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  PRAISE FOR DIABLERO:

  "Blackbeard is fertile ground for pure evil, and Toby Tate's DIABLERO does the subject justice. A well-crafted read."

  —Steve Alten, New York Times bestselling author of The MEG series

  "DIABLERO is the perfect matchup of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones and Pirates. Ancient evil, modern intrigue, and a fast pace will have readers hanging on the edges of their seats."

  —David Niall Wilson, author of NEVERMORE, DEEP BLUE and VINTAGE SOUL

  “...an enjoyable modern day take on Blackbeard’s tale.”

  —HorrorNews.net

  DIABLERO

  Toby Tate

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-68261-043-5

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-044-2

  DIABLERO

  © 2015 by Toby Tate

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Christian Bentulan

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Permuted Press

  109 International Drive, Suite 300

  Franklin, TN 37067

  http://permutedpress.com

  To my dad, Marcus Tate, Jr., who passed away before he could see this book published.

  I miss you, Dad.

  Contents

  Part I: The Death Defier

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Part II: The Great Old Ones

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-one

  Seventy-two

  Seventy-three

  Seventy-four

  Seventy-five

  Seventy-six

  Seventy-seven

  Seventy-eight

  Seventy-nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Part I

  The Death Defier

  And there was war in Heaven…

  And the great Dragon was cast out,

  That old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan…

  And his angels were cast out with him.

  Revelation 12:7-9

  That is not dead which can eternal lie

  And with strange aeons even death may die

  H.P. Lovecraft—The Necronomicon

  One

  Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

  The man stepped out of the cypress trees and onto the wet sand, glancing inconspicuously around the beach, then back toward the old Ocracoke lighthouse. He stood not far from the small cemetery on the lighthouse property, which he thought was appropriate, considering the spell he was about to invoke. Sanderlings and seagulls squawked overhead. The sky was overcast with clouds that hid the sun just enough to keep it from being overwhelmingly hot. Amazingly, there was little or no breeze.

  Not far away, on the horizon, he could see the mast of a small ship, which looked like it might be a fishing trawler, but which he knew was actually a research vessel called the Lucille. He smiled.

  He set his backpack down on the sand and began pulling out the various items required for the job—a copper bowl, several small plastic bags, a butane lighter, four short candles, a small plastic bottle of water, and four shot glasses.

  One by one he picked up the candles and lit them, casting each to the north, south, east, and west, then set them in a circle in the sand. He filled the shot glasses with water from the bottle and placed each one in front of a candle.

  He emptied the contents of one plastic bag, which held ground-up human bone, into the copper bowl, then placed the bowl in the midst of the candles. The man lit the bones with the butane lighter and watched as the flame quickly consumed the contents and died in a curling wisp of smoke.

  Sticking the lighter in the pocket of his jeans, he picked up another bag, this one holding moist soil, and poured the contents in a circle around the candles. He put the empty bag in the backpack and picked up the next bag, which held table salt, and poured it in another circle around the soil.

  He leaned down, stuffed the last empty bag into his backpack and cinched the top with its drawstring. He stood and adjusted his ball cap, steeling another look around the beach. Satisfied there was no one within earshot, he took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  Then, he closed his eyes and quietly began to chant.

  * * *

  Dan Brickhouse lived up to his name—big-boned and built like a tanker truck, which always made it difficult to squeeze into a diving suit. With the help of his friend Jonathan, the expedition’s leader and captain of the Lucille, he managed to hat up, get his tanks on and get over the side before the sun had risen too far in the sky. With the time it took for ascent and descent at a depth of three hundred feet, they needed all the daylight they could get.

  The mixed-gas helmet they used for the dive was not cheap, but getting down to the wreck and seeing it firsthand was a priority for both men, especially considering the identity of the sunken vessel.

  For the last two months, they had been searching the waters off Ocracoke Island in hopes of finding a ship that had disappeared nearly three hundred years ago—the Adventure, last known to be under the command of Blackbeard the pirate. Scanning the bottom of the inlet had proved to be an arduous task, like looking for a grain of sand in a swimming pool. But Jonathan was nothing if not persistent. Some would say stubborn. He had insisted he knew the whereabouts of the wreck, and that he could find it. In truth, the location of the sunken pirate vessel had come to him in a dream, but he kept that bit of information between himself and Dan.

  Jonathan Jefferson’s contributions to the field of underwater archaeology had been unmatched on the east coast of the US over the years. He had been instrumental in discovering more sunken ships and their treasures in the Graveyard of the Atlantic than anyone alive. No
one in the scientific community doubted his abilities, because he had proved himself time and again.

  Jonathan knew that it would be one of the finds of the century, as important as the discovery of Blackbeard’s flag-ship—the Queen Anne’s Revenge—in Beaufort Inlet some years before.

  But hours and days turned into weeks and then months as Jonathan and Dan operated the joystick controls on Robby (Remote Operated Biometric Black and Yellow), a remote access vehicle the team had borrowed from the Oceanographic Institute of Technology out of Virginia Beach. The team searched endlessly over sand and coral, trying to spot the telltale signs of a sunken ship—an anchor, a cannon, a ship’s bell, a ship’s wheel—but all they managed to get were bloodshot eyes from staring at the PC monitor. They were quickly running out of grant money and had, in fact, come very close to calling it quits.

  Then one day, Jonathan finally found something incredible. Not just a ship, but likely the one he had been looking for, sunk into what appeared to be a cavern.

  Just like in his dream.

  Dan had thought Jonathan was crazy at first—but now, not so much.

  With Robby’s waterproof, high definition cameras and powerful floodlights, they could see into virtually any space the submersible could get close to. There was also the claw, Robby‘s remote-controlled hydraulic arm, which they had used days ago to retrieve an old bottle from a hidden compartment inside what they believed to be the captain’s quarters.

  The hiding place had once been well concealed; a wooden box built into the bulkhead, similar to a recessed wall safe. It looked as if it had been covered by a small wooden door that would have appeared to the casual observer to be just another part of the wall. It had since partially rotted away, however, and revealed its mysterious contents: an old onion-shaped wine bottle, popular in the early eighteenth century.

  Through concentration, skill, and a little luck, Jonathan managed to maneuver Robby through the dark, murky water with only the light from the floodlights to see by, then around through the inside of the ship‘s hull. The water in there was nearly pitch black, the visibility nearly zero.

  Hours later, they finally maneuvered the ROV back to the surface and hauled it aboard the Lucille with a rusted old winch. What they found inside the bottle, which had been sealed with lead, was even more intriguing. An animal skin at least five hundred years old, covered with blood-red writing in a language neither of them had ever seen.

  Jonathan had taken photos of the writing and sent it via e-mail to a friend in Raleigh, someone that he hoped could decipher it. As of yet, they still had not heard anything.

  The sea at this depth was dark green from the clay in the soil and an abundance of microscopic life that thrived in the cool water. At three hundred feet, the sun was about the strength of twilight, so an underwater light was a necessity. Dan, an oceanographer by trade, was as fascinated with the structure of the ocean floor itself as he was with the wreck, and used his powerful pistol-grip AquaSun eLED to study any flora and fauna that came within range of the light’s beam.

  As if on cue, a large red grouper swam by, inches from Dan’s face plate, apparently as curious about the diver as Dan was of him, then slowly faded in the distance.

  Dan saw Robby move silently around the edge of the cave where the vessel sat covered with barnacles and long tendrils of seaweed, but intact with all eight of her cannons and probably many other artifacts yet to be discovered and brought to the surface.

  Though Dan wanted to comment to Jonathan on his various observations, he tried to talk as little as possible, since the effects from the helium in his mixed gas suit made him sound like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz. Upon switching from the nitrox gas mixture to trimix on his descent, he began to sing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” before he was rudely cut off by Jonathan.

  Dan adjusted his weight belt and began to shuffle toward the edge of the cave that yawned like a huge mouth on the ocean floor. He looked forward to each dive, because every day led to another discovery—a ship’s bell on Tuesday, a piece of silverware and a dinner plate on Wednesday, a cannonball on Thursday—things that had drifted out of the wreck on its way down to the depths or that had simply washed up out of the cave over the long centuries.

  As Dan shuffled along the ocean floor, sand and silt billowing up around his feet, something caught his eye. At first he thought it may be a grouper or a horseshoe crab, and moved in with the light to get a better look. Possibly a manta ray, he thought, as he admired the grace and beauty of the creature.

  Dan quickly realized it wasn’t any marine life he’d seen before. The ray, or whatever it was, seemed to be digging its way out from under the sand, pushing its way up out of the ground like a mole.

  When he got close enough to see it clearly, he froze, holding the beam steady, mesmerized by the sight. There were two things pushing sand out of the way now, and something else rising up in the midst of them. A cloud of silt spread out around the thing, partially obscuring it from Dan’s view.

  Suddenly it broke free of the ocean floor and rose up like a nightmarish monolith, the cloud of dirt swirling in the lamplight.

  Dan’s last thought before utter panic set in was that the thing standing before him should not, could not, be alive.

  Without thinking, Dan dropped the AquaSun, then reached down and unfastened his weight belt, letting it fall to the sea floor. He began to rise quickly, ignoring his decompression stops on the way to the surface; but his terrified mind raced beyond logic.

  Dan didn’t bother switching gases on his mixed gas suit, which resulted almost immediately in hypoxia. He muttered incomprehensibly as Jonathan, who had been monitoring Dan’s depth gauges from the Lucille, screamed things into the radio that Dan could not begin to comprehend. He ascended in seconds from three hundred feet to two-hundred-and-sixty feet…two hundred…one hundred, his blood filling with gas bubbles and entering his brain, which would soon cause a massive gas embolism.

  In a matter of minutes, Dan bobbed to the surface and tried in vain to grab the ladder fastened to the side of the Lucille, but his hands no longer obeyed his brain. His eyes rolled in his head like two runaway marbles and he began frothing at the mouth.

  Jonathan hoisted Dan out of the water and dragged him across the deck, then laid him out on the deck. With much effort, he pried off Dan’s helmet.

  The ocean air hit Dan and brought him back momentarily to semi-consciousness.

  Dan managed to gain control of his eyes, if only for a second. Just long enough to recognize the face of his friend, Jonathan, who was mouthing words that he could no longer understand.

  With every last ounce of strength, Dan grabbed Jonathan by his shirt collar and pulled him close. Something important he had to tell him. Jonathan had to know, had to be made aware.

  Dan forced the words from his brain to his mouth, concentrating every bit of effort into making his lips move, praying to God that he was saying what he meant to say, that Jonathan understood his babbling.

  Then, Dan released his grip on Jonathan, lay his head down on the hard wooden deck of the ship, and drifted off into the darkness.

  Two

  River City, North Carolina

  Two Weeks Later

  Lisa stepped over the cypress knees and edged her way along the muddy bank of Lake Drummond, following the tracks of a bear that she knew was about to have cubs. The bear, which she had affectionately named Suzie, had been pregnant for months and was soon to give birth. She had seen the black bear foraging in the swamp on several occasions, peering under rocks and inside hollow cypress trees for ants and other tasty morsels. Having been pregnant once herself, Lisa knew exactly how the bear felt. It was all she could do to feed herself, let alone the cubs she carried. Ravenous hunger was a constant companion.

  Lisa Singleton had spent much of her time in the lake over the last couple of years as a park ranger, learning the flora and fauna and personality of the Dismal Swamp, its subtle beauty and its hidden dangers. The lake
and surrounding forest was a protected wildlife sanctuary spread out over one-hundred and–seven-thousand acres, and many a hiker and camper had become disoriented and lost in the tangled undergrowth and juniper trees. Occasionally, an old moonshiner or a lost child would die from exposure, unable to cope with the harshness of the dark forest. After sundown, the blackness of night can quickly close in, enveloping the uninitiated like a death shroud, cold and unforgiving.

  But people ignored the warnings of park rangers, not fully realizing the sheer size of the swamp until they were too far in to find their way out. That’s when the helicopters and search parties got called out, wasting manpower looking for someone who shouldn‘t have been lost in the first place, had they listened.

  Lisa walked along the bank, watching the bear tracks weave from one side to the other as the mama bruin hunted for signs of food. She heard the sound of a woodpecker up above her, and gazed up into the canopy of Spanish moss that hung over her head, partially blocking the midday sun, making it appear later in the day. As she searched for the bird, she suddenly found herself walking in the lake and looked down in time to see her boots filling up with water.

  “Shit. That figures.”

  Thunder sounded in the distance, and she looked to the west. A storm was brewing.

  Lisa knew she would spend the next hour walking back to her truck with her feet in wet socks sloshing around inside soaked shoes. Gazing over at the shoreline, she saw the bear tracks continued a ways, and then veered off into the forest. The bear had obviously found something interesting.

  Lisa turned back to shore when she heard something splash in the water. She looked, thinking a long-nose gar or some other fish had become spooked by her presence. She saw something move beneath the water.