Escape Island

 

The diminutive aluminum boat was hardly what one would call “seaworthy”.  It bumped up and down across the embattled surface of the bay, and each time the boat smashed down into the water Dani felt like her soul might leave her body. But the crappy little dingy with its eggbeater engine was all she could find at short notice, or more to the point, it was all she could afford.

The island loomed ahead of her in the dusky grey of a cloudy coastal dusk. Normally the area was a tourist’s dream; sunny, warm, and surrounded by crystal blue waters. But a storm was blowing in just as night was about to fall, and it gave the ocean a foreboding look. It gave the island and its many palm trees a strange shape; too sharp, too shadowy.

Dani didn’t know a lot about maritime law, but she was pretty sure that driving a death trap boat out to a restricted island just prior to a storm was at least frowned upon. What she did know for a fact was that not having any lights on the boat was definitely against the law. But she didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the morning to make it out the island, and in truth she hoped that her moronic feat might attract the attention of the law. Harbor patrol could chase her out to the island and then provide the help they had refused to offer when she had gone to them in the first place.

She still bristled when she thought about the condescending look on the officer’s face when she spoke with him at the station. “My friend Jessica has been abducted by her ex and taken out to that abandoned resort on the island” Dani had said. “Someone needs to go help her. I know he plans to hurt her.”

The officer had given her a smile that might have been charming ten years and 40 pounds ago and replied, “I’m sorry your friend has you worried, but do you have any proof that she is in danger? Why hasn’t she contacted our office herself?”

“Well, first off, he took her phone. And second…” she trailed off at the “second” part because it wasn’t going to be helpful in the least. Second was that Jessica’s ex, Gary Lewis, was a former cop and former high school football star, and thus a guy who could do no wrong by his former brothers in blue, despite being fired for repeated abuse of power. Truth was, it was hard to picture the handsome and funny Gary as being a sadistic sociopath. Jessica certainly hadn’t seen it when she’d fallen in love with him.

No, the law officials had been of no help in the end. They offered to go out and take a look around the island if she didn’t hear from Jessica within the mandatory 48 hours, but Dani knew it would be too late by then. If Gary had been a sicko before he got fired from the police force, a year of security duty on the old “Escape Island Resort” had turned him into an absolute monster.

Dani could see the much larger and sleeker boat that Gary and the other guards used to get to and from their shifts tethered up to a dock that was once meant to welcome ferries of resort guests and luxury yachts seeking port. She blew past it and into shallow waters, pulling up the little motor and letting the waves pound the boat up onto the beach. She jumped out into the sand and pulled the boat up as far as she was able. The boat getting washed away was the least of her worries right now. It had been about six hours since Gary had grabbed Jess from her home, and that was way more of a head start than Dani could stomach.

She checked her phone, but there was no service. She knew that would be the case. In fact, she knew a lot about Escape Island. Gary had frequently spoken of his job, at first boasting that he was lucky to have “parted ways” with the force because private security was such a cushy job. “No real danger” he’d say to whatever adoring crowd he could draw. “Just riding a scooter around paradise all day and taking naps whenever I feel like it”. But then he started to complain about the island; no cell service, endless boredom. And then he became rather manic about the island; that it wasn’t what it seemed, that it taunted him, that nobody lasted more than a couple years on security detail because the place was evil.

Dani had never liked Gary; could see through his gleaming white smile and his bro-ish anecdotes. But Jess had been head-over-heels, and no matter how close you are with a friend, you just can’t break her up from a guy she’s in love with. Even when he gets fired for beating a harmless drunk to a pulp. Even when he cheats on her. Even when he loses his temper and leaves her with a black eye. You just wait for the fall out damage and you show up. And right now, this was Dani showing up.

Dani trudged up the beach feeling more like the soccer mom she was than some brave hero. Her tennis shoes were wet and full of sand. Her hair was whipped up into a knotted frenzy from the boat ride. She had a bright blue backpack slung over her shoulder that she used to pack diapers in for her son’s daycare. And as she looked across the quickly darkening grounds leading up to the massive resort building, she had to admit that Gary’s stories had gotten under her skin.

To the right of her was a big garage with a faded sign that read “SCOOTER AND GOLF CART RENTALS”. To the left was a waterfront vista where guests would have been able to order drinks from the now battered tiki bars and watch the sun set over the gorgeous ocean. Directly in front of her was the main hotel; a 20-story building with an all-glass front intended to reflect that same splendid sunset. Gary had once drunkenly said, “the glass doesn’t reflect shit anymore, too many dark souls trapped inside.”

As Dani drew closer to the resort entrance, she gleaned what Gary likely meant; the glass had become tarnished to the point of a sooty black, through it was probably from years of neglect and not from “trapped souls”. Afterall, the most bone chilling thing about Escape Island was that it had never opened. 27 years ago, some developers had poured millions of dollars into this exclusive getaway. They had furnished the rooms, landscaped the patios, even stocked the silly golf carts and scooters. But they had never hosted a single guest before closing the project down.

Dani remembered Jess with a margarita in one hand and a spatula in the other, flipping burgers in between passing the blunt. She had said, “I bet that they just closed Escape Island because there’s some kind of cancerous shit out there”. Gary had snuck up behind her and grabbed her around the waist, causing her to squeal, and he’d said in his best southern-charming-as-fuck drawl, “you better hope there’s nothing cancerous out there baby, what would you do without me?”.

Thrive and prosper Dani thought now, clenching her hands into fists. She pushed open the front doors to the resort, and despite all the years of neglect, they came open with ease. There was a strange sucking sound as she stepped over the threshold and the doors came to a close behind her. It felt like she was being sealed in.

She stood in what would have been the hotel lobby, and it was vast to say the least. The glass ceiling extended up several stories, and though the glass was now blackened and stained, she could imagine that it must have been designed to create a beautiful and shimmering spectrum of light for tourists checking in.

Aside from the damaged glass, the lobby was remarkably intact. Everything had a faded and dusty appearance, but aside from a few strips of limp wallpaper and the occasional ripple from beneath the carpeting, the room appeared startlingly normal. There was no mold creeping up the walls, plants pushing out from crevices, or pools of stagnant water as she had expected. Part of her expected a ghastly voice to whisper into her ear, “do you need help with your bags Mam?”.

“Well, this is fucked” she said out loud, and the sound made her jump. She was standing in the lobby of a building that had some thousands of rooms in it, looking for her best friend, and had no idea where to start. The one thing Dani did know was that Gary had Jess somewhere inside the hotel and not in some dilapidated cabana or a sunken scuba retreat on the far side of the island. Dani knew this because just before Jess had left Gary for the last time, he had fueled her permanent exodus with some majorly disturbing ramblings.

“He’s been having these crazy ass nightmares every time he closes his eyes” Jess had cried, a nearly empty bottle of chardonnay between them as they sat on Dani’s couch. “He keeps saying the island is causing them, that even when he’s on the mainland, part of him is still there. When he’d wake up, he’d rammable about ‘making his payment soon’. Then one night he was so fucked up on coke and Jack Daniels that he started going on about a blood tribute to the hotel. And I just knew that look in his eye. He didn’t mean HIS blood. Oh, Gary would never pay in HIS blood. I get that now. Maybe too late, I know, but I do get that now.”

Dani said it wasn’t “too late”, and she still needed to believe that. All she wanted was to find her friend alive. Suddenly, the elevator at the far end of the lobby let out a loud and merry “DING” and Dani was sure her soul really did leave her body this time.

The doors slid open and with a guttural “oh hell no” Dani approached the inexplicable device and stepped inside. The doors slid shut, and she tried not to imagine she was being sealed into a coffin. Without a moment’s pause, smooth jazz filled the little box, and she was sure she had entered some ring of hell. And then the elevator started its ascent.

Gripping the straps of her silly backpack like it was somehow a stable tether to reality, Dani trembled as the elevator made its way cheerily up and up. She noticed a poster on the wall of a couple embracing on the resort’s beach, elaborate font framing their erotic exchange with a question; “Does it get any better than this?”.

It really, really does Dani thought as the elevator approached the penthouse floor. Dani had never even gotten close to a penthouse, but right now she would have rather been anywhere else. With yet another merry “DING” the elevator doors popped open.

She had expected to be greeted by some sprawling, extravagant hotel space. Instead, she entered into an ornate but almost claustrophobic passage. At the end of the narrow hall was a heavy door, and she approached it with shaking legs. She didn’t know how the elevator had come to life, and she didn’t know what was on the other side of the door before her, but she hadn’t come all this way to abandon Jess now.

As she reached for the too shiny silver doorknob, the door opened of its own volition, and she stepped back quickly to put distance between herself and the threshold. It was dark on the other side of the door, so it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but slowly she made out the shape and size of Gary Lewis. And as light and color finally met her gaze, she realized he was wearing a fluffy white bath robe, and holding a tiki cup with a pink umbrella.

“So glad you could join us, I knew you’d make it” Gary said, that phony smile of his stretching so wide she thought it might split his face in half.  “Come on in, Jessie Girl is about to wake up.”

Dani felt her feet move despite her mind being numb. It was all too surreal. Inside the penthouse everything was almost perfect. A sprawling open layout with windows that opened to the bay, and as she glanced outside, she could see that the storm had arrived. The winds bent palm trees, flung rusty patio furniture, and poured water down the crystal-clear windowpanes. The cleanliness of these glass panes in comparison to those seen on the rest of the building was odd, but it was just one small detail in a cacophony of strange. 

“Do you want a drink?” Gary asked from behind a massive bar that was fully stocked with dusty bottles of everything imaginable. “I know you like rum, and even the bottom shelf stuff has been aged for 23 plus years.” He laughed at his own joke like they were old friends sharing a congenial moment. Dani’s eyes drifted to Jess, whose motionless form lay on a California King bed across the vast hotel space. “Oh, don’t worry about her, she’s just had too much to drink. You know Jessie Girl; she can’t turn down a drink.”

Dani rushed to Jessica’s side, feeling a sinking certainty that she had made this perilous journey only to find her best friend dead. It was true that Jess liked to have a drink. But she also like to dance, and to cook, and to make people happy. It was too unfair that her light would be snuffed out by this self-absorbed asshole in this clearly cursed place.

Dani was no nurse, but when she put her fingers to Jessica’s throat, she found a pulse and this time, Dani felt her soul return to her body and settle deep within her. Everything now came to her with incredible clarity as she took the backpack from her shoulders and reached inside. She heard Gary’s footsteps approach from behind, but she only cared about the safety of her friend.

She could hear impossible-to-explain sound of ice cubes clinking within the drink Gary carried, but Dani kept her eyes focused on her best friend’s motionless figure. And then her hand found what she was looking for, and she turned to face Gary Lewis.

He nearly dropped the tiki cups in his hand. “Woah now” he said, acting like she had pulled out a kinky sex toy and not a handgun. “But you don’t own a gun.”

“It was easier to find than a boat” she sighed, and she shot him dead before he could even wipe that smug look from his face.

Dani was no fragile thing, but she lacked the brute muscle to carry her friend out through a storm. Luckily, two ice cold cocktails poured on her head woke Jess from whatever drug induced sleep she had been locked in. There was confused sobbing and a lot of tripping and stumbling, but they made it to the elevator. Which, of course, no longer wished to comply since they were attempting to escape.

And so, a drug addled woman and a first-time killer dragged each other down 20 stories. Outside the storm howled, but that was not enough to convince either of them to stay the night on Escape Island. They made their way through the rain that drove into them like pellets and suffered contusions from flying debris, but in the end, they found their way to the boat that Gary had traveled to work in each day.

It would be a cute story to say that either of them thought to take the key off Gary’s corpse, or that it had been left there in the boat for their convenient escape. But even if they had been able to start the boat up, they would have capsized from the storm quickly. So, they stayed in the boat as it rocked and slammed against its bearings. And eventually, 48 hours passed and one very surprised officer who was following up on a seemingly stupid report about some abducted lady, found two very dehydrated women sitting on the edge of the dock, awaiting a ride back to the main land.