He would do what had to be done tonight, then come back in the morning and wait for their return.
Chapter 19
SLEEP IS AN overcoming force, a need that will not be spurned.
Marny stayed awake as long as he could watching the flames dance in the darkness, occasionally throwing on another dry stick and gazing as the fire slowly consumed it. But around two in the morning the arrhythmic snapping and crackling of the flames accompanied by the perfect timing of the ocean’s roll tugged at his eyelids. More than once he dozed, only to be jerked awake by the reflex in his neck. He’d adjust himself, breathe in a couple lungfuls of cool ocean air, stretch, then try again.
Esther and William slept surprisingly well. Marny would have thought two people in their predicament would find sleep difficult to come by, a prize just out of reach. But they’d slipped so suddenly and peacefully into that world of dreams that it almost seemed unnatural.
He thought of what Esther had said about God and His will. She truly believed God had brought them together for a reason. That it was no accident that he was the attendant at the gas station Gary never stopped at who picked up her note and read it. That it was God who prompted him to follow Gary and rescue her from the house of horror.
Marny thought about it, but he wasn’t convinced. Life was too random, too chaotic, too cursed to say that God had His way and it was all working out accordingly.
Then he thought about what she’d called him: her accidental hero. She was being facetious, of course. She didn’t believe in accidents, and he was no hero. If anything, he was an antihero. And if she knew the truth about him, she’d take William and both of them would swim the mile in fifty-degree water back to the mainland. It was that bad.
But no matter how much he tried to coerce both his muscles and mind into staying awake, the fatigue and stress of the day eventually caught up with him, and he drifted into sleep, where his mind conjured awful visions.
He was in a darkened room, no light at all, sitting on his haunches in the corner. Karl’s voice was there, deep and gravelly, strained, half grunt, half speech. He said something about showing him respect, but Marny didn’t catch the whole thing. He wasn’t sure if Karl was talking to him or to someone else.
Karl’s voice drew nearer in the darkness, a bodiless phantom closing in. Then Marny picked up another sound: a wet thumping sound, like he was swinging around a piece of raw steak. Was the jerk going to bludgeon him with a slab of meat? Marny tried to push back farther into the corner, but the wall would not give even an inch. He pulled his knees up closer to his chest and buried his face in them. If Karl was going to kill him, he at least wanted his eyes closed when it happened.
Karl’s footsteps stopped just inches from Marny, and the click of the light switch echoed in the room. Light surrounded him now, but he kept his face buried and eyes closed.
Karl nudged him with his foot. “Look at me, ya little piece a’ garbage. Look what I done.”
Marny kept his face buried. He knew the moment he opened his eyes and lifted his head, a thirty-two-ounce steak would rattle his brain and the beating begin.
Karl nudged him again, this time harder. “Hey, garbage boy. Look what I done. Look at ya now. Not such a tough guy, ayuh?”
Marny opened his eyes and lifted his head. Bile surged up his throat and stung the back of his tongue. Karl did have a piece of meat in his hands, only the meat was no cut of steak; it was Marny. He held the other Marny up with one hand gripping the back of his head and the other arm around his waist. He was limp and appeared dead. His face was so bloody and disfigured Marny wouldn’t even have recognized himself if it weren’t for the University of Maine sweatshirt he’d worn so often in those days.
The bile was there again, but Marny swallowed it down. He was too scared and mad to vomit. In a fit of rage like he’d never experienced in real life, he jumped up and launched himself at Karl. The jerk dropped his punching dummy and stopped Marny’s attack with a stiff forearm to the chest. Marny went down hard and lay there next to his pulverized twin. Karl stood over him, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose, a string of saliva connecting his parted lips. He breathed heavily, too heavily for the little work he’d done to knock down someone half his weight. With one of his meat-hook hands he grabbed Marny around the ankle and dragged him out of the room and down the hallway. Marny tried to fight back, but his arms were paralyzed. Had Karl hit him that hard? He felt no pain, just paralysis.
At the end of the hall was the staircase that led to the first floor. Without hesitation Karl swung Marny around and shoved him at the steps. Marny bounced violently down the flight, hitting each stair with either his back or arms until he came to rest on the floor at the bottom. Still he felt no pain, but fear had seeped into every cell of his body—intense fear, like he’d never felt before. He was sure Karl was going to follow him down those steps and beat him into a slab of meat as he had his twin. But when he looked up the stairs, Karl was gone and his mother was there. She wore her favorite flowered dress and had her hair all fixed up like she did on Sunday mornings. Tears came to Marny’s eyes, and he whispered her name.
“Marnin.” Her voice was calm, casual. “You didn’t kill me … but you might as well have. It was your fault. You provoked him, and you know he always took it out on me.”
The tears flowed now; Marny couldn’t control them. “No.”
“Don’t deny it. I swear, you’re such a victim. If you would have only minded your own business, none of it would have happened.”
Karl appeared behind her, but she didn’t seem to notice. He too looked calm now. Gone were the rage, the bulging veins, the reddened and sweaty face.
Mom continued, oblivious to the monster right behind her. “How many times did I tell you to mind your own business? Huh? But you just couldn’t.”
Fear suddenly seized Marny, clamped down on him like a vise and tightened his throat. He tried to warn his mother about Karl, but no words would come. It was as if someone had stuffed a rag in his throat.
At the top of the stairs Karl smiled at Marny, a wolfish grin that dripped malice, then gave his mother a hard push right in the middle of the back. Her head snapped back, and she lurched forward and for an instant was in a free fall down the steps. Her body hit the first step a quarter of the way down and tumbled end over end until right before she landed on him …
Marny jerked awake so hard his neck spasmed. Pain shot up the side of his head. It took him a second to orient himself. The sun peeked over the watery horizon an eternity away, but dawn had arrived and the sky was deep shades of orange and red. It had to be a little before five o’clock. The fire pit was now nothing more than a pile of charred sticks. Esther was still asleep … but William was gone.
Panic jumped into his chest. William was gone. Had Gary crept up on them in the still of the early morning hours and taken him? Marny was supposed to stay awake, guard Esther and William, make sure this very thing didn’t happen, but he’d slept so soundly. Looking around, he saw nothing but granite, grass, shrubs, and pines. No William.
He stood and scanned the island again, making a complete turn and finding nothing that clued him to William’s whereabouts. How was he going to tell Esther he’d lost her brother? He assured her he’d stay up and keep the fire going, told her to have faith in him. His hands began to shake and a cool sweat broke out on his face.
But before he could stutter something, Esther stirred and opened her eyes. She rubbed at them, then pushed herself to sitting.
“Where’s William?” Her sleep-stained eyes darted around the small encampment.
Marny just looked back at her dumbly. His silence said it all.
She said with some urgency, “Marny, where’s William?” She was giving him every opportunity to come up with a perfectly rational explanation for why her brother, the one with the special gift, the one wanted by crazy Gary, was missing.
“I … I don’t know.”
Chapter 20
ESTHER S
TOOD AND swiveled around, anger and panic burning her cheeks.
She came full circle and drilled Marny with narrowed eyes. Her breathing was shallow, labored. “You don’t know? You were supposed to be watching.”
His eyes dropped to the grass and stones. “I know. I fell asleep.”
“But you said you’d stay awake; you said you would.” She started to walk away from the fire, then stopped and turned around. “Well, come on. Let’s see if he’s on the island. He may have wandered off.”
She wasn’t ready to accept the reality that Gary may have been there as they slept, stepping silently around them, watching, planning, taking her brother. That would be the end of her world.
She took off ahead of Marny, heading farther east, following the rocky shoreline around the island. To her left, across an expanse of choppy water, lay the coast of Maine, a dark gray smudge on the horizon. To her right, towering pines formed a wall behind which lay acres of wooded land hiding secrets she had no desire to unveil. She only wanted to find her brother.
Picking her way over rocks and around boulders, Esther fought off the guilt that nudged at her heart. She shouldn’t have snapped at Marny like that. Did she really expect him to lie awake the entire night and keep watch?
But he’d said he would; he’d told her to have faith. She wondered briefly if she’d made a mistake in choosing him, if he wasn’t the one she thought he was. But he had to be, not because she’d chosen him, but because, in reality, she hadn’t chosen him. Because he’d chosen her. It was his decision to follow her note and rescue her and William from Gary’s clutches. Where had that compulsion come from?
She knew where. It was all part of providence, something she didn’t fully understand, couldn’t fully understand, but simply accepted.
She stopped and called William’s name, waited a few seconds, then glanced back at Marny. He was keeping his distance, allowing her the space she needed to cool down. With his head hung low, hair in his eyes, and hands in his pockets, he looked the picture of remorse and defeat. Again guilt pricked at her.
But the guilt was quickly pushed to the side by a growing sense of panic. What if Gary had been on the island last night? What if he had taken William? Why hadn’t she heard anything? She wasn’t that deep of a sleeper. Over the years, with Gary as unpredictable as he was, she’d trained herself to sleep light and be ready to move at the slightest noise or disturbance. Had she been that exhausted from their escape from Gary that she’d slipped into a coma-like sleep?
Halfway around the island’s edge she climbed a grouping of boulders and peered over the top. Her heart leaped into her throat. There, in a small cove, William stood almost knee-high in a tide pool, holding a starfish in each hand. He looked at her, held his hands high, then went back to studying the creatures he’d found.
Esther’s legs suddenly felt weak, and she sank to the ground.
Marny knelt beside her. “He’s fine.”
Esther sighed. “Yeah. He’s fine.”
“I’m sorry I fell asleep.”
“Don’t be. You only gave your body what it needed. I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
“You call that snapping? That was a pat on the back compared to the verbal beatings Karl used to give me.”
“Karl?”
“My stepfather. He had a way with words. Real classy guy.”
They were both quiet for moment, watching William fish in the tide pool for creatures washed in from the bay’s depths and captured in the shallow trap. He set the starfish down and retrieved a small lobster, no bigger than the palm of his hand.
Finally Esther said. “I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s so strong, so sure of everything.”
“It seems the feeling is mutual. He needs you too.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t need me. He just pretends he does.”
“Have you ever seen your father since he left?”
“No. I was ten when he left. I loved him so much. He was my hero. He used to call me Squirt and take me to McDonald’s in Freeport every Saturday morning for breakfast. I looked forward to Saturday all week. It’s when I had him all to myself, just the two of us.”
“And just like that he left?”
She hesitated, refusing to let the memory of that day crawl back from wherever she had cast it. “Just like that. He couldn’t handle the thought of having a son who was both physically and mentally challenged. When Mom died, the courts found him and gave him the option of taking us back, but he refused.”
“And you’ve never looked for him?”
“How could I? Gary keeps close tabs on us. I’ve thought about it. I have this dream that someday he’ll just show up on Gary’s porch and demand to take us back. That he’ll be my hero again and rescue us.”
William turned his head to look at Esther. His lips were tight, jaw set, brow furrowed. He said, “We need to get off this island.”
Chapter 21
WILLIAM’S WORDS PUCKERED Marny’s skin in a wave of goose bumps.
Marny looked out across the bay and saw nothing but a single organism with a million different moving parts oscillating to a cadence all its own, moving ever closer to them but never gaining ground. Colorful buoys dotted the water, bobbing quietly in time with each other.
William held several starfish like they were jewels. He looked at the mainland as if he could see across the mile of open water and had found something there that scared him, something headed their way. He turned and met Marny’s eyes for a moment, then glanced away. “We have to get off this island, Marnin,” he repeated.
“Why? Is he coming?”
His eyes fixed on the dark streak on the horizon, William nodded and carefully set the starfish back in the tide pool. He wiped his hands on his pants. “Is the boat ready to leave, Marnin?”
Esther stood, walked to William, and offered him her hand.
“We should get going,” she said. “He’s never wrong about this stuff.”
The view across the water was still empty. No boats approached. No sea monsters with numerous tentacles loomed just below the surface.
Marny nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
They headed back to the campsite, gathered the blankets, threw some dirt on the fire pit, and climbed aboard the lobster boat. Right before Marny turned the key to fire up the engine he heard a low thrum in the distance. Looking up, he saw another lobster boat a good three quarters of a mile away, headed in their direction. His throat tightened and his palms began to sweat. It could be nothing, just a lobsterman getting an early jump on his traps. Not unusual at all. But it could be something far more sinister too, more venomous than a multitentacled sea monster with an appetite for human flesh. It could be Gary.
William and Esther had climbed into the boat and taken seats in the back. Marny turned around, caught William’s eye, and nodded toward the approaching vessel. “Is that him, William? Is that Gary?”
William didn’t even look at the boat. Marny could tell that somehow he just instinctively knew. “No.” He was a child of few words, but when he spoke, what he said carried the weight and significance of a thousand grandiloquent words.
Esther seemed surprised by her brother’s answer. “No? That’s not Gary coming for us?”
William shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Then who’s that?” She pointed at the lobster boat now a half mile away. It was traveling at cruising speed, no more than fifteen knots, and did not appear to be in any hurry to get to their little sanctuary in the middle of the bay.
William shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Marny wasn’t going to wait around and see. “Hold on.” He pushed the throttle forward slowly, and the boat backed away from the dock. He turned it and shifted, then inched the throttle forward again. Slowly it gained speed. Marny didn’t want to full-throttle it back to the mainland as he’d done last night getting to the island. There was no need to alarm the approaching lobsterman.
At a quarter mile from the is
land they passed the other boat with a good forty yards between them. The lobsterman was an elderly man with a deeply creviced face and wiry gray hair and beard. He wore yellow bib overalls over a long-sleeved gray shirt. They made eye contact, and Marny nodded and gave a little wave. The lobsterman drilled him with a squint-eyed glare and returned neither sign of cordiality.
It didn’t take long to make it back to the lighthouse and dock the boat. Walking the pier back toward the rocky shoreline, Marny had a stone in the pit of his stomach. He kept expecting Gary to jump out from behind a boulder and show them the meaning of brutality.
When they stepped off the pier and onto the pebbly beach, he said to Esther, “I think we should go to Mr. Tuttle first. We can call the police from his house.” He glanced at Mr. Condon’s place down shore a little bit. “I don’t want to go back in there unless we have to.”
“I think we should just get the car and go,” Esther said.
“Go where?”
“Into Pine Harbor, away from here, anywhere else but here.”
Marny glanced at the two houses again. One held the remnants of violence and murder and the thought of seeing Mr. Condon’s pale, lifeless face; the other held the hope of aid, shelter, a place to call for help. “Mr. Condon has another car, and the keys are in his house. But I’m not going in there unless it’s the last resort. Let’s see if Mr. Tuttle can help us first.”
Esther said nothing.
“You okay with that?”
“I just don’t want to be around here any longer than we have to.”
The fear was evident on her face, in the tone of her voice.
“I don’t either, but I think the safest place right now is inside Mr. Tuttle’s house.”
“Okay. I trust you.”
Those were not the words Marny wanted to hear. If he failed, it could be the end of all three of them.
They climbed a flight of rough-hewn logs set into the embankment that served as stairs from the beach to Mr. Tuttle’s property. The yard was a wide expanse of some of the thickest, greenest grass Marny had ever seen, perfectly manicured. The house, thirty yards off the shore, was magnificent and stately. The entire back facade was lined with windows so one could see the beauty of the bay from anywhere in the house. A sprawling two-tiered patio made the transition from yard to house a welcome one. Marny walked up to the back sliding door and knocked. Mr. Tuttle didn’t answer, nor did Molly, his middle-aged Maltese, bark.
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