The Avenger 36 - Demon Island (2 page)

There was . . . something.

Jepson forced himself to laugh. Must be one of the demons this place is noted for, he told himself.

There were strange things said about San Obito Island. About the dark and silent castle. About things seen, or sometimes only sensed, in the woods. Rumors, probably, loose-lip stuff.

Still it might be a good idea to get back to the others. Jepson was beginning to feel very . . . uneasy.

Over to his left, just at the edge of his vision. He turned his head quickly.

Nothing.

Who is she? he wondered.

What made him think that? He hadn’t really seen anyone off there in the mist. Yet he had an impression . . . there’d been a girl standing there.

A slender girl, pretty. Her dark hair cut short and boyish. Smiling at him.

A smile like the smile on a skull. An awful smile, reminding you of your own mortality.

Jepson turned around. He hadn’t come that far. He’d be back with the others in a few minutes.

There she was.

He saw her for sure this time. There in the fog about ten feet in front of him. In among the dark trees, a slim girl in a white gown. Smiling at him, and with her hands . . . beckoning.

“What do you want?” he said.

The fog spun, tattered into streamers, and the girl was gone.

Jepson was certain of one thing. He didn’t want to go anywhere near her.

He started to run.

There she was. Directly ahead of him on the path. She stood, hands on hips now, smiling. Smiling and waiting. Smiling that death’s-head smile.

Jepson halted. “Look . . . who are you?”

She raised a hand, motioned him to come closer.

“No!” Jepson spun, pushed off the path and into the woods.

She followed.

No sound of pursuit. She seemed to float like the fog.

He had to get away from her. Whoever . . . whatever she was.

Jepson ran.

There she was ahead of him again.

He ran in another direction.

Again she appeared in front of him.

“Leave me alone!” he shouted.

All at once there was nothing beneath his feet. He’d been forced to the cliff edge without realizing it.

He fell down through the foggy night. Fell three hundred feet to smash on the black rocks.

Cole Wilson raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to gruesome horror.”

Terence O’Malley said, “You haven’t got the proper attitude toward our art.”

Heather Brail, after sipping her drink, said, “I hope you are referring to the movie we’re going to make . . . and not to real life.”

Grinning at the slim, auburn-haired girl, Cole replied, “I’ve come Westward Ho, Heather, for nothing but a holiday. I’m not anticipating any trouble.”

O’Malley, a freckled, red-haired man of twenty-eight, shook his head. He glanced away from them toward the large windows of the beach restaurant. The fog was drifting across the black Pacific, spilling up along the coastland. “Heather, having, I am sure, an Irish ancestor dangling from her family tree somewhere, is a very perceptive girl. She realizes, Cole, that you are a jinx. A Jonah, as it were.”

Cole tapped his chest and raised an eyebrow. “Me? Why, having me along while you’re doing the location stuff on Demon Island is the next best thing to having a certified leprechaun.”

“I didn’t mean to imply you were a jinx,” said the pretty actress. “It’s only that . . . well, the last time we met, when Terry was directing
The Purple Zombie,
some odd things happened.”

“A few real zombies popped up, admittedly,” said Cole. “The merest coincidence.”

The young, freckled director said, “Despite the fact that I’m in the movie business, I do read. And I’ve come across quite a few accounts about you and your Justice, Incorporated, cronies in the magazines and newspapers over the past few months, Cole. I can’t help but conclude that once any member of Justice, Incorporated, shows up in town . . . trouble will arrive before sundown.”

His grin widening, Cole said, “You’re a brave lad, Terence, to take me along to Demon Island with you. Knowing that I’m a lodestone for bad times.”

“It’s my patriotic duty to keep you out of Los Angeles,” replied the director.

“Remind me to spend my next vacation in the tropics, or some spot where I’m appreciated.”

“We appreciate you,” Heather assured him. “And I, at least, was happy to hear you were coming back here for another visit.”

“Oh, we all love and admire Cole Wilson.” O’Malley was looking toward the windows again. “It’s out there some place . . .”

“What?” asked Cole.

“That blasted island,” replied O’Malley.

“I thought you were looking forward to doing your location shooting thereupon.”

“Sure, it’s perfect. When Isaacson and I scouted the place last month I saw that at once. If I can catch the feel of Demon Island on film I’m going to have the best horror B-movie this town has ever seen.”

“You already had that in
The Purple Zombie,
old boy,” Cole said. “I recall James Agee called it ‘a little gem of purest ray serene.’ When I viewed it, in a vast Manhattan palace of the cinema, I was all over goose pimples.” He turned toward the girl. “And you were absolutely splendid, Heather.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure, Heather was great. And Isaacson’s camera work is equal to what Toland did for Welles,” said O’Malley. “But most critics are still snobs. Hell, even the people in the academy are too stuck up to nominate something named
The Purple Zombie
for any kind of Oscar. If Heather’d done what she did for me in some flick directed by John Ford or even Mike Curtiz she’d have a shelf full of trophies by now.”

“I’m in no hurry for awards,” said Heather.

“One Oscar,” continued the director, “and I could get a million bucks at least. I could do exactly what I want to do. And it’d be a horror movie, too.”

Cole waited a few seconds before asking, “What’s wrong with the island?”

“Oh . . . it’s nothing to worry about.”

“You ought to tell Cole,” suggested the girl, “since it’s something in his line.”

“I’m on a vacation and not a busman’s holiday,” said Cole. “Mayhap you’d best not tell me what horrors your island contains.”

“Supposed to be haunted,” said O’Malley, “but that’s really just a lot of local gossip and such.”

“Is it the island itself which is rumored to suffer from spooks,” asked Cole, “or that dilapidated mansion on its pinnacle?”

“Depends on which old fisherman you listen to,” answered O’Malley. “Some favor a ghost who roams the castle . . . others, a demon who prowls the forests. Take your pick.”

“Why was the island abandoned?” Cole asked.

“It’s because of some complicated family thing. Back in the early 1920s it was bought by Esmeralda Zak . . . remember her? They billed her as the ‘deadliest beauty of the screen.’ You know, more of that Theda Bara baloney. The Zak dame made millions until the public got tired of vamps. Lived on the island with her third or fourth husband, a Lithuanian business tycoon. From what I’ve heard from some of the Hollywood oldtimers, Esmeralda had some of the most fantastic parties of the twenties. That’s going some.”

“I seem to recall something,” said Cole, “about some bizarre event which took place at one of those fabled get-togethers.”

“Yeah, a young girl . . . actress, just starting to click . . . died at one of the parties. One of those mysterious deaths. Was it murder? Suicide? What? They covered it up, but enough details got out to contribute to Esmeralda’s decline as a movie-picture siren. Her husband went back to Lithuania, and by 1926 she was broke. The place was sold to an oil man from Oklahoma, but he never lived there. Rumor has it that his money came not from gushers but from the underworld.”

“Ah, yes, I recall tales to the effect that Demon Island was used by rumrunners and bootleggers during the waning years of Prohibition.”

“That seems to be true, yeah.”

Heather said, “So you see, Cole, our island has quite a history.”

“It has a past, certainly,” he said. “I’d be willing to wager, however, that we’ll find nothing more than a rundown old island awaiting us.”

“No, it’s . . . oh, never mind,” said O’Malley. “I’m starting to sound like one of those old fishermen.”

“We’ll be on the Island come Monday,” said Cole. “If it’ll make you feel any better, old man, I promise to scare off any and all demons we encounter.”

“It’s a deal,” said O’Malley, laughing.

Tucker found him.

It was a few minutes after ten in the morning; the fog was lifting. The bright sunlight hit Jepson’s sprawled body, made his bloody white shirt glow.

“Jepson!” cried Tucker. He had been walking along the gritty beach. He was about fifty feet from Jepson’s body when he saw it. “Hey, Jepson!” he shouted again, although he knew that the man must be dead.

As he jogged toward the body the small, chubby Tucker went over in his mind all the nasty things he’d been thinking about the missing Jepson. They’d figured, when he didn’t come back last night, that he’d run out on them. Or that maybe he’d told somebody about what they were looking for and then gone off to some kind of rendezvous.

But none of that, apparently, was true.

Jepson had had an accident, that was all.

The broken body of his dead partner didn’t bother Tucker. He was sorry that Jepson was dead, it was too bad; but looking at what was left of him didn’t bother Tucker. He squatted on the jagged rocks, studying the corpse, poking at it, lifting it and letting it fall back.

He stood and scanned the cliffside. Must have lost his footing in the fog, he decided. There were no signs that Jepson had been shot or knifed before being tossed over the cliff. Well, no obvious signs anyway. And Tucker had seen quite a few dead men, plenty who’d been killed in ways other than accidental.

Still, it was sort of funny. Jepson seemed to be a careful sort of guy, not the type you expected to have an accident.

You never can tell, he mused.

Tucker glanced out toward the sea. The next problem was doing something about the body. He couldn’t leave it here in the open.

Some five hundred feet along the narrow beach there were a few small caves in the rocks. Wouldn’t do as a permanent hiding place, but Jepson could be stashed in one of them for now. Then after dark they could come and haul him up and bury him some place.

Tucker grabbed his late partner under the arms and began dragging him toward the caves.

Stark dropped his shovel and rubbed his palms together. Getting out his pack of cigarettes, he shook one into his hand. “Rather be digging up dough,” he muttered.

“Well, so would we all,” said Morrison. “So would we all.” The digging of Jepson’s grave had made him sweat, his fat pale face was beaded. “Nevertheless, this has to be done.”

“I don’t agree,” said the burly Stark. “Like I told you, we could have put him in a sack full of rocks and deep-sixed him.”

“No, I won’t have that,” said Morrison. “Jepson was one of us. He must have a decent burial.”

“Yeah, sure.” Stark lit his cigarette and picked up his shovel.

Tucker, since it wasn’t his turn to dig, was standing next to the three-foot-deep hole which Stark and Morrison were working on. “Nights on this island . . .” He shook his head, eyeing the woods. Fog had been rolling across the ground for nearly an hour.

“I won’t let the demons get you,” said Stark as he dug.

Tucker thrust his hands into his pockets. “I keep thinking about Jepson. He was a very careful guy. Not only that, he’d done some mountain climbing and roughed it in forest country. I don’t see how he could have—”

“It only takes one crash to spoil a perfect flight record,” said Stark.

Morrison paused in his digging. “What are you getting at, Tucker?”

“Well . . . I can’t help wondering if . . . I don’t know.”

“There’s nobody else on this island but us,” said Stark. “So nobody pushed him off the edge, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

“It’s not just people. You know, they say—”

“Baloney!” Stark climbed up out of the grave. “It’s deep enough. We can dump him in.”

“Much too shallow,” observed Morrison.

“We wasted enough time! That movie outfit will be here in three more days, bright and early on Monday. I want to find Silva’s dough before then.”

Puffing, the fat Morrison got himself out of the hole. “The fault is not entirely ours, Stark, nor poor Jepson’s. You, after all, are the one who claims to know the exact location of—”

“No, I never claimed nothing like that.” Stark shoved the body, causing it to roll over into the fresh grave.

“Don’t treat him like—”

“He ain’t going to feel nothing.” Stark began shoveling dirt into the fresh grave. “Now let’s get something straight, boys. I know for sure that Silva buried a million dollars on Demon Island. It was the profits from his end of the smuggling setup he had going during Prohibition. He stuck wads of cash into fruit jars, put the jars into a big metal trunk, and buried it. He never collected. The Feds got him on a tax rap before he had a chance to get back here. He spent the rest of his life in Quentin. He was goofier than a bedbug the last few months.”