World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  I said, “She had a good look at my bare ass.”

  “She probably loved it.”

  “Probably scarred her for life.”

  “Fun times…” Pita said this with a healthy dose of nostalgia, and although likely unintentional, her tone communicated more than her words did: they weren’t fun times anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her quietly enough I wasn’t sure she heard me over the storm.

  But she did, because she said, “For what?”

  “I’ve changed.”

  “We’ve both changed, Jack. Everyone changes.”

  “I’m not the same person I was.”

  “Because you can’t race.” It sounded less like a statement and more like an accusation.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Dammit, Jack,” she said. “I know. Okay? I get it. Racing was a big part of your life. You can’t do it anymore. Okay. But…stop looking back. You had a good career—”

  “Four years.”

  “And you did more in those four years than most professional racers do in ten.”

  “I could have been great.”

  “You were great!”

  “I mean the records—”

  “Screw the records, Jack! You’re lucky you didn’t die.”

  “I actually did.”

  “Well, you didn’t stay dead. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. So you should be thankful for that, for being alive. Why can’t you just accept what happened and move on?”

  “You don’t understand…”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Didn’t you hear what I told you, Pita? I’m not the same fucking person. If I’m not a race car driver, who am I? What do you propose I do with the rest of my life?”

  “The rest of your life? You only had another five years of racing anyway.”

  “Ten, minimum. More like fifteen, even twenty.”

  “Why don’t you at least consider broadcasting? Your agent—”

  “I’m not going to sit in a booth and watch other people race.”

  “It’s better than doing nothing, Jack. And that’s what you’re doing now. Nothing. You’re miserable, and that’s made me miserable. Don’t you see that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So do something about it other than drinking yourself silly every night.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “You don’t think you have a problem?”

  “I’ve never said that.”

  “You’re an alcoholic, Jack.”

  I stiffened. I didn’t like that word. It brought to mind images of bums sitting on the street, begging for change. But I suppose I was an alcoholic—just one with money.

  “What?” Pita said when I didn’t respond. “You’re going to ignore me now? You know, lately, if I didn’t start a conversation, we would never talk.”

  “You want to talk about why I drink?” I snapped.

  “I know why you drink,” she said.

  I shook my head. “It’s not just that I can’t race…” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her what was on the tip of my tongue, and decided why the hell not. “It’s…being here,” I finished.

  Pita frowned. “Being here? This island? We just came today—”

  “Mexico,” I told her.

  Silence.

  “We were supposed to come here for a month or two,” I added, “to get away from the media. We’ve been here for almost a year now.”

  “We spent four years in the US,” she said defensively.

  “That’s different. You liked it there. I’m bored out of my fucking mind here.”

  “So why don’t you go back to the Las Vegas, Jack?” she said coldly. “Nobody’s forcing you to stay here in this terrible country. Go. Then you can sit around your house all day there and drink.”

  I clenched my jaw but didn’t take the bait.

  A sky-wide burst of lightning shattered the night. Ancillary thunder followed.

  Rain fell. Wind gusted.

  More lightning, more thunder.

  “Are we…okay?” Pita asked me eventually.

  “Okay?” I said, though I knew what she meant.

  “Us. Are we okay?”

  I was going to tell her yes, we were fine, we were just going through a rough patch. But what was the point? We both knew the truth.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think we are.”

  We didn’t say anything more after that.

  3

  I didn’t want to think about racing, or Pita, or the fact we had just broken up—which I was pretty sure was what just happened—so I spent the next hour or so considering Miguel’s murder, the mystery killer, the theories we’d come up with thus far. The more I dwelled on this, the more I felt as though we were missing something, overlooking some vital piece of the puzzle.

  Miguel’s eyes were not taken by someone doing something stupid in the heat of the moment. Whoever mutilated him—hopefully after he was already dead—was sick and twisted. So the serial killer premise I could buy. What bothered me was the fact the murder occurred here, on this island. Because a murderous sociopath was more often than not the guy next door who had a nine-to-five job, was on a first-name basis with the staff at the local Starbucks, paid taxes, had a mortgage, and waved to you from his car while you walked your kids to school. I’d never heard of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer living as recluses in the wilderness. Jason Voorhees maybe, but we weren’t dealing with an undead dude in a hockey mask. Despite what Pita may believe, there was nothing metaphysical going on. Whoever killed Miguel and injured Lucinda was flesh and blood. They put their pants on one fucking leg at a time.

  So what were they doing on this goddamn island?

  This line of thinking ultimately brought me back to Solano. He lived out here on his own. He was a crazy bastard. He would have been the obvious suspect, except for the fact he was dead…

  I frowned. Sat a bit straighter.

  What if he wasn’t dead?

  I mean, how did we know he was dead? All I knew was what Pepper told me. All Pepper knew was what someone told him. And what had that been? That Solano was found drowned in the same spot where the girl supposedly drowned fifty years before? Well, the first glaring problem with this was the fact nobody would have known where Solano found the girl’s body except Solano himself—if there had ever been a girl to begin with. Moreover, Pepper had said the police hadn’t been able to determine Solano’s cause of death because he had been in the water, undiscovered, for too long, eaten by salamanders and fish. Well, if he was this badly gone, perhaps little more than a clothed skeleton, it went to reason they couldn’t positively identify him either.

  So the body might not have been his. It could have belonged to anyone.

  But who?

  Someone like Miguel who had trespassed on his island?

  Holy shit! Was Solano the killer then? And if so, he surely knew of our presence on his island. Of course he knew. We were camping out in his fucking house!

  I turned to Pita, to share this discovery.

  Her eyes were closed, her lips parted slightly. She was asleep.

  I stared ahead again, into the night, the rain.

  Was Solano out there somewhere? Watching us? Plotting?

  4

  I was dozing off, my chin touching my chest, when a sound caused me to start. I jerked my head up, snapped open my eyes. But it was only Jesus and Nitro, coming outside to relieve us.

  It was 2 a.m.

  5

  Inside the cabin the candles burned warmly, beacons in the tempest, though two had extinguished themselves. Elizaveta sat at the table by herself. She smiled diffidently at us. “You survived,” she said.

  “It’s crazy out there,” I said.

  “I know, Jack. I can hear. The thunder, it’s like earthquake.”

  I checked in on Lucinda. She lay on her back, the red sheet pulled to her chin. Her attractive face was hoary, sunken, almost cadaverous. I peeled back the sheet, then Solano’s
poncho, which made me think of Clint Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns. Trying not to look at Lucinda’s bare breasts, I eased her onto her side. Her skin was hot and clammy. Nitro’s tank top/compress was stiff with blood. However, it seemed to have worked, as the laceration had ceased bleeding. I eased Lucinda onto her back and once more covered her with the poncho and sheet. The pulse in her neck was difficult to palpate, but it was there, faint and slow. Her breathing sounded raspy.

  “Lucinda?” I said softly, not expecting an answer.

  I didn’t get one.

  I left the room and checked on Pepper next. He lay with Rosa beneath the green and beige rug, only their heads poking out. Two peas in a pod, I thought. But although Rosa seemed snug, perspiration sheened Pepper’s face, and he appeared to be shivering.

  I felt his forehead with the back of my fingers. He was burning up.

  “Peps,” I said quietly. “You awake?”

  He opened his eyes, saw me, closed them.

  “You got a bit of a chill in the rain, buddy.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Best thing for him, I figured, would be a hot drink. We had rainwater, but Solano didn’t have a stove or microwave to heat up the water, and I didn’t think it would be wise to start an indoor fire.

  Second best thing for him would be to get him up and moving.

  “Hey, Peps,” I said. “Can you sit up?”

  He shook his head imperceptibly.

  “Just for a bit. Get your circulation moving.”

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Can you try?”

  He struggled to his elbows with great effort, then flopped back down. He shook his head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just rest. Do you want some water?”

  “No…”

  “I’ll be back.”

  I turned to leave and found Pita directly behind me.

  “Trying to give me a heart attack?” I said.

  “I’m going to sleep in here for a bit,” she said.

  “I don’t think there’s any more room in the bed.”

  “On the floor.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She moved past me and settled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then she lay on her side and curled herself into a ball, using one arm as a pillow.

  I waited for her to say something, maybe goodnight. She didn’t. I exited the room and closed the door behind me.

  I went to the table and sat next to Elizaveta. Tired of carrying the hay hook around, I set it on the tabletop.

  “Lucinda seems stable,” I said.

  “She’s lost much blood.”

  “Hopefully she can hang on until morning.”

  “And Pepper too.”

  “He’s not that bad.”

  “I think he has…how do you say?” She shook herself and said, “Brrrr…”

  “Hypothermia?” That had crossed my mind. “Maybe,” I said. “But he has a fever. I’m pretty sure if you have hypothermia your skin would be cool to the touch, not hot.”

  “He is shivering.”

  “I think he just has a nasty bug.”

  Elizaveta seemed alarmed. “Bug?”

  “No, not like that. Speaking of which, how’s your sting?”

  “It hurts.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I was a bit dizzy for a while.”

  I frowned in concern.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay now. I feel better.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I don’t trick you, Jack. So what is this bug you say?”

  “It’s an expression for a really bad cold,” I told her. “I had something similar once. I was a teenager. A bunch of friends and I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans for a weekend. No one had a car, so we took a Greyhound—a bus. It was air-conditioned. A vent was right above my seat. I didn’t know how to shut it off, and I fell asleep with freezing cold air blowing on me. When we got to New Orleans in the morning—it was an overnight bus—I had all Pepper’s symptoms. Fever, shivering, no strength. When we got to the hotel, I dropped into bed and couldn’t get out of it for twelve hours. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t do anything.”

  “And then what?”

  “It just went away. Literally within an hour I went from feeling dead to almost normal.”

  “So you think Pepper will magically get better too?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I think he just needs rest.”

  On that note Elizaveta yawned. I did too.

  “So what did I miss in here?” I asked.

  “Miss?” she said.

  “What did you guys do while Pita and I were outside?”

  “Nothing amazing.” She shrugged. “Jesus and Nitro had arm wrestle.”

  “Who won?”

  “Take guess, Jack.”

  “Did they talk shit about me?”

  “Shit? No. They said some bad things. But never shit.”

  “It’s an expression.”

  She smiled. “I know.”

  “So?” I pressed.

  “What?”

  “What did they say?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t… So what did they say?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Jesus will be your brother-in-law. I don’t want to make trouble.”

  “He’s not going to be my brother-in-law.”

  “Yes, when you marry Pita, he will—”

  I lowered my voice. “Pita and I broke up.”

  Elizaveta blinked in surprise. “When?”

  “When you guys were inside here arm wrestling apparently.”

  She was reticent. She fiddled with the garden claw on the table before her, turning it over in her hands. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said finally. “Do you want to talk?”

  “No.”

  She looked at me. I looked at her. She seemed as though she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. Still, her eyes didn’t leave mine.

  “You’ll be okay, Jack.”

  I nodded.

  “You know what you need do?”

  I waited.

  “Move to Russia.”

  “Russia?”

  “You are rich American man. Handsome American man. You can have every girl in Russia you want.”

  This comment surprised me, because although she wasn’t in Russia, I couldn’t help but feel she was speaking about herself too.

  So was she hitting on me—all of five minutes after I’d broken up with Pita?

  I glanced at the door to Pepper’s room, glad I’d closed it. But was Pita on the other side, with her ear against it, listening?

  No. We weren’t speaking very loudly, and the rain drumming against the roof would make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to hear our voices.

  Even so, I wanted to change the topic, though for some reason my mind was drawing blanks.

  “Please, Jack,” Elizaveta said, cupping my hand with hers. “I joke.”

  But was she joking? There was mischief in her eyes—because she was joking, or flirting?

  This was bizarre, the turn of the conversation, bizarre. And what made it even more bizarre was the fact I was attracted to Elizaveta, I’d been attracted to her ever since Jesus introduced us, and I was hoping she wasn’t joking.

  I cleared my throat. She removed her hand from mine.

  Thunder crashed above us, petering to a growl.

  “This storm,” Elizaveta said. “Oh my God.”

  The storm, the sanguinary killer out there—right. “I was thinking about everything that’s happened on the island,” I said, relieved to find the knot in my tongue had unraveled. “Do you want to hear a new theory about who might have killed Miguel?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “Tell me.”

  I explained.

  “Solano murdered Miguel?” Elizaveta said, and I thought she was going to laugh, tell me this was outlandish. But what she added was: “I think you might be right,
Jack. It all fits. Everything.”

  “It does, right?” I said. “He lives out here. He’s a crazy hermit. He doesn’t want people trespassing on his island.”

  “So he kills them.”

  “And dumps them in the canals. Pepper told me it was filled with skeletons anyway, from the revolution.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “The army supposedly dumped thousands of bodies in them.”

  “But Solano didn’t dump Miguel.”

  “No, but that’s because he probably didn’t have time. He would have wanted to find Lucinda and Rosa first. Make sure no one could leave and give up his secret.”

  “But why take his eyes?”

  “Maybe that’s just his thing. Serial killers do all sorts of weird shit like that.”

  “Look, Jack, I have goosebumps.” She showed me her arms. “You have solved this mystery!”

  “It doesn’t mean we’re safe,” I said. “He’s still out there.”

  “Yes, you are right. But I feel safer because Solano is not some Rambo. He is just old man.”

  “Which is probably why he hasn’t tried anything.”

  “You mean attack us?”

  I nodded. “He has to know we’re here. We’re staying in his house. But like you said. He’s an old man. He might be able to sneak up on someone like Miguel and stab him in the back, but there’s nothing he can do against so many of us.”

  “Oh, Jack I’m so relieved!” She leaned forward across the table and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips stayed pressed against mine for way too long to be a simple celebratory peck.

  But I didn’t mind. In fact, I felt electrified, like one of those bolts of lightning in the sky had just zapped me on the head.

  Then her lips parted. Mine did too. Our tongues touched—

  I pulled back, frazzled, guilt-ridden.

  What the hell was going on?

  Elizaveta was looking at me with her sparkling green eyes. Her face was slightly flushed. She clearly had no problem with that kiss.

  And I realized I had to stop whatever had started. What we were doing wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. People were going to get hurt. Pita would, Jesus would. I didn’t care about Jesus actually. But I cared about Pita. And this was wrong. It was way too soon. Elizaveta was her friend.