Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (32 page)

Paul still sniffled occasionally. He whispered to Jim or to George or perhaps to himself how sorry he still was. But for the most part,
they walked in silence. As the time dragged on, Jim shivered more and more violently. His teeth clattered and his legs shook. His left arm hung limp and dead at his side. The black tendrils from the wound in his hand were crawling over his chest. Yet he kept on, one foot after the other through the dark.

Whether the poison running through Jim’s blood would allow him to admit it or not, somewhere in his heart he knew he and his friends were lost. Dawn was but several hours away. Doom would be close behind.

Yet, just when all hope seemed lost, a low rush penetrated the silence. A wall of blue moonlight appeared between the trees in the near distance. A surge of vindication swelled up inside Jim. He began to run as fast as his sickened body would carry him.

“See!” he shouted, his voice strained and shaking. “I told you! It’s the end of the forest! We’ve reached the mountain and soon we’ll be at the
_—
”

Jim never finished. When he, the Ratts, and Lacey broke through the trees, they all staggered to a halt at the bank of the river called the Mountain’s Tears. The water flowed fast and hard. On the other side was the hill that led back to the Sea of Tall Grass. They had walked in a complete circle.

None of the clan said anything. A flash of heat erupted in Jim’s hand and the pain burned out of control. The agony brought him to one knee, but when George moved to help him to his feet, Jim slapped his friend’s hand away and forced himself to stand.

“We must go back through!” Jim shouted. His voice was broken and gravelly. “There’s still time! There’s still time to beat the Cromiers to the cave!”

“Jim,” Lacey said, her voice trembling. “We’ve been walking for hours and hours in a circle. We’re not going to find the cave. We must go back. We should try and go back to the beach while there’s still a chance to make it though the Devil’s Horns.”

“A chance?” Jim screamed. “I can’t let them do it! I won’t! They’ve taken everything. I won’t let them take any more! I will have my revenge!”

“Can you even hear yourself, mate?” George walked over to Jim and shook him by the shoulders. “I wanted you get your stuff back just as much as anyone, I swear I did. But look what it’s doin’ to you! Can’t you just let it go?”

“Let it go?” Jim staggered back from George. “You don’t understand! You don’t know what it’s like to have lost your father and everything he gave you. You never even knew your father, George!”

George stood still in the moonlight by the river, as though morning had already come and turned him to stone. Silence like death fell over the children, so quiet that the lone tear that fell from George’s cheek could almost be heard as it landed in the grass. Neither Peter nor Paul tried to make a joke or smile. There was no cheer left in any of their faces. In the end, it was Lacey who finally spoke. Her voice shook as she spoke.

“We do too know what it’s like to lose, Jim Morgan,” Lacey said. “Now we know what it’s like to lose a friend. We have to turn back or we’re going to turn to stone on this island.”

“There is no way back!” Jim raged. “The only way is forward! To the cave!”

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Lacey replied, and she finally turned away.

“Fine then! Go back! I don’t need you! I’m glad you’re going. I’m going to find the shell and the treasure for myself. Do you hear me? All mine and nobody else’s! I’ll show those Cromiers…I’ll show you! I don’t need anybody!”

Paul and Peter hung their heads. Cornelius lacked the strength to argue with Jim or give him the tongue-lashing he deserved. But as the others began to shuffle along, George alone stepped to the riverbank beside Jim, his hat in his hand.

“I still remember the day you gave me this hat, Jim,” George mumbled, looking down at his hands. “I was gonna give up on everythin’,
remember? I was gonna quit thievin’ and give up helpin’ you and me own brothers, even. I said some rotten things and made Lacey cry. But you didn’t give up on me then, did you? You bought me this hat on Christmas. It’s the only present I ever got from anybody. That’s the truth and you know it. So, please don’t tell me to give up on you now.”

George’s words stung some hidden place within Jim - some deep chamber in the depths of his heart. But even then the black poison and the wretched cold that held Jim in their grasp refused to let him speak. The dark magic held his chattering teeth shut, and all Jim could do was look away from his best friend.

“Come on, George,” Lacey said. “We have to go.”

George lingered another moment longer, as if hoping Jim might still change his mind. But Jim refused to meet his friend’s eye. Yet it was that moment, as George sadly put his hat back on his head, that saved them all from complete disaster.

Just as Lacey, Peter, and Paul began to search for a river crossing, a loud crack snapped from the forest edge. Leaves fluttered down from the braches into the thick mist. The clan froze where they stood. None of them dared draw a breath. For what seemed like an eternity, the five friends and the raven stood in complete silence. Four orbs, wide as boulders and glowing green, opened in the darkness beyond the trees.

Lacey and the Ratts scurried away, but hardly fast enough. At the sound of another crack, the two pairs of flaming green orbs dropped down from the trees. With a hammering like thundering war drums the shadowy creatures burst into the moonlight to the beating of great wings.

The mists curled away like parting curtains to reveal great owls - old feathers of brown and gray bristling like armor. Gnarled beaks and claws snapped and grabbed at the air. The owls rose up into the night, talons outstretched and their deep green eyes fixed upon the clan, who cowered like frightened mice beneath their claws.

Lacey screamed and fell back toward the river, but the owl’s screech drowned out her cries. The winged hunters descended upon them. Jim watched in a trance as one of the mighty birds came for him. But
before the owl’s outstretched claws seized him, George leapt and tackled them both into the wet mud at the River’s edge. The owl’s talons sliced through the air just above their heads.

Sliding in the mud, George dragged Jim between two rocks, safe from the owl’s clutches. George screamed for Lacey and his brothers, but the others had not been nearly quick enough. It was only moments before the owls had them in their grasp. Lacey, still clinging to Cornelius in one arm, was taken by the first, Peter and Paul by the second, hanging on to each other for dear life. All three of their mouths were open wide as though they were screaming, but to Jim the world was silent and numb. He could no longer feel even the pain in his arm or the cold wracking his body. He watched the owls soar off into the moonlight. Lacey stretched her arm back to George and Jim, as though they could reach out and pull her back to safety.

George screamed again for his brothers, but the silence entombing Jim would not be broken. He closed his eyes and let the darkness swallow him whole at last.

ELEVEN

im dreamt of a time long ago. He was racing his old pony, Destroyer, through the forbidden forest that stretched from the borders of Morgan Manor. In the dream, Jim was running for his life, but a danger worse than soldiers on horseback chased him this time.

It was the Crimson Storm.

It came quickly for Jim. Blood red rolled in the shadows of its dark crevices. Lightning burned white-hot eyes into the black skull within the storm clouds. The face shouted Jim’s name as it descended upon him, blasting trees from its path with fiery bolts. Fast through the forest Jim fled, as he had over a year ago. He pushed Destroyer harder
and harder until he came to the river into which he had fallen during his first escape – but this time there would be no such fortune. The river’s waters had turned black as pitch, black as the poison tendrils in Jim’s arm.

The poisonous river was alive.

It reached out beyond the banks and seized Jim by the arm. The black water pulled him from Destroyer’s back and dragged him beneath the surface.

Down the river Jim floated, whisked away by the dark rapids. He tried to escape, but again and again he was yanked beneath the waves. Rocks and branches bruised and battered his body along the way. The river refused to release Jim, and Jim failed to break its hold. Finally he surrendered and let the current take him where it would. Down Jim sank into the depths.

But before Jim fell all the way to the riverbed, a flame bloomed to life above the surface. It was bright as the morning sun. Glowing tendrils broke through the waters. They reached out and surrounded Jim. They kept him from falling even deeper in the murk - but they did not pull him to the surface. A voice spoke to him from the light.

“Jim Morgan, you have very nearly sunk beyond even my reach.”

“Will you help me?” Jim asked. He reached for the cords of light, but they lay beyond his grasp.

“Why should I rescue you? What cause of yours is so noble and true? Was it not by your own hand that you pricked your finger with the rose thorn and poisoned your blood?”

“I’m looking for the shell, the shell my father left me. It leads to the Treasure of the Ocean.”

“Many have sought the shell – and many more have sought the Treasure of the Ocean. Many have perished on their quests. I did not help any of them.”

“But I never wanted the shell in the first place. I just wanted to go home. The Cromiers – they’re the ones! They burnt it to the ground. They killed my father and burnt my home to the ground. There’s
nothing left now but the shell. I have to stop them. I have to beat them to the shell!”

“It is true, the Cromiers burnt down your house. But your home was not wholly lost until this very day, nor was it truly destroyed by the Count or his son. If the only answer you have for destruction is more destruction, or pain for more pain, how will anything good ever grow in your life? Think about your home, Jim Morgan. What do you see?”

“I see a blackened pile of ashes lying in ruins on the coast of England!” Jim cried.

“Are bricks and beams all there is to a home for you?” The light replied, flashing brighter and hotter in the gloom of the river. “If so, then I shall leave you here and call it a mercy, for you shall never know joy in this life. Now, think of home. What do you see?”

Jim closed his eyes and searched his memories. At first, he thought only of Morgan Manor, before it had been burned to nothing. But then he thought of the cellar beneath the shoe factory, the lighthouse by the sea, and even the cabin below the
Spectre’s
decks. Yet there was something more beneath the surface of those memories. It was his father’s strong hand on his shoulder, MacGuffy’s grumbling lessons, Lacey’s flashing blue eyes, Peter and Paul’s laughter, and George’s arm over his shoulder. Another thought occurred to Jim then. It cut him more deeply than all the other pains put together.

“I burnt my home down,” Jim said. The image of Lacey reaching out to him from the clutches of the owl flashed in his thoughts and broke his heart through and through. “I burnt it down in just one day. Maybe you should let me go.”

“What would you go through to rebuild that home, Jim Morgan? What would you endure?” Jim thought about it for a moment, but he found his answer inwardly, spoken by the most unlikely of teachers.

“I would weather ten-thousand storms,” Jim said. There was quiet for a breath, but then the light flared so brightly it broke the darkness. The brilliant flash blinded Jim, even in the dream.

“So be it, Jim Morgan! But know that you shall bear a scar, and there shall be great pain.” One tendril of light reached out and took Jim by his poisoned hand. It seared Jim’s arm to the bone. It burned so badly that Jim screamed aloud and wished he would die. But as it scorched his arm, the light also pulled Jim up through the pitch waters.

“Now,” said the voice. “Wake up, Jim.”

Jim broke the surface of the river. He gasped in the warm night air and the light enveloped his entire body.

“Jim, you must wake up!”

“Jim, wake up!”

Jim sucked in the startled breath of a broken dream. He kicked and thrashed about until his eyes fluttered open. He shouted aloud and swung at the air as though still in danger of drowning. After a moment, though, Jim realized he was free of the waters. He took a deep breath, his heart still pounding.