Also, she seems to be busy feeling sorry for herself and wanting everyone’s sympathy. At least when she’s awake.
She didn’t have to do any guard duty last night. Kimberly, Billie and I took turns, with me taking the morning shift so I could work on my journal here.
Been writing like a madman, ever since dawn.
A while ago, Kimberly woke up. She came over to the fire and we said “Good morning” to each other. She asked how the journal’s coming along. I said, “Fine. I’m just about caught up.”
“I hope you’re making it clear that Wesley’s behind all this,” she said. “Wesley Duncan Beaverton the third. So there won’t be any doubt about who murdered Keith and Dad.”
“It’s all here,” I said.
“And he’s probably the one who dropped that rock on Connie yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
“You got that?”
“Sure do.”
“Good.” She shook her head. “I’d sure hate for him to get away with this. If he ends up killing all of us, maybe that diary of yours’ll be the only way anybody ever finds out the truth.”
“My God, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“It probably won’t,” Kimberly said. “Anyway, I’m going in for a swim. Can you hold down the fort for another ten or fifteen minutes?”
“Sure.”
So then she jogged down to the shore and charged into the water.
She came out of it a few minutes ago. When she first came out, she did some push-ups on the beach. Then sit-ups, knee-bends, etc. She just now walked over for the ax. I guess she plans to swing it around, the way she did yesterday. I’m going to watch. So long for now.
Thelma’s Story
And who should wander out of the jungle this afternoon but Thelma?
At the time she put in her appearance, nobody was actually keeping watch.
Billie and Kimberly were out in the water, trying to spear some fish for supper. Kimberly was going after them with Connie’s special spear, while Billie stood by with the pot. They’d just finished nailing their second fish when Thelma came toward our campsite.
Connie was asleep under one of the shelters. We’d let her drink a few slugs of bourbon after lunch to ease her aches and pains. It must’ve helped considerably, because she zonked out. She’d been snoozing for a couple of hours by the time Thelma showed up.
I was stretched out on my back beneath the leafy roof of the other sun shelter, my head propped up by a mound of sand, my paperback held above my face with both hands. I’d been reading, watching Kimberly and Billie, reading a bit more…
Thelma’s shout of “Help!” startled me so much that I flinched and the book jumped out of my hands.
I flipped over onto my belly.
The paperback had landed in the sand about four feet away.
Thelma was about fifty feet away, walking slowly toward me. More of a stagger than a walk, actually. Small, stiff steps. She was bent over a little, as if cramped. Her arms hardly moved at all. She carried herself like someone who’d recently fallen down the cellar stairs, or something.
She had some pretty good damage to her face, including a shiner and a fat lip.
One sleeve was missing entirely from her blouse, leaving her right arm bare to the shoulder. The blouse was filthy, spotted with blood, and untucked so it hung down in front of her shorts.
Even though her blouse was buttoned up, I saw right away that she’d lost her bra. You couldn’t miss it. She has large breasts. Un-leashed, they swayed and bounced, making the front of her blouse leap around as if she had a couple of wild animals trapped inside.
One bare knee had an abrasion similar to the one on Connie’s shoulder.
Her hands were empty.
There was no sign of Wesley. I figured he might be nearby, though, using Thelma as a diversion while he snuck in.
Also, Thelma had given us a taste of how dangerous she could be without any help from Wesley.
I reached out and grabbed the ax. Hanging on to it, I crawled out from under the shelter and stood up.
She raised an open hand.
I twisted around. Kimberly and Billie were still busy fishing. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the shout.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Billie! Kimberly!”
Their heads turned. Because of the slope of the beach, I doubted that they could see Thelma. They could see me, though. I gestured for them to come out, and added, “Hurry! Thelma’s here!”
I looked over at Connie. She was curled on her right side, the same as before, to keep the pressure off her wounds. The shouting must’ve woken her up. Her eyes were open, watching me.
“Thelma’s here,” I told her, even though I was repeating myself.
She didn’t say anything. She barely moved. But her upper lip twitched slightly.
Kimberly and Billie were sloshing toward shore.
For at least a while, it would be just Thelma and me. And Wesley, if he was trying to pull off a sneak attack.
Thelma was still coming.
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t take another step.”
She stopped.
“Put both your hands up. Put ’em on top of your head.”
She obeyed. Her breasts lifted. So did her entire blouse, a little bit.
I thought about frisking her.
Not just so I could feel her up, either: the way her blouse hung down, big and loose, there was plenty of room for hiding weapons.
The other two gals would be here soon, though, so I gave up the idea of checking her.
“Do you have any weapons?” I asked.
“No,” she muttered. She had a dull, sullen look in her eyes. “I didn’t come here to cause any…”
“Thelma!” Kimberly blurted. I looked back and saw her break into a run. Billie hurried after her. Over at her shelter, Connie didn’t want to miss out. She was getting to her hands and knees.
Kimberly raced past me, then slowed, then stopped a few strides from her sister.
Thelma started to lower her hands.
“Don’t.” Kimberly jabbed out with the spear, prodding her in the ribs.
“Ow!”
“Stay put.” She held the spear in both hands, its point an inch or so away from Thelma’s chest.
Billie arrived. Both of us moved in and stood with Kimberly.
“Can I put my hands down, now?” Thelma asked.
“No. Don’t move. Billie, you wanta search her?”
With a nod, Billie stepped forward. She went behind Thelma. Using both hands, she started at the armpits and worked her way down Thelma’s sides.
“I haven’t got anything.”
“We’ll see,” Kimberly said.
Billie patted the pockets of Thelma’s baggy shorts. After checking around the waist, her hands moved up Thelma’s front. She stayed outside the blouse, but pushed in the fabric until she met flesh. She rubbed up and down, lifted and shoved Thelma’s breasts this way and that as she checked underneath and between them.
Thelma grimaced while this went on. She also winced a lot, as if she were being hurt.
“Does he have to watch this?” Thelma wanted to know.
Meaning me.
“Make him look the other way.”
“Shut up,” Kimberly told her.
Squatting, Billie squeezed Thelma’s rump, patted the legs of her shorts, and shoved a hand up between her legs. When the hand jammed against her crotch, Thelma gasped and went to her tiptoes.
“Nothing,” Billie announced.
“Okay, you can put your arms down.”
She lowered her arms.
Billie came around to the front, and stood beside me. A second later, Connie joined us. This was the first rime since the attack yesterday that she’d been up and walking without any help. But she seemed to be on the verge of falling over. She leaned against her mother.
We all stared at Thelma.
Her chin was trembling. She sniffed. “I… I know you’re all mad at me. You have a right to be, I guess. I shouldn’t have…”
“Cut the shit,” Kimberly said. “Where’s Wesley?”
She struggled to speak. When her voice came out, it sounded so high it was almost a squeak. “Dead.”
“What?”
“Dead!” she blurted. “He’s dead!”
“Yeah, right,” Connie muttered.
“He is!”
“When did he die?” Kimberly asked.
“Yesterday.”
“When yesterday?”
“Morning.”
“Who did that to Connie at the falls?” Billie asked.
Thelma blinked and shook her head.
“Did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Throw that damn rock over the falls?”
“No! We… We weren’t at any falls.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“His place. Wesley has this… secret place. It’s past the falls. It’s nowhere near the falls.”
Billie glared at her. “If you didn’t throw the rock, who did?”
“I don’t know!”
“Did Wesley throw it?” I asked.
Before Thelma could answer, Kimberly said, “He was dead by then, remember?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Which means you did it,” Kimberly said, and gave Thelma another quick poke with the spear.
“Ouch! Don’t!” She grabbed the hurt place.
“You did it,” Kimberly said, and jabbed the back of her hand. The spear put a pale dent in it.
“Stop that!”
“Tell the truth.”
“Wesley made me!”
“What do you mean, he made you? He was already dead.”
“No. He wasn’t. We were there. We were watching you all. We were up there above the falls, and spying on you, and he wanted to, you know, kill him.” She nodded at me.
“Me?” I asked.
“Yeah, you. I told him we shouldn’t. I didn’t want anybody else getting killed, but Wesley said he’d kill me if I didn’t do it. What could I do? He would’ve killed me. So I went and snuck down to the stream and did it.” She glanced at Connie. “It wasn’t supposed to hit you. It was supposed to hit him.”
“Stupid bitch,” Connie muttered.
“I’m sorry. What can I say? I couldn’t see what I was doing. Just a quick little peek or two. Somebody would’ve seen me up there watching, so I just had to throw it blind, and it got you by mistake.”
“Sure,” Connie said.
“It’s the truth! If you think I hurt you on purpose… I never would’ve done it on purpose. Look what Wesley did to me!” She raised both hands, open fingers trembling toward her face. “He beat me. Look how he beat me! All because I hit you instead of that boy!”
That boy.
Nice.
“He didn’t want you getting hurt. And he wanted him getting killed—so when I hit you instead, he blamed me for screwing up everything. He… he beat me and…”
“Pretty damn active for a dead guy,” Kimberly said.
“He wasn’t dead then.”
“Ah. So you were lying when you said he died yesterday morning.”
“It was after you all left the lagoon and everything.”
“He beat you up, and then he died.”
“Must’ve taken a lot out of him,” I said.
Glaring at me, she blurted, “I killed him!”
The rest of us went silent. I think we were stunned.
“What did you all think, he died from those old spear wounds? They were nothing. He was getting over them. I’m the one who killed him. You have me to thank for it, and nobody else.”
Kimberly looked her in the eyes and said, “I don’t believe you.”
Thelma’s mouth dropped open.
“You wouldn’t harm a hair on that asshole’s head. He can do no wrong, as far as you’re concerned. He’s your god.”
“He hurt me!” she blurted. “After I hit Connie with the rock, look what he did to me.” She gestured to her battered face again. “And this!” She fumbled with the top button of her blouse, then stopped and said, “He has to turn around.”
Kimberly gave me a nod.
I turned my back to Thelma.
A few seconds passed. Then she said, “See? See what he did?”
Kimberly murmured, “Jesus.”
I took a look over my shoulder.
Thelma’s head was down. She had her blouse off.
Her huge breasts were striped with scratches, smeared with livid bruises. Some of the bruises were shaped like fingers; others were crescents. From the look of her breasts, she’d been lashed by a switch, slapped around with open hands, and bitten.
Sobbing, still not raising her head and noticing me, she turned around. “And this!” Her back didn’t look as if anyone had slapped or bit it—just whaled the crap out of it with a switch. Her skin was streaked with threads of dry blood. She must’ve taken fifty lashes back there.
“And that isn’t all!” she blurted. Keeping her back to us, she started to put her blouse on. “I’m not gonna show… not gonna pull my shorts down…”
I took that as my cue to turn away.
“But he… he made me strip… take off everything… and then he beat me and beat me… all because I dropped that rock on Connie by accident… He didn’t want her damaged. But oh, God, he was sure the hell happy to damage me. And he got all turned on, beating me, so then he… he did other things to me.”
“He raped you?” Kimberly asked. She sounded upset.
“That was… yeah, and worse, too.”
I looked over my shoulder again. Thelma had her blouse on, and was trying to fasten its buttons. Her eyes were red and wet, her nose was runny and her hands trembled so much that she was having real trouble with the buttons. She saw me watching, but didn’t complain about it, so I went on and turned around.
“What else did he do to you?” Kimberly asked her.
“No. I can’t… I won’t tell. It’s too awful. But at least… It wore him out. That’s the good part. When he was done, he was so tired he couldn’t stay awake. He fell asleep and that’s when I killed him. I bashed his head in. There was a rock nearby and I grabbed it and I bashed his head in.” One of her hands fluttered away from her blouse. It held an imaginary rock. She raised it and hammered it down. “Bashed him till there was nothing left of his head but a big bloody pile of crap!”
Kimberly shoved her spear into the sand. She opened her arms and Thelma staggered into them. They hugged each other and Thelma bawled her head off.