Telescope Jim Ebook

THE STICKER AND THE GAME

NE DAY I’LL TELL A STORY ABOUT PAINTING YOUR NAILS
and barbies and stuff — you know, with teapots and gossip and all that.
But as for now, I’m telling a story about sea-ruffians or pirates to the common
man, so there won’t be any nail-painting or excited blabber here. Not unless
its fingernails painted in traitor’s guts, and blabber about treasure and battle,
which is just the kind of story I would have liked when I was a boy. And it’s
just the kind of thing that happened to me when I was a young man overseas,
when I met a person called Jim.
Longfellow Jim, as some called him because of his enormous height,
was traipsing around my seaport when I was at the age of sixteen. I had
dropped out of school a year earlier and had been shipped off to the South
Seas in punishment of my bad behavior.
My place in the world, where I was allowed to exist, was in the service
of the kitchen, as a dishwasher. I was responsible for the slop that was fed to
you from this half-rate restaurant — me and this chef person and this other
chef person called the Sous.
Under the strange and awkward pretense of washing dishes, I was paid
to listen to these two chefs prattle and yell, and in good truth save the kitchen
from utter ruin.
But, after the kitchen was closed, the two chefs became perfect
gentlemen and wandered the streets in complete cheerfulness. And on this
particular day when Jim appeared, not even the biting wind that cut across the
streets could disturb their good humor.
I went with them, and as we passed building after building, the chefs
walked and gawked and cursed and yelled according to their varying moods,
until we reached our usual pub called the Orderly Way.
When I entered, a hand slapped me on the back.
“Go’n in?” asked a voice. I turned to see who had struck me and found
a burly man holding the door open for me.
He was unusually tall and broad and nearly knocked me over. One of
his apish arms, which had slapped me on the back, presented the doorway to
me and I went in. But as I took my regular seat, I watched the man’s brown,
bushy beard and blue eyes float around the room until they ended up at the
poker table behind me.
As the night continued, I was continually interrupted by the Burly
Man’s booming voice.
“Now there’s a good hand!” he laughed. “Pocket threes! Who would
have thought!” He jabbed his opponents with his elbow. “See, I knew that
fella was bluffing!”
The Burly Man remarked on the unusual amount of good hands he was
getting, then apologized for winning, then left for the bathroom, rummaging
his large weight beneath his jackets. As he returned, the ground shook and he
continued to make a humble ruckus about being the leader.
“Chip leader? Are you sure?” he said with surprise. “Must be my lucky
night!”
The faces around the poker-table grew grimmer and the Burly Man’s
chip-pile grew larger. Finally, all the chips ended up beneath the Burly Man’s
wooly beard and arms. When he stood to leave, one of the players shouted
‘cheat’ and in a moment the room was turned upside down.
The Burly Man leapt over the table to scare the man who had said it.
And several men who had been waiting to take the Burly Man’s money leapt
from the shadows. Next, there was a great yell, and someone screamed “men
are killing one another in here!”
Suddenly, more men who hadn’t been seen in weeks appeared from
windows and back alleys to join in the excitement. They jumped from stools,
from staircases, from chandeliers, and rooftops — from every shadowy corner
in the place. In short, the evil spirit that had been working over the place was
finally realized in the uproar.
And from within the massive crowd which formed, the Burly Man’s
head popped out between flailing arms with an excited, cheerful grin as if he
was enjoying an especially delightful ride at the theme park. His giddy face
rode the waves of arms to the right, to the left, and finally, he disappeared into
the crowd and reappeared outside of it, yelling insults at the ‘filthy cheat.’
“Kick him in the neck!” he cried in varying tones of savagery, “I say
we skin the cheat alive!”
Until everyone looked around and realized he was the one yelling and
had done such a good job pretending to be one of his own attackers that they
had lost him for a good twenty seconds.
The joke enraged the other men and they leapt at him again, but this
time, the shrill voice of a barmaid rang out and brought everything to a halt as
if sudden death had fallen upon the room.
“Now what is going on?!” hissed the barmaid as if just realizing some
thirty men were trying to kill one another.
The accusation of cheat came out and the Burly Man told the accuser
he was a dirty liar who had funny-looking eyebrows. There was another small
squabble about the eyebrows, but finally the Burly Man had to leave.
“Keep your darned money,” he scoffed, kicking over the poker table
and spreading chips and bills onto the floor. “If I did wrong, it was in lettin’
you keep a bit of my money. I won’t take a single dollar with me in these
jackets!”
This caused the bar staff to immediately search his jacket and affirm
there was no money there. Then they let him leave. But when each of the
players went to reclaim their cheated money that had been spread onto the
floor, several thousand dollars were missing.
At this point, I shuffled off my seat, glad to have been untouched by
the brawl and pleased to have witnessed it.
Still, I wasn’t out of the clear. For when I returned to my hostel and
snuggled down to sleep with the shouts of the men floating around in my
head, I took off my own jacket, stuffed it under my bed and was struck with
sudden fear.
On the back of my jacket, which was shimmering in the light, was a
large, foot-wide reflective sticker. I hadn’t put it there. It reflected the objects
of my room perfectly and gave a mirror image of everything in it.
Vaguely, I remembered that part of my jacket being struck by the hand
of the Burly Man when I had walked into the pub . . . Yes, it had been him
who had slapped me on the back!
Cold fear trickled through my body. My hands began to shake. My
regular stool at the Orderly Way was directly in front of the poker table, and
with my back turned, the shiny sticker would have reflected the other players’
cards like a mirror . . .
The Burly Man had been called cheat and scoundrel and had been
accused of looting every man at the poker table. These accusations, I realized
in a daze of horror, were painfully true, but worst of all, he had used me and
my jacket to accomplish his thievery.
But where had all the money gone?
T
CHAPTER 2
THE DEMOLITION SITE
HE NEXT MORNING, I GATHERED MY THINGS FOR WORK AS
a blazing sun reflected off the bay, reminding me of the half day I’d
wasted in sleeping.
I glanced at my jacket with the sticker, which I had hidden deep under
my bed, and the whole event came swirling back to me. I remembered the
muddled, angry crowd, the smoky barroom, and the outlandish Burly Man
who had included me in his cheating scheme. Then I thought of his childish
delight when he had surfed the crowd of swinging fists and snuck out beneath
them. But where had his cheated money gone?
Next to my jacket, I found an order form: this was my task list for that
afternoon from the building manager
Scrap-metal delivery needed at 1116 Autobauk Lane.
One of my jobs besides dishwasher was delivery man for different
businesses. I was rented to shop-owners to help with their afternoon work.
This brought all sorts of odd jobs my way and that afternoon, it brought me to
the fringes of the city, to an abandoned lot deep in the mountains surrounding
the beautiful town which had become my new home.
My cart, my work outfit, my tools and other things I pulled behind me
through a cobblestone track in the mountains. It was terribly hot and the
raging sun blasted me as I walked up the lanes through streets and jungle
foliage that crept around the city.
The buildings became more decrepit and monster-like as the forest
began to infiltrate the structures. Soon, palm trees and bushes mixed with the
gates and fences of the city, until at last, I reached an old hotel where several
trees had grown through the roof.
One One One Six Autobauk Lane, I read off the building address,
wiping the sweat from my face. Next to the building was a banner.
NOTICE OF DEMOLITION, the sign read.
I saw beyond the rooftops, the white buildings of my city miles away
— hundreds of feet below. I marveled at my climb. Sailboats sailed in the
distance, riding ripples of what seemed a blue carpet on which toy ships
moved — and around which miniature green mountains loomed.
“You’re late,” greeted a construction worker behind me.
I turned. My order form was ripped from my hand and the construction
worker, who had emerged from the dilapidated building, scrutinized the form
and led me inside. Within the old structure there were vines and bushes
growing through broken walls, climbing up the stairs. Patches of black hinted
at previous fires. Old blankets and tin cans indicated previous squatters. There
were rusted pipes hanging from the ceiling, and finally, giant, trees rising
through a rotted roof.
“Watch your step,” declared the man, bounding up a crooked tree like a
stair. As he directed me, I scurried after him.
At the top, the construction worker began reading markings on the wall
and counting his steps. Suddenly, there was a loud bang as he struck the wall
with a crowbar and began pulling it apart.
His bearded face peered inside where signs, arrows, and numbers lay
hidden. He assessed the signs and continued pacing through the house as if he
was navigating through it, until he abruptly retrieved a heavy pipe from
within the walls and handed it to me.
As I received the pipe, a coin fell to the ground.
I halted. There was a flicker of silver on the coin, which drew my
attention. When I reached down to grab it, I saw a ship on the coin and
quickly hid it in my pocket.
The construction worker continued tearing the place apart and handed
me more pipes, which I loaded into my cart. A half hour later I had a cart full
of heavy lead pipes.
“This is the scrap-metal?” I asked as the last pipe was placed on my
cart. “What do people want with all this old junk?”
The man scowled at me.
“You’ve never done construction before, have you son? Pipes! Pipes!
Pipes is good for all sorts of things.”
This was supposed to be an explanation. He lifted his hand to his beard
and handed me a second address from his pocket, which I read.
“That is where you are to deliver the metal,” he explained.
“That will take me to the marina,” I remarked, observing the address.
“That’s right. Go son. Scram! Out, out! Get gone, kid! Woooeeee!”
Each of these exclamations grew louder and more abrupt, ending in a
sort of cattle-call that shook my bones. I ran without thinking — down the
main track, through the passerby and tourists, past offices and the police
station toward the marina, where I was greeted by a man in a yellow jacket
and large boots.
“Demolition go okay?” he inquired, smirking and eyeing the city
nervously. Soon, many hands were unloading the pipes into the boat, and I
turned, glad to be finished with the hard business of carting.
But as the pipes were stowed and the boat was untied, I peered through
the boat-window and saw the men hovering around an object hidden in the
pipes. I saw something golden and what looked like the figurine of a monkey.
The lengthening shadows told me I was needed at the kitchen for
cleaning dinner dishes. As I left and walked higher and higher into the city, I
turned and watched the boat with the pipes exiting the marina. It moved
around the docks, around the quays, around giant ships and sailboats, passed
the cliffs and small islands, until it left our port completely and turned
determinedly into the giant waves of the deep ocean and disappeared into a
stormy sunset.
I
CHAPTER 3
LOOT AND LOOTERS
PONDERED THE COIN I’D FOUND AT THE DEMOLITION SITE AS
I returned to the kitchen. Behind me, the sea blew harsh winds over the
mountains and seemed to shout at me as thunder rolled and a heavy wind sent
a black cloud my direction. After work, as I tried to sleep, I contemplated the
men at the marina and their strange behavior.
Why had they wanted all those heavy pipes? Why had they been
removed from inside the walls of the old building? And what about the golden
monkey?
The man in the yellow jacket troubled me in my dreams. I saw his
weathered hands, his worn jacket, and his knowing, black eyes. His boots
stomped toward me with a slow energy. Then, late in the night, I awoke to
find several specks on the water.
They were ships! Dark ships. Moving without any light . . . moving
secretly into our marina . . .
At intervals, I rose to see the ships closer and closer, until finally, in
early morning, they reached our harbor.
“That voice!” I said, rising from a dream.
The voice of the construction worker rang in my head as I bolted
awake.
“Pipes! Pipes! Pipes!” he had said. “Scram! Get gone! Woooeeee!” I
had remembered that voice all through my dreams.
Then, the Burly Man from the Orderly Way drifted into my thoughts.
They had been the same voice!
Could the man from the demolition site be the same man who’d
cheated at poker? The accent had changed, the outfit had been altered, but
beneath both was the same broad, bearded person! I was sure of it! He had
walked with the same jolty movements. And his eyes were of the same color
blue!
“It was you!” I murmured, falling back to sleep.
When I woke, I half-doubted my nightly suppositions and believed that
the ships had only been a delirious dream.
The sea was grey. A vicious wind splattered rain across the bay, but
there was no sign of any dark ships.
I exited the hostel and made for my favorite bakery in honor of my
hard work from the previous day. I ordered pancakes and coffee and stared
into the rainy morning. The bay’s tempestuous winds rustled the shops as I
pondered the Burly Man who had tricked the other poker players and
pretended to be a construction worker. Why had there been a golden monkey
hidden in those pipes? And where had all the poker money gone?
I wandered to the bathroom, and when my hand grasped the paneling
inside, I remembered the Burly Man taking several trips to the bathroom.
Then I thought of how that golden monkey had been hidden in the pipes. This
triggered an idea. I finished my breakfast and hurried through pelting rain to
the Orderly Way, where I asked to be let into the back.
“I lost my room key,” I told the staff and insisted I needed to search for
it.
I was allowed to scour the room where the poker table had been. Then,
at the bathroom hall, I began to peel back the paneling boards and dug
through the insulation to find something that made me shudder with
amazement — a wad of hundred-dollar bills. The missing money from the
poker game! It was just like the demolition site. The Burly Man had been
sneaking to the bathroom to hide his winnings. He had hid it the same way the
gold monkey had been hidden — within the walls. But what else had he
hidden in the pipes?
After five minutes, I discovered several wads of money, which I stuffed
into my socks and hurried into the streets.
I had never been so rich in my life. At the nearest bakery, I ordered the
most expensive item on the menu.
“Thank you very much! And here’s a tip for your work.” I slipped the
cashier a twenty.
Next, I bought a hat, some boots, a jacket to replace my old one, and a
guitar that I had desired since I arrived at the port.
I reached into my pocket and as I pulled out my wad of money, the
silver coin from the demolition site went tumbling to the ground.
The man at the shop observed me as I set my money down and
recovered the coin. Suddenly the man disappeared into the back of the shop. I
waited and waited for him to return. But he was gone for so long, I became
worried.
I heard a strange noise on the wind — the jingling of bells or was it a
whistle? Something in that noise frightened me. I took my guitar and ran, but
I heard the same whistle coming from the rooftops. I saw a group of men
watching me from the shadows.
“They’re after my money!” I told myself. I figured the shop-owner had
disappeared to inform the group of robbers of the large amount of money I
was carrying.
As I slipped into my hostel, I saw a very tall man with thick boots peer
at me from across the street. I quickly found a loose floorboard beneath my
bunk, hid the money, and gazed out the window. The shadowy figure was
joined by several more men, who quietly disappeared into darkness.
T
CHAPTER 4
THE BURLY MAN
HE NEXT MORNING, I VENTURED INTO THE CITY. OVER THE
trees and rooftops, there was a crowd of people on the mountain where
the demolition site had been. As I drew near, I saw news vehicles, reporters,
and even a helicopter — they were surrounding the site where the pipes had
been hidden.
“What is this about?!” I asked, arriving at the old building.
“The Sinsay Treasure,” a boy explained at the edge of the crowd.
“Haven’t you heard? A silver coin was found from an ancient treasure. They
are excavating the building to see if there is more inside. There is supposed to
be loads of silver coins, gold bricks, and a solid-gold monkey.”
I watched with strange excitement building in my heart as men began
inspecting the building for the treasure and the ancient silver coins. The news
teams continued to report, and I dug my hand in my pocket where I grasped
the silver coin I’d found.
Then, I glanced secretly at the aged coin in my hand and tried to
conceal my fluttering heart — it had been treasure hidden in the pipes! A real
silver treasure! And I had part of it in my own pocket! I had even helped carry
it away — gold bricks, silver coins and a monkey of solid-gold.
From where had Burly Man gotten it? Who was he? Where had the
treasure gone?
Hours later, as I worked in the kitchen, the Burly Man walked into my
restaurant and broke into my thoughts with his loud, booming voice.
“Waiter, I want to speak with the chef!” he declared, bursting through
the kitchen doorway.
“Chef is busy,” the sous chef replied.
Suddenly the sous chef’s ponytail was firmly gripped by the Burly
Man and stuffed into the garbage can, which drew the Chef’s attention.
“I would like a dish of sirloin steak.”
The Burly Man proceeded to order in the most refined terms a steak
marinated with Mediterranean flavoring. He ordered fish broiled with an herb
from Norway, then shrimp sautéed in the style of New Orleans. And all of it
he wanted done immediately and with professionalism!
The two chefs looked at one another after the Burly Man had left.
“Did you hear the way he yelled at you?” the chef asked, inspired.
“How he spit right in your face.”
“I did Chef,” answered the sous, fixing his ponytail.
“No bum off the street would demand food like that,” continued the
chef reflectively.
“Who do you think he is?” probed the sous, sensing a superstitious
mood in the chef.
The chef became meditative and sharpened his knives.
“A food critic,” he declared, opening his knife-case. “See if you can
find anything about him?”
The sous chef began scrolling through pictures of food critics on his
phone.
“It looks like he is from the European circuit!” declared the sous,
finding a lookalike to the Burly Man from Sweden.
“As soon as he stuffed your ponytail in the garbage, I knew he was a
man of taste,” returned the chef, scavenging his best cut of steak from the
back of the fridge.
“Now careful Chef,” warned the sous playfully. “We have a food critic
in our restaurant. The headlines could sing your praises. ‘Crooked-eared chef
cooks perfect dish for undercover bum.’”
“Don’t forget ‘dodgy sous who had his ponytail stuffed in the
garbage!’” returned the chef angrily.
“I’d be honored to remember it,” replied the sous.
All this time, I sprayed and loaded dishes, trying to keep myself
unnoticed in the back of the kitchen. But once the Burly Man had left, I
warned the chefs of his suspicious identity. However, I was only scolded with
the foulest of dishwashing names — water-rat, spray-slave, plate-clerk,
garbage-handler. What did I know!
After a quarter of an hour, the requested dish was served and the Burly
Man ate in silence and with great pleasure, wiping his beard, licking his lips
and placing a pint of ale to his mouth. Then, to show his appreciation, he let
out a loud burp and groaned delightedly.
“My compliments to the chef!” he declared, stumbling to the stage,
where he grabbed my guitar, which had been set nearby.
“Don’t mind if I play a song, do you?” he announced, burping and
pulling the guitar out of the case.
He directed drinks to be served all around, then taking center stage,
began singing sea stories.
“Boom boom boom go the cannons in my ear. I put my finger to the
trigger. A cannonball nearly hits my foot. I can’t heeeeeeeear. Boooooooom in
my eaaaaaar. Battle.
“That was one of my own compositions, a very important little tale
drawn from me own life experiences.
“Now how about one dedicated to a dear old friend of mine.
“Blue eyed bobby stole me wallet, the dirty son-a-gun and happened to
land with his face in sand, after my foot kicked the back of his leg. Then the
waves pulled him out to the sea — hey! hey!”
“Where are you going? Where you going?” blurted the Burly Man
when several of the customers tried to leave the room. “Never heard a sea
yarn before? I was just getting to the good part where the sharks come and the
crabs get hold of his legs. There’s an awful lot of dangerous critters in the
dark seas you know. Never mind that now.”
He glared with bulging eyes and blew through his teeth. Then he
forced his listeners to sit. His voice echoed through the room as he recounted
in sea language his adventures through jungle fortresses, marooned islands,
and the salty sea.
“A last story, a last story!” he declared as if he the crowd had been
begging for more.
And in a deep and frightful voice he sang:
In the Darkened Isle of Stones, they cast me down to be turned to
bones,
Between cliffs and craters and gullies it was, with dark and stony faces
above,
Where man and house and trees were none, I lie and cursed and cried
and sung,
In the Darkened Isle of Stooooooonnnnnnnneeeeeess!
His listeners plugged their ears as he finished. But the Burly Man set
down his guitar and proudly bowed.
T
CHAPTER 5
THE METAL EYE
HE BURLY MAN SET MY GUITAR IN ITS CASE AND DAWDLED
near the stage before stepping down. Then he retreated to a dingy booth
where he finished his drink and paid for his meal. The restaurant emptied and
the Burly Man was left alone, confined to his thoughts. He was, I believe,
mentally lingering over the last phrase in his song, for after a long, blank
stare, he beat his chest and softly sung:
“Where man and house and trees were none, I lie and cursed and cried
and sung. In the Darkened Isle of Stooooooonnnnnnnneeeeeess!”
His words ended in a burp.
Out the window, a figure caught my eye beneath an awning. Beside it,
another shadowy outline signaled toward our building, within which the Burly
Man sat.
I approached the Burly Man, who seemed to weigh a hundred times the
weight of a normal man surrounded in all his rags and hoods and jackets and
staring pensively.
“What you looking at!” he barked. My eyes glimpsed a silvery belt
below his vest, and two massive, untied boots with laces hanging askew. His
thoughtful blue eyes, which scrutinized me, seemed strange to belong to such
an ape of a man with a loud, brutish voice.
“It’s you, delivery boy,” he bellowed, recognizing me.
“Have you seen the weather?” I remarked, winking noticeably as I
collected his dishes.
The man’s eyes narrowed. Without moving, he peered sidelong at the
window. He coughed, and using his old reflective trick, took a metal flask
from his pocket to observe the persons across the street.
“Awful tempestuous weather,” he agreed meaningfully and raised his
eyebrows to show he was impressed with my secretive communication.
He stood and walked toward the restroom. When we both were out of
sight of the window, he grabbed me by the collar and growled with doggish
fear.
“You listen to my words and answer me plainly!” he hissed, pushing
me toward the window. “Look out there with your cleaning rag to the glass
and tell me what you see.”
I did as he said and, pretending to clean the windows, glanced across
the street at the men hiding in the shadows. There were two big men and a
little man observing our restaurant, I told him.
“Does the big fellow have a cutlass on him?” inquired the Burly Man
quietly. “Cutlass?” I asked.
“A sailor’s knife, son!” answered the Burly Man impatiently. “Is his
hand upon a sword at his belt-line?”
I nodded. The Burly Man drew a deep breath.
“And is there a scar about his right cheek where a man tried to drive a
knife into his skin?”
The Burly Man illustrated this by putting a finger to his cheek and
moving it toward his ear.
I peered closer and seeing the exact mark on the man reported it to the
Burly Man.
“Ghosts and devil-men!” muttered the Burly Man. Then he inquired
about the small man.
“Does the little guy have two stubs on his left hand where a man
gnawed through his fingers like a rat?”
I answered that I saw two stubs in that exact place!
“Betwixt the devil! Three-Fingered Jim and Mangle-Face Jim — back
from the dead!”
The Burly Man fell flat on his back as if someone had punched him
and started wheezing and choking.
I asked who these men were, for I understood that they were the same
men that had followed me home from the guitar shop. And I had the strangest
idea that it had been these men that had come in the black ships during the
storm.
“Quiet, quiet you devil of a son!” hissed the Burly Man, getting up and
trying to calm himself. “You’re staring at the shadowy faces of Devil Jim’s
ruffian crew. Three-Fingered Jim, and Mangle-Face Jim, like I said, worst of
sailors and smugglers.”
The Burly Man crawled to the door that led out of the restaurant and
into the hostel. He asked if I had a room in the building. When I answered
yes, he blurted:
“Get us up there, double quick!”
I led him up the elevator and into my room which was empty.
The Burly Man hurried to the window and pulled back a curtain.
“Do you have any birds in the alleyway?” he pried. When I told him
crow’s nests covered the awnings, he asked if I could catch a crow and bring
it back.
I soon returned with the requested crow, which I’d caught using the
hostel’s fish-net.
“The top window across the street with the curtains drawn,” the Burly
Man murmured, peering out the window as I brought him the bird. “Do you
see a metal circle on the glass? That’s where the big man is staying, the
captain of their crew — Devil Jim.”
I approached the window and peered. My eyes followed the building to
the top, where I saw a metal circle that looked like a magnified glass pressed
against the window along with a pipe-shaped object.
“Now send the bird out,” directed the Burly Man.
I sent the bird out the window and into the rain. It flew off cawing and
flapping.
The curtain where the metal circle had been ruffled and the pipeshaped
object withdrew.
“The metal circle is gone . . . ” I reported.
The Burly Man sank to the floor with a deep exhale.
“Sit yourself down lad,” he sighed in relief. “There isn’t a monsoon
from hell that would make that man come in here now, not with the sign of
bad-luck over this house. All devil-pirates are terribly superstitious and
blackbirds is the worst of the omens. Not tonight, he won’t attack.”
“Attack?” I asked curiously.
“Of course,” replied the Burly Man, glaring at me sidelong, “come to
kill Longfellow Jim. That is my name — good to meet you.”
He extended a calloused, sweaty hand and I shook it.
O
CHAPTER 6
TELESCOPE JIM
NCE THAT CROW FLEW, THE BURLY MAN BECAME
boisterous. His bearded face beamed in the light of the bedside lamp
and he talked as freely as if his soul had wandered back from the grave.
His skin, which was sunburnt from drifting at sea, softened as he
smiled. The tangled beard and chapped, lump of a nose seemed hardly
threatening as his face filled with joy and he slumped to the floor.
“Devil Jim — that’s who is across the street,” whispered the Burly
Man, drinking from the flask in his pocket. “We Jims have been enemies
since practical childbirth. I fought off the Devil on the high seas, barehanded
in the middle of a typhoon. Then I was taken captive by that one-eyed
monster, Jim, tied to the mast and left for dead with nothing but an island of
stones to survive on.”
“But aren’t you Jim?” I clarified.
“We both Jims,” explained the Burly Man. “Jim’s a common name for
thieves and scoundrels. It’s the first one that comes to our minds when we’re
lying, but it sticks — sticks like the fleas on Jim’s back.”
Jim had a sudden itch behind his shoulder that made me step a few
paces back.
“Jim — me-Jim — I mean myself — I am called Longfellow,” he
declared with importance. “The other Jim is Devil Jim. All his words are dark
like the devil and his face is evil as a thunderstorm. He could kill you with his
looks or even his bad breath, if ever you got close enough to smell him.”
‘Longfellow’ Jim rambled in this disorderly way for the next hour,
becoming dramatic at times, talking as quietly as if he were afraid the wind
might hear — but always telling the story so that he was the hero and the
other Jim, Devil Jim, was the loser.
“He left me marooned,” Longfellow continued. “He stranded me on the
terrible island of stones. Then I wandered through places no man has seen.
“You may have heard Devil Jim called Telescope Jim once or twice, on
account of the metal eye that you saw earlier.
“Devil Jim had his eye bitten out by rats while he was tied to a pier.
After he lost his eye, he paid to have a telescope placed there, so he could see
the other Jim (me-Jim) escaping on the waves. Sometimes his eye is like a
radio tower sticking out of his head, and men grow scared, thinking he’s an
alien with an antenna and beat him over the head.
“Other-times, the telescope disappears into Devil Jim’s head,”
Longfellow Jim made a popping sound with his lips, “and then you’re staring
at no eye at all, just a black pit — into Devil Jim’s soul, and by extension, the
devil himself. That’s why he’s called Devil Jim.”
Jim slapped the floor and chattered his teeth as he rattled through story
after story with the two Jim’s at one another’s throats. Limbs were cut.
Cannons were blasted and men were marooned. As his stories were told, Jim
built a barricade of stolen whiskey bottles around him from the bar. Then, late
in the night, he turned his jacket inside out, placed it on the floor and began to
survey it nostalgically, drinking from his flask.
Tattooed on the jacket was a map of the ocean. I knew the places well.
It was a map of the South Seas, but there were other places on the map I did
not recognize.
Jim grasped a lighter from his pocket and illuminated the map and
smiled at me. There were secret currents, shipwrecks, caves, shark sites, battle
sites, and smuggling routes between the islands.
“Tattoos is a sailor’s best friend!” Jim remarked proudly. “A sailor
would tattoo the land that shipwrecked him if he only had some ink.”
I turned to Jim, assessing his map uncertainly. Suddenly I felt the urge
to tell him that I knew about his treasure in the pipes and about his poker
scheme.
“I found the money you cheated — hidden in the walls of the Orderly,
hidden just like the treasure you unloaded from the demolition site.”
Jim looked at me wide-eyed, impressed at my awareness of his
schemes. But then he turned on me suddenly.
“You took Jim’s money!” he hissed. “Are you working with him —
with the Devil?”
“No, I’ve never met the Devil or this Telescope person you call Jim,” I
told him emphatically. “In fact, I think those men across the street are
following me.”
Jim’s nostrils flared.
“Come with me,” he demanded, leading me out of the hostel. His face
was red with anger and his eyebrows fluttered as he led me down the alley
and across the street to the hotel where Devil Jim was staying.
“You can prove your sides now,” whispered Jim in my ear.
Before I knew it, the lumbering, oversized man was climbing the side
of the building like a mammoth Bill-goat. Soon, he reached the fire escape
and climbed straight to the top windowsill. I followed his path, and using the
fire escape stairs, arrived at the window where the metal eye had watched us.
Inside, there were the snores of what seemed many men. But when I
looked inside, there was only one giant man sleeping on two beds pushed
together, and beside him was the telescope that Jim had told me about. It was
looking very alive to me, and the man’s body seemed five times the size of
Longfellow Jim, who I considered a practical monster.
“Pirates of the old day, son,” Jim explained, seeing my fear. “They are
scary folk. Now, go in there and place these five smooth stones in Goliath’s
smoking tray.”
Jim handed me a leather pouch.
I crept very quietly through the window and couldn’t help staring at the
metal hole in the Giant’s eye-socket.
Around him were harpoons and fancy weapons. I saw a hatchet made
of shark teeth and a shark-tooth necklace on the bedside table.
Spread across the table was a map with calculations and mysterious
writing. Across the land and sea were secret passes — marks where treasure
had been lost and marks where it had been found. My eyes kept wandering
over the sea-routes underneath the water and the mysterious islands to which
they led, until there was a loud snore and Devil Jim’s hand reached out and
grasped my shirt.
“Steady, steady son,” whispered Longfellow from the window. “It’s
only a nightmare in Jim’s brain. Caw like a blackbird now.”
I made a noise like what I thought was a blackbird, but the giant man’s
fist grew tighter around my shirt until my sleeve tore.
“That’s not a blackbird!” hissed Longfellow desperately. “That’s a
dove. Caw! Caw!”
I mimicked Jim’s cawing and Telescope Jim released me and recoiled
into his bed. The giant’s sleepy, single eye looked lazily around the room. His
monstrous head of flesh stared blankly and his hand reached for his telescope.
Quickly, I grabbed from the floor Devil Jim’s wooden pipe, which was
as big as a saxophone and placed the small bits of rock Jim had given me into
the pipe. Then I crawled out the window to the fire escape.
“There, there, son, you’re as good a sailor as any, I reckon,” said
Longfellow in relief. “I know you aren’t working with the Devil.”
When I came down the side of the building and crossed through the
alleyway, Jim was shaking with silent laughter.
“What? What are you laughing at?” I asked, my voice still cracking
with fright.
“Nothing son,” Longfellow replied, extending an open hand to me.
“Give good Jim a pass into your common room, where I can sleep the night.”
I led Jim into the hostel common-room through the back door, gave
him a blanket and went to my own room, where I locked the door, and let a
feeling of fright settle over me as Devil Jim’s giant face and empty eye-socket
haunted me all through the night.
T
CHAPTER 7
MILES THE MUTINEER
HAT NIGHT I DREAMT OF A MASSIVE THUNDERSTORM
looming over my city with beard-like clouds hanging down. A tornado
spun at its center like a giant telescope watching me, and through the wind
and rain, the storm laughed and snored, until, a puffy hand lifted a wooden
pipe into the air. Suddenly there was an explosion.
BOOM!
I woke with a sudden start. Rising out my window were plumes of
smoke — smoke coming from Telescope Jim’s window!
Reality, it seemed, had merged with my dream. Telescope Jim had
apparently endured an explosion, which I suspected had come from the bits of
stone I’d placed into his pipe. He must have woken, and upon lighting his
pipe, ignited something like firecrackers in his face — an event which my
slumbering mind had anxiously anticipated.
I seemed to hear Longfellow Jim laughing somewhere in my mind as
fire sirens sounded and yelling ensued from across the street.
If I hadn’t pulled the prank myself, I would have thought it was funny.
But, the idea of inciting a giant sea-ruffian to anger made me shudder with
fright.
When I went downstairs, a further disconcerting sight met me as I
passed the hallway between the hostel and the bar. My dishwasher post had
been filled by another boy, who busily chopped vegetables for the day’s
kitchen prep.
“What are you doing?” I asked, peering into the kitchen.
The building manager had given my job away early that morning, the
boy told me.
I nearly punched him, but as soon as I returned to my room, I forgot
about the boy. My keycard had been locked out.
“What is going on?” I asked the receptionist, trudging to the front desk.
“It says you’re checked out due to insufficient funds,” she informed
me, and I stared, confused. Three months’ work had been stored up. How
could they be kicking me out?
Just then, Longfellow Jim came striding into the lobby, holding a dish
of noodles from which he indulgently slurped.
“What have you done?!” I hissed, referring to the prank in which he’d
entangled me.
Jim finished his noodles, unfazed, and peered from grinning eyes.
“Can you imagine the look on Devil Jim’s face!” he laughed. But after
he finished his breakfast, he took me aside in the common-room.
“We have bigger problems,” he said, changing his tone. “My friends,
the ones who took off with the pipes,” he winked, meaning his treasure, “they
haven’t responded to my communications. They stowed the pipes safely, but I
haven’t heard from them for a couple of days. I’m afraid Devil Jim found
them and,” he drew a finger to his throat, miming the death of his friends.
“The pipes might be in danger now, if Devil Jim is looking for them.
That’s where you come in.”
His blue eyes focused on me very seriously and I felt the weight of his
gold pressing down on me.
“You have to help me get those pipes safe again, before Devil Jim finds
out where they’ve been hidden. I’m sorry, but you have to come with.”
Jim looked at something in his hand. He unfolded a piece of paper and
handed me what appeared to be a police report.
“Miles the Mutineer,” I read from the report. “Villainous sixteen-year
old ruffian — five-foot-nine, a hundred and fifty pounds. Thought to be dead.
Dangerous and spotted at local sea pub. Reportedly working in coordination
with second villain — dangerous, heroic Jim.”
“Heroic Jim?” I wondered aloud.
“That’s me,” explained Jim seriously. “We both are dangerous. But I’m
a little more established than you, Miles.”
“Miles,” I repeated, frowning. “I’m not Miles.”
“The police report says you are.” Jim read further into the case notes.
“Miles the Mutineer, terrible villain shot dead by a cannon ball over a
treasure fight — that’s the treasure in the pipes. Now they have a face to go
with the name: your face.” Jim pointed at the police report to give more
weight to his words. “It’s right there. Sixteen-year-old ruffian, sort of ugly —
oh and the bar staff found an ax in your guitar this morning that proves you
are Miles. That’s why your keycard don’t work — why you can’t work here
anymore!”
I felt the room spinning. Could Jim’s words be true? The police report
seemed like a prank, but my lost job and my keycard trouble made me
unsteady and nervous.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they already have the footage of you taking
the money out of the walls of the Orderly,” Jim continued, eyeing me
carefully. “How long before they find out you moved them pipes from that
run-down building and solidify you as Miles?”
I stared at the beggar, completely baffled and infuriated, imagining
myself choking his sunburnt neck and pulling out his bushy beard.
He’d ruined my job and my life and turned me into a thieving fugitive!
Slowly it dawned on me. It had all been a trap — the poker game, the
demolition site, even his song at the restaurant. He had placed the hatchet in
my guitar case to turn me into this Miles character connected to the treasure.
Had he picked me out of all the youngsters to fit the description because I had
a small history of pranking and stealing in my old life? Could he be framing
me for evil — or for good?
His eyes seemed to watch all these thoughts dart through my head.
Finally I glared at him.
“You did all this!” I hissed, pushing him aside. “You wanted to force
me into helping you!”
“No, no, no, I’m helping you,” corrected Jim. “I’m giving you a chance
to get out of this dump and get your heart into the South Seas! What would
your parents say if they knew you were twelve hundred miles across the
ocean washing dishes?!”
My parents had sent me overseas to see the world and gain experience,
but all I had done so far was work at a restaurant and bum around a hostel.
Jim’s words cut me deeply. Suddenly, I wondered about his treasure.
“How much will I get if I help you?” I asked. “How much of the
pipes?”
Jim patted me on the back.
“Enough to buy this hostel and turn it into a giant fish fry,” he
remarked absurdly, and seeing my altered attitude, began leading me to the
back of the hostel.
I insisted I hadn’t joined him yet, but Jim continued to talk and
eventually I was drawn into his plan almost against my will, until finally I
was standing outside my hostel with the door of my old home securely shut
behind me.
J
CHAPTER 8
LIKING TO BELIEVE
IM COLLECTED MY THINGS FROM MY ROOM. HE HANDED ME
the hiking boots and backpack from under my bed. I had to lower my head
at the pathetic state of my overseas adventure. My parents had given me these
items believing that I would explore the country, but I had never left the city.
I threw the straps of my backpack over my shoulder, tied my boots to
its handle, and started off into the grey alleyway, where, through the rooftops,
the distant light of late morning shimmered off the bay.
There was a different allure now in the water. The idea of exploring its
wild and mysterious depths captivated me, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off its
glistening horizon. I imagined Jim’s island nestled within a turquoise lagoon,
sheltered by stretches of palm trees and brimming in a secretive jungle that
cloaked his hidden treasure. But would those jungle leaves also hide Devil
Jim the giant? Would his band of sea-ruffians be waiting for us there?
“The ferry boards in an hour,” Jim remarked, quickening his pace. “If
we are swift, we’ll arrive just in time to board.”
Jim strode jauntily through the business district where businessmen
bustled between towering buildings and into fancy doorways. Several
passersby scowled at Jim’s ragged coat, but he winked and nodded as if he
knew something they didn’t. Then he changed our direction toward the bay
where a highway crossed overhead and waves smashed beside us. Ahead a
giant ship came into view with a line of people streaming behind it.
“Jim, we don’t have any tickets!” I exclaimed as we joined the line,
which waited to board.
Jim scowled at the tickets in the other passenger’s hands as if it was the
first time he’d seen them. Then he looked down the line to a news team which
I believed had covered the story from the demolition site.
When we met the ticket collector, Jim approached proudly and told
him our situation.
“Our tickets have two names on them and there are also a bunch of
numbers,” Jim told him. Then he gave the colors and boarding times, but
suddenly the ticket collector cut him short.
“But where are your tickets?” he asked, frowning, and when Jim
continued to describe the tickets, he murmured “you don’t have any tickets?”
“What?!” Jim gasped, stumbling backward as if the ticket collector
were choking him. “What did you say?!”
He was so loud that several people in line began to stare.
“I don’t believe it!” he yelled, grasping me by the shoulders
protectively. “Right here in front of my boy. Did you hear what he said?! I
don’t believe it! I want to see a manager!”
When Jim threatened to cut the ticket collector’s nose-hairs from his
face, the ticket collector called his manager, who listened for a minute, eyeing
Jim and I as the commotion behind us grew.
“What do you mean you think you have tickets?” inquired the manager
sensitively.
“Like I told this gentleman,” explained Jim in a tone that meant the
ticket collector was an idiot. “I believe I have two tickets like everyone else.”
He lifted his eyebrows meaningfully. The manager seemed to
understand this expression and shifted uncomfortably.
Jim shuffled forward, pulling me along and shielding me from the
ticket collector.
“He said to our face — in front of all these people — that we didn’t
have any . . . any tickets!”
Another dramatic gasp was projected into the line as Jim turned to see
the impression he was making, but the people behind were cursing him for
holding up the line.
In the distance, the news workers began gathering their cameras. Jim
looked pleased.
“He said it from up there,” continued Jim, “in his ticket booth — with
all those tickets around him.”
The manager furrowed his brow.
“Are you saying he looked at you from above?” he inquired curiously.
“That’s the word — above,” agreed Jim, “like he was better than us —
as if he had tickets we didn’t have!”
Jim paced as if he was retelling a traumatic event. He glared at the
ticket collector and winced as if he was getting stabbed.
“I only asked a question,” defended the ticket collector.
“But what does a question mean to people like us — ” interjected Jim,
grasping me by the collar, “ — to us, who believe we have tickets, he’s saying
we don’t, from up there in his booth, with tickets all around him, with tickets
in his hand. Look at him, he’s holding a ticket right now!”
The manager eyed the ticket collector suspiciously, and seeing the
approaching news team, pulled the collector out of the booth.
In a moment, reporters were sprinting towards us with camera teams in
tow.
“Son, how do you feel?” they asked, shedding blinding light onto my
face. “How did it feel to be asked if you had tickets, to be shamed, to be told
that you were nothing, to be practically nothing?”
I glared at the news team, unsure with whom I was more angry. But the
manger stripped the ticket collector of his uniform and handed three tickets to
Jim.
“Why, I believe this man has three tickets!” the manager declared
benevolently.
Jim threw the tickets on the ground, spat on them, and scowled like a
child.
“Three tickets,” he hissed incredulously, “to people who have been
believing all day, hoping and dreaming of little tickets in our pockets — do
you believe three tickets will make up for being told we had none!”
“Four tickets,” declared a second manager ingeniously.
“Four first class tickets!” corrected a third manager, scowling at the
second manager and throwing tickets at Jim’s feet in front of the cameras.
I felt myself turning red as the two managers more dramatically offered
beverages, hotel rooms, and ferry passes — each which Jim refused — until,
as the cameras were stabbing me in the face, the head manager finally yelled
out:
“Alright! I believe this man owns the ship!” He put his arms around us
magnanimously. “Why, he is captain of the ship!” He smiled craftily at Jim
and the news team as if he had won a very complicated battle.
This offer impressed Jim perfectly. His eyes widened. He straightened
up and proudly observed the pathetic people behind us holding tickets.
“There we are gentlemen,” Jim agreed, shaking the hand of the
manager. “I am glad you understand. I was beginning to think you were
confused about my beliefs!”
The news cameras were shut off. Several onlookers, who had recorded
the event, uploaded the video of the incident to the web and muttered in
disappointment “what a rip, only ten likes!”
The managers shook one another’s hands in triumph.
“No one wants to see someone give their passengers a whole ship!”
They directed the onlookers to leave as Jim and I were given two red
jackets, offered champagne, and escorted to the top of the ferry where the
captain’s suite was located.
J
CHAPTER 9
GIANT-FIBBING METHOD
IM RELAXED HIS FEET INSIDE THE CAPTAIN’S CABIN, WHERE
several massive windows looked out onto the bay. I pressed my face
against them, trying to see my hostel through the mess of buildings. Then my
eyes drifted passed the quays where industrial ships were being loaded,
passed beaches where tourists walked and green hills near the outskirts of the
city. In the distance, the shores of a second, large island broke the haze of the
horizon. The ferry turned toward the horizon of grey and blue, and the second
island’s shores, where I imagined Jim’s treasure to be.
Jim lit a cigar, set his feet across the captain’s desk and blew smoke
into the pristine cabin. I sat on the comfy seats, staring at a view I had never
witnessed before, and thought that the regular passengers were fools and Jim
was brilliant for getting us there. I began to ask Jim how he did all of it.
“By a magnificent little thing called the Giant-Fibbic Method, Miles,”
Jim replied, taking a huge whiff of smoke and blowing it into the cabin.
I cracked a laugh.
“Don’t you mean the scien-tific method,” I corrected, but Jim shook his
head and set down the cigar.
“No. That’s the old one, for people who think rocks is rocks. I’m
talking about the new one that is about telling fibs, where you can make a
rock a tree or a walnut a piece of nose-hair unless you want it to be a
grasshopper.”
He flicked his eyebrows impressively as I stared at the deep-blue
waves and thought about his statement.
“What on earth do you mean?” I asked in horror.
Jim sat back in the captain’s chair and puffed out a thick cloud of
smoke that stained the luxurious furniture.
“I first learned of the Fibbing Method when I was at the doctor’s
office,” explained Jim. “I had a problem with my big toe and somehow, by
way of data and math and all that, it was fixed. Then, after the uncomfortable
science was out of the way, the doctor remarked in the old scientific way that
it was a so many centimeters long and in fact a rather big foot.
“The nurse who stood nearby,” continued Jim, “looked at me and
gasped. Then the doctor’s eyes began to flutter and I told him that I liked to
think my foot was small. ‘Your foot is big, but you think it is small?’ clarified
the nurse and left the room.”
Jim leaned back and continued to tell his story.
“Then the doctor gave me some water and said something about pig’s
feet — that maybe he had said pig’s foot and not big foot at all. I told him that
I was sure he said my foot was big! Then he sat down breathing hard and
choking.
“Before I could finish helping the old man, the greatest thing happened
— a whole mess of people rushed in with the nurse who was making all these
exclamations.
“They asked me if I liked to think my foot was small. I told them I did.
They escorted the doctor away and started asking me questions.
“‘Being a mammoth of a man with huge, wild teeth and an ugly, hairy
face — did you find it offensive when he told you that you had a big foot?’
“They asked me all sorts of insulting things, until I was fuming —
perhaps I did have an ugly, big foot, I thought to myself. Maybe I am a sort of
caveman, and this assessment of my foot in inches and centimeters was an
insult.”
“Wait a second,” I said. I had to interrupt Jim because he was talking
very fast. “Are you saying they thought the Doctor called you a Bigfoot . . .
like a Sasquatch?”
“Exactly. Came right out of the devil’s mouth,” answered Jim. “The
whole town nearly chucked him in the river for saying it,” he added jovially.
“Some extra-humane people with amazing, good hearts, bless their souls, told
the doctor he was the Bigfoot; then they tied a plastic foot to his face and
dragged him around the city.”
I stared at Jim, shuddering in horror.
“It was out of compassion that they did it,” Jim explained, “in the
science world doctor’s bruises and beatings are beatings, but in the Fibbing
one, they are acts of compassion — compassion Miles!”
Jim could see the disgust forming on my furrowed brow.
“Now don’t get mixed up. The doctor had beaten my soul. It’s humane
to get rid of soul-beaters.
“After they asked me about believing I had a small foot, everyone
started giving me things and asking if I needed to be comforted after my
trauma. I never felt so babied in my life.
“The crowds gathered around saying ‘look at Bigfoot’s pain. Just think
if you had been an ugly caveman and smelled and were filthy and practically
never showered and had been told by a small-footed person that you had big
feet. How would you feel?’
“Some of the townspeople started kicking one another for not being
angrier at small-footed people in general. And they started arguing about who
had the most small-foot-hate in their hearts, which is actually a prized virtue
in the Fibbing world. And one man whose feet were really small got thrown
in a dumpster so everyone could show off their Bigfoot love together and
their good hearts.
“That’s when it happened. That’s when my big moment took place.”
Jim leaned in with excitement. “After hearing all these people insult my feet
and seeing that fat old doctor say his bit about centimeters, I imagined I had
been a cavemen and had been lied to by my parents and suddenly had found
out by this dumb old doctor that I was Sasquatch, and I felt hurt in my heart.”
Jim pointed to a fleshy part of his chest. “That’s when my big pain
moment took place. And suddenly in the Fibbing world — I was a hero!
Yay!”
Jim stood up, cigar in his mouth, and clapped for himself.
“I think I might even have cried,” he confided. “And by Fibbing
reasons, you can get money for tears. The townspeople told me I could sue,
and that was how I bought my first mansion, until I turned it into a slum and
burned down all the furniture and never mowed the lawn and stuff — it sold
for a couple dollars and I bought cigarettes.
“So you see Miles, the fact that we didn’t have two tickets, by Giant-
Fibbic reasons means that it was exactly what the ticket collector couldn’t
say.”
I stared at Jim, trying to process all this and thought back to his story
about his foot being assessed as ‘big.’ Then I thought about him feeling bad
for having big feet and even looking like a Sasquatch — which he seemed
like with his angry, greedy face — and how his pain had been used to get the
doctor sued, and I thought him a downright evil person.
“But Jim, Sasquatches aren’t real,” I objected, finding a hole in his tale.
“Why would anyone care if they called you something that wasn’t real?”
Jim started to get nervous and shudder in discomfort.
“Well that’s not the point. None of that matters . . . I wouldn’t expect
science folk like yourself to understand, being mostly bad in your heart and
liking things like numbers and statistics and never a person’s heart.
Everything’s real in the Fibbing world, even the greatest of all fibs —
especially those. Scientifically there ain’t no Sasquatches, no,” he reflected
sadly. “But in the Fibbing world, where rodents are asteroids and glowworms
are toddlers, Bigfoot is as real as diapers on Santa Claus’ bottom.”
“Jim there isn’t a Santa Claus,” I objected again.
“In the Fibbic-world I’m making up, which is like video games, there
is! That’s why I’m using him as an example!” exclaimed Jim, coughing out
smoke. “Don’t you play video games, Miles?”
He spat out a bit of his cigar which had broken off in his clenched
mouth.
“Actually, now that I think of it,” he groaned in frustration. “I don’t
think you have a good enough heart to understand. That’s all this is. Everyone
knows evil hearts can’t understand the Fibbic ways, cus they don’t care about
people. I’m trying to help people, Miles! So my lies are good! Good!”
I stared at Jim’s fuming face and widening nostrils, wondering if he
was mentally disturbed.
Then something began to settle in my own head.
“Jim, maybe it’s heartless to have all this science and numbers in my
brain, but what if the ticket collector, in his imaginary world — the Fibbic one
that is like video games — what if he played video games to and liked to
believe he was a sort of walrus or an albatross and not a ticket collector at all.
What if he believed, Fibbically that is, that he never said the words you don’t
have tickets and only squawked like a sea-gull?”
Jim’s nostrils flared until they were the size of a wild bull’s. He
stamped his feet and puffed his cigar.
“Boy! You really are about as stupid as a toadfish. My fib about tickets
was turning loafers into kings and captains, so by Fibbing reasons it was
incredibly good! But him being a walrus or a squawking sea-gull don’t help
anyone. See this proves that you really are evil. Evil hearts get called all sorts
of names in the Fibbing world, so just be glad I don’t become humanitarian
and cast you into the water like they did the doctor.”
Jim threw his cigar into the waves and stood, feeling I think, extra
proud and heroic for dealing with an evil-hearted science-person. He seemed
upset that I didn’t fall flat on my face, worshiping the brilliance of his new
method. But after he went away to the balcony, to peer out to sea, I thought I
heard him crying over his poor, big foot, or could he have been laughing?
Jim cast a sidelong glance at me and for a second, I thought he was
impressed. But then he hid his smile and went back to looking at the waves.
A
CHAPTER 10
ONE RUFFIAN LOST, ANOTHER RETURNED
FTER JIM HAD LAUGHED OR CRIED OR DID WHATEVER HE
did looking out to sea, he became agreeable and returned to the
captain’s cabin cheerily.
His words however, churned in my mind as the ship rose and fell and
the mountains from my island floated away. Our ship was overtaken by a hazy
mist. I pondered Jim’s story.
Perhaps I should have been more compassionate toward Jim’s big foot.
Perhaps I should have felt more wounded by what the ticket collector had said
about our tickets. But no matter how I tried to grow my heart bigger, I
couldn’t help thinking that Jim was a scoundrel.
There were all sorts of imperfections about myself with which I could
get upset. I thought of my nose or my ears or my head-shape, and then my
hands, which seemed small and ugly. I could think of myself as wrinklehanded
me or small-handed me or gangly-fingered me. Any one of these
details could drive me to behave as wildly and injured as Jim and his big foot
if I let it.
As I thought this, I heard a voice outside the door. Through the window
some of the managers were gathering money to give to Jim for the ruckus he
had made, since he couldn’t own the ship.
I heard something about a ‘son’ losing his school tuition and a ‘baby
girl’ losing her chance at having her own room and one of the manager’s
families was going to give up their vacation.
The collection of bills made such a thick wad that I felt my heart
trembling with excitement. There were thousands of dollars there, enough to
rent a room at the hostel for months, years. I would never have to work again!
I began to plan what I would do with the money.
“Let’s just be glad we had the captain’s suite to give them,” remarked
the first manager, heading toward my door. “If we didn’t turn away the field
trip of kids, we wouldn’t have had anything at all to give the complainer.”
I winced, remembering a school bus and several dozen kids who had
been waiting to board. Had Jim’s fuss caused them to lose their field trip!? Of
course it did. Hadn’t I ever thought that by Jim and I getting seats it meant
that they had to be taken from someone else, from someone who had worked
for their seats.
I suddenly thought of the bus full of kids returning to school with
dashed hopes and I decided I would never take anything free again.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
“Son, will you take this money by way of apology.”
It wasn’t a hard decision. I refused the money and shut the door.
The managers seemed to think something strange had happened. But
they kept the money and returned down the hall.
I imagined the students who would have rushed around the captain’s
cabin, peering out the giant windows, grinning from ear to ear. Then I thought
of Jim’s bloated, arrogant face, puffed up about his humanitarian fibbing lies,
smoking a cigar and dirtying everything in the room, and I felt terribly sad.
I found Jim on the upper deck, dictating to the ship’s navigator which
route to take, and directing him closer and closer toward the island we were
approaching.
“I can’t get any closer to those mountains,” replied the navigator,
pointing to his computer. “The water is too shallow.”
“Nonsense,” returned Jim. “I know these waters like the back of my
hand.”
The navigator took the ship a little further and told Jim this was the
closest he could go.
Half a minute later there was a loud splash.
The captain and the managers came running to the back of the ship.
“Where did he go?” they asked. “You don’t think that was the ticket
fellow?”
They concluded it had been, but none of them inquired any further.
Soon, the ship docked at a bay surrounded by bright, green hills, which
cheered me up. I exited the ship with the passengers who had worked for their
tickets and stared at the outdoors.
Large, rugged mountains rose before me, covered in jungle foliage.
And in the valley ahead, there was a small city with vineyards, apple groves,
and fruit farms.
I wanted to get my bearings, so I climbed the nearest hill and turned
around. In the bay, I saw ships and mountains. There was the city beyond the
bay, shinning below an outline of cliffs. And then there was the shore of surf
and a sparkling light — a tiny round circle, reflecting like a mirror — a circle
I had seen before.
It was the brass Telescope from Telescope Jim’s eye gazing at me.
I
CHAPTER 11
STARS AND SUPERSTITION
GASPED AND FELL BELOW THE BUSHES. HAD THE GIANT SEEN
me? Or had he only been looking in my direction? Through the bushes, a
small ship gleamed on the beach.
The telescope eye continued to scan the mountainside. Next, a group of
figures exited the boat and hurried along the beach. I realized now that Jim
had jumped ship to flee from Telescope.
I scrambled under the forest canopy and hid within the trunks that were
like massive vines growing out of the ground.
Jungle noises crept into my ears. Chirping bugs, shrieking birds, and an
occasional screeching possum. Uneasy feeling trouble me as I scrambled
further into the forest and insects the size of mice wandered between my feet.
What kind of place was this?
This was the wild outdoors your parents sent you to discover, I told
myself. The terrain grew less and less familiar. Soon I was skulking between
trails that ended in the stiff form of rock walls.
Suddenly the forest cracked with fast-moving footsteps. Whispers
filled the air and abruptly I was ripped from my hiding place.
A cloth went over my face.
Another cloth was placed in my mouth.
Several rapid hands bound my feet and the whispering continued.
Sneaky little critter hidin’ in the dark.
What was he doin’ hidin’ there my captors asked.
The voices were harsh and grating and resembled dogs’ growling more
than man’s speech. But canine or no, they talked over the nice journey I was
having and inquired how it might end.
“Do you think he likes pick’n daisies near the cliffs?” asked a husky
voice.
“Maybe he’s a sort of bee-studier person that likes to stick his head in
beehives?”
This was followed with ghoulish snickering.
“Or maybe he’s a thrill-seeker who wants a chance at swimmin’ with
sharks?”
They pondered these ideas as thoughtfully as if they were planning the
end scene to an exciting new movie.
Lastly, they asked if perhaps I was a biologist type who might be
interested in playin’ games with the spiders and scorpions?
Just then, quiet footsteps sounded next to me and several crawling
insects were dropped on my face.
“AHHH! GETTTIT OFFFFF!!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“What’s he screamin’ about?” my captors asked, rushing over to me.
“Why’s he rubbin’ his face in the grass? Is he a gnome tryin’ to get back into
the earth or maybe a tree fairy that fell out of a tree?”
My skin crawled as I tried to squirm free of the insects wandering
down my face.
Then a voice like thunder filled the forest.
“What’s that crawlin’ on his face?” boomed the voice. There was a
moment of silence while some men looked me over. “Don’t touch him or I’ll
strike you dead.”
The cloth was removed from over my eyes.
Before me was a very rugged group of men all staring at me with
skewed faces. They were outlandish, rough, tall men with rifles and cutlasses
tied to their backs and pistols in their hands. Their faces were so dirty they
resembled the mountainside.
Deep in the back was a lone, massive figure I knew to belong to
Telescope Jim. He stared at me through the tree trunks.
“He’s covered in lady bugs,” remarked the giant as my gag was
removed. “Lucky bugs. That’s the best sign we’ve had in weeks. Give ‘im a
sip of water.”
I was handed a canteen from which I drank greedily as I removed the
remaining bugs. I still felt as if I’d been brutally tortured by having all those
insects crawl on my face blindly.
Next, an animal passed behind me in the woods.
“Was that a pig?” murmured the man with the scar called Mangle-Face
Jim.
“A boar,” added Three-Fingered Jim. Both ruffians grabbed their guns
and headed into the woods. “Double signs of good luck,” they muttered.
The forest sounded with footsteps and angry gunfire. But too my
amazement the boar was soon shot and retrieved. Then a fire was made, and
the men began preparing to eat the meat.
They watched me out of the corner of their eye.
“So he’s a leprechaun,” they decided after finding the second sign of
good luck and began prodding me with sticks.
“If he’s a leprechaun, why don’ he talk funny?” they asked, scowling.
“And why don’ he have pointy ears?” objected one of the men. This
seemed awfully suspicious to the ruffians and they squinted at me skeptically.
“He don’ smell much like fish’s guts,” remarked another man in
conclusion. “I never trusted anythin’ that smelled better than a codfish.” This
explained the foul smells of the men around me and convinced me they
trusted one another deeply.
“Leprechauns don’ eat fish and don’ smell like ‘em either,” declared
Telescope Jim standing, “they smell like four-leaf clovers and grass that’s
coverin’ buried treasure, which is good enough for me.”
My hair was sniffed and it was agreed that I did smell like grass, in
which luckily I had just rolled.
“They’ll be no more investigatin’ of leprechauns,” declared Devil Jim
as a flicker of light shot overhead. “A shooting star!”
The giant stood, furthering the mystical moment with making a small
earthquake.
“The signs of good luck are surrounding him like God’s good angels,”
he said in a cursing tone. “If anyone hurts him, I’ll use that man’s head for a
cannonball next battle and shoot it into the sharks.”
The men were inspired by the sudden display of wildness and I was
immediately loosened and patted apologetically. Though I felt little more safe
than if I had joined a pack of wild bears.
T
CHAPTER 12
BIRDS AND BOASTING
HE LAST SIGN OF GOOD-LUCK HAD COME FROM A BRIGHT
light that had shot over our heads. It had appeared to be a shooting star,
but afterward I felt a flake of something hot land on my arm.
A firework? A noiseless firework had been shot off. Telescope had
believed its light was the final sign of my good-luck prospects.
But as I glanced at the trees overhead, I saw a figure move slyly
through the foliage. I gasped.
There was someone in the trees. Someone had lit the firework.
I sat down and tried to think while the men began roasting the pig. As
it was cut, I noticed that one of its fleshly legs had a mark where a rope
appeared to have been tied.
The pig had been set loose right behind me to create the appearance of
good luck to the superstitious men.
And the pile of lady bugs which had crawled down my face — they had
been placed there by quiet hands moving over quick feet. Could it have been
Longfellow Jim?
I thought it must be him and grew more excited. By presenting these
coincidences around my discovery he had given the men a reason to keep me
and protect me from harm.
The rest of the week, however, I saw no sign of Longfellow. It seemed
he had disappeared into the forest for good, and I believed I was stuck with
the outlaws. This was no encouraging thought.
Sea-ruffians, as you may well know, are ruthless vagabonds and
thieves. They make their camp late, and devour animals quietly in the dark.
They are always half-joking and half-shooting things and carried plenty of
guns and knives. Any leftover bones from their food they used for weapons.
Devil Jim’s own rifle was made from the jawbone of a giant-white
shark that he’d killed in a deep-sea cave. This bone, which he gripped like a
toddler’s fork, he’d also used in the destruction of his enemies during an
infamous battle — so the story went from his rugged companions, who
snarled and twitched as if they all had mysterious diseases or had lived in a
pack of wolves their whole life, both which were practically true.
“You must be wondering what a wild-dog, massive man like me is
doing in a place like this with all theses scoundrelly, bug-eyed creatures?” Jim
asked one day, treading next to me like an elephant walking on its hind legs.
“Well let me tell you. We’re goin’ hunting! Not for men, nor for animals
either. But for somethin’ sort o’ in-between.”
Three-Fingered Jim grinned cruelly.
“Sometimes we do however ask a traveler ‘are you a bird hunter?’” he
added. “And if he hesitates, we shoot him! Cus we against the shootin’ of
animals.”
Three Fingered Jim exchanged a malicious grin with Mangle-Face.
Telescope moved the jawbone rifle to the other side of his hip and let
his boa-constrictor-like arms flop beside himself while he propped his gun
between his elbow and his hip.
“I’m downright sad about animals,” the giant confessed. “Since I was a
kid, I could never kill a one of ‘em. And my teachers were always asking me
to do it and I hated teachers for that. They’d say to me ‘hey bulbous kid!
dissect that frog!’ and I couldn’t do it. I refused to hurt another living
creature.”
Devil Jim flashed a proud glance.
“Teachers always had dogs they would beat,” Telescope added, looking
down at me. “And squirrels they shot with pellet guns. I could never beat
dogs and talked openly against shootin’ of squirrels, so they flunked me —
prejudice against my kindly hands. Called me kindly-Kurt and kind-man-Ken
and all sorts of awful names like that, and I was flunked for not hurtin’
animals, which is basically math and science — hurtin’ people’s brains and
such.”
Devil Jim walked into the forest and set his pack onto the floor. That
night, the men slept in perfect secrecy, either high in the trees, hidden in
hammocks, or under a pile of pine needles with the ends of their smoking
pipes sticking out for air. Late in the night, there was a terrible squeaking
from atop the highest of trees. Then there was three gunshots.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! And the next morning — would you believe
it! — we had smoked bird which had fallen out of the sky!
“Strange how fates is,” reflected Telescope, buttering the bird and
tearing up as he sliced an onion. “Providence shot that bird out of the sky just
when we needed food the most.”
“Do you think it would be strange,” I asked, “if we found birds falling
out of the sky with stray bullet holes in them the rest of our trip?”
Big Jim chewed a bit of bird thoughtfully and agreed that that could
very well be the case, since fate was good at providing for Big Jim’s belly
even though his hands were kindly toward animals.
“I did come across an evil critter once,” Jim reflected when we had
finished eating, “that almost made me do the evil thing of skinning a creature
alive. He was a nasty little sea-devil with a cheery face that strut about singin’
songs and playin’ cards. But I beat him every time.”
I looked up at Telescope. It seemed he was talking about Longfellow
Jim, though I hardly believed he could have beaten Longfellow at cards. I felt
indignant. Suddenly, up in the trees there was a noise like a bird mimicking
the giant.
“Who said that? Which asinine arse said that?” blurted the giant, lifting
his gun. All the men raised their own guns, but the mocking voice echoed
further and further away, until we could here it no more.
“I chased the darn bird everywhere,” continued Devil Jim smugly,
“through storms, across oceans, onto desert islands, even into the arctic.”
I imagined Longfellow out-smarting Telescope through all these
places, but Devil Jim smiled to himself.
“And the poor half-animal-guy, well he’s frozen now. Most of the
rumors say he lives in Antarctica, eating snow and makin’ snow-angels.”
His telescope-eye and the fat, baseball-sized real-eye surveyed the
forest.
“Does he get all the gold though?” I asked, unable to hold back my
indignation about the insults directed at Longfellow.
The giant’s enormous arm lunged at me.
“Why you runt! I’ll squeeze you in two and use ya for chewin’ gum!”
he shouted, grasping at the air.
The men turned and raised their guns as if Jim was some old elephant
in a circus who’d gone mad.
“A cold, a cold!” I explained, dodging the giant’s arms and rushing
away like a cowboy running from an angry bull. “I wondered if the bird might
catch a cold from living in the ice and snow? You said he lived in Antarctica!
That’s all I meant.”
The giant’s dumb face stared for several long moments — blankly and
angrily, as if his brain had stopped working. The men rushed between me and
the giant like clowns trying to distract the angry bull. Then the giant dropped
his arms, growled, and sulked away.
T
CHAPTER 13
BLIND MAN’S BAY
ELESCOPE’S FACE HAD CONTORTED INTO SOMETHING LIKE A
baboon’s backside when I made the comment about Longfellow ‘getting
all the gold.’ That irate expression lingered on his face as he suspiciously
viewed me the next few days. I tried in every way to stay away from the
diabolical brute and began to believe he wasn’t mentally stable.
I had committed a terrible blunder, however, in my service to
Longfellow when I enraged the giant. For my duty was, I believed, to figure
out the missing pieces to Telescope’s story.
What had happened to Longfellow’s men who had taken away the
treasure? The man with the yellow rain-jacket and the black boots who had
stored the pipes at the marina — where had he gone? Did he survive Devil
Jim’s attack? Could the treasure have been hidden somewhere nearby? Any
chance of inquiring into this now seemed dangerous.
“Don’t be afraid of the capt’n,” Three-Fingered Jim told me as we set
out the next day. “It’s for starvin’ children in Africa that he gets all upset and
tries to kill things.”
I lowered my brow and turned to the band of mangy mongrels.
“That’s right. He’s an ‘umanitarian,” explained Mangle-Face spitting
everywhere. “If Telescope’s brains start to twitch unfriendly-like, it’s on
account of him feeling hurt for somewhere in the world.”
The sneering faces of the sickly men twisted as we set off. Later that
day we found Jim in such an unfriendly state of mind. The big man was
bludgeoning a three-foot-wide tree with his bare fists.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
The men scowled.
“There’s awful bad mud slides in South America,” they explained and
wandered off.
Then, hours later, we found him plowing through a bunch of sheds that
turned out to have no food in them and the men remarked knowingly.
“It’s the tsunamis in Japan, that’s what he’s upset about. Terrible. Just
terrible. Poor Jim feels it. We feel it too.”
And at night, I awoke to find the Devil throttling trees again in his
sleep. The group of men gathered around and sleepily told me that Jim always
loved animals. And that places all over the world was caging and torturing
animals that very moment. They wandered back to bed, applauding one
another for having such a humanitarian almost-sort-of-person as their leader.
All these incidents only caused me to become more frightened and less
at ease, until one day our adventure took a sudden turn.
After our long trek south into the mountain ranges, we came to a long
beautiful valley with a long lake at the center. Next to it was a wooden hut,
toward which we headed.
The men had eaten very little and I was eager for some way to escape.
But when we approached the old cabin, we found it dark and empty.
“Wait a second, there’s a boat over here,” directed one of the men,
nodding to a blur near the dock. “And there’s a smell coming from it.”
There was a large riverboat parked in front of the cabin. We began to
hear faint noises coming from within the dark recesses. And though an aroma
of food was wafting our direction, there was no light and no other sign of life
on the boat. Devil Jim approached and bent his massive self into the entrance
of the boat, causing it to sway.
“Who’s there?” asked a voice from the darkness. “I hear footsteps.
Five, six, seven . . . twenty . . . or more sets of feet! Dear me, who are all these
visitors?”
The voice came from an old man at the back of the riverboat. He was
covered in grey hair and cloaks and stirred a saucepan of simmering food in
the pitch dark.
“He’s blind,” inferred Telescope as they shined a light on the old
codger, who cooked quietly.
“One of those sets of feet is heavier than the others,” remarked the old
man, twisting his head curiously, “and the floor of my boat has lowered
significantly.”
“Right you are old fool . . . ” said Jim, but his voice faltered. His giant
single eye which wandered through the shadows had come across a luggage
trunk, and his hand had swung it open.
Inside the trunk, a sparkling sight caught the attention of all the eyes in
the room, except the blind man’s of course, who stirred the saucepan
unwittingly. Telescope’s men shuddered in delight. There were diamonds and
jewels and silver ornaments hidden away in the trunk.
“Are you men in need of some food?” inquired the man, tilting his
head at the silence.
Telescope made a loud, fake laugh to cover up the silence.
“That would be wonderful!” he declared, sitting down loudly so his
men could swipe the jewels and stash them in their pockets without being
noticed. “What an ‘ospitibal old arse — I mean horse of man of you are.”
“You’re hunters?” guessed the old man, bringing a pan of mushrooms
and beefsteak to a couple of the visitors. “I hear the clinking of guns in my
old ears.”
“Hunters yes!” laughed Telescope, raising his gun and pointing it at the
old man’s face suspiciously. “(Old buzzard! how did he know that?!)” he
muttered under his breath, but then realized that the man had overdeveloped
his ability to hear in his blindness. “We are hunters from across the sea,
looking for a certain kind of folk that are shooting birds.
“You’re against hunting,” inquired the old man, stirring his pan.
“Ever seen any bird-hunters around here?” inquired Mangle-Face Jim.
“I housed a traveler three days ago, but I don’t think he killed any
birds,” replied the old man, hobbling back to his stove to deliver more food,
“he only wanted to store his luggage trunks.”
Suddenly all the men grew excited, understanding that Longfellow
must have been the traveler and brought these trunks of treasure.
My heart sunk as I realized Longfellow’s gold would soon be in the
hand of these outlaws.
“Luggage trunks — he left more than one?” inquired Telescope
delicately.
“Yes, three trunks. One . . . two. . . three . . . heavy things . . . ”
The old man’s thoughts broke in absentmindedness. Then he told a
story about the food, which he had caught and made himself. He had raised a
family here, didn’t they know. In his young life he had been so happy, before
his family’s tragic deaths. He wanted to tell them his favorite memories with
them.
Suddenly Devil Jim couldn’t take it anymore.
“Where did the man go, you nasty buzzard! And the other luggage
trunks?” he demanded.
“The trunks? Oh yes . . . yes!” replied the old man, remembering their
previous conversation. “He had three trunks and stored them in the back. I
forgot all about them once you started inquiring so politely into my family
history.”
“I did no such thing,” barked Devil Jim, standing, and forcing the man
to the back of the riverboat, which swayed.
“Now before I show you the boxes, did you ever hear of a fatter person
sneaking about in the woods?” asked the old man, turning around suddenly.
“The man who brought his luggage told me there was a heavier person
sneaking about, and I was to beware of him. Are any of you very heavy?”
Devil Jim became uneasily silent.
The old man’s wandering mind transferred back to the treasure boxes
which had touched his extended arms.
As he bent over the two luggage trunks, the men quickly pushed him
aside and opened the trunk where a shimmering sight of gold reflected in their
faces.
“Good heavens, he’s a moron and a babbler!” declared Telescope as the
man was pushed to the back of the boat. “He doesn’t have a clue that there are
piles of gold here. But what’s the good of gold if you can’t see it, aye men!”
I was pushed alongside the old man, so I couldn’t see the treasure. I felt
that something terrible was about to happen to the old man and went to
protect him.
Suddenly there was the noise of something rubbing against the
riverboat, and I realized that the old man was gone.
Through the windows, I saw trees alongside the boat that were moving.
They suddenly became tilted. At the same time, the boat became tilted as
well.
Then I felt something pull at my belt — I was pulled steadily backward
by a rope. I was lifted into the air through a window and out of the boat. Next,
I was looking at the riverboat from above, hanging by a rope which had been
tied to an over-hanging tree and I watched the riverboat speed away in horror.
“Oh no! Oh no!” I shouted for I realized in a moment that we had
drifted far from the cabin by the lake and were now at a narrow river-dam
where the water dropped into a fall, and over which the riverboat plummeted.
The giant boat loomed its back end, was tilted up slightly and then
tipped over the edge into darkness.
I
CHAPTER 14
A TWIST IN THE CAVES
WAS LEFT DANGLING IN A MESH OF TREE-TRUNKS
protruding from the shores — hanging from a rope to which I had been
tied. The old man had saved me.
I had been lingering near the back door, when somehow or other, the
rope had been tied to my belt. The old man must have been carrying it with
him. The other end he had flung over a protruding tree, swung himself free of
the riverboat and tied my rope to the tree so I was pulled out as the boat
plunged toward the falls.
I glanced at the shadows and saw the old man’s figure clambering up
the overhanging trees into darkness.
Something about the way he clambered triggered a strange feeling in
me. The old man seemed taller, more nimble, and quick-footed. He had
clambered in the same way Longfellow had clambered up the trees in the
hotel at the dig-site.
The old man was Longfellow! My heart beat with sudden relief and
excitement.
Longfellow had been masked in some way or other. I saw a fake beard
and cloak hanging in the trees overhead! It has been his lumbering frame
under the disguise. All the wandering conversation had been an act to disguise
himself.
I reached behind me and untied the rope from my belt, then crawled
along one of the lower tree-trunks to shore.
Longfellow had disappeared . . .
I heard the outlaws crying below. Apparently my time with them
wasn’t over. I would be in a precarious situation if they found me unharmed.
So I peered over the cliff where the water had plummeted. The riverboat was
bashed and was now sinking near the shore. The men were climbing out of it
one by one and swimming ashore.
I hurried down the cliff to the pool of water where I dipped quietly in
and crawled out as if I had gone over the falls as well.
“A swindler!” shouted Devil Jim, swimming ashore. “He was a
trickster and a con artist!”
Several of the men turned to me as I crawled out.
“What an ‘orrible bad-luck leprechaun you found capt’n,” they said,
staring at the sinking river-boat. “The treasure is gone!”
“He wasn’t blind a bit,” blurted Three-Fingered Jim, holding his three
fingers to his eyes.
“Do you still have your scroll captain?” asked one of the men. I wasn’t
sure what this meant, but Devil Jim searched his jacket and replied that he
still had his scroll. Then the giant reached to his face.
“My telescope. Where’s me scope!” An ominous metal hole appeared
where the giant’s telescope had been. I felt fear come over me as I
remembered Longfellow’s words about the giant’s eye-socket being a window
to the devil.
“He took it from me! That old man, blast him!” shouted Jim.
The men grumpily started a fire on shore and the whole event was
revisited. The old man had pretended to be blind. He had showed them a
bunch of fake treasure in order to steal their pirate-guns, which were quite
valuable. His longwinded babbling was contrived to distract them, along with
his cooking and fake treasure, so they wouldn’t notice the boat moving slowly
toward the dam.
Somehow, the men refused to believe the man could have been their
enemy, Longfellow, though I knew it had been him. The riverboat and cabin
must have been the vacation spot of some rich person, which Longfellow had
chanced upon and used for his scheme.
Devil Jim set up a camp on the shore and the outlaws were forced to
sleep round the campfire with wet clothes. They had lost most of their guns in
the fall and were down to primarily knives as their immediate weapons. In the
morning, the injured men were left behind and I realized Longfellow’s plan of
lessening their numbers. There were only fifteen now, and this seemed much
easier to handle if it came down to a gunfight when we found the gold.
But as for me, the men gave me worse and worse looks as our trip went
on, as if I was responsible for all their calamity.
At one point, Devil Jim had the horrible luck of climbing a tree with no
core inside. One of his followers (we weren’t sure which one — though I
thought his voice had come from the tree-limbs above) wondered what was
the point of having a captain called telescope if he couldn’t see more than five
feet in front of himself?
Telescope grumbled at the complaint and scurried up the nearest tree in
an attempt to learn our location.
His huge weight was gone for many seconds and the outlaws drew a
deep breath as if the earth was somehow bigger and less stifling.
Then there was a crack like thunder.
One man yelled “timber!” and another “giant blubbery man!” and
everything giant and blubbery fell to the earth along with some sticks.
Some of the men had broken legs and this lessened our numbers even
further. We were down to fourteen men!
Then, Devil Jim went across a bridge that said maximum weight: one
thousand three hundred and twenty pounds, which was ten more than
Telescope thought he weighed, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, until Jim
passed over the bridge and it flat-out shattered.
Telescope went sloshing down the river and all the men chased after
him like he was their fattened cow.
When Telescope had dried and comforted his bruised self, he grasped
my shirt and held a knife to my throat.
“What kind of a devil leprechaun are you!” he cursed in a demonic
language of hisses and growls. I thought for a second that his humanitarian
side might suddenly feel pain from some other side of the earth.
But he rolled over, took a deep breath, and plodded on.
During my third week with the outlaws, a storm forced all of us into a
cave system. The fourteen weary souls trudged into the cave, which had two
rooms and many tunnels, and there they set up camp. A lantern had drawn
them to this area of the forest, and luckily brought them across the cave.
After they’d settled down and tried to fall asleep, there came a
whispering from the men who’d camped in the furthest room. I heard between
hisses the words telescope and fat his through the cavern.
“Who sad that?” blurted Telescope uncontrollably. “What are you
saying about me, you mangy mongrels?”
One of the men in the other cave sat up as if he had been dozing off.
“We was saying nothing, just talking about food.”
But more whispering came and more words drifted to our ears. Bad
sort of captain. Smelly oaf, hisss hisss hisss. That blind man was his fault.”
Telescope pondered these words in the shadows. And tossed and turned
uncomfortably.
I felt I needed some air and shuffled to the other end of the cavern,
where I saw the other group of men heading down the tunnel.
“I thought it came from over there,” one of them said and I followed
them into the tunnel.
The men had their knives drawn and were walking carefully through
the dark, when one of their feet struck something.
“Why this is a turn of luck,” said one of the men, reaching down for
something.
They turned on a lighter and something gold glittered under the dirt.
There were five golden bracelets, hidden in the cave floor.
I heard from the shadows much applauding of the leprechaun as they
scooped up the objects and donned them around their wrists.
Then they looked ahead toward the depths of the cave.
“What if there's more?” they wondered aloud, “and what an opportune
time for only the three of us to find it, without any fat man around.”
“If we find the chests, perhaps we let the goose-chase carry on and one
day come back and find the poor forgotten chests alone.”
The men agreed to this and continued forward, examining their shinny
bracelets.
As I listened to them, I heard the snoring of a man. When I turned I
saw the cave from which we had just come. I trudged forward and found the
whole band of men before me, many of them awake and holding their guns.
They had been listening to the other men scheming to keep the gold for
themselves.
I doubted that Devil Jim expected any better from his heartless band of
hooligans. But then the words fat and smelly drifted through the cave again.
I saw a figure move through the shadows next to the three men with
bracelets, and I heard the clinking of something like metal.
As they lit a lighter to view the path ahead, my eyes saw little specks
moving out of the bracelets in a stream onto their hands and trigger-fingers. It
was a swarm of spiders and centipedes and worse things.
Suddenly their was a yell of pain and sudden firing as their triggerfingers
were bit by the insects.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Next I heard one man yell.
“Shoot the man that looks like a horse,” and “We’re keeping the gold
for us.”
This threw the cave into an uproar.
“Mutiny!”
The men who had the bracelets began shooting wildly at the men that
had appeared suddenly, and those who had been listening in the dark began
defending themselves against the onslaught of bullets.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, sounded one end of the room. BOOM,
BOOM, BOOM, returned the other.
Telescope and his men started ducking and diving as bullets ricocheted
off the walls, until Telescope’s voice rang out.
“Stand down! Stand down! It’s us. It’s us,” he yelled.
But when they turned on a light, the three men with the bracelets where
shot in some way and stung by many insects and two others from the other
team were wounded.
“Captain, what’s this?” asked one of the men, lifting a brass telescope
from the ground.
“Me scope. How in the heck did that get there . . . ?” Telescope let out
a yell. “It was him! The blind trickster!”
He stood and placed the telescope back on his face.
HISSS.
Devil Jim roared again and flung his telescope into the cave. A serpent
crawled from within the telescope. It had bitten his face.
“That evil man, that horrible old creature! Curses! Death! Forever
pain!” yelled the giant as he held his forehead in pain.
But finally he let out a loud groan, grabbed his telescope and hurried
away.
T
CHAPTER 15
DEVIL JIM’S LIST
HAT NIGHT I DECIDED I WAS GOING TO LEAVE. I FOUND NO
opportune way of slipping off, however. Every time I trudged away by
myself, Devil Jim would appear right behind me.
“Are you scared of all those animals I’ve been eating?” he asked,
sneaking up behind me.
I had been noticing a large number of animals disappearing over the
past week. The men had been returning with them in the night. They’d
mention something about healing their wounds and next morning the animals
would be gone.
“Well let me tell you,” said Telescope, “I don’t eat any of those
animals. I take ‘em off into the woods cus o’ their wounds. When they’re
better, I let ‘em go eat grass and be free.”
He patted his belly, which incidentally released a burp. But I was
appeased by his congenial booming voice, and he led me back to the camp,
where I sat awake all night. I couldn’t help feeling like something was wrong.
Then Telescope and his men began talking around the campfire in
hushed tones, after I retreated to my hammock. There seemed to be less
laughing than usual and this made me very uneasy. Finally I filled my
hammock with pine needles and climbed down to listen.
When I had crept close and could see their figures sitting around the
fire, I began to decipher their words.
“When we shot those birds,” said one of the men, “when the eight
hundred stray bullets killed ‘em in that coincidental tragedy, the pesky birds
were headin’ South not North. So why would we lookin’ North for their
golden eggs?”
“Those strange and pesky birds,” countered another man more angrily,
“might ha’ been headin’ South, but their eggs where hid North, before they
were slain with the wild bullets. They took off in the other direction to be
tricky-like. Haven’t you ever used your head in a jam?
“Quiet men, quiet now,” interjected Telescope peaceably. “We
witnessed the tragedy of those strange and nasty birds dyin’ a few weeks
passed and ‘ave searched these hills dead through. But the stray-alley-cat-bird
I’ve been followin’ hasn’t shown his mangy face yet. When he does and finds
that his old bird-friends died near one of his old hideouts, he’ll lead us to the
eggs and there tragedy will strike again.”
I shuddered at the coded banter. These men were talking slyly about
Longfellow and his men — about their deaths, the gold, and even
Longfellow’s return. This was the information I had been hoping to discover.
It also appeared that we had arrived at the very spot where
Longfellow’s men had died. They believed Longfellow would know where
the gold had been hidden once he discovered where his followers had died.
Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted.
“If we don’t get some luck soon, capt’n,” declared one of the men. “I’ll
run over there and cut the leprechaun’s throat.”
“Shhhh. None of that now, none of that,” demanded Telescope, peering
over his shoulder to my hammock where the pine needles still disguised my
absence.
Telescope was quiet for a long time. He seemed rather calm, and after
staring at the flames with a grin, he took out a notepad from his front pocket
and stared at it.
The men left and the fire was put out. The animals they had captured
were rounded up and led to one corner of the forest.
I waited and waited, and after falling in and out of sleep in the bushes,
I woke to find Devil Jim fast asleep in a bed of moss and his notepad laying
across his chest in the rays of moonlight. Something in the smile Jim wore
drew my curiosity. I found myself walking dangerously up to the sleeping
giant as if I were incapable of fear.
It must have been boldest moment of my life, but I grabbed the notepad
and began to read it in the moonlight. There were several things written out in
a list.
First, I saw goat but this was crossed out, then there was lamb, and that
too had a line through it. Then there was fox and vulture and several other
names of animals with some little description next to them, but all of these
were crossed out. The last item on the list was the only one uncrossed.
My heart beat very fast.
It was leprechaun.
“B
CHAPTER 16
A LEPRECHAUN TAKES FLIGHT
EARS UMMY YUMMY,” TELESCOPE MURMURED IN HIS
sleep and added, “horse ummy yummy,” grinning wide and finally
muttered “leprechaun ummy ummy yummy,” and rolled over.
Such a fright took me that I started convulsing where I stood. I thought
I might faint. My feet locked up. My limbs trembled.
The giant’s huge, horrible face grinned and he licked his lips in his
sleep. His belly that was the size of a refrigerator quietly lifted and fell.
As the giant rolled back over his jacket opened and dropped something
in my path. My curiosity was compounded by my reckless fright. I stared and
stared at a long leather scroll, and reached for it impulsively. Suddenly Jim
snorted and I took off at a sprint.
I bolted! I had subdued a shout which must have woken them all! And
I had Devil Jim’s scroll in my hand.
I didn’t stop running. At any moment I expected to be caught.
My feet raced through bushes and trees. I sprinted wildly. The sounds
of their feet would overtake me at any moment.
The treetops and mountains rushed by in the moonlight. The thought of
the men gathering around filled me with terror.
Soon my lungs ached,and my sides burned. Yet I kept going. I saw in
my head Devil Jim’s enraged face and knew he would kill me if he saw me.
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Run Run Run!” I said to myself as I paused to
take a break.
But I waited in the bushes, listening for sounds of the men, which was
impossible to hear with my panting.
Then I heard a shout rising from the valley bellow. They had awoken
and found that I was gone.
“Run. Run. Run. Don’t stop. Don’t stop — he’ll squish you in two and
use you for chewing gum!”
I started up again and this time I didn’t stop. I had shivers. I had
flutters in my heart. My legs and arms trembled as I ran through the jungle,
and half an hour later, my body was still shaking.
All of Longfellow’s tales of his adventures with Devil Jim replayed in
my mind. I thought of all the animals Devil Jim had eaten, and his lies, and
how the devil had probably seen me from within Telescope’s metal eyesocket.
As I scrambled up a mountain, gunshots rang from the valley below.
Were they aimed at me? I turned to a cave to hide and discovered some ink on
the mountain. It was a design of some kind.
A sailor would tattoo the land that shipwrecked him if he only had
some ink, Jim had told me back at the hostel.
The ink signs were very alike those Jim had used at the demolition site.
They were a group of upside-down V’s that had become very familiar to me
since my recent flight.
I turned to look over the valley and saw the V-shapes on the horizon!
The ink design was the outline of a mountain — and the direction in which I
was to head. But my heart sank — the mountain was across a deep valley . . .
I decided to follow Longfellow’s directions. After a long trek down a
steep and slippery hill, and an arduous trek up another, I reached the mountain
which Jim’s sign had indicated. There I rested in the shadows.
As afternoon neared and I began to explore the mountain, I found
another sign etched on a rock. There was the number twenty, a footprint, an
arrow, and a small shovel.
“Twenty paces that way, dig,” I translated.
I paced out twenty steps in the direction of the arrow, along the rough
mountain-cliff, and found a large, flat stone, which I used to begin digging.
After a little effort, the ground gave way to a hollow space underneath the
rock, heading into the mountainside. I tucked my head in and found before me
the entrance to a long, dark cave.
I slid below the mountain, my head scraping the rough rock walls. But
on the inside, I found a dry opening. I crawled onto a smooth rock surface and
heard the blowing of wind through the cave, which made me feel somehow
safe and welcome. I stepped forward and my hand reached a rope ladder,
which climbed to a window. From the window, rays of light projected onto a
tall, uneven ceiling, which became more apparent as my eyes adjusted.
I climbed the ladder, which was over twenty feet high, and looked out
over the mountainside and the trail with the entrance. The hole I’d dug,
however, left an obvious path for Telescope to find.
Suddenly, the intention behind the ladder became clear to me. The
ladder was made in such a way that it could flip over the outer wall of the
cave. Then, I could climb down and close up the entrance.
Standing on the window, I flipped the ladder to hang over the cliff-side.
Then I climbed down, filled the hole, and replaced the long flat rock over it.
After climbing back up, I pulled the ladder into the cave and the entrance to
the cave was hidden again.
W
CHAPTER 17
SURVIVAL AND THE CAVE
HAT KIND OF PLACE WAS I IN? I WONDERED, IMPRESSED
by the design of the caves.
After a small exploration, I found additional systems of caves in the
back. There was a mountain spring, a bucket of water, a mattress, a flint, a
lantern, some well-dried firewood, kindling, and even tufts of bark for starting
a fire.
“Why, this was a well-organized mountain hideout,” I laughed to
myself, lying down on the mattress and hanging a lantern.
Using the bark and a flint, I was able to start a small fire within a pit
further inside the cave.
Would this ruin my secrecy? My eyes followed the rising smoke and
saw that it was lifting high into the rocks and disappearing into the mountain.
I thought of Devil Jim and his men who were now prowling outside
somewhere. And I pondered the danger I was in.
After exploring the tunnels the next day, I found many lookouts, and
even viewed Devil Jim himself and his men sneaking along the mountainside.
I was afraid at first, but then I realized I was within a pirate sanctuary,
and would be safe and quite protected. I observed the men from the top
lookout and recorded their position on a detailed map of the jungle which I’d
found. The map outlined tunnels and trenches and hideouts all along the
forest. It seemed to be only part of a whole, for there were references to
places and hideouts not on the map.
Eventually I felt safe and quite proud of the ruffian refuge.
The more I explored the system of caves, the more they drew my
curiosity. Was this the cave where Longfellow’s men had stayed before they
were killed? Perhaps Jim had directed me to it? If so, where was Jim?
As I had undone my jacket on my first night there, I had come across
the leather scroll which I had grabbed during my traumatic flight from Devil
Jim. I had stuffed this object in the inner lining of my jacket and half-forgot
about it. But when I surveyed it then, I nearly shouted in amazement. It was a
map! Telescope Jim’s map, the one I had seen in his hotel room, back in the
city!
My eyes stretched across this piece of strategy from my enemy and I
laughed, realizing this was Devil Jim’s closest and most secret piece of
information. The mysterious pools and the magical islands outlined in his
own hand filled me with awe and wonder. My eyes followed the depicted
waves through underwater passages and onto secret pirate territories. Beside
each marking were notes describing each’s importance.
That night I slept peacefully with Telescope’s treasure map beside me.
The smoke of my fire crept into the mountain and disappeared through
several diverting cracks in such a way that the source of the fire could not be
discovered.
Inside a tin box, I found a journal of events.
Pipes are stored. T Jim is close. We will try to divert him tomorrow.
Longfellow’s followers! This was their entry just before they were
killed . . . They had stored the ‘pipes.’ But where? Was the gold here in the
cave!
I left my own entry.
Miles the Mutineer, sometime in March. I spent three weeks with T
Jim’s band of outlaws before I deserted them with important information. L
Jim narrowed them down to only thirteen. I made a fire and used the ladder to
hide the entrance. I have stolen T Jim’s map and hold it now with me. His
location I have recorded in the upper-lookout map-log. No sign of L Jim. I
anticipate an attack.
After many nights of loneliness and hunger, I went to a precipice
through a long stairway and looked out over the ocean to find my home
island.
From the high point, the shimmering waves, steady breeze, and rough
landscape made feel as if I were viewing a real-life painting. They struck me
with sudden meaning — a feeling of something greater than myself, greater
than the treasure, than life, and even mankind, but what was it?
I suddenly wondered what all this beauty and wildlife meant.
As I listened to the peace of the outdoors with its strange birds and
nocturnal sounds— and the powerful rumbling waves in the distance, my
mind seemed to grasp it. This was the creation of something man could not
understand. Something leapt in my heart!
Could all of it be the creation of the supreme being with which so
many people described connecting throughout history? This idea was
frightening and befuddling. Yet, I was helpless and in need.
Suddenly, a prayer rushed to my lips.
“Food, I need food, God,” I cried, and asked to find Longfellow and
escape from Telescope Jim for good. “And if you don’t mind — maybe I
could find a bit of the treasure that old Jim left here — good Jim that is, the
Longfellow one.”
And I hoped God had understood me.
I was halfway down the stair when I heard a pig squealing in the dark.
Somehow, it had entered my cave by a distant route.
My prayer had been answered already! But how was I to kill it?
In a rush, I took the pirate knife I had gotten when living with the
outlaws and a spear I had found next to the mattress in the cave and snuck
toward the squealing pig. As I drove him into the cave, I trapped him and his
large, furious face turned on me, blinded in the light of my lantern.
Horror struck me as I realized that if I didn’t strike well, this creature
would seriously harm and possibly even kill me.
The pig snorted and plunged toward me. I scurried up a bank and
hurled the spear with all my weight.
There was a sharp cry of rage and terror.
My strike was successful!
The pig fled through the cave squealing. Minutes later, I found it dying
in a corner. Then, I took the pirate blade to its throat, asked God’s forgiveness
for killing an animal and thanked Him for bringing me the food anyway.
Suddenly, there was a noise behind me.
“Miles, you crafty devil? You killed supper in honor of good ol’ Jim’s
return?”
I turned with the delight of seeing another human being, a friendly one
as well. For the speaker was Longfellow Jim, who held an outstretched
lantern.
“J
CHAPTER 18
A FEAST BETWEEN FRIENDS
IM!” I EXCLAIMED, RUSHING TOWARD HIM. TWO PRAYERS
answered in one day! I thought to myself. What about the treasure
now!
It was a beautiful thing to be in that stone cavern with a crackling fire
as the pirate smokestacks spread our smoke throughout the mountainside,
keeping our cave hidden. The pirates, it seemed, were masters of secrecy,
resourcefulness, and rough living conditions. Their systems of protection
were ancient and simple, but clever. Jim and I had a castle it seemed as rain
began to pour.
We pulled the boar back through the cave, where Jim skinned it. The
meat was cut into pieces and roasted over a fire. Jim brought some root-beer
from bottles that were stored at the bottom of a natural spring. When he
opened them they were ice-cold. Then the rain poured and I thought of
Telescope and his men suffering the rain in the wild.
Jim told me how he had been the one laughing in the trees. He had
given me the signs of good luck, knowing Devil Jim’s superstitious ways.
“I couldn’t help playing tricks on me old nemesis,” he said, chewing on
some of the meat.
He had found the riverboat and used some old hidden treasure to fill
the boxes.
He had drawn the men into the cave as well, and placed the gold
bracelets in their path. He had been hiding and slipped a magnet by the
bracelets which unleashed a latch and the insects that had triggered the
gunfight.
He had of course been listening to the men when they had been talking
of killing the pesky birds and deduced from their position that his men must
have hidden the gold in the hideout we were in.
“Then I made those tattoos that brought you here, and even shot at you
a couple times when you crossed them, so I knew you’d hide and see them.”
Jim smiled a wide grin.
“We down to only seven now, Miles, seven filthy varmints,” he
muttered, meaning the outlaws.
When I showed him Telescope’s map, he looked shocked.
“Miles, how on earth!” he exclaimed, staring at the map. “Do you
know what this is?”
I told him I thought I did.
“This is a map of all Devil Jim’s secret knowledge of the seas.”
Longfellow told me he would have to study it, since it was partly
encrypted with Devil Jim’s code names. Then he grew very excited and told
me there was more treasure out there. Lots of it.
I asked Jim where he had been all this time and he told me he had been
making arrangements for our escape.
While we feasted in the glow of the fire, Jim explained the history of
the treasure.
“A mysterious tribe discovered it. Then there had been wars over it
between the Spanish, French and Dutch, but that ended in the treasure’s loss.
The shipment I discovered was only part of the full treasure.
“Telescope and I were mates then,” Longfellow continued, leaning
back and chewing on a pork leg. “We found it using our combined knowledge
of ancient shipwrecks. Then Devil Jim turned on me. Tried to keep it for
himself. There was a faction between us. I was tied to the mast and left for
dead on an island. But I had altered the ship’s log so he lost the location of the
treasure. But I remembered it in my ‘ead, and went back for it.”
“Then you stored it at the hotel?” I guessed. “Until the city decided to
demolish it.”
“Exactly!” answered Jim. “And that was what brought me to you.”
Jim finished his pork leg and stretched lazily. I stretched my own
stomach painfully. I felt like a boa constrictor who had swallowed an entire
animal whole.
“Come with me Miles,” Jim declared, standing. “It’s time you saw the
treasure.”
Jim led me down a rocky stair toward a passage that was covered in
water.
At the back of a beach, he uncovered a raft made of driftwood that he
used to pass over the water. We paddled through caverns that were just cracks
in width, and went deep into the mountain, until we came to a distant shore.
Jim landed the boat and began digging.
Within a few minutes we had two chests of wood before us.
Jim opened one and it shined with silver. Sterling silver coins. At the
bottom were gold bricks.
The next chest showed gold chains that embedded with diamonds and
crowns adorned with pearls. I saw a large red jewel that I nearly pocketed.
There were black jewels and green jewels and shiny grey jewels. Jim
looked on these with a grin.
“There is much treasure like this in the South Seas.”
Then he reached into the chest of silver and removed from beneath it
all, a golden monkey, which Jim said was the trademark of the Sinsay
treasure.
The gold bricks were as heavy as a bowling ball. They each bore an old
and mysteriously engraving from some other time and some other place. I
held the golden monkey in my hand, a prize of the ancient world.
It was held firmly by the hand of Miles the Mutineer.
We loaded each chest onto our raft and towed them back through the
cave.
“By all reason, the meal we just had will be our last,” remarked Jim.
“We are only two men against a troop.”
He looked at me nostalgically as if I were the last human he would set
eyes on. Then he smoked his last cigar, drank the final bit of root beer and
became serious. He handed me something wrapped in leather from a secret
storage compartment.
“A pistol?” I remarked, taking an old black revolver.
“I have made arrangements for a boat to meet us at the nearest bay. If
we are strategic, Telescope Jim will miss us.”
Jim led me to the back door at the opposite side of the mountain and
we headed into dark of night without any further strategy.
There was a single, descending path down the mountain toward a
glimmering bay and a horizon of ocean.
“They will have at least one sentry between us and the sea,” Jim
whispered as we each dragged a chest onto the road. “If we are lucky, we will
find him first. As soon as we shoot, the rest will be on us in no time.”
It was very strange heading into the darkness, towing our treasure
behind us, like a couple of gypsies. We moved an inch an hour it seemed.
We moved and were quiet. We dragged and pulled and hauled and
remained still, looking for an attack from the darkness.
On and on the rugged path went.
Each moment I suspected sudden gunfire. My legs burned from pulling
and my arms grew limp.
One more inch, one more foot, I told myself
There was the sea, I could smell it.
Soon I could hear the waves rolling against the rocky shore.
Freedom. Jim’s boat would be there, just beyond the ledge.
Finally, we reached the last cliff before the bay and the hillside erupted
in gunfire.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
I turned to the forest behind me.
Early-morning sun illuminated the landscape that hid the angry gunfire.
Telescope’s sentry had seen us and sent out the alarm.
Several more bullets whizzed through the jungle and ricocheted off
rocks.
“Hurry, Hurry!” I hissed to the path behind me.
The edge of the track led around a cliff and over the water. Abruptly it
came to a halt.
Deep, swirling stretches of ocean lay below. It was a long drop.
“Jim, where’s the boat?” I called.
The cries of the outlaws broke the trees behind me.
I ducked and lifted my pistol toward the noise. I fired. I could see
nothing, but my attackers saw me.
Bullets whizzed passed my head and struck the rocks behind me.
A shot struck the edge of my boot and I shuddered. Telescope had seen
me, he was watching me with his telescope. I had only moments before his
next shot put an end to my life.
“Longfellow, Longfellow!” I hissed, turning to the path from which I’d
come.
A sudden fright took me. There was no response.
Longfellow was gone.
I
CHAPTER 19
THE END OF THE ROAD
CREPT AROUND THE ROCK WALL WHICH I HAD IMAGINED TO
have hidden Jim’s figure.
There was no one.
I risked a more dangerous glance down the path which led into the
mountains. It was likewise empty, and more bullets zinged passed my head.
Longfellow had abandoned me.
He must have been gone for minutes now, perhaps half an hour or
more!
The sudden pain struck me as gunfire blasted the cliffs above. Jim had
used me as bait. He had fled with his own share of the treasure, and left me
with the other half to lure Telescope away.
I stared in horror at the vast ocean. I could either jump or face the troop
of men who would surely skin me alive!
“Longfellow!” I yelled. But there was no answer.
A worse realization struck me as I grabbed my trunk.
“The thief. No! No!” I yelled, voicing my fear. “The swindler!” I
shouted, for I suspected something worse.
He had not only used me as bait, but swindled me too.
My heart shook within me as I broke open the lock on the chest and
reached inside.
Stones.
The chest I had been carrying was filled with stones. Jim had switched
the chests before we left and I hadn’t known any different.
It had been an evil trick, a vicious scheme. He had used me to get the
map. He had used me to get the treasure, brought me across islands to die at
the hands of his enemy.
What a terrible feeling!
Leaving me to the outlaws was murder. What could I do? I was pressed
to the edge of the cliff with nothing but a chest of stones! There was only the
sea and the cliffs.
I stared. The gunshots rang.
I threw the chest off the cliff.
KAPLUNK.
I jumped after it. Bullets whizzed over my head. I heard the men shout
as they raced down the mountain to look for the sinking chest.
It was a long fall. I landed with a painful smack and sunk below the
surface.
I was about to swim ashore, when I saw the shadow of a boat coming
toward me. Above Telescope’s eye was looking at me through the water.
From within the waves I looked up, terrified.
Then I saw something glitter in the water.
My coin from the demolition site.
It had escaped my pocket in my fall and drifted passed the treasure
chest. It was the only treasure I had from my entire journey.
Above, Telescope Jim continued to watch, following me with his eye.
I reached and swam. I dug and kicked and lurched.
But my lungs were bursting.
Alas no! My life was not worth that coin!
The barrel of a gun took aim from the boat above. And I swam away.
I lost the only bit of treasure I had ever had.
I resurfaced under a cavern below the cliff, where I drew a deep breath.
I could hear the boats gathering outside the cliff, shouting at one
another to find the chest.
Several men jumped in the water, but I was long gone.
Within the shoreline-cave, I found an exiting path through the cliff. On
the other side of the small peninsula, I met up with an official hiking trail that
was part of the national park system.
I ran and ran and ran. My legs ached. My head swam.
Soon I saw buildings rising over the hills. I had come back to
civilization.
I ran toward the city, feeling terrible, but still amazed I had escaped.
How long before Telescope found the empty chest of stones and came after
me.
Probably never, I thought with peace returning as I remembered the
chest disappearing over an ocean shelf. They had never known it was a fake. I
myself had believed the trick up until the last moment. For all Telescope Jim
knew the treasure had been lost again at sea.
I will not explain the horror and pain I endured as I wandered back to
the city. I won’t tell you the names I called myself and Jim, and the dismay I
suffered boarding the return ferry without my rucksack or any treasure —
without even the silver coin which had begun my journey.
I had killed my boar and that was my great accomplishment.
Very soon I was back at the dish pit, and weeks later, I was called to
the front office.
“There is a letter here for you,” I was told.
There was no return address. But I was suspicious of the note
immediately.
My terrible failure had been pushed to the back of my thoughts for
many weeks now. My good name had been restored at the hostel and I slept
and worked and wandered the city just as I had done before my adventure.
But the mysterious letter filled me with a sudden thrill as I opened it.
There was a mysterious note inside.
Under the red brick with the pier that has the good me’s initials.
“The good me?”
This sounded awfully like one of Jim’s colloquialisms, and it drove me
mad to wait as I finished my work in the kitchen.
As soon as nine o’clock struck, I raced out to the docks and found a
pier with the initials L. J. carved into them.
At its base was a red brick. I dug and dug down beneath the red brick.
And in old Jim fashion, buried under a pile of rocks was a box.
It was heavy.
I took the box carefully up to my room before I opened it. I shut the
door and made sure no one was there. Inside I found a note wrapped around
something else.
I had to test you in more ways than one, Miles, my friend.
Some in my crew were ‘liking to believe’ they were captain, and they
tried to contact the Devil about my treasure. The Devil ended up showing
them no mercy, and they nearly lost my treasure along with my trust.
So you see, I had to test you on the ferry. But you proved to have a
solid head on your shoulders, which is what I need. You fought through fake
reality and held fast to solid truth and almost met your end during your
travels with the Devil. But you depended on powers greater than yourself in
the old buccaneer spirit. These things are more valuable than gold in the
world of treasure-hunting
So you see Miles, I need a new first mate. And well you are the man, if
you want.
I eagerly await your answer. Send your response by flare tonight atop
Mount V______. One flare for yes and two for no. Sorry about leaving you at
the cliffs like that and don’t worry if you lost the chest. I filled it with stones. I
had figured keeping you in the dark was the best way to keep Devil Jim
thinking you had the treasure . . .
Anyway, I just received information about a dangerous new mission. I
need more help than just yourself however. Let me know your answer.
Yours Scientifically,
The filthy ol’ scoundrelly Longfellow Jim.
Wrapped inside the note was the figurine monkey of solid gold.
The monkey! The golden monkey! I shouted and had to quickly quiet
myself. This piece of the treasure, I discovered as I did an online search later,
was supposed to be the most valuable part by a hundred times, according to
the rumors that believed it was real.
I carefully wrapped the monkey in a cloth, hid it in a place which only
I knew.
After purchasing a flare gun, I hurried to the top of Mount V______,
where I shot a single flare out over the ocean and expected Longfellow’s
eager eyes to be watching.
SNEAK PREVIEW
TELESCOPE AND THE TERODACTYL
I
CHAPTER 1
THE YEAR OF THE MISSING ROOFTOPS
T IS WRONG TO TALK OF WARRIORS. IT IS WRONG TO SPEAK
about heroes. It is wrong to say the word monster.
That is what I was taught when I was at school in the South Seas. It
was a small school, on a small island . . . with small-minded staff.
But there was no talk of monsters and the staff made sure of it.
When I was in the first grade, I had been carrying a notebook with
drawings of sea monsters overturning ships and smashing harbors.
This was stolen from me the moment I entered the building.
“What are you doing with those drawings?!” a teacher asked, snatching
them away.
“I don’t know . . . looking at them.”
I was whispered about and glared at. The notebook was confiscated
and burned, I believe, secretly among the staff.
Soon afterward, a strange old man found me. He must have been a
janitor. He was whisking along in the shadows on his cleaning machine.
The cleaner stopped. The engine halted. The rickety old man hobbled
down off his machine.
“You the boy with the monster book?” he asked in a whisper.
A rich smile filled his face.
“I remember drawing pictures like that.”
He winked and shook my hand.
“When I was a boy, my house fell into the ocean.”
He paused. We stared in silence.
“Mud slide?” I asked after a moment.
“Plenty of mud. No slide,” he replied quickly. “Roof torn off though.
Year of the missing roofs.”
“Hurricane?” I asked.
“No hurricane,” answered the old man, “a sound like one, and craters
the size of a car left on the beach.”
This old buzzard staggered away without a word. The cleaner started
up. I was left in the dark to ponder these strange ideas.
The following year I was accused of Monster Hysteria. In other words,
I was suspected of believing monsters were real and making a fuss about
them.
This all started because I called a whale ‘a monster.’ Then the strange
word Hysterian was thrown out.
“A historian?” I asked.
“Not hist-OR-ian — hyst-ER-ian,” corrected a teacher, writing me a
pass to the principal’s office “ — someone who gets hysterical about large and
dangerous untrue . . . well monsters.”
Oddly enough, I was sent to a cold, dungeony sort of room where I
happened to be tormented by an enormously fat man with teeth that were like
fangs — a small side-note — he was our principal.
This large, hunched human had moles on his cheeks — and hair on his
moles, and no hair on his head, and a ring of hair from his eyebrows to his
temples that wound round his neck. The hair got really thick back there, a bit
like a mane.
It was hard not to use the word monster when entering his office and
finding him feasting on deep friend garlic food, as I did when I first met him.
I will interject here that I was only eight when I faced the hairy,
humongous human. This was about the time that our school was to be closed
for bad weather, and our staff were particularly uptight and crabby.
“What makes you think there are real live monsters out there?”
inquired my principal, leaning over his desk with interest.
“I don’t. I was just saying the whale in the harbor was a giant — ”
“Ah ha!” interrupted my principal. “How are you using that term giant
. . . do you mean to say the whale was actually an oversized human crawling
out of the sea?”
“No.”
The man’s shadow grew behind him as he leaned forward. It stretched
like a Sasquatch’s.
“All words have meaning, son,” growled the principal, scooping bits of
spicy food into his fanged mouth. “Especially those that appear to have no
meaning at all!”
He stood and attempted to form his fanged face into a smile.
“We don’t use words that might mean something other than what they
mean during these turbulent times. Now wait in my dungeon . . . I mean
lobby, for the rest of the hour.”
I was pushed out the door after a bit of hot breath from spicy food was
sent my direction, and the next little boy was brought in to be attacked,
assaulted, tormented, and frightened by the hairy, humongous human.
No . . . there were no monsters.
Only Hysterians and bad weather. Our school was closed for five
weeks during my third-grade year for a monsoon that never came. One day, it
did rain however.
“There’s the nasty storm we’ve been waiting for!” I remarked on the
way to the park.
“Looks like a bruiser,” replied my friend.
“You might even call it a monster.”
My friend nearly choked.
“What do you mean . . . there aren’t . . . such . . . things!” he yelled.
Then the grand old word came. No answer. No rebuttal. Just the name.
And some yelling.
“Hysterian! Hysterian!”
Truth be told. I didn’t believe in anything bigger than a tadpole, but I
did like my fellow mankind to make sense. I had a strange feeling then, as I
walked along the beach, that something wild and dangerous waited for me in
that stormy sea.
After our school was closed for a month, I did what any sensible
person would do, I became curious.
School started up. I wandered the halls. I went for a stroll. I thought
about something other than textbooks and classes, and I wondered.
The library lights came into view. We had an ancient library — all
computers. Screens from wall to wall. No real books, unless you went to the
back and asked the librarian for some.
“Ma’m, do you have any books about the history of our island?” I
asked.
“Son . . . all books are available online.”
“I don’t want one of those books . . . I’m curious about the year of the
hurricanes. Eighty-Six was it? Year of the missing rooftops.”
She gasped in disapproval before looking quickly around to see if
anyone was listening. Then she took off here glasses and gave me a smile,
bless her heart.
“Well there might be books about that back here.”
I was led to a shelf in her office.
“I was around during the year of the missing rooftops,” she told me in
a whisper. I believe she thought she’d found a kindred spirit.
“Oh . . . really?” I asked with feigned surprise.
“Of course . . . the year the craters spread across the beach,” she added.
“I don’t mean anything by mentioning them. Meteors and small planets can
fall out of the sky without there being massive creatures roaming the earth.”
She looked at me with wide eyes.
I felt my heart skip a beat. She continued using words like giant,
behemoth, and mammoth while throwing odd looks at me.
Her brain was working fast and mine was just catching up.
“You know about the gouges of Two Thousand and Three?” she
gabbed. “Four giant scratches in the rocks outside the harbor. But the earth
can crack to look like the claw marks of a wild humongous beast.”
She glanced at me over her glasses.
“I’m sorry I used the word beast.”
“That’s alright. I won’t call you a Hysterian.”
“Thank you.”
I was patted on the back and sent to class with a cup of hot cocoa and a
stack of books about odd happenings at our island . . .
Me and the librarian became good friends after that, and well I became
exactly what I’d thought they’d called me. I became a monster historian.
H
CHAPTER 2
THE HISTORY OF MONSTERS
ERE ARE MY FINDINGS IN MY DEDICATED STUDY OF
monsters at our small island.
Year of the missing roofs. Nineteen Eighty-Six. Several hundred
houses had the tops of their roofs pulled off. Shrieking like a terrible wind.
But no wind. Men reported the earth shaking. One ship was sunk. Also, a
little girl reported finding a rocking chair in her backyard.
“Rooftops? Shaking ground? A rocking chair? How do these connect?”
I talked this over with my friend, Kales. She was named this because
her parents liked lettuce. Her and her brother Beechwood were the only two
kids who didn’t mind being called Hysterians, only because they got called
worse things for having weird names.
Two Thousand and Twelve. The year of the missing fishermen. Bad
weather caused the ports to close. Rescue crews received an SOS signal and
found dozens of fishermen floating out at sea. According to the article, the
men ‘lost their footing’ during the storm. And of course, their ships were
found stacked on top of one another in a bay.
Now here’s a good one.
Story of the missing guy. One year a guy went missing for about five
whole months. He came back with his mind completely lost. Kales and I
actually tracked him down. The old guy said he woke up in the dark.
Everything smelled like fish. Then he went sky diving. And he had scars like
teeth on his arms and legs.
“Did you see any large animals?” we asked. “Any dangerous, wild
animals?”
Kales recorded the man’s testimony.
“Big things, yea. Elephants.”
“Any rhinoceroses?”
“Yes?”
He answered yes to inquiries about twelve other animals before we
changed the subject.
“Can you draw us a map?”
“A map of the island where I was captured? Why of course!”
He printed out his own name and circled it.
“Well, even if his mind is gone, the story of his discovery is worth
something,” Kales remarked as we left. “He was found in a boat with a
flotation device and several bits of missing roof.”
The man also talked nonstop of a smell like rotten eggs.
Rhinoceroses. Elephants. And rotten eggs. That sums up our
investigation — oh and one more thing.
In Two Thousand and Fifteen. Three giant waves struck the harbor.
Ship after ship capsized. But meteorologists said the waves didn’t come from
tectonic shifting. On the same day many kids were reported missing from
their campsites . . .
Wait, what?! That’s right . . . I nearly chewed my finger off when I read
that. I was eating a bag of chips in the old library with Kales and Beechwood.
A group of kids went missing from their tents. Totally regular camp-out
stuff. You know, tents ripped open, large footprints on the beach. Trail of
mauled trees leading into the ocean.
The official statement was that the kids just floated out to sea, and
there might have been a strong wind. We have a real great community of
small-minded people on our island — reporters included.
I had to read that story twelve times before I realized it had been
written without a proper explanation.
I read this the day Kales, Beechwood, and I were discovered.
We were in the fifth grade, just hitting the peak of our monsterstudying
career — right about the time the outbreak of Walrus Virus hit our
island.
Suddenly there was a bursting apart of one of the bookshelves.
A furious teacher’s face was thrust in front of ours and we were
dragged out.
“What are you doing away from the screens!” she yelled. “You can’t be
here. What is this — books? Books! Books about oh no . . . no, no! Things
that aren’t real! Come with me.”
Kales, Beech, and I got tossed rather cruelly down the old library
stairs. Kales took a bludgeon to the head from a random bookshelf. And I was
dragged by the scruff of my neck to the principal.
I took the brunt of the punishment. I told the teacher I’d frightened
Kales and her brother into following me — by telling them stories about . . .
about MONSTERS!
The teacher ate this right up. She wrote down my name and added that
I’d used inappropriate language and frightened smaller, more helpless kids.
Beech was three times my size.
I had always known my day was coming. My parents would get a call.
I could see the look on my dad’s face. I could hear the rumors that would
spread about me, about him! He would lose his job, and I’d be grounded for
life!
I waited in the principal’s office.
Same old beast. Same old mole-hair . . . Little more neck hair . . . Same
fat fanged-face. Only this time he meant business . . . How was I supposed to
know the Walrus Virus had spread worldwide over passed weeks, disgruntling
teachers around the globe, including the hairy, humongous human that was
my principal.
T
CHAPTER 3
MASS HYSTERIA
HE PRINCIPAL WHO WAS NOTHING LIKE A MONSTER WAS
angrier than usual.
His fingers, which had rough, scaled knuckles, strummed the desk. His
fang-like teeth were propped into an unusual greedy smile, which turned red
and blue with bits of half-devoured jellybeans.
This was the snack he consumed during his meetings, which is how he
grew so enormous.
“Well you know what people are saying . . . ” he began. “Jellybean?”
He offered the bowl of the colorful treat.
“No thanks.”
The furry paws stuffed handfuls of the beans into his mouth.
“I understand we found you in the middle of studying some outdated
paper books about certain exaggerated events.”
The slobber-filled laugh was now a multicolored one and the words it
contained were hard to understand.
I told him this.
“Are you mocking me son? Are you saying I’m some unintelligible . . .
creature?”
“No, you’re just slobbering down your left cheek.”
“Slobbering ha!” he shouted. “Another word for mon . . . for mon . . .
You called me one of those . . . those things! So, let’s have it. What is your
favorite imaginary . . . thing? Hmmm? Giant drooling moose? Double pawed
d-d-dragon?”
Double pawed mouthfuls went on consuming the jellybeans. This man
was going to eat himself to death in front of me. Either that or he was trying
to trick me into calling him a monster.
“Are you aware of your reputation on social media?” he asked after a
great coughing fit. “Kids are saying the m-word left and right because of you!
And looking for mysterious creatures around every corner. We can’t have kids
doing that with the virus and everything!”
“Yes sir, but why not?” I inserted quickly.
“Why? Well because we can’t have everybody focused on untrue
things. The whole world would go hysterical if they thought ‘MONSTERS’
existed. Questioning this proves you’re a Hysterian!”
I had a small argument about the logic of this accusation, ending in me
being deemed a Super-Hysterian.
“Listen I am in a tough position,” my principal explained after a onesided
shouting match. “We are in a tough position. Kids are saying you have a
little club that are interested in these things. That you ‘have seen’ and even
talk to ‘monsters’ — do you talk to them? You haven’t seen any have you . .
?”
I scowled. He was not being sarcastic.
One, and then both hands went grasping for more jellybeans.
“Sir, it seems like you believe in them since you care about the word so
much.”
I had caught him in a coughing fit.
The mole-hair principal began breathing fire, I mean jellybeans. His
horned paws slammed the desk and he coughed out gobs of red and blue goo.
“Don’t — matter — what — you — think — you rascal!”
“Sir, you know rascal is another word for mon . . . ”
“Don’t bring your potty mouth in here! Don’t corrupt these walls!”
He clutched both sides of his office as if my words might strike them,
but he looked like a troll trying to bring down the building. I won’t say I
didn’t fear for my life.
“The point is social media is going nuts,” he continued. “It’s saying our
school can’t handle Hysteria. That we’re in on it. And well we have to going
to do something about it.”
“You’re not going to . . . to call my parents?” I gulped.
The hairy, fanged man scowled. Chewing stopped.
“Devil I am. You’re expelled son.”
My heart dropped.
“What? From school?”
“Not from recess. From school. From class. From books. From the
whole island. Because this ‘m’ nonsense has gone viral.”
I thought this was a joke at first, but I could see by the way he kept
scooping jellybeans into his fanged mouth that something was indeed wrong.
I stood up to leave.
“You haven’t been expelled yet. Not formally. You will wait here.”
The giant man left. I was left in suspense for a very long time,
contemplating the error of my ways, and fearing the principal’s words.
Very soon I was led to the gymnasium where I was caught in a
whirlwind of flashing camera lights. Not just phones but news cameras, video
cameras, and a live feed was projected on the wall.
The entire school was assembled — sixth graders, seventh graders, all
the teachers— and they were looking at me with hatred and glowing faces.
I also saw many men and women who looked as though they had
driven very far to see me.
I was forced to sit in a chair. The teachers had their moment to show
their outrage. I was made to endure like a toad stuck in the clutches of a
power hungry — well, I won’t say beast.
I was told I was expelled, and not to come back. Then the reporters got
hold of me.
“Did you say the ‘m’ word?”
“Have you ever used large-creature language before?
The blaze of the lights was overwhelming.
“Have you ever read books about such creatures?”
“Are you against the banning of these topics . . . ”
I was silent, dead silent. It only took a moment for the crowd to make
its decision.
“Hysterian! He’s a Hysterian!”
It was crazy. There was no second-guessing their decision. The crowds
pushed through the teachers and security.
It wasn’t only I, but my principal who ran with me. I hurried out
backstage and down the back exit, where I slipped into Kales and Beech’s
minivan. Their mother, who was hardly aware of the danger to which I’d been
exposed, drove me all the way home, wondering why there were so many cars
in the school parking lot today— and commented about another outbreak of
the Walrus Virus which would surely shut down school again. Possibly for
weeks.
“Shut it down?”
I was quite relieved.
T
CHAPTER 4
THE RELATIONS SPECIALIST
HAT NIGHT MY DAD GOT IN A SHOUTING MATCH WITH THE
television. He called the principal a bunch of names for letting the news
attack me. My mom told me the island had a small gene pool.
The next day a big, burly man showed up at my door. He had a long fur
coat and fine leather gloves and several knives around his waistband. There
were also ten telescopes of different sizes tied to his jacket. He pulled out the
smallest, which was actually a magnifying glass and examined a piece of
paper.
“Are you the occupant of 12100 Winchester Boulevard?”
I told him I was.
“I’d shake your hand but we’re under Walrus Flu regulations.” So, we
bumped elbows for a greeting . . . Awkward greeting . . .
Before I could give my name, he told me I should call myself Chester
if I wanted to attract the least amount of attention.
“Chester has been found as the least likely name associated with
monsters, the slaying of monsters, or anything heroic.”
I told him my name was Thad, Thad Bartok, which according to the
man, had a vicious ring to it.
He extended a mid-sized magnifying telescope and examined my face.
“Good amount of wildness in your eyes! Primitive head shape.
Ferocious set of teeth! This will be tough.
“Excuse my telescoping your face,” the man apologized, “but it’s my
job to restore a good public image, so I have to know what we’re up against.
And if you think you can escape bad press without my help, well, you’ve got
your head in the clouds.”
He paused.
“That was not an allusion to any tall or enormously tall creatures,” he
whispered.
“Disclaimers young Thad, that is the only way to be safe. Saved my
skin more than once.”
He paused again.
“That was not an allusion to a monstrous de-skinning animal.”
The gruff man removed a sailor’s hat and made a low bow, which
revealed a long mane of tangled hair that reached the ground.
“Abel Saurian. Public relations specialist,” he said, introducing
himself. “I’d like to help navigate you through your social media troubles.”
He shuffled his waistband of telescopes and retrieved a pen, which
caught my eye.
“Squid ink, that one. Treacherous to erase, signing in blood you are.
But we’ll get to that later.”
I noticed a sticker on the pen which said no animals were harmed in the
production of this fine pen, then in smaller writing except when they were
killed and slaughtered.
An uneasy look settled on Abel’s brow as he extended the largest
telescope, which peered beyond my house onto the hills. There, a train of cars
was forming.
“Might’n we be able to find somewhere safer to chat,” he suggested in
a hurried whisper, “I know a coffee house down by the marina.”
Several cars turned and headed our direction. I saw after a closer look
that the vehicles had news logos on them!
“You don’t have a bazooka, do you,” Abel muttered. “Ah never mind
that. Come with me.”
The large sailor led me down a rocky path to the shore, where we
entered a fishing boat. Bits of wire, hooks, and half-skinned fish were strewn
about. We drove along the shore to a cliff with a small dock at its base, then
parked and climbed up a winding stair leading inside a cave.
“Fisherman’s entrance,” he informed me with a grin. A large skull with
massive tusks was set on a wooden sign that read The Boar’s Habit.
“Best coffee this side of Borneo,” Abel remarked with a wink, leading
me up a series of caves lit by lanterns.
The winding stair ended at a coffee shop overlooking the sea.
There were wooden tables. Glowing lanterns. Shadows everywhere.
Shadowy men. Knives flashing. Men playing cards. Heavy tobacco smoke
wafting through the air.
At the bar sat a man with a patch over his eye. Next to him was a man
without a leg.
“Is there a hospital nearby?” I asked in a whisper.
Abel took a seat and passed me a coffee.
“I won’t say that that man’s scar don’t look like it come from a
serpent,” he replied, nodding to the man with the patch. “Or the marks around
the other man’s leg don’t appear to have been made by very large teeth.”
He leaned forward.
“You know of course, Thad — I mean Chester, that there are bigger
things in the world than lions.”
He surveyed my face quietly in the shadows.
“Why do you think schools are shutting down every other month? And
bunches of kids go missing? Not for bad weather and the Walrus Flu.”
Abel lifted his eyebrows mysteriously and drank form his glass.
“Well never mind that.” He lifted his voice and slapped the table.
“Waiter, couple of boar’s legs for this young man.”
I was brought a leg of meat and some crab cakes.
“I am a lawyer, Thad,” Abel began, cutting off a slice of meat and
stuffing it in his mouth. “Not the kind you know.” He coughed on the large
bite. “I specialize in a certain kind of sea business, a business that has been
making giant strides these past years . . .
“There were no references to Twelve-Foot-Tall men in that sentence,”
he whispered under his breath.
“The big issue, the elephant in the room — small elephant, mind — is
that you said a certain word and studied a certain topic which made a lot of
people angry . . . ”
Abel took another stab at the boar’s leg.
“You could take a shot at the microphone — try to explain yourself.
But before you could say the word ‘micro’ and ‘phone’ together, the news
would have edited it to sound like ‘monster.’
“So, my advice is to go at ‘em with humbleness. Humility is the best
policy when facing social media mobs who want to tear you limb from limb.”
Abel lowered his voice.
“That was not a reference to large reptilians from the sea.”
Abel leaned forward.
“Will you let me help you?” he asked. “I can erase you from the
world’s memory before they get a firm grasp on you.”
“How?”
“You’ll just have to trust me. I only ask that you take a look at
something in return.”
I couldn’t see any reason to hesitate, so I agreed. Abel reached across
the table and patted my shoulder.
I was directed to follow him.
Abel made some phone calls. Soon, a school bus was waiting outside. I
was loaded in and we were driven back to my school.
“What are you doing!”
To my horror, the bus parked at our gymnasium and outside, news
vehicles were parked.
“I’ve set up an interview with the press,” Abel explained and quickly
disappeared.
“What about what you said about the microphone — ”
I was led by security into the gymnasium, where angry faces and
camera lights flashed. This time there were several hundred people packed
into the auditorium. Each person had a phone in the air and recorded my face.
All the unbearable interrogation was going to start again —
Then suddenly, a voice erupted from backstage.
Several persons rushed out from behind.
“Help! Help!”
The cries were coming from several shuddering staff, including my
principal.
“Monsters! Here in the building. Large scaled monsters! They’re here!
Go look, look!”
It was horrible, frightful. The strained shouts confused everyone.
The five or so staff were hysterical, unhinged, shaking, pointing, and
screaming for help.
“You don’t understand — scales and claws!” yelled my principal.
The crowds were confused. Strangest of all, the cameras began to
quickly turn off. And it seemed to me that the news teams began to back
away.
No one said a word. My principal and the teachers remained terrified,
and the crowds began to disburse!
Some frightened persons pushed passed me and began arguing with my
teachers.
I was forgotten just like that.
How had Abel done it? What kind of law had he studied? I asked him
this as soon as he found me in the hall moments later.
“Law of nature,” he replied, “particularly the area of animal behavior
and human response.”
I thought this was a joke, but Abel didn’t laugh. He was swiping
through news feeds on his phone and flashed me a delighted grin.
“That bit of awkward video footage ended everything. Looks like the
news has moved on.”
The headlines which had borne my name only a day ago were replaced
with stories of the Walrus Flu.
“How did you get my principal and the other teachers to say all that?” I
asked.
“Well it wasn’t hard really,” he replied with a grin. “I cut the electricity
and let a few scaled creatures wander round backstage.”
I imagined a boa constrictor and alligator frightening my teachers.
Abel passed me an envelope.
“Here’s the other end of your bargain. I told you the law I studied had
to do with the sea. Well here’s something I discovered in my line of work.”
Inside was a picture.
It was a photo of the missing guy that Kales and I had studied.
“We interviewed that guy,” I told him.
In the picture, the missing guy sat on a chair, a rocking chair! The
rocking chair that had dropped out of the sky and been found in a girl’s back
yard.
The next picture was of the missing guy curled up in a boat. Beside
him were two piles of shingles — the missing rooftops — and two gigantic,
curled, pointy objects that looked like massive snails.
“Talons . . . ” explained Abel. “From a giant vulture. That’s how I
found him before the Coast Guard was called. Marina Police destroyed the
talons out of fear of starting a frenzy. But I kept the picture. And your friend
Kales connected the missing rooftops. She guessed the rocking chair in the
little girl’s backyard was his. She might have some monster-hunting blood in
her.
“Which comes to my point,” Abel continued.
He lifted his phone and played a recording.
“This bit of radio came to my co-workers a few months back.”
I heard crinkling. Then static. Then metal clamoring.
Then a girl’s voice came on. Sweet, soft voice, like an angel’s, but
filled with fright.
“Help . . . help . . . if you can hear this, please . . . we were attacked . . .
we have information . . . help . . . please help . . . ”
The recording stopped. The effect was unsettling. It made my skin
crawl.
If you can hear this, help . . . the voice had said. But what could I do?
Abel led me to the school’s exit.
“The real reason I found you was to convince you to join me in my line
of business. You see, the law of nature I studied was a dog-eat-dog sort, or
rather,” he raised his eyebrows, “a large-creature-eat-tiny-human kind, and its
transformed into the angry-human-grabs-his-gun-and . . .
“Well there are groups of us, Thad, that are tired of our schools being
shut down and our jobs being eliminated because of fear, and we’re setting
out to find out what is happening to our world . . . To find the creatures that
are behind all this and stop them.”
“You want to . . . hunt the virus?”
Abel gave me a dark look.
“You have the pictures. You can keep ‘em.”
And without another word Abel walked out.
H
CHAPTER 5
SUDDEN CONTAMINATION
AD I BEEN CHEATED? HAD I BEEN LIED TO?
School closed for bad weather? For Walrus Flu? Could this be a
disguise for something too big for our world to handle . . . real . . . live . . .
monsters? And while families were quarantining and washing hands, giant
creatures were roaming our earth?
That seemed to be the gist of Abel’s words. I considered the events
Kales and I had studied and the outrage we had in turn received.
Could our school’s hysteria about monsters be because our world was
getting attacked by them? Not a virus or a monsoon, but something violent
with which we didn’t know how to deal.
The radio recording Abel had played ran through my thoughts. Who
had sent it? What had happened to her? What had attacked her? Was she still
alive?
Before Abel had left, he had given me a business card in case I ever
wanted to help him, but I folded it up and tucked it away in my jacket pocket.
The next day, I watched the news pour in with mixed feelings.
Schools closed. Offices shut down. Food shortages increased. Panicked
people bull-rushed grocery stores. Stock markets plummeted.
My father went out at night with gloves and a mask like some sort of
space traveler to find food. My mom began packing suitcases in case we had
to leave suddenly.
Before long I had forgotten about Abel and his monster-hunting
business. These attacks were a flu, a dangerous bug, not giant hairy monsters.
The map of contamination grew larger and larger. News stations talked
more incessantly of the deaths.
Then, after school had been closed a fortnight, Abel found me
wandering the beech.
“Had any more thought about that recording I showed you?”
I had forgotten what he meant at first and shook my head.
“Got another picture for you,” he added.
He flashed a photo of two massive skulls and a person standing next to
them.
“Giant tiger skulls. Found off the coast of Borneo. Proof that what I’m
telling you is . . . Still not interested?”
I thanked him for his help and quickly left.
That week my parents sent me to Beech and Kale’s house to take my
mind off the panic.
Friday morning, I awoke to sirens.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, coming down the stairs.
Sudden fear rushed through my heart.
Kales and her mother were gathered around the television.
“Brand new outburst of the plague.”
“Three hundred died this morning . . . ”
The television flashed to a series of hospital rooms.
Kales’ mom shut it off.
“Three hundred . . . that was fast. Where did it come from?” I asked.
No answer.
“The beach.” Kales’ mother’s voice cracked. “It was fast . . . ”
“Fast like the rooftops,” Kales added. She looked at me meaningfully.
“What’s the matter . . . ?”
Suddenly my mind caught up. The sirens were not on the TV. They
were coming from outside . . . from the beach.
I bolted toward the door.
Kales yelled for me to stay. Something sharp pounded in my heart.
I followed the sirens. They were coming from my neighborhood.
The beach was covered in craters. Cars and ambulances were
everywhere.
I had to zigzag around giant, massive pits. They were being washed out
by firemen.
Washed out because of the virus?
I ran faster. Giant craters were forming in my heart.
My neighborhood was blocked off. Our row of houses were . . . were
gone . . . completely missing.
Quarantine tape stopped me.
“You can’t go in there . . . Virus.”
“Your family is at the hospital.”
I was directed away. Then the words came.
“No one survived. Sorry, they’re gone . . . ”
My parents. Gone. Just like that. Lost forever.
Walrus Flu! The dang plague! — it had taken my parents . . .
I’d never see . . . I’d never do anything . . . with them again . . .
I received no consolation. Hundreds had been affected by the attack.
We were directed here and there. I was shown a hospital room where it had
happened.
“That’s where they spent their last moments,” I was told by a nurse. “I
am sorry. They’re gone.”
“Can I see them? What happened to my home?”
“Contaminated. Bulldozed . . . They died swiftly. Their funerals will be
happening soon . . . ”
Happening . . . soon . . .
A haze of sorrow overshadowed me. I wandered in a daze from
hospital rooms to hotel rooms. Out of the cloud of sadness, a hand grasped
my shoulder.
Abel had come to the funeral.
Small church, two coffins. No bodies. Virus took ‘em. Bodies
contaminated. Disposed of.
I looked up and saw a tear on Abel’s face.
He didn’t offer any more pictures, but something had been building
inside me which leapt out suddenly.
I had been thinking about what Kales had said.
“Fast like the missing rooftops.”
And there had been craters on the beach, which the firemen had
quickly washed away. They had sprayed them with water. Why were they so
concerned about removing the craters if it was a virus . . . ?
Was it because there were paw prints inside? Was it because there were
real . . . live . . . monsters . . . destroying our world as we spoke?
The sudden impulse took me.
“I want to hunt them . . . ” I muttered. “I want to kill the things that did
this.”
Abel’s eyes widened.
I hadn’t even realized I believed him.
Perhaps my unconscious self had observed what my mind had ignored
— the outrage about monsters, the prohibiting of the topic, and a constant
stream of untrue stories about the plague — it was all to stop fear from
spreading. It was a way of controlling everything while our world was slowly
defeated.
Abel pulled out a small telescope-magnifying glass to examine me, he
was so startled.
Then he gave a sad smile and told me he wasn’t leaving.
All the doors shut. I was left with some strange aunt, an empty
building, the two coffins —
And Abel.
“I don’t mean to mess with your feelings Thad, what you’re going
through must be terrible, but there is something you should know.”
He fiddled with one of the telescopes.
“Not everyone believes these creatures are destroying their victims.
Some believe there is a method to their attacks. No bodies. No carnage.
Remember the old man who was dropped out of the sky. He was being taken
somewhere before he fell . . . and he had been kept alive.”
“Are you telling me that my parents might be alive . . ?”
Giant hope bounded in my heart.
Where were they? What was happening to them? How could we find
them?
Every bit of me sprung back to life in the small glimmer of hope Abel
gave me.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I showed you that
recording. We’re not just hunting the monsters, we’re trying to save the
people that were taken. And we need all the help we can get.”
Abel left.
I was alone. Strange empty church. Strange aunt. Strange empty
coffins. No bodies.
But now giant hope was rising in my heart.
They were possibly alive! Alive! And there were people out there
trying to find them.
A sudden memory rushed into my head. What had the missing guy said
when Kales and I had interviewed him?
“You want a map of the island where I was captured,” he had said.
The crazy old man couldn’t help us find the island. His mind was lost .
. . but he at least had told us he had been captured — held prisoner at an
island. An island in the sea . . . with monsters.
That’s where my parents were . . .
I searched through my pockets to see if I still had the business card
Abel had given me. And there it was folded up.
“If you are interested in joining the hunt meet me at this location,” he
had said.
On the card was an address.
One One Nine, Old Sandy Beach Road.
Telescope and the Terodactyl is published in full.
CLICK HERE