Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

She shivered. There was no heating in the cabin, but I didn’t think it was just a matter of the temperature. I went over and sat beside her, taking her hands in mine. Her thin, bony fingers were as cold as a corpse’s.

“What about you, Andrea?” I asked. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you leave after Lisa drowned?”

“Because I saw it happen.”

“So?”

She was silent a moment.

“What did Sam tell you about it?”

“That Lisa tried to swim across to that other island and didn’t make it.”

“Did he say why?”

I shrugged.

“He said she was a good swimmer, only this time she overreached herself.”

Andrea stood up and moved away into the shadows.

“Lisa was a good swimmer. A champion. We were at UW together, and she was on the Huskies team. But she was also far too smart to try and swim across to Orcas. The water around here is icy and the currents are fierce.”

“So why did she do it?”

She emerged from the darkness and stood in front of me.

“She didn’t. Sam did.”

“Did what?”

“Drowned her.”

I stared up at her.

“She and I were swimming down at that pool,” Andrea went on. “After a while the boat appeared. Sam was at the wheel. He called to Lisa. She swam out and climbed aboard. Sam took the boat out into the middle of the strait and threw her overboard.”

I was silent.

“That’s why he’ll never let me leave,” Andrea went on. “He made me write a letter home saying that I was going to Nicaragua. One of the guys who was going to Texas mailed it from there. When they didn’t hear any more, my parents eventually came looking for me here. Mark took me up into the woods while Sam talked to them. I don’t know what he said, but he can be very persuasive when he wants. They haven’t been back.”

I stood up.

“But what about the others?” I said agitatedly. “You can’t just make all these people disappear without someone getting suspicious!”

“Sure you can, if you pick them right. There are a million homeless kids in this country. It’s no problem to find someone with no roots, no hope, no paper trail. A couple of the guys go out recruiting every so often. They befriend these kids, give them some money and a big line about Sam having all the answers. If they decide the guy’s no good, they let him go. All he knows is that some religious nut tried to get him to sign up. If they decide to take him, then he has to write a letter the same way I did. Sam always quotes that line from the Bible about leaving your parents and brethren and wife and children for the kingdom of God’s sake. Most of these people weren’t getting much return from those things anyway, so giving them up in exchange for board, lodging and the secret of eternal life is not a big deal for them.”

“Did he try and convert you too?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“I have to pretend to go along with it, but they don’t really care what the women think. It’s basically a guy thing. The women aren’t initiated into the Secret. They just have to turn up for the lectures, take care of the scutwork, and spread their legs whenever Sam asks them to.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I didn’t particularly want to. If what Andrea had told me was true, then the situation was far more dangerous than I had ever imagined.

“OK, you’ve told me your story. Now hear mine. My child was kidnapped and apparently murdered. As a result, my wife killed herself. Sam now tells me that he masterminded the whole thing because, quote, I needed to be broken before I could heal, unquote. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. I only saw that boy for a moment, and from a distance. It might have been some other child, dressed up to look like David. Sam could have got all the other details from the newspaper stories at the time. I don’t know what to believe. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Andrea gave a deep sigh.

“I’ll tell you what I know. Melissa left the island for a while, a couple of months back, I guess. I lose track of time. When she got back, she had a child with her. We were told he was her son, and that one of Melissa’s sisters had been looking after him all this while. No one thought anything of it.”

“Did you meet this boy?”

“Of course. He came to my classes.”

“How did he seem?”

She shrugged.

“Normal enough. He used to have coughing attacks, that was the only thing. Sometimes he seemed to find it hard to breathe. But after a couple of weeks here that stopped. Plus he used to ask when he’d see his mother and father again. Melissa told us that he’d been with her sister so long he thought she and her boyfriend were his parents.”

“And where is he now? With this bitch Melissa?”

“I don’t know. The day you arrived, he disappeared. When I asked why he hadn’t come to class, Sam warned me not to talk about it.”

“Well, I’m going to find out!”

I tried to push past her, but she blocked me with her body.

“No,” she said decisively. “I will.”

We stood there in the darkness, holding each other.

“They won’t tell you anything,” Andrea went on. “They might talk to me.”

She released me.

“You’d better go,” she said. “And be careful. If you’re seen leaving here, we’ll both be in serious trouble.”

“Do you have any children, Andrea?” I asked.

“I missed out on that.”

Her tone was flat, almost flippant.

“You must still be young enough,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant. I haven’t set foot off this island for what seems like a lifetime, and the breeding stock here doesn’t impress me. Now go. Tomorrow morning I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to find out.”

She accompanied me to the door. Outside, the darkness was now complete. I found Andrea’s hand, squeezed it one last time and slipped away toward the fringes of the clearing.

Back in my room, I began to have doubts about the wisdom of trusting her. For all I knew, Andrea might be reporting back to Sam even now. Or perhaps he had set up this meeting too, to gain time, or work on my emotions in a different way. But this, I knew, was what Sam wanted, what he stood for. He reveled in obscurities and ignorance, in dysfunctional behavior and doubt. If I allowed them to overwhelm me, he had already won. I had to have faith, not in his hallucinogenic theology but in my own experience, and in the irreducible reality of another human being. Losing on those terms would be less destructive than winning on Sam’s.

My thoughts turned to David. Was he warm enough? Had he been properly cared for? Would he recognize me again? How could I ever explain to him what had happened, and break the news of his mother’s death? Above all, I wished I could do something. I felt so helpless. Everyone on the island, except maybe Andrea, was my enemy. There was nothing to be gained by single-handed heroics. I turned off the light and tried to sleep.

I awoke shortly after dawn to find a figure standing beside my bed.

Kristine Kjarstad was in tears when Steve Warren brought in the fax. Oh fuck, he thought, wondering if it was too late to “eclipse himself,” as his mother used to say. She had a load of oddball expressions like that. People thought everything had been easy for Steve, that he’d been born with a plastic spoon in his mouth. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

His mother was a war bride with whom his father had spent a pleasant few days during the liberation of Paris and then returned after the armistice to discover, as he put it, that “there were two Battles of the Bulge, and we lost the second one.” The result was Steve’s oldest brother, George, with an optional s , who was born a few weeks after their marriage. Three months later, the newlyweds arrived back in Dick Warren’s hometown of Aberdeen, a logging community on the Washington coast.