“Shiver me timbers!” Frankenbeard shouted. “This be one mysterious beach.”
“Don’t neglect me timbers, shiverwise,” Pegleg Joe, Frankenbeard’s twin brother also shouted. “Methinks this be a beach filled with danger.” They were walking along Little Stone Beach, on vacation from their usual pirating, but not from the sleuthing the pirate twins were known across the seven seas for.
It was easy to see why they felt such a sense of mystery coupled with danger. The beach was populated by sea monsters, and sea monsters only. Sea monsters of every shape, size and stripe, and some polka dots. Hector, the Creature from the Burnt Sienna Lagoon; Beverly the Sea Serpent and a teenaged gill man named Chadwick were just but a few of the strange beings cavorting along the shores of the beach. They didn’t appear to be terrorizing, annihilating or otherwise bothering anyone or anything, but seeing as how they were sea monsters, it was likely they had evil up their gilled sleeves.
“Yo ho ho, Frankenbeard, we best investigate. Yo ho ho.” Pegleg Joe said nervously. Frankenbeard removed his magnifying eye patch and crouched to the sand, casting his eye across the beach, inspecting each grain of sand individually. Pegleg Joe pulled out his Clue Parchment and quill and began writing down every last detail of the beach, down to the last drop in the ocean.
“Excuse me,” a murky-skinned ten-foot tall sea monster laying on a regular-size beach towel who looked a bit like a dragon or an eel said. “You’re blocking my sun.”
The twin pirate sleuths ignored the protestations of the monster and proceeded with their investigation.
“Pieces of eight!” Frankenbeard exclaimed. “A clue! A clue!” He pointed toward the south end of the beach.
“What is it, pirate brother?”
“I think it might be a guh-guh-guh ghost!” The twins tiptoed and tip-pegleged to the end of the beach. As they walked tentatively, one brother would shove the other brother ahead, not wanting to be the first to encounter the ghost. Behind them, sea monsters had started up a volleyball game. They debated about inviting the pirates to join, but since they were acting weird and anti-social, the monsters decided to ignore them.
When they were almost fifteen feet from the potential beach ghost, they stopped dead in their tracks. Neither pirate wanted to move closer, neither could bring themselves to move at all. “Aar, Joe, you be the matey who investigates first.”
“Aar, Frankenbeard, I say you be the matey who investigates first.” The two were averting their eyes from the space where the ghost was floating. Finally, the two wordlessly decided to both run screaming from the beach, to their galleon parked up the road.
Which was a shame, really, because the sea monsters were going to share hot dogs with them, and roast marshmallows and sing around a bonfire, and could not understand why the pirates had been so afraid of an abandoned sail.