Eyeland, part 4, ConclusionWhy couldn’t I go home? Who or what wanted to keep me on this island?
My mind drew a blank.
I dreamed of eyes again that night: large green eyes with red pupils.
The eyes watched and followed, they seemed amused by my attempts to escape them.
I woke with a gnawing hunger and raging thirst. Returning to the cabin for food and drink, I found the beer and pastries I had snatched earlier, were back. Puzzled, I searched the entire cabin.
Someone was playing tricks.
Someone was watching me, sneaking around this cabin while I was out.
Slurping a fresh, cold, if somewhat bitter beer held back the madness. Marilyn was wrong. Someone had been watching me all along, watching and waiting for a chance to get me.
“Who are you?” I screamed, standing in the center of that beautiful cabin and spinning rapidly to catch the culprit, should he be watching now. “What do you want?”
My words echoed uselessly as the now familiar fatigue washed over me. Before my mind slipped into a total stupor, a light bulb went off somewhere deep inside. I suddenly realized that the food and drink could be drugged. With the last of my rapidly depleting strength, I rocketed the brown bottle at the stone fireplace. The comforting sounds of glass breaking followed me into the nightmare world my sleeping hours had become.
In my dream, an old crone stooped to collect the broken shards of glass.
Olive green eyes with deep red pupils gazed sadly at me from a wizened face. Her toothless mouth struggled to form words I couldn’t understand. Seemingly frustrated by my sluggishness, she reached into the folds of her shapeless robe and produced a scroll. In my dreamlike state, I followed the crone through the waxy woods, my hands clutching the leathery scroll. Strange stars in the indigo sky glowed redly at me, like the eyes of a thousand strangers. The crone paused at the edge of the beach barrier and looked back at me nervously as the red eyes sparkled all around us. She reached a wrinkled finger out to touch the invisible wall. With a spark and a light popping sound, a section of sky swung back releasing a puff of hot arid wind.
In my dream I only got a glimpse of what was out there, beyond the barrier. When the horizon swung in to let the crone out, I saw the faces behind those red eyes. Old withered faces stretched in all directions, all focused on me.
I hope to God it was a dream.
When I fumbled open the strange scroll, it surged and pulsed beneath my fingertips with a peculiar, almost electric, quality. The words carved into the swelling fabric, could answer all my questions although the prospect chilled me to the bone. The blood red letters dancing across this skin-like parchment made my eyes water with fear and heart scream with the agony of betrayal.
“BILL OF SALE—SOLD TO THE COLONY OF NEW MARTIAN SETTLERS, ONE SLIGHTLY
NEUROTIC MALE HUMAN FOR RESEARCH AND STUDY PURPOSES." SIGNED Marilyn Denton.
End
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