Dr. Eastbrook turned to his
daughter, softened his voice, spoke to her as if they were an affectionate father
and daughter at a mall food court, trying to decide what to order.
“Harriet,” he cooed. “Who knows you’re here?”
“Don’t hit me, Daddy,” she
whimpered.
“I would never do that, Dear,” he
cooed again. Harriet glanced over at me.
“If you say anything to her,” said
Dr. Eastbrook under his breath, his back to me, “I will hit you for the last
time.” I imagined his smile as he
continued facing his terrified daughter.
Harriet waited, then took a deep
breath and said in a loud voice: “Everyone in Ohio knows we’re here.”
Silence—except for Blue Boyle’s
creature sounds behind me.
Dr. Eastbrook let out a deep sigh,
shook his head, stood, made as if to turn, then whirled and slapped Harriet so
hard he knocked her off her chair.
He whirled around, his face now
florid with rage. He spoke to no one in
particular. “We have to assume that
others know they’re here,” he said.
“We’re going to have to move—again.”
He looked back at us, then at Blue Boyle. “Take these two over to the other side of the
island”—and awful pause—“and drown them.”
As he was grabbing us and moving
toward the stairs, I saw a reflection of Dr. Eastbrook in one of the
windows. And he was talking with
someone.
.Aunt Claire?
There was no escaping from Blue
Boyle. His enormous strength matched his
gigantic size, and as he carried us back the way we had come, one of us in each
oversized hand, like dolls held by the backs of our necks, both Harriet and I
tried to plead with him. He appeared to
hear no sounds. And I was nearly
overcome by his rotting stench. He smelled
dead—long-ago dead. The crying
cormorants screeched as we passed below them, their droppings splattering on Blue
Boyle’s head and shoulders—and ours.
It didn’t take long to get to the
eastern edge of Green Island. Harriet
was sobbing. I was too. I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t help it. I was thinking rapidly of all the things I
could do to help us escape … I came up with nothing. Our hands remained bound behind us. We were in the grip of something far more
powerful than we were, so I thought at the time. We were helpless. Making it worse, the closer we got to the
shore, the continuous humming groans of Blue Boyle grew louder, louder—soon, almost
reaching the volume of a roar. The
cormorants could no longer compete.
As we emerged from the woods and
faced the lake, the lake where Blue Boyle would hold us under water until we
were no more, he suddenly stopped his noises and froze in position. Staring.
I heard a familiar, very welcome whirring sound.
I wrenched my head to the side and
saw what had stopped him: Anchored right offshore was a boat, and overhead
hovered a helicopter. On their sides,
both said U. S. Coast Guard. They were searching, I’m sure, for two lost
girls. And now they’d found us.
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