Coffin Island (24 page)

“Are you in-charge here,” I asked. “I
would like to speak to the wombat that’s running Crypt
Island.”

I plan to kill it. Crush its head under
the front wheel of the glass Cadillac. I kept that part under my
hat. No sense in giving the tip off.

“That’s Honey Badger,” Madison said.
“She’s the Queen of the Wombats.”

“I’m the Queen of the Wombats because I
can eat anything,” Honey said.

She was currently eating a dead cobra.
Her claws were enormous. I was beginning to see the hideous
symmetry of this world.

“Aren’t you the feisty creature,” I
marveled.

“Do you want a bite of cobra?” Honey
asked. “I already ate the venom.”

“I ate right before the shipwreck,” I
said and patted my empty stomach for emphasis.

“Cobra venom makes me pass out,” Honey
explained.

“
It doesn’t kill you?” I
asked.

“
I wake up eventually,”
Honey said. “Nothing can kill me.”

“
Honey is trying to suicide
her way out of this world,” Kaiser explained.

“
It seems like a popular
activity these days,” I said.

“
The last days of Crypt
Island,” Kaiser said. “Welcome to the wake.”

“
When is the funeral?”
Madison asked.

“
Any day now,” Kaiser
shrugged.

“
Nothing can kill me,” Honey
said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when everyone else is
dead. I don’t want to be alone. I’m a social creature.”

“
You can eat with the
sharks,” I said.

“
I certainly hope so,” Honey
said. “I don’t want to have to eat myself.”

“Honey is an African badger,” Madison
said while smoking her cigar. “Or rather she is a magical African
badger. She’s impossible to kill. She’s basically the Madison of
wombats.”

“I tend to think that she is much
worse,” Kaiser said. “No offense, Madison.”

“
None taken,” Madison said.
“Honey Badger makes me shudder.”

“
Marriage further distorts
your view of her,” Kaiser shrugged.

“
You finally married her?”
Madison gasped.

“
I went out drinking,”
Kaiser said. “I woke up with the situation.”

“I dig up corpses and eat them,” Honey
said impervious to the insults. “I’ve eaten all the dead on Crypt
Island. That’s why there aren’t any carcasses left in case you were
wondering.”

“Aren’t you the plucky little
creature,” I grimaced.

“Honey is a wombat that has spun out of
control,” Kaiser explained.

“
I’m afraid that Crypt
Island is a repository of them,” I said.

“
Your fears are legitimate,”
Kaiser said. “All the wombats have gone insane.”

“
Insanity is always at the
end of the magical river,” Madison snorted.

“
Here we are once again in
the heart of darkness,” I shrugged.

“
The horror,” Madison
sighed.

Chapter

“
It’s a pleasure to meet
you, Headmaster Boo,” Honey said and extended her claws. “It would
be an honor to eat you.”

“I’m not entirely sure what to say to
you, Honey,” I said and declined her paw. “I really don’t think
it’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re like the angel of
death.”

“I’ve eaten angel,” Honey
said.

“This is my realm,” Kaiser said and
extended his paws broadly in the backseat of the glass Cadillac. He
was seemingly trying to capture Old Havana in glass, the molten
lake of rum and glass Alcatraz in his paws. “And I’m married to the
most voracious cannibal on the island.”

“How is the cannibalism progressing?”
Madison asked.

“We’re running pretty low on wombats,”
Honey said. “I have to lay off it while they breed. Then I’m going
to eat the young.”

“What are you eating now?” I
asked.

“We’re eating witches,” Kaiser
said.

“Why not lead a balanced existence?” I
asked.

“I wouldn’t mind eating a witch,”
Madison said.

“Cannibalism has been highly popular,”
Kaiser said.

“Take a bite out of witchcraft,”
Madison agreed. “Eat a witch.”

“Which witch do you eat?” Kaiser
snorted.

“How do we get to The Casket Island
School for Witches?” I asked. “Perhaps it might be helpful to have
a few less mouths to feed here.”

“We’d like to get out of your fur,”
Madison said.

“
Give you cannibals a much
needed break,” I said.

“Casket Island sank into the emerald
ocean,” Kaiser said.

“I can’t say that I blame it,” I
said.

“It’s an underwater world?” Madison
asked.

“That’s what we think,” Kaiser
said.

“But we don’t know where it is,” Honey
said.

“Or how to get there,” Kaiser
said.

“Casket Island is doing the typical,”
Madison said.

“
Hiding and being
mysterious,” I said.

“
Trying to lure us in,”
Madison said.

“We’re the only world on the surface of
the emerald ocean right now,” Honey said.

“And we’re going under,” Kaiser
said.

“I’d sink too if I were a magical
island on the emerald ocean,” I said.

“
Kaiser is the first and
last Headmaster of The Crypt Island School for Witches,” Honey
said.

“
The upper class witches put
me in-charge as a joke,” Kaiser shrugged.

“
You did a good job for a
joke,” I said. “Chin up, hound.”

“
He didn’t do any work,”
Honey said. “Witchcraft took over.”

“
Are you accusing me of
something?” Kaiser demanded.

“
You held it together until
we got here,” Madison said.

“
Witchcraft held me until
you got here,” Kaiser said. “This is your baby.”

“
It’s probably time for you
to go, bro,” I said. “I hate to be the guy to break the bad news to
you but you’ve got to go now.”

“
Booster is taking over,”
Madison said.

“
Some day soon I am going to
eat all of you,” Honey said.

“
How do you like your new
school so far?” Kaiser asked.

“
You’re going to love lunch
because it’s you,” Honey said.

“
It sounds like we showed up
for the final days of it,” I said. “I’m ready to let everybody out
if you follow my drift.”

“
I would have to agree,”
Kaiser said. “School is nearly out.”

“
I wouldn’t mind some deep
fried witch for graduation,” Madison said.

“
Plenty of primitive
cultures eat their elders,” I said. “We fry up Professor
Coffin.”

“
We can dip Kaiser in the
rum for an appetizer,” Madison suggested.

“
You can’t eat my husband,”
Honey snapped. “That’s my job.”

“
You need to treat me with
more respect,” Kaiser bristled. “I’ve done a horrendous job but I’m
still the Headmaster. You can’t eat me. I’m the hound at the
top.”

“
This is The Crypt Island
for Witches,” Honey snarled. “There aren’t any coffins here. You
better watch your step.”

“
I don’t think that I’m
going to need one,” Madison challenged. “I tortured plenty of
animals when I was growing up.”

“
That’s a marker for a
sociopath,” I said.

“
I enjoy torturing humans,”
Honey said. “Eating them alive is my favorite dish.”

“
I can already see where
this is going,” Madison said.

Madison was looking for a weapon.
Kaiser had his fur up. Honey was sitting there blissfully vicious
and high on cobra venom. What did she have to worry about? I was
the one with all the problems. Trying to drive this magical mess
was a nightmare. Can I get a little help with the occult up in
here?

“
The Crypt Island School for
Witches looks lovely,” I said in an attempt to diffuse the
situation.

Madison wasn’t used to being powerless.
She was going to get herself killed. I had some very graphic plans
that involved her being alive. You don’t tie down a dead person and
have your way with it. You need that person alive and
kicking.

“
However we would like to go
to The Casket Island School for Witches even if it sank into the
ocean and it’s moving around and we can’t find it,” I said. “Do you
have any suggestions on how we might go about beginning the
process?”

“
Wouldn’t we all like
suggestions,” Kaiser snorted.

“
We’re all clueless here,”
Honey said.

“
Some are more ignorant than
others on Casket Island,” Kaiser corrected.

“
Ignorance is a popular
endeavor these days,” Madison said. “The parishioners seem to grow
everyday like so many weeds that need to be pulled.”

“
What exactly do you know?”
I asked.

“
You must graduate from The
Crypt Island School for Witches before you go down to The Casket
Island School for Witches,” Kaiser said. “We are the middle school
even though we are the upper school. That’s all we
know.”

“
How do you know this?”
Madison asked.

“
We’ve been told this by the
wombats that escaped from Casket Island,” Honey said.

“
What else do they say about
Casket Island?” I asked.

“
They refused to tell us
anything else,” Honey shrugged.

“
Honey upset them,” Kaiser
said.

“
Silence was their only
weapon,” Honey said.

“
You ate them?” Madison
asked.

“
You ate the only link we
had to the final school?” I shouted.

“
All of them,” Honey
said.

Honey was smoking a long cigar. She had
called one down. Apparently wombats had witchcraft in this world.
How did they get the power into themselves? Were wombats drinking
our magical power? Or just eating witches did the trick?

Chapter

“
How do we graduate from
here,” I asked. “Are there any procedures that might increase our
odds at getting out of here?”

Such as eating the occupants of the
backseat of the glass Cadillac? I thought.

“
We haven’t figured out the
steps,” Kaiser said.

“It will probably take four hundred
years,” Madison sighed.

“
We have never graduated a
single pupil,” Honey said.

“
What exactly have you been
doing here?” I asked.

“
We’ve been riding around in
the glass Cadillac,” Honey said.

I was already planning on crashing the
glass Cadillac somehow. It wasn’t going to get to decide my
destination.

“
What has everyone else been
doing?” I asked.

“
Cannibalism and war,”
Kaiser shrugged. “At least that’s what it looks like from
afar.”

Glass Alcatraz was definitely not
happening.

“
You’re not sure what
they’ve been doing at glass Alcatraz?” I asked.

“
We take a peek at it every
now and then,” Kaiser said defensively.

“
We try not to get too
involved,” Honey said.

“
They content themselves
with riots,” Kaiser shrugged.

“
Sounds like you have a
pretty loose hand on the wheel,” I said.

“
It’s a stressful situation
being in-charge of all these warmongering cannibals,” Kaiser said.
“You can’t imagine the sleepless nights that we’ve had in the glass
Cadillac.”

“
We eat the dead after the
riots,” Honey said.

“
The bodies that aren’t
thrown into the rum,” Kaiser said.

“
We’re setting out for glass
Alcatraz now,” Honey explained.

“
Tonight is the final riot,”
Kaiser said.

“
The last supper,” Honey
said.

“
What’s the hurry?” Madison
asked.

“
We wanted to make sure that
we got the last bite,” Honey said.

“
The island is almost
entirely depopulated,” Kaiser said.

“
Old Havana in glass is
nothing but glass,” Honey said.

“
What’s going to happen to
us?” I asked.

“
You’re going into the rum,”
Kaiser said.

“
Or getting eaten,” Honey
said.

“
Do we have a choice?” I
asked.

The glass Cadillac passed two
hitchhikers. The glass Cadillac threw itself into
reverse.

“
No, you don’t,” Madison
shouted and tried to prevent the glass Cadillac from backing up to
retrieve the hitchhikers.

“
They’re not sitting back
here with us,” Kaiser snarled.