Free Haunted Shipwreck by S.D. Hintz

CHAPTER 1
    Passing Bell was a graveyard poet’s paradise. With the dawn came the chorus of crows and colliers. Black Locusts and bleeding hearts lined the sickle-shaped streets, shading the buried dead scattered about the woods. And the town had been built to outlast their owners, buildings of ivied bluestone with mansard roofs and mullioned windows. It was quaint and secluded, rife with campfire legends that blazed through generations.
    Jack Jericho had heard them all. Thirteen years in his hometown had soaked up every bloody tale. His favorite was the century-old shipwreck on the pier that killed a crew of pirates. It was said they stalked the woods nightly at high tide dragging rusted anchors.
    Similar yarns had been woven around the abandoned Skelt house across the street. Legend had it that at midnight on the nineteenth of every month, one could spot Lester “The Skeleton Man” Skelt hanging in the second story window. Jack had yet to see these ghosts with his own two eyes. Until then, Passing Bell would be a boring town full of glorified stories.
    Jack straightened the corduroy collar of his trail duster as he headed down the cobblestone bikeway. He was eager to see what Old Willard Reed had in stock today. Mondays were the largest loads of the week. They were delivered via ferryboat with the rest of the town supplies from Portage. On the days Jack had an inbound order, he would pace the pier with Old Willard, watching the sun rise through the ferry’s steam.
    Jack had collected nineteenth century antiques for as long as he could remember. Of course, Old Willard had lived next door all his life. So, it was no wonder he had such an obsession. Everything about the era intrigued him. Vaudeville, the Old West, ragtime, you name it. His parents thought he was crazy for spending his weekly allowance at Reed’s Antiques, and they were sick and tired of the stockpile in his bedroom. But what could he do? It was his hobby. His parents were obligated to tolerate his passion until he moved out of the house.
    “Hey, Jericho!”
    Jack looked up from the misty street. Mack Milton waddled across his lawn. He was a month younger than Jack and the only son of the town cleaver, hence his daily garb of a white full cut butcher coat. He was bull-necked and porky with a butch haircut that hid beneath a Detroit Tigers cap. As big as Mack was - standing five foot eight inches tall and weighing in at one hundred and eighty pounds - he was as chicken as they came. It was a known fact that he boarded up his bedroom window because it faced Lester Skelt’s hanging quarters.
    “Morning, Mack.”
    “What the hell kind of hat is that?”
    “A porkpie.”
    “Porkpie? Sounds like something I ate last night.”
    “It probably was something you ate last night.”
    Jack shook his head. He knew his hat would raise eyebrows. While it lacked the peculiar look of a deerstalker or stovepipe, it had the name that would be the butt of many jokes to come. Oh well. He was used to it. Besides which, it made him look like an Old West gambler, a regular Bat Masterson. And it complimented his charcoal Dodge City pants and gray crook scroll shirt. He had even plastered his dishwater blond hair and parted it down the middle to fit the image. Hell, if there was a sheriff in town, he would have been mistaken for an outlaw.
    Mack warped the brim of his cap. “Let me guess, you got it from the old man.”
    “Who else? It had my name written all over it.”
    “Whatever you say, Porkpie.”
    “Ha-ha, Beefcake. I’ll see you in a few.”
    “I gotta mop the meat locker. Maybe I’ll see you at Blue’s.”
    “Have fun scrubbing blood.”
    Jack cleaned his glasses on his shirt as he emerged from the mist, en route to Reed’s Antiques. Old Willard’s house stood on a weedy knoll at the end of a crumbled brick walk. It was three stories of faded bluestone with ivied eaves and a corbled chimney, from which wisps of smoke swirled into the ashen sky. Dark lanterns