Vicious Memories

Chapter 45

The abandoned village turned my blood to ice.

An eerie feeling of familiarity sank through my skin and latched onto my heart, making me shiver as we walked toward the central clearing, my hands coming together anxiously. Distorted echoes of our village flew at me from every direction.

Alice assured me that despite its similarity to our home, this ruin of a community wasn't an old outpost of theirs. They hadn't built this.

"Then how...?" I asked.

She didn't know.

We reached the clearing in the center, an axle around which the wheel of ruined buildings stood. Sturdy lean-tos, small wood huts, and well-made tents dominated. Here, unlike in our village, nature had grown with wild abandon over everything, sprouting deep green moss and mint colored grass over every inch of every structure, the wood barely visible beneath, like brown bones holding the entire mess together. To get to this rise we had crossed a stream, 200 yards to the south, that ran west across the island; it originated from the lofty heights of Mount Home, gathering tributaries on its journey west, and would have served as a perfect water source.

It was a good spot to build a village.

But as Alice and I inspected the area I couldn't shake an irrational feeling. It was like a virus, dancing gleefully, bitterly, through my thoughts, impossible to get rid of no matter how hard I tried.

Standing there among the floating pollen, walking between the old structures, squatting down to run a hand over a sagging tarp so faded I couldn't tell what its original color had been... it all felt like stepping into a dream. Not just anyone's dream, though - my dream. I felt happy, like I was returning to an old diner that I used to frequent in my childhood - a place with cheerful memories that had seen things like birthdays, first dates, reunions.

"So much like our village," I said, returning to the middle of the clearing. "But something went wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"At the end, probably right before it was abandoned."

"That is generally when things go wrong."

"It was never properly fixed," I continued. "Here, look at this, starting in the clearing."

The sun climbed higher into the sky and I could feel time melting away like candle wax around a too-large wick. We would have to run back to the village soon.

"How can you tell anything after so much time has passed?"

"It's been years, but the marks are still here. Look right in the center. This is where the worst of it happened. Maybe a fight amongst themselves since an attack from outside would have started near the edge. See this land here? Scraped and uneven. Covered by grass now, but you can still tell. If this was their gathering spot they would have kept it smooth, and since it's at the top of the small rise rainwater wouldn't have made any divots. This one here is over a foot deep." I ran my hand over a gash in the earth. "Could have been made by shovels or axes. A few hits on the same spot would make a depression that nature couldn't fill back in immediately."

I moved on to the tents.

"This one never came apart, but it was knocked several feet to the side. The depression in the ground is over there, from the pressure of someone sleeping in it every night. There's no depression in this new spot. Nobody slept in it after it was moved. And these scores on the cabins are too high up, too random for animals to make. I mean, some of this could be from wild boars, or dogs, but not all of it. It had to have been done by people..."

In my mind I relived what might have befallen this ill-fated group of settlers. I could almost see the flying limbs, smell the rotten tang of blood, hear the screams of anger and pain. The evidence of something wrong was everywhere I looked, a smattering of mold spores on the surface of an otherwise healthy loaf of bread, hinting at an infected core.

My eyes flitted from place to place, taking in the gashes in the earth where there shouldn't have been any, the splintered cabin supports and torn tent covers, the scratch marks and faded dark patches lying on both wood and tarp. This village was missing the little knickknacks that made ours so endearing - rods to hang window covers, steel tools, personal effects like watches or bracelets or books - but the evidence of life was still apparent.

I stood up too quickly from my crouch and all the blood rushed to my head, making me dizzy. I stumbled one step to the left, putting a hand on a cabin wall for support, blinking spots out of my eyes. In the periphery of my vision I saw a ghost walking between two of the tents, talking to someone out of my line of sight. I whipped my head around, alarmed, as the apparition threw his head back and laughed at some unheard joke.

My limbs locked.

I was staring at my own face, there and yet clearly not, as it disappeared around a pile of scrap wood.

What the hell...

I shook my head twice and ran after the figure. But when I rounded the corner there was nobody there.

"Hey!" Alice called. "You okay?"

I didn't answer at first, just stared at the empty space before me. I put my head in my hands.

"Ollie?"

"Yeah," I called back. "Just checking to see if there's anything back here."

We searched for any signs of recent habitation. Our time was almost up.

In the end there was only one small cabin left. It was more of a storage shed - five feet tall, six wide, ten deep. Alice went inside and uttered a startled cry that made me bolt in after her with my knife drawn.

Nobody else was there.

Alice crouched in the shadows near the back wall. Her hair, damp and straggly with sweat, stuck to the back of her neck just above the collar of her t-shirt.

"What is it?" I asked, putting the knife back in its sheath.

She didn't answer for a few seconds, shuffling through something on the ground. When she stood up dread rose in my stomach lake a wave of lava, burning every organ it touched. "Not another one."

A large piece of metal lay on the dirt floor, leaning up against the wood wall. Dents marred its dull surface in several places, creating faux waves in the faded and peeling white paint. I had seen this metal before.

"I thought the wreck was on the other side of the island," I said.

"It was."

"Is there another one of them underneath it?"

"Yes."

"Did you look inside?"

"Yes."

I squatted down with trepidation. There it was, lurking under a twisted piece of the villagers' wrecked ship. I pulled it a few inches closer. Alice had already opened the latches.

The black lid swung open smoothly. I picked up the cream folder lying inside, noting the handcuffs, faded paperback book (Neverwhere), dental floss, and coiled blue headphones.

My eyes stayed glued to the cover of the folder for a while. Hands that had so readily reached out of their own accord a second ago refused to obey me, but inaction had never been my strong suit. I opened the file and read the name printed clearly at the top.

"No," I said, shutting the file immediately. "Not possible."

"We need to head back. We can talk on the way."

Alice's face was impassive. Or was her expression just hidden in the shadows of the cabin?

"It's not possible," I repeated.

But it was. The file said so loud and clear.

We returned the folder to the briefcase and snapped it closed. I tucked it safely under one arm, feeling nauseous. Back in the light of the sun, Alice looked sick, too.

We ran the entire way back to the village together.