Dead Leaves, Dark Corners

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Resorting to booze to help deal with this place is understandable. Did I say that already?

  Back to the fifth and final journal, that of our Irish lad Timothy Murphy. I’m about to start on it. The opening page is marked ‘Day 1, Little Gull Island.’ Isn’t that funny? Just like mine. I can tell that I’m going to like this fellow. I expect it will be easier reading too, since Timothy’s residence here spanned 1976 to 1978. He may sound like a hippie, but at least there shouldn’t be any arcane references to decode. Wish me luck!

  Day 15, Ankou Island, 3:00 am...the witching hour!

  So I finished Tim’s journal. Man, what a trip. From what I can tell, Tim made it out of here alive. He did go a little Looney Tunes there at the end, but I think he managed to get his head on straight. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back the truck up.

  Tim, like Edgar, was here alone. He really sounded like a cool dude...like someone I could hang out with. The beginning of his journal was awesome. He was a painter. Brought his oils and canvasses with him, and in his free time, he’d smoke a little weed and paint ocean scenes or cloudscapes.

  Tim found the crucifixes. Wondered about them, just like me, but he was smarter than me. He didn’t even think about moving them. Figured they were there for a reason.

  Here’s where it gets weird. Even though the crucifixes were in place, Tim started to see the Shadow Creature, or something like it. He wasn’t like Edgar in the way Edgar could paint pictures with words. Tim could only paint pictures with paint. (HA!) He saw it where I first saw it, on the western shore, but he had a different theory about it. He thought it was something that came from Plum Island. You remember when I mentioned the Plum Island Animal Disease Center? It was in full swing in the 70s. Tim thought they were doing some weird-ass Frankenstein shit there, like creating new species of animals.

  He thought the Shadow Creature was something that swam over from Plum Island.

  So I don’t know about Tim’s theory, but I do know this: that thing is back tonight – and it brought some friends. I’m watching them through my Super Duper binoculars. There are eleven. They’re all different. Different depths and degrees of blackness. Different weirdly amorphous indistinct shapes. And they’re close enough now that I can make out two glowing embers where their heads should be. I was calling them Shadow Creatures. I think we can all agree to change that to something more fitting:

  Demons.

  Day 16 or 17, around midnight

  I don’t get it. The crucifixes aren’t working. The demons came back again the last two nights. They appear en masse...and they stare at me. They float around out there in a semicircle, with their flailing arms that almost seem to beckon, and they watch me with those glowing eyes that look like lumps of burning coal.

  I don’t know what to do. I re-read Tim’s journal and I think he did something...SOMETHING...to get them to leave, but I don’t know what it was. He acted secretive at the end, like he wanted to keep me in the dark about something. You know, I thought I liked Tim. Thought of him as a buddy, as weird as that sounds. Now I feel betrayed by what he neglected to tell me.

  Bastard.

  Day 17 or 18, sometime in the morning

  My watch stopped working, just like my phones and camera. I’m not surprised. Why would I be? Obviously I survived the night. I wouldn’t be writing if I hadn’t, right? Or maybe I didn’t survive and it’s not me who’s writing, but my ghost. Or my ‘spectre’ as Herbert and Giles would say. Hey, maybe I’ll run into Mabel here in the ghost plane. HA!

  I don’t really think I’m a ghost. Well, I MOSTLY don’t. My thoughts are a bit clearer at the moment. Not much, but a little. I don’t doubt that I’ve been seeing something at night, but I can’t say for sure that they’re demons. Hell, who could say for sure? Are there demon experts in the world? Too bad my phone doesn’t work. I’d get one of them here pronto. I’m just so tired, and my thoughts are fuzzy, like instead of brains in my skull, it’s been filled with cotton fluff...like those Build-A-Bears. I have fuzzy fluff between my ears, and I have to say it doesn’t work very well to think with.

  But even though it’s daytime, and there are no demons to be seen, I still have this creepy crawly feeling of impending doom. It’s almost like there’s something being absorbed into my skin from the island itself. What’s that word? Systemic. That’s it. Systemic fungicide keeps black spot off your rose bushes. You don’t spray it on, you put it in the soil. I know this because my mom grows the most beautiful roses you’ve ever seen. I miss my mom. I think Ankou is like that. There’s some kind of poison here that is soaking into me through the air and the water and the sand and the rocks, and it’s blocking coherent thought and clarity, just like that fungicide blocks black spot. That’s a good analogy. At least I think it is. When you have fuzzy cotton brains, you can’t always be sure. ;)

  Day 20-something.

  I think I’m in trouble. I’ve lost track of my days, and that has GOT to be a bad thing. If I don’t even know what day it is, how will I know when I get to go home? If I don’t know how many days are left, how can I set GOALS for myself? Goals are important, you know. We don’t get anywhere in life without goals.

  For some reason, I’m thinking about football. Man, I miss watching TV. I wouldn’t say I’m a big sports fan, but I do enjoy seeing the Cowboys hand the Redskins their own asses on Thanksgiving Day. Now I’m thinking about pumpkin pie and turkey. And turkey makes me think of birds. And birds make me think of eggs.

  I’m so tired.

  Day Who-The-Hell-Knows (HA!), Fucking Little-Gull-Ankou-Island, sometime in the dead of night

  I had one of those things...what’s it called? Oh yeah. An epiphany. I KNEW there was a reason those things multiplied from one to eleven. I don’t think they slipped through some opening to an alternate dimension or swam over from Plum Island. Do you see the significance of their NUMBER? DO YOU GET IT???

  I’ve been so stupid. When I discovered those eggs, I should have thrown them into the ocean. Remember when that first one was cracked open, but there was no baby bird in the nest? Then the first Shadow Creature appeared? THEN I found the other ten eggs broken in the same way, and still no baby birds...not a beak, not a feather, not a half-eaten foot. You know why? Because those weren’t normal eggs. They were DEMON eggs. Do you see how perfectly that explains everything? Why there is no wildlife on this HELLHOLE? Why would animals want to be in a place with eggs that hatch into DEMONS?!?! Oh my god. If I had only known. But I didn’t. And now I’m fucked because those things are GETTING CLOSER!!!

  Day 3248939434685491

  I think there’s a chore I’m supposed to do, but I can’t remember what it is. Something to do with a hidey hole. I keep thinking of that term for some reason.

  The demons are right outside. What’s next? Will they appear inside the building and surround me in a hellish demon circle? And then what? Will I feel those nothing hands on my skin and see those nothing faces inches from mine as they close in on me? Will they suck the air out of my lungs with their nothing mouths? There are some terrible ways to die, but right now I can’t think of any worse than that.

  I think it might be better, if I have to die, to do it on my own terms. I don’t want to be dragged down into the demons’ lair, which I imagine looks like something from Dante’s Inferno, just like Edgar tried to describe. So you see, I think I actually do have a choice. I’ll have to ponder that with my fuzzy wuzzy cotton brains. I’ll let you know what I decide to do...that is, if I don’t forget.

  Day or Night, Night or Day, I can’t decide what not to say.

  There was this guy who was okay but he also kind of wasn’t. Pity that he couldn’t escape but then none of us get out of here alive. HA!

  He thought he might persist but then that didn’t work out. I’m sad for him. Truly. It must be awful to be him but then probably lots of people have it worse. Or do they? Maybe not. Maybe he is the most unlucky of all unlucky people on the planet. In heaven or hell. Below or above.
Water. Air. Fire. Earth. Which oh which shall I choose?

  Starry stry nigt. Who needs lite? Not this boyo! No fier. Fier hurt. Wet stuf. Yes. Cold but not 4 long.

  Chooze. Dun and dun.

  ***

  “Can’t this rust bucket go any faster?” the old man yelled. He stood at the bow of the boat, shielding his eyes with a gnarled hand against the sea spray and the waves that smashed against the hull.

  “You’re lucky I even agreed to do this,” Captain Dan hollered back. “You couldn’t have picked a worse time to venture out into The Race. There’s a nor’easter bearing down on us. Docking at Little Gull will be a nightmare.”

  “I paid you enough to make it worth your while,” the old man snapped, then directed his attention back to the island.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Hold on, boy. Almost there.

  “Why did you wait so long to tell me about ferrying that kid out there?” the old man asked, not taking his eyes off the looming lighthouse while waiting for a response.

  “Tim, give me a break. I haven’t seen you in five years. Why would I track you down just to tell you about a ferry job? Besides, if you got on the internet or watched the news every once in a while, you’d have known about it.”

  The old man gave a noncommittal grunt. He avoided television and the internet as pointedly as he avoided human contact. Jim Beam and painting were all he needed these days. They were the only two things that kept him sane.

  “I’m going to tie off on the port side. The dock is rotten, so be careful where you step. You got twenty minutes, then I’m outta here. If you’re not back, I’m leaving without you and you’ll be stuck here overnight. Got it?”

  Tim looked at the forty-something man from the vantage of a seventy-something man who had seen things that would make most forty-something men curl up in a fetal position. His expression said as much, so he didn’t bother to respond.

  The wind screeched straight out of the north at a steady twenty-five knots; the temperature was dropping. Snow would arrive soon, followed by ice. He couldn’t blame Dan for his urgency.

  With arthritic fingers, he looped a red wool scarf around his neck and stepped off the boat onto the worm-riddled wooden planks.

  For a man of his advanced years who had been drinking heavily most of his adult life, he made decent time getting to the keeper’s building. A quick scan of the interior revealed no evidence of the kid himself, just his gear. Climbing up the spiral stairs took longer. He had to stop for a breather at the halfway point; pain was shooting across his chest now, but he continued the ascent.

  At the top, gazing out those windows at the view that was so familiar and so unwelcome, he thought he might collapse.

  “Fuck that. Murphys don’t faint, ya panty waste. Suck it up. Get on back down there and look for the books. If he’s anywhere alive, that’s where he’ll be.” He could hear the quaver – the voice of an old man. What in the hell was he doing back here? Why put his own life on the line for some idiot kid he didn’t even know?

  He grunted, then headed back down the stairs, carefully. The last thing he wanted was to fall and break his neck, or have a heart attack. He had thwarted the malevolent forces on Ankou Island once before; he would not let an old man’s infirmities make the island’s work any easier.

  He clambered over angular, slippery rocks on a northerly heading. Was it his imagination, or did the very topography of this place want to kill him? It almost felt like the rocks were reaching out for him, luring his unsure boots to PICK ME! PICK ME! Let me trip you up, you old fucker!

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts, realizing as he did that the island was already working its evil mojo...trying to make him think he was crazy. Trying to make him slip up.

  Well, he wouldn’t. If that young man were still alive, he would get him the hell off this island and never let anyone come back here again.

  He half-slid down a sandy hill. There were fewer rocks here, just as he remembered, except for that semi-horizontal boulder cliff with the granite mantle jutting out of it – a natural sitting place for someone who wanted to carve out a niche in the rock facing.

  He was only half surprised not to see a body lying on the ledge. His heart sank.

  He scrambled on down, forgetting to be cautious now. He calculated how much time had elapsed since Captain Dan had tied off the boat. Fifteen minutes? He better hurry. There was no way he would survive another night on Ankou. The island would never allow that.

  He arrived at the rusted metal door, noticing that the ancient lock was missing. He flung it open and reached inside. After forty years, the oilcloth was still intact, and even more strange was how familiar the smoothness of that greasy fabric felt. He shuddered, grabbing up the cloth-wrapped tomes.

  You can make it, old man.

  Dan was untying the mooring ropes when Tim finally stepped back onto the rickety dock.

  “I gave you twenty-five minutes, you old fart. What about the kid? Did he decide to stay?”

  Tim hauled himself onto the bow, clumsier now from the weight of the bundle inside his heavy coat; the added bulk went unnoticed.

  “He ain’t there. Let’s get going.”

  “What do you mean he ain’t there? Where else could he be?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said between clenched teeth. “Let’s get the hell out of here. You’re the one who was in such a goddamned hurry!”

  The captain fired up the motor, then said, “We gotta report this, you know.”

  “Of course, we gotta report it! We’ll do that as soon as we get to the mainland. Now shut the hell up and drive. Don’t ya see the sun is going down?”

  ***

  “Detective, that’s all I can tell you. Yes, I looked in the lantern room at the top of the tower and in the keeper’s building, just like you did. And just like you, I didn’t see anything other than the kid’s stuff scattered everywhere. Yes, I’ll be around if you have any more questions. I ain’t going anywhere. Oh and you’ll call me if the diving team turns anything up, right? I appreciate it, detective. Good night.”

  Tim’s knees popped as he stood. It was only three steps to the cupboard where he kept the bourbon. No need for the highball glass; tonight would require the whole bottle.

  He sat back down in the chair, and rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Shaking hands hovered over the books spread out on the kitchen table, arranged in chronological order. Anyone looking over his shoulder would notice the scars snaking across the wrists, perpendicular to the forearms. Then just above the scars they would see faded tattoos of four poorly-rendered crucifixes.

  He reached for the fifth journal, then lifted its cover. He smiled when he saw his own handwriting: Day 1, Little Gull Island. He closed his eyes as he was transported back in time. There had been some pleasant memories during his life on Ankou. And a hell of a lot of terrible ones.

  He opened his eyes finally, took a deep breath, and turned over the cover of the sixth journal. It looked new, despite some scuffed edges and inky fingerprints on the hunter-green leather. He suspected there were videos on the cell phone and photos on the digital camera he had found in the building, and which felt heavy now in the pockets of his trousers; he would have to figure out how to operate the newfangled gadgets before he could study them. He would need to work up some courage for that.

  He sighed, then began to read.

  The End.

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