I Traveled to a Strange and Misty Isle...

In my travels, I came upon a dark and misty island filled with dark and wondrous things. Its visage emerged from the smoky sea as we stood high upon the eastern seaboard, at the summit of the tallest mountain.  It was a small and lonely isle with signs of human life etched among the rugged stone. I saw wooded furs and wooded shingles and white wooded spires grown from the rock. I felt a strange calling from this place—and I was not alone. My companions surely felt it too. The thrill of adventure overcame us, and we determined to cross the bay and explore the isle at the 'morrow's first light.

Morning came bright and blue upon the coast. We found ourselves seated in a tiny mail boat, rocking gently through the ocean bay. The captain was a wiry man who chewed his tongue as if mulling cud, and he strained to raise his thin neck above the tilted prow. We sailed across the waters in uneasy silence. As we drew near the island, clouds of fog buried away the sun. We were bathed in mist at once sticky, warm and lightless, like some phantom ether.

We disembarked upon a skeletal pier awash in slimy ooze. Barnacles chewed the wooden flesh likes scabs and sores, crunching beneath our shoes. We stepped gingerly among the rot and climbed to higher ground. The wharf was a long and narrow thing, swaying in the ocean's pull. In the distance, we saw a tall dead tree rising from the hill, as if growing from the fog. Blood red buoys dangled from its limbs like a nightmare from a blood meridian. A hanging tree, I thought. My companion joked, “Tides come up high 'round here." I did not laugh. We walked quickly past the cursed tree.

The port was a small and ramshackle affair. A home for fishermen. At the edge of the bay, we watched workers drifting like wraiths in the mist, hauling baskets full of the sea's briny flesh onto the shore. Their voices lapped with the muttering waves. All around the dockhands rose towers of lobster cages, stacked high like barbed wire mazes and filled with the scent of salt and blood.

We did not linger long upon the dock. I led our troupe down the single rutted road, which carved across the belly of the island. Other passengers joined our expedition-- adventurers from the mainland, moving through the mist, just as curious and woebegone as we. None had dressed well for this strange, sultry weather. The oppresively warm and humid fog. The gray sky kindled by the blazing summer sun, hidden in the vault above. It was at once too hot, too dark, too humid, and too miserable to breathe.

Further upon the road, we came upon strange and wondrous signs. Images of Celtic circles sprayed on metal sheets. Mysterious shapes filled with swirls like waves and spikes like swords. Next to these signs were the grisly avatars of woodland spirits: terrible horned things shaped by metal and bone, raised in cruciform upon the trees. Their faces ringed by grisly smiles. A strange welcome to travelers and the homefolk alike, I thought.

The mist grew warmer. Sweat broke upon my brow. 

By and by, we found the village square, where a ramshackle tavern offered drinks and a museum of oddities. We perused the island's history. We learned of the many shipwrecks of the late 1800s and of all the joys and sorrows of the village built upon the edge of the sea, once a prosperous place, now forgotten.

When we had finished, we wandered outside, uncertain of where to venture next. A local man with a bushy gray beard approached. Gesturing towards the thick woods ahead, he bid us to explore the Rocky Cove. “It's just a quick jaunt,” he promised, "if you follow the signs.”

Why not? We had come to explore.

The entry to this trail was an inviting carpet of soft needle pines, swishing gentle beneath our feet. The woods smelled of fresh resin and rain. I led my companions down a narrow trail nestled between junipers and black spruce. Soon the path petered down to the width of single wooden planks, laid slick and long across a bog. There was no wind here, no cooling ocean breeze. We were sweating, sticky and uncomfortable in the heat. Mosquitos lit upon our arms--big fearless aliens, who died with their swords thrust inside us. I found myself slapping at these bloodsuckers, walking faster to escape them. 

Faster I began to move. And faster still. Until suddenly, I came upon a small clearing, a relief from the stifling spruce trees, and I found myself utterly alone. 

I turned in dizzying circles, calling for my companions. My voice was swallowed by the trees. I knew they had been close behind me—but where had they gone? Had they simply vanished?

The mosquitos returned. The forest seemed to hum with malevolence. Slapping, cursing, I vowed to find the rocky coast, to bathe in the ocean’s wind and  await my companions there.

For far too long did I wander in the trees. The island was small, no larger than two miles long and wide. I could make no sense of my endless journey in the woods. Nor, when I finally emerged from the raking grasp of the trees, could I fathom the alien landscape before me.

It was not the Atlantic coast I had come to know—the blue waves and dotted isles upon Maine’s craggy shores. Rather, I saw a stillborn sea. Water as thick and black as ink, and an ebony beach strewn with razor sharp rocks and putrescent kelp. A dark altar rose upon the nearby hill, carved into the promontory. Upon its height I saw a stone slab with shackles and chains, whose purpose my vivid imagination ginned into nightmare existance.

I imagined ancient god wandering this place. Some deity  with little regard for the frightened imps who inhabited the island. 

I gazed upon the endless oil cauldron of the sea and lost myself in these dark reveries, until the hours bled away, and the sky scratched charcoal hues of night, and the mist thickened like a suffocating fog. 

With darkness came a voice, whispering in my ear. I listened fervently, nodding, nodding, for every word seemed writ with holy power. Then I heard the bells tolling in the distance, coming from the island church. They warned of the mail boat's last voyage home. The final escape to the mainland.

The whispering grew louder. My thoughts turned to sudden, lustful violence. I turned and fled back into the woods, unsure of what I would find in the shadowed thicket. What awaited me there? Woodland monster or wayward friend? Laughter or death?

The whispering voice followed me in.