Chapter 18

The smell of iron and rotten food filled Jacob’s nostrils.  His eyes fluttered open and as if looking through a milky opaque lens, the whole room was blurry to any finite shape.  The air was thick with a dry musty putrid odor that caused Jacob to double over and vomit when he tried to make his way to his feet.  He sat in a puddle of his own bile, struggling to get a grip on his situation. 

Confusion was becoming all too common, but regaining his sight and ability to function was important if he hoped to survive.  He operated himself like a robot, his subconscious taking the wheel and allowing him to regain some of his composure.  His sight faded into view, the tears welling up from the smell washing away the blur.

He was sitting on a plain wooden floor covered in nearly two inches of dust and grime.  His clothing, likewise; was covered in an equal amount.  The room he was in was large, nearly 50 feet in length, with a high ceiling that arched in the center, brought to shape by large wooden beams that met in the center.  Jacob managed, after some time, to stand and noting the brightly colored stain glass windows, and large pews lined with people, that he was in a church.

The church was not atypical in that in was one of Christian worship, but was less extravagant and almost awkward and nontraditional.  The people sat motionless, staring towards the front of the room while a small girl knelt before a large stone tablet with strange symbols across it. 

Jacob stepped towards the center aisle, hoping to approach this girl and find out where he was or how he had managed to find his way there.  As he stepped a few feet towards her, the rear pew, filled from pew to pew with people, he now noticed, were rotted and decayed.  Their sunken eye sockets were placated by partially bared yellowed teeth and loosely hanging skin.  Their faces, though rotted and decayed, were turned towards the front, as if awaiting something.  Their expressions were emotionless, and almost, sad. 

Jacob noted as he walked ever forward that the remaining pews were the same, some with children and some with elderly people.  All were dead and patiently waiting on something.  Whatever that something was, made Jacob’s heart beat ever faster in his chest, as he knew it was not something good.    

  The little girl rocked back and forth, in a manner to subjugate the mood of death all around her with a livelihood of youth and worship.  She muttered words, unknown to Jacob in any language he was accustomed, not that he knew much of any aside from English.  When he made it to within 10 feet of the small girl, she stopped rocking.  She stood, her white dress falling to her ankles. 

She slowly began turning towards him.  She was beautiful, with brown hair tied back behind her ears, and she wore a smile, not of malice or hatred, but of love and excitement.  Jacob’s heart almost leaped to see something like this, after everything he had been through.  He momentarily forgot that behind him sat about forty five decaying and rotting corpses, until her expression went blank. 

She knelt back down to her knees and bowed to him.  He stood, mesmerized and confused. 

“Who are you?” he said, though he felt he should already know the answer. 

Without standing, she whispered in a voice that was more fitting a woman than a child, “I am your child.  We all are your children.  You are the Father.” 

The Father?

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by that.  I only have one child, and I think you may have confused me with someone else…”

She stood back up, this time her expression stern and less sincere. 

“YOU are the Father.  You are the one who will lead us home.  You are the one who will end our suffering and bring us from the darkness and into the light.  You are the Savior.” She said with her eyes full of hope and longing. 

Jacob looked behind him and noticed that all of the corpses were now standing, their dry emotionless faces turned towards him as if expecting something.  Jacob knew in his mind he should be afraid, afraid of the macabre scene in front of him, but he was not afraid.  His heart beat at a steady, even pace inside of his chest and he felt a weight lift off of him. 

Memories rushed into his mind instantly.  He remembered everything now. 

The world, the island, the power. 

It settled on him in a calming, silent resolve.  He was not going to escape this island, this island was his.  This body was not. 

Erin opened her eyes to the sound of moaning.  She looked around and at once saw Thomas sliding along the grass, holding onto his temples.  He managed to make it to a nearby tree and propped himself up. 

“I feel like I have been slipped a roofie and washed it down with a fifth of whiskey.” He said, noticing she was watching him.  “What the hell just happened?”

Erin was about to answer when she noticed Jacob lying still and motionless on the ground.  She walked over to him, and saw he was no longer breathing. 

“Thomas!  I think Jacob is dead!”  She called, and Thomas stood and approached, cautiously. 

“Stand back.  I had training as a field med, though I have no equipment.”  Thomas felt the pulse of blood on the side of Jacob’s neck, and noticed that it was there, though very faint.  “He is alive, though just barely.  We need to get him to some shelter and keep him safe until he wakes up.  Who in the hell was that woman?”

Erin began gathering branches to make a make-shift gurney.  “That woman has been trying to kill us since we found each other.  She has been after us.  I don’t know who or what she is, but I know she is evil and seems very persistent.  She has an effect on men, obviously, that somehow draws them in.  I don’t know how, but it’s evident with how you reacted that we may be in more trouble than we thought.”

Thomas was helping her with the gurney, arranging sticks in a pattern that overlapped and entwined themselves so that they would hold Jacob’s weight. 

“I don’t know what happened.  I saw her and remember just wanting to go to her.  I was so angry with Jacob for not letting me and could feel within me the urge to kill him just to be with her.  I was about to turn on him when the sound broke out and brought me back into reality.  What a fucked up reality it is!

We need to get him to some type of cave or building to get him out of the open air, and then split up and find some water and some food.  His breathing is labored and could largely be from dehydration.  Aside from that, without any medical equipment or a hospital close by, we can only hope to wait and see if his body will heal itself.  The sound waves could have caused him to go into shock.”

Erin nodded, knowing and understanding everything Thomas was saying, but still afraid she was going to lose Jacob.  He had brought her out of the darkness of the house, away from whatever had had her, and she owed him her life.  She watched him as Thomas finished working on the gurney, running her hands through his hair as he lay motionless on the ground. 

Thomas went off into the trees to gather some type of vine or twine to tie the branches together.  He was gone for around 5 minutes when he came rushing back through the trees. 

“Well, although I am glad we made the gurney; you’re not going to believe this!”  His eyes were full of promise and excitement.  “I will wait with Jacob while you walk through those trees right there.  This island is a lot larger than you thought.”  Thomas was smiling brightly, with his teeth shining in the sunlight like tiny pearls. 

Erin pushed through the undergrowth and gasped.  There was a whole town below them.  She saw cars driving, and the undergrowth led to a small two-lane blacktop road.  It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  She sat down beside the road and cried. 

It wasn’t long before a vehicle drove by and as soon as the whole incident had began; she and Thomas were sitting in a hospital, along with Jacob who was in ICU.  Apparently they were on one of the smaller islands in the Philippines and after some discussion with an officer; they had explained everything that they knew.

The town itself was not large, with only about 7000 people they learned from reading some of the brochures on the table. 

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Erin said at last, finally alone with just Thomas. 

Thomas was spacing out, lost in his own thoughts a couple chairs across from Erin.  It was a silent agreement he was going to wait until Jacob had awakened before he was to plan his route home. 

“What doesn’t make any sense?  I mean, aside from everything that has happened in the past 36 hours.”

“Just that, the date on the wall is the exact same day, the last time I looked at a calendar.  That was close to three weeks ago, by my own personal estimation.  In addition to that mind-raping dilemma, I was sailing on a boat in open water, a thousand miles east of here.  I don’t understand how we randomly crashed against a shore of rocks, and ended up landing on an island a thousand miles from where we thought we were. 

I will admit to not being the best navigator, but Mark, the man I was with, was a professional sailor.  He had been sailing since he was 5 years old.  I believe him to know how to use a compass and GPS.  We were nowhere near this island.” 

“Maybe, but I remember you telling the officer there was a violent storm the night you wrecked the boat, maybe it was messing with the GPS system in the boat.  What is more compelling is that last I knew, I was headed home on leave from the military.  I was on dry land.  I didn’t crash a boat or airplane; I woke up on a steel table in the Philippines, drugged like a lab experiment.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?” came a voice from down the hall.  It was Sarah, the robust, dark skinned woman who had been their attending nurse.  “It’s your friend.  He’s gone.”

Chapter 17

As the sunlight broke through the trees, Thomas was brought out of his horrid nightmares and back into the cold hardened reality.  He looked around, momentarily confused of his surroundings when he noticed that there were two other people sitting against a tree across from a nearly fading fire.  There was a man and woman, both around their late 20s and the woman was staring at him with an alarmed expression on her face. 

“Hello,” was all Thomas thought to say, he was unsure of whom they were or what they were doing on this island, but he was similarly grateful they didn’t look nearly as threatening as the things that had pursued him the night before, although they still could be enemies. 

The woman began nudging the man, a slightly larger guy in torn dress pants and a stained dress shirt wearing hiking boots.  He didn’t look too threatening, but he was also a good bit larger than Thomas and that always seemed to prove a point of caution.

The man’s eyes opened at once and he sprang to his feet as if in alarm and the sudden alarming wake up.  He stared around before his eyes fixed on Thomas and his expression turned from fear and alarm, to curiosity. 

Thomas backed up a few paces, crawling away from the stump as if to prepare to either fight or take off, which ever the situation dictated. 

“I mean you no harm.  I am simply lost and very confused.”  Thomas said, as sincere and certain as he could manage. 

The man approached him and held out his hand.  Thomas accepted the help and he brought him to his feet.  “My name is Jacob, and that is Erin.  What is your name?”

“Thomas, Tom is fine.” He said, nodding to Erin.  “Can you please tell me what is going on and where I am?”

Jacob’s eyes met Erin’s and she shrugged, “Well in truth, we don’t really know.  We each have similar instances of ending up stranded on this island, but we do not know where we are.  I was in a plane that crashed a few days ago and Erin has been here longer, having wrecked a boat off shore a few weeks back.” 

Erin’s expression changed from concern to sorrow.

Thomas acknowledged them both, attempting to read the truths behind what they were saying.  “I didn’t know this was an island.  I was hoping to make it back away from the coast and find some sort of town.  I woke up yesterday on a steel table in some sort of rudimentary prison cell along the beach.  I was chased by these…”  his voice broke off, he was unsure whether he wanted to openly admit to seeing demonic creatures as he was still unsure of them himself.  The drugs could very well have played a part in his actions, so he left it alone. 

“I think someone was chasing me.  I never stopped to see who or what it was, only ran as fast as I could.  I ran for miles, with this someone right behind me and closing when I saw the fire.  I ran towards it and still don’t know how I made it without my lungs bursting in my chest.  As for how I managed to get on this island, well I seem to have been drugged and my past few weeks are still a little hazy.” 

He watched as Jacob stood staring at the dying coals of the fire, thinking on everything he had said.  “I think we know what was chasing you, though you may not fully believe what we will tell you.  This island, this place, is something straight out of a nightmare.  We have been fighting for survival since we managed to make it here, though we still don’t know where here is.  The darkness of this island will serve only to kill you if you are not careful.”

Erin stood and brushed the leaves and dirt from her pants.  “I might not be fully ready to trust you, but we could use your help.” 

Jacob’s mind remembered the boat and nodded.  “We found an old fishing boat, nothing fancy, but it does have a sail and enough from for all three of us.  The only problem is that it is about 3 miles back in the jungle and it takes a while to move the small vessel with only me and Erin pushing it.  We could definitely use your help if you are willing.”

Thomas wasn’t sure sailing a small boat out on the open sea was the smartest plan, but the alternative was spending another night on this island being chased by whatever the hell those things were.  “Lead the way, I’d be glad to get off of this damn island.” 

Jacob took the lead and was headed off in the direction of his footsteps from the previous night.  Soon, the house could be seen across the valley floor, looming out on top of the hill.  They made it to where they had left the boat and Jacob hit his knees and Erin collectively gasped. 

The boat was torn to pieces.  There were claw marks and boards ripped from the ribbed inlays and cast all over the jungle floor.  Jacob silently chided himself for not doing something to cover the boat before they left it, but he knew that if he took any more time to do that, they would both be dead.  Their hope of getting off the island that day was shattered in hundreds of small pieces of a fishing boat. 

Thomas stared down at the carnage and shook his head, “Well, I don’t think it will float, unless one of you has about 25 rolls of duct tape.”  He didn’t expect the joke to go over too well, but Jacob did smile. 

Jacob stood and stared over at Thomas, “Well we might not need your help after all it seems.  Are you military, or just dressing the part?” 

Thomas smiled back at him, “I’m a member of the U.S. Army, have been for 8 years now.”

Erin sat down against a tree and began to cry into her arms.  Jacob and Thomas both looked over at her and then back at each other.

“We need to find some place to hold up tonight.  Some place a little safer than the open jungle,” Thomas said, open to ideas from them both.  “I am sure you know this already, but I saw a house on top of that hill that might provide some shelter.” 

Jacob shook his head, “We came from that house yesterday.  There are things within its walls that make the terror of the creatures outside seem minute.  We have yet to explore the full extent of the island and I think we may need to press on.  The whole Southern end of the island is of no use, as we have scanned it thoroughly, though this house is as far north as we have ventured so far.” 

Erin nodded, “I think Jacob is right.  Though this boat was our quick hope of leaving soon, we really didn’t even know if it would float.  We need to press on and find some other way to get off of this island as soon as possible.  I can feel the evil growing with each day, as if our fear is somehow feeding it.” 

Thomas was a little short of words, but nodded and motioned with his hand for one of them to lead the way.  Jacob took the point and began walking through the trees.  The jungle was hot and the air was moist with humidity.  Although it was still early, it was starting out to be a very hot day and the heat would be just as dangerous to them as the things trying to kill them unless they found some water. 

Jacob held his gun forward, obviously unsure of what to expect as they ventured further and further into the dense undergrowth.  Erin was behind him and Thomas was in the back.  They walked for most of the day, passing a small stream that allowed some relief to the heat, though it still gnawed away at their energy levels and all were more than hungry.  They stopped just a few hours behind the daylight faded to ensure they had a fire going. 

Jacob sat about the task of fortifying their position while Erin and Thomas set traps and searched for some food.  A small pheasant was soon cooking over a fire.  The night was rather peaceful, minus the shadows and growls in the trees nearby, but nothing they did not expect or prepare for.  Jacob had gathered numerous armloads of wood and had sat it next to the fire, so they would not have to venture out of the light of the flames to gather more if that was necessary.

By the next morning, they were once again ready to set off.  The day was much unlike the previous in that thick white clouds littered the sky and blocked out the sun for the most part.  Although there was still plenty enough light to see by, the thoughts on all of their minds were the intolerance to light these creatures had and how a cloud could affect that. 

It was nearly mid day when they came once again onto a small beach.  The light from the sky cast an eerie façade to the tropical scenery.  A soft, but ever increasing, wind began to blow and carried the surf well above the normal tide.  They walked along the outskirts of the water, keeping close and confined. They talked, mostly about their lives and where they were from.  Erin and Jacob grew to feel sorry for Thomas, hearing his story of how his parents had died and he had been left taking care of an aunt that was dying of cancer. 

Their doubts of him were still there, but they both grew to like him in his own way.  He was military, through and through.  Although he was serious and could be quite helpful, his mindset was always taking some dirty spin and often carried the mood. 

Jacob stopped dead in his tracks, just moments before the beach ended and the trees wrapped all the way to the shore meeting a small drop off that landed 10 feet below onto a rocky slope.  The trees were dark and foreboding and much unlike the rest of the trees, these ones did not seem to let much light to pass through to the jungle floor below. 

“I don’t think we should go that way.” Jacob said, with alarm.

“I was about to say the same thing. But what seems to have stopped you so sudden?  Did you see something?” Thomas asked, searching the trees.  It was then he saw her.  A white dress whipped in the wind, flowing between the trees without form.  He saw her delicate fair skin, moving through the darkness, smiling over at them with her perfect lips. 

He felt himself walking towards her, being drawn in to her beauty and captivating charm.  Jacob held him, wrapping him in a bear hug and avoiding looking at her.  Her charm was no longer one that affected him, seeing her now only as the demon she truly was.  Thomas struggled to be let free, cursing at Jacob as he pulled to get out of his grip.  Jacob held fast, as Erin searched endlessly for what they were looking it. 

To her, all she could see was the dark forest, but she saw the look of fear on Jacob’s face and knew at once what it was he seen.  It had to be her.

The woman walked between the trees, taking care to move as if studying the trio with both interest and malice.  Jacob was losing his grip on Thomas, fighting with him to prevent him from being pulled into the seductive grip of evil.

Jacob’s eyes opened in alarm.  The woman was longer standing in the trees like she was before, but indistinctively had vanished.  Thomas looked around, searching for her, his lips pursed in both anger and frustration at being held at bay. 

The evil laughter broke through the trees at once, bringing Thomas out of his love-struck mentality and down to his knees holding his ears along with Erin and Jacob.  The sound was piercing and painful, stabbing through the auditory nerves and breaking through the mind’s barriers.  As sudden as the whole scene happened, it was over. 

Thomas fell onto his stomach and lay still on the ground.  Erin and Jacob struggled to sit up, though their sense of direction and balance had been up-rooted by the sudden impulse to throw up and collapse.  Blood leaked from the ear lobes in tiny lines of bright crimson. 

The world was muted.  It was as sudden as unplugging a radio that was blasting music.  The sound was gone.  The woman was gone.  Thomas was gone.