Off and on. I knew it was only my mind playing games, but I couldn’t control it.
Sometimes, I nearly screamed with fright and ran like hell.
Other times, surrounded by my phantom ladies, I loved the darkness and warmth of the night.
I felt the good way as I approached the lagoon.
Raising my eyes, I saw the moonlit slab of rock where Kimberly had stretched herself flat, days ago, to scan the lagoon for signs of Thelma and Wesley. I climbed onto it. I lay down on it, in exactly the place where Kimberly had been. The warmth of the rock seeped through my shirt and shorts.
She was with me. Her heat was in me.
That’s how I felt, anyhow. It was only in my mind, but maybe that’s no great reason to discount it.
Lying there, I slowly scanned the lagoon.
In places, it sparkled with points of silver moonlight. Mostly, though, it looked black.
This was not a forbidding blackness.
The opposite. One look, and I wanted to be in it. Could hardly wait.
I told myself that I hadn’t come up here for a dip in the lagoon; I’d come to look for the women.
To search for them beyond the far side of the lagoon, above the waterfall and farther upstream where we’d last been together. I wouldn’t find them here. Maybe not there, either, but that was the place to start.
To get there, I needed to cross the lagoon.
On my feet, I looked all around. No glow of firelight was anywhere to be seen. Nor did I see a sign of anyone’s presence. I listened. The only sounds were birds and bugs, plus some of the usual jungle shrieks and jibbers (God knows what they came from), and the quiet splashing sounds of the waterfall on the other side of the lagoon.
Bits of moonlight lit the falls. Otherwise, they were black except for a few dim, gray streamers of froth at the bottom.
I wanted to feel the waterfall spilling onto me. I wanted to feel the lagoon and the night air. I wanted to be gliding through the black water, naked.
I took off my shirt and shoes and socks.
Then I took off my shorts. Naked, I crouched and set them down. I pulled the straight razor out of the right front pocket.
Though I wanted complete freedom in the water—nothing to carry—I suddenly found myself reluctant to leave the razor behind. Someone might steal it. Or I might chance upon Wesley or Thelma. Without the razor, how would I defend myself?
After giving the matter some thought, I put on my right sock and slipped the razor down inside it against my ankle.
Which was exactly the same way I’d carried Andrew’s Swiss Army knife up the tree to cut down Keith. I started to remember about that. It was more than a week ago, but seemed like it had just happened. I could feel the tree against my body, see Keith hanging…
“Don’t think about it,” I said. Even though I spoke in a whisper, the sound of my voice unnerved me a little.
Who else might’ve heard it?
Standing up straight, I looked around. I stood motionless and listened. And started to feel very exposed and vulnerable. I began imagining that someone was out there, hidden in the darkness, spying on me, creeping closer.
As fast as I could, I climbed down the rocky bank and eased myself into the water. My legs vanished. A moment later, everything below my waist was gone, as if I’d been sawed in half by a magician.
Right away, I felt safer.
It would be no trick, at all, to disappear entirely.
My chills began to fade. My goosebumps started to go away. My tight muscles relaxed. A pleasant warmth seemed to be spreading through my whole body.
I felt even better as I waded into deeper water. When it reached my neck, I looked down and there was none of me left to see.
I had become invisible.
Except for my head, of course. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew that it showed.
If anyone was watching.
So I ducked below the surface to make my head invisible.
Now, I was completely gone. Completely safe. I was all alone in the warm water, surrounded by a jungle where my enemies might be lurking… I felt wonderful. I was not only safe, but invincible.
Staying below, I swam. The water flowed along my body, warm and smooth. After a while, my lungs began to ache. I stayed below, anyway. Soon, I heard the shooshing and plottering of the waterfall.
Underneath the falls, I found footing on the rocky bottom. I turned around and came up slowly. The curtain of dropping water pattered on top of my head, ran down the sides of my face, splashed softly into the water still covering my shoulders.
My head was no longer invisible.
I didn’t feel frightened, though—maybe because it would be so easy to disappear again.
I stood up straight.
And shivered as I did it. This was no shiver of fear, though. This was excitement. I felt daring and powerful as more and more of my body came out of the lagoon and into full view of anyone who might be watching.
How different this was from my last time here! Only a couple of days ago, I’d stood battered and aching and desolate beneath these very falls. I’ll have to write about that in more detail. Soon. Not now, though. For now, I want to tell about last night.
And how I continued to rise up under the falls.
When I was bare down to my waist, I shut my eyes. The falling water splashed onto the top of my head, onto my shoulders and outstretched arms. It slid down my body like warm oil.
This was where Connie had stood, naked, rubbing herself with her wadded T-shirt. She’d stood with her back to me.
In my mind, I turned her around.
I became her.
I was Connie standing under the waterfall, arms out, trembling as the water spilled down my naked body, showing myself to an imaginary Rupert.
Which sounds a trifle odd, now that I try to write about it.
Let’s just say I let my imagination run wild for a while, there at the falls last night. I had so many different emotions swarming through me, I’m lucky I didn’t go nuts entirely and stay that way.
After a while, though, I remembered my reasons for coming up to the lagoon.
Namely, to search for Connie, Billie and Kimberly.
Not for their spirits, but for their bodies—alive or dead.
And to see if I could get some idea about where Wesley and Thelma might be.
To kill them, if I could.
So I waded over to the flat rock where we’d taken Connie after she’d been knocked out. I boosted myself up, got to my feet, and climbed to the top of the falls.
Even though I’d finally gotten back to business, I still felt strange. I was dripping wet and shivering—trembling from head to toe. My jaw even shook. The night probably hadn’t turned any colder while I’d been in the lagoon, but it felt as if the temperature had dropped about twenty degrees. Also, I was gripped by a weird mixture of fear and excitement.
At the top of the falls, I stood in a patch of moonlight and gazed down at the lagoon.
My lagoon.
It seemed like a wonderful place just then, and all mine. It was my own private swimming hole, a place where I could be completely free and completely safe, where I could dwell in my memories of Kimberly, Connie and Billie—where they would come alive in my fantasies.
Better to have imaginary friends and lovers than none at all.
In some ways, they might even be an improvement over the real thing. If they only exist in your mind, they can’t get killed.
Plus, they cooperate better than…
(That’s me, going off the deep end again. Maybe I was having—am having?—a slight encounter with a touch of mental breakdown. Could that be? Tee hee hee. And I ain’t even gotten to the BAD part yet. The bad part about last night, that is—as opposed to the bad part when we got attacked several days ago and all three of my women… Never mind. That’s for later, too. I should get back to last night.) I’ll skip over some of the weird shit I was feeling and thinking, etc., while I roamed the jungle naked with the razor in my sock. I’ve got so much to write about, anyway, without dwelling on stuff like mat. (Not to mention that I’ve already filled up more than three-quarters of my notebook. I have about a hundred empty pages left, and that’s counting both sides of the paper.) Here’s how it went last night. From the top of the falls, I followed the stream uphill, climbing through the shadows and the moonlight toward the place among the rocks where we’d found Kimberly on the day I think of as “the last stand.”