Chapter Three
Arris drifted in the current, staring up at the night sky and the millions – or was it billions? – of stars twinkling above him. He was amazed he hadn’t been eaten by a shark, and after all the hours he’d spent drifting with the current, he’d lost all fear of them. He now wondered how long the inflatable vest he was wearing would last and what drowning would feel like. It was weird what a person would think about, being alone for so long in the ocean, floating, helpless. He had imagined a thousand different scenarios for his rescue and none had occurred.
But he was tired. Dead tired. He’d been fading in and out of consciousness through much of the day as he floated in the water. Maybe he wouldn’t know it if he suddenly drowned? That would be a relief. He wouldn’t have minded not knowing that he’d died. Living was the problem: he was compelled to do it, and out here, bobbing on the ocean, the world could finally take its measure of David Arris, find him wanting, and kill him. It would all be over and he could finally be at peace with his wife and children. That was all he really wanted out of life, anyway, a death from a situation in which there was nothing he could have done to save himself; a scenario where there were no odds, where no amount of preparation could save him because the fighter inside of him loved odds, loved beating them, and if a speck of his soul knew there was a way to win, it was inevitable that he would do everything he could to win. And he didn’t want to fight any longer.
Just then the current shifted and Arris could feel it, a malicious hand beneath the water, pushing him toward something. There was nothing he could do about it but witness it, and when his feet brushed the sand of the ocean floor he thought the impossible, the incredible, that maybe, just maybe, God was looking out for him. A wave crashed over him and he stood up and saw the silhouette of an island. He stumbled forward, staggering through the surf until he was out of the ocean and on dry land. He looked around and realized he was on something, looked back at the ocean and, deep inside his brain, some long-ago memory said something to him about the tides, and he forced himself to walk further inland, and then the soft, comforting surface of the sand called to him and he collapsed in a heap on the ground.
Arris awoke in a fantasy world. He noticed reality was different before opening his eyes, before his final morning dream of reliving the previous day had finished playing out in his mind, before fully realizing he was not soaking wet and sleeping on a sandy beach. He was on a bed, his head lying on pillows, a lightweight down comforter covering him. He opened his eyes and saw a gauzy, white mosquito net falling from the top of the bed and surrounding it. He sat up slowly and looked through the white sheer curtain at the room beyond. Arris was certain he was in a medieval castle of some sort, the kind some half-crazy wealthy Scotsman might have restored as an effort to reconnect with his ancestors.
And, he was naked.
Arris slipped out of the covers and stepped away from the bed, immediately noticing his clothing folded atop a chest of drawers nearby. He picked up the shirt and held it to his nose: it was laundered. He pulled on his flight suit pants – civilian slacks modeled on the bottom half of a military flight suit and made out of cotton instead of Nomex – and pulled on a long sleeve linen button-down shirt.
He stared around the room a moment longer and noticed the glass-paned door on one side. He walked over to it, opened it and stepped outside onto a small veranda that overlooked the jungle canopy of what he assumed to be a small island. A gentle breeze mingled with the sounds of island birds. Arris turned and scanned the side of the building to which the veranda was attached, and it was, indeed, something nearly castle-like, if much more modest in scale: a stone mansion built into the side of the cliff wall of a small mountain. Below him was a perfectly manicured lawn a little smaller than a football field and edged with perfect shrubbery. Beyond that was jungle.
Arris was astounded. He reached down into the calf pocket of his flight suit pants for his pack of cigarettes and was only mildly disconcerted to find they weren’t there – he usually didn’t take them on missions, chewing nicotine gum or, on occasion, using an electronic cigarette instead.
“Ah, you’re awake,” said a sonorous bass voice from behind him. “I hope you had a restful sleep.”
Arris turned and stepped through the doorway back into the guest room. Standing in the middle of the room was a trim, fit 50-ish man with salt-and-pepper hair, a crème linen suit and a blue ascot. For the briefest of instants, Arris thought he must now be in some sort of active dream state, but he knew he had been awake too long and experiencing reality too vividly for that to be the case, so he stepped closer to the man and extended his hand.
“Best night of sleep I’ve had in a while,” Arris said. “I’m David Arris.”
Arris watched as the man raised his right hand slightly in a dismissive gesture toward shaking hands, nodded his head in affirmation of their greeting, and then smiled broadly.
“And I am Doctor Konrad Onorien, your host,” Onorien said. “This is my home, welcome.”
“Thank you for fishing me off the beach last night. Last thing in the world I would’ve expected,” Arris said, wondering at Onorien’s refusal to shake hands.
“Yes, well, the natives made quite a hullabaloo about your arrival last night. It was difficult not to notice something different was happening on the island,” Onorien said. “Breakfast will be ready soon, I hope you’re hungry. We can talk more about your chance appearance here then, if you don’t mind.”
“Hungry? I’m starved,” Arris said.
“Good. Well, I’ll allow you to perform your morning activities in private; there’s a wash closet through that door over there,” Onorien said, motioning toward a wall. “Come down when you’re ready.”
With that, Onorien turned and walked out of the room. Arris stared after him in incomprehension. Arris had no way of making sense of the events that were currently transpiring – hell, of the events that had already taken place – and now he was standing in the guest bedroom of a castle on an island with a puzzling owner. Arris walked back out onto the veranda and stared over the jungle canopy.
“Natives, huh?” Arris said quietly, wondering at the odd choice of word.
Arris spent a few minutes in the bathroom cleaning himself up. It was clear from the moment he had awoken that he had already been bathed before being deposited in the bed, but he washed his face and hands anyway, brushed his teeth with a provided toothbrush, and tamped down his hair by wetting his fingers and running them through it. He looked in the mirror at himself and wondered how he had survived the previous day. His green eyes ran over his shaggy dark blonde hair and day of beard growth in his reflection on the mirror: it was an image he had not thought he would see again. He should be dead, one way or another, not freshening up on some sort of island retreat. If he had still believed in God, he’d have offered some sort of prayer, but that belief had been gone for a while, now, so he just stared at the man reflected in the glass opposite him and wondered why. The man just stared back at him.
Arris walked out of the room and down the hallway, intrigued by the décor. There were gilded frames of artwork he was sure he had seen before, late nineteenth century works he recognized from museum visits with his wife on lazy Sunday afternoons, and curio tables with odd artifacts on them that he was sure he had heard about, but nothing connected with anything he could put a name to. He knew it meant Onorien was wealthy, however, but he had no way to know if it meant Onorien was ostentatious. Arris knew this stuff was not there to impress him but he had no way of knowing if was there to impress anybody or if Onorien were some sort of genuine collector of such things. In his own home, Arris had arranged a collection of black and white photos on the walls of the stairway leading from the first to second floor, pictures of his family in normal moments, not to interest guests but, rather, to reinforce to his family that these random moments in time were the history of the family. Anybody could stop and look at one, remember the event and realize everyone in
the house was connected to a common history.
He came to the end of the hallway and surveyed the curving staircase and the highly polished wood banister. Arris smiled to himself for a second, touched the wood, and then noticed a girl at the bottom of the staircase in the rotunda near a set of heavy wooden doors.
“I wasn’t going to slide down on it, honest,” Arris said, smiling broadly.
The woman at the bottom was a light-skinned black girl with shoulder-length curly brown hair and, Arris instantly noticed, the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. He figured her to be in her late teens or early twenties. She looked up at him with incomprehension and said nothing. Arris walked down the stairs and approached her. She took the barest half-step backwards and barely curled her fists, both motions Arris noticed out of a long habit of sizing people up. She was afraid. Or nervous. But ready to fight. Arris smiled at her.
“I’m David Arris,” he said, trying his best to be disarming.
The girl stared at him a moment longer and relaxed slightly. “Nereika,” she said. “You brought us the rare moment of excitement last night, Mr. Arris.”
“Oh, how’s that?” Arris replied.
Nereika made a wave with her hand to indicate the direction in which they were to head and the two started walking down a lengthy hallway, similarly decked out with potentially priceless artifacts and other items of curious interest.
“We don’t often get people washing up on the beach,” Nereika said.
Arris turned his head toward her and smiled. “But you get that? Now, that’s surprising.”
Nereika let out a tiny laugh which she immediately clamped down. It was, Arris thought, evidence that she was trying not to give something away, whatever that might be. It was much in line with the way Onorien had not wanted to shake hands with him earlier, as if he were being evaluated for his potential – danger? - more than taken in as someone in need of help.
“No, actually, we’ve never had anyone wash up on shore,” Nereika said. “That’s what made it so exciting.”
“Well, I’m glad to have made a splash,” Arris quipped.
Nereika just looked at him blankly.
“So, what is it you do here on the island?”
Nereika hesitated, and Arris could tell she was trying to come up with an appropriate answer, something he surmised she had never had to do before judging from her facial expression. She was trying to remain neutral, but Arris could tell she had never been asked such a thing before by the way she furrowed her brows and looked to the side.
“I’m Ma-,” she stopped for an instant and corrected herself, “I’m Doctor Onorien’s understudy slash personal assistant, I guess you could say.”
Arris smiled in an attempt to disarm her. “No, I meant here on the island. I looked out at the island from the balcony of my room and didn’t see any signs of life, or a town. So, I was kind of hoping maybe this was the tourist destination.”
Nereika looked slightly confused by Arris’ comment and started walking down the hallway, motioning for him to follow. “Well, there are beaches, but no tourists. This is a private island.”
“Private, huh?” Arris said. “That’s nice. I don’t suppose you have a plastic tub with spare swim trunks in it, do you?”
Nereika sniffed out a small laugh and turned over her shoulder, “No, I don’t believe we do.”
Nereika stopped at a door and opened it, motioning for Arris to go through. Arris raised his eyebrows in good humor and smiled politely at Nereika before turning in through the doorway into an elaborate dining room. The room was lit by an elaborate chandelier dangling from the ceiling over a long, heavy, ornately carved table. A dozen matching chairs stood along each side of the table. A sideboard laden with silver serving dishes rested against one wall, and the smell of eggs, bacon, and sausage instantly overpowered Arris, who realized immediately how hungry he really was, given the previous day’s events.
“Welcome to the island of Diabolus Visum, Mr. Arris,” Onorien said, striding up along the opposite side of the table. “I hope you’re hungry.”