Fourteen
I started jogging toward Father as he waved me back into the coffee shop, took us to our table, and from there I could see that there was, indeed, something happening at the motel.
Dr. Eastbrook’s car was parked right near ours. Father then pointed toward the outdoor staircase that led up to the higher floors. The doctor and Blue Boyle were slowly moving upwards.
“We’ve got to move now!” said Father. “I’ve already paid the bill.”
We hurried outside and made our way as quickly as possible to the doctor’s car. Staying bent over so he would have a hard time seeing us from the motel, we checked the front door handle. Open! Father reached in, found the latch for the trunk, pulled it. I heard it pop.
We lifted it up, slightly, and I saw my backpack.
I carefully pulled it out, and as we turned to hurry to our car, I heard a ferocious roar.
We both looked toward the motel and saw the enormous Blue Boyle pointing right at us and heard him bellowing like an enraged predatory animal.
Which he had become.
Blue Boyle and Dr. Eastbrook had whirled and were moving quickly down the stairs—but they had a long way to go, and by the time they’d reached the bottom, we had already driven out of sight.
***
But we didn’t go far. Father’s plan had been to find a concealed place where we could watch Dr. Eastbrook drive out of the parking lot. Then, after a brief wait, we’d follow him. Find out where he was going—what he was doing. And then we would notify the authorities.
Sounded like a great plan to me.
If only.
***
The first part went very well. We found an alley very close to the motel exit; Father backed into it, out of view, and we waited.
And we didn’t have to wait too long.
Dr. Eastbrook’s car roared by, heading toward I-87, which is the route he must have figured a sensible fugitive would take. (Actually, I thought a sensible fugitive would not take the most prominent road out of there but would find something a little less obvious.)
After a couple of moments, we headed out behind him, keeping several cars and trucks between us so that he wouldn’t see us easily.
Sure enough, he headed up onto the southbound ramp, and we followed cautiously, figuring it would be much easier to keep him in sight on an Interstate than on other roads with stoplights and other obstructions.
Another factor: Beside him in the front seat, Blue Boyle swelled like a giant blowfish. It would be impossible not to see him many car lengths away.
“I hope you’ve got plenty of gas,” I said to Father.
“I’m not as dumb as I look!” he joked.
“That’s a relief,” I said.
He smiled.
***
We stayed on I-87 (S) for about forty-five minutes, all the time keeping what we were sure was a safe distance. Then, near Troy, New York—just a few miles up the Hudson River from Albany—we saw him turn to leave the Interstate and turn east on New York State Highway 7.
And we entered a small town—the smallest, I would later learn, in the entire state of New York.
I felt my heart surge when I saw the sign: “Village of Green Island.”
Before I could say anything, Father mumbled, “I know, Vickie—I know.”
***
This was getting too weird. As I wrote earlier in these Papers, my friend Harriet and I had nearly died on the Green Island in Lake Erie—and Dr. Eastbrook had taken me there again when he was drugging me and traveling to various sites where I’d had similar near-fatal encounters with him and Blue Boyle, encounters that you can read about in the earlier volumes of these Papers.
And now … another Green Island?
Only, I later learned, Green Island, New York, was no longer an island—and had not been one since the 1960s when construction crews had used soil and rubble from the I-87 construction to fill in part of the river, and so Green Island became part of the mainland of New York. And the little community of Green Island had a name that made no sense.
Remaining in the Hudson River, however, are a few other islands: Stormy, Adams, and Starbucks—a name I recognized immediately. Starbuck was the First Mate aboard the Pequod in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. I had thought it odd, back when I’d read that novel, that it was published in 1851—the same year that Mary Shelley died. Melville’s name does not appear in her letters—or in her journal. But had she really never heard of him? Had she not read his earlier, far more popular books? Like Typee—a South Sea adventure from 1846?
This may all seem a little beside the point right here … but be patient.
And remember.
***
Father and I followed Dr. Eastbrook and Blue Boyle carefully through the quiet streets of the town—staying at least a block away. Then we saw them take a left turn toward the river; we did, too. They stopped. And they moved toward a little dock, where they approached a little motorboat, put their bags in it, and headed off to the nearby island—Stormy, which, as far as I could see, was heavily wooded.
“Now what?” I asked Father.
He said nothing. Just stared ahead.
I waited, then asked again, “Father?”
He said nothing.
“You think we should follow them?” I asked.
He finally spoke: “How?” He sounded both frustrated and weary. And I’m sure he felt that he had no idea where all this was headed. He must have been wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
“I guess we could wait awhile,” I said. “See if they’re coming back? Or staying somewhere on the island?”
Father shrugged.
By then, the little boat had turned around the point of the island and had passed out of our view.
***
I’m not sure if we remained because Father wanted to see if they returned—or because he’d just become inert, worn out by all that had happened, all that was happening. But sit we did—fortunately, we were parked near but not underneath a tree, so the sun added a little welcome solar heat.
I took out my new book—the one I’d just bought by Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. It was quite out of character for Father not to ask me about a book I was reading, but, arousing from his funk, he looked over, saw the title, and finally asked me about it.
“Who’s Kate Atkinson?”
“She’s from England,” I said. “This is her first book—I got it at the drugstore back in town—and just listen to the blurbs on the cover.” I read a few of them to Father, who seemed to perk up when he heard them. A good book could do that to him.
“You haven’t started it, have you?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you read aloud then? I think I’m too tired to dig through my things and look for something to do.”
I did this occasionally—read aloud to Father. He, of course, had done so for me since I was a toddler. And still did so now and then.
And so I launched into the book.
I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall.[i]
I stopped. Father and I looked at each other a moment, then broke out in laughter.
I didn’t need to say it, but I did: “Sounds like that famous night in Frankenstein, doesn’t it?”[ii]
“Indeed.”
***
After about an hour it was fairly clear to us that they had landed on the other side of the island. They had not returned; they had not rounded the island and come back into view.
“Well,” said Father, “now what?”
I had no idea.
He looked at his watch. “Why don’t we get something to eat? Then go find somewhere to spend the night?”
“Okay,” I said, “and that will give us a chance to examine that device in my backpack and see if we can figure out what it is.”
I’d used we, but both of us knew I meant I. Father had long ago realized that I had great scientific interests—and knowledge—and that he, though very bright, was not exactly in my league—not in anything having to do with science.
We drove up into town and found a quiet little restaurant—and parked several blocks away, just in case Dr. Eastbrook and Blue Boyle thought of cruising the streets, looking for our car. We were pretty sure that they didn’t know that we’d followed them here to Green Island, but we didn’t want to take a chance.
I found I was far hungrier than I’d thought I would be. So was Father. We both ate the huge portions they brought us, every scrap, until not even a grain of salt was left on our plates.
The waiter, stopping by to refill our drinks, saw those clean plates and could not help commenting. “I guess you two were hungry?”
“Good guess,” joked Father.
The waiter took it well.
“Do you have a dessert menu?” I asked.
They did.
***
We drove to a small motel and, once again, found a place to park that was not visible from the road. Father told me that he registered under a name that was close to ours so that he could claim it was a handwriting mistake if anyone ever asked him about his it.
“I don’t think anyone will ask,” he told me in the room. “The clerk didn’t seem to care about much of anything.”
“That’s good,” I said. “So what name did you use?”
“Sloan,” he said.
I nodded. “Better than ‘Rock,’” I joked.
After we both cleaned up a little—I could not even remember when I’d last taken a shower, though it had not been that long ago—we sat in a couple of chairs at the little round table in the room and took out the device that I’d found on Green Island back on Lake Erie, the device that Dr. Eastbrook was very determined to recover.
As I mentioned earlier, it resembled a thin toaster, but, when you opened it, you could see slots that seemed designed to hold test tubes.
I opened it again for Father, and we stared at it, trying to think what its purpose could possibly be.
There was some sort of padding or insulation surrounding the inside. I pulled some of it away and saw what looked like small heating elements—and it was only then I noticed the small spot for a connection on the outside. It apparently had a way to attach to an electrical outlet.
“Well,” I said, “it definitely held things he wanted to keep warm.”
“But what?”
I said nothing. Just sat there and thought.
And then something dawned on me—something horrible—but something I was certain must be true.
Father saw the change of expression on my face. “What is it, Vickie?”
I told him. And then I watched the change of expression on his face.
[i] These are the actual opening lines to Atkinson’s novel.
[ii] The night that Victor Frankenstein brought his creature to life. Here’s how Mary Shelley described it in the opening paragraph in Chapter 5 of Frankenstein: “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”
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