Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (27 page)

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.
Fuck, 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.