... Let's Go Exploring!

The USS Watterson lay in utter ruin. Rubber shreds, tangled amongst sandy sticks and pebbles littered the beach as the lapping tide nibbled them into its silty depths. The Captain was unconscious, face down in the damp grit of the shore. His eyes fluttered, then opened. Desolation lay about him and his lungs burst with pain as his breath stretched full once again. 

He sat up, eyeing the wreckage. 

“Avast,” he muttered, salty air chafing his lungs. “How long have I been out here?”

No one answered, of course. He was the last of his ship’s crew. The strong, iron-willed man of steel. It wasn’t any wonder that he was the lone survivor.

That barmaid? He thought. What was her name? Susie?

“Blast my recalcitrant greed!” he said. The promise had been too good to be true. The map, waterlogged in his breast pocket came at a good price… too good a price. It had cost him his faithful crew and, worse, his ship. He cursed himself, then stood. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one on this forsaken sandbox!” A line of footprints trailed up to the tree-line. He followed. 

It was dense here, save for the thin path that snaked its way through the vegetation. The Captain discarded his coat. Sweat beaded down his face and chest dripping from the ribbons that remained of his shirt and breeches. Some unknown jungle birds screeched their song upon the misty air. He could feel eyes on him, prodding his back, making the hairs on his neck stand on end. 

If only I had my sword! He thought. “Curses!”

Twigs snapped, and, what could only described as the sound of wet noodles sliding along the forest floor grew louder and louder. 

His eyes failed him. Only dark shadows and the swaying palm fronds were all he could see. He stood still, deadly still. Gut trembling, he could feel the heat of fear waft off him as an explosive burst of foliage pounded him in the face. 

“Blast!” He shouted, dodging into a tight roll. What looked like a massive fallen tree lay across the path before him. It squirmed, writhed. He felt his bowels grow cold, as the unmistakable scaled pattern slithered into the brush. 

Like diamonds, the Captain saw a pair of eyes glowing in front of him. He heard a hiss, felt the tension in the beast as its head coiled back for another strike. 

“Not today, foul creature!” he cried, breaking off a branch, he lurched once again, narrowly escaping the serpent’s hooked jaws. It slithered onto the trail, the extent of its body filling the path. 

“Ah, a Lymerian Jungle Viper, I should have known.” The Captain stood, fragile twig held firmly in his sweating hand. 

It struck out, again missing the Captain. He snapped the stick across the viper’s face. It reeled back, twisting in boiling agony. 

“Have at you!” He jabbed with what remained of his wooden sword, piercing the serpent’s golden eye. “That’ll teach you to mess with the dreaded Captain Calvin!”

It reared, hissed, then lunged again, blindly. “That’s what I thought, you yeller-livered swamp noodle.” With the beast impeded, the Captain was able to predict every move. He dodged and rolled the clambering jaws over and over again, until the slithering terror was a tangled knot of its own body. 

Calvin smiled. 

The battle over, the path forward was now free of danger, and so, Captain Calvin wandered forward, a shattered twig littered the path behind him. 

The pyramid stood tall, ominous, blocking the sun’s rays. Vines tangled amongst the weathered stones like a giant net. Numerous doors were carved on both sides of the dire stairway. In its shadow was the Captain. He peered up, lip hooked in a sneer. He saw the footprints once again. They stopped before the first step. Thunder roared in the distance and the sky behind him boiled in a dark cloak. He thought he saw a glimpse of movement in the hollow doorways above. He grit his teeth, then ascended. 

From below, the pyramid was massive, a towering monolith of stone, creepers, and mystery. Upon the steps, it was even more so. Pebbles skittered down the steps as Captain Calvin stopped to breath. His lungs were scorching, legs flaring embers of pain. 

Clack clack! 

He turned, heaving. Nothing seemed to stir, though the doorway before him was shrouded in darkness. 

“Come out if you value your petty life!” He called. A faint visage presented itself, not leaving the curtained safety of the doorway’s shadow. “I said come out!”

The milky white relief of a skull smiled at him. It clattered out, hands stretched, poised to claw and strangle. 

“Ah ha!” the Captain cried. “You thought you could--” he gasped. Several more skeletons poured from the doorway. He leapt up the steps, near the next set of passage openings only to find that they were full of the cursed, skinless denizens as well. 

He ran. Ran for his young life. The skeletons filled the stairs below him, countless, clattering up the stone in a macabre din of ravaged bone. That deathly timbre filled the space before him, as more and more of the mindless creatures blocked his passaged up. 

“Curses!”

He was surrounded. Gruesome, chattering smiles spread out around him. Waves of bone, fingers and teeth, they clawed and climbed. The overcame him like a tidal wave. Darkness. Musty, mildew scent affronted his clenching nostrils. He could feel their tenebrous fingertips dig into his back and neck. His clothing was torn from him as he was deafened by the raucous cacophony of the dead. 

He reached a hand up, felt something grasp it. Something full… warm… hairy?

Pulled into the rainy air, he gasped for breath. Dark, pebble-like eyes met his. “First--First Mate?”

“Aye, Captain,” the tiger said. He he stood lithely atop the writhing mound of bones, rain pelting him as he surfed the bodies, festooned in a crystalline glow. “You lost your hat!” He slapped a sopping wet, folded newspaper atop the Captain's head. 

Captain Calvin and his First Mate Hobbes leapt from the seething mass, clung to a craggy ledge beside the steps of the pyramid. 

“You didn’t think I would leave my Captain to such a fate, did you?” Hobbes said. He pulled a glimmering cutlass from the sheath at his striped hip. Settling his own newspaper hat atop his head, the tiger lunged forward with a fierce swipe at the nearest skeleton. 

The mound was wising up. They noticed that their prey had escaped them. As one, like a flow of water, they began pouring forward, sneering jaws agape. 

A glint caught the Captain’s eye. Sticking from one of the boned terror’s chest was a sword just for him. He grasped it almost as if by instinct, pulling the rusted smear of steel and brass free with a greasy creak. 

Him and Hobbes pressed through the fray, taking the higher ground and rushing several paces up the steps. They neared the top of the pyramid before they turned. Tangles of vines and foliage pulled at their feet. They stood side to side, swords out, rain pinging against the pair of steel blades. Thunder cracked above and the air filled with moist static. 

The bones clattered up after them.  “Have at you!” the two cried in unison, bringing their blade up for a heavy downward blow. 

“Calvin!”

The Captain blinked. Around him were piles of sticks in all manner of disarray. Rain leaked down his face in rivulets, bleeding newspaper ink in muddy streaks. 

“I’ve been calling you for five minutes,” his mom said. She stood on the back porch landing, foot tapping. “It’s starting to storm out here, you need to come in, now.” 

The boy blinked, his trusty stuffed tiger grasped tightly in his hand, spongy and sopping wet. 

Calvin’s mom let out a sigh, “Darn it, Calvin, I just washed him. And why is the hose all tangled up?”

The End