Scared of the Dark

by Easton Vaughn

  “I’ll find a way,” Aiden insisted.

  “Bravado,” she said. “False bravado. Just what we need.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re still embarrassed about what happened back at the marsh.”

  “You found me crying like a baby,” he said. “You can say it.”

  “And I told you then that I didn’t care about that. Still don’t.”

  “This whole time,” Aiden said, “back on the island and now here, I’ve let others dictate. I’m sure they have me pegged: soft white boy, nonthreatening, a joke. They’re underestimating me. I’m not saying South Boston is Detroit but…I’ll use how they think of me as an advantage somehow.”

  “Hit ‘em when they least expect it,” Lemon said in singsong.

  Aiden squinted and bit his lip as he gazed her way.

  “I’m sorry,” Lemon said. “That was uncalled for.”

  “I don’t blame you for not believing in me,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t either, if I was you. But I’m going to get us out of here.”

  Lemon was quiet for several beats. Then: “Either way, I’m glad we had…our time together last night.”

  Aiden smiled in spite of their circumstances. “Can we lay to rest any notion that I’m not attracted to you?”

  “Lay, huh? Interesting word choice.”

  “I wasn’t bad, was I?”

  “You were definitely not bad. Not bad twice,” she said, matching his smile, “and headed for a third if Dmitri hadn’t shown up.”

  “All the more reason for me to get us out of here. You owe me another tumble.”

  Lemon shook her head, clucked her tongue. “Another tumble? And here I had you pegged for a gentleman.”

  “You actually got that right.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s a restaurant,” he said, an earnest look on his face. “Journeyman. It’s in a suburb of Boston—Somerville. You pay for the tasting menu and they surprise you with an entrée. You can pair your dinner with a wine as well. I want to take you there. I’m determined to get us out of here so I can.”

  “What would your neighbors in Martha’s Vineyard say if they knew you were taking the help out to fancy restaurants?”

  “Cute.”

  “You’ve been to this restaurant with Saina?”

  “It’s a special place,” he said, immediately regretting those words, trying not to wince behind them. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  But Lemon surprised him. More often than not he was discovering that to be the case with her. “I believe you’ll get us out of here,” she said. “And I’m going to hold you to that meal.”

  He searched her face for the lie. Her eyes were clear, dry, and crinkled by a smile. He checked her throat for the tell-tale swallow. It didn’t come. Searched her shoulders to see if they were slumped. They weren’t. Still, it was unlikely she actually believed what she’d said. But that didn’t matter. Just hearing the words emboldened him. Gave him the courage to act. Maybe, in the end, he wouldn’t prove capable of overcoming Dmitri’s formidable challenge. Maybe he and Lemon would both die here. She was right after all—Dmitri seemed to be just as bad if not worse than Merritt, impossible as that idea was to grasp. Dmitri would probably torture them, make sure not only that they died but that they died slow. Aiden, though, would make him work for that victory. Enough was enough.

  The door to the hen house eased open at that very moment—Aiden at his most resolute. The sun cast a bright glare but Aiden didn’t squint. Dmitri walked in with a second man wearing matching military-style apparel.

  “I changed my mind,” Dmitri said. “No point in treating you two as though you’re special. You can eat with the others. Up on your feet.”

  Lemon immediately wiggled to the edge of the wooden pallet, rocked twice for momentum and made it to her feet, her movements not unlike a woman with her belly swollen by pregnancy. The man with Dmitri took hold of her shackled wrists.

  Dmitri nodded at Aiden. “Doc?”

  “Not hungry,” Aiden said.

  “Should’ve told me that before I had your meal prepared.”

  “Your problem,” Aiden said. “Not mine.”

  “That right?” Dmitri frowned and started striding over, his boots crunching the hay spread over the floor.

  Lemon called Aiden’s name and he turned to look at her. Dmitri was unsheathing a large knife from a leather scabbard attached to his belt buckle. “You should eat, Aiden,” Lemon said, a hint of panic in her voice. “Please.”

  Aiden nodded and hopped up. Dmitri reached him at the same time. They stood chest to chest, eyeing one another. Aiden gave away several inches and probably fifty pounds, all of it rock-hard muscle. But he didn’t blink, and neither did Dmitri. The menacing soldier smiled, though. “I’m going to enjoy breaking you, Doc.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  Dmitri chuckled. Then, using his free hand, he grabbed one of Aiden’s bound wrists. Aiden tried to shrug him off. Dmitri only increased the pressure of his grasp. A flare of pain lit up Aiden’s arm all the way to the elbow; he thought he heard bone crack, tendons and muscles ripping apart. He bit down on the pain.

  “You might be tougher than I thought,” Dmitri said.

  “You better believe it,” Aiden said. He could feel sweat popping out in pinpricks on his forehead. A bead of it fell into one eye. He didn’t blink.

  Dmitri released his grip and eased the knife back in the scabbard. He gave Aiden a push. “Move.”

  They ushered them around the backside of the chicken coop and over a small rise in the topography of the farm. At the foot of the hill there was an overgrown pasture enclosed in rotting fencing the color of spoiled meat. Several rusted cabin-like structures made of metal stood partially hidden in the growth. At one time they’d probably been painted a light tan; now they were just dirty and windowless. The door of one was open. Aiden saw a youngish man inside, hunched down, pants around his ankles, wiping his ass with newspaper. He scowled and slammed the door closed, shutting himself in pitch dark. Aiden’s mouth went dry. What was this place? And how was it possible he’d stumbled upon somewhere even worse than the island? No one was this unlucky, this snake-bitten.

  “Up ahead,” Dmitri said, breaking Aiden’s thoughts. A barn loomed in the near distance. Maybe a hundred yards away. It was massive, faded red, with white Xs framed in the trim of its breezeway and hayloft doors.

  “Hmm,” Lemon said.

  Dmitri nodded as though that were a compliment. “What they call gambrel. A popular architectural style with dairy farmers during the 20th Century.”

  “No one asked you for a history lesson,” Aiden said.

  Dmitri let the slight go. Once they reached the barn, he flashed a smile and moved behind Aiden, machete out, cutting through Aiden’s binds in one slice.

  Aiden shot his right hand to his mouth, sucked at the meat of his thumb. “Shit! You cut me.”

  “Just a little nick.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  Dmitri laughed.

  Lemon gave Aiden a look as she was cut free and shoved over next to him. It was enough to calm him.

  Dmitri noticed the silent communication that had taken place between them. “You two are cute. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others.”

  He rolled the breezeway door along a wobbly track, the whole thing screaming and groaning as it advanced. Aiden took the moment to glance around, gauge whether there was an opportunity for escape. Off in the distance he spotted two men on sentry, both with rifles slung over their shoulders, both still as mannequins, both looking directly at him. Lemon took his hand and guided him inside the barn, quickly releasing the hand once they stepped beyond the threshold. There were horse stalls on each side of the cavernous space. Exposed wooden rafters above them that felt a million miles away. A loft for hay. Picnic tables set up like in a cafeteria down the length of the wide middle aisle.

  Nearly every seating spot at every table was taken. Dirty white faces shot up to
study the new interlopers.

  “Two fresh ones for your lot,” Dmitri called from the doorway behind them. “A redbone and a physician. Part of our new diversity initiative. They were caught in flagrante delicto, so you know they have stories to tell. Do make sure they share.”

  The breezeway door screamed and moaned again as Dmitri closed it behind him. Several intense bulbs shined from fixtures high up on the walls. The loft doors on the second level were open as well. So light wasn’t an issue. Aiden noticed two seats, conveniently side by side, down at a table near the far end of the aisle.

  “Been too long since I had Vermont maple syrup,” he said, standing up straight and moving toward the table.

  There were five others seated there. Three on one side, one at the head, and one on the bench Aiden chose. No one spoke a greeting. Pancakes were piled high on a platter in the middle of the table. Next to that platter was a second one with thick links of sausage. A jug of the maple syrup next to that. A plate at each setting. No silverware.

  “No forks or knives? How do we eat?” Lemon asked.

  “With our hands,” Aiden answered.

  “Why wouldn’t they give us silverware?”

  “Because we could use them as weapons.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah. They’re smart. We’ll just have to be smarter.”

  He took two pancakes from the platter and tossed them on Lemon’s plate. Then took two for himself. Two links of sausage for both of them as well.

  “No thank you,” Lemon said as he raised the jug, prepared to pour syrup on her pancakes.

  “No?”

  “It’s too sweet for me.”

  He smiled, said, “I doubt that,” and poured a healthy amount over his own pancakes. After some time, he realized Lemon wasn’t eating. “What?”

  “You shouldn’t provoke Dmitri.”

  “Why not?” he asked around a mouthful of pancake and sausage.

  “His eyes,” she reminded him.

  “He doesn’t scare me. I know I’m probably crazy to say so, but it’s true.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Sooner than later, you mean?”

  “Don’t do this,” she whispered.

  “I’m getting us out of here,” he said for the umpteenth time. His mantra of the morning.

  “I don’t see a way,” Lemon said.

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  An old man on the other side of the table looked up. One of his eyes was gray—the color of a dead mouse in a trap—the other dark brown and very much alive. Lemon gasped and touched a shaky hand to her chest. The old man had a brilliant head of white hair, close-cropped, and skin that was both the texture and color of wrinkled khaki. His eyebrows were black and bushy, startling in their contrast with his hair. He was drowning in the clothes they had him wearing. “To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory,” he said. A surprisingly rich, booming voice coming from such a small frame.

  Aiden frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “Pierre Corneille,” the old man explained. “I wish I could claim it as my own.”

  “I don’t believe I know Corneille,” Aiden told him.

  “No shame in that, young man. But in case you’re interested… He was born in Rouen, France into a family of lawyers. Educated by the Jesuits. Became a lawyer himself. Worked as one of the king’s counselors for twenty-one years and still found the time to write twenty plays. Wrote twelve more after he retired.”

  “You know a great deal about him,” Aiden said.

  The old man nodded. “I’m somewhat of an annalist. History excites me. One of the few things to do so.”

  “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Pierre Corneille you said?”

  “Yes,” the old man replied. “Considered to be the father of French tragedy and yet six of his first eight plays were comedies.”

  “That’s the danger of categorizing someone,” Aiden said. “You can get it miserably wrong.”

  “A danger indeed,” the old man said, smiling, his teeth impossibly straight and impossibly white.

  Lemon yawped beside Aiden. “You’re full of shit, old man.”

  Aiden turned to face her, startled by the outburst. “Where did that come from?”

  “Bitterness,” the old man said from the other side of the table.

  “I’ll apologize for her,” Aiden said.

  “The hell you will,” Lemon barked.

  Aiden ignored her. “This has been a stressful situation. Forgive her.”

  “Forgiveness is not for me to grant,” the old man said.

  “Damn right,” Lemon said, getting up from the table.

  “Lemon!”

  She didn’t turn back.

  Aiden watched her march toward the breezeway doors. Watched her bang on it with the side of her fist. Watched her disappear into the sunshine once the door opened. He shook his head and plucked a pancake from his plate, shoveled it in his mouth. It no longer tasted any good, he noticed.

  “Alcee,” the old man said, extending a hand.

  “My fingers are sticky with syrup,” Aiden told him.

  “Doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” the old man said. “Does it?”

  Aiden smiled and offered his hand. “I suppose not. Alcee you said?”

  The old man nodded. “But most people call me Shepherd.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Merritt was soaked with sour sweat, his hands aching terribly from exertion. The work was tough but satisfying. His chest swelled as the tall oak before him cracked and toppled over. It landed on soft ground with a muted thud.

  “Didn’t even realize we had a chainsaw on the island,” Deborah called from the clearing a close distance away.

  “You need to know everything?”

  “Got your back up, I see,” she said.

  “Take the hint,” Merritt told her.

  She didn’t. In fact, she moved closer and stared at the tree lying in the grass like a dog turd. “What are you going to use this wood for? The cabins I keep hearing so much about?”

  “Not to be rude,” Merritt said. “But as you can see, I’m busy here. What is it you need?”

  “For starters, it would be nice if you cleaned out your ears.”

  Merritt sighed.

  Deborah spoke very slowly, pausing dramatically between each word. “What. Are. You. Planning. To. Do. With. This. Wood?”

  Merritt turned his back on her and started walking alongside the felled oak, counting off the feet using his boots. The tree still needed to be cut down further, into eight-foot lengths. He estimated that it would yield three—maybe four—of the logs he’d need. That realization caused him to blow out an air of frustration and wipe the sweat from his forehead. A lot more work had to be done.

  “What’s that you’re whispering?” Deborah asked.

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  She nodded. “Yup. What were you whispering?”

  “Buoyancy,” he said softly, more so to himself than her.

  “Which means what?”

  It wasn’t a call for resilience of spirit or cheerfulness—two possible dictionary definitions for the word—although he could certainly use some of both at this moment. But instead, it was a stark reminder that the eventual logs he cut from the tree would lend themselves to a raft. And that raft would need to float. It would need to be buoyant.

  “James?”

  “Deborah?”

  “You’re pissing me off.”

  He nodded and turned his attention back to the tree. Soft woods worked well for a raft. Pine and fir, poplar and balsa. Dead wood was even better. It didn’t retain very much water. It was lighter. Maple and oak were to be avoided, if at all possible. They were very difficult to cut, a bitch to move around, somewhat resistant to float. “Not to say they necessarily sink,” he said.

  There was a frown in Deborah’
s voice. “What now?”

  “Still thinking out loud,” he offered.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He turned to Deborah and eased into a comfortable smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you’ve caught me at a bad time.”

  She said, “One thing you need to learn: there’s no such thing as a bad time where I’m concerned.”

  Merritt set the lightweight STIHL down near his feet and moved closer to her. “You’re right. You have my full attention now.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Whatever, James.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  Her hands slipped down to her hips. She cocked her head and took him in. “What about me?”

  “You didn’t come out here for nothing.”

  She nodded and relaxed. “True enough.”

  “So?”

  She flashed a quick smile. “Because of the deep connection that you and I share, the others elected me as messenger.”

  “You could have raised me on a walkie-talkie.”

  “I thought a more personal touch was in order.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’re out of bottled water, Haywood’s losing his mind because he smoked his last Djarum, Miss Amelia has a fever that won’t break. I checked our medical supplies and there’s nothing to give her for it. The others thought maybe you and I could pay a visit to the mainland to restock on some essentials.”

  “That’s gonna hafta wait.”

  “Why is it gonna hafta?”

  If he were light-skinned, Merritt would’ve colored with shame. He hated that she’d picked up on the ineloquence of his words. It happened sometimes when he was at a loss for answers. It wasn’t a state he was comfortable having exposed.

  “Once I finish this…project,” he said, “I’ll go myself.”

  “When can I tell them that’ll be?”

  Surprised she didn’t push harder to go with him, he thought it best he give her some kind of timetable. He glanced at the felled tree again. Once he had the logs cut from it, he’d gather them up and bring them to the beach. Line them up so they were partially in the water. Six base logs lying side by side, and two connector logs placed atop them and running perpendicular at the top and bottom of the makeshift raft. Everything stitched together with rope tied in clove hitches and a series of overhand knots—familiar enough because overhands were the first knots made when tying a shoe. “You can tell them it’ll most likely be sometime tomorrow or the next day,” he said.