Terminal Island

Chapter Twenty-Six

ACT SIX:

SALVATION



It takes him a while to come back. For a long time there is only the blackness of the grave—Henry can’t think or move. Is it over? Where am I?

At first it is soothing, womblike. He gradually senses heavy fabric encasing him like a cocoon, and the weight of earth pressing in. When he tries to turn his head, dirt crackles down along folds in the stiff cloth. There is only the slightest space above his mouth from which to draw shallow breaths.

Henry shudders, waking in abject panic. I’m buried alive! Uncontrollable spasms wrack his whole body and he starts hyperventilating, thoughts careening wildly. Ruby! Moxie! The panic attack comes in waves, rising to peaks of hysterical frenzy and then settling into troughs of hopeless, sobbing resignation. How long will it take to suffocate? The waiting is intolerable, and there is not a single thing he can do about it. Let me die, he prays. Take me quickly.

Weak from exhaustion, Henry hears something. There is a scraping sound from above—the sound of someone digging. All at once he can feel it! Hands burrowing down to him, pushing off the heavy mounds of soil. The thick canvas is peeled back.

Weeping gratefully, Henry shields his eyes to see the beautiful face of a child eclipsing the light.

It’s the horned boy. There is a golden haze around him, a tunnel of light, and in this brilliant glare his nubs are glowing, his body sun-shot and nearly translucent, ember-red at the extremities. He is wearing a sort of loincloth, and his hair is a mop of copper-bright dreadlocks. The eyes gleaming in that elfin face are solemn and glad.

“What is this?” Henry asks, his voice a cracked whisper.

Smiling, the boy takes Henry’s hand and strains backward, pulling him up. The earth is light and dry. Henry accepts the help and shakily rises out of his grave. As he struggles to his feet, there is a loud rushing noise like surf—what sounds like an approaching wall of water. Henry cringes in fear…then stands straight.

It is the sound of applause. A standing ovation.

Beyond the bright lights is a crowded auditorium—Henry is on stage.

The set around him is a field of shallow graves, burial mounds exactly like the one from which he has just emerged, against a backdrop of sky and clouds.

The boy moves on. Leading Henry by the hand, he stops beside the next grave, pondering it, then abruptly drops to his knees and starts clearing away the loose dirt. In a moment he exposes the tarp and shoves his arm in. Drums begin pounding. Up to his elbow, the boy strains backward, pulling something out of the earth.

It is a hand, a pale arm clasping his. The arm becomes a whole person, a ghostly figure emerging clean and glowing from the ground—it is one of Henry’s fellow prisoners from the basement. The applause rises again. Pulled completely free, the reborn being looks around in wonder and apprehension. He touches his body as if amazed to find it in one piece. Suddenly there is the sound of triumphal music, and from every part of the stage dozens of other luminous figures start rising out of the ground, voices joined in a choir, staring in surprise at themselves and each other as they sing.

Henry is in shock, frozen as this climactic musical number plays out. The sun rises behind them, and dry ice smoke floods the stage so that it is as if they are standing on a cloud. At last all the actors appear in full-throated song: the minotaur and the mare-woman from the wings, the mirror-plated angel from above—all these godlike beings welcoming Henry and the other raised dead to some heavenly plane. Everything swells to a crescendo, ending on the highest note.

The curtain draws shut.

Now the show truly seems to be over. Everyone but Henry is animated, blissfully weeping and hugging each other in a tumult of post-show chatter. People rush onstage in congratulation, bringing trumpet-like white flowers. “Oh my God! That was fabulous!” It’s a sea of happy activity, with Henry standing like a pillar of salt in the middle.

Nothing clicks; his thoughts have seized up like a frozen computer, spitting out bytes of random gibberish: I’m not…just…there’s no…but it’s…what—

He feels a pressure building in his head and chest, making it hard to breathe and crowding out everything else. Things around him are wavering, blurring—the chatter begins to seem far away, as if heard down a long tunnel. Henry can’t feel his limbs. He is sweating, swaying. As if in slow motion he tips over backward, back into his grave. When he falls it’s as if he plummets into a bottomless pit…



Henry awakens with a start, heart pounding, as if he just drifted off. He is sitting in a darkened movie theater, a few rows from the front. It’s still the Casino, but the place has cleared out; Henry is alone. How long has it been?

There is a movie playing.

“What the hell?” he mumbles, wiping drool off his chin. For the first time in a long time he feels clearheaded, almost refreshed, as if everything else has been a muddled nightmare. In consternation he sits up.

The screen is showing a grainy video image—pans of trees and flickering bonfires, shot in night-vision green. At the bottom corner of the screen it says, LIVE. The soundtrack is of someone breathing into a microphone and indecipherable background hubbub: the sound of a crowd of people either hysterically laughing or crying.

The image is very jumpy, but rushing figures of women can be seen. All are wearing grotesque metallic masks—some reptilian and others horned and childlike. The dark cavities of their eyes flash with the creepy reflected glow of infrared. Hundreds of them are shambling around in the firelight, naked or with their clothing in rags, bodies smeared with strange tribal patterns, their mouths hanging open and arms spread to the heavens as if lost in some religious mania. Scattered around the ground are knurled white objects—bones.

Above the chaotic noise, a woman’s voice can be heard, hoarsely shouting, “Nun chre methusthen! Nunc bibamus! Can they hear me? Turn it down, I can’t hear!”

As if reading from notes, she recites, “‘Rain falls by the grace of God, hence from high Heaven is the sea replenished, and in its endless depths the cold lays bitter hold! But lo!—beat back the chill with fire, and build the pyre higher and higher! Drink wine as sweet as nectar to a bee, and drink of it abundantly! Do not give over your hearts to woe, or waste your youth to care; for sorrow is a sober foe, and ambrosia cheats despair! Oh Lord, we drink in your name this holy gift; to cast out shame, run wild and swift!’”

Despite her golden mask, Henry recognizes the woman. It is Lisa again—the former tween psycho who drove him and his mother off the island all those years ago, now graduated to murderous cultist and seller of nonexistent condos to the soon-to-be-slaughtered leisure set.

Slurring a little, Lisa goes on: “The Lord sayeth, ‘Witless are those who will not lose their wits.’ Hence we stand before you in disguise, for he who stands in judgment also dies! We’ve been purifying ourselves for two days in readiness to greet Him! We are ready!” A frenzied cheer goes up in the background. “We have suckled the calf and the wolf cub; we have gorged ourselves on sacrifice. Oh my God, please God—what you’re seeing now is something none of you could ever witness in person and live—the holy adoration of the Bacchae!”

There is a screaming outburst in the background, and the camera bounces and spins over blurred, running figures. For a minute the picture bobs crazily and then steadies as all the women fall to their knees, keening hysterically.

Something lurks before them, barely visible under the trees. A strange, humped form, flickering greenish in the video haze, black horns glinting in a massive woolly head.

The bison-man.

As he totters forward, the camera spins, scanning the clearing. Henry glimpses blurred shapes of four white horses with naked, masked riders. They are turned outward, facing in different directions, and lying on the ground between them is a man’s writhing body. He is spread-eagled, and there appears to be a spear sticking through his side. Is he chained to the horses?

Before Henry can make sense of what he is seeing, there is a thin crack! and the horses bolt in all directions. The abruptness of what follows catches Henry totally by surprise—a rude shock that hits him like a physical blow to the chest:

Right in front of his eyes, the man is suddenly ripped apart like a doll. With a crunch of popping ligaments and joints, his body is flung straight up and all four limbs simply jerk loose and go flying after the horses, leaving the man’s head and torso to sickeningly flop back down in the dust. Yet it is what happens next that causes Henry to blanch with the supreme horror of witnessing something that even his worst nightmares have not prepared him for:

All the women set upon the mutilated, twitching body…and begin devouring it.

Crying out in horror, Henry turns away, too late, and dry-heaves between the seats. There is no escaping it; he can still hear what’s going on, the sound of their nearly sexual ecstasy, and it’s as bad as seeing it.

“Ah God…oh my God…” he mutters, making his way down the row and to the exit.