Chapter Two: The Dreamer

“My prime request,

Which I do last pronounce, is –O you wonder! –

If you be maid or no?”

-Ferdinand, The Tempest

            Helen Marshall jerked awake from a nap she had never meant to take and a nightmare that she couldn’t remember.

            She looked around, her heart still pounding and her forehead lined with sweat. Rain lashed the windows of her office and the wind still roared outside. The files she was supposed to be organizing were scattered all over the desk. Some of them were damp from her sleeping on them.

            Hastily, she started to gather them up as she struggled to remember her dream. She was sure it had been very vivid at the time, but now…nothing remained except the dull, throbbing sensation of recent terror. 

            Helen put down the papers, gripped her hair, and shut her eyes tightly, fighting to remember. There was something that scared her horribly, but what? It wasn’t something that happened, she was sure about that. It was….it was something that was said...a name…

            Kobras.

            She opened her eyes. That was it! Someone had used the name ‘Kobras’ and that was what scared her so badly that she woke up.

            Well, she thought bitterly to herself. That explains everything, doesn’t it?

            She dropped her face into her hands and massaged her temples. It had been almost three weeks since she remembered anything from any of her dreams, and now that she finally had, it meant nothing whatsoever to her. She didn’t have the faintest idea who or what ‘Kobras’ was, or why the mere name should frighten her so badly. If only she could remember more…

            Helen tried for a few more minutes, but then gave up. It was no use; it felt as though someone had shut a door in her mind that no amount of effort could force open.

            Most people wouldn’t be particularly concerned about forgetting their dreams, but Helen wasn’t most people. Up until a few weeks ago, she had never forgotten her dreams. This was because her dreams weren’t just dreams. Through them, she could see things: things that had happened in the past, things that were happening now, and even some things that would happen in the future.  Sometimes they were clear and sharp, as though she were simply watching from the side. Sometimes they were strange and indistinct; full of imagery and sound that she would have to piece together and interpret afterwards. But one thing was common to all of them: they all turned out to be true.

            All this made her sudden inability to remember them very disturbing, and what made it even worse was the fact that almost all of her dreams of the past few days had very definitely been nightmares, and prior to this she had only had one other nightmare in her life.

            Helen gripped her hair tightly and glanced heavenward. Something very, very bad was going to happen; she was sure of it. She felt as though she had suddenly, inexplicably gone blind and was stumbling about in the dark, aware that danger was approaching, but unable to see it coming or do anything to stop it.

            It wasn’t as though she could ask anyone for help either. Only a select few people knew about her gift, and she doubted whether any of them could tell her what had gone wrong with it. And she couldn’t very well try to sound a warning without knowing what she was supposed to be warning about.

            Thunder and lightning roared outside. Helen got up and walked to the window to try to work off some of her restlessness. It was all dark outside: she couldn’t see anything except the dim, fuzzy glow of one of the perimeter fence lights.

            The Island of Matoul was a strange place to work, she reflected. She had only been there a couple of months, but it had already begun to work its spell on her. At least, that’s how she framed it in her mind. This wasn’t the spell of its beautiful beach or lush vegetation. It was a much more unsettling spell; a sense of having left the waking world behind and entered dreamland. Matoul was a place where most of the island was strictly off limits, but where she had twice been put up in her boss’s sumptuous villa when the weather precluded her usual helicopter ride back to Key West (and tonight looked like it was going to make a third time). She didn’t see many other employees, though she knew there were dozens at least. About the only person she talked to on a regular basis was, oddly enough, the island’s security chief, Charles.  

            None of this really struck her as odd or unnerving; it was what she had expected when she took the job. She had been told straight up that the facility would be kept strictly secret, what they were researching there, and why they were being kept secret.  Nevertheless, the experience of working in that kind of situation gave her an odd, disjointed sensation; as though everything she saw on the island was somehow less real, less like waking-life and more like a dream (the kind of dream she didn’t have but other people did) than anything else. 

            The door opened, making her jump.

            “Dr. Prosser!” she said. “You startled me.”

            Dr. Donald Prosser was Helen’s boss, though she had only met him once or twice. He was a short, stout man of about fifty, completely bald with bright blue eyes. He didn’t enter very far into the office, but stood near the door in his usual stiff, almost military fashion.

            “I am sorry,” he said. He had a very soft, gentle voice tinged with a British accent. “I was just coming to let you know that, with the weather, I’m afraid it looks like you’ll have to stay the night.”

            “That’s what I figured,” she said.

            “Are you alright?” he asked. “You sound troubled.”

            “It’s nothing,” she lied. “I just feel asleep and had a nightmare is all.”           

            Prosser nodded in an almost distracted way. He was watching the storm outside.

            “You know, I don’t remember the last time we’ve had such a storm,” he commented.

            Helen looked outside as another crash of lightning lit up the trees that were whipping around in the wind.

            “How long have you been here?” she asked. “Oh, wait,” she added quickly. “I’m not supposed to ask, am I?”

            “It’s quite alright,” he said. “I first came to this island…let me see…what year is it?”

            “1981.”

            “Is it really?” he said. “I’d lost track somewhere. In that case, I’ve been here for twelve years this April. How time slips away!”

            “Yeah, really,” she said. She wondered if he had the same dreamy sensation about the island, but didn’t know how to put that question into words.

            “Er, do you mind if I ask how you ended up here?”

            Prosser turned his gaze from the window and fixed it upon her in an appraising manner.

            “No, I don’t suppose I mind,” he said. “It’s not a complicated story. I used to work at Empire State University, but I was forced out. Professional jealousies, I’m afraid; I’d rather not get into all that. After I was, let’s say, retired from there, I went to work for Centron Farms. That was the biggest mistake of my life. As soon as Xander Calvan got wind of my research, he told me that my contract meant that it all belonged to him as my employer. I resigned that very day, but his lawyers tied up my life’s work so that I couldn’t touch it.”

            He paused, glaring into the distance as he relived the painful memories.

             “This was the low point. I was now out of work and unable to openly continue my research. I stayed with Charles.”

            “Charles?”

            “Yes, we’re old college friends, didn’t he tell you? He put me up for a while, and we discussed how I could outmaneuver Calvan. Charles had certain connections and learned of the existence of this island. We managed to dig up a wealthy benefactor and bought it off of its owner, who was buried in debt and eager to sell. Then, with a little money and some help from friends, I put together this establishment for the benefit of mankind, safe from prying eyes and greedy hands at last.”

            He gave a weak smile as he finished.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “I sound like a television commercial.”

            “No, no,” she said sincerely. “It was fascinating. Charles always refuses to tell me any of the background of this place, so I was curious.”

            “Quite natural,” he said. “Curiosity is one of our species’ greatest attributes. It’s what’s always saved us in the past.”

            “It wasn’t so nice to the cat, though, was it?” she grinned.

            Prosser gave a brief smile that said he recognized the joke, but didn’t find it very funny.

            “Well, I seem to be on a lucky streak, but I won’t be so bold as to ask what you’re working on,” she said.

            “No, please don’t,” he answered. “Though I will tell you that it’s quite possible that this island will one day be known as the place that changed the world forever.”

            He gave another weak smile.

            “That’s my hope, anyway,” he said. “An old man’s dream.”

            “It’s a good one,” she smiled.

            At that moment, the island’s security chief came running in.

            Charles Simon was a tall black man, powerfully built but with a very kind face. Like Prosser, he was middle aged and had a soft, accented voice, but his held much more power and volume than his employer’s. At the moment, he was wearing a black hooded poncho, which was soaking wet.

            “Dr. Prosser,” he said. “We have a boat wrecked on the island.”

            Helen felt as though she had received a sudden electric shock: a large boat trapped high on some rocks…

            “What?” Prosser snapped. “Where?”

            “The Eastern edge,” Charles replied. “Looks like it was thrown right up on the rocks. Wainwright and some men are trying to get the survivors off before it’s whipped back out to sea. I thought you’d want to come.”

            “Yes, you’re right,” said Prosser. “Lead the way.”

            “Hello, Helen,” Charles grinned on their way out. “Looks like you’ll be our guest again tonight!”

            “Looks like it,” she said, trying to grin back. “Be careful you two.”

            “Always,” said Charles, laughing and the two men rushed out of her office and down the hall. 

            The instant they were out of the room Helen dropped back into her chair, shut her eyes tight and gripped her head in her hands. The boat…she had dreamt that boat on the rocks. But there was something else: something Charles hadn’t mentioned or said that she had expected him to…what was it?

            She tried to walk back in her dream: there was the boat; a white and red yacht perched upon the rocks like a toy thrown aside by a child, leaning to starboard, great holes pounded into her sides. There were men: a small group of men with ropes and poles trying to get the people out of the boat while the waves crashed in around them…

            Then someone on the boat had turned to her and spoken…what had he looked like?

            She couldn’t remember. As a matter of fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t even remember if it was a man at all…but he had spoken, she was sure of it, and what had he said?

            Helen seemed to run up against a wall; whatever the man or the animal or whatever it was had said, she couldn’t think of it. But then…the scene had changed right after that, hadn’t it? Yes, it was as though she had turned around, but instead of rocks she had seen…trees. Trees being whipped about in the storm. And a path leading…

            She opened her eyes and sat up. She understood. She had seen the path that led from the main building down to the beach, and she had walked it. Which could only mean that she was supposed to do that right now!

            The elation that briefly filled her at having successfully remembered more of her dream died in the thunderclap that struck that very moment. She was supposed to go outside, down to the beach, in this? She wasn’t even sure she could find the beach in this weather; it was almost half a mile away through the forest!

            Helen glanced out of the window in the faint hope that either the storm had died down at least a little or that something would appear and show her that she had misinterpreted her dream and that she was actually supposed to stay inside, safe and warm and dry. But the storm raged as wildly as ever and no such thing appeared.

            Resigning herself with a groan, Helen got up and grabbed a flashlight from the front desk. She had learned long ago to never disobey her dreams, so out into the storm she had to go. Putting it off wouldn’t make her any drier the next minute, so without hesitating she threw open the front doors and stepped out into the night, bitterly wishing that she had thought to bring a poncho that morning.

            The rain hit her like a hail of bullets, smacking her painfully every second. The wind, which had been loud enough inside, was deafening out here, and every few minutes another lightning bolt would arch across the sky or strike the ocean in the distance, followed almost immediately by a blast of thunder. Her flashlight was thin and flickering in the driving rain and between that and the crashing trees she soon lost all sense of direction.

            Helen had been outside for maybe fifteen minutes (though of course it felt like much longer) before she decided she was lost. She thought she was still on the path, but she felt she should have left the trees by now, since they ended a ways back from the beach. She was soaking wet, sore all over from the pummeling rain, and with the alternating blinding light and inky blackness combined with the roaring winds she was completely disoriented and close to panic.

            Calm down, Helen, she told herself firmly. Your dream told you to come out here, and your dreams don’t lead you wrong...

            In the dim beam of her flashlight she spotted a turn off in the path and decided to try it. She took two steps down this new path before it suddenly started sloping steeply downward. She slipped and fell backwards with a shriek of surprise, hitting the ground with a painful smack that spattered her with mud.

            She looked around. The lights of the main building were just visible through the trees; a long way off. Dream or no dream, Helen was on the verge of giving up and going back. That’s when she saw it.

            Something was moving among the trees ahead of her; something very white and very bright.

            Helen felt a chill run down her spine, since she could only think of one thing that glowed like that.

            Ghosts…

            Yet, even as she thought it something told her that this wasn’t a ghost, at least not one that she need fear. The light that came from it felt very warm and soothing when it reached her sore body. She couldn’t see what it was, both because it was moving among the trees a good distance off and because it was so bright it was hard to focus on. But the sight of it seemed to give her renewed energy and she struggled to her feet.

            The moment she was standing, the thing started moving away from her through the trees. She followed it on the path, about a hundred yards behind and ten to the left of it. She hardly even noticed the rain or the wind or the thunder anymore; compared to her guide, they seemed feeble and unimportant distractions at best.

            Suddenly, the trees vanished from either side of her. The Guide sped up. Helen started running to follow, slipping a little in the mud. Even in the open, she couldn’t tell the shape of the thing; it was as if it nothing but a ball of light streaking across the ground. Occasionally, Helen caught glimpses of movement within the light, like limbs, but she never could be sure if it had two or four or some other number.

            Then, all at once, the ground gave way beneath her feet and she fell forward with a cry. Fortunately, she had only run over a very shallow bank and had fallen onto soft, wet sand. Picking herself up and spitting sand out of her mouth, Helen looked around. The White Guide had vanished as suddenly as it had come.

            But as she shone her flashlight around the beach, hoping to catch a glimpse of it (though she knew that she wouldn’t need a flashlight if it were still around), the beam shone on something else; something lying on the beach just above the water line.

            It was a body.

            Hendricks regained consciousness in a jerky series of sensations. He first became aware that someone was talking. Then (it seemed a long time later), he realized that his head was lying on something soft and warm. Then, opening his eyes, he became aware that a bright light was shinning in them, so he closed them again.

            “Oh, thank God!” came a woman’s voice, barely audible over the rain and wind. “I was wondering what I was going to do if you didn’t wake up!”

            Hendricks opened his eyes again. The flashlight, which had been shining in his face, had been set aside, so that its light showed the person who currently was cradling his head in her lap.

            This particular person had inky black hair that hung down to her shoulders. She had a pale, oval-shaped face that was currently spattered with mud. She also had large, bright green eyes that were currently looking straight into his own, eyes almost the exact same color as the dress which the rain had wrapped tightly about her.

In short, she was beautiful.

            “Can you stand?” asked the apparition.

            It seemed a very difficult question. Hendricks couldn’t think how to answer it. Mostly because every time he tried to consider it, the thought My God, she’s beautiful! popped into his head and drove out everything else. 

            “Hey,” she said. “Can you understand me? Do you speak English? O es que hablas Espanol?”

            “What?” he asked, finding his voice.

            “I was just asking whether you spoke English or Spanish,” she said. “Can you stand?”

            Hendricks’s overwhelmed brain finally managed to address the point.

            “I think so,” he said. He sat up, and as he did so he became aware that every inch of his body ached as though someone had beaten him. The Vision put a hand under his arm and helped him up.

            “Here, let’s get you back to the villa; it’s closer,” she said. “My name’s Helen, by the way. I work here.”

            “Hendricks.” 

Next Week: 

Chapter Three: The White Dog

Chapter One: The Storm

“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for

An acre of barren ground…”

-Gonzalo, The Tempest

            The vacation had been going pretty well up to that point. The Caribbean was as beautiful as ever, the yacht Michelle was comfortable and well-stocked with good food, and the weather had cooperated. As a matter of fact, Hendricks’s biggest complaint up until today was that the only other passenger was a man.  

            Now, though, the weather wasn’t cooperating. At all. Dark grey clouds hung overhead and the wind was blowing faster every minute. In the distance, the sky was an ominous purple.

            Hendricks – only his family members called him by his first name, Lenny – had spent a lot of time around the sea, first at home in Massachusetts and then more recently in Miami. As far as he knew, not once in his twenty-nine years had he ever been more than ten miles from it. He had seen every kind of weather from light drizzles to hurricanes. Standing in the bow and looking at the sky, he could tell immediately that they were in for a bad time.

            “It looks like we might be in for a bad time.”

            Hendricks jumped as his fellow passenger, Ralph Zanator, suddenly appeared at his side. Ralph was a huge man; tall and rotund, with a great black beard. He always seemed to wear the same crisp white suit and Panama hat and he always spoke as though he were under the impression that everyone else was slightly deaf. This made his uncanny ability to appear without warning even more alarming.

            “Yeah,” said Hendricks, recovering himself. “Sure looks like it.”

            “Should be a good show,” boomed Ralph eagerly. “I do love a good storm, don’t you?”

            “Er…”

            Hendricks not only didn’t love a good storm, but he couldn’t conceive what a ‘good’ storm might look like, especially on a small yacht in the middle of the sea. The older man, however, appeared to take his uncertainty for enthusiastic agreement.

            “Exactly! What could be more dramatic than the eternal battle of the elements; air pitted against water; the sky against the sea! And us caught in the middle! Should be fun, eh?”

            “Er….”

            “That’s the spirit! I just hope the captain doesn’t make us all hide below decks and miss the show. But we probably can talk him out of that, what?”

            “I don’t think that’s a good…”

            “Precisely! I’ll speak to him at once!”

            “No, you really don’t have to…”

            It was too late; Ralph had already bounded away happily towards the bridge. Hendricks followed, gloomily.

            Ralph really was the strangest man Hendricks had ever encountered. The moment they met on the pier while they were waiting for the boat, Ralph had enthusiastically acted as though he and Hendricks were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages, and ever since he had been popping up at odd times to make some bizarre observance. When they passed a tiny archipelago, for instance, Ralph began to expostulate on the many advantages of living there, including spacious under-water caves and “all the shellfish a man could eat.” When they had gone fishing, Ralph had told them all sorts of extravagant and patently false fish stories, including one time that he had caught a “whopper” when it tried to eat a friend of his (“skinny fellow; I think it might have managed him had we given it the chance”).

            He also claimed to have been an Army Medic, which Hendricks wouldn’t have believed except that the captain, a former Marine named Bob Hogan, did. And it was Captain Hogan – a burly man in his mid-thirties with an impressively bushy blond mustache – who was speaking when Hendricks finally slouched onto the bridge.

            “It’s good to see a man with some guts,” said Hogan. “Especially these days, but you’ve gotta consider my position, Ralph. I mean, what happens to me if one of you dies and I get sued?”

            “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that!” Ralph said, waving a gigantic hand dangerously close to Lucas, the helmsman. “I assure you that we shall all be perfectly safe. We all have some nautical experience after all, and we know how to ride a storm, don’t we Mr. Hendricks?”

            “Uh, well…I guess, but…”

            “You see? Nothing at all to worry about!”

            “I’m not doubting your experience,” said Hogan. “But you know as well as I do that all the experience in the world can’t stop you from being swept overboard.”

            “Not if you’re wandering the deck,” said Ralph. “But simply remaining somewhere in the middeck, perhaps bound to the mast, should surely give us as much safety as could reasonably be expected, yes?”

            “Crazy kind of man…” Lucas muttered, glancing back over his shoulder and shaking his head.

            Hogan couldn’t suppress a grin.

            “Why do you want to do this anyway?” he asked.

            “My dear man, I am something of a connoisseur of such things; I revere storms, I delight in tempests, I exult in hurricanes! The changing weather and the shifting seas, the mighty clashing of the elements in endless drama are a fascination of mine, and if I beheld every storm that has ever occurred from the day that the earth was formed, I could not delight in them any the less. And so, the chance to experience a really first-class tropical storm at sea is something I simply cannot pass up.”

            Hogan laughed, shrugged, and looked over at Hendricks.

            “Well, Mr. Hendricks, it looks like we’ll all be enjoying the weather tonight; will you be joining us?”

            Hendricks opened his mouth to say no, of course not, that he would be staying below deck, like any sane man would. But as he did so, it suddenly struck him how tall Hogan was, and how strong he seemed. You could always tell a real serviceman, he thought. And he thought how huge and strong and joyful Ralph was. Even Lucas the crewman, who was rolling his eyes and chewing his pipe, was tough and leathery, with enormous muscles. As a matter of fact, it occurred to him (not for the first time) that he, Hendricks, was a rather small man; five-foot six, not particularly strong, with a small voice and large, brown, puppy-dog eyes. Not particularly impressive compared to the specimens accompanying him.

            “Yeah, I suppose so,” he found himself saying. “If Ralph’s going to stay above deck, I guess I might as well too.”

            Hendricks immediately regretted saying this, but realized that it was too late to change his mind when Hogan clapped him hard on the shoulder in a congratulatory fashion. It hurt.

            “That’s what I like to hear,” said Hogan. “Good to see a man with some hair on his chest.”

            Smarting from the undeserved compliment, and glumly wishing he had the guts to be a real coward, Hendricks found himself an hour later, bound in a yellow life jacket and holding on for dear life to a rope around the mast as the Michelle was rocked and tossed by the waves and the rain and wind bore down upon him.

            “Oompah!” Ralph shouted gleefully as another wave crashed over them. “Isn’t this delightful?”

            Hendricks didn’t trust himself to answer, even if he thought he could be heard over the wind and peals of thunder. He settled for shooting Ralph a dirty look.

            A bolt of lightning lit the sky, followed instantly by a roar of thunder. Ralph clapped as though it were a fireworks display. He said something, but even his voice was drowned in another peal of thunder that followed almost immediately.

            “A double-header!” were his first audible words afterward. “This is even better than I had hoped!”            

            The Michelle lurched violently. It pitched up on a great hill of water and then plunged down into the valley that opened before it, only to crash head-on into the next hill.

            “Oompah!” Ralph shouted again as the warm salt-water smashed against them.

            Hendricks coughed and spat out seawater. By now he was cold, soaked-through, and very annoyed. He was so annoyed, as a matter of fact, that he started to shout at Ralph to remind him that he, Hendricks, was supposed to be here to relax and recover from a breakdown, and whether Ralph thought this was conducive to that end. He only got as far as “Ralph, I don’t know if you…” before another wave sent what felt like a pint of seawater directly into his open mouth.

            “What?” Ralph called cheerfully as Hendricks coughed and retched. “I didn’t catch that!”

            Hendricks considered trying again, but then another lightning bolt arched across the sky, accompanied by a roar even louder than the previous two.

            “That does it!” Hendricks shouted, his temper getting the better of him. “I’m going below!”

            “You can’t do that!” Ralph reminded him. “We need to hold on…”        

            “I don’t care!” Hendricks shouted, letting go and stumbling towards the cabin door. “I’ve had enough!”

            “Don’t be a fool, man!” Ralph called. “Get back here!”

            Hendricks ignored him. The cabin door was only about ten feet away. He could reach it easily enough…

            Another wave struck the yacht, causing it to lurch hard to port. Hendricks was thrown off his feet and slid sideways. He struck the rail painfully and grabbed it in a tight grip. As he tried to get his feet back under him, the yacht tipped sideways, and as it did Hendricks looked up to find himself almost at the same level as the water.      

            As he looked (this all seemed to take quite a long time), Hendricks saw a wave reaching up to him, as though it were the enormous hand of some sea-dwelling giant. He almost fancied he saw the water form into fingers. It reached him, seized him in a cold, powerful grip, and wrenched him overboard.

            Hendricks had no impression of striking the water; the water had already come up and grabbed him. He had a few confused, terrifying moments of suffocating blackness, during which he clawed his way up through the churning mass of water, before his head broke the surface. He just had time to draw a deep breath when the ocean rose up and covered him once more. Again he struggled upwards, and again he had no more gasped a single drought of air before another wave came and swallowed him.

            Finally, on his third attempt he managed to stay on the surface long enough to get his bearings.

            At first, there was no immediate sign of the Michelle. Hendricks had just enough time to wonder whether it had been swallowed up by the same wave that took him when another swell of water revealed a small collection of lights a good hundred yards off. It also, however, revealed another, much larger collection of lights farther off.

            Another flash of lightning illuminated the scene, and Hendricks realized that the larger collection of lights was an island. An island, moreover, with people on it.

            The trouble was that the ocean was threatening to take him right past it.

            Hendricks started swimming. He hadn’t gone more than a few yards when another wave grabbed him and hurled him back. He kept swimming, and yet another wave hurled him back. He made an indistinct noise of frustration and pressed onward. But however hard he swam, it felt like he was making no progress at all. His wet clothes dragged in the water, and his lifejacket made it so the waves threw him even further each time.

            Hendricks didn’t know how long he kept this up. It felt like at least an hour. His muscles were screaming and his lungs were burning. The salt in his water-soaked clothes chaffed painfully against his skin, and his mouth was parched from exhaustion and salt intake. But at least he could see that the island was closer now. The Michelle had disappeared, but Hendricks couldn’t worry about that at the moment. His life now depended entirely upon reaching that island.

            He gritted his teeth, put his head down, and tried to redouble his efforts. Agony shot through his whole body as his muscles shrieked in protest. Hendricks found himself wondering whether he might be able to survive even if he let the sea take him away from the island; after all, he had his lifejacket and surely someone would go looking for him, right? And if they didn’t, would drowning be such a horrible fate?

            Hendricks’s mind drifted back to his childhood in Massachusetts. He had lived in a small island town, which was full of fishermen and sailors who would tell endless stories of life at sea. One of them, an eight-fingered old Jew with no more hair than a billiard ball, named Gould, claimed that he had actually drowned and come back to life:

            “You’re trying to breathe,” he said. “But there’s nothing to breathe, and as your lungs fill with water, it’s like they’re on fire. Drownin’ feels like you’re burning to death from the inside out.”

            Hendricks gritted his teeth and tried to swim harder. No, drowning wasn’t going to be an option, he decided. He had to make it to that island!

            But even as he renewed his determination, he began to find his strength wasn’t going to match it. His muscles flatly refused to work any harder than they were working, and it quickly became apparent that they weren’t even going to keep that up for long. But he was close now; close enough that the waves were almost taking him into the island rather than past it. Just a few more minutes and he could stop swimming and let the waves carry him…

            Lightning lit the sky again, and Hendricks felt despair overwhelm him.

            The island ahead of him had no visible beach. Its shore was a jumble of rocks in front of a sheer cliff, against which the waves were slamming with enough force to break him into little pieces.

            There was no way out. He couldn’t keep swimming, even if he thought his body would allow it; he was almost too close as it was. He would have to trust that someone would come looking for him, bobbing alone out in the Caribbean. Though, he realized, if the Michelle had been heading for those same rocks, chances were that he’d outlive all of them, meaning that no one in the world would know where he was. He would drift for a few days, alone and forgotten, until he died of thirst. That’s if the sharks didn’t find him first, of course. Unless he just unhooked his lifejacket and ended it all himself.

            “Burning to death from the inside out…”

            How had he come to this? And more importantly, what had done with his life? Had the world been any better off for having him in it? He couldn’t think of how. As far back as he looked, he saw nothing but disappointment and cowardice. He hadn’t had any ambitions in school; he had just gotten by. He only became a cop to avoid going to Vietnam…and the war had ended less than a year later anyway.

            But then, when he had tried to do something more, what had happened? He joined the Miami PD, screwed up a couple times, and had a breakdown at his first real crisis. Which had led him here: a fittingly absurd end to a worthless life.

            Hendricks’s ruminations were interrupted by a loud splash; loud enough or close enough that he heard it despite the noise of the wind and the waves. He looked around, and as he did so he caught sight of something white bobbing in the waves, running parallel to the island.

            Somehow, Hendricks immediately knew that this was a guide. He started to swim, and was rather surprised to find that he still could. His muscles had seemingly gone numb at this point.

            The white object continued to bob along, now hidden by the waves, now just visible. Hendricks tried to get a better look at it, but it kept popping in and out of the water, as though it were weighted down and only a small part of it could float.

            It led Hendricks along the line of the cliff toward the edge of the island. As it did so, Hendricks would have laughed if he still had the energy. Of course! The cliffs were only part of the island’s shore line! There must be something more serviceable around the other end…

            But he also noticed a problem; the cliffs jutted out at what he took to be a bend in the island. To get around them, he would have to pass uncomfortably close to the rocks, even as the waves seemed to be slamming against them with renewed fury. His guide, however, kept going, apparently undeterred by the danger, so Hendricks resolutely followed it.

            When we’re thoroughly exhausted, our minds have a tendency to wander in an attempt to distract us from our own agony. Hendricks’s mind once again was recalling the sailors’ tales he had heard all his life; of wil-o-the-whisps, the lights at sea which sometimes would guide ships to safety, other times into disaster. Still other times, he remembered, they would lead to neither, but they would take the traveler…somewhere else. To the lost seas, dream-islands, or Faerie Land. He might vanish forever, or he might return a different man…

            The white guide vanished just as Hendricks was reaching the jutting-out cliffs. With a strangled yell of determination, he threw every last bit of effort he had left into passing it. He was almost there…the waves struck it like a bomb blast. He was level…the waves were drawing back for more…he was half-way through…the waves roared forth and carried him forward. The waves smashed into the rock, but miraculously, Hendricks didn’t. He could feel the submerged rocks grating against his hands and feet, but he had been spared being crushed against the wall. The waves pulled back again…but now he was passed.

            On the other side of the wall, he found himself in a broad, half-moon-shaped bay bordered mostly by a sandy beach. He was breathing so hard that it hurt, but he just managed to put a little more distance between himself and the rocks before he surrendered to the tide as it drew him inwards toward shore. Once he felt bottom, he forced himself to crawl forward at least a little way up the beach before he collapsed in dead faint.   

Next Week:
Chapter Two: The Dreamer

Introduction

First, thank you all for coming to read my book! I hope you all enjoy it, whatever flaws you find.

Now, before we begin, I want to set a few ground rules:

1. Please don't start a political or religious discussion in the combox. I'm all in favor of such things normally, but I don't want us getting too off topic. If either the book or another reader says something you disagree with, just let it be for now; there will be other places to air such grievances. Now, if someone says something about the book that you don't agree with, by all means discuss, but please let's stay focused.

2. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone this, but please be polite; you're all friends and family, and I'd like to keep it that way. This is supposed to be fun for everyone.

3. Remember, this is the first draft, so let me know if you see something you think should be fixed or edited (that's kind of the point of this whole exercise, isn't it?).

4. If you want to invite anyone else to join in the reading, please feel free; the more the merrier! Just have them send me their e-mail addresses so that I can give them the proper permissions.

5. Keep in mind that this is a very early book in what is planned as a very long series (it's actually the second book chronologically), so not everything will be explained or settled by the end. That being said, if something doesn't seem to make any sense, let me know so I can decide whether it needs clarification.

6. Finally, on a related note, some of you know more about this story, or even the larger world than others. If so, please refrain from posting spoilers (i.e. "Oh, this is the guy who turns evil half-way through!"). 

Thanks again, and I look forward to reading your responses!