Dead Leaves, Dark Corners

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  I wasn’t alarmed when I found it. The alarm happened later when I discovered three more in similar boulder-wedged locations at the northern, eastern, and southern shoreline.

  Four crucifixes placed about the island, and positioned in such a way as to stay in place indefinitely. Were they meant to be some kind of blessing? Were they for protection? If protection, from what? I have no idea what the answers are, but I do know this: Giles and his wife Margaret were found dead of unknown causes on Ankou Island, eighteen months after they first arrived. I was able to find that short blurb on some old archived forum, but nothing else. Was that information worth twenty percent of my cell phone battery? No, because I’m more unsettled than ever.

  I didn’t disturb the other three crucifixes, and it only now occurs to me that perhaps I should return the one I took. Is it odd that I suddenly feel exposed thinking about the crucifix that isn’t in place? I’m sure that sounds silly, but I’m tired.

  I’m not the praying type, but I’m praying for sleep tonight.

  Day 9, Ankou Island, 8:52 am

  I’ve been awake and up for hours. Even before I drank my first cup of coffee, I hiked over to the western shore and replaced the crucifix. It was on my mind all night. I should have just gotten dressed and done it sooner, but I didn’t because the wind was howling and I knew I would get soaked. I have this tiny sleep window, and if I roused myself to the point of going outside, it wouldn’t have opened for another twenty-four hours. So I did it this morning. I couldn’t wedge the crucifix in as securely as it had been before, but I think it will stay put. I hope so, at least. Something tells me it needs to be there. Don’t ask me to clarify that statement...I’m too fucking tired.

  More gray skies and intermittent rain today. Which means I’ll probably spend much of the day at my folding table reading the third journal. William Murray served as lighthouse keeper for the longest period of anyone: thirteen years. I remember from my research that he was credited for saving a man stranded on a drifting ice cake during his tenure, but that’s all I recall. His is the thickest of the journals, which makes sense since he lasted longer than anyone else in this place. I’m hopeful that because of that, he was able to overcome whatever Herbert and Giles could not.

  Here goes...

  Day 9, Ankou Island, 11:17 pm

  The sleep window has opened so I must be brief before it slams shut again. I just finished William’s journal, and I now know the significance of the crucifixes. They were the work of William and his wife Sarah, a devout Catholic. William himself was agnostic. He did not reveal any religious proclivity but elaborated at length on his wife’s assertion and profound belief that the island was haunted by the ghosts of dead sailors and ‘visited regularly by demons.’ The placement of the four crucifixes were a condition of her continued residence here, and since William didn’t want to leave such a good-paying job, and he didn’t want to live here alone, he indulged her.

  Is it a coincidence that nothing untoward happened to either of them, nor their two children, during all the years they lived here?

  I don’t have the answer, but I will inspect the western crucifix in the morning to make sure it’s still in place. I’ll check on the eggs as well.

  Day 10, Ankou Island, 9:21 am

  The good news is that ten of the eggs are intact. The bad news is the eleventh egg is broken in half, but there is no baby bird. Did something crack it open and gobble up the poor little creature inside, or did it hatch on its own and stumble out of the nest? I don’t know, but I admit I was saddened by the sight, perhaps disproportionately so. I’ve yet to see the parents. It is my fervent hope they have not abandoned their offspring because I don’t think I’m cut out to be a baby bird foster daddy.

  I was also disproportionately troubled to see that the crucifix I replaced is missing.

  I knew I hadn’t wedged it between the boulders as tightly as it had been before, but I thought it would stay put. Even more troubling is that I can’t find it anywhere in the vicinity. Did it get washed out to sea? I wouldn’t have thought the water would come up that far. I intend to search more this afternoon. I also want to watch the tide come in later and study the surge. Problem is, the next high tide will occur about eleven o’clock tonight, but I doubt I’ll be sleeping. I’ll need to be careful navigating those rocks in the dark. I’ve decided not to bring my kerosene lamp and risk dropping it and breaking it. So I’ll be hoping for clear skies and bright stars.

  Day 11, Ankou Island, 1:57 am

  My hands are shaking as I write this. Perhaps the two tequila shots I just drank will steady them. Where to begin? Oh yes, at the beginning, which began at 10:45 this evening.

  I donned my warmest all-weather coat and my hiking boots and headed out to the western shoreline. My attention was on the ground, making sure of my footing amongst all those rocks. When I finally glanced up to get my bearings, I was thirty yards from the water. Now keep in mind the lighting was terrible. I didn’t bring the lamp (for the reason I mentioned earlier) and there was minimal starlight shining through the patchy clouds. The moon was nowhere to be seen.

  So when I say I saw a figure standing offshore in the shallow water, you must take it with a huge grain of salt. In fact, take it with the entire shaker.

  Nevertheless, that’s what I saw. Or that’s how my mind interpreted what my eyes perceived. The figure was humanlike, but amorphous. More like a shadow of a human rather than a solid human form, yet it rose out of the water. Or seemed to. Then it just stood there. I couldn’t make out features in the gloom, but I tried to focus on where the eyes would be in the head-shaped area at the top. I got the impression I was being focused on right back.

  This Mexican stand-off lasted for two or three minutes...perhaps even ten. It’s impossible to say because I was in a state of panic. But I didn’t run away. I stayed in place and waited to see what would happen. Every time the beacon flashed on that spot, it disappeared. Then when the light passed, it returned. At one point during an eye-blink, the thing melted away or vanished or slid back into the murky depths.

  I high-tailed it back to the building, forgetting to make a mental note of how far the tide had risen. So in that regard, my mission was unsuccessful. I’ll venture back out in the light of day tomorrow morning for the eleven AM high tide to check the water level. Then as the water goes back out, I’ll scour every square inch of beach until I’ve found that damn crucifix.

  Make of that what you will. I’m going to bed.

  Day 11, Ankou Island, 4:51 pm

  The water surge doesn’t come all the way up to the boulders where the western crucifix was placed. Its highest reach misses that spot by five or six feet. I don’t know how the crucifix could have washed away. I’m at a complete loss. The tide is still going out, and I’ll do another search of the beach shortly, but with every inch the sun slides farther down the western sky, I feel more unnerved. I’m not going back out there tonight, but I will climb to the top of the tower with my binoculars and see what’s to be seen.

  Day 12, Ankou Island, 3:31 am

  I’m sitting at my folding table, writing by the steady, abiding flame of my kerosene lantern. The wind is strengthening. Even now I hear raindrops beginning to tap-tap-tap on the roof, a child’s tentative, sporadic toy-drum rhythm. Soon I expect them to escalate to a full-blown John Bonham solo. There will be no sleep for me, so I might as well capture the events of the past few hours on paper, before my brain distorts them by applying sanity and rationale.

  Yes, yes. I’ll begin at the beginning. That’s what I do, it seems. The beginning was at 10:22 this evening. I had eaten dinner late (the Spicy Cajun Gumbo was surprisingly tasty, but the havoc it wreaked coming out the other end...owie!). After I tidied up the kitchen and started the dishwasher (HA!), I headed up the spiral staircase to the beacon room.

  You should know the windows there are modern. The Coast Guard keeps them in good repair and they get a thorough cleaning every other month, as does the beacon itself. Th
e maintenance had just been done before my arrival, the timing of which was no accident. I am charged to spend two months here without human contact...that’s the challenge and the conditions under which all those people funded my adventure. They’ve paid for my services, and they’ll get their money’s worth. The notion of someone living alone for sixty days on a forlorn, uninhabited lighthouse island is fascinating to people. If they had known then what I know now, they would have pledged three times as much. It’s not just a lonely island, it’s a creepy-as-fuck-probably-haunted-by-ghosts-and-visited-by-demons-regularly island. Don’t you think that justifies tripling my salary???

  But I digress. So my point was that the windows are still relatively clean. I can see out of them just fine with my naked eye. The binoculars bring everything closer, as they are designed to do. The craggy boulders, the sea foam, the waxing gibbous moon playing hide-and-seek with the wispy night clouds...all crystal clear as seen through the non-distorting modern window glass with the aid of my high-quality binoculars.

  Yet that THING lurking on the western shore did NOT come into focus.

  It was back. It was again vague and nebulous...more like an absence of form rather than form itself. Not a gingerbread-man cookie cutter, but the missing section of the rolled-out dough. Does that make sense? Of course not, but remember it is still night, and I don’t have to make sense yet.

  And you know what? That wasn’t even the scary part. The scary part...did you catch it? That thing was standing ON THE SHORE. Not in the shallow water as it had been the night before. It was skulking amongst the rocks at the point just ABOVE where that crucifix had been. Do you understand the significance of that???

  Then, just as before, during an eye-blink, it disappeared.

  I waited for another couple of hours, scanning the beach and the surrounding water every few minutes. It didn’t return, which is why I’m downstairs now, writing by lamplight. I’m going to spend the rest of the night and likely most of tomorrow reading the next journal. There’s a span of some forty years between the end of William Murray’s tenure and the beginning of Edgar Whitford’s. There were other lighthouse keepers during that period, but if they kept journals, they were not locked away here. On one hand, I hope to find some clues about this mysterious apparition, on the other I’m half-hoping that Edgar’s writings are so boring they put me to sleep. You’ll soon know which it is.

  Day 13, Ankou Island, 10:27 pm

  I’m up in the tower again, scribbling by the light of the moon, which is constant and lovely, as well as the light of the beacon, which flashes over my head every fifteen seconds in a most annoying way. God, I hate that fucking beacon. I blame my insomnia on that blasted thing. Do we even need these? Doesn’t everyone use GPS now? Don’t sea-faring captains have all that fancy software to point out all the rocky reefs and dangerous shoals???

  But again I digress.

  As I write, I’m on the lookout for the Shadow Creature, as I’ve come to think of it. Yes dramatic phrasing, but so what? If I’m going to be scared as hell, I might as well have some fun with it.

  So far it hasn’t appeared.

  So I’ll summarize Edgar’s journal while I’m waiting. I managed to finish it today. It did not put me to sleep. Within a few pages, a clear image of Edgar formed in my mind: articulate, poetic, insightful. Edgar was not your run-of-the-mill keeper. I think to do that job, you must either be utterly without imagination or overflowing with it. The previous three keepers fit into the first category, while Edgar belonged firmly in the latter. He used his boundless free time here to indulge both his creativity and his intellect. He wrote descriptions of the sea and sky that took my breath away, and also profound existential commentaries on the state of mankind. He should have been an acclaimed poet or essayist or philosopher. Probably WOULD have been if he hadn’t lost his mind here on Ankou.

  As in the first two journals, Edgar’s descent into madness was documented in his writings. He saw ghosts and goblins and described them in such chilling detail that I had to force myself to keep turning the pages. Perhaps both Herbert and Giles saw the same creatures, but without an intellect approaching Edgar’s, their limited prose devolved into deranged ramblings. Or perhaps the beings looked different to those men than they did to the sensitive Edgar, whose words were so effective in their imagery, they will forever haunt my dreams.

  Why, might you ask, was our poor Edgar visited by these creatures when William, the one who came before Edgar and after Herbert and Giles, was not?

  I have a theory, which will soon make perfect sense.

  The crucifixes kept the unimaginative William and the devout Sarah safe. They had been placed at the four corners of the island: north, south, east, and west. All remained in place during the thirteen years they lived here in peace. All four were found by Edgar soon after his arrival. He, like me, was intrigued by them...pondered their meaning. He, like me, removed the one that had been placed on the western shore facing Plum Island. However, unlike me, Edgar discovered their importance too late. He was already descending into madness when he found the previous three journals, stashed in a locked cupboard and covered in decades’ worth of dust. That’s when he replaced the western crucifix, but it was too late. I can only assume that while he still possessed some semblance of reason, he chiseled out the hole in the rock and secured all four journals there. And I know why he did this. He intended to incinerate everything on Ankou Island, including his own haunted self. He stated as much in one of his last coherent passages. I recall from my former research that there had been a devastating fire in the early twentieth century, and so it seems Edgar did indeed carry out his grisly plan.

  Now we come full circle. What is the significance of the missing crucifix? When it’s removed, does it open a kind of portal into some hellish dimension? Does its absence allow demons, goblins, and ghouls to enter?

  I believe so, or at least some version of that. A week ago I would never have entertained such a notion, but I’ve seen one of these manifestations with my own eyes. Edgar never wrote about a Shadow Creature, but he described any number of other ghastly entities. His last few pages were unintelligible, and I’m thankful for that. I have a feeling Edgar’s poetic account of the end, if he’d still had enough wits about him to write comprehensively, would have depicted a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

  So now my mission is clear: I must, at all costs, find that fourth crucifix and secure it before any other creatures can get through. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Why not just turn on the cell phone and call for Captain Dan to come get me the hell out of here?’

  And the answer is: I would if I could. It’s no longer about honoring my commitment. I would happily refund every penny paid and release every dollar pledged if it meant getting out of here. But the problem is that none of my electronics are working. Not my cell, not the satellite phone, not even the digital camera. The backup chargers appear to be drained as well.

  How’s that for a kick in the pants?

  So you see, I have no choice. I have to find that crucifix. Even now as I write, the Shadow Creature has appeared. I’m watching it through those clean windows at the top of the tower with the aid of my excellent binoculars.

  And you know what? It’s no clearer, but it is definitely closer.

  Day 14, Ankou Island, 11:58 am

  I survived the night and I have wonderful news! I found the fourth crucifix! Once I had found it (just lying about on a patch of sand I’d searched several times), I used another makeshift fulcrum to wedge it back into its original location between the two massive boulders on the western shore. I don’t know if that will restrain the Shadow Creature that’s already here, but I believe it will keep more from coming through. I feel an enormous weight lifted from my shoulders!

  I do have some bad news, though. I was downright giddy when I found and replaced the crucifix, and so I felt up to the task of checking on my two nests. All remaining ten eggs were broken, and just as with the first, t
here were no little hatchlings squawking to be fed. Were they eaten by predators? I haven’t seen any wildlife here, so that seems unlikely. Which brings up another question: Where IS all the wildlife? Ankou is supposed to be a mecca for seals and otters and sea turtles and a dozen other animals. Why aren’t they here???

  I don’t know and may never know. All I do know is I have forty-five more nights to get through. And while I have plenty of food and water, I have no way to communicate with anyone. I left strict instructions that I was not to be contacted. That was one of the conditions under which I received all the financial support. I made a commitment to my followers, and while I would willingly break that oath now, the Coast Guard agreed they would not initiate contact.

  So I’m on my own. I hope the final journal will further enlighten me and help me to survive another month and half.

  God, that sounds like an eternity.

  Timothy Murphy (do you think the lad might have been Irish?!) was the last resident keeper. He lost his job in 1978 when the lighthouse became automated. I gathered from my prior research that the decision to do so was prompted by Timothy’s alcoholism, which adversely affected his performance. Alcohol will do that. After what I’ve seen, it’s understandable that a person would resort to it here. Even now as I look at my empty bottle of Jose Cuervo...

  Crap. When did I finish it? I’m so damn tired, my brain isn’t working very well. Attention class: sleep deprivation is a thing. Get your eight hours every night so you can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning for all your tests.