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julie

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Though he won't admit it, even to himself, Mathias is slightly nervous.

He's made the best preparations he can, managing to take over the television in the basement for the time being, although he hasn't had as much luck with the bookshelf as he'd been hoping. It seems to know he's looking for something in particular and so has been giving him all sorts of other movies. Eventually, it gave up two monster movies, though neither of them are from the fifties and he's a little disappointed by that. The titles, however, are especially ridiculous and so he hopes they're still entertaining enough.

He's telling this to Julie as he leads her down to the television, holding both movies in his hand. "So our options for tonight, anyway, are Sharktopus or Two-Headed Shark Attack. I am not sure which one sounds more absurd." They both look to be fairly recent, too, perhaps even made after his time and Mathias isn't sure what that says about the modern movie going experience.

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As they climb the stairs and then exit into the cooler evening air, Mathias thinks briefly about all the things he's seen on the island. In the end, there have been too many dangers for him to really think they anything bad will happen on this walk and he nods his agreement.

"I think we are more than--"

Just ahead of them, a vine slithers across the boardwalk and Mathias falls silent, staring at it. It's not real, he knows. It's not there at all and Julie won't see it, but it doesn't go away.

He stops so suddenly, and everything about him changes. I freeze, too, and don't let go of his hand.

"What's wrong?" I ask, my voice hushed. I don't even make a joke about sea monsters or anything else, because I can feel how tense he's become and it isn't funny in the least. There is clearly something to be frightened of here, even if he's the only one who's noticed it.

"It's nothing," Mathias says, even as little buds appear on the vine, then open, blooming into beautiful flowers the colour of blood. The leaves unfurl into something vaguely like the shape of a hand and they rustle. In that rustle, he hears the sound of laughter.

"I just thought I saw something in the trees," he says, forcing himself to look at Julie. The vine cannot be there. It's not there. "But I think it might have just been a bird."

"Before you get into a habit of lying to me, I should tell you what I did in the war." I keep my tone light, but I am dead serious. "I was an interrogator. They set me to pulling truths from enemy prisoners. I wasn't like... them." He's seen my scars; I don't think I have to spell it out. "I didn't need to be. So you can choose to tell me the truth, but I might feel compelled to get it out of you anyway."

I realize what I sound like, and drop his hand because I am awful.

"I didn't mean that to sound like a threat."

For a moment, Mathias doesn't move or say anything, but then he reaches down to take Julie's hand again. This might not end up being anything at all, but what he knows is that lying to a person by omission is still lying and if Julie's going to get to know him at all, then he has to tell her what happened in Mexico. It's still there, every day.

"Come," he says, starting to walk again. "Remember that I mentioned my brother died? That he's buried here on the island? Before I came here, he and I went on vacation to Mexico. He met a woman there, said he was in love." He pauses and shakes his head, smiling slightly. "Henrich could be very... impulsive and sometimes he did not think things through. He followed this woman to a dig site in the jungle. Something off the maps. He did not come back to the hotel and so I decided to follow him with some American tourists that I'd met. It was a very bad idea."

I'm surprisingly happy that he takes my hand again. He might just be a bit of fun in the end, but I do like him very much.

"Well, you know Americans," I say, though I don't really mean to make a joke of what is clearly a very serious story he's trusting me with. "I'd have followed him, too. Any of my brothers, I'd go after if I could. That's what family does, isn't it?"

He smiles briefly at the joke, looking down as they walk. "I've taken care of Henrich all my life, I was used to it. The Americans and I invited a Greek tourist as well, even though we couldn't understand him and he couldn't understand us. We traveled to this site that my brother had drawn on a map and when we got there, several men came out of the jungle. They tried to make us leave. One of the Americans, Amy, she stepped back toward this hill and stepped into a tangle of vines..."

For a second, he pauses, trying to find his place in the story. It's almost as if he's getting ahead of himself, but he can't think of where else to go. "They chased us up the hill with weapons. It was the vine, you see. They didn't want it spreading and once we'd touched it, we couldn't be let go."

"Because of a vine? That makes less sense than war." I tighten my grip on his hand, because I already know this tale doesn't have a happy ending. "Heinrich ran into the men with the weapons too, didn't he?"

She's right about that. It doesn't make any sense, even after all this time. "He did," he says. "Like I said, he was impulsive. I think he probably tried to make a break for it and he was shot with an arrow." Three arrows, but he doesn't think it's necessary to share that with Julie.

"By the time we found him, he couldn't have been dead for more than a day or so, but the vines had grown over his body," he says. "They'd stripped away a lot of the organic material. Half his face was gone. The vines had done that."

"God. How bloody dreadful." I shudder and resolutely try not to imagine any of my own brothers in such a state.

"How did you get away from there?"

"I didn't," Mathias answers. "We spent several days on the hill. If we tried to leave, the men with the weapons would stop us. The people I was with... they started to die. Amy and the Greek were both smothered to death by the vines and I do know how crazy that sounds, but it happened. The vines were... sentient. They did this." He holds out his free hand toward Julie and although the scars have faded significantly, it's still clear his palm was badly burned at one point.

"Eric was convinced they were under his skin." He pauses and laughs. "They were under his skin, but he was cutting himself, trying to get them out and when I tried to take the knife from him..." He trails off and touches his breastbone, right where the knife went in. "Then I was here."

I only give the barest glance at the scar, because I see how people look at mine, instead of at me, when they're not covered as they are now. I stop walking and take his other hand, and answer his story with a matching bit of my own.

"I died, too. They were taking a bus load of us prisoners to a... a camp." I still can't say it. God, I'm such a coward. "The French Resistance blew up a bridge, tried to rescue us, but it all went wrong. I was shot. Then I was here." I don't think he needs every last detail, and some of the story is Maddie's, and some is too horrible to even talk about, but I have told the truth. "What a terrible thing to have in common. I'd've thought it couldn't get much worse than a fondness for Sharktopus."

"It seems that this place makes a habit of taking people from moments like that," Mathias says, looking down at Julie, wishing things like this hadn't happened to either of them. It's as she says, a terrible thing to have in common, but at the same time he's glad she's told him the story. It makes his seem a little less crazy.

"I have been seeing things in the jungle lately," he admits. "Vines. Men carrying guns or a bow and arrow. Things that aren't there. That's why I stopped."

"I don't know quite what to think about this island sometimes," I admit. "I'm so happy just to be alive. I'm really grateful and I don't want to waste a minute of it. But then it does cruel things like taunting you that way, and I don't understand why, or how it can be so wonderful and so awful at the same time." Mathias has been here for ages, and I'm sure he's probably worked all of this out for himself, but I'm still quite new to it all. "If they're not really there, they can't hurt anyone, right? Not that it makes it any easier to have to see, but that's something, isn't it?"

"It is," he agrees. In fact, he agrees with everything she's said, but most of the time he doesn't know what to do with any of it. This place is the only life he has now. Henrich is dead and so is he, but here, he gets to spend time with Sam. He has friends, he's been in love, he can go on dates. It's much more than he'll ever have back home.

"My friend Lucy said as much when I told her about it," he says. "You're both right."

"This Lucy sounds very smart." I squeeze both of his hands in my own, and when I reach to kiss him it's an impulse to give him something other than phantom vines and armed men to think about. "I believe I was promised a sea monster. I won't be disappointed, even if I have to imagine it myself."

Mathias can't help but smile when she kisses him and he leans down, pressing the kiss longer for just a moment. "We will see what we can find," he says, although at this point, he's hoping there's nothing else to ruin the evening.

"We'll find a sea monster," I say confident in at least my own imagination. "Haven't you been paying attention at all?"

I take his arm to continue our walk, eager to put killer vines and Nazis behind us.

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