Across The Sea

Across The Sea

Eric Marier

Published by Treasure Map Books
at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Eric Marier

Smashwords Edition, License
Notes

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Excerpt from the private
journals of Lady Pleydell-Bouverie

The Legend of Atlantis and Sir
Robert of Dreighton

As the continent of Atlantis
sank around him, King Stullis traveled to the peak called Corallo
and placed all of his ancestors’ most prized possessions into one
chest, securing it inside a cave. Only one craft endured the storm
that followed the sinking, its survivors passing on the story, some
say myth, of the Treasure of Atlantis.

Thousands of years later, in the
sixteenth century, an English captain by the name of Sir Robert of
Dreighton was sent to Africa by the King of England to search for
treasure left behind centuries before by Roman troops. While
excavating beneath the floor of an abandoned temple, Dreighton
discovered a map deteriorated by time. Experts did their best to
decipher the ancient language found upon it. They believed the map
recounted the wars of Atlantis, its eventual demise and the exact
location of the legendary treasure.

One of the experts was a Spanish
spy and he travelled back to Spain, informing the Spanish king what
the British had found. The Spanish king ordered the spy to produce
a copy of the map and an Admiral by the name of Rogalles was
commissioned to find the Treasure before the English.

Many tales were written about
Dreighton, his nemesis, the Spanish Admiral Rogalles and their race
to claim the Treasure of Atlantis. Although popular in the
sixteenth century, all were fiction, and most were written after
both men had long given up their quest, empty-handed. Decades
later, the race would begin again, but this time, in Langer,
England.

Francis Bright was a
twelve-year-old boy with hair so light, it appeared white, and eyes
so dark, they appeared black. He was small for his age, with narrow
shoulders and thin legs.

It was a cool July afternoon in
the year 1587, and Francis’ platinum hair ruffled in the wind as he
pointed to an abandoned lighthouse in the distance. “There’s a
ghost in there,” he said.

He walked along the edge of a
cliff with two other boys: Ackley, his lifelong friend, with
towering, curly, brown hair and a freckled face, and Harold, a
gangly boy with elongated neck, arms and legs who had just moved to
Langer a few days before. All three boys wore white, loose fitting
shirts with dark breeches and dark shoes.

The cliff overlooked a wide,
choppy river and in the distance, a tiny island, on which stood the
high, greying lighthouse.

“Oh really,” Harold the new boy
replied, acting disinterested as he glanced down at Francis. He had
come to Langer with his mother as she tended to his sick aunt.

“That story’s so old,” Ackley
piped in. “No one believes it anymore.”

“Digby was fishing in his
boat,” Francis began as he stopped walking. “Staring up at an open
window, thinking about who knows what, when out of nowhere, an old
man in a nightshirt walked past on the other side.” Francis gave
his friends a mischievous grin. “The ghost.”

“Please,” Harold scoffed.

“Digby’s stupid,” Ackley added.
The wind did not so much ruffle his hair then as it just pressed
down on the soaring, brown, curly mass.

“I say we go there now,”
Francis said. “Just to investigate.”

“Are you mad?” Ackley replied.
“Don’t you remember what happened the last time we went out
there?”

“What?” Harold asked.

“My father told me that if I
ever go back to the island, he’ll have my head pickled in a jar.
That place is falling apart, Francis. We could fall through a floor
or something.”

“Ackley,” Francis said, his
black eyes appraising his friend. “Sometimes I wonder why we even
bother being friends. The fact that you have no guts repulses
me.”

Harold glared down at Francis
sideways. “You know, my aunt did mention not to play with you.”

“Besides,” Francis said,
continuing his argument. “Michael used to go there all the
time.”

Ackley’s gaze fell to the
ground.

Francis’ face reddened.

Harold looked down from one to
the other. “What just happened?”

What Harold could not have
known was that the name Michael had not been mentioned by anyone in
Francis’ family for over six months. Hearing Francis say it off the
top of his head just now had caught Ackley off guard. Michael had
been Francis’ older brother, and six months ago, he had been
pronounced “missing at sea”.

Michael and his father had been
working on a ship transporting crates for merchants when one
morning, pirates looted their vessel and Michael vanished. When
Francis’ father returned home, he informed his family, in a
whispered grunt, that Michael was presumed dead.

Since then, Francis’ home was
different from what it used to be. Francis’ parents little noticed
Francis or his six-year-old sister Margaret anymore. Everything was
quiet. Strained. Francis’ father stopped working on ships and
instead, worked in Langer on the docks. Michael was never mentioned
again. It was as if he had never been born. Never been their son.
It was as if Francis and Margaret had never had a big brother.

There had been one occurrence,
however, late one night in their small home which only Francis knew
about. It had taken place when Francis had been asleep and was
awakened by a yell down the hallway.

“Michael!” he heard his father
shout. “Michael!”

Francis jumped out of bed.
What’s happening?
he thought, running to his parents’ room.
What about Michael?

He found his parents’ bedroom
door ajar and put his hand on the door to push it open. Something
he saw then, inside the room, stopped him.

Inside, a candle burned, and
both his parents sat up in bed, his mother with her arm around his
father’s shoulders. “It was just a dream,” Francis’ mother soothed.
Her long, dark hair was loose and fell to her shoulders. “It was
just a dream.”

“It was more than a dream,”
Francis’ father replied. He was a thin man, with dishevelled, light
brown hair. “It was much more. I saw it. Everything. All over
again. I saw them grab him, Mary. Everyone was shouting; I couldn’t
hear him. Someone held my head but I could still see him from the
corner of my eye. They were carrying him. A red cloak loosened, and
I couldn’t see past it. All I could see was this red cloak. They
all wore them. And their flag… it was red as well. With a face in
the middle. The mouth open. The mouth wide open, screaming… like I
was.”

Francis’ mother said nothing.
Her face just fell into her husband’s shoulder. And she sobbed.

And that was the last time
Francis ever heard Michael’s name spoken aloud. By anyone.

Until now.

Francis had not meant to cause
such awkwardness between himself and Ackley. At once, he broke
through the silence.

“Well, I’m off,” he said, and
moved down a steep path leading to the beach. “I’ll find out what
Digby really saw myself.”

“All you’ll find is an old
lighthouse falling apart,” Ackley stated, as he and Harold followed
close behind. “That’s all we saw the last time we went there.”

“My gutless man, let us not
waste further time on this mind-numbing friendship.”

On the pebble-covered shore,
Francis found Digby’s rowboat, tied to the trunk of a tree. He
untied it.

Ackley and Harold stopped
behind him.

“So, you’re actually doing
this,” Ackley said. “You’re going out there all on your own.”

“Yep,” Francis replied,
dragging the boat past them. “I’ve got better things to do than cry
myself scared.”

Ackley grabbed onto the craft
and moved with Francis. He looked over at Harold and gestured with
his head that he should step to the other side and do the same.

Now all three boys carried the
boat toward the water.

“We’re coming with you,” Ackley
said.

“Who’s making us?” Harold
asked.

“No one,” Ackley answered,
shooting Harold a look. He then turned to Francis. “You just can’t
go out there all on your own.”

“Just to let you know: if
you’re coming,” Francis said, “you’re not allowed to wet
yourself.”

* * *

On the river, Francis rowed with
both oars while facing his two friends who sat on the stern bench.
Harold moved his elongated legs about, trying to find a comfortable
position to sit in, as high wind beat against the boys’ faces and
hair, and waves rocked the boat.

“Who’s this the ghost of,
anyway?” Harold asked, annoyed, and still not comfortable.

“The former lighthouse keeper,”
Ackley answered.

“How former?”

“He died over thirty years
ago,” Francis said. “And ever since, everyone’s been scared
senseless of that place.”

“Why? What did this keeper
do?”

“No one remembers,” Ackley
answered. “All anyone really knows is that it was pretty evil.”

Harold looked back at the shore
they were leaving behind. Panic rose inside him. He realized then
that he was trapped – in the middle of a volatile river. He had no
way of getting off this rowboat and running back to the comfort of
his aunt’s warm kitchen. He was going to this creepy, dilapidated
lighthouse whether he wanted to or not.

The stone structure soon
towered over them like an abruptly awakened giant. Harold had not
known it would be this imposing up close.

“We have to move quickly,”
Francis said, placing the oars on the gunwales of the boat. “I
can’t be late for supper.”

Francis, then Ackley, splashed
into the shallow water, and both pulled the boat toward the
island’s shore. Harold remained seated as he stared up at the
building. Up high, where glass windows should have been encasing
the lantern room, only jagged pieces of glass remained, jutting out
from the window frames.

Once the boat touched shore,
Harold stood with trepidation and stepped down onto the
pebbles.

“Really…” he began to ask.
“Why… Why are we doing this?”

“It’s an adventure, Harold,”
Francis replied.

“Just think of it as playing
pretend,” Ackley suggested.

Francis and Ackley moved toward
the lighthouse. The front door was a dull maroon colour and the
paint was cracked and peeling off; something else Harold had never
noticed from the mainland.

Francis put his hand on the
rusty door latch and moved it up. It lifted. Francis turned and
grinned at his pals. He then put an index finger to his lips to
signal quiet and pushed the door with care.

The door opened with a loud
creak, making Harold jump in his skin, surprised.

Francis stepped inside. Ackley
followed.

Harold stepped up behind his
two new friends and peeked in. Grey daylight pouring through the
open doorway revealed that the ground floor ceiling was low, that
the room was circular, and that rusted tools hung on the wall. It
also revealed a ladder leading up to the second floor through an
open trapdoor in the ceiling. Francis moved toward it.

Harold’s eyes trailed down to
the floor. He saw one of Francis’ feet brush against a discarded
rag. The rag had brownish red stains, and the stains looked hard,
and crusted.

“I think it’s time for us to
go,” he suggested.

“Let’s go up the ladder first,”
Francis said.

Harold looked up at the square
hole in the ceiling. It was pitch black up there on the second
floor.

“I’d rather stay down here," he
answered.

“Did you hear that?” Francis
whispered.

“What?” Harold whispered right
back.

“Shhhh,” Ackley said, trying to
listen.

Harold heard a rustling. From
somewhere above. It stopped.

“There,” Francis said.
“That.”

“It could have just been the
wind,” Harold suggested. “Wind making the old floors creak.”

“No,” Ackley said. “It was more
like a rubbing sound.”

And there it was again. Like
someone sanding wood.