Deeper (3 page)

Oh, and I also
made damned sure that they paid me extra for the docking fees at Golden
Cove.
 
The place was built to take in
money and they wanted a sizable chunk of mine for the privilege of parking my
yacht.

On the
brighter side, the fishing was supposed to be incredible and I had just the
right collection of fishing poles to test that theory.
 
My job was to get them where they were going
safely; after that I was free to play a bit.

Anyhow, I
hired on a couple of the local kids who I knew weren't quite ready for the
whole college experience, and made clear to them that they would be working for
their money.
 
Davey Walker was just
barely nineteen and looked like a freshman in high school, forget college.
 
He was reed thin and short to boot, with a
dark complexion and skin so smooth he probably never shaved more than once a
week.
 
But I also knew from experience
that he was one hell of a good kid to have around when it came to working on
engines.
 
I didn't expect to have too
much trouble along those lines, but it was nice to have an extra person around
who could handle the work.
 
As an added
bonus, he could cook if Tom wasn't up to it.

Tom Summers
was almost Davey's opposite, and was also his best friend.
 
There was little they didn't do
together.
 
Tom had reddish blond hair he
kept in a ponytail and freckles so intense that the only way to hide them was
to tan himself deeply enough to match them.
 
He'd been doing a good job of it, and was almost mahogany colored.
 
Tom was also the sort of kid who needed to
learn a few things about personal hygiene, but as long as he could handle the
workload, I would provide him with free deodorant.

Aside from
those two, it was Charlie and me to handle the work.
 
It was enough.

We got under
way early, and most of the trip down the coastline was as pleasant as could
be.
 
It only became uncomfortable when I
mentioned our destination to Charlie.

The thing is,
now and then I forget how much of a sailor Charlie is.
 
He did his time in the Navy, of course, and
he was practically raised on the fishing boats, but I forget that sometimes,
because he doesn't usually let himself act like a superstitious clown.

He heard the
name Golden Cove and jumped back like I'd slapped him in the face with a
jellyfish.

"You have
a good time, Joe,
"
 
Just
like that he was ready to hop off the side of the
Isabella
and start swimming for home.

"Oh for
Christ's sake, Charlie, grow up."
 
I
didn't mean to laugh at him, but I did.

Charlie turned
on me fast and jabbed a finger in my face.
 
"You know how I feel about that place, Joe.
 
We've talked about it a hundred
times."
 
He wasn't laughing.
 
He was pissed off and he was frightened.

"Charlie,
it's a damned town.
 
There's nothing
going on there that should have you ready to swim all the way home."

Remember that
couple I told you about earlier?
 
Well,
the man who made me look like Hercules looked over when he heard my words and
shook his head.

"Well,
that's what some of us are here to find out, isn't it?"
 
He managed a small smile, which looked like
it didn't fit him at all.

Charlie looked
at the man and then back at me, as if somehow the man with the miserable face
had just proved his point for him.
 
Rather than give my first mate a one-fingered salute, I looked over at
the stranger on my ship.
 
"Care to
explain that one?"

"Well, my
wife and me, we're here to investigate claims that Golden Cove is
haunted."

"Yeah?
 
What
makes you a specialist?"

He seemed a
little surprised that I didn't know the answer already.
 
"I'm Jacob Parsons, my wife is Mary
Parsons.
 
We're parapsychologists."
 
It finally clicked where I had seen them
before:
 
on the TV at home.
 
Belle was always watching shows about
murders, unsolved murders, or real life haunted houses at night, when any sensible
person would have been sleeping.
 
I
didn't mind, because I could sleep through almost anything.
 
Now and then I watched enough of the shows
that the names Jacob and Mary Parsons actually meant something to me.
 
They were on a dozen or more specials every
Halloween, and had been for at least a decade.

Charlie
couldn't have looked more upset if the man talking to us had actually yanked a
ghost out from behind his ear and thrown it at him.
 
I don't like to make fun of people's beliefs,
but I had about as much need of a ghost hunter as I did for a gynecologist.

My sentiments
must have shown on my face, because Parsons nodded as if to say
just you wait and see, Mr. Know-it-all
.
 
I rolled my eyes toward Charlie and shook my
head.

"Charlie,
do you honestly mean to tell me you're gonna let a few scary stories keep you
from making a living?"
 
He was
acting like a child, so I treated him like one.

It's the best
way I've ever learned to piss Charlie Moncrief off.
 
And it worked just as well as it always
does.
 
Now, I need to explain a little
something about Charlie.
 
He is, as I
already said, a ladies' man.
 
He is also
one of the best damned sailors I've ever had the pleasure to know.
 
He can do damned near anything required to
handle a boat in the roughest weather and he's as strong as an ox.
 
To the best of my knowledge, he'd never lost a
fight, either, and I'd witnessed quite a few of them back when I barhopped.

My point is
this:
 
pissing off Charlie is always a
risky proposition.
 
He stared hard at me,
with the sort of look in his eyes that said he wouldn't have minded
force-feeding his boot down my throat.
 
I'm not really much into taking risks with my life, but I trusted that
we were good enough friends that he'd let me slide and just be angry enough to
stay on instead.

I sort of hate
manipulating people, but I can do it when I have to.

I got
lucky.
 
Charlie nodded his head and
walked away from me.
 
I knew I'd have to
placate him later, but at least he wasn't leaving or tossing me over the bow of
my own yacht.

Jacob Parsons
looked at me and shook his head sadly.
 
"Sorry about that, Captain.
 
I was just making conversation.
 
I
didn't mean to cause any trouble."

He was a
paying client, so I indulged him.
 
"Wasn't you.
 
Charlie's always been afraid of anything that has a legend stuck to
it."

Parsons tried
to light a cigarette, fighting the sea breeze the entire way.
 
After a few failed tries he was puffing away,
and once that task was finished, he finally answered my comment.

"He might
not have been the best choice for this job, Captain.
 
What you call Golden Cove is supposed to be a
pretty intense place when it comes to ghosts and other things."

"What
sort of other things?"
 
It was a
long trip and I was just bored enough to ask that sort of question.
 
Besides, I needed to know what Charlie was
going to be worrying about.

Jacob Parsons
looked at me for a few seconds like he was trying to decide if he should
actually mention what was on his mind.
 
He squinted a bit when he was thinking.
 
I got to see him squint a lot while we were together.

"You know
the history of this area pretty well?"

"Well
enough."
 
I shrugged.
 
There had been a lot of stories over the
years.

"Well,
Golden Cove was built on the remains of another town, and one with a nice long
history of weirdness."

"Okay, go
on."

"I can't
think of the name of the town to save my life
...
Mary's
the one with the good memory.
 
Anyhow,
there was talk of devil worship and other things before the town got
leveled.
 
And long before that happened,
there was talk about the entire area being a sort of, I don't know, a sort of
trouble spot.
 
Nothing as bad as the
Bermuda Triangle or anything, but there are a lot of old documents that talk
about ships sinking off the shore there."

"Ships
sink.
 
I may not be a genius, but I've
been on the ocean long enough to know that."

"Well, that may be true, Captain, but there are rumors that
the ships might have been helped along."
 
He puffed away on his cigarette like it had
done something to piss him off and he was enjoying making it suffer.
 
"They were sunk deliberately, and not
just one or two, but closer to twenty."

"There's
no way in hell twenty ships got scuttled without people hearing about it."

Parsons nodded
his head and smiled.
 
"And I'd have
agreed with you if I hadn't read the papers.
 
But please, believe me, nobody knows because it wasn't done all at once.
 
Whatever was ruining those ships did it at a
very slow rate, like maybe a ship every fifteen to twenty years."

I chuckled and
shook my head.
 
"I'm guessing you're
not going to find a conspiracy, if that's what you're looking for.
 
I can't exactly believe that someone trained
their descendants in the fine art of getting rid of ships and then hiding the
evidence."

"You
misunderstand me."
 
Mr. Parsons looked
as amused as I felt.
 
"I don't think
it's that easy.
 
I think there might be
something up, but if so, I don't think it's a case of one person or even a
group of people wiping out these boats.
 
I think it might be some sort of phenomenon."

I have to
admit that notion was more interesting.

"So,
you're not looking for ghosts?"

"Oh, I
might be, but not in this case.
 
Well,
not exclusively."

"I don't
get you."

Parsons stared
at the deck for a few seconds, obviously trying to figure out how to word what
he wanted to say.
 
I got the impression
that he didn't usually like to talk, and that was a notion that stuck with me.

"Harry
Houdini was a great escape artist, but he also made a point of debunking a lot
of the spiritualists who worked the field while he was alive.
 
Did you know that, Captain?"

"I think
I heard about that a few times, yes..."

"Well, he
did that because he wanted to find proof of life after death.
 
He did that because he was a skeptic and he
wanted to be a believer.
 
More
importantly, I think, he wanted to stop the people who were preying on the
grieving survivors and make sure they couldn’t make a living out of fleecing
them."

"Okay.
 
I can see that.
 
But what has that got to do with Golden
Cove?"

"I don't
necessarily believe that anything at all is in Golden Cove.
 
I don't think there are monsters, and I don't
think there are ghosts or families who specialize in scuttling ships,
Captain."

"You don't?"
 
I was a little surprised to hear that.
 
I had expected someone with a little more
passion for his profession, if you can see my point.

"No.
 
But I'd like to find out for myself.
 
I want to know what's behind the rumors, even
if it's something as easy as natural gas pockets causing the ships to sink and
that same gas igniting that has caused people to see strange lights late at
night and the occasional ghost ship out on the water."
 
He leaned over the railing and knocked the
cherry off of his smoke, then pocketed the butt.
 
"I want to know what it is, even if it's
nothing at all."

"Do you think
you'll find anything,
Mr.
Pa
rsons?"

He smiled
again, and shrugged his beefy shoulders.
 
"I hope so.
 
I'm paying a
fortune for this expedition, and I'd hate to waste it on nothing more than a
windburn."

"I
thought you were along as a consultant."

"Oh, no,
I'm footing the bill for the university.
 
Well, Mary and I are footing it, anyway."

"What?
 
Universities don't have the money for this
sort of thing?"
 
I was only half
joking when I asked the question.

Parsons shook
his head and chuckled.
 
"Gotta buy
football uniforms this year, and I bet there are a few academic endeavors they
might consider, too, like a new set of encyclopedias for the library."

I liked Jacob
Parsons.
 
He wasn't the sort of person I
normally hung around with, but I was glad to meet him.