Crossroads (20 page)

Whatever they are, they aren’t gonna swim to the island. They don’t like water.

He went back out on deck and rolled up the bow and aft lines, watching the other anchored and moored boats as they passed. The lobstermen were empty, but several sailboats showed lights, and he could hear voices and threads of music carrying across the water. Suddenly a frizon de pis ran up his spine, that odd shiver that every French Canadian sailor knew well.

Someone just walked on your grave.

Or something. Maybe one of those evil looking somethings back on the dock.

He spat into the scuppers, climbing the ladder to the pilothouse again, slamming the bulkhead and dogging it behind him.

Those things didn’t just happen to show up now. They have something to do with Silky. Now he’s gonna have to tell me what the devil’s going on.

Night rolled out over the bay ahead of the running lights like one wide black tsunami. Behind the boat the lights of the mainland slowly disappeared in the distance. He steered for the island with the sure hand of a man who’d made the trip in good weather and foul so many times he couldn’t remember. Except for the blue and green buoys there wasn’t a thing moving out on the water, and other than the motor and the slapping of the waves against the hull the night was silent.

In that empty patch of bay when the mainland had disappeared but the island was still miles from appearing on the horizon he began to experience the increasing certainty that he was not alone on the boat. He didn’t know if it was one of the weird
things
that had made it aboard, or something else, but there was little doubt in his mind that something was sharing the
Mary O
with him. He had the creeping sensation of unseen eyes upon his back. Although he fought the urge, over and over he glanced over his shoulder only to see the inky darkness fading into oblivion behind the boat’s pale wake.

Then the feeling changed.

Instead of eyes, it felt as though someone were breathing down the back of his neck. He gripped the wheel tightly, muttering to himself.

"You’re crazy as a coot," he muttered. "Sad thing for a man not yet sixty to go mad, but you’ll fit right in now. You and Silky can be crazy together."

But the more he talked the less he liked the sound of his own voice over the hammering of the diesel and the steady slap of the waves. He was afraid he might be obscuring the sound of someone slipping up behind him.

"You gonna get shillyshallied on your own boat?" he grumbled to himself.

Focusing on the last buoy shining a couple of miles ahead, he locked the autopilot. Then he peered around the empty open deck. Finally he turned toward the bulkhead door leading onto the tiny gangway down into the hold. Snatching a flashlight from a rack beside the helm he jerked open the door and shone the light below. The hold had its own lighting, but it was low wattage and left a web of crisscross shadows around the metal traps.

The engine noise rattled up at him, and the boat rolled as it crossed a low wave. He crept down the stairs shining the light in all directions. The hold smelled of rotten fish and murky seawater, and occasionally, when one of the diesel or oil lines leaked, he could smell
that,
but the engine was fine now, running like a top. He glanced through another bulkhead into the tiny sleeping cabin. An empty bunk and a footlocker bolted to the deck. The door to the head was latched open as well. No room for anyone to hide in there. Most lobstermen didn’t even have cabins and some no heads. But since the boat had been Clem’s home for three years while he built his cabin, the
Mary O
wasn’t quite so spartan. He shone the light back through the pots at the small bulkhead that opened onto the engine room.

Closed. As it should be.

The rest of the hull was lined with more stacked wire pots. Most of a lobsterman’s work took place in the elements, up on deck. The picking of the traps, the rebaiting, repairing any frayed or broken lines, any busted traps. The lobsters on the
Mary O
were tossed into a fiberglass bin down in the center of the hold. But Clem was in the process of moving all the pots to what he thought would be a better fishing ground after a season of not-so-hot hauls. Now the bin was full of even more empty traps. He made his way carefully around to the bow where a chain rode lay coiled beside a spare Bruce anchor.

Still, the feeling of not being alone would not go away, and suddenly Clem was afraid that he’d made a mistake, that whoever or whatever was on the boat had slipped by him somehow and was now up at the helm. The hydraulic controls that ran the rudder shifted slightly, but the autopilot would do that, just maintaining the course he’d set. He turned back toward the engine room, but an increasing sense of dread stopped him in his tracks.

In that instant he knew that whatever was on his boat, it wasn’t up above on the deck or in the pilot house. It was down here, now, with him, just on the other side of that thin bulkhead door. He shone the light at the threshold where it met the hull, and the light seemed to be drawn through the joint there like water running through a crack in a bowl. Clem felt certain that if he hesitated longer the glow would be sucked right out of the flashlight. In that instant all the last of his liquid courage burned away.

He backed quickly up the gangway ladder into the pilothouse and slammed the door, slapping the bolt into place for the first time since he’d owned the boat. But he was absolutely certain that whatever it was that now hid from sight in the engine room would not be stopped by something so fragile as the thin metal bolt. He finished the trip to the island with his hands white on the wheel, piloting the
Mary O
to the dock below his shack more by feel than sight, staring over his shoulder most of the time, expecting at any morment for the door leading to the hold to burst inward. When the old tires along the hull finally bounced home against the wharf he hurried to leap off the boat and tie off the lines, still staring back at the now silent boat.

Something was hitching a ride.

But nothing crept up out of the hull. Nothing slunk out onto the dock. Still, as he glanced around the dock he noticed that the night had suddenly gotten eerily silent. Even the faint lapping of the waves against the pilings seemed strangely muffled.

Then just like that the feeling of a malevolent presence was gone.

"Just hitching a ride," Clem muttered, as he hiked shakily up the path past his cabin without stopping.

Whatever it was was gone now, and it hadn’t hurt him. Probably had been just his damned imagination. Silky had him so spooked he was jumping at shadows. Only the things on the dock in town hadn’t been shadows. So maybe the feeling on the boat wasn’t his imagination, either. Half way up the island he started getting that itchy feeling between his shoulder blades again. He traipsed the rest of the way jittery as a meth-head on a five day bender, jerking at every breeze, seeing faces in the shadows, figures in the clouds scudding behind the trees.

When he reached the clearing around Silky’s house he could see that something was seriously amiss. The ridge of the roof drooped in the middle as though a giant fist had smashed down upon it. The porch posts were askew, and the front door hung ajar. Lantern light flickered through a couple of windows, but the house had a silent, deserted feel to it, and Clem’s heart pounded a warning. He hurried up the steps, calling the old man’s name without getting a reply. Finding the entry empty he rushed from room to room. But no Silky. Stopping to listen he thought he heard a scraping noise from the open cellar door. When he stepped onto the landing the sound grew louder. Climbing down into the basement he found himself staring across the dusty space at Silky’s back, lit by lantern light.

The old man had tossed aside his shirt, and a bright sheen of sweat lathered his bony shoulders as he worked furiously at a large foundation stone that had collapsed into the basement. Clem stepped onto the floor, his rubber boot soles slapping the stone, but Silky paid no heed.

"What the hell happened?" asked Clem.

Silky jerked. Then slowly his shoulders sagged.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, without turning.

"What happened to the house?"

When Silky finally looked at him Clem was shaken by the exhaustion on the old man’s face. A glaze of sweat and dirt gave his ancient countenance the look of a war-painted Indian.

"I thought I run you off."

"I ain’t going," said Clem, voicing the decision he’d only really finalized on the hike up the trail. Depending upon what he learned here, now, they were either staying together, or Silky was coming off this island with him if he had to drag the old man.

Silky’s shoulders sagged even more.

"What the hell caused the cave-in?" asked Clem.

"It’s a long story."

"I got nothing but time."

"No, you don’t. You ain’t even supposed to be on this island."

"And I told you. I ain’t going. What are you gonna do, have me go get the cops to run me off? If you really mean to shoot me then go get your goddamned gun. If you can find it in this mess."

The old man shook his head, wearily, then silently lead the way back upstairs. Once again Clem noticed that the floor sloped badly, cups and saucers in the kitchen had crashed to the old linoleum, and the baseboard was ripped away at the corner where the living room wall seemed to have twisted under the pressure.

"You sure this place is safe?"

Silky shrugged. "A tremor hit."

"Never had one on the island before," said Clem, frowning.

Silky pointed to a chair in the living room. So Clem thought maybe he was forgiven?

"We had another one," said Silky. "You were on the boat."

"You never mentioned it."

Silky disappeared into the kitchen. "I didn’t think it was any of your business."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? You keeping earthquakes secret?"

The old man returned and dropped into the chair facing Clem, handing him a glass half filled with whiskey. Silky nestled one of his own between his hands. He stared into the dark fluid for only a second and then quickly away, as though he’d discovered something there not to his liking.

"Sure don’t seem like forty years," he mused, taking a slug of scotch.

Clem didn’t know exactly how to take that, so he just rode with the flow. "Nope. Time flies when you’re getting old."

Silky chuckled, but it was a hollow, sad sound. "If I’d gone to the mainland I’d probably be running a show right now."

Clem frowned. "Is that what you always wanted?"

Silky took a long drag of whiskey. "My people all went on the road."

Silky had never talked about his family before. His past was a closed book, never to be opened.

Clem shook his head. "Didn’t know your family was carneys."

Silky frowned. "Not family like you mean, but you could call em that."

"Being on the road would be a good life, I reckon. Better’n being locked into some nine to five job. But what would you have you didn’t have here? You own your own island for Pete’s sake."

"It’s not mine."

"What’s that supposed to mean? Whose is it?"

"It belongs to Shandon Graves."

"Who?"

Silky frowned. "Why did you think it was named Graves Island?"

Clem shook his head. "I always just assumed maybe sailors or fishermen had been buried here. Who knows how some of these places get their names?"

"Shandon made me caretaker. I don’t legally own it."

"You told me I could build here.."

Silky shook his head. "You knew the place wasn’t really yours."

"Well, yeah, but I just assumed you had the right."  

"I do have the right. I can do whatever the hell I want on this island. As long as I maintain things."

"What things? There’s nothing here but rock. What were you digging for down there in the basement?"

Silky’s eyes got cagey, and Clem wondered again if the old man wasn’t going off his rocker after all.

"Come on, Silky. I’ve been your friend since God was young. What’s going on?"

"It doesn’t concern you," insisted Silky, "and if you keep asking you’re going to be sorry."   

"It does concern me. I was up here the other night, Silky, and I felt something. Something bad. That’s the only way I can explain it. And I saw something tonight in town. Some
things...
Tell me what’s going on."

Silky’s face clouded. "What do you mean, things? What did you see?"

Clem shook his head. "If I hadn’t seen em with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. They looked like big fat black balls with bright red eyes, but man, they had some teeth on em. They scared me, I’ll admit. They wanted onto the boat. I think I just barely got away."

He chugged a slug of whiskey, the glass shaking in his hand.

"Are you sure that’s what you saw?" asked Silky, frowning.

Clem nodded. "I seen ‘em. I don’t believe ‘em. But I seen ‘em."

"Damn," muttered Silky.

"What were those things?"

Silky sighed loudly. "You’re gonna get yourself killed if you don’t get the hell out of here."

"Then tell me how to stop that from happening some other way. Cause I ain’t leaving."

"That’s the only way."

"Are you hard of hearing? There’s things back in town, and I have this stupid feeling I can’t ditch that maybe they’re waiting for me there, now. In fact I’ve been having one stupid feeling or another ever since you came to run me off the island. Whatever all this shit is about, it’s come home to roost with me, too."

For just a moment the pair had a staring contest, but it was Silky who finally backed down.

"For forty years we been hiding," he muttered, "but there’s some things you just can’t hide from."

Clem nodded. "What were those things on the dock? What was that thing I felt on the boat?"

"On the boat?"

Clem shrugged. "Maybe that was just a feeling, but it was the exact same bad feeling I had the other night outside your house."