Haunted Shipwreck (5 page)

“He died at midnight, numb nuts.”

“And he’ll still be dead, jerkoff. Trust me, if this house is truly haunted, we’ll know.”

Bobby took the steps by twos. He studied the front door. It was pale blue with a cobwebbed crack from the rusted letter plate to the threshold. The knob dangled by a screw. Bobby shoved the door. It stood like a brick wall.

Charlie seized Bobby’s shoulder and yanked him back. “When was the last time you were breakin’ and enterin’, Commando?”

Jack nibbled his lip. “Quietly, Harmon.”

Charlie jerked the knob and the screw popped loose. He tossed them both into the bushes. He then stuck his hand through the circular hole and reached for the deadbolt.

His body convulsed. He struggled to wrench his arm out. He yelled at the top of his lungs.

Everyone’s jaws dropped and their heads spun. The lights blinked on in Mack’s house. Charlie jerked his arm free and barged inside. The others knew they had to hide quick and flooded into the house.

Charlie slammed the door laughing as everyone hit the floor.

Jack flipped his lid, certain the ruckus had awoken the block. “What the heck’s the matter with you? Are you stupid?”

Charlie clutched his gut and rested against the splintered panel wall. “You should’ve seen the look on your face, Jericho. That was better than the time I got you with the hockey mask in the woods.”

“Screw you, Harmon. There’s nothing funny about those woods.”

Chelle and Lisa huddled in the corner, spooked and trembling. Jack chomped his tongue, realizing what he had just said. Charlie rounded on him, pouncing on another opportunity to heckle.

Bobby lit his watch, and then leveled his rifle. “It’s one ‘til. I’m heading up.”

Chelle and Lisa tailed Bobby as he ascended the creaky staircase, the carpeted steps a tangle of snags and worm-like threads. The girls wrung his coat hem as he grinned from ear to ear.

Charlie seized Jack’s lapels and backed him into a lopsided sconce. “Sounds like somebody doesn’t like the scary wary woods. Poor baby.”

“Let me go, Chuck.”

Charlie tightened his grip. “Shut up. You know goddamn well you’re Old Willard’s lady. You keep collectin’ those piece-of-crap antiques. What’re you, a fairy?”

Jack’s heart rocked his ribcage. His body broke into a sweat. He quavered, on the verge of losing his cool. “I’m going to throw you through the window if you don’t let me go.”

Charlie rasped, spraying Jack’s face with spittle. “You know I’m right, jackoff. I bet you’ve been lettin’ Grandpa charm your trouser snake.”

“Screw you, greaser.”

Charlie lifted Jack off his feet, the sconce scraping up his back. “I’m too young for you, queerboy. Plus, I like girls.”

Jack booted Charlie in the stomach. Charlie dropped him and doubled over, gasping.

“You punk!”

Jack shoved Charlie aside and bounded up the stairs. A smile eased his wince. Boy, it felt good to inflict harm on Harmon. He realized at that moment that he had never really liked Charlie. The guy was a bully, even with the ladies. Part of Jack hoped he had busted his ribs.

He paused at the landing. To the right was a dark hallway with ratty, plaid bedspreads nailed to the walls; it led to two shut doors. Toward the left Jack spotted Bobby, Chelle, and Lisa backpedaling from an archway. The shadows flickered, as if candles burned.

Jack whispered, leery of startling them. “Blue? What the heck’s going on?”

Bobby met Jack’s gaze and shook his head, a silent warning to stay put. Jack wasn’t buying it. If they were feasting their wide eyes on a ghost, he had to see, too. After all, that was the whole point of their so-called operation.

He rounded the banister and joined the group. He squinted through the archway, confused at what his friends were staring at. Then a loud creak stole his attention.

The Skeleton Man dangled from buckling rafters in a moonlit room with a stone fireplace and Eiffel Tower andirons. A wire clothes hanger was wrapped around his skinny neck, the jagged tip digging into his jowl. His emaciated body convulsed and thrashed in midair. His black-and-blue eyes bulged. Sweat poured from his apple-green face and trickled onto his plaid button-down.

Jack stumbled as his counterparts backed into him. “What in the holy heck?”

“You’re dead, Jericho!”

Charlie whipped around the newel and charged at the group. Jack was too stunned to defend himself. Charlie clamped his hands around Jack’s throat and pinned him against the wall.

Chelle and Lisa screamed.

Charlie spun and released his grip. Jack melted into the wall, his eyes fixed on the room. The fireplace ignited, blue-green flames leaping to the mantle. The rafters snapped like driftwood. Skelt gasped smoke as the wire hanger unfurled, the tip wrenching up his chin like a zipper. His body dropped to the floor and crumpled.

Charlie was mesmerized. He stepped beneath the arch, squinting, doubting his vision. “No way. No way in hell.”

The fireplace roared, engulfing the andirons, which surged red-hot. The Skeleton Man stood and swayed. His face was a slab of bludgeoned meat. His dislocated jaw crunched.

“I see the Devil! He’s burning! Burning!”

The fireplace belched a fireball, and Skelt burst into flames. He bellowed and flailed, a bubbling and burning stick man. The andirons levitated, then leveled horizontally, smoldering.

Charlie turned and stumbled. “Run!”

Chelle and Lisa fled, shrieking their heads off. The andirons launched like missiles through the archway. Jack and Bobby dove to the floor. The left Eiffel Tower punctured Charlie’s spine and jutted out through his chest, flaming. Its matching counterpart smashed into the back of his skull. Jack and Bobby shielded their faces from the cerebral spray as the wallpaper caught fire.

Chelle and Lisa made tracks for the stairs, hollering, holding hands white-knuckled.

Jack stood and pulled Bobby to his feet. “We got to go, Blue!”

Bobby was speechless and tripped after Jack. The boys glanced at the archway. Jack noted the peeled face fluttering from the scorched hanger, like a discarded Halloween mask. Skelt spun and howled in the moonlight, a blazing madman.

He then leapt through the window, bounding through both yards, and crashed through Mack’s barricade of two by fours. Jack and Bobby paled. The Milton house was on fire. Jet black smoke billowed through broken glass.

Jack’s feet were rooted to the floor. “What the heck was that?”

Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know, but we’re going to need a medivac if we flap gums.”

Jack and Bobby rushed down the hall. The walls were curlicues of flames, a smoky tunnel through Hell. They held their breath and squinted, struggling to avoid inhalation. When they reached the landing, they tramped downstairs. Jack was relieved to see the front door banging in the breeze. He knew the girls had escaped and were hopefully halfway home by now. Jack wished Bobby had never dragged them into this nightmare. The whole ordeal would be a town shaker in the morning.

Jack and Bobby bumbled outside. The stench of rotten clams slapped them in the face. The sight of the burning block punched them in the gut. The only unscathed building was Reed’s Antiques.

CHAPTER 5

The Bloody Cutlass sliced through high tide, waves crashing with the thunder against its hull. The ship looked like a wraith in the chowder mist, appearing and disappearing in the lightning strobe. The steel gray sails billowed, the white skull and scythes emblems taunting the wind. While a storm raged in the hellish heavens, Blacktongue’s tempest brewed ashore.

He marched with his crew beneath a blue-black sky into a ramshackle town. Lean-tos lined the gravel main street, dust swirling from facade to facade as if window-shopping. Drunkards stumbled out of the brightly-lit saloon while pushers lurked in the shadows.

Thunder crashed over the dilapidated blacksmith shop. Lanterns flickered on the warped front posts. The door was wide open, cracked frame to frame. An odor of hot iron mingled with terse rasps lured eavesdroppers.

Within the overcrowded shop were five pirates, cutlasses drawn. An old man, skin and bones, stood on a chair with a noose around his neck. Between the standoff were various blacksmith items: club hammers, anvils, tongs, and an array of forged fireplace tools. To the left was a crate with a steel box.

A bearded pirate in a crimson skullcap and double eye patches stepped forward. The blacksmith recognized him. It was Blacktongue! The scoundrel chuckled and pointed his bloodstained cutlass over the ironworks.

“Dancin’ the hempen jig without me? Ye best not be hornswogglin’ me of that skeleton key. Ye know I know the whispers of the Barbary Coast. That ol’ Devil’s bellows that’ll scuttle a fire ship. Unless ye been runnin’ a rig.”

The blacksmith was pale as a mime. His knees quivered, rocking the chair, and sweat dripped from his chin to his apron. His callus hands were white-knuckled around the noose. His teeth chattered between stammers.

“I…I swallowed it. And…I ain’t…I ain’t coughing it up.”

With that he lurched back and the chair toppled. His throat constricted and his face flushed crimson. He thrashed, gasping, clawing at the noose. Blacktongue outstretched his arms, staying his corsairs.

He raised his cutlass. “No prey, no pay.”

The crew assumed that their captain was going to cut the blacksmith loose. Instead the blade sliced open his belly, spilling his insides. Protruding from the steaming pile was a large iron key. The right-hand man snatched it as Blacktongue chuckled.

Blacktongue pointed his bloody cutlass at the black box. “Unlock it ‘fore I measure ye fer yer chains!”

The corsair complied. He opened the encasement. Arsenic-gray smoke billowed out. The pirates hacked in unison. It smelled to Hiram like burnt pork. When the smoke cleared, the booty was revealed. Within was a hand-carved wood bellows with a pentagram insignia, smoke spiraling from its nozzle. The corsair grabbed it and passed it over.

Blacktongue wiped his cutlass on the corpse’s pants, sheathed it, and caressed the bellows. “Aye. The five points. Yo-ho-ho, the Devil’s bellows. Me mateys, legend has it this was forged in hellfire, blessed by the Devil’s spit. I’ll wager me pieces of eight it’s just legend.”

Blacktongue parted the handles and slammed them together. The pentagram glimmered reddish-orange, and then a burgundy smoke stream spewed forth. It swirled around the pile of ironworks in tornadic fashion, breathing life into the blacksmith’s creations. They rattled and clanked, surged as if stoked. Then they advanced, hammers swinging in the air, anvils stomping, the shop quaking.

Song danced in Blacktongue’s brain, as it always did during battle.

Kill ‘em, spill thar insides, blow boys blow!

One of the corsairs flashed a toothless grin and tried to catch a hammer. Instead he suffered a concussion, but the assault failed to end there. The hammer pummeled the pirate, breaking his bones.

Blacktongue slammed the bellows repeatedly, hoping to pacify the iron puppets. “Argh!”

His hopes were crushed. Smog filled the shop like a smokehouse. He heard more clanking. The walls wobbled and the floor reverberated. He knew more of the blacksmith’s tools had been animated. He backpedaled through the front door, coughing and wheezing. The cries of his corsairs eked into the night, muffled by the hellish haze.

He stared at the bellows, growling, flustered. The pentagram sparked, yet the Devil’s instrument was igloo-cold.

A crash had him jumping back, dropping the bellows. An army of ironworks barged through the storefront, collapsing it in their wake, while the fog permeated into the night. The blacksmith had gone creation crazy. Blacktongue wondered where they had all been stashed. There were rumbling roasters, lashing pokers, a hopping bed frame, and even a rolling boneshaker. They were all from Hell’s fireplace, each item baring a wicked characteristic: spiked springs, blowtorches, dinosaur horns, the list was endless.

Blacktongue snatched the bellows. Since his corsairs were dead, he followed his keen hearing, latching onto the crashing waves in the distance.

The raging ironworks stampeded. The fog drifted into town, blanketing the main street. As he ran for life, Blacktongue caught a last glimpse - a heliograph, hazy but vaguely discernible - of the gutted shop. Bludgeoned pirates in blood puddles, furniture reduced to splinters, an empty room with a skeleton dangling by a noose, its flesh having walked away with the ironworks.

Blacktongue fled to the beach. The Bloody Cutlass was anchored near a line of boulders. On the deck stood a robed figure, holding a smoldering map by one corner. Blacktongue knew he had discovered the darkest treasure of the seven seas. And the Devil’s army seethed at his heels. He charged into the surf as high tide crashed in. The ironworks were doused and beached into a pile. They smoldered and rusted on impact, pitch black succumbing to persimmon. There they rested, inanimate, their hellfire extinguished.

Blacktongue waded toward the Bloody Cutlass, his crew diving into the eight-foot waves to retrieve him, the bellows, and the booty.

CHAPTER 6

Jack knew that they had to go to Willard’s. The shop seemed to be fireproof, while the rest of the town was in flames. He stared at his own house and wondered if his parents had escaped. He considered running to the rescue, then noticed the iron army pounding down the street. He spotted his sparking boneshaker leading the attack.

“That’s my bike!”

Bobby paled, fumbling for his rifle. “What? Seriously?”

“That’s it! C’mon, we need to get to Willard’s!”

“Willard’s? But that’s where these things came from!”

“It’s the only place not on fire! We can’t hang around out here!”

Bobby took Jack’s advice and sprinted with him across the street. The iron army stormed after them. Pokers stabbed tree trunks. Shovels clobbered mailboxes. The boneshaker burned tire tracks through lawns. Bangs and gongs and distant screams filled the morning fog.

Jack led the retreat up the brick walk. He tugged the double doors - there was no way in hell he was knocking. They opened and the boys barged in. They quickly shut the doors and secured the locks. They doubled over and caught their breath.