Terminal Island

Chapter Thirteen

BUFFALO



“Does this island seem strange to you?”

“In what way?”

“Well…just a lot of little things. I’ve just been thinking a lot about everything that’s happened here, and all these crazy ideas keep popping into my head.”

“Like what?”

“No, you already think I’m paranoid enough about this place.”

“Hey, I’ll still love you even if you are delusional.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I’m kidding. God.”

“Okay. It’s just this kind of crackpot conspiracy theory I came up with after talking to that bitchy cop.”

“Is this something I should be filming?”

“Maybe so.”

“Hold on, let me unplug the adapter…” Setting it up, she says, “Okay, shoot.”

“All right. Well, I’ve been thinking about those condos and how empty they look. I mean, we haven’t seen a single person go in or out, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay, and this island supposedly has a water shortage, right? I mean, there are signs about conserving water in every restaurant, in the hotels, in all the tourist literature. You would think the lack of water would hinder development, that there would be a limit to how many people this island could support. And yet development is booming. There must be thousands of new retirement units on those hills, and more going up all the time.”

“Yeah…?”

“So where are all these new residents? With the tourists gone there’s practically no one left. Half the businesses are closed for the season.”

“Who knows? You’ve seen those upscale condo communities before—they always look like ghost towns. That’s the way these people like to live. They raise hell if anybody’s out in the open spoiling the view—that’s why there aren’t usually any sidewalks in those places. They don’t want to see anybody, they don’t want to hear anybody, and definitely no children, pets, or poor. That’s why they put a wall around themselves in the first place.”

“Okay, but let me ask you this: What if one of those people were to disappear? Do you think they’d be noticed by the others?”

She laughs, “Probably not.”

“I’m serious. Think about it. None of them know their neighbors, they’ve probably retired far away from wherever they spent most of their lives, and they’re estranged from friends and families. No one knows anyone else. And a lot of these older people have money, or at the very least a regular Social Security check. So on the one hand you’ve got a lot of disconnected, vulnerable old people, and on the other hand they’re loaded. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Yeah—they’re targets for criminals. I’ve heard of that happening. Are you saying there’s some kind of old people farm going on here?”

“I’m saying, what if you got rid of the old people and just kept their checks? Is that so impossible to imagine?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, honey, but it is.”

“Why? Look, it’s not so ridiculous: You investigate elderly people and find suitable candidates—anyone who has no immediate family or close friends, is either retired or independently wealthy, and moves around a lot. There are millions of Americans who fit that profile.”

“Yeah, unfortunately your mother isn’t one of them.”

“No, but she would be a special category: easy pickings. Her identity represents a monthly check from the government and a clean credit record—that’s worth a fortune nowadays. And anyone looking into her life would find that she has essentially no other connections to the world.”

“Except for us.”

“Considering how little contact we have with my mother, I don’t think they would expect us to put a lot of effort into finding her if she were to drop out of sight. That deputy really made me conscious of that. All they’d have to do is set up a phony address, get a copy of her signature, and they’d be in business.”

“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 f*ckin’ 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. F*ck 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 f*cking microscope. Anybody who doesn’t live up on the hill is shit—they’re all so f*cking stuck-up. Look at those bitches over there. All they care about is telling everybody else what to do, just like their f*cking 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. F*cking golf carts. How can you raise hell driving a golf cart? Man, when I turn seventeen, I’m going to get out of this f*ckin’ 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 f*cking 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 f*ckin’ berserk, dude,” said Kevin, “like it wanted to kill somebody, which it did. It was blowing smoke like a f*ckin’ 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.”