James took a long, shuddering breath.
"It's getting cold out. We should go inside."
Back inside...to face Mary and Frank and Laura...
"Nah," Henry said. "Not yet."
"No, not yet," Eileen added.
James smiled at them with relief.
"You know...there's some good beer in the fridge," he said after a moment. "You wouldn't think that whoever runs this damn place would know a decent beer from a health drink, but I'm thankful for small miracles. And I keep a little hut around the back, for when I just have to get the hell out of the house." He smiled with genuine gladness. "At least I was able to make some changes to the place."
They followed him around to the back of the house. There was a clearing, about the same size as the one in front. A little conical hut stood in the middle.
James turned back to the house. The lights were dark. "Mary's given everyone rooms and gone to bed," he said. "Make yourselves at home. I'll be right back."
Henry and Eileen bent to enter the little hut. There was a stone-circled fireplace in the middle, and a fire hole at the apex of the roof. Rough mats rested on the floor, along with a small table and chair, and a cot.
"Not bad," Henry said. "It's like being in a tent out on my mom's lawn when I was a kid."
"Yeah," Eileen said. "I like this. It's cozy." She sat down on the floor.
Henry sat next to her. "What you said out there...about owing me..."
"I'd do it, you know."
"I know, Eileen," he said, leaning forward to light the fire with his pocket lighter. The flames roared to life, on cue. "I don't want you to do that."
"Well, I'd rather not have to," she smiled, "but I would."
"Don't," Henry said. "I don't know what I'd do if that happened."
"I don't plan on having to," Eileen said. "So keep yourself safe, and it's all moot." She grinned.
Henry nodded.
"That's good enough."
James returned with a couple of six-packs of beer. He sat down by the fire and popped open three bottles. They each took one.
"I'd like to propose a toast," he said. "To survival."
"To survival," the three said, and they clinked bottles and drank.
"Good," Eileen said.
"Damn good," Henry agreed.
"Small miracles," James said. He put his beer down on the ground.
"So, tell me about your monsters," he said with a grin.
"We had monsters and ghosts," Eileen said.
"Ghosts?" James asked. "I don't think I had any of those...but I had Maria."
"Maria...you mentioned her before, in the house."
"Maria..." James picked up his bottle and stared at the beer inside, swirling it around, fascinated by its movement. "I didn't want to say too much about her in front of Mary and Dad. Maria was … my temptation, my torment, my torture. She looked just like Mary, but much...uh..."
"More attractive?" Eileen volunteered.
"Yeah, more attractive. Don't get me wrong...I love my Mary. You've seen how much. But Maria...she fired my blood in ways that Mary never did. You should have seen her," he said, taking a long drink from his bottle.
"I think she was a stripper at the nightclub in town once. She had keys to the place. She kept one in her boot, one under her skirt, and one in her...top. She did everything to keep my attention. I suppose she had me by the ego.
"After she had me hooked, she died. Over and over. Pyramid Head kept killing her... I saw him do it twice, and once I didn't see it, but I think it was him. She kept teasing me with Mary's memories, pretending to be Mary one minute and Maria the next. But that was what she was supposed to do, I guess. It worked. I felt like dying every time she died. When they killed her in the hotel right in front of me, she screamed my name, and I understood then why I was there, why she was there.
"At the end, I saw Mary on the roof of the hotel. But it wasn't Mary...it was Maria. She taunted me, told me I'd never see Mary again...she drove that knife into my heart and twisted it. Then, she turned into a monster and attacked me. I had to kill her again...at the end she was lying there, crying 'James...James...James'...I died again, killing her.
"And so I brought Mary here, and now here I am, and here we are. You know the rest."
James drained his beer.
"The rest of them taunted me. Some of the monsters were long, female legs. I saw Pyramid Head doing things to them a couple of times. There was the squared thing that I told you about, that attacked Angela. Some hung from the ceiling and strangled me. Other hung under grates and tried to impale my feet. Others looked like people in straitjackets. Then there were the nurses in the hospital. You've seen them?"
"Yeah," Henry said. He drank from his bottle, which was close to empty. "Short skirts, long legs, nasty weaponry."
James laughed harshly. "Would have been kinda nice to look at, I guess, if you forget about the whole undead thing."
"Yeah, I guess," Henry said. "I wasn't really thinking about it at the time, but you're right. Sorry," he said to Eileen.
"We had to go through a hospital ward somewhere, too," Eileen said. "But we didn't see any nurses. Just a lot of wheelchairs, huge flying bugs, and some weird tall things like Amazons." She started laughing. "Wanna hear something stupid? When you hit them, they burped."
"They did what?" James said, opening another round of bottles.
Eileen looked at hers; she'd almost finished her beer, too, without realizing it. So had Henry.
"Burped," she said, as James handed her a fresh beer. "It would have been really silly if we'd been in any mood to laugh."
"Seriously? Leenie, you're messing with me."
"I kid you not." Eileen thumped Henry on the back, and he let out an enormous belch. "Like that."
They all laughed. Look at us, thought Eileen. Three survivors of Hell, who've killed more ungodly monsters than anyone can count and waded through more horror and gore than anyone has any need to, sitting the back of a wooden hut on an accursed island in the middle of a lake, getting fuzzy on beer and laughing about past nightmares. Now I have officially seen everything.
Funny to see these two guys like this. James was always an outgoing type, but Henry...I'd never have thought he'd be this at ease around other people. James isn't really "other people", though…he's one of us. At least they're getting along.
"What about these ghosts you mentioned earlier?" James asked.
"Unkillable. And migraine-inducing," Henry replied, and he downed more beer.
"Ugh."
"Yeah. They were a pain. I found...well, Joseph found these weird swords that would keep them down, but there were only five...nowhere near enough."
"How inconsiderate of Walter," James said.
"No kidding," Henry replied. "Some of the ghosts were people I'd seen die, too. Walter's victims, all of them."
"I'm sorry, man," James said.
"There were these demon dogs, too," Eileen added.
"I didn't have those, but I did have huge roaches," James replied. "Pain in the butt."
"And these two-headed things that walked on their hands. Heads were little kids' heads. They'd swipe at you, and knock your feet out from under you. They were fast, faster than we were."
"Faster than you, anyway," Henry said.
"And you, too," she returned. "At least I was limping in heels."
"Ouch," James said, "She got you there, Henry."
"They were about so high," she said, and stood up to demonstrate. As soon as she did so, she sat back down again.
"Wobbly, are we?" Henry asked.
"Speak for yourself," Eileen said. "I don't see either of you standing up. James, give me another. I'm almost out."
"Damn, woman," James said, doing as she asked. "You can put those away."
"Good beer, lots of it, and I don't have to pay for it," Eileen replied. "When you're a girl in college, you have to learn to hold your beer. Survival skills. Of a different type, gentlemen, than those used in saving the world."
Eileen got to her feet again.
"And on that note, I'm going to step outside for a little bit," she said. "James, is it…"
"Yeah, it's safe out there. There's nothing on this island to hurt you except boredom."
Eileen made her way to a tree. When she was done, she walked a little way back, and propped herself against another tree. She closed her eyes and felt the cool breeze blow over her. It was refreshing, and cleared her head somewhat.
They're such different people, Henry and James. James is fundamentally a decent guy, but he's been through so much, and it's really worn him down. The old cockiness is gone. He loves Mary, that's obvious, and he's willing to stick with her even with what it's doing to him. I wish we could help him somehow.
She strolled back to the little hut, which emitted a small curl of smoke from its top. As she approached, she heard the two men talking low, but she didn't try to listen.
"It's a lovely night out there," she said as she came through the door.
"We were starting to get worried about you," James said. "Everything OK?"
"Great," Eileen replied. "I just stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the night."
Henry nodded. "Sounds like a good idea. I'll be right back." He ducked out of the door.
Eileen sat down by James.
"So…" she said, smiling, "what were you two talking about?"
She didn't expect him to reply, but he just took another swallow of beer and replied simply, "You."
Eileen boggled.
"No, it's OK," he laughed. "I asked Henry about you, if you two were together. He said you had been, but he'd screwed up things, and he wasn't sure any more."
Eileen shook her head. "He thinks that I've stayed with him because I owe him my life. I do, but that's not why. If he hadn't had to get me out of there, we probably wouldn't have gotten to know each other, but I'm not with him because of that."
James nodded. "I know. You two are great together. But the thing about guys, Eileen…" He hesitated.
"A guy like him – he's smarter than me. I didn't know what I had until it was gone. He does. He's afraid that you will wake up one day and see that you can do better than him. He's afraid that once you realize that you don't have to spend your life paying back that debt, you'll move on."
Eileen's mouth hung open. She didn't know where to start.
"Yeah, we're like that," James continued. "I suppose it's pretty dumb, but that's how it is."
Eileen found her voice. "Yeah, it's very dumb," she sputtered. "I'm nothing special. Why would Henry think that he didn't deserve me? If anything, I don't know what I've done in life to merit getting a wonderful guy like him…"
James sighed with mock impatience. "You are special. You've always been, since you were little. Anyway," he said, "I'm not good at this stuff. But you two really should stay together."
"I hope he figures that out," Eileen muttered.
"I told him to give it a chance, that there was more going on than just gratitude. He needs to get over it and listen. It's a hard thing for a guy to do...most of us aren't wired that way."
"Thanks."
"Still keeping an eye out for you, kiddo."
"After all this time."
"Always. Here's to love," James said. "It can be a pain in the ass sometimes."
Eileen laughed. "To love."
They clinked bottles.
Henry put his head back through the door. "You're right, Eileen," he said. "It's perfect out there."
"Beats fog," James said dryly. "If I never see fog again, it will be too soon."
"Same here," Eileen replied. "We didn't have much fog the first time around, but I've seen enough today to last me a lifetime."
Henry looked at the emptiness of his bottle. "Give me another, man," he said. James popped open another beer and passed it to him.
"Are the lights still out?" James asked.
Henry nodded. "Everyone's asleep, I guess."
"Sleeping the sleep of the unburdened. While we're up all night out here."
"Well, they haven't seen what we have," Eileen said. "And done what we've have had to do."
"Yeah," Henry said. "I'll drink to that."
So they did.
"Tell me more about your monsters, Henry," James said.
Henry looked uncomfortable. "I dunno…I can't complain. You had it much worse than I ever did."
"Maybe. I don't want to get into that debate. I'm curious about what they looked like for you."
"Well, there are the ones we've told you about already, inside. There were also these gray hairless man-like things with massive goiters and tails. They jumped around like apes and swung golf clubs at me."
"Golf clubs? Not big knives or pipes?"
"Nope. Golf clubs. There was a sporting goods shop there. Heh. At least I got a decent set of clubs out of it."
James laughed. "Not much of a silver lining."
"No," Henry said, with a childlike sadness. "I don't even play golf."
They laughed.
"There were these men that came out of the walls and swiped at us. They were hard to dodge, especially on the escalators in the subway station. Near the end, there was a whole room of them…one was real, and the rest were puppets. The only killable one was the real one. The rest just spent time knocking me on my butt."
"Ugh. Nasty."
"Yeah. Then there were these things that walked on their hands, and had their heads and butts switched. They moved damn quickly."
"I can't imagine what those looked like."
"Don't bother."
"But the most horrible of all, James..." Eileen said, winking at Henry. James looked up from his beer.
"Oh God, they were the worst...I still have nightmares," Henry continued.
"I've never seen anything like them, and I hope that I never do again," Eileen said.
"A plague upon mankind."
"Scourge of the Earth."
"The unholiest of unholies."
"Proof that there really are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."
"What?" James asked. "What were they?"
Eileen's eyes met Henry's, then they said in unison:
"The giant technicolor slugs."
James looked from one to the other as they burst out laughing.
Their laughter continued far into the night.