by R. J. Jagger
The water, cool at first, now felt like a bath.
He paced himself, intent on not running out of breath or exerting himself so hard that he pulled the stitches out.
It took an insufferable time but he finally got close enough to where his feet mercifully touched bottom. He caught his breath, saw no one, and started towards the water’s edge in chest deep water.
Something brushed his leg.
It was a shark, undeniably, a small one, maybe only four feet or so, but definitely enough to rip him to shreds if it got the notion into its prehistoric brain.
He didn’t let himself panic.
Instead he stood still until the sinister shadow moved away. Then he pushed his way to the water’s edge and scurried across the beach into the palms, where he fell to the sand, rolled onto his back and let one thought and one thought only play in his mind, namely that he made it; he was there; he didn’t drown or get eaten in the process.
Getting back would be different.
Strength-wise, he doubted he could do that twice in one day, not without a good long rest. Emotion-wise, he wasn’t sure he could get back into shark-infested waters, however uneventful the encounter with the baby had been, especially since now, on examination, a stitch had pulled out and the wound had opened enough to let blood drip.
He closed his eyes.
The darkness felt like whiskey.
He let his body rest and his lungs fill with air.
Suddenly something tapped his chest.
It was the barrel of a rifle in the hands of a large man with a serious face, one that was ready for fighting if Teffinger was stupid enough to take things there. Three equals were beside him; armed men with mean attitudes.
“Up,” the man said.
35
Day Five
June 8
Sunday Afternoon
They led him across the island, winding through the palms and brush, to the opposite side where there was a large structure surrounded by several thatched outbuildings. They made their way past the structures to the beach. Out in the water forty or fifty yards distant was yet another small island, a circular satellite of sand not much more than fifty feet across, holding a few trees and breaking the water’s surface by only a marginal amount. The sand between here and there was submersed under the water only a few feet.
The rifle pushed into Teffinger’s back.
“Move!”
He turned, saw poison in the man’s eyes, and stepped into the water, which was incredibly warm and rose only to his waist as he headed across.
At the island he found something he didn’t expect.
On the far side, lying face down on a blanket near the water’s edge, was a woman; a woman with very dark skin, wearing a white bikini bottom and no top. She turned her face briefly towards Teffinger as he approached, too fast for him to make out her features. When he got to her she said, “Rub my back.”
Her voice was deep.
Her back wasn’t normal.
It was covered with scars, a hundred or more, each about two inches long, as if they had been individually carved in with the tip of a blade, not stitched, and allowed to close on their own, resulting in wounds that were slightly raised and visibly lighter than her skin tone.
“Are you Janjak?”
The woman didn’t raise her head or show her face, which was hidden against her arm and under long, black dreadlocks.
“Yes,” she said. “Rub my back.”
Teffinger knelt down in the sand and complied.
The woman’s muscles were taut.
Her body was strong and shapely, an equal to Kovi-Ke’s.
Her skin glistened with heat.
“I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “Her name is Modeste.”
“I know why you’re here, Mr. Teffinger,” she said. “We’ll get to all that in due time. Right now, the only thing you need to worry about is my back.”
Teffinger had questions but kept his mouth shut.
He worked at the woman’s back for a good five minutes. Then she spread her feet apart ever so slightly and said, “Do my ass and my legs.”
“Where’s Modeste?”
“We’ll get to that,” she said. “Just keep rubbing.”
Teffinger complied, working from her lower back down to her feet and then up again.
He still hadn’t seen her face.
As more and more time passed, the more he pictured it as burnt or disfigured, and he prepared himself to keep any repulsion off his expression when she eventually displayed it.
Finally, she turned over.
Her face wasn’t disfigured but it wasn’t pretty, either; not to imply it was ugly, it wasn’t; it was somewhere there in the middle. Her lips were large and her teeth had a slight, almost imperceptible, touch of gray in them. Her breasts, on full uninhibited display, were small, almost boyish, but her chest and arms and stomach were strong and in their prime. She looked to be about thirty.
“You killed one of my men,” she said. “You threw a bottle into his face. That wasn’t very nice.”
“So, he was working for you, then.”
“Yes.”
“And the other men too? The ones who took Modeste?”
“No, they weren’t mine.”
“Then whose were they?”
“Johnnie Rail’s.”
Teffinger shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
“Think what you want,” she said. “I’ll make you a deal. You do something for me and in return I’ll let you search anywhere you want. Satisfy yourself.” Around her neck was a razorblade on a chain. She took it off, handed it to Teffinger and said, “Cut a two-inch notch in my back. Don’t cross any of the ones that are already there. Be sure it’s deep enough to leave a scar.” She lay down on her stomach, exposing her back.
Teffinger pictured sinking the edge of the blade into her flesh.
“No.”
“You can’t search unless you do it,” she said. “Do you want to search or not?”
He did.
So he did it.
Afterwards she licked the blood off the razorblade, hung it around her neck and shouted to one of the men, “Let him search everywhere he wants. He has complete freedom for as long as he wants. When he’s done, let him leave. No one is to harm him.” Then to Teffinger, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Teffinger. Be careful of Johnnie Rail.”
He stood up.
His hand shook.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Did you do a voodoo ritual on a Jamaican woman named Kovi-Ke?”
“Yes.”
“How about a Denver woman named Station Smith?”
“Yes. She’s dead, by the way.”
“Not quite,” he said. “I talked to her just this morning.”
“Whatever you say. Go now. This session is done. I’ll see you at the next one.”
Teffinger didn’t know what the words meant and didn’t want to.
He left.
36
Day Five
June 8
Sunday Afternoon
Escorted by an armed man, Teffinger was given khaki pants, a white cotton shirt and leather sandals, followed by free reign to search the island for Modeste. She wasn’t there, he knew that deep down, otherwise he wouldn’t be allowed to look. Could Janjak be telling the truth that it was Rail’s men who took her? Did Rail script Janjak in as the bad guy, possibly in hopes that she’d kill Teffinger?
Teffinger searched the largest structure—Janjak’s quarters—first, not limiting himself to the obvious, but also testing for trap doors and hidden compartments, coming up with nothing time and time again.
Next was the closest outbuilding; a flimsy wooden structure with a thatched roof; not built to weather any type of serious storm; probably used for storage of some sort.
It had no windows.
The only entry, a wooden door, was padlocked.
The man didn’t have the key and didn’t know who did
.
“Shoot it off,” Teffinger said.
The man hesitated, shook his head and said, “We’ll come back.”
Teffinger kicked the door, again and again and again, until it busted opened.
Inside it was dark.
The floor was dirt.
Teffinger stepped in to spot something in the corner, at first glance appearing to be a body lying on a blanket, and then definitely so.
He headed over and kneeled down.
To his utter shock it was Modeste.
Her lower lip was cut and swollen.
Her eye was bruised purple.
He shook her.
She didn’t respond but she wasn’t dead.
She was breathing.
She had a pulse.
Around her ankle was a leg iron, padlocked to a chain that disappeared under the wall to somewhere outside, no doubt secured to something solid.
Teffinger stood up.
He needed to get the woman out of there.
He needed to take down the man with the rifle.
Suddenly a figure appeared in the doorway, a black silhouette against the light. It was Janjak. By the time Teffinger realized she was raising a blow dart to her lips, it was too late. She blew and with an eerie swish a dart rocketed through the air and stabbed into Teffinger’s chest.
He jerked it out.
“You should have never come here,” Janjak said.
Suddenly everything in Teffinger’s brained shifted.
Something was in his blood, something evil, something intent on taking him down. He fought against it but it did no good. His knees buckled and he dropped to the dirt. Then everything turned black.
37
Day Five
June 8
Sunday Evening
Teffinger regained consciousness to find himself adrift in a rowboat, surrounded by nothing but water, with no land in sight. His right wrist was handcuffed to a motor mount at the stern of the vessel. At the bow of the vessel was a makeshift wooden mast, bolted into the wood, rising six or seven feet at a diagonal into the air. At the top of that post was a human skull.
It was early twilight, meaning he’d been unconscious for some time.
There was no telling how far he was out to sea. It might be two miles, if might be fifty. He had no idea if he was in a shipping lane or in one of those no-man’s-lands that humans hadn’t seen in the last hundred years.
His skin, where exposed during the day, was raw and dry.
There were no oars.
There was no food and, worse, no water. The realization made the sandpaper sensation in his throat even drier. His instinct was to quench his needs with the seawater, but he remembered the old sailor stories of how it was the devil’s drink that would a spiral a weak soul into insanity and death.
He resisted, at least for now.
He scouted the horizon in all directions.
Nothing broke the line, not a mast, not a tree, not a vessel, not a shape of any kind. The only thing left in the universe was an endless expanse of rolling waves, which mercifully, were tranquil enough—at least for the moment—that they didn’t breach into the boat.
He turned his attention to the handcuffs.
The end around his wrist was solid.
He couldn’t twist out, not in a hundred years.
The other end was around a solid welded piece of the motor mount. The mount itself was affixed to the boat with eight bolts, all rusted tight. They didn’t budge.
Kicking the boards out wasn’t an option.
The back of the boat would be off at that point.
The boat would sink and Teffinger would still be affixed to the motor mount, which had to be a good thirty pounds; it would be his own little personal anchor down into a watery grave.
He was stuck.
He tried to relax and not let himself panic. Someone would come along; a fisherman, or some couple on their retirement yacht navigating the world; or maybe a pontoon plane, island hopping for remote sand and beach drinks. Someone had to. He’d done too many good things in his life for the world to let him die like this. If there were any sense of real karma in the world, he wouldn’t be abandoned in his time of need.
The thought felt good but wilted all too soon.
Bad things happened to good people all the time. In fact, that was his job—straightening those kinds of things out; and why? Because the world didn’t do it on its own, that’s why. Because there was no karma, there was only clean up. And speaking of good people, if the truth be told, how good was he, really, when you looked way deep down?
He broke hearts.
He had more than his share of selfish moments.
The minutes passed.
The sun sank lower and lower.
Night was coming.
The wind picked up.
A slight chop marked the surface of the water.
Then long rollers came in, the kind that had been on the march for many tens of miles, maybe even hundreds, gently rising the boat in a long steady motion to a crest and then just as slowly dropping it down into a valley.
They weren’t dangerous; at least not yet.
The night could be long.
It could be his last.
Anything could happen.
He needed to prepare himself for it.
He needed to reach down and gather every ounce of strength he had.
It was almost dark when something unexpected happened. A vessel suddenly appeared from out of nowhere in the distance not more than a kilometer off, cresting a roller at the same time as Teffinger.
His blood raced.
He stood up as much as he could and waved his free arm back and forth with a desperate energy.
“Hey! Over here! Come on, see me! Come on, look this way! Look this way!”
It must have spotted him because it seemed to change course and head his way.
Yes!
It had seen him!
It was definitely heading right for him!
As it approached, it took the shape of a small fishing vessel, not more than twenty-five or thirty feet long, with an outrigger on each side.
It stopped fifty feet short.
“Help me!” Teffinger shouted. “I’m stuck on this boat. I’m going to die.”
Two fishermen were at the bow, dressed in torn clothes.
Instead of shouting back, they locked in argument. A third man, the one who had been driving, joined them. The words became animated. The discussion seemed to be about the skull, the human skull floating out there in the middle of nowhere with Teffinger; his buddy, the skull.
After what seemed to be a long time, they retreated from the bow, now apparently of one mind.
Then the boat turned and left.
Teffinger called after it, nonstop, frantic to not be abandoned.
It made no difference.
It kept going until it disappeared out of sight.
He was alone.
Then darkness came.
At first it wasn’t full darkness because of the moon. Then clouds rolled in and shut out even the faintest of light. Nothing was left except the painful dryness of his mouth and the rhythmic chop against the side of the boat.
His body begged for sleep.
He fought against it.
He might need to hand-bail. If that became necessary he needed to get on it before the point of no return got him in a death grip. It wouldn’t take much more wind for the water to chop up to where it would breach the boat. He needed to be awake if that happened.
Live ’till dawn.
Just get that far and then take it from there.
38
Day Six
June 9
Monday Morning
The night was filled with demons. Teffinger spent most of it scooping invisible waves out of the bottom of the boat with his one free hand in a desperate struggle to keep the freeboard above the water’s surface, never able to see through the blackness of the night to access exactly how
precarious things were, or weren’t, but ever fearing the capsize would come within the next few seconds unless he ignored his burning muscles and kept in motion.
He went on and on and on, until he could go on no more; until death was no longer the worst of the options; until his body shut down and gave up and damn the consequences.
Sleep took him; no, not sleep, something much more extreme than sleep, something more like a descent into a black vortex where there was no sound or sight or smell or feeling or emotion or thoughts.
It gripped him with gorilla strength and squeezed every ounce of conscious life out of him.
He saw it coming.
He knew its strength.
It was so powerful that he could drown without even knowing it.
He didn’t care.
Everyone had to die at some point.
This was as good a time as any.
A pressure on his wrist worked its way into his consciousness. He focused, expecting it to disappear, but it stayed and if anything became even more pronounced. He let himself slip to a higher level of awareness, knowing he was leaving the sanctuary of where he was but needing to know what was happening.
He opened his eyes.
Someone was sawing at the handcuff with hacksaw.
“Stay still.”
The words came from a familiar voice.
They belonged to Johnnie Rail.
The man’s face came into focus. Behind it, the sky was bright. It was well into the day. Rail held a canteen to Teffinger’s mouth and said, “Drink.”
He obliged.
It saturated his mouth and lips and throat and, as it did, his brain ignited with the realization that he would live.
He would live.
He would live.
He would live.
39
Day Six
June 9
Monday Morning
Rail and his first mate, Evil Angel, got Teffinger out of the rowboat and into a twenty-six foot Boston Whaler with double Johnson outboards, at which point Rail pulled a pistol, pointed it at the rowboat and said, “Bye bye, baby.”
