Terminal Island

by Walter Greatshell

  “I think there’s a little more to it than that.”

  “Maybe so, but think of what you could do if you had the resources of a whole town at your disposal. I mean banks, police, mail—everything. You could kill and impersonate anybody, make all kinds of phony verification and just absorb their assets.”

  “Oh boy...”

  “I’m serious! You could do anything you wanted with them because they wouldn’t exist except on paper. They’d be ghosts—golden ghosts. And that’s exactly what I can’t stop thinking about: the idea that this island is a haunted gold mine.”

  Ruby puts down her camera.

  “Honey,” she says, “you’re nuts.”

  * * *

  On Monday, Miss Graves made an announcement:

  “Now, last week, because it was the first week of school, I let you all use your playground time as you saw fit so you could get to know each other, but starting today it’s going to be a major part of your grade. That means I expect you all to form teams and engage in some kind of sports activity. I’ll be monitoring you, so no dawdling around.”

  Gee, what a surprise, Henry thought. Why should things ever be simple?

  As he expected, no one asked him to join their team. Hardly anyone had spoken to him the previous week, nor he to them, so he hadn’t developed any friendships. He didn’t think it was a deliberate snub; most of the students had known each other all their lives, and fell into their usual groupings out of habit. An outsider by nature and circumstance, Henry didn’t blame them—he had no interest in forcing himself on anyone. How could adults expect kids to do such things? It was something that happened gradually. So he hung around the sidelines, not really troubling much about it.

  What made it easier was that he was not entirely alone. There were two other boys loitering outside the action, literally straddling the fence—the wooden perimeter fence surrounding the playground. They sat on it every recess, as if in contempt of the silly games being played below. One was the fat boy Henry had briefly spoken to the first day, the other a frail-looking blond kid. Henry had noticed them immediately—they had their own little clique of two, and were obviously outcasts from the larger school society. Misfits like himself. He liked that it didn’t seem to bother them, and slowly gravitated in their direction.

  “…what a fuckin’ joke,” he overheard the bigger kid saying. “I swear, if Lisa says one more thing to me, I’m gonna cut her heart out and make her look at it while she dies. She thinks she’s such hot shit. She won’t think she’s so boss after I cut her tits off.”

  “That’s so righteous,” the other sniggered.

  “I’m serious, I don’t need her bullshit—” The kid noticed Henry and nudged his friend.

  Henry took the opening: “Hey,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” the big one said disinterestedly.

  “Nothing much. Listen, I was just wondering how this whole P.E. thing works—I mean, how do they expect us to join in once the teams are all picked?”

  “Exactly,” the large boy said, dripping sarcasm.

  “Well, what are you guys gonna do?”

  “We’re doing it. Fuck them.”

  This was exactly the kind of thing Henry was hoping to hear. “Cool,” he said. “Um, is it okay if I hang with you guys?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Thanks.” He took a seat on the fence, basking in rebel attitude. “My name’s Henry.”

  “I’m Kevin, and this is Wade.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “You’re new here.”

  “Yeah, me and my mom just moved here.”

  “From where?”

  “L.A.”

  “L.A.? Why’d you want to come here? It blows.”

  “Not as much as where I came from.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “Are you from here? Both of you?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “What’s so bad about it?”

  The big kid, Kevin, replied, “Everything. Everybody is up everybody else’s ass all the time, watching everything you do like you’re under a fucking microscope. Anybody who doesn’t live up on the hill is shit—they’re all so fucking stuck-up. Look at those bitches over there. All they care about is telling everybody else what to do, just like their fucking moms. Not like there’s anything to do here anyway. You can’t even have a car, and even if you could there’s nowhere to go. Fucking golf carts. How can you raise hell driving a golf cart? Man, when I turn seventeen, I’m going to get out of this fuckin’ place so fast they’ll get whiplash watchin’ me go. Move to Hollywood, get me a Stingray with mag wheels. They can keep their island and their temple and all the tourist to suck off—”

  “Plus there’s Zagreus,” said the blond kid.

  There was an awkward pause. The fat kid shot the other a threatening look, as if to say, Shut up, dumb-ass.

  “What’s Zagreus?” Henry asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Forget about it. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why not? Come on.”

  “It’s not cool to talk about it. Seriously.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean things have a way of happening around here.”

  Henry confided, “I’ve already heard of some pretty weird things.”

  “You did, huh? What did you hear?”

  “Stuff about…like, animal sacrifices and stuff?”

  The big kid sneered, “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. This guy who works here over the summer.”

  “Is his last name Ragmont?”

  This startled Henry so much that he was at a loss for what to say, suddenly reminded of the burning boat. Hair standing on end, he chose his next words very carefully. “N-no,” he fumbled. “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, what’s his first name?”

  “Um…Man—Manny? I’m pretty sure it was Manny. I don’t really know him that well.”

  “Huh.” The boy nodded slowly. “Well, one thing you need to know about living here is that there’s nothing to do but talk, and people will say anything just to keep from going apeshit. The rumors go around and around until they snowball to fucking epic proportions. It’s mostly half-assed...but there are a few things that are true.”

  Kevin squinted at Henry in an appraising way, then scanned their surroundings for eavesdroppers. Apparently deciding the coast was clear, he said in a low tone, “Like what happened right on this playground a couple years ago.”

  “Oh yeah, this was sick,” said the blonde boy, Wade, squirming with delight.

  “Why? What happened?” Henry asked.

  “Well, this is a story that got hushed up. It’s taboo to talk about it, especially to outsiders. But since you live here now…”

  Henry nodded solemnly, acknowledging the privilege.

  “It was the Monday right after Easter vacation. The whole class was outside, just like this. It looked like it was gonna rain any minute, so nobody wanted to start any games—everybody was just standing around waiting for the first drop. Suddenly we hear this loud noise coming down the hillside, crashing through the bushes like an avalanche.”

  “It was a bison!” the skinny kid erupted.

  “Shut up, Wade. Yeah, we turn around, and out of the trees comes this total mother of a buffalo, just charging down onto the playground.”

  “Wow,” said Henry. “A wild buffalo?”

  “Yeah. It stank, man. It was like all black and slimy with blood, and had this bloody shit coming out of its nose and big red eyes rolling around like crazy in its ugly-ass head—”

  “Its tongue was hanging out like three feet!” said the other boy, drooling in imitation.

  “Gross,” said Henry.

  “It looked fuckin’ berserk, dude,” said Kevin, “like it wanted to kill somebody, which it did. It was blowing smoke like a fuckin’ locomotive.”

  “What did you do
?”

  “Duh, what do you think I did? Same thing as everybody else: Ran like hell.” Kevin lowered his voice. “But one kid didn’t move fast enough—this fourth-grade girl named Margo Pond. She was wearing a red dress, and the buffalo went right for her.”

  “Oh man,” Henry said, feeling queasy.

  “It ran her down and just trampled her to bits. I mean it just kept grinding her, you know? It kept on grinding and grinding her with its hooves, scattering her around until there was nothing left but this kind of...glop.”

  The way he described it made Henry flash queasily on the cat in the road, the one that had been run over again and again in front of the Del Monte Hotel. That trampled pulp like raw hamburger. He really didn’t want to hear this.

  The boy went on, “In a way it was lucky for the rest of us, because it gave us time to get indoors. We all hid in the building while they called for the sheriff to come shoot it and put it out of its misery. Bastard took nine bullets, and then they had to scrape Margo up with a shovel.”

  Trying to dispel the ghastly image, Henry asked, “What was wrong with the buffalo? Was it sick?”

  Before the heavy kid could speak, the skinny one piped up, “It had a spear in it!”

  “A spear?”

  “From hunters,” the other said. “They hunt them at the Isthmus; there’s a hunting lodge there. It must have gotten away.”

  “They use spears?”

  “Well…not usually. I don’t know.” Glossing over the subject, he said, “But it was wicked, dude, the way this thing was snorting and stamping around. It made kind of a victory lap around the playground after it finished with Margo, tracking little bits of her everywhere, like it was showing off for us. It flipped over the whole bike rack with its horns and shook it—thing weighs a ton. You should have seen its eyes, dude; it was pure loco. You just knew that if you went out there, that thing would come at you with those giant horns and hooves, and that would be it. You’d be gone like that. You just shoulda seen it is all.”

  Henry was very glad he hadn’t—he wished he couldn’t picture it so clearly now. “Wow,” he said, dry-mouthed.

  “Yeah. For a long time I couldn’t stand with my back to the hill there—not just me, but a lot of people. We kept thinking we could hear something up there that sounded like big hooves.”

  The boy slugged Henry in the arm, breaking into a grin. “But most of the time it’s boring as shit here.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE OFFICE

  The rebellion lasted exactly two days. By Wednesday, both his new comrades caved to the pressure, abandoning Henry to join teams. Suddenly he was alone again.

  “You better get with a team,” Miss Graves said. “You can’t just sit out here doing nothing. If I have to warn you again, you’ll be sent to the principal.”

  Willing to accept defeat, Henry did make an effort. Approaching first one team and then another, he asked, “Can I play with you guys?”

  Caught up in the heat of the game, the boys brushed him off: “We have enough players.”

  After a few such snubs, Henry decided that he was making it too easy for them to turn him down—the trick was not to ask. So he planted himself in the midst of a kickball game and waited to see what would happen.

  At first they avoided him, never passing him the ball and trying to play around him as if he was an inanimate obstacle like a rock. When he insisted on joining the action, they tried moving the whole game out from under him. But whatever they did, Henry stuck fast, becoming more and more determined to crack the wall of silence. It became a battle of wills. What could they do to him—report him to the teacher? At this point he wished they would.

  Finally the team captain erupted in frustration, “Excuse me, but could you move out of the way? We’re trying to play a game here.”

  “So am I,” Henry said.

  “Can’t you see we have enough players? Go find another team.”

  “All the other teams say the same thing.”

  “That’s not our fault. Go talk to the teacher.”

  But Miss Graves flatly refused to talk about it. “What did I say about coming to me with your problems?” she said sharply, annoyed at being interrupted in her chat with a colleague. “You better find a way to deal with it—that’s part of your education, too.”

  “I’m trying to!”

  “Obviously not hard enough.” She switched him off like a light bulb and returned to her conversation. The other teacher stared through Henry as if he were invisible, so that he felt like a ghost.

  That was it exactly: Henry was a ghost. He was dead to them, deader than poor Margo Pond—at least she was still talked about, a local legend. Who here would talk about him when he was gone?

  A group of girls playing soccer lost their ball. It bounced over to where Henry was sitting and he hurriedly picked it up, grateful for any chance to be acknowledged.

  He didn’t dare hope that they would ask him to join them. The team was all girls—the most popular, attractive, and socially powerful girls at that—but if he could just generate a little public sympathy, especially among these schoolyard arbiters of status, it might make a big difference. Henry held the ball for an extra second, just so they couldn’t refuse to acknowledge the favor.

  “Give it back,” one of the girls said, coming up. Her name was Meg. She was very pretty, dark-eyed, with a bob of shiny black hair, but she didn’t look friendly.

  Henry knew Meg was one of Lisa’s lieutenants. Lisa was the blond one who had traded notes with him on the first day, then snubbed him and never looked his way again.

  Kevin and Wade had warned him about Lisa: She was the team captain and de facto ruler of the school, with a pack of female followers who strutted around like they owned the place. Lisa was the one now hollering for poor Meg to hurry up and retrieve the ball.

  Feeling a little sorry for the girl, Henry was about to toss it to her when he heard Lisa shout, “Throw it back, you faggot!”

  Stunned by this uncalled-for attack, Henry stopped cold.

  “Throw it back or you’ll be sorry!”

  “You better give it up, stupid,” warned Meg.

  That was it. All the pent-up frustration of the past few weeks welled up in a throbbing red cloud, obscuring his senses. Sorry, huh? I’ll show you who’s sorry.

  Henry feinted with the ball, pretending to toss it back, then not releasing. “Oops. Missed. Oops, almost. Nope.”

  “Give it!” Lisa shouted. “Give it right now or you are so dead!”

  Everyone on the playground was starting to take notice. There was no teacher in sight.

  Henry continued baiting them, furiously relishing the negative attention. If this was the way they wanted it, he would give it to them. He felt out of control, as if he had let go of all his moorings was sailing into unknown territory.

  “You want what?” he said. “This ball? Okay, here—whoops. No, really, here—oops, darn.” He backed away from the approaching mob, lightly tossing the ball from hand to hand. Who’s stupid now?

  At last the girls were so close that there was really no more keeping it from them—in a second they would take it, unless he was willing to fight for it. Far outnumbered, Henry had no intention of doing anything so foolish. Instead he said, “Here,” and heaved the ball over their heads, far across the field. “Go get it.”

  The girls ignored the ball. They continued to advance on him.

  “Have your stupid ball,” he said, becoming cornered.

  They had no interest in the ball anymore. All eyes were on him.

  Henry suddenly realized he was in some danger—these girls wanted to hurt him. They were serious, not kidding around in the least. He was nervous, but there was something ridiculous about it, too, and he couldn’t help grinning. Trying to be funny, he said, “All right, ladies, one at a time.”

  Suddenly their hands were on him, grabbing his shirt and punching. Below, he could feel their shoes kicking at his shins. None of it was
really very painful, but there was a lot of it, from all directions, and now and then somebody landed a good one.

  “All right, all right,” he said, trying to submit. “I give, I give; you win. Cut it out before we all get in trouble. Ow—hey, watch it!”

  He expected them to stop at any time and go away, but instead it was getting worse as more and more girls joined in. Now they were painfully pinching and scratching him, pulling his hair. He thought of Sinbad battling the eight-armed goddess, Kali. He could barely breathe. Things were getting out of control.

  “Get his eyes, his eyes,” someone said urgently. “Hold his arms,” grunted someone else.

  “Cut it out, you guys,” Henry said, trying to fend them off his face. “That’s enough. We’re even.”

  They weren’t stopping. It was turning into a frenzy.

  Still more annoyed than scared, Henry decided he had to get out of there. It was either that or fight back, and there was no way he was going to hit a girl. He feinted one way and then dove the other, plunging through the crowd and breaking free, spinning to shake off their clutching hands.

  “That’s enough!” he said. “I’m not the one who started this! Get off!” He had to keep moving as he spoke; they were still attacking, trying to surround him again. They weren’t listening to a word he said.

  He tried to walk away, to retain some dignity, but they were all over him like hyenas, kicking and slugging and trying to trip him up.

  “This is ridiculous,” he told them, starting to flush bright red with pain and outrage. He tried to make a stand, turning and bellowing, “GO! AWAY!” as loud as he could, right in their faces. But it didn’t faze them, they were oblivious.

  Henry was so mad he was on the verge of tears. This had nothing to do with any stupid soccer ball, he realized. For them this was a much more interesting game.

  It was a terrible dilemma: Henry knew that if he turned and ran he could get away, but it would be a total humiliation—he could already hear them gleefully yelling “Chicken!” at his back. So much for his schoolyard reputation: these girls would think they could intimidate him any time they wanted to. And not just the girls—he would be the wimp of the whole island: Henry lets little girls push him around!