Cursed: A Corsair’s Tale

Chapter One

Sweet Dreams plantation house, Mal Chance Bayou Louisiana

Grace Thibodaux let her mare, Maymie, and the packhorse pick their way along the overgrown lane. If memory served, there was one more bend before the Sweet Dreams plantation came into view.

Spanish moss draped the huge live oaks bordering the path.

Beyond that screen, the bayou sang. The lap of water against the shore.

The plop of a muskrat’s cooling swim. The buzz of an insect.

The call of a bird. Heavy odors of oleander and magnolia blended with the rotting vegetation aroma typical of the bayou.

Beneath it all, the alien scent of cinnamon and sulfur rose like a creeping mist. Droplets condensed from the humid air, dripping from mossy trees.

No leaf or blade stirred. No breezy whisper disturbed the quiet.

The sights, the sounds, the scents, the sticky heat struck both familiar and strange after twenty years and a lifetime away.

Her first sight of the house echoed how she’d felt since her acquittal in Boston.

Battered, like the roof and exterior walls from years of weather.

Worn to the bone, her emotional armor scrapped raw and exposed like the peeling paint, ripped wallpaper, and ruined floors she’d no doubt find.

Her foundation was crumbling and weak, but she and the house still stood.

Fate had tried to destroy them both and failed. Bang-clang!

Grace jerked the reins, fear rolling over her shoulders and shooting down her spine. Maymie reared. Bang-clang!

The packhorse screamed.

Bang-clang!

Grace fought to control her fright and her mount. “There now,” she crooned, patting Maymie’s neck, praying the packhorse would settle before either steed was hurt.

Bang-clang! Bang-clang! Bang-clang!

The sharp ringing of metal on metal echoed from behind the house.

Sidestepping and flicking ears, the horses jostled each other, both neighing displeasure. Before biting and rearing could start, Grace dismounted and used the reins to force distance between the two.

Crooning all the while, she secured Maymie’s reins to the nearest bush, then did the same with the pack horse some distance from Maymie. Horses settled, she grabbed her rifle, and headed for the back of the house.

Bang-clang! Bang-clang! Bang-clang!

She slid into a position behind one of the columns supporting the porte-cochèr and waited for a pause in the odd rhythm of the bangs and clangs.

Silence. “Whoever you are, leave now. I have a rifle and will shoot if you don’t.” Shouldering her weapon, Grace left the safety of the pillar.

A sledgehammer fell from mid-air, and a rush of wind chilled her. The hammer lay beside an iron pump and an aged wooden water trough. Nearby were the rotted remains of what might’ve been a hitching post. About ten feet away, the large doors of the stable stood open.

“Who’s there?” she called.

Only birds answered.

Grace paced the stable yard, peering into the darkened structure. She listened hard, but heard no unnatural sound. Did I imagine it all? If so, what frightened the horses?

She was stressed and jumping at shadows, as she’d been for far too long. The horses had probably picked up on that.

Since no observable danger threatened, she lowered the rifle and returned to the horses. They stood contented, munching on the surrounding tall grasses, and seemed to have forgotten the scare.

“C’mon, girls, let’s get you settled. Night will fall soon, and I have much to do before I can sleep.”

When Grace was ready for bed, she was restless, tense and not in the least sleepy.

The pattern wasn’t a surprise, given the events of the last year, to say nothing of today’s oddities.

Tension, restlessness and more had plagued her.

She’d never sleep without some help. She’d grown so used to stress, and she’d come prepared.

She dug into the carton of mementos, and Aunt Sarah’s personal papers.

Grace pulled out a silver keepsake music box and a worn leather-bound book.

The music box had been a gift from her aunt to mark Grace’s sixth birthday.

According to Sarah, the box had belonged to Grace’s mother and was very old.

It’d been handed down from mother to daughter on the Tirlán side of the family.

She’d hugged the box to herself and smiled her thanks to her aunt.

Sarah had sighed. “Darling girl, you know your smile could melt stone.”

Grace had spent the next several weeks smiling at stones before her aunt taught her about metaphors in a way a six-year-old could understand.

The tune had helped calm the nightmares that still disturbed her sleep.

She could not recall ever seeing the book.

It had no title or publication information, so it was probably as old as it appeared to be.

Opening to the first page, she read the words hand-written in bold black ink on age-yellowed paper ‘Ship’s Log. ’

The handwriting was not Aunt Sarah’s delicate calligraphy. So, who wrote this? What ship had it come from, and why was the paper yellowed but the ink not faded?

Could it be a fake?

Perhaps, she could have it tested, the next time she went into New Orleans.

The years studying for her degree in archaeology had given her the skills to estimate age and value of objects, but confirmation was part of the process.

Grace couldn’t imagine anything in a ship’s log, making the creation of a fraud worthwhile, especially one as old as this appeared to be.

Regardless, a boring book should help me sleep faster.

The first entry was dated 15 January 1814.

At the bottom of the page was a scripted L, presumably the captain’s signature mark.

Sunrise at four bells. No clouds, fair winds, calm seas, position 24.

8° N, 89.5° W, tacking northerly. The watch reports no changes.

Cook is calling the men to breakfast. Then, Had to discipline…

***

From the aft deck of the Only Love, Captain Lucien Flynn used his psychic sight to watch his unwanted guest deal with her horses and carry things into the house.

With one hand he stroked the fur of the black cat perched on the rail beside him, the latest in nine decades of ship’s cats.

When the woman had arrived, Luc’d been using all his phantasmic strength to beat a rusty water pump into submission.

He didn’t need the water, but in the past nine decades, he’d had very little to do.

Hence, he made maintaining the plantation house, outbuildings and grounds his life’s work.

He was only one man, so the job might’ve seemed insurmountable.

However, he possessed a number of advantages that other men—living and dead—did not, primarily, an infinite supply of time.

Luc’s hammering noise had been so great that even with his hyper-senses, he hadn’t heard her approach. He’d paused, to rest—yes, phantoms could get tired—then she’d issued that vibrant and dusty-voiced warning. “…leave. I have a rifle … I’ll shoot.”

He’d rejected the idea of letting his unwelcome intruder witness the sledge beating on the rust-frozen pump handle with no visible person to wield the hammer. Time enough for that sort of thing, if need be. For now, he obeyed the husky demand.

Many would run screaming from a hammer swinging by itself, but given the woman’s threat, she might not behave as expected.

He’d had a fairly good look at her as he’d rushed past, then studied her as she moved around the stable yard.

A lifelong connoisseur of women, he noted that she wasn’t particularly beautiful.

Her face was longish, with eyes the green of the mist strewn hills of Ireland.

His long-lost home was a place and time best forgotten.

Her reddish brows weren’t quite hidden beneath her broad-brimmed hat.

No doubt her hair was some version of red.

Below her straight nose, there was a thin-lipped mouth, of a surprising soft pink hue.

Luc estimated her age as closer to thirty than twenty.

Are her lips truly that thin?

Perhaps the stubborn set of her mouth hid a fuller, more kissable, shape?

She’d kept the rifle firmly set at her shoulder. The muzzle led whenever she moved. Eventually, she’d lowered the weapon and returned to her horses. Even then, her shoulders’ resolute position and that fixed expression formed a warning. She was not easily cajoled or intimidated.

Luc could feel her determination, which both annoyed and intrigued him.

Getting rid of her might be an interesting exercise. The key would be to find a chink or two in the emotional armor that wrapped her as closely as the bayou heat.

She was different than his more recent visitors, and his curiosity stirred from its decades old slumber. Luc couldn’t shake his immediate fascination, so he continued his examination; all his psychic senses alert. What is it about her that calls to me?

Her eyes. He’d only seen eyes of that particular mist-strewn green hue on one person, along with that singular expression of blatant displeasure.

Luc refused to be drawn into memory, especially that one.

The young woman wore a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the neck.

Snug fitting trousers revealed a pleasant, if slim, shape.

The trousers disappeared inside age-worn leather boots.

The entire outfit was a uniform khaki color.

The boots, he suspected, had originally been black, but were so well used the color had faded to a dark rusty-gray.

Well prepared for the swelter and hazards of the bayou, no novice she.

Novice or not, no one could prepare for someone as cursed as he.

Luc couldn’t live a normal life, neither could he pass from life to his eternal fate.

His curse wasn’t something he cared to dwell on.

He was as he was. Therefore, he eschewed contact with both other spirits, and most people.

However, some of the living were impossible to avoid.

Of those who came to Sweet Dreams, many sought the thrill of a night in a supposedly haunted house.

With them, all he had to do was wait, and they’d leave.

The few who believed rumors of treasure in the holds of the Only Love would seize the chance to search.

As would the even fewer who knew of his curse and hunted the means to use him.

Did this new intruder want the same—to control him and his powers for her own benefit.

Would it be worthwhile to test the waters of this woman’s character?

The lights were out at the house. She probably slept. Watching her wouldn’t be difficult. Luc might even choose to wake her, revealing his ephemeral self. What might that sort of encounter show about her?

He drained his glass and set his energy to drift toward the house with the rising breeze.

Luc entered the house through the roof, flowing through walls and doors until he found the room she’d chosen.

Her makeshift bed lay at the edge of the moonlight.

Part of her nest remained in complete darkness.

The dim light robbed her and her surroundings of color.

He’d need all his hyper-senses to gauge her reactions.

Luc took up a position in a moonlit corner, where he was certain she’d see him upon waking.

He studied her still form. She’d foregone covers.

Wise. Even the lightest sheet would retain heat in this climate and make sleep nearly impossible.

She rested tightly curled on one side, head pillowed atop clasped hands.

Her lips, revealed at last as lush and full, moved in silent speech.

Then a hand shot out—palm raised in protest—and she tossed onto her back, groaning.

“What’s troubling you?” Luc mused aloud.

“Huh?”

The woman sat up, head moving rapidly side to side, searching until her gaze fixed on him.

“I asked what troubles you?”

“No!” She screamed and scrambled backward, cowering against the wall.

He looked down at himself. Yes, as he’d expected, she could see through his translucent body to the corner walls where he stood.

“I apologize. I so rarely see anyone; I sometimes forget how people react when they see me like this.” Truth mixed with lie.

As he’d had infinite time to remember, he forgot nothing.

She hugged her knees, clamping her eyes shut. “Not real. Dreaming. Just stress. Not real, not real, not real….”

Terror rolled off her in waves, battering him.

Luc blinked, and shame washed over him. He vanished himself, rushing back to the Only Love.

Had the moon been full, he would’ve been sweating, shaking in empathic dread.

However, if the moon had been full, he would have been corporeal, and perhaps not have scared her so badly.

The woman, on the other hand, had held herself so tightly she could not shake, like some wounded creature.

Those clenched eyes haunted him. She’d been desperate to convince herself she hallucinated.

However, she hadn’t run away. Nor had she leapt for a weapon.

She did not seem like the same woman who had confronted an unseen stranger. “... I have a rifle … I’ll shoot…”

No wonder I’m intrigued.

Which was the real woman?

The one who challenged, or the one who cowered?

Luc would give her time. Watch, learn her habits and intentions.

He need not hurry. Nor would he repeat tonight’s confrontation.

He’d tested the waters and found conflicting currents.

Strong, difficult currents. He began to feel—as he hadn’t for nearly one hundred years—the thrill of mastering an indomitable sea.