by M H Ryan
“You knew her?” Eliza asked, rushing toward me. She stopped when Benji had an arrow pointed at her.
“Yes, she was the captain of the ship you’re warning us about; Captain Rebecca Brown is on that ship. She’s the one that brought us here.”
“My mom brought you here?” Eliza seemed dumbfounded. “That’s impossible.”
“Wait, what?” Aubrey asked.
The ship blew its horn, making Eliza jump back from it.
“It doesn’t matter. All we need to understand is that we need to hide, right now, before it’s too late,” Eliza said.
“Behind the waterfall,” Benji said.
“No,” Aubrey said. “You can’t be buying the shit Little Miss Tarzan here is selling.”
“She’s not wrong,” Kara said.
“Jack?” Aubrey said.
“If there is a chance that ship can do us harm, we should at least hide and see what comes out of it.”
“Oh my God,” Aubrey said. “This is our rescue. This is what we’ve been waiting for, and we’re going to hide from it? Your mother is on that ship, you know?”
“My mother is not on that ship,” Eliza said firmly.
“I’m with Jack,” Sherri said, walking to the forest edge next to me. “From what we’ve seen out here, I say we play it safe.”
“Aubrey, please come with us. If it looks safe, we’ll come out and get on that ship,” I said.
“This is crazy,” Aubrey said, but walked into the forest, heading for the pool.
Before I left, I took one last look at the ship through the scope. The burn marks on the ship obscured some of the ship and ran up to the bridge windows. It might have been caused by the lightning on the deck. On the deck, I thought I spotted something moving, but as soon as I thought I had it, it was gone.
More than that, I felt something from whatever was on the ship. It was angry, like the whale, but there was this hunger, an extreme hunger that made my own stomach growl. It felt cold, and a chill ran over my whole body. I knew one thing— whatever was on that ship, it wasn’t human. I couldn’t feel humans, only the animals.
“We need to go,” I said.
Chapter 3
The five of us and Moshe stuffed ourselves into the small cave, or what was more aptly described as a cleft between two rocks, behind the waterfall. The hot water splashed and sent steam over much of the area. It gave us a nice concealment, and the pounding sound of water would mask any errant noises that came from us.
“This is stupid,” Aubrey said, standing behind me and trying to get a good view of what she was sure was an imminent rescue.
No one else spoke, but Eliza glared at Aubrey. Eliza was the shortest of the group but had this fire in her that the other women didn’t seem to want to tempt.
After a while, the ship’s horn blew out a long, deep note, and sounded as if it was right on the shoreline. The girls tensed, and I felt a few hands grabbing ahold of me.
The waterfall, while loud and wide, didn’t cover the entire opening. To the right, an opening about six inches wide gave me a clear view of the forest and the edge of the pool.
Another few minutes passed, and I heard a snap of a branch and leaves falling as several big birds flew to the forest floor. They quickly started snatching up the baby crocs that were still wandering the forest, either lost or late to hatch.
I had hoped to see Rebecca Brown in her khakis, there to save the day, not these colorful and dangerous birds we’d already fought off yesterday. What if the rescue team encountered these winged beasts and was overwhelmed? I tensed again and took a step toward the opening.
Eliza gripped my arm like an iron vice and pulled me back an inch. The girls wrestled her off me, but she kept her eyes on me, wide and terrified, begging with everything but words for me not to leave the cave. She pointed out the opening, shaking her head.
I felt it before I saw it—the hunger…the desire.
Something moved in the shadows near the birds, almost like a shadow itself, but the movement seemed more liquid, as if the waterfall's mist played with my view. It moved behind foliage and trees in smooth, quiet movements.
My breath felt cold, and I shivered even as the hot steam from the water saturated my clothes. The thing, while looking like a shadow, appeared to have a head and two arms coming from its humanoid body. It turned and faced us with a featureless black face, as if it was wrapped in fabric. I froze, afraid that any movement, even breathing, might alert the thing to our presence.
Every part of me was screaming that this creature of the shadows was dangerous. I felt its hunger; it was starved, but it wasn’t a food kind of desire but a need for something different. It had disgust for something, almost everything, as if the island itself repelled it. It also had a mission, a determination that helped it plow through the hunger and distaste. I’d never felt such complex emotions before. The sharks had a few, but this thing had many threads of bad intentions that weaved a dark tapestry.
Moshe let out a deep, guttural growl, and Benji quickly picked her up. The cat looked as rigid as steel, the fur on its back and tail puffed out. The cat’s fear radiated off it and gave me a sour flavor in my mouth. I motioned for Benji to take the cat to the back. She did, petting the cat and whispering in its ear. It seemed to work, and the cat settled down.
When I turned back to the thing, it still faced us. It seemed to tilt its head up, and where a nose and face would have been was just an undulating blackness. It took one step toward us when a screech from above drew its attention. A few more birds landed. The birds pecked at the ground and seemed oblivious to the shadow creature near them.
I risked a breath of air. Most of my thoughts focused on keeping the girls safe. I didn’t know who or what it was, but I felt it. As human as this thing looked, I knew I couldn’t feel humans, and from what I felt, it had no intentions of rescuing us. Eliza had been right—if we had greeted the docking ship with a ticker tape parade, as planned, I don’t think any of us would have lived through it.
The birds feasted, apparently unaware of the dangerous thing near them. Shadow man or not, if we had been down there, we might have had a lot of trouble with our feathered enemies. If they killed each other, leaving nothing alive in the fight, that would be fine by me. A killing-two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing.
The shadowy figure moved in a swift motion toward a bird. That’s when I spotted the blade. The shadow slid past the bird, swiping through its neck. The bird’s head fell to the ground while its body moved around, apparently unaware that the plug for its computing power had just been yanked from the wall.
In a few more movements, the thing went through several more birds, similarly slicing them. The few birds left took flight in a flurry of screeches. Feathers and leaves fell to the forest floor, raining over the shadow.
It kneeled next to one of the birds who was bleeding badly from a cut along its neck. The shadow lowered down against the bird, mostly blocking my view from behind a series of bushes, but I heard it—a sucking sound, followed by a slurp much like my Aunt Meredith would do when she drank straight from the soup bowl.
A hand touched the back of my arm, startling me from my trance-like state. Aubrey gave me a terrified look, as did the rest of the girls behind her. They couldn’t feel the creature in the same way I could, and I was glad for that. As it went from one dead bird to the next, I felt a different feeling building from the creature. The deep hunger was still there, but some of it had been quenched.
It moved out of my view and for a few minutes, I waited, staying as still as I could. Then the coldness left me and the strange feeling of hunger dissipated into the nothing.
With a feeling of warmth, I turned back to the girls.
“I think it’s gone,” I whispered.
They all, but Eliza, rushed around me, hugging me in silence. I felt Kara shaking against me.
“What was it?” Aubrey whispered.
I was still processing what I had seen and felt. With a dry
swallow, I tried to find the words. That’s when the ship’s horn blew. It sounded close but not as close, as if it had left our shores, perhaps to haunt another island and suck the life from it. Then it struck me—the horn call itself. Not a short toot but a drawn-out blow, which in the boating world was a warning.
“What was it?” Benji repeated Aubrey’s words.
Then it hit me, and I said, “It was death.”
Chapter 4
I regretted my words and tried to explain that I didn’t mean death itself but more of an abstract way of what death was but the name stuck and the girls were upset thinking the grim reaper was out there.
They even insisted on waiting a few more minutes before creeping out from the waterfall and climbing up the rocky hill. A way out, I spotted the ship, sailing away from us. Eliza stayed below, staring at the dead birds.
We all walked back to camp, spending a few seconds to look over the corpses of the birds. They were a mess of feathers and meat, and Benji nearly hurled at the sight of it.
The camp looked normal, and even the campfire had a few red embers still glowing. Our partial shelter looked untouched. I didn’t think that shadow thing ever made it far enough in the island to have seen it.
“You knew,” Aubrey said, pointing at Eliza.
Eliza’s eyes went wide and then they narrowed, glaring at Aubrey.
“Yeah, I knew about the ship. It took my—”
Aubrey took Eliza by the shoulders, and I saw the muscles on both women flexing as they pushed against each other. Aubrey, larger and more muscular, should have handled Eliza with ease, but the little woman held her own as the two tangled.
“Tell me now how to get out of here. Where do we go?” Aubrey demanded.
Eliza, probably deciding she was not going to match up in pure strength, slid back and tried to elude Aubrey. Aubrey adjusted, but the momentum pushed Eliza backward, and she stumbled on a block of wood Sherri had used as a stool and they slammed against the white sands together.
“Get off me!” Eliza said, struggling to get out from under Aubrey.
“You know how to get out of here. You had a boat,” Aubrey said, some spittle spraying Eliza’s face.
Sherri and Benji were close, waiting for the second their friend might need help, even if it appeared Aubrey had things handled. Eliza glanced at the girls and stopped struggling, letting out a long breath.
“I don’t know what you mean. Out of where?” Eliza pleaded, gripping the bag she took from her canoe.
“And what’s in the bag?” Aubrey said, pulling at it.
“No!” Eliza yanked it back and hugged it tightly. “It’s private.”
“You have to know how to leave here,” Aubrey said, some of the fire leaving her voice.
“I just saved you. Is this how you treat people?” Eliza struggled to get the words out, tears building in her eyes as she gripped her bag against her chest.
Aubrey growled, gave her one last push, and got off of Eliza. She stomped away from her, but Eliza stayed on the sand, looking at each of us, terrified. I knew it wasn’t just Eliza Aubrey was pissed at. She had pinned her hopes and dreams of getting rescued by that ship out there, and Eliza was the easier outlet for her disappointment and grief. Aubrey’s energy had spread to the other woman as well, and even Kara was eyeing the new woman in our camp with contempt. Moshe paced near the fire pit, the fur on her back standing up as she stared at the newcomer.
“Aubrey, please,” I said.
She let out a huff and folded her arms.
I reached down and offered a hand to help Eliza get back to her feet. She stared at my hand, confused. Then she looked over me from head to toe. She didn’t take my hand and got to her feet on her own, while keeping an eye on my hand and me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re just a little confused, and we don’t know you, but we don’t want to hurt you.”
Eliza took a step back, eyeing the women. She wiped her nose and said, “That’s a strange way of showing it.”
“I think we all need to sit down and have some—”
“Mangos!” Benji said, shouldering her bow and bouncing over to the food bag. “I wish I had more ingredients. I have the perfect sweet mango chutney recipe for moments just like this, but I’ll see what I can make.”
Benji studied Eliza for a moment as a painter might eye their subject, weighing and trying to see through the layers and barriers. Benji had expressed that the proper mango recipe could solve almost any problem and also match the person’s needs. I had yet to see her try it on me, but I have seen her assessing me as she was Eliza. In time, I suspected she would present me with my mango recipe.
“What’s a mango?” Eliza asked.
Benji gasped and worked quicker, muttering that this changed everything.
“Eliza,” I said. “Is that ship coming back here?”
“I don’t know. It might pass by my island twice a year, I think.”
“Do you know what that was in the forest? The thing from the ship?”
“I don’t know.” A heavy tear fell from her eyes and streamed down her face. “This was only the second time I’d ever seen it.”
“Do you know a way back to the mainland?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Eliza asked, wiping the tears from her face.
“You know, civilization?” Aubrey asked. “Where all the people live?”
Eliza shook her head. “You’re the first people I’ve seen since my mother left.”
“Do you know how you got here?” I asked, starting to feel like an interrogator, but we needed fast information here before we made any assumptions with Eliza.
Eliza shook her head. “My mom said that she and my dad were on his boat when a strange storm hit them. They awoke on the island I lived on for my whole life, and my father tried to explore, but he was killed just offshore by what my mom called a sea monster. I’ve never seen one, though. I made her describe it to me.” She ground her teeth and touched the stone knife at her hip.
“A sea monster?” Sherri asked with wide eyes. “Sorry about your dad.”
The idea of a monster sent chills down to my toes.
“I never got to see him. My mom said she didn’t even know she was pregnant at the time.”
“You were born here?” Kara asked.
“Yes.”
Aubrey sat down on a stump and buried her face in her hands. I didn’t need my extra sense to know she had just lost some hope.
“How old were you when your mom…was taken?” I asked.
“I was thirteen,” Eliza said. “Or that was my mom’s best guess.”
“How old are you now?” Sherri asked.
“I had my nineteenth birthday three months ago; it was the same time I…”
“Same time you what?” Kara asked in almost a whisper.
“I get these feelings that I should do something, or something was going to happen. And then a few months ago, I had a strong urge to build a boat. It was an obsession. I carved that canoe out with a few axes and rocks, burning it in the middle of the night when I could hide the smoke, but I knew I had to get it done. I knew I had to leave that island soon.”
“An intuition?” Kara asked, rubbing her feet along the sand.
“Yeah, my mom said I had the intuition of a seasoned hooker,” Eliza said and then smiled. “She said she would tell me what a hooker was when I was old enough.”
“It’s a person—” Aubrey began to say.
“That helps others,” I interrupted.
“With hand jobs,” Aubrey muttered.
“What’s a hand job?” Eliza asked.
Benji cut the mangos on the cutting board as her face turned red.
“It’s just someone that fixes other’s nails,” Sherri said and then winked at me.
Aubrey groaned.
Eliza looked at her nails, probably puzzling why her mother would tell her that she had the intuition of a seasoned professional manicurist that gave hand jobs.
&
nbsp; “How does this intuition work?” I asked.
“I don’t know; it’s just a feeling I get. It led me here, to you all…I think to save you from that ship.”
“Your hooker’s intuition led you to us?” Aubrey asked, looking up from her hands.
“Yes, and it knew months ago. It’s why I built the boat.”
Aubrey groaned with disapproval.
“A feeling,” I said. “I know about those.”
“I feel the islands. I started off alone on a terrible island that almost killed me,” Kara whispered. “I like this island though. This is a good place.”
“I feel the rocks. It’s like they speak to me,” Benji said, popping a cube of mango in her mouth.
“I hear the animals, or sense their emotions,” I said.
She looked to Sherri and Aubrey but neither said anything.
“Do all people have these abilities where you come from?” Eliza asked.
“No, and we didn’t either until we arrived on these islands,” I said.
“All I’ve ever known is my island,” Eliza said. “This is the first time I’ve left.”
“You’ve been alone on your island for the last six years?” Sherri asked.
Eliza nodded her head.
“Oh no, sweetie, you must have been so alone,” Sherri said.
“I got by,” she said, holding her bag tightly against her body. “My mom showed me how to survive on that island.”
Sherri walked over to Eliza and hugged her. Eliza’s face got buried in her bosom. Most of the tension of us versus her, melted away at that moment.
“We got you now,” Sherri said, patting her head.
Aubrey huffed, but that was as much protest as she was going to put up.
My heart went out to Eliza. I couldn’t imagine what she had been through, living there on her own for so long. I would have lost my mind. Being alone, I would have risked too much to get off the islands, as her dad probably did. I wouldn’t have waited for the urge to build a boat and leave—I would have swum into the waters to try to escape and to find others. Every second I got to spend with these women around me was a gift.
