Copyright 2011 David Bain
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Novel
Gray Lake: A Novel - $2.99
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Streetlights Filled with Flowers: Three Tales of Urban Fantasy - $.99
Grindhouse Novelettes
David Bain’s All-Nite!!! Grindhouse Quintuple Feature!!! - $2.99
Island Ghosts: A Will Castleton “Slightly Psychic” Detective Adventure - $.99
Cauldron Car: A High Octane Horror Grindhouse Novelette - $.99
The Cowboys of Cthulhu: A Weird Western Grindhouse Novelette - $.99
Brujas Behind Bars: A Chicks in Prison Grindhouse Novelette - $.99
From The Chronicles of Shin and Skulk
The Pit of Cormair: A Shin & Skulk High Fantasy Sword and Sorcery Adventure - $.99
Shin’s Silent Quest - $.99
The Tsan - $.99
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Black Cab - $.99
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ISLAND GHOSTS
by
David Bain
With thanks to Babs Lakey
I. A Phone Call
“I saw the Time brief just yesterday,” his old friend Mazie said, her voice coming through a couple thousand miles of phone line all the way from Michigan. “You look good in it, about twenty-one, I’d say.”
“I feel a hundred frigging years old, but I might have been twenty-one in the picture,” Will said. “I haven’t seen the article - I refuse to read any of them - and I have no idea where the hell they dug up a photo of me. I haven’t talked to any of the media. The bastards. It’s all been spokesmen and press releases.
“Yes,” she sighed with mock-exasperation. “I know. You had a bad experience with the press once upon a time.” Silence. “Will, why the hell are you back on that damned island? They give you all this leave, and you go to a place full of ghosts.”
“It’s Florida, Mazie. The Sunshine State. Where better to relax?”
“Yeah, but it’s Gamer’s Key, Florida, Will. And for you that’s hardly Disneyworld.”
Will Castleton sucked on his cold Corona, the taste of fresh-cut lime heavy in the smooth beer. Squinting against the sun, he looked out across the deck, beyond the beach and palms to the sky-blue water. The glint and glare of the midday sea did not assuage the fact that, for him, those waters were indeed haunted.
“Tell me, Mazie. Did Time report what, specifically, the guy I killed did to the girl in that motel room?”
“They said she would be in the hospital for months, that she needed plastic and reconstructive surgery, but that she’d be alright thanks to you. That’s how they put it.”
“They were kind. And optimistic.”
“We’ve all seen bad things, Will. You get to be there first-hand, but I’ve witnessed scenes just as bad. I’ve been there in everything but body. There’ve been times when I haven’t slept well for days, even weeks.”
“It’ll be months for me, if ever. It was one of the most powerful flashes I’ve ever had.”
“Will, be glad you at least had the power to do something. All I could have done would have been after the fact. After she was dead, Will. Maybe, if I’d had the girl’s shirt once it was all over, I could have said she was tortured and died in a motel room. Maybe.”
“I knew a blood-covered, darkly evil man was in a room somewhere. Most likely nearby, because … well, duh.”
“Because why would the universe tell you about something you couldn’t do anything about.”
“Right. But that’s just it. The evil emanating off the guy. I held back. Because of fear. I should have pounded on every door of every room of every hotel in that town. Instead I … hesitated. I denied my….”
“Your gift.”
“My curse.”
“You found her. She lived.”
“It wasn’t enough. I didn’t get there in time.”
“Will, at the very least she would have suffered even more.”
“Here’s why I didn’t get there in time, Mazie -- because the bastard got what he wanted. He told her sometimes pain was worse than death. ‘After you die, you’re just dead,’ is what he said. Did Time report that? That girl will need therapy until the day she dies, Mazie. Scars even worse on the inside than out. He got what he wanted.”
“Okay, Will. Therapy or death. Which would you choose?”
Will sighed. “Sorry, Mazie. Gotta go.”
Mazie started to protest, but Will clicked shut the cell before she could get it out. He powered phone down, thought about walking out on the deck and pitching it into the ocean, but didn’t.
He spent the rest of the afternoon in joyless, sun-soaked silence, nursing several more beers.
II. Back to Haunt You
Here he was, a U.S. Marshal, driving his Jeep with his blood alcohol level surely way over the legal limit, his only passenger a fresh case of Coronas.
He was risking it because Gamer’s Key was only a few miles long, and at every point but its center, you could see ocean on either side. It was a straight shot from the rental cabin to the 7-11, the closest of only two markets on the entire key.
But now someone was following.
No psychic twinge here; it was just a fact.
Not that being followed was a particularly unusual thing on an island with such roadways, but this guy was purposely keeping a steady distance.
At least it wasn’t a cop.
Will pulled the Jeep into the cabin’s driveway and parked under the cabin itself. Everything this close to the water on this thin strip of sand they called an island was on stilts.
The other vehicle went by.
Will stood in front of his car door, watching the taillights in the fading gray humidity. It was a compact little car, looked like an older hatchback. He felt like the vehicle’s shape should have rung a bell.
Now he saw that, instead of turning into another driveway, the hatchback went to the road’s dead-end about three-quarters of a mile down, did a U-turn, and came back this way.
The driver suddenly gunned it as he passed. As if Will wouldn’t see him if he drove faster.
The crappy little car struggled to gain speed. Will saw by the dim streetlights that the rather loud vehicle was a beat-up blue Chevette from the late eighties.
And that he did indeed recognize it.
Shit.
It was Lehman. The reporter for The Biscayne Beacon with whom he’d had “the unpleasant experience” way back when. Seven years and the bastard was driving the same car.
He had half a mind to get back in the Jeep and follow him.
But why bother. Now that Lehman had confirmed Will Castleton - failed lifesaver at twentyone, undeserving national hero at twenty-eight - was here, he would surely be back.
***
But Lehman wouldn’t be back tonight.
Will drank, listened to the waves out there in the dark.
New U.S. Marshal watches best friend drown
Left alone, the headline for the story Shane Lehman wrote seven years ago could, perhaps, have been read from a sympathetic angle. If you were as forgiving as a saint. The subhead, however, nailed the accusatory tone of the article.
“We’d been drinking,” says rookie cop.
It was true, but only technically. They’d been halfway through a case of Bud Light for all four people on th
e boat.
Certainly not the sort of drinking he was doing now.
As for Will, he’d hardly “watched.” He had, in fact, nearly drowned trying to locate Brad, whose calls kept getting further and further away in the storm-tossed waves.
He’d woken up with this ‘gift” - which hadn’t given him any inkling of how wrongly Lehman, the one reporter to whom he’d granted an interview, was going to slant the story.
Nor had it told him that the story was going to be picked up by a couple of wire services.
Cold moonlight sparkled off the rhythmically pounding Gulf. Somewhere out there, Brad’s spirit still wrestled with the unforgiving water, calling out Will’s name. Somewhere out there, the ghost of the man Will could have been still churned through endless water, searching, searching.
If Lehman came to the door tomorrow, Will would punch him in the mouth.
For starters.
III. Lehman
It was noon when the doorbell woke him. There was a hammer in Will’s head, pounding at his eyes. At least the day was overcast - no sun to aggravate his hangover.
It was Lehman, of course.
Will did not punch him in the mouth. He made the sack of shit wait though, let him watch through the mostly glass door as he got a beer from the fridge, found a half-dried slice of lime on the counter, opened the bottle plopped the fruit in. He took a good long slug. Will examined the man scowling at the door’s window.
Lehman, who was maybe five years his senior, hadn’t aged well. He had a paunch and wispy hair combed over a bald spot that hadn’t been there back in the bad old days. The hair of his cheesy moustache was as thin as that on his head. He wore cheap polyester slacks and a rayon shirt more green than the lime in his beer.
Then again, Will himself was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts.
He opened the door. “The hell you want, Lehman?”
“You actually remember me?” He was honestly startled.
“How could I ever forget? I lost my best friend and the police cleared me before I even woke up. But still you tried to crucify me. I lost my girl and most of my reputation, no matter how vehemently my superiors defended me.”
Lehman shook his head, still bewildered. “You’re back here. After that nasty bit of business out west, you come back here of all places. Care to tell me why?” The guy was apparently unfazed by Will’s near-nudity.
“Because I wanted to see your smiling face,” Will said. “Care to tell how you found me?”
“My uncle owns Real Estate Sails. You wrote him a check for this rental. Seriously, we got bought out by a different publisher. There’s a different editor now, too. It wasn’t my choice back then, and, for what it’s worth, I apologize.”
“Apology not accepted. You gleefully twisted every one of my words.”
Lehman frowned. “Seriously, Will. I -“
“Marshal Castleton to you. I’m a full-fledged U.S. Marshal now, Lehman, despite your efforts. I have as much power as any sheriff, except my jurisdiction is the entire United States.”
“Lehman’s frown was even deeper this time. “Okay, sorry Marshal. But seriously, I wouldn’t have to write things that way again. Listen, can I take you to lunch, talk about the past few weeks of your life? Literally the whole country wants to know. You could look at it before it’s published, make suggestions, take things out. Seriously, I won’t bring up what happened last time you were on the island.”
“Look, I’ll just be polite and ask you to leave. Now.”
“You’re not even going to offer me a beer?” he said, looking with mock-longing at the Corona in Will’s hand.
“No. Goodbye.”
Silence. For a beat longer than Will thought he should’ve allowed.
“Your loss.” Lehman held his palms up in a gesture of defeat and exasperation. “It would have been a great article this time. An award-winner for sure.”
Will gave Lehman the finger once his back was turned. But the gesture made him feel small, hollow. Something a kid would do. He finished his beer as Lehman’s little car putted down the drive, then downed two more for breakfast.
***
Will spent the afternoon on the deck, drinking and watching the steadily increasing clouds turn heavier shades of gray. Around five-thirty, it had gotten cold enough that he went inside for a windbreaker.
Fifteen minutes later he found himself still barefoot but wearing his coat, half a mile down the beach, being pelted by sharp pinpoints of icy rain, a heavy wind whipping his hair and moving the low, full, pregnant clouds rapidly in from the sea.
He turned his face up to the rain. The rain was a feminine thing today, cold and stinging but also oddly comforting, enveloping; something - someone - you could literally lose yourself in.
There she was now, in fact. The woman in the clouds. Directly above. She had voluminous cumulus hair, a small, ruddy, grey floating fleck of a nose. The contours of her aqualine face were etched in the darker curves of the cloud. There was a pink edge to her cloudy, swaying form that was slightly painful to look at. She was fading, her essence bleeding away into the sky, slipping from material reality, dissolving into another state.
And then she was gone. Just clouds.
The clouds weren’t dissipating at all. They were getting darker, fast.
It had been one of his damnable visions. There was no question about what it meant.
Somewhere, probably nearby, a woman’s life was in danger of fading, of bleeding away.
Sometime before this storm ended. He was sure of it.
And he would be the only one able to stop it.
Will flipped open his cell.
No. Closed it.
This time he would not call Mazie.
He sprinted back to the cabin. Okay. I’m on an island. There’s only one bridge to the
mainland. If there’s any sense to these visions, any rhyme or reason, she’s got to be somewhere on this forsaken strip of sand. So what’s the next step? Call the local cops, tell them I’m a U.S. Marshal with a vision?
He answered himself mentally in Mazie’s voice. The vision isn’t specific enough for that,
Will, even if you say you’re a psychic, even if you were to make the call anonymously.
His bare feet pounded thickly through sodden sand.
Okay then, just get in the Jeep and drive into the descending night. That’s all there is to do. Just a few streets on this island. If this is real, you’ll find her, something will lead you to her. Five minutes and I’ve covered the main strip. Five more and I’ve covered the few blocks of central Gamer’s Key.
His bare feet hit the wind-smoothed, rain-slick steps of his cabin.
Will quickly retrieved his handgun.
Ten minutes and he’d find her.
Fierce winds whipped and lashed at him as he raced down the deck stairs, the storm seeming to pick up intensity even as he jumped into his vehicle. He realized as he floored it that he was still barefoot.
IV. Against Time
Ten minutes.
The wind was thrashing the palm trees now. Big fat drops of rain splattered his windshield faster than the wipers could work, top-speed, to throw them off.
He was almost at the end of the island closest to him, the spot where he had seen Lehman turn around the night before. He suddenly realized alcohol was still swimming in his brain, fighting the adrenaline. The mix of the two chemicals added a sparkling luminescent sheen the high beams and windshield smears gave the night.
Lights on in a few houses, all up on stilts. Rain-blurred shadows visible in one or two. No one visible underneath any of them. Some of the houses throwing weird blue light, TV on, lights off.
He was driving much too fast for conditions, but much slower than he wanted to.
A string of restaurants, advertising crawdad, fresh fish, shrimp po’boys.
A school playground.
No figures fighting, no shadows of a woman in te throes of death.
Eight minutes.
His first pass through town. The storm-swept streets empty.
Lehman’s car and a red Beretta - the attendant’s, no doubt - at the 7-11, the shadow reading the paper and drinking coffee at the rain-streaming window undoubtedly Lehman.
Fuck Lehman.
Seven minutes.
The park. Damn. He had forgotten about the park. He swung the jeep into the parking lot, whipping through the suddenly muddy dirt trails twining around the mossy trees.
Shadows jumping everywhere, tilting at horrorshow angles in the rain as his high beams swung back and forth down the twisting trail.
The limbs of the trees swung in the gale as if challenging him.
The alcohol not helping.
Was that a person? Shit!
A man leapt at the Jeep and Will had no time to swerve.
No, the adrenaline already receding again. Just a statue of Wilford Gamer, the city’s founder, Will’s headlights giving it the illusion of motion as he turned.
Hurtling back toward the main road now.
Two minutes wasted.
Will turned, stamped on the accelerator, once again rushing through the storm at a speed too slow for his comfort.
Businesses at this end of the island. Mostly rental agencies. All dark.
Real Estate Sails, where Lehman’s uncle had snitched him out. Also dark.
Four minutes.
No woman.
The marina. He slowed.
Boats rocking in the waves, tugging at their moorings. Deserted.
The historic fort at the tip of the island. A vast, empty parking lot. The heads of the palms peering over the fort’s walls, tossing like the manes of wild horses.
Three minutes.
Where the hell was she?
He was nuts. She didn’t exist.
Flooring it back to the center of Gamer’s Key.
Will’s equilibrium sloshed just slightly when he turned hard at the corner past the convenience store. Houses only up one or two bricks above the ground here. Dilapidated, used furniture on warped porches. Trailers raised on concrete blocks.
One block over. Nothing.
Another turn.
One minute.
A figure in the road ahead, washed out in the rain and his highbeams.
A man.
Jeans, boots, denim jacket, thick hair, beard, no hat.
In the middle of the road.
Walking, no stalking forward through the driving rain. Not planning on making way for the Jeep. Displacing whole puddles with every broad determined footstep.