Latham's Landing (13 page)

“
Wishful thinking,” Helter said
dismissively. “Maybe there was a few years ago, when this place had
a caretaker. But after he died, no one came out here.” He gestured
at her feet. “I put it outside the tent, for your safety and mine.
I didn’t want to get shot by accident.”

“
Poor bastard probably died out here,”
Caroline replied absently as she picked up her other gun, her mind
racing as she tried to think of ways to get across the mile or more
of open water back to shore.

“
That doesn’t matter,” Helter said
curtly. “I can’t set the charges and try to swim it. We’ll risk
getting hit by falling debris, at the very least.”

“
I can try to swim it,” Caroline said
walking back and forth on the shore. “Where do you think is
narrowest?”

“
That’s a stupid plan,” Helter said
arrogantly. “You know you’ll drown. As soon as you’re too far out
to get back, a storm will come up. And even if it lets you get to
shore once, it will capsize us when we try to leave if we use a
boat—”

“
Why didn’t you bring a raft?” Caroline
yelled back at him, irritated. “You brought everything else but the
kitchen sink and couldn’t bring an inflatable raft?”

Helter took a menacing step toward her, then
visibly relaxed. “Arguing is not going to solve this. We need to
check out the boathouse, and see if there is a raft or boat there.
Then we’ll set the charges and take our chances.”

Caroline took off her heavy jacket, then
swiped at her sweaty face. “Go on, lead the way. I’ll go with
you.”

“
You should stay here with the
supplies,” Helter said with a dark look. “I’m a big boy and can
take care of myself.” He jogged off, heading across the weedy brown
lawn past the house to a long flight of stairs leading out of
sight.

Caroline took a step to go after him, then
thought better of it, sitting down on the shore. To her knowledge,
no one had ever died on Latham’s Landing on the front lawn, only in
the lake or inside the house. Last night’s decision not to go
inside for cover had probably saved their lives. Helter could be
the one to break that taboo first, not her.

Christ Jesus, how had anyone ever walked
up all these stairs?
Helter was only halfway up and already had
counted over seventy.
Latham must have had a lot of servants to
fetch and carry for him…and another entrance closer to the water
for himself and his family to use.

He made it to a sort of landing, with a
gnarled tree and a carved red granite bench, the top layer of it
bleached white. To the left side stretched up more bleached granite
stairs that branched at the top, one set leading to a back entrance
to the main house, and the other to another large building almost
as big. The stairs to his left led down to a small boathouse. A
rusty boat launch stood beyond the double doors, its tracks
disappearing into the water.

Helter took the right fork, then walked down
the remaining steps to the boathouse. Picking the rusty lock with a
set of tools from his pocket, he opened the door to peer in,
staying well back, his gun at the ready.

Inside was a steel boat, its hull rusty in
spots. But it looked fine from where he stood. The problem was
there was no motor, only a set of oars standing in a corner.
Everything had cobwebs over it and a thick layer of dust.

It was better than nothing.

Helter closed the door, hung the lock back on
the metal loop, and walked back up the stairs. As he reached the
landing again with the metal bench, he stopped in surprise.

There was a cleared spot there between the
two buildings. It looked like a helicopter pad.

Helter climbed a few more stairs, trying for
a better look.

Yes, this was a square flat spot, easily
fifty-by-fifty feet. Each side was also clear of trees and
buildings, so that the helicopter could come in with the usual
northeastern wind to land easily and leave the opposite way.

Helter climbed to the top of the stairs,
checking out the square. There was no sign of anyone. But this
stone here was clearly new, its color deep rust red, not aged and
bleached to white like the main house was.

Had a cartel of some kind begun to use the
island as a stopping over point for refueling or storing black
market goods?
None of the locals ever came out here anymore,
and the bed and breakfast on the shore had closed after being
flooded out last spring. It would be a perfect place to refuel or
store contraband.

Helter walked around the edges of the stone
pad, looking for footprints. There were some odd marks, almost like
deer prints, but larger. And the pattern was all wrong for deer.
Maybe unicorns live here, too, along with the ghosts…

Helter was so focused on the ground, he
bumped into a long tall ladder propped up against the side of the
house. He steadied himself, then looked up with shock.

This building was being worked on. Several
ladders were resting up against the house, and extensive
scaffolding covered this entire side. But who was doing repair work
on Latham’s Landing? And why?

The whup-whup-whup of the helicopter blades
were almost drowned out by the loud rock music emanating from the
stereo. Mac turned down the dial slightly.
Too much rock music
wasn’t good for your ears.
But neither was having to listen to
the constant whimpering from the rolled up blanket at the back of
the cockpit.

Mac Ready thought of himself as a pretty good
guy. To his business partners, he was one of the reliable ones, the
ones they turned to when they needed the job done right. He’d been
a helicopter pilot in the Gulf War, done two active tours without a
scratch to himself or his bird. But the damn bureaucrats had fucked
him over anyway, given him a dishonorable discharge, for what he’d
done to that girl.

He’d had every right to do what he wanted to
her, after catching her with that grenade. She wasn’t innocent. No
bitches were. They all had murder in their hearts. Just like that
whore whimpering back there.

Stateside once more, Mac had found a little
work giving helicopter rides to kids at fairs, but he hated it. He
also hated the stupid desk job that his mother encouraged him to
take, ‘just for a while, ‘til he sorted out his life’. Mac’s life
was already sorted out just fine. He knew what he wanted, too. It
just took getting hooked up with the right kind of men to make it
happen.

Mac had gone to the nearest big city, and
asked around for the closest massage parlor. When he arrived that
night, he asked to see the owner, saying he was looking for work.
He got an attempted beating instead.

When his attackers were all lying bloodied on
the ground, a battered Mac got up, spat out some blood, and asked
again for the owner. This time, he talked to the man about what he
was looking for in a job, and told him his qualifications, all of
them. That same man, Charter Collins, hired him on the spot. He’d
been transporting women for Collins ever since.

Maybe transport was the wrong word. New girls
came in all the time on trains and in trucks. Mac didn’t ever see
them. His business was with the older girls, the ones that were too
drugged out or diseased to work, the ones that tried to run away
too many times. His job was to make sure that they vanished just as
magically as they first appeared in this country, and weren’t
trouble for anyone.

That’s where the island came in.

The first time had been an accident. The girl
was already dead, and he’d come here just meaning to dump her into
the water, figuring that the fish would nibble her enough so when
she was found she wouldn’t be identified.
Seemed stupid now, in
retrospect
. None of these girls had any kind of papers. They
were completely disposable, with no one to care when they turned up
dead. The kind of girls he liked best.

Mac had come in low, meaning to dump the body
right near the island, figuring it would wash into the shallows
there and decompose. But an odd draft of air hit the left side of
the helicopter as it banked, nearly sending Mac crashing into the
side of the decrepit mansion. When he tried to straighten, another
draft had hit the other side, stabilizing the copter but bringing
it far too low. Then Mac had glimpsed the granite driveway behind
the house.

He’d set down the copter easily, hell, he’d
glided in like a dream. And while Mac sat there with the blades
spinning, recollecting himself, he’d seen the sudden surprise storm
racing across the lake, black thunderclouds boiling with stabs of
lightning.

Mac had tried the radio, but there was only
static. He’d gotten out of the copter, grabbed the girl’s body, and
carried it into the house, slamming the door after them just as
rain began pounding onto the roof.

He’d set her corpse down in a corner, then
went looking for an old chair to curl up on. But there was nothing
in the whole stupid house except a few old kids’ toys and a tiny
stained mattress in one upstairs room. Finally, he’d made his way
back to the main room, and looked out the front door. The storm was
still raging, but he’d discovered a bunch of driftwood on one end
of the porch. Bringing it inside, he started a fire with some old
peeled off wallpaper and some of his matches. Then he sat huddled
before the fire in his coat, glad that it was summer instead of
winter.

That night was a long one for Mac. He’d
dreamed extensively.
God, such dreams!
He’d never had
anything like them before. And when he woke, he was so excited he
sought out the body of the dead girl in a kind of mad craze, to act
out some of the amazing things he’d dreamt about. But the body in
the corner was gone. Only the bloody blanket remained in a
semi-sodden mess.

Excited as he was, that freaked Mac out
enough that he left right then, fighting the remnants of the storm
to take off, and almost crashing on the rocks when the copter took
a dive as he took off to rise. He’d bent the legs slightly on the
right side on impact, shearing off some tree branches, but he’d
gotten aloft.

Mac was glad to be alive. Afterwards, he’d
come back and done a little research on the isle he’d landed on.
Damn place was reputed to be haunted and the scene of multiple
deaths ‘by misadventure.’ Locals said plainly that if you went to
Latham’s Landing you never left again. But he’d left okay. Mac
counted himself lucky, and went back to his transport business,
dumping the bodies when he’d finished with them in the state land a
couple hundred miles away from his apartment, just like he’d always
done. He stayed away from the island, even taking an extra ten
minutes to go out of his normal route to avoid it on his weekly
trips for Collins.

But the dreams from that night on Latham’s
Landing haunted him. And the more time went by, the more Mac
thought he understood that it was a
certain kind of man
that
could come and go from Latham’s Landing. A man like Latham himself
had been. A man like Mac was.

He’d come back again, once he’d figured that
out. But this time, he’d brought a live girl, not a dead one. That
first time…

Don’t think about that,
Mac told
himself quickly.
You didn’t understand things then. Think about
the next time, after that. That time was perfect.

The second run with a live girl had been a
grand time. He’d set her free, then hunted her through the old
house, lying in wait around corners to slash at her with his knife,
listening to her scream again and again until she lost her voice.
He killed her there right on the main stairway, as a kind of grand
finale. Afterwards, he put her in the same corner where he’d put
the first dead girl, built a raging fire, and again went to sleep
before it, praying for sweet dreams.

The visions had come again, brighter and more
lurid than ever. Mac had woken exhausted, but also happy and sated
for the first time in…hell, he couldn’t remember ever feeling that
good before. The house seemed to draw all the pent up anger out of
him, and make it into fantastic dreams.

Again, the dead girl in the corner was gone
when he awoke. But the bloody blanket this time was neatly
folded.

Mac had been coming here ever since, every
few months. It was close to two or three years now. And in that
time, he’d noticed a few…changes.

Mac had seen the new building rising up at
the back of the main house six months in. It grew bigger every time
he came back. Yet there were never any human tracks outside in the
dirt or inside in the dust, either, other than his own and his
various victims. Mac had never seen any animals on Latham’s
Landing, not even a mouse, or a rabbit. The only animal tracks he’d
ever seen here were deer.
Those little bugger’s hoof prints were
everywhere in the dirt, especially in warm weather.
But
whomever had designed the new building knew the way the wind was
out here, and had left him ample space to maneuver to and from the
granite pad. That was all that mattered to Mac.

And there were other kindnesses, too…
Mac uttered a low sound of pleasure.
Yes, you just had to be the
right kind of people for Latham’s Landing.

There was a muffled crying from the
backseat.

“
We’re gonna have fun tonight,” Mac
said under his breath. “All of us.”

Caroline was so relieved to see Helter come
back, she gave him a pass for his macho bullshit earlier. “Did you
find anything?”

Helter told her about the boat, and the
boathouse. “It looks fine, but we’d better go while we can. Just
take the snowmobile over the land and—” He stopped suddenly, then
looked at her curiously.

“
What?” she said finally.