Legends of the Ghost Pirates (13 page)

Jo says, “You go up there if you want, but I'll wait
for you at the Old Man.”

Sara glares at Jo, and says, “Then I'm going with
Fisher.” Jo grabs the shovel and flashlight from Sara and I then
turn to go left at the fork.

“Tell that ol’ ghost Blarney Bart, I said hi,” Jo
calls back without looking.

“Why? Do you want to kiss him too?” Sara says in a
low snarl.

In about ten minutes of fast walking we are at the
Narrows and cross it easily with the tide still going out. Soon we
are at the same place we were yesterday where we saw the ghost.
Even though it's sunny out, I suddenly feel Goosebumps growing on
the back of my neck, and I can feel butterflies in my stomach. In a
whisper, I say, “Well, here we are again.” We both get low and work
our way to hide behind the rock where we were yesterday.

We look for a moment from behind the rock. “I don't
see anything, do you?”

“No. Nothing,” Sara answers. We both slowly stand up
to get a better look.

“The coast is clear. There's certainly no ghosts
around here. At least not in broad daylight.”

“Let's take a quick look around,” Sara says, “and
then get back to the Old Man. The sooner we dig up the money the
sooner we can leave.”

I walk out from behind the rock toward where the
ghost was standing yesterday. I'm not sure why I want a closer look
because if I were smarter we'd be back in the boat sailing away
from this creepy island. But as the old saying goes and is probably
true,
Curiosity killed the cat
.

We're just about ready to leave when Sara says,
“Hey, Fisher, what's that over there?” She's pointing to an odd
looking rock. But as we walk closer to it I can see it's not a rock
at all, it's an old olive green army tarp covering something large.
I hadn't noticed it at first, but now it sticks out like an
elephant in a supermarket.

Both of us approach it slowly. “What do you suppose
is under there?” Sara asks.

“I don't know, but that tarp isn't that old. It's
not like it was sitting here since 1716.
Let's
t
ake a look.”

I've grabbed on to a corner about to pull it back,
and look at Sara. She nods. I give the tarp a hard yank pulling it
back most of the way.

“What in the world?” Sara gasps.

Chapter 17

Voice from the Past

That's
not at all what I was
expecting to see. I was really thinking we were going to see some
old lobster traps or maybe some old rope, but not this. With the
tarp pulled halfway back, in front of us, stacked to about head
height, are rows of brown boxes, all labeled as stereo
equipment.

“Look at this,” Sara says as she points to the side
of one box. “It looks like it's Japanese writing.”

“I bet it's all from Japan. All the really good
stereo equipment is supposedly coming from Japan these days,” I
say. “My friend Tommy Goodwell says it's even better than the stuff
made in America. But I find that hard to believe.”

Sara grabs one end of the tarp while I have the
other, and we pull it completely off the pile of boxes. I slowly
walk around all the boxes neatly stacked in a large pile. There’re
boxes labeled speakers, receivers, and some as turntables, others
as tape decks; it's a lot of stuff. “There must be thousands and
thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment here,” I say still walking
around the pile.

Sara is looking closely at one of the 8-Track tape
deck boxes. “It all looks new. This is so weird, why do you suppose
this equipment is all the way out here on this island?”

“I don't know,” I say as I try lifting one of the
speaker boxes. “But I don't think anyone is supposed to know it's
out here.”

As I'm setting the speaker box down off to the side,
I notice something I hadn't seen before. “Hey, look down by the
water. There's a wooden ramp going across the rocks and boulders
into the water, but it looks almost new.” The wooden ramp is about
ten feet wide, long, and stretches past the high tide mark all the
way into the water to about where low tide should be. The ramp
seems to be built so someone could easily land a dingy or smaller
boat on it no matter what the tide level. That must be how all
these boxes ended up neatly stacked in a pile; someone's using the
ramp to unload and load the boxes.

It's all starting to become clear what's going on
here, when suddenly a voice calls out from behind us, “What a drag,
man. The Fish-Miester, Fisher Shoemaker. What'da doing out here,
man?”

Both Sara and I spin around to see a figure standing
off to the side who's wearing a red bandana and a scraggly beard.
“Skinny Pete,” I whisper to Sara.

“That's your ghost, Skinny Pete?” Sara asks. “But I
thought you said the Coast Guard caught him.”

Last summer while I was on the run, I ended up on
Hunter's Island. It was there where I ran into Skinny Pete, or
should I say, I found him one morning dead drunk passed out in the
bunk of his old lobster boat. At first he seemed like an okay guy;
he had a drinking problem, but he was okay. We even teamed up and
started working some lobster traps and I was lucky enough to even
make a few bucks. The problem was, it turned out they weren't his
traps at all; we were poaching. That will get you in some big
trouble here in Maine. And that's when it all went bad. A long
story short, I told the Coast Guard his last known location. They
were happy to have it because they'd been after him for a while. I
never heard any more about him, so I just assumed the Coast Guard
found him. Apparently not.

“The Law almost nabbed me,” Skinny Pete interrupts
while stroking his beard. “But I gave them the slip. Just too
clever for our Aqua Cops, I guess. Actually, just between you and
me, I was sorta sleeping one off when they musta cruised right past
where I was anchored. Not really sure how that happened, but there
was a lot a radio chatter going on later how they said I evaded
their pursuit,
'evaded their pursuit'
their words.” He
chuckles a little. “Hell, I was just taking a nap; I didn't
evade
nothing.”

Looking closer at Sara, Skinny Pete says, “Fisher
dude, this must be your old lady you told me about.”

I nod.

He walks a little closer to us. “Thanks to Fisher, I
had to make a little career change,” he says pointing to the stack
of stereo equipment. “No more stinkin’ lobsters for me, no, sir.
I'm now a stereo Hi-Fi equipment sales representative. And this
island is my sales warehouse.”

“Fisher, I have no idea what this wacko is saying.”
Sara says in a low voice.

I glance at her and make a little motion like I'm
drinking from a bottle.

She whispers, “Oh, that's right. You said he had a
little drinking problem.”

I take a step back from Skinny Pete. “What are you
talking about,
sales representative
?”

Skinny Pete moves closer to the pile of equipment,
pulls a box off and sets it down on the ground then sits on it. “Ya
see, I get this Hi-Fi stuff for a real good price. A REAL good
price, if ya know what I mean. All I have to do is sell it to my
customers who sell it to their customers. And this is like my
warehouse.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his arms. “All they
have to do is come out here and pick it up because we don't do
deliveries, man.”

Sara frowns and crosses her arms. “So this is a
smuggling operation.”

“Ouch.” Skinny Pete says. “S
muggling
; that's
such a harsh word. Smuggling is what pirates used to do. I'm no
pirate.”

“You sure look like a pirate,” Sara snaps back.

Skinny Pete chuckles. “I'm mostly a mellow dude, The
Fish-Miester can tell you that. But sometimes I end up doing some
crazy things, but mostly mellow.”

“Aren't you worried someone's going to find out
about your operation,” Sara says. “We found it easily enough.”

Skinny Pete pulls off his red bandana, scratches his
head, then puts it back on. “I wasn't worried about it until you
just mentioned it.”

I take a quick glance and catch Sara's eye. She
gives me a slight nod back. We slowly begin creeping backwards
ready to run.

Skinny Pete continues, “But now that you kids came
along I can't afford to have you blow our whole operation. The
dineros are way too good.”

“We won't say anything, I promise,” I lie. “Besides,
I know you don't want to do anything to hurt us.”

“You’re right; I don't want to hurt you. But my new
business partner doesn't have a problem with it. Fisher, I'd like
you to meet my new business partner, Turk.” Skinny Pete raises a
hand and points behind us. Sara and I both snap around. Standing
directly behind us is a huge muscular guy, completely bald, and
wearing a black tank top that says, “
Smitty's Pub
” across
his chest. His face is deep tan and looks like an old scuffed up
leather shoe. His arms are crossed and his eyes are glaring at us
without any humor. We're not even standing that close to him, but
we get an unexpected whiff that makes my breakfast come up a
little. He really stinks. His body odor is so strong it almost
makes my eyes water.

Covering her nose with both hands, Sara says, “I
think I'm going to be sick.”

We're both about to run when I realize he has a
three-prong trident spear pointed at us. I don't know much about
tridents, but I know they're sharp enough to easily stab a large
fish before they can get away. We don't budge an inch.

Very slowly Turk brings the trident to my chest,
taps me twice with it, then nods in the direction away from the
pile of stereo equipment. He wants us to walk. As I begin to move
he grabs Sara's elbow dragging her along. Turk forces us to walk
several yards out of view of the box pile to where they have some
fishing gear lying about the ground.

There's a couple of old bait barrels, some broken
lobster traps, and a spool of rope without much left on it. “Stop,”
Turk says through grinding teeth. Tapping me again with the sharp
end of the trident, he says, “You. Grab that barrel over there.”
Then he turns to Sara, “And you. You pick up the lid.”

We do as we're told. I pick up the barrel and Sara
grabs the lid. Turk motions us to move down by the water between
some of the large rocks where there's a little patch of sand. I set
the barrel down in the sand and Sara tosses the lid to the ground.
Turk takes the lid from the sand and pounds it onto the top of the
barrel.

“Looks like it's my lucky day. Low tide,” Turk
grumbles.

I look at Sara and she looks at me; we have no idea
what he's talking about.

“Plant your butts in the sand with your back up
against the barrel.” He encourages me again by tapping the sharp
trident against my chest. We do as we're told.

Turk grabs a piece of rope off the spool, pulls out
a buck knife from his belt, and swiftly cuts the rope. Moving like
an ape that has too many muscles, he kneels in the sand next to us
grabbing our hands and quickly ties them together around the barrel
strapping Sara and I tight to the barrel. Before he makes the
finial knot he gives it an extra tug to make sure everything’s
snug. I have to admit, his knots are a lot more secure than Skinny
Pete's knots. I got out of Skinny Pete's knots pretty easily, but
there's no getting out of this ones. We're tied tight to the
barrel.

“You kids have fun,” Turk says with a lopsided grin
sliding the buck knife back into belt holder. “I got boxes to
load.”

As he's walking away he stops and turns around. “Oh,
when the tide comes back in, that barrel should float you two quite
well.” He turns and walks away. The stink of body odor goes with
him.

“Tide. Now I get it,” I say.

“Do you think this barrel will float us?” Sara
asks.

“It might. Does it matter? Chances are good it won't
float us perfectly upright with our heads above water. And if it
does, the icy water will get us soon after that.”

“So we could die strapped to this barrel!” Sara
gives a hard wiggle and a tug on her tied hands.

“I suppose we could.”

“Aren't you worried about our predicament?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Well, here we are again, Fisher Shoemaker, trapped
with no way to get out. What is it with you getting us trapped by
bad guys? I'm really getting tired of this.”

“I dunno. It just seems to happen.”

Suddenly an idea hits me. “Hey, I've got it. On the
count of three, if we should try and stand up then we can at least
walk away even though we've got a barrel tied to our backs.”

“That could work,” Sara agrees. “Okay, let's try it.
One, two, three…” We both try and stand up, but because of the
sitting position it's impossible. We try two more times, but it
still doesn't work.

“Okay,” I say. “This is no big deal. We should be
able to get out of this one pretty easily.”

“I'm glad you think so, because we seem to be not
moving tied to this barrel,” Sara says giving a hard tug to the
rope just to make her point.

“Would you stop that! That hurts my hands when you
do that.” Sara gives it another extra hard yank.

“All we have to do is get down into the water, the
barrel will float, then we should be able to stand up and walk
out,” I say.

“And then what?” Sara asks. “We just walk along the
trails and row out to the boat with our back stuck to a barrel?
That shouldn't be too hard. That stink-bomb Turk will never be able
to catch us.” She gives another hard yank on the rope. I'm getting
tired of her sarcasm.

“First things first,” I say. “Let's just see if we
can get to the water so we can stand up. Then we'll figure out what
to do next. Start scooching toward the water.”

Sara doesn't protest and we start pushing ourselves,
butts through the sand, slowly down to the water like a sleepy sea
turtle. As we get closer to the water’s edge, I can feel the wet
sand starting to soak through my pants and underwear. There’s
nothing worse than wet underwear with sand in it. One little roll
of water comes shooting up the hard-pack sand and gets us good and
wet.