Shuteye for the Timebroker Read Free

a regular tavern wit, I see! Very glib, indeed. But your caution is overnice, in this case. I’m no ghost, you mooncalf! Look at me! Does this flesh look less than solid?”
    Subtly shifting her position, allowing her skirt to hike up in an apparent attempt to meet her downward-trending blouse halfway, the woman offered herself for inspection.
    “Ma’am, please!” Clayton begged, averting his reddening face.
    “Have some spine, man! Are you a eunuch? Why, the scurvy potboy, lowest of my crew, would have known how to react to such an invitation by Captain Jill Innerarity, Hellcat of the East Coast, known from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras as a mortal terror and expert wench. All right, you can look again. I’ve composed myself all ladylike for your eyes.”
    Clayton swung his head back around. Captain Jill had spoken true, going so far as to demurely cross her legs at the knees. Still, Clayton didn’t trust her.
    “If you’re not a ghost,” he demanded, “then what are you? And what are you doing underneath my house, howling those awful songs and keeping me awake?”
    “I’m a woman and a pirate, any fool could see those two things. And as for my singing, I’m celebrating my release. After three-hundred-odd years of entombment, you’d bloody well feel like singing too, bucko!”
    Clayton’s bafflement must have been obvious. Jill boosted herself off the crate, dusting her skirt neatly. “Follow me, you poltroon, and I’ll show you.”
    She headed off down the tunnel, and Clayton cautiously came after her.
    By a tumbled pile of bricks partially filling the way, they stopped.
    “My home for these past three centuries,” Captain Jill said, indicating with a wave of her hand where Clayton should look.
    He swung the flashlight to reveal a brick-lined cubicle set into the earthen side of the tunnel, its fourth wall a knee-high remnant flush with the passage.
    “How—” began Clayton.
    Captain Jill interrupted. “This Blackwood Beach of yours was a wizardly place even in my day, and I steered clear of it as long as I could. But after raiding up and down the coast for years, I ran out of towns to sack. And I was always looking for new challenges. So at last I convinced my men that we could deal with any dastardly tricks this hamlet could offer. One stormy evening, we hazarded a landing on the beach, thinking no one would be expecting us. But they were. A queer one- eyed sorcerer by the name of Goodnight led them. My men he bewitched into hermit crabs, who promptly buried themselves in the sands. Me he bricked up here, filling the loathsome box with a strange blue gas that left my senses intact, saying he might have a use for me in time.”
    Clayton contemplated the coffin-sized space. Three hundred years in a closet? He would have gone mad.
    As if guessing his feelings, Captain Jill continued. “That devilish blue phlogiston, or whate’er it was, left my poor body suspended, but my mind all arace, like a chip in a millstream. At first, I thought I’d be a bedlamite ere long. I couldn’t understand why the warlock had gone to such trouble to preserve me, only to drive me mad. Why hadn’t he just extinguished my thoughts for the nonce, as one caps a flame? But then I noticed the gas gave me certain powers. To wit, I could see and hear what was happening outside my petty cell—all over the world, in fact. I suspect that the scheming Goodnight wished me to keep abreast of history as it happened, so to speak, perhaps in preparation for whate’er obscure use he had for me. At first, I was chary of using my supernatural vision and hearing o’ermuch. But I soon came to enjoy amusing myself, watching the folly of mankind.”
    Clayton had a sudden frightening thought. “Welcome Goodnight, the magician—did he just free you tonight?” Clayton had no wish to intrude on any of the mysterious Goodnight’s projects.
    “Hah! That rascal did no such merciful thing. Yesterday a tremor of the earth opened a crack in my