Dead Man's Hand
Chapter Four: Secret Hideaway
"As soon as the ghost ships appeared, he ran all over town yammering something about the end of the world and holy ground. Then he was gone." Colonel Church said as we stood in the war room of Fort McMurtry, which had a large map of Haunted Skyway on the wall.
"There's an old abandoned church a ways from here. Rumor is that's where Sabatini is hold up. That's where I'd look for him." Colonel Church said as he pointed to the church on the map with a yardstick, and it was located on a small island in the middle of the skyway.
"Thank you for the information, sir." I said, nodding as I left for the Aquila. Within half an hour, the Aquila had already raised anchor to set sail towards the church.
No ghost ships attacked us as we went underway, and we soon dropped anchor at the dock in front of the old church, built of stone in a Gothic style of architecture.
My trusted associates and I drew our weapons as we walked to the wooden double doors of the church from the Aquila, her starboard battery ready to bombard the church with round shot should it become necessary.
We opened the doors of the church to find a Rat wearing a purple bandana, a dark waistcoat over a shirt, and purple trousers surrounded by skeletal pirates, led by a tall skeleton dressed in a maroon two-cornered hat and overcoat, and he had a hook for a left hand.
Sabatini had put up a good fight, evidential by the number of bones and broken pews scattered all over the room, but he was outnumbered, and he knew it.
"No! Stay back!" The Rat, Sabatini said as he brandished his dagger in front of the unfazed skeletal pirates, and their leader, the tall skeleton stepped forward.
"You verminous traitor, you thought you could spark a mutiny against ME and live? We made a pact, Sabatini. You owe me a debt. And Death, too." The tall skeleton answered angrily as he pointed his cutlass at Sabatini.
"No!" Sabatini said, and then he noticed me standing in front of the others at the doors of the church. "You there, pirate! You can stop this monster! The cards! Look to the cards!"
"Silence, you wretch!" The tall skeleton shouted, whom I now recognized from a photograph the historian Argleston had shown me as Captain Barnabus Blood, but Sabatini shouted, "The cards! Go to the sisters, on Isla de los Muertos! The cards..."
"Enough!" Captain Blood said as he swiped the air between him and Sabatini with his cutlass, and the Rat let out a cry of pain as he disappeared in a flash of black smoke.
Captain Blood then turned to face me, and instead of eyes, he had glowing blue balls of flame. "So, little one, you dare call yourself a pirate? Take them, lads!"
As his skeletal crew moved in front of him, Captain Blood disappeared in a flash of black smoke like Sabatini, and we ran to face his crew.
"Hey, did you stink like that even when you were alive?" I taunted, and the skeleton responded with an enraged swipe of his sword that missed me by a mile, leaving him open to my pistol.
As my opponent crumpled onto the floor, I kicked the resulting pile of bones to scatter them, and I even managed to brain another skeletal pirate with a leg bone just as he was about to finish off Rena, allowing her to get up and quickly decapitate the skeleton.
Bonnie aimed her new sniper rifle and fired, blasting a skeleton's skull clean off his shoulders, and Emmett delivered a double headshot to another skeleton with his pistols.
Jack thrust his sword forward into the eye of another skeletal pirate, and speaking of eyes, Old Scratch used the Eye of the Serpent to slice off the sword hand of his opponent, and as he clutched at his eye in pain, Ratbeard stepped in to finish the last skeleton off with his cutlass.
"The fiend's gone! We'd best get to these sisters Sabatini was talking about." Bonnie said as we regrouped in the middle of the church, and we returned to the Aquila to set sail to the east end of Haunted Skyway, where it connected to the skyway of Santo Pollo.
In the northeast end of the skyway was the Isla de los Muertos, the place where my trusted associates met Sister Snake on our vision quest.
It was getting dark as we dropped anchor at the docks, and near the shore were three Mustang gypsies sitting around a campfire near a covered wagon, and they wore brightly colored bandanas, white blouses, and frilled skirts.
The Mustang gypsy dressed in emerald green stood up as we slowly approached them, and she looked at me with piercing gray eyes. "I am Madame Esmeralda, and we welcome you to our humble camp, travelers. My sisters and I have been expecting you, young Matthew..."