“Guess we’re
not
the only people in the world,” Baxter said.
“Poor man.”
“Yeah. He doesn’t have you.”
“We’re so lucky. It makes you realize how lucky we are, doesn’t it? I mean, wouldn’t it be awful to live like that? With nobody who loves you, and no place to go at night?”
“We could offer him the use of our room while we’re gone.”
She gently slapped his rump. “It’s nothing to make fun of. I think it’s awful. I wish we could do something for him.”
“I didn’t bring my wallet. The blanket doesn’t belong to us. You might give him the clothes off your back. I’d like that.”
“Horny toad,” she said, and gave him another slap.
They crossed the street and walked alongside the Funland parking lot. A few cars were still there. Baxter wondered if kids might be inside some of them, screwing around. This late? Not likely. Even in his heyday of humping in the backseat of his car, he’d never been out past about two.
Nobody’s
out at three-thirty.
Just us. And some snoozing bums. Maybe a few patrolling cops.
Cute if we got stopped by the cops.
We’re not breaking any laws, he told himself. It only
feels
like it, wandering around at this hour.
“Trespassing on the wrong side of midnight,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Just thinking,” he explained. “It feels illegal, doing this.”
They hurried across Ocean Front Drive, climbed the stairs, and entered the shadows beneath the Funland archway. In spite of the blanket, in spite of Kim’s hand, Baxter began shivering again as they stepped into the moonlight. He looked up and down the boardwalk.
“What’s wrong?” Kim asked.
“I just hope it’s safe around here.”
She squeezed his rump. “Don’t be a worrywart.”
They stopped at the edge of boardwalk. “Isn’t this great?” she asked.
It didn’t look great to Baxter. The familiar beach where he’d lazed in the sun, slicked Kim with oil, and gazed out at the warm blue Pacific was gone. The beach looked cold and desolate, like a wasteland at the border of an alien ocean.
He didn’t want to go down there.
“I’m not so sure about this anymore,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Kim slipped her hand out of his pants and turned to him. She swept the blanket open. Holding it at her shoulder, she raised her sweatshirt above her breasts and eased against him. She lifted his sweatshirt. He felt the warm smoothness of her skin. Her hand crept down into the front of his pants and stroked him.
“Why don’t we go back to the motel?” he whispered.
“Why don’t we not?”
“I don’t like it here.”
“Feels
like you like it.”
He squirmed.
While she caressed him, he stared past the side of her head. The planks of the boardwalk were moon-bleached bone. The black shadows weren’t empty. They were hiding places.
I’m really getting paranoid, he told himself.
And felt his pants drop down around his ankles. The wind wrapped his bare skin.
“Woops,” Kim said.
He bent over. As he grabbed the top of his pants, Kim tugged the blanket off him and whirled away with it and trotted down the stairs to the beach.
“Dammit, Kim!”
She danced on the sand, spinning and swinging the blanket overhead like a giant flag.
Baxter pulled his drawstring tight and knotted it. He descended the stairs. Not rushing. Watching Kim cavort.
He stepped off the last stair. The sand was soft and silent under his shoes. It pushed this way and that as he walked toward her. He wanted to run at her and grab her and carry her to safety. But if he made quick moves, she would flee, laughing.
He stopped. “Come here,” he said.
She smiled. She draped the blanket over her shoulders. “What’ll you give me?”
“A kiss.”
“What else?”
“Kim, come on. I mean it. This place gives me the creeps.”
“I think it’s neat.”
He made a dash for her.
Kim lurched aside. He grabbed a handful of the blanket, but she got away. Laughing, just as he’d guessed. She ran along the beach, kicking up plumes of sand, angling gradually closer to the dark shadow cast by the boardwalk. Baxter, in pursuit, couldn’t rush full speed because of the blanket. He gathered it in as he chased her. Once it was wadded and pinned under his left arm, he began to catch up. But Kim was already far ahead of him.
She looked over her shoulder. In a singsong voice she called, “Slowpoke, slowpoke, you’re so slow it ain’t no joke.”
Doesn’t she realize?
Realize what? We’re alone out here. She’s having a good time.
I’m
the one with the problem.
But Baxter didn’t like the way she was getting closer to the boardwalk, closer to its long shadow and the dark land of pilings below the fun zone.
She glanced back at him again. “Catch!” she called, and pulled the sweatshirt over her head and tossed it high. The wind snagged the shirt and tossed it toward the shadow. Baxter almost caught a sleeve as it tumbled away. He dodged to the left and snatched it off the sand at the edge of the darkness. He ran a few more strides, then had an idea. He stopped.
“So long, Kim. Have fun walking back to the motel.”
She slowed. She halted. She turned around and put her hands on her hips. Her chest was heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Her breasts rose and fell. The rest of her skin was dusky. Her breasts looked as if they’d been dipped in cream. And the cream had been licked off the nipples, leaving them dark.
Baxter stared at her. She stared back.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” she said.
The beach seemed no less forbidding than before, and Baxter felt as if eyes were watching from the black area under the boardwalk, but Kim was right. He no longer had the urge to escape from this place.
Kim was bare to the waist, exposed and vulnerable.
Baxter wanted her.
He wanted her right here, right now.
Hands still on her hips, Kim ambled toward him.
He glanced into the dark forest of pilings, and shivered, and knew he wouldn’t run.
His fear, moments ago crying out warnings to flee, now felt like icy fingers caressing him, tickling and stroking him, the fingers of a phantom whore sick with lust and aching for the party to start.
Kim halted a few paces in front of him.
“You must be freezing,” he said.
“I’m not. Feels good.”
He supposed the running had warmed her up. He no longer felt the cold himself. The shivers that still shook his body had little to do with the chilly wind.
“Take off the rest,” he said.
In the moonlight he saw her smile. “Does this mean you aren’t spooked anymore?” she asked.
“Just makes it better.”
Balancing on one foot, she pulled off a shoe and sock. “I feel so
daring,
don’t you?”
Baxter nodded. He glanced into the darkness. The icy fingers of his fear probed him and squeezed.
Kim hopped, her breasts jiggling as she removed the shoe and sock from her other foot. “You just gonna stand there?” she asked, untying the knot at her waist.
“Yes,” he said.
Her sweatpants fell. She stepped on them to free her feet from the elastic around the cuffs. Then she came to Baxter, but instead of embracing him, she took the blanket. She carried it into the boardwalk’s shadow. As the darkness closed over her, the fear squeezed Baxter hard, too hard suddenly, no longer a lusting slut but a cruel hag hurting him.
Kim shook the blanket open.
“Not over there,” he said. “Let’s put it here in the moonlight.”
“What if somebody comes along?” Kim asked. “This is a lot more private.”
“I want to be able to see you.”
“Ah-hah.” She came out, and Baxter’s fear eased its clutch. Kim turned her back to the ocean wind. She unfurled the blanket. Squatting, she lowered it to the sand. As she pinned down two of the corners with her shoes, Baxter caught the other end and held it down. He took his shoes off and used them as weights.
Kim crawled onto the blanket. She lay down. She rolled onto her back and folded her hands beneath her head. “This is really great,” she said.
“Is it too cold for the oil?” Baxter asked, his voice shaking.
“I want it,” Kim said.
He found the plastic bottle in his pocket. He tossed it onto the blanket at her feet, then took off his socks and sweatsuit. He knelt in front of her.
She lay straight, legs tight together, and where her skin was tanned it was almost the same shade as the sand alongside the dark blanket, but bright compared to the shadow just beyond her head. Her hands were still pressed beneath her head, her elbows out to the sides. She squirmed slightly, as if relishing the feel of the blanket or impatient for the touch of his hands.
Baxter popped open the bottle’s squirt top. He squeezed a line of oil up Kim’s right leg. She flinched and arched her back when the stream crossed her groin, and seemed to relax again as it drew a silver trail down her left leg. Baxter closed the bottle and dropped it. He slid his hands up her skin, spreading the slick film. Its sweet coconut aroma reminded him of cotton candy, smelled good enough to eat, made him want to lick it off her.
Kim’s shaved shins were a little bristly, but her thighs felt like silk.
She opened her legs. She moaned and writhed as he rubbed her.
Baxter, leaning forward, roamed her with slippery hands. The look and feel of her were almost too much to bear, and so was the wind. It stroked the backs of his legs, swept between his legs and licked his groin, stole the heat from the cleft of his buttocks, scurried up his back, ruffled his hair.
Hoping to calm himself before it was too late, he rested his hands on Kim’s hips and lowered his head and shut his eyes.
She had said it would be neat.
What an understatement.
They’d already made love twice in the motel room before going to sleep. And countless times during the previous months. But it had never been like this.
And they were only beginning. She hadn’t even touched him yet.
Should’ve started with her back, he thought.
He felt Kim’s hands. They covered his hands and slid them down between her legs.
He lifted his head. “Eager beaver,” he said.
She smiled and squirmed and stretched her arms out straight overhead.
He stroked her with his thumbs.
She gasped.
That couldn’t have hurt her, he thought, and then she scooted away, thighs sliding under his hands, and he thought: How’s she doing that?
“Bax!” she shrieked.
He looked up.
The shadow of the boardwalk was eating her, sucking her in.
No, not the shadow.
Two vague, hunched shapes dragged Kim by her wrists.
“No!” he yelled.
She was already gone to the waist. Her moonlit lap bucked and tossed. Her legs kicked.
Baxter caught one flailing ankle. He clutched it with both hands. In spite of the oil, he held on to it. But he didn’t stop her. He was dragged along with her, his knees rucking up the blanket and pushing ruts in the sand.
“Stop!” he shouted. “What’re you…?”
His voice froze in his throat.
Beyond the two attackers, in the darkness under the boardwalk, were others. They scurried out from behind the pilings—bent, ragged shapes. Eight of them? Ten?
Baxter released Kim’s foot.
The moonlight lost her.
“Don’t leave me!”
she squealed.
Baxter staggered to his feet.
He stood motionless, knowing he had time to flee. Then, with a growl of fierce despair he rushed into the dark. He hurled himself at the pair dragging Kim. He tore them down. On top of them, he yelled for Kim to run. Bony arms hooked around him. Fingers clawed his skin. Teeth clamped on his arm and thigh. He cried out with pain and punched and tried to push himself up, but the savage things clutched him, bit him. He gagged on their stench.
“Get up! Bax! Quick!”
“Run!” he yelled. Damn her, why hadn’t she run? Didn’t she see all those others?
Where
are
the others? he wondered. They should’ve been on him by now.
He pounded a fist into one of the foul shapes beneath him. This time, he did some damage. The guy wheezed and jerked and released him. He drove an elbow down into the midsection of the other.
Suddenly he was free. On hands and knees, he scurried off their twisting bodies. He looked up and saw Kim.
She had found a club of driftwood. She stood tall in the dark of the shadow, between Baxter and the hideous pack, swinging the wood as if she were Davy Crockett defending a wall of the Alamo with an empty musket. None in the pack seemed brave enough to attack and risk a blow.
Baxter stared at Kim—astonished and proud and afraid.
He struggled to his feet.
And glimpsed a smudge of motion high to his left. He turned his head in time to see a crone leap from the top of the boardwalk’s railing. She sailed down, arms out like the wings of a giant bat, black rags flapping. Kim saw her. Tried to leap back. But the hag folded over her, smashed her to the sand.
The silent pack rushed in.
Baxter rushed the pack.
Mag and Charlie shambled out from beneath the boardwalk and made their way toward the stairs.
“No fair,” Charlie said. “No fair no fair.”
“Clam up,” said Mag.
“Gonna
miss out!”
he whined.
Mag cuffed his arm.
He grabbed the hurt and stumbled out of reach. “Gonna miss out!”
“We was picked,” Mag said. “’Sides, we’re gonna have us some fun.” She waved the motel key at him and grinned.
“I wanna be in on it.”
“Well, you ain’t.”
“No fair.”
They climbed the stairs. As they scuffed across the boardwalk, Charlie heard a faint, muffled scream. He knew it came from the Funhouse. Without him. Moaning, he punched the side of his head.
“Hey.”
He scowled at Mag. She dug into a pocket of her coat, pulled out a pint bottle, and offered it to him. He snatched it from her hand. A couple of hits, and he felt a little better.