Scared of the Dark: A Crime Novel

by Easton Vaughn

  Sheldon paused without cutting off the mower, and with one hand dislodged a T-shirt he’d tucked into the waist of his shorts. He used the tattered T-shirt to sop sweat from his brow and to dry his underarms. Shirtless, he was a sight to behold. Six-foot-five barefoot. Muscles carved like grooves in bedrock. Dark as licorice. Head shaved smooth, an unruly Bill Russell goatee and sideburns headed toward beard.

  Despite the smoke blower attached to the lawnmower, mosquitoes had feasted on his arms and back. Small welts were raised on his slick skin.

  But he wasn’t bothered by the bites.

  He was working.

  And he was still working when Merritt, Will, and Ruck came walking through the trees, blood all over their clothes, the bad red stuff you get from an injury. Merritt poked a strange white man forward with a branch that was as thick and long as an arm.

  With Merritt’s help, the white man stumbled and fell headfirst near Sheldon’s mower. A Black & Decker they’d bought with cash for him from a Wal-Mart over on the mainland. Soon Sheldon would have to tell them he needed more gas. He was down to one 10-gallon drum. He hated telling them he needed anything. They always sighed and walked him through the trouble involved, the risks they took every time they returned to the mainland. But Sheldon had no choice but to tell them. He couldn’t abide wild grass nipping at his kneecaps.

  He cut the motor off, looked at Merritt expectantly as the white man rolled around on the ground, coating himself with grass flakes and dirt. Will stood quietly by Merritt’s right shoulder. Ruck did a poor job of holding in tears by Merritt’s left.

  “You know how to tie a knot?” Merritt asked.

  Sheldon nodded several times. “Strong knot. Alpine Butterfly knot. Daddy taught me the Alpine Butterfly knot. Strong knot.” He gestured with his hands. “Make a loop. Twist the loop ‘til it makes two loops. Grab the top loop and—”

  “Okay, okay,” Merritt interrupted. “I get it. I understand.”

  Sheldon focused his gaze on the ground. He rocked on the balls of his feet and said softly, “Strong knot. Alpine Butterfly knot. Daddy taught me the Alpine Butterfly knot.”

  “Aight, Sheldon. I’m guessing even you’ve noticed that we have a visitor,” Merritt said, toeing the white man’s side with his boot. “Put him in the empty unit next to your maintenance shed and tie him up with that Alpine Butterfly knot you can’t stop talking about.”

  “Daddy taught me the Alpine Butterfly knot. Strong knot.”

  Merritt nodded. “I’m sure. Take him now, before he starts thinking things he shouldn’t. We let him loose so he could walk on his own. But we don’t want him getting any courage. Be careful with him.”

  Sheldon reached down and hefted the white man by the belt, and raised him over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. The man kicked and flailed his arms, but as Sheldon started walking with giant plodding steps toward the empty unit, he felt the white man’s body go slack.

  “Sheldon?” Merritt called.

  The giant turned back. “Yup?”

  “Wedge a block of wood through the shed’s door handle. I don’t want our guest getting out.”

  Sheldon nodded and turned back.

  Back to work.

  Whispering, “Daddy taught me the Alpine Butterfly knot. Strong knot.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lemon Potter woke reaching for something that existed solely in her dreams. She sprang up, breathing unevenly, immediately beset with a deep sense of disappointment. All was quiet beyond the woven mesh walls of the canopy screen tent she was enclosed in. The others must still be asleep. For as long as Lemon could remember, she’d been an early riser herself. Sleep, she’d learned, brought too much empty comfort.

  She blinked against the stark light of the sun, and her hand found the rough fabric of blankets that had served as her bed. A deep pile, at least ten blankets in all. She wondered how Candace had gotten ahold of them. Candace was resourceful. Especially gifted at finding the joy in a hopeless situation. That’s why Lemon had chosen Candace’s bed instead of her own after the misadventure of last evening. Candace gave Lemon strength, and in drinking in her scent through the blankets, Lemon hoped in some cosmic way that she was giving some of that strength right back to her absconded friend.

  As two of the younger women on the island, it was easy to assume that the commonality of age had brought them together. An incorrect assumption. Their connection was deeper than the years they’d lived, and completely unexplainable. Candace was from the South. Lemon’s roots, if she could think of them as such, were deeply entrenched elsewhere. Candace was one of the last to arrive on the island, and therefore part of the lower hierarchy. Lemon wasn’t. So what of their connection? How to describe it? Something stitched into the fabric of their souls, Lemon decided as she brought one of Candace’s blankets to her nose.

  For about the millionth time since last night, Lemon wondered why Candace had run off without alerting her. She sighed and picked up Candace’s most recent book, a Jodi Picoult paperback—House Rules. Touching the edges of the book, Lemon had to smile. The last book she’d read was Dr. Seuss’s There’s a Wocket in my Pocket. An exaggeration, sure, but not far from the truth. Candace, though, she always had her nose in a book. And she discussed whatever she was reading with an enthusiasm that quickly became infectious to everyone around her. Lemon was intimately aware of the complex world of Picoult’s novel without having read a word of it. She knew of Emma Hunt and her eighteen-year-old son, Jacob. She knew all about Jacob’s Asperger’s, his hypersensitivity to bright light, scratchy fabric, human touch. His struggle to make eye contact. His lack of empathy. His obsession with forensics. Lemon suffered along with Emma, and prayed that Henry, Emma’s estranged husband, would somehow find his way back home. That Emma’s youngest son, Theo, would be able to put aside the deep resentment he felt toward his older brother. That these broken characters would somehow find healing comfort. “Oh, Candace,” Lemon said aloud, sighing behind the words. “Why did you run?”

  No sooner had she spoken, than she noticed movement off to her right. She dropped the book and leaped up, spotted Ruck stumbling toward his own canopy screen tent. It looked as if he might be having some kind of emotional crisis. Lemon fumbled to unzip one of the entrance panels, and called after him. “Ruck?”

  He turned, saw her, and quickened his pace.

  “Ruck?” she called again, starting to jog toward him. “Ruck, wait.”

  His quick pace turned into a full-out run. He rushed right by his tent without stopping, stumbling and looking back once to see if Lemon was still giving chase.

  She slowed. Slowed and thought about what Ruck’s avoidance could possibly mean. The thought was an artery to realization, realization that tightened her jaw, hardened her heart, and set her moving. She would have to brave horseflies and a pocket of land cursed with impossibly large mosquitoes, slosh through sick greenish-brown water, fight off tree branches, but she had no choice. She needed to get to the beach.

  She trampled through the brush, instantly sweating from the exertion, her thin dress dampened enough to cling to her like another layer of skin. The water up ahead would yuck up her feet and dress all the way up past her knees. It would soak her with stink, but still she pressed on. Ruck’s eyes had been haunted, and that knowledge made her stomach drop. It made her nauseous, and it sapped some of the strength from her legs. But not enough to make her turn back.

  It took some time to reach the clearing—twenty minutes or so—long enough to further stoke her anger. She was prepared to step from the brush and march over to James Merritt’s tent, grab him by the collar of his shirt and slap him over and over again across the face.

  But she paused by the clearing, under a canopy of thin trees, her mouth gone dry and her legs refusing to move. Merritt was outside his tent, not even fifteen feet beyond her, completely naked. He stood near a black cast iron stew pot that was propped on a stand, the whisper of a fire beneath it, a rag of old clothing in his hand. Lemo
n watched as he dipped the cloth in the pot and then ran the dripping rag over his face, underarms, and muscular chest. She watched as he dipped it in the pot once more and used it to wash his legs and rounded buttocks. He dipped it a third time and started to wash his dangling penis. His organ blossomed into an impressive erection, a rainbow of browns evident in its length. Lemon swallowed, raised a hand to her throat, and took a tiny step backward.

  “Don’t run off on my account,” Merritt called after her.

  She colored with embarrassment. She’d picked up the nickname Lemon because her light brown skin had undertones of yellow in it.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Merritt sang.

  She stepped forward just enough for him to see her, to appraise her. She looked away, knowing without a doubt that the focus of his gaze travelled from the swell of her breasts, to the tightness of her stomach, to the width of her hips and the power in her legs. From the first moment she’d met him, he made her uncomfortable. She still hadn’t decided if it was because of the way he looked at her, or if it was something else entirely. Something inside of her that she had a difficult time admitting.

  Merritt whistled. “You’re filthy, but still quite spectacular.”

  She looked up and brushed a strand of black silky hair from her eyes. A knot of ponytail hung down past her shoulders. Because of Lemon’s appearance, many of the island folk assumed pretentiousness. Candace had thought otherwise. One of the few times she’d ever been wrong about anything or anyone.

  “I hope you don’t begrudge a man for wanting to be clean,” Merritt said, smiling behind the words. “You should see the look on your face right now, Mrs. Potter. Very disapproving. Enough to make a proud man go flaccid.”

  Without thinking, Lemon glanced down, saw the steel rod strength of Merritt’s erection remained. She quickly looked up again.

  “I meant it metaphorically,” he said, chuckling.

  “Where’s Candace?” Lemon managed. Her voice was phlegmy, uncertain.

  Merritt’s smile and laughter faded. He turned his back to her and dipped his rag in the cast iron pot again. “Gone.”

  Lemon stepped from the tree cover. “I need a better answer than that.”

  “Gone,” he repeated.

  She moved closer, less than an arm’s length separating them now. “She was upset enough to leave without telling me. And you chased after her with Will and Ruck. Are you saying she got away? Is that what you want me to believe? That she got away and you’re this calm?”

  “You asked a question, Mrs. Potter. I answered it. I’m sorry if you don’t like my answer.” He wrung out the cloth, absently wiped at his chin.

  “I need more than a one word answer,” Lemon said. “Gone isn’t enough. Elaborate, please.”

  Merritt sighed. “Listen. I know it can get lonely here sometimes. Many of you have taken to…experimenting. I don’t begrudge you that. To each his or her own. But your girlfriend is gone. Gone—that’s all you need to know. You’ll have to find someone else to eat your clam.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  Merritt nodded. “I’ve heard that a time or two.”

  “Vile and disgusting.”

  “Sorry to hear you feel that way,” he replied. “But I try not to worry myself too much about other people’s poor opinions of me.”

  “Could you put some clothes on?”

  He smiled. “Took you a while to realize my nakedness was bothersome.”

  Lemon stared at him, unrelenting, until he swiveled and moved inside his tent. He grabbed a pair of wrinkled shorts, held them up for her to see, then shrugged them on.

  “Better?” he asked, ducking thorough the opening of his tent and stepping back outside.

  Lemon didn’t answer.

  “I’m not sure how we got off on the wrong foot,” Merritt said. “I’ve thought back over it quite a bit, believe me. But it’s never made any sense to me. Whatever the cause, it saddens me to see this strain between us. We could be such good friends.”

  Lemon frowned. “I’ve never liked the fact that you’re here. I’ve expressed my feelings about it with Shepherd and he ignores my concerns. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. Out here on the beach, away from the rest of us. I know all about your ex-wife. You’re an evil man. A criminal.”

  Merritt’s dark eyes hardened. His voice deepened. “I’m a criminal? That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it, Mrs. Potter?”

  “I never…” Lemon’s words caught in her throat.

  “Go on,” Merritt prodded. “I need to hear this.”

  She didn’t respond, couldn’t respond.

  Merritt nodded. “We’re all here because we can’t be out there,” he said, indicating the knowledge of land far beyond the water. “Shepherd brought us here so we could be understood and appreciated by likeminded folk. So we could be redeemed. You don’t seem to have the right spirit for the cause, Mrs. Potter.”

  “You’re an evil man,” she said again.

  Merritt leaned down to her and whispered, “Just because Shepherd married you, doesn’t make you any different than the rest of us.”

  “Whatever you’ve done to Candace,” she whispered back, “I’m gonna make sure Shepherd gets to the bottom of it.”

  Merritt stood to his full height again. “Why don’t you give him a call and let him know how I’ve handled things in his absence. Maybe he’ll agree with your poor assessment of my leadership, and cut his recruitment trip short to rush back and save the day in typical Shepherd fashion.”

  Lemon opened her mouth to reply but no words came.

  Merritt placed a hand over the surprised “O” he made with his mouth. “Don’t tell me you didn’t pay your cell phone bill this month,” he said, laughing.

  Lemon muttered under her breath.

  “We’re out here in the nowhere, Mrs. Potter. No cell phone service. No internet. We need to stick together.”

  “Never.”

  “Shepherd understands and appreciates me,” Merritt replied. “He wouldn’t have given me the keys to the island if he didn’t.” He reached forward and took Lemon’s arm. “As First Lady it’s important that you appreciate me as well. Part of the job title, I’m afraid, looking out for your constituents. I have a few suggestions on how you can show me your appreciation if you’re at a loss.”

  Lemon snatched her arm away from him and stumbled backward, righting herself as she almost fell. She disappeared off into the wide yawn of the trees, Merritt’s hateful laughter chasing behind her. The tears came sudden and powerfully as she ran and slapped at bugs and aggressive tree branches. Tears for Candace.

  Tears for herself.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Aiden was lying on a hard and uncomfortable floor. His ankles were fused together with thick rope, his arms restrained in a similar manner, twisted unpleasantly behind him, the rope inflaming the raw skin of his wrists. He caught a whiff of the warm urine soaked into the crotch and legs of his pants, the soft lump in his boxers. No one had responded to his pleas for a bathroom.

  He took a quick mental inventory of his injuries. Sore ribs, eyes nearly swollen shut and he was probably concussed and had suffered immeasurable damage to his pride. And his trouble didn’t end there. His skin itched from mosquito bites, and he couldn’t see a foot in front of his face. They had him in a shed of some sort, and only a sliver of light crawled in through a crack at the base of the door.

  How could this have happened to him? What was happening to him? He thought of the whites of an angry pair of eyes, the ivory flash of teeth in an insincere smile. Those eyes and teeth the only features he could make out in the darkness of the night. He thought of the three black men who’d spoken little and tossed him around without care or humanity.

  Christ.

  A wave of despair swallowed him. “Help!” he yelled. “Help! Help!”

  No one responded, and he lay there feeling sorry for himself for a long moment. Then suddenly he tried rockin
g, the attempt taking him from his side to his back, where he landed softly, flattening the squishy mess in his pants. He thought of the fourth black man. A black Paul Bunyan. Despite the man’s overwhelming size, Aiden wasn’t as frightened of him as he was of the others. Christ, how many of them were there? Not wanting to find out, he struggled with his bindings again but the knot Paul Bunyan had tied him with offered no give whatsoever. Spent, he succumbed to a fit of tears that dripped down his dirty face and settled in his mouth. He drank the tears like the starving man he was. Started to laugh hysterically. Paul Bunyan. A big, black, Paul Bunyan.

  Screw you, Bunyan.

  More laughter.

  More tears.

  Then silence that stretched longer than most people could comfortably count. With the silence came even more deep thought, Aiden’s mind traveling places he knew weren’t healthy. This whole thing, whatever it happened to be, was a mind game. The moment Aiden gave up, or became too desperate, they would have him. And so, he decided right then and there that he wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t become desperate. He had no reason to. Obviously, this was a kidnapping. It would come down to money in the end. Aiden’s father would not want to part with even a penny, but Aiden would remind his father of his late wife’s—Aiden’s mother for Christ’s sake—last days. Her dying wish was that her two men would somehow find some comfort in one another. Aiden would tap into his father’s guilt and bleed the vein dry if need be. Yeah, it would come down to money; it always did. No reason to give up or become desperate.