And Ik. ‘It’s all right, Auntie. It’ll be over so soon, you’ll see. And I want to hear your voice nice and strong in the singing.’
We readied ourselves, Felly in Mumma’s lap, then Dash, then me next to Mai. I tried to stay attentive to Mumma, so Mai wouldn’t mess me up with her weeping. It was quiet except for the distant flubber and snap of the bonfires.
We started up, all the ordinary evening songs for putting babies to sleep, for farewelling, for soothing broke-hearted people – all the ones everyone knew so well that they’d long ago made rude versions and joke-songs of them. We sang them plain, following Mumma’s lead; we sang them straight, into Ikky’s glistening eyes, as the tar climbed her chin. We stood tall, so as to see her, and she us, as her face became the sunken centre of that giant flower, the wreath. Dash’s little drum held us together and kept us singing, as Ik’s eyes rolled and she struggled for breath against the pressing tar, as the chief and the husband’s family came and stood across from us, shifting from foot to foot, with torches raised to watch her sink away.
Mai began to crumble and falter beside me as the tar closed in on Ik’s face, a slow, sticky, rolling oval. I sang good and strong – I didn’t want to hear any last whimper, any stopped breath. I took Mai’s arm and tried to hold her together that way, but she only swayed worse, and wept louder. I listened for Mumma under the noise, pressed my eyes shut and made my voice follow hers. By the time I’d steadied myself that way, Ik’s eyes were closing.
Through our singing, I thought I heard her cry for Mumma; I tried not to, yet my ears went on hearing. This will happen only the once – you can’t do it over again if ever you feel like remembering. And Mumma went to her, and I could not tell whether Ik was crying and babbling, or whether it was a trick of our voices, or whether the people on the banks of the tar had started up again. I watched Mumma, because Mumma knew what to do; she knew to lie there on the matting, and dip her cloth in the last water with the little fading fish-scales of ice in it, and squeeze the cloth out and cool the shrinking face in the hole.
And the voice of Ik must have been ours or others’ voices, because the hole Mumma was dampening with her cloth was, by her hand movements, only the size of a brassboy now. And by a certain shake of her shoulders I could tell: Mumma knew it was all right to be weeping now, now that Ik was surely gone, was just a nose or just a mouth with the breath crushed out of it, just an eye seeing nothing. And very suddenly it was too much – the flowers nodding in the lamplight, our own sister hanging in tar, going slowly, slowly down like Vanderberg’s truck that time, like Jappity’s cabin with the old man still inside it, or any old villain or scofflaw of around these parts, and I had a big sicking-up of tears, and they tell me I made an awful noise that frightened everybody right up to the chief, and that the husband’s parents thought I was a very ill-brought-up boy for upsetting them instead of allowing them to serenely and superiorly watch justice be done for their lost son.
I don’t remember a lot about that part. I came back to myself walking dully across the tar between Mai and Mumma, hand-in-hand, carrying nothing, when I had come out here laden, when we had all had to help. We must have eaten everything, I thought. But what about the mats and pans and planks? Then I hear a screeking clanking behind me, which was Dash hoisting up too heavy a load of pots.
And Mumma was talking, wearily, as if she’d been going on a long time, and soothingly, which was like a beautiful guide-rope out of my sickness, which my brain was following hand over hand. It’s what they do to people, what they have to do, and all you can do about it is watch out who you go loving, right? Make sure it’s not someone who’ll rouse that killing-anger in you, if you’ve got that rage, if you’re like our Ik –
Then the bank came up high in front of us, topped with grass that was white in Mumma’s lamp’s light. Beyond it were all the eyes, and attached to the eyes the bodies, flat and black against bonfire or starry sky. They shuffled aside for us.
I knew we had to leave Ik behind, and I didn’t make a fuss, not now. I had done my fussing, all at once; I had blown myself to bits out on the tar, and now several monstrous things, several gaping mouths of truth, were rattling pieces of me around their teeth. I would be all right, if Mai stayed quiet, if Mumma kept murmuring, if both their hands held me as we passed through this forest of people, these flitting firefly eyes.
They got me up the bank, Mumma and Auntie; I paused and they stumped up and then lifted me, and I walked up the impossible slope like a demon, horizontal for a moment and then stiffly over the top–
–and into my Mumma, whose arms were ready. She couldn’t’ve carried me out on the tar. We’d both have sunk, with me grown so big now. But here on the hard ground she took me up, too big as I was for it. And, too big as I was, I held myself onto her, crossing my feet around her back, my arms behind her neck. And she carried me like Jappity’s wife used to carry Jappity’s idiot son, and I felt just like that boy, as if the thoughts that were all right for everyone else weren’t coming now, and never would come, to me. As if all I could do was watch, but not ever know anything, not ever understand. I pushed my face into Mumma’s warm neck; I sealed my eyes shut against her skin; I let her strong warm arms carry me away in the dark.
The People on the Island
T. M. Wright
T. M. Wright (1968–) is an American horror writer whose first novel, Strange Seed (1978), was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. More than a dozen novels have appeared since, including The Playground (1982), Carlisle Street (1983), The Island (1988), The Place (1989), The School (1990), Boundaries (1990), The Last Vampire (1991), and Little Boy Lost (1992). Wright’s short fiction has appeared in Twilight Zone magazine and many others. His seventh novel, A Manhattan Ghost Story (1984), has had fourteen foreign editions. The disturbing and surreal ‘The People on the Island’ (2005) is an unusual tale that at times evokes Shirley Jackson while placing its characters fully within the weird.
This winter morning, when we crossed over the dune, we saw a man lying face down in a shallow tide pool half a dozen yards from us. A gull waddled about agitatedly near him and squawked now and then.
‘Oh God,’ Elizabeth said, and stopped walking, as I had. She put her hand to her mouth, said again, ‘Oh God,’ and added, after a moment, ‘Another.’
I love such winter walks on the beach. Even before we came to the island, I found them bracing. I claimed to the skeptical that they made me ‘feel alive.’
The man in the half-frozen tide pool wore a black suit, and his shoulder-length hair also was black, as were his shoes. He wore several playfully grotesque rings on his right hand. One was purple, another green.
Elizabeth asked, ‘Do you think he drowned?’ She looked questioningly at me, then at the man, again.
I answered, ‘Who’s to say?’
She looked at me again and frowned a bit. ‘He would. If he could.’
Over lunch, we discussed the morning. Our discovery of the black-suited man was, of course, at the forefront of our conversation.
‘I’m sick of these people,’ Elizabeth said, and sipped her tea. She was having a chocolate scone with the tea, but had not yet touched it. ‘Where do they come from?’
‘I think we should go and look at him, again,’ I said.
Elizabeth broke off a small piece of her scone and popped it delicately into her mouth. She is a very courteous woman. Very aware of etiquette. ‘Go and look at him again,’ she echoed as she chewed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But more closely this time.’
She glanced sadly toward the window, which overlooks the water.
I said, ‘Perhaps we should even…turn him onto his back.’
She looked at me, brow furrowed, as if she were troubled. She looks at me like that quite a lot lately.
‘Perhaps we really should do that,’ I said. ‘Turn him onto his back. Look at his face. It’s possible we know him, Elizabeth.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘We know none o
f these people.’
‘But you’re so wrong,’ I said. ‘We know them only too well. They’re simply what they are. They are organs, flesh, hair. And blood as thick as pudding. How can they be any more or less than that?’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I don’t think I ever have.’
I nodded. ‘Maybe that’s for the good.’
She shook her head. ‘You only think it is, George.’
‘And what of the woman in the parlor?’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘She’ll keep. Every one of these people will keep.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ I smiled a little. ‘They keep so damned well.’
Elizabeth awoke screaming early the following morning. I took her hard into my arms, gave her kisses and whispered assurances that ‘everything is all right,’ until at last she became calm, and she said, ‘How long is this going to continue, George? How long do we have to endure it?’
I shook my head and held her more tightly. ‘My love,’ I told her, ‘our needs and our dreams can be demons. I’ve learned that much, here, at least. But our demons will bring us so much, if we let them, if only we can hear and understand their song.’
This house is small, comfortable and easy to clean, a plus when the wind is fierce, as it usually is, and the fine sand insinuates itself through every crack and crevice. Winters are the best time for that, and this winter has been no exception. Often, it seems as if the wind blows in four directions at once, and the house shivers, shrieks, and complains. But although the house is small, it’s quite sturdy, and I have never worried about being tossed into the elements late one evening, or of coming back from one of our winter walks to find the house not where I’d left it.
Elizabeth says she’s waiting impatiently for the first snowfall. She says it brightens the landscape, reflects sunlight (should we ever have it), masks the grotesque. I tell her there’s no reason to mask the grotesque; I tell her it can be beautiful. She merely shakes her head and scowls.
The black-haired man in the black suit was missing from the tide pool. I assumed several possibilities – he had been carried off by the tide itself, carrion eaters had quickly dispatched his remains, others on the island had spirited him away. That last possibility is remote, however. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, there are no others living on this island. I’ve circumnavigated it several times (quite time consuming), and, except for a few scrubby trees, and the poor excuse for a lawn I try to maintain around the house, there’s an almost complete lack of flora; animal life is restricted to a few gulls and herons (they seem confused, somehow, even a bit logy; I can’t imagine why), and an animal I’ve only heard, but have never seen. I believe it’s a stray dog.
The woman in the parlor in the other house is perched on an exercise bike. She has both hands tightly on the handlebars and both feet on the pedals. She’s wearing bright red nail polish, and she’s leaning forward slightly, in the position a bike rider would use. Her head is up a bit, her gaze forward, her eyes open halfway. They’re robin’s-egg blue. Her hair is blond, straight, long, and stunning. She’s wearing a gray, loose-fitting exercise suit with the words ‘Find Out For Yourself’ emblazoned across the chest in green, art deco-style letters.
I believe her name is Jane. Elizabeth is skeptical about this: ‘It could be anything,’ she said. ‘It could be Barbara, or Helen, or Jacqueline.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I believe it’s Jane.’
Elizabeth gave me a puzzled look. ‘She doesn’t look like a Jane to me. Where do you get these ideas, anyway? Why assign names to these people at all?’
‘Because it amuses me,’ I said. ‘They amuse me.’
She scowled.
We went to visit Jane this afternoon. It has been three days since our last visit, and she was precisely as we had left her. The parlor was cold, as was the entire house, I assume, since it’s not heated, and there was even a little frost on the backs of Jane’s hands, on her forehead, and on her eyes. I gestured to indicate the frost, because I found it almost decorative.
‘Look there,’ I said. ‘Look at the frost.’ I smiled.
‘It’s sad,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think it becomes her.’
‘Good Lord,’ Elizabeth whispered.
She doesn’t like to visit Jane. She likes visiting none of those who exist here. But she most dislikes visiting Jane because, she says, Jane looks angry. ‘It’s in her eyes,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And in the line of her mouth.’
I agreed, and added, ‘But I can’t imagine that she would have any reason to be angry. She is, after all, beyond anger.’
‘And everything else, as well,’ Elizabeth said.
‘My point exactly. Don’t you see? Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Nothing’s obvious,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘Nothing’s obvious!’ she repeated. ‘And that’s the whole point, isn’t it?’
She’s right. That is the whole point. Nothing’s obvious. Is the wind actually fierce and cold? Is the landscape actually barren? Is there a stray dog loose somewhere on the island? And what is Jane doing on the exercise bike in the parlor of the other house? Who put her there? And why? And what of the others? Henry, Joanna, and the rest. They’re fascinating. Complexity to simplicity to eternity in one effortless outflow of breath. Past and soul, needs and lusts and longing gone forever in a moment without oxygen. And perhaps their purpose is simply to be fascinating, grotesque, and predictable. Like chess pieces. Pets. Stories told around a campfire.
But there are some givens. My fingers actually do have ink on them from the leaky fountain pen I’m using. Elizabeth’s hair has indeed begun to turn gray since we’ve come here. And I’m positive this is winter, positive about the wind and the barrenness of the landscape. Positive that the grandfather’s clock in Jane’s parlor predictably strikes the hour and the quarter hour. Positive there’s a purpose to my presence on this island. Positive it is an island. That it sits in an ocean. That the ocean churns and throws whitecaps at sandy beaches which – I’m positive – are eroding rapidly. Positive no one walks these beaches except Elizabeth and I, a few logy herons and gulls, and a creature that barks hoarsely at a distance. Positive this landscape has as much to do with heaven as it has to do with hell.
The others in that other house may have once believed in their immortality, and so they have it now, in a way. Caught forever in the positions of life – eating, taking a bath, arranging shoes, feeding an absent cat, making love, becoming old, drowning. I am not surprised that there are no ghosts on this island. The others in that other house, and on the island in various places, are stationery ghosts we may touch, if we wish. But Elizabeth says that the touch of death is miserable, that it stinks. I disagree, of course. I tell her that death is as necessary to us as a beating heart.
Elizabeth and I have stopped having sex. She no longer parades around naked in front of me, nor I in front of her. It’s something we used to revel in, something we found exciting and necessary – after a shower, or just before bed, or simply as an enticement. But we don’t do it, anymore, though I believe desperately that I want it for us both. We don’t know why we’ve abandoned our nakedness – at least I don’t know why.
We don’t prepare meals for one another, either. Various pasta dishes were our favorite, and I had become something of a pastry chef. But we don’t prepare meals for one another, anymore. We hardly eat, anymore, and hardly ever together. We eat when we’re hungry, and I think that neither of us finds any pleasure in it, though we have all the food we need, and the little kitchen is delightful and well-equipped.
It strikes me that Elizabeth and I are necessarily together here, on this island and in this house, and necessarily drifting apart. She is drifting off to a world that’s more confusing, complex and gaudy – in a Technicolor way – than I like. And though I hate to do it, I think I have no choice but to let her go there.
‘How do they arrive?’ Elizabeth asked
.
‘By boat, I imagine,’ I answered.
She turned her head toward me, and, in the half-light, I could see her frown. Prior to coming here, her frowns were elegantly expressive of much more than I had come to expect from any frown; but here, they’re merely expressive of sadness and confusion. ‘You mean they pilot a boat to this island – they get in a boat and, start the engine, and…’
‘Of course that’s not what I mean,’ I answered, regretting my abruptness.
We were lying in bed, comforter and blanket pulled up to our necks. The air in the room was cold, good for sleeping. ‘I meant that they’re brought here.’
‘By who?’
I shrugged. ‘By elves,’ I said, and grinned.
She said nothing.
‘Did you hear me?’ I said.
‘Large elves,’ she said. I tried, unsuccessfully, to hear a tone of amusement in her voice.
‘Elves with grunt and grit and muscle,’ I said. What a fascinating and grotesque idea, I thought. Elves piloting boats filled with the dead. Elves unloading the dead on my island and arranging them in various positions of life. It was an idea I could embrace, and which made me warm.
‘We would hear such elves,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We would hear their boats.’
‘Above that wind?’ I asked.
She said nothing.
The others who’ve been put here do not argue or cajole or laugh or make meaningless conversation, though one might expect from looking at them that argument or cajoling, laughter or meaningless talk could well be their intention, had they any intentions left. But they are at the mercy of the wind’s intentions, now, the intentions of the winter, the intentions of those – unseen – who move them about, from place to place, and from attitude to attitude. I have never seen this being done, but I’m sure that it is done.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 221