The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) (9 page)

Years before, I’d watched a diabetic friend give himself a shot in the stomach. He had grinned when I winced, and then dared me to do it myself.

“It’s easy,” he had said, “just pinch up a roll of fat and stick it in.”

I’d been at the right age, at that point in life when eating my own excrement would have been easier and less humiliating than backing down from a dare. I’d done it, but not before sitting there for a couple of minutes, sweating, moving the needle close to my skin before pulling it back, knowing it would sting like a bee when I shoved it in, knowing I was going to, but trying to work up the nerve to actually do it.

I felt the same way looking at the buggy.

“What the hell is wrong with you, William?” I asked out loud. “You’re forty-two years old, too old to be scared of the dark.”

The door opened. Daniel stepped out amid a shower of golden light. He pulled the door closed behind him. Darkness sliced back across the porch.

He stood silently, facing me even though I couldn’t make out his features.

“Jesus,” I whispered, too low for him to hear. “This is all I need.”

“Hello, Daniel.” I said louder after gathering my breath.

“Hello, Mr. William. You shouldn’t go to the boat.”

Chills ran up my spine.

“What makes you think I’m going to
Angel
?”

I could barely make him out in the dim light from the window behind me. He stood unnaturally straight, and still.

He shrugged and thought for a moment.

“If you go back, you will shoot him.”

I rose from the floor of the porch.

“Who?”

“The man who died today,” he said quietly.

“You say some of the strangest things, Daniel.” I told him. “Why would I shoot him? He’s dead. I’m not going back for him. I’m going because our sleeping bags are there, because we need them tonight.”

Daniel sighed.

“He is waiting, Mr. William.”

I stood there, staring at his outline. The door opened again. This time Elsie emerged. She reached out and pulled the boy toward her.

“Go back inside, Daniel. It’s chilly out here. I don’t want you catching cold.”

She waited until he turned and walked back through the door. Then she moved toward me.

“You leave him alone. You hear me? There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s as good a boy as you’ll find.”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with him,” I protested. “But damn, that grandson of yours is creepy.”

She stepped closer. Light from the window flared across her face. Her eyes glinted with anger. “You just remember what I told you. Leave him alone.”

Something snapped inside.

“And you remember this,” I said leaning closer. “I didn’t bring him out here or invite him out. He came on his own. You don’t want him around me, then do your job as his grandmother and keep tabs on him.”

I moved past her and headed for the dune buggy. “Call that blasted judge first thing tomorrow. I don’t give a damn about travel bans. I want you both off my back.”

“Where are you going?” she called after me.

I climbed into the buggy and backed it down the ramp. Shoving the gear shifter into forward, I looked back toward the porch. Her figure stood framed in the light from the window.

“To get you a sleeping bag.”

Chapter VIII - Bad Things

The little buggy had no lights. I drove partly by memory, partly by feeling my way along through darkness so dense and black that even the white sand marking the path appeared as a thin, barely discernible line. Kelly and I had made the trip earlier in just a few minutes. It took almost half an hour on the return. Even then, the quiet lap of water against the shore told me I’d reached the bay before I ever saw
Angel’s
outline.

She had drifted sideways during the storm and lay with her starboard side grounded against the shore. An outgoing tide would leave her sitting high and dry, which happened to be fine with me. Any other time, I might have backed her out a bit, turned her around and dropped an anchor off the bow to keep her pointed toward the water. A stern line secured to something on the island would not only keep her straightened out and let her take any waves on her bow, but essentially lock the boat in place.

Any other night wouldn’t have a body sitting eighteen inches away from the pilot’s seat. I knew nothing about the man I’d fished out of the water. I didn’t need to. The thought of climbing in next to a cold, wet cadaver made my skin crawl. If
Angel
sat beached the next morning, the chore of removing the body would be easier. The shape of her bottom would leave the boat canted to one side. Within hours the water would be back and she’d be floating. I had no intention of clambering around the boat in the middle of the night, groping for lines and bumping into a dead man at every turn.

The same design that made
the boat a poor choice for the open ocean, left her perfectly at home in shallow waters. Aside from simply being stuck, grounding in coastal waters would leave a bigger sailboat heeled over on its side when the tide ran out. Unable to stand on the deep keels that kept them alive in the ocean, they often ended up laid out horizontal until the incoming tide swept over and swamped them.
Angel
might lean a little, but she would sit just as easily on the bottom as she sat on the water.

With the storms gone, the night lay calm and still, with nothing but the tick of rain drops filtering through the trees and the muted splash of water against
fiberglass to break the silence. I sat in the dune buggy for a long time, listening to every sound sliding through the darkness. Twice, the lonely cry of a shore bird echoed across the sound. Here and there, a fish jumped out on the water. The swamp hissed and sighed. Mosquitoes fluttered along my arms and face, and whined noisily in my ears. Nothing sounded strange, or even the least bit unnerving.

Not that I needed anything else weird to happen. Daniel’s spooky predictions and the flat tones that delivered them were disturbing enough.

The longer I sat, the sillier the whole episode seemed. Zachary was dead. Zombies weren’t real and weariness ate at me. Neither the bed rolls nor the pillow were getting any closer with me sitting in the buggy. The sigh that escaped me sounded like I was scolding myself.

I climbed out and walked over to
Angel’s
gunwale. Across on the other side of the cockpit, Zachary lay where I’d left him, still wrapped securely in the plastic tarp. I pushed down hard on the edge of the boat to make sure she wouldn’t suddenly find water and scoot out from under me when I tried to swing myself up and in. The fiberglass remained steady and strong no matter how hard I shoved.

At a dock, I could have stepped down and into the cockpit. With her hull grounded on the sand, boarding meant either leaping inside with the gunwale under my hand, or climbing aboard. Given her slick sides, and few handholds, the word climb translated into scrambling up and flopping over into the seat. Dad had a ladder tucked back underneath the cockpit that slung over the side and offered a more graceful entry. The fact that it remained stored under the seats inside didn’t expand my options any.

I jumped.

My feet cleared the gunwale by at least a foot. Even I was impressed.

Angel
shook, but didn’t rock, confirming the fact that she was thoroughly grounded. I stood in the cockpit for a moment, staring down at the crumpled tarp, knowing what lay beneath, and honestly, not wanting to turn my back on it. Just the thought stirred the unsettling image of Daniel framed in the doorway.

I swallowed to calm my nerves. I gotta tell you. When you’re looking down at the very thing some creepy kid said would come after you, turning your back on it is the last thing the survival instinct wants to do. The brain doesn’t just warn, it screams NO! with a back-clenching jerk of jittery nerves clamoring for you to get the hell away. Just the idea of turning around triggers an intuitive projection of how it would feel to be run down by something fierce
,
and hungry, something with huge teeth and long sharp claws.

The movie makers know it too. They know exactly how the thought of being ambushed and eaten alive strikes an internal chord. Find a horror movie, and inside it will be some idiot who wants to visit the haunted house even after two or three other people met a grisly death. Everyone knows he’s an idiot, but no one can stop watching.

When he finds the monster and turns to runs, they all know he’s got seconds to live and the end won’t be pretty.

The same thought struck me as I stood in the cockpit looking down at the body. I could have come in the light of day. I could have had others with me. But no, I’d come on the darkest night I’d ever seen, to the place I’d just been warned about. I decided right then and there if life suddenly turned good and the disease burned itself out, I was going to Hollywood. I had a future in the horror industry as the gonna-die-dumbass.

I finally turned, even though every nerve in my body screamed for me to jump back out and make for the station as fast as the little buggy could carry me. Instead, I stepped down into the confined space of the cabin, and felt along the inside bulkhead for the switchbox I knew hung from the wall. When my finger ran into the hard wooden box, I felt for the top switch, counted down and flicked the third knob.

Light flooded the cabin instantly. Just as instantly, relief washed through my body. The second most common way people die in scary flicks is to suddenly become aware of the fact that only inches in front of them the same hungry beast waited with claws bared and mouth drooling with anticipation. The light killed that notion. The cabin lay as empty and disheveled as it had all afternoon.

Sweat trickled down my face even though the night air had grown cooler. Emboldened by the light, I snatched up the sleeping bags and rolled them into a giant wad. Leaning over, I dug under the starboard bunk and pulled out both blankets my father had kept stored there. A drawer under the sink held a spare flashlight. I grabbed that too, thinking a little light would make the trip back a lot quicker. Gold flashed from the shelf above the sink. I leaned in for a closer look and saw the pack of cigarettes Elsie had opened earlier. Beside it lay the lighter she had used. The urge to light one up hit me stronger than it had in years. I stuffed both into my jacket pocket.

My hands full, I shot one last look around the cabin, not wanting to drive all the way back only to realize I’d forgotten something. A poncho lay in the passageway beside the starboard bunk. I stared at it, wondering how it had gotten there. The thought passed. I had no fear of the rain coming back.

The mind wants order, wants what it perceives to fit in the natural order of things it knows and understands. Mine told me the wind had gotten stronger. It told me the rustling behind me was nothing more than the breeze rippling along the edges of the tarp. Somewhere along the line it put two and two together and prodded the conscious part of my brain to say, hey, the trees aren’t whispering, and there’s no wind sighing through the rigging. The only movement is behind you.

Even with my mind buzzing the warning, it took a minute for the rational side to catch on. I spun around, still holding the gear I’d come to retrieve, feeling every hair on my body stand straight up. Sweat broke out across my forehead and chills raced up my arms.

The cabin light poured out the hatch into the cockpit, bathing the floor in a bright, white rectangle, but only partially illuminating the seat where the boy’s body lay still wrapped in the tarp. Half I could see easily. The night claimed the rest, the edge between light and dark drawn in a clean, straight line.

For a long moment, I saw nothing I hadn’t seen before. The rumpled heap of plastic and body lay undisturbed. The rest of the cockpit sat empty. I couldn’t make out anything beyond the bulky shape of the motor hanging off the end. I didn’t waste time looking either. The sound that had crawled through my mind hadn’t been wet. It had been the dry rattle of plastic crinkling, of something moving underneath it.

Every nerve in my body both screamed at me to run and yet seemed locked in place at the same time. Every inch of skin felt like it was trying to crawl away from whatever waited outside. I could hear myself breathing, the sound unnaturally loud in the close confines of the cabin.

Zachary’s hand slid out from under the tarp and dropped toward the floor. The sudden motion sent me flying backward into the sink. The hard wooden edge dug into my back, gouging an inch wide burst of fire across my skin. Fear isn’t the right word. Terror doesn’t come close. The sight of his hand dangling from the edge of the tarp, fingers motionless and pale, the nails long and dirty, scared the absolute beejeesus out of me. I knew that moment how he had died. He hadn’t gone easily, or gracefully. The boy had fought with every last ounce of air in his lungs to right the kayak, to force his head back above the surface of the water, to breathe once more clean, sweet air.

“
We-lee-um?”

The rasping sigh slid across the dead air, dry and hoarse like it had been forced out of a throat wracked with laryngitis. I stood, blankets and sleeping bags clutched in front of me like a shield, desperately searching for an explanation. My mind wanted to believe the sound came from an oddity in the rigging and the wind, to believe that somehow the boat had turned just the right way for the breeze to truly murmur through the taut lines. It wanted to believe that, come morning, some rational and fully scientific explanation would leap out at me. I would point it out to the others, and laugh at the surprised and shocked expressions on their faces.