Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4) (13 page)

“Oh hell,” I said and put down my spoon.

Bryson turned his head and took in the black-clad skeleton with wild
eyes.

“What’s he on about now?”

“I’m betting pirates. Or maybe ghost ships. I better take him outside
before he scares the tourists.”

“Have you actually seen them?” Bryson asked, surprising me.

“Felt them.
Or something.”
I met his gaze. It
was a relief to be with someone who understood, even if that meant that the
impossible was once again upon us. “Ben will hate me, but I think I’m going to
have to give the box back—treasure and all.”

“It won’t do any good,” Bryson warned. “Not long term. Kelvin tried.”

“But I can’t keep it. We can’t keep having these storms. Someone else
will die. And maybe this time it will work. I’ve found a piece of the missing
treasure. Maybe now the collection will be complete and they will finally go
away for good.”

Bryson was still blinking with surprise when I got up and approached
the wild-eyed minister.

“Reverend Burke, let’s step outside and get some air. You’ll feel
better.” Sometimes a strong suggestion can be efficacious.
But
not this time.

“The damned have come! The spawn of hell are—” I grabbed his arm and
spun him around so he faced the door. He had lost a lot of weight and I am not
a small person. Shock was also on my side. He wasn’t used to being manhandled
and I had him out of the chowder house before he had attracted too much
attention from the visitors. The locals were, of course, watching with interest.
But no one was going to interfere. They all agreed that this affair was mine to
handle.

“Get a grip,” I ordered him, keeping my voice low as I marched him
around the side of the building. “I know about the spawn and will be taking
care of it tonight.”

“Satan must be rebuked! Evil must—“

“Reverend, I’ve got it covered. You need to stay away from Satan and
the spawn and let me deal with it. It isn’t safe for you to be out at night.”

“God is my shield. He shall protect me when—”

I got right up in his face.

“Stay away from the sea. Stay away from the shore. I mean it. And not
another word about any of this in front of the tourists or Bryson will arrest
you for a drunk and disorderly.”

With that I turned and went back inside. I hoped he saw
reason,
otherwise Bryson really might have to arrest him for
being crazy and disorderly.

Mike gave me a relieved look when I came back in the door alone. I
smiled reassuringly and went back to my table.

“I ordered you another
ganache
, but Mike
says lunch is on the house,” Bryson said, pushing the fancy dish my way.

“Thanks. This is the kind of day that calls for double dessert.” And I
ate it. If anything happened, I wanted it reported that the condemned had
enjoyed a hearty last meal.

It was only a little after one when we left the chowder house but the
horizon was already gathering clouds along the margins. Another storm was
coming.

I felt a small trill of nerves. As I had told everyone, it was the
full moon and tonight it was the night that I returned the damned box to its
even more damned owners.

“Home?”
Bryson asked me.

“Yes, please. I have some things I need to do.”

I didn’t really and was glad when he didn’t ask me to elaborate. I had
been good and brave all day long. I needed some time to pet my dog and do some
private panicking.

Most
tymes
a
good blade doth put heart in a man, but though we had blades aplenty and many a
deck gun and cannons, yet we
dyd
not feel safe from
the
evyl
that stalked us. And I knew no means by
which our eventual fates could be bettered. Every
nyght
they grew more real to me and I came to wonder if someday they shall have
th
pow’r
to walk through
woode
and
stoene
.
What are these
ab-natral
creature
?

—from the unbound journal of
Halfbeard

Sunset.
The clouds moving on the islands were
purple, livid with threat and streaks of fire, but the glowing fog soon hid this
masterpiece of rage from my view.

I waited for full dark before stepping outside. I did not want to
chance being seen and questioned by Mary or Ben.

Part of me expected to find water-logged zombies rotting on the doorstep
when I opened the door, but there was nothing there except a few fingers of
mist. Something was keeping the clouds away from the house. That was good. I
needed to know that I had a safe retreat if I was going to keep my courage. I
tried not to think about the strange sea wrack that had moved closer to my door
with each passing night.

The fog closed in as soon as I left the narrow perimeter of light
around the house. Though stifling and airless it was also extremely cold,
almost an ice fog. I had trouble breathing as I inched down the path but
suspected the problem was as much psychological and maybe psychic as it was
physical. I was very frightened under my robe of calm intention. It wasn’t my
first ghostly encounter but it was the first time that I felt menaced, that the
other meant me harm.
What are these
ab-natual
creatures?
Halfbeard
had asked.
Something more than ghosts, surely.
But
could they become corporeal?
 
It had me
belatedly rethinking my assumption that the family bane could—and would—keep me
safe.

There was a flashlight in my jacket pocket but I have learned that in
dense fog, all it does is light up the upper half of my body and is actually a
deterrent to sight while marking me with a spotlight. Also I needed both hands
for holding the chest which I had wrapped in my ruined coat. It was going to be
left on the beach too. I didn’t want it anymore.

I looked back once. The house lights were still on but they were vague
and indistinct. The fog was also swallowing sound. That was by design, I was
sure.
Fog to hide the enemy here and rain everywhere else in
the islands to deter witnesses.
There were lights in the other two
houses, which seemed very far away, but they were swallowed up by the
thickening stench and I had a suspicion that in them, my neighbors slumbered in
a deep, unnatural sleep.

I could barely hear Barney’s braying and Kelvin’s howls of warning and
indignation. I knew my pets wanted to be with me and would defend me to the
death. And that was why I had locked them in the pantry. If there was any dying
that night, it would not be done by them.

Up from the beach there crept a hideous bouquet of rot and sea wrack.
Since there was no wind I had to infer that the stench was growing because
something horrible was getting closer. That was expected but my legs were
shaking as the fear grew.

I forced myself down to the beach. The tide was out but I didn’t trust
the water at all. The usual physical laws did not seem to apply that night. It
took all my effort, but I put the box out at the high-tide line about ten feet
from the churning water. My limbs simply refused to move me any closer to the
surf. I knelt in the wet sand and opened the chest so that whatever was out
there in the waves could easily see inside. In the rising light of the green
phosphorescence coming up from the sea I could make out the three coins, the
necklace, and to one side the shriveled glove that looked like it might well
have fit the denuded monkey paw.

Then I climbed on a distant rock to wait. My rational mind kept screaming
at me to flee, but somehow I knew that I had to remain as a witness, if this
handing over of cursed treasure was to work. I sat on my high rock with my
flashlight clutched in my hand, though I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to
turn it on. I looked and looked into the fog. My eyes have never stared so
hard, but the vapor’s density defeated me. It was left to my nose and ears to
tell me when danger came and when it was gone.

I know that we are all going to die. Of course we are. But there was a
big difference between we are all going to die
someday
and I’m going to die
now
.
After a while it wasn’t courage that kept me on that rock, it was terror.
Paralyzing, stop-the-breath horror.

I’m not saying I ever saw
Halfbeard’s
shadders
in the deep
. I finally lost what nerve
I had and buried my face in my knees and clapped my hands over my ears in an
attempt to keep the stench from choking me and also to spare my eyes if they
managed to actually see any of things I heard moving in the mist. But I knew
they were there—very close—and when the tide went out and the mist rolled away,
the cursed box was gone.

By then my limbs were asleep and I had a terrible pain shooting
through my back and neck. But I was alive and alone.

I fell off my rock as I tried to climb down and bruised my knees on
the smaller stones. I had to stagger crab-wise back to the house, but I was
euphoric and wept with happiness when I opened the pantry door and saw Barney
and Kelvin looking up at me with frantic eyes.

I knew the
nyght
that the
Calmare
was lost. It took four days for word
to reach the island, but I already kenned what fate had befallen her and my
crew. I can but pray that the
evyl
is avenged now and
wyll
come no more to the island seeking the last of
the treasure.

—from the unbound journal of
Halfbeard

I went down to
the beach the next morning to look for tracks around my rock, but the tide had
swept the sand bare, supposing that ghosts actually left footprints. My coat
was gone too. That was no great loss since I would never have worn it again.

Evidence of my
encounter would have been nice, but it was enough that the chest was gone and
that I was alive.

Ben joined me
as I stared out at the sea which was beautifully calm and the horizon
completely clear of atmospheric blemish.

“No more
storms?” he asked.

“Not today
anyway.” I looked down at him, kneeling in the sand and petting my dog. Ben was
a good neighbor. I was sorry that I had had to give his treasure away. “Want
some breakfast? I could make blueberry pancakes.”

“That would be
great. I had barely started my bowl of dinner vegetation when I fell asleep. I
guess I got too much sun yesterday,” he said, getting to his feet. I noticed
that he looked refreshed. Whatever had been ailing him had departed.
“How about it, Barn?
Want to share some grub?”

Barney barked
and wagged his stumpy tail. He always wants to share some grub.

*
 
*
 
*

I stared at the phone as though I wished to be certain that it wasn’t
telling lies. The news shouldn’t have shocked me, but somehow it did. I thought
the weirdness with the chest was over.

“Tess?” Bryson’s voice was worried.

“I’m here.” But I said this to the air.

Reverend Burke was dead? Had the idiot come down to the sea after my
warning and tried to rebuke the waters? Should I be horrified? Relieved that he
was dead? Of course, it might be that his demise was not related.

“It wasn’t a lynching or something normal like a plain old murder that
got him?” I asked at last, hardly daring to hope that it could be unrelated.

“It looks to be another accidental drowning. He was tangled in
seaweed.” Bryson’s voice was dry.

Seaweed.

“People are going to start avoiding the Founders Day Festival.”

Bryson grunted.

I should have been more upset at the news of the reverend’s passing,
but I hadn’t cared for the man and was glad the dead man wasn’t someone I liked.

And, if the legends were true, then his was the third death that came
with these visitations and everyone else would be safe.

Until the box came back.

If it came back.
Maybe it was
gone for good since I had found the third coin.

“Are you going to do DNA tests on this body?” I finally asked, taking
a seat at my desk. My slumped posture would have brought reproof from my
grandmother.

They hadn’t run tests on the last victim and I was actually curious
about what such tests would reveal, though I knew it might well open a
Pandora’s box of outsider questions and official interest if the results came
back with some whacky three-hundred-year-old Spanish DNA, but it would be
really nice to know what the hell it had been out there in the fog.