Seizure (34 page)

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Authors: Kathy Reichs

BOOK: Seizure
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“This way.” Ben led us along a narrower side path branching toward the water’s edge. Shelton’s humming grew louder. And shakier.
In twenty yards we reached the base of the hill. Grabbing my tool kit from where he’d left it, Ben started up a broken track barely visible in the moonlight.
As we climbed, questions lined up for attention.
Bonny’s poem was cryptic and vague. Did we have the correct translation? The right location? What were we supposed to do next?
Bull Island is immense. We could spend years digging in random spots and still find nothing. To have any hope, we had to solve the clues.
At the summit, we stopped to catch our breath and look around. A ring of stones circled the tiny hilltop. From this vantage, I could see the whole island.
“Look at this.” Shelton had dropped to a knee beside one of the rocks. “These were cut and fitted in place. This must’ve been the tower’s foundation.”
“So.” Hi walked a circuit. “We’re supposed to do what, exactly?”
“Focus on the poem,” I said. “The first line said, ‘On the moon’s high day, seek Island People.’”
“Full moon on Bull Island,” Shelton said. “Check and check.”
“Then we move to line two,” I said. “‘Stand the high watch, hold to thy faith, and look to the sea.’”
“Hopefully we’re standing the high watch right now,” said Hi. “So we need to ‘hold to thy faith and look to the sea.’ Whatever that means.”
“The last part is easy.” Chance pointed. “There’s the Atlantic.”
Everyone gazed at the iridescent black ocean stretching endlessly eastward.
Across the pond, beyond a low wooded ridge, I could just make out a jumble of debris on the seaward shore.
We surveyed the eastern landscape for long minutes, seeking inspiration. Found none.
“Um.” Hi shuffled his feet. “Okay.”
“We skipped the middle part,” Shelton said. “We’re supposed to ‘hold to thy faith’ somehow.”
“Which means?” Chance crossed his arms.
“Bonny’s clues have been literal,” I said. “What could we hold?”
Hi sucked in his breath, then scurried to my backpack. “The second rhyme from Bonny’s treasure map had similar wording.”
Of course! I felt like a dunce. “The riddle about the bridge!”
“Exactly.” Hi withdrew and scanned the map. “Here, Bonny used the phrase ‘thy faithful servant’ to describe the correct lever to pull.”
“The lever shaped like Bonny’s Celtic cross!” Shelton was working his earlobe double-time.
“And we
have
Bonny’s cross,” Ben said. “A tangible thing.” “That makes sense.” Chance pulled the cross from his pack and handed it to me.
“This cross has been the key,” I said. “Bonny’s touchstone. The symbolic expression of her faith.”
“Don’t just stand there!” Shelton was on fire.
“Do what, exactly?”
No one could answer.
“Talk the instructions through,” Ben said. “Step by step.”
Worth a shot.
“Stand the high watch.”
I moved to the center of the hill.
“Hold to thy faith.”
Grasping the cross with both hands, I held it aloft before me.
“Look to the sea.”
I turned due east and faced the Atlantic Ocean.
Holding that position, I peered across the moonlit island. Searched. My arms soon grew heavy.
“Now what?” I said finally.
“See anything unusual?” Hi stepped up beside me. “If the treasure is hidden below, there must be some indication from this spot.”
“Unless it’s gone,” Ben said. “That poem was written three hundred years ago.”
“But nothing’s changed!” Shelton whined. “There’s been no development here. No houses. No sewers. No Time Warner Cable.”
I studied the panorama below. “Hi, what am I seeing?”
“Jack’s Creek. It’s kind of a swampy lake that spreads out like an amoeba with tentacles. Shallow water riddled with sandbars and small islets.”
“That’s probably where the gators live,” Chance said.
“A terrible place to bury valuables,” Ben said. “You’d never get them back.”
“What’s beyond Jack’s Creek?” I asked. “Straight east.”
Hi checked his phone. “There’s a ridge, then a wide beach.”
“Hold up!” Shelton piped. “I forgot to tell you my hunch.”
“Anytime you’re ready,” I said.
“We’ve followed Bonny’s poem so far, but there’s one line remaining.”
“You’re right.” I recited the last part of Aunt Tempe’s translation. “‘Let a clear heart guide you through the field of bones.’”
“That stretch down there?” Shelton pointed to the debris-littered beach bordering the Atlantic. “It’s called the Boneyard.”
An electric sizzle traveled through me. “Why?”
“Hiking websites list Boneyard Beach as Bull Island’s top attraction. The sand is littered with dead trees and branches, giving it the appearance of a graveyard of half-buried monster bones.”
“Everything fits!” Hi exclaimed. “We must be looking in the right place!”
“But we don’t know where to
dig
.” Chance’s frustration was making him cranky.
“I don’t see you helping,” Ben said. “All you do is complain.”
I ignored the bickering.
There was a stirring deep in my brainpan. The tiniest jolt of recognition. What? Something Shelton said? Hiking? Bonny’s poem?
No go. The idea refused to surface.
“Quiet!”
The other Virals stilled. Chance started to protest, thought better of it.
“Let Tory do her thing,” Hi whispered. “Trust me, this is our best shot.”
I shut out the chatter. Something about that last line nagged at me.
“‘Let a clear heart guide you through the field of bones,’” I repeated. “Shelton’s right—that must refer to the Boneyard. But the poem directed us to this watchtower first.”
I spoke aloud, snapping facts together like Legos, encouraging the subliminal idea to the surface.
“Hold to thy faith, and look to the sea. I’m to stand
here
, but what I want is down on the beach. And I need the cross to find it.”
The cross. Why was the cross important?
I rotated Bonny’s artifact. “The top tine is bent?” I said. “Why?”
A design flaw? I didn’t think so. The delicate curve made the cross utterly unique.
Using two hands, I spun the cross. The crystal in the central ring flashed in the moonlight.
Suddenly, the pieces aligned like the tumblers in Hollis Claybourne’s safe.
“Anne,” I whispered to the night. “I understand.”
The boys watched in silence as I walked to the edge of the hillside.
“‘On the moon’s high day, seek Island People.’” I recited. “‘Stand the high watch, hold to thy faith, and look to the sea.’”
“We did this already.” The little patience Chance had started out with was long gone.
The other Virals shushed him.
“The cross
is
the key,” I said. “The last line says, ‘let a clear heart guide you through the field of bones.’”
“Wonderful. How does that help us?”
“Look at the cross, Chance.
Inside
the ring. What do you see?”
“The crystal? That’s the clear heart?”
“Ohmygod,” Shelton exhaled. “You’ve got it!”
Hi shook his head. “I’m lost. How can that guide us?”
“What strikes you as odd about this design?” I slowly tipped the cross this way and that.
“It’s bent,” Ben said.
“Exactly.
Why
is it bent?”
Holding the cross at eye level, I gazed down at the landscape below.
Felt a charge in my chest, as if someone had lit a match.
Identical mounds of rock rose on each side of Jack’s Creek. They seemed wrong, out of place in the lowland swamp.
I aligned the two mounds with the horizontal arms of Bonny’s cross.
Perfect fit.
“What are you doing?” Chance asked.
“This cross is going to reveal the treasure’s location.”
Hi was the first to catch on. “Hold the cross straight up and down. If the arms correspond to topographical features, this hill would be the bottom point.”
I did as instructed, but lost the alignment. “I can’t make it fit that way.”
Ben smacked his forehead. “We’re too low! There was a fort on this hilltop.”
“The difference in elevation wouldn’t be much!” Shelton exclaimed. “Martello towers were basically squatty stone shelters. The floor would’ve only been a yard or two higher!”
“Lift me,” I said to Ben.
“Seriously?”
“Of course I’m serious!”
Chance dropped to a knee. “Hop on. I’m the tallest.”
I swung my legs over Chance’s shoulders. He rose easily and grabbed my ankles to help me balance.
I raised the cross. From my new vantage point, the mounds clicked into perfect formation.
Heart pounding, I squinted, one eye squeezed shut, searching for the final piece.
The bent upper tine had to align with something.
I pointed to a dark spot on the ridge fronting Boneyard Beach. “Is that water?”
“Moccasin Pond,” Hi answered.
“Take two steps left,” I instructed Chance. “Now a half step back.”
Suddenly, everything slotted true. The curved portion of the cross arced to the center of Moccasin Pond.
I stared hard. The full moon was directly behind me, bright enough to tease details from the shadows below.
“There’s an island in the pond!” I yelped. “A third pile of rocks!”
Three mounds of stone.
The crude landmarks triangulated perfectly with the three points of Bonny’s cross.
Coincidence? Not a chance.
“Let a clear heart guide me.” I peered through the crystal in the cross’s center.
And saw nothing.
“Tory!” Hi pointed to the lower portion of the cross. “It’s not vertical!”
“Got it.” Orienting the cross fully upright, I realigned the three points.
A beam of moonlight shot from the crystal heart and knifed across the sky.
“Ohmygod!” Shelton squeaked.
“Get out!” Hi said.
“The full moon,” Ben breathed.
The disk was lighting an object in the distance.
I craned my neck to see, terrified of losing the proper orientation.
The object was a massive tree, bone white, with skeletal branches fanning out like satanic fingers.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
The moon moved in its arc, and the beacon faded. I strained to absorb every detail, knowing I wouldn’t get another chance.
“Stop squirming!” Chance placed a steadying hand on my back.
“It worked!” I screeched, twisting in excitement. “I know where to dig!”
Then I was tumbling.
Ben and Hi managed to break my fall. Chance wasn’t as fortunate.
“Thanks, guys.” Flat on his back, rubbing a shoulder. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Suck it up,” Shelton said. “You dropped our fearless leader.”
Chance sniffed. “She wouldn’t last five seconds in a chicken fight.”
“I know where to dig! I know where to dig!”
“Where?” Spoken as one.
“Get me to Boneyard Beach!”
CHAPTER 53
B
en insisted we head back toward
Sewee
and walk along the coastline.
“We can’t travel the inland paths at night,” he said. “Full moon or not, you can’t see anything down in that swamp.”
“FYI, those marshes are known as Alligator Alley,” Hi added.
“No thanks.” Shelton shouldered his pack. “The long way sounds just fine.”
We retraced our steps, then followed a deer track along the coastline. The moon now took up half the sky. The ocean was flat and smooth as glass, the air still and muggy. Every mosquito in the county was snacking on our sweat-slicked skin.
After a half hour, we swung back south and reached Boneyard Beach.
“I’ll just say it.” Hi gestured to the ghostly stretch before us. “This is the creepiest place in the world. So glad we came in the middle of the night.”
Hundreds of dead trees lay on the beach, all bleached morgue-white by exposure to sun and salt water. The nickname was perfect. Gnarled trunks. Twisted limbs. The sand was strewn with corroded seashells and the carapaces of long-dead crustaceans. The place looked like a Paleozoic graveyard.
“Spread out,” I said. “Look for a gigantic tree with branches spreading like Medusa’s hair.”
I crept through the Boneyard, stopping every few yards to check the hill across the lake. Finally, I locked onto target.
A petrified cedar, standing all alone.
The weathered old trunk was ten feet in diameter. Two yards above ground it divided into five limbs that snaked low across the sand. Every branch reached inland, as if running away from the sea.
The whole tree formed a lopsided V ten yards across at its widest point.
“The devil’s hand!” Ben exclaimed. “Of course!”
“Come again?” Hi said.
“The Sewee legend!” Ben pumped his fist. “Remember what my uncle told me? ‘When the night sky burned as daytime, a flaming brand mounted the field of bones, and staked the devil’s hand.’ This tree has to be it!”
Another piece clicked into place. “Anne Bonny had long red tresses, like flames. The story must describe the night she buried her treasure!”
“The Sewee wove the event into their oral history.” Ben squeezed my shoulder. “We dig here.”
“Okay, so this chunk of firewood is the devil’s hand.” Chance was sizing up the cedar. “Where do we stake it?”
Ben made a quick circuit, weaving through and clambering over the twisted, dead limbs.
“The branches all run inland,” he said when finished. “Three on the right, two on the left. There’s nothing noteworthy on the seaward side of the tree.”
I walked inside the V and put my back to the trunk. Nestled between the tree’s ancient arms, I felt sheltered and safe, protected from winds and tides.

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