Okay, here is the first of a three part story - previewed as Lovecraftian, although on reflection, I'm not sure I stayed completely true to that genre. It starts a little slow, but parts 2 & 3 should make up for the usual carnal carnage you've come to expect from me...lol. I am very keen on getting your comments, be they pro or con.
As always, this is a work of fiction and all characters therein are fictional, existing solely within the confines of my imagination (such that it is). Enjoy!
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I cannot honestly say that the first time I set eyes on Isprey Island that I harbored feelings of dismay and horror, although loathing might have been a dominant emotion. I remember that it was green and verdant, a beacon of furious life in a dark, gray and very forbidding ocean. I remember seeing the house for the first time, rising up on the side of the dominant hillside like a great, white fortress. I remember that I had just turned eighteen and that I was eager, ravenous almost to get on with my life and frustrated that instead that I would be spending the summer before university with my parents in this isolated, primitive place.
My father, Thomas Halloran, a professor of literature of rather infamous reputation, had taken a sabbatical from Miskatonic University -- no doubt to the relief of his students and many of his peers in order to do research on a relatively unknown author from early medieval England named William Isprey. My father's academic specialty had been Nordic bards, but near the time of my birth, he had come into possession of a Renaissance era treatise examining the writings of one William Isprey from the late 900s AD, an account of his adventures with a party of Viking adventurers who had established a colony on Isprey Island, some three hundred miles off the coast of Maine.
Most experts had discounted the writings as fiction, an almost quaint tale of adventure and horror that invoked images of worshipping Dark Gods and questing for arcane power, My father, however, had become obsessed with the treatise and had spent most of my life searching for fragments of Isprey's work, particularly a piece my father called, "The Summoning."
For years, Father had sought to gather the means to visit and do work on Isprey Island which had been associated with William Isprey since before the arrival of the Pilgrims in the early 1600s. The happiest I've ever seen my father is when he brought home from a research trip to Saint Petersburg, an ancient map marked with Nordic runes and Latin words and was purported to be a Viking sailing chart dated from the 1100s which clearly marked a tiny island off the coast of North America as Isprey's Island.
Since the time of the arrival of the Puritans, various folk have dwelt on the island, albeit not for long, the island claimed and disinherited in turn by the English, the French, Massachusetts, and Maine. Individuals have built homes there, only to sell or abandon them. The last was a wealthy recluse who built a substantial Cape Cod house there in the late 1880s and which has been rented out time and time again after his suicide in 1913.
Others have done archaeological research there, confirming that a group of Viking colonists had established a settlement, intermittently maintained between the years 900 -- 1100. Along with artifacts of a Viking outpost was evidence that some Native American groups had been on the island over the centuries with the findings suggesting that it had been a site of some religious significance.
Now, my father hoped to make his contribution to the history of Isprey Island and perhaps find evidence that would lend credence to William Isprey and his work being more that fanciful fiction. On rare occasions, Father would share some of his work with Mother and me, but it held little interest for me -- Father's translations and suppositions making it sound like Isprey was merely a madman, seeking to call upon long forgotten ancient gods he referred to as the Old Ones to grant him power.
I knew that in this summer of Father's research, my purpose was to simply be his slave laborer and that the many shovels and axes and other tools he had gathered and had loaded on our charter boat would be utilized by me to clear away brush or to dig for his proposed evidence. Father had offered vague hints that he was sure of the location of a site where Isprey had actually conducted his rituals and that once uncovered, it would allow him to offer up "incontrovertible" proof of his theories about William Isprey. When my father talked of such things, I knew that in his faraway stares he was seeing himself accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature or some such damn fool thing for all his years of sacrifice and ridicule.
The truth was that it was actually Mother who had born the sacrifice and ridicule that others heaped on Father's ideas. Father never paid attention to the derision of others. It was Mother that suffered the pains that the sneers and isolation that the academic community inflicted. Father never paid attention to us either. For my entire life, his place in our lives was an almost constant vacuum as he closeted himself off in his office, pouring over old manuscripts or sequestered himself deep in the older vaults of Miskatonic's library, seeking amongst their immense collection for clues or answers to his obsession. Often, when he could find funding, he would be off doing research in Europe or the Middle East.
Mother never complained, but always gave me a sad smile when I complained bitterly about being abandoned by Father, telling me in her always gentle way, "His work is important, John. He loves us in his way and provides for us...in his way and we must love him back as much as we can."
Ah, that was my mother in a nutshell...gentle and loving and never complaining. From my earliest memories, she always seemed beautiful, sad and wan, her golden blonde hair framing her pale face, her skin like flawless porcelain. I remember even now glancing at her as we stood on the prow of the fishing trawler Father had chartered to transport us to Isprey's Island, her long, modest white dress flapping in the sea breeze, her hair streaming behind her in the bracing breeze, a barely hinted expression of dismay on her face as she studied the verdant isle growing larger before us.
Mother noticed me glancing at her and reached out to place her hand over mine, her soft fingers trembling slightly as she did so. "Perhaps we'll enjoy ourselves despite the isolation, John -- our chance to truly get away from it all." Her fingers squeezed my hand wrapped around the safety railing. "And it does give me a last opportunity to spend time with my only child before he ventures off into the world and makes his own mark." She smiled at me lovingly as she always had, the love that was evident in her face tainted by the always lingering sadness.
I tried to smile bravely back and to be encouraging. Realizing it was lame even as I said it, I replied, "I will come home to visit, Mother...as often as I can!" Mother smiled at me, her eyes growing glassy with tears as she knew that my words were a lie. I hoped to put the gloomy, dark world of my father and Meskatonic University behind me forever. In my clothes chest rested my acceptance letter to Stanford and I already knew that once I was in the embrace of California, I would never return.
As we approached the dock, a somewhat disturbing odor alerted me to the nearness of our ship's captain, Horace Waltern, a scruffy, pot-bellied old salt who smelled of cheap wine and sardines at all times. Father had charted his boat, "The Vulgar Harpy," to carry us out to the Island...a journey of nearly two days. In the next three months, he was to be our only contact with the outside world, bringing in fresh food and supplies every three weeks.
