Oakwood Island

by Cormier, Angella; Arseneault, Pierre C;

  She wondered if Amy had come back for her, thinking that perhaps she had been mistaking when she’d felt that her twin sister had died. She had been pretty certain she had felt that loss a few days prior, certain that it was her twin’s loss of life that rattled her thoughts.

  Now, she was unsure of what she had just heard, and so she sat and waited.

  * * *

  Before Ryan could see what had produced the noise from behind him, the real beast pounced upon his body with such an intense hunger and fury that it twisted him around and brought Ryan flat on his back. As his head bounced off the linoleum floor, Ryan managed to raise his arms to protect his head and neck from the sharp teeth that tried to rip his face open. He suddenly sensed they both recognized each other from the Stuart’s incident, and this combined with the beast’s great hunger was a recipe for certain disaster and death.

  The beast clawed at Ryan, the long claws digging as far as they could into his chest, ripping shreds from Ryan’s bullet proof vest until it reached flesh. With one swift movement, he opened his mouth wide and with sharp teeth, bit down on Ryan’s right arm, sending the gun flying out of Ryan’s hand and sliding down the basement steps. Ryan struggled under the weight of the beast, its heavy legs pressing down on his own, crushing his muscles. As it pounced off Ryan it twisted around, the sound of bones cracking made Ryan scream out for help. Almost as in direct response to his cry, a loud shot rang throughout the house.

  The beast roared an inhumane roar of pain and stumbled next to Ryan, finally allowing Ryan to breathe a bit deeper without the pressure and heaviness of the beast atop of him. He could feel warm liquid sliding down his arm. Another shot was fired as the gravely wounded beast lurched forward towards a window. It leapt through it, sending shattered glass flying everywhere.

  Jack watched as the beast scrambled through the back yard and into the woods. He ran to the window, his shotgun steady in his arms, ready to shoot again but it was too late. The beast now gone, he knew he wouldn’t get the chance again.

  As Jack turned around, he saw a frightened and very pale Norah emerging from the basement. She stood in the doorway, her face and hands dirty, she seemed confused, lost even. In her right hand she held a gun by its barrel, Ryan’s pistol. It now had several scratches on the handle. Around her ankle was a length of chain that trailed along as she walked slowly up to the kitchen from the basement.

  As Norah spotted Ryan lying on her kitchen floor with blood gushing out from the deep wounds and gashes on his arm and shoulder, her nurse instincts kicked in at once. She rushed to get dish cloths and returned to Ryan’s side, pressing the cloth down hard on his many wounds. Ryan’s eyes grew wide as he recognized Norah. His mind was surely playing tricks on him, he thought.

  He asked inquisitively, “Norah?”

  Before she could respond, Jack spoke up with a harsh tone. “Your mind tricks did this to him, woman.”

  He said it with such an obvious malicious tone that Norah got up and backed away from both men slowly, the chain on her ankle clinking loudly. Jack raised his shotgun and pointed it towards Norah, his eyes fixated on hers. Voices made their way up the porch steps and quickly into the kitchen as three officers stepped onto the scene.

  “Ryan, oh my God!” said Brent as he rushed to his side, pressing the material down hard on his wound to try to stop the bleeding. He called out to his partner “Paul, call for an ambulance...Hurry!”

  Looking up from Ryan, he noticed Jack lowered the shotgun from the thin and apparent sickly woman that stood before him. Suddenly, he recognized the woman and stared at her in disbelief. Looking back at Jack, he was confused as could be at this point. Looking back down at Ryan, he noticed he had closed his eyes, going in and out of consciousness. The blood loss that Ryan had suffered had been severe, and his arm was now starting to ooze out a yellow substance of some kind. Brent knew Ryan needed immediate medical attention. He waited by Ryan’s side for the ambulance to arrive.

  * * *

  The following morning, Brent, Detective Burke and Jack were in the waiting room of the hospital, impatiently waiting for news about Ryan’s surgery. When the doctor finally came to them, they all stood up but it was Burke that questioned him first. “How is he, doc?”

  The doctor removed his glasses, and started to wipe them down using the sleeve of his scrubs. His eyes met the detective’s and he replied, “He survived the surgery, but all we did was stop the bleeding for now. He will need more surgery when he gets stronger, but now we wait and see if his condition stabilizes.

  “There is some kind of an infection also. We are monitoring that very closely. It’s unusual for an infection to form so quickly following a fresh wound like Ryan’s.”

  Burke crossed his arms across his chest and in his usual sarcastic tone, he replied. “That’s what I call a tough day at the office, huh Doc?” Burk always knew how to use his bad taste in jokes to get dirty looks at the worst of times, and this was no exception. Ignoring the people who were giving him dirty looks, he turned to Jack and inquired, “What happened out there anyway?”

  Jack was staring directly ahead, his gaze not meeting Burke’s as he answered. “He went in alone. Should have waited for me like I told him to. Damn fool didn’t know about the cursed girl, I suppose.” Jack’s eyes looked directly at Burke now and with such intensity that he took a step back from Jack. The older man continued, “I shot it twice... It won’t live long.”

  Suddenly, a panic burst out as a few nurses rushed up from their station and ran past them. At the same time, the doctor was paged on the intercom system. “Doctor Kingsley, ICU Room 4, STAT!”

  The head nurse rushed into the waiting room, the adrenaline of her job obvious in her face. “Doctor Kingsley, we need you right away. He woke up screaming Norah’s name and tore off half his stitches. He’s bleeding bad!”

  The doctor ran back to the intensive care unit where Ryan had been just admitted after surgery.

  Burke turned to Jack and with a confused look; he asked. “What do you know about this Norah woman? If she is alive, can you tell me who the Hell we found half eaten in the street?”

  Jack stared straight ahead, ignoring the detective’s questions. His eyes looked out past the long windows in the waiting room and into the sun soaked day that had just sprouted from the horizon a few minutes earlier. The early morning’s sun cast a golden glow on his face, the deep lines around his eyes and mouth dissipating as the warmth of the rays glided over and through him. He knew what was to be this morning. He knew he could not change the outcome of what was to become. He had spent so many long years accepting those things he could not change. Time had made it easier to accept, but it was always hard to face what had to be.

  Jack put on his hat and zipped up his long brown coat. He did not need to stick around to know what was coming. He bowed his head down and started to leave just as Dr. Kingsley stepped back out into the waiting area.

  As Jack walked out of the hospital, the doctor reached Burke and Brent and with a sombre look upon his face he said, “I’m so sorry. There was nothing more we could do for him...Ryan’s gone.”

  Burke nodded at the doctor and looked out of the large windows to see Jack’s shadow walking into the bright yellow sunshine.

  * * *

  Directly upstairs from the waiting room, there resides the psychiatric ward. Within its walls in room 204, sleeps Norah, strapped yet again to a bed, this time with several restraints across her legs, arms and chest. Here she will be trapped in body, while her mind is trapped within herself.

  Had she been awake, she may have noticed the murder of crows taking flight from the trees just outside her window. Away they flew together, with one lone, large crow trailing behind. It needed nothing more than to follow now and to wait to be called upon again by the old man in the woods.

  Chapter 11

  Island of Lost Souls

  Early O
ctober

  The black and ominous eyes kept watch, still and silent in the darkness of midnight. Time seemed to mingle with stillness, disrupting the normalcy of the view. The presence that permeated behind these watchful eyes would have been felt if someone had been there to feel it. Looking from a distance at the hospital grounds, they saw very few cars in the parking lot at this time of night.

  Only a handful of vehicles belonging to the nurses and doctors that worked the graveyard shift sat cold and lifeless in the dark. The quietness filled the space and the time around the buildings, morphing in and out of itself, breathing new life into the still and complete silence. The chilly breeze made the trees and shrubs shutter with apparent frigid resonance in the darkness.

  Though very little movement occurred on the grounds, the eyes followed a middle aged man as he walked in between the parked cars. Obviously in no rush to get to his destination, the man walked about with an air of nonchalance, his mind elsewhere, anywhere but in the lot. The dark haired man must have been a patient at the hospital, as he was still wearing his thin cotton hospital gown and dark brown slippers. Everything about him appeared normal, except for the green ominous glow that contoured his entire body, glowing brighter around his head, heart and abdomen. There seemed to be a steady influx of charged particles that surrounded the man as he slowly shuffled along, heading towards the cement path that lead to the side entrance of the hospital.

  The eyes that followed the man were not phased in the least at the man’s colourful display of light. It had seen many auras in its time and this one was but one of the many colours that exposed a soul to those who were open to the spirit world. The eyes kept watch as the man emerged from between two parked cards and turned abruptly with a look of horror on his face, bringing both his arms up to shield his face as the headlights of an SUV shone onto, and even through the man in the hospital gown.

  The vehicle followed the beams of the headlights and drove into and through the man, and continued on to turn onto the street that led off into town. The figure of what had been the man with the hospital attire and the green glowing aura dissipated as soon as the vehicle rushed through him. Nearby, a nurse that was running late for her shift ran out of her sedan and towards the hospital only seconds after the SUV made its way down the parking lot. She had not seen nor sensed anything out of the ordinary, as her own eyes had not been open to the spirit world that surrounded her and everyone else on Oakwood Island. The souls of many were lost here, wandering the streets, gazing unfocused and unaware of their own passing.

  Not all of the spirits had the same colours adorning their souls. Take for instance the old woman that suddenly appeared on the moist grass near the hospital side entrance. She stood disoriented, her blue aura glowing faintly around her. She raised her right hand to her mouth, apparently taking a drag of a cigarette that had long ago extinguished. The eyes that watched her recognized at once the motion of her hand as it craved the taste of tobacco also.

  The silence broke as large flapping wings took flight in the night sky, heading towards the hospital. Low chanting could be heard as the sound of the wings rustled the breeze around the dark body. The eyes focused on a second floor window and stared directly at it as the crow approached the ledge. It landed softly on the hard and cold stone edge of the window, where it had grown accustomed to visiting in the recent past.

  As it perched itself, the eyes quickly peered inside to the familiar view of the hospital room, the dim light behind the bed giving off just enough of a glow to be able to see the young and sick woman lying in the bed, her condition worse with each passing day. Her skin had become very pale and her cheeks were now sunken, having lost so much weight. Her body appeared frail and fragile in the bed where she lay. The doctors suspected cancer but all the tests proved otherwise. Maggie was surely becoming a victim of the evil that lurked on the island.

  On this evening, Maggie was not alone in her room. Next to her bed there stood a man with a glowing bright red aura. The man appeared tall, but it became apparent upon closer examination that it was due to the fact that his feet did not touch the ground making him appear much taller than he really was. He hovered over Maggie, a white smock adorning his small frame. He was, or had been rather, a doctor at one point or another. There was a knowing of having seen him before even though his face was still unseen.

  The aura glowed brightly as he appeared to speak with Maggie, though her eyes were closed, and a small amount of drool trailed from her mouth down onto her hospital gown. The watcher knew this was none other than Doctor Richard P. Edwards. It was the first time in weeks of watching Maggie that the doctor had come to her bedside. His aura appeared to radiate more than the others, glowing a bright crimson as his voice resounded in the spirit world. Through the windows and the eyes, it sounded like a voice carried underwater, a muffled garbling of words smashed together that could not be distinguished. The watcher waited, eyes transfixed on the scene before him.

  * * *

  From within the room, the air that the unconscious Maggie breathed into her frail body was heavy with the unseen form that hovered above her bed. Her condition had deteriorated greatly over the past week. She appeared to have slipped into a coma, but several doctors that examined her had been unable to confirm this.

  Her symptoms were unlike any other they had seen and although she had several signs of being in a coma, her brain activity proved otherwise. She seemed to simply be sleeping but her physical health had rapidly declined over the past few days. Her blood pressure had been irregular and her temperature had fluctuated from feverish to lower than normal temperatures within a few hours.

  The doctors were baffled as to what could possibly have been causing these symptoms. They kept a close watch on her and the nurses made extra rounds to her stiff and starch white hospital bed to make sure she didn’t go for worse.

  One of these nurses, a fellow Open Arms orphan made her way inside Maggie’s room, and took hold of the intravenous drip bag that was releasing a cocktail of drugs into Maggie’s bloodstream, keeping her as stable as possible. She removed the flattened one from the hook and placed a new full bag of liquid antibiotics to replace the empty one. Before leaving Maggie’s side the nurse brushed a few strands of hair away from her patient’s forehead and said a quick prayer, asking her saviour to spare the life of such a young and pretty woman. Her words were met with complete silence, except for the soft beeps of the machines and monitors that were attached to Maggie’s still and frail body.

  As the nurse stepped out of the room, another visitor approached the bed. The doctor spoke but no words were heard, at least not in the physical world. The aura around the doctor was now a bright crimson. He spoke suddenly and Maggie’s body twitched as he began, his voice almost serving as the paddles of a defibrillator against her weak and dissipating soul.

  “Dear girl, you’re finally starting to feel the full effects of the medicine Danny injected you with, aren’t you?” the doctor asked with a pressing tone.

  “Can you hear me, Maggie?” His tone now condescending, he spoke with a powerful and determined voice. “Pull out that damn drip that’s keeping you from my control girl. Pull it out now and listen to what you have to do, Maggie!”

  For the first time in nearly two weeks Maggie moved. Her left arm extended out and reached for her right arm, finding the fine needle that was firmly in place through her skin and into the largest of the blood vessels in her right arm. Had she been conscious of what she was doing, she would have found the pain to be excruciating. Being unconscious however, she felt nothing as she ripped out the drip from her arm, blood trickling out of the wound where the needle had been for the past few weeks. Fresh drops of blood stained the white sheets as the needle and long thin tubes fell on the bed by her side.

  The doctor felt a strong surge of power and confidence as he knew he now had control over the young woman, the hospital’s medicine no longer delaying the tr
ansformation that was required for her to become fully pliable to his will. His spirit swirled around to the other side of the bed where Maggie now sat upright, her eyes semi opened but staring with a blank look upon her face. Her mouth hung open, drool starting to run down to her chin, dripping down onto her light green hospital gown.

  “Come to me, girl. I can feel it happening again, just like how I had control over Danny, but so much better this time, my sweet little Maggie.”

  The doctor smiled a wide grin as he looked at the young woman and felt a growing urge inside of him, the excitement of the pending kill made his ego feel powerful and in control. His newfound excitement was short lived as he felt another presence nearby, a spiritual fluctuation in the air made its rounds until it reached the doctor. The red filaments of energy that encompassed his spirit swirled around as he turned to face the window in the hospital room.

  Two large beady eyes wrapped the doctor’s spirit in a tight visual grip and held him in place, their stare deep and paralysing the doctor in his place. The crow’s feathers fluttered in the wind on the window ledge, the light from the moon outside shimmering against their shiny plumage, morphing into long strands of grey hair flowing wildly in the wind.

  The crow dissipated almost as fast as the doctor’s spirit had felt it arrive and now in its place floated the old man with the faded blue jeans and shirt.

  On his head his old brown wide brimmed hat covered the parts of his face that his hair failed to hide. The only part of the man that was apparent to the doctor were his piercing eyes, beady and black, such as the crow’s had been when it had stared him down with menacing intent. The doctor’s aura dimmed and faded into a light reddish tint as the eyes stared him down, almost nudging him into a dare to make a move. As soon as the wind picked up a few moments after the man appeared, the grey strands of hair flapped in the wind that picked up speed and began turning black again. Wings spanning the width of the brown hat flapped about and within seconds the crow sat perched on the ledge of the window once more, staring into the hospital room at the doctor. With newfound focus, his aura became a bright crimson once more, the scorching colour of raw hate and revenge.