Read Online The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found by Heidi King - Free Book Online Page A

your eyes never quite catch them. But these were not
bats- they were fish. And they were jumping over us from the small
pools on either side of us that the tide had left. We just laid
there together counting flying fish. I drifted, trying to remember
the theme song to Family Ties but getting the Cheers song instead. I don’t even
remember that time of my life. Suddenly, like magic, it became
brighter. The full moon was rising.
    We didn’t speak. She reached up with
her hand and she held it until the moon rose over the
water.
    “ How many times have you
seen the full moon rise?” Maria whispered to me.
    “ I don’t know.”
    “ Right now there are people
working jobs they hate. When they die, even if they are old, they
will realize that they have not spent enough time watching the moon
rise like this.”
    Sometimes I thought Maria
was immature and I lamented our age difference. But when she says
things like this I think she is wise and all other conversations
inane. I mean I can’t even remember the theme song for Family Ties . How many
actual important moments in my childhood, moments so important they
shaped who I am, that I will only remember a few more times in my
life. How many more times will I lie on the ocean floor and see the
full moon rise?
    I knew this was one of those travel
moments… life moments… a moment that tourists miss because their
itineraries are filled with sightseeing.
    Tourists often brag about where they
have been. Travelers don’t know where the hell they are going. I
brought María here to Bocas to find out what we were to each other.
We were travelers.

The Red Jacket
    Editor’s Notes from
Patrick McGreer
    I have spent so many hours poring over
their blogs, diaries and personal letters to arrange what you are
now reading that I no longer remember my first impressions of them.
Except María, of course. Women as beautiful as her are not
forgotten easily.
    The Lost and Found is a
hike-in lodge seven miles east of Fortuna Lake – now a reservoir to
a huge dam. It requires a fifteen minute walk up from the David to
Bocas highway. Like a lot of my guests are out of breath from the
walk and María was no exception. I smiled and joked that she should
have taken the elevator. She didn’t smile back. At first glance she
was so cute I immediately assumed she was innocuous and would be
amused by my joke. But she remained vacant and when she held my
gaze I felt a kind of chill I cannot explain. “ Tengo alas ,” she said. I have wings.
“I just need to learn to use them.”
    They arrived at the top.
Gabriel, our handyman and part-time night safari guide, was helping
Dr. Mike with his luggage. I am sure I shook everyone’s hands and
answered their questions: Why don’t you
guys build a zip-line for people’s bags? Did you carry everything
up yourselves? Why did you come to Panama? The introduction speech I give is always new for the guests,
but for me it is a routine that has become one big blur. It was
this monotony that convinced my business partner Andrew and myself
that we needed to take a break. So we decided to lease out the
hostel for a year.
    We didn’t build a zip line because,
well, we need money, and that will come after the new private
cabins, the sauna, new shower change rooms, a bigger cage for
Rocky, our pet kinkajou, and composting toilets. I didn’t carry
everything up by hand, but yes, I paid people to carry everything
up by hand. Gabriel made a buck per hundred pound bag of cement he
carried up for our builder. I carried one and vomited on arrival,
so I gave Gabriel a job after we fired our builder.
    How I decided to come to
Panama is a much more involved question with several answers,
depending on who asks. The financial answer is the short one. While
most of our peers were getting married, buying real estate and
unknowingly heading into the subprime mortgage crisis, Andrew and I
taught ESL. Although we are both Canadian, we met in Korea and
bonded over basketball and