by M H Ryan
We were getting low on food, and the idea of something different piqued my interest.
“Benji, can you Sherri and Aubrey tie off the raft and collect any food from the trees, while Eliza, Kara, and I search for the chickens?” I asked.
“Chickens,” Benji said, wide eyed in excitement. “Chickens would be amazing out here.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Sherri said. “You guys smell smoke?”’
I took a whiff and did smell it, like burning wood. I took a few steps back and spotted a trail of smoke coming from deeper into the forest.
Leaving the raft, I followed Eliza into the forest where the smoke started to become thicker, not bad enough to choke on but a subtle haze.
“Something is eating this island,” Kara said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Even since the time we’ve landed here, I can feel the change. The good parts of this island are losing a battle against the bad, and it's getting more powerful by the hour. I think it won’t be long until this island is a horrible place like Yin Island.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Eliza said.
“Sorry,” Kara said. “What’s your intuition telling you?”
Eliza laughed. “It told me to get the hell off this island months ago—a journey that led me to you guys. But I feel as if there’s something still on this island for us. But half of me feels like we need to get out of here as soon as we can and leave it alone.”
I frowned at the admission. If there were something else on this island, we’d need to find it. It could be another sister or someone else. I still hadn’t seen Mario from the ship. He was co-captain and the engineer. I wondered where he was in all of this.
As we traveled deeper into the forest, I saw Kara lagging behind and slowed to let her catch up.
“Something’s bad this way,” she said.
“Yeah,” Eliza said. “I’m getting bad vibes as well.”
“Probably just the smoke,” I said. “But if there are chickens somewhere on this island, then we’ve got to risk it. A continuous supply of eggs could change everything.”
“Yeah, I guess,’ Eliza said. “I hope Henrietta is okay.”
“Henrietta, the chicken?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s like Henrietta the Fifth if I get technical.”
“What’s with that name?” Kara asked. “I mean, is a chicken born with that name or something?”
“I don’t know, but she has a couple friends, Poly and Opal. All three should be here somewhere. Oh, and Hank, the rooster.”
“Well, we should find them all,” I said.
“Not sure how Moshe is going to feel about that,” Kara said.
We pushed through the barren forest but didn’t spot any chickens. The smoke thickened and I developed a burning sensation in my throat. I had to see what was creating this smoke though.
Then through the smoke, we found it: a tree that had split through the middle and each section lay to the sides of the massive stump at the bottom. In the heart of the tree, hot embers crackled bright red with heat. I might have thought that this tree was a victim of a lightning strike last night, but I had seen this before, and it looked exactly the same. This same tree had been on Yin Island.
The island rumbled with an earthquake and a branch from a tree crashed to the ground behind us.
“This is so bad,” Kara said, staring at the tree.
I had the urge to just lay before the tree and give up on everything. The girls could find their way back home. They would get rescued eventually and then none of this would matter. I was probably getting in the way of them getting rescued. They’d be better off without me.
“It just doesn’t matter,” Eliza said. “I mean, I’ve never even seen a man naked in my life, and now here comes one, but he’s covered in girls that are so beautiful and dynamic. What could I even offer him? I’m like a candle against the sun.”
“Exactly, I’m holding everyone back,” I said, not really hearing what Eliza had said.
“We need to leave,” Kara said, but she wasn’t moving, and tears spilled from her eyes. “There’s something in the tree.” She spoke through gritted teeth.
“Eliza’s right. It doesn’t matter,” I said, looking at the red embers.
“I didn’t say that,” Eliza said, but I was lost in the tree.
The embers, they didn’t look that hot. Maybe I could touch them. I took a few steps forward, but I felt so tired. Perhaps I could just lay down on them and take a nap. Cass knew what was best, just to sleep through this whole mess. I could just wake up on some Disney Cruise a week from now, and Mickey Mouse could be giving me high fives while I lose at a bacon-eating contest. Of course, is there any real loser in a bacon-eating contest?
“Jack!”
I could hear them chanting my name. This would be better.
“Jack!”
A hand grabbed my arm and swung me around. Another hand swung at me, but I reflexively blocked it.
“Kara?” I said, holding her raised hand in mine. “Did you just try and slap me?”
Tears fell from her eyes, and she grabbed me with both hands, pulling me.
“We need to get away from it,” she said, but I looked back, wondering why.
Why do anything? This whole world was lost, and what could I do about it? The watchers were probably the real rulers of this world. They could have it. I would leave them and whatever else was in that cave. I’d leave them alone.
“We need you,” Kara said, pulling on me.
Eliza grabbed my other arm, and they both pulled me away from the tree. With each foot, I realized more about why they were taking me. The tree. It was terrible, just as Kara had said.
Glancing back, I spotted the smoldering tree through the smoky haze and hated it. It made me want to give up, and I would never give up. What the hell had happened?
“I’m okay,” I said to Eliza and Kara, but both of them kept pulling me with all their strength. “Hey, it’s me, I’m okay. I’m better now, thank you.”
They stopped and I pulled my hand free from them.
“What the hell, Jack?” Kara said, crying and hitting my chest with soft punches. “You were saying crazy stuff, and you wouldn’t respond to us.”
“We need to leave this place. The chickens will just have to find a way,” Eliza said.
“Something bad is building here, Jack, and we need to leave before it finds you again,” Kara said.
Right then, a chicken clucked and scratched at some nearby leaves in search of food.
“Henrietta!” Eliza said, rushing over to the chicken and picking it up.
With chicken in hand, we rushed back to the raft.
“We need to leave,” Kara said.
“What happened?” Sherri asked. “Have you been crying?” Sherri looked to me for answers.
“There’s something bad in the forest, just like Yin Island,” I said.
“It’s eating this island,” Kara said.
“Dude,” Benji said. “You found a chicken too?”
In Sherri’s hands were two chickens.
“Opal and Poly!” Eliza said.
Moshe walked off the raft, growling at the chickens.
“Moshe,” Benji said, kneeling down and shaking a finger at the cat. “These are our chicken friends. You are not allowed to eat them, okay?”
“Can we leave, please?” Kara said.
“The rooster?” I said, sensing the forest but coming up with nothing.
“No, Jack,” Kara said. “We need to leave now.”
“We gathered a bunch of nuts too,” Sherri said.
“That’s awesome,” I said, scanning the forest for the elusive fowl.
I hated leaving a resource behind, but Kara glared at me. If I made a move away from the raft, she might tackle me to the sand. Eliza would probably help. I had to cut bait from this island.
Moshe meowed at me and then stared at the chicken in Eliza’s hands.
“Moshe,
no,” I said, and the cat backed away, averting her eyes from the chicken. I sent a simple thought to Moshe that the chickens weren’t food. I wasn’t sure if it worked but the sea cat seemed uninterested in the chickens suddenly.
“Chicken cage,” Eliza said, stuffing the chicken into Benji’s hands.
“What?” I said, but Eliza was already running into the forest.
“I’ll be right back.”
I quickly inspected the tie-downs the girls had done, and it looked good. They had pulled some of the rope off the raft and then tied it off to the bundles of wood and supplies. The design kept the integrity of the raft, integrating the wood piles into it. Pretty smart, actually.
In less than a minute, Eliza came running back holding a cage made of thin branches in her arms.
“A chicken cage,” she said, trying to catch her breath.
Eliza stuffed the three chickens in the cage and tied the cage off at her corner of the raft.
With Cass and chickens on board, we dragged the raft to the water. We struggled to get the raft into buoyancy, but once we did, the girls jumped on board.
Aubrey grabbed my hand, helping me up after I shoved us past the first wave.
“Open the sail,” I said, and Benji and Kara raised it up.
The wind took hold of the sail and pushed us past the waves. The larger logs we used on the bottom helped greatly with cutting through the waves and getting out beyond them.
Soon, we were on the open ocean. I glanced back at Eliza’s island and saw the plume of smoke rising from it. When Yin Island had that same plume, it drew the attention of the ship and the shadowy figure that ran it.
I reached out into the ocean, feeling for the creatures, and came back with the static of a tame sea. It didn’t mean I could relax, but at least there wasn’t some ravenous shark or killer whale out there. In fact, the ocean seemed lighter, as if fewer creatures were swimming around down there. Maybe the storm shuffled them around.
“Can we make a stop at that cave island?” Aubrey asked.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’ve been kicking myself ever since leaving that blanket and shoes. We can’t be leaving supplies. This might be our only chance at this.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I had an urge to visit the island as well, but not for resources.
“Oh, come on. We need a blanket,” Aubrey said. “I can wash it out, and we could even boil it back on our island.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Sherri said. “Hell, I’d take that jumpsuit as well. We could make all kinds of clothes out of it.”
“So now we’re grave robbers?” Benji said. “Gross.”
“I was actually confused on why we didn’t take it,” Eliza said. “I mean, it’s not like that guy needs them anymore.”
“I’m with Jack,” Benji said. “I don’t want some dead guy’s clothes touching my skin.” She gave a shake of revulsion.
Aubrey got next to me, touching my hand that held the rudder.
“Plus, I’d like to be under a blanket with you. You get me that blanket, and I’ll make it worth it, over and over,” Aubrey whispered.
“What do you think, Eliza?” I asked, and I think she really knew I was asking. What was her gut telling her?
She stroked Henrietta through the cage and said, “I don’t know. It’s just a blank when I think about going there or not. That’s strange…for me.”
“Well, it’s not a bad thing then, and it’s on the way. We’ll just grab the blanket and shoes, but not the jumpsuit.” I glanced at Kara, and on her right arm was lyrics from the song “Jumpsuit.” “Some things should be left on that island.”
Kara and I had shared in each other on that island, and in that way, I had a great memory of getting to know a fantastic woman a little better, but I did something else on that island that I had an urge to check on—to see if it had even been real.
“Okay,” Sherri said with a sigh. “Cass could use a blanket, anyway. Her heads always bouncing around on hardwood.”
“Okay, we’ll stop by the island and grab the stuff,” I said, not liking it, but it was hard to argue the logic.
We could use Danforth’s stuff, and he wouldn’t miss it. His book and lasting memory sat in my front pocket. Tapping it, I thought about his descent into what seemed like madness. Was this gift a disease? Was it eating away at me? Were these watchers just an early symptom? Danforth said he killed them, but they kept coming back, and in the end, he wrote he knew it all and knew what he had to do.
The dates placed it seventy years ago, but the story felt fresh to what I was experiencing. Plus, we both touched what was deep below in the cave. We shared more things than I wanted to.
As we neared the cave island, I felt a change in the ocean, a silence. I closed my eyes and reached out, but there wasn’t anything but Moshe and those chickens. Moshe seemed devious—not a huge surprise, given her interest in the chickens—while the chickens were just a blank page fluttering in the wind.
“I don’t like this,” Kara said, looking at the cave island.
“Me either,” Eliza said, sitting near the chickens and giving Moshe suspicious looks.
Thankfully, the cat seemed to have lost interest in the chickens and lounged near the edge of the raft, licking herself.
“It’s just a grab and go,” Sherri said. “We buried him right on the shoreline.”
A hundred yards off the shore, I felt them. A watcher, maybe several of them. I paced around the small space I had on the deck and scanned the waters for dark shadows. They were closer to the shoreline, I felt that, but I couldn’t see them.
I grabbed the scope and scanned the waters. Nothing.
“What’s up?” Sherri asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” Kara said.
“No, I mean that I don’t feel the static of the sea. The creatures are gone. The only thing I feel is the watchers.”
“What?” Sherri said, looking into the waters below.
“I haven’t felt this vacant of an ocean since Tar Island,” I said, finally able to place where I’d felt this before.
“Should we still land?” Benji asked.
I shook my head and said, “Yeah, we’ll just make it quick. Sherri’s right. We can’t pass up on stuff like this.”
The waves rolled by us, pushing the raft toward the familiar coastline with its too-coarse sand and a cave that shined with the brightness of silence.
The raft slid onto the shore, and we jumped into the water, pulling it just enough onto the sand that it would stick but close enough that it would be easy to push back in.
Lieutenant Danforth had been buried at the back of the beach, right next to the rocky cliff.
With a knife in hand, I jogged toward the spot we buried him and stopped at the hole in the ground.
“Where the body?” Aubrey asked.
“We put it right there,” Sherri said, pointing at the hole.
I spun around, looking for the thing that did this, but I felt nothing but the watchers out there in the waves. They were watching me, and seemed nervous. They should be nervous, because I was sick of them spying on us.
“There’s footprints!” Kara exclaimed, pointing at a footprint in the sand near the hole.
Benji knelt down and touched the sand.
“You feel anything?” I asked.
“It was compressed not long ago. Maybe a few hours,” Benji said.
“How the fricker-fracker could you know that, Benji?” Aubrey asked.
“Me?” Benji said, pointing her finger at Aubrey. “Who knew about the storms and even knew exactly when they were ending last night?”
Aubrey crossed her arms and looked away, lips pursed. “I wanted that blanket.”
“Hey guys,” Sherri called, walking toward the cave. “I see drag marks here.”
Once I saw them, they weren’t hard to follow, like two lines in the sand. So Danforth had been taken.
“We s
houldn’t go that way,” Eliza said.
“Is that your intuition talking?” I asked.
She bit her lip and looked at the cave ahead, then shook her head. “No, but that’s just it—I don’t feel it on this island, Jack. Something is wrong here.”
“It could be a hog that dug him up and dragged him back to the cave,” Sherri said. “We can’t just give up now. I sort of need to know what the hell happened here.”
“Everyone, get your weapons, and let’s make this quick.”
In a minute, we all grabbed our weapons. We followed the trail over the rocks and indeed, the two drag marks from the grave went right into the cave.
“This feels like the start of some horror movie. Freaking Pennywise could be in there, dancing away, getting us to float or some shit,” Benji said, bow in hand.
“It also could have been a person,” I said, pointing to the footprints near the drag marks. “In and out, okay?” I said.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t done a hundred other dangerous things; what was one more?
I entered the cave with a spear in hand, leading the way. I heard a deep bass tone and saw the ceiling vibrate with luminosity as we entered. The drag marks faded away as the sandstone was too hard to leave marks. I walked up the hill, hearing another bass tone, as if some kid in his car was on the street doing a bass test.
“What’s that noise?” Benji asked.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
I resisted the urge to reach out to feel for what might be making that noise, because deep down, I had an idea that if I did, there would be consequences.
The plateau was just as empty as we left it, and I stared at the doorway. Another boom and the room darkened.
“Something’s down there,” Eliza whispered.
“Jack,” Kara hissed, but I didn’t respond.
I walked down the back side of the plateau and went to the doorway. Laying on the floor was Lieutenant Danforth, exactly as I first spotted him. It was as if we had never moved him. Even his shoes were back on his feet.
“What the fuck?” Aubrey said.
Another boom and this time it was clear where it was coming from. The small hallway that had been filled with concrete.
