Sea Creature Read online

  “We try to be civilized here. We handle most crimes with fines unless it’s serious. And then we send the offenders to Santiago to deal with. Many of them, just by being charged with a crime, will get lost in the jail system there as they wait for their court dates. There are men that have spent years in jail because the jails have forgotten about them. Is that what I should do with you and your friend? Send you to Santiago?”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  Ignacio smiled. “I know you follow orders from the man who pays you, so I am not angry with you. I know you are the one that lost your brother. His name was Andrew, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You lost Andrew to the beast. I too lost a brother to the beast. In a small way, we are alike.”

  Patrick sat silently a moment and then said, “You telling me he didn’t drown?”

  “No, he did not drown. He was taken from you by a creature. The locals here call it, ‘el fantasma de los océanos.’ The ghost of the ocean.”

  “How long have you known about it?”

  “A long time.”

  “And you let people swim here anyway?”

  Ignacio shrugged and stood up. “You are free to leave.”

  “What about our ship?”

  “The man you work for is very rich. He will put money in the right places and I will have to let you sail. But I can slow you down for a time. At least for now, you will not be going anywhere.”

  As he turned and left Patrick stood up and followed him. He stepped out into the sunlight and saw Christopher waiting for him by a limo.

  * * *

  21

  Christopher followed Patrick as he went back to the ship and explained the situation to Mitch and Hamilton. Hamilton immediately got on his cell phone and began making some calls. Mitch just said, “Didn’t get corn-holed there in the slammer, did ya?”

  A police unit borrowed from neighboring towns was standing guard by the ship. Everyone was allowed a few hours to gather their things and step off. Reporters were shooed away and Hamilton had given orders not to talk to any of them yet. The mayor would be getting his, he assured everyone, but better not to upset him right now.

  Patrick and Christopher decided they didn’t want to go back to the hostel yet so they walked the streets for a while and then went to a local bar. It was an upscale place but like any bar the floors were dirty and near the bathrooms it stunk of vomit and urine. At a table in the center of the bar was Mitch and three other of Hamilton’s men who’d beaten them there.

  “Boys!” he said excited, “come join us.”

  They pulled out chairs at the table and sat down.

  “What’re ya drinking?” Mitch said.

  “Just a beer,” Patrick said.

  “Wine for me.”

  “Beer and wine?” Mitch said, chuckling. “How about you pull your tampons out before I get those for you? Everyone found this amusing and laughed. “Just joshing ya mates. Well known fact that Americans can’t hold their liquor. Beer and wine it is.”

  “Who said Americans can’t hold their liquor?” Patrick said.

  “Just a well known fact. You sound like you want a chance to challenge that fact, mate.”

  Christopher said they didn’t but Patrick didn’t notice him.

  “All right, how?”

  “Tequila shots. First one to give or pass out loses.”

  “Fine.”

  The men cheered and Christopher mumbled something about how childish this was. Mitch ordered and the waitress brought out twenty tequila shots. The tequila was thick, like syrup, and the bottles behind the bar had worms in them.

  “Cheers, mate.”

  They took their first shot. The tequila went down smooth but had a strong aftertaste. It warmed Patrick’s belly and they took another. They would wait almost a full minute in between shots and then hold up their shot glasses at the same time and down the liquid. After five shots, the warmth Patrick felt in his stomach began to turn to nausea. After ten shots, he didn’t feel it anymore.

  They ordered another twenty drinks. Christopher tried to stop them, but Patrick was too into the game now. Mitch sat across from him with a smile on his face; there was no way he was going to let him win.

  Two more shots, back-to-back this time. They waited another thirty seconds and then took two more. The aftertaste was coming back and Patrick ordered a Coke to clear the taste from his mouth.

  “How ya doing, mate?” Mitch said, his words slurring.

  “Fine. Hey Mitch, why wasn’t Jesus born in Australia? Cause they couldn’t find three virgins and a wise man. Wait, Chris is that how it goes?”

  Mitch laughed so hard one of the men had to grab him so he wouldn’t fall out of his chair. Patrick began to laugh too but tasted vomit in his mouth and stopped.

  The room was spinning but Patrick picked up another glass and swallowed as Mitch did the same. Three more shots, one right after the other. Patrick couldn’t see clearly and his stomach and bowels burned. Whenever he drank too much he needed to have a bowel movement and he wasn’t sure how long he could hold it. Mitch leaned back in his chair and appeared calm, but Patrick saw the strand of drool that was hanging down from his mouth.

  Two more shots, and then a thirty second wait. Patrick felt vomit in his throat. Before he could take a swallow of Coke to keep it down it shot out of his mouth and over the table. The men cheered and laughed as Patrick slid off the table and onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Christopher helped him up and out of the bar.

  The night air was cool and some of the shops were still open, a few tourists browsing clothing stores. Chris carried him back to the jeep and Patrick was singing a Phil Collins song. He fell back in the seat, vomit over his shirt and pants, and sang louder as the jeep roared to life and Christopher pulled away from the bar.

  They drove through the winding streets and then left Viña and headed for their hostel in Valparaiso. It always amazed Christopher how the two could be so close and completely different from one another. He had been told by some of the locals that if one wanted to get lost and never found, Valparaiso was the place to go. The address system there didn’t work and even the police couldn’t find most addresses unless they grew up there and knew where everything was by heart.

  There were some neighborhoods that were known for such violence no policemen would dare enter them, even during the day. Christopher filed this information away; you never knew when you would have to get lost and never found.

  He parked the jeep in front of their hostel and Patrick was still singing. He pulled him down and put his arm over his neck and carried him in. He laid him on the bed and collapsed next to him. Christopher was not known for physical strength at a hundred and forty five pounds and just helping Patrick to the bed had worn him out.

  Patrick stopped singing and began to sob quietly. Christopher thought he was hearing things and then saw the tears pouring down his cheeks.

  “I killed him, Chrissy. I fucking killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “I fucking killed him. There were so many. There were so fucking many but they said we had to get what we wanted. They were our enemies, we had to get information.” Patrick brought his hands up over his face.

  “Patrick what are you talking about?”

  But he didn’t respond. He just wept for a while and then stopped and began to sing again. Before long, he passed out and Christopher took off his boots.

  * * *

  22

  Rodrigo came to the hostel a little later and Christopher asked him to watch over Patrick and makes sure he was okay. Then he went outside and got into the jeep and drove up the tallest hill in Valparaiso. He knew the area well; the streets were purposely too narrow so that police cars couldn’t come through.

  He parked the jeep and took any valuables he had and locked them in the glove box. This area catered to tourists and some of the local gang bosses had issued orders that tourists weren’t to be robbed s
o they could partake in the illicit businesses there, particularly the drugs. But much of the time the bosses were ignored as much as the laws.

  Patrick got out and began walking up the winding streets. The houses were little more than tin shacks and during the rainy season, if there was a particularly bad storm, they would just begin to slide down the hill on mudslides.

  Outside of a two story home were lined up women in skimpy clothing. Christopher walked to them and looked them all over. They bored him and he asked one of them where the boys were. On a corner across the street were gathered a handful of Chilean males, no older than nineteen. He walked past them as if window shopping and chose a slender one on the end.

  “Hola,” he said.

  “Hola. En busca de un buen momento?”

  “Siempre. Inglés?”

  “Jeyes I speak English.”

  “Do you have a room nearby?”

  “Jeyes.”

  Christopher followed the man into the house. It appeared like any normal home in Chile. There was old furniture with clear plastic wrap around the couches and love seats and a coffee table with a bible and art book filled with religious paintings on top of it. A painting of the Virgin Mary hung above the fireplace; her heart burning through her clothing as she stared off in the distance. In the kitchen were pots and pans and dishes, dried red peppers hanging as ornaments over the oven and dining room table.

  He was taken upstairs to a room with a large bed covered in a canopy. The boy led him to the bed, and then shut the door.

  *****

  When they finished, Christopher got up and dressed. He looked the boy over; he was strong and muscular and was lying on his side flipping through a magazine. Christopher sat in a chair and admired him for a long time. This was the best time in the boy’s life. Christopher knew exactly where he would end up. It would be addicted to heroin or alcohol, the other drugs available in the region too expensive for the normal street hooker. His youth and his strength would fade hit by hit and bottle by bottle until he could no longer sell himself. That’s when he would turn to crime and end up just another old man serving out his time in prison.

  But for now, he was beautiful. Christopher pulled out a package of cigarettes and lit one with a match.

  “What do you know about Ignacio Silva?” Christopher asked.

  “El alcalde? Not much. I met him once. He came here and walked through the streets and stopped and talked with us. He is vergy nice.”

  “Does he have a reputation for anything?”

  “Repu . . .”

  “Reputation. Estado.”

  “Oh he is vergy strong. The, how you say, ah, las pandillas?”

  “Gangs.”

  “Jeyes, the gangs are no scared of angyone. The gangs are scared of him.”

  “Why?”

  “He is not like other people. He is vergy strong.”

  “I’m glad you’re so descriptive.”

  The boy looked at him puzzled, an innocent smile on his face. Christopher took one last puff of his cigarette and rose. The boy turned to him, looking at him seductively, and Christopher pressed the tip of the cigarette hard into his thigh, putting it out.

  The boy screamed and jumped out of the bed, a string of obscenities spewing from his mouth in Spanish. He picked up the lamp and threw it but Christopher was already out the door and it hit the frame and shattered as Christopher laughed and ran out of the house.

  * * *

  23

  The trip had been a disaster from the beginning.

  Kyle Morrison stood on the rented boat overlooking the shore and waited for Nancy to finish haggling with one of the street merchants over a dress and piece of jewelry. When he’d taken her to Kenya last year, he had expected the street merchants as every travel guide warned him about them. But Viña del Mar was supposed to be different. Why didn’t the local police just round up all these damn street merchants and ship ‘em off?

  On top of that, he had looked forward to a breakfast of ostrich eggs and the hotel didn’t have any. He had to settle for blue bird eggs and some sort of fried sausage.

  Nancy turned to him and waved, the muscles bulging in her shoulders. Kyle’s impatience faded. She was sexy. Twenty-three years old and a personal trainer. Kyle never got girls like her until he was rich. When he was the fat kid in high school that came from an alcoholic father and a mother that ran out on them, and when he was the scholarship kid in college with all the elites looking down their noses at him, he never would have gotten a girl like Nancy.

  But now he couldn’t keep them away. The money was the draw and he saw the look of disgust on their faces when he made love to them, but he didn’t care. They were his. He bought them like he bought his boats and his condos and watches.

  “Get over here,” he shouted, “we’re leaving.”

  She ran over, pressing her hat to her head. Like a dog, Kyle thought.

  Nancy climbed aboard and he slapped her ass and she yelped playfully. He yelled to the two workers he had hired and they pulled the anchor and started the engine. The boat pulled out of the slip and he sat on a deckchair, sipping wine out of a forte cab wine glass.

  “I love this dress,” Nancy said, rubbing his shoulders. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I want to wear it tonight at the party. There’s going to be the president there. Isn’t that what you said? That the president would be there?”

  “I guess. I don’t know if I want to go though.”

  “Why not?”

  “That shit bores me. Gotta wear a tux and all that. Sounds boring.”

  “But I really wanted to go, sugarballs.”

  “Eh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll stop by.”

  She leaned down and kissed him and then ran below deck, coming back out with two glasses and a bottle of champagne.

  “Let’s drink this instead.”

  Nancy poured two glasses and handed him one. Kyle took it, sipped it, and then put it back down and took up his wine glass.

  “I want to go to that little island we went to yesterday,” she said as she leaned in close and nibbled on his ear. “I want to fuck you on the beach.”

  He turned to the worker at the controls and told him where to go. He finished his wine in one gulp and then kissed her hard. He bit down on her tongue until she pulled away and he laughed.

  They began running their hands over each other’s bodies and he slid his tongue down her neck and over her plump breasts. He bit the top of her left breast and she giggled.

  The boat suddenly began to slow and he thought they were nearing the island. He bent down and bit her thigh and could smell her perfume and lotion and it aroused him. He looked up to make sure the deckhands weren’t watching, and he didn’t see them. One had been near the controls and one was at the bow repairing a fishing rod that had snapped yesterday.

  The boat came to a stop and Kyle stood up and went to the controls.

  “What is it?” Nancy said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where the fuck did Juan and that other guy go?”

  “Maybe they went below?”

  Kyle walked to the steps leading below deck and examined the two rooms. There was a kitchen with a table and then a bedroom. There was no one there. He went back up to the controls and looked around at the vast blue water surrounding him.

  “Those fuckers fall in?”

  A scream cut through the air and they both turned to it. Juan was sticking out of the water, covered in blood, his organs bulging from an open wound in his stomach as something had wrapped itself around him and was holding him above the surface.

  There was one final guttural scream as blood erupted from his mouth, his chest and abdominal cavity crushed to paste.

  Kyle could see what looked like a white tube around him. The tube began to slither over the body and then pulled it under.

  “Holy shit!”

  He jumped up to the controls and slammed the throttle forward. The boat dipped low too
fast and Nancy flew out of her chair and hit the transom before flying into the water. She screamed and grabbed at the boat but couldn’t pull herself up.

  “Kyle! Help me!”

  He laid off the throttle a second and looked back, looking at her beautiful face as her make-up ran down her cheeks.

  Fuck it, he thought.

  He pressed down on the throttle again and bolted away as she frantically screamed behind him. It was a horrible scream; one of someone that knew they were about to die. It lasted only a few seconds and then was abruptly cut off. He looked behind him and saw only the water and a few birds diving down.

  The island was in view now. It wasn’t large, only a half square mile or so, but it would do for now. He just needed to calm down for a minute and think. The guys had fallen into the water and were killed by something. But he didn’t hear any splashing. That means they were probably taken off the boat but what the fuck could take a man off a boat?

  Nancy’s scream entered his head again and he shook it away.

  He got the boat nearly to the beach; the bottom scraping against rocks and sand. He jumped out into knee-high water and ran for the safety of the beach.

  The sand was hot underneath his feet and he collapsed onto all fours. He looked up to see a line of trees; the center of the island was thick jungle. He glanced back to the water but didn’t see anything; his boat gently bobbing up and down with the waves.

  As he tried to stand he heard the thunderous sound of fiberglass and wood crushed and sucked under the surface. He turned just in time to see the bow of the boat, sticking out vertically in the water, pulled underneath. In the few seconds he had turned away, it had been pulled out to sea almost a hundred feet and then under the water.

  Something whipped out from the ocean. It rocketed toward him and seemed to block out the sun as it came down. It scraped along his body and tore his clothes and skin alike.

  He screamed and wet himself before running into the jungle.