Gateways, page 23
Carl said, “I got Miccosukee blood in me, you know. At least that’s what my momma told me. They’ve got a reservation north of here off Route 41, and even a casino, but I ain’t never been to neither. The Miccosukee’s on my momma’s side. Don’t know bout my dad. My momma met him at the lagoon. I hear he didn’t hang around after he seen me. Just took off and we never heard from him again.”
Jack flicked a glance at Carl’s covered right arm. Should he ask about it?
Maybe some other time.
Instead he said, “So there’s been people living around this lagoon for generations?”
“Yeah and no,” Carl said. “The only people livin there now are the kids of the ones who used to live there. Everybody moved away when we was itty-bitty babies because they thought the lagoon was makin us all strange. But we kids came back.”
“Why?”
“Cause I guess we didn’t seem to fit no other place.”
Jack tried to think of a delicate way to say this. “Because of the way you all looked?”
Carl shrugged. “Some of that, maybe. But mostly because the lagoon seemed right for us. It felt like…home.”
“You moved out, though.”
“Yeah. But not far. That’s why I wasn’t too excited bout goin back. I’m afraid I might get sucked in again.”
“So how many live there?”
“Bout twenty. We’re all bout the same age too, give or take a couple years.”
Jack ducked as a big bird with an enormous wingspan swooped above them.
“What the hell is that?”
“Just a big ol’ heron.”
“Oh.”
For a moment there Jack had thought it was a pterodactyl. Or maybe a pteranodon. Whatever. The one with the tail.
They began to pass alligators of various sizes sunning themselves on the banks, but none came even close in size to the monster from yesterday.
Jack heard a scraping sound from the bottom of the canoe.
“That’s all for the motor for a while,” Carl said.
They used their paddles until the channel grew too shallow even for that.
“What do we do now?”
Carl rose and stepped out of the boat. “We carry her till the water gets deeper.”
Easy for you to say, Jack thought. You’ve got boots.
The hauling itself wasn’t so bad—only about thirty yards before the water deepened again—but the knowledge that a gator might step out of the surrounding greenery at any second upped Jack’s pace until he was fairly dragging Carl behind him.
“Too bad they don’t do a Survivor down here,” Carl said. “Survivor: Everglades…they’d never let me on, but I know I could win that million.”
Another reality show. Carl did like his TV.
Jack looked over his shoulder. “If you did win, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Get me a new TV.” He grinned. “One of them big sixty-inch models. Oh, and a new easy chair, an electric one that massages your back while you’re sittin in it. And get my car fixed.”
“How about travel?”
“What for? I’ve already been all over the world watchin Survivor and Celebrity Mole and the Travel Channel.”
“But it’s not the same as being there.”
Listen to me, Jack thought. The guy who never leaves New York.
“Is for me,” Carl said. “Oh, yeah, and I’d probably give some money to Mrs. Hansen. She’s havin a hard time. Might lose her trailer.”
“That’s a nice thought, Carl.”
He shrugged. “Just bein neighborly.”
Back in the water and putt-putting along again, Jack saw larger plants starting to crowd the saw grass off the banks. Ferns and trees fought for space. Jack spotted a fruit-bearing tree.
“What’s that?”
“Pond apple. Don’t even think about eatin one less you’re partial to the taste of kerosene.”
He went on to point out willows that didn’t look like willows, live oaks that didn’t look like oaks, and trees with exotic names like cocoa plum and Brazilian pepper.
Jack pointed to the tall, scraggly, droopy-needled, cedarlike pines that loomed ahead.
“What are those?”
Carl looked at him as if he’d asked if the sun rose in the east or the west.
“Them’s cypresses.”
“They look like pines.”
“Yeah, I guess they do. But they drop their needles come winter. Pines don’t do that.”
Jack noticed that the leaves on some of the live oaks were turning red or orange, as if it were fall. The drought, he guessed.
As they glided nearer the cypresses, Jack saw long, gray-brown Merlin beards of moss hanging from the limbs and swaying in the breeze.
He spotted other trees. He knew a Nelson pine when he saw one; royal palms had that distinctive smooth sleeve of green at the upper end of the trunk, and of course coconut palms and banana palms were identifiable by their fruit. But the rest were mysteries.
Carl pointed to a couple of dragonflies, one riding on the back of another.
“Looky there. Makin baby dragonflies.”
“And in public,” Jack said. “Have they no shame?”
Carl laughed. “Hey, don’t knock it. Dragonflies eats up tons of mosquito babies.”
“Yeah?” Jack raised a fist in salute. “Go for it, you two!”
Carl shut off the motor.
“What’s up?” Jack said. “More shallows?”
Carl shook his head and pointed. “We’re getting close now. See that big hardwood hummock dead ahead?”
Jack saw a rise studded with trees of all different sizes and shapes that blocked most of the western horizon.
“The lagoon’s in there,” Carl said. “So we got to go real quiet now.”
“I thought the place was going to be deserted.”
“Y’never know. Sometimes somebody’s feelin poorly and they don’t go to town.”
Jack pulled the Glock from its SOB holster, worked the slide to chamber a round, then tucked it away again.
They paddled ahead to where the channel ran into a dense green tunnel of vegetation. Speaking softly, Carl pointed out gumbo limbo trees, aerial plants, orchids, ferns, banyan trees with their dangling aerial roots, coffee plants, vines trailing from tree to tree, and every imaginable variety of palm.
“Looks like a rain forest,” Jack whispered.
Carl nodded. “Yeah. Even now, when there ain’t no rain. It stays wetter here cause the sun can’t get through.”
As they paddled around a few more bends in the channel Jack started noticing subtle changes in the greenery, most obvious in the royal palms. Every one Jack had seen till now had had a ramrod-straight trunk. These were bent here and there at odd intervals along their lengths.
Was this the first evidence of the mutation effects of Anya’s so-called nexus point?
Then Carl turned to him and put a finger to his lips. He nodded and made a hooking motion with his arm.
Jack got the message: almost there…around the next bend.
And then they rounded that bend and the right bank fell away, opening into a wide pond, 150, maybe 200 feet across. The surface lay smooth and placid, but the surrounding vegetation was anything but.
The willows, oaks, cypresses, and palms lining the banks had been twisted into grotesque, unnatural shapes, as if they’d been frozen mid-step in some epileptic ballet. And in one area they all appeared to be leaning away from an opening on the edge of the bank, as if trying to escape it.
That had to be it—the nexus point, where a little of the Otherness slipped through a couple of times a year. Anya hadn’t been exaggerating about the mutations. The vegetation looked like it had been designed by someone with PCP for blood.
All we need to make this scene complete, Jack thought, is the Creature from the Black Lagoon rearing its ugly head.
A large, skiff-style boat, Bull-ship across its stern, rocked gently against the far bank. Its crude, ramshackle superstructure looked like it had been built by someone with only rudimentary carpentry skills. Another smaller, equally rundown skiff, the Horse-ship—cute—lay directly to their right. They looked like floating tenements.
As he and Carl glided toward the center of the lagoon, Jack searched the banks for stray members of Carl’s clan. Just as predicted, the place was deserted.
Well, it looked deserted. Somehow it didn’t feel deserted.
“That’s funny,” Carl whispered, pointing to a small fleet of canoes beached on the far bank. “All the boats is here. If they went into town—”
“Well, well, well,” said a gruff voice from behind and to the right. “Look who’s here.”
Jack started at the sound and swiveled to see half a dozen men standing on the deck of the Horse-ship. As he watched, the snow-haired Semelee emerged from the superstructure and smiled at him.
“Hi, Jack,” she said.
Jack noticed the color draining from Carl’s face. “Oh, shit!”
Jack faced front again and saw another dozen or so men gathering on the deck of the bigger Bull-ship.
“Paddle!” Carl cried as he began yanking on the little motor’s starter cord. “We gotta get outta here!”
Jack thought that might not be a bad idea. He reversed his oar stroke to turn the canoe around, but then noticed that the men in the Horse-ship were poling it across the lagoon entrance, blocking their escape route.
He laid a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “Forget it, Carl. Looks like we’re staying awhile.”
“Long time, no see, Carl,” said the big guy Jack had run into in town. His grin was feral. “I knew you’d be back someday.”
“Hey, Luke,” Carl said in a faint voice. His shoulders slumped. He looked defeated.
Jack checked the comforting weight of the Glock at the small of his back. Not the right time to reveal what he was carrying, especially when they were such sitting ducks out here on the water. Better to wait and see what happened, wait till these guys got closer, or things got ugly.
Who knew? Maybe he wouldn’t need artillery. Maybe he’d even come away with some answers. Like, what do you have against my father? Or, who hired you to kill him?
“Knew I shouldn’ta come,” Carl muttered. His good eye veered right and left like a frightened rabbit on the run.
“Easy,” Jack whispered. “I promised I’d get you back to your trailer, and I will. Let’s just go with the flow here for a bit.”
“Don’t see’s we got much choice.”
Luke pointed to the row of canoes on the bank. “Why dontcha beach it over there with the others,” he called, “and we’ll all get real friendly like.”
Jack started paddling. “Let’s do like the man says.”
Carl hesitated a few heartbeats—he seemed frozen in place—then shook himself and joined in.
5
When they reached the far bank, some of the men from the Bull-ship helped pull its nose onto the dirt. Jack recognized the flat-bottomed motorboat he’d seen Semelee ride away in—the Chicken-ship. Next to it was a canoe labeled No-ship. Someone in the clan was a regular Shecky Green.
He managed to step ashore without resoaking his sneakers, but Carl got out and waded.
They all seemed to know Carl. A few acted genuinely glad to see him but most were standoffish, some even hostile.
As Jack and Carl stood together and waited for the Horse-ship to be poled over, Jack looked around. Close up, the vegetation looked even more demented. Back from the banks, maybe a hundred feet, stood half a dozen hutlike structures with open sides. Each seemed to be little more than half a dozen wobbly poles, three to a side, topped by a pitched roof of dried palm fronds. A small fire smoldered between two of the nearest. When they weren’t on the boats, Jack guessed they lived there.
Crooked men in crooked houses. He had little doubt that each contained at least one crooked mouse.
“Old Indian huts,” Carl said, following his gaze. “Been there forever.”
When the smaller boat arrived, Semelee was the first to step off, followed by Luke, bulge-browed Corley, and the rest. Soon the whole clan was assembled behind her, facing Jack and Carl in a semicircle.
Circe and her pigs.
A single woman with—Jack had made a quick count—eighteen men.
One scary looking bunch, Jack thought, eyeing their misshapen heads, mismatched limbs, and twisted bodies. Looked like they’d suffered an algae bloom in their gene pool. But he knew that, just like the trees, it must be due to the nexus point. The trees had no choice about where they grew, but these folks…why did they stay?
Only Semelee and Luke looked reasonably normal…if you discounted her wild white Medusa hair. Storm from the X-Men had nothing on Semelee in the hair department. She wore the same Levi’s and tight black vest as yesterday, but her long-sleeved shirt was red this time, with the top two buttons left open.
“Who’s this one?” she said, pointing to Carl. “He’s one of us, ain’t he.”
Luke flashed his nasty grin at Carl. “He sure is. He just don’t act like it.”
“How come I ain’t never seen him before?”
“You probably did but just don’t remember. Carl decided to leave right after you showed up. I don’t think we’re good enough for him no more.” He stepped closer. “Ain’t that right, Carl? Ain’t that right? But that was okay. This ain’t no prison. You can come and go as you please.” He got into Carl’s face. “But that don’t mean you can bring outsiders. You know the rule about outsiders.”
He reached to grab the front of Carl’s shirt and Jack laid a hand on his arm—gently but firmly. He wasn’t looking for a fight, not against these impossible odds, but he was not about to let Carl be manhandled.
“Don’t,” Jack said.
Luke’s fingers stopped inches from Carl’s shirtfront. “What?”
Jack kept his voice low but gave Luke a hard look, hoping he’d think twice. He didn’t have a plan—he’d been expecting an empty lagoon—but he was willing to ad lib, maybe do something quick and very nasty to make a point and throw the crowd off balance.
“Just…don’t.”
Luke glared at him, then glanced toward the water. “Back off or you’ll be goin for a swim.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
“Yeah?” He grinned. “Look who you’ll be swimmin with.”
Jack turned and saw what appeared to be a giant turtle gliding toward shore. Its head was down but its mossy, four-foot long shell looked like a relief map of the Himalayas.
Then it raised its head—and then its other head. Christ, it had two—big, ugly, rough-hewn things—both of which were now angled up, their beaked, sharp-edged jaws agape, showing huge mouths that could fit a regulation NFL football with room to spare. Its four beady black eyes were fixed on Semelee as it reached the bank and waited with its long, snakelike tail thrashing back and forth in the water behind it.
Luke grabbed a fallen tree branch and shouted, “Show time!” He stepped closer and lowered the branch toward the waiting jaws. “This here’s a alligator snapper. When you take your swim—and we’ll see that you do—here’s what’s gonna happen to your arms and legs.”
The branch came to within a foot of the left head and in a flash the neck telescoped out and the jaws chomped, breaking it in half with a loud crunching crack, as easily as Jack might snap a toothpick. One of the halves tumbled into the right head’s strike zone and suffered a similar fate. Three pieces of branch floated on the water.
Jack’s tongue tasted dusty.
“‘When’?” Jack said, knowing this many guys would have no trouble tossing him into the water. But he couldn’t back down. “You mean ‘if,’ don’t you?”
Luke stepped toward him. “No, I mean—”
“Just hold on there,” Semelee said, wedging herself between them. “Ease up. This ain’t no way to treat company.” She turned to Jack. Her eyes locked on his, displaying none of the animosity radiating from Luke. “What’re you doing here?”
Jack had his reply ready. “You suggested we have a drink together. Well, here I am.”
“Bullshit!” Luke said.
This guy had one helluva chip on his shoulder.
Semelee ignored him and smiled. “Yeah. I can see you’re here. But I meant back in town.”
“I guess I misunderstood. I happened to mention you to Carl and—”
“You did?” Her face lit as her smile broadened. “You were talking about me?”
Jack realized with a start that she was infatuated with him. He couldn’t fathom why. She’d had a couple of glimpses of him and they’d exchanged a few sentences; she didn’t know anything about him.
Or did she?
Jack debated playing to her infatuation, then discarded the idea. It could backfire too easily, especially with the jealousy he sensed seething in Luke. It was plain that he wanted Semelee looking at him like she was looking at Jack.
“Yeah, sort of,” Jack said, keeping it neutral. “When Carl said he knew where you lived, I convinced him to take me there.”
“And here you are.”
“Right. But I wasn’t expecting such an unfriendly reception.”
“Oh, don’t take Luke too serious. He’s been right cranky lately.” She patted his arm. “Ain’t that right, Luke.”
The big guy only glowered at Jack.
“Hey,” said Carl, pointing along the bank with his oar. “Don’t tell me that’s the lights hole!”
“It sure is,” Semelee said. “Want to see?”
Lights hole? Jack wondered. What’s a lights hole?
Semelee led the way toward a patch of ground completely bare of vegetation. Jack followed Carl. The crowd parted to let them pass. The center of the bald area was pierced by a roughly oval opening, maybe eight feet across. It ran straight down into the limestone like a well. Jack even knew what it was called: a cenote.
He stopped next to Carl at the edge and peered down. Deep. Deeper than he’d expected. He could just barely make out the pool at the bottom.
Carl gasped. “It wasn’t never this deep. What happened to the sand?”
Luke grunted. “Semelee sold it. Some guys came here and sucked a whole lot of it out. You just missed them.”
