The fog surrounding the island of Avetoro shrouded it from the world like the walls of a bastion. One wouldn’t see the island unless they searched for it, but for those who did, the fog was a deterrent. It almost acted as a warning not to come, that any ship would crash into the wall of fog seemingly stronger than bricks. It held that illusion carefully, and successfully. The large scattered boulders surrounding and inhabiting the wall were also another obstacle that disincentives, ambushing any boats unaware of their presence. Perhaps this is why it had never been truly scouted before. Myths from the people of the Antilles certainly didn’t help it, some told tales of sea monsters lurking in the fog waiting to strike, others of gods and demigods summoning it to conceal their whereabouts, some rumors have even described a boiling pool; a gate to the afterlife. Whether these legends and myths are based on truth or misinterpretations is still debated, but the fog remained as the guardian, the entity hiding the island. But on this day, the fog was getting holes in its walls. Rain thundered over the water, coming up from the Caribbean Sea, carried by a tropical storm. The island itself was placed directly on the route of the storm and was pummelled with the wind and treacherous bullets of rain. The tall pines of the forests were knocked to the ground, the scattered small ponds were being flooded to large lakes, and every person on the island had retreated to a stable structure. Nearly every person, at least.
A shabby tool shed was the spot of one of these stragglers bunking down for the storm, perched at the edge of a cliff overlooking the central cove of dead coral. From the cliff are the nests of seabirds, with the frigates and gannets crouched with their mates over their eggs and young. The person inside the shed stood impatiently in front of the shabby panel that acted as the door of the shed, anxious to leave once the rain had calmed down. This impatience is occasionally disrupted by a hard raindrop hitting the roof, which only spooked him for a moment before he returned to his waiting. The roof, made up of rusty metal sheets, sounded as if it would break at nearly every hit.
A shovel was knocked off the wall, landing right near his feet, and he kicked it away, remarking on the crowdedness of the shed. He had retreated to it once the heavy rain and wind came as a last resort, thinking it’d be knocked down with one swift slap of the wind. One more blast and this whole thing’ll come toppling, he thought every other time the gale had tried to take down the old shed. It had been three hours since he had fallen back into the shed, and his impatience had finally gotten the better of him.
“Screw it,” he declared to no one, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
The moment he opened the unimpressive door even a millimeter, it blasted open with the force of a semi-truck and knocked the man down to the shed's dirt floor. This granted a swear from him as he struggled to get back on his feet. The wind was trapping him in the shed, and in turn, taking every tool off the wall with it. The man grabbed the doorframe and pulled himself out, shoving himself to the right of the door, against the soaked wooden walls of the shed. It felt as if he was glued to the wall, he could barely move, and the bullets of rain didn’t help. Taking several small steps to the right brought him to the end of the wall, and the minute he moved off he was kicked to the muddy forest floor by the wind. As much as he struggled to get up, the storm pinned him to the ground and shoved him further away from the shed. Every attempt to rise to his feet just pushed him more. His chagrin was fueled by this until he saw a light in the distance. It was not an embracing or warm light, nor was it unwelcoming or cold. The light was consistent and monotone, only with the occasional blink of a faltering fluorescent tube. He managed to position his body to blow into one of the thicker, stronger pines to anchor himself. Through the mist and rain, the light came from a familiar building standing in a clearing.
“The research station!” he aloud excitedly, though muted by the gale’s howls and blows.
He let go of the tree, allowing the gale to drag him to the station. The farther it blew him, the brighter the lights illuminated until he had sight of the silhouette of the building and its adjoined tower. What seemed like not even a second afterward he felt the gale punt him one more time into the concrete wall, followed by a CRACK coming from his shoulder. A shout followed in pain, as he pushed himself up the bleached white wall and shuffled toward the door. It was located between two thicker concrete pillars, painted a light baby blue color. Another bout of practically climbing across the wall brought him to the heavy metal door. In the inlet of the pillars, the door was surrounded by a parallel horizontal pattern of thin wooden planks over the unpainted concrete. The man reached into his pocket and snatched out a keycard, he glanced at it swiftly to ensure that it was for sure his card, then pulled it up to the card scanner, glowing a dim red light, next to the door. Through his peripherals, as he was placing it back into his back pocket, he saw the light turn from red to green. It was hard enough to open the door without winds more powerful than a freight train, so he questioned his logic on why he thought he should enter through the front.
He was lucky that the garage, also attached directly to the building and also directly below the observation tower, was accessed using the same card. The gale picked up more so than before, and the sheer strength of it was astounding. Half an hour of maneuvering to the garage door was proof of it, and he was relieved once the door started opening. He rolled under the door simultaneously as it was opening and swiftly hit a button inside to close it, which caused the door to sputter for a moment before descending back down to the ground, sealing off the gale’s forces from the man. Another half hour went by, except now the man was lying on the ground both satisfied and exhausted from finally making it inside. His arms were weak, his legs felt like noodles, and he was soaked thoroughly like he had plunged himself into the ocean. By the time he finally caught his breath, a puddle of rainwater surrounded him as if he were his island. He pushed himself up off of the puddle and scaled the short steps leading to the door to the main part of the station.
The interior was the very definition of bland, with a dull tile, in a similar color to the concrete pillars, lying all across the floor, barely complimenting the chipping plaster wall, originally painted an off-white. Immediately next to the door to the garage on the left is a row of tall thin lockers containing supplies for the field, and to the right was a spiraling staircase up to the tower. The bullpen located in the center of the building formed a ring, desks in the center with some cabinets located on the exterior along the walls, save for one wall that is all glass from floor to ceiling dotted with little tiny light gray dots in neat rows and columns. The desks were three large pieces all squished together, two facing each other parallel and the third positioned at the end.
The man approached one of the two parallel desks and pulled out a notebook from a drawer, not too small but not large either, to write down his field studies in a more permanent place than his scribbles on a much smaller, portable notepad. They were notes on the nesting patterns he observed, including the birds' behavior before and when the storm rolled in. Once finished he returns it to the drawer and opens up a laptop sitting on the counter, which was already opened to his email, now containing a new message from another researcher. She was at the northernmost part of the island and would’ve experienced the storm later than he had.
Unless the storm’s big enough to cover the island. The man swiftly waved that thought away, after all, it was just a storm. Or that’s what he thought before he read the email.
“To fellow researchers Grace, Kelvin, and Carl,
An alert for Hurricane Potestas has been sent to everyone currently on the island. Its route is directly through the island and will come from the south. Get to cover before it strikes, the winds have been recorded to be almost 95 miles per hour so far!
Be safe, Danielle Davis,”
Below is an attached report of the aforementioned hurricane, which could not load due to the storm knocking over or obscuring any internet connection. So it is big enough to cover the island. However, the man, Kelvin, was not focused on that, or how he had managed to survive gales that powerful, but rather on why his station-mate, Carl, was not there as well. If he was, he’d surely have been in the bullpen or come from the bunk room to greet him. To reassure himself, Kelvin moved to the other end of the space to the door leading to the bunks, and, confirming his submissions, he wasn’t there.
He returned to the laptop, more hastily, and opened a GPS application provided when they all came to the island. When they were cleared to come, they were given devices to track them and, according to the individual who accompanied them to the island, to “make sure you don’t go where you aren’t allowed.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The GPS showed a map of the island, and there were three types of points. One was little white points, consistent and unblinking. These were the tagged birds, some lying on the cliffs that he was at not too long ago, but most lying inland in the forests. Next were larger, white square points with a little line coming up from the right side, the research stations. There were only three of these, equally spread across the eastern shore of the island. Finally, there were four circular red points, identical to the bird points save for the differing color. This would allow Kelvin to see where Carl was, as the four red points were each of the researchers present on the island. There was a dot in each of the three white squares, at least all except one. A single dot lay in the negative space, not far from the one representing Kelvin, which was a terrifying realization. He’s out there, in that storm! And he’s probably been out there way more than he had! The condition of Carl was not a question Kelvin was interested in answering, not yet. First, it was as if he could even get to him in this blasted hurricane!
Kelvin closed the laptop and grabbed a tablet with the same application from one of the drawers before rushing to one of the lockers to knab its supplies: a raincoat, a hand-held radio, a flashlight, and the keys to an SUV lying in the garage. Only the locker was missing the radio and the flashlight, so he opened the locker next to it to take the supplies from there. The door to the garage burst open once more as Kelvin struggled to both move to the car and put on the raincoat, stepping on his puddle. He climbed inside the car, threw the tablet and his other supplies on the passenger seat, and pressed a button on the visor, opening the garage remotely as it opened shakily from the wind, looking to rush inside and grab Kelvin once more. Nearly everything in the garage was pushed back once the door opened, even the SUV that, without its modifications, would have been shoved to the wall with everything else. Once the garage door opened entirely, he left off towards the lone dot in the storm.
The storm had somehow gotten worse, it would be impossible to see the road if it weren’t for the break of the trees outlining it. The gale enjoyed its new metal plaything, rocking the vehicle back and forth, lifting one side of its wheels a few inches off the ground or occasionally slapping it on a window, as a kitten would play with a ball of string. Only on the inside, Kelvin was getting delirious from the wind’s attacks. One more cycle of setting the car on two wheels and he’d almost definitely be sick. To distract himself he glanced back to the tablet to see he was getting close to Carl’s dot. It was only a few yards away at this point. After a few more minutes of driving, Kelvin reached a clearing, which was only known from the space without trees getting wider and wider til they weren’t seen anymore. That, and the familiarity of the location to him. This was Carl’s go-to spot on the island, as there was a large mahogany in the center of the clearing with several parrot nests resting on it.
“It’s simple to climb up, what with all the branches,” he told Kelvin a few days ago, “And I’ve been up there so many times it doesn’t hurt that much when they bite anymore!”
Kelvin edges the car further into the clearing, the lights being blockaded by the rain and the extra fog the hurricane created until the faintest illuminated outline of the tree could be seen. The tablet read that he was directly next to Carl, basically on top of him. Wait, he was on top of him! He cracked open the driver’s door, which only sent the door flying open from the wind, a small rectangular object lay on the ground, cradled by grass. It was mostly black, with a few buttons on the front surface and one tiny red light blinking on the top edge. The device had been abandoned, but not too long ago because of its functionality. It took several minutes to even grab the handle to reunite the door with the car, and once he did he moved the car closer to the tree. Kelvin reached over to the cupholder, where he placed the radio, and started calling for him
“Carl, can you hear me!” he said, practically yelling into the small device to account for the hurricane, “Carl Larch, please respond!” This went on for several minutes, but it felt like hours. The swift movement of an unknown object from the tree caught Kelvin’s eye, though, and he turned away from the radio. The tree was already about five yards away at this point, and he only had to feather the gas to inch forward just a bit more. He opened the sunroof and braced his right arm to the rim of it while his left held a flashlight onto the approximate location of where the object landed.
“Oh my god, what the hell!?” he screamed as he practically fell back into the vehicle, when he saw the object it was terrifying to him. A human arm. He landed in the driver’s seat, gasping for air from seeing the horror of a severed limb, but his breath was stolen once more when he saw a torso in the tree above. Then a leg. Then the head of Carl fell from the tree.
The inside of the car was silent, the only sound being the rain and the stray sounds of thunder from the outside. Kelvin was paralyzed, his face became flushed with paleness only comparable to a ghost. A crack of thunder, almost sounding like a whip, was mixed with the sound of… something. It almost sounded like a roar or a loud grumble from an alligator, but it also sounded annoyed, almost angry. It was so strange and alien it snapped Kelvin out of his fear. The sound roughly sounded like it came from the same direction as the tree. As much as his instinct was saying to hide, or run, Kelvin’s fear was replaced with intense curiosity in a subconscious attempt to redirect from his friend’s death. The ambiguous shape of the bushes rustling from behind the tree stopped when a silhouette the size of a small elephant emerged from behind the tree. The form and shape both confused and astounded him.
It walked on two legs, with two relatively small arms equipped with a large claw and four fingers, one seemingly vestigial. Osteoderms aligned its scaled body, as wide as a boat, but they were not like a crocodile’s. The scales were small, with larger scales forming around the osteoderms as they emerged from the body covered in keratin. His focus on the body moved up its powerful neck to its enigmorphic head, with two forward-facing horns above the eyes and four more making a portrait of its skull. One more, thinner horn sprouted from between the two horns above the eyes. Teeth from the lower jaw shoved themselves through its large-scaled lips, not unlike a lizard, and a mixture of blood and rain dripped from them. The eyes of the creature glared inside the car, looking directly into the eyes of Kelvin. Its small pupils were chilling, despite their near invisibility through the rain and fog, one can only describe them as the devil’s eyes.
It took only a second after the creature and Kelvin locked eyes for the latter to retreat to the back seats, but not before turning off the headlights. There was silence again, apart from the rain, the stray sounds of thunder, and the faintest feeling of a rumble shaking Kelvin more than the wind ever did. The feeling was a vibration, a frequency, and the only logical conclusion he reached was the creature’s rumble was for others like it, like how whales call and sing across the world’s oceans to one another. Muffled footsteps just feet away from the car were heard just a few feet away, and once they stopped, the car started getting shaken. It was still being beaten by the gale, yet Kelvin felt it be forcibly shoved with force, one only comparable to a stampede ramming into the side of the car. The rumble started again, and it felt as if a giant guitar amplifier was spewing a gross wave of loudness right next to him. He could’ve sworn that his organs nearly popped from the frequency. Kelvin shifted slightly and carefully, trying not to make any major movements that could incite the creature. As he moved, he looked out the window of the SUV on the left side and saw a glimpse of the creature. It kept its head perfectly still, it appeared as if it was a statue or a model placed in a museum, with only the flaring of its slit-shaped nostrils would clue you in that it was alive. The creature’s continued inspection of the vehicle lasted for what felt like hours, and every time it restarted its shaking of the SUV, Kelvin feared that that would be the last shake before it attempted to break it open. The last shake of the car was met with many minutes of anxious expectation from Kelvin until he realized the creature had stopped. He hadn’t felt it leave, yet he didn’t hear its reverberating rumble, so the only two options in his mind were that it was waiting outside for a reason to continue or it had silently withdrawn back into the forest.
When he lifted his head to the window to confirm either of his two theories, he saw now two heads glaring down at him, both still and waiting. Their waiting came to an end once Kelvin moved into view. A brief boom vocalized from one, and they both moved away, not out of sight but two to three yards away. Any hope of their retreat had already left Kelvin’s mind, and he anticipated some continued attack from the creature, now creatures. Rather than just be a sitting target, prey waiting to be eaten, he climbed to the front seat as swiftly as he could and put the car in reverse, hitting the gas. The car’s wheels spun on the soaked grass below and before it could regain traction, the vehicle was violently hit as the car spun out into the mahogany. Kelvin’s head was jerked into the driver’s door window from the force, leaving him dazed for a few moments after the car hit the tree. That gave the creatures the perfect opening. One of them charged into the windshield, shattering the glass, and grabbed Kelvin by the torso. Its jaws were crushing, like a giant vice condensing his ribs and organs into one pulp of flesh. Screams of pain were unheard by any other person, as he was yanked out of the wrecked vehicle and the second creature grabbed his left arm with the same force. The feeling of his arm being haphazardly shaken and removed from his body, tearing all muscles attaching to his body, felt like a forest fire, burning and stinging every passed second, every drop of blood lost. The pain was nearly undescribable, and the sight of what seemed like a waterfall of blood escaping his body caused Kelvin to pass out. His last thoughts were of acceptance, he knew what was about to happen. He could only hope that his death was not painful and that whatever place he ended up in would be good. The creature grabbing him brought him more into its mouth and crushed him with one CRACK. Kelvin was gone.
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