The Island - Part 1

by Michael R Stark

  Chapter V - Portsmouth

  The southern end of the island appeared off the port bow an hour later, rising out of the blue water in a long, dark smudge that looked like an artist had taken charcoal to the horizon. Following the channel on the way across proved easy enough. Red and green buoys, spaced about a quarter-mile apart, marked the course. A bi-plane slid by overhead at one point, engine droning. I imagined the same waypoints looked like a dotted line drawn across the sound from pilot’s viewpoint. Red noted the left or port side. Green marked the right. On the way back, the opposite would hold true, leading to the old sailor’s term of “Red, Right, Return.” The simple phrase told mariners on which side of the buoy they’d find deep water, and for the geographically dysfunctional, which way the bow should be pointed.

  The inlet between Portsmouth and the southern Core Banks vividly demonstrated the shifting and fragile nature of barrier islands. Hurricanes had battered the narrow waterway, choking it with sand at times and carving out new paths at others. At one point, the label next to the tiny slice of blue connecting sound and ocean had moved several miles south after a series of storms redrew the coastline, erasing the waterway like a teacher swiping chalk from a blackboard.

  The Core of Engineers had stepped in and dredged a deeper channel in firmer sand three miles to the south. I’d first seen the inlet in the early eighties. The passage had looked man-made in those days with the sides clearly marked and arrow-straight. I stared at the opening between sound and ocean as we approached. Time had softened the crisp lines into a more natural coastline with wind and water combining forces to round out the entrance and wear down the neat edges on either side.

  Ahead, a concrete dock marked the point where the Atlantic ferry dropped off fishermen and campers. Beyond the scrub pine and stunted brush, a handful of tired-looking cabins sat near the dunes. I knew from my first visit to Portsmouth that they were used primarily by fishermen. The Park Service owned and operated the site which also contained a small shed where visitors could buy gas, water, and ice.

  The thought brightened my day considerably.

  “Hey!” I remarked, straightening up and craning out to look past the curve of Angel’s hull. “They have ice here.”

  Elise looked up with a frown.

  “Yeah, so?”

  I shot her a grin. “I just had a passing moment there where I almost fell to my knees to worship the god of fishermen and coolers.”

  The frown on her face deepened. She leaned over. “You okay, Hill William?”

  I laughed.

  “I’m better than okay. Ice means my tea will be cold and my glass will clink when I drink it.”

  She huffed and turned to Daniel. “The man is daft.”

  Ignoring her, I eased Angel into the slack water well away from the dock and killed the engine. The instant the motor died, I raced forward and dropped anchor in less than six feet of water. Once the plow-shaped anchor hit bottom, I let out another twenty feet of line before I tied the end off. That extra line, called scope by sailors, would allow enough slack for the flukes to dig into the bottom.

  With the sailboat tethered to keep her from drifting while I worked out the next leg of the journey, I headed back to the cockpit and checked the time. The little numbers on the GPS display indicated a passage time of one hour and ten minutes, marking the arrival at 1:08 p.m.

  I’d downloaded charts of the entire island chain to an old laptop before I’d left Tennessee. Despite the early arrival, I didn’t feel like celebrating just yet. The town of Portsmouth lay twenty-two miles north. With winter not far away, sundown would come by seven at the latest. At top speed, Angel made a little more than seven knots. Simple math said we could make it in three hours. I didn’t trust it. Picking my way through the sandbars and shallow water could easily double the transit time, especially if we grounded along the way.

  My original plan also contained a visit to the abandoned village at the other end, but adhered to no hard and fast schedule. I knew a channel deep enough ran along the backside of the island for several miles. I figured I’d wander up that way sooner or later. The thought of trying to make the northern tip on the first day hadn’t crossed my mind until Elsie invited herself along. I’d gotten us as far as my memory would allow. For the rest, I needed to look at the charts to see what lay ahead.

  The laptop sat all the way forward, stored in the V-berth along with much of the food Elsie claimed I didn’t have. The only place I could stand upright in the cabin was near the hatch, under the pop top. A toddler could probably walk through the rest, but no one else. That meant climbing across the gear I’d tossed in earlier, hunched over and trying not to bang my head on the ceiling. I looked at Daniel.

  “There’s a bag up in the bow, a computer bag right next to the shelves. Will you get it for me?”

  He nodded and jumped down the hatch into the cabin, disappearing in the forward end of the ship faster than I could have made it to the sink. A couple of minutes later, he and Elsie crowded in close while I fired up the computer.

  My first mistake became apparent the instant the chart appeared on the screen. We’d passed the natural channel running up the middle of the sound by a mile at least. A half-mile north of the position where we currently rested at anchor, the depth readings dropped to one or two feet all the way to the end of the island. The only water fit for passage lay behind us or out on the ocean.

  Left to my own devices, the choice would have taken all of ten seconds to make. No one in their right mind would call Angel a sea-going vessel, but the weather couldn’t have supplied a better day to be on the ocean. From what I’d seen, I could’ve paddled a canoe up the coast. The water looked like a mirror laid out from one side of the horizon to the next. The wind ghosted through the rigging barely strong enough to swing the vane at the top of the mast.

  Good water ran two thirds of the way up the core side of the island in a natural channel. Beyond that, we’d be picking our way through sandbars and marsh. We could run the entire distance close to top speed at sea. We couldn’t in the sound. The longer I looked at the chart, the more it became clear that the ocean provided the only certain path to making Portsmouth by dark.

  Still, I wanted Elsie to make the decision. With Daniel aboard, she had more at risk than I did. As captain, the ultimate responsibility for the safety of passengers fell on my shoulders. I didn’t doubt Angel’s ability, but Elsie might. I thought it over for a long time before I pointed to the still water at the mouth of the inlet.

  “In half an hour, water will be pouring through there. We can make it through now without much of a problem.”

  Elsie frowned and glanced toward the inlet.

  I kept going, trying to get my thoughts out before she interrupted. “As best I can tell, the ocean is as flat as the sound. We can make it in three or four hours by running up the coast. If we want to stay in the sound, we need to backtrack about a mile and pick up the channel running up the middle. It will take us most of the way.”

  The old woman pursed her lips, her face thoughtful. “Most of the way gets us to what we used to call stupid water.”

  She looked up. “The water isn’t stupid. People are for trying to go through it.”

  I nodded. “The last few miles would be nasty, for sure. That chart has depths of less than a foot across a lot of it.”

  I looked at Daniel as pointedly as I could before glancing back to Elsie. “I’ll go either way. I think we can make it fine on the ocean side, but the call is yours.”

  She hesitated.

  “The weather out here can change so fast you don’t know what hit you until you’re right in the middle of a bad day.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “I’m not worried about a storm slipping up on us. The air is too dry for that. It’s the wind that has me worried. It’s calm now, but out here you never know. Two hours from now, it could be blowing a gale.”

  I stopped long enough to let that sink in. “And we all know wh
at that means.”

  “That we do,” Elsie agreed.

  I tugged on my ball cap and settled it lower to block out the glare off the water.

  “Angel can run in swells quartering off her bow, but choppy seas? Four or five feet is about the max I’d want to try over a distance like that. Anything more and we’re in trouble.”

  She reached out and ruffled her grandson’s hair. “What do you think, Daniel?”

  “I want to go on the ocean,” he said without hesitation. “The weather man said the wind would stay low until tonight.”

  “What weatherman?” Elsie asked him.

  “The one on the TV this morning.”

  She looked up at me. “Well, there you go. The TV said the wind wasn’t going to be bad. So, let’s get going and do it while we can.”

  “Alrighty, mates,” I said in my best pirate voice, “man your stations, cinch up your life jackets, and secure all loose items.”

  With the tide at dead low, we had to hug the center of the inlet to keep from grounding. Long sandbars ran out from the islands on either side like long, tanned fingers. Gulls and pipers picked along a shoreline fifty yards away. I kept the throttle just above idle and eased the sailboat through the still water.

  Our timing worked out perfectly. Inlets act like a pressure relief valve, allowing water to slosh back and forth between ocean and sound. The moon’s gravity drove that process in the form of incoming and outgoing tides. The water ahead looked slack in the thin ribbon separating the land masses. Any other time, the current would have been fierce.

  I kept an eye on the depth meter. Less than five feet lay beneath her keel when we cleared the southern point. The place should’ve been crowded with fishermen, but only a few pickup trucks sat on the sand. I counted nine figures moving on the beach. All of them stopped to watch as we passed.

  We kept a straight course out until the depth dropped to nine feet. I stepped down into the cabin at that point and pulled the release pin on the keel. It dropped with a satisfying thunk. Angel straightened up immediately with the extra weight hanging below providing a much stronger center of gravity.

  The water outside the inlet proved almost as calm as it had on the sound. Long swells, so smooth they looked oily, drifted in off the ocean barely a foot high and spaced far apart. As soon as the keel slid into place, I climbed back into the cockpit and shoved the throttle forward. The boat leapt as if wounded. The speed readout on the GPS quickly rose to seven and a half miles an hour. Even though the throttle still had a few more notches of power to burn, Angel wouldn’t go any faster. Physics insisted that she would have to ride her own bow wave to do that.

  The bottom continued sloping downward, the water growing deeper and deeper as we left the island behind. The depth meter read twenty-three feet when I swung the boat into a turn that took us from a little north of east to due north.

  Seven and a half miles an hour sounds slow. It felt like we were flying though. I’d let Daniel steer on the sound and saw no reason to change captains with the sea so flat. I told him to forget about the compass and just keep the island about the same distance off the port side. The depth meter had an alarm feature. I set it at ten feet and told the boy to cut the speed immediately if it sounded.

  A few seconds later, Angel heeled abruptly to one side as a low swell struck her nearly broadside. The instant it passed, she leaned heavily the other way as she slid down the back side of the passing wave.

  Shock and fear washed over Daniel’s face.

  I grinned at him.

  “It’s okay. Steering out here will take a little more effort.”

  Looking out over the water, I pointed to the next swell. “Cut into that one and take it off the quarter rather than letting it sweep in from the middle.”

  I watched the wave with him.

  “Just so you know, the boat will feel a little weird when we go through it, like she’s huffing and puffing, but not going anywhere. That will pass once the wave goes by.”

  “Now,” I told him when the swell was about twenty yards off the bow.

  He pulled Angel to starboard in a gentle arc. The wave lifted her easily and slid underneath with virtually no impact or heel.

  “Now straighten us out.”

  The numbers on the GPS dropped each time he quartered a swell, and rose as we slid down the back of the passing wave. I sighed. The maneuvering would increase our transit time at the expense of making the ride smoother. How much more time was involved, I didn’t know.

  An hour later I had my estimate. We’d covered six miles with sixteen left to go. I headed below to tell Elsie. She’d retreated to the cabin shortly after we passed the end of the island. I found her on the starboard side bunk, fingers pressed against her temples. She opened her eyes as I approached.

  “Something wrong, Hill William?”

  I shook my head. “Just thought I’d let you know we’re making decent time. We should be at the inlet in a couple of hours.”

  “Good,” she said in a low voice. “That’ll give us plenty of time before dark.”

  “You take anything for that? I have aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, maybe even a Goody Powder or two.”

  She sighed. “I never get seasick, at least not like other people. My head takes to pounding as soon as I get on the ocean. Nothing helps.”

  The lines at the corners of her eyes looked deep and strained.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, “just get us there. That’s the best medicine you can give me.”

  I searched for something else to say, but couldn’t find any words that might offer any relief. Elsie was old enough to know how to treat her ailments and what worked best on most of them. If she needed to get there faster, I would do it if humanly possible.

  I made my way back to the stern where I relieved Daniel at the tiller. Rather than seeming disappointed, the boy simply slid over and stared at me. Ten minutes later, the same flat, smoky eyes still watched me. He swayed in rhythm with the boat, leaning back slightly as Angel climbed across a swell, canting forward when she slid down the other side. Occasionally, when a roguish wave sent spray arcing across the bow, he would flinch. Other than that, the six-year-old sat as still and quiet as a mannequin.

  My mind worked through a handful of reasons. At first, I thought maybe he just wanted to watch me steer. That idea died after a couple of minutes. He didn’t look at the tiller, didn’t seem to care if the boat quartered the waves in the same way or if the ride was smoother.

  From there, I ventured back toward thoughts of autism. What I knew of the condition centered on internalization. Daniel certainly seemed impaired when it came to social interaction and the constant stare could fall into the realm of repetitive behavior. At the same time, he seemed acutely aware of his surroundings and others. Not once had he seemed unable to communicate, but rather the silence came across as a choice.

  No matter how I worked it around in my head, the kid just seemed odd. Elsie muted that impression somewhat by being constantly active, vocal on her opinions and quick to fill any gap in the conversation. When she was up, moving and engaged, I had little time to think about the boy. The longer he stared at me, the more I began to wonder if she’d adopted that type of behavior partly as a defense mechanism to keep attention on her instead of Daniel.

  With too many avenues to explore and none of them producing answers, I decided to try and break the ice.

  “You seemed pretty sure earlier when you said Angel would get us to the island,” I said and shot him a lopsided grin.

  His eyes flickered as if his thoughts had been wandering and I’d jolted him back to reality.

  “Yes.”

  The word hung in the air. I waited for an explanation, for him to offer insight into his certainty, anything. None came. I shifted uneasily. Social etiquette demanded that I not let the fledgling conversation die. At that point, I could have pissed all over social conventions and walked away without looking back. Truth was, I wanted
him doing something other than staring at me.

  I waved my hand toward the mast.

  “Maybe someday, I’ll take you out and let you sail her, maybe when I bring you and your grandmother back. How’s that sound?”

  He looked up and studied the tall aluminum pole as if noticing it for the first time. After a long moment, he shrugged dismissively.

  “Grandma will come back. I don’t know if you and I will.”

  “Sure, you will,” I said, feigning a certainty I didn’t feel. “This is a fine boat. She’ll carry us back with no problems at all.”

  He grinned suddenly, the same abrupt and toothy smile that had sent chills scampering up my arms earlier.

  “Not if the monsters eat you, Mr. William.”

  I pulled my gaze away from his face and glanced at the water ahead. Angel took the light swells easily, her bow slicing through the glittering wavelets with barely a shudder. I couldn’t say the same for my back. The eerie light shining in his eyes had the muscles clenching along my spine. I could deal with the words. From any other kid, the simple sentence would’ve generated a wry smile and reassurance that monsters didn’t exist.

  Not with Daniel. The smooth face of innocence that belonged on a child his age didn’t exist. Other than the brief look of excitement when I’d let him steer, the boy seemed to have two states - either staring off into space like a zombie or uttering odd statements through a grin as garish as any that ever graced a Jack-O-Lantern.

  Relief swept through me when Elsie’s voice rose from the cabin. I swallowed the awkward response that had been forming on my lips.

  “Daniel, come down here please.”

  He rose and walked away without looking back. I watched him go, the chills clenching the middle of my back and prickling along my scalp this time. He never returned. Half an hour later, I peeked down into the hatch. He lay next to Elsie. Both looked as if they were sleeping.

  I left them lying and headed back to the tiller, happy to be alone and away from those eerie eyes.

  Three times on the run north, we passed camps on the beach. A couple with a small child stood on the sand and waved as we passed the first. Beyond that, I saw no one. Other than a couple more campsites, nothing else marred the twenty-two mile run up the coast. The beach itself looked like a strip of sand clinging to a wild tangle of scrub pine and brush. I knew from my previous trip to the island that camping meant either waking up in the middle of the night with breakers pounding right outside the tent or dealing with hordes of bugs, most of which bit or stung. The island offered no alternatives. You either slept on the sand next to the ocean or headed back into the brush. .

  Venturing behind the dunes at any time offered a hazard of its own. The swampy interior hosted millions, maybe billions of thirsty mosquitoes. Deer flies kept the smaller insects company and bit a hundred times harder. Where mosquitoes left their victims slapping every inch of exposed skin, the deer flies left them jumping and howling.

  Every can of Deep Woods Off that I could find went into the cart when I shopped for provisions. I’d seen Dad come scurrying out of the bushes with his pants still undone and trailed by a dark, shimmering cloud nearly twice his size. The sight of him waving his arms like a madman and stumbling over his shorts had sent me rolling with laughter. The lesson stuck though. I had no desire to paint Blood Bank on my rear and serve up portions to the little insects.

  We rounded the point at the northern end of the island at exactly four p.m. and slipped into the current of the incoming tide. The numbers on the GPS immediately jumped up a couple of notches to almost nine knots. Even though the depth finder still showed plenty of water underneath, I eased back on the throttle until our speed came in just under five knots.

  Boats from Ocracoke had delivered tourists to the ghost town for years, occasionally dropping off campers, but mostly hauling visitors and ATV’s across for an afternoon excursion. Somewhere up ahead lay the dock where they landed. The thought generated a confused blend of relief and worry. Any such facility would be out of the current and in calm water. Even so, I didn’t know if I could tie up alongside or would need to anchor out from an abbreviated landing. The vanishing daylight didn’t help. Glare from the low-hanging sun swept long shadows across the cockpit and offered a gentle reminder that night would be closing in soon.

  I needed to get off the water and find a camp for the night. Even more, I needed our one and only form of transportation safe. Dad had planned on sailing her for thousands of miles, skirting rocky shorelines and countless hazards along the way. Not only would he roll in his grave if I put her in jeopardy now, I’d end up stranded with an old woman and a little boy. Neither proposition held any appeal.

  I sighed and scanned the coastline. Even a sandy stretch of beach out of the main current would work.

  I didn’t have to wait long. The island terminated in a sharp point on the northern end. Just past it, a wide bay opened off to the left, curving inward like the back side of a sickle. Protected from wind and waves, the water inside looked like a sheet of glass. With an eye on the depth meter, I swung the boat toward the center, only noticing the small dock once I had the boat already headed in the right direction.

  We’d barely cleared the point and slid in behind the lee of the island when the first mosquito landed on my arm. I swatted it away and dug in the locker under the pilot’s seat for a can of Off. After spraying every bit of skin I could find, I turned to find Daniel standing in the hatchway. I tossed him the can.

  “You’ll need it. Make sure your grandma slathers some on too.”

  He looked doubtful.

  “Whatever you miss, they will find. Trust me on that one. I saw a guy wake up one morning with a swollen band of flesh half an inch thick around his neck. He’d coated everything else.”

  The closer we came to the dock, the less it looked like an option. Short and stout enough to hold the ATVs the tour boats carried, the surface stood nearly four feet off the water. I didn’t need a measuring stick to know that Angel would stick past the end of it. The only way I might be able to line her up alongside without becoming a hazard to other boats, would be to plow her nose into the island.

  The beach looked more promising. The gentle arc of sand curved around for a quarter mile at least. Thick patches of weeds choked the southern end. Just below the dock, a downed tree spread branches and snags at least thirty feet out into the water. I looked for a good spot and finally spotted an empty slice of beach fifty yards north of the dock where a thick pine marked the end of sand and the start of island proper.

  The depth alarm squawked when we were still a couple of hundred yards out. Daniel jumped at the shrill tones. I gritted my teeth and hunched over the display, punching buttons until the unit fell silent. A moment later, the sound of the keel dragging bottom sent me scurrying toward the cabin to crank up the steel blade hanging below the waterline. As soon as it slid into place, I flipped the lever that locked it in the up position and headed for the bow.

  Daniel sat at the tiller, his face as empty as it had been most of the day.

  “Watch me. When you see me wave, kill the engine. The switch is right there next to the throttle. Turn it left. Got it?”

  When we were about thirty yards offshore, I leaned out and waved my arm up and down. The engine died immediately. I let Angel coast a bit more and dropped anchor in barely two feet of water. I paid line out to port until the boat had slid past and then looped the end of the rope in a quick figure eight around the forward cleat. When it caught, the sudden strain pulled her nose sideways while momentum pushed her stern around. As soon as her bow turned back toward the inlet, I undid the line from the cleat and let her slide backwards. Ten or fifteen seconds later, she grounded only a few feet from the shoreline.

  I took up the slack in the line and secured it to the cleat. Racing aft, I grabbed another line from one of the seat lockers and looped it around the stern cleat. Taking the free end, I jumped off the back and tied it o
ff to the pine at the edge of the beach.

  Daniel stood in the cockpit, studying the shoreline. I wondered if he‘d already started regretting his decision to come along. The strip of sand possessed few enticing features. Barely deep enough to call a beach, the bay looked like a trash dump. Bottles, jugs, bits of foam cups, torn sections of netting, and other debris littered the strand as far as I could see. Nestled among them, huge clumps of dead reeds and rotting grass painted a thick black swatch along the line where water met island.

  “Well,” I said under my breath, “we’re here.”

  I didn’t have time to consider anything else. Brush rustled behind me. I turned as a man and woman stepped out of the undergrowth. Both looked lost somewhere in their twenties.

  The man waved. He stood close to six feet tall, had wild brown hair reminiscent of a Rastafarian, and a thick beard forming on his face. He wore frayed shorts cut from a pair of jeans. Time and the washing machine had left the edges raggedy at the bottom and laced with a white fringe that stood out against his deeply tanned skin. The light breeze drifting in off the ocean ruffled through a sleeveless white T-shirt that looked two sizes too big. His bare feet left a perfectly defined trail in the wet sand.

  The girl wore a pink hooded sweatshirt, flip-flops, and what appeared to be a thin pair of man’s sleeping pants. Despite the extra clothing, she looked cold. She’d pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail. Her face carried a pinched and worried look.

  “Name’s Joshua,” the man said, walking forward and holding out his hand. “I guess you’re stuck too, huh?”

  I studied them both warily. On a city street, I wouldn’t have given either a second thought. The brain expects social interaction in those situations. It doesn’t on a secluded beach miles away from anything else. The pair stepping out of the bushes had triggered alarms on both the flight and fight sides of the fence.

  Fortunately, sometimes reading people isn’t much more difficult than looking them directly in the eye. His didn’t waver or shift, and carried a sense of contentment.

  I reached out and shook his hand.

  “Stuck?”

  The girl frowned.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  She licked at lips that looked raw from sun and salt.

  “The president banned travel this afternoon - all of it. If you can’t get home by noon tomorrow, you are required to stay where you are. After that, no one can travel more than five miles from their present location. The government also instituted a curfew. Anyone caught out past ten at night will be arrested.”

  “That’s not the word he used,” Joshua broke in. “He said, ‘detained,’ like in a camp somewhere—and that’s if they don’t shoot you.”

  The look on his face festered somewhere between rebellion and fear.

  I wanted to ask them why they were on Portsmouth in the first place. The news had carried threats of a travel ban for two weeks. Interstates had been virtually empty on my way down, perhaps in some degree from the constant warnings, but more so from the threat of the disease. The philosophical and I’m-ok, you’re-ok types could ruminate all they wanted about positive reinforcement. Fear proved a powerful motivator. Nothing drove the learning curve quite as succinctly as the thought of dying.

  I wanted to ask them, but couldn’t without enduring the same scrutiny.

  “When did he make the announcement?”

  The girl pulled her arms across her stomach. “About thirty minutes ago. The National Guard, police, Homeland Security, and FEMA are all mobilizing to enforce the ban. They’re setting up distribution points for food and emergency supplies.”

  “You said ‘noon tomorrow,’” I pointed out. “What happens between now and then?”

  Joshua hitched up his shorts.

  “If you can get home by then, you’re supposed to go. At noon tomorrow, all travel stops.”

  He took a deep breath. “We heard that they’re expecting a thousand people to be dead by nightfall.”

  I wiped at sweat starting to bead across my forehead. “They say how long the ban would be in place?”

  His shoulders moved in a slight shrug.

  “The government is estimating four to eight weeks, but no one really knows.”

  Something flickered at the corner of my vision. I turned to see Elsie standing in the stern with Daniel.

  “We don’t know if they’re going to make us stay here,” the girl said. “We’re going to have a meeting up in the old town tonight. You’re welcome to come.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked her.

  “There are nine all together, six in our group and some kayakers who set up camp on the lower end of town. There are three of them, two men and a woman.”

  She hesitated. “We’ve not talked to them yet. Joshua and I were heading down when we saw you coming in.”

  I pointed to Daniel and Elsie. “There are three of us. We saw a group down on the southern end. I counted nine there. We passed three camps spread across about fifteen miles of beach. I only saw people at one of them though.”

  The thought prompted another question. The point at the end of the island had been clear when Angel had passed a few minutes earlier.

  “Where’s your camp?”

  Joshua pointed back toward the ocean. “We’re up under a willow at the edge of the beach. Like Denise said, we saw you pass. We thought we’d come down and say hello.”

  I nodded, trying to remember the stretch of beach just before the inlet. I couldn’t. I’d spent the time focused on navigating the narrow waterway.

  “When are you folks meeting?”

  “Seven o’clock,” he noted and turned to point up over the brush. “The old town is wide open. The houses are scattered around with a lot of room in between. We’re going to setup a fire in the center.”

  I looked back toward Angel.

  “Well, let me talk to them. They’re local. I imagine we’ll be heading back tonight. If not tonight, then we’ll be underway before dawn in the morning.”

  The girl raised her eyebrows in a questioning look.

  “I can get them home before noon tomorrow if we leave early enough,” I explained. “We made the crossing today in about five hours. I don’t think the woman will want to leave tonight. If not, we’ll be at your meeting.”

  Joshua took her by the arm. “Sounds good. We’ll let you get settled.”

  I watched them go, waiting until they had disappeared into the brush. When they were out of sight, I undid the line I’d brought ashore and headed back to the boat.

  Elsie watched me approach with a frown. “Why you bringing the line back in? Who were those people?”

  “Campers,” I told her. “We need to talk, Elsie. The president issued a travel ban at his news conference. You have until noon tomorrow to get home. The only question is, are we going tonight or leaving early in the morning?”

  Life is funny. A decision that seems sane and reasonable at the moment can look idiotic later. I knew how fickle the weather could be along this stretch of coast. Elsie knew better than I. We should have left that night, dealt with the darkness, and made the crossing back to Atlantic.

  We didn’t. Everyone was tired. Everyone wanted off the boat. She wanted to walk Daniel through the old graveyard and point out the family who had lived and died there. Elsie reasoned and I agreed with her, that we could leave early, make most of the run in daylight and have time to spare.

  With the sun hanging low across the sound and a chilly wind springing up out of the east, the plan sounded good. To be honest, anything sounded more appealing than turning around and running the same stretch of water that we had just crossed. I hadn’t slept much past five a.m. in twenty years. To me, the plan of action carried simple bullet points: get up early, make a pot of coffee, and do a full speed run back along the same route we’d followed coming over.

  Six hours tops, I thought as I added up the times in my head. If we left by six a.m
., I should have them on the mainland by eleven, and headed back before noon.

  It seemed simple.

  I hadn’t trusted simple math. I don’t know why I chose to trust a simple plan. All the decisions, all the points on a timeline that required the fates of three people to converge at exactly the right moment, had conspired to put me on the island with Elsie and Daniel.

  In the weeks that followed, I often wondered if the gathering of the right people at the right time had been more than chance. By the time I learned the truth, I didn’t want to know the answer. I wanted something I would never have again.

  Freedom.

  Author’s note

  This is the first installment of The Island. Parts of this story have been in my mind for years. Bits of it rose during story time, which at my house, was bedtime with kids in pajamas and Dad trying to figure out what the night’s adventure would be. Usually that path took us somewhere with dragons, flowers, and tried to end on a positive note so they could go to sleep understanding why even ugly flowers need attention. The rest has been up there banging around for a long time, some of it inspired by an old TV show I used to watch as a kid. I’m dating myself somewhat here, but The Land of the Giants provided not only inspiration for some elements, but fueled a lifelong blend of mind walks.

  When it came time to sit down and write it, the overall waffling point proved not to be the story itself, but the beginning. I didn’t like starting in fantasy land. We all venture off into fantasy at times, but I needed a connection to reality. For me, that connection is a rock. Upon it are carved mysterious symbols no one has yet been able to translate. Legend holds that embedded in the lines and figures are directions for opening the Gates to the Underworld. I’ve seen the rock, visited it a time or two. You will too if you make it far enough in the series.

  I also need to make some apologies in advance. The island depicted in this book is real. The descriptions in terms of basic geography are accurate enough. I haven’t been since the hurricanes went through a few years ago, so I don’t know what havoc the storms may have wreaked. The ghost town at the northern end does exist. The fishing shacks at the southern end exist. In between are miles of open beach, great fishing and absolutely wonderful camping. If you go, take everything you need. There are no stores, no real roads, no houses, and no electricity. The rule to obey is simple. If you don’t take it, you don’t have it.

  The more detailed descriptions, especially of the town, well, they’re not so accurate. In fact, the only claim to accuracy is that the buildings exist. Beyond that, I invented most of it. Don’t rely on the story to provide a detailed tour of the old village. It doesn’t. To those folks who have been there and feel offended, my apologies.

  MS