Scared of the Dark

by Easton Vaughn

  “Revenge isn’t everything,” Aiden said, thinking of Lemon.

  “You’re not very smart for a Harvard man,” Sheldon responded, still smiling.

  “You said you’d make sure Lemon was safe,” Aiden reminded him.

  Sheldon’s smile faded. “You believe in God?”

  “Most days,” Aiden replied.

  “She’ll be safe. However this goes.”

  A sobering thought. Aiden couldn’t think of anything to say in response. Sheldon proffered a hand and he took it. Then the giant gently helped him to his feet. Aiden stopped and looked into Sheldon’s face, asked, “Why are you helping me?”

  Sheldon shrugged. “This is an evil place, but you aren’t a part of it.”

  “About the—”

  “You’re about to get into the other day?” Sheldon interrupted. “I knew you’d throw the hot water on me. I was praying you’d actually get away.”

  “Then that means you’ve helped me twice,” Aiden said. “Thank you, and thank you.”

  “I’m just sorry you got mixed up in all of this.”

  Aiden nodded and wiped at the moisture in his eyes. “I better get going.”

  “Stay in the shadows. Follow my directions exactly as I gave them.”

  “Will do.”

  “Is today one of the days?”

  Aiden frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “One of the days you believe in God?” Sheldon said.

  “We’ll see,” Aiden said, and then he left.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Her hands were restrained behind her back. Despite that, she sat with perfect posture. Pleasant had a fire going, and sat on the other side of it directly across from Lemon, watching her closely. The left strap of her dress had fallen off one shoulder, the form of a heavy breast and the hint of a nipple clear for all to see.

  Merritt came upon them and nodded at Pleasant. “This is yeoman work,” he announced. “You hog-tie someone like this, even if they desperately try to hold onto their dignity, it’s clear that is a losing battle. I like the message this sends.”

  Lemon’s posture didn’t falter. She kept her head held high and her back straight, her gaze focused directly ahead of her and on no one in particular. Give them eye contact and they could see the affect this was having on her.

  Merritt said, “You comfortable, Mrs. Potter? Can I get you anything?”

  Head held high, back straight, gaze directly ahead and on no one in particular.

  “You seem to have had a wardrobe malfunction,” he said, moving toward her. “Let me help you with that.”

  She couldn’t help but to turn and face him then, her eyes ablaze. “Come near enough and I’ll spit on you. Get real close and I’ll find a way to sink my teeth into you. And I won’t let go.”

  Merritt grinned. “I knew you were probably into some kinky shit. Didn’t figure you for a sadist, though. S&M and whatnot. Mistress Lemon, Queen of the Isle. Would you like me to try to scare up a whip of some kind?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Merritt’s smile deepened. “Now all of her deep dark desires emerge. You hear this, Pleasant?”

  “You’re going to get yours,” Lemon said.

  “That’s an original thought I’ve never heard from you before.” Tone of voice, the smirk on his face, his posture—Merritt made sure that everything about him was mocking. “I’m sorry to inform you that you’re no longer island royalty, Mrs. Potter. That is, of course, unless you’ve changed your mind regarding my offer. I think we’d make a cute couple.”

  “I’d die before I involved myself with you.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  He laughed as she went silent. It was all coming together better than he could’ve expected or anticipated. Even Mosley had fallen in line.

  “I planned this from the very start,” Merritt said. “Saw the possibilities the moment Shepherd brought me to the island. I tried to talk to him about my vision, but as you know, he can be stubborn and stuck in his ways. Old, antiquated ways.”

  “That’s an original thought I’ve never heard from you before,” Lemon said.

  “Why are you so angry, Mrs. Potter? Is it a defense mechanism of some kind? To mask your embarrassment because your husband fathered a child with Deborah? Because he still slips over to her tent whenever the mood arises?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Can you blame him? Your track record with children isn’t very inspiring. And, honestly, you can be cold. Like fucking a flounder, I bet.”

  She tried to wriggle free. Cursed Merritt once more.

  He laughed at her struggle. “Noah’s a handsome boy. And Deborah…though not quite your equal, well, she’s beautiful in her own right. Who could blame Shepherd for tipping over her way? I don’t imagine very many men could handle that temptation.”

  “I’m flattered,” a lifeless voice called from the short distance.

  Merritt, Pleasant, and Lemon all turned.

  Merritt said, “Deborah? I was just—”

  “Save it,” she said, cutting him off. “Sheldon’s back from wherever he disappeared to, and now he’s on a rampage.”

  “Sheldon?”

  “That’s what I said,” she barked. “He’s been gaming you. He talks normal. Better than you, in fact.”

  “What’s this now?”

  “Sheila,” Deborah explained, “turns out to have been Sheldon’s sister. He’s been playing dumb to get close to you, to us, but he’s no dummy. Big as he is, I’d be worried if I was you. He’s got it in for you.”

  Merritt spoke very slowly and softly. “Where is he now?”

  “When I left him,” Deborah said, “he was freeing your pet white slave.”

  Merritt stood there, completely still, as Lemon exploded in a sudden hysterical laughter, the only sound in an otherwise quiet night.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A stand of oaks fronted the land near Shepherd’s place. The trees were sun-dried and malnourished, sure to light up like the sky on the fourth of July. They would crackle, and they would smoke, and in some small way they would bring Sheldon a measure of comfort. The island and everyone on it was evil. It needed to burn.

  Fueled by pure adrenaline, he splashed gasoline from a red 10-gallon drum on several of the tree trunks. He had a book of matches in his pocket from a Chinese restaurant named Shanghai Garden. He pulled them out and stood there for a moment in deep thought. He’d had a mind to go and dig up the garden. Sheila deserved a more proper burial. But he decided against it. She would be baptized by fire like him and all the others.

  A loud cry pulled him from those dark thoughts. He looked up to see Merritt and Pleasant and most of the island’s men making their way toward him. Sheldon smiled and fumbled the matches from his pocket, smoothly lighting one and holding it up for them all to see. Merritt stopped and raised his arms to keep the others from moving forward as well. Then he smiled, his arms still upstretched so as to appear nonthreatening. He asked Sheldon if he could move closer.

  “I wouldn’t,” Sheldon said.

  “Fair enough. Can you hear me well enough at this distance? I think it’s obvious we have things to discuss.”

  Sheldon blew out the match, as it had burned down to his fingertips, lit another and tossed it at one of the oaks he’d doused with the gasoline. As he’d expected, within a moment the tree crackled and smoked and painted the night orange. He plucked another match from the book but didn’t immediately light it. Instead, he turned his focus back to Merritt. “You were saying?”

  Merritt said, “You haven’t spoken to me about any concerns that would have you acting out in this way. I’m bothered by that. If nothing else, I know I’ve made myself accessible.”

  Sheldon nodded. “You have. Let’s start all over then. Tell me what happened to my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  Sheldon made a pfft sound, lit the next match and tossed it at a second oak. Crackle. Smoke.

  “Okay, okay,” Merritt said,
raising his arms higher. “Sheila, right? It was all very unfortunate. I cared very deeply for your sister. It hit me harder than anyone when she drowned. Ask the others if you don’t believe me.”

  “You sure you didn’t help her drown?” Sheldon asked. “Be careful how you answer.”

  Merritt inched closer, his hands still up where Sheldon could see them. “Are you insinuating that Sheila’s drowning wasn’t an accident?”

  “No,” Sheldon said, shaking his head. “I’m outright stating it. You killed my sister. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You have a feeling? That’s some hocus-pocus right there.”

  Sheldon made the pfft sound again, then quickly lit another match and set a third oak aflame. “I have plenty of matches. Continue playing this game with me if you like.”

  Merritt said, “You sure had us fooled,” inching closer, less than ten feet separating the men now.

  “That’s far enough,” Sheldon warned.

  “You afraid of me?”

  “I think you know the answer to that,” Sheldon said, snickering.

  “Your sister had the same quality.”

  “Pardon?”

  Merritt chuckled. “She was an actor, just like you. She fooled me good. All of us, actually. Virginal is how I’d describe the act she put on. Had us all thinking she’d much rather live her life in prayer and contemplation at a monastery. But in actuality, Sheila kept that thang oiled up and running. The girl was insatiable. You know that word—insatiable—now that you’ve quit with the retard act?”

  “You have a death wish?” Sheldon said through gritted teeth.

  “Ever heard the term “fisting”? Ain’t a hand was ever made that was big enough to not get lost in your sister’s thang. Had to tie a rope around my waist and secure it to a tree to keep from falling all the way in when we got a notion to get cozy.”

  “You—”

  But the words wouldn’t come. Sheldon felt a thump against his chest, small but with a familiar sting, a paintball pellet. Part of a child’s game or mock military training. He looked down in search of a bloom of blue dye. His shirt was clear of any stain, but he immediately recognized what exactly had hit him. From experience, he knew that the active ingredient in pepper spray was capsaicin, a chemical derived from the fruit of plants in the Capsicum genus, including chilis. A split-second before his eyes closed shut on him, Sheldon knew that they would. Gasping for a breath, he tried to expel it from his lungs with loud barking coughs, knowing the effort would be futile. He bent at the waist, his skin on fire like the trees, involuntary spasms rippling through his body. A beat later, an octopus tangle of hands grabbed hold of his arms, and clasped around his torso, and around his legs at the knees, and he was tackled hard to the ground. He struggled to sit up, unable to because the weight of untold men rested on his chest, his arms, and his knees.

  “I would say close your eyes,” he heard Merritt say, the words followed by a tell-tale rack of a metal slide, “but looks like they’re already closed.”

  “You’re a coward,” Sheldon replied in a strangled voice. “You couldn’t take me by yourself.”

  “I prefer cautious,” Merritt said. “You’re a big boy.”

  Sheldon sensed Merritt crouch next to him, something cool and hard bit into the skin at his temple. “Go ahead and do it,” he spat. “Go ahead, coward.”

  “You do have some steel,” he heard Merritt say. “I respect that. Sheila had it as well, and, unfortunately, it got her kilt as the old folks say. The worst part of drowning is the helplessness. I wonder how it was for Sheila once she realized the Pamlico was determined to swallow her.”

  “You motherfucker,” Sheldon screamed, and tried to budge once again from the grasp of the men holding him.

  “Shh,” Merritt mouthed. “Sit still. This’ll be a lot messier than it needs to be if you keep moving. I could miss.”

  Sheldon disregarded those words and continued to wriggle and squirm, but he wasn’t strong enough to free himself from the cool kiss of Merritt’s gun. That surprised him. He was always strong enough. How could it be that he was failing now? Worse yet, how could he be failing his sister? He desperately wanted this man to bear the cross of Sheila’s murder. Merritt had killed her in cold blood and justly should pay for it. There was something wrong with this—this sudden shift in the narrative. It wasn’t right. But even as Sheldon considered that, a sense of calm washed over him. It was over, he realized. He stopped struggling to break free. On the bright side, he would be reunited with his sister once again. As soon as this was done.

  Through gritted teeth, he said, “Do it.”

  “As you wish,” Merritt replied, the last words Sheldon was to ever hear.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lemon couldn’t keep tears from shimmering in her eyes, no matter how hard she strained. Merritt and Pleasant had run off to handle the ugly business with Sheldon. Deborah announcing soon after the two men had left how she’d never felt more “bone weary” and making her own exit. Only Mosley Walters and Haywood Daniels remained now. Haywood couldn’t seem to meet Lemon’s eyes. Something had changed in Haywood’s friend however, a hardening of some sort, as Mosley couldn’t seem to look anywhere but directly into Lemon’s face.

  “My Old Dad was a hard man,” he was saying at the moment. “We actually called him Old Dad. And my grandfather, we called him Old Granddad. They were both drinkers, you see.”

  Lemon sniffed but was otherwise silent.

  “Old Dad was involved in all manner of criminal activity,” Mosley continued. “You name it, he did it. Ran hoes for a stretch. Some other time I have to tell you the story of me losing my cherry to a tired old hag named Cashmere. Wasn’t anything soft about her, and in many ways I blame that old goat for making me so…specific in my tastes.” He shook his head at the memory and went on. “Strong-arm robbery shit, Old Dad did that too. Eventually, he took a hard fall moving boodle. The shit was as counterfeit as a black woman with blond hair and blue eyes. Green dye came off it on your fingers, if you even touched the shit.”

  “I’ve never heard you curse before,” Lemon managed through sniffs.

  Mosley nodded but went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I visited him inside, near to the end. The cancer had gnawed him down to the bone. I don’t believe he weighed more than one-thirty. This is on a six-two frame.”

  “If you’re trying to get some pity from me, save your breath.”

  “Dying by the day,” Mosley added, “and he was still carrying himself hard. He talked down to me, same as he’d always done. I never did manage to make Old Dad even a little bit proud. Even with his seventh grade education, he was able to tell me that my “proclivities” disgusted him. But I saw something in his eyes in that prison, and it surprised the shit out of me. You know what it was?”

  Lemon narrowed her eyes and kept her mouth clamped shut.

  “Fear,” he said. “Can you believe that? It truly shook me up. Old Dad had always been bulletproof. I couldn’t wrap my head around that final image…a scared and broken little man. Not Old Dad. It couldn’t be.”

  “Unbelievable,” Haywood muttered.

  “Prison did that to him, Lemon. It snatched my Old Dad’s soul right out of him.”

  “Maybe it actually gave him one,” she suggested, finally speaking.

  Mosley considered that for a moment. “You could be right.”

  “There was a point to your story?” she asked.

  “I don’t think you fully understand what the island has offered you,” Mosley said. “If it wasn’t for this place, imperfect as you believe it to be, we’d all be somewhere far worse. Do you even appreciate the freedom you have here?”

  She laughed at the notion. “Freedom? This is a prison of a different sort, that’s all. Don’t make it out to be some kind of nirvana.”

  “It saddens me to hear you talk that way.”

  “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

&n
bsp; He smiled. “Shepherd has had a far greater impact on you than you’d probably care to admit, considering your present mind state. Nevertheless, all of this talk of souls is tiring.”

  “You know Merritt and Pleasant will kill Sheldon,” she said.

  Mosley nodded. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “And I’ll likely be next,” she added.

  “You don’t appreciate what you have here,” he replied, shrugging.

  “You have more of your Old Dad in you than you probably realize.”

  “I’ll try to find the compliment in that statement.”

  “Do try,” Lemon said.

  They fell into a silence that lasted until the walkie-talkie in Mosley’s pocket crackled, Merritt’s voice breaking through on the line. Mosley fished it from his pocket and answered. “Yeah?”

  “Are you still sitting on Mrs. Potter?” Merritt’s voice asked from the black rectangle.

  “I don’t think she could handle me sitting on her,” Mosley said, smiling.

  Merritt’s sigh came through loud and clear.

  “Haywood and I are both here with her,” Mosley told him. “She’s secured.”

  “Cut her loose,” Merritt said. “I want her off my island. She has the night to get gone. If I see her in the morning, well, that won’t be good for her. You tell her I said so. Once you’ve set her free, come to Shepherd’s house. We’re having a meeting.”

  Lemon sat up as straight as possible. She frowned. What was this play? Because, she’d come to learn, everything was a play coming from Merritt.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” Mosley asked. “You said to set Lemon free?”

  “She has the night to get off the island,” the tinny reply.

  “Roger that,” Mosley said, pocketing the walkie-talkie. He looked over at Lemon, shrugged and smirked. “I can’t pretend to understand that man. I guess you’re free to go.”

  “What is this? Why would Merritt let me go?”

  “Beats me. I have one request, though.”

  “What?” she said quietly.

  There was no warmth in Mosley’s smile when he said, “Make sure you get on birth control the moment you get settled somewhere.”