The Beard Part 16

"Don't worry," Eaglehead said. "You're not going to die." He paused and looked at the floor. "At least, I don't think we will."

Dad had also begun to doze. This was probably a good thing. Undoubtedly, he would be freaking out if he wasn't asleep. Sleep is a cure for many things. Anxiety is definitely one of them. Don't want to think about something, just fall asleep and let your subconscious take over. Usually, you'll find your subconscious is thinking about something else entirely.

"So," I said. "Do any of you have names?"

"Mutants and rejects are not given names on the island," Eaglehead said sadly.

The cabin was beginning to fill with pressure. My ears felt stopped up. There was an overall heavy feeling to everything. As though we might just keep going down and down until the pressure of the ocean crushed this ship that seemed so mighty above water and so flimsy beneath the surface.

"That's one of the things I'm hoping for when we make it back to the island," Eaglehead said. "Maybe I will even be allowed a new head. But a name would do. Just to see the island, the place of my origin, will really be sufficient."

"Look," I said. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry my grandpa stole the flame."

"And I'm sorry we stole your grandpa and mother. Hopefully they will be all right."

"You said you were sure."

"Well, that was all a lie. But don't hold it against me. Since I haven't been on the island since birth, I couldn't possibly have a clue how things are there. Rumors and hearsay-that's what I've based most of my knowledge on."

At that point I wanted to hit him just for lying to me but, I rationalized, he was a much more pleasant companion than the imposter and he couldn't really be faulted. He was an outcast, thrown away from the place of his birth. His must have been a painful life.

"You should look out the window. We've now crossed from your Pacific Ocean or, at least, a close approximation of your Pacific Ocean, into the Malefic Ocean. I think you'll find the aquatic life rather... intriguing."

I turned around in my seat, raising up and putting my knees on the cushion so I could peer out the porthole. Truly, the aquatic life was very fascinating. There were mermaids and giant seahorses. Some of the giant seahorses had batrachian features that looked like something from H.P. Lovecraft sitting astride them. There were giant trees with eyes for leaves and all the colors were amazing. This deep, I would have thought everything would be eyeless and gray, like something from a nightmare. But all colors were represented here and the darkness of the depths only lent to their brilliance. The sun could only bleach them out.

"Oh no," Eaglehead said. He sounded alarmed.

"What is it?" I asked.

He pointed out the window on his side. I crossed the cabin, still clutching the flame very close to my chest. I didn't trust him that much yet and thought maybe his alarm was just some elaborately concocted ruse to get me distracted and closer to him so he could bludgeon or peck me or something.

When I looked out the window, it didn't take long to find what he was pointing at.

The creature was the size of a whale but pale and fleshy, covered with the skin of a human. And the face was kind of human also. Giant human eyes. A giant human mouth. But the body of a whale... Except for the fat fleshy human like arms protruding from it.

"And that's not good?" I asked.

"Definitely not. He's kind of far away right now..."

I knew what that meant. If he looked that large from far away, he was, in actuality, at least the size of our ship.

"Isn't there a way we can steer away from it or something?"

"This boat doesn't have any way to steer it. No wheel. No rudders. No oars. It goes where it wants to when it wants to. It's a loose cannon."

"And, right now, it seems to be headed..."

"Straight for Big Karl."

"Big Karl?"

"Indeed."

"That sounds ominous."

"Downright nefarious."

Then he turned and pecked at my shoulder. It tore away a hunk of my shirt and some of my flesh. I held onto Brilliance. I screamed like a girl. Dad, dazed, woke up and, always suspicious, didn't take long to realize what was going on. Luckily, the two other Nefarions continued to sleep. It was a crazy thought but maybe he had intended to drug our coffee (why did we ever drink anything Eaglehead offered us?) and accidentally switched the cups. Two drugged cups of coffee. Two sound asleep Nefarions. Seemed a little suspicious to me.

Dad smacked him in the side of the head with the board.

"Will you stop doing that?!" Eaglehead squawked, trying to enclose his giant beak around Dad's head. Luckily, Dad had a fat head and he only took a nip from the top of it. But Dad managed to jab his plank arm into Eaglehead's beak like a large and brutal tongue depressor. Eaglehead gagged and covered Dad with coffee vomit. I was torn between trying to protect us and not really wanting to hurt Eaglehead too badly. So I smote him with the urn.

"Two against one!" he squawked. "That's real fair!"

"You've been f.u.c.king with us this entire time!" Dad shouted, prodding him in the ribs with the plank.

"You deserve it! Rapists!"

"Rapists?!" Dad scoffed. "You've been raping our reality for years!"

"And deservedly so!"

"Kidnappers!" Dad shouted.

"a.s.sholes!" Eaglehead shouted.

"f.u.c.king pus sac!"

I stood there, my head moving back and forth at this increasingly degenerative insult battle as though watching the world's most boring tennis match.

They continued to trade insults and I happened to look out the small round portal at the maliciously grinning face of Big Karl. His face filled my vision, followed by the inside of his mouth, equipped with a dangling uvula and everything. He crunched down on the ship and we were suddenly surrounded by cold water. Remembering the flame didn't seem to generate any heat, I shoved it in my pants, grabbed Dad's plank arm, and paddled desperately for the surface that seemed so far away. From that deep, the pressure was tremendous. It was like trying to swim against a tide. Maybe I should have tried to help the Nefarions, they could be devoured by Big Karl for all I knew, but I could only think about getting me and Dad to the surface. The shimmer of light was very far away. I kept my eyes opened, trained on it. Breathing became very difficult, the pressure bearing down on my chest. My head grew as heavy as the rest of my body and I went unconscious, lungs filling up with water.

Thirty.

When I finally came to, my head still felt heavy. My lungs and stomach felt heavy. I tried to stand but couldn't. I rolled over and vomited out rancid seawater. I managed to pull myself to my knees. A very dense fog surrounded me. I looked out at the ocean. I saw Big Karl out there flopping around. He crested the surface before plummeting back under, leaving me with the searing image of his giant human b.u.t.tocks. I would have laughed if I didn't feel like I was dying. I checked my pants for the flame. It was gone. Of course. That was just my luck. To come all this way and then lose what we had come all this way for. Dad was collapsed on the sand a few feet from me. He was probably dead. I crawled over to him, shaking him. His skin was cold.

"Dad?" I shook him harder.

"Dad?" I rolled him over onto his side and pounded on his back. I placed my hand on his back to see if I could feel him breathing at all.

He coughed and spewed up some seawater and a crab that quickly burrowed into the grayish sand. I slumped down beside him. He opened his eyes and sat up, vomiting once again between his legs.

"s.h.i.t," he said.

"s.h.i.t, yeah."

"What the f.u.c.k happened?"

"Big Karl happened."

"Huh?"

I motioned out toward the sea. Big Karl continued to frolic, unabashedly smiling and revealing everything.

"That's an ugly motherf.u.c.ker," Dad said.

"d.a.m.n right," I said.

"Still have the flame?"

"Nope."

"Is that it out there?" He pointed into the water.

It could have been the flame. Could we be that lucky? Probably not. Bad luck seemed to run in our family. The luck was so bad that even when we performed an act to try and reverse the luck or at least balance it out the bad luck would make it impossible. I stood up, still dizzy and woozy, and entered the cold ocean. As I got closer to the object I realized it definitely was the flame.

The imposter sprang up from the water on the other side of it, rushing for it as fast as I was. It was like a race in slow motion, each of us trying to trudge through the water to reach the flame. At the last second, I made a tremendous leap for it and clasped it in my hands. The imposter then leapt on top of me and tried to hold me under like we were children at a public pool. He was even weaker than I was, however, and I was able to resurface and push him away from me.

"Leave us the f.u.c.k alone," I said. "You guys got what you want, okay? You're here now. Go off and find your long lost relatives or something. And take off that stupid beard. You can never be me."

Again, the hurt look I was becoming familiar with flooded into the imposter's eyes. He took off his soaked false beard and slung it into the water, trudging off to my right, further down the sh.o.r.e. I could see two figures waiting for him-Onionface and Eaglehead. Part of me was glad they had also survived Big Karl, even though Eaglehead had tried to swindle us in our final moments of extremis.

I soggily wandered back up to the sandy sh.o.r.e. This was not at all what I expected from the island. It was gray with fog and dismal and kind of chilly. Visibility was down to about fifteen feet. Wherever we decided to set off to would be a mystery. Something like a channel was cut into the beach, arching off as far as I could see. It made me think of a very narrow moat, about two feet wide and dry.

I held Brilliance up in front of me. The flame burned very low. It looked in danger of going out.

"We'd better return this quick," I said.

"We have to figure out where we're returning it to. We're on the island. They should be able to find us now. They know what we want."

"So what now?"

"What now? I guess we walk."

"You've never been here, huh?"

"No. I didn't make it anywhere near this far last time. I almost thought the place didn't exist at all."

"Is this how you thought it would be?"

"No. I thought it would be... sunnier. Dad always described it as being sunny and tropical. This is downright Gothic."

"That's an apt description."

"Maybe we should try and cut around the perimeter at first. Maybe it's not so foggy on the other side."

"Do you know how big the island is?"

"No. Not really. I don't think it's extremely large. It has to move itself through time and s.p.a.ce periodically. It can't be that big, can it?"

"I dunno." Physics wasn't one of my strong points.

We took off walking in the opposite direction of the Nefarions.

"I should warn you," Dad said. "If we see any other Nefarions, even if it's the normal-looking ones, we should probably proceed with caution. This flame is the only thing they're going to care about. We're just intruders. Remember that. There's a reason no one comes here."

"Right."

Both of us were too exhausted to say anything. We just continued to walk mechanically. I tried my best not to look at the flame. The last thing I wanted to see, after coming all this way, was the d.a.m.n thing guttering out. If it went out completely, I knew, it would mean our death. Because it wasn't just us who had come all this way. Too many things had happened for me to think we had done this by ourselves. From first spotting Eaglehead in New York to the hallucinogenic sandwich, to the busride, to the shifting and shortened landscape, all the way to the ship that brought us here, it was clear we had had some outside help. And if it seemed as far from the divine as help could possibly get, I was okay with that. If it meant we hadn't done it all on our own, I was okay with that too. It gave me a sense of security-so long as the flame burned. If the flame went out we would have not only failed ourselves but the Nefarions as well. The flame was of vital importance to each of us. For me and Dad, it meant getting Mom and possibly Grandpa back. For the Nefarions, it meant maintaining their life force, their tradition, going back to their old ways-whatever those ways may have been. Maybe it would even mean the end to all this gloom.

Eventually we saw a figure cutting its way through the fog. Dad pressed his plank to my chest and we walked back into some shrubbery just beyond the sand. As the figure drew closer, we were able to get a better look at him. He was very thin. He had hair and a beard down to his waist. He walked in the moat-like thing cutting its way into the sand. He was in it nearly up to his knees.

"Dad?" Dad said. The old man either didn't hear him or he couldn't see where the sound was coming from. It would have been difficult for anyone with even slightly impaired vision.

Dad grabbed my arm and we approached the wandering old man.

Dad now stood in front of him. "Dad?"

The old man stopped.

"Dan?" he said. Then, "Dan! You found us. Amazing!"

"It wasn't easy."

"Is this..."

"David."

"David! I haven't seen you since you were..."

"Seven," I said. "When the elephants came and took you away."

"Ah," he said. "And you didn't believe me."

"I believed you. You were the one that didn't believe."

His eyes went to the flame in my right hand.

"You didn't bring that here to return it, did you?" Grandpa said.