This one looks like a goddamn vulture! Sam thought.
First it locked its jaw around Bakali’s neck. That didn’t kill him, as Bakali tried to scream. But his air supply was cut off and Bakali just kept opening his mouth like a fish, trying to speak, trying to make any sound.
The creature’s wings flapped, but Bakali must have been too heavy for it.
Sam pulled out his gun.
But much too slowly, for the reptile now dug its two claw feet into Bakali’s midsection, and opened him up.
In a second, the trapped man’s body lay completely open.
As the “Vulturesaurus” released Bakali’s head, Sam fired two shots at where he imagined its brain must be. The creature howled in agony. It tried to flap its wings and escape, but after three short flaps, it fell forward, dead.
“We gotta go,” Sam said. He started pulling the girl to the boat. Had she ever seen a boat, did she know what this was?
She stepped into the dinghy, and Sam pushed it off the shore. He hurried to the center bench seat and started rowing as fast as he could. The storm had turned the water into something choppy, boiling. The boat rocked up and down, dipping below the water— and for every three great pulls on the oars, Sam imagined that he lost as much as half the ground.
He also kept checking the skies above.
But so far, no more flying dinosaurs.
It’s absurd, he thought. Flying dinosaurs.
Life changes so quickly, reality shifts bizarrely in an instant.
He bumped against the Susana.
He quickly tied the rowboat to the stern, and jumped aboard.
He saw the girl, bobbing in the boat, looking at it as if it was as frightening as the creature he just killed.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s okay.”
She looked right at Sam and then, in what must have been an act of trust, she climbed aboard.
He didn’t have time to pull the anchors up; he took his knife and cut each, then dragged the girl into the wheelhouse. He could hear the pumps below, still working to keep the churning ocean out of the ship.
Now he started the main engines, as the ship bobbed perilously close to the rocky shore.
He pressed the starter, but nothing happened.
“Damn…”
He hit it again, and then again, and then finally the engines kicked in. He cut the wheel hard to starboard, and pulled back on the throttle.
The ship started moving away from the rocks.
Even though he knew he was moving away from the shore, he could see almost nothing.
His hands gripped the wheel hard.
The ship moved sluggishly—obviously the sea had gained on the pumps, or maybe all the rocking had made the gash worse.
Come on, come on, come on, Sam thought. Just get us away from this hellhole.
He looked back at the girl, standing beside him, by the door to the wheelhouse.
Sam gave the terrified girl a smile, then turned back to the windshield, a blackish blur.
They were safe from the rocks, the boat was moving away from the shore, even though it sat so low. Belowdecks probably awash with the sea.
How long before the water killed the engines? But they were off the island. About as close to being safe as he could ever hope.
Then—the ship hit something hard, and tilted sharply to starboard.
Sam had to hold on to the wheel as the ship kicked over at a sharp angle.
But the girl had been standing by the wheelhouse door, and it flew open with a jolt.
Sam turned—to see her go flying out, sprawling to the floor.
The ship quickly righted. She was in no danger of getting thrown overboard. Sam let go of the wheel.
To help her.
To bring her back.
And he thought, It must have been waiting, hovering, circling the ship in the storm.
The Vulturesaurus landed on the girl. Her eyes glistened in the flashing lightning. Not showing fear. Whatever had happened to her, she had passed fear a long time ago. Not really expecting that she would ever get away.
The creature’s claw feet held her pinned. She reached out a hand to Sam. Since they had met, she had barely let him go.
The Vulturesaurus started flapping, and with the lighter girl, it started to rise in the air.
Sam had three bullets left in the gun. He held it out and emptied all three of the chambers at the thing.
Until its leathery wings stopped moving, and it fell a foot or so back to the deck.
He knelt down to the girl. She opened her mouth, and said words in her language. “Ka-neh, ry-leh nah.” Then, softly, so that Sam had to put his ear next to her lips, “Ka-neh…”
Then the light went out of her eyes.
Sam saw one of the creature’s claw feet still buried in the girl’s body. He reached down and began pulling it out. One claw caught on something, a bit of bone.
Maybe, Sam thought, it was damaged before, in some other attack.
The loose claw popped free and fell to the deck.
Sam picked it up and put it back in his pocket.
The ship moved sluggishly in the churning sea. Sam went back to the wheelhouse, wondering, And how much longer do I have?
The Susana passed into the fog bank, and then started out of the other side when the engines stopped.
Sam still held on to the wheel. Water crashed onto the deck, great choppy waves sloshing over the wood from either side.
The ship sat low in the water; it was sinking.
He let go of the wheel. He took a few deep breaths, trying to think.
He took out the map that he had made—miraculously, it hadn’t gotten too wet. On the other side, it showed their course west of Sumatra. He flipped it back over and grabbed a black oil marker. He wrote down the longitude and latitude. He carefully folded the map up and put it back in his pocket. He was alone. Everyone else was gone. He was alone, but he was alive.
Sam walked out of the wheelhouse, and ran to the stern. The ship rocked left and right, taking huge gulps of sea water, but also at the same time spinning, as if in a vortex.
He reached the dinghy, also with about a half-foot of water but riding the crazy surf better than the dive ship.
He jumped into the rowboat and untied it. A trough sent him slamming to the seat. He grabbed the oars. Then free of the sinking ship, he began fighting the sea with the oars, cursing, screaming, bellowing back at the thunder.
Until—
At some point he noticed that the thunder was gone, the lightning was gone, the rain had stopped.
The sun was out, and only he was making any noise, still yelling at the top of his lungs.
The sun seemed to hang overhead as though it was immovable. A brilliant white-hot lamp aimed down only on him.
He stopped rowing when he realized he had no idea where he was headed. Besides, it seemed easier to sit in the boat and let the sun do its work.
49
Atlantic City, New Jersey
WHEN ANN CAME BACK TO the apartment, it was afternoon; the late summer sun cut through the back windows sending a golden light that cut through all the rooms.
No one was there, and she was just as glad.
She could pack, get all set before the good-byes and leaving. It hadn’t been hard telling Nadler that she was moving on.
Though she hadn’t saved a lot of money, she did have some. Enough, maybe, to go back to New York and start knocking on doors again.
Something would turn up. Something had to.
She walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The envelope was on the table, and a piece of paper next to it.
“Ann, this came for you…Ellie,” was scrawled on the paper.
The envelope bore the words WESTERN UNION, and the familiar yellow color of a telegram.
She checked in the glassine window to see that the blocky letters did indeed spell her name.
ANN DARROW.
She opened it, and pulled out the oddly fo
lded message, reading:
ANN
GET YOUR BAGGYPANTS OUT NOW STOP
NEW SHOW NEEDS US STOP
COME BACK TO MANHATTAN STOP
LOVE MANNY STOP
Ann read it again just to make sure that the words wouldn’t vanish, that the words were in fact real.
And then, finally, she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and, in the golden light, with no one there, no one to see, she openly wept.
50
The Indian Ocean
HENNING MENKEL YAWNED.
This stretch of the sea could be so boring; a big empty ocean. His freighter runs had become so routine that he almost felt the ship had no need of a captain.
Perhaps he could turn the ship over to his first mate and catch a nap.
That sounded good, a nice long sleep while the ship steamed over the still sea.
He rubbed his eyes. Tired, maybe a little old for this, he thought. Might be time to head back to Norway and give up the sea.
Was that even possible? he thought. Was there any kind of life there for me?
He blinked.
He saw a dot on the ocean.
Must be a bit of wood, something kicked up by a storm?
He reached down for his binoculars.
It was a boat. A boat bobbing on the endless flat sea.
“Cut hard to port, Eric,” he said to the man at the wheel. “And slow a third.”
Another look through the binoculars.
No doubt—a rowboat. Was there someone in it? Where the hell did a rowboat come from out here? There had been no radio reports of ships in trouble.
Now the freighter steamed to the bobbing boat, and Captain Menkel started giving orders for the boat to be recovered…and to see what might be in it.
Menkel stood at the rail as his men tied up the boat and brought someone out of the boat, then up the walkway to the main deck.
Two crewmen held up the man, his skin festering with blisters, lips parched to a bloated, papery whiteness.
But the man opened his eyes. Still alive. Cooked like a piece of bacon, but still alive.
“Hello?” Menkel said to the man in heavily accented English.
One of the crew took a wet towel and dabbed at the man’s lips. They’d have to give him water slowly.
The man opened his lips, trying to speak.
At first Menkel could hear nothing, just small puffs of air that somehow escaped the parched mouth.
But then, indeed…words….
Epilogue
JACK DRISCOLL POURED ANOTHER FEW fingers of bourbon. He read over what he had written, and then crumpled the page into a ball and threw it to the floor.
He looked over at the pages on his bureau.
Maybe I should get back to that, he thought…back to the story he promised Carl. Because one thing was for sure: Carl Denham wouldn’t let him rest until he got something.
Except—what was in front of Jack was his real work.
But there was a problem. The characters in this new play seemed to be in their own separate worlds. Sure they talked to each other, supposedly cared about each other. But I’m not buying it, Driscoll thought. And if I don’t buy it, how can an audience?
Another sip. The booze didn’t help the writing—he wasn’t that deluded. But maybe he could figure out what was missing from these people, what was wrong—
No. Not with them.
With me. Something missing in me .
How can you give characters something you don’t have yourself?
Carl had nailed it when he told him, “Jack, you have to live if you want to write.”
Live…
How does one do that?
Jack got up.
Got to be an answer somewhere.
He left his small apartment, without an idea of where he was going or what he’d do.
When Denham’s production shut down for a few weeks, the director had his opportunity.
A plan.
If there was some place out there, an unknown island in the unknown seas, there might just be one place to find it.
Singapore!
The harbor bars back in the New York area had all come up dry, so he confided in no one when he left—after all, he might well come home empty-handed.
After a few days in the crowded port, haunting the watering holes that ringed the harbor, it looked as if this trip, this search for an island that didn’t exist on the maps—an island that might be that most rare of things…unknown— just didn’t exist at all.
Then he got a tip from a sailor, someone who had traveled with Denham years ago. A tip, a rumor…all for the price of some shots of cheap gin.
There was somebody there who might actually have what Denham was looking for. A Norwegian ship captain who had been talking in the bars.
It also wouldn’t be the first time Denham had chased a bit of information only to have it vanish before his eyes. Tonight—his last night before returning home—would probably be the same.
The bar was called the Blue Rose. The s on the neon sign was out, and the darkness within made this the least appealing of the row of dingy bars that lined the street, drawing in the hard-drinking sailors, and the floozies at the ready to help relieve them of any money they might have left.
Dark inside, like a cave.
He took a breath. The man sat in the back, barely visible in the shadows. Carl walked over to the bartender. A plump blonde sat sprawled on a stool, her predatory eyes locked on him.
“Just a beer, please,” he said. The bartender pulled back on the spigot and filled a glass with warm beer. Carl put down a few coins, then walked to the back of the bar.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“No.”
The Norwegian captain had been told that Carl would be coming.
“Carl Denham,” Carl said, extending his hand.
The captain shook it. “Henning Menkel.”
“You’re the captain of a freighter?”
A nod.
“And you found something? Something that I might be interested in?”
“Could be, Denham. Could be.”
In the half-light, Denham could see that the captain’s eyes were bloodshot. He’d obviously had a few before Carl’s arrival. For a moment, neither said anything.
The guy seemed awfully secretive about his find. Carl didn’t let his hopes get up….
“Want to tell me about it?”
The man rubbed his beard.
“Weeks ago. We found a boat, just floating. It was nowhere. Not near an island, no ship’s reported missing. At least not yet.”
“Someone in it?”
Another nod. “A man half-dead. His skin cooked by the sun, delirious. Half-dead…”
“But not dead?”
“No. He lived for a few more hours. We gave him medicine for the pain. Some water. But no way could he live. But he spoke.”
The captain’s eyes started to water.
Christ, he’s back there, Denham thought. He’s back in the open sea of the Indian Ocean as he tells me this.
“It was crazy, mad talk. Said everyone else was killed. He said they were eaten, ripped apart by monsters. Crazy talk. I told him to stop. Got him some more water, got his burnt body some ointment. There wasn’t much we could do. It’s only a freighter, our infirmary just doesn’t—”
“I understand.”
The captain reached out and grabbed Carl’s arm. “But later, when I was alone with him, he started again. Babbling…an island that no one knew about. A island shaped like…a skull. The Island of the Skull, he said.”
As the captain spoke, Carl’s heart began racing.
If this was true, if it was real, then he might be on to something that could make this movie, make his secret plan turn into the most incredible Denham picture ever.
If it was true…
“But you said he sounded delirious, that he sounded crazy?”
The captain nodded. “I would have just…how do you say it�
�let it go. The sun can drive a man mad. But—”
The captain opened up a cracked leather satchel that he had beside him and brought out a folded piece of parchment paper.
“He had this.”
The captain didn’t unfold it.
“A map. Showing the island. With longitude, latitude. Skull Island.”
“But it still could be…a delusion.”
And in the shadows, Carl saw the captain smile, his brownish yellow teeth capturing a bit of the scant light.
“Yes. I thought that too. But then, deep inside his pocket, he also had this—”
The captain reached into his satchel again, grabbed something, and then let it fall to the table.
It was a claw.
Denham had made films using animals from around the world.
In size, in shape, in its deadly curl that ended in a needle-sharp hook, he had never seen a claw like that.
“God. What is it?”
The captain nodded. “Exactly, Mr. Denham. What is it?”
Denham picked up the claw.
He closed his fist on it, then opened it again.
Still there.
It was real.
“He said one word when I took this from him. One.” The captain killed his whiskey.
“Kong….”
Carl walked out of the Blue Rose, out to the rainy, steamy streets of the Singapore harbor. He felt giddy. This was incredible.
He had to pay more for the map than he planned, a lot more. But despite his pleas, the captain wouldn’t part with the claw.
“Not for sale,” the captain had said.
Perhaps the captain wanted to keep it so that he’d have some evidence that it was real too, that he wasn’t mad. No matter.
And when the captain finally unfolded the map, when he brought the candle on the table close to the map, Denham saw the strange-shaped island.
The ridge that ran down one side close to the shore. A mountainous outcrop—probably a volcanic rise. Might even be an active volcano there. The island also had twin hooklike spits of land that extended out of the island into the sea, as if grabbing for it.
It was unlike anything he had ever seen.
The Island of the Skull Page 20