsheathed a large dagger from his side and pointed at me. “So, ye stole it, then? Yer a dirty thief?”
My eyes widened in panic. I needed these unstable people to believe I was a good person. “No, no, I swear. I found the chest, and the jacket was inside. I put it on and was then swept out to sea. That’s when you found me. I promise. I’m just–” I paused to think, amusing my delusions, “I’m merely a baker’s daughter. I honestly only found the old chest and the things inside it. I’m just lost and would only like to be escorted back home, please.”
“Well, that’s a very convincin’ story, lass,” Finn replied. “But it’s nae up to me what happens to ye.”
“Well, who do I speak to, then?”
He chuckled. “That would be the captain.”
“Okay, well, bring me to your captain.”
“Nay,” he said. “It dinnae work like that. The captain will decide when he wishes to speak with ye, if he even does at all. Ye may find yourself at the bottom of a watery grave before the day is out, lass.” Finn turned on his heel then and began walking away.
I yanked on the metal bars. “What? Why? I’ve done nothing!”
“We shall see ‘bout that!” he yelled over his shoulder before climbing up the short ladder to the deck above.
I retreated into my cell as far as I could, in search of a glimmer of safety. Where could I possibly be? Who were these men and why did they seem so… out of place? Why did they lock me up instead of getting some help? I crouched down in a dark, musty corner and felt something dig into my thigh. I reached inside my jean’s pocket and pulled out the snow globe key chain. I could use the key as a weapon, I thought, as memories of the one self-defense class I’d taken came to mind.
I opened my jacket to put the key somewhere I could reach it better and realized I’d slipped Henry’s journal inside it before all of this happened. The paper had been soaked by the ocean’s water, but the inked script barely bled. So, I handled each page with gentle care, stealing glances out through the bars of my cage to make sure I was alone, and searched for the next entry, to find out what became of young Henry.
August 14th, 1698
I have come to accept my fate aboard The Burning Ghost. Maria will never let me go. I had intended for my last entry to be just that, my last. That night, I had snuck out of Maria’s bed once again, the evidence of our disgusting affair still fresh on my body. I planned to stand on the bowsprit and take my own life, so my body could fall to the sea below. Where I belonged.
But, al
as, one of the ship hands found me and brought me to her. To say she was angry would be an understatement. My skin still breaks open from wounds she inflicted that bloody evening. Her husband Eric still stands by, idly, without care, or notice.
But her reign of terror over my mind and body did not end there. No, Maria has moved on to other forms of torture. Since that dreadful night, she has been determined to bring me together with the devil. She calls him Devil Eyes and insists I embrace him.
I tried, I truly did, to keep a hold on my humanity. To not forget who I am… or was. But Devil Eyes is a pirate whose evil seeps into your soul. I can feel him in my veins, swaying my mind and influencing my choices. She forces me to spend far too much time with him.
Now, Maria has taken it upon herself to bring me along on longer, more brutal, raids. Devil Eyes has forced me to take seven lives and each one chip away at my soul. Soon there shall be nothing left, an empty shell for Maria and Devil Eyes to play with. A puppet.
Last night, we boarded a small vessel. It appeared to be a cargo ship transporting rice from the South. Maria had tied the crew up in gunny sacks and lined them on deck. I often watched her as she tossed men overboard, listened to them scream for their lives as they plummeted to a slow watery death. Sometimes she would use them as target practice, she’s not the best shot, from what I can tell.
But last night, Devil Eyes and Maria forced me to do it. To decide if they were to be tossed overboard, alive, or if they were to be shot first. The shrivel of my past self-wanted them to have a quick death, no suffering. But she did not like that. She wanted me to suffer more than them. So, she made me do it. Maria put the pistol in my hand and Devil Eyes pointed it for me. I knew I was a good shot, my father saw to that. I cried as my finger pulled the trigger and a lead ball smacked one of the gunny sacks. A little cry rang out as the person inside squirmed and then, finally, stopped. As the bag toppled over, I realized it was not tied shut and the small, lifeless body of a child poked its head out.
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