Jason nodded. “He’s right.”
Beatrice shook her head. “No. I think we should get off the island.”
“Aren’t you listening?” said Bradley. “There’s no place to get to.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Hold up,” Jason said. “Let’s not start that again.”
Bradley looked up at him. “Man, we’ve got to find Tim and Archer. They’re out there with this crazy guy. We have to get them back here.”
“Maybe he caused this whole thing,” Jason said.
Beatrice cocked her head to the side. “How would that be possible?”
“I don’t know. How is any of this possible? If he’s so obsessed with end-of-the-world stuff, maybe he’s found some kind of device that short-circuits everything, or maybe he poisoned the water. There’s got to be a reason. Somebody did this.”
“My dad didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s not smart enough, for one thing. And for another, he’s just as shocked by it as you are.”
“We can’t just sit here,” Bradley said. “We’ve got to find Tim and Archer.”
Jason agreed. He was getting anxious now. He figured they could be in serious trouble.
“What does your dad look like?” Bradley asked Beatrice.
She looked into Bradley’s eyes. Would he even stand a chance? He did look strong. But strong enough?
“He’s big,” she said. “Bigger than life. It doesn’t look real, how big he is.”
“Supernaturally big. Got it.”
“Seriously. He’s probably six-foot-six. And like, big all around too.”
“Fat guy?”
“Not really. Just big.”
“Roger that. Tall, big guy.”
“I don’t think you should be taking this lightly.”
Jason said, “Bradley takes everything lightly.”
“Shut it, George.” Then, he looked back at Beatrice. “Very tall. Very big. That it?”
“He also has a bushy beard.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m telling you. He’s not someone to mess around with.”
“What’s the name of this guy I shouldn’t be messing around with?”
“Tereus.”
“Tereus,” Bradley said. “Never heard that one before.”
Jason added, “He’s got guns, Bradley.”
“Right, I know,” Bradley said. “We just want to find our friends. Then we can figure out what’s next. But we do it together. And I want to know who I’m looking out for if I happen to run into him.” He nodded a thanks at Beatrice, and then said to Jason, “You going for Archer?”
“Yeah. I’ll go find him. Then we can rendezvous back here.”
“Where are you going to start?” Jason said.
“Bee Market. You?”
“When Archer left, he said he was going to the power station to troubleshoot the electricity outage. That was hours ago. No electricity. My guess is he’s moved on by now. And he’s definitely indoors. Someplace he can find information. That really just leaves a few options: the school, the library, and the historical society.”
“Or his house,” Bradley added.
“He’s not at his house.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do. It would remind him too much of his mom. Of the past. Of reality or whatever. Archer studies reality to avoid reality.”
Bradley blinked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well. That’s Archer.”
“Okay. Let’s meet back here before nightfall, whether we’ve found them or not. Just to regroup, figure out our next step.”
At the exact same time, they looked at Beatrice.
“What?” she said.
“Um,” Jason said. “Do you wanna stay here? Or do you want to come with one of us?”
Bradley cleared his throat.
“I don’t want to stay here by myself,” she said. She looked at Jason. “I guess I’ll go with you.”
Jason nodded, trying to look cool.
“Whatever,” Bradley said. “Don’t get killed.”
10
STORIES
Bradley ran in the direction of downtown, and Jason and Beatrice headed toward the coastal outskirts, where the high school was. The day had seemed interminably long by then. The sky should have already taken on the pallor of the island’s dusk, but it was still blue as can be, as if the sun knew that they needed more time.
The high school was quiet and dark like every other place in town. Every door was locked. Every window looked into lifeless spaces.
“You’ve never been here?” Jason said to Beatrice.
“No.”
“Because you were homeschooled or whatever.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Your mom taught you?”
“No.”
“Your dad.”
“Not really. Kinda. But not really.”
“He taught you or he didn’t?”
Beatrice ignored the question. “You don’t think your friend is here?”
“No, I really don’t. We shouldn’t have come here first, now that I think of it. If Archer’s doing what I think he’s doing, he would not have considered the school library the best place.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Trying to solve the mystery. If any of us can figure out what happened, it’s Archer.”
Jason led her in the direction of the historical society.
The distances seemed to get shorter, the ground more easily covered. They stayed off the main roads and traipsed down alleys, through wooded areas and anywhere that might prevent exposure. Jason led the way since Beatrice was woefully and surprisingly unfamiliar with the layout of the island.
Every glance Jason stole found her returning his gaze, but while his look was curious, hers was wary. If she really had been as sheltered as she’d indicated, and if her dad really was as mean as he sounded, he couldn’t begrudge her distrust. And even if neither of those circumstances had been the case, the entire scenario naturally aroused distrust on everyone’s part.
But he couldn’t distrust her. There was something she wasn’t saying, he could tell—something mysterious about her story to be sure. But he knew she wasn’t withholding out of malice.
She seemed to move effortlessly. He was in shape and yet found himself frequently out of breath. Not so Beatrice. She kept up his pace, even in her thin white flats, and she never looked like she was trying.
“Let me know if you need a rest,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she replied.
The statue of Virgil Grosset greeted them at the historical society building, lantern in his left hand, keys in his right, his sullen gander far over their heads, cast to worlds unknown.
The door was still unlocked.
Archer had left the lantern there, and it was still burning. At the table, Jason found Spooky Tales of the Salty Seas resting just under its yellow glow.
“I owned this book when I was a kid,” he said.
“Was it good?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember if you liked it?”
“I remember I liked it. I don’t remember if it was good.”
Beatrice picked up the book and began to leaf through it. Jason considered each page as she turned. “I remember,” he said, “there’s one particular story in there I liked a lot. Something about a guy who went rowing out to sea and never came back.”
“Is that spooky?”
“For kids, maybe. Or maybe it was how they told it. I don’t remember all the details.”
She handed him the book. “Which one is it?”
He flipped to the table of c
ontents. Surveying the story titles, he said, “I can’t tell by the names. I’m pretty sure it was in this book.” He flipped through the pages himself, stopping his shuffle at random moments to see if a page jogged his memory. “Hmmm. I don’t know.”
“So, he just kept rowing?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t sound very spooky, does it? I think there was something about his ghost coming back, maybe.” Jason shut the book and handed it back to her. “It’s a kid’s story. It’s not deep. But I liked it.” He scanned the table. The only other item there was a blue pen with a NASA logo on it. “Archer was here.”
“Okay, then,” Beatrice said. “Where to next?”
He led her in the direction of the town library, but as they passed under the statue outside, the keys in Virgil Grosset’s right hand caught Jason’s eye. As they did, he noticed the power lines running overhead.
“You know, just to be sure, we should probably check the power station. That’s where Archer said he was going this morning.”
Soon enough, they were overlooking the rocky slope along the northern shore and the fenced-in shed and transformers of wwec substation 204.
At the gate, Jason called out, “Archer! Archer, are you there?”
They listened.
“Do you hear that?” he said.
“What?” she replied.
“The water. The waves on the shore.”
“What about it?”
“It’s the only sound left.”
Beatrice was thinking. She eventually said, “I know what you mean.”
“The whole island’s been too quiet. You take all the people and animals away, sure, you lose noise. You take all the electronic stuff away, yeah, okay, same thing. But it’s different. Other than the storm the other night, there’s no birds, no wind, no nothin’.”
“Quieter than quiet,” she said.
“Except for the waves hitting the shore. It’s like a reminder that we’re still here, taking up space.”
Beatrice looked herself up and down. “Yep. Still here.”
Jason smiled. “You know anything about that stuff?” he said, nodding toward the transformers.
“Less than nothing.”
“That makes two of us.”
Jason gazed out toward the shoreline where the ocean kept coming, softly lapping at the black and gray rocks, receding in gentle streams of foam into the steadily resurgent waves. The town had officially been chartered in 1895, but those waves had been coming and going for decades, even centuries before that. The island was here long before people were. And it was still here after.
Then Jason remembered something. “There’s a big cave that way,” he said, pointing through a wooded rise to the west along the shore. “I haven’t been down there in a long time, but my brother and the guys and I used to play around there. You ever see it?”
“No,” said Beatrice. “But can we? I mean. Is it all right?”
“I think so. And maybe Archer is out there. He always liked that cave.”
As they ascended the brushy knoll overlooking the northern ocean, which ran uninterrupted until the Pacific rim of Vancouver Island, he told her about the tidal pools down by the cave where he and his brother excavated crabs, starfish, and sand dollars, and the more he reminisced, the more he seemed to remember.
Beatrice was smiling at his memories. She could picture them herself.
At the top of the rise, she cleared the tree line much too swiftly for his comfort, moving too close to the edge of the cliff. He instinctively grabbed her wrist, but she shook him loose, unperturbed but, nonetheless, uninterested in his concern. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Just don’t stand too close to the edge. You’re making me nervous.”
She stood at the brim, nothing but rocky shoreline below her, looking out at the ocean. Her white dress hung limply about her frame.
The air was completely still. It made no sense.
“We can walk down this way,” Jason said.
They stepped cautiously over an exposed cottonwood root since the head of the winding trail down along the face of the cliff was small, only a few square feet. This time, as Jason held out his hand to steady her, she let him. But soon, Beatrice was leading the way down, slowly and surely, balancing herself here and there by leaning against piles of rocks.
“I’m sorry about your shoes,” he said.
Her white flats were muddy.
“They were already like that,” she said, unbothered.
Eventually they reached the bottom. The tide was fairly high, the water gently pushing up nearly ten feet from the face of the cliff.
“It’s along this way,” Jason said, as he navigated over and through the tricky mounds of bowling-ball-sized rocks.
She followed until they reached the cavernous cleft in the face of the stone cliff. Storm-piled rocks had created a short barrier before the opening.
“At highest tide, I bet it fills. In a storm, you probably don’t want to be in there.”
Beatrice hitched her dress up slightly and lifted one slender leg over the wall of rocks, then the other. She was already walking into the gaping mouth before he himself had managed to step over.
“Your friend’s not here,” she called.
When he reached the top of the rock and could see in, he said, “No, I guess he’s not.”
“It’s scary,” she said, though she didn’t sound scared.
“It’s pretty big. I don’t know how far it goes.”
“All the way under the whole island, I bet.”
“Maybe,” he said, joining her. “We mainly played just inside here, around these little pools.”
Beatrice crouched down by one of the puddles. The water was clear, and the bottom of the pool was dusted with black sand. She reached in and retrieved a polished little stone with blue and gray stripes.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Jason said.
She pondered the stone, then squeezed it in her hand. “It’s real,” she said. Looking all around, up and down the smooth walls to the rough ceiling above, she said, “A girl could live here.”
“A girl?”
“A person, I mean.”
“You’d go to bed and drown,” Jason said.
“Not me,” she said. “I’d float.”
“Your dress would get ruined,” he said.
She frowned. “That is something to think about.”
She opened her hand to look at the stone again, and then holding it high over the tidal pond, she tilted her palm until it slid off and dropped back into the water. “But could you imagine?” she said. “You’d have the whole place to yourself, and nobody bothering you. You could make a fire. Hang some pictures on the wall. Read all you wanted without being interrupted or even worrying about anyone finding you. The world could just keep going and never know you were here.”
“That sounds awful, actually.”
“It sounds mysterious to me. And romantic.”
“Romantic? By yourself?”
“That’s not how I mean it.”
He didn’t know how she meant it. But he could imagine why she’d want to be alone with nobody finding her. “Are you afraid of being found? I mean, by him.”
“You’re bringing the world into it,” she said, playfully scolding him. Then, more seriously, she replied, “But yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t like he is. Can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“He claims my mother ran off, abandoned us. Abandoned me. But to tell you the truth, I think he did something. I honestly think he did something.”
“To your mother?”
“I don’t have any proof, of course. I was tiny then. I don’t remember much at all. Not about her. Not about them together. But I just feel it.
I think he hurt her.”
“You know, you don’t have to tell me all this.”
“I want to. I probably need to.”
Jason didn’t know what to say, so he said, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say that,” Beatrice replied. “It has nothing to do with you. And to tell you the truth, I think it’s why we’re here. On the island, I mean. We came, just the two of us, when I was four years old. I was born on the other side of the country. He brought me here because of what he did, I know it. But something wouldn’t let him get away with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“This thing, whatever is happening. It’s life catching up with him. Something’s catching up with him. He couldn’t just start over, you know? You don’t get to just run away from what you do and not have it catch up. Something is hunting him.”
“Like he might be hunting us?”
“Maybe. Whatever’s hunting him, whatever is the reason for all this, I have to believe is somehow . . . good.”
“How can whatever or whoever did this be good?” Jason asked. “Everyone’s gone. My family’s gone. They might be dead.”
“Maybe it was something bad. I don’t know. But if it happened to interrupt my dad’s desire to hide from the wrong things he’s done, it has to be good. Like, as hard as he works at being so evil, there’s something out there, or someone maybe, I don’t know, working harder at being good. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That something bad could also be something good . . . or become good. I want to believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” Jason said. “Everything has changed. I used to believe good wins. But that was when I thought the world ran by rules like that. Seems like the rules are out the window now.”
“How should it end, then?”
“With everyone coming back. Either we figure out where they went, or they just come back. I don’t know. But I wish I could go back in time and not go camping and stay here instead to see what happens. Stop it from happening. Do you think we can do that? Go back in time?”
“No.”
“Why not? Seems like anything’s possible right now.”
“Because time travel stories never make sense. As soon as you change something in the past, the future automatically changes. Don’t you see, if you go back, you might set off a chain of events that makes you not even exist.”
Echo Island Page 11
