The Shipwreck of the Pelinaion

Chapter Four

            Thomas was alone.

            His coughing fit had, by now, abated, so the first thing Tom did was stand up, finish his tea, and wash the mugs in a state of disbelief. Maybe he really was just hallucinating. It could be a recurrence of childhood trauma brought on by increased stress, or whatever the doctors had tried to tell him before.

            With nothing else to do, the lighthouse keeper decided to listen to his radio. He turned it on and spun the dial, expecting to hear some kind of catchy tune or news broadcast, but was instead met with a wave of static. No matter which way he spun the dial and adjusted the antenna, Tom couldn’t get any sound other than static on his radio. Thomas thought it strange, because his radio had always been reliable in the past.

             His dog started barking outside. Thomas stood up and immediately ran to the back door, because he recognized that bark. It wasn’t just the barking-at-chickens yaps he heard from his border collie, Max; no, this was a large-animal growling snarl. Max hardly ever used his snarl, which made Tom worried.

            Thomas slammed the back door shut and glanced around for his dog. The barking had stopped, and Max was nowhere to be seen. Tom walked around the house, calling out Max’s name, softly at first and then with increasing degrees of both volume and bewilderment. For the first time in his life, the dog did not answer.

            Thomas decided to go look for Max. He might be injured or stuck somewhere in the woods. But first, he had to put on shoes and a jacket. Tom turned back to the house and was about to open the door when an eerie feeling made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It felt like he was being watched.

            He turned around again to look at the forest. Even though it was barely late afternoon, the very air seemed dark and tangibly menacing. Tom looked intensely into the trees, where shifting shadows seemed to solidify into murky shapes. A migraine came and, with it, the dreadful cough returned. He collapsed to the ground, hacking and wheezing.

            Thomas woke up slowly, his head aching and his lungs burning like he just finished a marathon. He rolled over to get more comfortable, but fell out of bed instead. It was then he noticed that his shoes and clothes were caked in mud, and he had no idea how they got that way.