Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (32 page)

I put my hand to my forehead and scrunched it up. What a mess. In some ways it was amazing and some others…wow. Did I really do that? Even the fact that he saw me completely naked, the fact that he gave me an orgasm…I couldn’t have been more vulnerable than that.

And then to say he couldn’t go on. What a load of crap. I wasn’t complaining but…how was that fair at all? It’s like he just wanted to be in control of everything, even down to sex. He knew how I felt about him. Sure, I’m the one who got off in the end, but he wanted that to happen. He got at me. He won. And I was unable to get at him.

Suddenly, I was less embarrassed and more ticked off. It was a more manageable and face–saving emotion anyway. It was like he used me in the most backward way possible. All he did was bring my emotions and feelings for him to an absolute boil, and then walk away clean, as if he didn’t do anything wrong. Walk away back to his stupid hot girlfriend and love child.

OK. Now I was mad. I shoved on my clothes, which were still damp since I had officially run out of anything clean, and headed out into the storm.

Dex was nowhere around the tent or picnic table. A quick glance at the beach told me he wasn’t there either. Unless he was really asking for it and decided to go on a walk somewhere, the only other place he could be was the shitter.

The weather was the exact same as it was yesterday. In fact, in some ways the fog seemed thicker and the waves were steeper, angrier. They seemed to call to me, to echo my mood, which was rapidly going sour. The damp clothing and the overall feeling of grossness didn’t help either.

I had decided that I should probably make some coffee, since he hadn’t seemed to do that either, when I felt a presence watching me. The goosebumps rose on my arms.

I looked up and got the crap scared out of me. It was Mary standing in the trees, observing me silently in her dark swath of a dress and her pale, weird face. How long had she been there for?

I was about to call out after her but she put her finger to her mouth to motion me to be quiet. Then she turned and walked off, her figure disappearing behind the trees.

I got up and went after her. I knew it wasn’t right for me to leave the campsite without telling Dex first but I didn’t really care what he thought at this point. Mary held the answers.

I followed her into the woods, towards the inner campsite and past the bog, to an area I hadn’t been to yet. It was another clearing like the other campsite but had rows of stunted fruit trees and some foreign–looking bushes deliberately placed throughout. It looked like a long forgotten garden.

Mary headed across the soggy grass and walked along a narrow, pebbly path that cut through the center of some rustic rose bushes. I followed carefully, not wanting to get caught on the spiny thorns and overgrown brambles.

On the other side of the bushes was a patch of weeds and a low stone bench surrounded by small stacks of chopped wood. She sat down on the bench and clasped her hands in her lap. I paused, ripping my sleeve on a greedy branch and looked down at her. I wasn’t sure whether it was safe to talk to her yet or not.

Finally she looked up at me in surprise, exclaiming, “Oh, you’re here. How nice to have your company.”

She wasn’t being sarcastic. It’s like she didn’t realize I followed her. I gave her a small smile. “Where are we?”

“This is my rose garden in the orchard. I had brought the seeds with me from California. I thought the flowers would cheer the poor souls up.”

“Did it?”

She shook her head, “It was a waste of money to come here. A waste of life.”

“Money?” I repeated. I remembered the bit in the book that mentioned the rumors of how the Reverend paid the Canadian government to let him and Mary come here. “You paid them to let you come, why?”

“John did. He paid them so he could be alone with me. My mentor, my Reverend, he was more sweet on me than he was on the Lord. He brought me here to be alone, away from the church and everyone else. He knew I had no one else, that I would do whatever he said.”

I know what I wanted to ask next but I wasn’t sure how to say it. “Did you love John? Did you want to have a child?”

Mary started picking at her hands, peeling off dead skin in long scaly layers and flicking them on the grass below. I tried to hide my grimace.

“I loved John. Yes. But not in that…way. It was sinful. Perhaps I would have if I was given the chance. But I wasn’t. He brought me here. He…had his way with me. And then I was with child. I think the child was all he wanted. I know I didn’t want it.”

Oh, geez, Mary was raped by the very person she trusted. I felt increasingly bad for the mousy woman with her twitchy eyes and sad complexion.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“That’s kind of you to say that,” she said. “But it doesn’t change anything. I was stupid and naïve. He had me by the scruff of my neck and we both knew it. Then of course I found San. That was wrong too, I knew that. But what did it matter. I was already having a child out of wedlock. I was already on the wrong side of the Lord.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of slipped out.

She took a quick glance at me before diverting her attention back to her hands. “I don’t have many other people to talk to.”

“What about your daughter?”

“She’s three years old. And she’s dead.”

“So are you.”

“She’s dead to me. There is a difference. How could I love something like Maddy when all she did was bring me pain and bring me death?”

I took in a deep breath. I didn’t like where the conversation was going.

“Yesterday you said that people here could harm me and Dex…”

“When was yesterday? Who is Dex?”

“Dex…the man I am with.”

“Your husband?”

“No.” I didn’t want to embellish.

She shrugged. “Forgive me, I forget details. You trust this man?”

I nodded. She shook her head. “No you don’t. He had his way with you, too.”

I ignored that. She obviously had no idea what she was talking about. I took a step toward her. She eyed me up and down, her delicate frame tensing.

“Mary,” I reasoned. “Mary, Dex and I seem to be in a bit of a predicament and we were hoping you could help us out.”

“We? He doesn’t know about me. You haven’t told him.”

“No, you’re right. I haven’t.”

“This is because you are unable to trust him.”

Who was she, a ghost shrink?

“If you tell him about me, it’s only going to make him angry,” she continued. “And when he gets angry, you’ll be in a lot of trouble. More trouble than you are in now. Believe me.”

“Why? Why would he be angry?”

“He doesn’t like secrets. And he’s jealous of you.”

The second part didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Why on earth would Dex be jealous of me?

I let it pass, for now. I crossed my arms and said, “Tell me more about this trouble we are in.”

She shrugged again and started to hum a song to herself in a lilting tune.

“Mary?” I repeated.

She looked at me and smiled brightly. “Oh, you again. So glad you could join me.”

Oh my God. She was a fucking nutter. Maybe she was the loon roaming the forest last night.

“I’m really grateful you are talking to me,” she said in her singsongy voice. “No one ever stops and chats with me. I can’t remember the last time someone acknowledged my existence. You must be a special person, Perry.”

“I’ve heard that before,” I scoffed.

“That’s why he’s jealous of you. Right now, he’s out there, walking up the beach looking for you and cursing you.”

“Dex?”

“You have something he wants. You also have something John wants and something San will want. I’ve seen them watching you. You can see them if you look harder.”

The hairs on the back of my neck tickled unpleasantly.

“What does Dex want?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

I sighed, trying to compose myself. My brain felt sluggish and lazy. Too lazy to really understand what was going on.

“What do John and San want? Did they slash the Zodiac? Are there other people on the island?”

Mary started to sing to herself again.

“Mary!” I yelled, exasperated, and reached for her. I shook her bony shoulder, feeling the bones crack and crush underneath my hand. I gasped and recoiled in horror.

She looked down at her collapsed shoulder with all the breeziness in the world. “They won’t be so easy to break. The sea, it does peculiar things to your bones.”

I wanted to tell her that I was sorry but I couldn’t form the words. I felt like vomiting.

“Look,” I said, sucking the feeling down. “I know this is a strange situation and all. For me, anyway. I mean, I think I might actually be mental. Maybe you’re not real at all. Maybe this whole place isn’t real. But still, if you could somehow help me out in any way, help me get off this island, I’d really appreciate it.”

She laughed. “I can’t leave this island. What makes you think you can?”

“Because I’m not dead.”

“You will be soon,” she said simply, her little–girl voice gone. The frankness cut me to the core.

“Will you help me, Mary?” I tried. “Can you just…just tell John and this San person to leave us alone? To let us leave. We don’t have anything to do with whatever this all is. As soon as the weather clears, we will be out of here. We will never come back.”

“I can’t. I hope I never see them again. I’ve been moving around this island for God knows how long, trying to stay one step ahead of them. Perhaps you need to borrow a lesson from me. You’re much easier to catch than I am.”

I felt breathless. “Where are we?”

“This is the Island of Death. This is purgatory. This place has a dark soul of its own. And it will drown you in its depths.”

And at that Mary got to her feet, her bloody, pussing feet. “I have to keep moving. My advice for you is to do the same. Don’t trust anyone. Anyone. He does not have your best interests in mind. No one does. Not even me. But I recommend you take my advice to be safe.”

And then she was off and running. I looked behind me, expecting to see Dex, or God forbid, the Reverend, but there was no one there. And of course she was long gone.

I tried to shake some sense into my head as I carefully slipped past the rose bush’s prying thorns, and down the orchard trees, dead and grey from the cold winter or a hundred years of neglect. I didn’t know what to make of anything anymore. Reality seemed to be losing its grip on me, sliding off like the chains on an anchor. None of this was possible but I had to accept it as truth. If I didn’t, it would mean I was going crazy. And which one of those scenarios was better? I’d either end up in a mental institute or in some brutal fate here, which could be worse.

I wondered if that’s what Creepy Clown Lady had been talking about. She had said something about people coming to take me away. Take me in away in straightjackets? Take me away to the loony bin? I had been treating Dex like the enemy in this regard but maybe he had the total right to worry about me. He couldn’t see the things I could. Not all of them anyway.

If only I could actually see Creepy Clown Lady here, then maybe I could get some real answers. It’s funny how she brought an utmost sense of fear in the base of my being, yet if I saw her creeping around in the trees, in her ridiculous taffeta gown, I’d almost be comforted. It would be another tie to that world I knew before this place. This place was taking over day by day, hour by hour. Even Dex was becoming something else to me. Someone foreign.

I thought about that long and hard as I made my way through the brush back to the tent, hoping that maybe she would materialize if I thought about her long enough. She didn’t.

Dex did though. The minute I stepped on to the path, he came booking it out of the campsite towards me.

“Where the fuck did you go!?” he yelled at me. He looked like hell. He almost had a full–on beard going, his eyes were bloodshot and the space under his eyes looked like half–moon plums.

“I went for a walk,” I said and tried to walk past him.

He grabbed my arm sharply and yanked me towards him. His eyes were crazy. “Bullshit!”

I looked down at his rough grasp, trying to stifle my own anger and avoid a massive blowout.

“It’s none of your business,” I snapped. I knew that was going to set him off. I probably should have said something else.

He was taken aback, and for a moment, speechless.

“Where were you when I woke up?” I asked.

“In the bathroom,” he said through gritted teeth.

“What’s wrong with you?” I questioned.

He cocked his head and loosened his grip on me. He smiled sarcastically. “What’s wrong with me? Shit, Perry. That’s rich. You’re the one who flips out whenever I leave you alone. What about all that bullshit about you needing me then? You don’t think it’s not the other way around?”

I snorted. “No! I don’t. And maybe it was just bullshit anyway. You should know all about that, you’re an expert at it.”