Just a consequence of this dark isle.
Oliver parked the Q5. Killed the engine. Approached her cautiously only to hear Charlotte’s low whispering voice:
Rummaging in our souls, she hushed as his wife sank beneath his gaze. We often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
“Lights went out,” she said. Abby.
Her voice blank, too. Like her dead eyes.
He glanced at the stone cottage behind her.
“Looks like they’re back on,” he said.
He pushed open the mud room door. Stepped aside to let her enter first. But she took a step backward, sinking into the mud.
“Abby…” he said softly.
He tried offering his hand.
She shrank deeper into herself. Thin shoulders sagging. Chin dipping into her narrow chest. Ashamed. Shivering harder.
“What? What is it?” he said.
“I-- I can’t find my pills,” she said. More ashamed and shivering harder still. “I know I packed them,” she went on. Then rather undone: “I’m sure of it.” As if they’d gone off on their own.
Hiding from her. Snickering.
As if pills could do such a thing.
Oliver sighed and as gently as he could muster took her trembling hand and slowly escorted her past a boggy pool of drowning cigarette butts and into the stone cottage. The neglected fire in the woodstove was now dying, reduced to a bed of glowing coals, and the stone cottage had gone rather cold. Oliver situated Abby on the couch. Stuffed in a fresh log. The flames jumped back to attention, forcing long encroaching shadows to reluctantly retreat.
Abby watched those shadows recede.
Her dead eyes stirring back to life.
Reminding him somewhat of Tibbs.
His large dull eyes turned shiny.
Then again, not like Tibbs at all.
Not at all energized or curious.
Rather quite the opposite in fact.
Like she might just suddenly scream.
Scream and never stop screaming.
“OK?” he asked her tenderly.
Knowing she was no such thing.
Knowing he’d be soon be digging through the final remaining boxes looking for the misplaced pills. It took him nearly a half hour before he stumbled on the murky brown prescription bottle.
Buried in a small box labeled MISC.
Books, bathroom stuff, snack food.
The last things packed apparently.
All thrown in haphazardly.
It was while rifling through these final remaining boxes when he finally noticed the television had been unplugged -- and the large dark wide screen turned toward the stone wall. He tried not to stare at it. Tried not to let his wife see him doing so, at any rate.
He offered her a glass of water.
And a couple orange pills -- a couple of the bitter little orange pills dug out from that murky brown prescription bottle.
A bottle labeled: Lloyd’s Pharmacy. 45 York.
A street near their home in London.
A home that was no longer their home.
He then led her up to their bedroom.
And tucked her into the bed.
Pulling the bedsheets to her chin.
“It’s going to be OK,” he told her.
“You’d tell me this time if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?” she eventually said in the dark, eyes fluttering tiredly. Falling closed.
Not waiting for any answer.
Perhaps not trusting any answer.
Oliver watched her curl into a ball. Like she was in pain. Then made his way back downstairs to perform his evening ritual of closing up the cottage for the night. The wind howled in the eaves outside the kitchen window. A rather disconcerting sound.
Not unlike a disembodied voice.
Rising. Falling. Rising again.
He found himself opening the fridge. Not hungry, but looking anyway. The cottage lights nictated heavily, then blinked off. Leaving him stranded in sudden darkness. He closed the fridge and just stood there for a beat, realizing how desolate and afraid Abby must have felt when these lights had failed her and left her so alone with only that disembodied voice. Rising. Falling. Rising again.
An emergency generator, maybe.
He’d pick one up for times like these.
This wasn’t residential London after all.
As his eyes slowly adjusted to the shadows racing forward and folding over him like a dark blanket -- a familiar cold black hand reached out and grasped at his neck and slowly turned his head. As before.
Revealing the cellar door standing open.
Oliver felt the skin tighten on his body.
His testicles shrivel toward his abdomen.
He was decidedly certain the cellar door had been closed, having glanced at it when he’d come down the stairs. Glanced at it like a small child might glance under his bed at bedtime to make decidedly certain nothing was hiding under there. Waiting. Preying.
The open cellar door invited him down into a deeper darkness and he hesitated only briefly this time before slowly descending the old rickety staircase. The warped risers creaked with his each tentative step, tempting him down to the earthen floor below.
He stood there a moment. Acclimating.
Just beyond that old rickety staircase.
Before stepping deeper into the cellar gloom.
If only to prove to himself he was not his wife.
The ceiling low here away from the stairs.
The thick dark beams pushing down on him.
Insisting to him he duck low his head.
The only relief from the inky gloom being the soft red glow of the monstrous medieval-looking cast iron oil-fired boiler slumbering in the corner. Resembling a black dragon’s façade.
Lambent eyes. Fangs.
Oliver confronted the thing as if it were a thing that needed to be confronted. The boiler popped and hissed, pleased.
Its red gleaming eyes flickering.
And revealing a faded stone column.
The stone column climbed the far wall.
It appeared to only be for structural support, but after turning around in a full circle, Oliver quickly realized the strange stone column to be unique. A unique fixture down here in the cellar.
Less functional than ornamental.
Oliver approached the stone column.
Its stones were smaller than the wall stones.
Artfully shaped. Elegantly fitted.
Faded by time, but offering a canvas.
A stone canvas for a cryptic writing.
Carved right into the column itself.
Oliver leaned forward. Blinking hard.
The writing appeared to be Gaelic runes.
The runes timeworn and barely legible.
And there was even more besides.
Carved faintly beneath the verse of runes.
A depiction of the moon in four stages.
A waxing moon. A full moon.
A waning moon. A dark moon.
And the depiction of a giant thorn tree.
The moons cresting that giant thorn tree.
Peeking through its thin skeletal limbs.
All of it appearing and disappearing.
At the whim of the flickering boiler flames.
Oliver shook his head. Spooked. Fascinated.
How do you know when the moon has had enough to eat?
Who had done this? For what purpose?
Been ‘round here forever like most things.
For as long as anyone ‘round here can remember.
Oliver gently traced an index finger along the enigmatic runes above the moon cycles and the giant thorn tree -- as if the mere act itself might somehow decipher their mysterious meaning.
The wind shrieked outside the walls.
Much louder than it had been even before.
As if just made aware of his trespass.
Startling him from his reverie.
Shaking the stone
cottage above him and murmuring impishly through invisible cracks in the aged foundation and quite very suddenly sounding more like a disembodied voice than ever.
A woman’s voice, surely.
Seemingly whispering his name.
“Oliver…” it seemed to say.
Oliver felt his blood chill, though immediately became decidedly certain, as any sane man should be in such a situation, his ears were only betraying him in his utter exhaustion. Still, like that small child who dares peek under his bed at bedtime and perhaps bravely whisper into that hollow darkness just in case something were under there to whisper back, he found himself responding to that voice.
“Hello…?” he heard himself mutter.
The voice returned with another wind gust.
Hushing from every direction at once now.
“Stay…” it seemed to implore him.
Oliver shuddered. His throat dry as sawdust. Even as he knew it only the wind and his overactive imagination. Still, for all that, he backed-up in the darkness and said rather stupidly: “Anyone there, then?” If only to convince himself. “Hello, if you please…?”
A moment of pregnant silence followed.
Before a creaking behind him. A presence.
Oliver spun quickly, nearly falling.
Only to discover his wife standing on the old rickety staircase at the open cellar door, peering down from the shadows.
A silhouette. The kitchen behind her still dark.
“Who’re you talking to?” she said blankly.
He did his best to compose himself.
“No one. Myself,” he managed. “Just checking the silly boiler. Up in a minute, dear,” he promised. Before: “Go on, then.”
She weighed his response. Frowned. Exited. Oliver eventually followed, but paused at the top of the stairs to stare back down at the runes and the rest of it carved on that stone column appearing and disappearing in the flickering aura of the boiler flames.
9.
THE WIND AND RAIN were gone by the morning dawn, but left behind that interminable gray sky. A low-hung stratum of gray clouds. Thick and heavy. Oliver took his morning coffee outside, leaning into the biting morning cold, intending to be reinvigorated by it, inviting it to wake him from his doldrums. To clear out the sticky snags of cobwebs from his head, particularly sticky thoughts concerning a strange stone column featuring cryptic faded runes and mysterious moon cycles cresting a giant thorn tree as that red-glowing boiler hissed in the corner and a naughty wind whispered through the cracks in the aged foundation, imitating an intelligent sibilating voice that quite rationally could be nothing more sinister than that wind itself seeking out the odd gaps in the crumbling old stone blocks, if still managing to prey on the mind all the same. Quite right, he’d sip his coffee and allow the morning cold to hollow-out his mind of such stickiness rather than dwell on who in the name of god might have carved such peculiar things down there in that dark cellar in the first place and for what possible intentions, ill or not, while also trying not to mull over too deeply whether or not such things had anything to do with those eldritch horseshoes once nailed to the double stable doors behind him or with that eccentric Rowan cross. For he understood that any such answers to any such delphic questions would only quite elude him in the end.
Unless he forsook sanity.
And became entangled in cobwebs.
Sticky and inveigling cobwebs.
From which he might not escape.
Not without bitter little orange pills, perhaps.
Instead, he studied the low-hung gray clouds, thick and heavy, and became increasingly certain the clouds were not moving, or so his sticky-cobwebbed mind insisted. Not unlike, he decided drearily, being trapped inside a child’s snow globe. Only instead of snow, just infinite variations of gray and more gray. An interminable gray static for the moment, perhaps, but silently poised for the next violent turn or vigorous shake of the imaginary snow globe.
Oliver sighed. Shook his own head.
Wondering if this was all only isle fever.
He’d been warned about it after all.
By acerbic colleagues back in London.
He tried to focus on the distant horizon.
But it was now quite difficult to ascertain.
Quite difficult, if not impossible, to determine where that gray sky and that gray sea finally met. The horizon a lost thing. He tried to tell himself it was still there like his struggling sanity.
Still there beyond the cobwebs.
By and by, Oliver returned inside the small stone cottage, feeling a bit off-balance despite the fact the low-hung gray sky still had not changed. Despite the fact the snow globe remained still.
Perhaps, ironically, because of it.
He got to work on the final moving boxes that early Saturday morning. Abby eventually came down and assisted him. Eyes puffy with lack of sleep. Despite those bitter little orange pills.
Oliver hadn’t slept much himself.
Had felt her awake in the dark beside him.
Just lying there. Breathing unevenly.
They finished with the moving boxes. A nice distraction while it lasted. He then suggested another and they exited the small stone cottage and climbed inside the Q5, the all-weather tires temporarily slipping and sliding about on the muddy driveway before eventually gaining purchase and pulling out onto the winding A4.
Oliver plugged in directions. The navigation working again.
It was a thirty eight minute drive to the nature preserve on the north side of the isle. There was a small parking lot. Empty.
Oliver had packed a picnic.
A beef log, crackers, a bit of cheese.
A bottle of wine. A bit of dessert.
There was a narrow hiking path from the parking lot down to a soft sandy beach, pushing through sweeping marram grass. Oliver and Abby strolled along the meandering shoreline, searching out a perfect picnic spot while remaining alert to curlew calls and watching out for breeding birds, including oyster catchers, ringed plovers, little terns, and meadow pipits. They also gazed out over the water, searching for basking sharks and diving gannets. Unfortunately, they found only more of the oppressive gray. The beach desolate. Not unlike the parking lot left behind. The sea an undisturbed gunmetal. Meanwhile, despite their warm coats and boots, the sullen coolness of the air soon chilled them and they ate their beef log and crackers and cheese and drank their bottle of wine and nibbled on their dessert with chattering teeth and fairly goose-pimpled skin.
Only to have a cold fog roll in.
Thick and wet and bleak.
It mischievously hid the small parking lot on their dismal hike back and they had to backtrack to find the Audi, deliberately retracing their steps in the cold sand and searching for their cross-tracks from earlier that afternoon as to not miss it yet again.
Abby now in a foul mood.
Oliver not much better himself.
His feet sodden and frigid.
Abby kept her coat on in the car.
But held his hand in solidarity.
It felt like a block of ice.
He’d meant for the sojourn to break the morose spell steadily falling over them since their arrival. He’d hoped to be inspired by nature. But, admittedly, he felt more claustrophobic than ever.
All that grayness pushing down on them.
Abby still had bags under her eyes.
Like she’d never woken this morning. Like this was all an endless dream. And not a very pleasant one at that.
The cold fog swallowed the isle on the drive back to the stone cottage, becoming thicker and darker still. The Audi headlights did little to penetrate it, just managing to seek out and follow the black winding ribbon of road pushing into the mist. It was rather as if the low-hung gray clouds had simply fallen onto the world.
The gray old lady returned.
Along with her gauzy gray veil.
Oliver was forced to drive slowly.
Each bend a possible wreck.
He nearly drove past his own muddy driveway. The stone cottage and adjacent barn all but invisible. In the end, the only identifiable landmark from the road was that hand-painted sign.
SIORGHA COTTAGE.
Swimming in the gray murk.
Oliver turned into their driveway, slipping and sliding again in the wet muck, bumping along the occasional rocky bits, before having to slam down hard on the Audi brakes, coming to a madly-skidding halt before a rather large man quite suddenly materializing in the heavy fog.
An older man. Undoubtedly local.
A scruffy gray beard tinged with red.
A solemn expression. Sunburnt cheeks.
An oatmeal-colored Irish wool fisherman cap.
Dark mud-stained waders and boots.
A thick dark gray tweed shirt.
Oliver, stunned, having been thrown rudely back in his seat as the Q5 jolted to a stop, stared at this unexpected figure standing in the pale headlights and surrounded by swirling tendrils of the gray mist. The only sound the idle of the vehicle. The mist muffling everything else. But for Abby’s low-breathing next to him. Short and frightened. Her sleep-puffy eyes now large and unblinking, reminding Oliver again, most unsettlingly, of his new students.
And what did they have to be so frightened of?
Oliver found himself absently wondering now.
Even as the answer continued to elude him.
Even as he catalogued this large figure in the fog.
Standing in the middle of the muddy driveway.
For this figure in the murk could be no other than the strange man who’d placed the Rowan cross on the double stable doors. Oliver didn’t even need to turn to his wife for any confirmation.
Her agitated breathing confirmation enough.
In addition to her large and unblinking eyes.
And the bone-white of her thin knuckles.
As she tightly gripped the door rest.
The gray-bearded figure, having lifted a calloused hand toward the Q5 as it madly-skidded, as if the mere gesture might somehow be able to halt the vehicle in its madly-skidding tracks by some esoteric necromancy, now motioned for Oliver to lower the driver side window. Oliver, as if watching himself from a distance, observed himself flicking the window doodad. The window slid down. A low electronic whine as the large figure in those swirling tendrils of gray mist rounded the Audi, moving rather effortlessly through the sticky muddy muck. This in spite of a rather exaggerated hitch in his otherwise long stride. Moving not unlike an aged Frankenstein.
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