by Tom Savage
The hard stone beneath her shoes abruptly became wet sand, and she realized with relief that she had finally reached the bottom. She stepped out onto the beach, grasping the wood post of the warning sign to steady her as she turned once more and peered up the curving stairs. She could make out the lights of the house far above her but nothing else. To orient herself, she would need the light for a moment. She aimed the flashlight directly down toward the base of the sign and switched it on.
Something was glinting there in the sand, just beside the signpost. Karen leaned down to pick it up. Don Price’s Zippo lighter, with the big red S for Superman. He must have dropped it when he left the island last night. She slipped it into her pocket and cast the beam around her until she saw the boathouse.
She turned off the light, let go of the sign, and raced down the sand to the dark shape beside the stone pier. The water in the bay was raging in the gale, and now the wind and the crash of the breakers attacking the sand were the principal sounds she could hear. The wood double doors facing the dock constituted the entire side of the building, and there was a metal track leading down from them into the sand. Sliding the speedboat out to the water would be considerably easier than she’d thought, except that—
Except that the doors were locked. She chanced the glow of the flashlight again for a few seconds, studying this new impediment. A padlock kept the drop latch in place, but the metal hasp was loosely attached to the weather-beaten wood doors by four rusty screws. Memorizing the exact location of the latch, she switched off the light, dropped it and her bag onto the sand, and slipped the machete’s blade between the backing and the wood. Grasping the handle, she yanked downward with all her strength, prying the metal plate away. With a wrenching screech, the latch and padlock broke free and fell at her feet. She yanked on one heavy door, picked up the shoulder bag and flashlight, and went inside, pulling the door shut behind her.
The air in here was worse than the toolshed, much worse: oil and dry rot and an unpleasant metallic scent. There was also a rich, ripe odor she couldn’t quite place. Mildew? No, stronger than mildew. Something had died in here—a rat or an iguana. She could hear the buzzing of flies all around her, even above the thrum of the generator behind the building, which supplied the main house with electricity. She had to act quickly. She didn’t know if her absence from the house had been noted yet, but the boathouse would be the first place they’d look for her. She turned on the flashlight and swept the beam around the room. The old wood-hulled motorboat was on the metal track by the doors, covered with a gray canvas tarp. She shone the light on the track, noting the steep downward slope. One good push and the boat would slide forward through the doors and down the few yards to the water’s edge.
Grace Tyler had won the argument over summer camp when Karen was twelve, mainly by getting Mrs. Friedman to send Amy as well. Now Karen silently thanked her mother for insisting on it. Archery, riflery—and boating. In one eventful six-week period, the two girls had learned to handle every type of small watercraft: canoes, rowboats, a Sunfish, and an outboard Boston Whaler. If she could get this craft into the surf, she could start it and steer it well enough to make her way to Tortola. Of course the Whaler had a tiller, and this had a steering wheel and an inboard motor, but that was even better, wasn’t it? It would be like driving a car. This made her think of the obvious detail she hadn’t considered: the key. If it wasn’t in the ignition, she couldn’t start the engine. She didn’t care; if there was a pair of oars in this boathouse, she’d row the damn thing to Tortola!
The beam of light took in two big red plastic containers by one wall: gasoline. She’d take them with her, just in case the boat’s tank was low—assuming she could start it. And the light showed her something that might also be a problem: a wide, dark stain directly beneath the hull. It looked like the boat was leaking oil. She’d have to hunt around for that, too. But first, the tarp. She leaned the machete against the wall behind her, raised the flashlight, and stepped forward, sliding a little in the slick on the floor. Steadying herself, she grabbed an edge of the canvas and whisked it away, shining the light down into the boat.
The key was in the ignition beside the wheel. Her relief at that fact dissolved instantly when the beam drifted past the pilot’s chair to the cockpit and padded bench behind it. Karen stared, raising her free hand to her mouth to cut off the scream welling up inside her.
Don Price lay in a pool of blood on the floor of the boat, and he was in several pieces: arms, legs, torso, head. His milky brown eyes stared up at her from the top of the pile, his mouth open in apparent surprise. The flies were everywhere; the mound of severed flesh and sliced clothing actually seemed to be moving. The stench that was not from a dead iguana now struck her full force. The oil on the floor of the boathouse was not oil; thick black blood had dripped down through a dozen freshly bored holes in the bottom of the hull.
Karen fell back against the boathouse wall, gasping, the flashlight falling to the floor. The light was now shining directly across the wide puddle at her feet, which was also crawling with life. She slid down the wall to her knees and vomited, the Dover sole and Champagne and coffee spewing out onto the floor. She heaved again, retching and gagging until she was fighting to breathe. The room swirled around her, a kaleidoscope, and with it the suffocating reek of death. She slumped against the wall, coughing, swatting at a thousand bombarding insects, waiting as the nausea slowly passed.
Rising to her feet was a huge effort, but she finally managed it after a few false starts, and she bent down again to retrieve the fallen flashlight and machete. She couldn’t bring herself to look inside the ruined boat again. Keeping to the walls, as far away from the blood as possible, she edged around the building to the doors. She burst out onto the wet sand, welcoming the freezing deluge that poured down on her, cleansing her skin and hair and clothes of the dizzying, overwhelming stench. She stood outside the boathouse, grasping the machete in one hand and the flashlight in the other, attempting to gather her strength and her resolve. She had never been this terrified. Only one option now remained for her: hide.
Another flash of lightning, another thunderclap, and she was running, sprinting through the rain down the length of the sodden beach, away from the blood and the flies and the madness. There was a path over there somewhere, concealed among the trees at the other end, and she would find it.
—
Letter from Harper to Anderman, March 13, 1981 (continued)
My other reason for writing to you is strictly personal, and I couldn’t mention it in letters that would be read by officials. I’ve spent twenty-two long years in this dismal place, and the others here are all from strata of society that you and I never knew existed—not merely the cons but the keepers as well. My true punishment is that I must associate with these inferiors day after day, week after week, year after year.
Is it any wonder, then, that I’m thinking of you? You and Hangman Cay…
—
Carl Graves came out of his apartment, shutting the door behind him. As he crossed the kitchen, he glanced down at the blood on the tiles. He’d have to clean that up, but not now. Now there were other, more pressing matters.
He pushed through the swinging door into the main hall. He was heading for the stairs when the office door above him opened and Hux came out to the gallery rail. Carl looked up at his employer, amused at the sight of his old cellmate in a tuxedo. The guy had class; you had to hand him that. And he was smiling, which Carl didn’t understand. The stupid cow had given the game away to the girl, and the girl was not in her room. As far as Carl could determine, she was no longer in the house. So, why was Hux grinning?
And why in hell did he have a gun in his hand? It was that little revolver he’d insisted on adding to the order when they’d first arrived here, to go with the matching rifles for him and Carl. The rifles were to get rid of unwanted guests, tourists or treasure seekers or adventurous kids. So far, they’d used them only once, scaring off a part
y of drunks who’d actually tried to come up the stairs to the house. Those idiots had gotten the surprise of their lives, and they’d made it back into their boat and away from the island in record time, with bullets flying over their heads. God, how the two of them had laughed! Molly didn’t think it was funny, of course. Well, she sure as hell wasn’t laughing now, was she?
Hux was coming down the stairs, and he didn’t have the cane anymore. He’d apparently dropped the pretense of a limp the moment the girl was no longer here to fall for it.
“Our guest was just in the boathouse,” he said as he arrived at the bottom. “She tripped every motion sensor down there, and the alarm went off in the office. The cameras got some lovely footage of her running out of there. She has your machete from the toolshed and a flashlight. Clever girl.”
Carl grinned. “I guess she decided not to take the boat out in this weather.”
“Yes. The boat is in no condition to travel, as I’m sure she’d agree.”
The two men shared a laugh. Then Carl said, “Do you want me to go get her?”
“Oh dear me, no! The poor thing apparently prefers the accommodation of the caves. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling her evening. It’s not as if she has anywhere else to go. We’ll leave her to it for the time being.”
At that moment, the front windows were lit up by a bright flash of lightning, and the answering thunder shook the house. They laughed again. Carl could just picture Karen Tyler, soaking wet, huddled in one of those caverns by the water’s edge, the breakers flooding in to drench her even more.
“I’m sorry about Molly tipping her off,” Carl said. “I should have been watching her more closely.”
“No matter. She would have learned everything in just a few hours anyway. And where is the excellent Mrs. Graves?”
Carl grinned some more. “I’ve tucked her into bed. She’s resting. Permanently.”
His employer nodded thoughtfully. “That leaves the field wide open for Miss—what’s her name?—Miss Crystal Lite?”
That set Carl off again. “Crystal Flame. Yeah, she’ll be waiting for me back in Charlotte, soon as we’re finished here. When do you suppose he’ll arrive?”
Hux thought about that a moment. “Very soon. After all, it’s nearly midnight, and tomorrow is our anniversary. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Carl nodded, thinking of the cameras and motion sensors. “I guess we’ll see him before he sees us.”
“Yes, I daresay we will. Well, I will, at any rate.”
Carl didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”
Hux—Rodney Lawson Harper—reached out with his free hand and patted his former cellmate on the arm.
“It means thank you, old friend,” he said, and now his smile was sad, “but I think I can take it from here.”
The revolver being raised and aimed directly between his eyes was the last thing Carl Graves ever saw, and the ensuing explosion was the last thing he ever heard.
—
Letter from Harper to Anderman, March 13, 1981 (continued)
I’ve only been truly happy with you on Hangman Cay. Do you remember? Chess and opera. Painting your portrait on the beach. The caves at low tide. The memories sustain me in my worst moments, and those moments are endless here, in this gray place….
—
Karen arrived at the far end of the beach, soaked and panting. Despite the wind and rain, she felt hot and clammy. Nausea and terror had subsided into a dull, aching fever. Her teeth were chattering, and her hands were shaking so badly that she had to grip the flashlight and the machete with extra force. This fever was the onset of shock, she decided. And the constant rain, flashes of lightning, and cracks of thunder were numbing her senses. One particularly loud thunderclap a few moments ago had sounded exactly like a gunshot.
She had to find the path. They’d come down it from the rock shelf at the tip of the island yesterday, but she couldn’t remember where they’d emerged from the trees. She and Don Price—oh God, Don Price!—had been distracted from noting their surroundings by their host’s bombshell announcement. He’d told them that he, Wulfgar Anderman, hadn’t killed the people at Tamarind fifty years ago, that Rodney Harper had killed them. But their host wasn’t Wulfgar Anderman. That was a lie, one lie among a thousand. Nothing he’d told Karen was true, and yet, oddly enough, she believed that everything he’d told her was true, just from another perspective….
The path was over here somewhere, among the tall sea grass and tangled trees. Somewhere, right about—
Here. The beam of the flashlight highlighted the narrow space, the sandy track leading up the hill ahead of her. She turned around on the beach, squinting up at the distant lights on the cliff above the opposite end. No sign of activity over there that she could make out—but then again, she could barely see anything through the torrent. Those blurry lights were the house, and that glow at the northern horizon was Tortola, which meant that straight out from the cove was the island she’d come from Wednesday. Only Wednesday? Yes, she’d been on Hangman Cay for a grand total of thirty-five hours.
Gripping the machete, Karen plunged into the thicket. She stumbled as branches and bushes lashed out at her, scratching her face and arms, but she didn’t pause for a second. The flashlight was switched off now—she couldn’t allow the telltale glow to alert the people in the house—and she could barely see the path before her, but she moved as swiftly as she could, up the steep slope of the hill toward her destination. She actually welcomed the occasional flashes of lightning: They showed her the way.
She lost her footing once and fell to her knees, wincing at the jolt of pain in her legs, dropping the flashlight and grasping at a prickly century plant to keep from tumbling backward down the hill. The thorns on the edge of the thick, rubbery leaf bit into her hand, drawing blood, but she took no notice. She felt around in the mud until she located the flashlight, and she was up again and pressing onward, the steady rain making her clothes feel infinitely heavier than they were. She thought perhaps she’d left the path at some point, and she experienced a momentary sense of claustrophobia as she saw more and still more trees ahead of her. She couldn’t see the beach from here, but she paused long enough to look for the lights of the house. There they were, shining through the trees, so the opposite direction would be—
Then she heard the roar of the breakers ahead of her and moved faster, running now, propelling herself through the tangle of leaves and vines. A final bank of trees, and suddenly she emerged from the maze into open space. She stood at the edge of the huge shelf of rock that sloped down to the high, jutting boulders at the water’s edge. The fierce wind whipped her wet hair and clothes. Above all else was the roar, as the mighty waves below smashed into the rocks, sending geysers of spray high into the air.
The relief that suffused her made her giddy, and she unwisely rushed forward. The uneven, slanting surface of the shelf was thoroughly drenched by the storm, and the scree and greenish lichen that clung to it in places formed a slippery carpet. But Karen had had enough of dead bodies and wet sand and dripping leaves and the constant, pelting rain, and she craved the shelter of the caves. She would have to clamber around the farthest boulder, clinging to handholds, bracing herself against the onslaught of waves, but she was ready for it. She ran straight out onto the escarpment, heedless of the slick surface beneath her wet sneakers.
She didn’t get far. Four loping strides, and then her legs came out from under her and she was flying forward. She landed hard on her stomach, bumping her forehead as the breath was knocked out of her, and her hands scraped viciously on jagged rock. The machete and flashlight clattered away in opposite directions, and the strap of her shoulder bag broke, sending it skittering off into the darkness. She was sliding, rolling, tumbling in what seemed to be slow motion over rough surfaces, a headlong, jolting fall down the wet slope toward the water. It finally ended as abruptly as it had begun when she slammed into the base of one of the big boulders that guarded the
coast.
She lay facedown beside the boulder, too dazed to move. A wave washed over her, and she began to return to reality. Okay, she thought, I fell. Now I have to check that I’m not badly injured and try to get up and move. My legs are still working, my arms are all right, the bump on my forehead isn’t too bad, so I should be able to—
A sudden noise from somewhere just above her sent these thoughts from her mind, and terror took over her senses once more. Someone was moving toward her down the rock shelf. The scrape and thump of the heavy footsteps approached, and she felt something solid brush against her arm: a shoe.
She couldn’t will herself to move. This is the moment before death, she thought, this moment of complete paralysis. She stared, transfixed with fear, as a large hand came down from the darkness above and firmly wrapped its fingers around her arm. As she was lifted slowly up to a standing position, she heard a man’s low, clear voice.
“You must be more careful, Karen.”
Now she stood on the rock, leaning back against the boulder that had checked her fall, borne up by strong hands grasping her arms. The rain continued to pelt her and lightning tore at the sky as she looked up at the figure before her. She blinked, unsure, and in another celestial flash the face mere inches in front of her own came into focus.
That’s when she knew she was dead. She must have tumbled down the shelf and landed badly, perhaps broken her neck, and he had arrived to escort her to heaven, for this man was definitely her guardian angel, her Watcher. He’d helped her up in the rain on Hangman Cay as he had once helped her up in the rain on West End Avenue—and with the very same words.
Through the wind and the rain, Karen could feel his warmth. She stared into the eyes of her Watcher and smiled. He smiled back.
