by E. Coulombe
All three were silent for a moment as they separately envisioned the nightmare. George looked up with a pained expression on his face, “Please don’t tell Emma what I just said.”
George stood up to leave, “We’ve got to move now. This thing’s got to be eliminated, or if it can’t be, then it’s at least got to be contained until it works itself out.”
Kerri interrupted, “Out to what George? What is this thing going to evolve into next? And contained how? While Andrew was trying to find you I’ve been wracking my brain over this. Don’t you think that by the time we got to the Dunkleosteus, we were entering the era of deep sea organisms? There’s no reason to think this thing is still confined to Ko`olau Kai.”
“You may be right,” George mused, “it may have gone deep already. But there is some hope of confinement because of a natural retaining wall around that bay. But how many organisms are we talking about? How does the Mutator work? It has to get into an organism and then cause it to evolve within each generation. So we are talking about a finite number of creatures, right?” George pounded his fist on the table. “We need to talk to Andrew now! Dammit, that man is really starting to piss me off! I know…..I know,” he calmed himself down as soon as he saw the expression of fear on Kerri’s face. “He must be suffering terribly.”
“And I don’t think we can count on him now. When I last saw him he wasn’t even coherent. We’ve got to do this ourselves George.”
“Okay,” he pulled his body upright, physically ready to take charge. “First, we need help. We have to use the cell phone, Grant. I know you have it. I want to call Harvard, we need the experts, and UH. I should probably call the Governor; this is going to at least be a state emergency if not a national one.”
“No!” interjected Grant in his deep booming voice. “You are not calling anyone,” Grant moved as if to physically block George’s departure. “At least not until Andrew gets back. The Nakoans know to stay out of the water. I’ve already posted men around the island to make sure nothing comes ashore.” Grant once again gazed out the door. “I know Andrew. He’ll return when he’s ready.”
Grant slowly shifted his gaze back to them. “Until then we are all staying right here. Just us.” Staring directly at George and Kerri, he said, “There are many reasons we do not allow outsiders onto this island.”
George found it hard to receive Grant’s intimidating glare, “And the doctor isn’t coming is he Grant?”
“Not yet.”
“You didn’t send for him did you?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks to you, the Mysterious Island’ is certainly living up to its reputation.”
Chapter Fifty Nine
Andrew ran to the village, up the twisted path to Moki’s home. After banging on the door it finally opened. Meialoha, Moki’s mother, stood on the other side.
“Andrew! Moki’s not here,” she said, her voice filled with surprise, “he’s out searching for Michael with the other men. Why aren’t you with them as well? Did something happen to Lono?”
“No. But I need to talk to Moki….about something…..”
“What, what is it?”
“I remembered something.”
“What?” Meialoha wrapped her shawl around Andrew’s shoulders and helped him through the door. “What’s wrong Andrew, you look awful.” She made him sit in a chair by the small fire she had started to keep the cold and the evil away on this frightening night. “What is it Andrew?”
She looked more closely at him. His whole face seemed to be moving, writhing. She’d seen this only once before, when spirits were wrestling with a man. His head hung down and his arms went limp; his body mirrored his mental collapse. “He told me once, a long time ago, about my mother, said she’d committed suicide.” He looked up at her. “Did you know?” His head hung down. “Of course you knew. Everyone did.” He started to sob.
An expression of deep sorrow covered her face. “Andrew, didn’t you know? Did your father never tell you? You were only a boy then….but still.” She hesitated. “Tonight is not the night for this. Go to Emma, she needs you.” She paused. “You need each other.”
“Yes, you’re right,” he looked up at the mention of his wife’s name. He shuddered at the thought of her, hearing the news of Michael. He should be there with her. He grabbed Meialoha’s shoulders.
She couldn’t look into his face any longer; it was frightening, as though the evil spirits had won. She tried to find comfort by looking into the fire. “You were so young then Andrew. I remember they brought you home for the funeral. Just a boy, in your suit and tie, dressed like a man, trying to behave like a man, the way they told you to do. You stood there in your fine clothes and everyone could see you were trying to be brave, trying to hide your heart broken which was written all over your frozen face. I wanted to hold you, and let you cry your tears, but your father wouldn’t let me.” She turned so that Andrew wouldn’t see she was crying.
“You weren’t home long. They sent you away again. We all thought that was wrong Andrew. You never should have left. You and Grant shouldn’t have left the island. At least not the second time.” She spoke quietly, as if to herself.
“What happened to my mother, Meialoha?”
Her shoulders slumped and she faced him. “After your father sent you away to school your mother’s heart was broken. She wasn’t the same.”
Andrew looked around the room. He stared out the window so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. The candle light showed him only his own twisted reflection in the glass. He looked down at the scarred wooden table under his hand.
“She just wasn’t the same anymore. She was quiet, she didn’t talk much, the way she used to talk story with us, and didn’t go anywhere, even stopped coming to dinner. Just stayed in her room. She was so sad. I guess her heart was broken. You were her world Andrew, you and Grant. We tried to cheer her up, to get her to join us at the huikilau, or the imu pit, or the luau for Naiomi’s baby. She wouldn’t.” Meialoha stopped. Her face hardened against the memory. “So one night we had a special luau just for her. Cook made her favorite foods, and we got some of her acquaintances from Kauai to come over on the barge. She joined us then, even smiled and laughed a bit. It was almost like she was with us again, like she had come back. The way she used to be when you were around, when she had that happy glow.” Meialoha frowned. “But maybe that was not such a good idea.” She stopped.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“We all thought later, after what happened, that maybe we’d been wrong. Maybe you did need to go away, that she just needed time to heal. The luau for your mother. That was not a good idea.”
“What happened, Meialoha?”
Her voice cracked. “Andrew you don’t need to know this.”
Grabbing her shoulders, “No Meialoha, I need to know! I should have known long ago.”
“Yes.” Meialoha looked down. “She left the luau and hung herself from the rafter in the shed. My husband found her.”
Andrew groaned. His fist tightened. “I hated my father. Hated him so much. But I thought it was only my life he had ruined. But he killed her too. May he burn in hell! “
He started for the door.
“No! Andrew, wait!” she held his arm. “I cannot let you think that. It was not your father’s fault. He was a good man. I can’t let you go thinking he wasn’t”
“What do you mean?” He asked suspiciously.
“It was your mother, Andrew. She wasn’t well, she had a sorrow deep inside and she couldn’t cope. She used you to help her get through, but she needed you too much.” Meialoha let go of Andrew’s arm and looked down at the floor. The scowl on Andrew’s face turned to surprise at the look on her face.
“No. You are wrong. My mother loved me.”
“Yes, she did. But she loved you the wrong way. Your father did what he thought was best for you, so you could grow up and have your own life.”
Andrew pushed the door open, slammed it
against the outside wall and screamed into the darkness. “It’s my fault. I did this! Punish me you insane gods!”
“No Andrew, don’t. What are you saying?” Her voice was shaking; his eyes frightened her; where once they were blue, now she could see only black.
“You don’t understand Meialoha. My life, my work, I had to do it to bring her back but instead….it cost me my son.” He ran down the steps.
“Please! Stay! This is not a good night to go out,” she called after him. “There’s nothing you can do now.”
“No, you’re wrong,” he answered, “having lost all else, all else is now to come.” Then he was gone, leaving only the pelting rain to cover his tracks in the mud. It turned into a stream and flowed down the hill.
“What an evil night” she said to the darkness. “May it soon be over.”
“What are you doing?” Emma said.
“Nothing. Just watching you,” Andrew answered.
“Why?”
“Just wanted to be here when you woke up.”
“Why?” Emma turned to the window to see if it were day or night. Darkness prevailed. “Oh, god.” She rolled over in the bed, her face to the wall. “I can’t.” A loud myna bird screeched outside her window. “I can’t remember yet. Please, give me something. I want to sleep. It hurts too much…..”
“What do you want?”
“I need something to calm me down; it’s not good for the baby the way I am now. Damn I wish we had a doctor here now.” She placed her face into the pillow and sobbed. “I just keep seeing his face….” He waited for her pain to lessen. She raised her head, “look in my medical kit, there’s a syringe of haloperidol. Bring that.”
Andrew got up and crossed out of the room. She turned her head and watched him leave, looking only at the open door, not breathing at all. She heard him shuffling about the bathroom. She watched as he came in prepping a syringe. She directed him on how to remove the air, and find the muscle.
He pulled back the sheets, held her upper arm in his once strong hand. He stopped.
“What?” she asked.
“This won’t be good for the baby,” he slowly answered.
“No, that’s okay, it won’t hurt the child. Worse for the baby is the pain I feel. This will help us both. I wouldn’t take it if it didn’t.”
“It’s not what you think it is,” was all he said.
She turned and looked at his face. It was twisted, not her husbands face anymore. He was suffering terribly, he needed her, but she couldn’t go there; not now.
“Just do it Andrew.”
“But it won’t be good for the child,” he mumbled as he placed the needle to her skin. “Or maybe it will,” he shrugged resignedly. “Maybe the child will become our savior. Who knows?” he snorted. “Who knows anything on this night of horrors.”
She finally breathed as he forced the liquid into her waiting muscle.
Chapter Sixty
The winds stopped as the dawn’s first light was beginning to dry the compound outside, Andrew entered the kitchen from the hallway. George, still seated at the wooden table, drinking coffee, and flipping through old texts he’d found in the library, was startled by Andrew’s quiet entry. Andrew’s shirt was ripped across his chest, leaves sticking out of his tussled blond curls. Kerri entered the room. The expression on her face revealed that she too was frightened by Andrew’s appearance. Andrew’s face appeared odd as well – fluid-like, as though the intensity of emotion was physically distorting it. Grant entered behind him.
Andrew spoke quietly, deliberately, as though sitting on a powder keg of emotions. He explained the timeline for the Mutator, what he thought it had done to the bay, but George had trouble listening. Andrew’s odd voice and twisted face, gave more fright than comfort.
“What do you think the Mutator would do to an organism in mid-gestation or even a late-gestation phase? Would it have the same effect?” Andrew asked Kerri when he had finished with George.
Kerri and George both looked at him in shock. “Andrew, what are you talking about?” Kerri asked.
“I’m just thinking out loud.”
“Well please stop, you’re scaring me” Kerri started to cry. George crossed the room and gently placed his arm around her shoulders.
Andrew’s face became even more distorted. His jaw clenched, and he gazed out the window at the sea beyond, apparently thinking through his own answers to the questions he had raised, oblivious to the effect he was having on either of them.
When he spoke again it was to tell them the Nakoans would be the ones to deal with the Mutator. He didn’t think the organisms had been able to leave the waters of Ko`olau, because of two things, the higher temperatures in the bay created by the undersea vent, and the reef barrier surrounding it. The Nakoans would kill the creatures, using concussive grenades and even depth charges which Grant had left over from work he had done with the Navy’s tracking project. Grant, standing behind Andrew, remained quiet. Apparently they had already spoken, agreed to this plan of action.
As for George and Kerri, Andrew went on, choosing his words carefully, they could leave, but they couldn’t get help; tell anyone anything, and the Collier’s would completely deny it. Label them crazy, and not let them or anyone else onto the island. Michael’s death would officially be listed as a shark attack. Kerri wouldn’t be able to repeat the experiment because Andrew had never actually revealed the composition of his Mutator. George didn’t have sufficient proof for a court injunction.
George and Kerri looked at each other, suddenly thrown together as ex-pats, both thinking just how insane these two brothers were.
“But Andrew, the Nakoans can’t take care of this. You know it’s too big now,” George pleaded softly, afraid now not only of Grant’s reaction, but even more so of Andrew’s. “We’ve got to get help. We need the government in here.”
“The Feds? To do what?” Grant challenged him.
“Remove the monsters. They can net the bay, capture or kill everything in it. This is deadly serious Grant. Not some political game...”
“Don’t you think I know that!?” Grant shouted, “This is my family that is suffering. Not yours. And don’t patronize me with your goddamn ‘good intentions’! I know what you really want,” He stomped to the far side of the room, being in a corner seemed to help him control his anger.
“You want to bring in more scientists and capture these creatures for your research,” he practically spit the word at George. “We don’t need your help. We don’t need any outsiders to come and rid Nakoa of this evil.” He pointed to the ocean outside the window. “Look where we are. In the middle of the goddamn ocean. Who do you think is best equipped for water combat? The Nakoans are the very best water men in the world. With nets and spears in their canoes they are better than any sonar or radar in submersibles. You will never find a more fearsome warrior. If ever you have a battle to fight, trust me, these are the men you want on your side – not some pansy ass researchers in scuba gear!”
Andrew backed him up. “The Nakoans will take care of their own waters. If the Mutator has already gone out to sea, then there’s nothing anyone can do about it – neither the Feds nor the Nakoans.”
“You’re both wrong, and insane to boot! This is madness.” George yelled at Andrew’s retreating back.
Andrew stopped and turned. Breathing slowly and speaking softly, for the first time he sounded remorseful. “This could be the end of it anyway George. The Dunkleosteus was the top predator of the period, and suddenly, all the placoderms, the plated-skins, they disappear from the fossil record. Something drove them to extinction, and the same may very well happen here.”
“You’re just guessing,” George sneered. “You don’t believe that! If you did you wouldn’t be planning to bomb the bay and destroy every living thing in it.”
Andrew’s anger flared. “Yes, I’m guessing! But how does anyone know anything for certain now? And you’re damn right we’re going to bomb it. We’re going
to throw everything we’ve got at it.”
Grant was dubious. “Wait a minute Andrew. All of the dynamite? That’s too much. You’ll kill the waters.”
“We can’t kill those waters, Grant,” Andrew said over his shoulder, unable to look his brother in the eye, “they’re already dead.”
A scream from down the hallway made them all jump. “Emma!” Andrew whispered. They saw Meialoha and Nani rush past the kitchen door, headed for Emma’s room, carrying hand woven baskets filled with steaming taro leaves. “Wait Meialoha,” Andrew called after her, “you can’t do that. It could harm the baby.”
“The baby?” Grant bellowed.
George, Grant and Kerri all looked at each other and in a split second realized this was news to them all. George grabbed Andrew’s arm as he tried to leave. “What baby?” he shouted as he spun Andrew towards him.
“Emma’s. She’s five, maybe even six or seven months along,” Andrew answered quietly, avoiding their reactions by looking down at the floor. “She didn’t want to tell anyone, not just yet anyway.” He looked at Grant’s angry demeanor. “Look, that was her decision,” he spoke defensively, “and I respected it.”
The news not only shocked George, but unsettled him. Intermingled with his concern for Emma’s well being, something else troubled him, even frightened him. It was Andrew’s behavior. A moment ago George thought it was just irrational behavior, perhaps justifiably crazy. But it dawned on him now, there was some logic to it, at least in Andrew’s mind, but it only made sense if you knew the end game.
And whatever his end game was, it was decidedly not the same as everyone else’s.
George spent most of the day in a chair in Emma’s room. Both he and Andrew sat with her, taking infrequent naps, reluctant to leave her. News of her condition spread through the village. Nani, Moki, Lono, Grant, Meialoha, everyone at the compound stayed nearby, keeping vigil.