The Ghost Ships of Arizona

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Truth be told, Matt Drake felt more than a little foolish. People told him the Bones of Odin quest sounded a little far-fetched, but searching for a five-hundred-year-old sunken ship in a barren desert really unhinged something inside him. He understood the logic, even the reality of a ship being deposited out here, but then someone had to go and label them ghost galleons or some such and spoil the entire bloody thing.

Bollocks.

He’d have an easier time seeking out an investment banker’s market stall in the middle of Pontefract, Yorkshire.

As darkness fell across the desert he found himself seated with Karin, Lauren, Smyth and Yorgi around a hastily laid campfire. Blankets were spread beneath them, backpacks sitting alongside. The heat that had palled the day was thankfully beginning to dissipate as though someone had left the oven door open. Drake took a long swig of water and surveyed the landscape.

Sand dunes of varying heights undulated all around them, forming a natural valley for their rest. Nobody was under any illusions that the same dunes might last until morning, but the good news was that no storms were incoming. None that could be forecast anyway.

Yer take yer chances, their guide had told them. I ain’t stayin’ out here. And he had slunk off with that slightly terrified blank stare across his features.

So now they sat awaiting their mysterious new guide — Kelly, the old man who would find them in the desert. The Ghost Ship Whisperer, Drake thought with a silent chuckle.

The landscape wasn’t all sand. It was composed of dried roots and barren, gravelly paths. Brown straggly trees. Flat, austere land. A featureless plain lay beyond the dunes, home to few but master of all. The falling night came down like a hammer to an anvil, fast and hard, and soon the lands were blanketed in darkness. A heavy silence descended with it that soon became broken by odd, anomalous sounds.

Drake broke a tense silence. “So, who’s up for Scrabble?”

Karin didn’t look up. Only Yorgi glanced over at him. “Is it you being serious? You did not bring Scrabble, no?”

“No mate, I didn’t. But I did bring this.” He whipped out a silver hip-flask. “A bit of west-coast grit.”

Smyth held out a hand. “I’ll take some of that.”

Drake threw him the flask. “Since we’re here for the night how about a game of ‘I Spy’?”

Now Lauren threw him a withering look. “Really, man? What you gonna say? Something beginning with the letter ‘S’? ’Cause that’s all I see round here.”

Drake rose up on his haunches. “All right, all right, so I’m bored. Look, I’m off to take first watch. Shout me if, you know, one of those bloody galleons rises or jumps out at ya.”

He climbed the constantly shifting hill and studied the backdrop. It was uniform to the degree of pointlessness. Of course, this kind of backdrop made it harder to stand watch. Everything looked the same, ergo nothing moved. And now the darkness was lightly caressing every horizon, blotting out the light and forcing him to rely solely on hearing. He crouched down, getting accustomed to the surroundings and the “normal” sounds that infested the night. A faint wind scuffled through the sand, sending tiny rivulets streaming downhill like a miniature dry river. His friends chatted quietly. A small animal ferreted nearby. Like any other place on earth, the desert had its patterns and its laws. Drake respected and learned them. Below, the campfire crackled and sent a thin, twisting spire of gray smoke into the air. The land was quiet and non-threatening, if a little stealthy. It took ten more minutes for the old man to find them and when he did Drake knew exactly where he would appear. Carefully, he escorted Kelly into the camp.

Smyth eyed the Yorkshireman. “Kudos, dude. I thought he would slip by you.”

“Never happen,” Drake said. “Though it’s so quiet out there it could put a zombie to sleep.”

Kelly stepped to the center of the camp, close by the fire. His hair was white and hung down past his shoulders, straggly to a strand. His clothes were dark, dirty and creased whilst not being torn. Drake, the closest, smelled no odor emanating from him so maybe the rumpled front was just that. When he spoke his voice was rich, intelligent and resonant, as if he’d once been used to lecturing on a circuit.

“I am Kelly, your guide. I can’t promise that you will see the ghost ships, but I can promise that I will try my best to show you. Monies may be paid at the end of our trip. You,” he stared at Drake, “and you,” he nodded at Smyth, “are not like the usual type.”

“Usual type?” Smyth snapped straight back.

“Non-combatants.” Kelly chose an odd description. “You have seen action.”

Drake coughed. “We all have.”

Karin lifted her face from a contemplation of the flames. “And you? Have you ‘seen action’, old man?”

“More’n my fuckin’ fair share,” Kelly rasped with gusto.

Drake clapped him on the back. “And now you’re a ghost ship hunter. Congrats.”

“Ah, so you’re a cynic and a non-believer, yet here you stand. Your mission has to be larger than you.”

“Quick deduction. It is.”

“The ghost ships then,” Kelly took a moment to seat himself and request the hip-flask from Smyth’s tighter-than-usual grip. “Five hundred years ago an abandoned ferry was seen moored in the desert. A huge ship, it broke banks during a violent storm on the Colorado and drifted here. Stories tell of the screams of its crew being battered around the deck, broken and fragmented by the intensity.”

Drake rubbed tired eyes. “Fragmented?”

“Imagine being tossed so violently you don’t know which way is up or down, left or right.”

Drake stared. “Wow, dude, you are so lucky Alicia isn’t here.”

“The ferryboat now resurfaces to the sounds of thunder and the screams of its crew can be heard still.”

Drake listened to the old man’s voice, pitched perfectly to a level just above the crackle of the flames. Timbers spat deep in the fire and, as the desert temperature plummeted, the little group huddled closer as darkness pressed all around.

“The Pearl Ship was seen again only a few years ago. Said to have vanished in the 1600s when a young explorer was carried away by a tidal bore, the craft was beached, full of black pearls and ransacked by the American Indians of the time. They skinned and scalped the man alive, leaving him chained forever to the Pearl Ship as an offering to their gods. When it rises from the dunes he can still be seen, bound to the rigging.”

Drake felt a little shiver despite himself. Kelly was good at creating atmosphere, lowering his voice so even Smyth had to lean forward. Darkness and the snapping, popping fire added to the scenario the old man was creating. Drake himself took a moment to scan the dunes and then listened even more closely, intrigued.

“Of course, the stories of lost galleons are as plentiful as waves in the sea. Add to that a bay that was once attached to an inland sea and an undeniable confirmation of a vanished Spanish treasure ship in the area and you have the stuff of which legends are born. At least, for the fanciful. My own opinion was much the same as yours—” he indicated Drake “—until I saw one for myself.”

“You’ve seen a ship?” Lauren asked. “Out here?”

Kelly nodded vigorously. “I have, young lady. The Spanish galleon of old, I saw, with me bare peepers. And ethereal it rose out of the gloom, as intact as the day it were lost, a wraithlike wooden structure that almost seemed to ride the sand dunes like waves. I stood and I could not move. It was as if I were stuck in quicksand. My heart — it fair beat out of my body. My face, it must have been as white as the specters that inhabited the deck.”

Now Drake broke the mood with a cough. “Specters?”

Kelly shrugged. “P’raps it were me imagination. P’raps not. But something moved on that deck. All around me was a mist, slowly rising, and I couldn’t get no bearings. More than once I felt icy fingers at the nape of my neck. I struggled forward and the ship stayed still. Only now do I realize it was real, not an illusion. This was a tangible vessel, its creaking timbers not the stuff of supernatural nightmare. I approached its huge side and imagined I could see vaporous, impossibly long arms reaching down toward me — either to help me up or drag me into their cold embrace and an eerie doom.”

The old man sat back, swigging from the hip flask, and not even Smyth uttered a sound. Drake frowned as he evaluated the story. Take away all the embellishment and yes, such a thing was possible. But still…

“Still another story recounts of a Viking ship,” Kelly went on, to Drake’s surprise. “Described by the local American Indians as an open boat with round metal shields along its side, settled somewhere in the Badlands. Several people were given directions to its location but an earthquake prevented them from reaching the site, swallowing two of the party whole. If we do find the lost ship during our travels, guys, please be careful. Disaster always lurks close by any sighting.”

“How would you even know where to start?” Karin asked quietly, indicating the all-enveloping dark that lurked just outside the influence of the flames and seemed to creep closer with every passing second.

Kelly nodded at her, as if acknowledging an intelligent question. “This is my home, Miss. For many years I have lived here. It can change its appearance in the passing of a storm, as may you and I, but underneath everything is still the same.”

Drake wondered if that was really an answer, but Kelly at least appeared genuine. He noticed the man carried no belongings, no backpack. “You say you live out here?”

“I have an abode not too far away. I’ll be fine for a couple of nights.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to meet us at your house?”

“Me space is me own,” Kelly said. “And not to be blatantly publicized.”

“Fair enough.” Drake nodded. “So what’s next? We set out at first light?”

Kelly tipped the flask until no more liquid fell out. “Ya got any more of this?”

“No, mate. But I could warm you a plate of beans.”

Kelly wrinkled his face up. “I’ll pass. Unless—”

Suddenly Drake was up and on his feet, listening hard, as desert noises became scrambled and made no sense. The balance had been broken.

By someone.

Or something.