I’m a little (or a lot) late to the BlogBattle party, but I wanted to continue with what I started last month in The Precious Maiden. Here’s another episode of Grant & Teagan, a series about treasure-hunting adventurers aiming for the over-the-top feeling of a radio serial set in the ’30s,  with October’s theme of “scattered.”

There are many quality writers who participate regularly (and turn in their work on time). Check out their stories too!

From the Adventures of Grant McSwain — Herculean Hero, Finder of the Fantastic, and Accomplished Acquirer of Astounding Artifacts!
Accompanied as always by his hapless assistant, Teagan O’Daire, the Ginger of Galway.

 

Taken by treacherous treasure-seekers, and possibly pursued by putrid pirates of the past, Grant and Teagan will learn that not every long-sought prize has monetary value, and not every apparent enemy is a truly a threat. But is this lesson too late in coming? Find out, in this week’s episode: “The Scattered Wealth of the Sunken Wights”

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Once again, Grant strained against his bonds and shouted curses at their captors, but all his rage went unheeded. One of the Kaiser’s men laughed and spat in the grass, then shooed away the persistent black goat who seemed to think the ruins were his territory. The German soldier went back to scouring the moss-covered stones for any hidden secrets or remnants of the promised treasure.

The goat hopped into the trees but quickly reappeared, meandering around the site chewing on thick leaves and watching Grant from a distance.

Teagan ignored Grant’s thrashing and closed her eyes to concentrate. How had this happened?

No Krauts had been among the treasure seekers and grave robbers who pursued the pair to Saint Kitts days ago. A little mischief at the docks had prevented the competition from setting sail, even if any would have followed Grant’s admittedly ill-advised venture into the wrath of a hurricane.

So how did the Germans arrive just hours after Grant and Teagan found this site? Hauptmann Graebel, one of the Germany’s most effective — and brutal — collectors of antiquities and curiosities, had followed the clues to Saint Croix and the ruins of Vallarte’s final resting place.

The realization hit like a slap across the face. “They have a U-boat,” Teagan whispered. “You don’t have to worry about a storm when you’re deep under the waves.”

Grant paused his futile attempt and considered the declaration. “Hmm. Should’ve guessed that not having them on our trail was too good to be true.” He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pulled against the ropes with his whole body’s weight and strength.

Judging by the changing colors in the patches of sky visible between the thick branches of the trees, the sun had almost set.

It didn’t slow the work; Graebel had torches enough to light the whole site.

“You’re wasting effort, Grant,” Teagan muttered, sitting slumped against the tree to which she was tied, her long red hair draping her face in shadows.

Her partner turned, the shame and anger plain on both his face and tongue. “Oh? And what are you doing to help us escape? Other than figuring things out after the fact.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she replied, “because I can’t do anything. We’re going to have to trust what Vallarte’s daughter promised.”

Grant scoffed – a weak, defeated laugh of a man with no options except for the word of a long-dead spirit. “She said they’re coming…” Grant stated. “That they’ll know someone is digging up whatever’s left of Vallarte’s gold, and that they’ll spare no one they find here.”

“Burning greed,” Teagan said, recalling the ghost’s words. “She said it like it held special meaning.” The verse echoed in Teagan’s mind with the spirit’s haunting tone.

Burning with greed and vile misdeeds, your death guaranteed, your judgment decreed: no rest or relief for the bloodthirsty thief.

Even with Allhallowtide and All Soul’s Day fast approaching, Teagan shuddered at the thought. It was one thing to sit in a Mass and pray for the souls of those who had passed on. Quite another to encounter a soul in person.

The spirit of Guadalupe Maria Eledora Vallarte had lingered in this place for nearly three hundred years, since the death of her father and family at the hands of his mutinous crew. She had appeared to Grant and Teagan as well, ready to pronounce the same curse she had supposedly placed upon all those who dared claim her father’s gold.

And when the Kaiser’s thugs barged in, machine guns at the ready, she spent several minutes following Graebel, uttering similar words of doom and destruction… until he produced holy water and burned her repeatedly with mere droplets sprinkled her way.

The ethereal screams seemed to linger in the air, like an invisible finger of ice stroking Teagan’s spine. If the Germans felt fear at the sights and sounds, they hid it well. Or perhaps they feared Graebel more than anything the spirit could do.

Grant sighed, dripping sweat, and sagged against the tree. He met Teagan’s gaze, and she saw the weary acceptance in his eyes. “She said a great many things, Teag. How many of them have helped us get free so far?”

Teagan tried to come up with a witty response, but no words worth saying came to mind. All they’d sought here had come to nothing. No treasure, and more questions than answers. The ghost claimed sailors from many ships had plundered the treasure over the years, and all of them had fallen prey to her curse. Charred vessels lay submerged around Saint Croix, supposedly crewed by the unliving sailors who had fallen victim to their own greed.

But how would that help her and Grant?

She turned her attention to the goat who, for the fifth time since their capture, nosed about in their scattered supplies. The Germans didn’t seem to care that the creature had made a mess of Teagan’s belongings, though at one point Teagan heard some discussion about fresh roasted meat.

Why only my gear?

The goat suddenly looked her in the eyes, and Teagan thought she saw a flash of something red in the animal’s teeth before it disappeared into the lengthening shadows among the trees.

Teagan peered into the growing darkness, but the goat was gone on whatever errand had occupied its mind.

Some soldiers celebrated as they emerged from the largest building, showing off coins that glinted gold in the torch light. Graebel gave them an encouraging nod with a hint of a smile, but his eyes held no mirth behind his spectacles. It seemed he sought more than Spanish doubloons.

Teagan grimaced as the man turned toward her and Grant. Now he grinned under his hawkish nose, his bared teeth predatory. The men wore no uniforms, but Graebel made his khaki shorts and thick shirt look like full ceremonial attire, nonetheless. He approached with a crisp gait despite the uneven ground. “You know more of this place than you have let on,” he said, his English almost devoid of any accent. “What have you learned in your brief time here?”

“Learned to remember you lot have submarines,” Teagan muttered.

“Hmph. Yes. I applaud your… ‘creativity’ in Saint Kitts, delaying your peers. Setting out into the gale was foolish, but fortune favors the bold. Had you not, we would have uncovered every secret of this wretched island before you set one foot on the sand.”

Teagan held back her surprise at what Graebel revealed. The Germans had a contact at Saint Kitts who passed on information, just like so many previous times and places on their travels where their paths had crossed. How widespread were the Kaiser’s efforts? They seemed to span the globe.

Grant looked over at the soldiers celebrating their find. “Gee,” he said, “I guess we missed a spot.” He wouldn’t reveal anything intentionally, but his bluster and bravado had landed them in plenty of trouble before.

Graebel sneered at his soldiers. “The men are easily entertained by thoughts of treasure troves. I seek something greater… something far more useful for the rise of the Third Reich than mere precious metal. Something that can free our armies from such frivolities and weakness.”

He eyed Grant, then sized up Teagan.

She raised her chin in defiance, holding his gaze despite the nauseating feeling stirring in her stomach. This one truly believed in his cause.

Graebel smiled and leaned in close. “What do you know,” he asked in a slow, too-calm tone, “of the curse of Guadalupe Vallarte?”

Teagan felt her eyes widen before she could force a nonchalant expression. “It seems like she was murdered here as a prisoner of pirates. That seems like a pretty terrible way to go.”

“Not that,” Graebel hissed. “Not her death.”

He drew closer, and she felt the heat of his breath on her cheek as he whispered, “What do you know of the strange undeath which she afflicts upon others? I have read a most interesting account of her victims—skeletal sailors now locked into single-minded purpose.”

The holy water, Teagan realized. He came prepared for a spirit. He came to find her, not gold.

Teagan cocked her head at the sight of the goat, standing in the shadows, staring at them. It wasn’t chewing, just watching with otherworldly concentration. Watching her, specifically.

Graebel stared at her with the same unsettling intensity. “You’ve seen many things over the years, have you not, Miss O’Daire? Much that might prove useful to the cause of Germany.”

One of the soldiers burst into the ruins from his post guarding the entrance, panting from sprinting and shouting a warning. “Ein fackelzug!” he cried, pointing toward the sea. Graebel hastened toward the man, who continued calling out, “Ein fackelzug im Meer!”

Teagan replayed the words in her mind. A torchlight procession in the ocean? Corpse-lights, perhaps?

She smiled and shot a glare at Graebel’s back. “Something tells me you’ll be learning more than you wanted to know about that curse.”

Gunfire erupted in the night. Grant turned toward the sound. “That’s coming from the north ridge. Do you see the strange glow in the trees?”

A second burst of machinegun fire resounded to the south, followed by screams and shouting in German. The guns in that direction went silent as suddenly as they had pierced the quiet. Between the trees at the edge of the ruins to the north, a flaming skeleton lumbered toward one of the soldiers, unfazed by the bullets shattering its bones. When it finally crumbled, another stepped over its smoldering remains and clamped an unyielding and searing hand around the throat of the German.

“They’re coming,” Teagan repeated. “Literally burning with greed.”

If Grant doubted before, he showed only resolve now. “And we don’t want to be here when they do.” He shifted around, searching for any means of escape.

The ropes holding Teagan vibrated unexpectedly, and she twisted around to see the black goat, still staring at her with its horizontal pupils as it gnawed on her bonds. “You needed a body,” Teagan realized. “Something physical to protect your incorporeal form from holy water and whatever other resources Graebel brought.”

The Germans ran toward the sounds of firefights, this time from the east, near the coastline.

Grant noted their distraction and started working the ropes back and forth on the bark of the tree. “Maybe if I can build up some friction, I can—”

He froze mid-sentence as Teagan stepped away from her tree, frayed rope dangling from her wrists. “How did you – the goat!”

The animal chewed and tugged at Grant’s restraints, quickly freeing him. Grant stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. “I’ll take what I can get, I guess.”

He dashed over to what remained of their gear, rummaging in Teagan’s pack. “I have a plan,” he declared. “We can leave some nasty surprises for Graebel and make sure there’s nothing left for him to find here. How much dynamite did you have hidden away in your pack?” After a few more seconds of fruitless searching, he added, “And where did you put it?”

Teagan almost answered, then remembered what she had seen in the goat’s mouth. She looked down at the creature in confusion. “Did you take all my dynamite? The red sticks?”

The goat lifted its head in response. “Well, yes,” the wavering voice of Guadalupe Vallarte said, sounding both present and distant at once. “I placed it around the camp and among the buildings where these wicked men are taking shelter. When the burning skeletons come to fight the interlopers, their flames will light the wicks.”

An explosion rocked the site to the south, belching fire and dirt into the night sky. The goat watched, its odd eyes reflecting the glow of the flames. “I like the red sticks.”

German soldiers ran to and fro, mowing down slow-moving skeletons at first, until they depleted their ammunition. Teagan surveyed the chaos and spotted Graebel. He put down a skeleton with two shots from his Luger pistol, shattering the undead creature’s femurs. Then he too scanned the mad spectacle in frustration, until his eyes found Teagan’s.

Head cocked, he stared with obvious confusion at the sight of his captives, now freed, in the company of a goat.

Another blast tore through the camp between them, seemingly engulfing the German officer.

“Lupe,” Teagan said, addressing the goat. The ghost. The ghost goat? Focus. “Do you know a safe way out of here?”

Vallarte’s voice filled the air around the goat. “I can lead you through the conflagration to your vessel. I know now that you are not like these, or the ones who came before.”

Grant stood laughing at the devastation as another stick of dynamite tore a building apart. “I know it’s a little early, but Happy Hallowe’en, Krauts!”

He patted Teagan on the back. “You definitely brought the treats,” he said with a chuckle. “And you—” Grant said, eyeing the goat. “What other tricks do you have up your sleeve?”