Oakwood Island

by Cormier, Angella; Arseneault, Pierre C;

  Behind it, in the shattered window of the Stuart’s bedroom, a much smaller predator nimbly hopped up on the ledge. A large orange tabby cat sat down and sniffed at the air.

  * * *

  Norah was finally done with her shift. Standing in front of her locker, she removed her white sneakers and pulled on a warm pair of grey wool socks and then her fur boots. She grabbed her winter coat that was hanging in the locker and placed it on the bench just behind her. She packed her lunch bag into her large backpack, along with a book she had been reading during her breaks.

  Everything put away, she reached for her coat, but tired as she was, she didn’t notice when something fell out of her pocket and underneath the bench. Once her coat was on and buttoned, she headed for the door to walk the few blocks home. She had a quiet evening of rest and relaxation planned.

  Beneath the bench, lay a single clue to the secret life Norah was leading. The Sylvester the Cat keychain held a single key, to a lock that hung on her basement door at home. Without the key, the lock would remain intact upon her return. Realizing that the key was missing from her pocket, Norah began to search for it. Eventually finding it under the bench, relief washed over her. It would have been a long night indeed for Norah, had she not found it.

  Chapter 4

  Lost

  June

  A few days after his conversation with Detective Burke on the ferry, Jack’s red Ford truck came to a slow stop in the hospital’s rear parking lot. Used mostly by staff and for deliveries, this lot was hidden from the main entrance and from the traffic that passed out front, both pedestrians and drivers. Though he wasn’t exactly hiding, he didn’t want to bring any attention to himself during his regular visits to the young patient in the psych ward. For the past six months, Jack had been coming to visit Maggie on a weekly basis. Usually not for a very long stay, and often he would only walk in to her room, see if her state had improved or worsened, and would be right back on his way again. He kept a low profile, trying to not get noticed too much, as he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion. His reasons for visiting Maggie and checking up on her would be hard to explain. Because of this, he played it safe and kept to himself during his visit.

  Making his way across the parking lot in the hot afternoon sun, Jack recalled how Maggie had escaped from the trailer. She had a fierce spirit, that one, he thought. Back then, she had managed to trek for who knows how many miles in frigid cold temperatures after having witnessed things he never imagined could happen on his home soil. Now, he thought, Maggie was but a body with nothing but a glimpse of a spirit inside of her. He felt it fading away with every visit to her bedside. The first few months, the doctors had run many tests to see what was causing her to go into an almost catatonic state. Though awake, her mind was usually elsewhere. The results always came back without answers. The medication cocktails did nothing more except to slow down the degradation of her state after the first two weeks. She seemed to stabilize a bit after that, but she continued to worsen, albeit at a much slower pace than when she first came in.

  During her six month stay Jack came to realize that the evil that had captured Maggie on that winter’s day was still very much present and continued to wreak havoc on her mind. He knew somehow that she was the key. He couldn’t lose sight of the bigger evil at play here.

  Walking into Maggie’s darkened room, he gasped when he saw a young woman sitting in the rocking chair by Maggie’s bed. The dark haired woman turned her head and smiled.

  “Oh, Shelley, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Jack pulled the door open again, ready to leave the room.

  “Don’t be silly, Jack. Come in!” She waved him over, gesturing him to sit in the chair next to hers.

  “Well I was here, and just thought I’d come visit. She doesn’t have any family, and most of her friends from the orphanage left the island years ago.” Jack pulled the chair over a few feet away from Shelley’s, and sat down. He took off his old hat and dusted it with his lean, tanned fingers.

  “I know what you mean. We worked together for a long time and she and I always got along so well. I try to come in when I can, even if it’s just for a few minutes.” Shelley pulled something out of the pocket of her cutoff jeans.

  “Today I wanted to bring this in and see if she was awake, maybe it would help her to come out of it.” She opened her hand and Jack’s eyes fell upon a small chain with a gold cross pendant. “When I went in to feed her cat I remembered her wearing it every day, right up until a few weeks before her abduction.”

  Standing up, Shelley undid the clasp of the chain and gently put it around Maggie’s neck. Maggie, her eyes fully closed, never stirred while her co-worker adorned her with the only childhood memento she ever owned.

  “Hopefully you’re right, Shelley.” Jack said, looking at Maggie, waiting for her to open her eyes. But of course she never did. The few times he had seen her with her eyes open, the dead stare from them had sent chills down his back. Whatever it was that put her in this state, kept a strong grip on her still, months later.

  Getting up from the chair, he cleared his throat while putting his hat back on his head, then pushed his long hair over his shoulders and down his back. He pushed the chair back against the nearest wall and turned to Shelley, who was now standing next to the hospital bed.

  “I need to head back. I wasn’t planning a long visit.”

  Shelley turned to face Jack and smiled at him. “Thanks so much for coming by, Jack. I just know Maggie would appreciate it.”

  Nodding and smiling back at her, he left the hospital room as quickly as he had come in. He wasn’t sure how much Shelley knew about him, or if she had ever heard the stories that the locals would often recount whenever he was in town about his abilities. The last thing he wanted was to be asked about something that he wasn’t really sure he understood completely himself. Though he had become accepted and not shunned by his community, something that he was grateful for, he knew that wherever he went, there was usually some story being told about one time or another, with this one or that one. It didn’t bother him, so long as nobody asked him about it. Honestly, Jack wouldn’t know what to tell them.

  * * *

  The voices crept inside Maggie’s head like maggots in a rotten corpse. Her mind tried to keep them out, but it was no use. Months and months of the man screaming at her and the witch’s shrill voice had driven that slightest bit of her true self down into the depths of her being. Now, her mind like a chasm, full of the echoes of all these unearthly voices, stood small and silent on the edge. Once in a while, she was able to look past the chasm, and see some light. She’d hear familiarity in the distance. Bits and pieces of dialogue, a word here or there that she knew she recognized, but could never remember from where. Now was one of those times.

  The light appeared and she heard a soft female voice, it sounded so close to her. Then a deeper voice, more than likely a man’s. She stretched her arms out, in her mind, trying to reach that light. The light that her eyes never saw. She felt something cold. It came out of nowhere, a light touch on her chest and then it was gone. She smelled a familiar fragrance. Her nostrils took in the smell of the woman’s perfume and Maggie grew dizzy with confusion. The light dissipated and then came the screams again.

  The man’s voice, screaming at her to do something, anything. She felt like she was falling asleep again. So many times she had tried to come out, to cross the chasm in her mind. But every time, this voice came, demanding things of her that she couldn’t comprehend. She saw pus filled maggots falling from the darkness and onto her. She fell into a slumber once more.

  Over and over again, the confusion, the panic, the unconscious slumber all recurred time and time again for months upon months. Somewhere, deep inside, her spirit knew it had to keep trying to escape.

  * * *

  Across the island, Detective Burke thought he’d made his first big break in his
case. Nearly six months after the abduction victim at the trailer had escaped, there had been no real leads to follow. Though there had been reports of dead animals and missing pets in the months prior to Maggie’s abduction, until she escaped and the trailer was discovered, there had been no proof that whatever was attacking the animals wasn’t just some rabid or wild animal loose on the island.

  The detective rolled up his long shirtsleeves and pulled on a pair of white latex gloves. He was standing in the Oakwood Island Police Department, in a back room with a few bright fluorescent light fixtures overhead. On the table in front of him sat five medium sized hard cover notebooks. The small black garbage bag that they had been in was set aside and the five books were spread out side by side in a row. Above each book, was the evidence bag it had been sitting in. The books were in decent shape, although some moisture had gotten inside the garbage bag, and there was obvious humidity damage to the outer covers, but what was inside the notebooks is what held the most importance. Luckily for Burke, and the community as a whole, the notebooks had been found the day before by a young boy and his father while exploring the caves along the cliffs.

  Burke opened the first notebook. Though the ink of the first page was a bit smudged, it was easily legible in block print and the journal entry in this first notebook sent a rush of excitement through Burke. He knew this was something. Finally, a lead of some kind, allowing him to take some kind of direction with this case.

  DATE November 3rdLOG #001

  Subject: Cat Method: Inhalation

  Notes:

  5 mins: Incessant meowing and scraching

  15 mins: Scraching floor boards, claws broke off and bleeding. Meowing and growling.

  45 mins: Meows stopped. Lost mobility in paws. Pupils dilating.

  2 hrs: Yellow appearing in eyes. Pupils fully dilated. Test subject died at 3:27pm.

  DATE November 17thLOG #002

  Subject: dogMethod: Injection

  Notes:

  5 mins: Sniffing, going around in circles, appears confused.

  10 mins: Growling.

  15 mins: Pupils dilating and turning yellow. Drooling heavily.

  28 mins: Lower jaw has retracted and hangs lower than normal. Howling sporadically.

  1h20 mins: Gnawing at hind legs. Excessive drooling. Snapping and growling at his own body reactions/movement.

  1h50 mins: Has chewed off part of left hind leg. Bleeding profusely. Test subject died at 6:33pm.

  DATE Janary 21LOG #008

  Subject: CoyoteMethod: Injection

  Notes:

  *Injection completed in upper right hind leg. Canine bit my wrist and hand during injection. Ingessted what it bit off. Subject ran away. Unable to track physiological transformations.

  DATE FebraryLOG #013

  Subject: DogMethod: Ingestion

  Notes:

  Pupils dilatted and yellow. Growling. Jaw dislocation and funtion change. Howlin exessively. Death within 2hrs from running head first into the wall, repeateadly.

  DATE MorchLOG #015

  Subject: DeerMethod: Injection

  Notes:

  Pupills dileted and yelow. Aparent confussion and disorientd. Droolin proffusely due to jaw dislocatian. Colapsed and unnable to get up. Yelow pus comming out off ears, nose and moufh. Dificulty breafhing. Subject died.

  DATELOG # 023

  Subject: Native Male Human Method: Injection – 130mL

  mid 30s

  Notes:

  Brain hemorage and DEAFH whithin fi20 minuts for FIRST humen test subject

  Burke managed to go through three of the log books within a few hours before calling it a night. It was clear that the writer was suffering some sort of breakdown by the final entries. He also knew things were about to pick up for him, work wise. But as many hours as it would call for, these were the days he lived for as a detective. He felt excited at the turn of events that this discovery of clues had brought forth.

  Unsure as of yet if the note taker was in fact the killer himself, he still felt confident that it was a step towards solving this maddening case. Turning off the light to the makeshift evidence room, he closed the door and locked it, knowing he’d be returning bright and early in the morning. Smiling, he rolled down his sleeves again and headed towards the station’s rear exit.

  Chapter 5

  Norah

  September

  The darkness fell as a heavy dark curtain over Oakwood Island that evening. The light wind held a chill, but the mildness was refreshing as Norah walked through the puddles left behind from the recent rainstorm. She lived only a five-minute walk from the medical centre. Her house sat perched atop the small slope of a road that ran just on the outskirts of town. Surrounded by weeping willows, as many of the other homes in the area, the house was modest and charming. She had been born in this very home thirty-five years earlier. The distance between the houses had served her family well.

  Through generations, they had required distance and privacy. Now, as she muddled along she reached into her coat pocket for the keys to the front door. She found the keychain jingling merrily in between her fingers and pulled it out. She smiled as she climbed up the front stairs, happy to be home after a long shift at the hospital. The key to the front door turned and clicked in the lock. Norah wiped her feet twice on her door mat and went inside.

  As every night before, she locked the door behind her, stood as quiet as a mouse in a cat’s alley, and turned her attention to the stillness within the walls of the house. She listened to its breathing and its pulse, felt the rhythm of its structural essence, and once satisfied that all was in order, only then did she proceed to the closet to put away her boots and coat. At the closet, she removed her coat and then reached for her Sylvester the Cat keychain in her inner pocket. The unzipped pocket was the first clue that something was wrong. She always kept that zipped up, the keychain secured in place. As her fingers reached in and Norah found nothing but the softness of the lining, panic rose from her gut and into her throat as she recalled her forgetting to get a second key made for the old lock.

  She started mouthing “no...no....no....where is it?” She turned the coat over in her hands and checked her side pockets. The emptiness made her heart sink further in her stomach. She ran outside and retraced her steps from her front stairs over to the end of her walkway to see if Sylvester the Cat had fallen out somehow. Empty-handed, Norah climbed up the stairs once more, but her smile was now gone. A grim and worried look had spread across her face. She kicked off her boots at the front door, and went through her coat pockets again. When she came up with nothing, she frantically searched her scrubs. When those proved to be empty, she went through her backpack. As she was putting her bag away in the closet, she heard a muffled laugh coming from the kitchen area.

  “Damn it!” Norah ran over to the kitchen and stood in front of the white door that led to the basement. Two deadbolts secured both the top and the lower parts of the door. A large lock hung just above the doorknob, ensuring adequate protection against the basement’s occupant. Norah had installed the lock as added security when Amy had once tried to break free, almost succeeding had she not managed to get there in time. The two deadbolts had worked loose from Amy’s constant bashing against the other side of the door. This lock now was the added peace of mind to help her sleep at night.

  “Nooooooraaaaaaaaah......” The girlish voice carried its weight in chills as it sounded up the wooden stairs just beyond the locked door. Another laugh crept up to the first floor and tickled Norah’s ears as would a mosquito on a warm summer night.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” she called down to the basement.

  Norah made her way to the kitchen cabinets, looking for something she could use to break off the lock. She knew she had to get down there before her prisoner suspected something was wrong and used it to her advantag
e.

  * * *

  On one wall along the dark basement, there stood a white porcelain toilet, and a standalone sink. The centre of the dingy room housed an unmade bed, covered with white duvet blankets and cozy pillows. The area rug it rested upon was old and ragged, aged by many years. Propped on the rug and against the bed were piles of books, some old, some new, all worn by the room’s avid reader. A single bulb shone down from the ceiling of the room, casting a soft glow on the bed. Just beyond the bed sat a woman in her mid-thirties; her face hidden by long locks of tousled hair.

  Her back to the basement stairs and door, she sang to herself.

  “One, two, three, four, I know what your life is for....five, six, seven, eight, don’t you know it’s too LATE!?” Her laughter echoed throughout the near empty basement.

  Norah had removed all the storage boxes after the last outburst, which had nearly ended with her escape.

  “This time it will be different, my dear sister....One, two, three, four,” she sang as a smirk spread across her mouth. Amy turned her head and looked over her right shoulder, eyes staring at the white door up the wooden stairs. Beyond the door, Norah was picking away at the lock, making it thump and clang in the process.