Legends of the Treasure Child : Demon Spawn

Evening came, and with it the arrival at their destination. Gentleman Jockard was visibly agitated – perhaps excited that he’d finally made it there. He paced back and forth on the main deck, barking at his crew to have the Ranger come to a halt, get the canvas out of the way and so on. His crew performed the tasks clumsily, as if they had all of the sudden been robbed of their natural grace as sailors and pirates. They were visibly nervous – even the most experienced pirate among them with thirty years on the waters – made mistakes.



After a silent and friendly chat between Mr. Gibbs, Morty and himself, Jack Sparrow decided it was time to take precautions. He watched as Morty leisurely walked below deck, hands in pockets and whistling on a make-it-up-as-you-go tune, to unlock the gun room. Mr. Gibbs gave the word, and one by one, the crew took their turn to disappear down below where Morty helped them conceal weapons on their person. Disappearing at random, it looked as if no one were missing from the deck at all. It was a specialized talent of the crew of the Black Pearl, a talent developed and honed to perfection courtesy of Jack Sparrow, the very master of Disappearing Unnoticed As If He’d Never Been There In The First Place.

Soon, they were all loaded without actually seem like they were loaded. Should battle come, then each and every single member of the crew of the Black Pearl would be able to bite back at least once. Jack fancied it was like the good old days of piracy, when everyone was one’s own best friend and one could never know when trouble would come knocking. Jockard and his African men might be lean, mean killing machines but they were not of the likes of the crew of the Black Pearl!



Daniel and Nathaniel had flown to the heavens to seek experience as whatever it was they had to become. Jack didn’t really want to be thinking about that right here and then, and neither did he blame them before taking off before dawn. John would be more than enough protection from mortals, though at the moment he was nowhere to be seen.



Checking once more to see that his gun was in place, Jack remembered something. He’d always fancied that if there was to be a tale about Jack Sparrow, then it would end with: ‘And thus lived and died the glorious Jack Sparrow!’

If he kept walking down the path as a demon’s slave, forever living and giving birth to his peculiar offspring, then there would never be such a tale. Fame, aye, but in Hell, not on Earth. To other demons he’d be remembered and wanted as the childbearing whore of the banished demon king’s son. A whore whom every demon was dying to enslave and fuck senseless. To humans, especially religious humans, he’d be a fiend – an enemy of God, and again, a demon’s whore. Even Jockard, who was among the more tolerant of the pirate lords, looked down at Jack. And Jockard wasn’t even a Christian, or a Muslim. Jockard believed in Jockard. And God? What did God think of Jack? Jack didn’t even want to go there. He could however, always rely on his trusted gun. It wasn’t partial. It stuck by Jack in every situation, in every adventure, and it wasn’t under a compulsion to enslave, rape or burn him at the stake.



There was shouting among Jockard’s men. Someone had heard a splash, and claimed they’d seen a large fish tail disappear into the abyss. Looking over to the commotion, Jack exchanged glanced with Jockard. The black pirate lord didn’t look happy. Jack was glad to be ignored for once.



The water engulfed his morphed body, and John imagined it to be the icy touch of a lover’s silky smooth hands. Calypso’s hands. It be the same touch she dealt out to dying sailors; Her hands on their bodies as water filled their lungs, as weakness overcame them and the last they ever saw was the shimmering surface above drifting farther away as they descended into Calypso’s cold womb.



John’s long and elegant fish tail sparkled golden in the fading rays of daylight, and he dove deeper and deeper until darkness and the chill of the water were all he could sense. But he was not afraid. John Sparrow feared but one thing in this existence, and that was to lose his father Jack. Apart from that, John was untouchable. Allowing his demonic senses to kick in, he opened his eyes to a new world: The world of the dead and the damned.

It didn’t take long before he caught the trail of the first ghosts. It was a group of young African women, floating gracefully through the black currents of the deep, their bodies elongated, their legs vanishing into nothing. They implored him to be set free. The N’ugayyan Saai, they repeated, the N’ugayyan Saai: The Shaman wouldn’t let them go. Swirling about him as he approached the wreckage, they continued to complain about their misfortune, explaining how the B’saarkha – The Flying Dutchman – had ignored their cry for passage back to Mother Africa. They were like flies circling a dead body, eager for him to do something.



The HMS Centurion was a depressing sight, most of all because of the multitude of desperate ghosts swimming around her. The atmosphere was crammed with ambivalence; Being the resting place of their bodies, they couldn’t stand to be near the wreckage. An aura of malignance and pride emanated from the bowels of the stranded galley. John sensed the spirit within had been awoken or disturbed, possibly from the immense energies of a hundred and more lives perishing. Ignoring their pleas, John ventured inside the wreckage, wrenching open hatches and trap doors to get into the deepest levels of the boat. He wasn’t prepared for the sight of hundreds of decaying and bloated bodies in disarray on the floor. The flesh should have perished from their bodies ages ago. Their bones should have been washed away by Calypso’s touch, but for some reason, she let this happen.



It took a moment before he realized the truth. He saw the twisted logic the disturbed spirit was using. If she could not escape her watery grave since her spirit was in effect attached to wherever her bones rested, then neither should anyone else escape. She had convinced herself she was protecting them, keeping the families together, keeping the tribe safe. That was not all. Resting there, at the bottom of the ship, his hand on the casket in question which Jockard so greatly desired, John realized there was something else at work as well. On his way inside, John could not sense a starting point to the disaster which sent the galley to the bottom of the ocean. There was no hull breach. Her masts still stood intact. There was no sign of the bodies of the crewmembers, nor of the captain, something which suggested they were not included in the curse she’d put her people under. Could the shaman really have been strong enough to use her powers to drag the ship under the sea in one swoop, the way the Kraken could? John’s conclusion was so. Instead of having to witness yet another stack of her people being forced into slavery in the new land, she decided that no one was going to have them. The logic of a true erratic and vindictive leader: She had performed a satanic ritual, or voodoo or whatever name evil could wear, on the very souls of her own people. Comparing this knowledge to the group of priests which would be his reward for raising the casket, he could not help but to see the similarities. The sentiment lasted for a brief second only, and John brushed it aside.



He made no attempt at concealing his presence. She saw him, and the spirit of the N’ugayyan Saai came forward with caution.

‘Your kinsman is in need of your services’ he told her. She made no reply, only watched him with suspicion. ‘I intend to raise your bones from this watery grave.’



He shouldn’t have said that.



The entire ship began to rock and rumble, and John realized that his arrogance had cost him control of the situation. The surge of water pushed him to the bowels of the ship, wood groaned and creaked, accompanied by the chorus of a hundred anxious voices. John had trouble breathing, as the masses of water squeezed him to the floor. This wasn’t his doing. It was the doing of a Nature Witch calling on the forces of the sea, draining the ghosts of their residual energies. One by one, he felt their presences vanish. The disturbance in the power which had both rejuvenated and bound them, now sucked them dry like a vampire’s bite, and John knew they now descended to Hell to spend eternity in a nightmarish labyrinth they were too weak to emerge from. Not only was the shaman erratic and vindictive, but in truth selfish as any true dictator would be.

Just as John felt the pressure on his lungs give way to air again, he realized this was the shaman’s way of telling him she would best him in every challenge. Instead of him raising her bones, she did it herself. He quickly slipped back into two-legged form, and rose to stand among the decaying bodies.



“In the name of Jesus Christ” he spoke loud and clearly, “I release you from your bonds. May your souls have peace, and may you find The Flying Dutchman to guide you back to your ancestors.” He watched the flesh melt from their bones. The putrid smell disappeared, and the air was refreshed, salty and smelling of peace.



He realized he shouldn’t have done that.



Seeing this, the spirit of the shaman became furious. The source of her power dwindled away between her fingers, set free by a male satan no less! John walked over and bent to pick up her casket. A heavy blow to his right shoulder made him stumble, and he almost fell across the casket.



“Easy now, mad woman!” he warned her, thinking about his prize and the joys it would bring him. He bent again and picked up the casket with the bones. She struck at him again, this time attacking him from behind, but he managed to stay on his feet. She was becoming a very annoying mosquito buzzing about his ears, and he quickly made it up on deck, ignoring her blows and attempts to make him slip and fall. Gazing over to The Ranger, he realized that a young naked woman now stood by Gentleman Jockard’s side, gazing back at him. Looking closer, he saw that her body was covered with symbols painted in red.



“Now where did I see this before? I hate having a pointless déjà vu...” John muttered to himself as he watched a small ‘chariot’ being dispatched from The Ranger and to the recently raised HMS Centurion. Though they didn’t see it, John trailed the spirit of the shaman as she floated over to where the naked woman was standing, expectantly inspecting the female. John allowed himself to be escorted back to The Ranger in the ‘chariot’ – a small rowing boat, all the while he raked his mind for a reminder why he was beginning to feel uneasy. He picked up a nervous stray thought from the man rowing the boat – a thought concerning the lady: Though a little chubby, she was black, beautiful and healthy, and she showed no fear at the idea of being sacrificed so the shaman’s spirit could inhabit her body. Her soul would be devoured in order to make way for an ancient spirit. Now, hadn’t John gone through that scenario already?! Aye, it had happened before Jesus Christ, with a different shaman but still in Africa. In a time when the last of the descendants of Atlantis were becoming desperate, wiping each other out in their search for eternal life. They’d almost caught John back then. Having a body was tiresome, because it decayed with time, yet it allowed the bearer to channel more energy. If they could enslave a half demon and feed on his powers, they’d become near invincible. John sighed. Another reason to stay faithful to, and to be governed only by Jack. Jack didn’t care about the power.



They came upon The Ranger. He gave the casket out of his possession, and ascended The Ranger only to step directly on a red symbol painted on the deck near the railing. It felt like stepping in glue, or in quicksand, and he had to use a little extra strength to lift his foot in order to take another step. Pretending it didn’t bother him, he noticed Jockard’s eyes on him. The look in his strong, brown eyes betrayed the pirate lord, and John understood he now knew Jockard’s true intentions. He intended to make John his slave. Just then, a pang of insight blurred John’s vision: If he was to be trapped now, then circumstances would be so, that he would not get to meet a very important person in his existence. Their fates would be altered, and thousands of years would again separate lover from lover. Realizing that such a meeting would occur in impending future – impending meaning somewhere during the next ten years compared with the perspective of having to wait thousands of years – made John reach out with his right arm. The casket immediately slipped from Jockard’s fingers, stunned as he was, and it elevated into the air with speed. They all gazed upwards to watch the chest, and as someone to their left fired, the casket splintered into a thousand speckles of wood and pieces of bones. Turning their heads in astonishment to see who the perpetrator was, their eyes locked onto the image of Captain Jack Sparrow. Smoke still fumed from the barrel of his pistol, his arm poised elegantly at them, his jaw set in determination and his brown eyes sparkled with a father’s fury when protecting one’s offspring.



Jesus Christ, John thought. The old pirate did it! He really did it!!



Then, things happened very quickly: Mr. Gibbs was the first to roar, followed by a barking ‘charge, charge’! Then the crew of the Black Pearl roared as well, revealing their pistols and cutlasses. Once surprise over Jack’s gunshot had passed, they focused on one thing only: Battle. Many a proud African pirate fell to their bullets before they realized what’d hit them.



John lunged forward, grabbing the shaman spirit by the fringe of her aura, thus materializing her for all to see. She was a hideous thing to behold: Her face a mass of wrinkles and fury. She was but skin and bone, and her naked breasts reminded John of empty nosebags blowing in the wind. She screamed at him in fury, her black eyes like needles onto him as they locked gazes for a second. Her scream was followed by the start of a curse, but by the time she should have finished, he’d already put his hands around her neck to absorb her energy. Stopping abruptly, her fury turned to horror as she realized she was losing. Her shrieks were lost on the midnight wind as her residue disappeared. Moments later, a piercing pain bloomed in John’s chest. Looking up, he gazed into the barrel of Jockard’s gun as he realized he had been shot dead in the chest.