Lieutenant Theodore Groves rowed the boat, trying not to stare at the grizzled man in front of him. It was difficult; the small rowboat was not built with social delicacies in mind. He kept his gaze up and to the left, so that he wouldn't have to lock eyes with his passenger.
"How are you enjoying the Caribbean?" asked Groves. It was the third time he'd tried to make conversation with the man. As soon as the words left his lips, he regretted them. The peculiar man was so high up in Her Majesty's government that he didn't even have a proper rank, only a fistful of stamped and sealed letters from every office of any importance. Groves had looked over the paperwork himself. It was official enough to make his blood run cold. Groves would have been more than happy to hand the man and his papers off to someone else, had there been anyone else to hand them off to. The man was a captain by rank, yet he had no ship and no troops to speak of. Port Royal was his last stop.
"Tell me about the skeletons," said the man. The covered cage between the man's feet began to chitter again. The papers had claimed the man's name was James, but given the last name that was almost certainly a pseudonym. The man slapped the cage with his hook hand, which made a clang that quieted whatever was inside; this had happened a number of times during their ship ride. At first Groves had thought the cage held a bird, but there was an occasional clink of metal coming from within the cage as well. The chittering wasn't natural.
"The skeletons," said Groves. "That's what this is about?"
"Tell me about the skeletons," repeated the man whose name might have been James. Groves found his eyes falling on the hook hand again. Captain James Hook. Hell if Groves was going to say that out loud if he could possibly help it.
"They looked like normal men until the moonlight hit them," said Groves. He tried his best not to recall the sight of his comrades dying, nor the rotting, decayed bones. "They could walk the ocean floor. They shrugged off pistol shot and laughed as our swords ran them through."
"Excellent," said Hook. He smiled for the first time since Groves had met him.
The cove led to a cave, which the moonlight shone down on. It had been divested of its treasure months ago, save for a single chest filled with Aztec gold. Hook strode towards it, carrying his cage with his hook hand. Whatever was in the cage had begun chittering again in earnest, but the supposed captain paid it no mind.
"I don't know what Her Royal Majesty plans," swallowed Groves. "But the gold has a terrible curse placed upon it. These men could not quench their thirst or quell their hunger. They had desires that they could no longer fulfill. I spoke with a few of them afterwards, when they were mortal men again. They ate gruel with their fingers like it was roasted duck. They drank stagnant water as though it was wine."
"You're saying they did not need to eat or drink in their skeletal form," said Hook.
"I don't know," said Groves. "They were in a constant pain."
"You were among those who took the ship," said Hook. "It was plundered, was it not? Were there barrels of hardtack and drinkable water?"
"No," said Groves. "There weren't."
Hook nodded. "It seems likely they had no need for provisions then."
He knelt down next to his birdcage and pulled off the black cloth on top of it. Groves was surprised to see a monkey inside. In its hands was a large gold coin, stamped with skull. Hook lifted his birdcage up, to expose the monkey to the moonlight. At once, its true form was revealed. Flesh hung from the bones only in a few places, and there it was rotting. The skeletal monkey chittered again.
"Do you have much experience with magic?" Hook asked.
Groves took a moment to realize that the man was talking to him. "No," he replied.
"When this creature was brought to my attention, I thought the magic worked on it was merely an illusion," said Hook. "That would be a simple enough thing, to make a monkey look skeletal in the moonlight. It would be impressive enough in its own right. Yet it was soon clear that there were none of the telltale signs of an illusion, no places where the illusion failed. I ran a knife through this creature the first night I had him, only to find that I could poke at the individual ribs. It was a full transformation, brought on by the moonlight, much like a werewolf's, yet quicker and more complete." He picked up the cage and swung it out of the moonlight. The monkey inside immediately took on solid form again. "The transformation is nigh-instant."
"You already knew the answers to your questions," said Groves. His hands were shaking; he tried to summon up enough courage to stand his ground. He was beginning to wonder whether this man was really part of the British government. It was possible the hook-handed man was here of his own accord, having made perfect forgeries of a dozen very official documents. It was also possible that he was legitimately representing Her Majesty's interests in this matter. Groves wasn't sure which would be more terrifying.
"I am not one to ask frivolous questions," replied Hook. "Curses can vary in strength. In the West Indies I once came across a curse which had been applied to an old king some hundreds of years ago. His sons were doomed to die on their thirtieth birthday, as were their sons, and so on and so forth. It was meant to bring ruin upon his line. Yet while the sons died, as did the grandsons, by the fourth generation some only got grievously ill. I heard of this tale during the seventh generation, when the thousands of men descended from that king only took a brief sickness on their thirtieth birthday. They had grown so numerous that the curse was spread thin."
"I thought perhaps I was seeing the opposite here," Hook continued. He stared at the monkey. "Just as a curse can have its effect spread too thin, this monkey might have been feeling the effects of a curse meant for hundreds being funneled into its small body. So yes, I have done my own tests to determine the nature of what the curse has done to this creature. I starved it, drowned it, and lit it on fire. I've watched the transformation it undergoes. Yet I needed to confirm that the wild tales were true, or at least that they hadn't been warped in the telling. And I have yet to confirm the most important aspect of this curse."
Hook opened the door of the cage and took the coin from the monkey. After he'd closed the door again, he slipped his hook between the bars of the cage and snagged the monkey with it, enough to draw a syrupy substance that was close to being blood. This Hook dabbed on the coin, which he then tossed into the open chest to join its brethren.
Hook stared down at the monkey, then lifted its cage back into the moonlight. This time there was no transformation. The grizzled man nodded in satisfaction, then pulled a knife from within his coats and stabbed it through the bars of the cage, catching the monkey right in its stomach. The animal cried out in pain as it bled, but not for terribly long.
"The curse is reversible," breathed Hook. He looked to Groves. "Of course, you had said as much, but you understand my skepticism."
Groves only stared at him in mute horror.
"The hunger and thirst weren't enough to drive those pirates insane," said Hook. His tone was conversational. "It will be a challenge for those selected, but certainly not an insurmountable one."
"You can't," said Groves. "You can't. It's a foul curse, an affliction."
Hook shrugged. "You know what they say." The moonlight lit his toothy smile. "One man's curse is another man's treasure."