THE TREASURE OF CAYMAN BRAC

"Briiiiiieeeeee - iiiiiieeeeee - iiiiiieeeeeessssss!"

     I rolled over and looked for familiar things in my own bedroom. My mind cleared, and I realized I stared at Aunt Nina's alarm clock in her condominium guest room on the Caribbean Island of Cayman Brac.

     "Four A.M.? Who's calling me so early?"

     "Bryce!"

     The pounding surf echoed through the room. I looked at the closed slatted blinds to the double glass doors. Light shined through on the left side, moved to the right, and back again.

     I sat up in my bed. "What's out there?"

     Staring at the moving glow, my stomach tightened. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the left side of the blinds. Waiting until the glow drifted back to the right, I slid a slat aside and peered out. The bright moon lit the beach about forty feet away. White breakers hit the coral bedrock and splashed to the edge of the pile of rocks.

     A round bluish-white light hovered over the right side of the double doors. A sudden streak sent it shooting toward me, and a second later I stared into a weird face.

     "Ahhhhhh!" I let the slat go and ran for the bedroom exit.

     "Aunt Nina!" I dashed into the condo living room, past the kitchenette, and into her bedroom.

     I sprang into her bed. "I saw a face!"

     Aunt Nina rolled over and sat up. "Bryce, honey, what is it?" She looked at her clock. "Do you know what time it is?"

     I threw my arms around her and hugged. "This glowing face floated outside and-"

     "Slow down, girl. How old are you?"

     "Eleven."

     "And you can't tell a dream from the real thing?"

     I leaned back and offered her a sour face. "But it wasn't a dream."

     She wouldn't believe me, but she did let me spend the rest of the night with her.

     Aunt Nina took me to Half Way Cave on the north side of the Brac the next day. Inside, I took pictures in the sunlit part while she explored a darker section. I faced a giant stalagmite jutting up from the cave floor and steadied my camera to snap a picture.

     "Bryce, you must help me."

     I spun around to face a man dressed in a pirate outfit. His long hair and beard hung in braided pigtails, each woven into red ribbons. Fuse cords used on ancient cannons stuck out from under his hat, lit and smoldering.

     My heart pounded. "What do you want?"

     "Bryce, I'm Blackbeard the Pirate, and you must help me find my treasure."

     "What treasure? You're just a man in a costume." I pointed to the gaping hole my aunt disappeared through. "My aunt is right in there. You better leave me alone."

     He floated toward the twenty-foot-high ceiling. "I need you Bryce. Find my treasure."

     "Aunt Nina! Come quick!"

     Blackbeard's image began to fade.

     "I'll keep coming back, Bryce. I know you're staying the summer at your Aunt's Cayman Breakers condominiums."

     His image faded as Aunt Nina burst through the opening and ran toward me. I told her who and what I saw.

     "You're just seeing things, sweetie. I'll take you into Spot Bay and let you talk to a man who knows all about Blackbeard's treasure."

     At Spot Bay we pulled up next to the Nim Things gift shop. Inside, an old, dark-skinned Caymanian man named Tenson Scott greeted Aunt Nina like a long lost friend.

     "Sure, Bryce, a treasure there was. I nearly found it myself. Back when I was 14, I played with some boys along the Beach Walk to the First Cay. That's just a mile east of the Cayman Breakers. We found the spot where Captain Blackbeard had carved a skull into a giant boulder. Digging behind the rock, my shovel hit something."

     He pretended to jam a shovel into the floor. "Clunk. I thought I had hit solid bedrock, so I quit digging. Years later, when we were all grown, one of my friends returned with a metal detector … and after digging a big enough hole, he discovered the treasure had been covered by a large rock. I missed by a few inches of being a very rich man."

     "That's incredible," I said.

     He laughed. "So you see, little girl, the treasure's gone."

     Aunt Nina refused to let me stay in her room again. I hurried to sleep, but at 4 A.M. I awoke to a bright glow inside the room. I sat up and stared at the image of Blackbeard. He hovered over the foot of the bed surrounded by the bluish-white light.

     "What do you want?" I asked. "You're treasure's been found."

     Blackbeard floated closer, but I held back my fear. "That's just a tall tale. Tomorrow, I want you to ride to the beach walk and mosey along the bluff until you find … my skull carving!"

     "I … I don't know."

     "Don't you want to be rich for the rest of your life?"

     "Well … yeah."

     He drifted toward the double glass doors. "And you won't need a shovel." His image passed through the blind slats and the room darkened again.

     I talked Aunt Nina into exploring the area the next morning - and I brought a shovel. She parked at the end of the road and we walked along the underbrush at the back of the beach for a little ways before she turned down a path over bare rock.

     We arrived at a boulder 20 feet tall by 20 feet wide. Aunt Nina stopped at the base of it and pointed ten feet up.

     "You see the skull face carved there? That told Edward Teach this rock is where he buried his treasure."

     "Edward Teach?"

     "Blackbeard."

     We walked around the rock, and she pointed to a slight depression in the sand near its base.

     "That's where he buried it."

     "May I dig a little?"

     "Be my guest."

     I dug for about fifteen minutes and then talked Aunt Nina into digging some. Walking past a huge flat rock laying to the right, I found another open area of sand.

     "The treasure's here," a whisper said.

     I looked to my right and saw the bluish-white glow drifting three feet away.

     "Blackbeard?"

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