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 Angel 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 Angel’s side 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 standing there 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 thought 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. I don’t know if it comes from nights huddled in caves feeding a fire while saber tooth tigers prowl the darkness or life on the savannah a million years earlier, but it’s there.
The movie makers know it too. They know exactly how the thought of being ambushed and eaten alive strikes an internal chord. They play on it, offering up scenes designed to manipulate both instinct and fear. 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 movie 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 side 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 brain 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 at the same time 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, full of what looked like mud from the bottom, 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.
“We-lee-um come out. I want play.”
A stunned bleat of fear burst from my chest the second time it spoke, the sound stuck solidly between a grunt and a curse. Wind, even if it existed, might moan through the wires in a close approximation of a single word. No wind that had ever existed could produce an entire sentence.
I stared as what lay beneath the tarp shifted. Something jerked sideways, and then bolted upright in the middle of what should have been his stomach. The tarp jutted straight up, crackling as it went, the sound like someone walking through dead and dry leaves. Whatever lay beneath it turned quickly, first one way then the other, as if scanning the horizon through the dense plastic and just as suddenly shot back down.
Silence. Still and calm.
Then a soft, hoarse whisper slid through the empty air.
“We-lee-um come out. I want play forever.”
“Holy shit!” I gasped, my own voice just as hoarse.
The far edge of the tarp jerked. Zachary’s head shot up, the angle so fierce that bones crackled and crunched. Dead, glazed eyes looked back at me.
“We-lee-um?”
The voice came out of his mouth, the same horrible gaping hole in the bottom of his face that looked big enough to fit a softball. His head bobbled like a puppet, like God was having some fun and jerking on his strings.
“Come play here.”
I stood frozen in the cabin, with no options and no where to turn. I could run to the forward bunk, but on a twenty-three foot boat, that mean putting another ten feet between myself and the apparition sitting in the back of the cockpit. The only other direction available was toward it.
The boy’s face rose as if leaning back to yawn. His throat bulged and pulsed, growing thicker by the second until it looked like a fat white sausage stuffed so full it would split at any second. Bones cracked. Air hissed and farted out of the deep pit that had been his mouth. Then, as if I needed one more thing to make me crap my pants, an ear emerged, a long, skinny, hairless ear.
Another followed. Right behind them both came the bulge of something round, gray and just as hairless. Teeth flickered out of Zachary’s cavernous mouth, scattering across the cockpit floor like dice with roots tossed by the devil.
I couldn’t breathe. I’m sure a hero would have taken up his sword and slain the beast dragging itself out of the boy’s cold flesh. All I could do was watch.
Wide grinning eyes, with yellow where the whites should have been and dark slits for pupils, poked up next. Zachary’s lips stretched taut, pulling away from his teeth until they looked paper thin. Just when it seemed the throat had to burst, a long crooked nose flopped out. The rest of the face slithered out, slimy and wet, like a baby that had just passed its crown.
“Just you, just me, we play.” the thing breathed in a long hiss, revealing row upon row of sharp, triangular teeth. It leaned forward, jerking the kayaker’s head back down amid the snap and crackle of bones being ground fine, and puked pounds of torn flesh and organs onto the floor. Clotted blood and chunks of ragged meat spewed across the fiberglass sole.
“Bats go upside down, We-lee-um. Like dead boys float upside down.” it rasped in its toneless voice.
Zachary’s throat flexed and writhed as if packed full of wriggling worms. The skin was stretched so impossibly tight that it seemed any second it would split wide open. A fat lump swelled at the base of his neck, and worked its way upward. The thing struggled to free itself, and finally with a sigh, leaned forward and vomited another large mass, this one full of meat chewed into dark brown slivers. The tension in the boy’s throat relaxed enough for the thing to work one long, bony arm free. The look on its face came as close to sorrow as I believe possible on such inhuman features.
“Supper gone. I hungry,” the creature moaned.
I stared, dumbstruck as it slid another arm free. Both limbs dangled for a moment, both of them long, thin and spindly. Its hands were gnarled, each with three long, finger-like claws arranged in such a way that one served as an opposable thumb. They looked capable of either grasping or acting like three pronged scissors. It hooked its fingers at the corners of Zachary’s mouth and forced its body upward.
Daniel’s words echoed through my mind as I watched. “You’ll have to kill him again.”
I glanced right and saw the butt of Dad’s rifle still mounted on the inside bulkhead that stretched back underneath the cockpit and framed the port side seat. Dropping the wad of bedding, I lunged for it and worked feverishly to free the gun from mounts designed to keep it secure in the worst of weather. My fingers shook and my heart pounded, but the hasps holding the rife to the wall proved strong and stubborn.
Outside, the beast gave a satisfied grunt. I looked around the edge of the hatch. Wings unfolded behind it, rising high and wide. It flapped them experimentally, shrugging off grisly bits of flesh in the process.
I turned back to the gun, stifling a grunt of my own. Mine held no satisfaction though, just fear and frustration. Every time it moved the sound of bones cracking and skin stretching filled the air. I knew it was close to setting itself free and tried to steel my nerves for the task at hand. The back latch came free, suddenly and simply. I jerked on the rifle, literally prying the front latch out of the fiberglass.
The weapon felt solid and capable in my hands. Dad had fitted a black, nylon bullet sock around the stock. Brass gleamed like gold from each of the six slots. I pulled a round free and fed it into the chamber, fingers suddenly calm, following a process he had ingrained in me year after year. Three or four times every summer, he had packed up his truck, loaded me in the passenger’s seat, and drove up into the mountains for target practice. We never hunted, but we blew the hell out of bottles and cans.
A heavy thump shook the cockpit. I stepped back to the middle of the hatch. The thing had finally freed itself. It rose out of the shadows, standing on top of what had been Zachary’s chest. The feet were long and skinny appendages, stuck at the end of bowed, knobby legs and terminating in curved claws that clicked against each other when it moved. Its stomach hung fat and distended, bulging downward like an obscene beer belly. At most, it stood maybe two f
eet tall, though the wings stretching out behind it looked twice as wide. Its skin was gray and slick looking. The few hairs that stood out were wiry and thick.
As improbable as the sight of it crawling out of the boy’s mouth had been, the thought of it worming its way in seemed equally impossible. I fed the last round into the magazine and jacked one into the chamber.
It looked up with yellow eyes and studied the rifle. Something like a grin split the imp-like face wide open.
“I hungry,” it whispered.
I brought the rifle up to my shoulder.
“No, you dead,” I said and pulled the trigger.
The thing flung itself sideways so incredibly fast the motion streaked a gray blur across the back of the cockpit. It landed on the opposite side, claws scratching at the fiberglass as it scrambled for purchase. Yellow eyes glared back at me, eyes full of anger but no pain.
I levered another round into the chamber and fired again, this time jerking sideways with it as it shot back across to the other side. The bullet passed through one leathery wing, leaving a perfectly round black hole.
It howled in pain and rage.
”Master kill you!”
The distinctive ratcheting sound of the lever sliding back and slamming home echoed through the cabin.
“I got one of these for him too.”
I squeezed the trigger again. Flame flared across the opening. The little imp-beast screamed in pain and flopped across Zachary’s body like a wounded bird. I worked the lever again.
The creature jerked at the sound and threw itself into the air. I ducked as it swooped close overhead. The instant it passed, I stepped out into the open cockpit, brought the rifle to my shoulder, and gritted my teeth in frustration. I had no idea what the thing was, but the night swallowed it. The heavy whoosh of wings struggling for altitude grew fainter and more distant as the seconds ticked away.
I needed light. Inspiration dawned bright in my mind. I leaned over and flicked the switch that turned on a glaring floodlight at the bow. A bright beam shot out over the sound, highlighting murky water ahead, but not the sky. Still, far ahead light flickered off something moving high in the air. I shouldered the rifle, took a deep breath and squeezed off another round.
The Island - Part 2 Page 7