The Island of the Skull

by Matthew John Costello

  Tugging harder, steady, tugging and—

  Until that hand too popped free.

  And Kong had to be only seconds away from breaking through the brush, to get to the wall.

  Some of the darkness in the jungle seemed to move; he was there.

  She jumped off the stone, onto the ramp that led into the jungle.

  An opening in the dense wall of green lay to the side, a place between two towering trees where the vines and plants weren’t so thick.

  The girl started running, not looking back, tripping, getting up, running as fast as she could.

  Another roar, and for the first time that night, this night of horror, the roar sounded farther away.

  Even as it was constant now.

  He was there. He found the empty stone, the heavy ropes scented by the grease of cooked animals.

  The nightmare had only begun.

  But the girl was still alive…and on the run.

  25

  New York City

  CARL DENHAM HOPPED OUT OF the cab, hurrying through a New York downpour, the rain coming down as though someone had turned on a gigantic faucet over the city.

  In a minute he was soaked, even just dashing to the door of “21.”

  He knocked, and the doorman let him in, smiling.

  “Evening, Mr. Denham. Nasty out tonight, hm?”

  Denham hurried past the doorman. “New York weather. You gotta love it.”

  “Mr. Driscoll is waiting for you in the back, with a guest.”

  Guest? Strange, when they arranged this meeting up for a drink, Carl thought it would be just the two of them. A good chance for them to catch up. Traveling with a crew who didn’t think much about anything, Denham could use a dose of Driscoll’s wit.

  And what better place than “21”—though in reality the establishment was an illegal speakeasy, Prohibition was just about ignored in Manhattan.

  Thousands of years of human beings enjoying a beer or a shot of whiskey, and some crazy people thought a law would change that.

  Instead, it became a damn field day for the gangsters. Denham had already watched them muscle into the picture business, funneling some of their booze money into something legit.

  He guessed it would take decades undoing the damage—that is if the damage could be undone.

  He moved through a sea of tables, lit by candles, the jewelry on some of the Broadway babes making the room glitter.

  What a great place! If Carl couldn’t be out at sea, going somewhere exotic, shooting something, then this was as close to heaven as could be.

  He saw Jack Driscoll, and next to him a guy with a mustache, wavy hair—Irish-looking, and somewhat familiar.

  “Jack, have you seen what it’s doing out there? I’m soaked.”

  Driscoll stubbed out his cigarette.

  “Heard some thunder before. Have a seat; your first martini’s on me.”

  Denham nodded, and he took a free place.

  “I want to introduce a friend of mine…Eugene O’Neill.”

  The other man stuck out his hand. “Gene.”

  “Carl Denham,” Denham said.

  He saw Jack shoot a look at the other man as though they were on the inside of some top-secret joke.

  Jack leaned over. “Gene’s a writer.”

  “Ah, another struggling artiste? Tough business, even for Jack who is damn good.”

  Jack laughed, while his friend reached for a pack of Pall Mall. Tapped one out, and lit up.

  “Carl, Gene is a lot more successful than I am. You never heard of him?”

  “You know me. Not a lot of time to hit the Great White Way. I barely get to see your plays.”

  “In fact, you don’t. You missed the last two.”

  “Bad timing, kiddo, and besides they didn’t stay open long enough. Like I said, tough business.”

  Then the other man spoke.

  “And what is it you do, Mr. Denham?”

  “Carl, Gene, Carl. Or if you ever work for me, call me ‘Denham.’ ” Denham laughed. “Been a long time since I’ve been a Mister anything. I make movies.”

  “Film? Interesting. There are plans to film one of my plays.”

  “Really? Then you must be doing okay.”

  Jack laughed aloud. “Carl, this is Eugene O’Neill, award-winning, successful playwright. Everyone knows him.”

  It was O’Neill’s turn to laugh.

  “Obviously not everyone.”

  “Like I said. I don’t get out much. Usually running around looking for money.” Then to Jack. “Like now.”

  Then back to O’Neill.

  “So what do you write? Musicals?”

  “Never did that. Usually write drama. Serious stuff.” Between puffs, O’Neill smiled. “Maybe too serious. But you know—I am working on a comedy now.”

  “You’re kidding?” Jack said.

  “Not at all. All about my youth, filtered through some happier glass. Maybe…one of these.” He tilted his own martini glass. “A real comedy. And you know, I think it’s pretty good.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Jack said. He turned back to Denham. “Gene wrote Mourning Becomes Electra.”

  “Hey, I did hear about that. Something to do with the Greek tragedy?”

  O’Neill grinned. “You could say that…I stole a bit from Orestes, and transplanted it to the post–Civil War New England. Guess I turned it into an American tragedy.”

  “Now that’s a good title.”

  “You really should read a paper now and then, Carl.” Jack raised his hand to a waiter.

  “Try getting the Herald Tribune delivered in the Arctic, Jack. It’s a problem.”

  “Another?” Jack said to O’Neill.

  “Love to, Jack. You know me. But I’ve promised to meet the wife for dinner. One more of these, and I’m sure I’ll start to think of better things to do.”

  O’Neill stood up.

  “Next time, dinner? Love to read Ah, Wilderness! when it’s ready.”

  Denham watched Gene shake Jack’s hand strongly. “You’ll be among the first.” He turned to Denham.

  “And nice to meet you, Carl. Good luck with your photoplays.”

  Carl shook the writer’s hand.

  Then Eugene O’Neill sailed out of the club slowly, almost—Denham thought—as if reluctant to leave the flickering warmth, or the booze, or the camaraderie.

  “So he’s famous?”

  Jack ginned. “Very. He’s a genius. The best we have. I’ll never be that good. Never.”

  “Hey, don’t put yourself down. You’ll be—”

  The waiter arrived with two martinis—Denham’s first and a refill for his friend.

  “You were saying?”

  “Oh right—sure you will be. You’re brilliant.”

  “If you say so….” Another sip. “How’s Herb?”

  “Doing great. Gotta tell you, even the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian were impressed with what they did up there in Nova Scotia. And they have him walking—can you imagine that?—walking on the prosthetic. They say he’ll be ready to do whatever he wants to do in a few weeks.”

  “So you got your cameraman back?”

  “Yeah. He was crazy to go for that shot.”

  “People like to please you, Carl. That’s what you…bring out. They want to make you happy. Even if it means getting attacked by a hundred sea lions.”

  “It wasn’t a hundred, and they were seals.”

  “Thank God for Hayes.”

  “Amen to that.” Denham took a sip. A perfectly chilled martini, flecks of ice floating on the surface. Heaven. “And how’s your new play going?”

  “It’s going. Slow, steady—I’m the tortoise of playwrights. But—I dunno—having trouble with the romance that drives the whole story. It’s like I don’t know what the guy should say.”

  “Now I wonder why that is?”

  “Funny.”

  “I mean, I make movies about dangerous places and exotic animals. Because that’s what
I know, got it? How could you write about romance without having had much experience…”

  “I’ve dated.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve passed by a church once too. About as frequently.”

  Jack looked uncomfortable. Denham knew someone would nail him. Jack Driscoll would lose his heart big time. He’d fall like someone jumping off a building.

  “And what about you?”

  “Me? Romance? I’m a filmmaker, Jack. Filmmakers have no time for—”

  Jack laughed again, an infectious sound, warm, genuine. Denham always felt smarter, wittier with his friend. It was a good feeling.

  “No, your next steps, plans?”

  “Oh, that…” Another icy sip. “I’m working a few angles. The investors weren’t happy. So they cooked up a compromise.”

  “To make up for the money, for the lost expedition?”

  “Yeah. A jungle picture. We’re going to meet about it in a few days.”

  “Now that is funny. And you’re going to do it?”

  “Have to. And here’s the worst part—they got Bruce Baxter for the lead.”

  “Oh. Lucky you.”

  “Right. If only he had a brain cell.”

  “Women seem to like him. Any female lead?”

  “They’re looking. That part will come later.”

  “And your locations, treks to real jungles?”

  Denham leaned close. “Budget’s tight. But I know my way around budgets. I’ve built enough in, but cutting corners that I can take the Venture out…once I figure where to go. Just need one thing…”

  Denham fixed his eyes on Jack.

  “Let me guess—it has something to do with me.”

  “Yes. I need a story, Jack. Just the start for now, stuff we can start in a studio for now. You can turn in the script for jungle stuff later.”

  “Carl, I can’t. I’m buried with this new work. We have a producer’s reading in a few weeks.”

  Denham clasped his friend’s forearm.

  “I don’t need the whole thing, kiddo. Just enough to get the thing rolling, keep the moneymen happy…while I start thinking where we can shoot the real jungle stuff. Thinking an island, maybe.”

  “Caribbean?”

  “Nah, something new. Something people haven’t seen. Still working on that. But Jack, you got to help me.”

  “For free…?”

  “You’ll get paid—eventually. You know me.”

  “Yeah, that’s part of the problem.”

  “You’ll get paid. Just give me enough to get Baxter and some of the other actors busy. We’ll get a girl, then the real story. You can do it.”

  “Yeah, but do I want to?”

  “It’s for me…how can you say no?”

  Jack downed his martini. “Right, how could I. And now, I think I need another.”

  Denham sat back.

  He was almost back in business—and that was cause enough to celebrate.

  26

  The Indian Ocean

  SAM WATCHED THE SURFACE OF the turquoise blue water break as Tommy’s helmet popped up. Then the diver’s hand reached above his helmet, thumb straight up.

  I trained the kid good, Sam thought. A smart diver. Though there was one thing he couldn’t give the kid, and that was experience. Tommy needed a lot of dives under his belt before he got to that point where when something went wrong—and something sooner or later always went wrong—he’d be calm as can be.

  The kid did fine being trapped on the training wreck. But what would happen here, out in the open water?

  Panic was the killer. Every helmet diver knew that. Getting twisted up in your own air tubes, stumbling, turning, forgetting where the release valve was, letting the air build up in a suit…

  It could all happen so fast.

  The crew pulled Tommy to the metal platform to raise him out of the water. One of them shouted an order in Portuguese, and the platform started coming up, the water cascading off Tommy.

  Captain Rosa stood outside the wheelhouse talking to Bakali.

  Both looked grim, faces set.

  And the reason was clear. Tommy had sent up only a few pearls. Barely worth the time sending him down.

  If there was some secret, unknown place where oysters would be found, they had yet to stumble upon it. And Sam knew they were hundreds of miles from any shipping lanes, far from any place where other vessels had gone for pearls.

  “God, Sam—it’s beautiful down there.”

  Tommy was oblivious of the mood on the ship. Sam guessed he better have a talk with him.

  Too much cheeriness could be a problem.

  “Yeah, kid, when you’re out of your suit, come on the stern deck. We need a little chat.”

  Tommy’s smile faded a bit, the lightbulb finally coming on.

  Tommy had a cigarette between his lips.

  “Divers don’t smoke,” Sam said.

  Tommy took another drag. Looked at the cigarette and flicked it over the side.

  “You’re the instructor.”

  “Ex-instructor. It’s just that you need your lungs in the best shape possible.”

  “But aren’t smokes supposed to be good for coughs, and—”

  Sam laughed. “Guess you believe everything you read?”

  “No. Not really.”

  The engine started up, and the deck below them began to vibrate. Sam heard the anchor chain being pulled up.

  “We’re moving,” Tommy said. “Where we going?”

  “Beats me. Cap’n Rosa has not chosen to confide in me. But my guess is somewhere…out there.” Sam gestured to the open sea to the west.

  “Out there? What’s out there?”

  Sam looked at the flat shimmering expanse of brilliant blue and green, stretching as far as the eye could see, as if the earth was a mammoth stretch of jewel-like brilliance, flat, endless.

  “There? Nothing. Oh, if you headed south you would eventually hit New Guinea. But it’s a big ocean, filled with a thousand islands we know and probably a thousand more chunks of rock we don’t.”

  “So you’re saying we might be on a wild-goose chase?”

  “All I’m saying is…I don’t know what’s out there, and I doubt Rosa does. In fact—”

  Tommy gave Sam a nudge. Sam turned back to the ship and saw Rosa and Bakali walking toward them.

  “Wish I kept that cigarette,” Tommy said. “I think we’re about to find out where we’re heading.”

  “I wanted to tell you what I am doing,” said the captain.

  Rosa and Bakali stood so that they blocked the early-morning sun. They looked like two dark shapes, ominous hulks.

  “Great. I guessed we wouldn’t stay here,” Sam replied.

  “Here?” Bakali said, talking through clenched teeth, tight on his cigar. Sam noticed that the stogie wasn’t often lit, that Bakali, for all his swagger, nursed the cigar for most of the day. “Here—there is nothing.”

  “I noticed. So, Captain, where we headed?”

  “Further out. We follow the island shelves, the great reefs. Tell me, what do you know about oysters?”

  Sam looked at Tommy and grinned. “Not much.”

  Rosa moved to the side, and a brilliant slice of sunlight hit Sam square on the face.

  “Sure you can find them on sandy bottoms protected by reefs, but you can also find the big ones deep, eighty meters deep. They like it where water’s moving, currents from all over, come together.”

  “They like that?”

  “Yes. And if there is freshwater current, off an island…then you get nice big oysters.”

  “And the big pearls,” Bakali said.

  “Good to know.”

  “Yes. So we move out there, looking, hunting. We may be out for longer time than I told you. So…I make sure. That okay for you?”

  Sam nodded. “No plans to be anywhere else, Captain. So I guess this is as good a place as any.”

  “Me too,” Tommy added quickly. But Sam could see that they weren’t exactly wa
iting for Tommy’s answer. They’d probably just as easily throw the kid over the side as chum for the fishing lines the ship trailed…to supplement the chef’s store of food.

  Rosa slapped Sam’s back.

  “Good. Then we keep going. To the unknown, eh? And maybe we get lucky, hm?”

  Odd choice of words, Sam thought. The unknown.

  Just didn’t sound good.

  Rosa and Bakali turned away, returning to Portuguese, talking about who knows what.

  He turned to Tommy. “Hey kid. You want a smoke…smoke.”

  Tommy grinned, and dug out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit up, the white smoke sailing up high to a nearly perfect blue sky.

  27

  The Indian Ocean

  SAM DOZED BELOWDECKS, THE STEADY chug of the engines soothing in their repetitive rumbling.

  Occasionally a crewman would enter the bunk area and make some noise and Sam would stir from his daytime sleep. A bit of a dream would remain, disconnected, part of some vision that vanished like cotton candy melting on his tongue.

  For a moment he was a teenager back at St. Vinnie’s when he first discovered a reason for going to Mass—to see the girls walking back from Communion, looking so sweet, so innocent.

  So desirable.

  Then another, reliving a battle between his older brother and his drunken father bellowing at each other, then finally shoving, until he saw his father thrown back into his chair, his cruel drunken rule finally over, defeated.

  Then, being under water, the dives into the murky Sheepshead Bay harbor, dives where the yelling ended, the light faded, and there was peace, peace and—

  Feeling—a little bite.

  Some small pumpkin seed nipping his white tender skin.

  Barely feeling it, but such a strange feeling when you know something wants to bite you, take a nibble—

  So many incomplete dreams of home, dreams—maybe—of why he left and joined the Navy to begin with.

  Dreams and nightmares that led here.

  He turned over.

  Someone shook his shoulder.

  “Sam! Sam wake up.”

  Sam turned over. Tommy leaned over the bunk, still shaking him.

  “I’m up, damn it. What the hell—”

  “Sam, they see something.”