Terminal Island

by Walter Greatshell

  “But isn’t some of that right out of the Bible?”

  “Yes, but remember that the original language of the Bible was Greek. It’s from the apostles, some of whom may have been initiates to the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis—the church of Zagreus. Christ himself was at least influenced by the liturgy of Eleusis, and perhaps more. In fact, these people think of Jesus as a usurper—a priest of Zagreus who wanted to be God. The original identity thief.”

  “But how could such a thing still be happening?”

  “It’s probably always been around, lurking in isolated pockets around the world. This island was one of them—rumor has it that Zagreus-worship came over with one of the Black Hand societies during Prohibition, when this island was a major staging area for bootleggers. Reconstituted, doped wine was manufactured here in huge amounts. But the Internet has caused a revival.”

  “I just don’t—how is it possible to keep such a thing secret?”

  “Because they all have a stake in it—it’s the golden goose. Also the drugs help.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Hell yes. None of this would be possible without the sacrament: the so-called ‘ambrosia’ they brew from either amanita muscaria or datura stramonium—Angel’s Trumpet. Zagreus is the god of wine, and they take that shit seriously. Amanita is a poison mushroom and datura is a flower, a powerful alkaloid with effects similar to PCP. There was one particular incident where it may even have gotten into the town reservoir when federal agents broke up some stills—the whole incident was covered up, but half the people on this island probably got permanent brain damage from drinking that crap. To this day they guzzle it nonstop during their festivals.” Arbuthnot stares pointedly at Henry as he says, “It’s how they achieve the state of religious ecstasy that permits them to do…what they do.”

  Henry doesn’t flinch—this comes as no surprise to him. “Murder,” he says.

  The investigator nods, donning his coat. “Human sacrifice. It’s the ultimate initiation—once someone has done that, they are committed to the faith in a way that no ordinary baptism can compete with. It’s what mobsters do to ensure ultimate loyalty. But these folks have added their own twist to it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They think they’re doing their victims a favor, saving their souls by turning them into permanent subscribers. The people they kill are not human beings but pharmakoi—healing agents delivered by God. And there’s an added incentive: Each killing represents a fresh income stream—literally manna from heaven.”

  “Unbelievable…”

  “Yeah. And this is just the beginning, a template for what’s to come. This island is a testing ground for a Second Coming, ground zero for a church that thinks the meek are cattle and that the spoils belong to the victor. They’re engaged in a campaign to break down the culture and hijack all this disposable wealth that has cluttered the society with too many judges, too many lawyers, too many petty obstacles to the exercise of raw power. They mean to reduce the population to a superstitious, impoverished rabble that will be properly in awe of their greatness…or be swatted like flies. Only then will they openly speak the name of Zagreus. And the public sacrifices will commence.”

  The investigator suddenly shakes his boulder-like head with wry disbelief. “Needless to say, I haven’t slept properly in years. But I’ll tell you what: if what you’re telling me is true, we’re about to bust this cocksucker wide open.”

  Overwhelmed, Henry gathers his wits and says, “That’s terrific, but…right now I really just need you to help me find my daughter. Please—I’m going out of my mind.”

  “Certainly, certainly. I’ll tell you what: I have a couple of inside connections here who may be able to tell me something. With just the information you’ve given me I should have considerably more leverage. I’ll go over right now.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Henry says, dissolving in gratitude. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. You’re doing me a favor.” He puts his coat on. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll have to ask you to wait for me. These people won’t talk if they think someone’s listening in.”

  “Okay,” Henry says. “I won’t budge.”

  “Well, actually I can’t leave you in here with all this stuff. This is kind of my office, you understand. I don’t even let the maid in here. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Formosa. Room 318.”

  “Good, why don’t you go back there and wait for me? I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  Henry can’t imagine facing Ruby empty-handed. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather just wait outside here.”

  Sensing Henry’s desperation, Arbuthnot says, “Sure, whatever. Tell you what: Why don’t you wait on the plaza for me? It’s a more public place. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “I’m not sure it’s safe out there.”

  “Why not?”

  Unsure of how to put it, Henry says, “There was a nut in a costume before.”

  “What kind of costume? What did he do?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, really. It just kind of…worried me, with the rest of the town so empty.”

  “It’s probably nothing—I wouldn’t think about it right now. Let’s focus on finding your daughter.”

  “Okay…”

  Out on the sidewalk, Arbuthnot says, “I have to go this way. Hang in there—we’re gonna nail these bastards, you’ll see.” He rests his big paw on Henry’s shoulder, then turns away and disappears around a corner.

  Drained and hurting, suddenly feeling like his body weighs a ton, Henry goes half a block to the town plaza. Arriving there, he rests on a bench facing the drugstore.

  Birdman of Alcatraz…the vivid memory of feeding pigeons with his mother here almost brings him to tears. Suddenly he sees it all as through a cracked lens, a crystal ball that captures the whole dynamic of the situation: himself and his missing mother and daughter in a three-generation cycle of futility…with him at the center, being simultaneously torn in both directions, toward the future and the past. Being ripped in two.

  But why? Why is this happening?

  Hearing a baby crying, Henry’s mind contracts back to the size of the present, his eyes drawn to a pleasant and perfectly ordinary sight—and thus a profoundly welcome one.

  Coming down the street are two women pushing a baby carriage. They are a couple of blocks away, idling along as if simply out enjoying a lazy fall afternoon. As if nothing odd could possibly intrude on their world. Henry walks over, self-consciously trying to appear normal himself so as not to alarm them.

  The carriage is a big, Victorian-style pram. It is not only old-fashioned but old, its undercarriage rust-stained and rickety. He feels like he has seen it someplace before.

  A bad feeling wells up out of Henry’s guts.

  This is immediately followed by a second feeling—the urgent need to see who it is crying in that basket. The muffled wails are high and frantic, and the women aren’t doing much about it.

  Approaching them, Henry says, “Good afternoon. Can I speak to you ladies?”

  The women don’t acknowledge the question. They are middle-aged matrons, one frumpy, dark, and heavy-set; the other tall and slender, with long white hands—her face is obscured by a veiled sun hat. The swarthy one stares at him with a look of grinning contempt.

  “Your baby sounds upset,” Henry says. Without asking, he cautiously tips up the canopy of the stroller. There is something moving under the blanket—large enough to be a toddler.

  “Moxie?” he says, voice trembling. “Moxie-boo?”

  Heart palpitating, he leans in, pulling aside the cover.

  Oh shit…

  Underneath is the skinned carcass of a lamb. But it is not dead. It is bleating in agony, its eyes rolling wildly in its naked, bloody skull.

  Henry can hardly believe what he is seeing—his brain skips like a bad CD: Angel’s Trumpet, Angel’s Trumpet…

  Suddenly losing it, he shouts, �
�Jesus Christ!” and jerks upright in horrified rage. It is this abrupt motion that likely saves his life, for a sharp blade suddenly cleaves the air where his throat had been.

  Wha—?

  There is a dog-faced woman coming at him—the tall, thin woman. She has shed her veil and is wearing a black mask that looks like an actual dog’s dried-and-cured face, frozen in ravenous attack, with long blond hair spilling out the back. She is snarling and swinging a machete.

  “Whoa,” Henry cries, lunging backward. “Get away from me!”

  The blade catches him a glancing blow on the shoulder. What is this? Trick or Treat? Now the other woman is coming at him with a steel-toothed mallet—an abalone hammer—squealing in delight.

  “Stop it, stop!” Henry shouts. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Surrounded, Henry grabs the stroller and swings the whole thing around, crashing it into both women and knocking them back. The lamb falls out onto the ground, screaming. Furious, Henry leaps on the dog-woman, wresting her machete away and chopping the lamb’s head off.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you people!” he shouts, flinging the sword into some hedges. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he intends to find his daughter no matter what.

  The abalone hammer whacks him behind the knee, and instantly Henry is in a battle for his life. As he goes down, the dog-woman comes up, all ferret-quick sinew, pulling out a tremendous knife and lunging forward to plant it in his guts.

  Using every bit of his rusty hand-to-hand skills, Henry manages to fend off the blade, getting kicked in the balls instead. And now the other woman is on him again, too. They’re both strong and fanatically determined—insanely determined.

  “Stop,” he grunts in pain. “Stop or I’ll have to hurt you.”

  Tiring, trying to avoid being simultaneously clubbed and stabbed, Henry realizes he has to get out of there. In frustration he elbows the hammer woman in the stomach and punches the dog-woman in the face, knocking her mask off.

  It is Lisa.

  She grins madly at him through bloodied teeth, laughing through her snarls. Henry slaps her, shouting, “Stop it! Stop that!” and is oblivious at first to the other figures emerging from buildings—other people running out with glinting weapons of their own to block his escape.

  What alerts him is the sound of childish giggles and mocking animal sounds. In continuation of the day’s nightmare absurdities, some of the newcomers are wearing hooded sweatshirts and baggy pants along with the hairy faces of goats or wild boars, giving them the look of funky urban animals. It would be funny if it wasn’t becoming so dire. By the time Henry realizes the trouble he’s in, it’s almost too late.

  “Come on,” he moans.

  He breaks clear, running for all he’s worth. Unsure of what he’s going to do, he heads the only way still possible: down towards shore. Two goat-boys with twisting horns converge in his path, one wielding a long pike and the other a nail-studded wooden club. On the fly, Henry grabs the first by his weapon and brutally swings him into the second, knocking them both down as he charges past. He keeps the pike.

  Emerging at the beach, he can see that he is trapped, surrounded, and goes the only way he can: out onto the pier. Maybe steal a boat!—no, he already knows that all the rentals are in storage, stacked like cups for the season. All right then, he’s a good swimmer; without any other prayer of escape his intention is to leap off the end of the pier and try to swim away, perhaps make it to the nearer cape faster than they can get there on foot. Then run for the hills.

  But as he passes the rental concession, Henry sees that even this slim possibility is out:

  A horrific and ludicrous vision appears from behind the snack bar, blocking his path—it is an enormously fat man in shorts and flip-flops, built like a sumo wrestler and tattooed from head to foot in skeins of black ivy, his hands gripping a sledgehammer. But what truly checks Henry in his tracks is the man’s wraparound mirrored sun-visor, which gives him the look of having a single long, Cyclopean eye.

  No…fucking…way.

  Henry charges, lowering the pike at the man’s belly like a bayonet—it’s a big target. But as he homes in, the giant easily swats the harpoon aside and almost takes off Henry’s head with the sledgehammer. Thrown off balance, Henry slams into the ogre’s legs as if into a tree trunk, rebounding on his ass. Dazed, he looks up to see the huge hammer being raised high for a final killing blow.

  All at once, a long-handled boat hook swings into the picture. Its gleaming curved end plants itself in the giant’s neck and he screams, dropping the hammer to clutch at it. Like a bad vaudeville performer being yanked offstage, the monstrous figure is abruptly jerked off his feet, squealing like a pig as he is twisted around and shoved face-first into the deck.

  Carol Arbuthnot is holding the gaff.

  “How do you like that?” he says, slamming the man’s bloody head into the steel base of the marlin crane. “You say you like it?” He loops a cable around the man’s ankles and hits the button of the electric hoist, leaving it running to slowly raise the massive body upside-down.

  “Don’t,” the bloodied hulk pleads, belly dangling. “Don’t…”

  “Don’t kill him,” Henry says, getting up. He has never been so happy to see anyone in his life.

  “Is that all you can say? Just get in the Zodiac.” Arbuthnot gestures at an inflatable boat tied below.

  He has a point; the animal-people are coming fast, way too many of them. Henry descends, clambering into the motorboat as Arbuthnot fires a warning shot in the air, then follows him down. The boat wheezes under Arbuthnot’s weight. As Henry casts off, the detective yanks the starter cord. It chugs and dies.

  “Try again,” Henry says.

  “Oh, really?” Arbuthnot tugs again and the engine putters to life. In a second they are pulling away, watching people line up against the pier railing to look down at them through the eyes of dead animals.

  Henry can feel the cold force of their stares. Against his will he shudders: There is something so wrong, so malignant about this—it’s a whole culture, going on generation after generation. It’s a disease. Look at them up there: no anger or jeering, just silent contentment to wait, as if the waiting is decreed, an inextricable part of the game.

  “I thought you told me not to worry,” Henry says.

  “Well, I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “I had to be sure you weren’t one of them.”

  “Jesus.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  EASTER PARADE

  Circling the end of the pier out on the open water, Henry checks his injuries and finds nothing serious—the knife mainly slashed his coat. That was my favorite coat. Suddenly he notices a thick plume of smoke rising from around the coast, way back above the Casino.

  “The condos,” Henry says.

  “They’re burning the evidence,” says Arbuthnot. He guns the boat up the beach as near as possible to the Formosa Hotel and runs it aground. “This is where you get out.”

  “Wait—what about you?”

  “I’ve got a quick errand to run. Don’t worry—see to your woman and lock yourselves in. I’m going to call in the cavalry.” He hands Henry a revolver with tape on the handle—a .38 Special. “That’s a spare. Don’t hesitate to use it if you have to, then just get rid of it—it’s untraceable. Give me a push back out, will ya?”

  In a few seconds Henry is back at the Formosa Hotel, bounding up the porch steps. Ruby is in the lobby, just hanging up the phone, and Henry is so grateful to find his wife still waiting, unharmed, that he falls to his knees before her and hugs her around the waist, pressing his face into her belly. “Oh thank God, thank God,” he moans.

  “What? What is it?” she asks.

  “We’re trapped here!” He starts barricading the entrance door. “They’re all crazy!”

  “Who is?”

  “Bunch of maniacs! They just almost killed me out there!” He brea
ks down, voice cracking. “Honey, I don’t know what’s happened to Moxie!”

  “Nothing’s happened to her—she’s fine. Who’s trying to kill you now?”

  Henry jumps up and grabs his wife by the shoulders. “What do you mean she’s fine?”

  “Whoa. She’s still at Janet’s, having a high old time.”

  “What?”

  “Honey, I just spoke to her.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah, I just got off the phone. They still haven’t left Janet’s house, but everything’s fine—the tram ran down and they had to recharge the batteries, that’s all. It takes a few hours. They apologized, but Moxie’s terrific—she’s having a great time. It sounds like a regular garden party over there.”

  Henry feels like he’s cracking up. “Wh…are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. You had me worried out of my mind—I even called the police.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. I spoke to that woman deputy you told me about—she sounded a little busy, but friendly enough. She said they were understaffed because everybody’s at some local festival, but that they’re going to send a car around as soon as they can.”

  Henry listens to this, incredulous. “What fucking festival?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of wine expo outside of town—a big fall festival.”

  “That’s bullshit! It’s bullshit!” Henry stamps around, ranting, “I’ve just been out there and it’s a Goddamn nuthouse. There’s a bunch of psychos running around in masks like it’s Halloween—I barely got away with my life! This is all some kind of fucking game, the same as it was thirty years ago!”