The Lost Island

Like a roaring engine blaring over the sound of everything happening around him, one thing stood out over the rest: His family. What would they say if he failed? What would they think if he never returned home? Sure, some might have found peace in the fact that should any of that come to pass, he would never have to know, but not Kyo. It was in the uncertainty of that possible future that made him now worry about the things in which he placed his value as opposed to the task at hand. Generations had come before him and fearlessly led the charge and come out victorious. Generation after generation, they carried their honor and victory to the next, and what if all that had simply led to nothing? What if it had all led to the only son of a retired soldier-turned fisherman dying out here in this place so far from all he knew? Kyo of course never wanted to carry that burden. He was content at home in his writings, but when the Emperor called their nation to action, he answered that call like his father and his before him. Unfortunately, that bravery was now overshadowed by his fear that was leading him closer to the edge of a cliff that was the current situation.

His reminiscent state was rudely interrupted by the reality of his situation, slapping the metal deathtrap around him in the face. A bullet scraped across the outside of the cockpit of his Mitsubishi Zero fighter plane, taking with it a streak of gray paint. Searching for a way out, he quickly jerked the yoke to the left, forcing his plane to sharply break away from the three American P-51 Mustangs that now stalked his aft side like birds of prey circling for their meal. The Americans had cleverly broken up his squadron; now separated and alone, he knew he didn’t have much time until they again were on his tail, and he could not risk crashing into the cold gray waters below. Finally gaining some sense of a desire to strike back as a matter of pride, he cut back to the right and pressed the throttle down. As his body was shoved into its seat by a massive gravitational pull, his plane arched straight into the flight path of his attackers. He let out a cry in the heat of battle as he pulled the trigger and his weapons fire caught the Mustang in the lead by surprise, ripping through it and causing a massive in-air explosion that rocketed into the hungry waters below in a thunderous rainstorm of molten metal. The starving sea swallowed the wreckage whole. Both pilots that flew on either side of their fallen comrade quickly turned their attention to this as Kyo flew right between them, narrowly missing their wingtips. The wake of his flightpath shook both of the dark green planes and they quickly split, mirroring each other as they looped around to respond to their attacker.

Kyo pushed the throttle lever all the way down. It was a race now, and neither of the American Mustangs could outrun a Zero in a race. Flying so low that his plane left a wake in the mercilessly cold Bering Sea waters, Kyo’s eyes darted around the sky, searching for his comrades but he couldn’t find them anywhere. He was heading east, and on the horizon a small thin gray line appeared, growing ever taller: An island.

In his rearview, Kyo spotted the Mustangs behind him as the familiar muzzle flash of their machine guns erupted and a barrage of gunfire erupted in geysers of seawater splashing all about his plane. He pulled back on the yoke, climbing high and fast. Too fast. Within seconds the lightweight plane began to lose lift and Kyo knew he had made a mistake. The plane’s engine screamed as Kyo suddenly began to fall backwards. Seeking to recover from his stall as the air whooshed around him the metal of the plane quaked, he turned into it. His propeller now aimed directly at the empty sea hundreds of feet below him, he fell like a bomb from a plane towards the waters below. Gently pushing forward on the yoke his wings caught the wind and the Zero slowly leveled out.

Just ahead of him, Kyo could see the Mustangs barreling straight for him, their guns opening fire again. Kyo flew right between them again before circling back around quickly. Now he had the drop on the Mustangs. He quickly gained ground on them, swooping down like an eagle on one of them. As one of the Mustangs pulled up, Kyo pulled the trigger and his Zero vibrated profusely as a thundering barrage of 7.7mm gunfire tore through the little Mustang and it dove into the harrowing seas below.

Kyo looked around as he flew over the wreckage for the other American, now his only threat left. He eased up on the plane’s throttle as he scoured the skies. Suddenly the sound of cracking metal and his plane’s sudden desire to drop its right wing alerted him to the presence of the other Mustang descending upon him from behind. Kyo suddenly began losing altitude at an alarming rate. He knew he was going to crash. The empty gray island that grew ever larger and ever closer became his target as the Mustang flew over him to circle around for another pass. Kyo looked at the gaping hole in his wing, able feel the hole in a realization within himself like a sinking pit: He was going to crash. He would have to attempt a water landing. It was his only chance.

Continuing to throttle off, he extended his flaps hoping the drag would help his right wing as the Zero plunged closer and closer. Now he could see the white foam of the salted sea upon the rocky beach of the island. He eased the plane lower and lower, keeping an eye on the Mustang that now was directly behind him and coming in hot. Suddenly, he was thrown forward, his head smashing upon his controls as salt spray splashed across the glass and the Zero collided with the sea, bouncing up once before plunging down in the shallow water and screeching its metal against the rocky shore as it collided with the steep mountainous island mere feet from the water.

Kyo found himself adrift in a loose state of consciousness. He could smell smoke. He could taste the metallic blood in his mouth. He could even feel the throbbing soreness within his head. He felt the stinging sensation of the teeth being knocked out of his mouth. But he wasn’t in his plane, he was home in his family’s little three-room home in Moji-ku. He stood in a room he knew well, lit by the flames of their chimney. His father, tall and imposing with his balding gray hair and charcoal black eyes staring at him in the dim light. His father turned towards the wall. He grabbed something mounted there, a rifle. It was old and dusty, the wood of it chipping. Kyo always took the stories of his father’s heroism in the war with Russia long ago to heart.

“I took this from a boy I killed. He was barely old enough to hold this, and far too young to die on some hill half the globe away from his family,” his father told him. “But he died with honor.” Kyo remembered this day. It was the day before he left. The last time he saw his father or mother.

Kyo didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t wanted to come this far north and fight for the Emperor. He never cared about such things like his father and grandfather had. Honor was something from an early age he heard his father talk about religiously, but Kyo could have cared less about honor. He cared about art. He wrote stories and drew pictures. At only eighteen he was barely alive by the time he was ordered to give his life for this war, but he did it anyways. Not for his honor, but for his father’s.

“To die for the emperor is the greatest honor, Kyo. Do not be afraid,” his father told him.

Kyo’s eyes opened to a smokey haze pouring out from behind his controls. He quickly unlatched his safety harness and exited his cockpit, falling onto the cold hard rocks below. Salt water washed over him before rescinding back into the sea, burning the bleeding wound on his skull. Kyo stumbled forward, in shock as he looked at the flaming wreckage of his plane.

Suddenly a deep rumbling caught his attention: The American Mustang roared over him, happy with its handywork. It flew over the gargantuan mountain above him, leaving him alone on the barren island to die.

Kyo, for his part, was aware of this, but was in such bad shape that he soon lost consciousness. In a deep and dark sleep, he found himself again in the home of his parents, lit by the flames in the chimney, only this time he was alone. It was only him and the rifle on the wall. Sirens were blaring in the distance beyond the thin wooden walls of their home. He was confused. Where was his father? Where was his mother?

Suddenly a frighteningly deep and empty emotionless voice spoke to him through his mind.

“Consumed,” it said before Kyo’s own terror at the experience of a foreign voice in his own mind sent him spinning out of his own dream.

When he awoke, he found himself with his back against the steep mountain feet from the shore. The incoming tide had put out the flames of his plane and now there was only darkness. He couldn’t see anything; he could only feel the icy water washing over his aching mangled legs. He shifted, slowly and agonizingly to look up the height of the steep mountain, and he could see a source of light far on the other side.

People, he thought with a sense of relief. Even if they were American, he didn’t care at this point. He just wanted to go home. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home to his writings, to his drawings. He wanted to find a wife and have children and be with his parents. He never cared about this stupid war. It was a petty squabble in his mind. He couldn’t believe that he almost gave his life for it.

It took Kyo nearly four hours to climb over the mountain, but as he neared the summit, he pushed himself beyond his own physical limits. His desire to live was strong. He placed his hand onto the summit and climbed on to it to gaze out onto what he thought must be a military encampment from the amount of light it shown into the sky.

Instead, he was greeted again by the isolation of this barren land. The American P-51 Mustang was several hundred feet away from him in a shallow valley, ablaze in the black night air. Kyo could see the pilot’s burning corpse in the pilot’s chair amongst the broken wreckage. He slowly made his way down to it, using what remained of the inferno to keep himself warm in the freezing darkness. His hopes faded as the fires slowly burned out. It’s a grizzly and disturbing thing to try and sleep next to a dead body, even of an enemy. Kyo laid there the whole night until the sun slowly rose in the east, providing little warmth through the cold cloudy sky.

Kyo studied the wreckage closely. Only the mangled metal frame and the charred remains of its pilot remained. Kyo found his joints struggling to hold him up as he stood, his head seeming too heavy for his neck. He quickly lost his balance and fell over. He landed over a footprint and quickly stood back up in an adrenaline filled shock. The footprint couldn’t be his… and it wasn’t the pilots. He knew this because it was burned into the ground, as if the person it belonged to was on fire or made of molten lava or something. The footprints went directly to the wreckage from the east and then returned back to the east. He hadn’t seen them in the blackness of the night but now they were plain and clear.

Kyo quickly patted himself down searching for his pistol: Gone. He must have lost it in his crash, and he wasn’t sure that if he returned to his plane, he’d ever be able to climb up again. Luckily, in the still steaming ruins of the plane he saw the pilot’s pistol. He dragged the pistol away from the ashes with his boot and waited as the steaming metal cooled in the freezing morning air, his eyes constantly watching the horizon. After several minutes, he grabbed the 1911 .45 pistol which was still warm but tolerable now and began to follow the burned footprints. He didn’t know who or what they belonged to, but he would do what he had to in order to stay safe and leave this place.

With his feet dragging against the dark and lifeless soil of the barren Aleutian island, Kyo traced the burned footprints until he found himself growing weary and tired. He hadn’t had a drink of water in over 24 hours and his stomach now churned and growled at him for forgetting about it. The salty air burned his lungs and nostrils, and his heavy head soon grew light as he found himself once more plunged into the dirt unconscious.

Once again, Kyo was there in his parent’s sparse home. A log was on the fire and its skin was popping and gray. The evidence that his parents had been there was written all over the place. Their evening tea was still steaming in their two cups beside the chimney, his father’s rifle was still on the wall, but there were no parents there.

Then, the sound of sirens blaring like mad men in the distance came screeching through the thin walls. The sounds of the agonizing cries of hundreds of people that seemed to be in the midst of unimaginable torture rang through his ears like an unbearable and maddeningly out of tune choir screaming at the tops of their tearing vocal cords. He couldn’t take it. His hands pressed firmly against his ears couldn’t stop the pain. His eardrums were ready to burst and seemed to bleed inside his head from the awful sound. His body trembled like the ground in an earthquake as a tsunami of terror filled his bones.

He was driven mad as he bolted out the door and into the night. Outside his parent’s quiet home, the town he grew up in was gone, washed away by a sea of fire in the night. Smoke poured into the heavens like the tears pouring down his face. The screams of people caught in the ruins was deafening without the walls to dampen them and Kyo ran like he was running for his own life into the carnage to help even though he wouldn’t have even an ounce of a clue what to do if he found someone. The fields were turned to boiling mud, buildings to broken ground, and the people stumbling in the streets screaming resembled lifeless corpses escaped from a slaughterhouse; reminding Kyo that under all the societal dressings humans put on themselves, they were but animals adorned in their own self-deception that they could ever be more than they naturally are.

Up above, beyond the glowing smoke and embers climbing like specters into the night, the roaring menace of American bombers sang their song of death that Kyo had come to know all too well in his time as a soldier. This apocalyptic vision of the end of Japan, of the end of the world as he knew it; was every reason why every Japanese soldier fought and would fight to the death to prevent this from happening. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about the vision, was that it was not delirious and foggy like most dreams were. It was as if Kyo had fallen asleep and when he awoke, he was really there. It was as if it had really happened and Moji-ku was really a scorching inferno. He could feel it in his sense of equilibrium. Though he didn’t belong here and he himself was foreign, this had already happened.

Kyo’s panic-stricken and overwhelmed mind commanded him to scream out though his vocal cords were trembling too much to even consider obeying, Where are my parents!?

Then a sound that resonated louder than the bombers far above filled his screaming mind, silencing it. It was the deep and expressionless voice from before, answering his question as if it narrated this nightmarish horror story that he found himself living in.

“Consumed.”

In the instant of the word even being uttered, the screams and sirens disappeared. Only the wind could be heard. The scolding heat of the burning ruins replaced by the chilling caress of the Bering Sea’s cold merciless winds on his broken body. Kyo could feel the dark earth sticking to the insides of his dehydrated mouth as he found himself face down, an imprint left in the ground from his body’s unconscious trembling.

He slowly rose to the ground, his joints tight and sore; the blood from his head wound now a dark brown crust resembling war paint upon his face. He began to walk forward once more, his feet dragging across the hard soil. He clutched the American’s pistol tightly in his hand. He could feel within his animalistic desire to survive that he didn’t have long. The blood lost had left him weak and the lack of water was starving what life remained in him of any ability to push on.

He followed the black scorched footprints upon the ground, fearing that the voice within his head and the glimpses into the world beyond this island belonged to the being that left the prints; but he knew that if he didn’t follow it, he would die here. There is no honor in dying if no one knows how, and even though Kyo thought honor was a bullshit lie to make men die for their country; if he died it would give him some peace to know his father at least thought it was an honorable death.

Kyo could feel the pores on his body grow rigid and the hairs on his skin stand up as he slowly made his way over the lifeless dead grass upon the hills of the island. Hundreds of feet below him it seemed the gray and tumultuous ocean waves ceased to crash against the rocky shore, and the waves instead came from the shore and ran as far away as they could from the island the longer he followed the footprints. The dead grass all had grown out and away from the direction that Kyo walked, and the cloudy gray sky circled like vultures above.

Speaking of vultures, Kyo couldn’t help himself even in his dehydrated and delirious state from noticing there were no birds on this island. In fact, this was the first time in his entire life that Kyo could remember being on land and not hearing birds. It seemed no birds had ever been there, like they feared the island itself was a predator aiming to consume them.

Something within the air had changed; Kyo knew it. The air was thinner, and some vaporous scent ran through him like he wasn’t even there, and it made his heartbeat uncontrollably fast. His mind told him to keep on, but his body seemed like if it could, it would leave its mind behind and turn and run as far away from this part of the island as it could. Something was wrong with this place. It didn’t belong here. The air was unnatural. Kyo’s equilibrium was chaotic and fleeting like the waves below as if there was no way to feel balanced here at all. The light grew dim and fleeting as if it were night outside even though it was still daytime; Kyo’s watch told him so. Time seemed an irrelevant memory here as he reached the crest of a peak and below him saw what he could feel inside of him was the epicenter of all of this artificial chaos.

In the darkness, he could still see as if it were daylight, and in the shallow valley below the peak he could see a stone object that was clearly built, not naturally forming; though he knew in his mind it wasn’t built by man. It seemed like he just knew this fact, as if the stone object had told him so. It was easily three times his height and had a large square base with strange markings engraved into the stone that looked more complex that any form of mathematics he had ever seen, yet they seemed so elementary in their presentation. The strangest thing was how the engravings seemed to move, as if they were people acting out a scene in a play back home. Above the squarish base was a diamond shaped piece of stone that made up the bulk of its height, and it was rotating as if it were a man locked into a drug induced trance. He began walking down to the structure, petrified by fear but his own biological curiosity was unable to deny itself. He could feel the sensation of touching the stone even though he was still so far away from it. It was almost metallic and liquid like even though it seemed to be made of the cold dark rock of the island. He could see clearly the burned footprints walked right up to the stone object and disappeared and he followed them closely, matching each footprint with his own, locked into his actions like some sort of puppet being controlled by a master puppeteer.

His mind could feel the puppeteer, masterfully inking into him and flowing like hot thick blood through his veins. He sensed its presence and he trembled at thought of its true nature, already knowing what it was but fearing it all the same and unable to comprehend it with his feeble mammal brain. It was like the stone structure was telling him everything he needed to know even though he couldn’t comprehend it. There was no other way to explain it except the essence of something existing yet being so far beyond physical understanding that it couldn’t be real. It was an idea, a thought. Too simple to be anything else and too complicated to exist in mankind’s feeble realm. It was terror.

Kyo’s voice ceased to work, and his eyes rolled into his head as he followed the footprints ever closer to the object. The ground shook and his skin grew hot and bubbly. He wanted to scream in pain but the understanding emanating from the stone smothered his vocal cords. He walked forward like a wind-up toy without any control over itself closer and closer until he was right up to the stone. The air was rotten and smelled of dead bodies and the night was dark. The stone was the only source of light. It was light. He could see clear through it now, it wasn’t stone, it was light. And far within that light he could see something staring back at him from within it. It knew he was there. It wanted him. It needed him for something. He stood unable to move, his heart pounding so hard that he could hear it within his ears like a terrified drumbeat that thought if it could beat faster and faster it could escape.

“Consume,” a deep and inhuman expressionless voice said to him.

Kyo fought with all his human might to move and control himself. The harder he tried the more panicked he became. He wasn’t alone, even in his own thoughts. The Terror was there with him, all seeing and all knowing. He had to break the uncontrollable fear consuming and controlling him. Something habitual that he didn’t have to think about, that’s what he needed.

Then the two of them knew what he was going to do to break it, almost as if the stone had given him the memory though it was his own. As a child he had nearly died from Scarlet Fever. One of his earliest memories was of being washed in cold water by his mother, her dark and gentle eyes trembling in fear at the future as she watched her child slowly dying from what was brought on by his own body’s reaction to a microscopic life form… Something he never knew before but now in this moment did. He still remembered her to this day singing a nursery rhyme to him to calm him as she washed a cold wet rag over him to cool him.

Without even have to think much more he felt the Terror watching him from inside himself and inside the light of the stone as he sang. His mother’s voice came out of his mouth as if she were there with him.

“Let me pass, let me pass

What is this narrow pathway here?

It's the narrow pathway of the Tenjin shrine

Please allow me to pass through

Those without good reason shall not pass

To celebrate this child's 7th birthday

I've come to dedicate my offering

Going in will be fine, fine, but returning will be scary

It's scary but

Let me pass, let me pass”

Kyo suddenly found his arm moving as if he could control it. It was the only thing he could control. Now was his chance, he had to kill it. He grabbed the American’s pistol and aimed it into the stone, firing at point blank range at the Terror within. At the very moment he fired it, something roaring out from within the stone like a flaming meteor and tore through his neck.

Kyo’s body stayed upright, not under his control, only his arm fell limp, dying from the blood loss pouring out of his throat.

As he lost the feeling in his arm and his mind seemed to lull into sleep, he could only think one thing: How?

Now, for the last time, the voice answered him.

“Man always wars, and war always consumes.”

1982

“Where is it?” Steven Hosner asked.

He had just endured a twelve-hour flight and three-hour helicopter ride to get here and was impatient. Whatever was so important that it required someone of his ranking to come here in person had better be good, or someone was getting reprimanded.

“In the exact center of the island,” Dr. Smith answered, pushing his thick horn-rimmed glassed up his nose until they were snug and tightening his thick jacket around his body.

Dr. Smith was native of Jamaica, and his body language told that he didn’t like the cold weather. Whatever was here was obviously worth it if they managed to drag him all the way here.

“It’s the damndest think Steve,” Dr. Smith said as the two of them made their way from the man-made turbulence from the helicopter now departing to the campsite of dozens of tents and personnel setting up for a major operation, “it’s identical in size and appearance to the one in Ecuador, but it’s stone composition is different.”

“How’d they find it?” Steven asked.

“A fisher boat spotted the rusted wreckage of a crashed plane and called it in to the Coast Guard. Turns out to be Japanese Zero from the Second World War.”

The two of them entered one of the many large industrial sized tents to find a labyrinth of workstations being set up inside.

“How’d news get up to us?”

“The Coast Guard found a downed P-51. The plane was scorched in the crash, but it looks like the Japanese pilot left a letter in it after it stopped burning,” Dr. Smith said as held up a plastic bag with a laminated letter inside.

Steven quickly snatched it and began examining it closely as the two of them made their way through the tent and exited into a center area that the tents were all constructed around. In the center of it was a dilapidated and rusted frame from a burnt crashed plane, a skeleton still in the cockpit as if it were a part of it now.

“I don’t speak Japanese, so spare me the trouble. What’s it say?” Steven asked, more of an order than a request.

“Nothing, it’s numbers. Not words. I’ve got someone working on it.”

“So,” Steven continued, “the Japanese pilot, what happened to him?”

“That’s the weird part, Steve. There are footprints leading from the plane to the object. They match the exact shoes on the corpse we found of him.”

“Footprints after 40 years? What are you, nuts?” Steven said mockingly.

“They’re burnt into the ground, Steve. The earth is literally melted into the footprints. They’re permanent.”

Steve tried to play off his confusion, very perplexed by this. Of course, nothing ever seemed to make sense about the objects.

“Okay, so where’d you find the pilot’s body?”

“He’s beside the object, in a fetal position… like a baby,” Smith said.

“Like a baby?” Steve asked. “What are you describing a painting? Tell me how he died.”

“He shot himself in the throat.”

Steve raised his eyebrows in surprise, “Not exactly an efficient means of suicide, is it?”

“We think he might’ve been shooting at the object, and the ricochet killed him, Steve.”

“That makes no sense, then how’d he end up in fetal position?” Steve asked.

Dr. Smith shrugged.

“There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense. There’s a pen in one hand and a gun in the other… And these footprints, they lead from the object back to here, and then exactly to the location of the body.”

“So, he came from the object, left a letter with cryptic numbers on it and then returned and killed himself?”

“No Steve, there’s dried blood all along the path and in the footprints. Early DNA testing looks like it matches the corpse. He shot himself and then walked all the way here and back before curling up and dying.”

“That’s… unnatural.”

“Dr. Smith!” said a young woman running out of one of the tents in a hurry holding a notepad in her hand.

Dr. Smith held out he calloused hand for the notepad and took it.

“What is it Doctor?” he asked the young woman.

“The numbers, I’ve figured it out. They’re coordinates.”

“For where?” Steve asked. “Peru? Elsewhere? For another object?”

“No,” she said with a look of concern on her face. “They’re spatial coordinates.”

“What?!” Dr. Smith exclaimed.

Steve snatched the notepad from Dr. Smith, “For what?!”

“Polaris.”

Steve handed the notepad back and look of dread on his face.

“We’re going to have to take this to the top… to Mr. Prowse.”