In the nightmare, there were pirates. They looked like naked red devils and their fearsome faces were grinning at me while I was paralyzed. Their captain, however, was not naked but dressed in a dark red gown, and he had a dagger – the only object from the dream that I would remember in great detail later. It was greenish and looked historical, almost theatrical. And the devil struck the dagger to my chest, causing great pain. I screamed but no voice escaped my mouth. Suddenly someone, or something, grabbed me from behind and pulled a bag over my head, and I saw nothing more.
What was it? Not from my earthly memories, for sure. More false memories, implanted? More bugs in the synchronization of memories?
I had been physically exhausted from the previous day's toil at the sea, and I think I had been the first one in the camp to fall asleep. Yet nothing prepared me for what I discovered when I suddenly opened my eyes. My lids were pierced by the rays of sunlight as the shadow of the precipice gave way to my first dawn in a new world.
The light first seemed too bright for me to see anything. I raised my aching head from the pillows. I found no dagger or wound in my chest. The seabirds were crying loudly. They were busy flying out to the sea and back to the island with their prey, to feed their hungry chicks or their partners still laying on eggs. But something was wrong here, something was horribly wrong.
Where was everyone? I rushed up and looked around. How long had I been sleeping? The morning was in full brightness by now. Our campfire was long since extinguished; no smoulder left. Mary Darling, Nurse Ellis and the girls – they were all gone. Where would they go without giving me a notice?
I looked behind and saw that at least Engineer Benson was still with me. I quickly checked his pulse and find out he was awake, trying to say something to me.
"What is it bro?" I asked. "Where have they gone?"
"Mike..." he whispered very weakly, and his eyes were enlarged with fear. "The demons..."
"What demons, Dave?" The quiet horror crept in me like fever.
"The red ones."
He was very weak, that was obvious to me. I had to find Nurse Ellis quickly. Where was Mary? Where were the girls? Where was Mary Darling?
"That was a nightmare, Dave", I said, about the red demons. "I have to find the others."
I also had to stay calm. To stay calm, that was the most important thing now. Calm, and rational.
"Gone", he whispered. "The red demons..."
I noticed something else now, and it overtook me with much agony. The bags that we had filled with food, water, medicine and tools, and which we had carried over here with great trouble – they were gone. Not everything, it seemed. One medical kit had been left, as if someone was thinking of Benson. The knife was still next to me. The crowbar was gone.
"Wait here", I said to Benson – needlessly, as where would he go. "I will check the boat."
It seemed like the rational idea. They had gone to the boat. Maybe we had forgotten something there that Mary or Caroline remembered. They'd taken the girls along because I was still asleep. Calm, Mikael, calm and rational.
I put the knife in my pocket and rushed down to the seaside rocks. But as I had somehow anticipated, the boat was no longer there. Gone, that too.
No, Mikael, no, this didn't make sense. Why would they go with the boat and leave us behind? Why Mary, what was this about? Mary would not do that, not leave without telling me. Why had I not woken up earlier? It was my fault, wasn't it?
I returned to the campsite and started studying the ground for any footprints, any tracks or marks. I soon discovered there were too many of them – after all, we had been twelve people on our feet, and one wounded. Nothing seemed to indicate struggle, however – neither with red demons, nor with pirates or anything else. Yet they were all gone.
Had we been once more betrayed by Nurse Ellis? Was that it? I blamed myself for trusting her. I had needed her for Benson's sake. But even if she betrayed us, why on earth would they leave me and Benson behind? Why had Mary not woken me up? Why had none of the girls cried and grabbed my arm?
Had they gone back to the lifeboat and sailed away with it? Or had someone come here to take them away? But it didn't seem from the tracks that they had been taken with force. There were no signs of a major struggle here, and I had not woken up. Surely, I'd have awoken if someone came and took them by force. And if someone came and called them – a rescue mission, that is – then they'd have woken me up, for sure.
Then another thought came to my mind. The titans – they had found the lifeboat. There must have been a tracker inside, which we had missed when we tried to get rid of all their smart technology. The lifeboat might even have had a secret mechanism to return back to the base, activated by some trigger. A timer? Had they been on the lifeboat when such a signal trapped them there and took them back to Atlantis? But if that's what had happened, if they could call the lifeboat back, then why had the Laputans destroyed the Nautilus?
Yet another group of titans – a third party we didn't know about? Maybe there were red ones, in addition to the grey and blue ones we had seen so far. Maybe someone had convinced Nurse Ellis to cooperate. Or even Mary. In good faith, she might do that, to save the girls. But why would she leave me behind? That wasn't like her.
An exhaustive amount of alternative explanations circulated through my mind, and none of them seemed verifiable or even convincing. Desperate, I sat down on a rock. My eyes wandered around the crags, the crevices, scanning for all the possible hides, finding nothing but more nesting seabirds.
* * *
The first morning in a new world – and I hadn't just slept late but lost my companions. I had hardly started thinking of Mary as my future, as my new beginning, when I had already lost her. Now I was stuck here, in a strange world with a headache and a badly wounded man whom I could hardly hope to rescue.
The thought sent me back to Benson. I tried to communicate with him but he kept whispering "silence" and something about demons. I started investigating his wounds and the medical kit to see if there was anything I could do. That would be something Mary would think of. Leaving this medical kit for me when she had to go somewhere. But where? And why not wake me up? I changed the wraps of Benson's wounds, used disinfection and gave him what Nurse Ellis had called morphine.
"I will be back soon", I said then, seeing to it that Benson lay in a safe place, and set up climbing to a higher altitude, hoping to reach the top of the rocks in order to see further around. Maybe I would be able to make the figure of the lifeboat somewhere in the horizon. Send signals to them, perhaps. Or even swim to them.
They must have left with the boat, somehow. Perhaps by accident. Perhaps trapped by a mechanism we had been unaware of. Perhaps thinking they were only going somewhere nearby. They should have woken me up.
While I climbed, I noticed tracks of something climbing there before me. They looked like marks of hooves, not shoeprints. Some kind of animals lived here, I tried to convince myself, pushing away the ominous whispers of red demons.
Climbing exhausted me physically, but I kept going – I had to see what would be up there. And when I finally reached the top, there was indeed a new world, wide open in front of my eyes.
It was not the most inviting world I had seen, yet it still elated my mind that was nearing desperation. On one side, there was the deep blue sea, and right below me, the steep cliffs that were full of seabirds. But up here, there was a windy plain, growing long tussock grass as far as I could see. The grassland quietly waved in the wind. The noise of the seabirds made it seem as if all the life was on the seaside. Up here, on the moor, there would be just loneliness.
I looked at all directions, but the landscape was the same everywhere. At some distance, I saw isolated rock formations sticking out of the tussock grass, and a couple of bushes that broke the otherwise seamless harmony of the long grass.
The sea glittered in sun, but there was no lifeboat anywhere to be seen. Nothing else either, except for the various kinds of seabirds floating in the air and taking advantage of the air currents above the cliffs.
I felt out of my powers and out of my wits, and I spent a long time just trying to see something else than the sea, the grass, and the seabirds. A glimpse of something shiny in a great distance, please. But no, there was nothing. No lifeboat. No Mary arriving with a flock of girls from the grassland, telling me they had just taken a morning stroll. Only the breeze.
* * *
I returned down the same way I had come up, and the descent was even more slippery and difficult than the climb up. I wondered in my mind how on earth I could move Benson up to the moor. Then I realized that the campsite we had selected was probably the best and the safest place. There was not much shelter up on the moor.
I could keep the camp where it was, and Benson there. Meanwhile, I would search through every cavity, every possible place where they could have gone – although my instinct told me they had gone by the boat. I could also make trips up to the moor in order to discover whatever was there to be discovered.
Maybe Mary and Caroline and the girls would return after some time. If I left the campsite permanently, they might never find me. On the other hand, I considered with growing anxiety, if someone or something took them against their will, I might not wish to be found here with Benson, in the same place. Should we move, after all? The uncertainty over what would be the best course of action was eating me inside. I ordered myself to stay calm and rational.
I would not be able to move Benson alone. I decided to stay for the time being and avoid falling asleep. I started my search efforts from below, from the slippery rocks where we had landed and left the lifeboat. I found nothing. No items dropped by the girls. Nothing. I did find tracks though, removed algae, a crushed shell – but they could all have been caused by us in the previous evening.
Returning to the campsite, I explored the area, found countless tracks there, mainly left by our own group. That was it, I thought. Most of the tracks I could see were left by human shoes. But there were also a few bare-footed prints – small ones, not very clear. Probably left by the girls as they had taken off their shoes for the sleep.
More animal tracks. Some small, hooved animals. Sheep size. Countless birds. Fish bones, left by the birds. The cavity that had scared Ripsi – there was nothing inside, just an angry fulmar hissing at me from its nest, and the smell of algae and rotten fish. No doubt from catch the birds had accidentally dropped, and their excrement.
Up on the cliffs, and on the moor, I didn't dare to go far. I took short walks to all directions, finding nothing of any significance. Just grass – endless grass. Every time I stared upon the sea, I hoped I would see the lifeboat floating back. In vain.
* * *
The next day, Benson died.
He did not communicate much with me in the end. He had no powers for it. Yet there was one more cryptic message he left me with. It was the last time when I returned from my walks on the moor, having discovered nothing but more grass, some stones, and a couple of brooks that would supply us with fresh water.
I found Benson conscious, which at first made me hopeful. Yet when trying to speak to him, I quickly realized he was dying. What he said to me sounded like raving nonsense, but I listened more than eagerly, since he was my only companion left in this new world.
"The two elves", he whispered. "They came and then went."
"What elves?" I asked, with growing doubts. "They came here?"
"No", said Benson with notable irritation. "I saw them from a distance. Tried to look at you."
He nodded at the path I used climbing up and down between the campsite and the moor.
"Maybe it was me you saw", I said.
"No way", Benson sighed. "Little elves. With hoods. Two of them. Like... Like in the Star Wars..."
"You mean jedis?" I asked. I was holding his hand.
"No, I mean the little creatures."
"Like ewoks, bro?" I asked. "Like jawas?"
"Yeah..." he whispered, not specifying which one he meant. "Like them elves."
And then he said nothing no more. I stayed calm for a while, trying his pulse that was no more there. I closed his eyes. Then I cried, very quietly, with no voice. There was nobody to see my tears.
It was all loneliness now.