Forbidden Island An Island Called Sapelo

By Tom Poland

Writer Slater Watts accepts a mission to go to lawless, wild Forbidden Island off the Georgia-South Carolina coast to profile a voodoo priest who rules the island like a god. A haunted man, Watts sees the assignment as the last chance to break his dying daughter’s five-year coma. On his way to the island Watts meets Tyler Hill, a woman who believes her runaway daughter lives on Forbidden Island. Hill convinces Watts to take her to the island, and her mission supplants his, threatening his last chance to save his daughter. Watts and Hill make a discovery that threatens everything and redemption or destruction for all hangs in the balance. Love, dark secrets, carnage, unrivaled beauty, and a do-or-die mission await readers of Forbidden Island whose phosphorescent sea, majestic dunes, green marshes, and star-filled heavens will long haunt them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Poland
• Release date: Sep 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465764164

Tom Poland

Tom Poland's work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. Among his recent books are Classic Carolina Road Trips from Columbia, Georgialina, A Southland, As We Knew It and Reflections of South Carolina, Vol. 2. Swamp Gravy, Georgia's Official Folk Life Drama, staged his play, Solid Ground. He writes a weekly column for newspapers and journals in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle and changing culture and speaks to groups across South Carolina and Georgia. Tom grew up in Lincoln County, Georgia, and graduated from the University of Georgia. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where he writes about "Georgialina," his name for eastern Georgia and South Carolina.

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FORBIDDEN ISLAND

An Island Called Sapelo

By Tom Poland

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Tom Poland

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Escape

The Continent’s Edge

The Crossing

Miracles

Through The Heart

Marooned

Solo Flight

Something Happened

Insanity’s Edge

The Crucifix

Farewell To Sapelo

Dedicated to the memory of John Mitchell Poland

Thanks Mom for your poetry

Special thanks to James Dickey and the dead Peach Farmer

Encouragement from Beth Shugg and her Apex Book Club

Encouragement from Lorie Kirby Knowlton

&

Faye Moskowitz

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

ESCAPE

All through the long Fourth of July weekend, Detective Morton’s words haunted me. When you’re a murder witness, remember one thing. Some creep’s life depends on what you say. And then there were the balloons, silver birthday balloons with red hearts. They haunted me too. Tuesday morning, still tangled in the metalwork, they drooped in mourning, and a cross lay in the alley where the young mother had fallen.

For twenty days, relentless heat had baked Atlanta. An inversion trapped the South, spawning a crime wave that swept over Atlanta like a plague. Pushing against the old 50’s window, it opened with a groan and burning air rushed into the room. A Styrofoam cross and flowers marked where the young mother had fallen.

I looked across the great, sprawling city. Satellite dishes sprouted like mushrooms from rooftops bristling with transmitters. Cell towers blinked, the air awash in conversations. People were connecting.

Traffic signals flashed and cars dutifully observed. An ambulance shimmered through town, detouring around a barricade where orange-clad utility men fed fiber optic cable into the earth. City noises floated up as I leaned out, way out, to free the balloons. Suddenly a hand shoved me and the city spun crazily.

Need some help jumping?

Southern Escape’s latest art director, Pauline, pushed against me.

Damn, woman, what the—

You’re fifteen stories above the city. Is that enough to reach terminal velocity?

I just wanted to get rid of those. The balloons lazed through a slow-motion bounce over the alley where Friday’s murder had set them free.

Where’d those come from?

You didn’t see the news.

The news depresses me. I never watch it.

Read this. I gave her the story I’d clipped from Saturday’s Atlanta Constitution, ‘Birthday Becomes Death Day.’ "

My God, you witnessed this, she said, leaning out, looking at the alley.

Yes, some thug knifed a woman, Molly Augustine, to death down there. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t even see the killer’s face. Get something to cut those balloons loose. I’m through looking at them.

I guess so, she said. Pauline left then returned with an X-acto knife taped to a ruler. Leaning out, I sliced the ribbons and the balloons drifted from my window.

Pauline fell into my chair, her eyes deepening. She was the latest of the art directors, all of whom Murphy had fired. She twisted a strand of auburn hair.

I know you pretty well. Agree?

If lifting a few beers together does it, I guess you do, I said, though she didn’t know me at all.

I hear you’re going to quit, Slater.

We used to publish stories on canoeing in the San Blas archipelago, whitewater rafting the Chattooga, trekking through Iceland, rock climbing in France, and cave diving in Mexico, I said. Now we publish crap about the Governor’s mansion and the city’s newest CEO, some kid who’s got some wacky Internet get-rich-scheme. It’s time I quit.

To do what?

Freelance. Freedom with a price. It’s bad to get too comfortable, you know.

Comfort is good I think, she said, settling deeper into the chair. A lot of writers would love to have your job.

Well, it’ll be available soon.

You just need a vacation.

I need to forget July 2nd. Every day here reminds me of the past and the murder last Friday just adds to it all.

Pauline’s eyes narrowed and she got a fresh grip on her hair.

You blame yourself for what happened to your wife. Talk to me. You can tell me anything, you know that. They say you hate cell phones now.

Just what, exactly, do ‘they say?’

One of the writers, I won’t say who, said you walked out of a meeting the other day when a cell phone rang. He said you freaked. That you have cell phone phobia. That you refuse to use or take calls over a cell phone.

Leaving a room isn’t what I call ‘freaking out,’ but it’s true I don’t use them. There was a time when I did but never again.

Please, you can tell me, Pauline said, twisting her hair anew.

Brandt, Murphy’s predecessor, recruited me to join his staff. Six months after coming on board, Brandt promoted me to senior writer. The promotion was good for my family. I thought it called for a celebration. I was on I-85 going home when an impulse hit me. I’d take my wife and daughter to dinner. I used my cell phone—I never went anywhere without it in those days—to call her cell phone.

Pauline looked ill at ease, as a person who knows bad news is coming.

She and Brit were on the way home from the supermarket. I told her about the promotion and that I was taking them to dinner. She was happy for me. She told me to tell Brit the good news. Just after my daughter said hello, the call dropped, or so I thought. Ann had run into and underneath a flatbed truck carrying rebar construction rods. Brit was in the back seat. A steel rod crushed the side of her head. My wife died as they rolled her to the ambulance.

So, that’s how it happened, Pauline said, uneasy and quiet for a long time. How’s your daughter?

Brit’s in an institute. She’s been in a coma ever since the accident. A stomach tube keeps her alive.

How long can she stay that way?

The doctors say the end is coming … no more than six more months barring a miracle.

With hesitation, Pauline touched my hand, just barely, as light as ash settling.

Don’t blame yourself anymore.

"I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about my big promotion. If I don’t pick up that cell phone, then I would still have my wife and my daughter would be in high school, thinking about college. You don’t know how many times I’ve regretted picking up that phone. I had two exits to go when traffic came to a dead stop. I heard the traffic chopper fly over. I could see the helicopter swing into position and hover close to what had to be my exit. When they described the truck and a burgundy Honda Accord over the radio, I knew it was Ann. I left my vehicle on I-85 and ran to the accident.

It was a nightmare. The paramedics got there fast. I held her hand as they loaded her into the ambulance. Then she died. A trooper found Ann’s phone in the floorboard of her car and gave it to me. It was still on. I locked it away in a drawer. I’ve not touched one since.

Pauline moved close to me, then stopped dead. A soft whirring sounded and Murphy rolled through the doorway. Pauline made a show of getting busy, grabbing papers off my desk.

Well, well. Mr. Slater Watts, aspiring freelance writer, see me in my office. Right now.

Murphy rolled away, leaving a wake of double creases in the sand-colored carpet.

Maybe I won’t have to quit, I said for anyone listening.

Pauline shot me a pained look and turned toward the Art Department. I followed Murphy into his office, which smelled like a nursing home.

Murphy wheeled and faced me.

Shut the door.

Murphy gasped for air and wheeled back and forth, his paralytic version of pacing. Talking to the detective and trying to be a hero Friday made you miss my deadline.

Yes, but I’m a witness, the only witness.

A piss-poor witness fifteen stories up. All you saw was the top of a cap. Then you missed the deadline trying to save an illegal immigrant of all things. Suppose I tell you to clean out your desk. You won’t have any insurance to take care of your darling little girl will you?

Suppose I roll your wheelchair down an elevator shaft? You won’t be around to fire me will you?

Shut up. I’ll do the talking. Your problem is you think you’re smarter than I am, and you think I’m brutal, cold, not much of a person. Well, you’re wrong on all counts. As for missing Friday’s deadline, we can push the printer to cover the time we’ve lost.

So what? Nobody cares, Murphy. Nobody cares if you even print your damn rag. We haven’t done a real story in two years.

A r-e-a-l story, said Murphy, steepling his fingers and drawing out the words. Tell me, what’s a r-e-a-l story?

Well it’s not about some mayor’s fat wife chairing the United Way. Let’s do a story on Friday’s murder and tie it to the single mother’s plight, illegal immigrants, and the city’s drug problem. When Brandt promoted me to senior writer five years ago, he told me to write stories that had meat.

Don’t bring Brandt into this. Brandt’s gone.

Yes he is and so is the magazine’s soul. Let’s cover that poor woman’s murder.

"Get off your damn soapbox, Slater. Our readers don’t care about that woman. They want stories about themselves. Southern Escape is a magazine affluent people show off on their coffee tables. Success, Slater, Southern Escape celebrates success, not death and poverty."

"Then change the magazine’s name since you’re here to glorify Atlanta’s aristocracy. How about Affluent Atlantans? That has a nice ring, don’t you like that?"

About as much as I like your sarcasm. Now you listen to me, Slater. This will surprise you, but I asked you to come in here because I agree with you. It’s no secret the magazine’s losing money and subscribers. What would you say if I gave you an assignment, a real story, that means working alone on a wild island through the summer into fall?

Talk on, I said, though believing him was hard, hard indeed.

Suppose I sent you some place where there’s no laws, no cars, no government even—a land as wild as old Africa, right here in the Southeast.

No such place exists.

Oh yes it does. I have an assignment for you where you can camp alone on a primitive island. It’s nothing like Atlanta.

That sounds too good to be true. What’s the story?

There’s a man called Rikard on a large barrier island who commands wild animals and kills people with his thoughts.

A shaman?

A genius in primitive medicine, you could say.

Where is this island?

America’s last true wild place, a hell of an island, Forbidden Island, the last undeveloped island along the East Coast. Natives know it as Sapelo Island. Ninety square miles of tropics. Twice as big as Hilton Head, bigger than Staten Island, and four times larger than Manhattan. No roads, no electricity, and no phones. Just wilderness and danger at every turn.

Sweat popped out across Murphy’s forehead, and that strange powdery frost that cursed him began to dust his skin again.

No one really owns Forbidden Island. Look out the window and you’ll see a powerful group that wants it bad.

The gold dome of the Georgia Capitol glinted in the morning light.

The Georgia legislature?

That’s right. The politicians are under pressure to annex the island. Their bedfellows, the developers, want it bad. Four hours east of here is the South Carolina Capitol’s copper dome where other politicians and developers lust for Sapelo. It’s about gold and copper all right—money—and lots of it. Each state’s Tourism Department craves Sapelo, but no one’s cooperating. Each state’s game wardens hate each other, and the poachers love it. Drug runners, too. It leaves everything as it is—a lawless, savage island no one governs. And the islanders like it best of all.

Islanders?

Natives, you could say. Sapelo, Forbidden Island, or whatever you want to call it straddles the US territorial boundary where the Savannah River splits Georgia and South Carolina’s offshore waters. During Reconstruction, the federal government granted the island to ex-slaves. Their descendants have controlled it ever since. Kind of like Indian reservations. South Carolina and Georgia can’t agree to joint ownership, and that’s a shame. It could be the quintessential resort.

An ungoverned island ... I mused aloud.

Lawless. You can kill a man there and no one will prosecute you. But I’m not asking you to do that, Murphy added, with fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead. At least, I don’t think so.

How is it you know so much about this island?

My brother, Mallory, and I grew up in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Our grandmother told us stories about the island when we were kids. She called it Sapelo so I prefer that to Forbidden Island. That sounds like some corny Disney movie. We thought Sapelo was the scariest place in the world. Turns out, it may well be. Doesn’t scare me though. Not a bit. When you live in a wheelchair, nothing scares you. If things were different, I’d go with you. It would do us a world of good to work together, but I’d have a hard time wheeling this rig over the dunes. But you’re a runner I hear. Tell me, Slater, how many miles a week do you run?

Maybe 35 miles a week.

You have strong legs, nothing like these, he said running his hands over withered, famished bones, like a skeleton’s. Come feel my leg.

That’s okay. I can see.

No. Come here. Do it.

I felt his right leg above the knee. Hard, thin, and calcified, it felt like a knife blade.

See what I mean? Sapelo is 18 miles long and at places more than six miles wide. You can get around the island on foot with no problem. Me? Swimming through peanut butter would be easier.

Running on sand doesn’t compare to running on a street.

I know that, damn it. I was like you once. Strong, lean, with thick brown hair like yours, blue-eyed, and full of piss and vinegar. That was before this sickness took over me.

What, exactly, is wrong with you?

The question hung in the air as Murphy leaned back in his wheelchair and more sweat popped out upon his freckled brow. That peculiar frost glistened on his mottled skin. As the dust of death powdered him, he aged before my eyes.

I’m not sure and may never know.

So you’re sending me, Slater Watts, writer, to Forbidden Island to …

… To profile Rikard the medicine man. You could say unconventional medicine interests me more than ever. So, let me lay out the facts. You’re strong enough to do this, and you don’t have a family anymore. My other writers do. Their wives would raise hell if I sent their husbands on this assignment. Besides, you’re a damn good writer and pretty good at primitive camping, or so I hear. So you’re perfect for this assignment. It’s karma, your destiny to go to Sapelo.

I have a daughter, but, yes, a challenge sounds good. It’d be nice to escape the city of murder and memories.

"Here’s your chance. Spend a summer on Sapelo. But remember, no power, no phones. Perhaps cell phones work there, but you’ve learned your lesson about those haven’t you.

I don’t have one and if I did, you’d be calling me every day.

No, I’m going to Europe this summer.

Europe?

Yes, there’s a doctor in Paris who may be able to treat me.

Then you must know something about your illness.

No. This Parisian doctor … his specialty … is mystery diseases.

"I see … Well, an article on a medicine man seems out of character for Southern Escape. We’re going to publish a story about a man in a place no one can travel to. It has no resorts, no golf courses—imagine that. Who’s going to buy ads based on this piece? Witch doctors?"

They call them root doctors, Murphy said, fire in his eyes. As you yourself say, every now and then you have to do a real story. This one’s real and it’s yours, if you want it. Sleep on it, then give me your answer in the morning.

***

In the last five years, I had experienced personal tragedy of the worst kind. I had been corkscrewing into depression and the psychological whirlpool Molly’s murder sucked me into didn’t help. I was sick of the city, sick of crime, sick of traffic, and sick of writing pointless stories for the afflicted, spindle-legged Murphy. I had been dying in my own private way, but life had sent me a wake-up call: a bouquet of balloons from a dead woman.

The drive home was grueling as always. An accident snarled traffic, and two men had squared off pointing and shouting. One shook his fist in the other’s face. I took a detour through a bad section of town—a ghetto of the worst kind. Just past a corner where drunks and bums loitered, I spotted a shop with no name that had amulets and dolls hanging in cracked windows. Perhaps Murphy was on to something with this unconventional medicine thing. If Rikard offered Murphy deliverance from his illness, could he save my daughter as well?

Inside it was dark and smelled of incense. An old black woman came from behind a curtain of glass beads and walked over behind a counter, where she leaned on her elbows.

Good afternoon, I said.

What do you want?

Do you have any books on island medicine?

You don’t know nothing ’bout roots.

That’s why I’m here. I need a book.

In the gloom, a cataract on her left eye glowed like milk glass. I walked over to a wall where a black straw doll with orange eyes hung. The old woman shuffled out from behind the counter, as if her feet were cracking.

Shamen put people in trances don't they? I said, touching the doll.

Yes, all the time, she said, tilting her good eye toward me.

Can a shaman bring someone out? I asked, letting the doll swing free.

It is a hard thing, she said.

All I want is a chance to awaken my daughter. She’s been in a trance for five years. Modern medicine’s no good.

I know. Your daughter, she commanded, how is it she sleeps for five years?

I told her about my promotion, the call, and my wife’s accident. I told her I had the chance to spend the summer on Sapelo and I told her about Rikard.

Ah, Forbidden Island, she said. That is a place not for you. All right, I will help you. She hobbled over to a shelf and pulled out a black book.

You study this book. Take it to Sapelo, but you must return it.

How much? I asked.

She stared at me with her good eye.

Give me your hand.

I gave her my hand, which she studied.

What’s yo name, she asked.

Slater Watts.

Bad things haunt you. Now listen to me. You must take the right things to Sapelo. Cut two locks of your daughter’s hair. Place them in a bag. Take something from her bedroom, something she loves. Get a vial of her urine.

I don’t know how that’s possible, I said.

You will find a way. Next, you must go back to the car where she was hurt. Cut two squares of cloth from the seats where your wife and daughter sat. Not just any two squares but squares stained by their blood.

The car rested in a junkyard, the graveyard of rusted automobiles and repository of unspeakable horrors. I thought I’d never have to see it again.

Now you must get one more thing. You must get the cell phone your wife handed to your daughter. Do you know where it is?

My heart quickened at the thought of touching that phone. I locked it away in a drawer.

Take these things to the shaman. He may show you his powers. He may not. I am helping you for one reason only.

What is that? I asked.

The power we have exists in two forms: good and bad. What you want is good. Now leave and always look over your shoulder on Sapelo. Forbidden Island is not a place for a white man, especially a city boy.

***

Back in traffic, I touched the dusty old book and the possibilities electrified me. The people around me seemed lost in conversation, oblivious to the river of steel flowing around them. Along both sides of the highway, light poles ran to the horizons like immense fences, which they were. An island with green palmettos, no roads, no traffic, no power, and no cell phones … I liked that.

Rikard’s powers renewed my hope of awakening Brit. I had never thought of shamanism as a way of awakening my girl. Perhaps her coma was nothing more than a trance. Rikard the trance breaker—that was reason enough to risk whatever dangers Sapelo held. Everything that mattered to me waited on Sapelo, a final chance to save my girl, a great story perhaps, and if it all came to nothing, I would, at least, have escaped the traffic and crime. The coast surely would be cooler than Atlanta, and no one could contact me. Solitude would be mine.

I stopped by a bookstore to buy some books on the Golden Sea Islands where fragrances of coffee, paper, and ink greeted me. Beneath a mural of dead authors, couples sipped lattes, their hushed conversations blending with the soft rustle of paper. I looked around the bookstore. The people there seemed happy enough with their day-to-day lives. They were fine with being dependent on electricity and, in fact, would not know how to live without it. They were accustomed to the blaring of car horns, the ringing of telephones, and the chirp of computers. I didn’t think they would give up a summer to do what I was considering.

I found a book on island medicine and several on the Sea Islands. One book had a crude map of the Georgia-South Carolina coast as its end papers. All the islands were named except one: a large island shaped like a woman’s high-heel boot with a small waterway dividing it. Was that my destination?

Forbidden Island had to be like the photographs: beautiful, gold, and green, an ever shifting mass of sand and vegetation where survival of the fittest was everything. This Darwinian oasis of dunes, maritime forests, and salt marshes would be like nothing I knew. The island would be in the words of the environmentalists, pristine. In the words of Murphy, murderous.

I thumbed through a few pages. The Sea Island’s legacy had been wild rice, indigo, and cotton. Descendants of slaves clung to their African heritage such that the soul of Africa—the legacy of tribes—had soaked into the islands’ sand and taken root. Now their language, music, skills, and cuisine shot up from island sand. I came across Gullah and Geechee, words I had heard but never thought much about. They were pleasing to the ear and rolled off the tongue with ease. Gullah, Geechee.

The idea of escaping to a wild island excited me. There would be neither microwaves nor ovens, just a campfire. I’d drink rainwater. And there would be no lights at night, simply the stars. That I could go back in time intoxicated me. I expected to pay a price for the privilege of escaping civilization. What if a diamondback rattler sank his fangs into me? Or what if a hurricane headed straight for the island? How would the natives take to me? Many things would be out of my control. Murphy was right when he said, sleep on it.

***

That night I went into a deep sleep, a sleep not even the clamoring city could break. I dreamed about the seashore, saltwater, root doctors, sand dunes, Spartina, and sawgrass. The sea and its crashing waves rolled through my sleep. The marsh ebbed and flowed through my dreams. Campfire shadows danced across the dunes and a black velvet sky with brilliant stars wheeled above. I dreamt the oldest and best dream—flying. I soared on outstretched arms over green marshes, dune lines, and across the foaming surf toward Africa.

I awakened more refreshed than I had in a long time, and the drive into work was better than it had been in a long time too. The city was trying to seduce me into staying but fate was pulling me in another direction. I would cast my fate to the island winds. I went straight to Murphy’s office where he spun to face me.

So Slater, what’s it to be?

"You’ve got yourself an island adventure writer, but on two conditions: give me an eight-page cover story and give me the copyright thirty days after it’s run in Southern Escape. Take it or leave it."

Murphy rolled back and forth. It’s quite unusual to turn over copyright to a staffer. This is a work for hire, you know. But, I suppose beggars can’t be choosy, and hell, you may not live long enough to write it. Agreed.

Put it in writing. I’ll take my own camping gear. The magazine can expense any other supplies I’ll need.

I’ll draw up the agreement this afternoon.

You’ll be glad we’re doing this story, Murphy. Readers can escape city life with an article like this. I’m ready to go. Summer’s nearly three weeks old already.

Murphy rolled over and shut the door with a nudge from a wheel, then he spun and seemed genuinely happy for once.

Let’s have some coffee. There’s the rest of the story as they say.

Murphy poured coffee from a low-slung cart designed for him. Then he rolled back and forth, as if contemplating exactly what to say. The sweat on his brow glistened, and that peculiar frost dusted his skin.

One cream, right?

Right.

"Now you cannot tell anyone what I’m about to divulge. Agreed?"

Agreed.

If you back out, I want your resignation, but I know you won’t. Your little girl needs you. Well, she needs your company insurance more than you.

"Just tell me the rest of