He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.
“But I’m not dead. Dex, you saved my life,” I wished I was strong enough to properly express how I was feeling. Weak words were not enough. “After everything I said to you–”
He put his finger to my lips and pressed it gently. His eyes searched mine earnestly. “No. You had every right. The thought of losing you…I’ve been a terrible partner and a terrible friend.”
Now I wanted to shut him up. “You haven’t been. I don’t blame you for not believing me. Most people don’t.”
“But I, of all people in this world, should,” he finished. He squeezed my hand again.
A snap was heard amongst the trees behind us. Suddenly I was filled with panic.
I sat up straighter and looked around me wildly. “The lepers, where did they go?”
“I don’t know,” he said grimly, eyeing the forest. “They were gone when I came out of the water.”
“I don’t think we have much time left,” I sniffed. We were both soaking wet. If they didn’t get us, the hypothermia would.
“I know. Can you walk?” he asked, getting to his feet and gently pulling me up.
I nodded, feeling numb and useless. The shivers were starting to build up. I could see them running through Dex too.
“What do we do? You said she slashed the Zodiac,” I mumbled hopelessly.
He squeezed my hand again and said in the most confident voice he could muster, “There’s still one more way off this place. Come on.”
He led me away from the beach. It was painful to move but we kept going. We got to the turnoff to the trail across the island but he kept leading me towards the bog and other campsites.
“Where are we going?’ I whispered, all too aware that things could be watching us from among the trees. The shadows all seemed to move.
He leaned to my ear and said roughly, “There is no way we are going down that path anymore. The mud has a mind of its own. There’s a weak trail up by the other campsites. I don’t know how far inland it goes, but at least there won’t be anyone waiting there for us.”
I nodded. An unmarked bush hike through the dark haunted island was just as disturbing as going through the middle, but he was right. Maybe they wouldn’t expect it.
We walked as quickly as we could up the path and through the campsites. The ground here was like a small lake of grass, and covered the tops of our shoes. For once, being wet didn’t matter. We were already soaked to the bone.
We were almost out of the grassy lawn, looking for a sign of a small trail out of there, when Dex cried out. I spun around and saw him fall to the ground with a splash. The earth was opening, the rocky grave markers were moving aside and graying, peeling arms were reaching out from the dark chasms below, holding onto Dex’s leg and trying to pull him down.
I screamed but luckily my reaction time wasn’t as numb as the rest of me. I grabbed Dex around the chest, not able to avoid his chest wound, and tried to yank him out. He was swearing, screaming, kicking out with his legs but unable to get free of them.
I let go, picked up one of the small boulders and bashed it against one of the ghostly arms, the sound of bones splintering reverberated through the air. Their grasp loosened for long enough for Dex to get to his feet.
He grabbed my arm and we scampered off into the forest, forgetting about the path; the only instinct was to run for our lives. I could hear the ground still being unearthed behind us, their maddening moans, the sloppy, thumping sound of their bodies flopping out of their graves and coming after us, wanting to exact their revenge, their justice for the horrible lives they were forced to live.
We ran in silence and as fast as we could while trying to avoid the tangles of bushes at our feet, darting in and out between the trees, ducking beneath the branches, our hands the only thing keeping us together in this blind marathon. Foot in front of foot, stride by stride, leap by leap, stumble by stumble, we kept going, ignoring the cramping in our legs, the tightness of the dark and the feeling that we were being chased by things too terrible to imagine.
Somehow, I don’t know how, we reached the other side of the island, our feet flying out of the brush and landing on the dirt coastal path. We hurried down to the left and galloped along it. The urgency never left us.
Finally the trees opened up and we could see the beach, the deflated, defiled lump of a Zodiac and the sailboat swinging out at sea.
We piled down through the brush until we hit the stones. Dex ran straight for the Zodiac, picking up his backpack he had left there and swinging it on his back. He ran back up to me and began pulling me along with him in the direction of the cliff.
“Where are we going?” I yelled, unable to catch my breath for even a second.
“The rope!” he yelled back. We leaped over a piece of driftwood in unison. We heard the sound of the beach stones scattering from behind us. It was the lepers, they were still on our trail. I knew better than to look. I couldn’t afford to lose it now.
We got to the start of the cliff and proceeded to climb up it as quickly as possible. My hands burned from the sharp edges and slicing barnacles but I pushed the pain out of my head and kept going. I eyed the rope at the top when I could, just to make sure it was still there, and understood what Dex’s plan was. We were going to slide down the rope and onto the boat. It was ridiculous but our only choice.
We were almost at the top, only a few more feet of scraggly ground and crusty boulders to go, when Dex stopped in his tracks. I pulled up beside him and followed his gaze.
Mary was standing at the arbutus tree, her dress blowing billowing out to the side of her like a black cape. She was as grotesque as the last time I saw her. The rat was gone from her face, but her eye was still missing and all her fingers were still gone except for the thumbs and ring fingers. In her disfigured hands she held the hunting knife in her hand, waving it front of the rope, taunting us with it.
“Mary,” I yelled at her, raising my hands in surrender. “Please don’t do this, Mary. You need to let us go. We don’t belong here.”
“I didn’t belong here either,” she said. Her voice sounded distant, robotic even, and buzzing with a metallic edge. “They want you to stay. Stay here or in the black and white world. You’ve seen it before. They’ll take you there.”
She nodded at the distance behind us. Dex and I turned and looked. The lepers were climbing up the cliff like reverse lemmings, with John marching behind them all, a mad herder.
We didn’t have much time before they were upon us. I looked back at Mary. She had taken a step closer to the rope and was wiping the blade up and down the yellow length of it with a scaling sound. “I want you to stay too. We are both the same, you and I. We have no one else but ourselves.”
“That’s not true,” Dex said angrily. “She has me. You’re the one who has nothing.”
“Not anymore!” she cried out and raised the knife. She brought it down with the first hack, the rope frayed, twirled, began to split.
Dex screamed. I had seconds to act. I remembered he had put the flare gun into his bag earlier. I could only hope it was still there, that she hadn’t taken it along with the knife.
I reached into his open backpack, reached around wildly until my fingers found the shape. I grabbed the flare gun from out of it.
Mary raised the knife again.
I raised the gun, aimed it at Mary and pulled the trigger.
The gun exploded in my hands, the flare shooting out in a storm of red light, smoke, sparks and the most heart–stopping bang that shook my ear canals loose.
The flare shot straight below the rope, missing it only by a foot, and hit Mary square in the stomach. She erupted in a sizzling firework of guts and fire and fell backward off the cliff, landing on the rocks below.
I didn’t have much time to think about what I just did. Dex and I exchanged a quick look. He was as surprised as I was.
“You are a good shot,” he said. Then noticing the ghouls were only a few feet away, he grabbed my arm and we made a made a mad dash up the cliff for the tree.
Once at the crest, I got up and inspected the rope. I touched it gingerly. It didn’t look good. It would probably snap under our weight. But it was our only way to live.
The lepers were now coming up beside the tree, their scabby arms reaching over the sides of the rocks and swiping at our ankles. Dex quickly whipped off his backpack and flung it over the rope, sliding it down to the very edge of the cliff. He squatted, facing the direction of the boat, holding on to the straps of the backpack and wrapping his hands around them a few times. He looked over his shoulder at me.
“Hold on to me as tight as you can. Don’t look down. Don’t let go.”
I was too afraid to move. This was going to be the world’s most terrifying zipline ever.
But I felt a random hand tug at the back of my cargo pants, and I knew it was zero hour. One more hesitation and I would be dead.
I wrapped my arms around one of the backpack straps, linked my hands across Dex’s chest and squeezed him for dear life.
A growl and moan from behind me, someone’s hot breath filled with death and decay, floated up the back of my neck. I pushed away with my legs and we were gone.
As we dropped away from the cliff, the backpack sliding forward with an abrasive, high–pitched sound, the rope caved down with our weight. We flew through the air at a startling speed. I couldn’t watch, I just concentrated on holding on to Dex as hard as I could, even though I knew I was slipping inch by inch.
Snap.
Before I could process what the noise meant, the tension in the rope gave way and we were suspended in air. Then we were free falling.
I screamed as we both fell, not knowing where we would land.
I hit the water like a brick, the cold seizing my lungs and shaking me awake. I rose up and paddled furiously against the water, searching for Dex.
“Dex!” I screamed, the frigid saltwater splashing against my open mouth. I splashed frantically, trying to stay afloat, to see above the waves. I couldn’t see him anywhere. The rope was gone. The lepers watched from the top of the cliff. The boat was free and slowly floating away from me, maybe a couple of yards away.
“Dex!” I yelled again, panic rising, my arms treading water as rapidly as they could. There was no light here in the water, only the vague reflection of the moon through the fog vapors. The water was black, the swells obscuring my vision every other second, and Dex was nowhere to be seen.
I panicked. What could I do? What if he drowned? What would I do?
The thought was too painful to handle. I felt everything start to shut down, including the will to keep living, to make a swim for the boat as the current and riptides led it out to the open oceans.
I screamed one last time. It sounded dull, as if no one was around to hear it.
Then a splash from behind me. I twirled around to see Dex pop his head out of the water.
“Got it!” he cried out through chattering teeth and held up the rope in his hands.
It was the greatest sight I’d ever seen.
He swam over to me and handed me the rope. “Can you do this?” he asked between splashes of waves. “We need to haul ourselves in. Pretend the boat is one big fish. OK?”
I nodded and together we both started to pull at the rope. There was no way we could pull the entire thing towards us, so we moved our hands along it, one on top of the other, steadily going up the length of the rope like we were rock climbing. It was tiring and the water was starting to slow my limbs down to an unfeeling slog. But eventually, we were getting closer to the boat.
I just couldn’t go any further. My hands had lost all nerves and my heavy boots were weighing me down, too heavy to lift up and kick.
Dex scooped his arm around me. “Hold on to me, baby. We’ll make it.”
His face was alabaster, his lips a sick shade of blue. This reminded me of the end of Titanic. That was a fate I didn’t want for myself.
With what little energy I had left, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and he continued to pull us both. Where he got the strength to pull us both in, I didn’t know.
I must have fallen asleep on his back. The next thing I knew, Dex was yelling at me, telling me to put my feet up on the ladder.
I looked up. I thought my head might roll off. It was that heavy.
We were at the back of the boat. I was face to face with the exhaust pipe. The ladder was down and right beside us in the water. Dex moved my legs over for me. I was supported, even though I couldn’t feel my feet.
He took my hand into his shaking one and pressed it against the ladder rung.
“Hold on tight. Hold on as tight as you can, OK? Don’t let go,” he pleaded loudly. I nodded feebly. He climbed up the ladder, leaving me clinging on to the rung. I was so close to be being saved, and yet closer to letting go.
Dex knew that. Once he was on board, he leaned over and grabbed me by the elbow and began to pulled pull me up like a 130–pound marlin. I felt bad that I couldn’t do anything to help him.
But somehow he managed. I was pulled up on deck. I lay on my back, unable to move.
“Stay with me,” he said through the clank of his shivering teeth. “We’re almost out of the woods.”
I closed my eyes. I could hear him fiddling around. Then the roar of the engine, the boat shuddering under its surge. I heard Dex run across the deck and haul up the anchor from the front of the boat and then disappear below deck.
He came back up and I found myself being covered with a million blankets. He tapped me lightly on the cheek until I opened my eyes.
“Hey. You need to stay awake. I can’t put you downstairs yet. It’s warmer there but you might fall asleep and not wake up. OK? Stay with me.”
I nodded slowly. He tucked the blankets around me. He was wet too, shivering uncontrollably. I wanted to tell him to cover himself up but I couldn’t form the words.
He got behind the wheel, put the boat in the highest gear and motored it away. The more we picked up speed, the colder I got. The wind was brutal.