Island Has Ghosts

Chapter 7

Valery decided to spend the night not on the shore, but in the 'barracks'. The walls, though damp, protected him from the cold of the night, and if he chose more or less sturdy blankets and covered the mattress with them, he could make a bed. It smelled bad, but it was much more comfortable than the bare earth.

It was his second night on the island, and it felt like he'd been here for years. Thoughts crowded into his head, keeping him awake, the stench of the moldy blankets persistent in his nose and nauseating. The sensible idea of going to sleep early, so that the bright morning would come sooner, had failed. Valery left the 'bedroom', went to the room with the table, fumbled for a candle in his knot, and after several attempts lit it. There was something about it - sleeping alone on an island and in an abandoned barracks. He caught himself constantly listening to see if the dog had returned. Valery did not expect the dog to bring anyone, but he was desperate to be in the company of any living creature! But the room was still silent, and any rustle he made was a loud noise.

By candlelight Valery flipped through the thick notebooks again, hoping not so much to decipher the events of the past as to find an explanation for his own presence in this place. However, the ledgers, as before, held a secret. For the first time in his life Valery could not find a common language with the numbers he loved so much, as if they had suddenly turned into Chinese characters.

When he reached for the men's magazines out of boredom, he remembered the red notebook. The first pages of that notebook were also scribbled with either coordinates or digitally classified information. Valery sighed disappointedly, but on the next pages he saw drawings made with a ballpoint pen. The author of them, undoubtedly, had a certain talent, because the figures depicted were proportional, authentic, and the faces were alive. Only the theme of the drawings was the same - eroticism. The unknown artist, apparently inspired by pictures in pornographic magazines or, more likely, starved for service without female affection, had recreated a good portion of the images from the Kama Sutra in a notebook.

Valery hummed. The pictures, despite their masterful execution, disappointed him more than the incomprehensible codes. That's why at first he took the next picture as a continuation of the erotic series - it showed two figures with their mouths pressed against each other, as if in a kiss. But, looking closer, Valery noticed the first oddity - one of the figures had collapsed in the arms of the other, her arms were hanging limply along her body, and her legs were half-bent at the knees. The other oddity was the dominant figure: the facial expression seemed far from pleasure, the black eyes wide open, and the mouth strongly resembled a round suction cup. What strange fantasy had visited the author of the drawing? Maybe he remembered some horror movie?

Further the artist has sharply passed from erotic theme to horror and depicted not love couples, but unknown creatures. They had human bodies, only the arms and legs at the knees and elbows could unnaturally bend backwards, as well as faces - turn backwards. Instead of mouths, the creatures had round suction cups with needle teeth, and the noses were two slits. The eyes were painted solid black or left white. It was very unpleasant to look at these drawings. Valery flipped through them hastily, and on the last page he found a short note left in sprawling handwriting:

"They're back! The dead come and take the living. Cursed place! It's true! Oh God, why didn't I go crazy! Why didn't I shoot myself while there was still ammunition left? I'm the last one left. In this damned place that makes hell seem like heaven. What a mistake we've made! Spilled blood on sacred ground, opened the door to the underworld, woke the dead.

However, who among us, brought up not on God's commandments, but on strong atheism, would believe in what the 'dark' old men say? Remembering that old age should be respected, however, we have forgotten that old people carry not only the experience accumulated by life, but also the wisdom of past generations. And what do we carry now? Death? So death is not the end, but, on the contrary, the beginning of an endless journey. Only existence is agonizing, I've seen it... I've seen it! And, my God, I regret, I regret terribly, that death is not an absolute finale.