CHAPTER NINE
I couldn’t believe what had come out of Dex’s mouth. Jennifer was pregnant?
“Jennifer is what?” I squeaked. “Pregnant? Your Jennifer?”
He nodded somberly, his face as blank as possible.
Mine wasn’t. I was unable to hide my emotions, even though I wasn’t really sure what my emotions were. This hit me like a pile of bricks had dropped off the top of a building. I was floored. I was flattened. Jennifer was pregnant. His girlfriend was pregnant with his baby.
Wait, maybe it wasn’t his baby. The thought relieved me for a second.
“With your baby?” I asked to make sure.
“Yeah. My…mine,” he said awkwardly.
F*ck. Shit. Obviously this was all about Dex, this was Dex’s problem (or not problem), but I couldn’t wrap my head around it, about the way it was affecting me. He might has as well have told me they were getting married. My heart lurched again at that thought, more horrifying and defeating than the one before. It felt like I had a fish hook through my guts.
I needed to pull it together. I needed to stop staring at him with what I was sure was a pained expression. There he was, telling me something he didn’t want me to know, something life–altering, life–halting (to me, anyway) and I was so engrossed in my own feelings I couldn’t take a moment to ask what this meant to him.
What did I say? I’m sorry? I looked at his face and got nothing from it. He was as serious as he ever was, but I couldn’t gather whether this was a joyous occasion or not.
So I just said, “Oh. Wow.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh and reached for the Jack Daniels.
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“Just last night. During the hockey game. Actually she had been suspecting she was. Missed her period last week. We thought maybe it was just stress because she travels so much for the show. That can f*ck women up or something. She’s on birth control, so it didn’t seem possible. I mean, how the f*ck is that f*cking possible?”
“So…she thought she was pregnant…and she told you this?”
“Yeah, a few days ago.”
“And you still came out here to the island?”
He didn’t look vaguely bothered by that. “Yeah. It’s work. Like I said, we thought it was just stress. She took a test yesterday. It was positive. That’s when she called me.”
No wonder he was so upset during the game. Wait a minute….
“So, she calls you and tells you she’s pregnant. And then you celebrate by dragging me off to a bloody strip club?!” >
He did look sheepish at that. He tried to shrug but it seemed the weight on his shoulders was too much.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said feebly.
“I know what you don’t do,” I said, pointing at him. “You don’t go to a f*cking strip club and buy your girl partner a lap dance when you know your girlfriend just found out she’s pregnant!”
As much as I hated Jenn, Dex was acting like a royal douchebag. My mind kept rolling back the reel of last night, looking for signs that Dex was dealing adversely with something so huge as finding out his girlfriend was pregnant. I couldn’t find anything except his damn perversions and borderline sleaziness.
“Yuck, Dex. Yuck,” I said again for emphasis, leaning back in my seat and staring him down like some disapproving mother figure.
Dex didn’t say anything. He looked chagrined but it was wearing off as he gazed at the bottle, like he was trying to Jean Grey it into a ball of fire or something. I didn’t even know if he was listening to me. I guess it didn’t matter. He must have known he didn’t handle it very well.
Not that I would have handled it well, had I been in his situation. Only I wouldn’t have been able to drink the problem away.
He wasn’t saying anything so I reached across the table and put my hand lightly on top of his. Just for a moment. He jumped and slowly moved his eyes over to meet mine.
“So, is this good news or bad news?” I asked as compassionately as possible. I wanted to be supportive for him, no matter what my own feelings were. It was no small thing to ask of myself but Dex, despite his actions the night before, deserved it. At least, I was going to try.
He chuckled wryly, shaking his head. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Dex. I really don’t.”
He sighed and reached for the bottle. He took a gulp that was big enough for him to choke on. When he regained control of his throat, he gave me a frank look.
“This is bad news.”
“For you or for Jenn?”
“I think for both of us. Definitely for me. And I thought definitely for her.”
“You thought? Did she change her mind?”
He shrugged and pulled out another cigarette. I hoped he wouldn’t hesitate too much longer. He was drunk, he was open and this was the only time I was going to get him to talk.
“I don’t know,” he said, lighting his cigarette, the stick bobbing up and down between his lips. “I guess she got thinking.”
“Didn’t you? I mean, when you found out?”
“Yeah. I got thinking. I got thinking about a lot of things.”
“Such as?” Oh please Dex, don’t make this as difficult as pulling teeth.
He didn’t say anything for a beat or two, just took a couple of drags on his cigarette. The alcohol allowed me to be more patient than usual. I waited, hands folded across the table, making sure I never lost the expectant look on my face.
Finally he said, “I got thinking about how I’m not ready to be a dad. How I’ll never be ready to be a dad. How…retarded the word dad sounds. How can I be a dad? I’d be the worst dad in the world. I’d f*ck up that kid, whatever kid, so badly…I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. So there’s that. That’s the unselfish part. And then there is the selfish part. The part that says, I don’t want to f*cking deal with that shit. If I had a kid…my life would change so much.”
“Maybe for the better?” I said, playing the Devil’s Advocate.
He shook his head. “No. Not with us.”
“But…your life is going to change so much.”
My words seemed to hit him like the pile of bricks I felt earlier. He cringed, just for a moment, and sucked back on that cigarette like it was the only thing keeping him sane. It might have been.
“I know. And I thought…I thought maybe it wouldn’t have to.”
“She was going to have an abortion?”
He nodded uneasily, maybe unsure of how I would react. It was a hard topic to talk about in this divided country.
“We had decided that if she was pregnant, she could just take the…abortion pill, I guess. I don’t know the name. Or we would just go to a clinic. She didn’t want a kid screwing up her career, or her body, I should say. As much as I didn’t want one screwing up our relationship.”
Huh. He was more worried about a baby screwing up their relationship than anything else. That was interesting. I wasn’t sure in what way yet.
“And then…”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged with effort. “Something happened. She told me last night when she found out that she wanted to keep it. And that if I didn’t want to have any part in it, I didn’t have to. She didn’t need me. If I’m not 100% in it, then I am not needed.”
We both seemed to mull that part over.
“And you told her you still wanted the abortion?”
“Well. Yeah. I mean, I’m not pressuring her. It’s her body, she can do what she wants. I will support her no matter what she chooses. But you know…I just don’t know why she changed her mind. I would have thought finding out for sure would have, you know, cemented her fears even more. But then she just…switched. Just like that. One extreme to the other.”
“An abortion isn’t an easy thing to deal with,” I offered quietly. “It can ruin you in ways you never thought.”
“Mmhmmm, and how would you know?” he said asked, pursing his lips defensively.
I wasn’t sure if I should say the truth right now or not, but I had nothing to lose. Dex had everything to lose here.
“Because I had one.”
The truth felt like it was laden with iron. And it was something I had never told anyone else. I never told Ada, had never told my friends, never told my boyfriend, never told my parents. It had been inside me all this time, tucked away deep.
Dex’s eyes widened, and then softened at the vulnerability I knew I couldn’t help but exude. There was no hiding it now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows.”
He swallowed hard and put out the cigarette on the table. We watched the ash spew out from the twisting butt.
“When was this? Sorry if I’m being too...”
“No, it’s fine. I think…I think it would be good for me to talk about it. It was with Mason, ironically.”
“The jackf*ck who cheated on you?” he asked, holding out the bottle for me.
“Yeah,” I said grabbing it and taking a sip. I coughed. “The one. And only.”
“Only guy as in only jackf*ck who f*cked you over, only love or only guy you slept with?”
“All three.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway…I was careless. I was on the pill too but it was during a time my stomach was acting up…I was throwing up sometimes because of this and that and you know. I guess one day it didn’t stick in time.”
I felt weird to talk about it because to talk about it was to remember it. I told him about the day I found out. This was before I found out Mason was cheating on me, as if that made a difference in the long run. I had missed my period, which was abnormal since I was on the pill, and it came as regularly as a clock. To the hour even. Naturally, my first thought was to freak out. I didn’t tell Mason, even after I took three at–home pregnancy tests, different brands. I hid the used sticks with their stupid plus signs deep in the toilet paper rolls in the wastebasket so no one would know. I didn’t want to tell him in case he thought I planned it or blamed me somehow.
It was just too big of an issue for my life to handle. Already I could barely handle going to class, I could barely handle living in a dorm, away from home, even with my roommate Gemma. I had dreams, the same dreams I still had. To have a baby would f*ck everything up. I had plans. And deep down inside, as much as I knew I was in love with Mason, part of me knew that we weren’t going to be together forever. It’s like I already knew he was going to cheat on me. I wasn’t going to be like one of those girls who has a baby just to keep the guy. I knew enough of those girls in high school.
I guess that was one reason to find Jenn’s decision commendable. She was going to go through with it no matter what Dex said or felt.
I told Dex about booking the appointment by myself and being so scared to death about it. I mean, so scared. I didn’t for a moment doubt my decision, as drastic as it was. I didn’t think that what I was doing was wrong. I knew where my morals were. That wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t want to go through such a scary, painful procedure alone. The fact that I was alone said so much. Even though I could have brought a number of people to come with me, I needed to keep this to myself. I was too afraid of what others might think.
It was horrible, to say the least. I’ve blocked out most of it, or maybe time has gotten rid of the feeling. It’s like when you break your arm or something. You know you were in pain and you remember the feeling of being in pain but that actual feeling is gone. This was the same kind of thing. I know it was painful beyond words and kept me doubled up in the bathroom for a week straight after. Gemma just thought it was my stomach, so she didn’t suspect anything. If she had asked, I was pretty sure I would have caved in and told her, just to get it off my chest. But she didn’t and then it became a thing of the past. Another ghost to be locked away, along with the drugs, and the accident and the family psychologist.
And then the dreams would come. I dreamed about the baby, what it would have and could have been. About maybe finding some essence of happiness in my life, about having something there to love unconditionally, something that may have validated myself. I wondered what he or she would have looked like and what they would have done with their life.
There was a lot of guilt. Sometimes it would sneak up on me. I didn’t feel like God was judging me but that I was judging myself without even realizing it. That my subconscious, my soul, was tallying this act up for some future retribution. Maybe I’d fail a test, maybe I’d get cheated on, maybe I’d feel alone for the rest of my life all because deep down inside, I thought I should be punished.
I babbled on to Dex about this for who knows how long. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t light another cigarette or touch the Jack Daniels. He just stared at me. Not intrusively, just…involved.
When I was done, he said asked, “Do you regret it?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t. Because I think everything happens for a reason and I think we need to go through shit sometimes to strengthen ourselves for whatever happens down the line. I think it made me stronger. It at least made me realize a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like…it’s OK to depend on people. That I don’t have to go alone through everything. That keeping people at a distance and hiding everything can hurt more than letting them in.”
The words hung in the air like the tiny bugs that flitted above the lantern’s glow. Dex could have been wincing; the way his brow had come together looked furtive and uncomfortable.
“Are you glad you told me?” he asked, his voice lower, gruffer. His eyes darted the expanse of mine in rapid twitches.
“Yes,” I said strongly. Honestly. “Are you glad you told me?”
He seemed to think about that. “Yeah. I am.”
That warmed my chest more than the Jack Daniels ever could. This heat radiated from my heart.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“What the f*ck can I do?”
“Are you going to marry her?” I asked softly. I had only a second of pure, blissful ignorance before he answered. Was I ready for the truth?
He locked his eyes on mine. “I don’t know. I will if I have to.”
A wave of relief. It was better than a yes. But still…
“Do you want to?”
He rubbed his chin scruff with his hand, more of a nervous gesture than one to signify he was thinking deeply about it.
“I’d rather not.”
I almost laughed at that, at the glib way he said it, as if he would rather not have sushi for dinner instead of pizza.
“Why are you with her then? Do you even love her?”
This would have been another question for truth or dare had the bigger one not preyed on my thoughts in the last past 24 hours. I thought I had dug at it earlier with the “I Have Never” game but we both skirted the issue on that. From day one, from the moment I heard Dex talk about Jenn, I always picked up on something. Something that was off about their relationship. I know it’s wrong to speculate on something you have no business in. How can we really know what goes on behind closed doors? It reminded me of a line in Rear Window, “That’s a secret private world you’re looking into there.” People do a lot of things in private that they couldn’t possibly explain in public.
But, I just didn’t get their relationship, at least not from the end I was looking in from. He never really seemed to care that much about her and it didn’t seem she cared that much about him. I had never met Jenn, but other than being a hot babe (Robo Babe, Baberaham Lincoln, etc) there just didn’t seem to be enough to keep someone as complex and neurotic as Dex interested. And therefore, I had to ask. It had been picking at me for too long.
He looked put off by the question. I didn’t blame him. I was almost being rude by asking that. But I had to know. I didn’t care if he thought it was none of my business.
He took his time. Making me wait while he scratched slowly at his sideburns and let his eyes roam the dark forest in a wayward manner, as if he thought he might find an answer lying out there, or at least something to distract him from one. >
He raised his finger to lips and then pointed at the video camera closest to us. It was the one with night vision and it was no coincidence that it was out. He had been prepared for something just like this. I wondered if he knew something about the island that I didn’t.
I moved as quietly as I could and leaned over to pick it up. As I did, I looked up at the side of the tent. I couldn’t make out what was out there, but I was right in thinking they weren’t fingers. They were too pointy for that. It was almost like a couple of trees had come alive in the night and were prodding at us with their branches, their scaly bark creating this raspy noise that was getting louder by the minute.
Feeling too close to it, I pulled back and gave Dex the video camera. He flicked it on and started filming. I sat up and moved further back so I was out of the way, and for a minute we watched the trails do their vertical dance. Each second that we filmed, I felt more calm and relaxed. There was something, at least this time, about having it all on film that made me feel like nothing bad could really happen. If I was looking through the lens like Dex was, I would be even more removed. No wonder he wasn’t as scared as me half the time.
At that thought, the camera pointed in my direction. I gave up on vanity and just gave the camera the most incredulous look. No acting needed. I had no f*cking idea what was going on either.
Dex handed me the camera and motioned for me to keep it on the tent wall while he squirmed out of his sleeping bag and stood up. He was ready to go outside. And as I handed the camera back to him, I could see he expected me to go as well. Going outside to where those…things were was a horrifying prospect but the idea of him leaving me alone in the tent wasn’t any better.
I got up and stood beside him, our eyes shifting between the tent flap and the phantom raking motion that was still going on. I could barely see him in the shadows but I knew he was trying to plan an ambush. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. His reassurance before shit got crazy.
In one stealthy motion he reached over and unzipped the tent flap and leaped awkwardly outside. I did the same, following right behind him, the flap smacking me in the face.
I barely noticed the cold damp air or the rough pebbles beneath my socks. I grabbed onto Dex’s arm and we looked over at five large deer that were poking and prodding our tent with mechanical simplicity, as if in a trance. Their antlers scraped up the sides and didn’t stop when even we had emerged. Any other deer would have gone bounding skittishly into the forest but these ones…they didn’t move an inch. They didn’t even look at us.
“What the hell,” I whispered, my voice higher than I hoped. The deer didn’t seem too bothered. I gripped Dex’s arm harder while he aimed the camera at them.
He swallowed hard and said, “Five against two.”
That wasn’t comforting at all. Those five deer could do more than enough damage to us. Where did they come from? What were they doing?
I looked over towards the picnic table and through the fuzzy haze of the barely lit sky I could make out strange shapes amongst the trees and bushes. I gasped. There was something there too.
Dex looked at me and then in the direction of my wide eyes. He brought the camera over and I peered over his shoulder at the lit night vision screen, which presented everything to us in a green wash of grain and blur.
There were at least a dozen deer waiting in the bushes. Some were on the path. Some were at the picnic table just feet away from us. They all waited, frozen on the spot, staring at us, eyes glowing like white/green orbs. Five against two? More like twenty against two.
I thought my nails were going to dig clear through Dex’s sweater. If he felt it, he didn’t show it. He switched the camera up between the two herds, between the creepy, ogling eyes and the robotic, thoughtless bucks. We didn’t know where to look.
“Should I turn on the lantern?” I whispered, my voice coming out in throaty rags. I knew it was just at the side of my feet. For better or for worse, maybe that would get their attention.
“Yeah,” he said through a sharp breath.
I quickly picked it up and turned the knob until it flashed on. The light was so bright I had to shield my eyes with my free hand. When they recovered enough, I looked back and saw… nothing.
Nothing at all but the trees, the bushes, the table and the tent. And Dex standing in front of me with a dumbfounded expression, the camera shakily pointing at nothing. No deer.
“What happened?” I cried out. How could they have just disappeared like that?
“I have no f*cking idea,” he said, and anxiously started the playback on the screen. He stopped it after a few seconds and we watched together as the footage showed the bucks with their antlers against the tent. In one second they were there. Then a flash of light that overwhelmed the night vision. When that faded, the deer were gone. They just vanished. All of them.
“How is that even possible?” I asked, unable to grasp the reality of it.
He shook his head and walked around to the side of the tent where they had been poking and prodding.
“Bring the light over here,” he said, gesturing to it.
I raised the lantern and walked over beside him. The side of the tent was marked with dark trails.
“Dirt?” I asked.
Dex squatted and ran his finger over one of them. He sniffed it then held it out for me in the light.
“It’s blood.”
That was too much. I looked around me, scared, my heart thumping around irregularly. The forest and the shadows began to spin. I realized I still might have been drunk. What time was it anyway? I didn’t even have my phone to check.
“This is great. I’m not f*cking sleeping tonight. What if they come back?”
“I don’t think they will,” he said absently, searching the ground around the area like a bloodhound picking up the scent.
“What if they do?”
“We will deal with it when it happens.”
He bent over and gently placed his fingers on the earth. He looked up at me. “They left hoof prints. We didn’t imagine them.”
“And we got them on film too. So, no we didn’t.”
“Just making sure. I think it’s good if we start questioning our sanity more often.”
“Easy for you to say,” I mumbled under my breath. I was too tired, too cold and too woozy to deal with any of this. I knew that if I gave it an ounce more thought, I’d have to give it my all and I’d be up for the rest of the night. All I wanted now was that warm sleeping bag and that blissful oblivion of my rested head.
“Go back to sleep,” Dex said. “I’ll finish up here.”
“OK. Don’t be too long or I’ll worry,” I replied. I stepped back into the tent.
He called from behind me, “Just look on the bright side. We got all of that on film.”
I stuck my head out of the flap looked at him wryly. “Huzzah.”
I stuffed my shivering soul back into my comfy, slightly damp sleeping bag and attempted to drift off to sleep. It didn’t happen until the lantern’s light went off and Dex was safely back in bed beside me.
* * *
My sleep wasn’t as solid as I had hoped. Dex got up at dawn to go take a whiz and considering the circumstances of the hours before, I automatically woke up too. Luckily the light of day was creeping over the top of the tent. Dawn always brought a sense of comfort and relief, an end to the night and the horrors it hid. As he climbed back in, I glimpsed a bit of the sunrise and a hit of the cold wind that had picked up in the last few hours. Everything was outside was red. Blood red.
“Some sunrise,” he said through chattering teeth as he slipped back into his sleeping bag.
“Is it the apocalypse?” I croaked, half–joking. I leaned over and pushed the flap an inch to get a better look. The trees were swaying in the breeze, the sky was a textural mixture of thick, fast–moving clouds and a muddy red color.
“Red sky morning, sailors take warning,” he muttered, rolling over so his back was to me.
Red sky night, sailors delight, I thought.
“What does that mean for us?” I asked. But Dex was already asleep and I was left to answer that question on my own.
* * *
It had only been a couple of hours but the weather had changed radically in that time. When I finally woke up again, the tent was shuddering from blasts of wind and whips of rain that slashed the sides with a rat–a–tat sound. This time I knew it wasn’t because maniacal deer were outside. A storm had come. The nautical adage was right.
Everything inside was this grey–blue color from the tent walls. I wanted to keep on sleeping. Being all cozy and warm in my sleeping bag, I didn’t have any desire to leave my snug cocoon for wet and windy weather. That was the thing about camping. Outside of your tent, you had to be outside.
I rolled over and saw Dex’s bag was empty. He was out there, somewhere, braving the elements. I kind of hoped if I stayed huddling in bed all morning that maybe he wouldn’t notice. Also, my head didn’t exactly feel like moving all that much, thanks to the copious amounts of Jack Daniels we had shared. I don’t know how it was but sleeping in those extra hours had only made me feel even more hung over. I probably would have been better off if I had gotten up in those wee hours of the red dawn.
“OK, lazy bones,” I heard Dex call from outside.
I groaned and pulled the sleeping bag further up over my head. I heard the front flap unzip and felt my leg being grabbed and shaken.
“You can’t possibly feel as bad I do.”
I peeked my head out and looked at him. He looked fine, maybe a bit pale, and had a noticeable five o’clock shadow spreading between his chin scruff and his sideburns.
“Why are you up then?” I moaned.
“Shit, shower and shave,” he answered. “But I could only do one of those. Come on, I have breakfast going. There’s coffee.”
I normally didn’t crave coffee when I was hung over but I needed something to wake and warm me up. And the idea of Dex making breakfast was intriguing.
“Is there a storm coming?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s here. Come on.”
He squeezed my calf and took his head back out of the tent.
I tried to take my time getting ready but the chilly air seeped through the fabric with each frightening wind gust, turning me into turbo mode. It would be Doc boots today, jeans again and several layers. Even with the giant jacket from the boat, I knew I was going to be soggy and miserable.
I stepped out of the tent and was immediately met with a misting of water. The sky was dark and grey, and the trees and bushes waved sporadically in the gusts that came off the water, which was mounted by a light fog that completely covered Little D’Arcy and made our island seem like it was the only one in the world, floating on the edge of misty space.
The tide was up and the waves crashed loudly on the shore, tickling at the driftwood. There were no birds flying about and there was no sound except the wind and the water. Everything was wet, cold and angry.
Dex had set up the stove on the picnic table, which was occasionally getting sprayed with a lashing of sideways rain. The tarp above that and the tent swayed with each gust but was holding together for the most part, giving us at least a partially dry place to huddle in.
I quickly zipped the tent flap shut, my fingers already feeling hard and icy, and scampered over to Dex, peering over his shoulder. He was actually in the midst of frying up some eggs to go with the bacon he had laid out on a greasy paper plate. The wind must have carried the aromatic wafts away earlier, because if there was anything that got me out of bed, it was the smell of bacon.
He gave me a quick glance and then pulled out a cup that he had kept down on the seat, handing it to me.
I thanked him and took a quick sip. It was instant coffee with the right amount of cream and sugar. He knew what I liked and considering it was instant, it wasn’t half bad.
Once the eggs were done, we sat down and tucked into our food. Dex was a surprisingly good cook. OK, it was just bacon and eggs and maybe I was easily impressed but I’m pretty sure if I tried to make breakfast, I would have burned the bacon into the ground. I can make pie and that’s about it.
He leaned back, looking full, and pushed his empty plate back from him.
“Hope you don’t mind bacon for the next couple of days. I made a bunch in advance in case it went bad in the cooler.”
I shook my head no just as the wind swooped in and picked up his plate, flinging it into the forest. We watched it go, flying through the air like a paper UFO. I raised my brows at him. “What do we do if it’s like this the whole time?”
“Clearly we’re going to go insane,” he answered.
I eyed the tarp flapping above us. “What if that doesn’t hold? What if our tent gets wet?”
“Then we get wet.”
“What if our cameras get wet? Your computer?” I asked, pushing at the point.
He pondered that for a second. “Maybe I should take the footage that we shot last night and bring it back on the boat. I could do some uploading there too.”
“If the boat is even there,” I pointed out. I hoped by bringing it up, I would be insuring it would actually be there.
“It’s there,” he said, though he didn’t look as confident as he sounded.
And within five minutes he was ready to go out on a mission to make sure.
He had the cameras gathered in their cases and nodded at the tent.
“I left you the Super 8…in case you happened to capture anything while I’m gone.”
“I hope I don’t have to!” I said. Even though I was the one reminding him about the boat, I didn’t actually want him to leave me alone at the campsite. Yes, it was daytime and, even with the mist obscuring the nearest point of civilization, there was a harmless vibe to the air. But being apart from him wouldn’t do us any good. Hell, I didn’t want him to trek across the island all by his lonesome, going through that creepy place with the dead trees and rabid raccoons. >
He adjusted the pack on his back and gave me a dry look. “Look, I’ll be gone for an hour. Two at the most. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
I loved that he assumed I was more worried about him than myself. It was kind of true though.
I sighed and shrugged. “If you’re not back in two hours, I’m coming after you.”
He gave me a wink. “Perry to the rescue again.”
And then he was off walking into the waving, wet branches of the forest. I watched him until his bright red boat jacket disappeared into the bushes and then I felt utterly alone.
I wasn’t sure at first what to do. There wasn’t much exploring to be done in this weather and though there was probably more shelter in the forest, there was no way I was stepping foot in there. I thought about checking my emails (not for comments) and browsing the internet but of course Dex still had my damn phone. I couldn’t even check what time in the morning it was.
I decided to crawl back into the tent. At least it was warmer in there and most definitely drier. Plus if the urge struck and I got really bored, I could always go back to bed. There was no one here to prod me awake.
But even though I was lying down comfortably on top of the sleeping bag, my mind kept reeling around to thoughts about the island. There was so much more to learn about this place and I knew so little.
I brought out the books I was reading yesterday and started flipping through one of them, looking for a CHAPTER or a phrase that was eye–catching. And I found it in the heading “The Woman.”
It seemed that when the Reverend John Barrett from Northern California had come up to D’Arcy Island, he hadn’t come alone. He brought up a 19–year–old missionary with him by the name of Mary Stewart. Mary was one of the youngest missionaries at a San Francisco mission, but had expressed an overwhelming desire to help the lepers. Even though the attorney general in Canada had denied their first request for them to work on the island, their second request went through. The book speculated that bribery may have been the cause. The government wasn’t going to spend any money on these forgotten people, but had Rev. Barrett paid them, they would have easily made amends. The author didn’t know why the Reverend and Stewart would have wanted to be on the island so badly, and didn’t make any attempts to explain it.
Weird thing was, for me, as I was reading, I could almost feel why. As weird as it sounded, there was something very uneasy about the whole thing, as if I was picking up on some vibe that had died a very long time ago. There was duplicity at the root. Questionable motives.
It didn’t help that the further I read, the more disturbing the story got. Mary died seven months into her island mission. The earliest records from the supply ships had noted her as a short and weak woman who barely spoke, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the Reverend informed them during one of their runs that she died due to pneumonia. The island was like it was today, a wet, inhospitable place. Mary would have died during the three–month lag where no contact was had. She would have been buried where the rest of the lepers were, buried by them or the Reverend in one of those delivered coffins.
My heart felt funny, as if I had some strange affinity towards Mary and her plight. All she must have wanted to do was help these poor, forsaken souls and, in the end, she died like one of them. And at only 19-years old. She basically sacrificed herself.
I shivered at that and tucked part of the sleeping bag over my legs for extra warmth.
“Hee hee hee.”
I froze in mid page.
A child’s giggle from somewhere outside the tent.
Did I really hear that?
Was it the wind?
I listened hard, trying not to breathe or make any sort of noise that would compromise my ears.
Nothing.
My mind was on overdrive and I was spooking myself out for no reason.
I carefully turned the page in the book and tried to get back into it, to find out what happened to the Reverend after Mary had died.
I heard it again.
“Hee hee hee.”
That innocent, yet inherently creepy giggle plus the sound of scattering stones from the ground in front of the tent. Someone was outside.
I sat up as quickly as I could, body poised, my heart pounding painfully, flooding my head with blood and pressure. My eyes searched wildly around the walls of the tent, looking for signs of anything abnormal. The walls ebbed and flowed with the wind but there wasn’t anything peculiar.
The giggles came again, this time from right behind my head. I spun around expecting to see a child there in the tent with me. But I was alone.
Then I heard it again. I quickly turned to the sound and caught a glimpse of a small shadow running back from the tent flap.
I stood up and unzipped it as quickly as I could and burst out of the tent. The giggling had stopped but I could hear delicate footfalls over the wind. I ran a few steps and stopped in the middle of the path. The rain had led up for the moment but the ground was already muddy, like brown soup. I looked down towards the beach area and then up to where the path led either into the woods or the outhouse.
There was nothing.
A terrible, skin–crawling feeling washed over my arms and legs, as if I were being watched by something I couldn’t quite see. I wanted nothing more than to see Dex coming around the corner.
The giggle again, this time from behind me in the direction of the beach.
I turned and saw a little girl running along the sliding wet pebbles, skirting the incoming waves and dodging the hulking driftwood. She was wearing only a long men’s shirt that covered her whole body. It was pressed against her tiny form in a bluish transparency, soaked from the rain.
I wasn’t sure what to do. Why was there a kid here on the island, running around in the storm? Why was she wearing just a men’s shirt? Where were her parents?
I looked around me and started off after her. I didn’t have much of a maternal instinct but I still couldn’t let some young girl run around in this weather dressed like that. As I reached the beach, I could see she didn’t even have shoes on.
I stopped and watched her run excitedly down the beach until she stopped halfway, her back to me. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. I started to take off my jacket, wanting to put it on her while I figured out what was going on. It was totally possible that she was the child of someone visiting. Maybe boaters or kayakers on the other side of the island. Or maybe there were people on the island all along. We were at the one campsite but that didn’t mean people weren’t camping on other areas of the island. For all Dex and I knew, there could have been a whole group of people on the south end. Maybe that was even the voice I heard last night, carried from a far–away bonfire.
The girl slowly turned around and made eye contact with me. She looked afraid. I held out my jacket for her to see.
“You’re going to catch a cold,” I said, raising my voice forcibly and trying to keep it from shaking. Couldn’t say the same thing about my arms though. “Where are your parents?”
The girl didn’t say anything but her face grew increasingly concerned like she was about to cry. I didn’t want to scare the poor thing.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m not angry,” I yelled. “You look cold. Your parents must be worried about you.”
The girl shook her head. “She hates me.”
I was startled at how strange the girl sounded. Her voice was almost accented and a bit stunted. She might have even had a lisp.
I looked around me, thinking that at any minute some distraught hippie couple would come out of the woods and run towards her, while giving me a dirty look for scaring their kid or something like that. But there was nothing but the wind and the cold spray it whipped up from the waves.
I couldn’t let the girl be out here like this. I didn’t care if she was scared of me or if her parents were going to get mad at me over my parenting. She was a little kid and a lot colder than I was.
I started walking towards her, confidently, but not forcefully so I didn’t scare her.
“Here, wear my jacket. It’s warm, you’ll like it.”
I was ten feet away from her. She looked a lot worse off than I thought. Her legs were all scratched up, her hair was long and a total mess. Her skin was dirty and there was a strange dullness to her blue eyes, almost like they were clouded over by that same fog that sat a few yards off shore.
She watched me approach, but didn’t seem to take me in. She looked afraid but I knew it wasn’t because of me, as hard as that was to explain. She was afraid of something else. I might as well have not been there.
She looked at the waves.
And ran into the ocean.
I was stunned. I watched her splash through the grey water until the waves broke on top of her. And finally I was able to snap out it.
I dropped the jacket and ran after her, my boots sliding around on the pebbles as I tried to gain traction. After a few paces I headed into the water as well.
I could barely make out a flail of her small arm or a glimpse of her head as the waves crashed over and over again but she was out there and that was enough for me to keep going.
I was annihilated by the sheer coldness, as my legs sank into the water and the ocean crept into my boots and splashed violently up the front of my jeans. In seconds my feet and legs were unfeeling blocks of ice and I thought my whole internal system would collapse on me, even with the water just below my knees.
But that didn’t stop me. I kept pushing through until the waves reached me and started to crash into my stomach.
The first hit took my breath away. I couldn’t even inhale if I tried, it was that cold. It took over everything and spread through my limbs and to my brain, where it erased all thought and reason. The only thing left outside of the numbness was the instinct that some little girl was drowning in the waves, somewhere near me.
I kept going until the water was at my waist. At this depth, the waves continued to break on me, the current wrapping itself around my thighs like a thick noose carved out of an ice block. The grey hues in the water and sky started to fizz darker and details began to blur. I felt nothing. There was a girl out there but my movements were becoming too sluggish to look for her.
I had to turn around. I had to head back, to get out of the water. But my will to return, my will to live was no stronger than the will to find the girl, who must have drowned somewhere in front of me.
I thought I heard someone call my name from far off but it was ragged and phantom–like against the roar of waves and the hiss of wind and scattered foam.
With the little strength I had, I turned and looked. Dex was running along the beach towards me. I couldn’t do anything except get jostled by the breaking waves.
He was swearing his head off, his face pale, eyes flashing. He started coming in after me, which was up to his mid thigh, and grabbed me by the arm. He pulled me roughly towards the beach. I was too numb to feel any of it. I let him take me, looking back at the water in a daze. There was something out there, right?
He dragged me over to a piece of driftwood and sat me down. He was yelling, his arms raised, gesturing. I couldn’t look at him. My eyes were locked on the waves, looking for some sign of the girl. She had been there…I know she had. Why else would I have gone in there?
I felt a sting at my right cheek. He had slapped me. I think.
I brought my eyes up to look at him. It felt like it took all the effort in the world.
“Perry. Perry Palomino. Look at me. Focus. Please.”
I tried.
“What the f*ck happened?” he asked, his voice high and breaking. His eyes were wild like the waves.
I felt drunk. Stupid. Unable to articulate anything.
I tried to speak but everything came out in a chatter of schizophrenic teeth and a convulsing spasms. I was in ice–cold, wet clothing from my breasts down and my body was finally kicking into survival mode.
Dex decided that slapping and yelling at me wasn’t a priority anymore. He literally picked me up in his arms. The vague recollection that this was becoming a common occurrence crossed my mind, but I put my arms around his neck and held on tightly as he took me up the beach and to the campsite.
He put me in the tent, in my sleeping bag, and then lay his sleeping bag on top. My head rolled back and I looked at the tent ceiling, which was shaking in the constant wind. I heard zippers open and clasps and a furious shuffling sound. It seemed like a pile of clothes were was being place on me. They didn’t stay on for long as my out–of–control convulsions rocked them off.
I shivered violently for awhile, feeling an unbearable pain as the cold numbness left me and the hot pricks of pins and needles came wheeling through like I was bring dragged through a swath of prickle bushes.
It seemed to go on forever. My thoughts were more or less empty but the one that stood out was the one of me wondering when this would end.
It eventually did end, though. The spasms stopped, the shivers slowed, my teeth were able to rest against each other without clicking. My breath was coming back hot, deep and normal. My heart rate felt reassuring. My brain was starting to work over what had just happened.
I turned my head to the side and saw Dex sitting in the corner of the tent, his wet legs pulled up to his chest. He was staring at me. There were so many intense looks flowing across his eyes and lips, waxing and waning with each passing second. He looked deep into my eyes, trying to get something out of me. I hoped he could. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain it.
But I knew nothing was that easy.
He looked down at his boots that squeaked with the water that had pooled inside of them. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t trying to warm up. His feet must have been dead inside.
“Your feet are wet,” I said thickly.
“What the f*ck, Perry?” He took in a deep breath and looked up at me. “What the hell were you doing? Going for a swim?” >
“There was a little girl…”
“A little girl?” he repeated, his eyes wide and disbelieving.
“I…I was in the tent. I was in here. I was reading and I heard a kid laughing.” It was taking a lot out of me. I paused and tried to regain my breath. He waited, the furrow in his forehead never leaving.
“A girl. I heard a girl laughing,” I continued. “I got up and went outside and saw a girl on the beach. She was maybe three years old? She was just wearing a long white shirt. I asked her where her parents were but there was no answer. There was something…wrong with her, or something. I don’t know but she was cold and already wet and there was no one else there. I tried to go near her, to give her my jacket and she just…she just ran off into the ocean. The waves broke…and…and I could still see her, though; I thought I could still save her. Then you came. And I couldn’t.”
Dex’s expression never changed, though I knew he was trying to comprehend my story as quickly as he could. Finally he said, “Perry. I never saw a child. I was watching you. I saw you run into the water. I was just about to put my bag down in the tent. I saw you on the beach just staring at nothing with your coat held out. And then a second later, you ran into the water. I didn’t see a little girl.”
I felt sick at what he said. I brought my hand up to my mouth. Of course there was a child.
“Maybe you couldn’t see her,” I said as another wave of cold went through me. “Maybe I was covering her from…from that angle. You don’t know. I know what I saw. I saw her well. Blue eyes. Ashy hair, messy, long, weird old shirt, like Victorian era or something. No shoes.”
“There’s no one else on the island, Perry.”
“You don’t know that. Have you looked?”
“No, but I was just at the boat. It’s still there and it’s still alone. Unless someone came by kayak, there is nowhere else to anchor your boat. If they aren’t at that beach, or at this beach, they aren’t here.”
“Maybe they came by kayak then.”
“Kiddo. Listen. Listen to yourself. There is no one here. If anyone came in this weather by kayak, they would die. You almost died out there and you were only at your waist. No one can come here in this weather. You know no one can come here in practically any weather.”
“They could have been here before, they–”
“There is no one else on this island Perry, except you and me and bunch of psycho raccoons and flash mob deer.” He said that with as much conviction and force as I had heard so far.
I thought it over. “Then what did I see? Are you calling me crazy?”
He sighed and slumped his head down, shaking it at the ground.
“What?” I asked defensively. “It’s a fair question. I say I saw someone. I know what I saw. You say it’s not possible. Then what did I see?
“I don’t know.”
“A ghost then,” I told him.
“A ghost of what?” he asked, finally looking up at me. “There were no kids on this f*cking island.”
“There was a woman.”
“Yeah, and?”
“She died,” I said softly, almost feeling inexplicably sorry for her at that second, like I was talking about someone I knew.
“I know,” he said. “I read about it. She died of pneumonia or whatever, like less than a year after being on the island. There was no kid. There were only lepers and coffins and opium and some religious idiot who thought he could ease their suffering when all he did was add to it.”
I didn’t get far enough into the reading about the Reverend to know what Dex was talking about but I didn’t want to ask either. That wasn’t the point anyway. I know what I saw. Whether it was an actual ghost or a child, something had just drowned itself off the beach outside our tent and that realization was slowly working its way through my body. I felt the tears coming, and I was tired, sad and very confused.
Dex saw this too, because he let out a much softer sigh and moved on over to me. He put his cold hand on my forehead and held it there, his eyes looking into mine.
“Just rest for a bit. I’m going to get warm and dry. I’ll fix something to eat. Get some more coffee going. Have a bit of a nap, get warm. Then we’ll get you dry and we’ll talk about all of this. OK?”
I couldn’t bring myself to agree. He lowered his face to mine. I could see the yellow and red pin pricks of color that snaked across the brown in his eyes.
“There is no one else here. OK? If you saw anything, Perry, you saw a ghost. I know that’s still not an awesome thing but just please don’t think you saw an actual child drown out there because I know you didn’t. And I think you know it too.”
He tenderly brushed a piece of hair off of my forehead and gave me a fleeting, close–lipped smile. Then he gathered up some clothes of his, left the tent and left me alone with my thoughts, which evolved from poignant to abstract to nothing at all.