*
It had only been a couple of hours but the weather had changed radically in that time. When I finally woke up again, the tent was shuddering from blasts of wind and whips of rain that slashed the sides with a rat–a–tat sound. This time I knew it wasn’t because maniacal deer were outside. A storm had come. The nautical adage was right.
Everything inside was this grey–blue color from the tent walls. I wanted to keep on sleeping. Being all cozy and warm in my sleeping bag, I didn’t have any desire to leave my snug cocoon for wet and windy weather. That was the thing about camping. Outside of your tent, you had to be outside.
I rolled over and saw Dex’s bag was empty. He was out there, somewhere, braving the elements. I kind of hoped if I stayed huddling in bed all morning that maybe he wouldn’t notice. Also, my head didn’t exactly feel like moving all that much, thanks to the copious amounts of Jack Daniels we had shared. I don’t know how it was but sleeping in those extra hours had only made me feel even more hung over. I probably would have been better off if I had gotten up in those wee hours of the red dawn.
“OK, lazy bones,” I heard Dex call from outside.
I groaned and pulled the sleeping bag further up over my head. I heard the front flap unzip and felt my leg being grabbed and shaken.
“You can’t possibly feel as bad I do.”
I peeked my head out and looked at him. He looked fine, maybe a bit pale, and had a noticeable five o’clock shadow spreading between his chin scruff and his sideburns.
“Why are you up then?” I moaned.
“Shit, shower and shave,” he answered. “But I could only do one of those. Come on, I have breakfast going. There’s coffee.”
I normally didn’t crave coffee when I was hung over but I needed something to wake and warm me up. And the idea of Dex making breakfast was intriguing.
“Is there a storm coming?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s here. Come on.”
He squeezed my calf and took his head back out of the tent.
I tried to take my time getting ready but the chilly air seeped through the fabric with each frightening wind gust, turning me into turbo mode. It would be Doc boots today, jeans again and several layers. Even with the giant jacket from the boat, I knew I was going to be soggy and miserable.
I stepped out of the tent and was immediately met with a misting of water. The sky was dark and grey, and the trees and bushes waved sporadically in the gusts that came off the water, which was mounted by a light fog that completely covered Little D’Arcy and made our island seem like it was the only one in the world, floating on the edge of misty space.
The tide was up and the waves crashed loudly on the shore, tickling at the driftwood. There were no birds flying about and there was no sound except the wind and the water. Everything was wet, cold and angry.
Dex had set up the stove on the picnic table, which was occasionally getting sprayed with a lashing of sideways rain. The tarp above that and the tent swayed with each gust but was holding together for the most part, giving us at least a partially dry place to huddle in.
I quickly zipped the tent flap shut, my fingers already feeling hard and icy, and scampered over to Dex, peering over his shoulder. He was actually in the midst of frying up some eggs to go with the bacon he had laid out on a greasy paper plate. The wind must have carried the aromatic wafts away earlier, because if there was anything that got me out of bed, it was the smell of bacon.
He gave me a quick glance and then pulled out a cup that he had kept down on the seat, handing it to me.
I thanked him and took a quick sip. It was instant coffee with the right amount of cream and sugar. He knew what I liked and considering it was instant, it wasn’t half bad.
Once the eggs were done, we sat down and tucked into our food. Dex was a surprisingly good cook. OK, it was just bacon and eggs and maybe I was easily impressed but I’m pretty sure if I tried to make breakfast, I would have burned the bacon into the ground. I can make pie and that’s about it.
He leaned back, looking full, and pushed his empty plate back from him.
“Hope you don’t mind bacon for the next couple of days. I made a bunch in advance in case it went bad in the cooler.”
I shook my head no just as the wind swooped in and picked up his plate, flinging it into the forest. We watched it go, flying through the air like a paper UFO. I raised my brows at him. “What do we do if it’s like this the whole time?”
“Clearly we’re going to go insane,” he answered.
I eyed the tarp flapping above us. “What if that doesn’t hold? What if our tent gets wet?”
“Then we get wet.”
“What if our cameras get wet? Your computer?” I asked, pushing at the point.
He pondered that for a second. “Maybe I should take the footage that we shot last night and bring it back on the boat. I could do some uploading there too.”
“If the boat is even there,” I pointed out. I hoped by bringing it up, I would be insuring it would actually be there.
“It’s there,” he said, though he didn’t look as confident as he sounded.
And within five minutes he was ready to go out on a mission to make sure.
He had the cameras gathered in their cases and nodded at the tent.
“I left you the Super 8…in case you happened to capture anything while I’m gone.”
“I hope I don’t have to!” I said. Even though I was the one reminding him about the boat, I didn’t actually want him to leave me alone at the campsite. Yes, it was daytime and, even with the mist obscuring the nearest point of civilization, there was a harmless vibe to the air. But being apart from him wouldn’t do us any good. Hell, I didn’t want him to trek across the island all by his lonesome, going through that creepy place with the dead trees and rabid raccoons.
He adjusted the pack on his back and gave me a dry look. “Look, I’ll be gone for an hour. Two at the most. I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
I loved that he assumed I was more worried about him than myself. It was kind of true though.
I sighed and shrugged. “If you’re not back in two hours, I’m coming after you.”
He gave me a wink. “Perry to the rescue again.”
And then he was off walking into the waving, wet branches of the forest. I watched him until his bright red boat jacket disappeared into the bushes and then I felt utterly alone.
I wasn’t sure at first what to do. There wasn’t much exploring to be done in this weather and though there was probably more shelter in the forest, there was no way I was stepping foot in there. I thought about checking my emails (not for comments) and browsing the internet but of course Dex still had my damn phone. I couldn’t even check what time in the morning it was.
I decided to crawl back into the tent. At least it was warmer in there and most definitely drier. Plus if the urge struck and I got really bored, I could always go back to bed. There was no one here to prod me awake.
But even though I was lying down comfortably on top of the sleeping bag, my mind kept reeling around to thoughts about the island. There was so much more to learn about this place and I knew so little.
I brought out the books I was reading yesterday and started flipping through one of them, looking for a chapter or a phrase that was eye–catching. And I found it in the heading “The Woman.”
It seemed that when the Reverend John Barrett from Northern California had come up to D’Arcy Island, he hadn’t come alone. He brought up a 19–year–old missionary with him by the name of Mary Stewart. Mary was one of the youngest missionaries at a San Francisco mission, but had expressed an overwhelming desire to help the lepers. Even though the attorney general in Canada had denied their first request for them to work on the island, their second request went through. The book speculated that bribery may have been the cause. The government wasn’t going to spend any money on these forgotten people, but had Rev. Barrett paid them, they would have easily made amends. The author didn’t know why the Reverend and Stewart would have wanted to be on the island so badly, and didn’t make any attempts to explain it.
Weird thing was, for me, as I was reading, I could almost feel why. As weird as it sounded, there was something very uneasy about the whole thing, as if I was picking up on some vibe that had died a very long time ago. There was duplicity at the root. Questionable motives.
It didn’t help that the further I read, the more disturbing the story got. Mary died seven months into her island mission. The earliest records from the supply ships had noted her as a short and weak woman who barely spoke, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the Reverend informed them during one of their runs that she died due to pneumonia. The island was like it was today, a wet, inhospitable place. Mary would have died during the three–month lag where no contact was had. She would have been buried where the rest of the lepers were, buried by them or the Reverend in one of those delivered coffins.
My heart felt funny, as if I had some strange affinity towards Mary and her plight. All she must have wanted to do was help these poor, forsaken souls and, in the end, she died like one of them. And at only 19-years old. She basically sacrificed herself.
I shivered at that and tucked part of the sleeping bag over my legs for extra warmth.
“Hee hee hee.”
I froze in mid page.
A child’s giggle from somewhere outside the tent.
Did I really hear that?
Was it the wind?
I listened hard, trying not to breathe or make any sort of noise that would compromise my ears.
Nothing.
My mind was on overdrive and I was spooking myself out for no reason.
I carefully turned the page in the book and tried to get back into it, to find out what happened to the Reverend after Mary had died.
I heard it again.
“Hee hee hee.”