her possession) would have been a great treasure. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere, though.
I have nothing of Kimberly’s to carry with me.
Only my memories of her.
With luck, though, I’ll be with all three of my women soon.
If I can find the mystery house, they’ll be nearby. I’d bet on it.
Whether or not I find them alive, I’ll take care of Wesley and Thelma.
I’ll make it hard for them, too.
Very hard.
Bet on it.
I’ll make them pay for every hurt they’ve done to my women.
Which sounds like a mean-spirited, brutal way to end my journal. But so be it.
Obviously, I’ll tell the rest of my story if I’m able. To do that, I’ll need to find a new source of paper. And I’ll have to still be alive.
Both good tricks.
So long.
THE REST OF THE STORY
My Quest for the Mystery House
I’ve gotten hold of a new notebook.
A lot has happened since my last entry.
I’ll take my time, though, and tell about it in the proper sequence—starting with the morning when I went off to hunt for the house.
The island obviously had no shortage of vacant beachfront property, so nobody in their right mind would’ve built a house somewhere deep in the jungle. You’d want an ocean view. You’d want easy access to the water.
If I just followed the shoreline, I was almost certain to spot the home of Matt and the dead woman.
I started out early in the morning. After a light breakfast of smoked fish, I filled an empty booze bottle with water from the stream (just in case), put the bottle in my book bag, shouldered the bag and set off, heading north.
This had been our route on the morning of the “last stand,” until Kimberly ran off without us.
Now, I was alone as I hiked the beach.
Though I started my journey with eagerness, sure of success, my optimism dwindled along the way. There might not be any house. Its existence was nothing more than a theory of mine.
For all I knew at the time (I’ve found out plenty since), Matt and the woman hadn’t necessarily been residents of the island. They might’ve come to it for a brief visit—parked their boat and come ashore to do some exploring, have a picnic, who knows? Or they might’ve been castaways: survivors from a boat wreck or airplane crash. If so, I was searching for a home that didn’t exist.
No, no, I told myself. There has to be a house. If not, where did Wesley get his hands on the ax, the rope, the machetes, the sheath knives he wore on his belt, the belt itself… ?
That argument comforted me for a while.
But then I remembered how, within a day or two after being marooned, Billie and I had come up with the theory that Wesley must’ve made a prior visit to the island.
He had obviously toured the region to search for a good island to use. Just as obviously, he would’ve taken steps to avoid becoming a victim of his own plot. That is, he planned to maroon the bunch of us, but he sure didn’t want to find himself trapped on an island without the means to ensure his own survival.
So we had figured out, way back at the start of the whole mess, that he must’ve come ashore earlier and hidden a load of supplies.
Supplies that might’ve included the ax, rope, etc.
By the time I’d spent a few hours hiking along the shore, I had pretty much convinced myself that I wouldn’t be finding any house. The house was a phantom, thrown together by bad logic and wishful thinking.
It would’ve been too convenient, too easy.
Find them all in a shack by the shore. Go sneaking in late at night, commando-style…
No, it wasn’t going to be that simple.
I would probably need to hunt for them in the jungle. In the region above the lagoon and in the areas beyond where I’d never been before. Who knows? Maybe they had a cave.
The problem was, I didn’t want to go looking for them in the jungle.
I wanted to stay on the beach, where I could feel the sun and the soft breezes, where I had a fine, open view in all directions and nobody could sneak up on me.
Besides, the house might exist.
Even if it didn’t, there were plenty of good reasons to continue along the beach. No telling what I might find. We’d always intended to explore the boundaries of our island, but had never gotten around to it. Thanks to Wesley, there’d always been more urgent matters to deal with first.
I was finally getting around to it.
I decided to keep at it, too. Any journey into the jungle would have to wait for a day or two, or however long it might take me to circle the island.
I felt as if I’d been granted a reprieve.
Then I found the house.
Some time earlier, I had rounded the north end of the island and started back along the eastern shore. I’d been hiking southward for quite a while when I came to a cove.
From a distance, the cove had been out of sight. I’d seen nothing ahead except more beach—ocean on one side, jungle on the other. Though my view had been obstructed, here and there, by rocky areas, I assumed that I was approaching a continuous shore-line.
I was climbing over a low spine of rocks when I first noticed a break in the beach ahead.
Seeing my forward progress blocked by water, I felt frustrated and annoyed; it was an inconvenience that would force me to walk a lot farther than I’d expected. Within a few seconds, though, my curiosity took over.
I could see across the water to where the beach started again, but very little of what lay to the right. The trees at the edge of the jungle got in the way. What seemed to be ahead, however, was a small bay, or cove, that looked at least five times as large as our little inlet on the other side of the island.
Hurrying down from the rocks, I ran through the sand. With each stride, more of the cove’s opposite shore came into sight. More and more.
Nothing but sand and rocks; jungle further back.
When the boat loomed into view, it scared the shit out of me. I dived for the sand.
Stretched out on the beach with my head up, I gazed at the vessel.
There’d been no need to panic; it wasn’t under way, as I’d thought.
I saw anchor lines stretching down into the water.
I saw nobody aboard.
It was a big white cabin cruiser—about a forty-footer.
Matt’s boat, I figured.
And our ticket out of here.
Now all I’ve gotta do is find my women…
That’s what ran through my mind, for a few seconds. I was elated. Then scared, realizing I might’ve already been seen. Just because the boat looked deserted…
I stared hard at it, and wondered if Wesley or Thelma might be staring back at me through a window or
