Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (25 page)

I shivered violently for awhile, feeling an unbearable pain as the cold numbness left me and the hot pricks of pins and needles came wheeling through like I was bring dragged through a swath of prickle bushes.

It seemed to go on forever. My thoughts were more or less empty but the one that stood out was the one of me wondering when this would end.

It eventually did end, though. The spasms stopped, the shivers slowed, my teeth were able to rest against each other without clicking. My breath was coming back hot, deep and normal. My heart rate felt reassuring. My brain was starting to work over what had just happened.

I turned my head to the side and saw Dex sitting in the corner of the tent, his wet legs pulled up to his chest. He was staring at me. There were so many intense looks flowing across his eyes and lips, waxing and waning with each passing second. He looked deep into my eyes, trying to get something out of me. I hoped he could. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain it.

But I knew nothing was that easy.

He looked down at his boots that squeaked with the water that had pooled inside of them. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t trying to warm up. His feet must have been dead inside.

“Your feet are wet,” I said thickly.

“What the fuck, Perry?” He took in a deep breath and looked up at me. “What the hell were you doing? Going for a swim?”

“There was a little girl…”

“A little girl?” he repeated, his eyes wide and disbelieving.

“I…I was in the tent. I was in here. I was reading and I heard a kid laughing.” It was taking a lot out of me. I paused and tried to regain my breath. He waited, the furrow in his forehead never leaving.

“A girl. I heard a girl laughing,” I continued. “I got up and went outside and saw a girl on the beach. She was maybe three years old? She was just wearing a long white shirt. I asked her where her parents were but there was no answer. There was something…wrong with her, or something. I don’t know but she was cold and already wet and there was no one else there. I tried to go near her, to give her my jacket and she just…she just ran off into the ocean. The waves broke…and…and I could still see her, though; I thought I could still save her. Then you came. And I couldn’t.”

Dex’s expression never changed, though I knew he was trying to comprehend my story as quickly as he could. Finally he said, “Perry. I never saw a child. I was watching you. I saw you run into the water. I was just about to put my bag down in the tent. I saw you on the beach just staring at nothing with your coat held out. And then a second later, you ran into the water. I didn’t see a little girl.”

I felt sick at what he said. I brought my hand up to my mouth. Of course there was a child.

“Maybe you couldn’t see her,” I said as another wave of cold went through me. “Maybe I was covering her from…from that angle. You don’t know. I know what I saw. I saw her well. Blue eyes. Ashy hair, messy, long, weird old shirt, like Victorian era or something. No shoes.”

“There’s no one else on the island, Perry.”

“You don’t know that. Have you looked?”

“No, but I was just at the boat. It’s still there and it’s still alone. Unless someone came by kayak, there is nowhere else to anchor your boat. If they aren’t at that beach, or at this beach, they aren’t here.”

“Maybe they came by kayak then.”

“Kiddo. Listen. Listen to yourself. There is no one here. If anyone came in this weather by kayak, they would die. You almost died out there and you were only at your waist. No one can come here in this weather. You know no one can come here in practically any weather.”

“They could have been here before, they–”

“There is no one else on this island Perry, except you and me and bunch of psycho raccoons and flash mob deer.” He said that with as much conviction and force as I had heard so far.

I thought it over. “Then what did I see? Are you calling me crazy?”

He sighed and slumped his head down, shaking it at the ground.

“What?” I asked defensively. “It’s a fair question. I say I saw someone. I know what I saw. You say it’s not possible. Then what did I see?

“I don’t know.”

“A ghost then,” I told him.

“A ghost of what?” he asked, finally looking up at me. “There were no kids on this fucking island.”

“There was a woman.”

“Yeah, and?”

“She died,” I said softly, almost feeling inexplicably sorry for her at that second, like I was talking about someone I knew.

“I know,” he said. “I read about it. She died of pneumonia or whatever, like less than a year after being on the island. There was no kid. There were only lepers and coffins and opium and some religious idiot who thought he could ease their suffering when all he did was add to it.”

I didn’t get far enough into the reading about the Reverend to know what Dex was talking about but I didn’t want to ask either. That wasn’t the point anyway. I know what I saw. Whether it was an actual ghost or a child, something had just drowned itself off the beach outside our tent and that realization was slowly working its way through my body. I felt the tears coming, and I was tired, sad and very confused.

Dex saw this too, because he let out a much softer sigh and moved on over to me. He put his cold hand on my forehead and held it there, his eyes looking into mine.

“Just rest for a bit. I’m going to get warm and dry. I’ll fix something to eat. Get some more coffee going. Have a bit of a nap, get warm. Then we’ll get you dry and we’ll talk about all of this. OK?”

I couldn’t bring myself to agree. He lowered his face to mine. I could see the yellow and red pin pricks of color that snaked across the brown in his eyes.

“There is no one else here. OK? If you saw anything, Perry, you saw a ghost. I know that’s still not an awesome thing but just please don’t think you saw an actual child drown out there because I know you didn’t. And I think you know it too.”

He tenderly brushed a piece of hair off of my forehead and gave me a fleeting, close–lipped smile. Then he gathered up some clothes of his, left the tent and left me alone with my thoughts, which evolved from poignant to abstract to nothing at all.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Are you sure you don’t think I’m crazy?” I asked Dex. “Because you’re kind of looking at me like I am.”

We were at the picnic table slurping our way through Mr. Noodles and more coffee. I had slept for an hour or so. The exhaustion from my emotions and from the near hypothermia had knocked me right out. I felt better now that I was dressed in warm and dry clothes but going over the incident with Dex again wasn’t helping. There was something disbelieving in his expression, buried in deep, no matter how clearly I tried to describe what I had seen.

“As I said, I don’t think you’re crazy. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“The books don’t say anything about there being a kid on the island, but who knows? I mean can kids get leprosy? Maybe one was banished here and they didn’t tell anyone.”

“Did the kid look Chinese?”

“No. I guess not.” She had been fair and her blue eyes were wide. Wide and fearful.

“Well,” I pondered, “what if she had died at some other time?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”

“I’ll Google it. Give me my phone.” I held my hand out for it.

A flash of fear passed over Dex. He fidgeted. “Sorry. I, uh, left it on the boat.”

“What!?” I yelled, nearly spilling the Mr. Noodles everywhere. “Why the fuck is it on the boat?!”

“Whoa, calm down.”

“Calm down?! What the hell, Dex?!”

My body felt like it was about to go all Hulk in a couple of seconds. My heart was racing and my bones were tense with anger and frustration.

“I thought it would be for the best if you–” he started. I didn’t need to let him finish.

“Fuck!” I screamed and got up, the picnic table rocking. I threw the Mr. Noodles cup against the nearest tree. It smashed into it with a wet thunk. A firework of hot broth and steaming noodles flew everywhere and landed on the bushes below.

I looked at Dex. He was sitting as still as a statue. His eyes wide, his lower lip sucked in. The fingers on his right hand were shaking slightly.

I was torn between wanting to calm down and wanting to let myself be absolutely livid over this.

“Where the fuck do you fucking get off making those decisions for me?! I already have one fucking father! I don’t need this, this pseudo–parenting from some hypocrite like you!”

“Hypocrite?” he asked softly.

“You had no right!”I said, ignoring him. “You are taking me back to the boat and I am getting my damn phone back, you got it?” I leaned across the table and jabbed my finger at him, my eyes fixed with blackness, my heart pounding in my throat.

He swallowed carefully and nodded, quick and swift.

“OK.”

He got up and started up the path. Obviously, he meant now.

“Good,” I said, my voice wavering the tiniest bit. I noticed my hands were cramped up into heated little fists. I didn’t really know what had come over me. But at least it worked. Maybe Dex would get the point of all of this. I didn’t want to be babysat or policed by someone who didn’t know which way was up half the time. That was one of the most aggravating things about him, his assumption that because he was older or that I was a fuckup, he knew what was best. Sometimes he did. But that wasn’t the point.

I walked behind him for most of the way through the forest. I was too irate to feel creeped out by the feeling of nothingness at my heels, or the shadows that the creaking and swaying trees left on the forest floor.

Dex smoked the entire time, one cigarette after the other, flicking the butts into the bushes. I made a mental note to come back later and pick them up, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. At least the chance of a forest fire was nil in this weather.

It wasn’t until we reached the creepy glade, that I found myself moving a little bit faster until I was right at Dex’s back.

“Did you see the raccoons when you came through earlier?” I asked, my voice startling him a bit in the strange stillness around us. The wind didn’t seem to reach here. It was like being in another world of dripping moss, slimy bark and decaying leaves.

He shook his head. “No I didn’t but I got my ass through here pretty fast.”

I didn’t blame him. I was still scared and I had someone with me.

We went back to walking in silence as we left the glade behind us. The closer we got to the other side of the island, the more the wind and chill picked up again. My hair was still wet from the water, which only added to the cold. I started to wonder if maybe I would die of pneumonia at this rate. I shoved my hands deep in the jacket pockets and hunched up my shoulders to keep my neck warm.

We turned right when we came to the well–trampled trail that ran up the east coast. I looked through the waving branches, seeing glimpses of the roaring waves between them. I couldn’t see the boat at first. That made my heart lurch uncomfortably.

But as we got off the path and the beach opened up, I saw her. She was shuddering with each upward thrust of the colorless, foaming swells, her anchors at both ends straining.

“She looks like she’s going to break away,” I said to Dex as we carefully made our way down a tangled trail and onto the slick pebbles of the beach. The wind here was razor sharp and relentless. It blew our jacket hoods straight back and messed up my hair within seconds.

“I know. I double–checked the rope though, and the anchor. She should be OK.”

With the choppy surf and increment bursts of spray, I was started to second guess my desire to get my phone back. Getting on the Zodiac was going to be a bit of a challenge. Dex had stopped in front of me, staring at it. He was probably thinking the same thing.

I looked again at the Zodiac sitting high on the beach. And realized why he was staring. It was half the height it was before, the pontoons seriously deflated like a squished loaf of bread.

“Oh fuck no! No, no, no, no,” Dex cried out and started running towards it. I followed.

He reached the Zodiac and pushed his hands down on the wet pontoons. They sank even deeper under his weight, a puff and hissing noise coming out from somewhere.

“We can still use it, right?” I asked hopefully, trying to squelch the panic that was bubbling up inside.

He didn’t say anything. He stood in the boat and bent over, inspecting the bottom while pushing down with his other hand. He didn’t have to say anything. I could see we were fucked. The Zodiac would sink like a stone.

And now the panic was coming in, rising fast. I put my hand to my temples and tried to keep calm, keep focused. Everything started to sway and the world became as rough and tumble as the never–ending waves that crashed so close. I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose as deep as I could, knowing a panic attack would not do us any good here.

Still if anyone needed a reason to panic, being stranded on a haunted island during a storm was as good of a reason as any.

“Fuck, no.”

I opened my eyes, staggering a bit off balance, and looked at Dex. He was looking up at me incredulously.