by Rio Youers
Martin nodded. He recalled the sound of a drawer opening and sticking closed when Mother Moon had fetched the key. He stepped to the dresser, eased the middle drawer open, and shone the flashlight inside. It was full of neatly folded scarves and sweaters. Martin lifted the items carefully, searched the corners, but there was no key.
“Shit.”
This was going to take longer than he’d hoped. Still, there was time: fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, depending on how quickly Mother Moon scarfed down Joe’s eggplant parm. And hey, if she liked it so much, she might go for seconds.
He left the middle drawer exactly how he’d found it—jutting like a crooked tooth. The top drawer was home to dozens of pairs of balled-up socks and panties. Most were of the passion-killer variety, but there were a few negligees and lacy thongs, proving that Mother Moon still had a pulse into her fifties—and good on her, Martin thought. Again, he sorted through the contents carefully, telling himself that he was violating Mother Moon’s privacy for all the right reasons.
He found nothing of interest in the top drawer, so moved down to the bottom. This had in it an assortment of items, including thick winter wear, an old pair of shoes, and a lace corset that matched some of Mother Moon’s more risqué underwear.
No key, but beneath the corset—
“What the fuck?”
Of all the things he’d imagined discovering in Mother Moon’s drawers—pornographic materials, illicit chocolate bars, a cell phone with internet access—a latex tiger mask was not on the list.
“Well, shit. That’s … different.”
It was incredibly detailed. Beautiful, even—a full over-the-head mask with two small eyeholes and a narrow slit to breathe through. Martin took it from the drawer and held it close to his face. The filtered light glimmered off its orange and black markings.
“You come out at Halloween?” Martin asked, then twisted his wrist to shake the tiger’s head. No, Halloween had been and gone. There was no trick or treating on the island.
So what was it for? General high jinks? Or maybe some kind of sex thing? Was this what the man—or woman—wore when Mother Moon strapped herself into that lace corset?
Probably. And yes it was unusual. Yes it was kinky. But it wasn’t a reason to leave the island.
“Back in your drawer, you bad ol’ putty tat.” Martin returned the mask face-up and placed the corset on top. He gently closed the drawer, then crept to the nightstand on the left side of the bed. He found some coins, an empty locket, three pens, a box of Tylenol, a tube of lubricant. He went around to the adjacent nightstand, opened the small drawer (it stuck a little—a good sign, he thought) and directed the flashlight inside. He saw the key at once. Its brass bow poked from between the pages of a fat paperback like a bookmark.
“Got you.”
He made a mental note of the page number and slid the key out, then slunk back through the bedroom to the main living area. His heart had been running hard since he’d seen Mother Moon and Shirley leave for dinner, but now it really picked up the pace. He sneaked to where the lockbox sat on the side table. It was turned backward, he noted, with the keyhole facing the rear corner of the room. Martin swiveled it and slipped the key into the brass-lined hole. There was a split second where he wondered if he had the right key—he hadn’t checked the drawer in the armoire, and there was every possibility Mother Moon had found a new hiding spot—then he heard the satisfying snick of the lock disengaging.
One glance toward the window, as if expecting Alyssa to rap her knuckles against it. A collar of sweat glistened on the back of his neck. He wiped it away and opened the box.
The watch didn’t interest him, and it didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen one—or any kind of time display—for over a month. He removed it, placed it on the table, and focused the flashlight on the box’s false bottom. He recalled how it had wobbled when Mother Moon put the watch back inside. He tapped against it and felt the give, then pressed against the edges until he found the sweet spot. One corner popped up enough for him to hook his finger beneath. He pulled the false bottom out and looked at what it had been hiding.
The flashlight caught a glimmer of metal and he thought for one heart-stopping moment that it was a bullet—that his dream had been a premonition after all. Furthermore, when he looked up he would see Laura standing over him with her dead face hanging and old leaves tangled in her hair. A chill rattled through him, then he noticed that it wasn’t a bullet in the lockbox, and it wasn’t a gun, either.
It was a ring.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
This was no dainty woman’s ring, though. It didn’t mark an engagement or marriage. It was a dull, unpolished gold, as clunky as a Super Bowl ring but without the showiness. Martin took it out and examined it in the flashlight’s glare. Maybe it had belonged to Mother Moon’s ex-boyfriend (Pace, Martin thought, the name drifting from the back of his mind), or even to Bernard Platt-Mellor. It had a menacing, old feel to it. There was a green eye on the front, not unlike the Eye of Providence. The inscription was dark with corrosion, making it easier to read.
“Derevaun Seraun.” He didn’t know what that meant—he assumed it was Latin—but speaking the words out loud made him feel miserable inside. It brought to mind incantations, burning candles, pentagrams. He imagined a muscular man in a tiger’s mask readying an altar for sacrifice.
Whatever the phrase meant, Martin didn’t care for it at all. He didn’t care for the ring, either; he dropped it back inside the lockbox with a mutter of distaste, as if he were flicking a booger from the tip of his finger. He had no idea why Mother Moon kept it locked away. As far as he was concerned, it should be at the bottom of the lake.
He shook his head and wiped more sweat from the back of his neck. As he picked up the false bottom to slip it back into position, Alyssa rapped her knuckles twice against the window—a crisp, no-nonsense warning that fired his heart into his throat like a cannonball.
“Oh, shit!”
Martin toppled onto his ass, dropped the false bottom. It took a moment to find it in the flashlight’s meager glare. He had to widen his fingers over the lens to allow more light, then he saw it nestled in the shadow of the sofa. He snatched it up and jammed it into the box. He couldn’t get it to fit at first, rotating it one way, then the other, until it dropped into position.
He looked at the door. How long would it take Mother Moon to make her way down the pathway to her cabin? They’d estimated two minutes, but what if she was in a hurry? She’d wolfed down her dinner quickly enough. No seconds for Mother Moon, not tonight.
“Don’t even think about it,” Martin hissed. “Just get the hell out.”
He closed the box, locked it, swiveled it so that the keyhole faced the rear corner. All good, but shit no—he’d taken three steps toward the bedroom when he realized he’d forgotten to put the watch back inside. His heart lurched again and he stumbled back to the box. The key jittered around the hole for agonizing seconds before slotting in. He cranked it, flipped the lid, placed the watch inside. Then he locked the box again and rotated it into the correct position.
Okay, now it was all good. Martin looked at the door again, praying it didn’t swing open, that he still had some time. He scampered across the living room, tripping on one of the rugs and rucking it up. He went back and straightened it out, then swept into the bedroom and over to the nightstand. The drawer was still open.
“Three sixty-eight,” he gasped, riffling through the paperback’s pages. He tried not to imagine what Mother Moon would do if she found him here. Kick him off the island, for sure, an embarrassment to everybody, especially his daughters. A dark corner of his mind provided a more austere punishment: laid across an altar while Mother Moon and the other islanders—Shirley among them—danced naked around him, chanting “Derevaun Seraun” and drinking rooster blood, their shadows long and wolf-shaped in the flickering candlelight.
Martin found page 3
68 and pushed the key inside, leaving the bow poking out like a bookmark. Then he closed the drawer. Or tried to close it. Of course it stuck. He jiggled it, gasping, sweat dripping off his jaw and onto his shirt.
“Come on, you bastard.”
He heard the distinct thud of footfalls on the wooden steps, followed by the creak of the doorknob turning. Caught, he thought. And so damn close. Excuses raced through his mind. He felt like a child again, inventing a thousand elaborate fabrications to avoid being punished. Before the door opened, though, he heard Alyssa’s voice—
“Mother Moon, I wonder if I could—”
More like the voice of an angel; she had stalled Mother Moon at the door, trying to buy Martin a little more time.
“Good girl,” he whispered, finally working the drawer closed. He took one last look around to see that everything was more or less as he left it, then skipped around the bed to the window. He slid it open, hopped onto the sill, and all but fell outside. A deep throb of pain burst from his injured knee when he landed. Swearing under his breath, he reached up and pushed the window closed, then hobbled around the side of the cabin and melted into the gloom.
22
“Was it a gun?”
“No, it was a ring. A man’s ring.”
“Okay, then—”
“But it wasn’t anything you’d ever want to wear. It felt ancient, somehow. And dirty. Like some kind of cult or secret society ring.”
They were in Alyssa’s cabin, which she’d once shared with a lady named Doris, but the second bedroom had remained empty since Doris returned to the mainland. There was no chance of them being interrupted or overheard, but they kept their voices low, just the same.
“It belonged to a man, though,” Alyssa said, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms. “So it’s not Mother Moon’s ring.”
“True, but she wouldn’t keep it locked up if it didn’t mean something to her.” Martin sighed and ran his hands down his face. They were still trembling. “Honestly, I didn’t get a good feeling from it. And there was an inscription: Derevaun Seraun. Any idea what that means?”
“No.”
“Me, either.” He shook his head and gave Alyssa a weak smile. “Jesus, with Google I could find out in two seconds.”
After stumbling away from Mother Moon’s cabin, Martin had huddled in the woods until his heart rate dropped a couple of notches and his breathing evened out. By this time, some of the other islanders had returned from dinner and assumed their positions in the meadow. Martin joined them. He called out constellations and sang Cat Stevens songs. At some point, he felt a hand slide inside his own: Alyssa. He squeezed gratefully. Back at her cabin, he’d thanked her for saving his ass. She made him a hot drink with chamomile to help calm his nerves. He drank it quickly, with noisy slurps.
“It’s fair to assume,” he said now, looking down at the empty mug, “that Mother Moon is linked in some way to that ring. Do you agree?
“I agree.”
“It could even be the reason for her odd behavior—why she disappears every now and then.”
“Could be.”
“If we can find out more about it—and about that inscription—then we’ll know more about Mother Moon.” Martin opened his hands and shrugged. “With her being so close to my daughter, that may not be a bad thing.”
“Well, you have two choices,” Alyssa said. “You can ask Mother Moon directly, which I don’t recommend because she’ll know you’ve been snooping—”
“Right.”
“Or you can leave the island. But if you do that, there’s no coming back.”
“She’s got her bases covered, huh?”
“There is a third choice.”
“I’m listening.”
“You can just let this go.”
Martin recalled the dull weight of the ring, and how bleak he’d felt when he read the inscription. “I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Then you need to ask yourself,” Alyssa said, leaning forward, her shadow spreading across the wall. “Is this enough for you to want to leave?”
Martin sat silently while any number of images raced through his mind, from Shirley sitting beside the well—It won’t be happy until I throw myself in—to a latex tiger mask staring at him in the gloom. He looked at Alyssa. She reached out. He took her hand.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, and in the next breath she was in his arms. Her closeness was the comfort he needed. “I really don’t.”
* * *
Martin had told Alyssa that he was looking for reasons to leave as much as reasons to stay. He imagined an old-fashioned balancing scale, with everything he loved about the island on one side, and the things he wasn’t so jazzed about on the other. These were fewer, but heavier, with the ring being heaviest of all. Once added, the scale tipped one way, then the other. It vacillated for several days, causing Martin to lose both focus and sleep. Recalling Jimmy’s warning finally settled it, though. I hope you find some peace, brother. And if it all begins to feel a little weird, get the hell out of there. And that was the key word: weird. The ring wasn’t immediately dangerous, like a gun, or threatening, like a bullet (although that odd inscription sent a chill rushing through Martin whenever he thought of it), but it was unquestionably weird.
“I’ve decided to go home,” he said to Alyssa. It was a chilly November evening, their faces turned to another fiery sunset. “I don’t want to, but—”
“I understand,” Alyssa said. She took his hand. “I’m going to miss you. Edith, too.”
“I’ll give you my address,” Martin said. “If you ever decide you’ve had enough of these amazing sunsets, and that you want to get back into the grind—”
“I’ll look you up,” she said. “Count on it.”
He spent the next twenty-four hours wondering how he would break it to Shirley, who, after only five weeks, was as much a part of the island as the trees and cabins. It was great that she had adapted so naturally, but taking her away could prove problematic. She was a sensitive young woman. The back and forth would be hard on her, not to mention unfair. She might never forgive Martin—a notion that broke his heart in every way.
But thinking about Shirley, another option occurred to him: to negotiate. All he needed was to leave the island for long enough to do a little investigative work—to learn about the ring and the meaning of that inscription, and in so doing learn more about Mother Moon. If everything checked out fine, they’d come back.
This meant Mother Moon bending the rules, which he wasn’t sure she’d do. Not for him. But he was part of a three-way package that included Shirley, and for Shirley—her new “pet,” to use Alyssa’s expression—she might make an exception.
* * *
“My goodness, you’re radiant. I don’t mean to embarrass you, Martin, but you look like a different man.”
“Thank you, Mother Moon.”
“Leaner, healthier…”
“I feel great.” He smiled, taking a seat beside the lockbox he’d deviously peeked inside. He imagined the ring in there, pulsing in the darkness like a fat spider beneath a floorboard, and moved over one seat. “I love the island—more than I expected to, if I’m being honest. The girls love it, too.”
“And we love having you here.” Mother Moon beamed, taking the seat opposite Martin. “You’ve brought, dare I say, a much-needed shot of exuberance to our community. Those girls … what bright lights they are.”
“Thank you. I’m extremely proud of them.”
Mother Moon nodded and poured him a glass of water, cold and delightful, drawn that morning from well number one. He’d drunk a lot of it since arriving on the island, which was one of the reasons he was leaner and healthier. He hadn’t stepped on a scale, but he guessed he’d dropped at least fifteen pounds. The dad-bod was history.
“But you came to me for a reason,” Mother Moon said, settling back into her seat and taking a sip from her own glass. “Let me guess: you love it here, but you’ve decided to
go home anyway.”
Martin fetched a deep breath and looked squarely at Mother Moon. Eye contact was critical here—a sign of honesty and trust. Fortunately, it was also easy. Mother Moon had such alluring eyes. Sometimes looking away was harder.
“Not exactly,” he said.
She gestured for him to elaborate.
“I said from the beginning that we were only going to stay for six weeks. Maybe two months. That was our intention—to reset, then carry on. Obviously our thinking has changed, but I’ve left a lot of loose ends back at home.”
“You and everybody else,” Mother Moon said.
“I still have a house. My brother, who thinks I’ll be home any day now, is dropping in a couple of times a week to make sure it hasn’t burnt down.” He had of course set Jimmy up as trustee on the house—an important detail that Mother Moon definitely didn’t need to know. “My employers have kept my position open for me, and the girls are still enrolled at their respective schools, no doubt taking up places that could be filled by other children.”
“So you want to go home and tie up those loose ends?”
“Right. They’re hanging over me, and I’m finding it difficult to fully relax.” He finished his water, set the empty glass down on the table, and fixed Mother Moon with a sincere expression. “All I need is four or five days. Maybe a week. I can quit my job, pull the girls out of school, put my house on the market—”
“Let me stop you right there.” Mother Moon cut in. Her words had an edge but everything else about her was relaxed and appealing. “Everybody on this island, at some point, comes to me with the same request. They want a few days to sell their property or visit their loved one’s grave for the last time. Or maybe they want to right some wrong with a sibling or friend. There’s always something.”
Martin nodded. He’d anticipated Mother Moon saying exactly this (he and Alyssa had improvised numerous scenarios) and it didn’t faze him. He still had a couple of cards left to play.