Seven Dead Pirates (16 page)

“Pardon?” said Adam.

“I don’t believe you were that bad,” said Lewis. “I mean, you
say
lots of awful things.” He remembered the liver-cutting threat. “But I don’t believe you
did
that many terrible things. I just don’t believe it.”

The pirates glanced at one another. For a moment, Lewis thought they were going to agree. And then, with a horrific “ARRGGGH!” Crawley whipped out his sword. With lightning speed, he slashed the chilly air, just inches from Lewis’s nose. Lewis could
feel
the breeze as the blade sliced past. A second later, the whole crew was running amok, yelling foul words and waving their cutlasses.

“Okay!” cried Lewis, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay! You’re scurvy. You’re bad!”

Smiling sweetly, Crawley sheathed his sword. “Just so long as you knows.”

“Aye!” shouted Jack. Reluctant to put away
his
dagger, he swished it back and forth in rapid figure eights, the metal glinting in the lamplight. He was wearing the ruffled blouse and striped pants Mr. Dearborn had described.

Lewis reached for
Treasure Island
. He held the book in front of him like a shield.

“Before I read,” he said slowly and carefully, “we
have to talk about these little ‘practice’ trips you’re taking. Outside. Wearing your tourist clothes. You can’t do that anymore.”

“Can’t?” snarled Jack, darting forward.

“Shouldn’t,” corrected Lewis. “If you want me to help, you’ll have to trust me. No more going outside. And when my class comes to visit next week,
please
stay invisible.”

Jack froze. They all did.

“Class?” squeaked Skittles. “More strangers?”

Uh-oh, thought Lewis. He’d forgotten to tell them.

Deal with it, he told himself.

Quickly, clearly, he explained the class visit. The more timid of the pirates continued to look anxious. Skittles glowed like a flashlight.

“Don’t worry,” said Lewis as soothingly as he could. “The people in my class are kids. That’s not really the same as
strangers
, is it? And they’ll only be here a short time. It might even be good for you, a chance to see how regular people look and act. You could … you could watch and learn!”

He was making it up as he went along. The logic sounded feeble, even to him. He was surprised when the pirates bought it.

“The lad says true,” said Moyle. “Here’s a chance to learn the ropes.”

Crawley perked up, too. “A chance to get ourselves more practice. I likes this plan. We puts on our new garments, like, and joins in the class. They won’t even notice us!”

“Aye!” yelled a few bold souls.

“NO!” cried Lewis, louder than he intended. “No dressing up! No joining in! Just
watching
! Please, please, stay invisible while they’re here.”

He started to explain why this was important, but the pirates had lost interest.

“Long John!” they shouted. “Give us Long John Silver!”

Lewis sighed and opened
Treasure Island
. For the next hour, he forgot his problems. For the next hour, he was far away on a mysterious tropical island. For the next hour, he didn’t have to worry about a thing.

O
n the day of the class visit, Lewis woke before dawn. He squinted at the glowing numbers on his bedside clock. 5:04 a.m.

Closing his eyes, he tried not to imagine all the things that could go wrong with this day. His mother, for example, telling everyone how he’d learned to read while still in diapers. Mrs. Binchy grabbing kids’ wrists and calling them skinny-minnies. His father making some kind of … 
speech
!

As for the pirates? Might as well try to control a storm at sea.

For Lewis, the strangeness started with the peculiar experience of going on a field trip to his own house. The class, including him, arrived mid-morning. As Ms. Forsley led her students up the driveway, she talked about Shornoway as if it were a museum, pointing out the gables, the wrought iron and the stained-glass windows. She didn’t seem to mind that some of the windows were cracked or boarded over. She just said it was a shame, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could be restored?

When the door opened, it was Mrs. Binchy who rushed out to greet them. She looked just as Lewis had expected, dead-Fred slippers and all. Her dress, as always, was a saggy old thing. Beneath it, her old-lady bosom swayed, like a couple of animals trapped in a bag.

The surprise was that she knew some of the kids.

“Ryan, dearie, how’s your grandma? She wasn’t at choir practice last week. Is the cold worse?”

“She’s better now, thank you, Mrs. Binchy,” said Ryan.

“And Sophie Duval, is that you? Why, the last time I saw you, you were riding that little pink training-wheels bike.”

Sophie colored slightly, but smiled back. “I have a full-sized bike now, Mrs. Binchy.”

Well, of course, thought Lewis to himself. Of course, Mrs. Binchy would know other people. She had lived in Tandy Bay all her life, and it wasn’t a big place. For some reason, Lewis had never thought of her having a life outside of Shornoway, with people and activities that didn’t concern him.

She shooed the class into the front hallway now, where Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn waited stiffly at attention. They were trying to smile and, in Lewis’s opinion, not having much success. His father, he was relieved to see, was hairnet-free. Mr. Dearborn looked a bit dull in his navy pants and beige sweater, but at least he wasn’t covered in tomato sauce. Mrs. Dearborn, meanwhile, was wearing her “professor” outfit—crisply ironed slacks and a dark jacket. Lewis had been hoping she’d be teaching at the university, but unfortunately she had a spare period this morning.

The first thing that happened was this: Mrs. Dearborn asked everyone to remove their shoes, even though it wasn’t raining and nobody’s shoes were dirty. Then Mr. Dearborn hung up all the jackets while his wife showed the class the “facilities”—a word some kids didn’t understand until they were actually standing in front of the toilet.

Following the crowd, Lewis tried to look on the bright side. What amazing luck that Seth had picked
this
day to get sick! Or play hooky? Lewis didn’t know or care which. Hearing the silence when Seth’s name was called for attendance, he’d felt light enough to float.

“Well, Mr. Dearborn,” said Ms. Forsley with a smile, “shall we begin the tour?”

Everyone turned to Lewis’s father, who cleared his throat for such a long time that Lewis’s stomach clenched. But when Mr. Dearborn finally started to speak, he sounded almost normal. He sounded, in fact, like a tour guide in a museum.

“Well, boys and girls, the first thing to know is … this house is very old. It was built in the 1860s by Captain Jeremiah Douglas, a Scottish merchant who owned a fleet of sailing ships. Jeremiah built Shornoway for his wife, Elizabeth, who he met and married in England. She was just eighteen years old. Think of that! They came here soon afterward. Elizabeth, so the story goes, missed her family very much. Jeremiah built this house for her, on a cliff above the ocean, so that any time she wanted, she could look across the sea toward her home.”

“Did it help?” asked a girl named Sarah. “Did it make her feel better?”

Mr. Dearborn looked pleased to be asked. “Nobody knows, my dear. But we do know that Elizabeth Douglas stayed. She made a new home here and had thirteen
children. So, I suppose—heh, heh—she missed England less in the end.”

“You’re right about that,” grunted Mrs. Binchy from the edge of the crowd. “With thirteen kids, who’d have
time
to miss England?”

And that’s how it went. Mr. Dearborn led the class around the ground floor, offering bits of history that Lewis had never heard before. Ms. Forsley and the kids asked questions, while Mrs. Dearborn followed, surprisingly quiet. Mrs. Binchy tagged along, too, adding wry comments that made everyone laugh.

As for Lewis’s father … well, Lewis was astounded. As the class straggled up the back stairs, he caught up and whispered, “Dad! How do you know all this stuff?”

“Research,” said his father.

“Re—what kind?”

“I’ll show you later.”

On the second floor, they moved room by room down the hall. Ms. Forsley kept letting out little cries of delight. “Oh my goodness, will you look at this? A coal oil lamp. Must be a hundred years old. And—oh!—look at this commode.”

Slowly they worked their way to the end.

And then, they were there—Lewis’s whole class, waiting outside Libertalia. Lewis watched as his father slowly turned the doorknob. Mr. Dearborn was saying
something, but Lewis’s ears had stopped working, and all he could hear was
rowrr-rowrr
, like the slowed-down track of a movie. The door cracked open, sunlight beamed through and the kids filed inside. Lewis followed, holding his breath.

His classmates were looking around. A few turned to stare at him.

“This is your
room
?” said Alex Neeson. “Up here in this tower?”

Lewis nodded.

Alex walked over to the green glass cabinet. He stared at the tin soldiers on top. Then he squatted and peered at the old toys inside. Lewis waited for him to laugh. He waited for Alex to ask, “Don’t you have any
real
games?”

But he didn’t.

Mike Burrows wandered over to Lewis’s desk. “Hey, cool! A ship in a bottle.”

Other kids gathered around. Mike asked how the ship got inside.

As Mr. Dearborn started to explain, Lewis searched the room for signs of the pirates. He couldn’t
see
them. Nor could he hear their voices. But he was suddenly sure, beyond any doubt … 
they were there!

It was the air. It had that unnaturally sharp feeling of coolness. And the fishy odor was strong. But
most of all, Lewis realized, he could just … tell.

“So you see,” said Mr. Dearborn, “the ship-maker attaches the masts and sails to the ship with hinges and strings, so the ship will lie flat and narrow while it’s being inserted into the bottle neck …”

And that’s all Lewis heard because, in the corner of his eye, he spotted the evidence he’d been looking for. One of the lace curtains was moving. Slowly it swelled out, larger and larger, into a shape that was impossible not to recognize. Barnaby Bellows!

Lewis blinked a couple of times, thinking hard. In three quick steps, he was at the middle window. He pulled it open, allowing the wind to come in. If the pirates were going to make the curtains bulge, he could at least provide an explanation.

But the open window began attracting his classmates. They crowded over to stare at the view.

“Aaaaaahhhhh,” said a deep, rough voice from their midst, “there ain’t nothing on this earth like a good salt breeze.”

Lewis froze.

Crawley!

He was right in the middle of Lewis’s classmates. Invisible.

“Why, yes, indeed!” replied Mr. Dearborn heartily. “Quite right! A good salt breeze is one of the great
pleasures of a home like Shornoway.” He didn’t seem to know—or care—who had spoken.

And to Lewis’s astonishment, no one
else
wondered about the voice, either. Nor did anyone notice when a tin soldier rose quietly off the green cabinet and began moving slowly across the room. But, of course, no one else was
looking
for such things.

So no one except Lewis noticed when Mrs. Dearborn suddenly twitched in an odd way and looked down at her jacket—where her pocket showed a small bump. Reaching inside, she pulled out … the tin soldier.

Her mouth dropped open. But she didn’t speak. She just stared at the toy for a very long time, her forehead crinkled.

Her husband, meanwhile, was concluding his explanation of the eight-sided construction of the tower. “Any other questions?” he asked the group.

Amanda Wilcox put up her hand. “Is Shornoway …” She paused nervously. “Haunted?”

Lewis held his breath.

Ms. Forsley shook her head. “Excuse me, Amanda, that’s not really a polite—”

“No, no.” Mr. Dearborn held up a hand. “It’s all right.” He smiled at Amanda. “I’ll bet you heard that from someone, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “My grandma.”