Black Tide (10 page)

He stood there on the shore staring at us, his arms hanging at his side beseechingly. He was covered in blood. I didn't know what to think – that he was pleading for help, that he was finally admitting I'd been right about something, that he was damning me for bringing us to this place. At once I felt an awful cascade of emotions – shame for all my evil thoughts about him, my less than honourable motivation for arranging this trip to begin with, possibly my ineptitude in dealing with the situation. Maybe he wanted me to see there was a kind of tragic honour in trying to beat death. I don't know. My fevered imagination was treading equally through shock and guilt.

Scotty stood that way a moment longer. And then gravity took hold. He simply fell over, into the water, and vanished.

Heather moaned, ‘Nooo,' and went weak in my arms. I nearly dropped her. She collapsed against my chest and began to sob, and it was a pitiful sound, full of defeat and misery, the kind that tears your heart apart. If I could have reached into her and taken that pain and brought it into myself, I would have done so because at that moment I don't think I've ever witnessed a human being who was so utterly, completely sad in all my life. And it had all been my doing. I couldn't have foreseen these events, but it was because of me that we were here, and it was because of me that Scotty and I had fought. My shame gave way to a freezing sense of terror. Now it was only the two of us. And as old-fashioned as it sounds, I knew it was my responsibility to get us off this island alive. My feelings of infatuation for Heather had given over to a kind of paternal protectiveness. Yet the doubt remained.

Would I be able to do it?

Heather pulled herself from me and staggered away a few short steps. She began to vomit.

I should have gone to her. I should have helped her. I should have spoken the magic words that would have eased her pain.

Instead, I simply knelt there staring blankly at the spot where Scotty had vanished. The torrid afternoon seemed to weigh as much as the world.

 

We sat atop the dune, numb.

I had worked all afternoon collecting lumber from the beach. Fortunately a great deal of wood had washed ashore, practically all of it dock timbers. This reinforced my suspicion that a barge had ploughed along the mainland side of the sound, tearing out a number of docks. Too bad none of the boats tied up to those docks had come our way. I'd worked almost to dusk, collecting the boards into a huge pile. Then I'd begun spelling out the world ‘HELP' in 20-foot tall characters on the sandy tailing of the island, careful to avoid DeVries' carbonised body which was still standing upright where he had burnt. The spot was slightly elevated with a shallow slope, so there was a chance somebody from shore would see it. But I was counting on an airplane or a helicopter pilot. That seemed the logical approach to reconnoitring the coast. If the authorities had begun to probe this far south, they'd do so by air first. Then by surface.

I had worked with a great deal of energy, partly to banish my thoughts, which kept returning to the sight of Scotty standing on the far shore, and partly to satisfy the newly found sense of urgency I felt in getting us off this island. Heather had remained on the beach for most of the afternoon, and I didn't bother her. I expected she needed the time alone. I didn't want to add to her misery. Later, she'd joined me, working silently yet with determination, and I'd said nothing.

As the sun slipped below the horizon and the air cooled, we gathered a few things – most importantly the flashlights and waterproof matches – and set up camp at the top of the dune. Neither one of us spoke of what we would face during the night. The day had already surpassed our quota of horror.

I checked the flashlight that Scotty had used the night before. The beam was jaundiced and barely illuminated the foot of the dune, much less the beach. I turned it off again. I wanted to get as much use from it as possible before the batteries died. No telling how much juice was in the other two flashlights.

We sat quietly in the gathering dark until the sun dropped completely below the horizon. And then Heather began to talk.

‘I don't know what to say,' she began, her voice jagged. ‘I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this.'

‘You're doing fine,' I told her.

‘I'm trying …' and it seemed she would start crying, as if the sound of grief alone would open the dam holding back her emotions. ‘I'm trying not to be one of those hysterical females you see in the movies, the ones who scream and faint and fall into the arms of a man. But I'm not sure …'

‘You're not hysterical.'

‘I can't believe what's happened. I can't believe what's happened to Scotty. Two days ago we were a happy couple and now …'

‘I know. It's horrible,' I tried to console her. ‘Everything that's happened since we came to this island is horrible – the mind can't take it all in.'

‘But Scotty …' and then she did begin to cry, very softly. She laid her head on my shoulder and just as quickly jerked it away. ‘Scotty was real. The rest of it …' she waved her hand as if to take in the entire world, ‘just doesn't seem that way.' She looked up and in a warbling voice said, ‘What am I going to tell his mom?' and began crying again.

‘Tell her he died trying to help us get off this island,' I said.

‘He was attacked …'

‘Don't tell her that,' I said, waving the flashlight around. ‘Tell her what I told you.'

‘Maybe you shouldn't bother turning that thing on,' she said. I wasn't sure if she were speaking to me or merely thinking aloud. But I said, ‘Of course you're not serious.'

She stared into the approaching dark. Finally, she shook her head. ‘No,' she sighed. ‘I guess not. I don't think that's how I want to die. But maybe I deserve it.'

I put my arm around her, more firmly than what would have been implied by a seductive gesture. ‘Look, Heather, don't start, OK? You couldn't have known and nobody expected this …' I swept my arm across the dim vista of the sound. ‘This … insanity. Nobody could have foreseen any of this. I could be punishing myself about asking you to come, but I'm not. To question my motives based on hindsight – it's pointless. I'm not going to do it, and you shouldn't either.'

‘But I shouldn't have asked him to come.'

I let out a loud breath.

‘It was a big mistake,' she continued, her voice clear now, like the Heather of old. ‘I mean, it was obvious you two didn't get along. I don't know what I was thinking … oh, what am I saying? Of course I know what I was thinking.' She paused, and a curious expression appeared on what I could see of her face, a mixture of confusion and something darker. She said, ‘Why did you ask
me
to come?'

I felt my insides go cold. Sweat speckled my palms. God, I didn't want to get into this, especially under the current circumstances. I babbled the first, lame excuse that came to my mind: ‘You're my graduate assistant. It's customary for college professors to include their assistants on field studies.'

Her head wobbled back and forth, and I could imagine her eyes rolling in the sockets. ‘I'm not exactly an expert on dinoflagellates. You could have asked a dozen other more qualified people to help, and you know I wouldn't have been bothered. I don't even know why I'm your assistant. I'd be much better suited to Dr. Purdy …'

‘I thought you wanted a diversified study base,' I offered weakly.

She sighed. ‘Let's just be honest. We may not live through the night, so let's be very, very honest …'

‘We're
not
going to die tonight …'

‘Whatever,' she answered dismissively. ‘I'd like to know the real reason.'

I fought for breath. I had never spoken about this with her, not any of it, and now I wasn't sure I even felt the same as before. Much had changed in the past two days. Too much for words.

‘Be honest,' she reminded me.

I didn't want to be honest. I wanted to tell her another lie. Too much was at stake now, and when I began to enumerate to myself everything I would risk by telling the truth, the words just tumbled out.

‘I wanted to be with you. Alone.'

She turned to me, her expression neutral. ‘You wanted to have sex with me?'

The words stung. Spoken with such lack of decoration, such blunt certainty, they robbed the whole concept of its subtextual beauty. I felt my face growing hot, and I was hopeful she couldn't see me.

‘It wasn't just a sexual thing,' I murmured, ashamed. ‘It was you. I wanted to be with you.'

She didn't say anything for a long moment, and the light had grown so dim I couldn't make out her expression. But after that long pause she said, ‘I knew that.'

The hole inside me deepened, if that were possible. It felt as though every molecule of my body were being drawn into it so that I heard her only dimly over the roar of my own heartbeat. A mad pulsing commenced in my temples, a heavy thud that sent shockwaves rippling across my body.

‘That's why you shouldn't turn on the light. That's why I should be dragged off into the water.'

I shook my head, more delirious than confused. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘That's why I asked Scotty to come.'

I knew that already. I told her.

‘I don't want you to think I hate you,' she blurted, ignoring what I'd just told her. She had become a pale hobgoblin in the maroon twilight. ‘I just … I just didn't feel the same way about you. And I wanted Scotty there.'

I couldn't think of anything to say except, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's not that I think you're too old, or unattractive,' she amplified. ‘I just … I was wrapped up in Scotty. I was taken. You see?'

Neither one of us spoke for a long time. The night settled in around us. There were no bugs – my
Karenia negre
had apparently done them in too. We sat there in the cool dark.

My feelings were … I don't know. I felt hollow inside, and cold to the bone. A kind of revelation was settling in. Every person experiences a moment in his life when he finally understands in a way that the protective coating on the psyche cannot deflect that he is fallible, and mortal. It's a condition that neither education nor intellect can deny. I had committed mistakes that for all my life I'd held other men in my circumstances accountable for, and now I didn't want to admit the same for myself. I always seemed to disappoint myself.

‘Are we evil people, Fred?' Heather asked, her voice perversely innocent. ‘All the manipulating and conniving – does that make us evil?'

‘You're not evil,' I told her.

‘And you?'

‘I don't know.' I honestly didn't.

‘We tried to talk him out of swimming to the other side, didn't we? I mean, we really tried.'

‘Yes.'

‘He was that way,' she continued, sounding angry. ‘You couldn't tell him a damn thing. He was a stubborn asshole.' A whiff of uncertainty crept into her voice. ‘Maybe that's what I liked about him.' I said nothing but I was listening. The conversation was jumping around, not quite linear, and in such moments unvarnished truth and fiction are mixed in equal parts.

She shook her head. ‘But we tried. You even tried to stop him, and he hit you. And then you cried.'

I made some kind of noise, I don't know what. Some kind of animal distress sound. My shame burned ever hotter. She put a hand on my arm and through the murk, I thought I could see her smiling.

‘No, Fred,' she said, ‘It's OK. You guys are so hung up on crying. It's a human thing. Entirely human.'

And then she settled again into silence.

 

I stood watch the first half of the night, switching on the dying flashlight and playing it around the empty beach.

At some point, I fell asleep.

Heather woke me up. She was cooing, ‘Oh Scotty, stop it,' and at first I could not remember where we were or what we were doing. Then I saw pale fingers, fat as bleached sausages, sliding around her throat. The shape of a head bobbed in the gloom.

A bolt of fear nearly stopped my heart and I jerked the flashlight up.

It wasn't Scotty. I don't know how I would have reacted if it had been Scotty. The weakened beam of the flashlight landed squarely in the thing's bloodless face, and the eyes twitched up to reveal nothing but white balls rotating blindly in the sockets. The flesh puckered and the thing threw a protective arm across his face but it was too late – one eye kicked off like a flare and the top of our dune was illuminated in an otherworldly nimbus of blue light as it began to burn. Fingers had latched on to my shoulders and I could feel a mouth closing in on my throat – the breath was cold, as if somebody had opened the heavy steel door of a meat locker, and it was foul with a stench of both rotting flesh and muck. I aimed the flashlight at me and the fingers instantly let go and there was a menacing hiss of combustion. Whatever it was staggered back and howled wildly into the night.