Shelley pulled a slender barbecue lighter from his pocket. He always carried one. Once, his teacher Mr. Finnerty had caught him burning ants near the bike racks after school. The fat carpenter ants had made weird pop! sounds as they exploded: like Shelley’s morning bowl of Rice Krispies.
Mr. Finnerty confiscated his lighter. He’d given Shelley a frosty, revolted look as if he’d just accidentally stepped on a caterpillar in his slipper. Shelley smiled back complacently.
He’d simply bought another lighter. He bought one every few weeks from different stores around town. He also bought mousetraps and ant traps. One time, a shopkeep had remarked: You must live with the Pied Piper, son, all these mousetraps you buy. That had concerned Shelley a little, and he’d made sure to steer clear of that store. It wasn’t wise to establish a pattern.
He flicked the ignitor. A wavering orange finger spurted from the metallic tip. Shelley worked carefully. It wasn’t a matter of savoring it—he’d done this so many times that his heartbeat barely fluctuated. He was simply methodical by nature.
He touched flame to the web’s topmost edges. The gossamer burnt incredibly fast—like fuses zipping toward a powder keg—trailing orange filaments that left a smoky vapor in the air. The web folded over upon itself like the finest lace. The spider tried to scurry up its collapsing web, but it was like trying to climb a ladder that was simultaneously ablaze and falling into a sinkhole.
Shelley idly wondered if the spider felt any confusion or terror—did insects even feel emotions? He sort of hoped so, but there was no way to be sure.
He set fire to the web’s remaining moorings. The web fell like a silken parachute with the spider trapped inside. Shelley harassed the spider through the grass, nipping it with the flame. He liked it best when he could sizzle a few legs off or melt their exoskeletons so some of their insides leaked out. He tried not to kill them. He preferred to alter them. It was more interesting. The game lasted longer.
He harried the spider until it scuttled under the cabin. He exhaled deeply and blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. Soon the spider would crawl back to its hole and build another web. Spiders were very predictable. When it did, Shelley might return and do it all over again.
Shelley scuffed his feet over the charred grass. It was best to leave no evidence. Take only photos, leave only footprints. He worked carefully, reflecting on the fact that this—what he’d just started with the Scoutmaster—was something new entirely. Something terribly exciting.
Spiders couldn’t tattle on you; mice couldn’t squeal—well, they could… but now Tim, he might just tell the boys what Shelley had done. But Shelley had an innate sense of leverage, a sixth sense he must’ve been born with; he understood that people in compromised positions were less believable. And even if the boys did believe Tim, or only a few of them—Max might; Newt definitely would—well, Shelley wasn’t sure that mattered now. He felt the pull of the island in his bones, a strong current anchoring him to it. The sun crawled over the water, and Shelley felt this day, which had only begun, might go on forever.
The boys had not yet stirred. When they did, talk would turn to tiresome matters: when the boat would show up, how badly their folks would flip out, the identity of the dead man in the cabin. Most of all, they’d talk about how they’d be safe, real soon.
But Shelley was positive the boat wasn’t coming.
Shelley wasn’t particularly intelligent, at least according to the methods society had developed to measure that. He’d scored low on his IQ test. In school, he earned Cs and the odd D. His teachers gazed upon his pockmarked cheeks and slug-gray eyes and pictured Shelley fifteen years later in a pair of grease-spotted overalls, his slack and pallid moonface staring up from the oil-change pit at a Mr. Lube.
Shelley was aware of their opinions, but it didn’t trouble him. Shelley was actually happy with this perception. It made it easier to engage in the behaviors that gave him pleasure—though he failed to experience pleasure in the ways others did.
Shelley was far more perceptive than most gave him credit for. His impassive face was the perfect disguise. His expression hadn’t changed when he’d seen the dead man on the chesterfield, but his practical mind had immediately aligned it with the black helicopter that had hovered overhead during the hike.
He had also aligned the thick white rope that had come out of the dead man with the thin white rope that had come out of his dog’s bum a few years ago.
Shogun, the family sheltie, had gotten into some spoiled chuck in a neighbor’s trash can. He passed a seven-foot worm weeks later. Shelley was home alone when it happened. He heard Shogun yowling in the backyard. He found the dog squatted in the zinnias. A white tube was spooling out of his butt, some of it already coiled up in the cocoa shells his father had spread over the flower beds.
Shelley crouched down, completely fascinated. He flicked at the white tube, mesmerized. The thing wriggled at his touch. Shelley giggled. He flicked it again. Shogun reared and snapped at him. Shelley waited, then touched the tube again. Flicking and flicking it gently with one finger. It was slick with the dog’s digestive juices. Shogun mewled pitifully and craned his skull over his haunches to stare at Shelley with wounded, rheumy eyes.
After shitting it out, Shogun tried to bury the worm. Shelley shooed the dog inside. He wanted to study it. It was dying very fast. Its head was a flat spoon shape. Many smaller spoon shapes branched off the biggest spoon: it looked like a Venus flytrap—the only plant Shelley found even remotely interesting. Each of the spoons had a slit down the middle studded with tiny translucent spikes. That must’ve been how it had moored to the dog’s intestines… fascinating.
Shelley thought back to that sunny afternoon in the garden, Shogun’s plaintive yipping as that greedy tube spooled out of its bottom. He was filled with a certainty as keen as he’d ever experienced.
The boat wouldn’t come. Not today. Not for a while. Maybe not ever.
And that was just fine with him. That meant he could play his games.
And if he played them patiently enough, carefully enough, he might be the only one left to greet a boat when—if?—it did show up.
He turned his vaporous test-pattern face up to the new sun. It was warm and not unpleasant. It would be an unseasonably hot day. New life could grow in this kind of heat. He walked back to the fire to rejoin the others.
19
WHEN THE boys awoke, the cooler was gone.
It contained all the food Scoutmaster Tim set aside. Wieners and buns. A six-pack of Gatorade. A bag of trail mix. Hershey’s Kisses. All they had left until the boat arrived. Max had placed it next to the fire the previous night. When they woke up, it was gone.
“Where the hell is it?” Ephraim said. He stamped around the campsite, knuckling sleep-crust out of his eyes. “I’m hungry, man.”
The others roused themselves slowly. Their sleep had been fitful, thanks to the ominous howls and sly scuttlings of the wild creatures lurking beyond the fire’s glow.
Newt said: “The cooler’s missing.”
“No shit, Captain Obvious,” Ephraim said. “Which one of you guys took it? Was it you, Newt, you lardo?”
Newton beheld Ephraim with bruised eyes. “Eef, why would I…?”