Sea Creature (9 page)

“Hola,” he said.

“Hola. En busca de un buen momento?”

“Siempre. Inglés?”

“Jeyes I speak English.”

“Do you have a room nearby?”

“Jeyes.”

Christopher followed the man into the house. It appeared like any normal home in Chile. There was old furniture with clear plastic wrap around the couches and love seats and a coffee table with a bible and art book filled with religious paintings on top of it. A painting of the Virgin Mary hung above the fireplace; her heart burning through her clothing as she stared off in the distance. In the kitchen were pots and pans and dishes, dried red peppers hanging as ornaments over the oven and dining room table.

He was taken upstairs to a room with a large bed covered in a canopy. The boy led him to the bed, and then shut the door.

*****

When they finished, Christopher got up and dressed. He looked the boy over; he was strong and muscular and was lying on his side flipping through a magazine. Christopher sat in a chair and admired him for a long time. This was the best time in the boy’s life. Christopher knew exactly where he would end up. It would be addicted to heroin or alcohol, the other drugs available in the region too expensive for the normal street hooker. His youth and his strength would fade hit by hit and bottle by bottle until he could no longer sell himself. That’s when he would turn to crime and end up just another old man serving out his time in prison.

But for now, he was beautiful. Christopher pulled out a package of cigarettes and lit one with a match.

“What do you know about Ignacio Silva?” Christopher asked.

“El alcalde? Not much. I met him once. He came here and walked through the streets and stopped and talked with us. He is vergy nice.”

“Does he have a reputation for anything?”

“Repu . . .”

“Reputation. Estado.”

“Oh he is vergy strong. The, how you say, ah, las pandillas?”

“Gangs.”

“Jeyes, the gangs are no scared of angyone. The gangs are scared of him.”

“Why?”

“He is not like other people. He is vergy strong.”

“I’m glad you’re so descriptive.”

The boy looked at him puzzled, an innocent smile on his face. Christopher took one last puff of his cigarette and rose. The boy turned to him, looking at him seductively, and Christopher pressed the tip of the cigarette hard into his thigh, putting it out.

The boy screamed and jumped out of the bed, a string of obscenities spewing from his mouth in Spanish. He picked up the lamp and threw it but Christopher was already out the door and it hit the frame and shattered as Christopher laughed and ran out of the house.

The trip had been a disaster from the beginning.

Kyle Morrison stood on the rented boat overlooking the shore and waited for Nancy to finish haggling with one of the street merchants over a dress and piece of jewelry. When he’d taken her to Kenya last year, he had expected the street merchants as every travel guide warned him about them. But Viña del Mar was supposed to be different. Why didn’t the local police just round up all these damn street merchants and ship ‘em off?

On top of that, he had looked forward to a breakfast of ostrich eggs and the hotel didn’t have any. He had to settle for blue bird eggs and some sort of fried sausage.

Nancy turned to him and waved, the muscles bulging in her shoulders. Kyle’s impatience faded. She was sexy. Twenty-three years old and a personal trainer. Kyle never got girls like her until he was rich. When he was the fat kid in high school that came from an alcoholic father and a mother that ran out on them, and when he was the scholarship kid in college with all the elites looking down their noses at him, he never would have gotten a girl like Nancy.

But now he couldn’t keep them away. The money was the draw and he saw the look of disgust on their faces when he made love to them, but he didn’t care. They were his. He bought them like he bought his boats and his condos and watches.

“Get over here,” he shouted, “we’re leaving.”

She ran over, pressing her hat to her head. Like a dog, Kyle thought.

Nancy climbed aboard and he slapped her ass and she yelped playfully. He yelled to the two workers he had hired and they pulled the anchor and started the engine. The boat pulled out of the slip and he sat on a deckchair, sipping wine out of a forte cab wine glass.

“I love this dress,” Nancy said, rubbing his shoulders. “Do you like it?”

“It’s all right.”

“I want to wear it tonight at the party. There’s going to be the president there. Isn’t that what you said? That the president would be there?”

“I guess. I don’t know if I want to go though.”

“Why not?”

“That shit bores me. Gotta wear a tux and all that. Sounds boring.”

“But I really wanted to go, sugarballs.”

“Eh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll stop by.”

She leaned down and kissed him and then ran below deck, coming back out with two glasses and a bottle of champagne.

“Let’s drink this instead.”

Nancy poured two glasses and handed him one. Kyle took it, sipped it, and then put it back down and took up his wine glass.

“I want to go to that little island we went to yesterday,” she said as she leaned in close and nibbled on his ear. “I want to fuck you on the beach.”

He turned to the worker at the controls and told him where to go. He finished his wine in one gulp and then kissed her hard. He bit down on her tongue until she pulled away and he laughed.

They began running their hands over each other’s bodies and he slid his tongue down her neck and over her plump breasts. He bit the top of her left breast and she giggled.

The boat suddenly began to slow and he thought they were nearing the island. He bent down and bit her thigh and could smell her perfume and lotion and it aroused him. He looked up to make sure the deckhands weren’t watching, and he didn’t see them. One had been near the controls and one was at the bow repairing a fishing rod that had snapped yesterday.

The boat came to a stop and Kyle stood up and went to the controls.

“What is it?” Nancy said. “What’s wrong?”

“Where the fuck did Juan and that other guy go?”

“Maybe they went below?”

Kyle walked to the steps leading below deck and examined the two rooms. There was a kitchen with a table and then a bedroom. There was no one there. He went back up to the controls and looked around at the vast blue water surrounding him.

“Those fuckers fall in?”

A scream cut through the air and they both turned to it. Juan was sticking out of the water, covered in blood, his organs bulging from an open wound in his stomach as something had wrapped itself around him and was holding him above the surface.

There was one final guttural scream as blood erupted from his mouth, his chest and abdominal cavity crushed to paste.

Kyle could see what looked like a white tube around him. The tube began to slither over the body and then pulled it under.

“Holy shit!”

He jumped up to the controls and slammed the throttle forward. The boat dipped low too fast and Nancy flew out of her chair and hit the transom before flying into the water. She screamed and grabbed at the boat but couldn’t pull herself up.

“Kyle! Help me!”

He laid off the throttle a second and looked back, looking at her beautiful face as her make-up ran down her cheeks.

Fuck it, he thought.

He pressed down on the throttle again and bolted away as she frantically screamed behind him. It was a horrible scream; one of someone that knew they were about to die. It lasted only a few seconds and then was abruptly cut off. He looked behind him and saw only the water and a few birds diving down.

The island was in view now. It wasn’t large, only a half square mile or so, but it would do for now. He just needed to calm down for a minute and think. The guys had fallen into the water and were killed by something. But he didn’t hear any splashing. That means they were probably taken off the boat but what the fuck could take a man off a boat?

Nancy’s scream entered his head again and he shook it away.

He got the boat nearly to the beach; the bottom scraping against rocks and sand. He jumped out into knee-high water and ran for the safety of the beach.

The sand was hot underneath his feet and he collapsed onto all fours. He looked up to see a line of trees; the center of the island was thick jungle. He glanced back to the water but didn’t see anything; his boat gently bobbing up and down with the waves.

As he tried to stand he heard the thunderous sound of fiberglass and wood crushed and sucked under the surface. He turned just in time to see the bow of the boat, sticking out vertically in the water, pulled underneath. In the few seconds he had turned away, it had been pulled out to sea almost a hundred feet and then under the water.

Something whipped out from the ocean. It rocketed toward him and seemed to block out the sun as it came down. It scraped along his body and tore his clothes and skin alike.

He screamed and wet himself before running into the jungle.

Kyle was sobbing and he looked down and saw blood cascading over his body and to his feet; droplets flying off of him as he ran through the vegetation.

There was a crash behind him. He looked back to see something rip through the branches. Before he could scream it wrapped around his face and threw him into a tree, smashing his ribs. It flung him back to the beach in one motion and then dragged him into the water. He clawed at the thing around his face but without air and his ribs broken, his strength faded.

He gave up as he felt the cool water against his back. He sensed himself flopping as his lungs began to burst and the last thing he heard was a high-pitched hiss and he thought of a snake, before his skull was crushed.

The sandy winds of Basra blew against Patrick’s face. They had given him goggles and a scarf to wear under the helmet but it never helped. There was always the sand. In his shoes, in his food, in his eyes, in his ears and nose and even his ass. He slept with it at night and woke with it on his face. It got to the point that he began to feel unsettled without it nipping at his skin.

The house in front of him had a large front yard and a garden. A child’s toy, what looked like a tricycle, was out front. He stared at the tricycle a long time. He saw the sun come up and then go down and the blackness of night took over, and then the sun came up again and he felt it burn the patches of skin on his face that were exposed.

“Russell,” his commander shouted, “get yer ass in that house.”

Patrick lifted his weapon and walked toward the house, three men behind him. The front door opened and inside . . .

Patrick jumped up out of bed and fell to the floor. He reached underneath his pillow for his gun but it wasn’t there. His eyes came into focus and he heard Rodrigo snoring in the cot next to him. The throbbing in his head made him wince and he stood up and went to the kitchen. Putting his hands under the faucet, he drank until his belly was full.

Patrick used the bathroom and then got into the shower. It was little more than a hose attached to a sprinkler head in the ceiling but the water was warm and relaxed his muscles and washed off the salty sweat. He was still drunk and he vomited in the shower and felt better afterward.

He dressed and ran his hands through his hair before looking for his wallet and realizing it was gone. He headed outside.

The jeep wasn’t there. He turned to go back inside and ask Rodrigo where Christopher was when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. There was movement in the bushes closest to the hostel. He walked over and peered in but didn’t see anything.

The last thing he remembered was pain in the back of his head, and then the ground rushing toward him.

*****

There was a floating sensation at first. Something like the state right before sleep when one is dozing off. It was euphoric and pleasant, like slipping under a warm blanket, but it only lasted a moment. Then there was the wet ground underneath him and the spatter of rain drops on his face.

Patrick woke underneath the jungle canopy. Though it was raining, the moon was clearly visible in the sky and the light broke through the vegetation and sparkled on the drops of water clinging to the leaves of the jungle. He thought, for only a split second, that he had died.

Then the shouting in Spanish hurled him back to where he was. He looked up and saw several men standing outside of tents and passing around a drink. They were hard looking men with worn faces and one of them was wearing an Indian Jones-style hat with a large scar running down over his face, covered up briefly by a large bushy mustache.

Pain distracted him. There was pounding in his head from the wound on the back and he felt the stickiness of dried blood on his neck. He looked down and his arms and legs were tied like a pig about to be put over a fire.

One of the men walked over and yelled something in Spanish. The man’s Spanish was quick with no breaks; Spanish not meant to be understood by tourists. Dizzy and with a migraine flashing lights before his eyes, Patrick didn’t understand and the man sent a powerful kick into his ribs, knocking the wind out of him.

One of the other men said something in a calming voice and walked over as the other man went back to the tents. This man was tall and wearing canvas shorts and a button-down shirt. He wore a hat and had black stains on his face from dirt. He looked almost like a tour guide except for a leather strap used as a belt that held several grenades and a handgun.

“Hola,” he said. He waited for a response but received none. “How do you feel? Do you need some food?”

“No.”

“You have been unconscious for five hours my friend. I was afraid Jose cracked your skull and you were dying.”

He offered his hand and Patrick held up his arms, showing him they were tied. The man grabbed both his wrists and hoisted him to his feet. As he sat up the blood rushed from his head and he nearly fell over but the man wrapped his arm around him and helped him to his feet. He pulled out a large knife and Patrick froze. He had survived war, disease, and brutal physical abuse at the hands of his father growing up and he thought it strange that this is how he would die.