Haunted Read online

  All he said was, “Salt was hard to come by in those days. But you can’t make salt from a freshwater river.”

  Was he right? That was something else I wanted to check privately. My biologist friend and sometimes lover had several types of salinity meters in his lab. But my lips would serve almost as well, as would the knowledge that saltwater is heavier than fresh so it sinks to the bottom.

  Again, Capt. Summerlin’s journal had fired my curiosity.

  As I moved around the boat, I heard Carmelo yell out a complaint or celebrate a discovery, his voice garbled by distance. Closer, somewhere inland, I heard branches cracking—the clumsy weight of an armadillo or feral hog, I assumed. I pushed my sleeves higher, leaned off the boat, and breached the surface with both hands. Water was cool, a slick, weightless feel, then I tasted it—fresh, but a hint of brine. That was encouraging.

  I decided to find out if it was saltier on the bottom.

  With my help, Carmelo had tied the boat’s bow to a tree after dropping a stern anchor. I hauled the anchor, sloshed the flukes clean, then opened my backpack in the hopes of finding something useful. Along with the journal, I had things I carry on my own boat in case I break down. There were extra clothes, bug spray, a sewing kit, flares and sunscreen, but nothing that could be used to collect water from the river’s deepest spot.

  Finally I chose an empty Coors bottle from the Igloo and used fishing line to clove-hitch it to the yoke of the anchor. I wanted the bottle to sink fast. Air pressure, I hoped, would prevent it from filling until it got to the bottom.

  When the bottle was secure, I pushed the boat away from the tree and waited for the line to pull taut. The drop-off was many yards astern. Too far to heave a ten-pound anchor. I realized I’d have to balance myself on the transom and use the engine as a knee brace to add distance when I tossed the thing. That was risky. So, before I went to work, I placed my phone on the console, along with my backpack and the journal, which I’d removed from its watertight bag—and couldn’t help reading a few passages before getting my hands wet.

  It was a wise precaution. My first throw, I stepped on the anchor line. The next try, I checked my feet, got a good pendulum motion going, then heaved the anchor hard. Too hard. The engine, instead of supporting my weight, gave way, spinning to the left, and I went overboard. It is possible I hollered “Damn!” just before I hit the water.

  But no harm done. I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blouse, and Nikes, not boat shoes, because I knew we’d be hiking. Fishing guides are used to soggy clothing. I’d also brought a towel. So I was smiling at my clumsiness when I surfaced. I combed hair out of my face and decided to enjoy the situation. It had been hot in the stillness of the homestead’s wreckage and the water was cool. So I sculled toward the middle of the river, seeing mimosa trees, dragonflies, the reflection of a passing egret from a duck’s perspective. Several hard green fruit that resembled apples, too, afloat like golf balls, and a flotilla of seedpods, long and brown. They parted at my approach. I continued on, only my eyes and nose, periscope-like, breaching the surface.

  Thankfully, my ears weren’t submerged—which is why the sound of breaking branches caught my attention again. I listened briefly, gauging the size and weight, and decided I’d been wrong about the armadillo or some other small animal. Something big was pushing its way through the brush . . . not fast, but definitely headed my way.

  I swung my legs around and sculled toward the boat, all senses alert. If it was a feral hog, normally no problem. I had once been confronted by a big boar in attack mode, however, and some memories are forever fresh. My real fear was that a large gator had gone inland for some sun and was now plowing its way back to the river for an afternoon meal.

  I sculled faster. The temptation was to stretch out and swim hard. In high school—not a pleasant period in my life—my happiest moments were playing clarinet in the band and being on the varsity swim team. Breaststroke was my specialty, but I can flat-out fly doing freestyle, too. Trouble was, if I swam, whatever was approaching might enter the water unseen. I found the prospect unsettling. Better to know what was coming and deal with it.

  And that’s exactly what I had to do. Now bushes were moving along the path that led to the old homestead, the heavy snap of branches still clumsy but moving faster and with purpose. Finally I understood: the splash of me hitting the water had traveled through the trees. Something had heard me and was on its way to investigate. I might make it to the boat first, but whatever it was would be right there waiting.

  To hell with caution. I swam—long, strong strokes—my clothes a dragging weight, my shoes useless as fins. Then my hands were on the boat’s transom, but my foot somehow snagged the anchor line. I fell back in. Bubbles boiled around my eyes. I was terrified of what might grab me from beneath—the water so black and clear. I resurfaced with a yelp and lunged for the boat again. This time I made it, floundered up over the transom and skidded like a wounded seal.

  I was winded but immediately looked up—and there was Belton Matás. He was grinning but had a concerned look on his face. “You should have told me you were going in for a swim. Isn’t there something called the buddy system?” He removed his glasses and squinted. “Are you all right?”

  There was no recovering my poise. That had vanished when fear took control. “Oh, Belton, some expert I am. I fell in. Then I thought you were a . . . I don’t know what I thought. My lord, I almost never scream like that.” I sat up and pulled my blouse away from my chest—still prim and proper despite everything else.

  The man said, “I didn’t hear a scream—I assumed you were having fun. In fact, I was going to ask . . . Well, never mind.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, you made a sort of laughing sound. That’s what I heard anyway.”

  “Well . . . good . . . Ask me what?”

  “Just an idea I had because you were already in the water. And swim beautifully. Are you hurt?”

  I got up and took a peek downward to confirm my wheat-colored blouse wasn’t see-through. I still had my shoes, too. “I’m used to bruises from falling over my feet. I was enjoying myself until I heard you coming through the bushes . . . And after what Carmelo said about the water—”

  “Carmelo? He can’t swim, doubt if he even showers. Watch your balance . . .” Belton stepped aboard and reached for the console to steady himself. I realized he would see the journal sticking out from beneath the towel.

  He did but said, “Do you want this?” meaning the towel, which he handed me, his eyes lingering momentarily on the leather-bound volume. It could have been one of those awkward moments but wasn’t. The gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, behaved like a gentleman.

  I said, “What did you want to ask me?”

  “Well, at the time it seemed like a good idea. Wait . . .” He signaled for my attention with an index finger. Turned, opened a forward hatch, then faced me, holding a mesh dive bag that looked new. Inside were a mask and snorkel, still in plastic, and cheap adjustable swim fins. “I bought these yesterday—no idea Carmelo is scared of the water. Then, when I saw what a good swimmer you are, well . . .” A humorous shrug.

  I said, “You want me to see what’s down there, don’t you?”

  “No. Well, unless you really want to.”

  I had to think about it. Normally, I would have been eager. From the journal entries I’d read that morning, I knew that Ben Summerlin might have traveled this very river. If true, there was a chance he had scuttled his dory somewhere along its length. Which meant there was a remote possibility that Belton had found my great-great-uncle’s boat—astronomical odds, but why not take a look?

  My bout of wild panic, that’s why. But I was feeling better, more sheepish than suffering any real fear of the river. Something else: I had an ulterior motive. The beer bottle . . . it was still clove-hitched to the anchor. To explain honestly, I would have to admit concealing in
formation from a man who had been open and kind to me. Better to nab the bottle while underwater and broach the subject of the journal later.

  Using the towel, I scrubbed at my hair. “I’d like to see what’s down there myself—if you’re willing to watch for alligators. And if the mask fits. I can check without going in.”

  I didn’t expect the look of gratitude on the man’s face. “I’ll get Carmelo. It’ll be safer with a younger set of eyes. You are a valuable young lady, Hannah.”

  He placed the mask and snorkel within reach and moved quickly, for a man his age, up the path toward the homestead.

  • • •

  WHILE I WAITED, I tested the mask, but only after retrieving the beer bottle and touching a finger to the water, then my lips.

  Very salty.

  My concerns vanished. Suddenly, the exact wording of an entry Capt. Summerlin had made in the summer of 1864 was important enough to sneak another look. I listened for noise, then opened both the journal and my notebook, hurrying so I could cross-reference a few entries before Belton and Carmelo returned.

  9 June, 1864 (aboard Sodbuster): The Blues is camped at Ft. Myers & Labelle which aint much of a fort but they do have a supply shed & a brace of 4” canon that can shoot acrosst bank to bank. What they aint got is a shoal draft dory, nor a knowledge of the creek that branches north of Labelle & [NEXT FIVE LINES BLOTTED].

  Hmm . . . the entry referenced the right boat and possibly the right river, but it was not the passage I was after. I continued reading.

  12 July, 1864 (Old Tampa): Deserters & runaways of the roughest sort have slipped into Florida like filth from a honey bucket. The railroad yard smelt like shit too & aint no place for a ships master but it is wear sutlers deal Yankee silver for cattle. The Frenchman I was to met did not show & I fear it aint true he owns a locomotive nor even the boiler what sunk in the [NAME BLOTTED]. I got more faith in the Cubans I will meet come morn if this weather breaks . . .

  Wrong entry again. But I read it all because my great-uncle’s sudden interest in trains and boilers seemed key to a bigger story. The same was true of an entry made in the spring of that year.

  1 September, 1864 (Key West, Hawks Channel): Loaded aboard is 36 mixed longhorn @ $6 silver per head but not one hogshead of beef or mullet cause of this situation. The victuallers in Habana will be sore disappointed but the beef will turn a pretty profit & guarantee the money required. On the Sunday before Christmas we are promised to deliver 100 silver dollars which aint easy considering the cost of what follows in expenses . . .

  Ben Summerlin had a plan. His plan included a train or a boiler, or both, and a river that fed into the Caloosahatchee from the north. He had sailed to Cuba to finance the project.

  That made sense. To make salt for thousands of people, a boiler the size of a train’s might be required. But where was the reference that tied things together? Finally I found it by backtracking, a fragment from an illegible entry made earlier in 1864 I had failed to note in my time line.

  27 May (Punta Rassa): . . . and what I tolt Gatrell & brothers they [NEXT FOUR LINES SMEARED] . . . that the bridge aint to far. A salt spring is there neath the surface owned by a Spaniard who is expert at [SMEARED OR BLOTTED] a master of trowel & square so this man is likely [ILLEGIBLE].

  There! My subconscious had put it together, but here was written proof. The Spaniard was the Brazilian who had planted timber before selling the property to Charles Cadence. Proof that a master bricklayer had lived at this spot was the cistern I had seen only minutes ago. And I had just tasted the salt spring . . . neath the surface with my lips.

  Additional proof: remains of a railroad bridge were only a mile from where I sat. I wasn’t certain the bridge had existed in the 1860s, but it might have. That was good enough for me. Ben Summerlin had guarded this river’s name, but, even if he hadn’t, the name had changed since Civil War days.

  It all fit.

  I felt sure of it. And, because I was convinced, I knew something else: whatever had sunk here wasn’t my great-uncle’s lost dory. Journal entries from late 1864 weren’t as badly damaged, so I knew from skipping ahead that he’d scuttled the dory while being chased by Union soldiers. Maybe the soldiers had discovered him making salt. Or maybe he had used salt as a ruse to spring a trap. The journal had yet to reveal the whole story, but Ben Summerlin was no fool. He wouldn’t have fled upriver—there was no escape in the cypress swamps and palmettos to the north. And he wouldn’t have scuttled his boat so close to another man’s dock.

  Whatever the sonar unit had found on the bottom was too near the old homestead to be my great-uncle’s boat. In a way, I was disappointed. On the other hand, Sodbuster was somewhere on this river, still waiting to be found.

  “We’re coming, Hannah dear!”

  Belton’s voice reached me from the undergrowth. I closed the journal and slipped both books into my bag. I felt a twinge of guilt for being sneaky but then decided when the timing was right I would lay out the whole story, journal, notes, and all, for Belton to see. Who better to help than a retired Civil War expert with time on his hands and who was trustworthy?

  But not Carmelo. There was something wrong about the man that had nothing to do with his weak intellect—or his simpleton act. I would have to feel out Belton’s loyalty before I moved ahead.

  When the two men appeared on the bank, I had the mask pressed to my face, but it fell away—no suction to hold it in place.

  “How’s it fit?”

  I said, “It’ll be okay, I think.”

  That was a kindness. If a mask doesn’t cling to your face, it will leak. I knew it but was unconcerned. Only two or three shallow dives would be needed for me to find out what was on the bottom. So I wouldn’t bother with the cheap strap-on fins either. But I would use the snorkel.

  No . . . No, I wouldn’t. The tube leaked, which I discovered while breaststroking toward the deepest part of the river, an oxbow shaded by mimosas. So I swam back and tossed the thing into the boat. Unfortunately, Carmelo was busy netting seedpods, for some reason, and the snorkel hit him squarely in the forehead.

  Belton laughed.

  Carmelo did not. His tough-guy face turned fierce. “You gonna get burnt, girl,” he said as if he wanted only me to hear. “You’ll see.”

  It took several dives to locate the right spot, but the first confirmed I was diving into a salt spring. Only a body length underwater, there was an abrupt temperature change. It was like swimming into a refrigerated vault—a sealed vault, because visibility changed from fair to poor.

  A leaking mask added to my discomfort. As I neared the bottom, pressure increased, temperature dropped, and water flooded in. Salinity was so strong, it hurt my eyes. Is that what Carmelo had meant by You’re gonna get burnt, girl?

  Unlikely. A man who can’t swim is a poor adviser when it comes to thermoclines.

  I surfaced, stripped the mask off, and fiddled with the straps while Belton called, “What did you see?”

  “Use your hands and steer me toward the wreck,” I answered. “It gets murky near the bottom.”

  He directed me away from the dock and farther downriver. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll use the fish finder and drop a buoy or something.”

  I said, “You watch for gators. Carmelo, I want you to watch, too. This shouldn’t take long.”

  Yes, it should have been easy, but, three tries later, all I’d found was a bottle encrusted with a white coating—salt.

  “Save it,” Belton called, “or swim it to me.”

  I jammed the bottle in my pocket and said, “I’m not coming back until I find the darn thing.”

  That was nearly true.

  I took several deep breaths and knifed downward. So far, I had done quick bounce dives. This time, when I got to the bottom, I leveled out and pulled myself downriver, feeling my way through the murk. Mussel shells, waterlogged seedpods,
everywhere . . . Then my shoulder banged into something that had an elastic give to it like a rope. It startled me. I couldn’t help but grunt in surprise.

  Automatically, I started up. If I hadn’t been taught to extend my hand when surfacing, my head would have collided with something that, inexplicably, wouldn’t allow me to surface. It was a black mass that raced toward my mask moments after my fingers made contact. I exhaled another grunt, accompanied by bubbles, but stayed calm. I reminded myself I was in less than ten feet of water. Find a way around the object, I would be on the surface within moments.

  It wasn’t that easy. I used both hands to push myself clear, but the black mass stayed with me. It seemed to be long and tubular when my face banged into what felt like a metal wall. I turned, tried the opposite side, and banged into another wall. Definitely metal. When I spun and hit what felt like a steel bar, I became disoriented.

  A drainage culvert, I thought. Someone dumped a drain pipe.

  But how in the world had I managed to thread my way into a pipe? And why was it suspended several feet off the bottom?

  They used an anchor, I reasoned. That’s why it won’t budge.

  Impossible. Drain culverts don’t float. Even thinking such an absurdity proved that fear had stunted my ability to reason. Something that didn’t require analysis was obvious: I would drown if I didn’t find a way out. The metal bar was the only constant in a blind world that was suffocating me. I grabbed it and felt the structure move. That provided another absurd hope—maybe I could push it to the surface, then escape.

  No. My head banged against a ceiling while the object strained against its tether, the structure buoyant enough to pivot. I kicked and pulled with my free hand, but the thing refused to ascend more than a few inches. My god . . . was I going to die like this? I was trapped from above—yet my lower body remained unobstructed.