Lost: The Novels

by Catherine Hapka

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Jeff said. “I’m Jeff Hadley.”

  “Yes, Hurley told me,” she said. Looking out at the sea, she smiled and said, “It’s a little weird that we’ve never really met before. I mean, it isn’t like the population here is so huge.”

  Jeff nodded. It was very nice being in the company of a lovely woman again and he spent a moment simply enjoying his proximity to her. He said, “Perhaps Hurley also told you that I’ve tended to keep my own counsel.”

  “I know how that is,” Kate said. “I feel that way myself a lot of the time.” She looked at him. “What’s the accent? Not Australian?”

  “No, this thick burr is pure Scots,” he said. “Except for the ten years I lived in London, I’ve been a citizen of Scotland.”

  Kate said, “This isn’t much like Scotland, is it?”

  “There are more similarities than you’d think,” he said. “I was brought up on an island. Granted, the isle of Arran is a bit bleaker and rockier than this, but still…”

  “An island. Ironic, huh?” Kate said.

  “Ironic indeed. I was born on an island and now it seems I’ll die on an island,” Jeff said with a rueful smile.

  “Don’t talk that way,” Kate said, frowning.

  Jeff nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve nothing to go back to even if we are rescued,” he said. “So I guess I don’t much care if I ever get home or not.”

  Kate gazed at Jeff with sympathetic eyes, almost as if she felt the same way. Then her face brightened a little, as if she were forcing herself to be positive. “I can see that we’re going to have to get you cheered up a little.”

  Jeff smiled at her. “You’ll find it hard to believe, but I actually feel better now than I have at any time since we got here. It’s nice talking to people again.”

  A voice called from down the beach, “Kate!”

  Kate said, “It sounds like they need my extraordinary organizational skills.” She stood up and dusted the sand off her jeans. “It was nice meeting you, Jeff,” she said. “I want to hear more about that other island one of these days.”

  “Any time,” Jeff said, rising beside her. They shook hands again and Kate went back to the cooking fire. Jeff watched her walking away, noting every detail of her attractive body.

  God, he thought. I miss Savannah.

  The boar meat wasn’t properly cooked until nearly nine o’clock. The islanders used broad, heavy leaves as plates. His fellow survivors seemed so congenial that Jeff was rather puzzled as to why he had spent so long avoiding them all. He stretched out on the beach, enjoying the sights, sounds, and aromas of the evening. He felt himself dozing off when he heard Michael’s voice.

  “I brought you some pork,” he said, handing Jeff a frond laden with steaming meat.

  Jeff sat up and took the meal. “Thanks. What, no gravy?”

  Michael laughed. “Yeah, and no apple pie for dessert, either.” Michael put his hand on the shoulder of the boy standing next to him. “Jeff, I’d like you to meet my son, Walt.”

  Jeff shook Walt’s hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Walt. I’ve seen you with your dad.”

  Walt nodded. “How come I never saw you before?”

  Jeff smiled sheepishly and Michael nudged his son and said with a tone of fatherly warning, “Walt…”

  “It’s like this, Walt,” Jeff said as Michael and Walt sat down in the sand. “I guess I’ve just been keeping to myself a bit too much.” He nodded toward the party. A man and a woman were dancing to Charlie’s music; it was nice to see. “Now I’m wondering why I did. I guess coming to the island was a bit of a shock to me.”

  Walt rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

  The three of them laughed and then were silent for a few moments as they enjoyed their meal.

  “My dad told me you’re an artist, like him,” Walt said.

  Jeff nodded. “That’s right. I’m a painter.”

  “A famous painter,” Michael said. When Jeff looked at him oddly, Michael said sheepishly, “I asked around. Locke knew all about you. Went to your exhibit in Sydney. He says you’re real good.”

  Jeff laughed. “Locke, pig sticker and art critic!” he said. “I’ll have to thank him for the kind words.”

  Walt said, “Have you ever drawn any comic books?”

  Jeff shook his head. “Sadly, I have not,” he said.

  Walt looked a little disappointed. “Well,” he said, “I hope you do someday. Comic books are cool.”

  “I think so, too,” Jeff said. “In fact, in my collection back home, I have an original Prince Valiant Sunday strip autographed by Hal Foster.”

  Both Walt and Michael looked at Jeff blankly.

  “Prince Valiant,” Jeff repeated. “Classic comic strip. One of the great…” He gave up and laughed. “Before your time, I suppose.”

  Michael said, “Before your time, too, I bet. You aren’t any older than me.”

  “Not in years, maybe,” Jeff said, “but far older in terms of bad behavior.”

  Walt said, “My dad said you have some art here. Did you bring it with you on the plane?”

  “No,” Jeff said. “I’ve been making things since I got here, but I’m afraid they’re not very good. And they’re certainly nothing like what I used to do.”

  “Can I see some?” Walt asked.

  Michael nodded. “Yeah, I’d love to see some, too.”

  Jeff shook his head. “It’s too dark in the studio.”

  Michael reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flashlight. “Ta da!” he sang.

  “Where in the world…?” Jeff said.

  “We found a bunch of them in various suitcases,” Michael said. “We try not to use them much—preserve the batteries as long as possible. But I figure this is a special occasion.”

  Jeff sighed and stood up. The other two stood up, too. “All right,” he said reluctantly, “but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  They followed him through the narrow opening of the studio and Michael flipped on the flashlight. All the pieces sat on the ground, leaning against the “wall” of the studio, and Michael slowly rotated the beam around the circle of artifacts.

  Jeff saw that Walt was frowning. “Sorry, Walt,” he said. “I told you that you wouldn’t like them.”

  “No,” Walt said. “I do. They’re cool.” He looked at Jeff. “If you ever start doing comic books, you ought to make them horror comics.”

  It had been an exhausting day and as soon as Michael and Walt left the studio, Jeff stretched out on his pallet and went to sleep. Instantly, he was back in the terrifying dreamscape. The creatures still stood with the baby held overhead and the mutilated body of the woman still lay on the ground in a swamp of blood. More than ever, Jeff wanted to turn and run screaming from the vision but, like always, he was rooted to the spot.

  As he stared, gaping in horror, the woman stood up. She took the baby from the thing that held it and cradled it in her arms, a pietà bathed in gore. Now something that Jeff had felt in the previous dreams became evident in heartbreaking clarity—the woman was indeed Savannah. The baby was no longer wailing; it appeared to be dead. Weeping silently, Savannah lay the child down on the ground and, gazing directly into Jeff’s eyes, extended her arms. High on her arm were tattoos of the shapes she used to sketch. In his dream, Jeff could almost read them, as if the language they represented was becoming clear to him.

  But he was immediately distracted from the hieroglyphics. Further down her arm, Savannah’s wrists were crisscrossed by jagged gashes.

  When the sun arose a few hours later, it found Jeff already awake, sobbing.

  17

  HURLEY SURVEYED THE GROUND carefully. The tension was overwhelming. It was a life-or-death moment. One miscalculation and all would be lost.

  Sawyer growled impatiently, “Will you go ahead and swing, already?”

  Hurley gripped the golf club tightly and made a few tentative swipes down toward the ball. “Patience is a
virtue, my man,” he said. He pulled the club back and then brought it down in a perfect sweeping arc. The golf ball sailed down the long slope toward a tiny flag in the distance. “Genius!” he crowed, a note of triumph in his voice.

  “Genius, my ass,” Sawyer said. “Watch and learn.”

  As Sawyer placed his ball on the tee, a voice called out, “Terrific shot!”

  Hurley and Sawyer turned to see Jeff approaching. Hurley said, “Oh, hey, Jeff. Sawyer, this is Jeff. Jeff, Sawyer.” Jeff held out his hand, but Sawyer just nodded curtly and turned back to the ball. “Shootin’ here,” he said.

  Sawyer swung at the ball, knocking it far to the left, where it landed in a copse of trees.

  “Crap!” Sawyer said, flinging the club to the ground. He glared at Jeff and muttered, “So much for concentration.” Then he picked up the club and stalked off toward the rough. He called back, “It’s your shot!”

  Hurley shrugged apologetically to Jeff. “It’s Sawyer, y’know?” he said. “He’s not Mr. Personality.”

  Jeff smiled. “I shouldn’t have interrupted,” he said. “But I need to ask you something. Something I don’t want anybody else to know about.”

  Hurley looked at Jeff dubiously. “Aw, listen…” he said.

  “No, no, no,” Jeff said. “This won’t involve you at all.”

  Hurley started walking toward his ball. Jeff followed close behind. Hurley said, “You want to know how to get to the caves we were talking about, right?”

  Jeff was surprised. “Right,” he said. “How did you know?”

  Hurley said, “Hey, I only look stupid.”

  Jeff protested, “You don’t look stupid.”

  Hurley shook his head. “I was kidding. Jeez, dude. Anyway, Locke would slice me up like that boar if I got in on this.”

  “I’m not asking you to get in on it,” Jeff said. “Just give me directions. I know you’ve been there.”

  “What, are you planning on going there by yourself?” Hurley said.

  “Yes,” Jeff answered. “I have to do it.”

  “Would it make any difference if I told you that you were a fool for doing it?” Hurley said.

  “Hey,” Jeff said, smiling. “I only look like a fool.”

  Jeff had assumed that the journey would require a map, and he had brought pen and paper along to help Hurley sketch it out. But the directions were so simple that he had had to write nothing down. The caves were only a mile from the beach, so Jeff figured he could make it there in under an hour, even if he had to slash through thick vegetation on the way. With luck, he could get there and back before anybody—meaning Locke—had even noticed that he was gone.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon watching Hurley and Sawyer’s increasingly contentious golf game. When Hurley won, Jeff thought Sawyer was going to fling his club into the sea, like a character in a cartoon. He didn’t know the conditions of their wager, but losing seemed particularly galling to Sawyer.

  He stormed off ahead and Jeff and Hurley walked back in a more leisurely manner. “I would’ve made a good golf hustler,” Hurley said. “Everybody takes one look at me and expects me to suck.”

  Jeff said with a grin, “Well, I’m forewarned. If we ever play a game, I’ll only wager what I can afford to lose.”

  Hurley said, “How about if I win, you don’t go to the cave?”

  “Good try, Hurley,” Jeff said. “But I’m going. Just do me a favor and keep it under your hat.”

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Hurley said. “But I sure wish you’d think this over, dude.”

  Jeff got little sleep that night. When he awoke before dawn, his first thought was one of surprise that he hadn’t experienced one of his nightmares. They had been occurring every night, so why not this night?

  Together with Hurley, Jeff had figured out an alternate way to get to the caves by looping around the camp. It would make the trip a little longer but it would lessen the chance that someone would see him walking into the jungle alone. But even adding this detour, the trip promised to be straightforward.

  It was still dark when he slipped out of the studio and padded quietly down to the beach. As far as he could tell, no one else was stirring yet, but he frequently looked back, just to make sure that he was leaving camp unnoticed.

  When he had gone about a mile down the beach, he reached a small inlet fed by a waterfall about eight feet high. This was the first signpost that Hurley had alerted him to. Jeff turned right and headed into the jungle. By now the sunrise was sending golden rays through the trees and Jeff had no problem seeing where he was going.

  He wanted to get back before anyone noticed his absence and frequently edged into a quick trot through the trees. But even as he did so, he chuckled at the irony.

  Practically nobody even noticed I was on the island up until now, he thought. And now I’m worried that they’re all running around shouting, “Where’s Jeff?” I could be gone for a week and no one would miss me.

  But even though he suspected this was really true, he continued to jog along, eager to get to the place where his mystery would be solved.

  I hope…

  The sun was high on the horizon when he spotted it. From this distance, a few hundred yards away, it looked like a giant rock jutting out of the lush greenery that surrounded it. It reminded him uncomfortably of the rocky mount they had fled to two days earlier, and Jeff began listening closely for any signs that the invisible beast was on his trail again.

  But he heard nothing. Then it struck him—he really heard nothing. He stood stock still and strained to hear any sound, but he didn’t hear even the screeching and squawking of the jungle birds that normally gave the island its ’round-the-clock soundtrack. The eerie silence seemed to deepen the closer Jeff came.

  And with the silence came an irrational fear. When Locke warned him against coming here, he had assumed the danger was physical. Now, Jeff wasn’t so sure. He was no believer in the supernatural, but this felt like a haunted place to him. It seemed to him that the temperature dropped markedly when he stepped into the clearing.

  As unnerved as he was, Jeff was totally fascinated by the sight before him. It was a cluster of caves, nestled by the waterfall. Most of them had small entrances, only a couple of feet high in some cases. But the opening of the cave directly beside the falling water was tall enough for an upright man to enter. It looked so dark and foreboding to Jeff that he could barely summon the courage to go in. But after a faltering moment, he took a deep breath and stepped forward. He had to go in. He had no choice.

  Jeff took out the flashlight, turned it on, and aimed it at the dark interior. Later, he’d have to thank Michael for telling him about the cache of flashlights—this task would have been a lot more difficult without one.

  Stepping cautiously, he walked through the cave’s entrance. Once inside, he gasped with awe.

  The interior was dark, of course. There was also a thick wall of vegetation that had snaked its way through openings or cracks in the cave’s walls.

  But he didn’t see any designs such as the ones Hurley claimed to have seen.

  It was then that a sound came from beyond the wall of the cave. It sounded to Jeff like a gust of wind mixed with a groan of agony. It was, he realized with a chill of horror, a sound he had heard in his dreams.

  Quaking with fear, he walked toward the wall. Thick vines and leaves obscured it. When Jeff heard the sound a second time, he began ripping away at the vegetation. And carved on the wall was the talisman.

  The groan sounded again, louder. It was a gruesome sound and every fiber of Jeff’s being urged him to turn and run. But he knew there was an answer here. He knew he had to find out what was happening to him.

  Ripping away more of the plants, Jeff noticed another opening. He cleared more vines away, revealing another cave. With each second, the groan sounded again, louder and louder, as if whatever was in there was coming closer.

  Jeff wondered if he was dreaming again. Maybe this was why he ha
dn’t had a nightmare last night—because the nightmare was still in progress. In some strange way, the possibility gave him additional courage. He had never been hurt in one of his nightmares. He always woke up. So, obviously, he was safe now.

  Unless this wasn’t a dream.

  Giving one last desperate pull, Jeff cleared away enough vegetation for him to pass through. Jeff had expected the place to be dark and so was shocked to find that it was lit even better than the cave he had just left. Light filtered in through cracks in the south wall of the cave. The size of the chamber seemed completely out of scale with the other cave, almost as if it were of entirely different dimensions on the inside as on the exterior.

  With creeping dread, Jeff confirmed what he had feared for so long—the eerie chamber was precisely the same place as the one he had visited in his terrible dreams. Only it was real. He knew for certain now that he was not dreaming—but he was enmeshed in a nightmare.

  On the wall just ahead was a mural of elaborate and disturbing imagery. Jeff recognized many of the designs from his own island work, and many more that he had first seen in Savannah’s sketchbook. But there was one difference—this horrible artwork was painted in what appeared to be blood.

  As he stared at the art, transfixed in fear, he heard a low whispering from deeper in the chamber. Once again the groan sounded. But this time there was something else. With horrifying clarity he heard a woman’s plaintive voice. The voice murmured:

  “Jeff…”

  18

  JEFF TOOK A CAB to the Sydney Airport and wheeled his single large suitcase into the terminal. He had always tended to be a little anxious about arriving late and missing flights, so he checked the departures monitor in the Oceanic terminal just to make sure that everything was on schedule. He realized with a groan that he had been a bit too efficient in getting ready for this trip and had over two hours to kill before boarding time.

  He checked his bag, endured the long security line, which snaked around like a compressed S, and then located his gate in the International Terminal. He stepped over to a book and magazine stand, selected a paperback mystery novel, and bought it, along with a pack of chewing gum. Gum annoyed him under any other circumstances, but during takeoff and landing he had made himself believe that chewing the foul stuff helped to relieve the pressure in his ears. He had also been told that yawning widely would accomplish the same thing, but he always felt a little foolish trying to induce a yawn.