Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (37 page)

“How do you know all this?” I asked, not sure of not wanting to believe her myself.

She pursed her cracked lips and thought that over. “I know things. I’ve been here a long time. This is how it always works.”

Always works? There were others like us? I didn’t want to think about that; it was too much of a mindfuck.

“Well. I don’t see anyone else here. Who is going to stop me, you?” I said, taking a step toward her. With her tiny, frail body, I knew I could hurt her easily. But then again, she was already dead so, really, what harm could I do?

Mary laughed; it was shrill and worrisome. “Not me. Dex will.”

I cocked my head and looked over her shoulder at the beach. Dex had stopped what he was doing and was kneeling on the pebbles, head turned in my direction and watching me. I wondered if he could see Mary.

“How…why…why on earth would Dex stop me, stop us, from leaving?”

“He’s going to think of a reason. He may not know the reason right now but it will come up, and you’ll have to go back to the campsite.”

I shook my head and then stopped, suddenly self–conscious that it might be a one–way show that Dex was witnessing from far away. I decided to play Devil’s Advocate.

“All right then, Mary. Say we go back to the campsite. Then what?”

“You both will become sufficiently paranoid of each other. He’s going to accuse you of being ill and you’re going to accuse him of being ill. That’s when John will appear. Maybe San too. When you are both alone and at your weakest. If not them, then the rest of the lepers.”

“Why? What did we do to them?” My voice was becoming higher by the second.

“It’s about responsibility, my dear. No one has ever claimed real responsibility for what happened here. I tried to fix it but look what happened. They turned on me. They killed me.”

“I thought John killed you.”

“This place killed me. There are wrongs that need to be righted and these souls won’t rest until that is done. This place is too close to the black and white world. It’s the responsibility of humankind. It’s a shame it got passed on to both of us. It’s a shame for two 23-year olds. We were so young.”

That caught me off guard. How did she know it was my birthday? And what did she mean “were”? I swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on something else. The sopping wet sock inside my boot. The feel of the smooth arbutus tree bark that I had one hand against. The smell of rain, even though there was no rain.

“I’ll be seeing you on the other side,” she said with a quick smile that slid easily over her missing teeth. “One more time. I’ll have something you’ll want to know.”

Not if I can help it
, I thought.

She looked down at her dress, tugged at the skirt of it, straightening out her bodice and walked timidly into the trees that led up the rest of the cliff, as if she was strolling off to church. I had no urge to stop her. I did have the urge to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

With Dex still watching me (seriously, OK, I’m talking to myself, get over it and get back to work), I scrambled down the cliff as quickly and carefully as I could. As soon as my feet hit the stones on the beach, I was off and running toward Dex at full speed.

“How’s it coming!? Let’s go now, shall we!” I yelled, coming to a stop in front of him, pebbles skidding everywhere.

He blinked hard a few times. He had been in the middle of removing the engine from the back. The tear on the left pontoon had been patched up and a million bandage wrappers littered the bottom of the Zodiac.

His lips formed to make words but nothing came out.

“What? You need help?” I asked, and bent over in front of the engine, working the vice back and forth, loosening it. As I did so, I kept my head down and said, “Yeah, I was talking to Mary. Not myself. Though I can tell you still don’t believe me.”

With a few yanks, the engine came loose and Dex was there, helping me lift it off the back of the boat and onto the beach.

“That’s fine. Thanks,” he said monotonously. I eyed him quickly. I could see he was having a battle in his head of what to think and what to say. Obviously he didn’t see Mary. It didn’t matter. We could deal with my apparent psychosis later.

“Are you ready?” I straightened up and tried to get the urgency across.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. He lightly kicked the left pontoon. “Are you ready?”

“Fuck yes. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Dex gave me a quick (but noticeably wary) smile. “I’ll pull from the front if you push from the end.”

I moved into position behind the Zodiac, my hand placed firmly on where the engine used to be. He picked up the backpack and put it on his shoulder.

“Are you sure the Super 8 will stay dry in there?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if he had a special bag around it or if he was going to wear the backpack on his head so it didn’t get wet.

“It should be OK, as long as the pontoon holds out,” he said as he started to pull the front of the boat along. It moved awkwardly, like we were dragging a dead body. “The only thing I’m worried about is the film if…”

He trailed off and stopped pulling. He let go of the boat’s front. His face was awash with panic. For a second I thought he saw something in the trees behind me but after a quick look, that wasn’t it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked slowly. A sickly feeling started to creep throughout my veins.

“We have to go back.”

My eyes widened. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening.

“We are not going anywhere,” I said, half inhaling my words.

He looked terrified, to say the least, but he stood his ground. “No, we have to go back, Perry.”

“We have to go back? What the fuck, this isn’t an episode of Lost, Dex!”

“The film! I left the film cartridges in my other bag. I changed them over this morning. Without that film we don’t have a show.”

I let go of the Zodiac and stood up. Shocked. Enraged. “Screw the show!”

“Sorry, kiddo,” he said, coming around the boat and heading off toward the trees. Toward the rest of the island and all the horrors I knew were hiding there.

I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t. It really was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I had to do something.

This time, instead of thinking about doing it, I did pick up a rock. I flung it at him. It hit him square in the back.

“OW!” he cried out and spun around like a cornered animal. “What the…did you just throw a fucking rock at me!?”

“I had to! Please, forget the film. We have to leave now. We have to leave right now!” My voice was reaching epic dog whistle proportions.

“You stay here,” he said angrily, feeling for his back where I had hit him. “Please, just stay here and stay out of my way. I’ll be back.”

I shook my head violently and ran after him. He started running too, to get away from me, but I grabbed his arm roughly and pulled on him hard. I hoped he could see the pure panic in my eyes.

“Mary said this would happen, Mary said…,” I stammered.

“Now you’re just babbling,” he admonished me, trying to swat away my arm like I was some sort of fly or pest.

I pulled on him harder. “Please Dex, please don’t do this, we have to forget it, we have to leave now! Right now! Right now! Right now!” I started screaming it. His eyes went wide, unsure of what to do with me, but he quickly composed himself and put my face in his hands. He looked deep in my eyes.

“I’ll be right back. You can’t stop me. We need that film. We are fucked without it. Without it, this whole thing would be for nothing.”

It didn’t matter to me. Nothing else mattered except getting off the island alive. Oh, if only he had seen Mary, seen what I had seen, then he’d know.

I started crying. It was really the only thing I could do. He took his hands off and rolled his eyes.

“Not going to work. Now please let go, or I’m dragging you along with me,” he threatened, the niceness gone from his eyes. He wasn’t going to let up. I began to think about all the things I could do to get him to stay. I could pick up the nearest heavy rock and hit him over the head with it but then what? I couldn’t paddle both of us to the boat.

“Are you shitting me? Are you seriously thinking about bashing me over the head?” he asked incredulously. He had followed my eyeline to a barnacle–covered stone that was just large enough to do the job.

I bit my lip.

“Unbelievable,” he spat out. “You need to get a fucking hold of yourself.”

And at that he flung his arms out of my hands with whip-like ferocity. “Now you can come with me or stay here. Your choice. But those are your only two choices.”

He adjusted the backpack angrily, then turned on his heel and marched off into the woods. I looked at the Zodiac and Mary Contrary and prayed both of them would be there when we returned.
If
we returned.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

To Dex’s credit, he did know that we were pushing our luck by going back for the God damn film cartridges. Considering the wound on his leg, we jogged all the way back to the campsite, not even stopping once to catch our breath. This time we were aware of the mud pits too, so we were able to sidestep them without getting bogged down.

All the running left my chest wheezing painfully and my stomach doing topsy–turvy things with the Twinkie. By the time we saw the stupid campsite, one more time, I had to head off to use the outhouse. I did not want to. I did not want to leave Dex’s side. But some things can’t be ignored and this was one of them.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I told him as we came to the junction near the campsites.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Can you come and get me after you find the film?”

“Sure,” he agreed, giving me an uneasy look. Maybe he was afraid I was going to sneak around and club him over the head.

He headed off to the tent and I ran as quickly as I could over to the outhouse. My stomach often gave me trouble. It figured that it would happen at a time like this.

On the way over, as I passed across the mossy, rocky outcrop that the outhouse stood on, I noticed a charred ring around some logs. I saw it before, but it never clicked. It had been a campfire at one point.

It got me thinking. Maybe if we took all the toilet paper out of the outhouse and stuffed it under the logs (turning it over so we got the dry side) and lit it, we could create a signal fire. That might cause some attention. Not that anyone would see it through the fog, but you never know. Dark, thick smoke might stand out against the gauzy fog and a nearby ship that plowed the international shipping lanes that were only two miles off shore, or a low–flying seaplane, might see it and investigate.

I sat down on the outhouse hole and looked at the stack of toilet paper beside it. There were enough rolls to do some sort of damage. It sounded pretty naïve, I know, but in case things didn’t work out, if we could light it and then maybe the flare as well, there was at least a chance of rescue.

After I was done in the bathroom and felt a million times better (well, my insides did), I stepped out, my arms full of the toilet paper rolls. I began lifting up the pieces of burnt firewood and sticking the rolls in at various angles. The only problem was with how damp the logs were.

Then I remembered the fire pits they had up by the other campsites that were further inland. There was coal and stuff like that, I thought anyway. I got excited and started off for them.

I ran to our campsite first and saw Dex sorting frantically through the bags he had laid out on the picnic table.

“Did you find the damn thing?” I asked.

He glared at me and kept looking.

“Anyway,” I continued. “I have an idea. I’m going to light a signal fire, just in case. There’s some coal or kindling up at the other campsite. Can I have your lighter?”

He didn’t say anything. I expected him to applaud me for my idea. But maybe he was still mad that I threw that rock at him. He did reach into his front pocket and pulled out his gold lighter. He thrust it into my hand and went back to searching.

I gave him a weird look and took off for the campsite, my boot still squishing with each step. I wanted to do this as fast as I could as each second away from Dex was an invitation to disaster.

I went straight to the fire pit/BBQ in the grassy campsite and pried the metal grill away from it. I dipped my hands into the coal but most of it was either wet or pure ash. I couldn’t use any of it.

“Shit!” I swore out loud. Now what? Some great idea.

I felt sickly defeated. My shoulder slumped automatically and I turned around, ready to make my way back to Dex. Then I remembered where I had seen kindling before. There had been stacks of cut orchard trees by Mary’s rose garden. Some of them were even underneath the stone bench she had been sitting on, which meant they had to be at least partly dry.

Still…it would mean I would have to go a bit further inland, and go to her garden. Her territory, which was even further away from Dex. I would just have to chance it. She always had to keep moving, there was a huge possibility that she wouldn’t be there.