Shadow of a Life (5 page)

There was so much sadness behind the
sparkle in Sophia’s eyes that I felt myself feeling even more drawn
to her than I had the day before. It felt as if we’d already known
each other for a lifetime.

“
Anyway, about the time of
my second birthday, we set sail for Staten Island where Father was
to receive a load of alcohol and sail with it to Italy. The night
before we left, my parents met with Captain Morehouse for dinner.
He was the captain of a ship by the name of
Dei Gratia
and a friend of my father.
Captain Morehouse was sailing to somewhere in Europe, too. I don’t
recall where exactly and it’s not important. They all expected to
see each other in Italy in the weeks ahead.”

“
Isn’t Captain Morehouse the
one who found the
Mary Celeste
sailing by itself?”

Sophia nodded. “Yep. Good memory. I
take it you’ve heard the story before?”

“
Many times. It’s
fascinating.”

“
We spent the first two and
a half weeks of the crossing trying to keep ourselves entertained.
Mother emptied out our large sea chest and I would sit inside it
and play. She would pretend she didn’t know where I was and I would
sit in the bottom of the case giggling. It was a very peaceful
time. Unfortunately, the morning of November
25
^th
brought choppier seas and a little bit of rain.”

“
So there
was
a big storm? Is that
what happened to your family?” I had a hard time waiting for Sophia
to get to the part of her story where they all
“disappeared.”

“
Well, as you seem to know,
one theory about the mystery of the
Mary
Celeste
was that we were caught in a big
storm. Yes it was stormy, but it wasn’t anything that concerned my
father much. He’d sailed in seas and storms like that many times
before. The rain stopped and the fog was starting to clear so my
mother took me to the upper deck to get some fresh air. About
midday, one of my father’s crewmen started yelling. Apparently,
when the mist cleared they realized we were headed right into the
path of another ship. As we sailed closer the crew noticed that
this ship had its sails down and was flying a white
flag.”

“
A white flag? What does
that mean?” I interrupted again.

“
It means the same thing on
a ship as it does on land. If someone’s waving a white flag it
means they surrender, or that they’re peaceful,” she
answered.

“
Oh. Gotcha. You can
continue now.”

“
Yes, ma’am.” Sophia winked
at me. “We stopped a short distance from the ship and were then
able to read its name—
The
Aurabelle.
None of the crew recognized it,
but it appeared to be a merchant ship of some sort. A lifeboat was
lowered into the water from the
Aurabelle
and some of their crew
paddled toward us. They stopped and yelled to my father, saying
that the storm had damaged their ship and they were taking on
water. Father, being the good man that he was, graciously welcomed
them aboard the
Mary
Celeste
. They had a woman with them and
Mother quickly took care of her, offering a blanket and tea. The
captain of the
Aurabelle
introduced himself as Jeremiah Goodwin. He told
father they were sailing from Portugal to the Caribbean. There was
no reason to suspect anything to be amiss so his story wasn’t
questioned further, and soon all the crew of the
Mary Celeste
had gathered
to hear the tales of this seemingly jovial man.”

Here, Sophia paused and took a deep
breath. Her countenance darkened as she continued with her story.
“It wasn’t long before Jeremiah revealed that their ship was
actually in fine shape. He and all of his crew—including the
woman—pulled out guns and announced that they were taking command
of the Mary Celeste and her cargo.”

I gasped. “You mean they were
pirates?”

Having studied the mystery
of the
Mary Celeste
for most of my life, I knew there were many theories as to
what happened to her crew. Some thought there’d been a great storm,
others believed there to be an undersea earthquake of sorts. Some
crackpots insisted the crew had all been abducted by aliens. Even
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story about his own theory before he
became famous for writing stories about Sherlock Holmes. Piracy had
been suggested at the time, of course, but it was quickly
disregarded. Apparently that was a bad idea.

Sophia continued. “I doubt
the word pirate ever even crossed my father’s mind when he let
Captain Goodwin and his crew on board the
Mary Celeste
. After all, pirates did
most of their dirty work hundreds of years before I was even born.
They were definitely a rarity at that time and in that
area.”

“
What happened after they
pulled out guns?” The tone of my voice was rising. By that point in
the story I was on the edge of the couch hanging on every word
coming out of Sophia’s mouth.
Could all
the crew of the
Mary Celeste
have survived? If Sophia lived to be eighteen,
what happened to everyone else on board?

“
Everyone was stunned. No
one knew what to do or what was going to happen. I remember my
mother clinging to me, but I think at the time I was oblivious to
what was going on around me. My father’s crew was made up of loyal
men, and when Captain Goodwin tried to tie up my father they
retaliated and attacked him. Shots were fired. My mother screamed,
and I cried inconsolably. When the smoke cleared, two of Father’s
crewmen were lying dead on the deck. Captain Goodwin’s entire
demeanor changed. He was enraged. He forced my family and the rest
of Father’s crew onto his lifeboat. Just before they began lowering
the boat with all of us into the water, the woman yelled for him to
stop. Turns out she was Elsa Goodwin—Jeremiah’s wife. She and her
husband whispered to each other for a minute and then he came over
and . . . and . . . ripped me from my mother’s arms.”

Sophia’s voice cracked, but she
continued on, not looking up from her hands as she
spoke.

“
I was still crying
hysterically, but Elsa held me close and watched over the edge of
the
Mary Celeste
as the lifeboat was lowered to the water. I could hear my
parents crying. The sound of mourning filled the sea. My father was
yelling and pleading with Jeremiah. I think he even tried to climb
back up the ropes, but Captain Goodwin just looked over the edge of
the ship’s deck, aimed his pistol, and fired. Father was instantly
silent, but my mother’s screams have haunted me ever since I died
and my childhood memories returned. There was another shot fired,
and then she too was silent. It was the last time I saw my parents,
swallowed up by the unforgiving ocean.”

I glanced at Sophia when she stopped
talking. There were silent tears streaming down her face and
suddenly she didn’t look so perfect anymore. Instead of feeling
jealous of her as I had the first few times I saw her, I pitied
her, and something inside me ached for the pain she’d been forced
to endure.

I stood up, surprised at how
stiff my body was. My muscles were so tense from anxiety that I
could hardly move. I took a couple of tissues from a box on a side
table and offered them to her. The revelation that Sophia was a
ghost was nothing compared to how my mind felt just then. I
couldn’t believe I’d heard the true story of the
Mary Celeste.

*****

I convinced Sophia that we should take
a break from the living room and head outside to the patio. After
what I’d just heard, I needed some fresh air. I grabbed a bag of
chips and a couple of sodas as we passed through the kitchen on our
way to the patio door. I offered the bag of chips to Sophia first,
but she politely turned them down.

She smiled slyly. “Actually, ghosts
don’t really need to eat. Sometimes we do just to keep up
appearances, but it isn’t necessary and we don’t really taste the
difference between one food and another. It gets kind of old
chewing on stuff that tastes like paper when it isn’t doing you any
good.”

“
Really? If you don’t need
to eat, do you need to sleep?”

“
No, but we can . . . sort
of. We have a way of temporarily turning our minds off and falling
into a trance-like state, but it’s not really sleeping. I do it
just to help pass the time, though. I try to live as human of a
life as I can, but I never actually change.”

Suddenly, a crazy thought entered my
mind. I really hoped it wasn’t true. “If ghosts are real, what
other mythical beings exist? Please tell me there aren’t vampires
or werewolves or zombies roaming around out there.”

Sophia laughed. I could tell she was
feeling better. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never met one of
those characters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It’s
highly doubtful, Jamie.”

I got up and moved to the patio swing,
rocking back and forth slowly. “So why did what’s her name, Captain
Goodwin’s wife, want to save you if they got rid of everyone else?
It obviously wasn’t for ransom.”

“
Elsa. Her name was Elsa.
Although for most of my life I called
her
Mother.”

“
They . . .
kept
you?”

“
Apparently she wanted a
child, but they hadn’t been very successful in their attempts to
conceive. When she realized that a perfectly healthy child was
about to be sacrificed, she stepped in.”

“
You were raised by the
couple who killed your family?” I asked incredulously.

Sophia nodded.

“
I’m still confused. If
Captain Goodwin wanted the cargo and ship, why did he just leave it
out in the ocean for the
Dei Gratia
to find days later?”

“
Captain Goodwin had more
crew members hidden below the decks of the
Aurabelle
. The plan was to divide the
crew between the two ships and sail west to the Azores Islands.
They would secretly change the name and paperwork of the boat and
then sail both of them into the Caribbean, which was much more
familiar territory to Jeremiah. This is the part of the story where
the modern explanation of what happened to the
Mary Celeste
most closely resembles
what
really
happened.

“
The crew of the
Aurabelle
began exploring
the rooms and cargo area of the
Mary
Celeste
. They of course had to sample the
alcohol in the barrels below deck even though I don’t think it was
the kind of alcohol that was meant to be ingested. Somehow they
unknowingly caused some of the barrels to leak or something,
because the next day fumes were coming from below deck. Some of the
crew got sick and everyone was nervous and scared. Seamen tend to
be overly superstitious and they thought they were being poisoned
and cursed for their piracy. No one wanted to remain on board. The
crew went down in the lifeboat of the
Mary
Celeste
and kept themselves tied to her to
see if they could wait it out, thinking the fumes would dissipate.
While they were in the lifeboat something made a loud noise from
the ship and they were so scared that they didn’t dare board her
again. Everyone returned to the
Aurabelle
and continued on their way,
leaving the
Mary Celeste
to drift around on her own. I’m not positive, but
I’m pretty sure that was Captain Goodwin’s first—and last—try at
piracy.”

“
What made the loud
noise?”

“
I don’t know. My memories
are only of things that I actually witnessed or heard. No one was
on the boat at the time so no one knows what the noise
was.”

“
This is by far the craziest
story I’ve ever heard. You must have been terrified.”

“
Remember, I didn’t have any
recollection of any of this until my childhood memories returned.
When I found out, I was so angry with Jeremiah and Elsa that I
spent years haunting them. I couldn’t ever show myself to them
since I’d known them when I was alive, but I definitely gave them a
lot of sleepless nights,” Sophia said proudly. “After six or seven
years I finally got bored and left. I took myself on a tour of the
United States and I’ve been all over the world. No one can say that
Sophia Briggs doesn’t know how to party. But I finally decided it
was time to figure out what I needed to do to be extricated. I
thought if I retraced the steps in my life it would all make sense.
Here we are years later and I’m
still
trying to figure it
out.”

I thought for a minute.
“Okay, the best thing for me when I’m trying to figure something
out is to make a trip to the library. I guarantee they have every
book, paper, and pamphlet ever published about the
Mary Celeste
and your
family. I think I should read up on the history of it all and see
if I can come up with any more unanswered questions or—” We were
interrupted by the ringing of my doorbell. I slipped back through
the sliding glass door, walked hurriedly into the living room, and
opened the door to find Camille standing on my porch.
Crap.