Supernatural: One Year Gone (16 page)

“He do that a lot?” Samuel asked. “Have girly dizzy spells like that?”

“Nope. I’ve never seen him do that before,” Sam said, a slight look of recognition flickering across his face. There was a little something deep down there. A second later the grain of feeling, whatever it was, had disappeared again.

As Dean pulled up in the car he saw Lisa and Ben standing on the sidewalk, looking expectant. He tried to put on a poker face, but the phantom phone call from Sam had shaken him. However, he needn’t have worried about Lisa picking up on his discomfort.

“Hi, remember us, the people you’re on vacation with,
at your suggestion
?” she began. Not waiting for Dean to answer she pushed Ben toward the car. “Good, because you and Ben are going to go see the clipper ships together.” Ben jumped into the passenger seat. “Do not feed him any crap.”

“Do fried Twinkies constitute crap? How about beer dogs? I think I saw hotdogs fried in beer,” Dean said, trying to lighten the mood.

“No and no. Have fun,” Lisa said, kissing Ben and giving Dean a significant look over her son’s head, as if to say, “Remember fun?”

Dean nodded. Fun wasn’t really a concept he was comfortable with right then. He drew a breath. For Ben he would have fun. What could go wrong?

A short while later they arrived at the clipper ship that was docked on the other side of the blue-green bay. As soon as the car stopped, Ben jumped out and ran ahead.

“Hey buddy, keep your cool in check,” Dean called after him.

“Do you think there are pirates?” Ben asked as Dean caught up.

“Not sure there were pirates back in Puritan times,” Dean said. He really didn’t know—it was the kind of thing Sam would have known. “Let’s go get tickets for the tour and we can find out.”
Tours. Tickets. Jesus,
Dean thought,
this “fun” is turning into Mr. Rogers’ nightmare.

Dean noticed that there weren’t a lot of other people walking up the gangplank to the ship. It seemed as though most people—even tourists—knew to stay away from such tacky crap. The ship wasn’t even seaworthy; Dean noticed it was half-grounded on the pier. The thing wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. That was good, however. Dean wasn’t too fond of the open water and he definitely wasn’t fond of puking on his shoes. In high school he’d taken a boat trip on the Mississippi, and the unpleasant memory came back to him as soon as he set foot on the gangplank.

Ben handed him a ticket with a Jolly Roger skull and crossbones on it.

“This is going to be great,” Ben said, leading the way to the gloomy anteroom which was the start of the tour. “And it looks like we have the whole tour to ourselves!”

“Are we late?” a voice said.

A pudgy old woman in a clinging powder-blue belted leisure suit, who clearly thought she was Super-Grandma, stepped into the room behind them. She held the hand of a little girl, about five years old, with a face like a mashed potato and a mouth rimmed with a red candy coating. The little girl’s sticky-fingered other hand grasped at Dean’s pant leg.

“Hands off the threads, Veruca Salt.” Dean cringed and stepped away.

“Dakota darling, leave the man alone,” Super-Gran said mildly.

“Ahoy there! Are ye all ready for a tour of the creakiest, creepiest ship to ever set sail the high seeeaass?” An old guy in a pirate costume leapt out from behind a plastic barrel.

“Ahhhh. Memaw!” The little girl screamed and pulled her grandmother back out toward the ticket counter.

“Guess not,” Dean observed under his breath.

“We are,” Ben said.

“Argh, grreaaat!” the old man said.

“That was a little more Tony the Tiger than Jack Sparrow,” Dean noted.

The guide gave him the evil eye.

“You can be me grommet. Would ye like that?” he asked Ben.

“Totally!” Ben said. “Can we see the Gibbet first?”

“Ye know a lot about pirates, mate,” the man said. “Just don’t get too pushy. I got a system,” he added, without the accent.

“We’re going to start foreword on the ship at the forecastle,” he continued, re-discovering the accent. “This is where the sayy-lors slept.” The pirate guide led the way as they walked toward the front of the ship.

Ben turned to Dean and shrugged.

“There’s a lot on the Internet. Pirates are cool,” he said.

After walking through a narrow hallway they entered a small dusty room with bunkbeds attached to each wall.

“’Tis where the picaroons slept,” the man said.

“Hey dude, you don’t need to do the accent the whole time. I mean, we appreciate it and all, but, ya know,
not
necessary,” Dean told the guy. The mock-pirate regarded him for a moment with tired eyes.

“Really? ’Cause this day sort of sucked,” he admitted.

“Yeah. Relax. Just let us wander around,” Ben said.

The guy nodded gratefully. “Okay. Just don’t tell my boss. You guys seem cool, so how about I show you some of the places that the public doesn’t get to see? I’m Teddy, by the way.” He shook hands with each of them.

“Dean and Ben,” Dean said. “Nice to meet you. Yeah, totally—show us the good stuff. Right, Ben?”

Ben nodded eagerly.

They followed Teddy to the main deck. Ben ran around pointing out where the swords were kept, and how the sails were steered. Teddy then led them down to the deck below, where the cannons were kept. It was a large nearly bow-to-stern open floor with imposing black cannons sticking out of a line of holes on each side of the ship.

“Do these work?” Ben asked, running toward one.

“Aw no,” Teddy said smiling, “these cannons have all been cemented up for decades. They used to shoot twenty-four pound balls. Boys like you would run up and down bringing gunpowder from the bottom of the ship to set them off.”

“You still have the cannonballs?” Ben asked.

“Gosh, no. They melted down whatever was found a long time ago.”

“So what’s this?” Ben asked, rolling a large cannonball across the floor.

Teddy looked surprised.

“That isn’t supposed to be there—where did you find that?”

“Yeah, I suspect we shouldn’t be here either,” Dean said, pointing out of one of the cannon holes. Teddy ran to the hole and peered out.

They were in the middle of the open sea.

“How the holy hell did that happen?” Teddy cried.

“I think he might be able to tell us,” Ben said, pointing to a tall, thin figure at the other end of the deck.

The figure limped toward them. As it moved closer, Dean could see it was a man. He appeared slightly translucent at first, but with each step he took, he became more and more solid, until he stood about twenty feet in front of them. He was dressed in a ruffled high-collar shirt with knee-high swashbuckler boots over tight trousers. A long silver sword hung from his belt.

He didn’t look happy.

“Nice shirt,” Dean observed.

The ghost turned his milky eyes toward them.

“Dean?” Ben had backed up against Dean, his eyes as wide as saucers.

“You know how you keep bugging me to teach you how to hunt?” Dean said calmly.

“Yeah,” Ben said.

“Hunt? Hunt what?” Teddy was frozen to the spot, staring at the pirate.

“Pissed off pirate ghosts,” Dean replied.

“What do you do first?” Ben asked, shuffling around behind Dean.

“Run!” Dean yelled as he pushed Ben and Teddy toward a door in the aft of the ship.

“Arrgh, ye scalliwags ain’t going to gull me!” the pirate shouted. Dean looked back to see him limping after them.

“No one is gulling anything with kids in the room,” Dean said, pulling an iron knife from his jacket and swinging at the pirate. His reach was too short, so he threw the knife at the apparition, but Captain Scalliwag was quicker than he looked and swiftly side-swiped it away with his sword.

“Through there. Now!” Dean directed Ben and Teddy toward the door.

“But ghosts aren’t real!” Teddy screamed, tripping over the threshold.

Dean pushed Ben through after Teddy, then leapt through himself. He spun around and slammed the door behind him just as the pirate’s sword blade cracked through the wood.

“Looks pretty damn real to me,” Dean said, ushering them forward into the dark of the ship.

“How did that happen? And what do we do now?” Teddy cried as he led the way down some steps.

Dean shook his head. “I don’t know. We could have passed through a portal of some sort. Could be a curse, a spell... Has anything like this ever happened before?”

“No, never,” Teddy said, “and I’ve worked here since college.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. Teddy was pushing fifty. Just then, a cacophony of harangues and the stomp of heavy boots on the deck above marched over their heads.

“Seems like there are more of them now,” Ben said.

“Is there any salt on this ship?” Dean asked Teddy.

“Should be, we use it on the gangplank during the winter,” Teddy said. “We usually keep large sacks of it in the galley.”

“Okay, well, that’s our second stop. First, where are the guns?”

“There aren’t any! We don’t keep guns on the ship.”

“Well, I would say there aren’t any pirates, but I’m pretty sure they’re here. So where would they have stored guns on a working pirate ship?” Dean said.

Teddy shrugged.

“Gunpowder room?” Ben suggested.

Teddy nodded. “Right.”

Dean punched Ben lightly on the shoulder and the boy straightened proudly.

Teddy took them down a long staircase to the very bottom of the boat.

“Through here,” he said.

“You can’t go in thar,” said a voice behind them.

The trio swung around. A craggy old sea dog was shackled beneath the stairway.

“What are you going to do about it, Golem?” Dean challenged.

“If I wasn’t chained up I would disembowel you,” the old sailor retorted.

“You look like you could use a colonoscopy yourself,” Dean said, bending down and taking out his pocket knife. He stuck it in the crevice between the floorboards and popped up one of the old planks.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked.

“Putting this poor cranky guy out of his misery,” Dean said. He stuck his arm down the hole in the floor and pulled out a human skull.

“Wha’d’ye have there?” the sea dog asked.

“Hold it, Yorick.” Sticking his hand back in the hole, Dean pulled out a moldy burlap bag. Inside was a collection of bones. Dean put the skull into the bag, then produced a small tin box of salt from a pocket, which he poured onto the bag.

“RIP old man.”

Dean lit his Zippo lighter and held the flame underneath the bag. It lit up instantly, burning bright. The old ghost started to scream.

Not waiting around to see what happened next, Dean pushed Ben through the door to the gunpowder room. Inside, the room was filled floor to ceiling with large barrels of gunpowder and an array of guns.

“This wasn’t here before,” Teddy said, amazed.

“Yeah, well, we don’t want it to be either,” Dean said. “The longer a supernatural force stays in this realm the more energy it gathers, and these ghosts are going to get all cozy in the present. So let’s get them the hell out of here. Gather all the iron pistols you can.”

“Even me?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, this
one
time, even you.” Dean handed him a flintlock pistol that was as long as Ben’s forearm.

“Pull back on this, aim, then pull the trigger,” Dean instructed. “This hammer will create a spark, but it might take a second to fire.”

“What about your
real
gun?” Ben asked.

“I didn’t know there were going to be ghost pirates,” Dean said, filling Ben’s pockets with handfuls of iron pellets. “I left it in the car.”

BANG!

The door rattled as buckshot hit the other side.

“They’re trying to shoot their way in,” Dean said. “Let’s go.”

The trio grabbed as many muskets and pistols as they could hold and climbed up the ladder at the far end of the room, emerging through a door into yet another part of the ship.

“This way!” Teddy cried, leading them through a small door.

“Um, Dean?” Ben stuttered.