In a Green Dress, Surrounded by Exploding Clowns and Other Stories by Robert Jeschonek

Author:Robert Jeschonek [Robert Jeschonek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-30T23:57:45+00:00

After digging out the chest and hauling it to the beach, we rowed our skiff by moonlight toward the Queen Anne's Revenge and the Adventure.

At first, Blackbeard just glowered at his end of the boat, saying nothing. But after a while, my own stare seemed to wear him down.

"When I was a younger man," he said, "after sailing aboard a privateer's vessel in Queen Anne's War, I settled on an island in the Bahamas. It was called Shark Cay."

I frowned. "I haven't heard of it."

Blackbeard offered no comment. "I had a wife and two children there. Two splendid little boys." He pulled back on the oars, pushing the skiff forward. "I was happy."

Happy? I tried to imagine it. I'd seen him furious, vengeful, bitter, distant, and brutal, but never happy.

"Then, one night, they came." He bobbed his head toward Ocracoke, toward the demons. "They emerged from the heart of a raging storm, swirling with red, yellow, orange, blue, and black lightning. They swooped down out of a doorway in the sky in flying boats and landed on Shark Cay, which they laid waste to." Leaning forward, he met my gaze with eyes afire. "When they were done, I was the only living thing left on the island." His voice was like ice. "Perhaps this is why you have not heard of Shark Cay before."

I rowed my own oars a few strokes before daring to speak. "And you?"

Blackbeard sighed. "They took me with them. Back through the doorway." He gazed up at the stars. "They took me to the strangest place you can imagine. The skies were green, the sun was blue. Sounds were like smells, and tastes were like touches. There were beasties everywhere, some like the ones we just fought and some more terrifying still."

"It sounds like Hell," I told him.

"That's what I thought at first, but no. It was another world." He kept looking upward.

I nodded silently. If not for the battle we'd just been through on Ocracoke, I would have thought him insane.

"They...changed me. They thought I could be of use to them." He looked at me and sneered darkly. "They could not have been more wrong."

"You escaped."

Blackbeard smiled grimly. "They sent me back to do their dirty work, but I broke free. I've been waging war against them ever since, using the tools they gave me." He stopped rowing and patted his chest, where the second head glowed faintly under his coat. "I can feel them coming. I know what they want."

"How is that possible?"

"They think with one mind." He tapped his forehead with his finger. "I hear echoes and whispers enough to piece together their plans."

I stopped rowing too, then. "Which are?"

"The end of us all, Stede Bonnet." Blackbeard scowled. "Every man and woman on the face of the Earth."

I sat silently for a long moment, watching him. His words sounded mad. I could not help but think that they were ample fuel for the mutiny I'd been organizing.

Yet how could I dismiss them after what we'd been through? "Armageddon?" I said.

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