Conjuring Blackbeard's Ghost

“Ha! Its a wonder I didn’t blow myself up before then with all the stuff I drank and wore to look ferocious! Spiking my rum with gunpowder and setting it on fire before I guzzled it. Sporting a bandoleer with three braces of cocked pistols, primed flintlocks, dirks, daggers and cutlasses, and those pretty smoking fuses dangling from my hat. Made of the best Havannah hemp yep maree-juana. Ha! I went around out-of-my-skull stoned mad! 

“My skull... its somewhere around here. They sawed off the top above the eyes, dipped it in molten silver, and called it Blackbeard's Cup. It had magical properties. Whoever drank out of it could talk to sharks and smell gold under water, and walk on waves with a parrot on each shoulder, I think. But it vanished. Only Blackbeard knows where it is. Ha!”

“Where is it?”

“Who are you?”

“A travel journalist.”

“Bloody hell! You think I’d tell a gossiping scribe? Anyway, who cares about the stupid cup. The soul of Blackbeard is beyond all trouble now. And this seance you’re paying for is for the birds.”

“Edward Teach, A.K.A. Blackbeard, the most ferocious pirate ever lived, Where are you?”

“I am... in paradise.

“Paradise ?!!” I  snorted, nearly snuffing out the candle. English buccaneer Eddie Teach, the most sadistic pirate that ever lived, ruthlessly murdering, plundering, all up and down the Caribbean and southern Atlantic coasts and abusing 14 wives—in Paradise? How'd you rig that?”

“Same way I bought the North Carolina Governor Charles Eden and Government Secretary Tobias Knight back in 1714. I bribed Saint Peter. Naw, naw I’m only jokin just to make fun of this bringin’ back the dead stuff. You really overdo it in the New Age. Naw, I repented my sins. T'is amazin' what death will do for you....Here I am, writin' be-yoootiful slobby love letters to all 14 wives. Here I am, writin' apologies to the good people of Charleston for taking them hostage and raiding their apothecary shops for opium. Here I am sendin’ flowers to me mother. Only there's one thing I really hate.”

“What's that, Blackbeard?”

“These bleedin’ pirate shops scattered around the Outer Banks.. Sellin' stupid Jolly Roger flags and stunt kites and plastic glow-in-the-dark skulls and skull-shaped mugs and ashtrays, eye-patches, counterfeit dubloons, and rubber cutlasses and scabbbards, and fake treasure maps that lead to nowhere.”

“Fake pirate maps!  I remember making one when I was ten. I crumpled it up and smeared it with dirty French fry grease to make it look old.  Had all the neighborhood kids believing there was buried pirate gold in Indianapolis!”

“...and those frickin' fake tattoos. Dat's the worst, fake tattoos. How's a py-rat to show his bravado with a skull-and-crossbones you can peel off !!!? Huh? Its makin' a sacrilege of what we brigands were: the dastardliest scum and dregs of the human race.  Ha!

“And another loathesome thing is arrangin' cockamamey seances just so's you can write about them, and lure more tourists into comin' to Ocracoke Island. And ruinin' my old hideout!”

“But Ocracoke's not ruined. It's too far out of the way. You have to drive all the way to Hatteras, and then take a 45-minute ferry. But yeah, I saw the Pirate's Chest and Teach's Hole, and the Jolly Roger Pub, Pirates Quay Condo Hotel, and Blackbeard's Lodge, with the boat-shaped check-in desk named The Adventure.

“Bloody landlubbers! Puttin' my ship's name on a bleedin' motel desk! How dare they!!!””

“But look, Blackbeard, your island is still wild, with galloping mustangs and free-grazing animals and 13 miles of isolated beach. And Ocracoke Village still exudes a  rather barefoot charm.”

“Barefoot charm ? Ain't that a cute travel writer's cliché for ye!”

“Well, I mean the village of a thousand or so blow-ins and descendants of shipwrecks and pirates has no sidewalks, no fast food joints, just a general store. Some streets are just sandy paths under live oaks. Fishnets hanging in the front yards of little frame houses, family graveyards in the back, that sort of thing.  The lighthouse we are huddled under at the moment is the oldest in operation on the North Carolina coast 1823.  It's cause hurricanes make Ocracoke just too wild for most people.”

“Ah, hurricanes. My kind of weather... “

“I walked along the beach last night under the full moon, with the pounding surf and silken sands, and the air perfumed with cedar and salt ...following the tiny sparks of eyes of scuttling ghost crabs, and the feathery sea oats and spiky beachgrass and yaupon bushes etched in the silvery light.”

“Romantic dunce!”

“Nope, just gathering atmospheric details for my story.”

“Hmph!”

“Things were hectic during World War II, when Ocracoke was a navy base for anti-submarine patrols. But it's quiet now. Most of the action in the Outer Banks is around Nag's Head and Kitty Hawk. Gosh! the air is crammed with flying people and things taking off on hang gliders or drifting behind mylar and aluminum gliders.  And the waves are leaping with windsurfers.”

“Nancy...?”

“Who's that?”

“Its me, David. Don't forget to mention my topless and roofed  double-decker sight-seeing buses. Authentic London buses that I brought over myself from England, and drive around the Outer Banks attractions, and nightly for Beach Pub Crawls and going between the Ocracoke ferry and Ocracoke Village. Call The Beach Bus, Inc. (919) 255-0550.”

“David Hoare! Your'e supposed to be in a trance. Your'e the medium, remember?”

“Yeah but it's getting awful chilly under this old lighthouse, and I'm waking up.”

“But I wanted to tell Blackbeard's ghost about Jockey's Ridge. The highest sand dune on the East Coast. How I scrambled 140-feet to the top to shoot the hang-gliders taking off on foot-launched lessons.”

“With pistols or flintlocks?”

“Blackbeard???  With camera lenses you brute! Hey, guess he's still with us! Oh the vast yellow dune is something out of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Vista of wings over sand. Great thermals and great place to land on your ass. Gee Edward Teach would look funny on a hang glider.”

“I'm no blasted carrier pigeon!”

“...or on a surfboard! Imagine Blackbeard sneaking up on a merchant sailing vessel on a surfboard! The best surf beach on the East Coast is around the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, where over 600 ships have wrecked since 1526. Where the northbound Gulf Stream smashes into the southbound Labrador Current.

“Blackbeard, I'm telling you... I climbed the 268 spiralling steps to the top of that 208-foot high black-and-white striped barber pole, built 150 years ago of a million and a quarter bricks. And I looked down. Hypnotic endless whitecaps... colorful boards leaping the waves.”

(Sigh)... “I remember waves...”

“But the waves at Canadian Hole aren't as wild. What a confetti of windsurfers, whizzing by and keeling over, up and down again. What a traffic jam of jeeps with Quebec license plates. I rode one along the beach, past where a guy had actually lost his jeep to the tides a few days before. Parked too close to the waves. For too long. Just sunk into the sands. Without a trace! “

“ That's some fricken' buried treasure!”