Beware the Pirate Ghost Read online

  4

  AS BRIAN AND SEAN pedaled toward home, Brian said, “Let’s stop and get flashlights.”

  “And get in touch with Dad,” Sean said.

  They rode past Debbie Jean’s house, and Sean grinned. “I guess Debbie Jean finally paid attention when I told her she couldn’t help us,” he said, “She was gone when we left the Hoppers’.”

  “You haven’t been looking in the right places,” Brian said. He glanced over his shoulder. “She’s on her bike, and she’s been doing a pretty good job of tailing us.”

  Sean groaned.

  “Except for when she rode through somebody’s vegetable garden,” Brian added.

  “What are we going to do about her?” Sean asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Brian said. “We’ll leave our bikes in the backyard, and after we pick up the stuff we need, we’ll cut out the back way and lose her.”

  When Brian and Sean burst into the kitchen they discovered that neither their mom nor dad was home. They called their dad’s office and got only his recorded message.

  “Lester is a real nut about caves, so we’re going to check out the pirate caves at Hernando Cove,” Brian said as soon as he heard the beep. He went on to tell what he and Sean had found out about the argument and the missing bike.

  Next, he tried to reach Detective Kerry, in case their father was still with him, but was told that Detective Kerry wasn’t in the office.

  “Leave a note for Mom,” Sean said. He pointed to a slip of paper Mrs. Quinn had fastened to the refrigerator. On it she’d written that she was following the route Lester might have taken if he had gone to visit his grandmother.

  Brian jotted down the message he’d given to Mr. Quinn.

  Sean read over Brian shoulder. “I hope Mom doesn’t know that the caves are haunted,” he said.

  “She knows they’re dangerous,” Brian said. “Remember a few years ago when she worked with a committee to get the county to put up warning signs?”

  “The signs didn’t keep kids away. The pirate ghost did,” Sean said. “That’s what Sam said, anyway.”

  The back door opened, and Sam Miyako stepped into the kitchen. “What did Sam say?” he asked.

  “I was telling Bri what you said about the pirate ghost down at Hernando Cove,” Sean explained. “He’s real, isn’t he?”

  “Ghosts aren’t real,” Brian said. He pulled two flashlights out of a kitchen cabinet drawer. He tested them and handed one to Sean.

  Sam put on a low, scary voice. “Be glad the pirate ghost didn’t hear you. He’d get revenge. Someday they’d find your bones buried deep beneath the sand … like the bones of Jack the Sailor.”

  “Who’s Jack the Sailor?” Sean asked.

  “Many years ago Jack heard about the pirate ghost,” Sam said. “Jack bragged that there wasn’t a pirate, alive or dead, who could get the better of him.”

  Sam paused, and Sean asked, “Well? What happened?”

  Sam looked sorrowful. “Jack was never seen again. Except for his bones, of course, which was all that was left of him.”

  “Don’t think about Sam’s dumb ghost stories,” Brian said to Sean. “Think about how we have to find Lester before we run out of time.”

  Sean glanced at the clock on the stove, and a chill ran up his backbone. “It’s almost eight-forty-five,” he exclaimed.

  “What’s all this about Lester?” Sam asked.

  Brian took a good look at Sam. “It’s … uh … confidential,” he said. “But maybe you can help us. Lester disappeared during the night, and we think he may have gone to the pirate caves.”

  Sam’s eyes shone. “If you want me to come with you, I will,” he said. “Have you got another flashlight?”

  Brian fished out another and gave it to Sam. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “Oops, that reminds me,” Sam said. “I came to tell you that Debbie Jean is behind a tree across the street, watching your house.”

  “She thinks she’s following us,” Sean said. “But we’re going to cut out the back way and lose her.”

  Silently, Brian and Sean walked their bikes through a gap in the hedge. When they reached the street behind their house, Sam met them on his bike, and they took off.

  Fifteen minutes later they reached the lower road that led under the cliffs along the shoreline around Hernando Cove. Brian braked to a stop. Sean and Sam pulled up behind him.

  From where they stood they could look down the pile of boulders into the small cove. Dull, gray ocean water reflected the overcast sky. The tide was out, leaving a trail of gleaming brown seaweed. The sandy beach was littered with driftwood, and a battered old shack rested in the shadow near the edge of the tumbled pile of boulders. Damp fingers of mist trailed across the shack and the lower rocks. There were no signs of Lester or his bike.

  “Maybe we guessed wrong,” Sean said. “We can go home now.”

  Brian shook his head. “We need a closer look. Bring your bikes. We’ll park them just a short way down the trail, behind the rocks.”

  As they found a hidden place in which to put their bikes, Sean said, “I don’t see Lester’s bike anywhere.”

  Brian bent over, studying the narrow trail that ran down to the cove. “He may not have come this way. I don’t see footprints or marks from bike tires.” Brian paused. “The road that turns into the cove is about a quarter mile farther on.”

  “Do you think Lester would have used the road instead of this trail?”

  “In the middle of the night? Probably. Let’s go down and find out.”

  They quickly worked their way down the narrow and crooked trail that ran between the boulders.

  As they neared the bottom of the trail, Sean asked, “What if we don’t find any bike tire tracks or footprints?”

  Sam jumped from a low boulder to the sand and pointed toward the shack. “There are plenty of footprints,” he said. “Look.”

  “Those are too big to be Lester’s,” Brian pointed out.

  They all gave a start as a voice suddenly boomed, “Go away! You kids don’t belong here!”

  An elderly man wearing stained khaki trousers and a tattered sweatshirt stood in the doorway of the shack. Ragged wisps of white hair poked out from under his faded baseball cap.

  “We’re looking for someone,” Brian called to the man. He glanced past the shack to the rocks, where the hammering of ocean waves, over countless years, had worn deep caves into the rock cliff. The water level was lower now, and the cliffs were dry. Through the still-clinging morning mists, Brian could barely make out a narrow, dark entrance to the caves.

  “Whoever you’re lookin’ for, he ain’t here!” the man shouted. “No one comes around these parts. The caves are haunted. You know that, don’t you?”

  Brian trudged through the soft sand toward the man. As Sean and Sam followed, the man edged back into his doorway.

  “I told you to go away,” he said. “If you’re lookin’ for pirate treasure, you’re in the wrong place. There’s no treasure buried here. Plenty of hunters came searchin’ in years gone by, but none of ’em found so much as a penny. There’s nothin’ good in Hernando Cove but the fishin’, and I don’t welcome your company.”

  “We don’t want treasure, and we’re not interested in fishing,” Brian told him. “We’re looking for a missing seven-year-old boy.”

  “No boys around here, either.” The fisherman grinned, exposing yellowed teeth, some of them missing. “If any boys had enough nerve to come near the caves, the pirate ghost would get ’em, and they’d never be seen again.”

  His grin grew wider. “The pirate ghost carries a sword. A bloody sword, if you get what I mean.”

  Sean, his heart thumping, took a couple of steps back. “Okay. We’re going,” he said.

  The fisherman left his shack. With his mouth still twisted in an awful, smiling grimace, he strode toward Sean and Brian.

  “That goes for all of us,” Sam said. “We’re out of here!”

&n
bsp; Sean turned and broke into a run, struggling through the soft sand until he reached the path through the boulders. As fast as he could, he scrambled upward.

  Finally, he paused and dropped to a flat place in the trail. He breathed hard, trying to catch his breath.

  Sam tripped and fell next to Sean. Sean was surprised to see that Sam looked frightened. “That guy is weird,” Sam said. “While he was yelling at us, all I could think about was poor old Jack the Sailor.”

  “Poor old Jack the Sailor has got to be somebody you made up,” Brian said. He climbed up beside Sean and sat down.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Sam said. “The story seemed very real when we were down there.”

  Sean had to laugh. “That’s funny! You scared yourself!”

  “Running away was a good move, Sean,” Brian whispered.

  “It wasn’t a move. It was for real,” Sean said.

  “Whatever. The fisherman will think we’ve given up.”

  “We have, haven’t we?” Sean asked.

  “No, we haven’t,” Brian said. “We haven’t checked out the caves yet.”

  “But that guy said—”

  “He said there weren’t any boys around. That means he didn’t see any. But if Lester came here, it was in the middle of the night and the fisherman was probably asleep.”

  Sean gulped. “Then the pirate ghost got him—”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “—with his bloody sword.”

  “Come off it, Sean,” Brian said. “Don’t pay any attention to the stories Sam tells you. He just likes to scare you.”

  “Sam’s scared, too,” Sean answered.

  Sam looked embarrassed. “I was scared for maybe a minute or two, but don’t tell my little brother,” he said. He looked at Sean. “The Jack-the-Sailor story wasn’t exactly true, but the pirate ghost sure is.”

  Brian raised up, peering over the rocks, then sat down and whispered to Sean, “The fisherman’s still out there. You and Sam hide in the rocks. I’m going to ride around to the road that enters the cove and see if I can find Lester’s bike, or any sign he might be here. If I do … Well, we’ll climb down again, sneak around the shack, and enter the cave.”

  “With the ghost?” Sean asked.

  Brian looked at his watch. “Forget the ghost. It’s after ten o’clock.”

  Bent over, so the fisherman wouldn’t see him, Brian started up the trail. Sam scrambled up next.

  Sean made his own way upward, leaving the trail. But as he climbed around one of the boulders he stepped on a soft lump that suddenly moved out from under his foot. A low growl sounded in his ears, and something clamped tightly around his ankle.

  5

  “WATCH IT,” DEBBIE JEAN GRUMBLED. “You stepped on my foot.”

  Sean dropped down beside her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I’m following you,” she said. “I’m the one who told you about the missing bike and the way Lester acted about his medicine. If Lester’s here, then I’m going to get credit for finding him, too.”

  Sam slid down beside them. “Keep the noise down,” he said. “We don’t want the guy who lives in the shack to know we’re still here.”

  “Why?” Debbie Jean asked.

  “Because we’re going to try to get into the caves and look for Lester,” Sam answered. “We think that’s where he’s gone.”

  “Lester has a lot of posters and books about caves in his room,” Sean added. “We’re hoping they’re a clue.”

  Debbie Jean nodded in agreement. “Lester talks about caves all the time,” she told them. “I’ve heard him say a lot of times that someday he was going to explore the pirate caves and find the treasure.”

  “You didn’t tell us that,” Sean complained.

  “You didn’t ask me,” Debbie Jean said.

  “Did Lester know about the pirate ghost?” Sean asked.

  “Sure,” Debbie Jean said. “But Lester wasn’t worried about ghosts.” She looked at Sean. “I guess the ghost doesn’t bother you, either. Huh?”

  Sean pictured a pirate waving a bloody sword at him. He shrugged and said, “Not much.”

  Brian slid down into the hollow next to Sean. He didn’t seem surprised to see Debbie Jean. “I saw your bike by the road to the cove,” he said. “And I saw a green mountain bike hidden nearby it.”

  “Green? That’s Lester’s bike,” Debbie Jean said.

  “You were right, Bri. Lester came to the caves byway of the road.” Sean frowned as he thought. “But if he’s in the caves, wouldn’t he have heard the fisherman talking with us? Why didn’t he come out?”

  “He wouldn’t come out if he’s hiding,” Debbie Jean said.

  “Or …” Brian stopped. “Never mind,” he said. “We’ll have to go in the caves and find him.”

  “How are we going to do that, with the fisherman there to stop us?” Sam asked.

  “We’ll just have to wait until he’s sure we’ve left.” Twice Brian rose to look over the rocks, but both times the fisherman was still in sight.

  “He’s mending a large net,” Brian said. He looked at his watch again. “That could take forever.”

  “Maybe one of us could talk to him, and the others could sneak into the cave,” Debbie Jean suggested.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Brian said. “He’d figure out what we were up to.”

  For a few minutes they sat so quietly they could hear the steady splat and fizzle of small waves hitting the shore before being sucked back into the sea. Finally, Brian looked at his watch and sighed. “It’s nearly noon. Time’s going by awfully fast.”

  “See if the fisherman’s still there,” Sam whispered. “Maybe he’ll go inside his shack and eat lunch.”

  Brian rose slowly, bracing himself against a large boulder. This time he motioned to the others. “He’s nowhere in sight,” he said. “Come on. And be quiet! We’ll head for the entrance to the caves.”

  They climbed down the trail and walked silently through the sand, staying close to the bottom of the cliff. As they passed the shack, they bent low, hoping that the fisherman wouldn’t look out his window and see them.

  Slowly, step-by-step, they approached the entrance to the caves. The gash in the dark, volcanic rock seemed much larger than it had at a distance. It looked like a giant fish’s open mouth, ready to swallow whoever came near.

  Mists swirled around the opening, and Sean wished the mists could turn into fog, hiding them from view. What if the fisherman saw them? What if he chased them? Sean glanced over his shoulder, toward the shack they had passed, but there was no sign of the fisherman.

  Brian held up his hand for the others to stop. “It’s just a couple of feet up to the entrance,” he whispered. “We can get into the caves without any problems. Just be careful where you step. Caves are full of holes … and sometimes rats. Shine your flashlight wherever you step. Debbie Jean, since you don’t have a flashlight, stick close to Sean.”

  “Yuck,” Sean mumbled.

  Debbie Jean shivered. “There are rats in the caves?” she asked. “You didn’t say anything about rats.”

  Brian ignored her question. “If you’re ready,” he said, “let’s go.”

  Before they could move, a deep, horrible yell shattered the air.

  Brian, Sean, Sam, and Debbie Jean froze. They stared in horror at the entrance to the caves. Through the mists stepped a pirate, dressed like a shabby Captain Hook. A dirty bandanna was wrapped around his head, and an eye patch covered one eye.

  The pirate yelled again and waved his sword, which dripped with bright red blood. He jumped from the caves’ entrance to the sand and faced them.

  “You’re my prisoners!” he cackled. “You’ll never get out of here alive!”

  6

  DEBBIE JEAN SCREAMED AND broke into a run, heading for the road that led down to the cove. Sean ran, too, but in the opposite direction, heading for the path up the cliff. All he wanted was his bike—the fastest way to get home! />
  It wasn’t until Sean had reached his bike that Brian and Sam were able to catch up with him.

  “Sean, stop! Where are you going?” Brian asked.

  “Home!” Sean said.

  Brian grabbed Sean’s shoulders. “Leave the bike there.”

  “And let the ghost get us?”

  “The ghost isn’t going to get us … or anybody else.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Sam’s voice shook.

  Above them they heard the swish of bike tires and saw Debbie Jean speeding past.

  Sean made another try at pulling out of Brian’s grip. “Let me go!” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “No. We’re going back,” Brian said.

  “We can’t. You saw the ghost!”

  “I think I like Sean’s idea best,” Sam said.

  Brian shook his head. “I did take a good look at the ghost. That’s why we’re going back.”

  Sean stopped tugging and turned to look at Brian. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that a private investigator has to pay attention to details. Didn’t you notice anything unusual about the pirate?”

  Sean shivered as he remembered the pirate. “The dirty clothes he was wearing? The blood dripping from his sword?”

  “His teeth,” Brian said. “Some of them were missing … just like the fisherman’s teeth. In fact, the very same teeth.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sean said. “Are you telling us that the fisherman dressed up like a pirate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he want to scare people and make them run away?”

  “I don’t know,” Brian answered. “Maybe he’s still searching for pirate treasure he wants to keep for himself.”

  Sam interrupted. “He told us there wasn’t any treasure. He said people had looked for years and hadn’t found any.”

  Brian shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t telling the truth. Or maybe he just wants to live alone in peace and quiet without a lot of people around. Whatever his reason, I’m sure of one thing: The pirate we saw is not a ghost.”