Into the Darkness

Into The Darkness

 Across the water there is an island, it’s shoreline edged with dark trees. In the winter the moon hangs above the island like a luminous dinner plate and in the summer the sun shines at the islands centre, casting long shadows. My Granny told me never to go to the island. All the grannies told all their grandchildren never to go there. It held something dark and evil. Best to stay on the mainland, where there were lights and people. When I was six Granny took me to the water’s edge and put the frighteners on me, squeezing my hand tight, and coughing her rattling cough, an Embassy No6 hanging from between her yellow fingers. She told me old stories, from when she was a girl, of beasties in the water and dead things living on the land. The stories made the hair on the back of my neck rise up, and tears come to my eyes so that I had to suck my thumb to keep them from falling. I was a child then, and believed in my Granny and all the things she said. But I was soon grown up, or considered myself to be and at 15 I wasn’t listening to anyone anymore. That summer, the summer I turned 16, a boy I knew had a little row boat called Jeanie Deans. He used it to row up and down the headland, showing off the muscles in his forearms, wearing an old Navy hat his dad had given him. I thought we were just mates, we used to hang around outside the village library and smoke fags together and talk about nothing but one night I let him kiss me and it felt dangerous and opened up a closed door to new things so we made a pact that he could kiss me some more - but only on the island, he said, pushing back his cap and winking at me. I was giddy at the thought of stepping out on that old forbidden land, so I agreed and we made a plan for the day after the Solstice, when the seasons would begin to turn. We wanted time to pass quicker. We wanted the night to come. It had been raining - light summer rain, the evening filled with petrichor. We launched the Jeanie Deans from the slip as the sun started to dip in the sky, took an oar each and began rowing together. At first we were just laughing and jostling for space on the boats narrow bench, pulling hard against the water, shoulder to shoulder. The ringing song of the eider ducks followed us as the shore receded. It took longer than we thought to get there. The sun was almost setting, sparking out long red bolts of light across the water. We were tired and thirsty when we finally pulled the boat up onto the islands narrow shore. We shared a bottle of coke I had stowed under the bench and the slippery, sugary liquid felt like nectar in my mouth and the boy and I kissed without thinking until the sun was behind the trees and casting long shadows across our bodies as we lay in the sand. Our chance of rowing back to the mainland was lost as the gloaming passed and the night fell down around us. Even though it was summer and the nights were still long the outline of the boat soon disappeared in the stillness and all we saw were lights flickering into life on the other side of the water. On the island the darkness was absolute. In the morning I had to row the boat back on my own, my clothes bloody and torn, shoes missing, my hair full of leaves. I sobbed and prayed as each oar hit the water. I prayed that the Kelpies would come and steal me away, that the Kraken would awake and sink the Jeanie Deans and take me down to Davy Jones’ Locker. I cursed the land and sea and air and all the saints of lost things and everything between me and the devil I had left on the island. The boy was gone, but I was bringing something back with me. Something that swan inside me, a black minnow of a thing, nestled in the folds of a red stream, growing darkly. Never go to the island my Granny had said. It is the place where dreams are ended and nightmares begin.