Chapter

54

Just below my hand, the red light of the buoy illuminated Sobel’s inscriptions. As I caught my breath, I stared at them, wondering if this was another version of the old nightmare?

My mind whirled with confusion. If this was an accident, why hadn’t she tried to find me? If she had just attempted to kill me, why here? Even in my exhausted state, trying to dump someone in the ocean within swimming distance of a buoy, or the shore for that matter, didn’t make sense.

I waited.

No sound of the boat.

A few minutes later, I realized why I hadn’t heard the boat again. I had managed to swim toward the shore lights as the fog drifted in and out across the water. My body was weak and near collapse as I staggered ashore only to see to my left the Petite Princess was docked at the small pier’s slip...the same pier as I had visited with Mathews, the same pier, beach, and trees...This was The Cove.

I lay there a minute on the sand, knowing I was alive, but knowing somewhere close by, Lauren Sobel wished me dead.

I turned my head to my right.  On the other side of the docking inlet, a phone booth stood alone in the dark, its green fluorescent light casting an evil glow befitting its occupant.

As I stared at her, a rage started to build inside me. I rose to my feet and staggered across the beach to the dock...to wait.

She was still on the phone when I stowed myself away in the bow of the boat. I didn’t know what I would do with the spear gun in my hand, but I felt secure for the first time since innocently stepping aboard the Petite Princess to give her the chance “...to wrap everything up neat.”

I crouched there in my wet clothes, beginning to get the shakes as she finally returned. She stepped aboard and moved to the controls. As she stood there, not moving, perhaps pondering what to do next, her spread legs suggested instant reprisal. The outstretched tip of the spear gun pointed directly at her crotch. I’m sure that’s what Charlie would do, I thought to myself. But that wasn’t me. That’s not how I felt right now. I didn’t want any part of Charlie or his thinking. I just wanted some answers and then some peace.

I didn’t have long to wait for one of the answers. The engine fired up and as she slowly moved the boat out of the slip, she picked up the ship to shore radio and after several attempts to break through the static, her voice suddenly took on all the drama and appropriate hysteria for the situation. “Oh, thank God it’s finally working. Harbor Patrol?”

“Yes. This is the Harbor Patrol. Are you emergency?”

“Yes...yes. I couldn’t make contact with anyone before...something...something terrible has happened. Mr. Randall fell overboard and...”

“Where are you located, Miss?”

“We were on our way to...” Static started up again. She hit the instruments and momentarily it cleared. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, we’re here. Where are you?”

“We were on our way...” More static. “Hello? Hello? God damn it, hello?” All that was heard was more static. “Son of a bitch!”

She started the engine and started to pull away from the dock. My finger tightened around the trigger. She had tried to kill me. A part of me was ready to do it Charlie style.

As I groped with the mixed emotions pumping through my veins, I suddenly sprang up and knocked her to the deck of the boat.

Her expression was utter shock and disbelief. She became a crazed animal, kept at bay only by the steel tipped spear pointed at her throat.

“Why?” I shouted. “Why?”

The boat was beginning to rock radically without its helmsman. With seeming disregard - or complete confidence in my inability to pull the trigger - she kicked and rolled to the side, knocking me off balance.

As we struggled, she shouted, “You’re supposed to be dead...you can’t be alive...”

Suddenly the struggle abruptly terminated as the gun went off, sending the spear through her chest and pinning her to the side of the boat.

She looked on in horror, still repeating over and over with her dying breath, “You can’t be Charlie...Charlie couldn’t swim...Charlie couldn’t swim...couldn’t swim... “

By the time my shaking arms had managed to steer the boat alongside the yacht, it was all but engulfed by the fog.

Standing on deck was Mathews. Even from a distance, I could see his face was tense with concern.

As I drew nearer, he peered into the boat. The strength I had grown so accustomed to faded from his face, replaced by horror and disbelief at seeing Sobel slumped over, the spear still impaling her to the side panel.

His face transformed to a strange disappointment and helplessness. It was a mirror of how I felt. The scream of pain within both of us. I had failed. We had failed. Seven months of working through what seemed like a bad dream was back where it started...The Cove and the awakening to an even greater nightmare.

I clumsily maneuvered alongside the launch bay. Mathews was now showing grave concern as he stepped aboard. He didn’t speak for several moments. Then he turned to me with tears in his eyes. “How, Charles? How?”

“An accident.”

“Jesus, Charles. Jesus.” He turned away, steadying himself. I remember that between the two of us we didn’t have enough composure to make the simplest of decisions. And decisions had to be made. “Jesus, Charles.” He grabbed several towels, hastily covering her. “Can you drive this thing?”

“I… I guess so. I got it back here.”

“Get us away from here for a few minutes,” he said in hushed tones.  “Who knows where the crew is…

“Fog, Mathews...awful fog out there.”

He raised his voice. “Just get us away from the boat and the crew that might look around.”

My arms wouldn’t settle down and my legs were about to give out, but his growling…

“Move!” made me realize there was no room for weakness now.

I pulled slowly away and within moments, we were shrouded in fog.

“What are we doing this for,” I exclaimed. “We’ve got to tell them what happened.” Obviously, I wasn’t seeing things the same way he was.

“What are you going to say? You didn’t do it? Charlie did it? You fucking flipped. You’ve fucked everything up...everything. I almost had you there. You were damn near whole!”

I was stunned. I wasn’t just getting through the shock of the accident, but Mathews, the Doctor, was not functioning like my doctor. He was barely functioning like an adult. I was frightened. My security, the man I depended on so heavily, was more affected by this than I appeared to be.

“What do you mean, I fucked everything up? She tried to kill me. Knocked me overboard and left me for dead. I didn’t fuck up. I saved my ass. What are you talking about?”

“Who did this? he shouted. “Who did this? Tell me.” “I don’t know. We struggled. The thing went off.”

“What thing?”

I picked up the spear gun from under the bow. “This. I was just holding it for protection. The crazy… had just tried... “

“Oh, Christ! I know. I know. Would have been easier if she had.” “What’s that supposed to mean,” I shouted back.

He grabbed the spear gun from me. “It means I hope you didn’t lose your senses completely and murdered her. It means you better hope her finger prints are on this with yours, you crazy bastard.”

“Of course,” I shouted back at him. “Of course they are. She tried to jerk it away just like you….”

Suddenly, Mathews glanced at his hands holding the gun and dropped the weapon just as they were suddenly flooded with the glare of a close-by search light...

...then the hull of a Harbor Patrol boat was approaching...

...then a bull horn pierced the gray night. “This is the Harbor Patrol. You the people trying to reach us?”

We both froze.

“Hey...you people all right?”

We didn’t know how we were at that moment. At that moment only pain and madness surrounded Mathews and I as he fixed his gaze on me...a gaze that was worse than any Charlie had ever given me in my worst nightmares.

“I almost had you whole. Fucking Charlie...Fucking Charlie!”

I only remember two uniformed men leaping onto us as my doctor raised his hand to strike me. I must have passed out or was knocked unconscious.

When I awoke, I was lying on a padded bench next to my doctor. We were on the Harbor Patrol boat. We were both handcuffed.

We were both tired.

We were both living a nightmare together now.