Page 126 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

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There was an alligator in the boat.

There was analligatorintheboat.

Fallon had reached levels of stress, shock, and incredulity that made him question every single decision he’d ever made in his miserable life, which very well might end tonight, one way or another. Probably badly. Definitely painfully.

He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a little ball, close his eyes, go to sleep, and wake in his own loveless bed in Virginia to find that this had all been one long, awful dream. If that happened, he might even roll over and kiss his wife good morning, joyous with his mundane routine.

But when he closed his eyes, someone staggered backward into him, and someone else cursed, and someone else screamed, and he opened his eyes to find that the nightmare was all too real.

Everyone had scrambled to the edges of the boat to get clear of the gator. The thing was trailing a length of steel cable from its mouth, and a tree limb as big around as Fallon’s thigh lay at the bottom of the boat beside it; it had fallen from above, and struck one of the men – Lloyd had called him Rawlins – in the head. He’d collapsed in a boneless heap, and lay there still.

Lloyd was driving the boat, and he gunned the engine, so that the forest flew past them in a blur, which seemed like a real shitty idea after an unseen wire haddecapitatedthe pilot of thefirst boat. They hadn’t stopped after it crashed to see if anyone aboard needed help or wanted to board their boat.

“Fuck this,” Lloyd had said, and pressed the throttle flat, and they’d raced away into the night.

Only for flying alligators to leap at them, one of which was now hissing and swinging its tail and turning in tight, agitated circles, lunging at them all.

“Somone dump that sonovabitch overboard!” Lloyd shouted over his shoulder.

Someone reached for its tail, and then staggered back into Fallon when the gator whirled and snapped. “Fuck that,” the guy said, and tried to keep backing up.

Fallon elbowed him in the ribs, then tripped, and nearly toppled backward. He had a flash vision of backflipping straight into the outboard props, then regained his balance with a tight grip on someone else’s arm.

The gator twisted away from them – and chomped down on Rawlins’s head.

Fallon turned away.

Someone shouted, “Oh, God!”

“Shit!”

Fallon swallowed hard, not sure if he could keep his gorge down. He could hear an awful, meaty sound, and the gator’s weight thumping on the boat’s floor, and he guessed Rawlins was either terribly concussed, or dead, because having his skull punctured – oh, God, the sound of it! – didn’t rouse him.

Fallon saw the water rushing past below, the white-capped, wavering lines of the boat wake, and considered diving in.

But thought of more gators made him shudder, and kept him rooted to the spot.

“Get it out!” Lloyd roared.

There was a flurry of scuffling, grunting, swearing, and then an almighty splash.

He turned his head in time to see the gator as they flew past…and Rawlins. The gator hadn’t released him, and the men had shoved him overboard, too.

Fallon shuddered again, and turned around so he could see what awaited them.

To his surprise and relief, the narrow canal opened up into a huge expanse of star-studded sky, and a vast lake, black beneath black, so they might have been floating if not for the moon-silvered silhouette of a small island out in the middle.

Lloyd backed off the throttle, and the boat slowed to an easy glide across the open water.

Fallon’s attention was fixed on the island, and the floating white specters that glowed amidst the mossy branches.

Ghosts, was his first, foolish thought. New Orleans was supposed to be haunted, wasn’t it? And here the ghosts were: not mere raps on hotel doors, or cold patches in a cemetery. These were good old-fashioned sheet-draped Hollywood spirits, floating and wavering,flapping…

Birds. They were birds. Hundreds and hundreds of white egrets roosting for the night.

How many times could his heart leap and stall and slow tonight? It was doing more work than a gymnast on a balance beam.

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