by Blake Crouch
Rufus stood up and plucked a pipe from the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt.
"I have to tell you though, Andy," he said, glancing over his shoulder at his son at the end of the dock, "Luther and Orson are ultimately failures. Evil is something to be overcome and redefined. It overcame them. Orson was torn between his love of blood and his self-hate. My boy," Rufus sighed, "has only a love of blood. It’s the great sadness of my life. I love the Great Regression for what comes after it. Luther loves it for the warfare, and he would have it go on without end. Do you see what I’m saying?"
I nodded, because surprisingly I did. In that moment, the philosophy of Rufus Kite made perfect, terrifying sense. Not that I sympathized. I just…understood.
Vi said, "What fucked you up, Rufus?"
He took the pipe out of his mouth and howled with laughter.
"Little lady, I was raised by loving, God-fearing parents. Worst thing ever to happen to me was my cocker spaniel, Rusty, getting mange when I was fourteen. Broke my heart."
"But what made you into this—"
"Violet, I’m not the product of abuse, molestation, neglect, abandonment, mental disease, pick your excuse. The things I believe and do are the result of a man who has looked unflinchingly at the human heart and rid himself of the lies he’s been told about it."
"There’s no goodness left in you?"
"God, I hope not. Goodness? I should wish for goodness? Morality is not man’s Godlike quality. The search and acquisition of truth is. You think God’s moral? He’s beyond moral. He created the concept. Made the rules you play by. I reject those rules because I have free will, because I have that kind of vision. I’m starting a new game."
Baby Max had dozed off. Now he stirred, eyes rolling around in his sockets like shiny ball bearings. Rufus knelt down and grinned at the infant, stroking his ancient crooked finger against the silky cheek.
"Max," he said, "a self-centered, mercurial little monster. I love it. He hasn’t been brainwashed with your morality yet. He’s an original thinker, more Godlike than we’ll ever be, until mommy and daddy poison him with notions of right and wrong."
Rufus rose, started for the backdoor.
"If there was no right or wrong," Vi called after him, "this world would implode. We’d all kill each other. There’d be no one left."
He glanced back.
"A few would survive. And they’d be the creators. I’m sorry you don’t understand."
Rufus disappeared into the house.
Luther still sat motionless at the end of the dock.
Vi reached over, took hold of my hand.
We were quiet for awhile. I tried to see my brother in the new light of him never having been raped. Tried to flush the taste of Willard Bass from my mouth.
"Did that woman on the boat, Beth, have children?" Vi asked.
"Two," I said.
Vi shook her head. "I can’t believe she didn’t…"
"I know. But don’t pity her, Vi. Envy is the appropriate emotion. You have no idea what tomorrow will be like. If you and Max live through it, you won’t be the same person who’s sitting beside me tonight."
Maxine emerged from the house and walked down through the grass toward our colony of lawn chairs.
She stopped beside Vi’s chair, knelt down, and swiped the baby out of her arms.
"No!" Vi screamed, jerking against the chain. "What are you doing?"
Max wailed.
The old woman rocked and hushed him.
"You can have him back tomorrow evening," she said, "long as you, and Andy, do what’s asked of you. If not, I’m going to hold Max by his little feet, and swing him into the stone walls of the basement till there’s nothing left."
# # #
Kim and Steve woke early Thursday morning in their suite at the Harbor Inn. They dressed in clothes purchased specifically for this trip—Kim in a cream rayon skirt and matching sleeveless V-neck that tied at the waste, Steve in royal blue shorts and a canary polo shirt. He’d never sported such vibrancy in his life, but this was appropriate dress for honeymooning. He didn’t feel foolish. He felt grown-up. He was twenty-three now, a college graduate, married, and tingling with what he thought was maturity.
They crossed Silver Lake Drive and walked into the small office of the Harbor Inn, where they scavenged the meager continental breakfast. With their greasy pastries and Styrofoam cups of orange juice, the newlyweds stepped outside onto the pier and dined in the presence of the harbor, glittering in early sun.
They bogged down discussing plans for the day. Kim wanted to go shopping again at the craft and antique stores. She was insistent on buying more gifts for their parents and friends and mailing them back to Wisconsin.
"They’ll have to be in the mail by tomorrow at the latest," she told Steve for the second time in the last half hour. "Tomorrow at the latest."
He wondered fleetingly if he’d married an obsessive-compulsive.
"Well, I’d like to go to Portsmouth," he said. "See the ghost village. On the weather, they said there’s only a twenty percent chance of rain this afternoon."
Steve was certain she’d oblige him. He’d been a model husband thus far. It was Thursday. They’d been in Ocracoke since Sunday, and they’d shopped mercilessly every day of their honeymoon. Perhaps he’d have to put his foot down on this one.
"Kimmy," he said. "I really want to see Portsmouth."
"Steve, it’s soooo hot. I don’t want to be outside all day."
"Case closed," he said sternly, a line his father had used to much success with Steve’s mother. "We can shop all you want when we get back, and we’ll shop all day tomorrow. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. Do you?"
She turned away from him, watched the ferry bound for Cedar Island chugging out of the harbor. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and she wiped sweatbeads from her forehead. She glared at Steve. He looked like such a little boy.
"Fine. We’ll go to the stupid island."
She started back down the pier toward Silver Lake Drive.
Steve called after her.
It felt so good to keep on walking.
# # #
Kim started talking to Steve again an hour later, on the walk over to the Community Store and the boat docks. The day was blue and intensely humid, and the novelty of their marriage and this quaint island, so far from their Wisconsin home, cleansed the rancid taste of their recent quarrel. They were lovebirds again and held hands while they walked.
When they arrived at the parking lot for the Community Store, Steve motioned toward the shack at the end of the dock, pointing out the TATUM BOAT TOURS sign mounted on the side.
"That’s it," he told Kim. "Guy said to be there at eleven."
"How much is it?"
"I think twenty dollars a person."
"Oh, jeez that’s expensive."
He chose not to point out that she’d already spent over four hundred dollars on gifts. Kim would certainly have a well-reasoned argument for each and every expenditure.
They walked into the Community Store, a modest, eighty-six year-old grocery offering a modicum of staples, beer and wine, local jams and canned peppers, even several shelves of videos for rent.
Potato chips and beef jerky seemed sufficient to tide them over until evening. Steve paid for the snacks and ten postcards that Kim required immediately. Loading everything into a small backpack, they crossed the burnished wood floor and walked back outside into the ever-thickening heat.
It was nearly eleven, so they headed for the steps leading up onto the dock.
Kim stopped suddenly on the weatherbeaten planks and peered down at the water.
"Will you look at that?" she said, pulling a disposable camera from the front pouch of the backpack she’d recruited her husband to carry. "He’s not even scared of us. Mom will love this picture."
She took several photographs of the tattered pelican.
"Look at its wing," she said. "I’ll bet it can’t fly anymore."
/> "It wants food," Steve said. "Should I give him a piece of jerky?"
"Jerky?" She sighed with immeasurable annoyance. "It would choke him."
"No, I don’t think it would—"
"Fine, Steve. You want to kill this sweet old bird, go right ahead. I’m walking to the end of the pier."
Footsteps clanked toward them. They both turned and watched a tall frail man painfully ascend five steps to the dock. When he reached the top, he stopped and leaned against the railing to catch his breath.
"Sir, you all right?" Kim asked.
"Yeah, I’m just old as shit," he said, grinning. "But I’ll make it." The man took a deep breath and said, "Whew. Glad I caught you two. You here to take the boat over to Portsmouth with me?"
"We sure are," Steve said. "You the gentleman I spoke with on the phone this morning?"
"Well, I don’t know about the gentleman part. What was your name again, young man?"
"Steve."
Steve reached forward and shook the man’s hand.
"And this is my wife, Kim."
The old man nodded to the young woman and said, "A pleasure. My name’s Charlie Tatum. I’ll be taking y’all over to Portsmouth today."
"Excellent," Steve said.
"Here’s the thing. See my boat up there?"
He pointed to the thirty foot Island Hopper moored to a rotting beam, where a man with a bushy white beard was busy padding up water on the vinyl seats from last night’s thunderstorm.
"That’s my brother, Wally, and he’s fixin’ to take that motor apart. Old net got caught in the blades when we was coming back into the harbor our last trip out."
A family of four strolled by, headed for the end of the dock.
"Yeah, Wally’s gonna have to turn those folks down, but look I’m running a ferry from our dock on the sound out to Portsmouth. There’s two more spots if y’all want to go."
"Steve, maybe we should just—"
"Absolutely."
That family sat down on a bench at the end of the dock. Wally said something to them, inaudible from this distance.
"Well, if you’ll come with me, I’ve got my truck here, and we’ll get going. We’ve got another couple signed up, too, and since it’s just the four of you, we should be able to make a nice long day of it."
They followed the old man to his truck—a rusted, dinged relic of a vehicle that seemed to have as much a chance of starting up as its owner did of running a marathon.
Kim sat in the front seat, her husband in the back. As the truck cranked and gargled out onto Silver Lake Drive, she gazed down to the end of the dock, wondering why that family of four was boarding a boat with a busted motor.
# # #
Steve climbed out of the back of the truck and followed his wife and Charlie Tatum through a disheveled front yard of waist-high weeds, around the side of a large and crumbling stone house. From the backyard, the sound stretched out before them, unstirred to the point of appearing frozen in the mounting, windless heat.
The three of them strode down the gentle slope of weeds toward the water’s edge. A decaying dock reached out from the bank, and there were people milling about at the end.
Steve caught up with Kim. Because they were the same height, he put his arm around her waist and they stepped together onto the rickety dock. Charlie led them to the end, pointing out the boards that might not bear their weight.
A twenty-four foot Scout lounged in the calm water, and an exceptionally pale man with long black hair manned its cockpit. Steve nodded to him. The man looked away, set the Yamaha outboard gurgling.
Charlie offered Kim his gnarled hand. She took it and stepped down into the boat. Steve followed, and then the old man untied the rope from a gray timber and hopped with surprising spryness onto the deck that reeked faintly of mildew and the discarded sunspoiled viscera of fish.
Steve glanced at the couple who were already seated on the cushioned limegreen bench that ran along the inner sides of the boat. It occurred to him that they did not appear to be having a very good time, but he introduced himself anyway.
The man was bearded, with a tangle of gray-flecked brown hair and guarded eyes. They shook hands. Steve tried to introduce his wife, but Andy didn’t seem interested in meeting her, so he took a seat, a little embarrassed. Andy’s wife, a young woman scarcely older than Steve, wouldn’t even look at him. She just stared off into the sound, nervously brushing her shoulder-length blond hair behind her ears.
"Glad to have y’all aboard," Charlie addressed his four passengers. "It’ll be a thirty minute ride over to the island, so y’all just sit back and enjoy. That’s my son, Luther, at the controls, so don’t worry. We’re in capable hands."
"Should we pay now?" Steve asked, reaching for his wallet.
"Nah. We’ll settle up later."
The old man sat down in the jump seat beside his son. He whispered in his ear, and then the motor growled to life and the boat lurched forward. Steve leaned back into the cushioned seat and put his arm around Kim.
The water raced by as they sped parallel to shore. Steve turned and watched the great stone house dwindling away. That gothic residence looked as though it belonged on a dreary English moor, secreting a gloominess that seemed out of place in the wet sunshine of this August morning.
The tiny figure of an old woman stood in the overgrown backyard, a baby in her arms. She waved to the departing boat. Only Steve and Kim waved back.
The petite blonde sitting across from them lunged for the stern and emptied her guts in orange-green ropes into the wake.
Kim reached over and rubbed her back.
"You okay, honey?" she asked.
The blonde nodded but was sick again.
The old man glanced back from the cockpit, grinning.
"All right there, Miss?" he called out over the groaning motor.
"I’m fine."
The old man laughed and yelled something about "sea legs" that was lost in the wind. The blonde returned to her seat and leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. Kim and Steve looked away, back toward Ocracoke, quickly fading into nothing but a green smudge on the horizon.
They crossed the inlet, whitecaps just a few hundred yards east where the ocean and sound ran together. Fifty yards off starboard, thousands of cormorants congregated on a temporary shoal. They scattered as the boat passed by, filling the sky, squawking, some divebombing fish in the shallows.
Now Portsmouth loomed. Steve squeezed his wife’s arm and pointed to the approaching island. Kim nodded blandly as the abandoned structures of Portsmouth Village
came into view amid the scrub pine.
The blueness of the sky had begun to wane, to drown in its own heat and fade into an indistinct whiteness that was neither cloud nor sky, but a veil of humidity that is the fate of most afternoons in a southern summer.
The boat continued shoreward, as would a passenger ferry bound for Haulover Point. But before they’d neared the dock, where tourists are unloaded for their ventures into the ghost village, Luther turned the boat and guided it around the soundside of the island.
They were close to shore now, and as Steve stared into the impenetrable thicket, Kim fell mesmerized by their fellow tourists. The man and his wife seemed oblivious to the island and the sound. They stared out across the water, listless and burdened. She started to speak to them, but the boat turned suddenly and headed up a creek into the interior of the island.
Pines crowded the banks. She could smell them.
The creek narrowed.
The boat slowed.
Drifting now, a sappy branch passed overhead, and she reached up and pinched off a cluster of pine needles.
The motor quit.
Only the soft liquid rip of the bow slicing through the water.
In the darkgreen distance, she saw where the creek ended. There was a small dock at the terminus, a rustic shack behind it.
She slapped the side of her neck, came away with a bloodsmeared palm.
/> The first mosquito had found her.
Kim glanced again at the woman on the opposite bench, curious as to why tears meandered down her face, and her hands had begun to tremble.
# # #
Rufus tied the boat to the moorings and stepped down onto the dock. He offered a hand to the young woman, helped her out of the boat, and then her husband.
"You two should go on ahead," he said. "There’s a slough back there."
He waved toward the dense foliage behind the shack.
"Straight through those trees. Tide’s out, so it’s dry now. You follow that a ways, and you’ll come out on a tidal flat. Trek across the flat for a mile and a half, scramble over the dunes, and you’ll find yourself on a deserted beach that’s just as pretty as a picture."
"You going to show us—"
"We’ll be right behind you, but you might as well get a head start. It’s quite a hike."
"What about the ghost village?" Steve asked. "We really want to—"
"We’ll take you there, too, so don’t you worry. It’ll be part of the loop we do."
The young couple set out down the dock, past the shack, and into the pines. We all watched them for a moment, making slow progress as they bushwhacked their way through the brush, glancing back now and then to see if we were coming. When they’d disappeared into the thicket, Rufus looked back into the boat at Vi and me. Grinning, he reached into his pocket and tossed me a key.
"Opens the shack," he said. "I think you remember it, Andy, but don’t worry—no grizzly trap this time. Just a pump-action Remington under the bunk bed and a box of shells on the table. On account of your limp, you might want to get a move on."
I struggled to my feet.
Vi was bawling again.
"Let’s go," I said.
She shook her head.
Grabbing her under the arm, I tried to muscle her to her feet, but she collapsed across the deck. I knelt beside her and whispered into her ear, "Vi, walk off this boat with me. Whatever you have to do to steel yourself up for this, now’s the time. They’ll kill your baby."
She wiped her eyes and looked up at me, then nodded, came to her feet.