On the northwest corner of the fields, at the tree line, which was nearest the coast, Bradley began walking east along a ridge. The soft roar of the waves below was more pronounced, given the lack of wind. And when he had crossed the entire expanse of the northern edge of the field, he could see down an embankment. In the midst of an acre of level and grassy ground stood a mobile home. He wondered why he’d never noticed it before.
He hunched over and crept along a low border of brush that ran around the back side of the trailer. He figured knocking on the front door was probably not a good idea.
I can be smart, Bradley thought to himself.
When he was at the midway point of the rear of the home, he crouched backward into the brush and watched. There were two windows on the rear of the building, but both sets of blinds were closed. He couldn’t hear any noise, but he was still quite a ways across the yard.
Bradley knew he had to get closer. So he got down on his hands and knees and started crawling.
I am not smart, he thought to himself.
He reached the base of the trailer, which was elevated on blocks, the gap below covered with a wide strip of white lattice along the bottom. He rose to his feet but bent at the waist to keep his head below the level of the windows.
He put his ear against the vinyl siding, but still he heard nothing.
It took him a few minutes to work up the courage, but eventually Bradley lifted his head to window level. The sill was barely at the height of his eye, but he could see from the corner through the slightest crack in the blinds.
He stopped cold.
There was a figure sitting on what looked to be a couch, facing the window.
The person just sat there. Maybe he couldn’t see him. But Bradley was afraid to move.
He strained his eyes, trying to make out any features, but the interior was too dark. The shadow and he were in a staring contest. Who would break first?
The shadow did. A slight tilting of the head sideways. Bradley jumped back away from the window but bumped his head against the side of the house. He froze, listening for the rush of footsteps on the trailer floor.
Instead, what he heard was a mournful moan from inside the trailer, a guttural warble he’d recognize anywhere. It was Tim.
Suddenly he had to be inside the trailer. But the front door was the only way in.
Bradley quickly scanned through the crack in the blinds again. He couldn’t see anyone else in the room, though it was dark, and his perspective was too narrow to be sure. He could see Tim’s silhouette leaning now.
“All right,” Bradley whispered to himself. “Okay.” And then he brazenly walked around to the front of the trailer and turned the flimsy knob on the thin door. He opened it slowly, halfway expecting to be riddled with gunfire.
When nothing happened, he entered the trailer. The light coming in through the door gave him a clear view of the long layout, and of Tim tied at the feet, hands behind him, sitting on the couch. His face was bruised and bloody, and there was duct tape wrapped around his head and covering his mouth.
Bradley rushed over to him. “Oh man,” he said. “What happened to you?”
Tim jumped, eyes wide. He had expected Tereus.
Seeing Bradley on his knees feverishly untying the binding around his ankles, he began to cry.
It took a fair bit of untangling, but soon Tim’s feet were free. Bradley then went straight to the duct tape and pulled it down below his friend’s mouth. It ripped as the adhesive tore his skin.
“What happened?” Bradley repeated.
Tim gasped for air. “Huge guy,” he sputtered.
“We need to get you out of here.”
“He’s going to kill us all.”
Bradley pushed Tim over to the side, trying to get at the binding on his wrists.
“Can you walk?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Tim replied.
“Can you run?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re going to have to.”
Bradley heaved one of Tim’s arms over his neck and hoisted him up off the couch. He practically dragged him to the front door, and as they reached the tiny wooden landing of the few steps down to the yard, he stopped abruptly. The biggest man he’d ever seen was sauntering down the embankment from Minuai Fields. The man had seen them too and froze.
“Here we go,” Bradley said.
The sight seemed to catch Tereus off guard. He puzzled for a second, unsure what he was looking at. It was enough time for Bradley to get down the steps, Tim practically hanging onto him, and start for the side of the trailer. He had to get the trailer between them and Tereus because the man had a rifle slung over his shoulder and was now bringing it up to ready.
They had just reached the corner when the report exploded in the air. A bullet struck the side of the trailer by Bradley’s neck with a hollow thud. He found strength he didn’t know he had, and the gunshot seemed to inspire Tim to find more as well. They scrambled around the side of the house.
They could tell by the heavy footsteps that Tereus was running after them now.
Jason, Beatrice, and Archer whirled around. There, in the doorway to the cabin, stood a man none of them had ever seen before, yet who carried with him an air of familiarity. He was neither tall nor short, but jovially plump, especially in his reddish face, bald with a thatch of black hair around the back of his head, wearing flannel-cloth pants and a tweed coat over an off-white, button-up shirt.
“Is that—?” Jason began.
Beatrice read his mind. “No.” It was not her father.
As if reading all of their minds, the man said, “You can call me Jack.” He spoke with an English accent, but more striking still was the pleasant deepness of his voice.
“Who are you?” Archer asked.
“Why, I’ve just told you,” said Jack. “And what a thing to ask after you all barged into my home.”
“This is your cabin?” Jason said.
“For the moment, yes.” He closed the door behind him, and for the first time they each noticed he was carrying a black walking stick with a silver knob on the end, which he gently laid against the wall by the doorframe.
Jack began to take off his coat. “Still. I was expecting you,” he said.
“You were expecting us?” said Jason.
“Certainly. You weren’t expecting me?”
“How do you mean?”
“You come into a man’s home, rifle through his things, and mull around without expecting he’ll come home?”
“We thought everyone was gone.”
“Most everyone,” said Jack. “But you’re here. And so am I.”
“Do you know what happened?” Archer said.
Jack looked at the boy, considering all angles and points of his face. They couldn’t have been more different. “What have you got there in your hand?”
Archer was clutching the green notebook he’d earlier taken from the shelf and the copy of The Green Notebook he’d taken from the library.
“What did they tell you?” Jack asked.
“Nothing,” Archer said. “I don’t know. I don’t understand them.”
Jack looked at the boy with undeniable sympathy. “I suppose it isn’t time.” He crossed to the desk and, pulling away the chair, sat down and began to unlace his shoes.
“Have you always lived here?” Jason said. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve never seen you before either.” He pronounced either with a long i, like eye-ther. “Have you always lived here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll admit I have not. In a manner of speaking, I am just passing through. But then, in a manner of speaking, so are you.”
“Look,” Archer said. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I
n the woods, do you mean? In this cabin? I’m a writer. It’s a lovely place to write, don’t you think? It’s quiet. Rather secluded. When I’m very still, I can hear the ocean. And when I’m restless, the walks are splendid.”
“What do you write?” said Beatrice.
“Oh dear, all kinds of things. Poetry, philosophy, stories. I have written in as many categories as you might name.”
“Stories?” Beatrice asked.
“Yes, stories. They are my favorite.”
She smiled.
Archer stepped up to the bookcase with the array of green notebooks. “Did you write these?”
Jack reached out for the notebook in Archer’s hand, which the boy slowly gave to him. Jack leaned over to the case, inspecting it for the proper gap and, finding it, slipped the missing piece back into its slot on the shelf. Sitting back, he pondered the rows of notebooks for a moment, and finally said, “Yes. I wrote them. You could put it that way. Though I am more like a secretary for their contents.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, my dear boy, that the writing is mine, but the telling isn’t.”
“What kind of language is it?”
“The kind that takes some time to understand.” Jack smiled. “Now,” he said, clapping his hands together, “why don’t you each have a seat? There are things we must talk about.”
“I’m not sitting down until you tell us what’s going on,” Archer said.
“I cannot tell you straightaway,” Jack said. “But you will know.”
Jason sat down on the stone hearth and brushed off a spot for Beatrice. Straightening her dress beneath her legs, she sat beside him. Archer remained standing.
“These notebooks. They mean something, don’t they? I mean, they’re not just gibberish.”
“Certainly not,” Jack said. “I have never in my life committed any length of time to gibberish.”
“So, what does it mean?”
“I’m afraid, as I said, that I can’t tell you. I have not been sent to tell you everything. At least, not in the beginning. I’m here to be your guide, to help you understand.”
“Sent?” Jason said. “Sent by who?”
“By whom,” Jack said. “And we shall get to that page soon enough.”
“The whole world’s gone crazy,” Archer said. “This is unreal.”
“You keep saying that,” Jack said. “Or thinking it. As if you have any conception of what is more or less real in the first place. You imagine your world before things became inexplicable was more real and this world less so. But what if, in fact, it’s the other way around?”
“Is that a riddle?” Beatrice said, delighted at the prospect.
“My dear, to some it has been given to know the secrets, but to others it has not been given.”
Archer was not listening. Absentmindedly thumping The Green Notebook against his leg, he could not take his eyes off the bookcase.
“I want to see,” Beatrice said. “What do I do?”
“You must think hard on that great divide between what you sensed was real and what you think is not. Where was the line drawn? One moment you lived as you did, and now you live as you are. What happened?”
“That’s what we’re asking you,” Jason said. “We don’t know.”
“What’s the last thing you know?”
“The whole island had more people! Cars worked. Clocks worked. Everything worked! There was a whole country there, and now it’s gone.”
Jack looked at Beatrice. “You aren’t so sure, are you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You aren’t so sure that that wasn’t the dream.”
Jason said, “I had a family. Have a family. And they’re gone. Where did they go?”
Archer finally interjected. “Enough with the riddles, grandpa. Tell us what happened.”
“You’re a hard one, aren’t you?” Jack said. “I’ve already told you I can’t just give you the answers. Not straightaway. Not yet.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Properly speaking, both.”
“So you don’t want to give us the answers? You don’t want to help us?”
“I’m not able to want to. But even if I was able to want to, I still could not.”
“I just didn’t think this could get any weirder,” Archer said, exasperated.
“Let’s try it this way,” said Jack. “You tell me what happened.”
“But we don’t know,” Beatrice said. “That’s just the thing. That’s why we’re asking you.”
“No, no. I mean, just before all of this. What happened? What is your last memory of life as you knew it?”
The room grew quiet. Beatrice stared at the wood floor. Finally, she spoke, “I remember. I remember that my father was angry. I mean, he’s always angry. But he was especially angry. I remember him tearing about the house. He broke a glass in the sink. Just smashed it away right there into the sink. Bits of glass everywhere. He was shouting and . . .”
“Yes?” said Jack.
Jason looked at Beatrice’s face. A teardrop was swelling in the corner of her eye.
Meekly, she whispered, “I think I told him I was going to go away. I couldn’t live there any longer. I had done all I could to love him into something different. I wanted to. But I could see it wasn’t going to work. Or, you know, if it was going to happen, it wouldn’t be because of me. I think that’s right. I think I said I wanted to leave.”
“That’s the last thing you remember?” Jason asked.
“He did . . .” She hesitated. “He did something awful.”
Jack pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. Beatrice was practically curled up onto herself, her head nearly in her lap. She dabbed at her eyes behind the waterfall of hair that now obscured her face. Almost inaudibly she simply said, “He hurt me.”
She rose slowly then and gave Jason a mournful look before crossing the room and exiting the door.
“Should we go after her?” Jason asked.
“No,” said Jack. “She is composing herself. Give her a moment. But what of you lads? What do you remember?”
Jason looked at Archer, who was again staring at the bookcase.
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “We were camping. On the mainland. It was the last day. We were just heading back home. That was it.”
“We crashed,” Archer said, still not averting his gaze from the notebooks.
Jason looked at Jack. “That’s right. I almost forgot. We got in a crash. In Bradley’s jeep.”
He replayed everything in his head. The deer running out. The jeep careening over. Hanging upside down. The phones not working.
Before he said another word, Beatrice returned. Her eyes were still damp, but she was no longer crying. Jason continued. “After the crash, we started walking back.”
“The ambulance,” Archer said.
“Oh, right,” said Jason. “The ambulance blew right by us.”
“Just like . . .”
“Yeah. Just like we weren’t even there.”
Archer and Jason looked at each other. Their faces said, No. That can’t be it.
The boys looked at Jack. The man was grinning, coaxing them on from the desk chair with his relaxed demeanor.
It couldn’t be that.
“It can’t be,” Archer said out loud.
Even the stupid ferryman, thought Jason. He was wearing a Styx shirt. It couldn’t be more obvious.
The boys turned the corner of the trailer. Tereus was running down the yard after them. They had only seconds to make a move.
Bradley knew they couldn’t clear the ground between the trailer and the woods before their pursuer would catch sight of them. He’d shoot them both in the back before they could even reach the t
ree line.
Pure instinct was kicking in. If Bradley was exceptional at anything, it was fighting.
Looking down, he saw the white lattice at the bottom of the trailer. Without thinking, he reached down, grabbed hold of it, and pulled. A section gave way. I may not be that smart, but I am strong, he thought. He shoved Tim down. “Crawl,” he ordered.
Tim did not think to object. He wondered if he’d get caught under the trailer and be a sitting duck, but he promptly obeyed. His body felt numb from his captor’s abuse, but he wriggled quickly under the trailer. He kept crawling on his belly and forearms, toward the front of the house, farthest away from where Tereus was about to end up.
Bradley had two choices now. Make a break for the far end of the trailer and try to outflank the man, using the building as cover, or stay put. He decided to stay put, crouching down by the corner of the trailer, hoping his pursuer would come recklessly close to the side of it.
He did. Assuming the boys were making a break for the woods, Tereus darted along the side of the trailer at full speed. Right when he heard the closest footfall and the huffing of the man’s breath, Bradley launched himself, thick shoulder first, up and out into the man’s rib cage as he passed. Football seemed like a distant memory now, but it felt good to hit a man again.
There was a gentle crack in Tereus’s ribs and a loud whomp as he careened sideways and hit the ground.
He did not stay down long. No sooner had Tereus skidded to a stop in the grass than he was already clambering back up.
Bradley ran around to the front of the trailer. He remembered the guns.
He raced to the porch and through the door, shutting it behind him. To his surprise, Tim was inside.
“What on earth, man? I told you to go under!”
“I did. But I came back inside.”
“No duh. What are you doing?”
Tim was holding a kerosene lantern he’d found under the trailer in one hand and a lighter he’d grabbed off the kitchen counter in another. “I’m gonna burn the place down.”
“Not with us inside it, Biggie Smalls.”
Echo Island Page 13
