Getaway

Liz couldn't say she didn't know why she was here, but she could question why.

Why a wise and just God would leave her here was beyond her, and if this was his plan, she wasn't so sure of his wisdom.

She could see him standing in the shadows of the palm trees, eyes red like a dog caught in the flash of a camera.

All he did was stare, but she felt as if it wasn't all he intended to do.

The trip had been one they had planned for years. A girl's trip to the Bahamas, just her and her old sorority sisters, on a cruise for five sun-soaked days. Liz had been looking forward to it. It would be nice to get out of the house for a while. Her BA in Administration had mostly made a great dust catcher in the eight years since she'd graduated, and between the kids, the house, her husband, and her call center job she did to bring in some spending money for herself, she had little time for anything else.

Well, that wasn't entirely true.

Liz had contented herself with talking to her old sorority sister, Janet, Claudia, and Maria, about their lives and what they had all been up to. Janet wrote for a food blog, she and her husband jet-setting around as he ran his export business, and Liz loved to hear about all the foreign places she found herself in. Claudia was a lawyer, always the brains of the bunch, and Liz often celebrated with her, over the computer, about her courtroom victories. Maria was a designer in New York, and Liz would be lying if she didn't admit that she regularly lived the most through her bestie. Maria lived like one of the girls from Sex in the City, with a constant diet of different men, different gigs, and constant problems that seemed fixed before they got too out of hand.

Liz’s life, in contrast, seemed mundane. Her friends gushed appreciatively over pictures of her kids, none of them having any, but it was clear that their admiration was mostly lip service. They were out living spectacular lives while Liz was stuck in a gilded cage with her eggs. She was comfortable; Harold was a good man who took care of the bills and gave her whatever she wanted. She loved her kids dearly, but watching her friends as they went about their lives made her feel like hers was going nowhere.

As she sat beside the fire, alone and watching the red-eyed creature, she now wished she had stayed in her comfortable rut.

When she had told Harold about the trip, his only real concern had been about who would watch the kids. Harold was a dutiful husband, but he reminded her of an old song her mother had liked. She couldn’t remember the name, but her mother had played it on cassette as she cleaned the house. Harold reminded her of a line from the song, one her mother always sang in tones of deepest disgust; a line that embodied Harold as much as it had her own father.

"I will raise the children while you go have a beer. Where is my John Wayne? Where is his shiny gun? Where is my Lonely Ranger? Where have all the cowboys gone?"

It was a good line, and it encompassed her life so well.

Harold was not the owner of an export business. He wasn't a model or a defense attorney who might be moved to sleep with her after a trial. Harold was an assistant manager in a company that made oil drilling equipment. He was nice enough, he was stable, but his interest in her had clearly waned. It had happened sometime after their second child was born. She saw his eyes begin to wander, and if he wasn't having an affair, then his impending midlife crisis would surely drive him into one.

She had assured him that her sister would come watch the kids while he was at work but that he might miss some of his after-work bar trips this week.

"I'm sure she'll watch this on Saturday, though, so you can meet your associates at the links for your golf game." In retrospect, she thought he might have been a little too glad to hear how her nineteen year old sister would be coming to sit with the kids, but that might just be in her head. The news that he could still golf that weekend had softened his mood a bit. He'd even slipped her a few extra hundreds so she could fly to Orlando instead of driving.

The idea that she might have been stuck in traffic and missed her cruise was comforting now, but as she thought about the reunion with her friends, it brought a smile to his cracked lips.

They had all met at the airport, first Liz and Maria, with Janet and Claudia flying in about an hour later. The four had gone to dinner, drinking and talking about what they'd been doing, and finally boarded the boat around nightfall. They'd had a grand send-off with fireworks and champagne, and the four of them had talked excitedly about what they would do once they arrived in the Bahamas.

"Hope your husband gave you a day pass," Maria joked with Janet and Liz, "cause you never know who you might meet on this trip."

As Liz stared at the man-shaped thing, its unblinking eyes focused on her like twin beams; she wasn't sure that this was the someone that Maria had meant.

It had all been smooth sailing until the second night. The four of them had drank at the bar, dined in the main hall, watched a few of the floor shows, and gone to bed thoroughly pleased. Maria had come in a little later after leaving with a fella from the bar, and Liz wondered if she might pick up a fling of her own? She had turned red at the thought. Did she dare do such a thing? She didn't think she could, but who knew what the trip might bring?

The second day had been spent around the pool. Liz was a little more self-conscious than the other three. She'd never quite gotten her figure back after her second, but that didn't stop the eyes from finding her. They soaked up the sun, pretending to ignore the ogling eyes of those who looked, and Liz felt desired in a way that she hadn't since college. Harold did his duty at least once a week, but she'd come to suspect that it was out of habit. The men who looked at her and her friends seemed more than willing to do more than their duty, and the thought made her smile as she watched them from behind her sunglasses.

They had dressed in their best that night, their reservation at the Captain's Table being semi-formal, and Liz thought she might find herself in someone's bed besides her own later. She was feeling confident in a way she hadn't since before she'd met Harold, and as they laughed over drinks and appetizers, she wished this night would never end.

When the ship stopped suddenly, groaning as it was hit something and lurched like a wild animal, she hoped she was still asleep in her bunk, her afternoon nap still going on.

Now she knew better.

As she felt her eyes getting heavy and heard that strange singing that had marked every evening after the first, she knew that the nightmare never ended.

They started evacuating soon after the sudden stop. The ship had run up against something, and it had shredded the side of it. Liz and her friends were shoved into a lifeboat with about a dozen others. They bobbed out into the night as the boat rode low in the water, its guts filling with the balmy island sea. Liz reflected that at least there had been enough boats for everyone as the crewman rowed them toward a collection of islands nearby.

As Liz sat beside her friends, the adrenaline starting to ebb and the ocean rocking her amidst the warm bodies, she felt herself starting to drift off. You'd have thought such a thing was impossible, but she could hear others yawning and one particular loud snorer behind her. She leaned her head against Maria and felt the other woman breathing heavily. It appeared Liz wasn't the only one getting tired, and as she drifted off, she thought she heard the first snatches of a song that would become very familiar.

When she woke up, she found herself alone; the boat beached as the surf pushed it in and out against the sand of some unknown island.

Liz had no idea how long she had been there, but the fact that she was alone filled her with palpable dread. Where had everyone gone? Was she the only one left out of the twenty or so people in the boat? She got up but immediately sat as her sleeping legs refused to hold her. She tried to rub some feeling back into them, her hands as numb as her legs, and that was when she noticed the thing around her finger.

It was a ring woven from coconut fibers, and she couldn't remember seeing anything like it before. Where had it come from, and who had put it on her? It was tight on her finger, but Liz couldn't call it uncomfortable. It sat flush against her skin, and as she lifted it up to take a better look, she saw the creature for the first time.

The island swam with fog, the trees and sand leading her to believe that it must be tropical. She had seen him in the mist then, leaning against a palm tree as he stared at her. The two locked eyes and she felt her skin crawl as he stared silently. It was as if they were the only two in existence, and the longer it went on, the less human he began to look. Its arms became less human as their thickness waxed and waned. Its legs appeared to double, then to triple, and its head bulged oddly before returning to its normal dimensions.

It was man-shaped, but certainly no man.

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, but when it turned its head suddenly, the spell was broken.

She heard Maria calling to her through the fog, and when she turned back to look, it was gone.

"Glad you're finally awake," Maria said, "We got a little worried when you wouldn't wake up."

"How long was I out for?" Liz asked, getting shakily to her feet as the pins began to recede.

"Nearly a whole day. We left three others here with you. Did you all wake up at the same time?"

Liz shook her head as Maria took her arm and led her up the beach through the fog.

"We've been trying to make something that will get the attention of ships or planes, but the fog is so thick that I'm not sure anyone will see us. The rest of us have been trying to get some shelters up, but the fog is so thick that it's hard to find materials."

As they came through the fog, Liz could see that there were around fifteen others milling about. Men, women, and even a couple of kids went about their tasks without much enthusiasm. They looked at Liz disinterestedly as she and Maria approached, and Liz saw Janet and Claudia as they turned rocks into worlds so a plane might see them, and they both waved as she walked over to them. The rest of the day was spent raising lean-toos and setting up fire pits. She met some of the others, her fellow castaways, and they seemed to have quite the mixed bag. There was Ben and his sister, Catherine, Angella and her daughter Celeste. Margo, Roger, his boyfriend Francis, Tracy, who carried around a typewriter case with the manuscript inside, Gail, Cathey, and her son, Gregory. They feasted on nuts and fruit, coconuts, and some little crabs that Ben and Francis had managed to scare up around dusk, and as they ate, the group discussed what they would do tomorrow.

"It might be nice to take stock of the island," Ben said, "find out if there are others here."

"A source of fresh water would be good too," Maria put in, and Liz couldn't help but notice that she kept looking shyly at the older man as he agreed.

Liz tried to keep up, but it was hard to focus on planning.

It was hard to focus on anything with the pair of red eyes staring at her from the nearby palm grove.

No one else seemed to have noticed it, and the longer it stared, the more she realized it was staring only at her. Whatever the creature was, it seemed to have eyes only for Liz, though the attention was far from flattering. Her finger itched, and Liz realized it was the first time she had thought about the ring in a while. She wondered if it had given it to her while she slept? Why not just take her if it had gotten that close?

As the others began to get comfortable, Liz watched the creature in the fog as it stood its lonely vigil, which was why she was still awake when the singing began.

Liz didn't know exactly where it came from or whether it had anything to do with her mysterious voyeur, but she blinked a little too long and found the red eyes gone as she came awake. She sat blinking, the sounds of snoring vibrating around her. The night was suddenly split by a heavy baritone. It rolled across the sleeping people, hitting Liz like the warm steam off a cup of tea. As she watched, a few of her fellow survivors staggered up, getting to their feet, and walked toward the jungle. They moved like sleepwalkers, their legs taking them shakily into the fog. In the dark, Liz wasn't certain who it had been, but in the morning, they were two less than they had been the day before.

She hadn't sleep that night, but as the sun came up and turned the fog into a blanket of diamonds, she pretended to.

The last thing she wanted was to answer questions about the missing people.

* * * *

No one seemed to notice at first, but by noon the disappearance of two people was hard to ignore.

"Any idea where Roger and Francis are?" Catherine asked, looking around like she might have just missed them.

"Off doing God knows what, I'm sure," Ben muttered, drawing some dark looks from a few of the others. He had made his displeasure at the pair of them pretty clear to everyone but them and didn't seem to care about their disappearance too much. A couple of people talked about going to look for them, but it was finally decided that if they had gone off on their own, then they would either come back or they wouldn't. People went about their day, some looking for food, others trying to find a plane or boat to hail. As the day spun out, Liz wondered if she should tell someone about what she had seen last night? She hadn't told anyone about the man-shaped thing in the jungle, and if it was the thing taking people, maybe they should know. Her thoughts chased her throughout the day, but as the sun set and the fire cast sparks into the night sky, Liz found herself awake and searching for the creature.

She didn't have far to look. It had been there since dusk, just watching her as she sat by the fire. The fog was still a thick pea soup, and the image within it swelled and distorted as she kept an eye on it. Her head dipped and jittered as she tried to stay awake, but when the singing began tonight, it was like a sweet lullaby. She saw three shapes rise around her, the fire turning them into silhouettes against the sparks as they stumbled away from the dancing flames. She tried to call out to them, to raise an alarm, but she was fading away as the deep, resonant voice drowned her amidst the crashing waves of the beach.

* * * * *

The camp awoke to find they were ten now, and Liz discovered that one of the shades had been Claudia.

Another had been Angella’s daughter, and she was beside herself with grief, "Has anyone seen Celeste? She was right next to me when I fell asleep last night."

"We should go look for them," Maria suggested, looking pleadingly at Liz and Janet as she tried to move the others to go with her. Most didn't seem keen on going off into the mists to hunt for the people who'd disappeared, especially if there was something out there taking them. Liz found it impossible not to be moved by Maria's words, though, and Janet seemed to feel the same. Claudia was their friend, and Celeste was just a child. The thought of them lost and scared in a strange place made Liz's heart ache, and the three assured Angella that they would try their best to find her daughter.

She thanked them tearfully; the disappearance had left her in a state of grief so deep that she could do little but sit and rock as she cried.

In the end, the three set out to search for those who had disappeared and the others watching them leave as if they never expected to see them again.

The foliage smooshed wetly underfoot as they searched, the fog a constant blanket around them. The palms gave way to thin pines and wispy spruces that seemed to grow small round nuts. The ground was far too wet to see much. Any footprints that might have existed were obliterated by the soupy ground, and as the three women searched the jungle, they found no trace of the missing people. Liz was no tracker, but in the movies, there were always signs left behind when someone went missing in the woods. Fabric left on a tree, hair hanging from a branch, maybe a swatch of blood smeared across the bark, but there was none of that here.

It was as if the island had swallowed them up, leaving nothing behind to mark their passage from life to death.

The whole time, Liz felt like she was being followed. She glanced fitfully around as she looked for the man-shape thing. She caught the odd glance of something, some vague shape amidst the mist, but it was impossible to tell if it was her voyeur or not. She felt pursued, this thing dogging her heels wherever she went, and she began to wonder if it was the thing that had summoned her to the island? Were they all just lunch for this creature? A game of cat and mouse to break up the monotony of its existence?

When the sun began to set, they were forced to head back to camp empty-handed and heavy-hearted. Angella was inconsolable. The group came together for her, but their eyes were more often than not on the jungle. The fires were stoked, and as people began to get comfortable for sleep, Liz found herself too tired to join them. She had collapsed after they'd returned from their search, exhausted from all that walking, and her sleep had been heavy and dreamless.

That night, Liz finally got to meet her mysterious watcher, and it likely saved them from another loss.

* * * * *

It was late when she jerked awake, unsure of how long she'd been asleep. The fire was burning low now, the ashes flickering into the sky as the logs crumbled beneath the assault of the heat. Liz thought, at first, that the waves had woken her up, but as she glanced into the gathering shadows, she could see those same red eyes as they bore into her. They were closer now, maybe fifteen feet away, but Liz was finding it harder and hard to be terrified of her mysterious watcher. The longer she sat looking at those red eyes, the more curious Liz found herself.

"Hello?" she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to wake anyone up.

The red eyes blinked, unsure, but when a voice answered her, it was very different from the deep baritone she'd heard singing at night.

"Hello," it answered, its voice unsure as its features remained unknowable from behind the thick fog.

"Do you live here?" Liz asked, feeling foolish almost at once. It had been here since before their boat had arrived; of course, it lived here.

"Yes," it answered, "for most of my life, I think."

The two talked for a bit, Liz becoming more comfortable the longer it didn't simply leap on her and gobble her up. It confirmed her suspicions that the island wasn't boundless and that her group of survivors were the only people there. She asked about the fog, and it told her it had just always been there but that it kept everything nice and cool, so it wasn't unwelcome. It would have amazed her how quickly she fell into a normal conversation with this creature if she hadn't been so absolutely exhausted. As it stood, it seemed like the most normal thing to have happened in a while.

"Are you the one singing at night?" she asked after it finished telling her about the caves near the edge of the island. It was beginning to lighten on the horizon, and Liz realized it might leave before she got to some of her more burning questions. The eyes had been crinkled a little as it spoke, clearly enjoying their conversation, but as she asked about the song, they took a definite downturn. Was it mistrust, or was he ashamed of the answer?

"Yes, that's me," he answered, clearly hesitant.

“Have you…I mean, are you the one,”

"Liz?" someone said sleepily, and Liz turned to see Maria sitting up groggily, "Who are you talking to?"

Liz turned back to introduce Maria to the thing she'd become so comfortable with, but it was gone.

"No one. I must have been talking in my sleep."

* * * * *

There were no new missing people in the morning, but it did little to help with the tension. Ben had started talking about making spears or something to defend themselves, but most of the others were more concerned with surviving. Even so, the foragers took the homemade spears he made when they went to look for food. His sister Catherine tried to talk to him, telling him he was making everyone anxious, but he loudly told her that everyone SHOULD be worried about whatever was taking people in the night. Angella looked like a ghost as she sat looking at the waves, and people seemed content to give her space. She was mourning the loss of her daughter, and it was unclear whether her tears were swelling the ocean or the ocean was rushing forward to give her its salt.

Liz found herself thinking about the odd creature as she went about her day. It hadn't been like she had expected, and she found herself wondering if it had really been the one taking people? She still hadn't told anyone about it, and most of the others would have assumed she was going crazy. The thought of some red-eyed thing creeping up to talk to her in the night would have scared some of them and just made others think she was losing it. Worse yet, she suspected that Ben would stay up and try to fight it if she told him, so she kept her mysterious friend to herself.

For the next week, she would stay up after the fire burned low and meet with it. She didn't hear the singing on those nights, and the red eyes seemed more than happy to come back so they could learn more about her. Whatever it was, it seemed very interested in Liz and the life she had lived back on the mainland. They talked about boats and cars and television, the food she used to eat, the people she'd known, her family, and anything else the creature could think of. Liz would find herself watching him as his body did its strange trick, thickening and shriveling, multiplying and dividing, and the longer she watched it, the less afraid she became. The longer they talked, the less substantial it seemed to become, and that worried her. Liz found that she was afraid of losing it, this thing that made her feel almost normal. The mist seemed to clutch at it, making its features even less recognizable, and it added a level of unreality to it.

It made it seem as if it were fading away.

"Can I tell you a secret?" it said suddenly, leaning in closer one night and causing Liz to blink as the fog patterned against her face.

"Sure," she said, glad for a break in the conversation. Liz had been worried that she would run out of things to talk about, and then it would go away. She had forgotten to be afraid of it and was glad for the company and the attention this thing showered her with after everyone else went to sleep. She missed her family and her children most of all, but having it here to talk with made it a little easier, a little more tolerable.

"When you first noticed me, I had come to watch you."

"Me?" Liz asked, surprised, "why me?"

"I noticed you when your boat came. You were just sitting there, sleeping, and I couldn't take my eyes off of you. That's why I gave you the ring."

Liz had been struggling with the conflicting nature of being both uncomfortable at the idea of this thing watching her and strangely flattered by its attention. When was the last time anyone had paid that sort of attention to her? Certainly not at home. Certainly not since she left college and started her descent into wedded bliss. She jumped a little when he mentioned the ring, having almost forgotten about it until right then. Sometimes she would go all day without thinking about it, and then it would suddenly catch on something, and the scratchy fibers would peel at her skin like steel wool, and she would remember that it was there.

"You gave me the ring?" she asked, watching its head wobble oddly.

"I did," and though it sounded like it wanted to say more, it was unsure how to proceed.

"I don't know what to say," Liz said, knowing exactly what she wanted to say but unsure if she could ask.

The two sat in silence for a few minutes, just listening to the waves break on the beach as they stared at each other.

"Why don't you ever sing anymore?" she asked suddenly, causing the eyes to back up a little.

The eyes backed away, getting closer to the tree line but still unable to look away from Liz.

"Why don't you sing anymore?" she asked again, and this time it sounded like an accusation.

He was almost thirty feet away, but Liz still heard him when he whispered the secret he longed to keep hidden.

"Because I don't want to hurt you, but I'm so hungry."

As the sun came up, dispelling some of the fog, Liz was left with nothing but her confusing mishmash of feelings.

* * * * *

Whatever he was, he managed to hold out for another three days.

Liz didn't see him again until the third night, and that was when she heard the singing.

Liz had thrown herself into any task she could find, trying to take her mind off him. She wasn't exactly sure when he had gone from It to Him, but the transition made her wary. She had been working to leave the island, wanting to return to the life she'd known, but now her tasks seemed pointless. Maria had started lighting fires along the coast in an attempt to get the attention of passing ships. Janet wanted to make a map of the island, something they could use to explore deeper for supplies. Ben wanted to find better shelter in case the weather changed. Gail wanted to try and find out if they could see the shipwreck from some point on the island, so they could get their bearings. Tracy just wanted to sit and work on her manuscript, and the others seemed content to just exist here until it was over. It all seemed very trivial to Liz. Despite this, she threw herself into anything that came her way, whether it be scouring the island for resources, looking for somewhere to move the group, or just feeding fuel to the multiple signal fires.

All the while, she could feel the eyes of her admirer as they followed her. She never saw him lurking in the mist, but she could sense his presence. He kept his distance, watching her from afar, and Liz was worried that she had offended him. She had suspected that he was the one luring people away, but she hadn't really understood the implications until he'd spelled them out for her. They would never find their fellow castaways, no matter how much they searched, and it was strange to feel so attached to someone who saw you as food.

Angella had disappeared on the second day, but Liz doubted her new friend had anything to do with it. Angella had done little else but weep for two days, the sea drinking her tears greedily. She wouldn't eat or drink, wouldn't come to camp no matter what the time, and when they woke up to find the stretch of beach she had been on was empty, Liz assumed she had just wandered out into the sea. It might have been the kindest thing for her, but Ben had other ideas.

With only nine of them left, Ben and Gale now carried clubs and accompanied anyone who left the camp to forage. They had appointed themselves as the defacto guardians of the camp, and Ben seemed to have decided he was their leader. He and Catherine argued often, but his patients for her seemed to be running thin. Cathy and Gregory had taken to sleeping close to Liz and her friends, and Cathy kept a protective arm around her son at all times. Tracy slept with her arms around her typewriter case, holding it like someone might hold a stuffed animal, but even she had moved close to the group for protection. When Catherine came to join them on the third night, they all slept in a shallow pile like rabbits in a warren. Ben and Gail sat around the fire, blinking owlishly as they kept watch, but to Liz, it began to feel more like a prison camp than a group of survivors.

* * * * *

Liz woke up on that third night to the sound of singing. She found herself looking for those piercing red eyes amongst the fog and found his shadowy body not too far off. Dark forms imposed themselves across her vision, and she watched them lumber into the trees before realizing what had actually woken her. It was only Ben by the fire now, Gale having left to go with her mysterious admirer, but now only Tracy's battered typewriter case was left to mark that she had existed at all. Some of the others were beginning to squirm, but instead of lingering, the music began to fade almost at once, making a couple of the jerking forms quiet down. One of them had been Janet, the three women sleeping close to each other for some semblance of protection, and as Liz settled back in, she found herself feeling torn about the absence of her mysterious new friend.

Ben was upset the next day, enraged by the loss of Gale and the others stuck close to the camp that day. A light rain had blown in, and they seemed content to fix the boat tarp they had taken off the lifeboat to keep the worst of the rain off their fire. They huddled underneath it, shivering as the storm pattered around them. Ben stayed up late, his sleep utterly forgotten, but Liz's visitor didn't come back that night. She supposed he was full after eating so well the night before, but Liz still found her own sleep difficult. She was exhausted, unsure how much longer she could do this, and as she drifted off, she wondered who would be missing in the morning?

When Janet's hand slid out of hers, Liz sat up in time to watch her walk out into the rain. The singing was getting farther away already, and when she looked at Ben, she found him snoring in the sand after tumbling off the log he was sitting on. Liz went after her friend before she could think better of it, and the rain was cold on her face as she moved into the darkness. It didn't seem to affect Janet at all, and as Liz pulled on her to get her to get her attention, it was like pulling on a stone. She strained at her, looping her legs around hers as she tried to trip her up, but Janet's eyes were set as she made her way into the woods.

Janet pulled her into the jungle, the two still struggling, and Liz could see those red eyes burning into her from the depths of the woods.

"Stop it," she yelled, tears mingling with the rain sliding down her face, "Don't take her! She's my friend!"

There was silence in the jungle, broken only by the falling of the rain as it hit the thick fronds on the trees.

It was almost too loud for her to hear him when he spoke, but it was just loud enough to reach her as he slipped into the wet blackness of the surrounding jungle.

"Sorry, it's my nature, " said the scorpion to the frog."

She was left to ponder that as the rain soaked her to the bone, leaving her confused and apprehensive.

* * * * *

Maria wrapped Liz in a hug when she came back, the camp awake and holding torches. They had spears too, even Gregory, and Ben pressed one into her hand as Maria let her go. His eyes mistrusting but resolved. He was clearly suspicious of her, but with only six of them remaining, he was forced to put his misgivings aside.

"We're going after it," he said, and as her eyes got wide, Ben smiled knowingly,"That's right, I've seen it too. I saw it tonight as you tried to drag your friend back, and I've seen it lurking around the camp more than once. I'm still not sure it's the thing that's taking people, but at this point, I don't care. We're going to find it, and we're going to kill it before it kills us."

Liz wanted to deny him, wanted to scream at him, wanted to stab the spear into him and make him shut up, but instead, she fell in with Maria and let him lead her into the semi-darkness.

She felt claustrophobic as they made their way into the jungle. Ben had no clue where he was going, but as the sun rose over the horizon, he kept them moving as their torches burned low and their clothes clung to them. They had set out with bellies full of fire, determined to find this thing that stalked them. They crisscrossed the island, the sun dispelling the shadows as they moved, but they never seemed to find anything that would make a good hiding place for anything bigger than a bird or a badger. The longer they searched, the more frantic Ben seemed to become.

"Where are you?" he kept whispering, looking around frantically as they stalked the groves, "It has to be somewhere here."

His need to find the creature seemed insatiable, but by noon, Ben was forced to admit that he had no idea where he was going. The group was tired and hungry, their legs hurting and the fire in them now quenched by the constant mist, and as they turned back towards their campsite, Ben seemed completely demoralized. Catherine finally put a hand on his shoulder, reminding him that they were all exhausted and needed to eat, and he was finally forced to turn around and head back to camp. They had covered the whole island, beach to beach, and found no sign of Janet or anyone else.

As they trudged back, Ben wasn't the only one looking downtrodden.

They all knew that come morning, they would likely be five instead of six.

* * * * *

As Liz sat by the fire now, remembering the last few days with sobering clarity.

Ben had been taken next. He had tried to stay up and keep watch, wanting to catch this thing so he could keep them safe from it, but in the end, he had succumbed and fallen asleep.

They had all been so tired after trudging through the jungle, but when they woke up, he was already gone.

Cathy was next, and Gregory's cries had brought the rest of them around the next morning.

By then, the four of them had been frantic. None of them wanted to be next, but it seemed inevitable. They were all tired, their meals growing smaller as their numbers dwindled, and they were utterly trapped by the island they now found themselves on. They couldn't fight him, they couldn't escape him, they were nothing but cattle just waiting for the slaughter.

Catherine went next, but, by then, Liz already thought she knew what she had to do.

When he returned the following night, Liz was waiting for him.

* * * * *

He seemed confused when he found her awake, Maria and Gregory snoring around her, and when she put a finger to her lips, his nod made her stomach churn.

"What will you do when they're all gone?" she asked, watching the fire dance between them as his mist hissed against it.

He didn't answer her, his red eyes boring into her as he hunkered and watched.

"You seem to be saving me for last. Do you hate me so much that you would make me watch the people I care about disappear before it's my turn?"

“Never!” he blurted, and she shushed him as Gregory stirred against her, “I would never torture you like that. It’s only that I can’t bring myself to hurt you. I need to eat to survive, but I hate that it must come at the expense of you.”

They pondered this for a moment as the fire hissed and spit like an angry cat.

"What if I went with you now?" she asked suddenly, "Would you let these two go and just take me?"

He was wilent, but his nod was all the answer she needed.

"Lift the mist and let them go, and I'll go with you."

He seemed startled, "I can't promise your safety. It's hard for me to control my hunger, as you've seen, and I'm not sure I could forgive myself if I hurt you."

"I'm sure you'll have no trouble calling more boats here, just like you did to ours, right?"

The eyes looked away sheepishly, but he didn't bother to deny it, "How did you know?"

"I guessed, just like I guessed, that this ring might be stopping your song from calling me away at night, right?"

He nodded again, "It won't protect you, though, if I decide to just gobble you up one day when I get hungry."

"It's a chance I'll have to take," she said, getting up and walking towards him.

The red eyes widened, but as she walked into the mist that surrounded him, the cold embrace encompassed and accepted her.

* * * * *

Liz felt conflicted as she watched the little boat leave with Maria and Gregory.

The sound of the deep whistle had brought the two around as the sun rode high that morning, and Maria had called her name for quite a while before leaving with the boy. The ship had seen the messages on the beach and seen the smoke from their signal fires, and Liz had been afraid that Maria wouldn't go for a minute.

As the boat grew smaller and smaller on the horizon, a part of Liz wished she was on it.

Another part had already accepted that this was her new home, as certain as she was that she belonged with the man whose strange hand now clutched at hers.

As strange as it sounded, this had been the trip she'd wanted. Her old life seemed so dull now. Harold and her children were already starting to fade as she stood beside this strange creature. As she turned to look at him, she wondered if she would become like him one day? Maybe he had been like her once, before being discovered by something like him. Maybe he had left a life like hers behind, sacrificing everything because it felt right.

Regardless, this was her home now, and as she turned to look at him, she felt complete in a way she had never felt before.