Terminal Island Read online

  Suddenly a great cloud of red billowed down through the water, filled with pink and white bits of flesh. Huge black rays swooped in to suck up the chum. The bloody plume continued to grow, turning the sea from blue to red and filling the cabin of the boat with the same rich color. Henry fled, running upstairs to the open deck. There was no escape; the very sky was stained red, and in that gruesome light he saw that people were falling from the end of the pier into a big black funnel on the boat’s stern—there were thousands of them lined up all the way down the pier around the waterfront to the Casino. The Butcher was in the boat’s cockpit, wearing a fancy captain’s hat with gold trim. Every few seconds he pulsed the engine, sucking people through the propeller and clearing the chute for more. The sound of it was the most horrible thing Henry had ever heard.

  There was nowhere to run, nowhere for him to jump except into that sea of blood—Henry struggled to scream and could not. The Butcher leaned down and hoisted Henry into the cockpit, putting the captain’s hat on his head. Pointing to a big black button, he said, C’mon, Skipper. Why don’t you give it a try?

  The weekend passed too quickly, and as Sunday evening came on Henry was confronted by the dual realization that a) he was expected to return to school in the morning, and b) he could never in a million years do so. He just couldn’t—it was a dead certainty. Nothing in the world could make him go back there.

  Working up to the sickening knowledge that he had to break this news to his mother, he barely tasted his dinner—and she had cooked one of his favorite dishes: lamb stew with cabbage and potatoes. He had to rush to the toilet soon after to throw it up.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he gasped as she stood over him, watching with concern.

  “Oh no—that’s all right, baby. The food didn’t agree with you, that’s all.”

  “No, it’s not the food.” Henry looked up at her, his face leached of color, droplets of toilet water in his forelock. “I want to get out of here.”

  “What?”

  “I want to leave. I want to go back to the mainland.”

  “Oh, honey, why? Is it because of the school?”

  “It’s everything. I don’t like it here. You said you don’t either—let’s just leave.”

  He had hoped she would jump at the chance, or at least go along with it, but she seemed to be dragging her feet: “Well, maybe at the end of the month, if this job doesn’t come through…”

  “No! Not the end of the month!”

  “When did you have in mind?”

  “Now! Today or tomorrow! As soon as possible! Can’t we just pack up and leave? Please!”

  She knelt down beside him, talking soothingly as she stroked his head: “Honey, I can’t just leave like that. There are a lot of things that have to be squared away first, even if we could go. I just don’t think we should make any hasty decisions. This job is looking like it could be a wonderful opportunity for us. If it comes through, maybe we could rent a little house with a yard, get you your own room, a bicycle, maybe a dog or a cat—wouldn’t you like that? Maybe I could even open a little boutique. It’s something we’ve dreamed about for a long time.”

  More pie in the sky, Henry thought. “I don’t care. I just want to get out of here.”

  “Okay, gee…but does it have to be so fast? Can’t it wait a week or two?”

  “No—not if it means I have to go back to that school.”

  “But you already told that nice vice principal that you didn’t mind going back there.”

  “I know—I lied! I can’t go back, I just can’t.” He clutched at the hem of her house-dress. “Don’t make me go back there, Mom. I beg of you.”

  “Maybe if I went and talked to them—”

  “No!” Now he was getting annoyed. “Why can’t we just leave? God!”

  She gave him a final pat and stood up again, joints popping. “Ooch,” she groaned, snapping out the kinks. “Honey, I promise you we’ll do what we can. Can you hold out for a week, just so that I can have a little breathing room to figure out what to do?”

  “Does it mean I have to go back to school?”

  She gave it agonizing consideration, then said, “I’ll make a deal with you: If the job falls through, we’ll have no choice but to leave—we won’t have the money to pay next month’s rent anyway. But, if they decide to hire me, you have to agree to give school another try. If it still doesn’t work out, we’ll think about other possibilities, but you have to at least give it a try.” Before Henry could object, she said, “In the meantime you can stay home. You don’t have to go unless the job comes through. Is it a deal?”

  “When will you know?”

  “They keep telling me it should be any day now.”

  Just to buy time, Henry agreed.

  Monday was slightly more tense than the previous days Henry had spent at home. After Mr. Van Zand’s visit, he didn’t feel quite as safely cocooned as before, and had nervous twinges thinking about what the people at school must be saying and doing about his continued absence. But as usual he took great solace in reading and daydreaming. His mother went out for a few hours in the afternoon, and Henry shut the curtains so that if anyone came by they would think no one was home. He had no intention of answering the door.

  As the hands of the clock inched past three o’clock, he felt himself breathe easier. The hardest part was over, only four more days to go.

  Something slammed against the door.

  Henry sat up in bed, hearing faint jeers from the street. Unnerved, he waited a minute, then climbed down off his bunk and peeked out the curtain. There was no one in sight; the narrow path along the hedge was empty, and the thin slice of Eucalyptus Street that he could see looked clear as well.

  There was something on the porch—a brown paper bag.

  With a sinking feeling, Henry opened the door and nudged the rolled-up bag with his toe, thinking, What now? There was something wet inside; the bottom was damp and torn. He was sure it was garbage or dog turds, something like that, and would have preferred to just throw it in the trash without looking at it. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch it at all until he knew what it was.

  Using his mother’s bamboo backscratcher, Henry cautiously opened the sack, prepared to leap away if it was some kind of booby trap. Peering inside, he could see that it was meat—raw meat. With dawning awareness, he ripped open the sides of the bag to fully expose what was in there.

  It was the skinned head of an animal. A pig’s head.

  Henry stared at it in nightmarish fascination, heart jangling.

  The lipless face of the pig was one huge, hideous grin, its strangely human molars all exposed and its big gnarled tusks curling outward like goat horns. Its eyes had been gouged out and replaced with spiky thistle burrs. Stuffed in its jaws was a weird plastic object that at first Henry thought was some kind of bottle, but when he carefully pulled it out he discovered it was the base of a toy—a toy hula girl. It looked exactly like the one he had given to Christy. It was broken and bloody.

  Henry numbly wrapped up the head and carried it out to the garbage cans, stuffing it down deep so no one else would see. His whole body felt woozy, he couldn’t seem to complete a thought. All he knew—and he knew it with an absolute conviction—was that he had to shield his mother from this, no matter what. She couldn’t know.

  Because if she knew, if she were to see something like that—some grisly thing that had no place in her fragile, self-protective shell of childish nostalgia—there was no telling what could happen. She could crack. She could crack up completely and he would be alone. Henry could only shudder to think how easily she might have been the one to find it.

  Coming home, she sang, “Hel-lo! Hel-lo! I’m back! Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “Nope,” Henry said. “Not a thing, Mom.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  ESCAPE FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND

  Every day now was stretched and convoluted beyond the limits of patience, a tortuous folding and ref
olding of time like the twirling Mobius strip of saltwater taffy in the candy store window.

  There were no more grotesque pranks like the pig’s head, but twice every day, before and after school, Henry could hear the catcalls of passing kids on bikes. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, and was grateful that the apartment was set so far back from the street, the kids not daring to venture down their garden path.

  Whether his mother noticed, Henry wasn’t sure, but if she did, she didn’t let on. More likely, he thought, she just glossed over the sounds as innocent child’s play, cheers not jeers. In any case, she continued to come and go as if everything was hunky-dory, and didn’t report anything bad from her jaunts into town. Henry himself had not been farther outside than the porch since the day of the school incident. He lived in his pajamas and blue bathrobe, as resigned to the four walls as any prison inmate.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Oh, disintegrating nicely.” This was an expression his mother used in her darker moods, and it never failed to annoy him.

  She didn’t smile. “Henry, you can’t just stay cooped up like this all the time. It’s not good for you.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Are you sure? Wouldn’t you like to come with me to the store? Just for a little fresh air?”

  “No. I’m fine, don’t worry about me.”

  “I have to worry; I’m your mother.”

  Then get us out of here, Henry thought.

  But neither of them made any mention of that subject, which lay between them like a slumbering lion—better to leave be than to provoke it. Given time, perhaps it would just go away on its own.

  His mother broke the stalemate on Friday night.

  Sitting Henry down, her brown eyes sad and searching, she asked, “Are you sure about this, sweetie?”

  Henry thought she looked a thousand years old. He said, “Yeah.”

  “Because there’s no turning back. You can’t change your mind later.”

  “I know.”

  She nodded gravely, turning her face away to wipe a tear. “All right,” she said.

  Henry pricked up. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “First thing in the morning. Pack your things.”

  He hugged her, sobbing into her shoulder, his face squeezed into a grimace of pain and joy. Voice muffled, he said, “Thanks, Mom.”

  She patted his arm, her face still turned away. “That’s okay, sweetie. That’s okay.”

  * * *

  They left the apartment at dawn. It was cold and drizzly out. The praying mantis was still in the exact same position Henry had last seen it, perched among the leaves. While his mother locked the door and put the key in the mailbox, Henry looked closely at the insect, then tried touching it. It fell to the ground, stiff and dead.

  They walked down the path, burdened with their luggage. Henry was disconcerted to see a week’s worth of splattered eggs and other garbage littering their outer walkway. His mother hadn’t said a thing to him about this, nor did she mention it now, briskly stepping over the debris.

  Turning left onto the sidewalk, Henry took a last look back at the cottage before they were past and out of sight. All he felt was relief.

  The streets were deserted, the whole town shuttered, and as Henry and Vicki made their way down to the waterfront, she had to tell him several times to slow down—he was almost running. Henry didn’t want to explain why he was going so much faster than necessary—it would have meant admitting to himself that he was terrified of being seen. All he wanted was to sneak away like a thief, and be gone before anyone knew they had left.

  They turned right at the waterfront, entering the tourist district, and followed the deserted brick promenade past boarded-up shops. Henry was startled to see how completely the town had emptied out since he went into hiding—there were not even any boats in the harbor. The sea was gray and covered with whitecaps.

  Whereas before the place had been quaint and sleepy, winter had driven it far over the line into bleak. It felt like he and his mother were the last two people on the island.

  They passed the closed taffy factory and crossed the main intersection. With a shock of fear, Henry saw two girls watching them from the other side of the street.

  One was Lisa.

  To his mother the girls probably seemed harmless enough in their boots and short skirts and candy-colored plastic raincoats, but to Henry they were mocking specters of pure dread. He edged closer beside his mom, eyes forward.

  As they passed under the gloating stares of the girls, Henry felt an unexpected euphoria: This was the worst they could do to him outside of school. A dirty look, so what? With his mother beside him he was safe. He was free. He was leaving, and there was nothing they could do about it except stand there and watch him go.

  Henry had a sudden wild urge to make a rude gesture of some kind, to stick his tongue out at them, or put his thumbs in his ears and waggle his fingers and go, Nyah-nyah-nyah! But he contented himself with meeting Lisa’s mocking eyes for one split second—all that he could stand. Just long enough to send a message of careless scorn for her and her whole miserable existence: You want this island to yourself? You can have it!

  Continuing on, Henry saw two more girls around the next corner. His hair stood up. They were also familiar to him from the school—one of them was named Sylvia. When he looked back, he could see that the first pair was following at a discreet distance, and several more girls were converging with them from the side streets. They were all moving slowly and without apparent evil intent, swinging closed umbrellas as if out for a morning stroll. Now three more girls came into sight from behind the pier, pastel orange and pink against the leaden drizzle. At this point there were at least ten altogether.

  Henry wondered how his mother could fail to notice them, but she seemed preoccupied with her heavy bags, focused on getting to the ferry terminal. Henry decided to do the same, to ignore the girls. They were just trying to scare him—what did they think they were going to do with his mother there, in broad daylight?

  This was just some kind of farewell stunt for them to amuse themselves in their marooned boredom. Something to cackle over and dredge up when entertainment was scarce, to keep from turning on each other like so many hyenas. A last psych-out, nothing more. But that didn’t stop his pulse racing.

  How had they known when he was leaving? For that matter, Henry wondered how they ever found out where he lived in the first place. He thought of one of his mother’s favorite expressions: The walls have ears. Another reason he was glad to be getting away from here.

  The sidewalk continued past the pier to the south end of town, where the buildings were pinched between sea and cliffs. Here there was nowhere to lurk, and to Henry’s relief Lisa and her cronies remained behind, not daring to be quite so conspicuous.

  He and his mother were almost there now, hoofing their bags alongside deserted volleyball courts and the bike rental shack. The ferry dock was just ahead, on the south cape—the Cabrillo Mole. Beyond that the road continued on beneath overarching cliffs, past Lover’s Cove and then out of sight around the point to the seaplane landing.

  Henry was glad they wouldn’t be lugging their things that far, and wasn’t even sad about not taking the plane back—the ignominy of the cheaper ferry boat was fine by him. All his starry-eyed fantasies had turned dry and brown as the scrub on those hills; all he cared about now was getting out.

  The ticket office was still closed, not a person in sight.

  “Looks like we’re first in line,” said his mom breathlessly, shedding luggage. “We’re early.”

  They settled down to wait, taking in the panorama of land and sea. From the raised terminal platform there was a perfect view of Avalon and the Casino across the mouth of the bay. It wasn’t raining on the island, but they could see filmy curtains of it trailing far out over the ocean, and tiny gold motes wheeling high up in shafts of breaking sunlight
—seagulls. Not for the first time, but probably for the last, they wished they had a camera. Henry could almost pretend to be wistful.

  After a few minutes, his mother said, “Oof, I have to go to the bathroom.” She checked the terminal restroom and found it locked. “Gee whiz. Henry, could you keep an eye on our things while I run into town for a second? I really have to go.”

  Alarmed, Henry said, “Can’t you wait until the boat comes?”

  “I really can’t. All that walking loosened me up—I have to run. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Where do you think you’re gonna go? Everything’s closed.”

  Over her shoulder, she said, “The public toilets on the pier.” She was right: the beach restrooms were always open—they didn’t even have doors.

  “Hurry back,” Henry called anxiously, watching her hustle down the path. She tossed him a perfunctory wave and was gone.

  He shuffled around, hands in his pockets, humming tunelessly as he scanned the seas for their ship. It should be appearing any time now. From nervousness or the power of suggestion, he began to feel that he also had to go to the bathroom.

  Fidgeting a few minutes more, pacing around in front of the ticket window, Henry decided he had to at least look for a place to pee before other travelers started showing up and he lost his chance.

  The ferry landing was a wide, paved platform jutting out over the ocean, exposed on all sides. Since there was no one in sight, Henry thought of relieving himself right there in broad daylight, but he was too self-conscious for that—what if someone he couldn’t see was watching from town, or from those mansions on the hills? It wasn’t so farfetched; there were even coin-operated telescopes over by the Casino.

  He circled the ticket kiosk. At the rear of the landing was a deck of slippery steel grates, below which the sloshing of waves could be heard and dimly seen, spooky as a subterranean lake. Standing there, Henry was more or less hidden, shielded by the terminal building, and with the added novelty of peeing directly into the sea. He was facing the direction of Lover’s Cove, but there was no one there. The only thing was he didn’t like being out of sight of the luggage—it would have to be quick.