Seven Dead Pirates (9 page)

S
everal weeks later, on a dull, wet Thursday, Lewis’s parents went out to a special dinner at his mother’s college. It happened to be Mrs. Binchy’s night off.

“We’ll hire a babysitter,” said Mrs. Dearborn.

“What?” said Lewis. “No! Please! Nobody my age has babysitters. Kids my age
are
babysitters.”

His mother rolled her eyes. What
other
kids did, she said, was no concern of hers.

Mrs. Binchy came to the rescue. “Not to worry, Mrs. Dearborn. I’ll be home early, eight at the latest. And, really, it’s as peaceful as the grave out here.”

Reluctantly, Mrs. Dearborn agreed.

“Keep the doors
locked
,” she told Lewis, as she and
Mr. Dearborn left for dinner. She was wearing her shoes with the buckles instead of the ones with the laces. For her, Lewis knew, that was dressing up.

“You have my number,” she said. “And if you have to call the fire or police—”

“Nine-one-one,” said Lewis. How stupid could he be not to know
that
?

As soon as they left, he headed upstairs and stretched out on the brass bed. It was just quarter to five, and he thought he might read for a while before eating the casserole Mrs. Binchy had left in the oven. Soon he was deep into a novel about two boys lost in the Amazon rain forest. Snakes, giant insects, piranhas …

When his skin prickled, he thought it was just the danger in the book. Then he glanced up.

Seven dead pirates were gathered around his bed.

He let out a scream!

The pirates let out a few good screeches themselves. Most of them glowed several shades brighter.

“It’s true!” cried Lewis, once he’d caught his breath.

“What? What?” demanded Crawley, looking rattled. “Speak, boy!”

“It’s true that you get brighter when you’re upset.”

“
Who’s
upset?” hollered Jack, shaking his fist. “Why, I’ll—”

“Sssst!” ordered Crawley. He raised his eyebrows at Lewis. “Well?”

The others smiled expectantly.

“Oh,” said Lewis, looking around. “I guess you’re here about …”

“Aye!” said Crawley. “The plan!”

Lewis felt a stab of guilt. “It’s not
quite
ready,” he said. “I’m … I’m working on it.”

“Aye.” Crawley nodded happily. “We sees you sitting here, day after day, dreaming up schemes. I’m sure it will be a
grand
plan, what with all this thinking.”

“Pah!” said Jack.

“Well …” said Lewis, suddenly eager to leave. He closed his book and scrambled off the bed.

But Moyle stepped forward, blocking his way. “Why, lookee here, Captain! See this great thick book the lad holds? As easy for him as climbing a mast. I
told
you he could read to us.”

Lewis held his breath. What now?

“Aye,” agreed Captain Crawley. “Doubtless, he can. Adam! Fetch the book.”

Adam ran to the glass cabinet. He held up a book. “This one?”

“No,” said Bellows. “It were red.”

Adam searched again. “This?”

“No, it were smaller,” said Skittles. Pushing past
Adam, he reached for a shabby red book. “Here it be!”

He thrust it in Lewis’s face. “Read!”

Lewis peered, dumbfounded, at the cover.
Peter and Wendy
, it said in letters so faded they were almost indecipherable. He thought for a moment. “Peter Pan?”

“Aye,” chorused the pirates. “Peter Pan.” They sank, one by one, to the floor and gazed raptly up at him. Looking down, Lewis thought that—except for their age and filthy clothes and missing body parts—they could have been a storytime group in a library.

Tentatively, he opened the book.

“Read!” demanded Crawley.

“I’m not … very good at reading aloud,” said Lewis. “Usually I just—”

“Read!”

Lewis took a deep breath and began. “All … all children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew—”

“No!” said Moyle. “Not that! Find where it tells about Captain Hook!”

“Aye,” said the others. “Give us Hook!”

Lewis tried to explain. “It’s not that easy. You can’t just open a book to—”

Jack leaped to his feet. “FIND CAPTAIN HOOK!” he roared, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I’ll try,” said Lewis quickly. He leafed through the book, checking pages at random. Finally, he spotted the word “Hook.” As he began to read, growls of appreciation drifted up from the floor.

And so he read about Captain Hook and the crocodile who had swallowed Hook’s hand and then followed him around, waiting for the rest. Moving through the paragraphs, Lewis couldn’t help peeking at his own pirates, with their various missing bits. No wonder they were fascinated by Hook.

He read on, losing track of time, losing track of himself, hypnotized, like the pirates, by the story and the sound of his own voice. Whenever the book drifted to other characters—Peter, the Lost Boys, Wendy—the pirates grew impatient. “HOOK! HOOK!” they cried, forcing him to search again.

“Ah, that were a treat,” said Crawley finally, with a deep sigh. “You reads like a charm, young Lewis. Near as good as your great-granddaddy.”

“Great-Granddad read to you?”

“Aye, when he were about your age. He read us about Hook many a time.”

And, indeed, Lewis had noticed that in certain parts, the pirates’ lips had moved in unison with his. They had actually
memorized
sections.

“I wish we’d met this Hook,” said Moyle, “but in all
our sailing of the seven seas, we never come across him.”

“Well, no,” said Lewis, “you couldn’t. He’s—”

He was going to say “not real,” but stopped. The pirates, still in the grip of the story, had a strange contented light in their eyes. It would be like telling a five-year-old there was no tooth fairy.

He closed the book instead.

“I … I have to go now,” he said. “Dinner.”

At the door, he looked back. They were sitting where he’d left them.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

Crawley grinned crookedly. “No way of knowing, lad. But you’ve put us in a fine way to make a grand evening of it. Hasn’t he, boys?”

“Aye!” cried Bellows. “We’ll shake the floor tonight, by thunder.”

Lewis waited.
Shake the floor?
But no explanation was offered. He left.

The macaroni and cheese was dry, but still tasty. Lewis ate it standing at the counter. Afterward, he washed and dried his dishes.

Then he headed for the spare room where he’d been sleeping, even though he still didn’t think of it as “his” room. The bins and boxes were gone now, but his mother’s sewing machine still sat like a lump in the
corner. The couch, made up neatly into a bed, looked as if it were awaiting a paying guest.

Lewis walked to the window and tried to raise it, but it was stuck. He made a few more efforts, grunting. Then he stared at the empty driveway.

What were they
doing
upstairs?

His toes began to tap. Slowly. Nervously. Then faster.

He ran for the back staircase.

He only meant to take a peek. He only wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

But when he saw what looked like a party, when he heard the shouts to “Come in, lad!” he couldn’t stop himself. Soon he was perched on the edge of the brass bed, watching what appeared to be a card game—except that Lewis had never seen cards played so
actively
before. Skittles, Moyle and Jonas squatted tensely in a circle, slamming down cards with such force that Lewis couldn’t help jumping. The rules were unclear, but there seemed to be a lot of shoving and whacking across the head, neither of which Lewis had ever imagined to be part of a card game.

Across the room, Adam was playing a small metal flute for Jack and Barnaby Bellows, who were dancing a kind of jig. Mostly this consisted of hopping
from one foot to the other with ferocious energy, but occasionally the partners seized one another and spun in a frenzied circle. The floor, Lewis noticed, actually
did
shake as Bellows’s huge feet pounded the boards.

Crawley stood back, but his damaged face had an air of deep contentment. It wasn’t long before he burst into song:

Here, other voices joined in:

The captain hoisted his tankard. “To the
Maria Louisa
!”

The others clinked their mugs before glugging the contents down. At least, they
appeared
to be glugging.

Lewis couldn’t stand it any longer. He whispered a question to Skittles.

“No,” said Skittles morosely. “We can’t drink a drop and we can’t eat nothing, neither, more’s the pity. We tried at first, but it just went right through us.”

“Now we pretends,” said Jonas, overhearing. “But it ain’t the same. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a pint of grog.”

“I’d give me right arm,” said Skittles. “If I had one.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lewis noticed that Adam had wandered over to the onyx chess set. He was picking up a pawn.

Lewis was about to say “Stop!” but something in Adam’s face made him catch himself. Joining the cabin boy, he whispered, “Do you know how to play?’

Adam shook his head.

“Would you like to learn?”

A huge crooked smile was Lewis’s answer.

And that’s how it happened that, twenty minutes later, the two boys—human and ghost—were engaged in a head-to-head chess game. The other pirates gathered to watch and to shout encouragement to the cabin
boy, along with ridiculous suggestions. The entire audience was on Adam’s side, and at first this bothered Lewis. But then he told himself that Adam was new to the game and lacking in confidence. Adam
needed
fans.

Still, Lewis couldn’t help being unsettled by their reaction when Adam lost. The pirates howled their disapproval, waving their pistols and accusing Lewis of cheating. Jack threatened to give him twenty lashes.

“No!” cried Adam, his eyes shining. “Lewis won, fair and square. It were a grand game, and …”

He stared at Lewis, hesitating.

“Yes?” said Lewis.

“Might I make so bold, sir, as to ask for another?”

Lewis had never been called
sir
before.

“Uh … okay,” he said.

They played another game, and Lewis won again. This time he wasn’t
quite
so flustered when the pirates hollered at him.

“Another?” begged Adam.

Lewis nodded, then realized how late it must be. “I’ll be right back,” he said and ran down to the kitchen.

Mrs. Binchy was home. He could tell by the warm teapot on the counter and the TV sounds from her room. How lucky she hadn’t come looking for him! He found a piece of paper and wrote:

He put the note on the kitchen table and weighed it down with the pepper grinder. He brushed his teeth. He took his vitamins.

Then he ran back up to Libertalia.

T
he party, if that’s what it was, went on most of the night. Lewis lost track of time. At some point, he fell into a fitful sleep, interrupted periodically by shouts or singing. The pirates never seemed to get sleepy. Then again, thought Lewis, why would they?

He opened his eyes to an empty room, sunlight pouring through the tall windows. The only sound was the ringing of the kitchen bell—Mrs. Binchy, telling him he was late. He stumbled downstairs.

At school, he had to keep blinking himself awake. In the middle of social studies, chin resting on his fists, he actually fell asleep.

The word “Shornoway” woke him. Ms. Forsley was talking about historic buildings in Tandy Bay, and Shornoway was one of them. She named others, too—the doctor’s office, Stellars Grocery Store. Lewis realized that this must be part of the “local history” they were going to study. He forced his eyes open.

But at afternoon recess, crouched and leaning against the back wall of the school, he fell again into a doze.

“Hey, look at this!” Seth’s voice. “Lewisser’s gone sleepy-bye.”

Lewis burrowed his chin into his jacket. Ostrich, he told himself.

“Nice hair!” said Seth. “Maybe we can make it even nicer …”

Other voices laughed. The boys in white.

Before Lewis could move, something rubbed hard across the top of his head. A sharp sweet odor filled the air.