Dark Waters

11

FOR A SECOND, everyone just stared. Then—“Who are you?” demanded the stranger, bristling at them. “Thieves? Trying to wake up Tommy, are ye? Well, he won’t wake. I tried already.” He glared at the bones with bloodshot dark eyes. “Ungrateful sod. After how long I’ve protected him.”

Brian, staring at the man in the doorway, found himself terribly conscious of the shadowy gaze of the skull at his back.

The stranger had enormous, bushy eyebrows that dominated a face the color of modeling clay. One shoulder was a lot higher than the other, and he was huge—his head thrust forward and the back of his neck brushed the lintel of the door. His beard poured down his chest in a series of bristles. Brian licked his lips. “I’m Brian,” he said. “This is Phil, and that’s Coco. Our boat sank.”

“Sank, did it?” said the man, looking from one of them to the other. “Marooned, are you? Me an’ Tommy know all about that.” He gave the skull a conspiratorial grin that faded quickly. “Or did. Tommy won’t talk to me anymore—”

“No!” said Phil. “Not marooned. We’re waiting for a boat. A boat’s coming to pick us up.”

“And you thought you’d wait here, did you? Thought you’d take me ’n’ Tommy’s cabin for yerself, did yer?” He pulled the axe down off his shoulder and hefted it.

“No!” chimed in Coco, almost yelping. “No, we just—saw it and wondered who lived here. We wondered if you could help us?” Her voice had started off confident but faded as she kept talking. The stranger’s eyes were wild in his clay-colored face.

“Help you?” said the stranger. “Want me to axe you, do yer? Want me to axe you and leave you in here with Tommy, so that you don’t have to wait? Wait like I’m waiting? Wait for the thing in the woods?” He shuddered. Then his face softened. “Poor kids. I’ll axe you if you like.” He raised the axe. “No bed, of course, but ye can have the floor. Tommy won’t mind. Hold still . . .”

Coco yelped, backing up. “Axe us? No—we don’t want—that.”

The axe was lowered. A frown creased the stranger’s face. “Well, sure,” he said. “Better the axe than what’s coming for you.”

“What’s coming for us?” whispered Brian.

The stranger laughed at him. High, wild, shrill laughter spilled out of his mouth, rising and rising, awful, not sane. His teeth were ground down, rotted and gapped; the inside of his mouth was black. “Oh, you’ll find out,” he said. “I got my axe ready for anyone who wants it. You’re not getting off, you see. Not nohow, not never. I never got off, don’tcha see. I got the boys off, but not me. Can’t leave while she’s still here. Gotta get her. Gotta do it for Tommy . . .”

“Who?” demanded Phil. “And you’re wrong. We’re totally getting off this island. We—”

He was interrupted by Coco shouting, “Shut up shut up shut up!”

When Brian and Phil swung round to look at her, she said, “I think I heard something. Out there in the trees.”

“Poor kids,” muttered the man. “Poor kids, they don’t know any better. Not fair to give them a choice when they don’t know any better.” He raised his axe again and advanced into the room. His expression was horribly caring.

Brian, cold with terror, did the only thing he could think to do. He snatched up the skull. “Axe any of us, and Tommy gets it,” he said.

The man froze again. “Now,” he said, “you wouldn’t hurt Tommy, would you? Understand, it’s for your own good—”

Brian threw the skull. The stranger dropped his axe to catch it, cradling it in his two huge hands, and in the moment he was distracted, Brian snatched up the axe in one hand and his bundle of wood in the other.

“Coco, come on!” he bellowed, and the three of them dashed into the trees. Faintly, Brian heard the sound of the man, weeping, in the cabin at their backs.

“Tommy,” he wailed. “Tommeeeee! Why’d you hurt him? Why’d you hurt him!”

The sound was swallowed by the muffling trees.

They could not go as fast as they wanted to. The ground was slick with mud. The forest was so still that Brian could hear the thud of every footstep, the sound of everyone’s breathing.

The ground sloped down toward the beach. They trotted as fast as they dared, in single file, heaving their bundles of wood. Brian and Phil had managed to snag theirs; Coco hadn’t. But it was all right, Brian thought. They had enough for the night.

Beyond that . . . well, he didn’t know.

“Wait,” said Coco, panting, at the same moment as Phil whispered, “I thought I saw something.” They all stopped, and they peered, and they listened. Brian didn’t see or hear anything.

“What did it look like?” he whispered. “Was it—do you think it was the axe man again?”

Phil shook his head, squinting.

Then Brian heard something. A faint chiming. The fishhooks were crashing into each other. Like they were a beaded curtain and someone had just run through it.