The Night Mark(68)

Faye sat back on her knees and admired her work. Three rows of carrots. Three rows of beets.

“Faith?”

Faye heard Carrick’s voice calling to her.

“Is breakfast ready?” she called back.

“Stand up slowly, love, very slowly,” he said, and Faye turned to him. He walked toward her, carrying an ax in his hand. An ax?

“What?”

“Stand up right now. Walk across the garden. Walk as fast as you can.”

“I just planted it—”

“Now. Right now.”

Faye heard a sound, a strange sort of shuffling, like footsteps dragging on the ground. Slowly she turned around.

Faye screamed.

An alligator lurked not ten feet behind her. At the sound of her scream, it opened its mouth, baring rows of white teeth, a dark cave filled with ivory stalactites. It charged toward her as she scrambled back on her hands, getting tangled in her skirt as she tried to stand.

She yelled Carrick’s name. In a blur of movement, she saw him rush forward with his ax raised, but she didn’t wait to see what happened next. She clambered to her feet and ran to the opposite side of the garden to the oil shed and hid behind the door. From behind the shed’s door, she could hear grunting sounds, wet thuds and then...silence.

When she cracked the door open and peeked out, Carrick’s silver ax head dripped with red.

“Hope you like alligator stew, love,” he said, turning to her, wearing a look of false levity on his face.

“That... That’s... Carrick, that’s an alligator,” she said, cowering in the oil house doorway.

“That was an alligator.”

The alligator, or what was left of it, lay on its side, two fat legs dangling in the air.

“This island has alligators,” she said.

“Yes, this island has alligators.”

“You killed an alligator. With an ax.”

Carrick nodded. “Didn’t have time to load the shotgun.”

“You killed an alligator with an ax because you didn’t have time to load the shotgun.”

“You’re repeating me,” he said.

“I was almost eaten by an alligator.”

“I think he was after the goats.”

“Carrick.”

“Or you,” Carrick said. “Can’t lie, he might have been after you.”

“I’m going to faint,” she said.

“Don’t faint. It’s dead, I swear. You can come out of the shed now.”

Faye didn’t want to come out of the oil shed, but her rational brain reminded her she couldn’t stay in there forever. Her rational brain also told her she should not be living on an island where an alligator could just sneak up on her.

“Come out,” he said again. “You’re safe. I got him.”

Faye knew she might puke, so she waited a few more seconds until the nausea passed. Then she turned around and almost did throw up though nothing came out. It had happened so fast, so insanely fast she didn’t know how to process it. She’d barely had time to be scared before Carrick had killed it. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She wanted to run a hundred miles at a hundred miles an hour away from the creature. Instead, she crept from the doorway of the oil shed and walked over to Carrick, where he stood panting. Faye winced and turned away at the sight of the deep gashes in the alligator’s body. She guessed its size at about ten feet long, more than large enough to kill a human being. Specifically, her.

“Not an endangered species,” she said, looking at its long green-black body. Liberal guilt haunted her even in 1921.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. It’s a big, big...thing.”

“It’s a big thing, yes. A big dead thing.” Carrick nodded.

“You saved me from an alligator. No one has ever saved me from an alligator before. That’s not a thing that happens to me. That’s not a thing that happens to anyone.”

“It happens on this island.”

Faye sighed and leaned against his chest, his broad, strong chest that had the power to kill an alligator with a three-foot-long wooden ax. She giggled madly, giddy and dizzy, relieved to be alive.

“You are such a badass,” she said, lightly pounding his chest with her fist.

“I’m a what?”

“Nothing. Just rambling. I’m fine—I promise.”

“You regret coming here yet?” he asked, and she looked up at him sharply before remembering he meant coming here from Boston, not coming here from 2015.

She shook her head no and rested her forehead on his chest again. She smiled. A man had killed an alligator to save her. This would never have happened in her time, and yet it didn’t make her regret coming here. She felt lucky. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have Carrick. Lucky to know how lucky she was, which was the best sort of luck.

Carrick wrapped one arm around her shoulders and held her to him. Faye looked up at him, ready to kiss him senseless.

“Oh, my, am I interrupting something?”

Faye started nearly as hard as she had when she’d seen the alligator.

“Mr. Hartwell,” Carrick said. “We’ve had an interesting morning.”

“I see that.” Hartwell strolled over the lawn to where they stood by the alligator’s corpse. “Sorry to disturb y’all. Looked like you were having a tender moment.”