by Oisín Curran
I see a knife shine in the lamplight. Nolan puts it under the piano tuner’s beard. Then he pulls it across. The piano tuner’s eyes bang open. He gapes his mouth but he can’t talk. Dark blood pumps out of his neck. He wriggles for a second, then stops. He lies back. His eyes are still open, but he doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe.
Nolan stands and walks to the next person.
I see all our bodies in the light from his lamp. I’ve seen them like this before. Everybody’s lying the same way our dead bodies were lying in that cave. The cave was the future. It was now. He’s going to kill us all.
I shake Quill, then Rook, but can’t wake them. They must be drugged. Nolan’s sniffing Severn’s body. I’ve got seconds before he puts knife to throat again. I find a smooth rock that fits my hand and run behind him fast and quiet, trip, fall.
Nolan’s light turns toward me. I lie still. Lamp turns back and he bends over Severn.
I get up and run at him and jump. He hears, turns, and slashes. Cold on my arm and I drop the rock. But Nolan falls under me. My arm’s cut. He gets up, stumbles, curses, trips, falls and I’m on him. Grab another rock to brain him, but he’s got my wrist. Arm’s bleeding so I wipe my free hand across it and smear the blood in his eyes. When he tries to wipe it off, he lets go of my wrist and I grab sand and grind it into his eyeballs with the blood. He screams and rubs at the grit while I grab a rock and hit his head as hard as I can. He tips over and lies still.
I’ve got to keep moving, because I’m afraid if I sit down I won’t get back up. Severn is still sleeping, still alive, head on his rucksack. I search it because sailors have rope. The lamp shows a long piece of thick cord. I tie Nolan’s hands and feet. I don’t know good knots so I tie a lot of little ones as tight as I can and then knot the loose end around a boulder just in case.
Finally, I take the time to clean my cut and look at it. It’s a long, shallow slash across the bony side of my forearm. The bleeding’s nearly stopped. I wade ankle-deep in the water and clean it again before wrapping it with a rag from one of the boats. Suddenly I realize that I’m starving. A can of sardines from Rook’s backpack goes down fast. I sit down near Nolan, rock in one hand and his knife in the other.
I don’t mean to pass out but I must because I wake to find Nolan’s teeth nearly on the knife. Behind him the rope stretches so tightly it digs into his wrists and ankles. I give him a light whack with the rock because I don’t want to kill him. Not just yet. He groans and lies down again. The morning light begins to spread and my crewmates start to wake.
When they do, Nolan shouts that I’ve gone insane. He woke to discover me slitting the piano tuner’s throat and jumped me, etc.
He’s lying, I say when he’s finished talking. He was going to kill us all.
But why? Captain Severn says. He still doesn’t trust me. I’m a stowaway from nowhere who could very well be insane, as far as he’s concerned. I can’t really blame him—I’ve certainly done enough bizarre things by now to warrant his suspicion.
The piano tuner’s wife holds her husband’s limp head in her lap and rocks back and forth, his cold dark neck blood on her dress. I can’t look at her.
Follow me, I say. And they do, as they always do. I think I’m beginning to understand why. Rook and Quill follow me because they care for me, they worry about me, Chisolm follows because she believes in me, Severn because he’s in love with Quill and in thrall to Chisolm. And the rest, as far as I can tell, are sheep.
Severn brings Nolan, holding a knife to his back, and I lead the way to the wreck. Inside we walk the hallways. Nolan yells. He wants us to untie him. He shouts that I’m the murderer, he’s the victim. I open a door, then another, another. Empty rooms, boiler rooms, storage rooms. Not what I’m looking for. I hear crewmates muttering. Nolan is louder, nervous. I’m getting close.
Another door. Here it is, yes, this must be it. A room full of neatly folded clothes and neatly stacked human bones. We walk through it, everybody quiet. There’s a second door at the far end. We go through it and find them all. All their parts. Hearts pickled in sea brine; ears, eyes, and arms and legs smoked and salted, hung from the ceiling by fishing lines.
Did Nolan’s fall break something other than his leg? We leave the room full of human meat and go back outside. Nolan won’t answer any questions at first, but then he does.
I had no choice, he says.
When the ship wrecked on the island it was far from the shipping lanes, and all communication instruments were destroyed. A month later the crew ran out of provisions. They started fishing and gull-hunting—but the fish in this part of the sea are few and bony and the gulls are smart.
One day a young sailor named Oliver got sick and died. The crew was starving and the captain ordered them to gut the body and prepare it. Most said no. They couldn’t, wouldn’t. But in the end, their hunger got the better of them and then they ate Oliver.
Everybody listening shakes and twitches. Nolan notices and gets mad.
For your sakes, I hope you never learn what it’s like to really starve to death, he says. Your body starts to eat itself and you can feel it. You cannibalize yourself. You’re a cannibal whether you want to be or not.
He stops talking, but Rook gets him to go on and he does.
Oliver didn’t last long between them all and after a while they were hungry again and once you start down this path it’s hard to stop.
The custom of the sea, says Captain Severn, nodding.
Meat is meat, Nolan says. He shrugs when he says this and I don’t like the shrug. I don’t think anybody else does either.
The captain said they would draw straws. But the captain was the one who drew the short one, so he found his gun and shot himself in the head.
A man of great character, says Nolan, Although it’s too bad he wasted his brain. It’s too nutritious to spray across a beach.
They went on following the dead captain’s orders until the only one left was Nolan.
For a long time after he stops talking, nobody says anything. I think we’re thinking about our provisions. We’re wondering how long they’ll last. Who will make the best meal if it comes to that?
I look down and see a dark stain on the rock under my feet. Old blood maybe.
Suddenly I see Nolan in my mind stepping over his dead crewmates. Slippery guts spill out with blood.
I’m not the only one thinking this. Severn doesn’t believe Nolan. He’s asking him questions. Why is the storeroom so well stocked? If the story is true, the crew would’ve gotten smaller one by one, each body eaten before the next game of straws began. In the end, there shouldn’t be any provisions, just Nolan slowly starving to death.
If it wasn’t for the girl, you’d be butchering us now, Severn says.
Nolan doesn’t answer.
Poor Grimm didn’t escape, says Chisolm.
We look at the dead piano tuner and his wife, who still holds his head.
It’s time to go, I say.
We pile up the smoked and pickled remains of the ship’s crew and burn them. What else can we do? Nolan goes crazy. He screams, foam comes out of his mouth. He tries to escape. Severn ties him up even more and gets some help to throw him in one of our boats.
We do what Grimm’s wife asks and build a raft of driftwood. We lay him on it, pour diesel from the wrecked ship on the wood, tow it out to sea, and light it. Behind the raft flames, we can see the fire on the island. So can Nolan. He looks like he’s given up.
Suddenly he stands up and jumps overboard. He disappears for several long minutes, then comes back up. He got himself free of the rope somehow. He swims back toward the island. Nobody tries to stop him. They all turn away and look at the horizon. But I can’t look away. It takes a long time for Nolan to get back. When he does, we’re so far away I can barely see him. He’s trying to put out the fire. There’s some
thing else. What is it? A flicker. Behind the fire. The back of my scalp burns—my follower is there on the island with Nolan.
I turn away, sweating. Rook bends down in front of me and picks up a small mussel shell from Nolan’s seat. It must be what he used to cut himself free. Rook looks at the shell, then throws it overboard.
Good Lord! said Myles. Why so macabre?
He was looking at Bernadette’s latest canvas—blood-coloured paint spattered over a drawing of a woman holding a man’s severed head by the hair.
It’s Judith beheading Holofernes, said Bernadette. It’s macabre by nature. Nothing I can do about that.
It seems to me, said Myles, massaging his belly, That there’s no need for such excessive grotesqueries.
We had just finished brunch at the K-Gs’. Iris’s scheme had apparently worked because after my visit we were invited for waffles.
I disagree, said Bernadette sharply. We can’t turn away from the grotesque, we must face it. Suffering, pain, and death—it was only when Siddhartha realized those were the bedrocks of experience that he was able to step onto the path to enlightenment.
Myles was preparing a rejoinder, but Iris interjected suddenly to ask whether Athena was the model for Judith. Athena smiled enigmatically from the window seat where she sat with a book.
Just then Bill came in with Artemis and Apollo and showed me a strange piece of paper he had recently discovered in the attic. It looked ancient to me, yellowed, torn, and partly burnt.
It seems to be a map, he said.
And it was. Examining it closely, I saw that not only was it a map, it corresponded to the K-Gs’ property.
It’s a map of this place, I said.
Do you think so? said Bill with surprise.
On the map was a large X drawn above a boat in the northwest quadrant. The sketch of the boat matched the old dory sinking into the grass of the sloping lawn. I ran to it with Bill, Artemis, and Apollo close behind me.
The boat, filled halfway with soil, was overflowing with dead flowers, a portion of which had been wrenched from the ground and left to compost on its surface. Rifling through the weeds, I came upon an old glass bottle, and inside it was a note on paper that resembled, in its state of decay, the map. It read: My Prow Knows the Way.
What could it mean? asked Bill as Artemis, Apollo, and I dug around in the bow of the boat but found nothing. Hunting beneath, I found nothing again and circled to the stern, staring pensively at the yard. I was too caught up in the hunt to note that Artemis and Apollo were not really helping but rather lurking and nudging each other in the background. In the near distance was a chickadee bustling its wings in the grotty old birdbath. The prow pointed straight at it. Away flew the chickadee as I sprinted forward and, after peering quickly into the depths of the bath, reached in. Trying to avoid contact with the fresh white and pea-soup bird excrement, I pulled out a metal container. It was an old travel case for soap—I had one at home that I’d acquired at a yard sale and in which I kept a tuft of Shadow’s hair cut before burial. Opening the lid, I found a small brass compass. I dried it off and noticed a deep nick in its frame. When the compass’s arrow lined up with the north setting, the nick indicated west and so I went that way, Artemis and Apollo in tow.
Dead birch and maple leaves crisped under our sneakers, dampening in the chilled grass. A lone snowflake wafted from the clear sky. Clue by clue, we made our way from one end of the yard to the other, coming finally to a miniature ceramic castle, and as we climbed up to it I noticed suddenly that the evening was coming on fast. The castle, known to me from childhood playdates with the siblings, had a drawbridge, and when I lowered it I found a cigar box. Artemis and Apollo crowded around me. Bill had disappeared in the gathering dusk. Iris and Myles were loafing near the house, talking with Bernadette. On the heels of the dark came the cold. I pulled up the collar of my coat and, with fingers red and trembling from the chill and anticipation, I lifted the lid of the box.
Explosion to our left. A shot of fiery purple arced high into the sky and blew up in a rain of pink sparks. Then a red one followed. Then blue. It went on.
Happy birthday! shouted Bill as he came striding from the fireworks, What did you find?
I looked down and saw by the exploding lights that the cigar box was crammed to the brim with silver dollars.
It was three days before my birthday, but Iris had brought a cake and arranged for the surprise with the K-Gs because it was the weekend. Although the cake was delicious and the ice cream sweet, I felt strangely let down by the party. I didn’t like attention, didn’t like surprises, and the atmosphere of gloom in the Krimgold-Gragnolati household was so deep that not even balloons and streamers could brighten it. Above all, the party made it impossible to ignore the fact that the entire treasure hunt had been staged—I’d suspected as much, of course, but hoped I was wrong.
It was treasure, nevertheless, and while Artemis and Apollo noisily ate seconds, I brought my hoard to a low table in the living room and stacked the coins in neat heaps. Iris helped Athena clean up in the kitchen and Bill plunked down his chess set on the dining room table in front of Myles and began to set it up. A match between Myles and Bill was a ritual event and could last hours. Myles was good but impatient. Bill usually won because his method was virtually fail-safe. He played defensively, taking no risks, waiting, waiting until Myles impetuously made an error out of boredom.
Bernadette rose abruptly and paced for a bit before settling on me. Well? she asked.
One hundred dollars exactly, I said.
It’s too much, said Iris, emerging from the kitchen. Much too much.
Not at all, said Bernadette, rounding on her. Finders keepers.
They settled on a couch to talk. In the tiny kitchen Athena dried dishes, a world away as she stared out the window and sang along quietly with the radio on the windowsill, Is there life on Ma-ars?
Artemis and Apollo had also grown quieter now as they began working on their third helpings of cake and ice-cream, while next to them a dense silence radiated from the chess game between Bill and Myles, and I, for my part, refurnished my cigar box with its coins, perfectly stacked. It wasn’t hard to see, even at the age of eleven, that my treasure trove was directly linked to Iris’s diagnosis. Bernadette and Bill felt terrible about it all and sought a way to cheer me up and, via me, my mother.
It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I might, in small and unexpected ways, benefit from Iris’s crisis. So each family was trying, somehow, to cheer the other. Was it working? My cheer had faded nearly as quickly as it came, but the others seemed to be in slightly improved spirits, at least for now, all except Athena, who was indifferent and elsewhere in her thoughts. Behind me I could hear Iris explaining everything to Bernadette: lymph nodes, carcinoma, radiation, Mass General...
I turned to the small living room bookshelf.
A volume about famous disasters disclosed the gruesome details that followed the sinking of the Essex by an enraged nineteenth-century whale. This, in turn, led to the sorry fate of the Mignonette and came up to date with the grim, snowbound survival tale of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. And as I read these enumerated miseries, a familiar weight began tugging my thoughts down through soil, rock, and emptiness, until they fell upon that underground sea.
I don’t know how long we’ve been sailing away from Nolan and his island. Long enough not to feel sick about it anymore. All we think about is where we’re going. At least, that’s all I think about. I point, Captain Severn sets a course, we sail. But I feel doubt behind me. The crew doubts me. Nobody says anything. If they say they doubt me, then they’re lost on an underground ocean, following a kid pointing nowhere. I’m glad. If they’re scared, they’re quiet, and I need them quiet because I doubt too. City still pulls me, but in the dark nights I wonder why. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe when we get there we won’t find anything. Then the magnet in my bon
es will pull me overboard and drown me if my crewmates don’t. That’s a fear I can’t allow above water. To think about the consequences of what I do will slow me to a stop because I won’t know how or if I should go on. And I must go on.
hot bread
gunshot ghost
wall rainbow
blue snow
sinking boat
light bursting in darkness
betrayed girl
snow battle
book of my life
Thump! Our boat shakes, almost flips. Something big and smooth and shining wet slides out of the water and back down in a long, lazy curve.
Silence in its wake. We make no sound. No screaming, no yelling, no whispers, no breathing.
Thump!
The same long, smooth body breaching the water, then disappearing back into it.
Then nothing again. Seconds pass. Minutes. Is it gone? Can we fight it? Severn digs in his pack and pulls out a small, old gun and a hunting knife—what good are they against a beast this massive? Might as well shoot spitballs at it. This is what comes of adventuring with pacifist utopians.
The water bubbles, pops. A huge, smiling, furry face emerges from below. Unbelievably, it’s a face we know. And yet we don’t.
It’s Lutra. But Lutra grown into a giant, a nightmare otter.
Chisolm shouts her name and Lutra sees her and starts chattering—I say chattering, but actually it sounds like cannon fire at close range, or at least what I imagine cannon fire to sound like. What I’m trying to say is that it’s incredibly loud, although Chisolm doesn’t seem to mind. We cover our ears and watch Chisolm reach out to touch her otter’s huge wet nose. From that nose to the end of her tail, Lutra’s as big as our two boats placed end to end. Her whiskers alone are longer than me, and she’s close and trying to get closer, much too close. When she puts a paw on the gunnel of Chisolm’s boat, it tips. She wants to climb aboard. Now, at last, our silence breaks and everybody starts shouting and screaming because the boat’s about to flip. In the chaos of Lutra happily squirming up and Chisolm shouting to her to stay down and the crew yelling at Chisolm to control her animal, there’s a shot.
