Terminal Island Read online

  “Honey, I’m here for you, I’m listening and trying to be supportive, but…I don’t see how you can be sure of that. Did you check every building? I mean, come on, did you? And even if it was empty, what does that prove? Places close for a lot of reasons: renovations, fumigation, who knows? Maybe they had termites. Just try to look at it from my point of view.” She sighs, shaking her head. “It’s my fault—I knew I shouldn’t have let you go in there alone. Damn it! Now who knows what’s going to happen—at the very least they’ll probably make us pay for the damages. We’re screwed. We’ll have to pay for a lawyer…shit, this is all we need right now.” She turns her face away from him, starting to cry.

  Henry doesn’t know what to say, he wants so badly for her to be right. Suddenly he jumps up, shouting, “Holy shit! I can prove it!” He flings the day-bag off his back and tears open the zipper. “I did what you said—I filmed the whole thing!” But the camera comes out dripping and smashed, as he should have known it would. Defeated, Henry says, “I’m…sorry. But I swear to you it’s the truth.”

  Handling the wreckage of her expensive camera, Ruby says, “No, I agree with you about one thing: We have to get you the hell out of here as soon as possible, the minute they bring Moxie back. I don’t want you here another minute. If we can sneak off this island scot-free it’ll be a miracle.”

  Relieved, Henry nods, not saying anything to jinx it.

  They set about packing their things. “Just what we can carry in our day-bags,” Ruby says. “Leave the rest; I don’t even care.” Henry doesn’t argue.

  When they are finished, they sit and wait, anxious and jumpy.

  “How long have they been gone now?” Henry asks.

  “I don’t know. Less than an hour. Those trams are slow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now you’ve got me all worried. Maybe we should wait downstairs in case they try to call.”

  “Okay.”

  They shoulder their rucksacks and go down to the lobby, sitting on a spindly wicker bench and leafing through island maps and brochures: Inland Safari! The Isthmus—Holiday at Two Harbors!

  After a few minutes, Ruby says, “You know what? I’ve got that card with her home phone number. I’m gonna just call.”

  Yes! For God’s sake, call! “Good idea,” Henry says.

  She gets up and tries the phone at the front desk, dialing several times. To quell Henry’s anxious look, she explains, “Line’s busy.” After a few more attempts, she says with studied calm, “They must have it off the hook,” and sits down.

  Henry is vigilant to any sound from outside—the telltale electric hum of a tram, or a baby crying—but there is nothing. Just the swish of the breeze through the entrance. Every few minutes, Ruby tries the phone again, to no use. “How can they leave the hotel unattended like this?” she says, temper flaring. A dusty cuckoo-clock made of seashells and with a caption reading Life’s a beach chimes three o’clock—another hour has gone by.

  Henry stands up. “I can’t sit here anymore.”

  Ruby nods, resigned. “I know. What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to see if I can find them…or at least somebody who can help us.”

  “You mean the police? Maybe I should call them.”

  “No, not the police. Could I have some of that Motrin?”

  “Sure.” She hands him the bottle and he takes a few, swallowing them dry. “Are you gonna be okay?” she asks.

  He nods, choking a little on the pills, says, “If I don’t find out something right away, I’ll go to the police myself and lay it all out—it’s ridiculous for us to be huddling in fear like this. I’ve had enough of this crap. Whatever happens, happens, okay?”

  “Okay. I wish I could go with you, but they might come back any second.”

  “No, one of us should definitely stay here. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  Henry kisses her and they hold tight, then he goes out to the street.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  BUFFALO

  The town is quiet as ever, drowsing in the mid-afternoon doldrums.

  Siesta time, Henry thinks. His back has stiffened up from sitting—he feels like someone has beaten him with a baseball bat, but tells himself it’s nothing compared to those first months of rehab. Barely able to get down the porch stairs, he considers calling it off, but that would just mean climbing back up again and worrying Ruby. The Motrin should be kicking in anytime soon.

  Moving as quickly as he can, he makes for the waterfront, scanning every side street for movement, for one of those familiar electric trams, picturing the moment as if willing it into being: that blond girl Janet excitedly pointing him out to Moxie as they approach—There’s your daddy! Here he comes! Wave! Wave to daddy!

  But there’s no traffic, nothing stirring at all. The town is as empty as he’s ever seen it. It suddenly occurs to him that he can’t remember when he last saw anyone out on the street…it would have to have been yesterday sometime. Since then there has been a drastic dip in the sense of life. Henry just didn’t notice it earlier, obsessed with finding his mother.

  He resists the feeling, not daring to believe it, knowing what Ruby would say. It’s a quiet place. But the closer he gets to the center of Avalon, the more obvious it becomes:

  The whole town is dead. Not just napping, but deserted in the way of those condos up there, cleaned out and hollow…just like that day. That long-ago day with his mother. The whole place has that same petrified air.

  It reminds him of The Pike.

  The Pike was a sprawling waterfront amusement park in downtown Long Beach—California’s answer to Coney Island. Once catering to a huge clientele of sailors during World War Two, The Pike (and the whole of downtown) had slowly become decrepit as its customer base dried up, finally shutting down altogether when the fleet left town for good.

  During the long summer days when Henry’s mom was off working, he would wander the bleak prospects of the downtown waterfront as if it were his own backyard. The area was a junk-strewn wasteland of condemned buildings, bulldozed fields, and rat-infested stone breakwaters—very much like the vistas of his earliest memories in San Pedro…and thus, strangely comforting.

  This was not the glamorous Southern California of popular myth, all movie premieres and white sand beaches. This was the only Southern California Henry knew: acres of spit-blackened sidewalks curing in the sun, with bars and bail-bonds shops like outposts in the wilderness. It was a landscape that was mostly deserted by day, roamed by drunks and derelicts and screaming lunatics by night.

  The centerpiece of it all was The Pike. Henry has vague recollections of his mother bringing him there when they lived in San Pedro and the old amusement park was still hanging on by a thread:

  The lights and carnival barkers and droning calliope. The Diving Bell. The swooping double-decker Ferris Wheel. The Penny Arcade. The Fun House, with its cracked plaster clowns above the entrance, shrieking recorded laughter (and which, just before the park was demolished, would yield up a mummified human corpse painted Day-Glo orange—the propped-up ghoul passed off all those years as another dummy). All that was still there when Henry’s mom had first brought him to The Pike. But when he went back there by himself the only sound was the wind riffling strings of tattered plastic pennants. While his mother worked, seven-year-old Henry walked the desolate carnival grounds, alone but not lonely, examining the frozen machinery of the Wild Mouse and the Tilt-a-Whirl, peering into the Try Your Luck stands now gutted of balls and bottles and cheap stuffed animals, and thinking that the place was beautiful—it seemed to exist for its own sake, needless of people, as old and crustily organic as anything in nature.

  Yes, Henry thinks now, Avalon is just like The Pike.

  Every hot-dog stand and game arcade is closed, every door locked as if it’s Christmas in September—even the Sheriff’s Office and Fire Station. But there is no holiday that Henry is aware of; it should
be an ordinary weekday, a school and work day. Yet the windows stare blankly back at him, dark and unoccupied. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

  He glances behind and his heart lurches. Not a creature—

  Back down the street, about half a block away, looms a monstrous, humped figure. Just standing there watching him.

  Adrenaline running like quicksilver, Henry shades his eyes to see better, to be sure he is seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. No—it’s gotta be a joke…

  The weird apparition looks about seven feet tall, top-heavy with a shaggy horned head—a bison’s head—that is suspended on a limbless column of overlapping hides, like raggedy plating. Dangling from its horns are strips of flesh that appear to be flayed human skin. A corona of flies swirls around it in the sun, and there are trickles of rank wetness from its eye sockets and nose—the hair under its jaw is slimy with matted blood. As Henry watches, the freakish being glides forward in its cloak of skins, then turns and vanishes between two buildings.

  That’s the thing we saw!

  There can be no doubt about it—it is the same apparition he and Ruby encountered in the hills: a disgusting, buffalo-headed man.

  “What the hell,” Henry mutters, terrified even though he knows it must be nothing but an asshole in a costume—or maybe that’s why he’s terrified: Only a crazy person would do something like this. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  Chest ringing like an anvil, he hesitantly backtracks to see where the thing went, finding only a trail of blood. It looks like real blood, leading in smears and drabbles down the alley to the next street. He follows it, meaning to chase the son-of-a-bitch down and have it out with him…but that might be exactly what they want him to do. A trick. A trap. Slowing, Henry sees that the blood trail disappears under the door of an unmarked storefront. The window is draped black; there is no way to see inside.

  He knows this place from when he was a kid. It was some kind of market then, a secret little shop that had no sign and didn’t advertise in the tourist literature. For all he knows it may still be. Something about the place clangs against his memory—the dreamy recollection of walking by with Christy and seeing a huge green dragonfly trapped inside the window.

  What did he glimpse in there? Something that he didn’t understand, that he barely registered except as a place he didn’t belong. He hasn’t thought of this since it happened; it is filed deep with all the other imponderables of childhood. But something bad.

  Henry turns around and starts running.

  Going as fast as his aching joints will permit, he trots through the middle of town, what would normally be the busiest part, searching for signs of life. He goes past the pizza and ice cream places, the little indoor shopping center, the Post Office. The windows are decorated in a way they never were before, with oddly composed still-lifes of fruit and raw meat and other more random items of plenty set out like offerings, with paper money strung up like bunting.

  Everywhere he goes he begins to notice fresh-painted graffiti, the same symbol over and over: a buffalo’s horned head, weeping blood—the stylized face looks half human. Henry scans the beach and the pier. Nothing. He tries to enter the lobby of Arbuthnot’s hotel, the expensive Sand Crab Inn, and finds it dark, the glass entrance sealed.

  “Hello?” He jumps the fence into the hotel courtyard and walks down the line of doors, his voice echoing against the building. “I’m looking for a Carol Arbuthnot! Mr. Arbuthnot! Can someone hear me? I have an emergency!”

  There is no response, and Henry is about ready to despair when out of nowhere a thick, grumpy voice calls, “The hell’s your problem?”

  It is Arbuthnot himself, up on the second floor. He looks like he’s been napping, dressed only in a shorts and a t-shirt. The unexpected sight of that brutal mug is as welcome to Henry right now as the appearance of a Christmas angel.

  “Mr. Arbuthnot! I’m sorry to bother you, but I need your help—it’s important.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Henry Cadmus—I overheard you the other day talking about some missing persons that you were checking into? Well, I’ve found out what it’s all about.”

  Yawning and rubbing his eyes, the big man says, “Oh really? Well you better come on up, I guess, or I’ll never get any sleep.”

  Once Henry is in the room with him, Arbuthnot holds off hearing the story to take some aspirin and go to the bathroom. “Fucking jet lag,” he grumbles apologetically. The room is a mess, with liquor bottles and take-out boxes and paperwork laid out on every available surface. It smells stale. After a moment Arbuthnot comes back out and starts putting on his pants.

  Unable to wait another second, Henry blurts, “Mr. Arbuthnot, my daughter is missing, and I think she may have been kidnapped.”

  “Do you know you smell like gasoline?”

  “Yes. That’s all part of it. Earlier today I was almost killed trying to find my mother up at that Shady Acres place, and now I believe they’ve got my daughter, too. They’re following me! The whole town is in on it!”

  Nodding thoughtfully, Arbuthnot circles behind Henry to get a shirt off the hanger. “Shady Isle, you mean. I see…”

  All at once there is a gun pressed to Henry’s skull.

  “Cut out the bullshit,” Arbuthnot says in his ear. “Who are you working for?”

  Dry-mouthed, Henry says, “Nobody. I’m here for the same reason you are.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “I’m looking for answers.”

  “Start making sense, asshole.”

  “A few months ago my mother came to this island and disappeared. I traced her to that Shady Isle, but she’s not there—no one is. The whole place is just a front for a gigantic identity-theft mill. They take people’s identities and make them disappear.” He recounts everything that happened, everything he failed to tell Ruby. “I know it sounds insane, but I was just up there and saw the whole thing! They’ve got it going like a regular assembly-line.”

  “That’s bullshit. I’ve been up there and interviewed some of the residents. It all checks out.”

  “How did you manage to go in? By appointment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they put on a dog and pony show for you. That’s how it works!”

  “And how did you get in?”

  “I climbed up the hillside and went under the fence. It was pure luck. But they almost caught me—I barely got out with my life.”

  The pressure of the gun lessens as Arbuthnot expertly pats Henry down with his free hand, scrutinizing his I.D. When he’s finished, he lowers the revolver and steps back. “Do they know who you are?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve been to the police.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then they know.”

  Sensing that Arbuthnot is way ahead of him, Henry asks, “What the hell is happening on this island? How can they get away with this?”

  Finishing getting dressed, Arbuthnot says, “It’s bigger than just this island. This is the tip of the iceberg. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but there are links to dozens of countries. It’s very well financed and politically connected.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m still figuring that out.” Knotting his tie, he says, “A few people from the Treasury Department, the Secret Service, the FTC, the SEC, and the Social Security Administration have been running an unofficial investigation that is about to go official—big time. They’ve been working independently to blow the lid off this thing, because nobody else will look at it. It’s career suicide. That’s why they had to bring me in, a ringer, because nobody else wants the grief.”

  “I still don’t understand what’s so—”

  “It’s basically a religious cult that’s using modern technology to stage a comeback. But it’s a cuckoo’s egg—it camouflages itself in the trappings of fundamentalist Christianity, which makes it a political hot potato.”r />
  “I’ve heard something about a Satanic cult. And animal sacrifices.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Arbuthnot zips opens a shaving case and pulls out an object wrapped in cloth. Handing it over, he says, “Say hello to Zagreus.”

  Henry unfolds the napkin and finds a statue of a child—a young boy. The figure’s oversized head has two nubs like budding horns. It is carved from ivory, about eight inches long, and has a certain phallic contour.

  “Wait a second…” Henry says.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen this thing before. What is it?”

  “That’s Zagreus—the Horned Child.”

  “So it is the devil?”

  “Not quite. Not unless you believe that Jesus Christ was cribbing from the devil.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A lot of Christian concepts are borrowed directly from Zagreus: Immaculate conception, the whole water-into-wine thing, the martyrdom and resurrection. Eternal life for those who eat his body and drink his blood. Yet Zagreus predates Christ by five to ten thousand years. At one time, Zagreus-worship spread like wildfire all over Europe and Asia Minor, toppling the major religions of its day.”

  “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “You’ve heard of Dionysus, haven’t you? Or Bacchus? It’s all the same god. Zagreus is just the kiddie version, like the baby Jesus.”

  “But the horns…”

  “Horns didn’t originally have sinister connotations—God himself could be a bull or a ram. Those horns were just signifiers that Zagreus was the authentic Lamb of God. The concept of a horned devil was invented by early Jews and perpetuated by Christians to discredit Zagreus so they could steal his customer base—like Pepsi versus Coke.”

  “What does that have to do with what’s happening here?”

  “Zagreus is alive. Here. Today. His believers use various forms of Christianity as a cover for their real purpose, which is massive financial fraud, racketeering, political corruption, you name it, all for the big Z. Anytime someone starts preaching the ‘prosperity gospel’ or wants to kill in the name of Jesus, that’s a clue that Zaggers might be pulling the strings. They are especially active in the movement known as Dominionism, which holds that wealth is proof of God’s favor, and anyone who’s not born rich can go suck it. Their goal is to repeal the Constitution and replace it with God’s Law—which of course would include bringing back slavery and killing all witches, queers, and disobedient children. It’s bananas.”