Richard Laymon: Island

“You can usually dodge them,” Erin said. “He just likes to hear us scream.”

“And watch us try to get out of the way. He loves to make us jump around. You know, because we aren’t wearing a stitch of clothes, or anything.”

“He dumps buckets of water on us from up there, too.”

“All kinds of stuff,” Alice added.

“It’d take all night,” Erin said, “to tell you everything he drops on us. I mean, he’s had a lot of time on his hands with nothing to do but mess with us.”

“His favorite thing, he lies down and dangles his dong through the bars. Then he’ll…”

“God, Alice. That’s not…”

“I’m just trying to tell what he does.”

“Rupert doesn’t need to hear it. You know? Jeez!”

I decided to bring us back to the subject. “So Wesley got this ladder, tonight, and used it to climb up to the top of Billie’s cage?”

“Right,” Erin said.

“Then what?”

“Then he pulled it up after him. And he put it across the gap between Billie’s cage and Kimberly’s to make it easy for him to cross back and forth. He can just use the ladder like a bridge, you know? Instead of having to jump.”

“That’s why he hasn’t come over here,” Alice said.

“I don’t think he’s real eager to jump. It’d be pretty tricky. There’s nothing up there but bars.”

“And the ladder,” Alice added.

“He can get around pretty well, walking on the bars. He’s had a lot of practice.”

“He’s part ape,” Alice said.

“Thinks he’s King Kong,” Erin said.

“Thinks he’s King Dong.”

“You’ll have to excuse my sister,” Erin said. “She isn’t usually like this.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“See?” Alice asked. “I told you it was okay with Rupert.”

“He’s just being polite.”

I stayed quiet at that, not wanting to get involved in their little squabbles. The thing is, I didn’t really mind Alice’s language. It’s hard to be offended by stuff like that when you’ve got a guy like Wesley nearby. It’s hard to be anything except scared. But I did find myself a little bit amused, now and then. And sometimes embarrassed.

And turned on. I mean, there I was, sitting on the ground between Erin and Alice. They were stark-naked. I might as well have been naked, too, considering the condition of my shorts.

Even though I couldn’t see the girls, I sort of knew what they looked like. After all, I’d had time to study every inch of Erin when she’d been in the room with Wesley and Thelma. And Alice was her twin sister. What I couldn’t actually see because of the darkness, I had no trouble imagining.

On top of all that, Alice’s talk about things like twats and dongs and boners only made things worse—or better, depending on how you look at things.

Plus, I couldn’t quite stop thinking about Erin having the “hots’ for me. Apparently, she hadn’t used that exact word. Whatever words she might’ve used, though, she’d made it clear to Alice that she liked me.

Interesting news. Incredible news. Wonderful news.

Too bad it had to come at a time when everyone was in so much danger that I figured we probably wouldn’t all make it through the night.

Anyway, that sums up what was going on with me, and why I said that I didn’t have any problem with Alice’s language. I wasn’t being polite, I was being truthful.

Trying to get things on track again, I said, “So you think Wesley won’t try to jump from cage to cage?”

“I haven’t even seen him try that in broad daylight,” Erin answered.

“Doesn’t mean he can’t,” Alice pointed out.

“If he wants to come this way,” Erin said, “I bet he’ll bring the ladder with him. Put it down across each gap. We’d hear that, if he tried it.”

“The ladder’s aluminum,” Alice explained.

“So we don’t need to worry about him sneaking over,” Erin said.

“Unless he does jump the gaps. We’d hear him when he lands on this cage, but…”

“He’s too smart to try it.”

“Or unless he gets down off the cages,” I suggested. “Then he could sneak over here on the ground…”

“Kimberly’s gonna warn us if he climbs down.”

“She’s supposed to,” Alice corrected.

“Yeah. We sort of set up a few tricks of our own. If Wesley does anything we need to know about, Kimberly’s gonna pass the word to Connie, and Connie’ll tell Alice.”

“Except Connie’s asleep,” Alice said.

“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” Erin said. “Anyway, he won’t climb down. He’s right where he wants to be, up above everything where nobody can get at him.”

“I have a spear.”

The girls were silent for a second or two. Then Erin asked, “Can you hit him with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d better not even try,” Alice said. “Even if you get him, he’ll probably still be able to set Billie on fire. All he has to do is drop the torch.”

“What if I wait till the torch goes out?” I asked.

For a couple of seconds, nobody answered. Then Alice spoke up. “I don’t know.”

“It might be a really long wait,” Erin said. “And when it does burn out, he’ll just dip it in the gas and light it back up.”

“With what?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“How would he relight it?”

“Oh, he’s got a couple of Dad’s cigarette lighters. Keeps them in the box up there for lighting his paper wads.”

“And cigarettes,” Alice said. The creep smokes like a chimney. That’s something else he uses on us. His butts. He gets a big charge out of flicking them at us.”

“He doesn’t have to be on top of the cages for that,” Erin explained. “He mostly does it from the sides. Yells ‘incoming’ and fires the things through the bars. They aren’t as easy to dodge as the paper balls.”

“They can really sting, too,” Alice said.

“That’s horrible,” I muttered.

“It isn’t half as horrible as some of what he does to us.”

“Rupert doesn’t want to hear about it.”

“And Thelma’s even worse than Wesley,” Alice went on. “She comes right into the cages with us, sometimes and…”

“Knock it off,” Erin said. “I mean it.”

“I think she must be part lesbo…”

“They’re both a couple of sicko freaks,” Erin said. “Let’s just let it go at that, okay? You haven’t gotta go and blab about every little perverted thing they’ve done to us.”

“Rupert doesn’t mind. Do you, Rupert?”

“Well…”

“I mind,” Erin said. “Jeez. So just cut it out. It’s embarrassing. Rupert doesn’t need to hear every disgusting detail.”

“Let him speak for himself. Do you want to hear what Thelma likes to do?”

I looked for a way out, and found it.

“She’s dead, by the way.”

“What?” Erin blurted.

“I killed her. Over in the cove.”

“Wow.”

“Fantastic,” Alice said.

“Good going,” Erin told me. Something suddenly touched my thigh, so I flinched. Then I realized it was Erin’s hand. It gave my leg a gentle squeeze. “How’d you get her?” she asked.

“With one of those machetes.”

“Holy cow.”

“Fantastic,” Alice repeated.

Erin’s hand slipped under the tatters of my shorts.

“So Wesley,” I said, “is the only sicko freak we have to worry about.”

Her warm, small hand glided a ways up my thigh. It came close to my groin before reversing direction. I had to squirm.

“What about the bucket?” I asked. “You said Wesley liked to take it up on top of the cages and dump water on you?”

“What about it?” Alice asked.

“If I can get my hands on a bucket of water, maybe I can take care of things if Wesley tries to set Billie on fire.”