her feet, but her eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped.
Rufus charged his son, scooping him under the knees and driving him into the dirt floor. Vi sprang up, rushed over to Max, grabbed him, and scrambled up the staircase.
Rufus’s physical strength was staggering. In a matter of seconds, he’d straddled Luther, one hand on his neck, the other raining blows upon his pale face, laughing while he beat his son, laughing while I lifted the ax and limped toward them.
Luther’s loss of consciousness did nothing to detour his father’s hysterical rage.
Standing behind them now, I hoisted the ax.
It fell, the weight of the head propelling it earthward.
Rufus thought to glance back at me just as the blade clove his spine.
I jerked it back out as he convulsed, toppling backward into the dirt. When he stopped shivering, I thought he was dead, but his eyes blinked calmly, and he grinned at me, arms twitching, legs now and forever inert.
He said, 'I can’t move my legs.'
'Yeah, I got your spine.'
'Beautiful?' he called out. He turned his head, saw Maxine sprawled motionless against the stone. I thought he might call out to her again, but instead he looked back at me, reached out, and grasped my hand.
'I still believe in you,' he said. 'I know you see past the illusions.'
'Had a little regression of our own, didn’t we?'
He grinned and winced, the pain flooding in now.
'Rufus, I just want you to know…' I leaned in close to insure he heard every word. 'I think you’re full of shit.'
Rufus grunted, shook his head.
'No you don’t,' he whispered, then smiled and closed his eyes, full of peace and joy, as though he were ascending into some invisible glory.
His fingers opened, he let go of my hand, and died.
# # #
I took the ax with me and limped up the rickety staircase. Vi was crouched on the top step with baby Max, shivering.
'It’s locked,' she whispered as I neared them. 'I can’t get it open.'
'Scoot down a few steps.'
With Vi safely beneath me, I buried the ax blade in the small door, heard it splinter, hinges creaking. On the fifth blow, it burst open. I stepped across the threshold into the foyer, glimpsed late afternoon sunlight streaming through the living room windows, gilding clouds of dust.
I turned and looked down at Vi.
'Come on up here and wait for me,' I said, starting back down into the basement.
'Where are you going?'
'Luther.'
She grabbed onto my leg, said, 'He saved my son.'
'He’s a psychopath, Vi. I let him off once. You saw how many people died. I’m not making that mistake again.'
I tore my leg away and continued my descent.
As I approached the bottom, Luther stirred and sat up. Rufus had obliterated his face.
I raised the ax.
'Andrew, what are you doing?'
Two steps, and I was upon him.
I swung the ax at his neck, but he caught the helve an inch below the blade. Before I could jerk it away, he swept my feet out from under me. I hit the ground, and when I looked up, he was circling me with the ax.
'Roll over on your stomach.'
'Why?'
He turned the blade on its blunt edge.
'I’m going to try not to smash your skull in. But no promises.'
# # #
Vi stands in the foyer as Luther emerges from the basement, his black hair matted to the blood on his face.
'Did you kill him?'
'No.'
Luther walks into the kitchen and takes the keys to the ancient pickup truck from a lopsided ceramic bowl on the breakfast table. The stench of raw flounder is overpowering, an association he will never be rid of.
He returns to the foyer.
The little blonde stares at him.
Luther stops to look at the infant, wanting to touch it.
Resisting.
Its mother says, 'Thank you for what you did. But I don’t under—'
'I don’t understand it either.'
Luther opens the massive front door.
The sun is gone.
Still a few miles offshore, storms race in from the sea, their oncoming thunder rattling the windows, the sky gone green, the air heavy, reeking of rain and ozone.
# # #
Vi prodded me back into consciousness, squeezing my hands, whispering my name. Before I even opened my eyes, I could feel the ache in my skull.
I sat up, foggy-brained, fingering the tender knot on the back of my head.
'Let’s go,' Vi begged, her voice seeming to echo. 'It’s getting dark out, and I despise this place.'
My gaze fell on Maxine, slumped against the wall, then Rufus, lying in a calm black puddle. Painfully, I turned my head and stared into the dark tunnels leading into the innards of the basement, to the trophy case, and its standing dead.
'Where’s Luther?' I asked.
'Gone. He took the truck, but there’s another car out front. I found some keys in the kitchen. Cash, too. About a hundred and fifty dollars.'
'Have you called anyone?' I asked.
'Andy, I just want to get off this island.'
Vi helped me up, and then we climbed the steps and walked together out of that stone house into the storm-cooled evening, two exiles, stateless and bewildered.
# # #
We reach the north end of Ocracoke at dusk and board the ferry.
Vi stays in the Impala with Max, asleep in her arms.
I step out, walk to the bow.
A father and his six or seven-year-old son lean against the railing, wind disheveling their hair, a satisfied, end-of-day peace emanating from them.
The man looks over, nods.
'Fine night, eh?'
I watch the island diminish until nothing of it remains but the distant steady glow of the Ocracoke Light, twelve miles south. When it slips under the horizon, leaving only the black waters of Hatteras Inlet and the clear August sky, flushed with sunset, I pray I’ve seen the last I will ever see of that island.
# # #
I drive us north on Highway 12. The road is empty tonight, wind whisking sand from the dunes across the pavement.
West, beyond the sound, somewhere over the mainland, the last trace of warmth dies on the horizon.
Stars burn above the Outer Banks.
