Island

by Richard Laymon

  If Island is your kind of book, I’m pleased you’ve found the work of Richard Laymon. I only wish all of you could have had the additional pleasure of knowing Dick Laymon as well as I did. In truth, the strangest thing about him is that he tolerated me as a friend.

  The Journal Of Rupert Conway, Castaway

  Today, the yacht exploded.

  Fortunately, all of us had gone ashore to have a picnic on this island, so we didn’t get blown to smithereens. All of us, that is, except Prince Wesley.

  Prince Wesley wasn’t actually a prince. He was actually an asshole. Sorry about that; you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But he was a royal pain in the butt and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the explosion was his fault. He probably picked the wrong time and place to light up a cigarette.

  Kaboom!

  Now he’s fish nibbles.

  I’m sorry he’s dead, but he was a ridiculous, arrogant jerk. He was a grown man; all of thirty, I suppose, but he went around all the time wearing one of those stupid white yachting hats. And you never saw him that he wasn’t strutting around the deck with his ivory cigarette-holder hoisting up a Marlboro in front of one eye or the other. Oh yeah, he wore aviator sunglasses, too. And an ascot, more often than not.

  Anyway, that was Prince Wesley. He’s dead, so I won’t spend any more time running him down. His actual name, for the record, was Wesley Duncan Beaverton III. He died today, April 1, 1994, which is not only April Fool’s Day, but also happens to be Good Friday. What a day to go.

  He is survived by his wife, Thelma. Who ought to consider herself lucky to be rid of him, but instead seems to be terribly upset.

  Wesley and Thelma didn’t have any children, but they’d only been married for about a year.

  Personally, I think he married her for her money.

  He sure didn’t marry Thelma for her good looks. Her sister got all of them. The sister, Kimberly, is about twenty-five and a knockout. To think I’m marooned on a tropical isle with a babe like Kimberly . . . ! Whoooey!

  Not that anything much is likely to come of it. Aside from the fact that I’m a few years her junior and here as the guest of her half-sister, Connie, she’s married. Her husband, Keith, is one of those incredibly handsome, bright, sincere and capable guys who makes ordinary jerks (like me) look like we got stalled somewhere low down on the evolutionary ladder. I’d hate him, but he’s too nice to hate.

  The other male with us here on the island is the sire of all three gals, Andrew (never Andy) Collins. His first wife, mother of Thelma and Kimberly, bit the big one in a snow skiing accident at Lake Tahoe. He subsequently married Billie, and together they had Connie.

  This little yacht excursion in the Bahamas was a gift from the children to celebrate the twentieth wedding anniversary of Andrew and Billie. (Wesley came down to Nassau a week ahead of everyone else to set it up - scout the situation, check up on the hotel reservations, rent the boat, and so forth.) Andrew is probably in his mid-fifties. He’s retired Navy, rich because he invested in some sort of oil scheme that paid off huge, and a pretty decent guy. If you’re going to get marooned, he’s probably a good fellow to have along. A straight arrow, smart, and tough. He treats me okay, sort of, even though I’m sure he suspects I’ve been ‘putting it’ to Connie.

  Connie’s mother, Billie, is only a couple of years older than Thelma. In other words, she’s young enough that you’d logically take her as one of Andrew’s daughters, not his wife. She’s a lot better looking than Thelma, though not quite as hot as Kimberly.

  She and Connie look more like sisters than like a mother and daughter. They both have dark tans and golden hair, and wear their hair in the same short, pixie style. Connie is slightly taller. Her mother is a lot fuller in the chest and hips, and of course looks older in the face. Actually, Billie is quite a bit more attractive in many ways than her daughter.

  (I’d better make sure none of these folks gets a chance to read what I’m writing here. I’ve only just now started working on this journal, and I’ve already thrown in some stuff that could get me in trouble.)

  My plan, by the way, is to keep a detailed account of things, and use it as the basis for a ‘true adventure’ sort of book. Which won’t pan out if we get rescued too soon. I’m hoping we’ll have to spend a while here, long enough for there to be a few more dramatic events. For the record, the reason I brought my writing pad when we came to the island is that I’ve been working on some short stories. I plan to win the Belmore fiction writing contest ... Man, what an optimist! Maybe none of us will ever get off this island, in which case I might as well forget the writing contest. And a few other things.

  Never mind.

  Gonna depress myself, if I don’t watch out.

  Anyway, back to the introductions.

  Connie, daughter of Billie and Andrew, is my ‘girlfriend.’ We’re both freshmen at Belmore University. That’s how I got to know her. We kept being forced together by the alphabet: she being a Collins, I a Conway. At a university, you can’t remain strangers for long with the person who immediately precedes you in the ABCs. Soon, we began talking to each other. After a while, we started going out. Before I knew it, she was inviting me to spend spring break with her family on a yacht in the Bahamas.

  You don’t turn down an offer like that.

  I don‘t, anyhow.

  I decided to postpone the inevitable - breaking up with her - until after the excursion.

  Now, there might not be an ‘after.’ Yee gads, stuck with her for life. No no no. Won’t happen. We’ll probably be rescued shortly. There’s just no way this can turn into some sort of Robinson Crusoe deal. At most, we might spend a few days here. More likely, we’ll be picked up before dark; that’s if somebody heard or saw our boat explode.

  It was one hell of an explosion.

  For a while, crap kept falling out of the sky and plopping into the water. Pieces of the boat - and undoubtedly Wesley. (I expected to see a foot or a head or a big looping coil of entrails coming down, but nope.) Many of the pieces were on fire. They got snuffed out when they landed in the water. Nothing came down on the beach, luckily.

  Then there wasn’t much left but a bunch of junk floating on the water, and a smudge of drifting smoke.

  At the time it went up, we couldn’t spot any aircraft or boats. We sure did look. Some of us did, anyhow. Not Thelma, of course. That’s when Thelma clutched the sides of her head and started shrieking, ‘No! No! Oh my God, no! Wesley! My poor Wesley! No!’ And like that.

  After a few seconds, Kimberly put her arms around her. They stood there hugging each other, Kimberly patting her sister’s back and murmuring to her. Kimberly was wet. She’d gone in the water for a little swim after our picnic lunch on the beach, and had just waded ashore a minute or two before the explosion. Her black hair was matted against her skull and hung in a sheath down the nape of her neck. Her back was golden and smooth and dripping. She wore a white bikini. The pants of her bikini hung a little crooked, lower on one hip than on the other, showing more of the top of her right buttock than her left. And the middle of the seat had a crease in it ...

  Enough of that.

  She looked damn fine, that’s all. I couldn’t help staring. But I also spent my share of time looking out across the water. The cloud of smoke had moved on and thinned out. I could see a couple of islands, way off in the distance. But not much else except water and sky.

  Kimberly led her sister away from the rest of us. They sat shoulder to shoulder on the blanket where we’d had our picnic.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Billie said, watching them.

  ‘Splendid move on Wesley’s part, blowing up our boat.’

  ‘Andrew!’

  ‘Fumes in the engine compartment,’ he went on. ‘The idiot knew they could blow us to hell and gone. My mistake. Shouldn’t have let him stay on board, nobody there to keep an eye on him. Should’ve known he’d fuck up the works. The bastard. He was too dumb to live.’

  ‘Andrew!’
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  ‘At least he blew himself up with the boat. That’s the silver lining.’

  ‘Don’t let your daughter hear you say such things. She loved him.’

  ‘He sure as shit didn’t love her. Anyhow, good riddance. Rest in pieces, Wesley.’ And he hocked a wad of spit onto the sand at his feet.

  After that, Andrew and Keith went out on the dinghy to see what they could find at the scene of the explosion. I offered to go along, but they said it wouldn’t be necessary. Typical. Maybe it’s because they think of me as a useless kid or because I’m not part of the family. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t know about. Even though they’re generally nice to me, they treat me like an outsider. I get excluded a lot. I’m sort of used to it by now, having spent several days with this bunch.

  Anyway, they left me behind with the women while they puttered out and started picking up nearly everything that was still afloat.

  Connie stood on one side of me, her mother on the other.

  ‘They won’t bring back Wesley, will they?’ Connie asked, making a face like the one she’d given me once when we talked about eating beets.

  ‘We should give him a proper burial,’ Billie said.

  ‘He’s probably in chunks,’ I added.

  ‘They’d better not bring back chunks of him. God! That’s just what we’d need.’

  ‘If we’re stuck here very long,’ I said, ‘we might want to eat him.’

  ‘Rupert!’ Billie gasped.

  ‘God!’ Connie snapped. ‘I can’t believe you sometimes. That’s disgusting!’

  ‘We’d have to jerk him right away,’ I said, ‘so he doesn’t go bad on us.’

  Billie shook her head at me. She was smiling slightly. ‘You’re demented,’ she said. ‘Just don’t say anything like that around Thelma.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,‘ I assured her.

  She swayed sideways and bumped me a little with her shoulder. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re demented, but sensitive.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Cut it out, huh?’ Connie said. I think she meant both of us. I’d noticed before how it seemed to annoy her when Billie and I talked or goofed around. Come to think of it, just about everything about Billie seems to annoy her. Maybe it’s one of those competition things, and she knows she doesn’t measure up. I mean, her mother has her whipped in every department: looks, brains, sense of humor, compassion, you name it.

  Must be hard on Connie. I’ll have to be more understanding.

  After she told us to cut it out, we just stood there silent as the ‘men’ gathered floating treasures.

  The sand of the beach was almost white. The water lapped in gently - no big combers, I guess, because of the reef. (There’d been some pretty good waves right after the explosion, but they didn’t last long.) The water, pale blue, was a little murky. It had been incredibly clear until the boat blew, and would probably be that way again in a while. There was a soft, warm breeze taking away the worst of the heat. And there were the gals.

  Man oh man.

  It’s a shame that Prince Wesley had to go (I’m sure), and it’s too bad that Thelma is taking it so hard, but I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we were to be stranded in a place like this.

  At least for a while.

  The longer the better, as far as I’m concerned.

  Not really. But I wouldn’t mind a couple of weeks, as long as we don’t starve (no need to worry about fresh water, because of the stream).

  After a while, Andrew and Keith returned with a boat full of odds and ends - including some packets of food, but no bits or pieces of Wesley. I’m sure Connie was relieved.

  ‘Is his body out there?’ I asked.

  ‘Bet on it,’ Keith said.

  ‘We’re going back out,’ Andrew said. ‘We’ve gotta salvage what we can.’

  ‘I could go with you, this time, if you need an extra set of hands.’

  ‘That’s all right, chief,’ Andrew said. ‘Somebody’s gotta stay here and watch out for the ladies.’

  Chief. He calls me chief quite a lot. It’s like a thing with him. I’m almost nineteen years old, and he calls me chief like I’m a kid.

  Oh, well, maybe it’s quaint.

  ‘Whatever you say, skipper,’ I told him.

  He hoisted an eyebrow.

  Anyway, Thelma and Kimberly came over. Thelma had stopped crying, and seemed groggy. They pitched in, and everyone helped to unload the boat. Then Andrew and Keith cranked up the dinghy’s motor and took off to scour the inlet for more loot.

  The gals got to work on the goodies we’d just unloaded, so I went over to our picnic area to get my notebook and a pen. They were in my book bag along with a couple of paperback books. Instead of taking them out, I just swung the bag onto my back and took the whole thing with me.

  I called out, ‘I’ll be back in a while.’ Before anyone could ask questions or offer to accompany me, I hurried off.

  I walked alongside the stream, figuring to follow it into the jungle. Keith and Kimberly had gone exploring before lunch while the rest of us dinked around on the beach, and they said the stream led to a great little lagoon, complete with a waterfall - if you hiked inland far enough.

  My impression was that they took the hike to get away from the rest of us. They probably skinny-dipped in the lagoon, and I’d bet a million bucks they screwed.

  I sort of wanted to see it and maybe take a little dip, myself - but I was more interested in sitting beside the lagoon and getting to work on my journal.

  When I started into the jungle, it looked pretty dense and creepy. No telling what sort of creatures might be lurking there. The open beach seemed a lot safer. So I gave up on following the stream, and went along the sand toward a big tower of rocks on the point.

  The inlet is shaped like a large U, with the stream running down its center to join up with the salt water, and rocky points at each tip. The one ahead of me was higher than the other. It would give me a good view and all the privacy I needed.

  The climb to the top winded me, but was worth it. The summit was probably forty or fifty feet above the water. When I got there, I took a while to look around. I could see the gals down on the beach. Also, I saw ‘the men’ on the dinghy, hauling crap out of the water.

  In places, the water was clear enough that I could see to the bottom. Mostly, though, it was still cloudy because of the explosion. I turned away pretty quick - afraid that I might spot some leftover Wesley.

  On the other side of the point, there’s a lot more beach and jungle. No docks, no houses, no roads, no telephone poles, nothing to indicate the island has inhabitants.

  I studied the sky and ocean. No aircraft, no boats. After a check of our beach to make sure nobody was coming my way, I found myself a nice, sheltered nook in the rocks, sat down and started to write.

  It’s been very nice. No one can see me here. An overhang keeps the sun off me, and there’s a wonderful breeze. All I can see is a bit of ocean and the sky.

  Now, I’m caught up to the present.

  I feel like I’ve been at it for at least an hour, maybe a lot longer. I didn’t keep track of the time. My butt’s a little sore. I’m about ready to head back down and see what’s going on.

  Maybe I should leave my journal up here. Hide it in the rocks.

  No, I’d better take it with me. If I leave it here, might be tough to retrieve it in case we suddenly get rescued. Also, something could happen. Some sort of wildlife might attack it - I don’t want my precious pages getting munched by an iguana or ending up as insulation for a bird nest. I’ll keep it in my book bag, and take it with me everywhere so nobody will have a chance to lay eyes on what’s written in here.

  That’s all for now.

  The First Supper

  I’m back.

  It’s early evening, and we’re still here. Looks like we probably won’t be going anyplace tonight.

  Andrew and Keith spent most of the afternoon making trips to the scene of the explosion to salvage
things. Keith even did some diving and brought up stuff that had sunk. They managed to retrieve quite a lot of items that should make our stay on the island more endurable: food and clothes and utensils, not to mention a few bottles of booze that had somehow survived the blast and some fresh fish that hadn’t. But they came back without anything really major - such as a flare gun or transmitter - that we could use to alert rescuers of our position.

  Andrew, a great hand at everything, cleaned the fish. He is not only retired Navy, but an Eagle Scout. He is nothing if not prepared. Just as I never go anywhere without my writing implements and reading material, he is forever equipped with a slew of useful items, including a Swiss Army knife and a butane lighter for his pipe.

  While Andrew gutted the catch of the day, the rest of us trooped over the beach and gathered driftwood for our fire. It is plentiful. In about ten minutes, we had a pile six feet high.

  Done with the bloody work, Andrew built a tidy little fire about twenty feet from our huge stack of driftwood. He used his butane lighter to ignite it.

  Keith had recovered a skillet during one of his dives.

  Billie did the cooking. We didn’t have any grease for the skillet, so she opened one of the liquor bottles and cooked up the fish in bourbon. It wasn’t bad.

  This is sort of like being on a camping trip. A trip where you messed up and left most of your supplies behind - a trip where you don’t necessarily have a way to get home. Those are the negatives. On the other side of the coin, this is better than any camping trip I ever went on because this one includes the gals.

  I’ve had a hard time keeping my eyes off Kimberly in her white bikini. And Billie isn’t any slouch, either. Her black bikini is a lot bigger than Kimberly‘s, but seems smaller because there’s so much of her that it doesn’t cover. She was really something to see, crouched beside the fire and shaking the skillet. The skillet wasn’t the only thing that shook. She seems to like showing off what she’s got. I try not to let Connie catch me looking at her.

  I’d be looking at Connie, but there’s not much to see. She’s spent most of the day wearing an extra large T-shirt over her swimming suit. Also, even though she has a decent build, she looks scrawny compared to her mother. And unlike her mom, she doesn’t seem to have any tendencies toward exhibitionism.