“Yeah, okay,” Len agreed cautiously. “I mean, it makes sense that we don’t want anyone to figure out that the kraken is under our control, or stumble across us when we find my, I mean your, treasure.”
Red puffed on his pipe furiously to mask the smoke coming out of his nostrils. He closed his eyes and counted to ten dead bodies until he could be sure he had himself back under control. “Yes, exactly. So I have come up with a cunning plan.”
“Uh, huh.” Len rolled his eyes. “You mean like all the other cunning plans you’ve come up with so far?”
The youngest and stupidest of the men guffawed, and Red casually took out the knife he kept tucked into his boot and stuck it into the annoying Human’s chest, then picked him up in one smooth motion and heaved him over the side of the boat.
Silence settled over the remaining crew and Len opened and closed his mouth like a fish on the end of a spear.
“Would anyone else care to make a comment about my leadership skills?” Red asked mildly, wiping his knife off on the leg of his trousers. “No? Excellent. Then I assume you are ready to hear my idea?”
Three heads nodded up and down in unison, Len’s bobbing the hardest of all.
Good. It was about time the little twit remembered who was in charge here. The kraken was only the second most dangerous thing on this ocean.
“People are still afraid of ghosts, are they not?”
Len’s usual blank look became even blanker. “Uh, sure. Most people. Why?”
“I will start appearing as the ghost of Blackbeard, the fearsome pirate,” Hayreddin declared, quite pleased with the cleverness of his idea. (After all, he had been the man known as Blackbeard, along with many other famous pirates, so it was not as though he would have any difficulty taking his semblance.) “These scientists will be so frightened, they will stop chasing the kraken and leave us in peace to pursue the treasure.” He waved his tattooed knuckles in the air to reinforce his point.
“Uh, I’m not sure that will work,” Len said, albeit in a more cautious manner than before. “People probably won’t believe you are really a ghost, his ghost especially. I mean, he wasn’t known for operating in this area, was he? I thought he ended up mostly in North Carolina.”
Red waved away his protestations. “I can take on the guise of Blackbeard as easily as you can pull on your boots,” he said. “Just you wait and see. And it matters not where he sailed in life, since all is different now anyway. It is only important that I am fearsome and strike terror into the hearts of those who see me, so they run away and stay away.”
“You sure as hell strike terror into my fricking heart,” one of the men muttered.
Red beamed at him. “Exactly. So we will await the next passing vessel and I shall appear to them as if out of nowhere. They will spread the word and before long, we shall have peace to continue our search.”
“Or end up on the Internet,” Len said. But he said it quietly, and so Red was happy to ignore him.
*
“Oh, come on,” Bethany said. “You saw what?” The last couple of days had been difficult enough without her having to deal with idiots. And this particular idiot wasn’t even drunk yet, unless he’d started in another bar.
“Blackbeard’s ghost,” a fisherman named Clyde said, with complete seriousness. His face was ashen and he’d tossed back his first whiskey like it was water. “I swear to god. Scariest thing I ever saw in my life. And you’ve met my mother in-law.”
The two men who crewed for him nodded their heads in unison, looking equally unsettled.
Bethany had met his mother in-law. It was hard to believe there was something out there that scared him more. (Her Christmas fruitcakes had been known to make grown men cry.)
“How did you know it was Blackbeard?” she asked, her skepticism clear in her voice. Alexei, who was sitting at the bar with the three sailors, took a sip of his beer and perked up, like a man whose favorite reality TV show had just come on. A group of regulars gathered around.
Bethany often thought sailors gossiped more than any dozen women in a hair salon. Her father said it was because of the long, boring hours out on a boat with nothing to do but talk. He was going to be really cranky that he missed this particular conversation.
“How did I know?” Clyde said. “He freaking told me, didn’t he? Said, “I am the ghost of Blackbeard the pirate. Fear me, puny mortal!’ Plus, you know, it was tattooed on his knuckles, one letter on each finger.”
“Puny mortal?” Alexei choked back a laugh. “He actually said ‘puny mortal’?”
Clyde glared at him. “Oh yeah, it sounds silly now, sitting in a brightly lit,” he glanced around, “well, a reasonably well lit bar. But out on the ocean, miles from land, with the sun going down, it sent a chill right down my bones.”
His shipmates nodded mutely, and pushed their empty glasses across the bar for a refill.
Bethany poured them each some more whiskey and set the bottle down within reach. She could tell it was going to be that kind of night.
“Okay, so how do you know he was really a ghost?” she asked. “Not to mention, how did he appear to you if you were in the middle of the ocean?”
“And why were you out so late?” One of the other fishermen asked from a nearby table. “You’re usually in by afternoon at this time of the year.”
Clyde held up a hand for them to wait and slugged down the rest of his whiskey. “Let me just tell the whole story from the beginning, will ya? It will be a lot faster.”
He swiveled on his stool so he was partially facing Bethany at the bar, but could still address the others gathered around to listen.
“As for why we were out so late, well, we were trying to make a buck, weren’t we? There’s hardly any fish out there - ” this got nods of agreement from everyone else - “so we took out a boatload of those damned thrill seekers who wanted to try and catch a picture of the sea monster.”
“Giant squid, not a sea monster,” one of the scientists from Wood Hole said from a table off to the side. “Much more interesting, really, given the rarity of giant squid sightings.”
“Like sea monster sightings are common,” Alexei muttered, but for a change, he kept his voice down so only Bethany heard him.
She was grateful for that, since the last thing she needed was for him to create another riot. But he’d been strangely quiet since their night together a few days before, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
She knew she was faking pretending she didn’t care about their crazy (wonderful/amazing/holy crap that was the best ever) sexual encounter, but she had no idea how he felt. And she wasn’t going to ask him, either. They both knew he was leaving soon, and not the type to settle down. What would be the point? Other than to have more wildly satisfying sex. But she wasn’t going to think about that either. More than twenty or thirty times a day.