ISLAND THIRTEEN
Due to a tragedy of errors, the vehicles used by the staff of the prestigious Costa Grande golf course to rake and smooth Sand traps were reduced by one. The sand trap rake, a three-wheeled machine which looked very much like something a clown might ride in a circus, was used by certain employees each morning so that the lofty and highly self-esteemed golfers would have smooth, fresh sand in which to plunk their expensive, but nevertheless useless, golf balls. These attempts were made in order to land their golf balls on the "green," which is where the "hole" was, the "hole" being indicated by a tall flag pole, which was perpetually topped by a languidly fluttering piece of colored cloth.
One sand trap rake was out of commission, which meant another, older Sand Rake had been pulled out from beneath the cobwebs. An experienced sand rake operator had called in sick on that same day.`
First come, first served.
Gary Delaney, a humble, unassuming white man, who has nothing better to do, or no place better to be, comes in to work at the Costa Grande Inn and Club early everyday by bus. Looking at the golf course assignment board in the crew break room, he sees that he has been assigned to rake sand traps. Delaney, of course -- first come, first served -- chooses the newer, most preferable of the two remaining trap raking machines. The other sand trap vehicle, which was usually out of service, is all that is available when the second, final sand rake operator, a black man named Edwin Quinn, comes in later.
As Gary Delaney is gassing up the regular sand rake machine, having already chosen it due to having arrived so much earlier, Quinn, a squat, sturdy, over-sensitive man, passes Delaney on his way in.
"'Morning, Delaney," Quinn gurgled glutinously at Gary, then paused. "So you're on the board to rake traps today?"
"Yep," Delaney replied, after struggling to decipher what Quinn had said. "Gnarl's not coming in today. You've got all of his traps."
'Gnarl,' the senior and regular sand trap rake operator, was a hideous, lumpy troll-like creature, who could, if he were smart enough, have rented himself out to Halloween parties for a fortune.
"So I've got Gnarl's traps, huh?" Quinn gurgled. "I guess you would know. Were you here before they unlocked the gates again?"
"I just get here early," Delaney replied. "I come in by the first city bus, you know."
"Yeah," Quinn sneered. "And I guess that means that I'm stuck with that left over piece of junk sand rake, too."
"I got here first," Delaney shrugged, removing the gas nozzle from the newer sand rake's tank.
"Of course you got here first, and you're always the last one to leave! You're even here every weekend! I'm the one who has new Truck payments to make, and a family to feed, and you're the one that's making all the money! You still live with your parents and don't even pay rent. . . . What do you do with all the money you make, anyway?"
"I don't know," Delaney mumbled, screwing on the cap of the gas tank.
"You 'don't know'?" Quinn mimicked. "I've got an idea for you: Why don't you buy a life?!"
"I have a life!" Delaney retorted. "I just don't use it!"
Quinn laughed and walked away, shaking his head in bemusement. He went to check the crew assignment board in the break room for himself, and to punch the time clock.
Sure enough, Quinn has been assigned the sand traps that Gnarl usually raked, and which were, therefore, unfamiliar to him. Although senior in employment to Gary Delaney, he had still only recently been trained as a sand rake operator. Delaney had been assigned the traps that he, Quinn, would have ordinarily raked, had Gnarl come in.
Edwin Quinn, a middle-aged black man with small, suspicious eyes and an almost incomprehensible dialect, was easily offended, and now that he had found out that not only had that skinny, no-life white twerp beaten him out of the only good sand rake, but that the fat, white assistant superintendent had also stuck him with sand traps he had never raked before. He had already invested over a decade of his life in working for the prestigious Costa Grande Inn and Club, a fact he was quick to point out to any junior personnel who ever attempted to pull rank on him, but having recently committed himself to making payments on a shiny, new black truck, of which he was very proud, as well as the typical expenses of a wife and two children, left Quinn in no position to protest too strenuously.
Having punched in, he resigned himself to retrieving the older, dilapidated sand rake from the "barn," and proceeded slowly (the sand rakes, which were motorized tricycles with a horizontal blade on the front and an array of adjustable flaps and tines on the rear, were notoriously slow, anyway) out onto the golf course, scattering out from the maintenance facility along with his numerous co-employees, each on their various vehicles and assignments.
Quinn was determined that raking Gnarl's unfamiliar sand traps would not be a drawback to him. He would prove that he could do it, even if it meant using the more awkward and difficult machine. Perhaps proving himself equal to Gnarl's years of experience would be worth an even larger pay raise at the next evaluation.
Three of the sand traps were on an island, called Island Thirteen, because the thirteenth green was entirely surrounded by a shallow lagoon. The green, which is where the hole and the flag were, and the three sand traps, were only accessible by two wooden bridges, east and west of the island. Each of the sand traps were close to the lagoon, and Quinn couldn't swim and was deathly afraid of water. He had never raked the traps of Thirteen before, and as Quinn approached the traps, he felt himself become tense with anxiety. He began to curse Delaney for getting the good sand rake.
Quinn drove into and around the inside of the sand traps as slowly and as carefully as possible, having to fight the machine as he went, but on approaching the third trap, the one closest to the lagoon, something went horrendously awry: either the sand rake completely malfunctioned, or, due to his lack of experience, his approach was wrong, or Quinn panicked at being so near the dreaded water, but he and the machine went over the bulkhead. The heavy sand rake pinned the frightened man under the swallow water, and he drowned.
After the investigation, which was extensive, all anyone knew, or was willing to admit, was that after the sand rake was pulled out of the lagoon by crane, it had a broken steering chain. Whether the chain had broken before the accident, during, or as the machine was being retrieved, no one could ever know.
* * *
The funeral took place on the following Saturday, and it was exactly one week after the accident that Gary Delaney was, as usual, waiting on Third Street for the first city bus that would take him to work. As it was very early in the morning, it was still dark, and there was very little traffic.
The bus was late. Delaney was sure that he had not missed it because, having nothing else to do, he always got to the bus stop earlier than he needed to be there.
In the distance, from the north, Delaney saw a pair of on-coming headlights, but he soon discerned, by the size, that they were not of his awaited bus. As the vehicle neared, he saw that, instead, the headlights were of a pick-up truck, a shiny, new black pick-up truck.
When the truck reached where Delaney was standing, it slowed, and then stopped. The passenger door opened.
Grateful for the ride, as he was now sure that his bus had broken down somewhere, and deducing that the truck's driver was no doubt a fellow employee at the Costa Grande Inn and Club, Delaney eagerly bounded inside the cab of the shiny, black truck, and closed the door. He didn't notice that there was no dome light.
The driver was hidden by darkness, but as the truck rapidly moved away from the curb and began to pick up speed, Delaney gushed with gratitude.
"Thanks a lot for stopping," he said. "My bus should have been here by now, something must have happened to it."
Gary paused, expecting the unseen driver to respond, but except for the muffled growl of the truck's powerful engine, there was only silence. Gary noticed that the truck continued to accelerate.
"I'm on my way in to work at the Costa Grande Inn and Club. Is that where you're going?"
Still there was no response. Gary was beginning to become uncomfortable with the icy silence. The truck continued to gain speed.
Finally, several speechless miles later, at the turn-off from Third Street to the exclusive Costa Grande Boulevard, the truck made the turn to the southeast. Gary breathed a sigh of relief, ascertaining that at least the enigmatic driver was going in the same direction as he. The truck continued to increase its speed.
"Do you work at the Club, too?" Gary asked, nervously. He was aware that the truck was moving much too fast, and was still picking up speed.
Again, Gary's question was met by steely silence. Still the truck picked up speed, now seeming to hurtle down the narrow boulevard toward the Inn. Gary saw that the distant row of streetlights that adorned the Costa Grande Inn and Club's property was rapidly growing near.
"Say," Gary stammered, "do you need to be in this much of a hurry?"
The truck seemed to increase its speed even more, the headlights illuminating the traffic lines on the road as quickly as dots in a video game. And still, the dark silhouette of the mute driver made no answer.
They had now reached the beginning of the Costa Grande Club limits, and were passing under the streetlights, which, because of the speed of the truck, seemed, instead, like strobe lights.
"Hey, man," Gary squealed, "are you trying to kill us?"
The driver finally spoke, in a familiar, glutinous gurgle: "Only you."
"Quinn?" Gary looked at the driver, and the rapidly flashing streetlights now, in flickering intervals, lit up his face. Staring at Gary with glazed, bulging, sightless eyes, his entire lower face smeared with globs of caked mucus, was the corpse of Edwin Quinn!
"You had no life," the corpse of Quinn gurgled, "but you took mine! Now, I will take yours!"
"No! No! No!" Gary was struggling with the passenger door handle, desperate to escape the truck, despite the horrendous speed at which it barreled down the boulevard. The streetlights persisted in synchronously illuminating Quinn's dead, goggle-eyed face. Gary, still fighting with the jammed door handle, stared aghast as the corpse's mouth grimaced itself into a huge grin, and slow, gurgling laughter began to bubble out of its breathless lungs, producing an noxious, yellow foam that oozed out of its mouth, down it's chin, and cascaded over it's right shoulder.
The door handle broke off in Gary's hand. Gary tried rolling down the window, but its handle broke off, also.
Now, deep within the property of the Costa Grande Inn and Club, with the Atlantic Ocean shimmering metallically as it briefly appeared in flashes between the individual hotel buildings, the truck suddenly swerved to the right at a stop sign and careened toward the golf pro shop.
The corpse of Edwin Quinn continued to laugh hollowly, like pockets of lava exploding on the surface of a simmering volcano, while more vile fluid vomited slowly out of it's mouth. It's head was still twisted unnaturally toward Gary, it's eyes, blind and bulging.
By this time, the Costa Grande Inn and Club's security had been alerted to the presence of the mad, black truck, and were chasing it with their security cars. The St. George County Sheriff's Department had now been called in as well.
Spinning to the left, just past the golf pro shop, and clawing it's way onto the golf cart path, the black truck aimed toward the eastern bridge of the Island Thirteen green.
Gary screamed. The gurgling laughter of Quinn's corpse was undiminished as Gary was now throwing the entire weight of his body against the passenger door, and making futile attempts at breaking the window with his right elbow.
The truck hit the wooden bridge, crashed through the left-hand guard rail, and then flew through the air in an arc until it finally lost momentum. Splashing into the dark, shallow water, the nose of the truck sank deep into the mud that covered the bottom of the lagoon, leaving only the tailgate and the still turning rear wheels exposed.
Gradually, the spinning of the rear wheels slowed to a stop.
* * *
The entire episode was something of a mystery, and, in many ways, still is. By the time one of the deputies succeeded in gaining entrance to the cab, both doors being locked, it was already full of water. The only occupant was Gary Delaney, found crouched cowering on the floor of the passenger's side, his dead face hideously contorted in a grimace of fright. It was later proved, however, that there was no water whatsoever in Delaney's lungs, indicating that he had evidently died of massive heart failure sometime before the truck hit the lagoon.
Another peculiar thing discovered the next day after a crane (probably the same crane that raised the sand rake the week before) raised the truck from the water, was that no ignition key was found anywhere within the truck, nor had there been one anywhere in Delaney's possession. The only existent keys to the truck were still in the untouched purse of Edwin Quinn's widow, who, like the authorities, could not explain the apparent theft of the shiny, new black truck by the bizarrely suicidal Gary Delaney.
THE END
This post first appeared on Horror Stories By Douglas W. Cracraft, please read the originial post: here
