Stranger

Eighteen

“Oh, hell’s bells.” I used the phrase Mom would use when Chelle spilled her milk on the couch or the crotchety old car wouldn’t start.

“What’s wrong?” Michaela whispered from behind me in the boat.

“Damn battery’s dead.” I let out an annoyed hiss between my teeth as I checked the battery meter. Yup, the needle was in the red. Deep, deep in the red. “Damn thing… it runs off truck batteries, but from the look of them they’re older than my grandmother. They’re just not up to holding a charge for long.”

Michaela glanced anxiously at the thinning mist out on the water. “We’ll be in clear view soon. Can you find a replacement?”

“Not here.”

“How about recharging them?”

“I can only do that tonight when the juice starts flowing,” I said, nodding at the power cable that ran along the jetty. “But it will take around five hours to get enough charge in the batteries for a round trip across the lake.”

“Then we’re stuck.”

“At least until dark.”

“Shit. My friends need that food.”

“Will they wait for you?”

She shrugged. “They will unless some hornets find them. Then they’ll have to run for it.”

“Damn.” I slammed the boat’s steering wheel with my fist. “I should have checked that those batteries weren’t goddam antiques before I took the boat. Look at the crust on them.”

“Don’t blame yourself. After all, you weren’t planning this kind of operation when you took the trip across there, were you?”

“No. The truth was, I’d just downed a bottle of whiskey and needed to get out of Paradiseville here for a change of air.”

She tilted her head as if to ask why.

“Long story. I’ll tell you another time, but we need to get these supplies covered up. Can you give me a hand with the tarp?”

“What now?” she asked as she helped me pull the sheet over the bags of canned food and packets that I’d dumped into the bottom of the boat.

“You need to keep out of sight until dark. Then I’ll run you across the water.” I stepped off the boat onto the jetty and held out my hand.

She shook her head. “I’ll lay low here.”

“You can’t stay in the boat all day.”

“But from what you’ve said, Greg, if the townspeople find out that you’re helping me you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Don’t worry, they won’t find you. All you need to do is sit tight in the spare bedroom in the cabin. Then we’ll leave after dark.”

“OK… if you’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure; now give me your hand.”

I grasped her slender hand and helped her off the boat. After that I pulled the cable that ran from the boat’s batteries and plugged it into the jetty power point. OK, the batteries weren’t tip-top. But with a full charge they’d make the return trip easily enough tonight.

With the mist now melting fast we walked quickly back to the cabin. There, I showed Michaela the spare bedroom. At least she’d have the day to rest up.

“Don’t raise the blinds,” I told her. “Or use the electric light when the power comes on this evening. I don’t get many people down here, but there’s always a chance one or two will drop by.”

Yeah, it’s sods law, as the saying goes. No. One or two didn’t drop by; there was a steady flow. As if the whole freaking island had sniffed my little secret on the breeze and wanted to come and see the stranger for themselves.

First by was Ben. He stood there on the porch with his hands shaking worse than ever. He said he’d been down the day before, couldn’t raise me and guessed I was sleeping. Clearly he was concerned that I had done something stupid after Lynne had been murdered by the townspeople (no, he didn’t use those words exactly). But I told him my eyes had hurt like hell after getting a face full of Mace, and that I’d stayed in bed for the day with a companion by the name of Jack Daniel’s.

“I don’t blame you,” he said, his fingers fluttering like butterflies. Poor kid really was worried about me. “I just didn’t want you to-to go and do anything stupid.”

“I stayed home,” I repeated the lie (repeat a lie three times and it starts to sound like the truth-even to the person who mouthed the lie) but of course I did do something stupid. I took a nighttime cruise across to the ghost town. I got mixed up with something weird called a hive and a bunch of people late of New York City. Now there was an eighteen-year-old stranger hiding up in a bedroom in my cabin. But I couldn’t tell Ben that. He wouldn’t snitch, I knew that much; but he might give something away with that nervous, jumpy (note: small j jumpy) manner of his. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to burden him with my little secrets, would it?

He wanted me to roll up to his apartment in town for breakfast and maybe burn off a few hours listening to some music. I thanked him but said I needed to saw up a mountain of logs for the firewood deliveries (although I had no intention of doing the rounds that day).

I decided it would look good to any outsiders passing by if, for me, it was business as normal. So I fired up Big Bertha the chainsaw, then started chewing up logs. Yeah, business as usual, but in my mind I walked up-stairs to see Michaela lying there on the bed, no doubt listening to the buzz of the saw. Even though I tried to keep the image from my mind I recalled how she looked last night, lying on my bed naked but for the towel, her hair fanned out onto the sheet, her eyelids closed, those dark eyebrows that formed a pair of neat twin arches, the smooth rounded shape of her breasts and the way they-

Hell. The chainsaw bucked up at my face as it hit a nail in the wood. You’re going to loose your nose if you don’t concentrate, Valdiva. But then, it was hard to concentrate with Michaela lying on the bed upstairs, maybe gazing at the ceiling with her eyes that were as glossy and as black as onyx.

What’s more, if I managed to shut off images of her I replaced them with images of the thing that filled the apartment room as completely as water in a fish tank. The organic smell of the thing came back to me, the heat of it when I touched it. How that face came lunging out at it me. That was weird, believe me. Weird in a dark and dangerous way.

But somehow a familiar way-that was something that made no sense at all. There should be nothing familiar about it. I’d seen nothing like it before, had I?

Maybe I’d subconsciously linked it to the head Ben found in the driftwood a few days back. That was weird and inexplicable as well. There it was, lodged in the branches. A human head with a spare set of eyes bursting out through the skin of the cheek like a pair of tumors. Shit weird, if you ask me. Maybe that block of pink gel had got-

“Greg… Greg? Turn off the…”

I suddenly realized that someone was shouting my name. Killing the saw’s motor, I pulled up my goggles.

“Hello, Mel. What can I do for you?”

Mel was an easygoing redhead of around twenty-five who ran the fresh produce round. Milk, butter, bread, that kind of thing. She grew marijuana with her tomatoes on the other side of Sullivan. Although she wasn’t one of the town bastards she’d got old family going way back. You know the sort; she might be one of us today, but she could as easily switch to one of them tomorrow. It might seem a harsh judgment, but at a Christmas party she nearly sucked my damn face off, only the following day she pretended nothing had happened.

Today she seemed her friendly self. “I tried to leave your milk and bread in the kitchen, but you’ve locked your door.”

“Have I?” I shrugged, aiming to look casual. “I must have done it out of habit.”

“So I haven’t been able to put your milk in the refrigerator. I put it under the table. It’s not in the sun at the moment, but it might spoil if it’s left there too long.”

“Thanks. I’ll go move it.” I laid down the chainsaw, dusted my hands on the seat of my pants and headed off to the cabin. I was surprised to see that she’d followed me.

“How are you for fruit and tomatoes? I’ve got loads with me if you need more.”

“I’ve got plenty, thanks. The milk and bread will do me fine. I might go up to Ben’s later. He mentioned that someone was holding a barbecue.”

Shut up, Valdiva. I realized I was talking too much. I was cooking up excuses I didn’t need.

Mel still didn’t leave.

She’s seen Michaela somehow.

The smile on my face felt more unreal by the second. “Can I get you anything, Mel?”

She glanced back at the truck. I saw a young guy there. I didn’t know him, but I’d seen him and Mel hand-in-hand a week or two back. Her latest flame, I guessed. He was also a pal of Crowther junior-the man who tried to rearrange my features with a hunk of firewood. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades.

What’s more, Mel wore a sudden secret smile. “Mel?” I prompted, wondering what was coming next.

“Greg.” Her voice dropped. “This is something you don’t want to go spreading around…”

She knows about the outsider in my cabin. “Just between us, Greg, I’ve grown a beautiful crop of grass. Do you want some? I’ve got a little of the first cut in the truck.”

Jesus. I thought she knew everything about Michaela, and all she was doing was pushing some homegrown narcotic. I shook my head, smiling with relief. She probably thought I was grinning like a loon.

“No, thanks, Mel,” I said.

“Go on, just take a little as a gift.” She leaned toward me, her eyes glittering. “You need something to help you to relax… you know, after what happened to Lynne.”

“I’m fine,” I told her in an honest-to-goodness friendly way. “Thanks, but I’m just going to get stuck into my work. That’ll help best of all.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Mel. Thanks again. I appreciate it.”

At last she went back to the truck. I watched her boyfriend fire up the engine and drive her away. She sounded the soul of compassion, the embodiment of neighborliness. But I recall she was one of the first to put a brick on Lynne’s chest. Funny old world, huh?

That afternoon a few more people dropped by. Old man Crowther with a request for more firewood. I’d drop it off, I said. No, he said, he’d be obliged if he could take some right then, as he’d run clean out; his brother had caught a batch of fish; they were going to eat them while they were fresh. Blah, blah, blah. So I carried bundles of wood to his shiny Lexus and put them in the trunk. Miss Bertholly called. We regret what happened on Monday, was the gist of what she said, but we live in extraordinary times that call for extraordinary measures to maintain our security and our safety. So, please, Mr. Valdiva. No hard feelings. We want to embrace you into our community.

… Blah, blah, blah.

Then Mr. Gerletz trundled by to make sure his boats were all present and correct. I thought he’d check the lone battery cruiser tied to the jetty just down from my cabin, but he lumbered by in that old pickup of his. Almost immediately after that came my twice-weekly delivery of two-stroke for Big Bertha. Gordi Harper always wore a checkered shirt like a jacket over his regular shirt, even on the hottest of days. And this was a warm one. He rolled the drum of two-stroke into the tool-shed, took out the empty, then rolled it back to his truck. He waved. I waved back.

As each visitor left I shot a look up at the bedroom window, hoping so hard it hurt inside that I wouldn’t see Michaela’s face in the frame. But she had a powerful streak of survival. The blinds stayed shut. She must have lain there all day, not moving, just in case a movement of air disturbed a blind or a telltale-tit creak of a floorboard might give her away.

I cut more wood. Sweating, I glared up at the sun. Set, damn you, set.

Tick followed by tock followed by tick. Time dragged on. Snails moved faster than those hands of my watch. All I wanted was for it to get dark. Then I could sneak Michaela into the boat, then head for Lewis. Within the hour I’d be back home in bed. God knows I was ready to sleep twelve hours straight.

At six in the evening the juice started to flow through the wires again. Now I could fix a meal without having to light the little camping stove. Not that I had anything else but the eggs, bread and milk Mel had brought earlier in the day. I saw she’d also left a bag of fresh mushrooms. That would be enough for ome-lets with the bread and coffee.

I made a meal, took Michaela hers which she ate in her room. There was still a chance of callers, with it being so early in the evening.

Mine, I ate on the porch, washed down with ice cold water. I still aimed to present a picture of normality. Even though the tension compressed my stomach so much I didn’t want to eat much, I forced down a couple of omelets and almost half the loaf. It might be a while before I got the chance to eat again. I’d also have to find a way of replacing around two weeks’ worth of food (for me, anyway) in the kitchen without drawing attention.

At close on eight I decided to check that the batteries were charging properly on the boat. All that after-noon the thought of them nagged at me. I didn’t trust them. They were old. Maybe water had got into the electrics. Perhaps that’s why the juice had drained from them so quickly. And why the hell hadn’t I switched the boat for another? But then, that would mean hoisting the food into the replacement boat. In daylight that would be risky.

I’d reached the cabin door when I saw Ben pull up on that old 250cc dirt bike of his. He smiled when he saw me. He was still smiling when he walked up onto the porch; then the smile turned into an angry mask as he hissed. “Greg, you idiot. They know what you’re doing. The damn Guard are on their way!”