Peter sat as powerless as an overwhelmed female character in a Victorian drama.
“How…” he began, amusingly astonished. “How the fuck did we go from me scaring you shitless to me being a coward?”
“Logic,” Nate puffed. “You keep mocking Andy, but you were never that smart yourself, Pete.”
“Oh, so I’m Pete now. Very logical. So one minute I’m Peter, the next I’m some evil spirit, the next I’m your subconscious voicing your inner mind, registering side details and bringing them to your att—ooh, what’s that red thing over there?”
Nate turned, expecting literally anything. There was a red buoy dozing on the water, some sixty yards to starboard. It was probably the same one Andy had spotted two days ago; they’d seen it through Kerri’s binoculars.
He could see the landmass of the isle now, much closer. The buoy was way off his path. He checked Peter.
PETER: (Shrugging.) What?
Nate nodded and forced himself to veer.
“What?” Peter cried. “We ain’t going to the isle anymore?”
There was something about rowing for the buoy that reminded Nate of approaching that one mental patient even the other inmates avoided. The nearer one got, the crazier he seemed, just like a weather buoy standing under the rain in the middle of the Atlantic, determined to announce to the world that there was something worth signaling there, although logic dictated that most likely there wasn’t. Nonetheless, in his experience, Nate had noticed crazy people have a way of being right.
Some grueling minutes later, the boat bumped gently into the buoy and Nate put his hand on the hard plastic surface. He felt strangely good upon thinking he was the first person to touch it in years, to give it that level of attention.
When it bobbed, he noticed the marking spray-painted on the side.
He searched his pockets for the flashlight he’d lost long ago. He couldn’t make out any rocks or reefs in the water anyway. He moved the boat around and saw the complete monogram. He knew the book it had come from.
A rope hung from the upper tip of the buoy, sinking underwater. Nate took it in his hands—it felt viscous and sticky—and fished out a lidded jar.
“Want me to open that for you?” Peter offered.
Nate opened it himself. The inside was perfectly dry. An interested moon seemed to peek over his shoulder, lighting the scene; and yet, it had just begun to drizzle.
He tipped the jar over. Rice poured onto his left palm, padding for the soft, prickly object that fell right after.
He’d seen one like this before—a nest made of twigs and straws, pressed into a rough ball. He unwrapped the nest and moonlight shone on what was hiding inside. Fortunately, its color almost blazed in the dark.
It always used to do that.
It was a flock of orange hair.
—
Two blank lines later, they were still sitting there.
Peter shook the daze out of his head.
“Okay, I think I speak on behalf of at least fifty percent of the people on this boat when I ask, What the fuck is going on?!”
Nate looked up at him, red herrings scampering away from his mind.
“How come you know Dr. Thewlis?”
“Who?”
“The dentist. This afternoon, in the car, you pointed out the town’s dental clinic. When did you ever visit Dr. Thewlis?”
“I had a cavity. The last summer, before Andy arrived. He pulled my last baby tooth out.”
“Did you keep it?”
“And leave it under my pillow—are you kidding? I was thirteen, Nate. Who knows where it is right now.”
“I fucking know! It’s wrapped in another nest, inside a dying tree on that isle! We saw it—it was your baby tooth, Pete!”
(Frowning, touches his jaw.) “No shit! But why would Dr. Thewlis—”
“Dr. Thewlis threw it away! Someone took it. The same person who collected this from the barbershop where Uncle Emmet took Kerri every June to have her ends cut!”
(Meditating.) “Hmm. Yeah, that makes…no sense at all.”
(Manning the oars.) “It will in a minute. Even to you.”
—
The penguin called out once more, its squeak echoing through the hollow walls of Debo?n Mansion.
“What if he’s hurt?” Kerri wondered.
“He may be hurt, but he’ll still come,” Andy said. “Besides, the wheezers fear him more than they fear us. I guess they respect teeth and claws more than guns.”
Kerri’s hair suddenly inched off the wall. She stepped away and stared back at the bricks behind her. Andy pointed a fresh glowstick toward it.
She heard it clearly. Something scratching behind the bricks.
And yet she couldn’t feel less afraid.
“Speak!” Kerri ordered.
The thing on the other side woofed.
“Out of the way,” Andy bid, wielding the pickax.
It took her only a couple of minutes to dig a hole large enough for Tim to scurry through into Kerri’s arms. A trifingered claw had carved a wound across his right flank, reaching from the ribcage to his hip. This was only the biggest of several over his whole body; blood trickled out of different spots where his fur had been bitten off. He was missing a large portion of his right ear. And he was sporting the proudest, bloodiest, happiest smile a dog could pull.
“Tim!” Kerri cried, trying to assess the damage as he clambered over and drooled on her, panting joyfully. “God, you’re so brave! You are the bravest, smartest, toughest son of a bitch in the family! (Kissing him back.) Yeah, you are! You’re such a good boy! Great, great boy!”
“Going back up this way is gonna be tricky,” Andy ventured, inspecting the inside of the wall. “We should keep digging our way into the next room.”
Tim scurried out of Kerri’s grasp for a second to catch the plastic penguin in his mouth and allowed her to praise him some more. The next battle could come along whenever it pleased.
—
The isle was deserted. The motorboat was still moored as expected, but Nate had lost the rope when he fell off the rowboat, so he beached the dingy watercraft on the shore where they had landed two days ago. The mud there now showed a bedlam of fresh, webbed footprints.
“Why are we here again?” Peter whispered.
“You don’t need to whisper, Pete, I’m the only one listening to you.”
He walked inland, but not toward the house, apparently asleep and nonchalant like it hadn’t just hosted a skirmish of three and a dog against the army of an underworld evil god. Instead, he knelt in the underbrush and searched for the patch of land where Tim had first detected the line of sulfur. The moonlight was kindly cooperating. He soon noticed the dead weeds signaling the presence of chemicals. The line stretched to the cancerous tree they had seen two days ago, the one with the first monogram and the nest with the tooth inside. Peter. In the other direction, it seemed to lead toward the old willow with the second monogram and the marble grave at its foot. Debo?n. The third monogram they had discovered between those two, farther south, on a tree stump. The fourth was on the buoy. Kerri.