Terminal Island

Chapter Thirty-Three

TOPSY-TURVY



Far out over the channel, with Catalina fading in the distance, Henry says, “I don’t understand this. Whose side are you on?”

Deputy Myrtessa talks as she zips into green coveralls. “I’m on your side, Mr. Cadmus. We have something in common, you and me—or maybe I should say your mother and me: Both of us were born into this monstrosity and broke away. Oh yeah, I was a good little priestess of the Temple…and then one day when I was fifteen I ran away. Just flew the coop. For a few years I just lived on the streets of Hollywood, high on drugs, surviving any way I could. You don’t know how many years it took me to overcome my programming,” she says. “I don’t think I ever would have done it without the help of Carol Arbuthnot.”

“Arbuthnot?”

“He found me and checked me into a clinic where I was able to finally get my head straight. He got me a place to live and even hooked me up with the Sheriff’s Department—I took to that training like a duck to water, top of my class. I got my badge and found the Lord Jesus Christ on the same day. Once I was strong enough, clear enough, Arbuthnot explained who he worked for, and why they were so interested in me. He asked me if I would be willing to go back to the island. Be a mole, a sleeper. I prayed on it and agreed—it was penance for my sins. The next morning I applied for a transfer. You would think it would be hard for a rookie to get a plum assignment like Catalina Island, but no: As soon as I said who I was, that I was an islander, the transfer was expedited—somebody somewhere carried weight with the top brass. I was welcomed back to the Temple with open arms, the Prodigal Daughter. But they kept me on a tight leash; it was hard to gather useful evidence because nobody would trust me…until I made a sacrifice. Until I proved myself one of them. Today was that day, do you understand? The day it was all going to be revealed; everything Carol and I worked for, killed for. Then you come along and it all goes up in smoke. All that time and effort, years of patience, just to blow my cover over you. Why did Arbuthnot ask me to do that? What makes you so important?”

Henry says, “I don’t know. But it’s all over now, isn’t it? You’re going to put an end to it?”

“We’re going to try. The problem is one of credibility—there is a culture of denial in this country. A complacent society that increasingly believes only what it wants to believe. Reason itself has become a disposable commodity, a losing concept that is gradually being phased out to make way for more marketable product. We’re back to bread and circuses…”

As the deputy talks, Henry’s attention is drawn down to the ocean. He can see the helicopter’s shadow on the water, and there is something odd flying above it, a tiny speck matching the helicopter’s speed. It is moving in such perfect tandem that Henry takes it for an optical illusion—a mote or a sun flare. It is hypnotic, flickering, and the longer he stares, the more certain he becomes that the thing is solid, some kind of ball, and furthermore is rising towards them. It is growing. Trying to rub it out of his eyes, Henry feels an unwarranted rush of adrenaline—What is that?

Turning to the deputy, Henry asks, “Can you tell me what that is?”

Pressing a bloody wad of tissue to her nose, she brusquely looks down and says, “Kelp.”

“Not in the water—that thing hovering there.”

She shakes her head impatiently. “I don’t see anything.”

“How can you not see it? It’s right—”

“Mr. Cadmus, please.” She and the pilot are conferring by radio with the mainland.

Henry backs off and looks out again. His heart skips a beat.

The thing is less than a hundred feet away, still floating as if invisibly joined to the copter. It is spinning like a small, grayish-pink orb, its surface lopsided and wrinkled.

It looks like…meat, is Henry’s first thought, and moment he thinks it he dismisses it as too ridiculous.

But it gets closer…and closer. And all the time it only looks more like a weird ball of flesh. A tumor-like thing, an embryo rolling in gelatinous albumin. It is surrounded by a thin corona of darkness, a negative halo. Henry finds that by rapidly blinking his eyes he can almost see it clear. Subliminal flashes of something terrible and familiar…it has a face.

Jerking his gaze back to the security of the cockpit, Henry has the scare of his life:

The thing is still in his line of sight, now hovering within the helicopter.

It is superimposed against the cabin as if Henry’s own eyes are projecting it there—as if it is not within the aircraft at all, but within himself! A veined pink moon looming in his mind, inescapable. As he shrinks backward in his seat, the thing suddenly balloons larger than life and jerks still, filling his entire field of view as if touching face to face, a living planet of fear, deafening with its roar. Henry involuntarily screams.

Oh God no—

It is that hideous, leering Idol, the very head of Iacchus. Not a fright mask, but Iacchus Himself, a monstrous, chthonic Buddha, huge eyeballs bugging out of their sockets with rabid pleasure, flabby mouth agape and tongue lolling between His yellowed tusks with slavering anticipation. It is a face out of a schizophrenic nightmare, pulsating and quivering with all-consuming passion.

In the depths of total, abysmal terror, Henry comprehends the meaning of Iacchus/Zagreus—the duality of the deity that is the duality of the human soul—the bright angel and the dark, the carrot and the stick. And he understands with perfect clarity how no one ever gets away. How the island goes on and on and on…

Root-like tentacles are twining around him; his ears are filled with mad cackles. Henry’s hands flail about for something to use as a weapon, and seize upon a cold metal handle—a gun!

“NO!” Henry shouts, firing into the face of that thing, blasting away at point-blank range until the hammer snaps on empty chambers. The face wobbles with each shot, then abruptly collapses in upon itself as if pricked with a pin. In an instant it is gone.

Henry feels a sudden physical euphoria—not victory, but the sharp sensation of falling. The helicopter is diving towards the sea. Trying to brace himself, he looks around in confusion.

The pilot and Deputy Myrtessa are both dead, their hands limply gesturing in free-fall, both shot through the head. There is blood everywhere; the cabin stinks of smoke. Wind whistles through bullet holes in the windshield. The view outside is of a dizzying upside-down ocean, all natural laws temporarily suspended. Henry drops the gun as if it is burning hot and it spins upward in a drunken trajectory.

With the inverted world rushing up to meet him, there is no time for Henry to do anything but pray, but he can’t think of who to pray to. And perhaps it doesn’t matter anyway.

Somehow he knows he’s going to live.





Acknowledgments:

Santa Catalina Island and the lovely town of Avalon are real, but the way I depict them is largely my own invention; by no means should it be mistaken for accurate travelogue. Go at your own risk.

I’d like to thank Ross E. Lockhart and the rest of the Night Shade team for their nerve and extraordinary talent. I also want to thank my agent, Laurie McLean, for her expertise and enthusiasm; my family and friends, who keep me sane on a daily basis; and most of all you, the Reader, without whom there would be no books. Yes, you are my god.





About the Author

Walter Greatshell is the author of the Xombies trilogy, the cyberthriller Mad Skills, and the gargantuan horror-satire Enormity (written under the pen name W. G. Marshall), as well as various short stories, plays, and nonfiction essays. As a freelance journalist he interviewed Mickey Spillane; as an actor he performed in the play Bohemia West by the late Andy Kaufman. He has lived all over the world, but right now he is happy hanging around Providence with his wife and son.