Captain James
STEVE HARRIS JR.
FREE READING SAMPLE
Part One: The River
17 September 1920
The setting sun cast the river in hues of crimson, the late afternoon wind sharpening the chill in the air. James winced at the sudden drop in temperature. Brackish water was mixing with the blood flowing from his newly severed right hand. Barely twenty minutes had passed since he hoisted the Jolly Roger’s sail. But now, his head spinning, maintaining a grip on reality felt as futile as clutching at sand under water. His drenched clothing weighed him down amid the peaceful cadence of lapping water.
Above him stretched a nearly cloudless sky, bathed in the warm glow of waning day. As James gazed upward, an oddly familiar sound caught his ear, a crowing. Then a strange silhouette emerged. A figure, leaping from cloud to cloud with unsettling grace. Yet it didn’t have wings like a bird, but arms and legs, covered in peculiar foliage.
Suddenly, pain seemed to emanate from everywhere. It began in James’ head, behind his right eye, and then descended to his right wrist before he closed his eyes in surrender.
Chapter One
James’ mind spiraled back to the moment he first met Wendy Darling. He was just thirteen years old, or so he believed. Standing in a dimly lit hallway, his wet clothes clung to him. The walls and ceiling, covered in thick stucco, bore the marks of years of water damage. The paper calendar dangled haphazardly to the wall. Its torn pages, remnants of earlier months, gripped stubbornly to the top, betraying the passage of time. The page below, frozen on April 1901, was strangely settling, as though the area around him had not become real until just then. Black lines had been drawn through each of the dates on the calendar, one through eleven, leaving the twelfth unblemished. It was a Friday.
The date itself meant little to James. 1901 was just a number, devoid of weight or history. For James had no memory of time’s meaning – neither of what had been lost, nor of what his present condition held.
He stood outside the two imposing vaulted doors flicking his thumbs with his fingers one at a time. The corridor’s only light came from fading candles and the moonlight sneaking through the narrow windows near the ceiling. A crash of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning, momentarily illuminated the threshold as faint murmurs grumbled from behind the doors, reassuring James that he was not alone. A sign posted beside the door read:
Sister Wendy Darling
Head of Orphanage
As the doors groaned open, James, drenched with rainwater, glanced up to find solace in the presence of an angelic figure. She was tall, middle aged with shoulder length golden hair. She knelt before him and extended her hand.
“What is your name, child?”
Before arriving at the orphanage that day, James had little memory of anything other than a home from his early childhood. There was the sound of his mother’s voice when she called to him. Although his father’s face was a blur, standing outside soaking wet summoned the sense of betrayal from when his father would leave him, struggling in the sea to keep his head above the surface, preparing him for the possibility of one day falling overboard.
That night, James battled insomnia. Though Ms. Darling gave him her sleeping quarters with its plush bedding and thick paned windows, James found little comfort. He would slip into slumber, immediately plunging into nightmarish scenes of fairies zipping about a towering moss-covered tree, lightning illuminating a tormenting sea, and himself flying through a storm. Each time he woke, his breath ragged, he lunged to the windows, heaving back the heavy curtains and looking into the tumultuous sky as though he was searching for something.
Eventually, sleep would claim him, but just as he began to finally drift off, he was abruptly jolted awake. James shielded his eyes as Ms. Darling drew the curtains back, flooding the room with light.
“Come now, Jamie. Get up.” Sister Darling motioned toward the clothes neatly laid out over the armchair across the room. After escorting him to the nurse who would tend to his wounds, she introduced him to the other kids. “Boys, This is Jamie. Please welcome him!”
Jamie? Oh yes, that was his name. Sister Darling gestured for him to walk ahead toward the boys who immediately swarmed him.
“Where did you come from?”
“I saw you drop from the sky in the storm!”
“Are you an alien?”
Clearing her throat, Sister Darling announced, “That’s quite enough.”
Jamie trembled as she took him under her arm, reminiscent of the previous evening when he was shivering in the rain. Jamie was led away from the crowd and toward the cafeteria where lunch was being prepared, granting him the privilege of dining alone. He devoured his meal as though he hadn’t eaten in years. From a distance, the mutterings of the other kids could be heard as they stared in astonishment as their new visitor licked his fingers and plate, savoring his haute cuisine. Soon, the other kids clamored in for their share of the colorless meat sandwiches and dry salad, which they came accustomed to knowing as lunch. Before long, Jamie was no longer alone. Although he enjoyed the idea of isolation, this attention was strangely comforting.
“I’m Liam.” Long-haired and tall, the boy broke Jamie from his trance.
“Hi?” Jamie struggled for words. He felt like he had just escaped a hurricane and hadn’t yet had time to breathe.
“Are you coming to the picture show? It’s one of our favorites.”
Every other week, the orphanage would either stage a play or screen a picture show. Sister Darling saw it as an escape from the harsh reality that many of these kids faced – that this was their home, and there was no way out. Once the kids reached ten years of age, their stories were typically written. Many of the prospective parents who visited could not have children and sought babies, not teenagers. For the older kids at the orphanage, this was their home, with these being their brothers and Sister Wendy Darling their mother.
Jamie found his assigned room. The closet on his side was empty except for the wet clothes that he had arrived in, which now hung in the closet. His head swayed ever so slightly, hypnotized, as the rhythmic drops of water from those clothes formed a small puddle on the floor. Suddenly Jamie gasped, startled out of his fugue by a boy staring at him.
“Remember me from earlier? I’m Liam!”
Jamie turned his gaze downward to avoid eye contact.
“They’re too big, huh?” Liam said, gesturing to Jamie’s clothes. “We don’t have a lot to choose from.”
“It’s fine,” Jamie replied.
“They told me you could be my roommate.” Liam smiled. “Actually, I asked.”
Liam’s previous roommate had the rare fortune of being adopted three weeks earlier, and Liam had become one of the orphanage’s rare tenants with his own space.
“I had the beds pushed together until yesterday. I was living like a king! I think they would have made you my partner even if I hadn’t asked. You can wear any of my clothes that you need. That is, except for the red sweater.”
“Thanks,” Jamie muttered.
“So, what are you…” A loud bell echoed through the corridors. “Yes! Come on Jamie.”
“Come on where?”
Liam grabbed Jamie by the wrist, causing him to jump back. Looking down at Jamie, who remained glued to his bunk, Liam said, “Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”
The boys crowded into the dark room as Jamie lost track of Liam. He took a seat in the back to avoid getting in the way of the other children, who seemed accustomed to this unruly behavior.
“Okay boys, find your seats,” Sister Darling called out, cutting through the commotion.
Once the bustle settled, a skeleton of a man wheeled a contraption into the aisle between the rows of metal chairs. The cart groaned, matching the frail man’s hobbles. Made from metal with several glass lenses and a crank on the back, Jamie had never seen anything like it. The man produced a match and struck it against his shoe to light a candle set on a copper plate, placing it in the bottom of the machine.
Immediately, on the screen, an image accompanied by words came into focus in the dimly lit auditorium…
Peter Pan and Wendy
The words gave way to a boy adorned in foliage with a crown of feathers, posed in a regal stance with his fisted hands on both hips. Jamie shot up from his seat, his chair clattering to the ground as his heart pounded. At the flickering black and off-white images, his eyes darted frantically over every detail as the room spun around him.
“Jamie, are you okay?”
Jamie, now wide eyed and pale, turned to face Liam. Sister Darling rushed in as a crowd began gathering around Jamie, who couldn’t make out their featureless, blurred faces as a sickening wave came over him.
And then everything faded to black.
End of sample
© Steve Harris Jr. All rights reserved.