The Big Con
Chapter 3: The Ghost Walks
"Geeze," Wendy muttered as she turned in at the long drive. "This is like seriously messed up, guys." The fence around the house and grounds must have been ten feet high, brick but painted gleaming white. Ahead a gate made of thick wrought-iron spikes barred the way—but as the old car nosed forward, the gate swung open on silent hinges, as if opened by an invisible hand.
"Wah-wah-wowie," Mabel said as the car pulled through the opening. "He's got toys!"
He did indeed. The broad front lawn was like a military museum: a howitzer and an anti-aircraft gun flanked the entrance. A World War II-era PT boat, looking brand-new in sharp paint, rested on dry-dock stocks on the right; an M-24 Chaffee tank hulked on the left. A Jeep. An armored personnel carrier. An LST. Even a T-6 airplane, a trainer decked out in Navy colors, sat as though ready for takeoff. Beyond them, a few steps from the main door of the house, stood a fifty-foot flagpole, with Old Glory at the top and below it the dark-blue and yellow US Navy flag.
The driveway turned into a circle –the flagpole was in the center of the circle, in a grassy plot—and from it a smaller drive led to the left, where a three-door garage squatted. Wendy just parked near the front door, and they climbed out.
Dipper turned and saw that someone had already opened the door—a skinny old guy in a dress-white Navy uniform stood beside it at attention. They walked over, Dipper wondering if he should salute. "Uh—Admiral?" he asked.
"No, sonny," the old guy said. "Chief Petty Officer Dogget. The admiral will meet you at dinner. It's time to lower the flags for the night. Would you help me?"
"Uh . . . sure," Dipper said.
"You young ladies stand there. You know how to behave?"
Wendy nudged Mabel and said, "We do."
"Good." Dogget stepped to the door and pressed the doorbell three quick times in succession. From a speaker hidden in the shrubbery came the sound of "Attention" being played on a trumpet. Dogget and Wendy simultaneously threw back their shoulders and saluted the flag, and after only a half-second of hesitation, Dipper and Mabel did the same. When the trumpet call changed to "Retreat," Dogget broke the salute and began to lower the flags. Wendy held the salute, and so Dipper did too.
The trumpet call ended as Dogget began to release the Navy flag. Dipper stepped up and helped fold it, and then they did the same for the national flag. Dogget nodded without smiling. "Good job. Thank you."
He led them inside, paused to place the flags in a glass-fronted cabinet, and then led them down a hall carpeted in plush maroon until he indicated an open doorway to the left. "Wait here. The Admiral will meet you at seven bells."
He ushered them into a sitting room that looked as if it had been designed for department-store mannequins, not humans. Two sofas faced each other across a round coffee table on which a model ship rested. A chair was centered against three of the four walls; two more flanked the hall door. A row of paintings and photographs completely encircled the room, skipping only the two front windows and the two side windows. Every one of them showed a sailing vessel, some of them on peaceful seas, some fighting storms, and more with guns blazing in action.
"Sit there," Dogget said, indicating one of the sofas—upholstered in Navy blue, like the chairs and the other sofa. "I'll call you to dinner in twelve minutes."
Oh, thought Dipper. Two bells is seven o'clock.
"This dude is seriously into ships," Wendy said, her voice almost a whisper.
"I'll bet the ghost is a sailor," Mabel said.
"Don't speculate," Dipper cautioned. "We have no data to go on."
"Dipper!" Mabel scolded. "You've been hanging around with Grunkle Ford too long!"
Wendy had leaned forward to inspect the model ship on the coffee table. It was the USS Sabine Pass, a slim gray vessel with a squared-off stern, an array of radar domes on the superstructure, and a helicopter landing pad on the quarterdeck. "This isn't out of a box, dudes," she said. "I think it's like, hand-crafted."
"It's a cruiser," Dipper said. "Ticonderoga class, I think." He pointed across the room to the oil painting that hung beside the doorway. "I know that's the USS Constitution. That's probably her fight with the British warship HMS Guerriere."
Two bells clanged, and the same sharp, querulous voice he had heard on the phone said, "Right, Mr. Pines! A famous triumph for the US Navy."
The figure that stood in the doorway hardly matched the hard voice: a square-built man, not as tall as Wendy, with sparse white hair on a pink scalp, an ugly face on a head that looked almost like it had been carved, badly, from a cube of wood, and a heavyset body in Naval dress whites. "I am Rear Admiral D.D. Skipper, US Navy, Retired, ladies and gentleman. Come with me. I told Dogget to see to the wardroom." He crooked his arm and Wendy slid her own arm through, glancing at Dipper and rolling her eyes.
The "wardroom" was a dining room a few steps down the hall. Dogget led Wendy to a chair on the right of a long table; he placed Mabel to the left, and Dipper next to her; and he took his seat at the head. The table had been set with gleaming white china edged in silver, crystal glasses, and more silverware than Dipper could identify.
"Now, then," the Admiral said briskly, "before we begin, introductions are in order. Mr. Pines, will you do the honors?"
"Uh, sure, sir. This is Wendy Corduroy. She's a good friend of ours. This is my sister Mabel, and me you know. I mean, we spoke on the phone. I'm Dipper Pines. Uh, I'm talking too much."
"Very pleased to have you all aboard," the Admiral said. His face turned a shade of purple, and he shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "Since this ghost business cropped up, got out of the habit of entertaining." His blue eyes almost popped. "I mean, you're having a nice sit-down dinner, everybody's chatting, and then this ghost comes gliding through the walls and passes right down the center of the table, making faces and leering! Very unmilitary. Oh, here's Dogget."
The Chief Petty Officer had wheeled in a cart with covered plates. He served them all, finishing with the Admiral, and then uncovered the dishes. Dipper had expected fish—that would have gone with the house—but instead he saw on his plate a small steak, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and a compact little salad of greens, tiny tomatoes, and olives.
"Thank you, Dogget," the Admiral said. "Well, I can say truthfully that Mr. Dogget was the best cook I ever sailed with. Dig in!"
It was all tasty, even the salad—which surprised Dipper, because he didn't much care for salads. Mabel, of course, inhaled everything, including four of the rolls that Dogget put on the table in a silver basket. Dessert was ice cream—vanilla with chocolate-mint bits sprinkled in. "Home-made," the Admiral said.
Mabel had seconds, then thirds.
Admiral Skipper beamed at her. "Does me good to see a gal who knows good food!" he said. "So many of 'em are always on a diet." His white eyebrows waggled as he turned to Wendy. "No offense, my dear."
"None taken," Wendy said with a grin. "Hey, you set out a good spread, Admiral man!"
The Admiral threw back his head and gave a booming laugh. "I like your spirit, girl!" he said. "Have you considered a career in the Navy? A woman can go far in today's Navy."
"No, sir," Wendy said. "I'm pretty much of a landlubber."
"Pity."
When even Mabel was full, they left Dogget to clear the table and went back to the sitting room. Admiral Skipper had them sit while he paced impatiently. "Better let me tell the whole story," he said. "I'm sorry for it, because parts are boring, but you need to know what you're dealing with. I hope you can make sense out of it. I can't!"
He launched into the story of his life—he had been born into a military family. "One brother retired as a three-star Army general, another won the Air Force Cross, and our little sister is currently a colonel in the USMC." The family was wealthy—"Our great-grandfather got into oil early, and he was good at identifying oil fields and stealing them from the rightful owners"—and Skipper had gone into the Navy fully expecting to have a long career.
Which he did, except—"Got stuck at the rank of captain!" he growled. "Nothing wrong with my performance. Always got outstanding reports. But, blast it, when your name is Skipper, and you're in the Navy—the joke was too good! Our skipper's Skipper! Don't get me started on the subject of names!"
"We know where you're coming from," Mabel chimed in. "My brother won't even use his real name! It's M—"
"That's enough, Mabel," Dipper interrupted. "Let the Admiral finish."
"Anyway," the Admiral said, "I voluntarily gave up my last command—you see the model there on the coffee table. Took shore duty instead. Couldn't stand the joking."
He finished his service career at Naval Base San Diego. "Got my promotion to Rear Admiral," he said. "I was put in charge of a hush-hush top-secret experiment. I can't go into it, but it had to do with instantaneous movement of a ship and its crew over hundreds of miles. Very technical. Anyway, things went wrong in the initial experiment. The ship didn't perform as expected. It vanished and then minutes later reappeared—but the crew suffered horribly. Most of 'em insane, some of 'em dead. And the ghost—I think, because I can't be sure—the ghost is one of the latter."
"You think he's seeking vengeance?" Dipper asked.
"Don't know, lad. He won't talk to me. But why would he seek vengeance from me? I didn't design the apparatus. All the sailors aboard the research vessel were volunteers. My main job was just to watch the experiment and preside over the writing of the final report. Why, I didn't even give the order to initiate the experiment. That came from upstairs, not from me." His shoulders sagged. "Of course when everything went to he—to Davy Jones's locker, if you follow me, I took the blame. They let me voluntarily retire—had my time in, no problem there. But I could have gained two more stars if not for being stuck as a captain for so long and then having my career cut short by the miserable experiment. I would have been a full Admiral, not just a one-star Rear Admiral."
Dipper heard Mabel stifle a laugh. She murmured, "Rear!"
"Sir," Dipper said, "you know, I'm not sure than exorcizing this ghost will help you all that much. I mean, you don't expect to be reinstated or anything, do you?"
"No, son, I don't. But—well, I'm an old man. I'll be a ghost soon myself! The truth is, I just want to do whatever I can so this poor bas—fellow can rest in peace. It weighs on my conscience. If you can banish it, or at least get it to talk and tell us what it wants, I'll do everything in my power to help it."
"I'll try," Dipper said.
"Dipper," Wendy murmured.
Dipper went on, "The first thing we have to do is make contact—"
"Dipper!" Mabel said, frantically tugging at his sleeve.
"—then I'll try an incantation to—what is it?"
"It's right behind you!" exclaimed both Wendy and Mabel.
Dipper spun around. Whatever he had expected to see—it was not the awful thing that hovered in the air, its horrible eyes glaring into his.