The island seemed larger than usual, and every shadow more hostile. They had been here before, hunting—no! Not hunting. Searching. Searching for their missing friend, searching for the words that would make things right when they found him. It was no less frightening, no less agonized an experience than it ever had been, but there was a numbness to it, too. They had been here before. It was beginning to feel as though they would be playing out this loop indefinitely. Or perhaps not a loop. A spiral, possibly, growing tighter and tighter as it progressed; a hangman's noose of frustration and pain.
Something had to give, and soon.
OoOoOoO
The days passed. He didn't scream in his sleep anymore; he just moaned, or whimpered, and usually wept. The screaming, it seemed, had been denial, had been defiance, and he was past that, now. Once, quite clearly, he had said, "Skipper. Please—you promised—"
The Skipper had lost no time in shaking him awake from that one, but when asked, he claimed that he didn't remember what he'd been dreaming. He was a terrible liar, but he was a stubborn one, and he stuck to his story. He did not remember, and that, he insisted, was that.
OoOoOoO
"These dreams seem to be the linchpin of his current mental state. If we can help him alter his dream narrative," the Professor said, "It would probably be a large step towards snapping him out of this depression."
"That's easy enough to say, Professor," Ginger said. "It isn't as though we can just change the channel in his head."
"Perhaps we can do just that," the Professor said. "Skipper, if I were to use hypnosis—"
"No, I suggested that already. He said that if we want to hypnotize him, we'll have to actually hold him down and pry his eyes open," the Skipper said, bitter. "He said it was bad enough he had to dream about it at night without having to see it during the day, too. I said I'd make it a direct order, and he told me he'd mutiny."
Mary Ann put a reassuring hand on the bigger man's shoulder, because the angry frustration in his voice was not really masking the agony underneath.
The Professor raised his eyebrows. "Well… I suppose it's a good sign that he was capable of expressing his resistance verbally, rather than simply vanishing again." It sounded weak, because it was weak, but it was the only bright side he could see.
"So if he's not going to let you hypnotize him, what else can we try?" Ginger was going to keep this conversation on a useful track if it killed her, because someone had to. There was a problem. They needed to find a solution; that was how it always worked in the movies, and if sheer determination could do it, it would work here, too.
"I've tried to psychoanalyze the poor boy, but he was most uncooperative," Mrs. Howell confessed. Uncooperative was putting it mildly. Sigmund Freud himself would have been hard put to extract anything useful from their therapy sessions; he had three sets of responses, 'Yes, Ma'am,' 'No, Ma'am,' and 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Howell, I don't know,' in various combinations, and not a word more. It was infuriating, really, how readily he acquiesced, doing precisely what she asked and answering every question she posed, while still managing to thwart her at every turn. That sort of stubbornness was simply appalling in someone from his tax bracket.
"What about re-enacting the crime? Would that help? If we restaged the hunt, except make it so that he was able to do something differently?" Mary Ann looked uncertain. "They did something like that on Old Doctor Young, when Tommy Tillerman had gone mad with guilt after his fiancée was killed in a car crash, and he was at the wheel. It turned out that Mark Mitchell had cut the brake lines, so Tommy hadn't really caused the accident after all."
The Professor frowned. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, Mary Ann."
"Well, aren't we trying to get him to see that killing Kinkaid wasn't his fault?"
"Yes, but there are at least two problems that I can see," said the Professor. "First of all, he did indubitably— albeit justifiably— kill Kinkaid. That, however, doesn't even seem to be the issue; if I've understood the matter correctly, his feelings of guilt would appear to stem entirely from his subsequent reaction to the deed. I suspect that a simple restaging of the events would not evoke a different reaction."
"What's the other problem?" asked Mr. Howell.
"Considering his reaction to the mere suggestion of hypnosis, there's absolutely no chance that Gilligan would voluntarily cooperate with a re-enactment of that hunt, and I'm entirely certain that putting him through it involuntarily— with one of us playing the part of the aggressor, no less— would only further damage his wounded psyche," the Professor said.
"If one of us has to play the role of the hunter, he could do some damage of his own. And not just to our psyches," Mr. Howell muttered.
The Professor couldn't exactly deny that part of it, either. "So, we're agreed. It's far too great a risk, on several counts."
"What about that sleeping medicine you mixed up? Perhaps if he takes some of that he won't have any more of those horrid dreams," suggested Mrs. Howell.
"Well," the Professor said dubiously. "I can compound more of that sleeping drug, but that's hardly a long-term solution."
The Skipper looked sick. "You're not seriously suggesting that we just slip him a mickey and hope for the best?"
"Nothing so underhanded. If no better option presents itself, though, we might well wish to consider offering him the option of a full night's sleep," the Professor said slowly. He didn't like the idea any more than the Skipper did, and these drugs were nothing to trifle with. In addition, he didn't even know whether or not they would suppress the dream state at all. The PDR inexplicably failed to list the side effects of home-brewed tropical berry extracts; he was working blind, and he hated it.
"I… maybe," the Skipper conceded.
"It's something to consider. But let's leave that as a last resort," the Professor said briskly, closing the subject.
"We appear to have any number of last resorts, and no first ones," Mr. Howell said.
"You're not wrong," the Professor admitted grimly.
They all looked at each other, and there didn't seem to be much left to say.
OoOoOoO
Given the amount of random… stuff… that washed up on their shores from the shipping lanes, the Skipper sometimes wondered if anything ever actually made it to its intended destination. Their latest find, a crate full of some sort of rubberized fabric, had beached itself in the lagoon that morning. It was Japanese, judging by the characters stenciled onto the side of the crate, but none of them knew enough to translate the label, and the material's intended purpose was, therefore, something of a mystery. The Skipper was finding it hard to dredge up the energy to care.
"It's just possible… yes, I think it just might work," the Professor said, his eyes alight as he twisted a swatch of the fabric in his hands.
"What might work?" Mary Ann asked.
"I think this material could save us! I've been testing its properties, and it's definitely waterproof. We might be able to use it to build an inflatable raft that would be sturdy enough to carry us into the shipping lanes! If you can stitch it to the correct size and shape, and if I can then devise a method of sealing the seams to render them airtight, this could get us rescued!"
"Oh, Professor, how wonderful! I'll need some help drawing a pattern; I've never tried to tailor a boat before," Mary Ann said, then chuckled. "But I'll try! 'Sew, sew, sew your boat,' right?"
The Professor laughed. "Indeed! Perhaps some of the native tree gums would prove sufficient to waterproof the seams once completed. I'll begin running experiments immediately."
"Do you really think we can sew this stuff into an actual boat?" asked the Skipper, a bit dubious. "The sharks ate the first raft we tried to build, and that was solid bamboo."
"I've developed shark repellent since that attempt," the Professor said casually. "I'm certain that we'd be safe from piscatorial menaces. This is the best chance we've had in a long time to escape. Mary Ann, why don't you go tell the others what we've found?"
"I will. Oh! They'll be so excited!"
"Skipper," the Professor began in an undertone as Mary Ann hurried away, "I don't want to say anything in front of anyone else, but this could be the key to helping Gilligan, too."
"What do you mean, Professor?"
"I mean constructing and utilizing this raft could very well distract him from his current morbid obsession with his experiences with Kinkaid. If given a new project upon which to focus, he just might be able to break free from the dreams."
"Oh, I get it," the Skipper said, with a dawning hope on his face that was almost painful to see. "If he's busy building the raft, he won't have time to be worrying about anything else."
"Yes, and in addition, once the raft is completed, the two of you are the only ones with any hope of successfully navigating from here to the shipping lanes. He's dreaming of committing murders, but in real life, he'll be helping to save us. There's a good chance that it could help restore his mental image of himself."
"I sure hope you're right, Professor," the Skipper said. "Come on, let's get this stuff back to camp. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll get home." And maybe, just maybe, it would bring his friend home, too.
OoOoOoO
For a while, it really did seem as though any number of prayers had been answered. The Professor, after testing a number of tree gums, singly and in concert, did manage to concoct a sealant that not only rendered the seams airtight, but—and this was the crucial bit—remained airtight for more than a couple of days. Once he was satisfied with his efforts, he and Ginger worked together to brew up a large kettle-full of the stuff, as she chanted the 'Double-double, toil and trouble' scene from the Scottish play with her very best and most witchlike cackle.
For the actual construction, the Skipper had worked with Mary Ann to draw a pattern that could create a raft similar in structure and dimensions to those he remembered from the Navy, and then had helped her adapt said pattern to fit their limited supply of fabric.
"I'd say that once it's finished, we should give it a float test, and a few dry runs around the lagoon, weighted down the way it would be if we were all onboard," he said, finally, looking at their handiwork. "I'm not taking anything on faith, not this time, but I think it'll work."
"How're we going to do a dry run once it's in the lagoon?" Gilligan asked, passing by just in time to hear. He was carrying several buckets of tree sap on a yoke, and he grinned a bit. "Come on, Skipper, even I know that a boat can't stay dry in the water."
"… Ah-ah! Dry on the inside," the Skipper shot back. "How's that, wise guy? Get moving before I give you a float test of your own!" The words themselves sounded somewhat harsh, but the badly concealed elation in his voice gave it the lie. If Gilligan was feeling well enough to bust the Skipper's chops a little, things were getting back to the way they were supposed to be.
The Professor had, it seemed, been right. Gilligan had thrown himself into the raft preparations with all of his usual enthusiasm, and if that included his usual levels of disaster, for once nobody was about to complain. He'd tapped and retrieved enough sap to waterproof an aircraft carrier, and if he'd spilled a few quarts here and there, (and there, and there, and there,) well, there was plenty more where that came from. He'd carved a new set of needles from bone when Mary Ann had discovered that the fabric could not be pierced with what she had. He'd begun drying fruit with which to provision the craft when she set sail. He answered when spoken to, and had even, on several occasions, initiated conversations that did not involve requesting instructions or clarifications thereof.
And the raft, when completed, was 'a thing of beauty and a joy forever,' as the old saying had it. Large enough for the seven of them and some supplies, ("But no gold this time, all right, folks?") and they had jury-rigged a lightweight bamboo-framed canopy to keep them out of the sun at least part of the time.
The Professor folded his arms. "The next logical step would be to calculate the combined weight of both ourselves and our provisions, load the raft with rocks of the same weight, and leave it in the lagoon for a day or two. Not to malign your handiwork, girls, or your design, Skipper, but I'd just like to make absolutely certain that it can support us for an extended period of time."
"No offense taken," the Skipper said. "I was about to suggest pretty much the same thing. If we need to fix something, I'd rather find out about it now."
"Yes, and if I've miscalculated the poundage the raft can carry, far better to discover that now. The combined weight of the seven of us should fall within the acceptable limits, but it's going to be a close thing."
"Six," Gilligan said quietly. "That'll give you a little extra room, anyway."
"What?" said Skipper.
"I said 'six.' I'm not going."
"You most certainly are, and that's an order!"
"Gilligan, be reasonable. You and the Skipper are the only ones with any relevant experience. You're vitally important to the success of this expedition."
Gilligan quirked an eyebrow. "You're going to pole this thing out of the lagoon and let it drift into the shipping lanes. I'm pretty sure the Skipper can handle that without me."
"We're not just abandoning you here," Mary Ann insisted.
"No, you're not. You're letting me stay. Big difference."
"But why?"
He looked away, into the trees. "I can't hurt anyone here," he said simply.