by Tim Lebbon
Norris remained standing behind him, still staring back the way they had come. His long shadow gave him all the attributes of a clumsy scarecrow.
When he laughed, that impression vanished. Only a human could laugh like that. Roddy could not remember hearing such a sound for a long time, certainly since before their ship was sunk six days previously. But here it was twisted into something grim and foreboding, caught by the ravine and distorted into an echoing snigger. Here, it was a laugh mad with something.
Norris was pointing back down the slope towards the jungle, giggling and sobbing. He backed up, slipped on flat ground and slid slowly over the edge. He cried out as darkness tugged at his legs.
“Max! Max!” Roddy leapt to his feet and collapsed with leg cramps. As his muscles knotted and writhed he crawled to the drop. His hands left blood smeared across sharpened stones. He was becoming one big wound.
Norris was pawing at a slowly moving slope of scree. Lying at about thirty degrees, his feet hung over a sheer drop into impenetrable darkness. No hope, Roddy thought, but he was determined not believe that, not even here, after everything that had happened. Best for him if he goes, crossed his mind, and the idea felt horribly true. Norris suddenly quietened and grinned up at him, and Roddy realised with a sickening certainty that he thought so, too.
The pit was becoming darker by the minute. The sun was not halting its descent simply to watch the unfolding of this pitiful human tragedy. Roddy reached out his hand, lying as near to the drop as he dared, terrified that he too would be dragged over the edge. “Grab my hand!” he shouted, his voice echoing back seconds later. “Grab it, Norris!”
Norris was swimming in scree. For each handful he grabbed, two slipped past him and spun out over nothing. Their fall into the ravine, a collection of minor collisions with the sides, echoed as a sibilant whisper from the dark. The dark, now approaching from all sides as the sun steamed into the sea.
“Norris!” Roddy shouted, suddenly terrified, petrified that they were all being sucked down, finally, into the island. Butch and Ernie were already there, held below its misleading surface; now, it wanted the rest of them.
Roddy edged himself forward. Only a few more inches, but enough to grasp onto one of Norris’s flailing hands. The cook’s reaction was not what Roddy had expected; he was silent and still for the briefest instant, then he began to shout. The more Roddy pulled, the more Norris squirmed and wriggled, in an apparent effort to dislodge his would-be rescuer’s grip.
The pit yawned wide, dark and silent.
Just as he began to slide, Roddy felt a weight land on his legs. Mumbled words accompanied the impact, spat from a red raw throat, rich in blood and confusion. The sound was horrible, the words worse, because they were utterly without hope. Max was sat astride his knees, hands curling into his belt and hauling back with all his might. It was not enough. “He’s still slipping!” Roddy said. “Norris, you’re still slipping!” Max uttered something between a laugh and a sob. Roddy could not see him, of which he was glad.
“It’s so cold,” Norris shouted, eyes flickering up into his head to show only the whites, as if there was much more to see in there. “So cold, so helpless, so hopeless. Where’s the point now? Where’s the purpose?”
“Pull me up, Max!” Roddy shouted, but the big man was working to his own agenda. He was hauling on Roddy’s belt, sobbing, and even in the riot of movement Roddy could feel him shaking. With terror, anguish or elation, he could not tell.
“Oh God,” Max began to whisper, his voice curiously louder than before, words carrying the weight of a lifetime. “Oh God, help us, oh God, help us ... for fuck’s sake, help us!”
Roddy felt his fingers beginning to stiffen and burn with pain. When he was a boy he had always wondered why people hanging onto a precipice in films let go. He thought them foolish; to know that to let go was death and still to do so. Certainly their fingers may begin to hurt, the cramps and pain may become almost unbearable. But when it was a matter of will — when they knew that they could either put up with the pain and live, or relinquish their hold and die — there should really have been no choice.
His grip was slipping. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, willing his muscles to hold, cursing them as they ignored his call. Behind him, Max was shaking even more, and his muttered prayers were increasing in volume. He was begging God for mercy, or maybe shouting at him, apportioning blame as he asked forgiveness. But from all Roddy had learnt, he knew that God would never be shamed into anything.
Norris was still shouting, words veering in and out of focus, coherent one second, meaningless gibberish the next. His right hand, until now pawing at loose rock to save himself from the pit, began to push, instantly increasing the pressure on Roddy’s grip. He’s letting go, Roddy thought. Letting go, in every way he can. What pain is he going through?
“Pull, Max! I can’t hold him —”
Everything happened at once. Everything bad. In those few seconds any semblance of control fled into the twilight, and panic found its place and made itself forever comfortable.
First, Max screamed. The sound was terrifying. Roddy’s scalp tingled and tightened, and a shiver grabbed hold of his limbs and would not let go. He sensed Max standing up behind him, letting go of his belt in the process. The big man ran, still screaming, across the broken stones and weirdly twisted heathers of the hillside. Roddy turned his head for a moment, watched as Max ran from light to dark. He passed from day to night with the look of someone who could never return.
Then Roddy began to slip forward across the sharp stones. He was fast approaching what he perceived to be the point of no return.
He saw the ghost. The woman did not appear, as though she had never been there, but made herself apparent. She was floating in the darkness near the centre of the ravine, slightly lower down than Roddy and the still struggling Norris. She was naked of clothes and flesh, bones glimmering in the failing light, hair sprouting wildly from her patchwork scalp. Her hands were held out, palms up. Her mouth hung open in a forlorn scream, but she uttered no sound. Her eyes were the brightest points in the dark pit, but they gleamed with madness, not intellect.
Norris brought up his right hand, clawed frantically at Roddy’s fingers, then slipped free. He raised his hands gleefully, mouth wide open and emitting a high, keening laugh as he slid slowly back on the moving scree. With a shout, he disappeared over the edge. His call continued for a long time, and Roddy could not properly discern the point at which it turned into an echo of its former self. Even the echoes had echoes.
From the pit, a smell rose up. Something dead, something unwelcome. A warning, or a gasp, or the glory in a death.
“Where are you now?” Roddy asked hopelessly, expecting no answer.
The world began to spin. His guts churned and he vomited, stomach acids burning into the raw flesh of his fingers where Norris had peeled away streaks of skin.
My skin, Roddy thought, down there now, under a dead man’s nails. I wonder if he’s hit bottom yet.
The woman was still there, but fading, pleading with him to reach out and touch her. But somehow he knew it was a deceit, she only wanted him to tumble over the edge after Norris, so he pushed himself back until he was cutting his knees and elbows on solid, flat rock. The woman disappeared, hands held out in a warding off gesture.
He began to shake. The sky was dark, as though the episode had lasted for hours instead of minutes. His limbs jerked and his head began to pound the rock, his nerves pirouetting him into unconsciousness.
He was trying desperately to identify a constellation in the night sky. In some vague way he thought God may send him a sign of comfort, something familiar to hang onto. But as he frothed at the mouth and passed out, everything was alien. Even the stars showed no sign of friendship. They stared down as he battered himself to pieces on the island.
When he came to it was dark. The sun had truly set.
Moisture had settled on him, like tiny glimmering ins
ects mistaking him for the ground. His limbs ached, his mouth was dry, tongue swollen. His neck felt ready to snap if he moved, but slowly he raised himself up onto one elbow. His back, cut and crispy with dried blood, ripped free of the spiky rocks beneath him. Hauling himself from a bed of knife blades would have felt much the same.
It was night-time, but he could still see, courtesy of a full yellow moon. It hung above the sea, its light shimmering from the surface of the water. Wisps of cloud passed across its face. Stars speckled the rest of the sky. Moonlight played around the edges of the pit, giving it the appearance of a pouting wound, pale and bloodless.
Roddy felt cold, but it was merely one more discomfort to add to the list. His bones ached, his arms were bruised and heavy, his legs sang with pins and needles. When he moved, everything hurt. Muscles cried out against the aggravation.
A moderate breeze was drifting across the island, carrying the tang of brine and seaweed, and other less readily identified smells. Decay, perhaps, death and putrescence. But subtle, like perfume for a murderer. The weather played games with his senses, while his own body sought to confuse him more. He was weak, so weak. His stomach rumbled angrily, calling for food. His gullet felt parched and rough, and the thought of water sent his throat into dry convulsions. Then he noticed that the dew decorating his body was thicker than water. He smeared his hand across his torn shirt and bare neck, and it came away sticky with blood. He must have been rolling around, striking himself on the ground, opening himself up so that his jaded blood seeped down between the rocks. Yet again, the island had drawn its fill.
Norris. His shout when he fell had been part scream, part laugh. Roddy had not even been conscious to bear witness the ceasing of the echoes. And Max had gone too, shouting incoherently, raging and raving into the night even before Norris had fallen. Had he seen the woman? Did the sight of her tortured body, floating in the darkness and gesticulating uselessly, finally drive him to distraction? He’d been shouting for God when he went, and Roddy was not sure whether he even believed in God. But faith was a fickle thing, and Roddy had often seen a sudden resurgence of belief when situations arose to encouraged it. Times when simple logic explained nothing.
He felt so weak. In the dark the ground beneath him was even stronger than before, full of power, vibrating with the life it seemed so hell bent on stealing. Perhaps it had begun sucking their energy from the moment they left the boat, finishing with some before others. Now, maybe Roddy was the only one left. Max had gone, and try as he might Roddy could not bring himself to believe in his survival. There were too many holes up here, too many sharp edges to fall victim to.
The sense of being unutterably alone — not just here, but in the whole world — fell upon him. He cried out with the hopelessness of it all, tried to picture people dying across the globe at that moment in the name of freedom and justice, but their plight did not touch him. Instead he mourned his own torpid, deserted soul, pleading for something to fill it, opening his heart up to enlightenment as he had inadvertently offered his flesh to the island. He waited for the light, yearned the warmth or whisper that would tell him God had found him. Had, in fact, never been away. He recalled his mother’s voice as she explained why he should say his prayers every night before bed. “God always knows you’re here, but it’s best to keep in touch, just in case,” she would say. As a lad, he had often wondered what the ‘just in case’ could entail. A slightly muddled God, perhaps, with a memory faded and fuddled with immense age? Now, he knew the case in ‘just in case’. He knew it, but however much he tried he just could not bring himself to believe that he had doomed himself simply by not believing. The God he was aware of from other people was not like that. He forgave, He loved everyone. He was everywhere, all the time, guiding fate. Steering torpedoes into engine rooms. Urging the cold glint of steel along wrist veins. Blowing sudden surges into streams, smashing heads open and laying pagan brains out to view.
But there was nothing other than the island, and the strange, inbred mutated things living here. Survival of the fittest, Max had said. Perhaps God had been here and found himself severely wanting. Here, something else reigned supreme.
Roddy raged and cursed. He shouted at the dark to keep it, and the things it contained, at bay. His wounds were one big agony, but individual pains made themselves known every time he moved. His agnosticism felt obvious to him now, but he knew also that he would have humbly and willingly admitted his mistake if comfort and peace would come to him from the dark.
But the dark gave up nothing. No comforting hand, no whisper of belonging. No animals either. No pig-faced monstrosities crawling from the pit to join their petrified cousins. Nothing.
Roddy suffered his pain and inevitable loss alone.
The night came to life. Sounds came from all around, some of them blatant, the more frightening ones secretive and covert. For long minutes Roddy sat still, certain that his fear would give him away, as something breathed heavily nearby. He could not move. Like the rocks around him, he thought that stillness would fool whatever was there. Then he slowly came to recognise a pattern in the breathing, and realised that he was hearing the sea, a mile or two away, as it broke onto the reef.
Something sent a shower of stones into the ravine. Claws snickered on rock as whatever it was scrabbled to safety. It trotted away from him, whining and growling.
There was a sound which could have been a shout in the distance, or a groan from nearby. Either way, he did not want to sit here and take any more. He was shaking with fear, recalling childhood days exploring woodland hollows and old deserted mills, the feeling of terror slowly taking hold until rational thought gave way to shouting and headlong flight. He could not afford to do that here, he knew, but still he felt the panic taking a firm grip. The same childhood fears reared their heads again. Things in the dark with him, things he could not see, reaching out to touch.
Roddy stood and began walking parallel to the ravine. He headed in the same direction Max had taken, half hoping through all his despised certainty that he would find him sitting on a rock, smiling sheepishly and running his hand across his bald head. Max would come out with some dry witticism, all the while taking charge of the situation and deciding what to do next. Now that there were only two of them, he would say, they had a better chance. Food, water, shelter for two is much easier to find than for four, or five. And for two who were friends, things were that much easier. So Norris was dead, he would say. So what? So who’s going to mourn the death of a Jonah? He would smile as he spoke, but somehow Roddy could not fit the words into his friend’s mouth.
Roddy stopped and looked around, vaguely shocked by his train of thought. From the ravine to his left, a sigh rose from darkness into silvery light. He wondered whether it was Norris finally striking bottom. It seemed all too possible. The landscape appeared even more alien at night, throwing up flashes of light here and there where luminous creatures darted or crawled, shadows darkening as animals passed by. The mountain seemed much higher than it had before, and suddenly Roddy knew that he had to make it to the top. From there, as Max had said, he would see everything. Whether he really wanted to do so was a moot point. For now it was a purpose.
The dark felt heavy, the presence of something thick and gelatinous instead of the absence of light. His going was hard, pushing through the night, hands heavy on the ends of his arms, feet blocks of rock dangling from his ankles. He was weak, hungry and empty. His mind felt drained, picked over by whatever they had offended by landing here and then discarded, thrown back into his skull like the mess of organs after an autopsy.
The ravine opened up next to him. Dark and deep and cool, inviting, urging him to enter, forget the hardships of aching muscles and swollen tongue. Another sulphuric sigh, volcanic or organic, neither seemed too difficult to believe.
He thought of Butch and Ernie resting in the ground, where grubs made use of them and the cool earth kissed their skin. He imagined the comfort of lying down, shedding all fears and c
oncerns.
He kept walking.
Each sound moved him closer to the edge. Every screech or growl or cry of feeding animals sapped him some more. His shoulders hung lower, his eyelids dipped shut. Pain merged, physical discomfort and mental anguish metamorphosing into something far more affecting; an agony of the soul, blazing white but invisible in the night. Burning in a vacuum, because Roddy was as drained of faith as any human being had ever been. The worst thing was not his spiritual emptiness; it was the fact that none of it was through his own choice. He felt mentally raped, but his rage at this was tempered by what he had seen over the past couple of years. The men and women he had watched die. The ships, burning fiercely as flesh melted and merged into their lower decks. The bobbing bodies of drowned men, eyes picked out by fortuitous fish. Blazing seas of oil. Lands scoured by war, until the virgin rock of the Earth showed through in supplication.
This island had changed him. Now, it intended to destroy him. Roddy was unable to avoid such intent.
Somehow, he survived the night.
There was nothing on top of the mountain. Roddy was not sure exactly what he had been expecting, but the mountain-top was bare, swept free of soil and plants by whatever winds blew at this altitude.
Day dawned surprisingly; light was something he had not expected to see ever again. Shocked into alertness, Roddy looked down at himself. Blood had dried and patterned his shirt with dark streaks, and his skin was still assaulted by the cruel sun. He looked worse than he ever had. His hands were slashed to scabby ribbons, his knees and stomach cut and ripped by the falls he had so obviously suffered on his climb during the night. Below him, further down the mountainside, the great slash of the ravine headed down towards the sea miles in the distance. The jungle was there, too, a sprawling green border between the mountain and the beach. It looked so alive and lush from up here. So friendly.