by Mark Murphy
"Sure."
"Okay. I want you to set your watch for 6 EM. It won't be dark yet, but you can start to climb out of the well then. I'll be at the river beach at about 7. I'll stay there until you show up. Look for a floating log with a flag on it."
"You're rescuing me using a floating log with a flag on it. You pick that thing up at DisneyWorld?"
"I'll be under it, wiseass. It's hollow. Good to see your sense of humor is intact. I just had to find a way that we can get you off the beach without anyone seeing a boat pull up to the shore."
"Well how do we know they won't be watching for suspicious floating log activity?"
"Be careful with the sarcasm. I might just decide to leave you there if you keep this up."
"Sorry. I'm just a little punchy from hiding under the body of a dead hog all morning."
"See you tonight," said Billy.
"Roger that."
Malcolm turned off his iPhone display and stared at his dim reflection in it for a moment. His hair was plastered to his mud-streaked face. His eyes looked as though they were sinking back into his skull. "You are one pitiful sight, Dr. King," he murmured to himself, jamming the iPhone into the driest jacket pocket he could find and zipping it tight.
23
For a few hours, Malcolm slept the sleep of the dead.
Wrapped in the foul embrace of an animal's decaying carcass at the very bottom of a deep hole in the ground, Malcolm could finally relax, and his weary mind gave way, collapsing in on itself like an overcooked souffle.
While he was sleeping, Malcolm dreamt of his mother.
It was the first time in a long time he'd dreamt of her. Thankfully, the Jeannette King of this dream was not the skeletal version, the one at the end, when the cancer had eaten its way through her bones and left her a burned-out husk of her former self. The terminal version of Jean-nette King had haunted Malcolm night after night for months after she died—bald from chemotherapy, delirious, her frazzled voice rasping out faint prayers in the darkness as her thin arms clasped together like a pair of chopsticks. That nightmare had finally ended when Malcolm had married Amy. This was something he had never told anyone, not even Amy or Mimi, because it sounded a little crazy. Secretly, Malcolm was certain that the end of his nightmares was a sign from his mother that he had found the right woman to spend the rest of his life with.
This time, however, Malcolm dreamt of the young Jeannette, whole and beautiful, in the full bloom of youth, the strong woman who had raised him as a single parent after his father had died.
"I love you," she said in his dream, her dark eyes filled with tears.
"I love you, too, Mom," he said, touching her face with his fingertips.
He did not know what awakened him. Perhaps it was the buzzards.
He saw them clustered at the edge of the well, smudges of black and gray, their crooked talons grasping feverishly at the edge of the well's gaping maw. Their onyx eyes gleamed dully at him in the half-light of dusk.
Dusk!
He glanced at his watch. It was 6 PM. His watch alarm went off seconds later.
Time to get out of here, he thought.
He heard nothing overhead—no dogs, no guns, no helicopters, no trucks.
Stepping gingerly around the bloated corpse of the pig, Malcolm braced his legs against the walls of the well and began to climb.
His movements were impeded by cramps at first and were hesitant and jerky, like a zombie emerging from its crypt. But his muscles started working after that and he soon began his ascent from the well.
The stones lining the walls of the old well were a crazy hodgepodge of sandstone, marble and granite. They were wedged together like some prehistoric three-dimensional puzzle spiraling upward toward the earth's surface. Some of the rocks simply broke under his feet, crumbling into dust. Others were held in the unforgiving clutches of tree roots, twisted wooden appendages that brushed past his face in the darkness and made him shiver.
He emerged from his subterranean hideout just as the stars came out. The buzzards hopped away from him warily as he stood, gazing at him with their soulless eyes, then flew off into the night.
The moon was a brilliant orb overhead. Savannah glowed just over the horizon, unseen and yet throbbing with life. Malcolm felt a silent hum pouring out of the city, a hum that resonated in his bones and seeped into his soul.
The woods were quiet. Moonlight trickled through stands of loblolly pines like quicksilver. There was a gentle breeze; the air smelled of honeysuckle, a sweet contrast to the fetid rot that permeated every last fiber of Malcolm's clothing.
His muscles were stiff from the hours he had spent wedged in the bottom of the well. His head throbbed. He rubbed his sore neck absently as he walked.
The river beach was deserted.
Malcolm stared at the clutter of ruined tree stumps and flailing scrub palmettos that had toppled headlong over the edge of the short bluff. There was no boat here. No one lying in wait for him, no ambush. But no Billy, either.
And then he saw it.
The log was drifting upriver, against the prevailing current. At first, Malcolm thought he had misjudged the tide, but the moon was clearly pulling the water out to sea. The log, paradoxically, was moving the other direction.
A tiny flag was mounted on the log. It fluttered gamely in the evening breeze.
Just like Billy said, thought Malcolm.
He waded into the river without a moment's hesitation. The frigid water chilled him to the marrow, but it was a cleansing baptism, washing away the away the stench and grime of Green Island. His eyes were clear and his senses were keen; he felt each wavelet and every puff of breeze. He reveled in the sounds of the chittering shorebirds hidden away in the marsh, and caught the complex organic scent of pluff mud in his nostrils. He was grateful for every sensation. Indeed, every ache, every breath and every heartbeat seemed a gift.
He had spent the day in a hole in the ground wrapped in the carcass of a hog, but he was alive, by God. Dead, and now resurrected. And he was getting off the island that had been his salvation and his prison. For the first time since this whole ordeal began, Malcolm had a glimmer of hope that he might get through this after all.
He swam out to the log, which plied the waters of Green Island Sound like some archaic bark-clad submarine. When he reached the log, he did as Billy had instructed and swam beneath it, feeling along the rough edges of its trunk with his fingers.
The log was hollow. Billy was inside, in a wetsuit and flippers, pushing it along.
"Where the hell did you get a hollow log?" Malcolm asked.
"It's a dugout. I'm an Indian, remember?"
Billy grinned.
"Actually, I saw it over in the marsh yesterday," he said.
"We're not actually going to push this thing all the way across the sound, are we?" Malcolm said.
"What, you're not man enough for that?"
"I'm exhausted, that's all. But I guess we'll manage."
"You're also gullible, kemosabe. The boat's hidden in the marsh. I just had to use this to get you off the island," Billy said.
He tapped his right index finger beside his eye.
"People are watching," he said. "Even if we can't always see them."
Periodically, Billy would duck outside to gauge their progress and reset their course. After a few minutes, the log collided with something, emitting a dull kershunk.
Billy ducked underneath the water, then splashed back inside.
"Boat's close. Let's go," he said.
When Malcolm emerged from beneath the log, he could see the skiff bobbing in the water a mere thirty or forty feet away.
They let the log go and swam over to the boat. Billy pulled Malcolm over the gunwale and handed him a blanket. Together, they watched the log drift away in the moonlight.
"I n-never knew I c-could get emotionally attached to a t-tree trunk," Malcolm said through chattering teeth.
"You'll get over it," Billy said, pullin
g up the anchor.
He cranked the engine and steered the boat into the sound.
"Lots to talk about," Billy said.
Malcolm nodded, clutching the blanket around his shivering shoulders.
Gazing upward, he saw stars spiraling overhead, beacons of light floating among the moonlit banks of clouds.
I wondered if I would ever see those again, he thought.
Malcolm took a deep breath and said a prayer, thanking God for everything.
24
The skiff rounded the point at Beaulieu and entered the Vernon River escorted by a squadron of pelicans. Waves slapped the hull with a rhythm that seemed almost musical, their collisions sending salt spray into the air like spittle.
Malcolm found himself gazing at the old plantation house that crouched on the point. Its squat columns looked as though a giant hand had somehow pushed down upon them, squeezing them to the point of rupture. The house was surrounded by several gargantuan live oaks, their massive branches sprawling to embrace the old home.
Billy cast a glance at Malcolm before turning his eyes back to the river.
"He's dead, you know. I don't know if I told you that or not," Billy said.
"Who's dead?"
"Your chief resident. The one who drove you home from the Christmas party."
Malcolm felt the blood leave his face. His lips were tingling.
"Carter? Carter Straub?"
Billy nodded.
Malcolm felt the gorge roil up into his mouth before he could do anything about it. Turning his head to the side, he puked again, bracing himself on the edge of the boat, his head bobbing over the side of the boat in time with the waves. His vomit spattered into the boat's churning wake. How many times had he thrown up that day? A dozen? He'd lost count. There was nothing left to bring up now—just bile and stomach acid. His teeth felt like they were rotting into withered stumps. His mouth was dry and parched, his tongue a piece of beef jerky gone bad.
"B-but how? I mean, w-what happened?" Malcolm said.
"I found him dead. Decapitated. The sonofabitch left the kid's head rotating on a turntable with strobe lights and mirrors all around it."
"Jesus!"
"The killer even signed his name on the wall."
"Which name?" Malcolm asked.
"Jack. His favorite persona. Swabbed on the wall in blood with a towel."
Malcolm slumped back against the gunwale.
"Carter didn't do anything. He just gave me a ride home," he said.
"But he was involved with that paper you were writing with Birkenstock. That means he knew our killer. Hell, he'd talked with him. Who knows what he might have stumbled upon? And let's not forget one thing—he knew you, too. Straub was just one more acquaintance that Birkenstock can link to you."
The waves had quieted as they rounded the point. The water was smooth now, almost glassy.
Malcolm realized that the pelicans were gone. He glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing except the dark margins of the distant tree line, across the marsh, and the shimmering fluorescent wake fanning out across the river behind them. The birds had simply vanished.
He stared out at the water for a moment, thinking.
"Did you call the cops?" Malcolm said at last.
Billy shook his head.
"Not yet. Better to let them find him later, when we've got you safely stashed away."
That's odd, Malcolm thought. He's a cop. Seems like he'd tell his fellow policemen.
But Malcolm didn't say anything.
Billy down-throttled the engine. Malcolm saw that they were headed for the mouth of a tidal creek that meandered through the marsh near the old Girl Scout camp.
"There's an abandoned boat house back along this creek," Billy said. "I parked my truck there. There's no electricity or running water, but at least it's out of the way enough so that no one will come nosing around."
The creek was placid. The engine was barely audible, chu chug chu chug, as the blunt bow of the skiff cut through the quiet waters.
The boat rounded a turn and there it was: a hulking wooden structure looming at the edge of the creek, leaning precariously over the water in defiance of gravity, a structure so densely black that it seemed to absorb all of the light around it. A small glimmer of moonlight spilled off of the corrugated metal roof before being lost in the thick nothingness of the structure below.
"Wow," Malcolm said. His voice was barely a whisper. The marsh swallowed it whole, leaving no residual sound.
Billy shut off the engine and let the skiff drift into the floating dock that was attached precariously to the dock house. As they entered the darkness beneath the dock house, Malcolm felt a sudden chill. He remembered something his mother's maid, Anna, used to say when he was a child.
Dat chill's a dead person passin' thru, she'd say, her dark face stern and serious.
Billy hopped out and tied the bowline to a deck cleat, then turned to face Malcolm. The shadows beneath his hat hid his face from view.
"Careful on the float," Billy said. "A few boards missing. You might lose a toe."
The floating dock listed heavily to the right. With Malcolm's first step, the dock rocked to and fro, pitching him sideways. He caught himself on a piling just before he would have toppled headlong into the dark water.
He had the unsettled feeling that if he had done that, he would have never been seen or heard from again.
Billy struck a match, filling the air with the acrid scent of sulfur. He lit a kerosene lamp and turned it up. He grabbed a rope ladder and swung it toward Malcolm, handing him the lantern at the same time.
"Use this to climb inside," he said.
Malcolm grabbed the lantern in his right hand and ascended into the underbelly of the boathouse. It was a small room, barren except for spider webs, some scattered candy bar wrappers and a few cigarette butts. A pair of sleeping bags were rolled up in a corner. The two windows had long since been shattered. Moonlight streamed in through them from across the marsh.
Malcolm glanced at his watch.
"I feel like today has lasted a hundred years," he said.
He thought about Carter Straub, his very bright and very earnest chief resident, and his chest hurt a little bit. Carter had been a brilliant young man. His parents were so very proud of him. Malcolm would miss Carter's wry sense of humor and his surfer dude lingo. Malcolm suddenly realized that second-year medical resident Meghan Sims, Carter's bubbly fiancee, probably had no idea at this very moment that all of their tomorrows had vanished in a single night.
"You would have made a most excellent surgeon," Malcolm said quietly.
"What's that?" said Billy.
"Just thinking out loud," Malcolm said.
Billy tossed Malcolm some dry clothes and began taking off his wetsuit.
"I guessed about your size," Billy said. "If they don't fit, I'll see if I can get you something else in the morning."
Malcolm glanced at the sleeping bags as he stripped off his soggy jeans.
"I suppose this means we're staying here," he said.
"At least for now. Still got to keep you out of sight. We got lucky on the island. I don't know if we'd be so fortunate if someone saw you in town."
Billy unrolled the sleeping bags and laid them out on the floor.
"Take your pick," Billy said.
Malcolm was bone tired—more tired than he had ever been in his life. His joints popped and his head throbbed. Despite this, he squeezed into one of the sleeping bags. He was certain that the ghost of Carter Straub would haunt his dreams.
But there were no dreams.
He awakened the next morning before dawn. Billy was still sleeping, and in fact was snoring so loudly that Malcolm was concerned that the racket might reveal their position.
He gazed out of the shattered dock house windows. The sun glowed just over the edge of the horizon, staining it with spectacular shades of purple, orange and red. The Vernon River drifted lazily before him. A mud bank, encru
sted with jagged crops of oysters, poked warily above the water in front of the marsh on the opposite shore.
Malcolm now realized that there was another door to the dock house in addition to the trap door in the floor that they had used for entry the night before. There was a small window beside that door. Malcolm took a look outside and was surprised to see a red Ford pickup truck parked there.
Shit! he thought, ducking his head away from the aperture of the window.
But then he remembered that Billy had said his truck was parked outside.
Malcolm eased his head back so that he could see the truck.
There was no one in it or around it. The small clearing the truck was parked in was surrounded by a dense riot of trees and underbrush. Piles of refuse were everywhere. A discarded washing machine, rusted through on one side, lay at the edge of the clearing. Malcolm saw a ruined couch propped up on a clutch of charcoal truck tires. Dense ropy vines twisted snakelike through the tires. A brace of pokeweed shook its purplish berries in the morning breeze as it struggled to find a roothold at the peak of the forty-foot-tall Everest of rubbish that towered next to Billy's truck.
Malcolm opened the door quietly, looking back at Billy as he did so.
Billy didn't budge. His snores rattled the few gap-toothed shards of glass that were left in the dock house windows.
The truck was a red F-150. There were a few dents, but it was generally in good repair. Florida plates. Highland County.
The doors were locked.
Malcolm was not certain what he was looking for as he gazed through the truck's oil-and-grime-streaked windows. Answers, perhaps.
The emerging sun spilled its rays through the dirty windshield. He could make out a jumble of maps splayed out across the seats. Two packs of cigarettes had been tossed onto the dashboard.
But then he saw something that made him catch his breath.
A leather-bound manuscript he recognized all too well peered out from beneath a worn map of the state of Georgia splayed across the front seat. The map was dotted with fluorescent blotches of yellow and pink highlighter.
Malcolm could see his name embossed in gold on the manuscript, Malcolm King, plain as day.