by S. E. Hinton
"Have you always been like this, Jamie?"
"Doc," Jamie said, the pain reliever relaxing him, "I'm tryin' to cooperate, never talked so much in my life, but sometimes I get the feeling you ain't hearin' me. No, I haven't been like this all my life. I never used to cry, ever. I saw a friend get killed right in front of me, and I didn't bat an eye. Well, that time the shark skinned me and I had to steer us outta there, I might have bitched around a little—but if I'd been like this on a ship I'dve been tied to an anchor and tossed overboard. People would think I was a Jonah. I coulda never got into the navy...." He stopped suddenly. "What am I gonna do, if I ever get outta here? I can't go back to sea."
The tears came welling up again as Jamie plunged back into despair.
"Jamie, I'll gladly replace Albert with you, if you ever need a job. Or write any letter of recommendation—once you've recovered, of course."
Jamie was quiet for a few minutes.
"I used to think maybe Grenville would want me back. I did a lot of work for him. Fixed up Hawkes Hall. He said I did a good job."
"Grenville Hawkes? Perhaps he will. You know he's paying your bills here."
And Louisa Kahne is giving him an obscene discount, the doctor added to himself.
"Well, he was always good to me. Giving me a job when everybody told him not to, he even got me to quit smoking and drinking. But I think he forgot all about me."
"I want to hear how you met him. But now, do you have any idea why you are so sensitive to pain? When did this happen to you?
Jamie gingerly got to his feet and eased into a kitchen chair.
"I think it was when I got sick at the boardinghouse ... that's when a lot of things changed for me. That's about the time I met Grenville ... me and Kell split up for good ... Things were never the same with me and Kell, after I went to work for Grenville. I think maybe it hurt his feelings, that I didn't talk it over with him first... but then he got convinced I was pulling some kinda scam on Grenville, ripping him off somehow, and wasn't cutting him in. Hell, I wouldn't scam Grenville. I'd be scared to, for one thing, he's the smartest guy I ever knew, he'd figure it out in no time. But why would I want to, him being nice to me like that? I was sick of scams. I couldn't make Kell understand." Jamie paused. "Anyway, everything that happened about then: Grenville, splitting up with Kell, this pain crap, all that gets mixed up. I don't know what caused what...."
"Maybe talking would help set it straight." Dr. McDevitt discreetly looked at his watch. He was officially off work, his wife would be upset if he were late again. Then, Jamie had fixed the leak.... He turned the page in his notebook.
"I got real sick in Hawkes Harbor. That's unusual for me. I never get sick. I was in the hospital in San Diego, but that was from a knife fight while I was still in the navy—it don't count as sick. Got a coral cut in the French Pollies, but healed up pretty fast; sometimes those get real nasty.
"Never got malaria. Kell used to have a bout of it once a year, it really knocked him out. Never got the clap or nothin'; Kell was amazed, but I let him think I never used a rubber. I never was that stupid—those movies they show in the navy, you never want to screw again. For fifteen minutes, anyway. Ten if you have shore leave.
"Did take some chances, though. Guess I was lucky, too."
Dr. McDevitt agreed with that, after all he'd heard. But he remembered Jamie's blood work quite well—no venereal disease, true, but still something odd.... He shook his head. Blood was not his specialty ... he focused again on Jamie's story.
"Oh yeah, once, in Mozambique, east coast of Africa, me and Kell both came down with dysentery. Man, that was hell. We were fighting over who was the most miserable. Then Kell got up this contest..."
Jamie grinned faintly at the memory.
Dr. McDevitt looked down at his notes, hoping to be spared the details of the contest.
"But other than some motherfuckin' hangovers, being too doped or drunk, I never get sick.
"Musta caught some weird flu or something in Hawkes Harbor. I never felt so awful. Too weak to move, couldn't eat or drink, I know I have bad dreams now but they can't be worse than what I was having then—strange, sick shit, too weird to even talk about."
Jamie rubbed the back of his neck. "My landlady said I got up and ran around at night, but maybe I'm remembering that wrong because I couldn't have, I was so weak. Kell even called a doctor....
"What did the doctor say?"
Jamie looked puzzled.
"The doctor Kell called to the boardinghouse?"
"Oh. He said I'd lost some blood—so I'd been in a bar fight, guy cut me with a bottle, it was no reason to be that sick—doctors make mistakes, that's what I told Kell. No offense."
Jamie took a breath, and Dr. McDevitt saw he was feeling the effect of the tranquilizer contained in the pain medication.
"Even Kell wanted me out of Hawkes Harbor. I'd become damn odd, he said...."
"Jamie, I want you to think about this, and we'll discuss it tomorrow. Everything, the town, Mr. Hawkes, your illness—I have a feeling it's important. Now I want you to rest. Come to my office in the morning after breakfast."
"Okay." Jamie sighed sleepily. "But you better send for me. I'll probably forget...."
He left to take a nap. And within an hour woke up screaming.
The next afternoon Dr. McDevitt sat down with his tape recorder. He hit the Rewind button, and the tape whirled backward.
He had some of Jamie's story but wanted to make sure of a few things. And there was that odd tone in Jamie's voice, an occasional hesitance that almost amounted to a question mark. As if what he was saying puzzled him, too.
He was sure Jamie wasn't consciously lying, but no doubt he was confused.
Dr. McDevitt hit the Play button and settled back with his notes.
"You ever been to Hawkes Harbor, Doc? I'm not surprised. Not much there for visitors, nice scenery but not great, some history stuff. It gets a few tourists.
"The Hawkes family founded the town of Hawkes Harbor. Hundreds of years ago. I ain't too good at history, but it was real early, like when America was still part of England. Everywhere you go in that town, there's the name Hawkes. They still own most of it, the mills, the shipping and trucking line, a munitions plant.
"Kell moved into one of the Hawkes family mansions. Turns out he had married a Hawkes, during the war, she had been a Red Cross nurse or something, run away from her rich family to see the world. I guess things didn't work out too well, he probably went through her money too fast or chased one skirt too many; he never told me the details. They couldn't divorce, being Catholics and everything, so she paid him off, so she could go home to her family, made him give her a death certificate so she could be a widow. I told you Kell knows a real good forgery guy, right?
"Well, this blackmail scam was going pretty good when I got there. He was supposedly a long-lost brother of the dead husband, and making a lot out of it. Money, clothes, I think he was going to try to marry her again, except she was already engaged to some hotshot business tycoon. Kell had his hands full with that guy, all right.
"Anyway, when I got to Hawkes Harbor, it pissed me off, Kell getting to live in that fancy mansion, me being stuck at the boardinghouse. He'd pulled that kind of shit with me before. It was a nice boardinghouse, though ... Katie worked there....
"You gotta understand, Doc, I was in bad shape then. Got myself fucked up on cocaine in New Orleans, blew a big wad of money, and I was drinking heavy, trying to come down off it. On my way to Hawkes Harbor I got kicked off a ship I was crewing, first time that ever happened to me. Then got jailed in Ocean City—assault, but the other guy was drunk too, no charges—yeah, I was in a real good mood by the time I got there...
"And here's old Kellen Quinn, the dapper Irish gentleman, hob-nobbin' with the town elite, with his fancy friends in one of those fancy houses. Not that they liked him, though. The Hawkes are real suspicious of strangers. Hell, they still won't have much to do with Grenville, and he's related to them.
"Anyway, I barged in on them a couple of times, pretending to visit Kell, they had to ask me to dinner, those kind of people are ruled by good manners.
"I'm not, so you can probably guess what kind of asshole I was there. Drank their brandy, came on to the niece, Barbara—her father, Richard Hawkes, Kell's brother-in-law, made remarks about how most people only ate one dinner at a sitting. He hated Kell being there, he didn't know what Kellen had on his sister but he suspected something ... you can imagine how he felt about me. He was funny, in a way, though, said some sharp things. I sure don't blame them for wanting me out of there. I was making Kell damn nervous, too..."
Dr. McDevitt turned up the volume; he wanted to make sure his own comments.
"You're quite agitated today, Jamie. Are you sure you want to go on?"
"Yeah, why not? I can walk around while I'm talking, can't I? You let me before."
"You received your morning meds?"
"Hell, yeah. You know me, I'll take anything you'll give me—it's getting dark out?"
"No, it's just clouding up, perhaps it'll storm soon.... It's just ten in the morning, Jamie."
"Oh."
[a long silence]
"So you had no friends in Hawkes Harbor?"
"Oh yeah, I did. Trisha, the landlady's little kid, her and Ricky Hawkes. They're about eleven. Ricky hated living in the mansion, there was nobody his age there and he didn't even get to go to school, had a tutor. He was hanging around with Trisha a lot; she's a sharp little imp. Katie's little sister. Different last names, though, Mrs. Pivens been married twice. The kids and me used to sit on the landing outside the second story of the boardinghouse, look at Hawkes Island. Me and them were pals."
Hawkes Harbor, Delaware February 1965
"So you guys are saying there's pirates' hot buried over on the island? Why don't you just go dig it up?"
"Nobody goes on the island. It's haunted."
"And it's not an island. It's a peninsula. See? There's the land bridge."
"Smarty. But Jamie, nobody has lived there for a jillion years."
"That weird woman is living at the Lodge. I heard she was a witch."
"The Lodge isn't exactly on the island. Anyway, she's some kind of teacher, studying history. We have some really cool history here, Jamie. Like the first colony, they disappeared off the island without a trace, like the colony at Roanoke. And the Indians were weird, too."
"Well, I don't know what Roanoke is, but the pirate stuff is interesting. What else do you know about that?"
"Don't tell anyone. Cross your heart and hope to die?" Sure.
"There's caves on the other side of the island. That's where the treasure's buried."
"No shit? Well, let's go take a look sometime."
"No! The whole island is haunted! It's evil! Jamie, swear you'll never go there!"
"Come on, relax. Okay, okay, I swear. So what kind of treasure, you think?"
"So the children were your only friends in Hawkes Harbor?" Dr. McDevitt asked.
"Katie was always nice to me.... Well, my landlady, Mrs. Pivens, she liked me. Don't ask me why—'cept she had a son about my age, he turned out bad. I guess she wanted to believe guys like us were good, deep down somewhere."
Hawkes Harbor, Delaware February 1965
"So, Mrs. Pivens, I hear that island is haunted."
"Nonsense. I'd think a bright young man like you would know better than to pay attention to children. The first Hawkes mansion is still standing there, it was abandoned during the Civil War, and no one has lived there since. But that's convenience, nothing else."
"How about the pirates' loot? The kids were saying ..."
"Well, there is some truth to that. The first Hawkes was said to be a pirate, and of course they roamed this shoreline. And some would say the Hawkes are pirates still! Ha ha! Tightfisted buggers.... So your Irish friend, they say he's got his sights set high.... Here have another cookie, Jamie, tell me what's going on up on the hill."
Dr. McDevitt fast-forwarded through another long silence. Jamie had paced the room, wiping his palms on his robe, always glancing at the window.
The storm clouds had darkened, giving the sky a look of twilight.
"You were going to tell me how you met Grenville Hawkes," the doctor's voice resumed.
Jamie had looked at him with mute appeal, like someone stricken dumb.
Dr. McDevitt said, "Can you remember the first thing he said to you?"
"Yeah. He asked w-w-what y-year it was."
"Didn't you think that a rather odd question?"
"No. Why should I? He didn't have a watch on."
"You said he asked you what year it was."
"No I didn't! I said he asked me for the time!"
"All right, Jamie—perhaps we should continue this later, you seem upset today."
"Ain't upset!"
Dr. McDevitt turned off the machine. A clap of thunder, a sudden power surge ended the tape there. The lights had come back on immediately, to reveal Jamie huddled on the floor. The doctor knelt beside him; he heard quite clearly: "Let me be dead.
"Let me be dead.
"Let me be dead."
Hawkes Island, Delaware March 1965
Let me be dead.
Jamie lay on the floor of the secret room in the cave. His bones brittle from the cold, he shook uncontrollably, his teeth chattering so hard his jaws hurt. The back of his head, his shoulders ached from being slammed up against the wall of the cave, being pinned by the throat.
Let me be dead.
The pain was incredible. The wound in his throat burned like he'd been scalded with acid; somehow that acid had entered his bloodstream and seemed to be gnawing his blood vessels, his very heart....
The worst was the memory of the cold greedy mouth on his neck, the sickening crunching noise as the fangs drove through his flesh, the sensation of being eaten alive, the small inhuman sounds of satisfaction It made—as hard as his heart had been pumping, it wasn't enough—the suction left a bruise from his jaw to his collarbone.
It happened as fast as lightning.... It seemed to take forever.... Jamie didn't expect to live through it, and now he was so sorry he had....
He had dropped to his knees and vomited when the Thing released him and the vomit in his bruised, swollen throat almost choked him. Then he keeled over on his side, and now lay quivering and panting like a half-killed rabbit before a beast of prey.
He had his eyes shut tight, but water gushed from them. It was so cold. It was so cold....
Let me be dead.
If he were dead he would no longer see those red eyes glaring up at him from the coffin. He'd been so lucky, he'd thought, to stumble on the boulder, so obviously blocking an entrance ... he'd taken little notice of the ancient symbol painted on the rock ... X marks the spot, he'd thought, and when he levered the boulder to the side, and the X became a cross, he still did not guess.... Lucky he'd brought his tools with him—the chest was full of coins, the old lock rusted...
And the chained coffin ... obviously containing something valuable, he gloated...
For who would chain a coffin...?
Then there was that moment when the universe had shifted for Jamie, when he pried open the lid—for a spilt second his mind had fumbled for a word, he wanted a word, there was a word—
Then the iron grip seized him and it was too late. And faster than was humanly possible, he was slammed against the wall. The horror of the moment, when It grasped his hair, pulled back his head, and he realized what was happening... this is really happening ... his eyes grew heavy, as the Vampire's saliva drugged him into compliance, lessened coagulates in his bloodstream, entered his nervous system to attack the mu receptors ... Jamie's pain tolerance was destroyed in seconds, never to return.
Then, after, It let him fall, as if disgusted.... Jamie didn't want to wake. He wanted to be dead. "What is the year?"
Oh, God ... It could speak ... and had a voice like Death....
The
year? What year? What did It mean? Jamie's mind raced almost incoherently.
"N-n-nineteen s-s-sixty-five." he heard himself sob, surprised to find he could answer, finding it impossible not to.
"Nineteen hundred and sixty-five?"
Suddenly It grabbed him by the upper arm, jerking him to his feet, strode out of the cave, dragging Jamie behind as easily as if he were a rag doll. The inhuman strength ... Jamie stumbled over small monuments, the headstones of some long-forgotten cemetery, bumping from one to another, scrambling to keep on his feet. The smell of rotting leaves, mildew, age-old sorrows ... death.
It went swiftly through the old graveyard, not glancing at the tombstones, Jamie stumbling and gasping in Its wake.
It stopped in the clearing at the edge of the cemetery, Jamie's sobbing breath the only sound.... The frigid dew soaked through his socks. Bone-chilled, exhausted, crazed, he could barely raise his head.
Down below the windswept hill, the lights of Hawkes Harbor sparkled on the edge of the sea, like a cluster of stars in the night. The Thing stood silent.
Jamie would have fallen, weak from loss of blood, and shock, but It held him—his arm would be black with bruises for days.
Jamie's heart skipped wildly when It turned to him. He saw It clearly for the first time. Tall, gaunt, and silver-skinned, the dark and depthless eyes ... and perhaps the most grotesque thing of all... still... a human face...
"And in 1965—do the Hawkes still rule Hawkes Harbor?"
In the few remaining minutes before the dawn, the Vampire's many questions answered, the best that Jamie could, It left him, the final sentence pronounced: "This coming night I will summon you. And you will obey."
Jamie stumbled out to a grotesque dawn in Hawkes Harbor, to find what an ugly, harsh thing sunlight was, what a hideous sound the seagulls made.
The ocean made him nauseous.
When he found himself back at the boardinghouse, somehow, delirious, twisting in his bed, he kept begging, "Don't let it be dark. Don't let it be dark. Don't let it be dark."