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Books by Mark A. Huebner
Take a look inside the Barton Family Adventures ...
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Get a taste of the adventures that Nat and Ruth share as they sail into the unknown ... the sailing life, tropical destinations, encountering pirates, spies, witchdoctors, and experiencing things beyond their wildest imagination.
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Change in
the Wind
ISBN-13 - 978-1733490504​
The darkness was barely gray, not yet really changing from black. Why was I even aware of it? It must have been early, just about daybreak when the sunlight is struggling to push out the shadows. Didn’t I just go to bed? All I wanted to do was roll over and go back to sleep. Just a little while longer and then I might get up.
Instantly I was awake as I realized we were moving!
When a boat is tied to the dock, it will rock back and forth rhythmically with the waves. The feel of a boat in motion is different.
Everything was silent. The engine wasn’t running. If dad had decided to set off early, he would have started the engines to move out of the waterway. But that didn’t make sense. He wanted us to test handling the boat as crew. He would have wanted us on deck as we cast off.
Why were we moving? Were we drifting? Had we somehow broken loose from the dock during the night?
I thought about that for a minute, but that didn’t make sense either. If we were adrift, there would be no pattern to our movements, but we were definitely moving in one direction. There was purpose in our going forward.
I don’t know what urged me to do so, but I slowly, silently eased out of bed. My bare feet hit the cool floor and I cautiously edged to the door feeling for the handle. It turned easily and I slowly cracked the door open only about an inch.
Through the skylight in the pilothouse, I could make out the mast above outlined against the gray background. There was no sail unfurled. How could we be moving ahead and in one direction with no sail and no engine running?
Something was very wrong here.
I could make out the shadowy form of a human figure behind the wheel. Who is that? I strained to make out some kind of detail. Is that dad? I didn’t think so. Dad is taller, I think.
There was movement to the right. There was the figure of someone moving from the bow past the pilothouse windows and into the cockpit. Now it looked like there were two people I didn’t know aboard.
I closed the door and sat on the edge of my bunk with my mind racing. How could the boat be moving? Who was behind the wheel? What was going on? Where was dad?
I decided to take another look out my door. They were still there in the cockpit. I had to know what was going on and where dad was.
I opened the door just enough so that I could get through and without a sound closed it behind me. I stood motionless for a few seconds to make sure that I was hidden in the darkness of the cabin and couldn’t be seen from the outside. Once I was sure, I crouched as low as I could and began to work my way forward through the salon. My eyes were adjusting to the dark and I could make out some shapes, but I didn’t make a move without first feeling my way.
I didn’t dare lift my head. I didn’t want whoever it was out there to see me. The door slowly swung open and someone came out. It was still too dark to see who it was, but I had to do something.
Voodoo Encounter
ISBN-13 - 978-1733490511
My eyes had adjusted to the darkening surroundings and to the fire. I could see that stretched along the open front of the stable was a cord or rope. Hanging from it by their feet was a row of dead chickens. It shouldn’t have seemed that strange to me because I had seen the same thing in the marketplace right next to the vegetables, but somehow in this eerie lighting it seemed gruesome. The red glow of the fire and the blood on their white feathers simply added to the weirdness of the scene.
I decided not to look that direction any further and instead started to look at the people around the fire. All of them were men, and they were either seated on the ground or squatted in a circle around the fire except for the one. Each had long hair that mostly hid their face while they kept their eyes down. They were bobbing their heads up and down in time with the continuous beating drum. Their chanting was monotonous and had seemed to grow louder and louder.
I couldn’t completely make it out from where I was because the bongo player was in the way, but it looked like they were roasting a pig or something over the fire.
I leaned out just a little from the tree I was behind to try to get a better view of what they were cooking. The timing was such that just when I did, the man who had been dancing came around the edge of the fire and was facing my direction. I don’t know if he had seen my movement, but he came to a dead stop and ceased his chanting. He had long scraggly hair that seemed to be going in every direction all at once. His dark skin had been painted with white streaks so that it glowed in the strange lighting. His eyes had white circles painted around them, and his face was also streaked giving it a fluorescent appearance. But the part that made my blood stand still was that his eyes were fixed straight toward my position.
I instantly froze. I didn’t know what was going on, but I suddenly realized that I didn’t really want to know or to get any closer.
After what seemed an eternity but was probably only ten or fifteen seconds, he began again to dance in his halting way around the circle of fire.
At this point, the only thought I had was that I wanted to get out of there, but I was afraid to move. What if I had been spotted or they just suspected that someone was there? If I moved again, I might be seen. And now I was starting to wonder if I had stumbled onto some kind of twisted ritual that wasn’t for anyone to see.
My nerves were wound tighter than that endless bongo drum when I suddenly felt a hand wrapped over my mouth and at the same time another around my waist. My heart stopped! A burst of fear gripped me! I just knew that I’d been caught and was now going to be roasted alive.
Treasure Hunt
ISBN-13 - 978-1733490528​
I just stood there for a second holding the flashlight. I was going to be the first one to see what had been sealed in this cave for over three hundred years. It could be nothing, or it could be … well there was only one way to find out.
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I crawled up on what was left of the rock pile, into the opening, and stopped at the edge of where it dropped off into the chamber. I turned the light straight down so I could see where I was going. It was only about four feet down, so I wiggled my legs around and jumped down to the floor. After making sure that my feet were under me, I slowly lifted the light up to have a look around.
The entrance came into the left hand side of the underground room. I could reach out and touch the wall with my left hand. I moved the light along that wall to the right thinking that I’d just make a big circle. When the light hit the far side, I could see that the room was only about ten feet wide. I began to move the beam to the right to see how long it was. The batteries were beginning to lose some power, so it wasn’t as bright as earlier, so I stepped forward and to the right, trying to see further into the blackness.
“Oh man!” I let out a yell as my blood froze, and I stopped in my tracks.
“What is it you see, Nat?” My dad had gone up to the opening and was shining his brighter light in behind me.
There, just a few feet in front of me, sitting with his back against the wall was a real skeleton. It’s not that I hadn’t seen bones before, because I had in school. We studied anatomy and had to memorize a list of this bone connected to that bone. But this was totally creepy. Here in the dark, not alone, but feeling alone in a hidden chamber except for … whoever this guy had been. What if his ghost still …
Escape
ISBN-13 - 978-1733490535​
With a loud creak and metal clang the door was slammed shut behind us. The sound of the lock clicking into place added a note of finality. And then the reverberating steps of the retreating guards slowly died away into the distance.
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Not waiting to be told this time, I reached up and ripped my black hood off.
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We were in a small room that had a single bed with a thin mattress in one corner. There was no sheet but only a faded thread bare military green blanket sitting at the bed’s foot. There was a tiny folding table with two chairs off to one side. A single light bulb hung down from a cord in the ceiling. In the other corner was an area for the bathroom. All it had was a shower curtain that pulled around to close off the facilities.
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“Can I take my hood off yet?” Ruth asked.
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“Yes,” I said, “but you're not going to like what you see.”
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There were no windows of any kind, and it smelled like the ventilation hadn’t worked in years.
Ruth began to cry in soft sobs of desperation. Mom came and led her over to the bed and sat down while putting an arm around her. Dad sat down in one of the chairs holding his head between his hands and looking more tired than I had ever seen him.
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And then, the lone single light bulb that illuminated the room went out, and we were left in darkness.