by M H Ryan
I flipped through the blank pages behind this last entry. I closed the notebook and looked back at the opening and the room that held the man behind these words.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Aubrey said. “What the hell happened here?”
“He died here,” Sherri said. “A man went crazy and died here. We shouldn’t have even read that…thing.” She couldn’t even look at it.
“What do you think he found out about this place?” Eliza asked.
“I’m not sure, but it seemed a paranoia set in and he couldn’t shake it,” I said, thinking of my own feelings and the watchers. Was I going to go down a similar path as Danforth? Would the noises get so loud in my head that they’ll drive me crazy? Would I get stronger?
“Paranoia leads to conspiracy theories,” Benji said. “I had an uncle like this. He won’t even leave his house anymore.”
“Oceans will run red?” Aubrey said. “This guy went a little deeper than some 9/11 conspiracy. He wanted to kill.”
“He killed something,” I said. “He mentioned killing them several times.”
“Yeah, the watchers,” Eliza said. “Should we see what’s in this cave?”
“No,” Benji, Aubrey, Kara and Sherri said at the same time.
I laughed. “I guess we aren’t spelunking then.”
“What’s spelunking?” Eliza asked.
“Just a fancy word for cave exploring,” Sherri said.
“What’s your intuition telling you about exploring this cave?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, it’s mixed. Like good and bad could come from it.”
Thunder roared through the cave, giving Kara a jump.
“Well, I’m not one to shy from a little exploring,” I said, turning the notebook to the page with the map on it.
“Yeah, me either,” Sherri said, getting up. “It could be fun.”
We went back into Danforth’s room and found the small opening at the back. Moshe paced near it. She had been smelling the same spot earlier. She seemed nervous as I got down on my knees to the small opening. I crawled a few feet in before I felt a solid wall. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I could make out the gray wall. It looked as if someone had poured concrete into the tunnel and smoothed it out.
“What’s in there?” Benji asked.
“It’s sealed off,” I said, feeling the rough surface.
Etched in the concrete was a circle, with spokes on the inside and teeth on the outside, like a gear, same as the picture Danforth had drawn. I closed my eyes, feeling the symbol, and before I realized it, I had reached into the cave, deep, and there was a hint of something down there. Something like I’ve never felt. I jolted back and scurried out of the small tunnel, jumped to my feet and backed away from it.
The feeling was gone, but the memory of it lingered in my head.
“What?” Sherri said.
Kara knelt, touching the ground. “Something’s changed,” she said. “It’s growing or moving.”
“It’s moving, and soon I think it will be running,” I said, not knowing what that meant, but I felt it and so did Danforth.
“Are we in danger?” Eliza asked.
“No, not yet,” I said. “It’s slow, but we should leave this island as soon as we can.”
“He told us not to go down here,” Benji said. “We should have listened. Now this thing is coming. It probably killed Danforth.”
“We’re not dying in here,” I said. “Let’s get back to the plateau, and if I sense we’re any closer to danger, we’ll take our chances out in the storm.”
We gathered back around the top and sat in silence as the storm raged outside. The thunder increased in frequency, and waves sounded as if they were hitting the mouth of the cave. During all this, I kept my extra sense open. I felt what Danforth called “the watchers” out there. They were curious and—something new—slightly afraid. Maybe for the storm, but I wondered if it was this island or us being in this cave.
The other thing I felt was below. Far below. I knew it was alive, since I could feel it, but it wasn’t alive like me or the sharks out there. This thing felt connected to the island in some way. My head hurt, the more I thought of it, and I suppressed my extra sense and lessened the noise.
As the minutes and hours passed, the girls’ mood lightened, and Benji started telling Eliza about movies and movie theaters. Eliza had many questions, but most of all, she wanted us to tell her about music and sing songs for her. This time when we sang “Sweet Caroline,” she joined in for the chorus and held her hand over her mouth at the end, trying to stifle her tears.
I was never that good at memorizing music lyrics, but the girls were amazing. They had a competition well into the night about who knew more. They sang songs, laughed, and joked about what we’d been through so far. Their thoughts of what was below us had all but disappeared. Good, better for them to not dwell on what we couldn’t change.
As we got tired, I assigned shifts for sleeping. I took the first shift and sat in the glow of the cave, listening to the storm outside and the creature or maybe creatures, steadily increasing speed below.
In the middle of the night, Eliza screamed and grabbed her bag tightly. She went back to sleep almost immediately, as if she had never awoken fully. The girls stirred, but they didn’t comment and quickly went back to sleep.
Kara seemed as restless as she did the first night. I thought of waking her, comforting her, but it was better to let her rest. We had another big day tomorrow, and I couldn’t wait to get away from this island.
Chapter 12
In the morning, we left the cave to a partially clouded beach. It felt good to have its rays on my skin. The light in the cave felt unnatural to me. A heatless light. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had done something wrong, something very wrong, on this island.
“The plane’s gone,” Benji said.
The space that it had been was now just waves and rocks. I looked around in the deeper water to see if it had been pulled further out, but it was just gone.
“Storm must have gotten rid of it,” I said.
“After like seventy years, it leaves now?” Sherri said. “We could have salvaged more from it.”
“There’s another storm coming,” Aubrey said, looking at the thin clouds.
“Great. When?” I asked.
“We got most of the day,” Aubrey said. “But the next one might be even worse than this one.”
We crossed the beach and breathed a collective sigh of relief when the raft sat just as we left it on the grassy hill.
We got it back down onto the beach, strapped our bags to it, and were able to secure the aluminum panels to the raft through some of the rivet holes. We also had a new backpack with a parachute inside, thanks to Danforth.
Aubrey, Sherri, and I went back into the cave and retrieved his body. There wasn’t much weight to the man, and we carried him to a rock cliff edge, where we dug a shallow grave. Eliza seemed fascinated by the whole process and kept asking questions about burying the dead and why. She helped put a pile of rocks over the pilot’s body, and in the end, Aubrey set his shoes on the rock pile. She had never even tried them on. No one else moved to claim them.
With the raft loaded and ready, we pushed it onto the water and raised the sail. The breeze pushed against it, and I steered to the island that had probably consumed Danforth until the very end. I just hoped we didn’t have as much trouble as him.
Getting some distance from the island, I no longer felt the thing below, and I relaxed. We were away from it.
“Feels good to be off that island,” Eliza said.
We all nodded in agreement, but didn’t discuss it further. I felt the notebook in my pocket and patted it. If we found a way back to the mainland, I’d want something to give to his descendants. Maybe his wife was still alive. He mentioned a daughter as well. Danforth could have great grandchildren that would probably appreciate closure to the story.
“Yeah, it does,” I said, glancing back at
the grassy atoll.
“Snake,” Benji said, pulling an arrow back in her bow.
“Snake?” Aubrey said, looking at where Benji was pointing. “Oh, hell no.” She quickly moved to the center of the raft with a spear in hand.
I spotted it as well: a large, green snake, swimming on the surface of the water. I reached out to it and felt the wickedness in it, like a sour feeling in the back corner of my mouth. Every thought it had revolved around killing, eating, and reproducing. It bobbed up and down in the choppy water, about thirty feet from our raft. It raised its head, and its forked tongue slid out as it tasted the air. It liked what it tasted and moved toward us.
“Get ready,” I said, grabbing a spear.
That’s when a massive shark came from below and bit down on the snake, s. The shark’s momentum launched it from the seas, with the snake twisting in its mouth. The shark jerked to the side, splitting the snake’s body in half and then crashed against the water, sending a splash and wave in our direction.
The part of the snake with the head moved around on the surface of the water, and I felt the fear and anger in it as it tried to escape what was certain death. A dozen more feet and the thing stopped moving.
Almost instantly, a school of smaller fish created a boil around the dead body of the snake. The sound of splashes and sucking was revolting. In less than a minute, the boil of fish was gone, and there was no snake left behind, just a foaming patch on the ocean waters.
“Well, you don’t see that every day,” Aubrey said.
“Was that piranhas?” Benji asked.
“No,” Sherri said. “They aren’t in the ocean. Could be something like it, though. Not sure.”
Over the next thirty minutes, the shark that ate the snake kept near our raft but didn’t get too close, and I never felt the rage in it that made me think it was going to risk everything and attack us. The shark actually wasn’t a bad companion, as we kept spotting snakes in the water, but they were leery of the shark patrolling us so they kept clear.
“That’s the island we need to be on,” Eliza said, pointing to the lush, green island ahead.
As we approached it, I felt the creatures on it as thick as I felt the creatures in the ocean. A static of hundreds or thousands of minds racing about their day, in search of basic necessities, like food, water, or a mate. For me, it was snow on a screen, but I felt hints of that sour snake wickedness.
The island itself wasn’t much larger than Yang Island, but every inch of it was covered in jungle. The leaves were all massive and green. The trees had wide bases, covered in moss, and thinned out as they rose high into the sky like vines reaching for the sun. The canopy of the jungle spread over the whole island, giving deep shadows further into the jungle.
This would have been a tough place to start off at, and I wondered if we would be able to find a person in the thick foliage.
We searched the shoreline, but there didn’t appear to be any beaches. The green growth reached right into the ocean, exposing green roots as the waves rolled against them.
“Jesus,” Aubrey said. “It’s a freaking jungle in there.”
“This is awesome,” Sherri said. “I’ve never been in a jungle.”
“Yeah, but…” Aubrey said, taking a deep breath. “This shouldn’t be here. At best, it should be like the other islands, because of temperature, rainfall and such. This is a completely different ecosystem in the same vicinity as others.”
“Like these islands have anything consistent on them,” Kara said. “I’m curious to get my hands on this one, see what it’s like.”
“There’s tons of life on it,” I said. “Look, there’s a spot we can land.”
A small section of beach appeared behind massive trees that looked to be made of a thousand roots running over the ground and toward the ocean. They were taller than the trees back on our island, reaching higher than the palms. The canopy seemed to intertwine with other trees as much as the trunks, sending a deep shadow over under them. Between the trees was thick foliage that didn’t allow us to see deeper into the jungle.
A white beach stuck out from the greens and browns. It wasn’t much larger than a few of our rafts and appeared to be the only beach that hadn’t been overtaken with growth. We brought the raft up close to the beach and something moved in the nearby tree. I didn’t see it, but the branches and leaves shook as it traveled deeper into the jungle. A bird perhaps, scurrying away from the people.
The raft slid up onto the beach, and I jumped off the front first, looking for anything that might attack us. I tried to feel for the creatures, but there were too many to make out any specific threat, and I could feel their overall temperament changing. They weren’t welcoming us to their island, but they were curious and also nervous.
Moshe got low and growled at the jungle, as if there was something in it she didn’t like. Kara patted the sea cat’s stiff back.
Aubrey and Benji were next off the raft, flanking me to each side with their weapons. I laughed, thinking of us as an invading force, landing on some foreign land with weapons drawn. In a way, we were. This island may have never seen a human. They might not have a fear of us yet.
A green bird, about the size of a baseball, flew out from the forest and landed right on my shoulder. I reached for it when it bit me on the hand.
“Son of a…” I swatted at the bird.
Moshe hissed and jumped up to my shoulder, then launched off me after the bird, but the bird flew from its reach and into the jungle.
I checked my hand. The little bastard broke the skin, a dot of blood forming on the back of my hand.
“Stupid little bird,” Benji said, drawing her bow back.
“Save it,” I said. “Let’s get the raft up on the sand.”
We pulled the raft out of the water and then gathered some of the bags from it. I never wanted to leave all of our supplies in one place. We’d carry as much as we could on us. We left the plane parts, the parachute, and paddles on the raft. Then we tied it off to a nearby tree.
“Hello,” I called out into the jungle. “Anyone there?”
I waited a few seconds, hoping any humans would just come on out. The idea of going into that jungle wasn’t appealing. I’d seen too many jungle shows with spiders and creepy crawly type creatures in the jungle to not give it the respect it deserved. Plus, the snakes. I felt them in the jungle, and there were many of them. We’d seen plenty in the water, and I imagined this is where they all came from.
Damn snake-filled jungle. What kind of crap luck did we have?
Kara kneeled and touched the sand and then moved closer to the jungle before turning back to us.
“The island isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either. It’s hard to describe, but it feels deceitful, like a lie,” she said, and shook her head, as if not satisfied with the answer.
“Well, better than hell island,” Aubrey said. “I can work with an island that’s a liar.”
“Maybe under all this jungle beauty is a hideous beast, waiting to entrap us,” Benji said in a joking manner.
“No, it’s like it’s hiding something,” Kara said.
“Well, hopefully it’s hiding another person from the boat,” I said. “Where do you think we should go, Eliza?”
“I think we should go that way,” Eliza said and pointed straight ahead.
“I should have kept those shoes,” Aubrey said with a sigh. “I got the right side.”
“I’ll watch the left side,” Benji said.
“Eliza and I will take the front,” I said, holding a spear, with a knife at my hip.
Eliza nodded and held onto her homemade knife.
“Kara and I will watch our backs,” Sherri said. They both gripped their spears.
“You ladies are amazing,” I said, shaking my head in wonder.
“This just better be worth it,” Kara said. “Something feels off with this place for me, and if a tiny bird can draw blood here, no telling what the hell else is holed up in this island.
”
“Snakes,” Benji said and Aubrey grabbed her spear tighter.
“Freaking snakes,” Aubrey said. “I hate them.”
“I think they’re constrictors, so just don’t let them get around you,” I said.
“Oh, that’s real comforting,” Aubrey said. “If one gets anywhere near me, I’m stabbing it to death.”
“I’ll be right there with you,” I said. I didn’t like snakes either.
Moshe meowed and walked near me in a circular path. She seemed on edge about something.
Eliza and I took the first steps into the jungle. It felt warmer under the canopy and wetter, as if it had just rained in there. We didn’t get ten feet in before the wall of bushes, ferns, and leaves impeded our way.
“Benji, Kara,” I said. “Can we get those axes?”
Kara and Benji handed us their homemade axes. Not much more than a stick with a rock tied to the end, but it should work for getting through some of this jungle.
I chopped at the foliage and smashed it with my ax like a hammer. Eliza did the same, and we moved forward into the jungle.
“We’re not exactly dressed for jungle trekking,” Aubrey said, snapping the front of her red bikini.
“Oh, come on,” Sherri said. “Can you imagine how sweaty we’d be?”
“Yeah, it’s not too bad for you guys,” Benji said. “Imagine if you wore something as a goof and were stuck with it?”
Sherri laughed. “I like your Sponge Bob bikini.”
“Well you should, you’re the one that bought it for me,” Benji said.
“You look sexy in yellow,” Sherri said.
Benji rolled her eyes and went back to scanning the jungle around us.
There were birds like the little bastard that nipped me on the beach, but I think they kept back because of Moshe. That cat prowled around us, hissing at the birds and jumping up anytime they got near us. There were a few butterflies as well, and what looked like a moth flew by. This island had what none of the other islands had—a large population of small animals.
The sounds of the jungle echoed around us, from birds chirping to other things making what sounded like a scratching sound. The elevation of the jungle continued to climb steeper as we got deeper in. In about ten minutes of chopping, hacking, and stomping through the jungle, I had a good layer of sweat building on my shirt.
