by Oisín Curran
Grandmother lowered herself into her chair, crossed her elegant legs, lit up a cigarette, sipped her highball, and absorbed Iris’s murmured worries. The enumerated concerns: lost income, the irreparable car, the unknown prognosis —all was a background hum to the magnificent exploits of the Dukes of Hazzard, the Hardy Boys, the California Highway Patrol, Starsky and Hutch, Evil Knievel and the Boston Celtics. Extolling the virtues of Celtics point guard Tiny Archibald, Myles rattled off his vital statistics before launching into the story of his (Myles’s) bid for the Canadian Olympic basketball team, an ambition crushed by a weightlifting injury to his lower back.
When at last I went to bed in my aunt’s old room, I raided her bookshelves searching through the fat volumes about spies and racetracks for all the tawdry scenes of gunplay and sex before drifting to sleep, empty, grey, unsated.
The next morning before we left for the city, I walked into the trees behind Grandmother’s house. Unlike the fir and maple forests around our own house, Grandmother’s woods were made of towering white pines that had evenly distributed a soft, melancholy, faded brown floor of long needles. It was nearly silent in there save for the wind hissing through the living needles far above. The softened contours of a long-abandoned road were still distinguishable between the tree trunks, and I followed them deeper into the gloom. The atmosphere of those woods extended the air of mourning permeating Grandmother’s house. The yellowing black-and-white photographs of my grandfather, handsome and sturdy in his uniform on a battlefield in France, the paintings of Prague that he’d sent back, the Croix de guerre framed above her desk, all bathed in the same nicotine-coloured light, the same forlorn palette as that forest strewn with dead pine needles. There was an embankment on one side of the old road, and I stopped and looked over it to the slope below, where rested the rusting carcass of a beautiful old car. The tree into which it had crashed had incorporated the front fender in its girth. All the windows were broken and I could reach in to grip the wooden steering wheel. Standing on the running board I wielded an imaginary Tommy-gun. Surely that was how it had happened—the car careening wildly as it tried to shake the Heat, guns blazing through some 1920s night with a trunk full of rum. Then the crash, the sirens closing in as the dazed mobsters and their molls crawled from the wreckage and disappeared into the soft, concealing woods, a pack of bloodhounds on their trail.
I heard my name bellowed in my father’s voice and patted the car’s hood before departing. And then Grandmother was waving goodbye in the rear-view mirror of her car, which we’d borrowed to drive to Boston. There was nothing romantic about the Buick, but at least its axles were intact.
Even though Myles and Iris had both lived in cities, they had already managed to forget how to enter and exit one. And there are few things more distressing for rural drivers than approaching the tangled maze of metropolitan entranceways. As the high-rises climb the sky, the bridges and tunnels and on-ramps and off-ramps, the sudden splits, the lane changes, the inconsistent signs all contrive to give the impression of a secret code, a lock with a forgotten combination, if it was ever really known, that opens onto some battle zone of an urban class war, where you risk being dragged from your borrowed bourgeois vehicle and torn asunder by a grim and ruthless proletariat who remain deaf to any cries of solidarity.
That, at least, was the tenor of my mother’s rising panic as we wandered grimy neighbourhoods, having taken a series of wrong turns. But in fact the local proletariat, if such they were, appeared to take no interest in us until, at last, reassured by their indifference, Iris worked up the courage to roll down her window and ask directions. Naturally we were on the wrong side of the city, but with two simple turns we were set on a straight course for the hospital. And now Iris’s strung nerves began to vibrate in a discordant twanging of recriminations and regrets—those ten years of chain-smoking, those burnt summers in the midday sun.
Myles’s hearty agreement with these assessments was only gas on the flame. Was he incapable of sympathy? Iris wondered. Did she want him to lie? Myles asked. But here they clammed up, for my voice was suddenly speaking.
I had inched up from the back seat and stuck my head between their battling voices, and my own was saying that the Lizzy Madge was wrecked on top of the Isle of the Dead.
The night is black, the moon sharp. Captain Severn and Rook lower a ladder and check the hull with a flashlight. They climb back on board looking upset. When it came up under us, the island’s stones ripped the boat open so badly that it’s beyond repair.
Send a mayday, says Captain Severn to Rook, Lower the boats, and abandon ship. This island could sink under us at any moment.
We cannot radio for help, says Chisolm. No one can know the location of this island.
Captain Severn doesn’t look at her. This expedition is finished, he says. My plane is gone, my boat useless.
Chisolm doesn’t care.
This place has been secret for millennia. It must remain so to all but the most dedicated seekers. No radio message until we’ve explored the island. In the meantime, yes, prepare the lifeboats.
You do not give the orders, says Captain Severn angrily.
As they argue, I slip away. Still shivering uncontrollably, I run to Rook’s cabin, shuck my wet clothes, and pull on some of his. They’re far too big, but I belt the pants in and roll up sleeves and cuffs, then run down to the engine room. It takes a few minutes to collect what I need, but when I get back up on deck with a can of diesel and some matches, the crew are still arguing about what to do. These people are decent, as people go, but they lack decisiveness. The key is to keep the momentum going or they’ll stall, and I can’t afford to let that happen. I need them—I can’t take off on my own. I’m resourceful, but it’s important to have a clear understanding of one’s weaknesses. Mine is that I’m being chased by something too frightening to think about, and there’s safety in numbers. At least, I hope so. I have to convince them that there can be no retreat. There’s only one way to go and I will force us there if I must.
With the help of the gasoline, the lifeboats catch fire more easily than I expected. Before the crew notices the flames, the deck of the Lizzy Madge suddenly tips violently and everybody crashes into the gunnels.
I can hear Rook shouting, The moon! The moon!
Looking at the horizon I see that the moon’s coming up fast. Too fast. The island is sinking again. Good. Just in time.
To the lifeboats! shouts Captain Severn, too late. As the crew run toward me they see boats engulfed in fire.
We’ve come too far to leave! I yell from the gunnel, then turn and jump.
Because the boat has tilted so far over, the ground is just a few feet away. I land on smooth stone and, without looking back, head east toward the rising moon.
I hear the crew behind me, cursing, shouting, jumping down. Everybody follows. They have no choice.
I feel the island under me. My feet know every stone. Did I walk it before? Did I live here?
I don’t look back. Waves hit rocks as the island sinks. I can’t hear the crew over the surf, but I know they’re behind me. My legs walk on, remembering what I can’t.
Hidden stairway down to a grotto. Water already up to my waist. I splash across it to a tall doorway cut in the rock. Pitch-black inside, but Severn has a flashlight—we’re in a big cave with a high stone ceiling. It doesn’t look man-made. At the far end of the cave is an opening to a descending stairway. There’s a strange glow coming from those stairs, pale, from another world.
We’ll drown in here! somebody says.
The water pours in behind us.
Wait, I say.
The water runs into a channel. The channel takes the water through a small gap in the rock wall. The opening is blood-red. A second later we hear a hiss. Then scraping behind us. Slowly, a huge slab of rock rolls out from a pocket in the wall. It’s twice as thick as I am tall. It slides across
the doorway, sealing it tight. No water after that.
Lava, says Severn. A steam-powered door.
We’re trapped, says Rook.
We’re saved, says Chisolm. The girl has saved us.
For what? asks Captain Severn. We’ll be buried alive under the ocean.
Turning to me, he shouts that I’m a lunatic who’s destroyed our only chance of escape.
I feel like the stone around us. His anger has no effect on me. Why not? I don’t care that he’s angry, I don’t care that he’s scared. And he is scared. The fear is leaking out of him. And when I feel his fear, a sudden rush of pity nearly topples me. I try to calm him by telling him I will lead them where they need to go.
Where?! he shouts. The island is above us, a drowned pile of stones, nothing more.
He rounds on the crew yelling, It’s insanity to follow this child! She’s a maniac, she’s unhinged! You say she rescued us, but it was her madness with the plane that raised the island and shipwrecked us. And the burning lifeboats? Her handiwork again, no doubt.
Chisolm looks at me too. She says, Where are we going?
I see the look Severn gives her. It’s a look of raw hatred.
I point to the stairway. To City.
And that’s where I go. I walk down the steps. The strange glow lights my way. The stairs aren’t really stairs. They’re big chunks of rock slabbing down through a winding tunnel. I hear the crew behind me as they follow. What else can they do? They mutter to each other, What city?
The original city! says Chisolm. The girl speaks of the lost birthplace of civilization! We thought the Island held a secret and now we know what that secret is. It is the gateway to the past. To our origins.
There’s more muttering. How can they trust me?
She has led us this far, says Chisolm. She was sent to guide us. She knows where she’s going.
Sent? By whom? I remember no instructions. And do I know where I’m going? I walk, but feel blind. Each step is the right one, but I can’t see the path in my mind. I follow my feet where they lead. I have that and my pictures and City, its waterfalls and lilacs and tall buildings forming an invisible magnet pulling a lodestone in my belly. And why? Why do I know where to go? Why do I need to get there? To find out where I come from.
The cold of the ocean finally begins to seep out of me as we descend, because the temperature goes up the farther down we go. The pale light strengthens. It lights the grey-pink stone of the tunnel walls and the bands of minerals that run through. Behind me I hear talk.
Perhaps, says Severn, The light comes from some kind of powerful mirror, relaying the sunlight down here.
Yes, says Rook. From some rock near the island. The sun should be rising now up there.
Quiet for a while. Thinking about the island makes us all think about the Lizzy Madge. That’s what I think of. How it’s probably rising with the rising water at first. And maybe even floating as the island disappears under it. Floating alone, abandoned. And then the sea will come in through its torn hull until it sinks on top of the island. And I suppose that it will go on rising and sinking as that island rises and sinks until it crumbles to dust.
I wonder if Captain Severn is thinking about his boat.
The light may come from phosphorescence, he says grimly, Or from the fires of hell, for all we know.
And then the stairs end and the passageway levels off.
Stop, says Chisolm. We must rest for a bit.
I stop. They stand around and some sit on the ground. I move away from them and squat against a wall. They leave me alone.
I hear something. Or think I do. Back up the stairs—a quiet sound, maybe claws? Burning head, stink of wild animal. Just like the cave, just like the storm. The back of my skull is boiling. It’s after me. How did it find me? How did it get past the door?
We keep going! I say. And without waiting, I run.
I think this hallway resembles your underground tunnel, said Myles. We were lost in the Massachussetts General Hospital, trying to find the room where Iris had been taken to recover from surgery.
The light, Myles continued, Is similarly dim, the vague threat lurking. Don’t touch anything! Every surface is crawling with mutant bacteria that could devour your lungs or skin. Yes, we too are marching through the subterranean passageways of your mother’s illness in hopes of returning to the relative peace of our precancerous past.
Was that it? I wondered. Was my story just an elaborate metaphor for our current circumstances? Or was Myles displaying his talent for finding meaning where he needed it? And what did he mean by our pre-cancerous past? Wasn’t the cancer Iris’s?
A steel triangle hung above Iris’s hospital bed, and she gripped it to pull herself upright when she saw Myles and me coming through the doorway. Myles said she looked pale and drawn and she thanked him sarcastically, trying to let the remark slide off her but being so drained from surgery she couldn’t muster her armour and sank against the pillows as though in response to a slow-motion blow. And it was only upon seeing this that Myles realized the brutality of his observation and tried to soften it by alleging that actually she looked quite good, all things considered, quite healthy given that she’d just been under anesthesia for several hours.
Not to mention, Iris muttered, that a chunk of her leg had been cut out. They took the lymph nodes, the butchers, because they wanted to be sure, and they’re students so it looks like they did with a hatchet.
She was certain of this although she had not yet seen the wound since it was hidden under gauze. And, she went on, lifting herself up to see me better, I won’t know for months whether they got it all. What, she wanted to know as she ruffled my hair, Had I done that day?
In fact, it had been one of the best so far of our week in Boston. On Iris’s instructions, while she was poked, prodded, scrubbed, tested, X-rayed and cut, Myles had taken me on a tour of high-rises and children’s museums, playgrounds and swan boats. That day we had visited the least likely of locations, the Christian Science headquarters, within which was the best room I’d ever seen. It was round, completely round. In fact, it resembled my globe lamp at home, only on a giant scale. A giant spherical room, then, with doors at opposite ends of the equator and those doors were linked by a catwalk that spanned the room. As we stood in the centre of the catwalk, Myles said it was as though we were floating in a secular cathedral, because the sphere was made entirely of stained glass that was backlit and glowing. The stained glass was multicoloured and each colour represented a different country. I imagined that we had been miniaturized and gained entry to my globe lamp at home and that the names of the countries had been reversed so we could read them and that instead of being lit from within, it was lit from without. But the names of many of the countries were unlike those on my globe, as were the shapes of the countries, and this was due, Myles explained, to the fact that this room had been constructed in the 1930s. All things, he intoned, Are in flux, they wax and wane, there is no stasis, no certainty in this world. Thus the British Empire that you see there has crumbled, and India, for instance, is ruled by Delhi rather than London. Likewise, the French no longer hold sway over West Africa—empires crumble and others are born: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, all subsumed into the Union of Soviet Socialists. And thus also, your mother is with us now, but in the space of a month or a year she may be gone, and our lives too tremble on a slender catwalk above doom.
His Sermon on the Maps was typical of his general outlook that day, which had been manifested earlier at the science museum, where we had paused before a small display featuring a massive number. Words next to it identified the number as the world’s human population—the final digit ticked upward quickly, relentlessly, representing the rate of births worldwide, and Myles said gloomily, The human race, of course, is damned—soon we will overrun the continents and be wiped from the surface of the earth by famine and disease, if not by n
uclear apocalypse or by some alien race who will introduce an invasive predator species to control our demographics as we have introduced foxes to fix rabbits, or snakes to snooker rats.
It was his prevailing mood and it continued even in the hospital, where Iris, who had listened with enthusiasm to the story of my day, at last succumbed to her pain and pressed a button for a nurse. And as we waited, Myles tried to be helpful, saying, The pain arises from difference, which arises from judgment—erase judgment, breathe into the pain, become the pain.
Go away, Iris cried, You dime-store Roshi! And then, having said this, she lay back and breathed deeply. She relaxed, and by the time the nurse came she noted that the pain had subsided a bit. Nevertheless, she accepted the nurse’s pills and as she lay back on her pillows I told her that the night before I had dreamed that far below the Island of the Dead everybody was running.
They’re chasing me. Rook catches up. He calms me. I can’t hear the Follower anymore. Can’t feel it either. We have to go, I tell him. We have to get to City.
Yes, he says, Yes. We’re going. But we can’t run the whole way.
Everybody else is with us now. They breathe hard, they look at me hard, they’re not happy. I don’t tell anybody about why I ran. I start walking and everybody follows. We go on until we can’t and stop.
Where is my Follower? Does it even exist?
The dim, strange light begins to fade and soon disappears, leaving us in darkness. A darkness so complete I can’t see my own hands waving an inch from my face. Severn and Nolan have pocket flashlights, which they use to help everybody find a more or less comfortable spot to lie down. The mineral floor is hard and wavy, but smooth at least, and we are tired. The lights snap off and soon I can hear the breaths of individual crew members make the shift to sleep. Deeper, louder. Somebody snores lightly. I can’t sleep. I’m suspended between terror and happiness. Happiness because we’re on the path to City and whatever secrets it holds. And I am terrified that I won’t reach it in time, that my Follower will catch me first and fold me into its stinking feathers where I will suffocate and vanish. Feathers? What feathers? I know it has them—dusty, mouldering, hot stench of wild animal. I lie awake waiting to hear its scrabbling claws and feel the heating of my scalp. But no sound comes.
