The Island
Part One
by o_girl © 2024
Preface
This time I have really given myself a challenge! I hope that history specialists will be excuse the errors and incorrectness that a non-scholar has made - and maybe even attribute it to that illusive concept of 'literary freedom'. Again, it is not a fuck-a-minute, but hope it will not disappoint the reader too much.
As I am definitely not Tolkien, all dialogue is written out in modern language.
I hope it does not spoil your reading pleasure.
I wish to thank my Australian Muse and editor for correcting my worst language
mistakes. She knows who she is.
20240402 - O_girl.
Prologue
by o_girl © 2024
This is a tale about an island. An island that has a long and very often turbulent and violent history.
It is also a story of the people on the island over the years, but foremost it is a story of two extraordinary women.
They are the last and current two inhabitants of the island, and the ones discovering and uncovering almost all of the history of the place.
The tale of the island begins a long, long time ago: 66 million years B.C.
A time when it did not exist. When the place where it eventually emerged was a deep and treacherous ocean.
A time when the earth was still having labour pains and violent events were shaping and forming land, mountains, rivers, plains, and islands.
Reptiles ruled and had done so for millions of years, evolving into a plethora of species.
From large, slow-moving herbivores and formidable carnivores. Reptiles of all sizes. Even the smallest creatures fighting to survive in the undergrowth.
Populating every corner of the earth. Land, sea, and water.
Adapting and thriving in the vast oceans were myriads of tiny chalk-bodied creatures that lived and died by the millions.
Upon death, their tiny chalk skeletons slowly descending to the bottom of the ocean, and formed an increasingly thicker layer of chalk.
The layer was compressed by the deep-sea atmosphere into a solid mass.
However, when islands story starts, life had become difficult. Volcanic activity had increased dramatically. Often large clouds of poisonous gases, ashes and debris partially blocked the sunlight for days.
This made plant life difficult and less abundant. Some species dwindled and some vanished.
Others, a select few thrived in the changing conditions.
The herbivores often went starving and there was less prey for the carnivores.
The whole food chain was under stress.
Often earthquakes and volcanoes forcibly and permanently changed the surface of the earth.
Mountains became valleys and valleys mountains.
However, our story starts at a totally different time and place.
Chapter One - 5 Years Ago - The Inheritance
by o_girl © 2024
"Now, you sit here and enjoy the sun for a while, and I will come back for you later".
Chief Nurse Patterson had lifted her small, skinny body out of the wheelchair and dumped her on the usual bench in the sun.
She did not answer. Not that she did not want to, but her clean-shaven bird-like head hung to one side, and saliva made a long strand out of the left side of her limb mouth.
Some incomprehensible sounds came out, but nurse Patterson was already half way back to the building.
As usual Patterson had moved the wheelchair away from the bench and out of reach. Not that it made any difference to her.
Her name was Elizabeth Hullchester, and she was the youngest of three siblings after the late Henry Hullchester.
He had made his fortune in property investments, shares, minerals, oil and almost anything else that could make legal money.
He had not been so fortunate with his love life, even though he had made three attempts. Elizabeth was the daughter of his last late wife whom Henry had met on one of his usual "Adventure Journeys". This time to El Salvador, where he had encountered an olive-skinned, local beauty. Thus, Elizabeth looked very different from her two pale siblings, and it had definitely not made her more popular with them.
George was her older brother from the first marriage and 34 years of age. He spent his time on bad investments and going through his inheritance at an amazing speed. He loved being part of the "jet set".
Her sister Gloria, by the middle wife, was a reasonably successful art gallery owner.
She was 29, and had inherited the family love of money which she spent as if it was going out of style.
Elizabeth had been the quiet one. Living in a small flat and studying archaeology.
Her last boyfriend: Jimmy had been a disaster, as he had stalked her after they split up and she eventually had to get a restraining order to end his harassments.
The siblings only met once a year. At Christmas in Henry's big villa on the North coast. They upheld a kind of "armed neutrality" during their stay, but there was definitely no love lost between them.
Both her siblings spend most of their Christmas stay at the house checking that the old man had not started selling off any of the expensive paintings on the walls, or any of the many original art sculptures on pedestals spread evenly around the large villa.
Then one day, as Henry was at his favourite pastime: Golf and had just made a perfect drive for the number eight hole, his heart decided to call it quits. He was dead before he hit the green.
All three of them had met at the funeral of course, and in the days after Elizabeth had waited for a letter from the family lawyer about the will.
It had not come, but one early morning she had been awoken by a very loud banging on her door.
When she opened, two policemen had grabbed her and dragged her off in handcuffs.
--
The trial had been a farce. Her former boyfriend had witnessed that she was mentally unstable, and somehow managed to make her complaints and the restraining order sound like it was something her apparently sick mind had concocted.
George and Gloria had both testified that she had always been mentally unstable.
The end of it all was that she had been declared mentally and legally incapacitated, her siblings had gotten joint custody of her affairs and she had been committed to "The Whispering Pines".
It was an old manor house in a park surrounded by a high brick wall. During the war it had been converted to house soldiers that had "battle fatigue".
Something that today would have been called "shell shock" or PTSD, but at the time it was ideal just to have these unfortunates hidden away in the countryside to "rest".
When the last soldier left, it had been unused until Doctor Saddlemeyer had managed to assemble a group of investors to acquire the property and convert it into a "Rest Home".
It had a main building with two wings. This centre building housed the reception, halls, and administration. The West wing had been turned into small apartments, where people with enough money could live out their autumn years in peace and safety. The most unfortunate of the shell-shocked had been housed in the East wing. Now it was a closed ward and housed the persons deemed dangerous to themselves or others.
Elizabeth was locked up in the East wing of course.
Chapter Two - 66 Million Years BC - The Disaster
by o_girl © 2024
´
The sun was shining on the huge, lazy swells of the ocean.
Just below the surface a giant shadow moved slowly along.
A full-grown, female, 17-meter long Mosasaurus weighing almost six tonnes.
Swimming slowly, almost in slow-motion and as always looking for prey.
On her right side, protected by her shadow, a calf half her size kept close and follow the mother's movement and direction.
Her only real enemies were fellow Mosasauri. She was at the absolute top of the food chain: A perfectly developed killing machine: Streamlined, pointed head with formidable rows of very sharp teeth. Limbs like giant flippers and a wide, flat tail end.
As all of her species she lived alone except when in heat, where a short "courting"
resulted in an equally short mating, and then a most often a violent separation.
Her calf was almost ready to swim off on her own.
She had stopped sharing her prey with it, and very soon she would start behaving aggressive towards it and vice versa until the final break would come.
Had the mother's tiny brain been able to contain emotions, she would have been content, full and happy.
She had a good territory to herself. Rarely did other Mosasauri ventured inside her range, and they all died or fled regretting it.
On the west side of her territory a ridge of volcanoes had formed a large piece of land. The active volcanoes there often darkened the skies, and the water became hot and boiling when she swam close to the edge. Her territory was efficiently protected from that side.
Not so from the other three sides, so a constant patrolling was necessary.
That was what she and her calf were doing right now.
Slowly and apparently relaxed.
The peacefulness was definitely an illusion.
The powerful paddles at the end of her limbs and the flat tail, combined with her "dynamic" shape with the pointed head made her go from zero to an amazing speed in seconds.
She was the perfect hunter and killer.
Her body displayed many marks and battle scars from a long life.
Right now, a small gash on her side from an encounter with a young male Mosasaurus was releasing a few drops of blood into the water as she swam.
After she had chased the young male away, a shark had sensed the blood and had come sneaking close with the idea of having an easy meal.
Big mistake! The shark was now being crunched and dissolved in large chunks inside her digestive system.
Her lower jaw was in two parts with a very elastic muscle between the parts.
She had the ability to open her mouth to an extreme degree and swallow large chunks of food or even large prey whole. The many rows of very sharp teeth were excellent to rip flesh apart - and strip bones down.
