by Margi Preus
25
Under Ground
She’d wasted a lot of time on that little fiasco, she thought, as she jumped out of Buck’s boat into knee-deep water, then waded onto the island. The island was just a rounded slab of granite on which enough dirt had collected over the centuries to support a small grove of red pines. It wouldn’t take long to traverse it to get back to her kayak, but she still had to paddle back to Sandy’s.
As she rounded the corner, she saw Potter. His boat was pulled into a small, protected cove, and he was hauling empty buckets out of his boat and setting them onto the beach.
He seemed startled to see her; he explained that he came out to the island sometimes to get clay. There was nice clay at that spot. He liked it for raku pottery. Where was her boat? he wondered. She said she had a kayak on the other side of the island. Ah, he said, he hadn’t noticed it.
She climbed the rise of the island and had just started down the other side of the hill when she heard a familiar sound that stopped her in her tracks. Ka-chink. It was the smack and clang of a shovel hitting dirt—or in this case, clay. That was the sound she’d heard in the middle of the night. It had been that exact rhythm.
So, it had been Potter. Digging something up. Or burying something. Or whatever the heck he was doing. She tried to remain calm, but a flutter of fear ran through her and her breath came in short, painful stabs. Why? He was just digging up clay. And he had maybe been digging clay out there in the woods the previous night at 2 a.m. for some perfectly rational reason. So she should just remain calm.
But she keenly felt how alone she was. Goosebumps were cropping up on her arms and the back of her neck. Her scalp crawled. A sudden wind came up off the lake that made her shiver. There was a killer loose somewhere, maybe on this island. Nels’s admonition to be careful came back to haunt her.
Okay. Fine. She’d just paddle home and talk to Potter later when she wasn’t so vulnerable to him and his shovel.
She jogged down the hill toward her kayak. The wind in the tops of the pines made a beautiful but mournful sound. That, and the waves rushing up on the shore, made her feel lonely and a little forlorn.
Then she realized that she was going to have to paddle back in this wind and these waves. She wondered if she could manage it. But that concern paled when she arrived at the spot where she had left her kayak and found that it was no longer there. Here was the paddle, but where was the boat? Then she noticed the cheery splotch of bright yellow bobbing in the waves, quickly racing away from the island. She put the binoculars to her face. Yep. The kayak, and in it her brand-new, expensive dress, her purse, and her phone.
Crap, crap, crappity crap. She must not have dragged it far enough up on shore, and when the wind came up, it must have blown away. Except the wind was from the other direction. Had her kayak drifted away on its own? Or had someone else pushed it off the island on purpose?
Him. Potter.
She felt as if a stone had lodged somewhere in her esophagus. She was stuck on this tiny island with a killer. You don’t know that, she told herself.
How had he known she was here? He’d seen her at the post office. He might have followed her here and known she’d be alone on this island. He’d said he hadn’t seen her boat when he went by. He could have been lying. He probably lied about everything. Her mind raced over everything he’d ever said to her. What had been a lie? What had he been mailing in those packages at the post office? Was Ginger involved in all of this in some way? Or was his relationship with her just a way to—her scalp crawled when the realization hit; her heart pounded away in its pretty silver box like a pair of fists. Was his relationship with Ginger related to T.J. somehow?
She listened to Potter shoveling, the clink and scrape of the shovel working its way into the heavy clay. Was he really digging up clay? Or was he digging a hole? A Francie-sized hole?
No, no, no, no, she thought. She had just let her imagination run rampant. Potter was just a regular guy, and right now he was her only ride off this island. She couldn’t stay out here all bloody night! Her aunts were in jail, after all.
Francie picked up the kayak paddle and started to climb the hill. She would just ask him for a ride. How hard was that?
Her steps slowed as she gained the crest of the hill. She tried to talk her heart out of her throat and back in its box where it belonged.
Peeking around the trunk of a big, fat pine, she watched Potter working away at his task. His boat, pulled halfway onto the beach, bobbed up and down like an impatient horse tugging at its reins while Potter dumped shovelfuls of clay into plastic ten-gallon buckets. Maybe her Aunt Astrid had been right about the island getting smaller; after all, Potter was hauling buckets of it away.
Among the white pails was a smaller, squat something that looked vaguely familiar. She put the binoculars to her eyes to get a better look.
Holy crockery! Could it be? It was the very casserole dish that Astrid had described: brown pottery with images of fish on the sides.
Francie backed off the crest of the ridge in a crouch and ran down the hill to the shelter of the pines where she leaned up against one of them and let a wave of nausea wash over her. Slowly, she slid to the ground and collapsed.
The sky between the boughs was a deep, endless, and mesmerizing blue. The boughs swayed gently back and forth, back and forth. Memories of long-ago picnics she’d had with her brother on the island came back to her. He’d skip stones while she packed clamshells with the sticky sand she now realized had been clay—the coveted clay that Potter was digging up. Clay. Potter.
She felt like all the pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle were there, scattered in her brain, and all she had to do was assemble them and she would understand all this. But it was one of those crazy thousand-piece puzzles, a picture of sea and sky, with tiny little pieces, every single one of them blue.
What if Potter came looking for her? Where could she possibly hide?
Oh, to fall asleep to the drowsy sounds of the wind among the pine needles, just sleep until somebody took care of everything: solved the mystery, sprang her aunts from jail, righted all the wrongs, and came to rescue her. I love to lie down weary / under the stalk of sleep / growing slowly out of my head, / the dark leaves meshing were lines from a poem in that book by her bed. She didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but whatever it was, she wanted it right now; she really wanted to lie down weary and mesh into the moss and old needles and dark leaves.
Maybe she could, she thought. She remembered a long time ago when she and her brother, maybe even here, had been playing hide-and-seek, and there had been no good hiding places. She had hidden by lifting up a layer of moss—as if it were the edge of a carpet—and climbing under it.
Francie rose to her knees, stripped off her sweatshirt, and laid it on the ground. She peeled back the carpet of moss and started digging. Using the blade of the paddle, she dug up earth and duff and piled the stuff onto her shirt. When her shirt was full, she carried it down to the lake and flung the dirt to the wind and waves. Then back to her grave digging. Don’t think of it as a grave, she told herself. It’s a hiding place. Only if I need it.
When she was finished, she crept up the hill and hid behind the big-trunked tree and peered down toward where she’d last seen Potter. He was loading buckets into his boat. Then, still holding onto his shovel, he started up the hill toward her.
Francie’s breath came in short stabs. Had he seen her? As soon as he dropped his head, she turned and raced down the hill toward her hiding place. Without pausing to think about it too much, Francie crawled under the moss blanket, pulling it over her as if she were snuggling into bed. She tried to imagine herself as being invisible and hoped that, aboveground, there was not an obvious outline of a person.
The ground around her was cool and moldy smelling, a heavy smell that brought her back to her childhood when she’d hidden this way. It had been the summer before the Accident. Her father had been very busy with something; she didn’t know or remembe
r what, so she and her brother had been left to fend for themselves, and she remembered it as a glorious summer of freedom. The smell of damp earth and moldering pine needles brought back that feeling of being a wild child of earth, a little bit animal, a little bit magical.
It made her recall something else, too, a memory as old and musty as the ground smelled. So vague it seemed like a dream, or perhaps it was. A memory of her mother. Maybe because she lay so still, she was finally still enough to feel this vibration that she felt so certain was her mother’s being. Francie suddenly felt—no, she knew—her mother was still alive.
Even with a thick layer of moss and dirt over her head, Francie heard the footsteps approach, or maybe she didn’t hear them so much as feel them. The ground was so soft and springy that the effect of a single footfall created a kind of wave of movement in the soft turf.
Is this what it was like to be dead, she wondered, as she lay there so still. Well, except if you were dead, you wouldn’t be inhaling the dirt and duff and moldering earth. You wouldn’t be feeling the rise and fall of your chest, still breathing, or the desperate thrum of your heart, still beating.
What was going on out there? Was Potter standing over her, shovel raised, about to bring its sharpened edge down? The thought made her skin crawl. Also, the thought of what might be crawling on her skin made her skin crawl.
There was a long pause, during which she tried not to breathe and, more terribly, not to sneeze. Finally, Francie felt the thump of footsteps retreating. Then silence.
After a long while, she lifted one corner of moss by her head and heard the scrape of boat aluminum on the sand, then the cough and sputter of a motor starting up, and finally the motor’s buzzing hum, receding, eventually swallowed by the wind. Was he gone?
Francie waited a long, long time before climbing out of her mossy hiding place. She stood, brushed herself off, and, shielding her eyes with her hand, looked out and saw the boat, a small spot on the lake, moving away.
Now what are you going to do? she asked herself. You’re still up a creek with only a paddle. You’re stuck out here until who knows when. You should have taken a ride.
She’d just have to wait until somebody came to get her. Somebody would come for her eventually, wouldn’t they? Sandy. He knew where she was. He’d worry when she didn’t show up. Right?
Oh! But she was supposed to go to the Fredericksons’. She wondered what time it was and how much time she had until she was due there at nine o’clock. If she’d had the kayak, it might have worked out. She probably would even have had time to eat something. Her stomach was an empty breadbox.
What if she had to spend the night out here? A sleeping bag would be nice. Even a book of matches would be helpful. She felt in the pockets of her shorts and her sweatshirt: a tube of lip gloss, a small pebble she thought might be an agate. A hair tie that she pulled out and used to put her hair in a ponytail.
Maybe she could find something on the island. Kids were always coming out here to drink beer and shoot off fireworks. Who knew what she might find? She began scouring the island. A few beer cans—empty—some broken glass, plastic crap, a chunk of Styrofoam. When you started looking, it was apparent how much garbage there was. Near an old bonfire pit she found some spent fireworks and even a few unspent ones in a sealed plastic bag—a handful of firecrackers and miscellaneous stuff she couldn’t identify. She didn’t have any matches, but she stuffed the bag in her sweatshirt pocket anyway.
The day had been bright, but now the shadows of the trees sprawled dark and oblique across the island and left inky black splotches on the lake. Ominous clouds massed on the western horizon like an oncoming army.
Francie realized her legs were shaking. In fact, she was quivering all over. Chilly. And scared. Relax, she told herself, he’s gone. I’m alone. I’m safe. She let herself sink down on the soft ground, inhaling the sharply sweet smell of sun-warmed pine needles. Out of the wind it was warm, especially here in this patch of sun. She curled up in the duff. I won’t sleep, she thought. I’ll just close my eyes for a moment.
But she must have fallen asleep because when she opened her eyes again, it was dark. But not so dark that she couldn’t tell who was standing over her.
26
Under Water
“Potter!” Francie sat up, her hand simultaneously curling around the kayak paddle.
“I’m surprised to see you,” Potter said. “I looked all over for you earlier. How did you manage to disappear?”
“Magic.” Francie swung the paddle as hard as she could, the blade catching him in the shins. As Potter went down, Francie leaped up and took off running.
Just where did she think she was going to go? Were they going to run around and around the island the way squirrels chased each other around tree trunks, until you couldn’t tell who was chasing who? (Or was it who was chasing whom?)
She wished a tree would sweep her up into its branches. She wished the forest would swallow her. There was a favorite story from her childhood in which a fleeing maiden threw over her shoulder what she had at hand: a comb that magically grew a thick forest, a mirror that spread into a deep, cold lake.
The only thing she had in her pocket was a tube of lip gloss, which she couldn’t think how to use. That and the fireworks. The fireworks could have been of use if she’d had a way to light them.
How was she going to get away? Run in a zigzag pattern if someone is shooting at you, she remembered learning from the fight choreographer on the show. It’s harder to aim at a zigzagging target. Another bit of useless information, since Potter wasn’t shooting at her. Instead, probably because of the zigzagging, he was gaining on her.
Then her foot caught in a root and she felt herself flying forward, felt her hands and arms plowing through the duff.
Potter reached her before she had a chance to even get up. “What’s your problem?” he cried. “Why are you running away and whacking me and stuff? How did you get here? I saw your kayak bobbing empty in the lake, and I didn’t think you were still on the island, so I was afraid—”
A series of short pops at some distance interrupted him. Firecrackers, Francie thought bitterly. Someone had a lighter. Somewhere distant.
“What was that?” Potter said.
Francie paused. It had grown darker in just the time they’d been running around the island—that dark bank of clouds must have arrived. Because of it, she couldn’t see Potter’s face, couldn’t see his expression.
“And that?” Potter stood up stiffly, tilting his head. “What’s that?”
Just barely, above the sound of the wind, Francie made out the drone of a boat motor. Coming toward the island? she wondered. No, shoot! Going away.
“A boat?” Francie said.
“No, I mean that smell,” Potter said. “Smoke.”
Now Francie smelled it, too. Someone having a bonfire?
Small flames appeared over the rise of the island, growing larger and licking at the trunks of the tall pines. Sparks spurted like fireworks into the night sky.
“Fire!” Francie cried, over the crackling and snapping of the fire. “Run!”
“The boat!” Potter yelled back. “There are buckets in my boat—maybe we can put it out.”
But the wind had fanned the flames into a roaring conflagration, which jumped to the surrounding brush in the moment it took Francie to turn and look. A couple of small, dead pines nearby sizzled and burst into flame. Francie leaped up and ran after Potter, holding her shirt over her face against the choking smoke.
At Potter’s boat, they found the buckets, dumped the clay out of a couple of them, refilled them with water, then turned back to face a wall of flames.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the acrid smoke and flung the water at the fire. “It’s no use! We’ve got to get out of here! Get in the boat,” she shouted above the roar of wind and fire. “I’ll shove off.”
Potter crawled in and made his way to the motor while she pushed the boat away from the shore,
then jumped in. When the motor came to life, Potter backed the boat out into the lake. Angry waves sloshed over the side as he maneuvered into the wind.
The relief of getting away was tempered by the anguish of watching the flames devour the island. Soon, though, Francie’s attention was brought back to the boat, because something was wrong. The boat rocked sluggishly; it didn’t seem to move properly. Then Francie noticed her feet were underwater.
“Criminy!” she yelped. “Does your boat always leak like this?”
“No!” Potter said, “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Francie watched as water seeped through a series of holes on the side of the boat. “Your boat has holes in it,” she shouted.
Potter slung a string of cusswords at the wind.
“Where are your life jackets?” Francie hollered.
More cussing. “I don’t know!” Potter cried. “They were here earlier.”
Great, Francie thought. Just great. Well, lighten the load, she supposed, and started heaving clay over the side. Then bailing. She bailed as fast as she could, but the lake poured in while the boat rolled unpleasantly. With every swell the lake threatened to capsize them.
The boat plowed along so sluggishly, Francie wondered if they were getting anywhere. She glanced back at the island. Nearly half of it was engulfed in flames.
Overhead, the heavens announced their wrath with an enormous clap of thunder, a jolt of lightning, and rain in the form of a sudden downpour.
Oh, thank the rainy heavens, she thought; maybe it’ll put out the fire. But then she realized it meant more water! Rain will sink us even quicker.
Francie bailed faster, but she could see she was losing the battle. Water, water everywhere: water up to her knees, more water rushing in. She was soaked through, and still the island burned.
Had they escaped being burned to death only to drown?
The hum of fear. That’s what it must be, this other buzzing hum, its pitch slightly different from the sound of their own motor—more insistent, more urgent, more purposeful.
