A mist over the island

Chapter four ii/ii

ii

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It was the noise that made it all seem so unreal. The noise worked its way into your skull, numbing your mind, making it impossible to think. It made Sheff want to clamp his hands over his ears and block it out, but he somehow knew that even if he did, the noise would get through.

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Now that their prey had escaped – for the time being – most of the things outside were simply running along the fence emitting their horrible whine. Now it was louder from one direction, now it was louder from the other. It blocked out all other sound, all other thought. It was horrible, yet almost hypnotic. Sheff had the impression that if he had to listen to it long enough, he would simply fall down, stunned. He gritted his teeth against it, and shook his head from side to side.

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

"Bastards!" he snarled. The simple act of vocalising, of making his own sound to combat the noise coming from outside, somehow seemed to help him regain control of his own mind, so he said it again. "Bastards! Bastards!"

He became aware that he wasn't the only one to have discovered this coping strategy. Behind him, Fiona was yelling too: "Shut up! Shut up! Stop that foul fecking whine!"

And Suzy was repeating again and again, like a mantra: "What the hell are those things? Where did they come from?"

But there was another voice too, one more worth responding to. Tom was talking to him. "Sheff. How many of them do you see? Are they inside the fence yet?"

The store room of the lighthouse, up one flight of stairs from the ground, only had two narrow windows, one on either side. With Sheff standing at the window looking inland, no one else could get a good view of what was happening.

"There's... it looks like... at least twelve of them," he said.

"Shut up!" shouted Fiona, mindlessly. "Shut up! Shut up!"

"Fiona, can you stop that?" said Tom.

"They're not inside the fence," said Sheff.

"No? I'd have expected them to get in by now," said Tom.

"They don't seem to be trying any more."

"I guess they know they can't get to us anyways."

"If they really wanted to, it'd take them about five minutes to get through the fence, I reckon," said Sheff. "Fuck I wish they'd stop making that horrible fucking noise."

They weren't all making it. There were two of them tearing at Ted's body – or what was left of Ted's body. Those ones were concentrating so hard on ripping him to shreds, they weren't making any noise at all, or they looked like they weren't. Sheff's heart beat faster as he watched them; anger flowed through his veins, threatening to overwhelm him. They looked happy! They weren't even eating Ted, they were playing! It was a game to them, snapping bones off his body, scattering bits of flesh here and there. They didn't care that no more than a few minutes ago, this had been a man, a thinking, feeling person. Sheff shut his eyes tight, to block out the view. The rage he felt was making it difficult to think. That and the sound.

"Bastards!" he said.

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Came the inevitable reply.

Of course, there was worse even than was happening to Ted, and some perverse part of Sheff made him open his eyes again to confirm it was still going on. Just that bit further away, three of the animals were half inside the mangled car. Two were on the bonnet, with their heads poking in through the shattered windscreen, one was hanging from the window, thankfully blocking Sheff's view of what they were doing to Oisin.