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Part I. Prequel
"Watch your step, Bobby!" the little redhead yelled. She tossed her long curls back over her shoulders and pulled her ankle-length skirt up to keep it out of the squishy Mississippi mud. Her shoes and socks were already ruined and she'd lost her sunbonnet.
"We're almost there!" her older brother yelled, charging fiercely ahead through the trees and brush. A little mud wasn't about to slow him down.
"Wait for me!" his sister yelled.
"Come on, Kate!" he yelled to her, disappearing towards the river. Kate stopped in her tracks and fought back a new wash of tears before bravely continuing on. She was seven years old, a Southern lady-in-the-making, and no matter how hard she tried, keeping up with her twelve-year-old brother was hard work.
"I see it! I see it!" Bobby screeched at the top of his lungs from beyond the trees. Kate let her skirt fall in the mud and ran to catch up. When she
broke through the trees, her brother seized her by her arm to keep her from tumbling down the bank and into the river.
There it was, a ghost of its former self, the stuff of legends, the desultory remains of the once proud El Diablo, the wildest casino paddleboat to ever cruise the Mississippi. Its skeletal remains were now buried chin deep in Mississippi mud, the stern charred from a damaging fire, but the rest intact, if stripped. The two children stared at it, their eyes wide with amazement, their hearts wild with excitement.
"See!" Bobby yelled. "I told you the old goat wasn't lying! It really exists!"
"Don't call Grandma an old goat!" Kate yelled back.
"Let's check it out!" Bobby said, ignoring her. He quickly clambered over moss-covered logs and started scaling the hull.
"Bobby, don't!" Kate yelled after him, afraid of being left behind. "Grandma says it's haunted!"
Bobby pulled himself onto the deck and looked down at his sister, like the king of a mountain.
"Katy is a scaredy cat! Katy is a scaredy cat!" Bobby yelled gleefully, then he disappeared into the ship.
Kate stood frozen for a few minutes, torn between a sense of adventure and her grandmother's warnings. As she watched, something rustled in the grass near her. Looking down, she saw a huge snake slithering towards her mud-covered feet, all the incentive she needed to climb onto the boat. A few minutes later, she joined Bobby in the Captain's Cabin, her fine Sunday dress now soiled and torn.
"Did you find anything?" she asked nervously, glancing about for ghosts. The old boat really did look haunted. All the gambling tables and chairs were gone, the windows were broken, the safe was empty, even the ship's wheel had been taken. All that remained were a few tin boxes with some innocuous papers in them, some bullet holes in the walls and a scattering of poker chips.
"Nothing but these," Bobby said, handing her one of the boxes.
The lid was rusted to the box, and Kate had to sit cross-legged on the floor and pry it off with her brother's knife. Finally, after struggling patiently with it for sometime, the lid gave.
"Anything in there?" Bobby asked, starting to get curious.
Kate's eyes grew wide as she reached into the box and pulled out what looked like an old journal, covered with dust and bound together with wood and
leather. Bobby plopped down beside her and the two unbound the leather ties.
"What is it?" Kate asked. She didn't read all that well.
"It's a log of some kind. Let me see." Bobby pulled the journal into his lap and dusted off the cover. There, burned into the wood and animal hide cover,
were these words: "The Voyage of the Mistress of the Sea, the Orb Nymph, as chronicled by Mistress LaFitz."
"You know what this is?" Bobby asked.
Kate scowled. If she'd known what it was, she wouldn't have asked.
"It's the story of Grandma's ship. The real story. Now we can find out if she's telling the truth or not!"
Kate stared at it in amazement, remembering all her grandma's late night stories of pirates and buried treasure and wild women.
"What does it say?" Kate demanded to know.
Bobby opened the cover slowly, reverently, then laid the book on the floor before them, and began to read....
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