Haunted Shipwreck Read Free

to have it blown off again. The reek of fish swarmed his head. He wondered if his dad was stalking him with a doggie bag of shrimp.
    A branch slapped his face. He snapped it in half and whipped it into the brush.
    The wind died.
    A clacking sound echoed throughout the forest. Jack’s mind latched onto the urban legend and identified it as an anchor being raised out of water.
    He whirled. The mist swirled over the path and a gust shoved him back a step, as if warning him not to run. The locusts soughed deafeningly, like blaring radio static. The rasps were suddenly clear to Jack. He turned on his heel like a music box ballerina, the melody entrancing him.
    Blow ye winds at midnight, blow ye winds hi ho!
    Skin ‘em in the riptide, blow boys blow!
    Blow ye winds at midnight, blow ye winds hi ho!
    Kill ‘em, spill thar insides, blow boys blow!
    The guttural voices repeated the verse while the breeze bit harder, drowning out the words. Jack snapped out of his trance. A flicker of light off in the woods caught his eye. It was approaching fast, shifting in the mist, like someone running with a lantern. Jack stood still, fear rooting him down, adjusting his eyes camera-esque, closing, narrowing, squinting, widening, striving to focus.
    The mist dissipated like washed out soap bubbles. A figure in a weathered gray robe and hood glided toward Jack. The heavy garment dragged across the ground, scraping twigs and dead leaves. Its arms were outstretched, flames jumping from its hands.
    The figure shot forward like a bullet and stopped a foot from Jack. A thick stench of saltwater surrounded him. The figure held the burning book up to its face. Through the flames Jack saw beneath the hood was a young woman glaring, her features flawless and shiny like a baby doll’s.
    A million thoughts flooded Jack’s head. He wanted to run. He wanted to stay. He wanted to see what would happen next. He wanted to know where this robed woman came from.
    The flames extinguished. The woman’s leer broke and looked down. Jack’s eyes followed. The black pages of the burnt book flipped on their volition with hummingbird speed. Sparks flew as if the parchment blur was flint and steel. And then the skimming stopped.
    The young woman held up the book before Jack’s face, blocking out her own. A single singed map of a shoreline spanned both pages. Words in an ancient language noted various landmarks. Jack could not discern if it was Italian, Latin, or Greek, for that matter. Though no sooner had he contemplated on it, the foreign dialect morphed into English. Jack’s heart fluttered. The name PASSING BELL surged on the outlined coast. It was a map of his own town!
    The map shot up into flames like a flare, disappearing through the forest canopy. The robed woman and saltwater perfume were lost in the mist, which had thickened to swirl in a mini tornado at Jack’s feet.
    He bolted without another look back. Old Man Willard had been right. The woods were haunted. And the folklore seemed more like nonfiction. Sailor songs, burning maps, a robed woman. What did it all mean? Jack wondered if he had finally lost it. No. Now way. The experience had been way too real.
    He spotted Rivulet Road up ahead. By the time he emerged from the woods, the entire surreal ordeal seemed like a figment of his imagination. He paused at the curb and struggled to catch his breath.
    “Jack? Where’d you come from?”
    Jack spotted Chelle Terrace standing ten yards to the left. She knelt before an herb garden near her two-story house with the caduceus weather vane on its gable end. She was a few years younger than Jack and the daughter of the town pharmacist. She was dressed in her Monday’s best, an angora sweater and skirt that matched her green tea eyes. Her honey-lemon hair was braided beneath a pillbox-Jack’s birthday present to her last month-and her cocoa butter skin glistened as if the sun shone.
    Jack sighed off his last pant. “The path.”
    Chelle stood and brushed