CHAPTER TWELVE
Dex had decided the best way to search the island would be to walk around the entire coastline, even though there were no trails that skirted the coast, aside from the one on the northwest side. This meant a lot of bushwalking, which in inclement weather and without proper equipment would be difficult to do.
We started off with the remaining campsites that sat inland from the ones we were staying at. On a normal, sunny day the little clearing would have been an ideal spot for a small group. There were three gravel sites, two picnic tables and a grassy, mossy bottom.
But on this day, it looked like the creepiest place to be, let alone camp. The picnic tables seemed rotted through and covered with black slime and moss. The grass beneath our feet was saturated and sinking, and all around us were clumps of piled rocks. We knew those were graves. It amazed me that people could actually be camping beside the sad, makeshift tombstones and not know about it. Or perhaps not even care.
After the campsite we headed inland for a bit. There was a small bog with year–round groundwater that used to be the only source of water for the lepers. I guess Dex and I were lucky in the fact that we were able to collect the deluge of rainwater that was falling every other hour; otherwise we’d probably have to drink the bog water. With the drooping, brown weeds that sprouted from the dingy murk and the broken, hanging grey limbs that surrounded it like a cage, the bog seemed like the kind of place where you were more likely to drink poison than water.
We were glad to get out of there and back onto the coast again, even though navigating was becoming more and more challenging the further we hiked away from the campsite. I had my stupid knife I had to contend with while I was struggling to break through the salal bushes. At first I tried slashing through like it was a machete and I was on some jungle expedition, but after a few futile attempts and one sharp cut to my finger, I gave up on that.
When we weren’t dealing with tangled undergrowth, we were out in the open, climbing over large boulders and rocks that made up the craggy shoreline. With my lack of balance and agility, plus the knife in my hand, I was definitely slowing us up.
Dex stopped on top of one boulder that was covered in reddish moss and bird shit and gave me an impatient look.
“Are you going to make it?” he asked. His tone said he wouldn’t care either way.
I narrowed my eyes at him and waved the knife. “You try this with a knife in your hand.” >
He sat down on the rock and held his hand out for the knife. I gave it to him and he grabbed my hand and helped pull me up, the slickness of the rain–soaked rocks falling away from my straining boots.
Once on top of the rock, I lay there for a minute and let the rain fall on my face, taking in a deep breath. I was soaked to the bone, freezing cold and absolutely miserable. We had only been on the move for about a half an hour and with the thick fog settled just a few yards off shore, it was hard to tell what direction we were facing. Any sign of the nearby Sidney Island, or even the closer Little D’Arcy, was obscured. It was disorienting.
What sucked the most was that I couldn’t just give up and go back to the campsite. We had to keep going.
Dex moved over and peered down at me, his head blocking the rain from my eyes. It made a pleasant pitter patter sound on the back of his hood.
“Catch your breath. Then we’ll keep going. I don’t want it to get dark while we’re out here.”
I nodded and breathed in deeply. We did have flashlights with us, but he was right. There was no way I wanted to be in the forest during nightfall, looking for people who may or may not be waiting for us.
He got to his feet and grabbed hold of my hand. He started to pull me up as my Docs slid around a bit. Just as I got to my feet in an awkward, hunched–over manner, his left foot shot out from under him and he went flying over backwards off of the rock.
I screamed and reached for him as he went but I fell too, only onto my stomach, still on the rock.
“Dex!” I cried and pulled myself forward and peered over the edge of the rock face. He had fallen about eight feet and was lying below the other side, looking all bent up and battered. F*ck, I hope he hasn’t broken anything, I thought wildly. If he had, we were screwed to high heaven.
He groaned and looked up at me. “I’m OK.”
“How? Are you sure?”
He nodded then stopped himself. He held his head. “Ow.”
“You’re not OK, oh shit.”
I carefully pulled my body around so I was facing the other way and tried to let myself drop to the rocky ground beside him as carefully as possible.
“Wait!” he screamed.
I paused, hanging off of the boulder, feet dangling, my arms barely gripping the slippery surface.
“Move to your left more.”
I sidled over to the left as much as I could and then my hands and arms gave away.
I landed on my feet but immediately fell backward and pointy, crusty rocks went into my ass, elbows and back.
Now it was my turn to swear my head off and moan. Why was I so clumsy all the time?
I looked at Dex, who was staring at the space right beside me. The hunting knife was there and for some reason it was lodged in the ground with the sharp blade facing straight up. Had he not told me to move to the left I would have landed right on top of it.
I shivered, feeling nauseous at the close call.
“You OK?” he grunted, trying to sit up.
“I came down here to ask you that.” I looked at my hands, which were lightly scratched with blood and dirt but nothing seemed too gruesome.
“We’ve both been worse,” he said and moved to get up. He paused and lowered his head a bit, dark eyes fixated on something at the base of the boulder.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to see.
He got to his feet slowly, trying to hide the wincing, and took a few steps before squatting in front of the rock, where a small depression made a short and shallow, dark cave. He reached in, his disappearing hands out of my view.
When he brought them out, in them was a very old, dripping shoe. A man’s shoe, quite small, brown and decrepit. We exchanged a curious glance. I guess finding a shoe wasn’t that strange but...
He turned it over in his hands.
His eyes bugged out and he gasped in outright horror, dropping the shoe in disgust and stumbling backward away from it in a wild panic.
Instinctively I jumped up, scrambling to get to my feet and stumbled over to where he was. I grabbed onto his coat.
His hands were at his mouth, looking like he was about to vomit.
“What?! What is it?” I cried, not wanting to go any closer to it.
He closed his eyes and tried to compose himself. I put my arm around him to let him know I was there. After a few breaths he opened them, shaking his head very slowly, eyes focused on the shoe in horrid disbelief, skin transparently pale. The stubble on his cheeks stood out like dark cacti on a white sand beach.
“There’s a foot in that shoe,” he said blankly.
“Excuse me?” My hands flew up to my mouth as well. He had to have been kidding.
“There’s a human foot in that shoe.”
“Oh my God,” I said, turning away and trying to remain calm. “What the? How? Why would there be a foot. Did someone cut off someone’s foot?”
“I don’t know. It might have fallen off.”
“Jesus, Dex,” I exclaimed. I looked at him with disgust. He gave me a barely perceptible shrug, his complexion still ashen.
“Leprosy,” he said matter–of–factly.
“OK, for one thing their feet didn’t just fall off like that. They lost feeling in their feet and hands and whatever, but that was totally different. And for another, that foot couldn’t possibly be a hundred years old!”
“Did you see the foot?” he asked, looking at me wryly.
I did not want to see the foot. Sure, there was a part of me that wanted to look, the same part of me that slows down at car accidents in some sick hope that I’d see a dead body, but I also knew that if the sight caused Dex to nearly puke, it would do something much worse to me. In fact, I felt like spewing right here on the rocks just from the thought of it.
“I hate to say this, but I really think we should get going,” I said, eyeing the moving fog that seemed to creep in closer. I wanted to be as far away from the foot as possible, even if the only other option was to continue on our pointless trek around the island.
Dex agreed and, after he scooped up the knife from its deadly resting place, we were back on our way, scrambling over the rest of the rocky coast in silence, mulling over the damn foot in the shoe. I didn’t know what Dex was thinking but at least he was the one to have seen it, to have seen something for once. The shoe could have been a hundred years old, it could have been a few years old – the sea and climate ravaged things out here like nothing else. It could have been a leper’s foot, it could have be the foot of someone murdered, or it could have just been the only remains of a drowned kayaker, washed up to shore. Apparently finding feet on the coast was a common occurrence in B.C. I didn’t want to think about it anymore than I had to.
We had other things to contend with, including making our way through the forest again, choosing the cover of dark pine and twisting arbutus trees with their scaling red bark that reminded me of dead, sunburned skin. We rounded the head of the island and started down the other coast with the wild waves now crashing turbulently on our right side. After a while of exhaustive bushwhacking, my fingers cold, numbed and scratched to bits from pushing back scathing branches, we came back to the a familiar area where a trail opened up and the Mary Contrary could be seen rollicking off the coast.
She was a sight for sore eyes, all right. There was nothing I wanted more than to just toss everything aside and make a swim for it. We paused near the beach and watched her ride the waves. Dex could tell what I was thinking.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “if the weather is better, I’ll try and make a go for her.”
I didn’t like that idea but knew we might not have the choice. If we were even given the choice. The good news, though, was that if someone had actually sabotaged the Zodiac and meant to strand us here, they would have just taken the boat. With the sailboat still here, that seemed more unlikely.
We continued down the path until we reached the turnoff for the dead heart and the campsite. Instead of turning left, we kept going down the coast. This was all new to me. The path was almost wider at points and took on the appearance of a well–worn stroll through a city park.
“Did you come down here earlier?” I asked Dex. He said he hadn’t.
It wasn’t long at all before the trees around us began to clear. If there was a view to be had through the encumbering fog, it would have been quite the sight. With the sea falling below the low cliffs to our right, you could have probably seen for miles.
The first surprise came in the form of what was supposed to be the old caretaker’s woodshop. There was nothing left of the building except low cement fixtures that would have held together the foundation and a single cement staircase that led to nowhere. The building was now home to spindly trees that twisted sideways from the wind.
The area around the cottage was strange, with a weird, thick feeling in the air, like the fog from offshore was choking us with an invisible hand. All I could think about was the history behind the ruins, how the coldness that was constantly seeping through my supposedly waterproof jacket and throttling my bones and joints was just a daily fact of life for the poor people who were left here.
Dex surveyed the area with one glance. Either he didn’t care or it spooked him out as much as it did me. We walked for a bit longer until we came across another ruin.
It was half a house, still standing. There were no floors or rooms, but two walls of vertical cement that met together in a tangled mess of vines and overgrown weeds that declared residency on the skeleton.
An arbutus tree shot up from the middle of the building, nature’s triumph over mankind. Flanking the remains of the ruins were large toppled stones and boulders that were covered in a thick layer of dark green moss. Civilization still had its grasp on the place with the numerous tags of graffiti that sprawled against the walls. Some lovebird’s initials, some racist slang, some innocuous cheers for Grad 2000.
Standing there with Dex, looking the eerie relic over, I think we were both glad to see something so trivial and modern as moronic graffiti. In any other situation I probably would have made some remark about punk kids ruining a historical artifact but all I could think about was how soothing the vandalism was. There was another world out there, another world of modern people who were going on about their lives. A world that occasionally brought over teenage kids to this godforsaken island so they could have sex away from prying eyes, get drunk and tag decrepit old structures that no one cared about.
“What do you think?” Dex asked. We had paused in front of the crippled cottage, both of us looking it over in silence.
“It’s creepy and comforting. At the same time.”
He looked out to where the lack of trees gave us a clear view of the briny waves and the vanilla cotton candy mist. “Would have been a hell of a view for the caretaker. You can’t buy this location back at home.”
True. But it would still be a hard sell. Sure you get a view, you just have to share an island with a bunch of lepers.
“Wish I had brought the Super 8,” he lamented to himself and walked along one side of the ruins. I stayed put, not wanting to explore it any further. Like the previous ruin, there was something unsettling here. Then again after a day of almost drowning, finding our Zodiac slashed and discovering a foot on the beach, it didn’t seem all that strange to find every single thing we came across just a tad creepy.
He went around the corner to the upright slabs and vanished out of my sight. I knew he was there, just a couple of yards away, but a wash of prickly cold came over me, almost as if I had an icy breeze inside of my body.
“Hee hee hee.”
The girl’s giggle.
I spun around and looked behind me at the forest.
The sound of leaves being crushed, branches cracking, light footsteps. But there was nothing there. Nothing I could see.
I listened hard. I couldn’t hear anything else. Not even Dex. I was about to open my mouth to call from him when I heard a SNAP.
I looked around me again and saw a glimpse of a white shirt disappearing behind the concrete where Dex had gone.
“Dex!” I yelled and ran over. I went around the corner and saw nothing. Where was he?
I kept running and was about to round the next one, the area where the dying vines overwhelmed the cracked and pebbly walls, when Dex appeared. I put on the brakes, almost running right into him. He reached out and steadied me with his hand.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Did you hear that?” I asked breathlessly.
“Hear what?”
“The laugh. The girl laughed and then I saw her, I saw her, she would have run right into you.”
I could see the hesitation in his face, followed by a tinge of concern across his brow. He kept his hand on me, tightening his grip.
“I didn’t see or hear anything, Perry.”
Of course he didn’t. I gave him a wary smile.
“Guess I’m going nuts then!” I felt small and simple. Maybe I was going nuts. Though if I wasn’t, I was a bit relieved to know that the girl, whether she was dead or alive, was still alive…if that made any sense.
I knew Dex was looking me over like some clinical scientist so I just brushed it off. “Well anyway, maybe you aren’t very observant. Can we finish this stakeout up? I’m getting colder by the minute.”
We took off down the path, leaving the ruins behind. The only problem now was the path deteriorated back into bush territory and we were back to slogging through mud and crisscrossed roots for the rest of the way. Sometimes we would come across a pretty curve of beach or a scenic outlook but with that constant armor of fog at our doorstep, nothing was as pretty as it could have been. Yesterday would have been the better day to go exploring. But then again, yesterday felt like a whole different life all together. Even the hockey game we went to – the strip club, God damn it – felt like something that happened years ago and to other people other than us. It had only been 30 hours or something but it felt like my whole life was rain, cold and fog, with the occasional foot thrown in there. >
The south end of the island came up and we were soon making our way up the bottom, tripping up the east coast. Aside from the little girl, we hadn’t come across anyone else. Dex pointed out that just because the perimeter was clean it didn’t mean people weren’t hiding out in the middle.
I started to doubt it though. We hadn’t seen signs of anyone. The boat was still there the last we looked, and as we struggled through the brush until we saw our own tent again, shining in its blue plastic glory like a beacon, it only solidified the fact that if there was someone else here wanting to make trouble for us, they would have done something else, right? The boat would have been gone, our campsite would have been destroyed. It would have been more.
Unfortunately, this didn’t mean the end of our journey. Dex was so determined to still find those “pontoon–slashing motherf*ckers” that he made us keep going and hit up the one place we had missed… the dead heart of the island.
It really was starting to get dark. From the way the clouds grew blacker near their tops, it must have been at least 3:30 or 4 p.m. We maybe had an hour before the sun would set in a place unseen.
But Dex was insistent and as much as my feet hurt in my boots, as much as my bones and hands throbbed subtly from the fall, I still wasn’t brave enough to wait it out alone at the campsite. So we kept going, heading deep inside to where the ferns grew to prehistoric heights and the only light seemed choked out by grasping limbs.
Though it was his idea, I could see Dex was apprehensive about heading into the middle. At one point in the path he stopped and quickly handed me back the knife for “safe keeping.”
We reached the end of the path and started back again. There was nothing there. No raccoons, no saboteurs, no giggling girls. Just the hanging moss, rotted stumps, a floor of grey, wet leaves and the stench of dying vegetation.
As we walked along, our pace quickening with the relief that we were leaving, Dex looked at me and smiled. “At least this has taken your mind off of all the blog comments.”
He was right about that. I wasn’t quite in the place to smile about it yet but it all seemed very frivolous when compared to a real–life dangerous situation.
He looked up at the marker on the tree as we passed it and frowned.
“I don’t remember seeing that tree before.”
We stopped and I looked behind me. The tree looked like any other tree in this area. Slimy, scaly bark flanked with beaded moss and the drip of rainwater. There was a tiny nick in the side of it though, where the inner bark was clean and white. Almost like someone took a few whacks of an axe to it and then gave up. He was right. I hadn’t seen that before. But I wasn’t sure that meant anything.
I looked at him unsure of what to say. “I don’t know.”
He sucked in his lips and reached into his pocket. He brought out the pack of cigarettes. It was empty. He crumpled up the package in frustration and threw it on the ground.
“Really, Dex? Littering?” I bent over to pick it up but he grabbed my arm.
“Just leave it for now, trust me.”
He brought out a pack of Nicorette gum and popped a few pieces in his mouth instead. Then he shrugged. “Almost there.”
I gave him an odd look and we continued on our way. He pointed off to the side and started in that direction. It wasn’t on the marked trail anymore but I went with it. I wasn’t sure why he felt littering was of any importance at the moment unless he was just finding another way of being stubborn. Still, I–
“Shit!” Dex cried out. I turned my head in time to see him take off, booking it up the path like a racehorse out of the gate.
There was a two–second lag where I wasn’t sure what was going on but I was quickly running after him, trying to follow his form through the mud and thick trees.
“Where are you going?!” I yelled after him, losing my breath already.
“There’s someone here. I just saw them running!” he yelled over his shoulder, part of his words muffled by the trees he was darting in front of.
I gripped the handle of my knife tighter and struggled to catch up with him but with his comparatively long and agile legs, it was a losing game. It wasn’t long before I lost sight of him and the sound of his breathing and strides were hidden by the density of the forest.
I stopped running and felt utterly lost.
“Dex!” I yelled. And waited.
I yelled again. Same deal.
I was alone in the forest, in the very worst part of the island. If it was a movie, I would have kept looking for Dex and gotten more lost. After all, I did have a knife on me. I was armed. But I still had a tiny rational part of my brain that functioned despite being waterlogged and hungry.
I remember seeing a film when I was in grade school. It was one of those PSA–type shows, akin to why you shouldn’t play with fireworks and that sort of thing. They did a video in a local Portland area forest about a young boy who got lost. The best course of action for him was to stay put and curl up for warmth. The kid also had a package of some granola–like treats that kept him sustained. I remember really wanting those granola treats; I can see the pink packaging clearly in my head, even till to this day.
I also remembered the way he huddled inside a hollowed up log until the rescuers found him the next day. Now, I had no treats and though there were many creepy logs here I could certainly crawl under, I wasn’t having any of that. If Dex even came back there was no guarantee that he would come back this way. There was, of course, no search party.
So I turned around and decided to get back to the main path as quickly as I could. I knew that would take me to the campsite and the campsite was the one place we both knew we could find each other. It was our constant. If I could get back there, there was no doubt he would eventually show up there.
I hurried down the path, fully aware that Dex was out there chasing something and that there might be other somethings around, watching me from the dead trees. I quickly passed by the cigarette package and picked it up. Even stuffed into a crack in a tree, it was better than leaving it on the forest floor.
I looked up at the tree we passed earlier and noticed again the nicks in the bark.
Only the marker wasn’t there.
I stopped. Walked back to the tree. A few minutes ago the red and white glowing disc of the trail marker was on the tree. Now it wasn’t. And it wasn’t on the ground or on any part of the tree. It had just disappeared behind our backs, like someone was going around and plucking them off of the trees.
My breath came in short and shallow. My head felt heavy and my vision began to swim. After everything that happened today, I knew the panic attack was long overdue. But f*ck, I didn’t want to go through it alone and in this dead place.
“Think, Perry, think,” I said to myself. My voice cut clearly across the glade. It almost made me feel embarrassed, which was a nice change of emotion given the circumstances.
This tree did have a marker on it earlier, which meant this was the path. But where was the next marker? Where did the path go? The ground was muddy and debris–covered in every direction, whether we had walked on it earlier or not, and with the way the trees were spaced out, it was easy to imagine a million paths were running in a million different directions. Without the markers, you really were lost and for the first time, I couldn’t see a single one anywhere.
“Shit,” I swore under my breath. If going forward was impossible, maybe going backward wasn’t. The shoreline and the Mary Contrary were only ten minutes away at the most. It wasn’t the campsite but it was something and in the worst case scenario, I could probably turn over the Zodiac and use it as shelter.
Part of me wanted to sit down on the nearest stump and cry my eyes out. I was lost, Dex was gone somewhere, chasing something, and we were stranded here. Not only that but my parents and my sister had no idea what was going on with me and were probably sick with worry. There was this constant irrational fear deep down in my chest that I might not see them again.
Maybe Dex would shoot off his flare gun and let me know where he was. That thought cheered me up enough to carry on back to the west shore and the boat.
I took in a deep breath and walked off in that direction.
And I stopped. I heard the sound of twigs snapping and feet shuffling slowly, not wanting to be heard in the quiet forest.
There was someone behind me.
I knew it wasn’t Dex.