CHAPTER V — “Vera Natura”

The reality of the situation dawned on us all. No one knew where we were. No other ships would be in the area. Wherever we were, it was at least two hundred miles off our projected course. Captain McPhail conducted a basic calculation using his sextant. He had concluded we were at least northeast of our intended course, although I did not know how he came to that conclusion. All that I knew was we were shipwrecked and had minimal chance of salvaging the SS Glenmore.

It had begun creaking rhythmically now; louder and louder, and it was clear that the tides were pinching its hull against the jagged rocks. Soon the hull would give way and the ship would collapse in. And slowly, salt foam and water and icy death would creep into its bowels. The ship would not survive the day. It would be crumpled against the rocks ignominiously and       I wondered how many ships before us had suffered the same end on this lonely alien island.

     This realisation of our fate brought with it a heavy sense of hopelessness and doom about the men. Some began praying, others sobbed and sighed. After that, they began pooling the resources and taking inventory of what we had.      There was a lot of talk about repairing the ship, sending out scouts, or maybe even fortifying the vessel as a shelter until rescue arrived. All of them were deemed impractical. It would be over a month before we were listed as overdue and perhaps another two months until we were found. Harper confirmed that we had enough rations for only one month but without any shelter, the men would perish.

     I did my best to keep from being intrusive, but all the same listened carefully and exhibited a willingness to help. I was effectively a dead-man-walking. It would only be a matter of time before one of them came for me in my sleep with a fish knife as retribution. They all blamed me for this, and perhaps they were right. But I was resolute that I did not want to die on this miserable rock with them, nor be buried at sea for all the eels and crustaceans to peck and nibble at on my way down to the bottom. I was prepared to do anything to survive.

​

***

​

The fog lifted in the afternoon. Its blanket drew back to reveal fully the desolate and grey island before us. We looked upward to the cliffs and saw how nauseatingly tall and precarious they were with their uniform aspects. It was clear that there was no beach nor low lands to head for. Even if there was, we had no rowboats to row to them in. They had been destroyed during the storm. The water was so cold and currents so vicious that even the strongest swimmer would last mere minutes.

      After some time debating, the men had agreed that the only way onto the island was up the cliffs. From the belly of the ship, they produced some improvised climbing gear from the hooks and ropes about the vessel. They put it on and began their impromptu planning of how to ascend up the precarious cliffs.

      It was at this time that I noticed something else. I stood there amongst the crew, and as they all chatted, I glanced off to my right, off the ship and back at the dark grey face of the cliff. There, I spotted these strange symbols carved into the rock. I frowned at first, unsure of what I was looking at. But, as I took a step forward and observed them further, I could see these strange runes carved deep into the stone. I’d never seen any markings nor language like it before. They looked ancient—primordial even. The wreck was close enough to the cliff that I could almost lean over the railing and touch them. With the overcast weather, it was hard to tell for certain, but to me, they looked like some kind of Stoneage carvings or black magic glyphs. It sent a shudder down my spine as I realized we were not the first ones to come to the bleak unknown island.

      “Hey, there’s something here,” I said, gesturing to the unknown hieroglyphs, but no one listened to me.

      I stared at the symbols for a long time, almost hypnotized by their ancient aspects. The world around me fell silent and everything around the markings blurred. Whoever carved them into the rock, done so a very long time ago.

      Captain McPhail snapped me out of my trance as he accosted me. He came up to me with a big snarling grin. He slapped me on the back and I came back to reality with a snap. He was in the first team and seemed very happy about it. For the first time since the crash, I had noticed he held a distinct twinkle of challenge in his eyes. He was smiling for some reason.

      The plan was to have Harper, Chamberlain, Captain McPhail and a few others climb the cliff first and then throw down the ropes for the rest of us to scale up them with the men above assisting with the winching. Luckily, the bases of the cliffs had a lot of step-ups and ledges that the men could use to gain some ground. They were able to scramble up at least a third of the face without the need for the climbing gear. The downside was the ledges were slick with algae and a misplaced footing would mean a long fall onto jagged wet death.

      Once they had their improvised harnesses on, they tactfully discussed their route up with each other, pointing and gesturing to various spots in the face that could prove dangerous. I did not know their experience with climbing but solemnly hoped they knew what they were doing. After Captain McPhail had sauntered up to me with his swaggering bravado and a waft of whiskey to follow, he leaned in with his arms folded, like a man discussing gambling odds with another punter.

     “Fancy your chances, doctor?” He grinned. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was flushed. “Anything can happen to ye now…”

      “Do you?” I retorted, facing him now. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to attempt that with whiskey in your blood?”

      “No better time, doctor. No better time! If I die, I’ll die with a big fuckin’ smile on my face. If I don’t die, well, I’ll still have one on my chops, and be a bit closer to heaven!” He grinned, showing the whites of his teeth.

I folded my arms and looked him up and down. “I was referring to your abilities to make sound judgements whilst intoxicated.”

      His eyes darkened at the remark. He leaned into my space and I smelt the stench of hard liquor on his breath even more. “Is that what you do, is it?” He barked at me, almost pushing his forehead into mine. “Make sound judgements? Like your judgement to curse this voyage? Oh yes, doctor, I can see your brain is fuckin’ shipshape with all that elixir in your veins. Thanks to ye and your cross, we’re all here with you. You caused this. Whatever Devil is out there, you summoned it! Bah!”

      He then spat at my feet and stepped over the bow of the ship with a scowl to begin the climb. I could not muster the courage to argue. He was right.

      Chamberlain was the first one to climb. He carefully stepped up, ledge by ledge, then Captain McPhail, then the rest of them. The ones who stayed on the ship watched as the figures on the cliff slowly faded into the mist.

      An hour went by and no one spoke. I turned to face out to sea once more. If the men were to kill me, then it would be now. I had my back to all of them and it was quiet. I solemnly waited for one of their blades to slip into my ribs, right between my lungs. I was almost accepting of my fate. But, it never came. I heard no creeping footsteps manoeuvring up behind me, no hushed chatter, nothing. Instead, the waves lapped unbroken against the ancient island and what remained of the SS Glenmore, and we all stood alone, waiting. The raw smell of seaweed and saltwater crawled up my nose and I waited.

​

***

​

After another hour or so, a dirtied brown rope then dropped down from the mist and that was our invitation to leave the ship behind for good.

      “Come up boys! The rope is fixed to a boulder. She won’t go nowhere!” Someone above said, and, with it, we heard the pandemoniac cackling echoing down to us. Then, it sounded like they were singing up there. It sounded like some old sea shanty. How long had they been up there? I wondered. How long had we been down here on the decaying ship? Our souls lurking in the corner of ruin?

     Those of us back on deck had bagged up our essentials and personal effects and we each prepared to make the climb and leave the ship to the mercy of the seas. I was first to attempt the climb. I walked past a few men who were holding their flat caps in their hands in a kind of reverence. Like the old lady back at the docks, it was a gesture I didn’t appreciate. I moved past them and came to the rope. Then, I stood at the base of it and looked around at what crew remained on the SS Glenmore.

      Simmonds, the cabin boy, nervously nodded to me in an attempt to display confidence, but his eyes betrayed him. He was scared. I couldn’t blame him. No one else showed concern for the boy. He was only a young lad and there was not much muscle on him.

     His braised black hair fell limply across his narrow boyish face and he looked slightly sick; as if taken with a fever. The glint of terror in his eyes made me wonder briefly what his story was. Had he run away from home? Had he committed a crime? If I was to survive the climb, I decided to ask him about his life.

     “You’ll be fine, Simmonds,” I said as I tugged the dangling rope closer to my torso.

     “I know,” he tried to say arrogantly, but the words came out weak, like a whisper that he didn’t believe.

     I smiled lightly. “Is your bag compact enough?” I asked. “Only take what you need, okay? We won’t be coming back.”

     “I will, doctor,” he then said earnestly, as if he understood my concern for him. “I just wanted you to know… I don’t blame you for…”

     “… Thank you,” I nodded. “See you at the top,” I then said, gripping him confidently. He tried to smile back but it came out as a grimace instead.

     I turned and gazed upward into the clouds of mist. Something cold and heavy slid into my stomach. But, I began heaving up the side of the jagged and precarious cliff nonetheless. It was a hard climb. Each step up was slow and painful.

     Soon, the ship disappeared below me. At about halfway my arms began to shake and the bag I was carrying had slipped off my shoulder to around my neck. It was gagging me and making my breathing very hard. But, I gritted my teeth and refused to let go of the rough rope in my palms. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes that I was ascending, but it felt like hours. My feet were sliding off parts of the wet cliff face and I began to wonder if this would be how I died. Don’t let go, you coward. Don’t let go! My mind screamed at me over and over.

     At over halfway, my arms burned and parts of my shoulders went numb. Beads of sweat began rolling off my forehead and into my eyes. I grunted and heaved my body up the sides of this dark and foreboding rock face and entertained the idea of just letting go. Then, I reminded myself that I must hear Simmonds’ story before I died. A stupid motivation for survival, but three-quarters of the way up the cliff face, it was all I had to keep me climbing.

     When I did make it to the top, I was greeted by only silence. No longer was there any singing or laughter. No more were there any joyful shanties of sailors’ stories. No one reached down to pull me up either.

     I heaved myself up over the lip of the cliff and then crawled across some scree and rocks that cut up all of my legs as all the men simply watched me. I was so tired from the climb that I couldn’t even speak as I crawled closer to the first team. I was only relieved I did not have to hang onto that blasted rope anymore.

     They were all huddling in the fog like a circle of gravestones. I rolled and laid on my back for a few seconds and tried to catch my breath, staring up at the flat grey clouded skies above. After panting and spitting some more, I rose to my feet to face the men.

     “What’s going on?” I asked, coughing and slurring as I did.

     “… Nothing,” someone said. They all had their backs to me and were either kneeling or sitting amongst the rocks.     Plumes of dirtied tobacco smoke rose from some of them.

    “Who was laughing?” I asked after a tense silence.

    “Come, lad?” Chamberlain snapped, looking up at me.

    “We heard laughing from down there. Sounded like you lot were singing up here…”

    “Huh!” Someone else snapped.

    “… No one was laughing,” Captain McPhail said quietly as he sat with his pipe upon a lonely and blackened rock. His eyes had gone a clouded grey again. “Take a look around, doctor. What the hell do we have to fuckin’ sing about?” He growled.

     I blinked slowly, then soon looked around and saw what they meant. As my eyes adjusted, I bare-witnessed our own end—A stark and barren end. What I saw was utter boundless desolation in every direction. The whole island was nothing more than a primordial volcanic rock in a vast and black sea. To our right was a small mountain about thirty kilometres away. To our left was an unending field of rocks and boggy emptiness. The lurid sprawl of lakes across the volcanic marshland sparkled intensely under the low white sun, their scintillation magnified only by the unyielding mist. There were no trees. There were no animals, just the ripping winds and endless silence of isolation. I fell to my knees.

     No one said anything for a long time. We each breathed out heavily and each man fell in on themselves. It must have been another hour that we all sat there for.

     Captain McPhail and his constituency had begun talking about what to do and how to get off the island. They huddled together their talks were low and serious. I wasn’t a part of that discussion so I never heard what they decided. Instead, I was sitting at the cliff edge alone, helping up those who made the climb. No one else was particularly interested in helping them, so I took it upon myself. It’s ironic, as not two days previous I had wished death upon all of them.

     One by one, the rest of the men made the climb from the sinking ship and up to hollow dread. Most of that day was swallowed up by the climb. We were all so very tired. At some point in the afternoon, I performed a headcount and realised that one was missing—Simmonds. He was still down there. He’d chosen to go last for some bizarre reason.

     I then edged closer to the precipice to see if I could spot him making the climb, but there was only a sea of mist below.

     “Simmonds, you there lad?” I shouted down into the shrouded haze.

     After a pause, “I’m coming!” He cried out. “ I’m… I’m…”

     “How far up are you?”

     “I … I can’t… talk. My arms…”

     I drew back and realised that he was struggling. “Keep going, Simmonds! You can make it.”

     “I can’t hang on…”

     “I can hear you! You’re close. Keep going!” I then turned to the men. “We got a man down there! Give me a hand and we’ll heave him in.”

     “Who is it?” Someone asked nonchalantly.

     “Does it matter?” I screamed. “Give me a hand!”

     But no one did. They all turned away and looked with ambivalence at the earth below their feet instead; all of them too caught up in the tangle of their own despair.

     My face went red with hatred. “Help!” I bellowed. “Help! What is wrong with you? He’s one of us!”

     Captain McPhail took a brief moment from his pipe to speak. “If a soul can’t make that climb, then they surely won’t survive what we’re about to face,” he said in an icy tone. “The lad’s done for…”

     “What?” I bellowed. “Please!” I then begged the men. “I helped you lot up, didn’t I?”

     “Face it, doctor. We’re all dead. It’s better for the lad this way. Better than starving… better than…,” Captain McPhail muttered and then went quiet.

     “No!” I  shouted “This is not right! He’s alive! The same as you!”

     From over the edge, I could hear Simmonds’ desperate squeals. I turned and grabbed hold of the rope alone, refusing to believe the captain’s merciless statement. I began tugging the rope upward.

     “Hold on, Simmonds! I’m going to pull you up,” I shouted.

     I tried to pull him up for a few minutes, but he was heavier than he looked, or maybe I was just too weak. I couldn’t heave him up.

     “I can’t hold on,” Simmonds squawked from below at some point. He was crying now.

     “Come on, man! Keep going! Wrap your arms around the rope. Create a knot over your waist!” I shouted, peering down into the unending mist. I looked back at the men and still pleaded for help, but none came. Then I heard a desperate yelping that sounded like a dog drowning in freezing water.

      “Simmonds?” I barked. “Are you there?”

      The rope suddenly went slack in my hands. It fell loose. Then I heard a guttural panicked scream echo up through the mist down below, then nothing. I stared over the edge and into oblivion and knew he’d fallen.

     “Simmonds! Answer me, man!”

     But he didn’t. The boy from Birmingham was dead. My mouth dropped and I could do no more than concentrate on the rope burns on my palms. Behind me, the men gawked and shrugged, like it was all some obscure pantomime. I turned to face them each and couldn’t think of the right words to describe my disgust for them all. Like the whale, Simmonds’ death would hang over my conscience for as long as I lived. I walked past what remained of the crew and situated myself upon a rock away from them all. I wanted to scream until my face collapsed in on itself. I wanted to tear my own face off at the shame.

     Simmonds was his name. No one knew anything about him, and no one cared. A boy too young for the sea. Too young for whaling. Too young for anything. I only wished I could have done more for him. But such is the way of the world. Only the cruel survive.

​

CHAPTER VI— “Vox Nihili”

​

Days went by. We took our belongings and headed further inland in search of food and shelter, wading through the snow and the bog. Each man his own enemy. Everyone was tired to the bone. No one talked anymore. Dehydration, starvation, and emaciation were now internal demons that thrashed at our souls as if limb from limb. We all just kept walking around aimlessly through the blizzards and the mist in search of wood and materials to create a raft of sorts. But there was nothing. There was barely any plant growth, let alone trees. The stuff that did grow consisted mostly of moss and some scurvy grass. It was all sickly and yellow and barely alive. This place truly felt like the edge of the world.

     We fished in some of the lakes and were able to catch a few ‘Salvelinus alpinus’ or Arctic charr fish as they are more commonly known. But, without the means to cook them, they tasted truly vile and would often induce bouts of diarrhoea. The rations were almost gone, and that was only one of our plights. The men had begun to turn on each other.

Frequent bickering and accusations of stealing rations had splintered the group into separate packs. Everyone hated each other. More than anything, we had no shelter. The tents we attempted to set up would often blow over in the unrelenting winds that seemed to mercilessly rip across the primordial landscape. It seemed that, now, more than ever before, everything was against us.

     Most nights, I simply huddled down into my coat and buried my head deep in my arms and prayed for death. The cold crept slowly into my body, and each time I felt as if I were drifting off, I remembered again the noises that Simmonds made when he died; I remembered the sounds of the whale screaming as it was harpooned, and they both felt like haunting ghosts of my judgement.

     The men were getting weaker, and, every day, we barely managed five kilometres walking. Edwards died in his sleep. I found him frozen-stiff under one of the collapsed tents. His face was a lurid white, eyes frozen open, and his skin twinkled from all the ice in his pores. No one had any eulogies for him. We left him buried under the tent and moved on towards the ridge on the east of the island.

      We moved on through the fog. Each step took us further away from our homes. And there was a presence in that fog. Something hungry. Everyone heard it, but only I seemed to acknowledge it. Ghosts of the fallen, of all those lost sailors before us. Voices emerged, then faded again into the shroud around us, merging in with the grey.

      At night, it was different. The rock-strewn boggy plains of dread where we made camp were full of strange rustlings, of whispers, of glowing eyes. Past the faint flickering of our oil lamp, we each saw them, yet none dared to mention their presence. The men quietly prayed that the eyes belonged to wolves. But it was something else and we all knew it—There were other things out there, evil things. I held my cross tight in my hands and prostrated myself before God. I begged for forgiveness.

​

***

 

By the time we reached the mountain some days later, we were down to thirteen men and our rations were gone. We reached the ridge at nightfall, by which point the steadily rising storm that had brought us to the island had returned.

It rained and rained, and the winds lashed against our exposed skin like burning embers. My face was blistered red from the cold and the hail. Everything was inky dark and no one could see anything in the twilight haze. We must have climbed about halfway up the hill when we decided we could neither advance nor head back down. It was a precarious climb and scrabbling up the rocks was indeed impossible, but descending back down was inconceivable, especially in the current weather. The storm roared up above and I knew if we stayed out in it for much longer then none of us would see the dawn.       We each shivered and shouted at each other what to do. After a few minutes of deliberation, I looked around, and there, I saw it.

     I had found a rocky outcrop that had a slight overhang for shelter—A small burrow underneath a giant boulder that at least covered us from the rain. It was our only hope. So the remaining thirteen men of the SS Glenmore all huddled on top of each other in its crevasse. It was utterly miserable. We were cold and wet to the core; hungry and so tired we could scarcely think straight. The night went on and it seemed like the storm would never end. In search of relief, I pushed my head harder against the slick rock and eventually slept. It was a low, writhing kind of sleep.

​

***

 

In the middle of the night, something caused me to stir up from my slumber. I blearily rose my head up and looked around at the sleeping men about me. It wasn’t coming from any of them. But I was sure I had heard something and I had the distinct impression that someone, or even something, had been standing over me as I slept.

     I looked around for a few moments to see what was near me in the gloom, but as I did, something else caught my eye. I was unsure what I was staring at to begin with. Yet, I was positive it was not there before. There was an odd blackness against the wetness of the rough stone. Next to my feet was a small fissure in the rock face, about two feet wide. It sloped down and backwards into the ridge at a steep angle like a mineshaft. The worst part was it had these unknown hieroglyphs carved in a circle around the edge of it. I trembled and gazed into the hole. Then I reached over and woke the men up.

     “There’s something here,” I said eventually. But, everyone was too tired to respond. “It’s a mineshaft. Look…”

     Captain McPhail reluctantly leaned up from his stupor to look over my shoulder at where I was pointing. “What is it, doctor?” He grumbled. Chamberlain and Hammond had started bickering with each other over letting the warmth out from their clothing.

     “Look. There’s a tunnel here,” I said. “It’s got…” My hands glided over rough engravings in the rock face. “It’s got markings around it. Pass me a candle.”

     Harper passed me a lite candle and I held it up to the edge of the entrance. I then drew back in terror as I realized that these markings were the same hieroglyphs I’d observed on the edge of the cliff. Whoever made those had carved these also. Shivers scrapped their way down my spine.

     “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” Captain McPhail said.

     Then, as I examined the archaic glyphs, all of us heard this rousing throaty growl emanate from down in the tunnel. It came up from the darkness like a gust of wind and ran through us all.

     “… What in God’s name was that?” Harper asked quietly.

     Then the voice vanished again like the stir of a sea breeze and all we were left with was the vacuous emptiness that the noise had left behind. We glanced at each other.

     “There are people down there…” I whispered furtively, reeling back away from the mysterious hole.”

     “It’s wolves,” Captain McPhail quipped.

     “Wolves don’t make fires,” I replied. “I can smell it down there.”

     “So it’s people? They must have food. They must have warmth,” Captain McPhail said. He stepped over me and edged closer to inspect it. He then held his hand out to the shaft. “It’s drawing in air. It’s warm…”

     The men all looked at each other, unsure what to do or say next.

     “We should go in,” Captain McPhail said looking into the dark foreboding hole.

     “We don’t know what’s down there,” I replied.

     “Shelter is down there!” He retorted with.

     “Or who’s down there. Look at those symbols,” I said and pointed to them. “I saw those same symbols on the cliff right where we shipwrecked. Coincidence?”

     The men looked at each other, then at the markings, and each man trembled with fear.

     “He’s right. All of this, the dreams of white light, the bad omens, those signs. That’s Satanic that is,” Chamberlain said, pointing at the glyphs. “That’s black magic.”

     “Shut it, Chamberlain!” McPhail barked.

     “That’s Hell down there,” he whimpered, then went quiet.

     “No, it’s not! It’s just some bloody Innuits!”

     “Captain, we can’t go in there. What if we can’t get back out?” I said.

McPhail then sighed, looked over me at all his weary and nervous men, then glanced up at the churning black skies. “I am not dying up here on this fucking rock,” he growled. “I’ll take my chances.”

     Captain McPhail had decided to crawl in first. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned down and reluctantly placed his hand into the crevasse in the earth. The crew watched on.

     He closed his eyes and gulped.

     As he crawled in, I began reciting the prayer of our Lord to myself. “Behold, whosoever is of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, him will I establish upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them,” I muttered softly as I watched his feet disappear into blackness; like he had been swallowed whole by a great snake.

     After another pause, Chamberlain headed in next, then Harper. I went in after then. The remaining men followed behind me and we each crawled forward on our bellies like primitive worms through the unending darkness of the tunnel. Ironically, mankind had escaped the caves aeons ago, now here we were, finding ourselves regressing back down into that same blackness for shelter. The peal of the storm disappeared behind us and only the faint dripping of cave water was heard instead. Each man held a candle outstretched in front and each man guided himself through the abyssal black with it. We each grunted and heaved down through the inchoate cavity of the ancient hill. The tunnel was slick with algae and dripping water and the smell of freshly-turned earth slithered up through my nose. The jagged slimy rocks we writhed over cut and sliced through our clothing. The tunnel had an almost serpent-like quality to it. It weaved and meandered through the earth and down the stratum of rock unhindered, like a boisterous river through passive sands.

     We moved on.

     “This is unnatural,” I said. “This is not right. God is not down here.”

     “I know,” someone replied. “We should not have come down here.”

     I crawled on my stomach, my only view ahead being the soles of the man’s shoes against my nose. Had I been at the back of the line, I would have stopped and chosen to die right there. But, the crew we behind me and I couldn’t cease edging forward. I wished I had refused. For what lay waiting for us in that infernum was a fate worse than any death.

​

CHAPTER VII—“Daemones spelunca”

​

After a very long time scrabbling down through the tunnels, Captain McPhail shouted back that he saw a glowing light ahead. With renewed enthusiasm, he scrambled towards it. We all followed. We crawled forward towards it and one by one, we then came into a small domed chamber. Dark and rounded. Stalactites hung low from the ceiling all around. The air was moist and sticky and the walls were shiny with cave water. And there we saw them.

      I gulped and almost fainted when I did enter. There was a glowing white fire. And huddling around that fire was a small group of sickly and stark-naked figures. They each looked up at us as we entered. We reeled back at the horrifying sight of them all illuminated there by the fire like morbid apparitions. They looked emaciated yet preternaturally virile, and their faces harboured this alien savagery, like of a pack of hungry wolves. On their bodies were strange tattoos of arcane hieroglyphics and other bodily mutilations such as scarification and branding. They were the same markings I’d seen on the cliffs and around the tunnel.

     “Good god,” Harper exclaimed as he faced the group of ghouls standing before us.

     “What in the name of…”

     None of us moved. The people before us uncoiled slowly and stood up. They stared at us. They were smiling now. Against the candescence of the flames, their absent milky eyes glowed unnaturally, like hyenas’ eyes under the moonlight. Hollow white opals that reflected minds more animalistic than human.

     “Hello,” Captain McPhail said gently to them. But they looked at each other giddily instead of responding. “We are lost,” he then said.

     None of them replied. The tallest one’s lips drew back into a snarl. His teeth were sharp and narrow, like fangs. They scanned us up and down and sniffed hungrily.

     “Who in God’s name are they?” Harper said. “Why are they on this island? What the fuck is this place?” But no one had the nerve to reply.

     “We have gone down very far,” I announced. “When you do enter Hell you do so on your belly. That’s what it says in—”

     “Calm down,” Captain McPhail shouted. “It’s not Hell. They’re just people. We’ve done nothing wrong here. Let’s just calm down and talk to them.”

     The most terrifying aspect of the confrontation was how they didn’t even look alive. They appeared completely ghoulish and unnatural. It was like you could see through them.

     “They must know the island. Perhaps we can trade with them and get out of here?” Cartwright said. “We got enough gold don’t we?”

     “I don’t think they want to trade…” I muttered as I edged away, attempting to retreat from the group. “We should leave.”

     But it was too late to leave. They were behind us now. They had surrounded us and had slithered closer. Some of them clutched crude implements and blades as they circled ravenously.

     Captain McPhail held his hands up in a gesture of goodwill, looking around at each of them. “I. Give. You. Gold. You. Give. Me. Wood?” He gestured then reached into his blazer and produced a small leather drawstring bag full of coins. He tossed it at their feet and none of them reached to pick it up.

     The castaways’ eyes glowed like burning embers locked behind a wood stove’s glass. One of them screeched.

The pack of savages moved too fast for us. Before anyone of us could unsheathe their daggers, the bloodthirsty cave dwellers were above us, hitting and stabbing us into submission. Four of the crew were killed right there and then. They were sliced repeatedly in the throat and head and amidst the chaos, I only caught glimpses of their bodies collapsing into the primordial earth. The purple blood seeped out of their lifeless faces. The firelight danced in the pooling crimson.

      Captain McPhail was the only one to make a meaningful challenge. He rushed forward to attack one of the ghouls. He’d managed to strangle and stab one of them to death until he was wrestled off him and dragged to the floor by the group. The rest of us then watched on in utter horror as they ganged up on him and smashed his head in with rocks. Blood gushed up in thick brown geysers. Just like my vision aboard the ship, I saw our captain laying there with no head. I was so terrified that I could not move. Instead, I simply had to bear-witness his skull being pounded and flattened into the ground like someone was kneading dough.

      “Oh, god!” Harper cried in anguish over and over. “Stop! Please, stop!”

       After that, the group moved quickly and spilt us up. I was snatched from behind and pulled through a network of narrow tunnels and eventually into a small chamber away from the main hollow. It was dark and damp in there, darker than any other parts. My feet slid across something slick and sticky as the savages dragged me further away from everyone, further away from it all. They lit the way ahead with a wooden stave. I soon realised what the substance against my feet was—blood. Old congealed blood. In its puddles were strewn parts of the tendons and discarded flesh. I gasped in horror and almost vomited in my mouth at the sight.

      “No! No! Get off me!” I shrieked, wriggling desperately to break free from their grasp, but they were strong people. Their strength appeared almost superhuman and I couldn’t help but realise how easily they tackled Captain McPhail and how easily they had dispatched him. I knew I would be no better against them.

      As they then tied me to a boulder, I saw barely illuminated in the twilight before me, piles of bones in the corners of the alcoves. And I knew, they had been down in this darkness for a very long time. The whole prospect shocked me to my core. I begged and cried and tried to writhe free from their bindings. But it was no use. I was condemned to the dungeon with the demons.

      Something dull and heavy smacked into my head and I went unconscious for a very long time.

      This space in between dreams and consciousness was the happiest part of my whole journey. It was the most joy I had ever felt. Since stepping on that accursed ship all those weeks ago, I had experienced nothing but unabating misery. But inside the wanderings of my mind, I felt curiously warm. I dreamt that I was back in London. I dreamt I had met someone. I dreamed I had kicked my addiction and became one of the most prestigious doctors of medicine at Kings College. I think I remember the smell of marble also? Champagne? It was where I should have been…

​

***

​

Much later, I awoke in a daze, only to find myself still bound to the wall in that pit. My conscious mind then began to function again. I was suddenly rational once more and remembered exactly where I was. No matter how hard I attempted to fight the reality of my situation, I was still there. This infernum would be my tomb. I cried and pleaded in rebellion, but it was greeted with only widening silence.

      So I went still for a long time. I shrunk in on myself. Through the impenetrable black, I attempted to pear around at my surroundings. But, there was nothing but the unending void and death. The air was thick and damp and hovered languidly around the chambers like wet smoke.

      And there was a smell…

      More than a smell. That hideous putrid stench of rotting flesh scoured my eyes and nose. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before; a potent acidic miasma of rancid milk and blood and rotting meat that burned as it crawled up my nostrils and past my eyeballs. I felt it in my ravaged lungs. Everything stung and seared with exanthema.

There, in the darkness, the distant screaming and begging and sobbing of my crew assailed my ears. They were all sharing my fate. Hour after hour, their cries of pain echoed through the labyrinth. Their writhing howling made me think of the old lady. Is this what she wanted for us? Hour after hour, I saw nothing but heaving blackness heavy against my eyes, yet I could still hear them all with me. In the alcoves somewhere, they were killing the men one by one. They were carving them up like the whale, and I could do nothing but hang there in the dark, listening to it all, awaiting my turn.

​

***

​

At one point, I do not know how long after, they dragged what remained of Cartwright back into the chamber. What they had done to him, I didn’t even want to imagine. In the dimness of their candlelight, I caught a glimpse of what remained of his emaciated body— it was now just a wet lacerated chunk of flesh. They had amputated his legs and his arms. They had taken everything from him. He was just this ghastly screaming head and torso. He was covered in all this blood and dirt. And he was completely out of his mind. He screamed as they leant him against the wall. He screamed when they left and the chamber plunged into blackness once more. He screamed and screamed in the dark next to me until he blew out his vocal cords; then he made a dull yelping sound, like some lone dying duck. This hideous wheezing that came out like a pitiful screech. It was abominable to hear.

      I could not endure it any longer. I forced my senses shut and tried to focus on something other than his unrelenting anguished cries. I let my mind wander far away, as far away as I could dare to imagine. My mind retreated in on itself. Even my hearing began to shut down and I soon fell into a deep and dream-filled sleep. Everything in my head began to blur. My dreams tumbled over each other in a string of unconnected thoughts and feelings. Before lapsing into a kind of trance, I recalled how Captain McPhail was probably right. Simmonds was spared a far worse death than the one he suffered. At least his soul would be untainted for the afterlife. We, on the other hand, would suffer gravely.

​

***

 

Endlessly, we were subjected to horrid abuse and torture from the crude people of the cave. My crew screamed, and I heard them all. One by one, their cries faded, slithered into nothingness, never to be heard again. And I hung there, awaiting my turn.

     I had never entertained the notion of resisting nor fighting my captors. It seemed redundant. After all, where would I escape to? Instead, I could only long and beg for finality to this nightmare, but it never came. My release continued to elude me and I simply would not die. I waited in the wet cold darkness alone. Each minute crawled by like an hour, and still, I would not die. I pleaded with the Lord to let me leave. I stared up desperately at the black ceiling and spoke the holy words, “Lord Jesus, I confess my sins and ask for your forgiveness. Please come into my heart as my Lord and Savior. Take complete control of my life and help me to walk in your footsteps daily by the power of the Holy Spirit. Please Lord, save me…”

     I slurred and mumbled those words over and over. But, still, I would not die. How long I had been in that chasm of despair I dreaded to think, only that it felt like an eternity; it truly felt like death itself had enveloped us all in its dark wings and taken us off to a realm where no mercy nor quarter would be given. I would be sentenced to wander the umbral plains of darkness alone forever.

​

CHAPTER VIII—“Respice finem”

​

For weeks I was down there. I felt like I could not endure the torment any longer. At my weakest moments, I thought of suicide. But I could not do that. Soon, I realized escaping the pit was my only chance of salvation. An animal caught in a snare will chew off its own leg to escape. I wondered whether I had the stomach to do the same? I had this repeating idea that if your body and soul dies in a bad place, then it will stay there for all eternity. I did not wish that on my worst enemies, let alone myself. In the end, passiveness appeared futile.

     With a fresh resolution within me, I set to work attempting to cut through the ropes around my wrists and ankles. Against my back, I had somehow found a sharpened and jagged outcrop of rock that could help. I rubbed and rubbed my bindings against it until my wrists ran slick with blood. I scratched and scratched until finally, the rope gave way.

My slashed hands were then free and they suddenly tingled with the renewed circulation. I slumped to the floor of the dungeon in a crumpled heap like a newborn fawn. And I laid there for a while. My breaths came out acidic and heavy in the damp pit. Then I set to work on the bindings around my legs.

      Somewhere in the labyrinth, the guttural screams of the forgotten souls echoed through the sickly air all around me. I refused to believe that I was to join them.

      Once I was free of my ropes, I got up steadily. It was the first time in a long time that I’d stood on my feet. Then I explored the network of dark tunnels alone. They were absent and echoing. Without torchlight, I had to feel my way through them. They slid off into interminable blackness all around. The ground was sticky and cold against my bare feet and my whole body ached. But, through sheer will alone, I pushed forward through the horror. Now and then, I stepped onto a bone or a shard of a skull. The fragments of the fallen only galvanized my desire to get out.

      What came after was a frenzied scourging of resources and means to escape. I had to believe that this was not my fate. If there was anything that was going to propel me out of this dimness, it was the power of my own mind and my faith in Jesus. I didn’t care if I died the second I escaped the cave, just as long as my spirit did not perish down here; just as long as I saw the sunset one last time.

      It would not be long before they returned to find me gone. I had to hurry.

​

***

 

The cave network was not as big as I first imagined. It consisted of two main chambers. The rest was merely a series of tunnels and cubbyholes that circled around in a loop and back to those same main chambers. In counting my steps, I calculated the network to be no more than five hundred metres in diameter. I moved forward some more and felt around everything until I was satisfied that I had the whole area mapped out in my mind. But in doing so, I noticed something else.

     As I ran my hands across the rough walls, I could not help but note something incongruous about the whole dungeon. There were cuts and slices along the cave flats. I felt with my palms the distinct impressions of quarrying and mining. At some point, these tunnels had been excavated. Yet, the methods used felt primal and rudimentary and not performed within the last few centuries. That notion alone made me gasp. I felt absolutely horrified and my stomach churned at the idea of this iniquitous cave network sheltering generations of species that would have navigated them well before ancient times and when the world was still young. With a rush of panic, I soon realized that it was the same people who’d made those symbols on the cliffs.

      “What is this place?” I gasped.

      This cave, whatever it was, had seen thousands of years’ worth of bones; most of which had crumbled and dissolved into the very earth I was standing on. The floor was made of them. Those things sitting around the fire were not human. Maybe they once were, but not anymore. I dared not to imagine what they were instead.

       I had initially planned to explore the network and then return to my bindings for later escape, but after what I saw next, I knew I would not suffer one more hour in the godforsaken pit.

       It was as I attempted to make my way back to my bindings that I saw what would await me if I stayed. Near the main chamber, I found Harper’s bloated maggot-infested corpse. It was discarded into a small crevasse. His black, pitted flesh, squirmed with the pulsing of the burrowing maggots. All the gluttony of the caves consuming him. I could only endure a fleeting glance at what remained of him, knowing then deep in my soul that he would remain there for all millennia, amongst all the others.

       I quickly averted my gaze and forced my hand against my mouth like a vice, and continued on further through the inchoate cave system. I tried looking for my crew, but I found nothing. There was only me left now and I did not know why. Only me and the cannibals in the cave.

       A few times they almost caught me. Some of them were wandering around aimlessly in the tunnels. Whenever I did hear them coming, I would lay down among the piles of bones until they passed me by.

       Eventually, I came to the exit tunnel; that small shaft of death that brought us down into the deepest pit of Hell. I clambered into it desperately and began heaving my weary and drained body up through its throat. I did not know how long I spent on my stomach crawling upward. Each grunt and thrust up the rock felt as if it would be my last. I prayed and cried and truly thought that I would never see the end of the tunnel.

​

CHAPTER IX —“Mors Vincit Omnia”

​

But somehow, perhaps through sheer will, I made it out. When I did, I scrabbled out onto the boulder and clawed for something to pull myself upon. I found a sprout of weeds and used it as a grapple to hoist myself up onto the boulder. Up there, all of our discarded gear was still in the crevasse near the entrance. Wet moulded sleeping bags and used-up ration packs were strewn across the rocks like the bones of fallen crows. I staggered and stood up slowly, took a step forward over the dead men’s gear, and huffed and wiped the sweat from my brow. Then I looked out to the expanse. Something took over me.

       Stretching out before me was the same stark and dead landscape. Above me, the sun was shining. It made everything on the island in front shimmer tremulously. The sight of that lurid landscape of fog and mires made me burst into tears. Without warning, I crumbled to my knees and sobbed deeply. By some miracle, I had found a way out.

All I could do was collapse to my knees and stare off into the middle distance of unrelenting grey and thank God. I cried and cried, screamed upward to the sky, and pleaded with him. The whole ordeal had made a mockery of my soul and reaved it from my very being. I cried and sobbed until there was nothing left.

      Soon after, I sunk back in on myself, a withered husk, and resigned myself to staring endlessly, silently, unmoving, upward at the looming clouds.

​

***

​

It’s dark now. And there’s no one else left. None of the dwellers from below have come up for me. I am alone, writing this confession only for myself. Because I believe no one else will ever read it.

      As I sit here, wondering what it’s all for, I cannot stop looking up at the mysterious monstrous pools of green up there. The Northern Lights are exceptionally beautiful when viewed from this angle. Has God been watching the whole thing? Why did he not save his children?

Those kinds of questions horrify me as much as what is below me right now.

Is this real?

How long have I been on this island?

How long ago did we set sail from Aberdeen port?

So many questions. Did I hallucinate the whole thing? Did any of them ever exist? As I sit here alone, staring up into the fathomless abyss of our primordial genesis, I can only wonder why I alone made it out of the deepest pit of Hell. But, I have this horrifying recurring notion within my mind—Did I even make it out? Or like the rest of them, am I still down there in that endless infernum, doomed now to wander in the blackness for all eternity? Am I only imagining myself sitting up here staring up into utter beauty? The final death rattle of my mind before it retreats and coils in on itself forever. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore… I can’t even remember my name.

      I believe we all died aboard that ship in the storm. Somewhere soon after leaving Aberdeen port, we must have sailed through…something—a hole in the world. And now we are all here. It washed up what remained of our spirits to the shores of the nine circles, the haunted edges of oblivion.

      I believe I am dead already and merely imagining myself writing this. I see the reason why we landed here. It is our punishment for the trespasses against this world. And only I have seen the hallowed skies again because only I have repented. This is purgatory. The rest of them refused to acknowledge their sins. Now they are all down there in Hell. It is where the remnants of their souls shall slumber forever, with all the other forgotten ones. And the sun will set forever over us all.

      I don’t have long now. My body is shutting down. Thank the lord. Only one thing remains true to me now—my last human thought—Mors Vincit Omnia: Death conquers all.