Novel Writing - Brock Island

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Chapter one

The Murderess

There should be a rule that in a society with such a small population as Brock Island had, there should not be a murderer amongst the inhabitants. The impulse to murder – if such a thing is an impulse, seems almost illogical on an island with a populace in the hundreds with more than enough resources to go around. It’s a Darwinian paradox, or so Charlie Brock, the story’s arguable protagonist, would have told me, but he doesn’t come into this story until a little later.

However illogical it was, Brock Island had a murderess — at least, this was how this story was told to me by a very reliable and thorough source – a source that I trust as supernaturally omniscient and wretchedly biased. I must admit that I entered this story much later than its beginning, so I shall do my best to tell the opening of the tale exactly as it happened. Yet I can only tell this tale based on the limits of what I was told, and what I was told, I was told by a ghost. 

I will begin by saying that this tale always begins with Susanna McGlinn in a moment when she was doing everything in her power not to sneeze. A tingling sensation was building up in her nasal cavities, but she held back the downpour of snot particles that wanted to rain down.

Poisoning a man’s food was one thing, but the idea of sneezing into it made bile burn Susanna’s throat. As she worked, yellow pulp coated her leather gloves, the granules rolling under her fingers with every leaf cut. The accumulation of powder on the knife made it increasingly hard to slice in thin, even strokes, and she knew that the tobacco needed to look, taste, and smell just right for her target to eat enough of it to die. 

Out beyond her kitchen windows, dark water battered against Brock Island, briny fingers scrabbling for the fishing town that perched on the top of the cliffs. Susanna’s skin ached for that cold, salty spray, but instead she was overheating in her domestic prison. She was trapped – a fierce princess in a high tower. Waves of heat smothered her from all sides. An industrial oven radiated currents of warmth and illuminated the gray room in a reddish glow. On days like today, she couldn’t help but wonder if her family were cooking her alive. 

Susanna’s three youngest children came barreling into the house, a tangle of nobbily limbs and curly dark hair. All three of them barked a chorus of, “Mom!” 

Susanna caught herself inches from touching her lips. She peered down at the yellow tobacco granules, raining from her gloves. To ingest that small amount would only give her a stomachache, but even that strange bout of illness might arouse suspicion if it coincided with a man’s death. 

“Mom! We’re starving!” the children barked, their eyes roving the kitchen like they were pups sniffing out their next meal. 

Susanna had been careless. Reckless. A grown man would have to eat the entire casserole to reach the level of nicotine poisoning that would kill him. Her children were smaller. She didn’t know how much would kill a child, with their bodies so much more delicate, but she didn’t want to risk an ounce. Susanna had the urge to scream at them and nip them until they left the way they came. But no, that was not how she was supposed to act. Her six-year-old twins were identical from their bare feet to their messy yellow-brown mops of hair, and they were small dirty beasts of destruction, just as she’d raised them to be. Where was her eldest who was supposed to be making sure the youngest survived near the cliffs? 

“Dinner isn’t ready yet. Go find your sister. She’s probably up in that tree with that boy again.” Susanna chopped the tobacco leaves and took a quick inventory of the kitchen. The remaining leaves were safely hanging on the rack by the window, and the pulp on her cutting board was minced past recognition. She’d prepared for this to some degree.

Rosy shuffled toward Susanna with filthy hands held up.  “Mommy, hug.” 

“No,” Susanna snapped, too harsh, but anxiety was rising in her body, clotting her throat, heating her eyes, and sending a ringing into her ears. “Sweetheart,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “Sweethearts--Go play with your friends, and don’t come back until dinner time.”

“Come on, you two,” Genette called with slices of cheese clutched in both hands. The girls rushed away with the same force as they entered, slamming the sliding door on their way out.

The abrupt sound made Susanna flinch, and she held her breath. As all of Susanna’s ilk knew, chaos was like the tide, it came in and out of influence in quick succession, and another wave would come soon. So, Susanna sprinkled the rest of the leaves onto the dish and rushed across to the sink. Had the pulp touched her skin? Was she soon going to be hunched over the sink, vomiting the dried fish she’d scarfed down to gather courage and energy to make this deadly casserole? She scrubbed the cutting board with a steel scouring pad, taking off layers of plastic before tossing the wire brush into the trash bin. Susanna peeled off her gloves and studied the untarnished skin underneath, flipping her hands and moving them so she could see every side, between fingers, and under her nails. The yellow dust had not penetrated the leather, but the gloves had left a film behind, and even as she washed her hands under steaming hot water, she could still feel the layer refusing to scrub off. 

“Is this for me?” Her husband’s low male voice said from behind her, and just like that, chaos returned. Hands wrapped around the murderess’s waist, icy fingers pushing up the hem of

her shirt. 

She squirmed and forced a laugh. “Barry! Cold. You’re so cold!” 

Barry was not cold – or so it was told to me. He was a warm man with a bushy beard and a jolly demeanor. Gentle jailor is what the ghost called him. Rough of face and soft of touch.

“Just stepped off the boat.”

“And your smell proves it.” Susanna sniffed long and luxuriously, but the reek of tobacco again stung her nose and she shook her head.

“I’m a bit confused.” Her husband grunted. “I thought that fish was your favorite perfume—isn’t that what you all like? I can wash.”

“We like the sea.” It was the mother of all understatements. Turning in her husband’s arms, Susanna gazed up into dark blue eyes. He wasn’t terrible to look at. Her favorite feature were the white scars that streamed from his eye down to the dark scruff of his beard—the remains of wounds she took personal pride in. “This casserole…” Susanna punctuated the word with a kiss, ignoring the bristly feeling of her husband’s beard on her cheeks, “…is for Hansen Brock. I doused it in pepper and added horseradish. You would hate it.” Closing her eyes, she gave her husband another lingering kiss and swallowed down the revulsion at the feel of his rough bristle. “Who knows? If Brock loves the dish, maybe you’ll finally get—” 

“Susanna… What is this?” Barry’s eyelids narrowed over his cobalt eyes, and a line fissured between his brows. “You hate the old man—we all do. He’s a rank old bastard, and after this year’s pay cuts—that make absolutely no fucking sense, I’d rather douse him in gasoline and light him on fire than give him so much as a three-day old trout from our table.”

Gritting her teeth, Susanna managed to say, “I’m trying—to help you—with your career. Our family needs you to be successful, and you never have been and never will be without my help.” 

Barry curled his calloused fingers into a fist, grunted, and hit his forehead. “You don’t know Brock. He’ll eat your casserole and won’t spare our family a thought. You promised that you wouldn’t interact with the fishermen again. Nothing good ever comes of it.” Shock passed over his features, and his arms stiffened around her. “Tell me you’re not talking to Jameson…?”

“Of course not.” She ripped her eyes away from Barry’s gaze and focused her mind on counting the thick buttons of his wool coat, down to his belly. Susanna cleared her throat. “Are you going to take the food to your boss or not?” 

Leaning down, Barry brushed a kiss on her forehead. The touch was soft, but the bristles of his beard might as well have been wire mesh, scraping off layers of skin, and Susanna wanted to smack his face away, but she didn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” her husband said. “I can’t lose you—not with four half-feral girls to take

care of and long hours to work with ever-worse pay—I need you here, at the house.”

“And here I am.” The murderess rubbed her forehead, trying to wipe away the ghostly feel her husband’s bristle left behind. “I can never leave this place—you know that. They made sure of that.” Susanna stepped back and slipped from Barry’s arms. Going to a far drawer, she pulled out a wool covering and headed back to the casserole. After wrapping the wool around the dish, Susanna tucked it securely around the corners. “I made this for your boss—take it to him or throw it away—I did it for the sake of our family.”

“I know you think Brock Island is hell, but you should have seen the mainland, Susanna.

I can’t even describe it to you—and the ocean is so polluted, seals wash up on our shores every day. Like it or not, the fisherfolk of this island saved you all... I just—I love you.” Her husband reached for the dish. “I’ll take this to Old man Brock while you finish dinner.” 

“Wait.” Grabbing for the edge of the tray, she closed her eyes and recited a prayer in her mind. 

Waves of the tumultuous sea wash away my enemy, and only he. 

“Susanna.” Barry’s voice hardened, and Susanna knew that his god would be at the center of it. “You better be praying to the Lord of the Second Coming and not to the ocean again.”

“Of course, I was asking a blessing from your god.” The lie tasted like over-ripe fruit at

the point of rot.

“Our god.”

“Of course.” Opening her eyes, Susanna withdrew her hand from the casserole. 

It only took a few more stilted sentences between husband and sea wife. How were the girls today? Did Susanna take time for herself as they discussed? Then, Casserole in one hand, Barry stomped out of the house, leaving a trail of mud behind his boots. 

Susanna grabbed a broom from the corner and swept out the dirt. As she cleaned, she chanted silently in her head. Waves of the tumultuous sea wash away my enemy, and only he.

Siren’s cry, let him die, drowning in the ocean’s eye. Give him agony, give him pain. If you hear me, make it rain.  

There was a breath of silence, and then thunder boomed across the sky, and a bolt of lightning illuminated the dark sea. The gray blanket of clouds that clung to the island year-round sprinkled down droplets of water, splattering over the road.

Susanna couldn’t help a small smile as she brushed the clumps of dirt outside, launching them to skitter onto the porch. A great gust of salt air slammed into the windows of the little house, making the whole structure moan as it held against the wind’s endless assault. The gulls chittered above, and the sea inhaled the tide and exhaled with a thunderous crash. Seawater sprayed into the air in great plumes of mist, and Susanna set her broom aside and listened to the ocean’s mournful wail. 

“More,” the sea cried. “Kill more. Kill them all.”

Grabbing up the broom, the murderess tightened her fingers around the wood until the length threatened to splinter in her grip. The ocean was right. The murderess’s job was not close to complete on Brock Island. There were so many left to kill. 

Chapter Two

The Death of Old Man Brock

As Barry McGlinn carried a poison casserole up the long winding road to Old Man Brock’s front door, a young man of thirteen sat a hundred yards away in a nearby tree. In the young man’s lap was an encyclopedia, pilfered from Old Man Brock’s neglected library. The young man, Charlie

Brock, read the first word of the third page in the volume.

Papyrology n.

The study of ancient papyrus manuscripts from civilizations in the lost continents. Of rare usage in the After Second Coming era before the ice age, now considered an extinct line of study. 

“Papyrology,” Charlie rolled the word around in his mouth, savoring the snap of his lips and the feel of his tongue ricocheting off the roof of his mouth. “Papyrology.” Charlie wondered if this word was one that would stick in his mind—forever unused. There is no telling which words would stick and which would fade with each new encyclopedia he memorized.

"Pyra-who?" 

Charlie glanced down to find Megan considering him through the branches of the tree. She stood with her arms crossed and a hip cocked. Around her, a chorus of sheep blinked up at him as the pulp of masticated green summer grass stained their mouths. Megan wore a thick but threadbare red wool coat while the ewes stood naked, their white and black coats shaved down to the skin.

“Not today,” Charlie muttered as he tried to read—though he found himself studying the same word on a loop, processing nothing. “Go away, Megan. I don’t feel like answering your questions today.”

Charlie didn’t look down, but he swore that he could feel her eyes roll. The telltale creak and moan of the branches told Charlie that Megan planned to share his branch. When the limb he was perched on wiggled under his butt—Charlie couldn’t take it anymore, and he watched her clumsy ascent. “You should pay better attention while you climb.”

“What’s Papyrology?” Megan asked, pronouncing the word exactly.

“A word for studying ancient manuscripts made of Papyrus.” Charlie glanced back at the page. “You could learn that -and other words -- for yourself if you’d actually let me teach you to read.”

“Nah, I don’t want to.” Megan settled onto the branch beside him. “It’s not because it’s illegal. I don’t care about that. But words from continents that no longer exist are without point.”

“Pointless,” Charlie said as he rolled his own eyes.

“Better the way I say it.” 

They were the unlikeliest of friends, and I’d guess that the reason behind Megan’s constant visits was that they were two of only six other thirteen-year-olds on Brock Island. Megan was lanky and tall. Charlie was short. He spent all of his time reading—Megan was illiterate-by choice—he’d offered to teach her. Daily. Her face was long, and teeth as jumbled as the boulders that formed a sea wall near the docks. Charlie had severe features and perfectly straight teeth—only suffering a small gap in the front. Megan’s voice was a lower octave than his, and she sang as if her heart ached with every note. Charlie could sing every note, but they rung hollow unless his fingers were flying over porcelain keys. The only thing that the two teenagers really had in common was that Megan and Charlie were usually alone—one of them was too prickly to be invited anywhere and the other cursed—or perhaps both were both things.  “Not the best weather to try our first cigarette.” Megan held up a rolled cigarette. She swiped a match along the rough bark of the tree, the point of contact spitting sparks. 

“Your first cigarette, I’ve been inhaling that stuff my entire life. How’d you get that match?” To Megan’s family, a match was a night with heat and candles lit.

“Nicked it from your kitchen.” 

Charlie shook his head. “You know what Old Man Brock would do to you if he found out?”

“Not like your grandma or aunts to tell him.”

It wasn’t like Charlie’s grandmother to tell her husband, Mr. Brock, anything at all. In the past couple years, Charlie had become more aware of the secret matters no one was supposed to say in front of his grandfather. If his aunts or grandmother were nowhere to be found in the house, they were tending the garden or draining the septic. If something was missing, the item had been stored below in a recent cleaning.

A low rumble pulled the two teenagers’ attention to the west of the island, checking on the isolated rain cloud that had gathered there. The gray wall of rainfall had remained stationary for some time now, but the storm didn’t have to shift more than an acre to soak Megan’s cigarette and Charlie’s book. Brock island was barely four miles across, according to the number of steps it took Charlie from the high cliffs to the north and the docking bay in the South. The island was shaped like the hump of a submerged camel. At the very top of the hump was a single oak tree with limbs that reached past the hill on all sides. Charlie had stashed many things in that tree. Books his grandfather hoarded behind locks in glass cases. A broken compass. Devices with gears—some working, most not. Jewelry that belonged to his mother. He decorated his tree with treasures, knowing that Mr. Brock would never bother to walk up the hill and discover how much Charlie pilfered. 

Megan’s match caught on the rough bark, and sparks bloomed into a flame. She rushed to hold the match to the end of her cigarette and held it at the tip. Her eyes crossed as she focused on the flame that was singeing its way toward her fingers.

“You need to inhale,” Charlie said. “It won’t light unless you inhale.”

Megan gasped in, held her breath, and then coughed so violently that her entire body rocked on the tree limb. 

“Careful. You’re going to kill yourself.” Charlie grabbed a handful of Megan’s loose coat, though if the girl tipped over now, they’d more than likely both be going down. 

Her cough transformed into a laugh that cut off with her next inhale. “You’d be a lot better company if you were less bossy.” She held the cigarette out to Charlie, but he shook his

head. 

“How did you know I live my entire life trying to be good company?”

“Yeah, fine.” The branch swayed beneath them as Megan puffed and coughed. “You know I’m going to be fourteen before midsummer—this could be my Selkie year.”

“You’d be one of the outliers—the youngest was thirteen, most were closer to sixteen and some are as old as eighteen.”

“You think you know everything about everything, Charlie Brock.” Megan lifted her chin, staring out at the leaves undulating around them like thousands of green tentacles. “I’ll

finally get my own house—finally.”

Charlie chewed on the tip of his tongue. “You’re not scared to wake up as a seal?”

“Nah.” Megan clicked her tongue and shook her head. “It’s temporary—it only lasts a day, and then you never have to be a seal again.”

The idea of waking up rubbery and without legs terrified Charlie to no end, and—not for the first time—he was glad he was born without a womb. It was the womb that caused a person’s

selkie year.

Megan cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking… Ever wonder if it’s all lies and there’s millions of people out and we’re just stuck here on this tiny, god forsaken island?” Between coughs, Megan continued on her familiar line of treason, questioning the reality that had been constructed around the pair since before they could walk. According to those that raised them, on the mainland of what was called the North Western Hemisphere, the majority of people survived by travelling over vast blue glaciers in migrating tribes, following the deer and horses, never settling for too long. Many had to resort to cannibalism to survive. 

Charlie waited patiently as Megan babbled her usual theories that the fisher folk of Brock Island were lying to them and there was a whole world out there full of cities and cars and phones and all of those things that Charlie had told her that once existed. 

“I have another thing I want to ask you.” Megan said, and Charlie realized that she had been working her way up to asking what she’d truly come to question Charlie on, and he was in no rush for her to find her confidence. Inevitably, her words trailed off into a mumbled, “Did you know that your mom was going feral before she tried to drown you?” 

Charlie’s gut knotted up like he hadn’t had a bowel movement in weeks. He knew that Megan wasn’t asking about Charlie’s mother, not really. He’d told her before that, as he had been six, he couldn’t really remember up until that time, anyway. Megan was asking a question that had been haunting her for months, and so he answered that one instead. “Megan, your mom isn’t going feral.”

Megan stared off, down toward the rain clouds watering the lower island. “Say, you did know your mom was going feral. What do you think you would have done?” 

Charlie grabbed the end of his sleeve and worried the material between his fingers. “I don’t know… doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“What if she tries to kill me – or my brother?”

He cleared his throat. “She won’t. Statistically, women who go feral almost entirely attack fishermen on the docks. There are only a few outliers.”

“Like your mom.”

Charlie was used to Megan stating the blunt truth with no regard to the effect it would cause on those around her. He was pretty sure that it was what he both liked and disliked most about his sort-of closest friend. And yet, Megan’s words still sliced through Charlie’s heart, cutting it clean in two, but it was almost always in pieces when he thought about his mother and what she had done. 

Megan brought the cigarette to her mouth only to notice that it had smoldered all the way to her fingers. She let out a small gasp and dropped the butt to the ground. Sheep gathered around the smoking butt in a circle as if they’d received a sign from their ewe god, but the

embers faded on the wet grass within seconds and the sheep resumed grazing. 

Megan wiped her hand down the side of her coat. “Would you have turned your mother in if you knew that she was going to try to drown you?”

Charlie wanted to deny the accusation—his mother hadn’t been trying to kill him— she’d thought he could turn into a seal if she held him under the surf. No one believed him about that— though—and they never would. Charlie didn’t have a womb, and his mother had gone feral, not delusional. To the people of Brock, all that remained of the boy that survived was the worst moment of his existence—the moment his mother failed to kill him. Charlie was no longer a person. He was a walking tragedy. A cautionary tale. It was in their furrowed brows, flinches, and gritted teeth. It was the reason why he had no friends save for his grandmother, aunts, and Megan, the town pariah, if the grudging time that he and Megan spent together could be called friendship. However, he couldn’t fault Megan for worrying about her mother—yet another

reason Charlie was happy he was born the way he was. Only people with wombs went feral. 

A gust of wind carried a high F note, and Charlie closed his Encyclopedia. “Caroline needs me.”

Megan gave him a crooked grin. “I didn’t hear anything—like anything. Pretty sure that there’s no bell, and you keep lying to get out of answering my questions.”

“Follow me if you like.”

Megan did. She followed Charlie down the oak limbs and past the hill toward Old

Brock’s house. It was the first structure erected on Brock Island and by far the largest. Like many of the houses, Brock’s place resembled the ship it was recycled from, though a first floor

of stone had been added, making the vessel look like it was riding on a wave of pebbles. 

Megan stopped before the steps, clearly waiting to be invited in, but Charlie didn’t have the patience for that today. 

“See you when I see you.” Charlie threw a wave over his shoulder as he leapt up the stairs, two at a time, with his P Encyclopedia under one arm. Just within the door to the kitchen, his grandmother Caroline waited. The woman had been married to Old Man Brock for forty years, but her only wrinkles were laugh lines around her eyes. She wasn’t much taller than

Charlie, maybe two inches, though only a fool would treat her as if she was small.

“Grandma,” Charlie whispered when he realized they were alone. 

Caroline was smiling, but there was something off about her expression—like it was a mask she’d pulled on. She was the one who fed Charlie, listened to his troubles and his excitements, taught him lessons and told him stories, and held him close, three kisses on his forehead every morning and night. Yet, Charlie always knew that there was something to be feared about his grandmother. Caroline’s nature was that of the ocean she prayed to, playful, full of life, and never to be taken for granted. She reached up and cupped his cheeks with calloused fingers. Her throat worked. “What have I told you that I will do, Charlie?” “Huh…” Charlie tripped over his words. “Uh… About… about what?”

“Protecting you,” she prompted. 

“That you will do it until I am sixteen.”

“And do you trust me to do that?”