CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning was Groundhog Day redux. Same whistling wind, flapping tarps, rat–a–tat sprays of rain against the tent, a gloomy blue glow and the ever–present damp nip in the air. If I had woken up to “I Got You Babe” on an AM radio, then it really would have been complete.
I was alone in the sleeping bag. I kind of preferred it that way. It gave me a chance to breathe and go over what the hell had happened last night. It was all coming back to me in the hazy light of day. The sound of his moans. The feel of his lips on me, like he wanted to eat me alive. The image of his head between my legs. Had Dex seriously gone down on me? Did he really run his mouth all over my body? Dex? My Dex? It seemed like a fabrication of my mind. I mean, I saw ghosts, why couldn’t I imagine a heated sexual experience with the man I was hung up on?
But then the feelings came back. Dex’s reluctance to go any further. His so–called allegiance to Jenn and her baby. Their baby. Ugh, the whole thing made me feel sick. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel any guilt for having been the other woman, even though I had been in Jenn’s position before. I just felt bad for Dex.
Although, I really shouldn’t have. After all, I didn’t force him to do anything. He kissed me first.
I put my hand to my forehead and scrunched it up. What a mess. In some ways it was amazing and some others…wow. Did I really do that? Even the fact that he saw me completely naked, the fact that he gave me an orgasm…I couldn’t have been more vulnerable than that.
And then to say he couldn’t go on. What a load of crap. I wasn’t complaining but…how was that fair at all? It’s like he just wanted to be in control of everything, even down to sex. He knew how I felt about him. Sure, I’m the one who got off in the end, but he wanted that to happen. He got at me. He won. And I was unable to get at him.
Suddenly, I was less embarrassed and more ticked off. It was a more manageable and face–saving emotion anyway. It was like he used me in the most backward way possible. All he did was bring my emotions and feelings for him to an absolute boil, and then walk away clean, as if he didn’t do anything wrong. Walk away back to his stupid hot girlfriend and love child.
OK. Now I was mad. I shoved on my clothes, which were still damp since I had officially run out of anything clean, and headed out into the storm.
Dex was nowhere around the tent or picnic table. A quick glance at the beach told me he wasn’t there either. Unless he was really asking for it and decided to go on a walk somewhere, the only other place he could be was the shitter.
The weather was the exact same as it was yesterday. In fact, in some ways the fog seemed thicker and the waves were steeper, angrier. They seemed to call to me, to echo my mood, which was rapidly going sour. The damp clothing and the overall feeling of grossness didn’t help either.
I had decided that I should probably make some coffee, since he hadn’t seemed to do that either, when I felt a presence watching me. The goosebumps rose on my arms.
I looked up and got the crap scared out of me. It was Mary standing in the trees, observing me silently in her dark swath of a dress and her pale, weird face. How long had she been there for?
I was about to call out after her but she put her finger to her mouth to motion me to be quiet. Then she turned and walked off, her figure disappearing behind the trees.
I got up and went after her. I knew it wasn’t right for me to leave the campsite without telling Dex first but I didn’t really care what he thought at this point. Mary held the answers.
I followed her into the woods, towards the inner campsite and past the bog, to an area I hadn’t been to yet. It was another clearing like the other campsite but had rows of stunted fruit trees and some foreign–looking bushes deliberately placed throughout. It looked like a long forgotten garden.
Mary headed across the soggy grass and walked along a narrow, pebbly path that cut through the center of some rustic rose bushes. I followed carefully, not wanting to get caught on the spiny thorns and overgrown brambles.
On the other side of the bushes was a patch of weeds and a low stone bench surrounded by small stacks of chopped wood. She sat down on the bench and clasped her hands in her lap. I paused, ripping my sleeve on a greedy branch and looked down at her. I wasn’t sure whether it was safe to talk to her yet or not.
Finally she looked up at me in surprise, exclaiming, “Oh, you’re here. How nice to have your company.”
She wasn’t being sarcastic. It’s like she didn’t realize I followed her. I gave her a small smile. “Where are we?”
“This is my rose garden in the orchard. I had brought the seeds with me from California. I thought the flowers would cheer the poor souls up.”
“Did it?”
She shook her head, “It was a waste of money to come here. A waste of life.”
“Money?” I repeated. I remembered the bit in the book that mentioned the rumors of how the Reverend paid the Canadian government to let him and Mary come here. “You paid them to let you come, why?”
“John did. He paid them so he could be alone with me. My mentor, my Reverend, he was more sweet on me than he was on the Lord. He brought me here to be alone, away from the church and everyone else. He knew I had no one else, that I would do whatever he said.”
I know what I wanted to ask next but I wasn’t sure how to say it. “Did you love John? Did you want to have a child?”
Mary started picking at her hands, peeling off dead skin in long scaly layers and flicking them on the grass below. I tried to hide my grimace.
“I loved John. Yes. But not in that…way. It was sinful. Perhaps I would have if I was given the chance. But I wasn’t. He brought me here. He…had his way with me. And then I was with child. I think the child was all he wanted. I know I didn’t want it.”
Oh, geez, Mary was raped by the very person she trusted. I felt increasingly bad for the mousy woman with her twitchy eyes and sad complexion.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s kind of you to say that,” she said. “But it doesn’t change anything. I was stupid and na?ve. He had me by the scruff of my neck and we both knew it. Then of course I found San. That was wrong too, I knew that. But what did it matter. I was already having a child out of wedlock. I was already on the wrong side of the Lord.” >
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of slipped out.
She took a quick glance at me before diverting her attention back to her hands. “I don’t have many other people to talk to.”
“What about your daughter?”
“She’s three years old. And she’s dead.”
“So are you.”
“She’s dead to me. There is a difference. How could I love something like Maddy when all she did was bring me pain and bring me death?”
I took in a deep breath. I didn’t like where the conversation was going.
“Yesterday you said that people here could harm me and Dex…”
“When was yesterday? Who is Dex?”
“Dex…the man I am with.”
“Your husband?”
“No.” I didn’t want to embellish.
She shrugged. “Forgive me, I forget details. You trust this man?”
I nodded. She shook her head. “No you don’t. He had his way with you, too.”
I ignored that. She obviously had no idea what she was talking about. I took a step toward her. She eyed me up and down, her delicate frame tensing.
“Mary,” I reasoned. “Mary, Dex and I seem to be in a bit of a predicament and we were hoping you could help us out.”
“We? He doesn’t know about me. You haven’t told him.”
“No, you’re right. I haven’t.”
“This is because you are unable to trust him.”
Who was she, a ghost shrink?
“If you tell him about me, it’s only going to make him angry,” she continued. “And when he gets angry, you’ll be in a lot of trouble. More trouble than you are in now. Believe me.”
“Why? Why would he be angry?”
“He doesn’t like secrets. And he’s jealous of you.”
The second part didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Why on earth would Dex be jealous of me?
I let it pass, for now. I crossed my arms and said, “Tell me more about this trouble we are in.”
She shrugged again and started to hum a song to herself in a lilting tune.
“Mary?” I repeated.
She looked at me and smiled brightly. “Oh, you again. So glad you could join me.”
Oh my God. She was a f*cking nutter. Maybe she was the loon roaming the forest last night.
“I’m really grateful you are talking to me,” she said in her singsongy voice. “No one ever stops and chats with me. I can’t remember the last time someone acknowledged my existence. You must be a special person, Perry.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I scoffed.
“That’s why he’s jealous of you. Right now, he’s out there, walking up the beach looking for you and cursing you.”
“Dex?”
“You have something he wants. You also have something John wants and something San will want. I’ve seen them watching you. You can see them if you look harder.”
The hairs on the back of my neck tickled unpleasantly.
“What does Dex want?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
I sighed, trying to compose myself. My brain felt sluggish and lazy. Too lazy to really understand what was going on.
“What do John and San want? Did they slash the Zodiac? Are there other people on the island?”
Mary started to sing to herself again.
“Mary!” I yelled, exasperated, and reached for her. I shook her bony shoulder, feeling the bones crack and crush underneath my hand. I gasped and recoiled in horror.
She looked down at her collapsed shoulder with all the breeziness in the world. “They won’t be so easy to break. The sea, it does peculiar things to your bones.”
I wanted to tell her that I was sorry but I couldn’t form the words. I felt like vomiting.
“Look,” I said, sucking the feeling down. “I know this is a strange situation and all. For me, anyway. I mean, I think I might actually be mental. Maybe you’re not real at all. Maybe this whole place isn’t real. But still, if you could somehow help me out in any way, help me get off this island, I’d really appreciate it.”
She laughed. “I can’t leave this island. What makes you think you can?”
“Because I’m not dead.”
“You will be soon,” she said simply, her little–girl voice gone. The frankness cut me to the core.
“Will you help me, Mary?” I tried. “Can you just…just tell John and this San person to leave us alone? To let us leave. We don’t have anything to do with whatever this all is. As soon as the weather clears, we will be out of here. We will never come back.”
“I can’t. I hope I never see them again. I’ve been moving around this island for God knows how long, trying to stay one step ahead of them. Perhaps you need to borrow a lesson from me. You’re much easier to catch than I am.”
I felt breathless. “Where are we?”
“This is the Island of Death. This is purgatory. This place has a dark soul of its own. And it will drown you in its depths.”
And at that Mary got to her feet, her bloody, pussing feet. “I have to keep moving. My advice for you is to do the same. Don’t trust anyone. Anyone. He does not have your best interests in mind. No one does. Not even me. But I recommend you take my advice to be safe.”
And then she was off and running. I looked behind me, expecting to see Dex, or God forbid, the Reverend, but there was no one there. And of course she was long gone.
I tried to shake some sense into my head as I carefully slipped past the rose bush’s prying thorns, and down the orchard trees, dead and grey from the cold winter or a hundred years of neglect. I didn’t know what to make of anything anymore. Reality seemed to be losing its grip on me, sliding off like the chains on an anchor. None of this was possible but I had to accept it as truth. If I didn’t, it would mean I was going crazy. And which one of those scenarios was better? I’d either end up in a mental institute or in some brutal fate here, which could be worse.
I wondered if that’s what Creepy Clown Lady had been talking about. She had said something about people coming to take me away. Take me in away in straightjackets? Take me away to the loony bin? I had been treating Dex like the enemy in this regard but maybe he had the total right to worry about me. He couldn’t see the things I could. Not all of them anyway.
If only I could actually see Creepy Clown Lady here, then maybe I could get some real answers. It’s funny how she brought an utmost sense of fear in the base of my being, yet if I saw her creeping around in the trees, in her ridiculous taffeta gown, I’d almost be comforted. It would be another tie to that world I knew before this place. This place was taking over day by day, hour by hour. Even Dex was becoming something else to me. Someone foreign.
I thought about that long and hard as I made my way through the brush back to the tent, hoping that maybe she would materialize if I thought about her long enough. She didn’t.
Dex did though. The minute I stepped on to the path, he came booking it out of the campsite towards me.
“Where the f*ck did you go!?” he yelled at me. He looked like hell. He almost had a full–on beard going, his eyes were bloodshot and the space under his eyes looked like half–moon plums.
“I went for a walk,” I said and tried to walk past him.
He grabbed my arm sharply and yanked me towards him. His eyes were crazy. “Bullshit!”
I looked down at his rough grasp, trying to stifle my own anger and avoid a massive blowout.
“It’s none of your business,” I snapped. I knew that was going to set him off. I probably should have said something else.
He was taken aback, and for a moment, speechless.
“Where were you when I woke up?” I asked.
“In the bathroom,” he said through gritted teeth.
“What’s wrong with you?” I questioned.
He cocked his head and loosened his grip on me. He smiled sarcastically. “What’s wrong with me? Shit, Perry. That’s rich. You’re the one who flips out whenever I leave you alone. What about all that bullshit about you needing me then? You don’t think it’s not the other way around?”
I snorted. “No! I don’t. And maybe it was just bullshit anyway. You should know all about that, you’re an expert at it.”
“Now you’re just being a bitch.”
I glared at him. “We all have to be experts at something.”
He rolled his eyes and took in a deep breath. He was trying to keep his temper in check. I could see it strained across his face.
He put his other hand on my shoulder and gave it a lighter, nicer squeeze. In my head I had the image and feel of Mary’s bones shattering under my own grasp. The disgust showed up on my face.
Dex noticed my expression and looked correspondingly uneasy. “What’s happening to us?”
“What happened? Well, we ended up getting stuck on this god damn island first of all. You know what this is? It’s purgatory.”
“Come on now–”
“I am serious. This place is death!”
“And that’s why we’re going to see if maybe we can get the Zodiac going. I have some ideas.”
“What if it doesn’t work? Why hasn’t anyone come for us? I mean, we were supposed to be back yesterday. There’s this storm. Why hasn’t the Coast Guard shown up? Doesn’t Zach want his boat back? Wouldn’t he have reported us?” I started blathering on like a woman on a verge of a nervous breakdown.
Dex abruptly pulled away from me, suddenly apprehensive.
“What?” I asked.
“I…” he took in a deep breath again. I knew I was not going to like what I was about to hear. “I told Zach we were staying an extra couple of days. They won’t expect us back until tomorrow.”
I was floored. Stunned. Unable to process. Did not compute.
“Tomorrow?” I managed to say. “But…tomorrow is my birthday.”
“I know it is. I figured since you don’t have a job, it wouldn’t matter if we stayed here a while longer. You know, to get some real good shots and–”
“Tomorrow is my birthday!” I shrieked, my arms flying out to my sides. “Why the f*ck would you think I’d want to spend my birthday on an island with you!”
“I didn’t think you’d care. I didn’t think your family would notice.”
There was no warning or premeditation over what happened next. I felt myself making a tight, hot fist, felt my arm winding up and felt the animosity powering my arm through.
I punched Dex right in the nose. Felt it give under my knuckles as my knuckles themselves erupted in a flurry of fiery pain.
Dex screamed and stumbled backward, grabbing his nose in agony, looking at me with wild animal eyes, half afraid, half livid. I grasped my throbbing hand and held onto it tightly, trying not to feel the pain. I had to admit, punching Dex felt better than I thought it would. If I broke my knuckles on his nose, it would have been totally worth it.
“You bitch!” he cried out, taking his hand away from his nose and looking at it. It was bleeding lightly, a tiny trickle coming out of his nostril and gathering in his moustache. “Jesus f*cking Christ, I think you broke my nose!”
“Good,” I challenged, still feeling the impulse to hit him again. An absent thought, the one that this island really was changing me, snaked across my brain and then faded into the thud and whir of my pounding heart and pulsing veins.
Dex shook his head. His eyes were watering, from the shock and impact, not because of any emotion, and his nose was looking more swollen by the moment. The teeniest tinge of guilt tugged at my heart strings. OK, I was glad I hit him but maybe he didn’t quite deserve a broken nose.
We didn’t know what else to say to each other. Whatever intimacy we exchanged last night was gone and buried. This was the new us: A sucker punch and a broken nose.
Before I could feel bad, I turned on my heel and walked off in the direction of the bathroom. I needed to clear my head and be alone. I was sure Dex would be busy plotting his revenge against me.
* * *
I sat down on the rocks just north of the outhouse for at least an hour. Just stewing over what had happened, trying to make sense of everything. It was a futile exercise. Dex had left me alone, which I figured he would. I knew he was probably thinking of some way to “handle” me or calm me down. Some way to deal with me so I would learn like a good little girl, and do what he said. He always had me by the scruff of the neck, and I had always done everything he asked of me. He used me, frequently, like he did last night. All part of his sick little game. That’s probably why he picked me in the beginning. He knew I would be easy to twist under his thumb.
I was hoping that by distancing myself from Dex and the campsite that Mary would show up again. I wanted to talk to her. She seemed like she understood what I was going through. She felt like an ally, another woman to take my side against the men. But she never came.
Finally I decided it was time to go elsewhere. Maybe if I went to the dead heart of the island, she would show up there. She did say she always had to keep moving.
I got up and made my way to the center. Only problem was having to walk on the path for a bit, just past the outhouse. I hoped Dex wasn’t milling about. And if he was, I hoped he wasn’t too angry. Mary had said something about there being trouble when he was enraged.
I almost made it to the trail without being seen, but Dex came out of the tent at the last minute and spotted me. He yelled, “Where are you going!?” >
I glared at him, and spat out, “Don’t you dare follow me.” I kept going. To his credit, he seemed to stay at the tent. I couldn’t feel or hear anything behind me.
The first ten minutes of the hike were fine. The trees were providing their shelter from the wind and cold and the rain only came in fat sporadic drops that fell from the canopy above. But the closer I got to the center, the darker it got. It was only early afternoon (I think, anyway; time seemed to be weird around here), but it was acting like it was near sunset.
I wondered how long I had been walking for when I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head and a cracking noise that filled the recesses of my brain and seemed to explode outward in stars and swirls.
I fell over and collapsed in a heap. The world went ink–black.