The Keeper of Dawn (20 page)

“I c-c-can’t … g-go b-b-back in the … w-w-water.”

“You’re not going in the water. Just your feet, nothing
else. I promise.”

I intended to argue, but my words—even my thoughts—came
slowly. Roland led me by the hand like I was a child. The sunlight was bright
on the water, forcing me to squint to locate the rocks. Derek handed me a
branch that I used as a walking stick. When Roland jumped to the first rock, he
seemed to be walking on water before the waves pulled back. Though he tried to
hide it, he grimaced from the cold. But when I stepped beside him, the water
wasn’t as cold as I remembered.

We proceeded in this fashion, waiting for the waves to drop
before moving to the next rock. The tide became our enemy. The farther we went,
the deeper the water became, making the rocks more difficult to find. The waves
had gotten stronger, and I leaned heavily on the walking stick. When we reached
the halfway point, I looked back at Derek and Chris. Beyond them was an onslaught
of waves—no trace of where we had crossed. There would be no going back.

I stood beside Roland, water halfway to our knees. The rock
we were on was long and flat. The next rock over—more than seven feet
away—jutted waist-high above the water. When the next wave crested, Roland ran
forward and leaped through the air. He landed at the edge, pin-wheeling his
arms for balance before stepping to safety.

Derek cheered from behind me. Then he shouted over the
waves: “You can do it, Jake!”

I tossed the walking stick back to him and waited for the
waves to lower. The water between the rocks never settled long enough to reveal
its depth. I tried not to think about what would happen if I came up short.

“Okay, now!” Derek shouted.

My feet were so numb that I knew I wouldn’t make it as soon
as I took the first step. I sailed heavily through the air, colliding with the
front of the rock. I clung to it in a bear hug, my face inches from Roland’s
feet. Submerged to the waist, the numbness in my feet seeped upwards. I didn’t
have the strength to pull myself up; it was all I could do to hang on.

Roland had me beneath the arms. “Wave!” he shouted an
instant before water swept across my face. My grip was slipping. Roland’s hands
fell away. I closed my eyes and hugged the rock. I felt the water level creep
up my chest and over my neck.

Suddenly two hands grabbed me beneath the arms. Derek had
me, and before the next wave broke, he lifted me out of the water and onto the
rock.

I sat in a puddle at his feet, trying to solve the riddle of
how he had gotten there.

“I thought you beanpoles were all skin and bone,” he said,
breathing heavy.

I smiled weakly. “It’s all in m-my f-f-feet.”

I sat with my knees pulled to my chest. Chris was still on
the rock behind us, waiting for the water to drop. But the water wasn’t
dropping, at least not to where it had been. It never went below his knees, and
the longer he waited, the higher it rose. The rocks leading back to the beach
appeared only when the waves receded. Soon, in a matter of minutes, the tide
would take them away. I pulled down the strings of my hood to shut out the
surrounding water.

A sharp yell brought my attention back. Chris had fallen in.
He was treading water between the rocks, the waves tossing him about like
driftwood.

“Grab on!” Derek yelled, getting down on his stomach and
extending the walking stick. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Chris grabbed
hold and Derek guided him around to the rock’s lower side. Chris took Roland’s
outstretched hand and pulled himself up.

“Damn that’s cold!” he said, looking at his wet clothes in
disbelief.

“Ready to rock n’ roll?” Roland asked, pulling me to my
feet. I tried to sit back down, but Roland wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s downhill
from here,” he assured me, which, surprisingly, turned out to be true. Though
the water was knee-deep, we took advantage of a lull in the waves and waded the
rest of the way in.

We made for a miserable bunch stumbling ashore: wet,
improperly dressed, going on little to no sleep. We rested briefly in the sand,
hoping to absorb its heat, but the sun was still low in the sky, and the beach
was as cold as everywhere else. My feet remained numb despite being out of the
water. I lay with my eyes half-closed, the rhythmic sound of the breakers
lulling me toward sleep. Fragmentary clouds flickered past my eyelids, and
half-formed dreams sprung up from some hidden crevice in my mind.

I came awake when Roland pulled me to my feet.

“Up we go. No sleeping on my watch.”

We proceeded up the beach, sand spilling over my shoes and
caking my ankles. The others rushed ahead, and by the time I had caught up to
them, they stood staring at the cliff. Something was wrong. Why had they
stopped? But then I saw it: the rope lay at our feet, all the tension gone out
of it.

Roland was shaking his head. “This is not happening. Not
now!”

Derek looked dumbfounded. “Jake was the last one down,
right?”

“Someone followed us,” Chris said.

“What?” Roland said. “Who?”

“There was a light behind us when we came down.”

“That was Jake,” Derek said.

“No, there was someone behind him.”

“Hey!” a voice called down from above. Then it came again. “Hey!”

Someone was peering over the edge of the cliff. He was too
far away to make out, but that voice …

“Who’s up there?” Derek shouted.

“Who’s down there?” came the reply.

Suddenly my teeth began to chatter.

“Loosy-Goosy, you better hope I never make it up this cliff,
you piece of shit!” Chris roared.

From high above came the terrible, high-pitched sound of
Loosy-Goosy laughing.

“That son of a bitch,” Derek muttered. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m
gonna
kill
him!”

“Charles Patterson, you should not have done that!” Roland
shouted as if scolding a child. “Jake’s hurt, and we need to get him to the
infirmary!”

“You’re breaking my heart,” Loosy-Goosy called down, still
laughing.

“This is serious!” Roland shouted up the cliff. “Go back and
get Max. He’ll know what to do.”

“Gotta be going. I’d hate to be late for class.”

“Hey, wait!” Chris shouted, but the only reply was the
diminishing echo of Loosy-Goosy’s laughter.

“This is idiocy,” Roland said. “Complete idiocy.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Derek kept repeating. “I’m gonna kill
him.”

“There has to be another way up,” Roland said. “We just
haven’t looked hard enough, that’s all.”

“There’s not,” Chris said. “The other parts are steeper, and
the shoreline cuts back on both sides.”

I tried to grasp the seriousness of the situation, but the
idea of climbing sixty feet up a rope was ludicrous. Though I tried to sit
still, hugging my knees for warmth, every muscle in my body shook.

I brought my head up and looked at the others. Derek was
running the rope through his hands. Roland sat beside me in the posture of
Rodin’s Thinker, one hand straying across the ground, his forefinger tracing a
random pattern in the sandy soil. And though I didn’t look directly at him, I
could feel Chris’ eyes on me. Why weren’t they talking? I liked it more when
they talked. The only sound other than the waves was the steady chatter of my
teeth.

“How you doing, Jake?” Chris asked.

“O … ok-k-k-ay.”

I looked down, frightened by my own voice. My stuttering
reminded me of Benjamin, and more than anything I wanted them to know I wasn’t
afraid.

“Well we can’t just sit here,” Roland said, getting up. “There
has to be something we can do. Can’t we … I don’t know, build a fire or
something? Can’t we use our body heat to—”

“This is my fault,” Chris said.

“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Roland said. “I’m the
one who came down here, remember?”

“If it hadn’t been for me, we would have never gone to the
Anvil.”

Suddenly my muscles stopped shivering. It was like something
inside me had shut down.

“We had a choice,” Roland said. “We could’ve said no.”

“No,” Chris said, sitting down; collapsing was more like it,
sinking into my vision. “They never say no.” Then, after a long silence, he
added, “It’s just like Wheaton.”

“Shut up! You’re not doing anyone any good. We’ve got to
figure out what to do!”

I looked at Chris. His resignation made me feel like a
lifeless object, discarded in the sand that would come back at some future time
to haunt him.

“I’m going to climb it,” Derek announced. He had one end of
the rope tied around his thigh and was studying the cliff.

“What?” Roland asked, not comprehending. “How?”

“It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“That last fifteen feet is almost vertical,” Chris said.

“Yeah,” was all Derek said.

“Derek, look, you don’t have to do this,” Roland said, going
over to him. “We’ll find another way.”

“Name one.”

When Roland didn’t respond, Derek scrambled up the first
ledge. Turning around, he said, “When I throw the rope down, tie it around
Jake’s waist. And tie it tight. I want your best knot, Forsythe. It better not
come undone.”

Chris sat up and blinked, surprised he could still be of
use.

“It won’t.”

“Okay, right,” Roland said, surveying the cliff like he was
seeing it for the first time.

It was such an effort to look up that I saw little of
Derek’s ascent. The only evidence of his progress was the small rocks that
skittered down from above. No one spoke, and I sat for a long time with my eyes
closed, listening to the tide. There was something in that sound I had never
heard before; it was emotionless, uncaring, but at the same time vital, even
intimate. And the longer I listened, the more convinced I became that I was a
part of it, that the very beating of my heart was connected to its ebb and
flow.

I jerked my head up when Roland shook me awake. I must have
dozed off, for Derek had already made the climb. The rope once again extended
up the cliff. Chris tied the end of it around my legs and waist in an intricate
series of knots, and Roland was talking to me, giving instructions I didn’t
hear. We were running out of time. I tried to tell them that the waves were
coming, but hands were pushing me up the first slope, and then the rope went
taut.

Though I only went through the motions of climbing—my hands
feeling for the next ledge, my feet scraping the wall—I continued to rise
higher, at times sitting in the complication of rope knots like it was a crude
chair. Though I felt safety in the ascent, the higher I went, the louder the
waves became. Breathing was a deception. The air in my lungs wouldn’t last. The
water was inside me now. A horrible sound filled my ears. An enormous wave was
coming. I could hear it building in the distance, and when it arrived, it would
take the entire island with it.

The veins in Derek’s arms stood out as he pulled me over the
edge. His hands were cut from the climb. I would think back on it later and
marvel at what he had done. He unraveled the last knot, threw down the end of
the rope, and led me along the trail. He half-carried me up the slopes, and by
the time rocks gave way to trees, even walking over flat ground was a
challenge. My surroundings remained a blur as I rarely looked up from my feet. We
rested briefly in the woods (Derek giving in to my pleas to stop), and I
collapsed twice in the field. Each time darkness crept into my vision, and by
the time it cleared, I was lying on the ground.

Roland and Chris caught up to us as we entered the school. The
halls were empty; class had begun. When the others stopped in the hallway, I
forced myself to look up.

Mr. O’Leary stood before us. He was wearing his tweed sports
jacket and pleatless black dress pants. He held a Styrofoam cup of steaming
coffee in one hand. He stared at me, through me and into the wall beyond. I
kept expecting him to say something, for his resonant voice to travel the short
distance between us and dispel the brutality of everything I had been through. But
he remained speechless, a pained expression contorting his face.

Chris cleared his throat to speak, but before he could utter
a single word, Mr. O’Leary lunged forward, grabbed him by the shoulders, and
slammed him against the wall.

“What did you do? What the
hell
did you do to him?”

Chris was shaking his head. “It’s …”

The darkness began to hedge back into my vision, shutting
out their faces.

“What?
What
?”

“It’s … d-d-different this t-t-time,” he stuttered. “I
swear.”

That’s when I knew the water was inside him, too.

I was leaning on Roland with my head bowed when the darkness
blotted out my vision. I felt myself slipping backwards, drifting away from
them. But Roland’s voice—filled with alarm—still reached me, though his words
were jumbled together and sounded far away, like they had followed me down a
long, dark tunnel.

My eyes fluttered open, darting about the room before settling
on the IV in the crease of my arm. It was this pinprick of irritation that had
lifted me out of my dreamlike haze. Pain that had resided in the background
came sharply into focus. My head ached, and the sunlight streaming through the
slanted louvers of the room’s only window stung my eyes. I was so drowsy it was
all I could do to lift my head from the pillow. I tried sitting up, but a
constricting soreness weighed me down as if a heavy object had been placed atop
my chest. I had no recollection of what had happened, but the longer I laid
there, bits and pieces came back—a flashlight wedged into the rocks, waves
thundering ashore, a blood-smeared wall. But these memories were so tangled in
knots they made little sense.

My surroundings convinced me that this quiet room with its
tidy row of empty beds had once been something quite different. The bed across
from me was positioned so near the fireplace that if someone were to lie in it,
they would literally be looking up the chimney. I had long ago made a game out
of seeing through the school’s makeshift renovations, to peel back the years
and discover a room’s original intent. Looking at the mahogany bookshelves, I
imagined sophisticated men—men such as my father—gathering in this room after
dinner, standing amidst cigar smoke and the flickering shadows of the
fireplace, discussing the day’s events, perhaps joking over how poorly they had
played the back nine. The wives had flocked to one of the sitting rooms to
contribute their share to the after-dinner gossip, the books sat unread upon
the shelves,
and these men sipped their cognac and liqueur in the
pleasurable company of their own kind.

But the last fire had died out years ago, the tight circles
of men replaced with two rows of narrow beds, and instead of the crackle of
burning wood, the sterile odor of a hospital permeated the room.

A black and white picture at the bedside depicted two men on
the broad steps of the school’s entryway. A large banner streamed overhead.

Grand Opening of the Hotel Nouveau

May 14, 1947

A boy slightly younger than myself stood beside them. His
indifferent expression gave away his disinterest in the ceremony taking place
around him. There was something familiar in the boy’s stance and distant gaze
that made me take a closer look. When I noticed a toothpick protruding from his
mouth, I suspected that the black and white photograph couldn’t capture the
true color of the boy’s curly red hair.

More photographs hung from the walls. Men in tuxedos and
women in formal gowns posed for the camera, lifted their glasses in cheer,
mingled at a wedding reception in the wide confines of a glittering ballroom. I
recognized the landmarks that had become assimilated into my daily life—the
courtyard, the lobby, Raker Lighthouse, the golf course, even the indoor
swimming pool. Lying in bed unable to move much more than my eyes, the Hotel
Nouveau felt very much alive.

“They say we were exposed.”

It was Chris. At first I thought a cigarette dangled from
his lips, but when it threw back the sunlight, I realized it was a thermometer.
He looked younger sitting in bed with the thermometer in his mouth. He had been
an adult on the Anvil, but here he was, back to being a kid again.

He leaned over and whispered, “Apparently you were more
exposed
than I was.”

Too weak to laugh, I managed a smile.

He started to say something more, but was interrupted when
Nurse Bennett entered the room, approached his bed, and yanked the thermometer
from his mouth.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke, would you?” he asked.

“Ninety-eight point eight,” the nurse said in a no-nonsense
voice, lifting her glasses off her nose and squinting at the thermometer. “It’s
a miracle. You’re saved. Feel free to go at
any time
.”

Nurse Bennett was an obese woman with a heavy face. Her
oversized breasts were two shapeless bulges in the front of her uniform. There
was a spoon-shaped curve evident in her upper back, and her shoulders were
pulled forward as if they had long ago submitted to the weight of her ample
bosom. When she looked over and saw I was awake, she smiled, sending a ripple
across her round face that revealed a small gap between her front teeth.

“Why, I was beginning to think you were going to sleep the
day away,” she said. Then she shuffled over to my bed and proceeded to fuss
over me, making sure the sheets were straightened just right, asking me how I
was feeling while checking the medical instruments at the bedside. “You’ve been
through quite a spell, quite a spell indeed, but it’s nothing we can’t fix.” Before
leaving, she reminded Chris that he was free to go at
any time
.

“You look like shit,” Chris said.

“So do you.”

“This gig is about up,” he said, crossing his hands behind
his head and closing his eyes. “Big Bertha isn’t buying my fever. And once I
get out, they’ll be watching me like a hawk.”

After a long silence, during which I nearly fell back to
sleep, I said, “Hey, Chris?”

“Hmmm?”

“You think they’ll, you know … kick you out?”

“Not right away, but yeah, Lawson’s got my number. It’s
personal now, and the way he sees it, there’s no way he can lose.” He shook his
head. “Deans are the same everywhere you go. When it comes down to it, they’re
a bunch of bureaucrats. But hey, at least that makes them predictable, right? He’ll
get his expulsion, but I’ll get the last laugh. He doesn’t know I’ve got an ace
up my sleeve.”

He looked over at me then, tempting me to ask him what he
meant. But it was an effort to speak, and I must have dozed off, for when I
opened my eyes, the sunlight coming into the room had faded.

“Hey, you awake, man?” Chris asked from the edge of his bed.
His eyes looked feverish, like he had faked the thermometer reading. “It’s good
you’re awake. Did I … did I ever tell you about my old school, Wheaton?” he
asked, rubbing his thumb over his palm as if wiping something away.

“I know it sounds crazy, but there were was this old coal
mine beneath the campus. Tunnels that went on for miles. Only a few of us knew
about them. I can’t even remember how I found out about it. Everything else at
Wheaton sucked except for that coal mine. Anyway, there were these twins, Billy
and Bobby Ingram, who used to go down there with us. And let me tell ya,” he
let out a strained laugh, “they were twins in the truest sense of the word. Looked
the same, acted the same, even had the same screwy laugh. Some of the guys
could tell them apart, but I never could.

“This one Friday night Bobby managed to get a hold of some
Johnnie Walker. According to Dean Wadsworth, this was
procuring contraband
,
so we went to the mine to drink away the evidence. If you’ve never sat
around drinking whisky by flashlight, I highly recommend it.”

When a bell rang in the hallway, Chris looked over his
shoulder, the quick movement extinguishing the bravado in his voice. Only after
the footsteps of students leaving their classrooms faded did he continue.

“I don’t know how it started, but Bobby and I got to
wrestling. Not fighting or anything, just fooling around. We got off a ways from
the others and … and I don’t … I don’t remember exactly how it happened. It was
so dark. I think I pushed him. I wasn’t even drunk. I pushed him, not any
harder than he pushed me, but it forced him to take a couple steps back, and … and
just like that, he was gone. He just … vanished. I knew something was wrong,
even … even before the others came over. Right where Bobby had been standing
was this … shaft in the floor.”

Chris concealed what was in his voice by laughing—a sharp,
nervous laugh—and then looked out the window like he was ashamed, not from what
had happened, but because he was letting me see him like this. The person who flew
helicopters and made fools out of teachers was no longer in the room beside me.
It was someone else, and suddenly I wanted him to stop. I didn’t want to know
what had happened to Bobby Ingram. If something bothered him this much, I
didn’t need to know what it was.

“The first thing I saw were his teeth. They were … scattered
everywhere. Just, fucking everywhere.” A flash of anger crossed his face. “We
must have walked by there a dozen times. Any one of us could have fallen. He,
ah … his legs were still moving, almost like … almost like he was trying to
walk. I think he was still alive, but … but no one could have survived that. It
must have been forty feet down. His head was all … busted open.”

He was quiet for some time before continuing. “Billy
withdrew. His family sued Wheaton for … I don’t know, wrongful death or
something. Tried getting me on manslaughter. It went to trial and everything,
but the jury ruled it an accident. Billy was there every day in court. But whenever
I looked over at him, I saw his brother, Bobby, plain as day, staring up at me
with no teeth. I’ve told myself a million times I didn’t kill him. But if it hadn’t
been for me, none of us would’ve gone down there. If it wasn’t for me, Bobby
Ingram would still be alive.”

Chris looked at me.

“You looked like a corpse down there today, Jake,” he said,
and a single sob escaped him. “I thought for sure I’d killed you. You were just
like Bobby. You were already dead, you just didn’t know it yet.”

He barely got out the final words before losing it. His head
dropped between his knees and his entire body shook. The sound brought Nurse
Bennett back into the room, but after one look at Chris, she left without a
word, quietly shutting the door behind her.

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault. No matter what had
happened to Bobby Ingram, I was alive. I looked away, my eyes coming to rest on
the pictures on the wall. But instead of seeing their elation and good cheer,
those men and women of yesteryear stared back at me with the emptiness of
bygone years.

Our time is over
. This place is yours now. But
there will come a day when your picture will hang from this wall, and your time
on the island will be over.

I reached out and placed a hand on Chris’ bowed head.

* * * * *

The fencing team was sparring. But instead of the resounding
clash of foils, the echoes were lost in a suffocating silence. Mr. O’Leary
stood at the edge of the pool waving his arms. His mouth was open like he was
shouting, but no words came out.

When I struck my opponent, his vest ripped open. We both
stopped, unable to take our eyes from the blood spilling down his chest. It was
happening to the others as well—thin red lines seeping over white uniforms. Our
weapons were real. Above us, Mr. O’Leary continued to shout and wave his arms.

Instead of discarding our weapons, the sight of bloodshed
intensified our efforts, transforming the sport into real combat. In an
instant, the dignified rules of fencing were discarded, the lunge and parry
forgotten. In their place arose murderous swings and thrusts, all backed by a
desperate will to survive. I felt cuts on my arms and legs, but I shrugged them
off as I sliced into my opponent. Soon our feet were splashing through blood
that had collected around the pool’s drain. Mr. O’Leary continued to run around
the pool, waving his arms, but we paid him no heed. It was all I could do to
keep my opponent’s weapon at bay. I struck him again and again, but he
continued to fight.

The blood in the pool was rising. At first we were stepping
in it, then we were wading through it. All at once everyone lowered their foils
and surged toward the shallow end. A panic gripped me as I raced to get out,
but the slant of the floor was slick and I lost my footing. My weapon
forgotten, I clawed at the bloody tiles, only to be pulled back by the others.

Our wounds continued to bleed. The blood was up to my waist.
Mr. O’Leary was still running, still waving his arms and shouting. But it was
too late. We couldn’t get out. We were swimming now, swimming in blood. But
instead of being warm, it was ice cold. The tide was rising. I wasn’t free of
it yet. Higher and higher the blood rose until the pool was full. At first one,
and then another of the faceless masks went under. My arms grew heavy. I could
no longer feel my legs. Soon my entire body went numb. I took one final breath
before sinking beneath the surface …

* * * * *

When I awoke, Mr. O’Leary was sitting on the bed beside me. His
slouched posture and distant expression indicated he had been there for some
time.

“Ah, back from la-la land,” he said, his face brightening. “How
do you feel?”

“Better.”

I inched into the sitting position, scratching at the
bandage where the IV had been. I looked over at the adjacent bed. It was empty.
Though it was evening, it felt like only moments ago since Chris had confessed.

“You were mumbling in your sleep.”

“I was dreaming about fencing.”

This seemed to amuse Mr. O’Leary. “I’m in your head now,” he
said, smoothing his checkered necktie. Then he went to the other side of the
room and brought over a plate of chicken and rice topped with gravy sauce. “Nurse
Bennett gave the okay for you to eat, so I took the liberty of bringing you
dinner.”

“Great. I’m starving. But I’m going to have to make some
room first.”

“Down the hall on your left.”

I eased out of bed and made my way to the bathroom past the
nurse’s station. While washing my hands, I noticed a message written on the
back of the room’s door.

By the twitching of my bum,

Something wicked this way comes.

Returning to the infirmary, I looked accusingly at Mr.
O’Leary. “You haven’t by chance …”