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Blogs > rm_lake2006fun > the lake shack

 

rm_lake2006fun 60M
Ask me for a photo
343 posts
11/29/2006 12:55 am

Last Read:
4/9/2009 9:06 am

..and so it began

....."tell the tale, grandpa, tell the tale!" The anxiously clustered around, in front of the fireplace with it's warm glow..scooting closer because grandpa didn't often favor them with stories, and when he did...the grew wide eyed, caught in the adventure themselves, the fire would crackle and pop! Making them all jump a little. "All right, all right." He settled back in his rocker, sipped his 'artheritis medicine' and began. Jenny poked her husband, standing in the kitchen doorway. She whispered, "Sam! Do you see that? Why aren't they this quiet and good at home? Why?"

.....The living room could have been carved from another era. Chunks of oak, maple and birch rose in a pile next to the fireplace. Somehow there was always a fire going, and it always seemed cheerful. Antique, well used furniture, wood floors that squeaked in places, wide pine boards were marked from years and years of travel across them. The sink in the kitchen was almost 100 years old. Grandpa didn't care if it dripped. He thought that cleared the well and he probably was right. Everything had that lived in look, because it was. His dad had built the house in 1906.

....."All right. Now, this is the story of the mandalay skull...said to be most powerful magic. Some said it glowed, some said it just heated up. I heard tell of it burning a man's hands who tried to hold it. We were bord ship off the coast of, hmm where was that now? Shanghai? Must have been shanghai. Three days out of port, there was this terrible storm. We lost some deckhands to that one, yea. That's where I learned how to tie off on the bulkhead, or a cleat. You don't do that, the great waves that crash over the decks will sure as I'm sittin here, wash you clean overboard!! Like you were never there. You don't want that, do yuh?" The all solemly shook thier heads. No, they didn't want to be washed overboard. "Always tie it off on something solid! Yer rope is yer lifeline! Anyway, the storm blew for a week, coming from every which way, and when we tried to turn into the waves the whole ship would drop right down, deep into a trough. She was a reconditioned freighter and yeah we all worried on that one. The chow line got a hell of a lot smaller after 6 men were swept overboard. The wind screamed and howled all week, the sky gray during the day and blacker than hell at night. The hold began to fill and we'd hand pump it out.

.....When the storm was finally over we had washed past a reef and were next to an island, surrounded by the turquose and blue waters. Gulls wheeled above, then caught the air currents to bank and sometimes dip for fish. Mild waves shooshed in, tumbling across the stretch of white sands. We sent a landing party in to scout. I was one of that party. I carried the food. Dried apples, biscuits and large dried flakes of meat from one port or another. ' chips' we called em cause they was like flattened manure.

.....There was a local village, brown people who jabbered a mix of languages. Our midshipman got thru some, he knew many of the languages from bein board ship so long. I was a young lad then. Not much older than you!" He pointed at one of the boys, a big eared fifteen year old. "Had ears like that too." He cleared his throat, "Harrumph!" sipped his whiskey then went on. "Well we set up a camp on the shore and traded a few things with the natives. We were going to be there a while since the ship needed repairs. A broken mast, well deck, hatches torn off, everything. Most of us stayed on shore, time on land gets valuable. We'd have great bonfires at night on the beach and drink the local favorite chen sing...some sort of local firewater. Great fish there, too. We roasted many a fish there. All over the place. Sharks too tho. Didn't want to swim cause they'd come over the reef at high tide, and yes they'd get ya.

.....Well one night it started getting late and most of the natives had gone back to their village when one of them cried out. 'Hokeashoe'or something like that. The skull man had came. We had heard something of magic around the islands before but this was the real thing. The skull man was the keeper of the mandalay skull. He looked ancient, all wrinkled but his eyes shone and he walked straight. I had to shake my eyes it looked like he was walking just above the ground! Sort of sliding, too. Just out of the firelight he came and the other natives ran away. They were afraid of him. Some of our stuff was shiny and the natives acted like they had never seen shiny stuff before. The skull man was interested in a small copper bound keg and the swords we kept. Nothin better than a sword close in.

.....Anyway he wanted a sword, the small keg and a shiny cannonball the we had been cracking coconuts on. The sword he got was kinda like that one." He pointed above the fireplace, then went on. "In return he gestured that he would give us something, and he did. Magic. He made that cannonball float like it wasn't nothing at all. He touched our feet. We were all<b> barefoot </font></b>an wearin ships rags. Tattered clothes. In the dim light just beyond the fire that night, there was something strange. Not from this world. Believe me or not, I've never looked at things the same. And once we pushed off, we could NEVER find that island again. Cap'n tried for years, every time we made a shanghai or singapore run. You see, he wasn't on shore that night. In the tropics the storms can kick up right sudden, and he stayed with the ship. Ol cap'n. Well I don't talk much about that magic. When the six of us stood, there by the fire we felt taller. I did, for one. But I didn't feel nothin under my feet. We were all a couple of inches from the ground. Tried sitting, same thing. Damn spooky. The wind started up, and then he was gone. Just gone, keg n cannonball an that sword he liked. A couple of the crew seen him by the village some days later, and they said the skull glowed from inside his pouch. Threw off heat. Said he had shells or something in there so it wouldn't burn thru.

.....Thats all for tonight, I'm a tired old man. I'll tell you more about it next time." There was an audible 'clunk' .....the swore later that grandpa's rockin chair had settled back down to the floor like it had been an inch up off the ground.

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