The Quiet Sea

ENTRY FOURTEEN

I must swim for it. Within the hour. Any other choice I may have had has been stripped away from me.

I have been foolish. So incredibly foolish. So afraid was I of an unknown terror that I forgot my care for a more common foe and, in doing so, have been driven from my sanctuary by my own hand. Would that I could only blame the flames, and discount fear, as the force that compels me into the water now, but I will be honest in this final hour, even if I do not know the truth of my honesty.

My work and the few possessions I brought with me are gone, all apart from the clothes on my back and this journal. Though I can attribute no thought to the action, I'm grateful I spared it destruction. My spirit is weighed down by foreboding and I do not know the future, but at least I'll leave this in remembrance of all that's happened, and while I wait, it gives more company and comfort than anything else that resides on this isle.

I'll give the islanders until the sun is within the width of a hand from the horizon, and then I'll begin my swim. All day I held out for rescue, but none have appeared. I cannot – will not – remain here another night.

It's not long now. I feel the island waiting with me.

I'm sitting in marram grass again. This small strip of dune doesn't have the malign feel of the brush and the ruins it hide at my back, or the sinister watchfulness of the waves before me. I don't trust that to protect me come sundown, but it's given me some relief after the ordeal of last night, and I think I can sit here ten minutes more while I relate those events.

It begins after my previous entry: there am I, sitting alone in the prison of my cottage as the wind screams at the walls, staring at the flickering flame of my candle in the hope it can banish some of the darkness and lend me the strength to ignore the tap, tap, tap at my window.

That sound had wormed its way into my head, a demonic hand knocking on the door to my soul. Clutching my hands to my ears did nothing to quiet it, and I think I fell half-mad from the listening. Shadows leapt in corners of my vision, perhaps cast by my dancing light, though back then I felt certain the evil had gained entry to my refuge and danced in mockery before it struck. I lifted my candle and spun about, peering into the spaces where the shadows pooled deepest, and though I saw nothing, my fear would not let go.

I don't know why I clung to the light as I did, but, like a child, I placed my faith in the act of seeing and shied away from the dark. A single candle couldn't fight the blackness that stalked behind me. It was that thought, aided by the incessant tapping, which drove me in a wild frenzy to my cupboard, where I pulled forth every candle I had. These I lit with shaking hands and placed throughout the two rooms of my cottage until no crack or crevice remained unilluminated.

I was standing there, surrounded on all sides by flame, when the shutter blew open.

Half turned towards it, I froze. I remember my heart stuttering in my chest as I looked into the eye of the night. I also know the tapping stopped, for I felt its absence in my gut. Then I remember no thoughts, just a space in time where I reached the shutter and slammed it closed with the mindless panic of an animal.

Relief was fleeting, for then I heard the whoosh of flame as the candle I'd knocked caught the sleeve of my jacket where it dangled from the back of the chair.

I'm lucky I escaped the blaze. Or perhaps I'm not. The bed blocked the only exit, the barricade I'd created to keep the island out almost succeeding in trapping me here forever; it took me precious moments to shift it, disorientated as I was by smoke and terror. Somehow, I prevailed before the fire caught up and managed, through fumbling fingers, to lift the latch of the door. As I fled out the burning cottage, my hand snagged the journal that rested on the bedspread, though I only realised what it was I had taken much later.

That is most of it. I don't wish to recall the long hours of darkness as I watched my cottage succumb to the inferno, nor the wicked language of the fire as it spat its curses into the night. Neither do I want to remember the figures I saw, or imagined I saw, contorting in the flames. If I survive, those hours will never leave me. I am haunted, never again to view the world through a lens untainted by my time on the island.

The cottage has smouldered all day. I cannot believe the islanders haven't seen the smoke.

If I'm to make my swim before night falls again, I must leave soon.