World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  So I was right. Solano must have made a noise, lured Nitro to the end of the porch. Then when his back was turned…

  I hadn’t given the old hermit enough credit. It seemed he wasn’t deterred by our superiority of numbers after all.

  “You have to get rid of him,” Pita said, looking at me over Elizaveta’s shoulder. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and mascara. Her nose leaked snot. She wiped at it with the back of her hand.

  She meant Nitro. And she was right. We couldn’t leave him in the middle of the room, pretending he wasn’t there, ignoring him.

  “Jesus, help me,” I said.

  “Where are we going to move him?”

  “The porch.”

  I pushed open the cabin’s front door, then went to Nitro’s legs. Jesus went to his arms. On the count of three we lifted Nitro and carried his heavy weight outside, stepping through the small lake of blood that had pooled around his body. We set him on the floorboards a few feet to the left. I folded his hands atop his bare chest in an attempt at dignity, but I couldn’t bring myself to slide closed his eyelids. I recalled attempting that with the Pepper-doll earlier in the day—or yesterday now, for that matter—and the eyelids springing open again. If this happened with Nitro…I don’t know, but I already had my fill of ghastly images from this island, and I didn’t need another.

  Back inside, I closed the cabin’s door, then dragged the table in front of it. The rudimentary barricade would not stop a persistent assault. That was not the intent. It was meant to prevent Solano from sneaking up on anybody again.

  “That’s not going to stop her,” Pita said.

  “Not now, Pita,” I said.

  “Not now? Not now?”

  “I don’t want to hear anything about ghosts.”

  “Why are you so blind?”

  “There’s no ghost on this island.”

  “We contacted her—”

  “It was a hoax—”

  “I felt her—”

  “Ghosts don’t fucking exist!”

  “Jack…” Elizaveta said.

  “Solano snuck up on Nitro. That’s it.”

  “Solano?” Pita said. “Solano’s dead.”

  “Solano?” Jesus said, frowning.

  I explained my theory again. Jesus seemed thoughtful. Pita, of course, wouldn’t have any of it.

  “I felt her, Jack,” Pita repeated. “She’s here and she’s angry and—”

  “It’s okay,” Elizaveta said. “We are safe.”

  “Safe?” Pita said. “Safe? Look what happened to Nitro!”

  To Jesus I said, “Can you calm her down?”

  He went to her, speaking reassuringly. She lashed back. Their argument escalated until she threw up her hands and went to Pepper’s bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  I could hear her crying from the other side of it.

  2

  Later. I wasn’t sure how much later. I’d fallen asleep and had just woken up.

  It was quiet—too quiet—and I realized the storm had stopped.

  No wind, no rain.

  Silence.

  The cabin was dark. A few candles still burned.

  I was alone.

  Elizaveta and Jesus must have gone to the bedrooms.

  I should probably get up, stick my head outside, make sure the storm was indeed over, but I found I didn’t want to move.

  The table was no longer in front of the door.

  Where was it?

  Who’d moved it?

  Jesus?

  Probably. He’d probably gone outside just as I’d planned to go outside.

  Too quiet.

  Was I alone? Alone alone? Had Jesus and Pita and Elizaveta left me? Were they down at the pier, waiting for the boatman?

  That’s what it felt like, that the cabin wasn’t empty, that it was deserted.

  A noise—from Lucinda’s room, like the shuffle of cards.

  “Hello?” I said.

  The door swung inward. The hinges protested, issuing a prolonged weeeeeeeek. I squinted, trying to see into the room. I couldn’t make out anything but darkness.

  “Hello?”

  A giggle.

  I stiffened.

  Rosa? I wanted to believe it was Rosa. But it wasn’t her. The giggle was more a cackle, malevolent, threatening.

  Lucinda? Had she recovered? Was she sitting on the bed, naked and giggling in the dark?

  Time to get the hell out of there, I thought.

  I stood—but didn’t leave. The person was cackling in the bedroom again. I knew I should ignore whoever it was, leave the cabin, run, but instead I found myself moving toward the witchy sound.

  I stopped inside the door. I still couldn’t see anything in the room. It was cauldron black.

  “Hello?”

  “Jack…”

  The voice was female, young, raspy.

  Something moved very quickly. I heard the frantic patter of small footsteps. Then a snick, a whoosh. A tiny flame appeared to my right.

  A doll stood on its tiptoes, a burning match in its hand. It was attempting to light the candle on the dresser. The wick caught and light bloomed. The doll extinguished the match with a quick flick of its wrist.

  Its head twisted ninety degrees, owl-like, to look at me.

  “Jack…” it rasped.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jack… It’s me…”

  The doll was female. It had dark wavy hair that fell halfway down its back, thick-lashed brown eyes, a tiny nose, playful lips—

  “Pita?” I said.

  “Jack…” Her lips weren’t moving, and I realized she was communicating to me how she claimed to have communicated with her sister Susana, telepathically.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Solano…”

  “What about him?”

  “He caught me…”

  “Caught you? But what did he do? You’re a doll, Pita.”

  “That’s what he does… He catches people… He turns them into dolls… He hangs them up everywhere… But we’re still alive… We’re alive inside them…”

  “Where’s Eliza?” I asked, alarmed. “Where’s Rosa?”

  “Dolls…”

  “No!”

  She began to cackle once more.

  3

  I came awake with a start and found myself in candlelit darkness. It was late, the time when graveyards yawned and decent folks slept snugly in their beds. Not me though. I sat cross-legged on the hard floor in the middle of the cabin’s main room, groggy and exhausted.

  I raised my head from my chest, blinking. I remembered sitting there, closing my eyes, not to fall asleep, to think…and maybe to forget. Yes, I’d wanted to forget I was covered in Nitro’s blood, forget his lifeless body was lying on the porch, his eyes staring at eternity, forget we were trapped on the island, stalked by a killer.

  My stomach, I realized, felt bloated and bilious. At first I thought this was due to hunger. But it wasn’t hunger. It was fear.

  I glanced at the barricaded door, then at Elizaveta, who sat in front of me, hands held together on her lap, head bowed. She could have been meditating had her posture not been slumped. “Hey?” I said quietly.

  Her eyes blinked open. “What happened?” she whispered.

  “You were sleeping.”

  Her shoulders sagged. Her fingers massaged her face, making small circles.

  “And you snore,” I said.

  “I do not.”

  “How would you know if you were sleeping?”

  She grimaced. I glanced at my watch. It was 3:41 a.m.

  I’d only been asleep for twenty minutes or so. Still, that was twenty minutes too long. Solano could have sneaked into the cabin during that time, slit my throat, slit all our throats…

  Dismayed by my lack of vigilance, I sat straighter. “Where’s Jesus?” I asked.

  Elizaveta gestured to Pepper’s bedroom. “He said smell bothered him.”

  I sniffed. The room reeked o
f blood, cloying and sickly sweet. It made me think of a cookie factory my parents had taken me to while we’d been RVing around the country, a visit that turned me off cookies for the rest of my life. The smell of molasses and dough and butter hadn’t necessarily been bad; it had simply been too omnipresent, too overpowering. I’d ended up disgorging the contents of my stomach on the floor in front of everyone.

  “I brought you this,” Elizaveta said, indicating an enamelware bucket next to her which was filled with rainwater. She slid it to me.

  I dunked my hands into the cold water and scrubbed them. The water turned red.

  “Let me help.” Elizaveta picked up a rag she’d fetched. She dampened it in the water and proceeded to clean my face. Her touch was delicate yet firm at the same time, maternal. “There,” she said when she finished.

  I looked around for my daypack. It was by the junk heap that included the car seat. I stood and stretched, retrieved the bottle of vodka from the pack, then sat back down. I twisted off the cap and offered the bottle to Elizaveta. She took an impressive sip and passed it back. I took an even bigger sip, swishing the vodka around inside my mouth to kill the lingering taste of blood. I didn’t have anywhere to spit it out, so I swallowed.

  Elizaveta produced her cigarettes, offered the pack to me.

  “You only have four left,” I said.

  “I’m trying to cut down. You have one, you help me.”

  Shrugging, I accepted a cigarette. She held forth a lighter and pushed the button that ignited the flame. I lit up. She slid a cigarette between her lips and lit up too. I didn’t smoke. Well, I did, but not regularly. I wasn’t addicted. During one of my binge nights out, I could burn through a pack by myself just for the hell of it. But I wouldn’t crave a cigarette the next day. In fact, I could go a week, or several weeks, until the fancy for one took me again.

  Funny why that was, given I was addicted to almost every other vice.

  I took a drag and turned my head to the left, so I didn’t blow the smoke in Elizaveta’s face. I couldn’t help but see the blood-smeared floor, the crimson splatter leading to the front door. My mind hit me with an image of Nitro, the way he looked at me when he’d stumbled into the room, scared, pleading, expressions so alien to him.

  “I didn’t like him,” Elizaveta said, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Nitro?”

  “I didn’t like how he always teased you.”

  “He was a prick,” I said. Then laughed. “But he was sort of funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “If we weren’t arch enemies I probably would have liked him.”

  “That makes no sense, Jack.”

  I took another drag. “You know what he told Pepper earlier, when we were looking for Rosa’s canoe? He told him to switch weather channels because the weather girl on his channel had a major hot front.”

  “Yes, that was his humor. He was always telling Jesus sexist jokes except when—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Except when what?”

  Elizaveta shrugged, contemplated her cigarette. “Except when Pita was around.”

  “Pita?”

  “Yes. But anyway…”

  I frowned. Did Elizaveta know something I didn’t?

  Avoiding eye contact, she picked up the bottle of vodka and took a sip.

  I said, “What’s up, Eliza?”

  “Nothing is up, Jack.” She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Were Nitro and Pita…” I didn’t know how to articulate the question. “Was something going on between them?”

  “I don’t know, Jack. I don’t know anything.”

  She was lying. That was clear as day…and that meant…what? What did she know? Had Nitro and Pita fooled around? Had they fucked? Had they been fucking on an ongoing basis?

  The girl I’m pounding right now, she’s vaginamite.

  My heart sickened, and I felt suddenly nauseous, as if I’d inadvertently stepped on a baby bird. I was also angry—furious—though this almost immediately burned itself out. If Nitro were alive, I would have beat the living shit out of him. But he wasn’t. He was dead, and no matter what he did, I couldn’t be mad at a dead guy.

  Pita though—she was a different story. I had half a mind to go wake her up, confront her. But what would that accomplish? She wasn’t coping well. A confrontation like that might push her over the edge.

  Are we okay? she’d asked me earlier on the porch.

  Yeah, except for the fact you’re fucking Nitro behind my back.

  “Jack?” It was Elizaveta. She was looking at me with concern.

  She’d known. Jesus had likely known too. How many other people had known?

  “I’m sorry,” she added.

  “Whatever,” I said. It wasn’t her responsibility to tell me Pita was cheating on me. She was dating Jesus. Her loyalty was to him, to his family, not me—

  Elizaveta rocked forward onto her knees. She stubbed out her cigarette on the floorboards, plucked mine from my fingers, and put it out as well. Then she placed her hands on my chest. For a moment I thought she was going to try to hug me, console me. She didn’t. Instead she pressed me backward. I resisted. I didn’t know what was going on.

  “Lie back,” she whispered, still pressing.

  And then I was lying back. My baseball cap slipped off my head.

  “Eliza…” I said.

  She lifted her pink top, exposing her midriff, then her violet bra, lifting the top over her head. She moved forward so she straddled me, her groin against mine. She took my hands in hers and pressed them against her breasts.

  This was reckless, I thought. Madness. Nitro’s corpse was outside, no more than two dozen feet away. His blood stained the floor. Pita and Jesus were in the next room.

  But a switched had flicked inside me, and none of that mattered.

  My hands were working on their own, exploring the firmness of her breasts, the weight of them, the hardness of her nipples.

  I undid the clasp of her bra. The spaghetti straps slipped down her arms. The cups released her breasts, which were perfect in the dim candlelight, full and round.

  Setting the bra aside, she leaned forward, placing a hand to either side of my head. Her lips tickled my neck, my ear, her breath warm, erotic. She leaned farther forward, so her breasts brushed my face. I could smell her sweat pushing through her perfume, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

  My tongue probed, trying to catch her moving nipples. She moaned quietly. I fumbled open the button on her shorts, tugged the zipper down. But that was all I could manage with her straddling me. She understood this and eased back, then stood, gracefully, like a cat.

  Her emerald eyes never left mine. They were intense, beautiful. She was beautiful.

  She skimmed her shorts down her legs. They dropped around her ankles. She fit her fingers into the elastic waistband of her panties, which were violet like her bra, and skimpy. She pushed one side down, then the other, revealing a trimmed strip of pubic hair—then pulled them back up.

  Teasing.

  Finally she slid them down her thighs to her ankles. She stepped out of them, and her shorts. I kicked off my board shorts and boxers.

  She settled on top of me, warm, tight, rocking, gripping, gliding.

  Soundless.

  4

  Afterward, clothed again, we sat on the floor as we had before, almost as if nothing had happened. And I couldn’t believe something had happened. It had been so unexpected, spontaneous, surreal.

  I felt lightheaded, amazed not only at what we’d done, but that we’d gotten away with it.

  I also felt like total shit.

  Pita cheated on me, I told myself.

  We broke up.

  I’ve done nothing wrong.

  Only it felt wrong. Very wrong.

  But right too.

  “Can I ask you a question, Jack?” Elizaveta said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Why did you stop racing?”

  “Oh,” I said, relieved.
This wasn’t my favorite topic of discussion, but it was better than talking about what just happened between us, what it meant. “You don’t know?”

  “I know about crash. Jesus told me. But that was one year ago. You are better, da? Why not race again?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not better.”

  “You look better.”

  It was true. My body was fine and functioning. I’d bruised my ribs in the accident, fractured my wrist, and whacked my tailbone so hard I couldn’t sit comfortably for days. Even so, I was back in my Chevrolet within two weeks…yet I wasn’t the same. I was getting daily headaches that affected my racing, distracted me. At the CarsDirect.com 400 I hit an embankment with the driver’s side of my car. Halfway through the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store 500 I smacked the wall in Turn 2 and spun out. Then, a few days before the next race at Darlington Raceway, I was scheduled to do a media tour. However, I bowed out halfway through the day due to the worst headache yet.

  My sponsors became worried. My PR guy wanted me to stay off the track. I stubbornly refused. The next race was the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Around lap 340 I developed another headache, this one so severe my crew chief threw in the towel at the next pit stop.

  I ended up seeing three different doctors. None could answer for certain what was wrong with me. They simply advised me to slow down, get some rest, I’d feel better soon.

  “I get headaches,” I told Elizaveta now. “Sometimes when they get bad, my vision gets blurry.”

  She frowned. “That is problem?”

  “Maybe not so much if you’re a banker. But if you’re a race car driver, running at three thousand feet a second, yeah, it’s a problem, a big problem.”

  “Can you take medicine?”

  “Nothing that’s worked.” I shrugged. “Well, except this, sort of.” I picked up the vodka and took a belt.

  “I didn’t know this.”

  “You never asked.”

  “So what do you do now? I know, I see you at parties sometimes. But you don’t race, don’t work. What do you do every day?”

  “Drink.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I am too.”