I went to an abandoned Scottish island. I know why they left.
The confidential inquiry is due to report back next week. I want to get my side of things on the record. I know they’ll blame me. Pin it on the survivor, tale as old as time. It was that fool Tamenay’s fault, if they’re looking for a scapegoat. He chose St Ambrose. There are some 300 abandoned islands off the British Isles, we could have gone to any of the others. I wish to God we had. But St Ambrose had an allure for Tamenay. On a night in the spring of 1921, the thirteen families still left on the island hailed down a passing fishing trawler, got onboard with whatever possessions they could carry and left forever. Never came back. If there was a reason, none of them ever expressed it. When we landed, we were the first humans to set foot on it in more than 100 years. Tamenay recognised the romance in that. He saw a book on the bestseller list and a BBC TV series. It was his fault.
When I was asked to join the expedition, I’d been six months at Vespasian, a tiny college in a half-prestigious university. I was invited by default. The only other folklorist in the faculty was old Kersall, crawling towards retirement and with no interest in spending two weeks on a wind-battered island in the North Atlantic. The rest of the expedition, seven academics in all, were archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, naturalists; they looked down on me. I could feel it as soon as we boarded the boat.
St Ambrose is a day’s journey off the western shoulder of Scotland. The first thing you see on approach are the cliffs. As high as tower blocks and black as night. The only break in this wall of rock is a slim bay on the east of the island. That’s where we dropped anchor. The crew of the transport ship insisted on staying onboard. The seven of us academics went ashore in two motor dinghies, barely able to steer them and loaded down with equipment. As we motored closer, I started to see the seabird nests. The whole cliff face was pockmarked with thousands of holes in the rock. Out of every nook stuck a cawing beak. Pearl-white gannets and grey storm petrels darted for the water like arrows. But most numerous of all were the ragged black cormorants.
“Ten thousand breeding pairs,” one of the naturalists said as a flock of them followed our course towards the beach.
In the island’s heyday, the men of St Ambrose used to climb without ropes down the sheer cliff-faces to steal the birds’ eggs. The birds grew hostile to man, so the islanders said. I read a story of a young man’s first egg hunt. He disturbed a nest of cormorants, and the birds tore his eyes out with their beaks. Blinded, he lost his grip on the cliff and plummeted to his death.
We hiked up the narrow path from the bay to the island’s only settlement. Thirteen squat drystone cottages and a tin-roofed chapel. All covered now in a layer of moss. They were slowly being swallowed by the Earth. In another hundred years, you’d not be able to tell there was ever anyone here at all. We set up our camp in the shelter of the chapel. We were dog tired and, before darkness fell, we were all in our tents trying to sleep as the howling north winds shook the whole island. I shared with a dour anthropologist called McKay. Trying to dry himself out on the expedition after he’d been caught under the influence at work. He couldn’t sleep without a drink and twice in the night I half-woke to see him crawling out of the tent to go pacing around the chapel. It was no surprise to me then that he was gone when I rose the next morning.
By 10am, we had eaten breakfast and there was still no sign of McKay.
“Where is he?” Tamenay asked me as if I had mislaid him.
“He was gone when I woke up. Perhaps he’s started work,” I replied.
Tamenay tutted. “His work is here in the village. It really won’t do.” He strode out of the chapel. “We shall have to go and find him.”
St Ambrose is only 3 miles across and a small group of us wrapped up against the wind to follow Tamenay out as a search party. Tamenay set off to climb to the highest survey point while we fanned out. I made for the western side of the island. Off the village track I saw a boot-print pressed into the dirt. I traced the tracks towards the cliffs. Black clouds massed on the horizon, and I could feel the warmth in the air you get before a storm. I followed the prints along the cliff edge with growing fear. Ahead, I could see a spot where the rough grass had been disturbed and the earth was loose.
I peered down over the cliff edge and that’s when I saw him. McKay was sprawled out on a rocky ledge twenty feet down the face of the cliff. Legs and arms twisted in horribly unnatural directions. His face was torn to shreds. But it was his stomach that made me vomit across my boots. Ripped open so that the bones of his ribcage jutted into the air. He’d already been stripped of his guts by the seabirds now hopping across his corpse with something resembling glee. For a moment, I nearly fainted. I would have surely pitched forward and down onto the rocks far below if I had. Only the shouts of the rest of the searchers as they approached dragged me back from the edge.
As we got back to the chapel, the storm fell on us. A hate-filled onslaught, rain lashing against the tin roof and finding all the gaps. We sat soaked and silent inside as evening encroached while Tamenay paced back and forth.
“We need to get off the island, tonight. Fire one of your flares, get us away from here.” I said, to break the silence as much as anything else.
“Inconceivable,” replied Tamenay. “Sad business of course but we all knew how McKay was. No, we’ll have the rest of the evening off, only right, but tomorrow we get back to it.”
“His body is still out there, with…” I hesitated to say it, “with the birds.”
Tamenay bit his lip in aggravation. “Fine. You’ll take one of the dinghies out to the boat in the bay. Have them radio the mainland and bring a winch ashore, only way to recover his...” He trailed off and turned to Hermansen, an ornithologist with a mass of red hair. “You go with him.”
Hermansen manned the tiller. She lit a cigarette as we stuttered out of the bay. The storm had faded, for a while at least, and left behind it a thick mist. We could barely make out the dark shape of the transport ship up ahead.
“The seabirds don’t attack humans, do they?” I asked Hermansen.
She snorted and shook her head. “A few of the species will have a pop at you in nesting season, if you get too close to their eggs. But attacking? No. The old drunk McKay fell of his own accord if you ask me. The birds on him were just…” she paused to exhale smoke. “…Opportunists.”
We cut through a bank of mist and there ahead was the transport ship. Quiet and still, save for the black mass of cormorants circling overhead. I looked back at Hermansen with concern. She stubbed out her cigarette and steered us towards the ship.
Together, we clambered up the steel ladder on the side of the ship and onto the deck. It was a small vessel, a flat deck for passengers and cargo and a whitewashed steel superstructure with quarters for the three crew members. It was at the door to the superstructure where I saw the first corpse. The captain, a gruff Shetlander with a thick grey beard, throat slashed open and eyes staring up to Heaven.
I spun in shock. And there were two more bodies near the starboard side. One with his head caved in. Another face down with his back lacerated. Hermansen pushed past me and stepped into the control room. She twisted the dials of the radio but received nothing but static in return. I looked up to the roof of the superstructure. The antennae and aerials were twisted and torn. And above, the black vortex of cormorants massed.
“We need to get off here,” I said. Hermansen didn’t argue. We clambered back into the dinghy. She tugged the chord on the outboard engine. The propeller spluttered and spat into life and we pulled away as quick as it would go from the ship. The cormorants followed us towards the beach.
About a hundred metres from shore, I saw it: a ragged black shape, pale flesh and midnight feathers, far bigger than the cormorants, cutting through the water like a dart.
“Hermansen!” was all I could manage before it collided with the dinghy. The force flipped the boat. We went with it, plunging into the icy water. The upturned boat landed on top of us. Some part of my subconscious told me not to struggle, and this was all that saved me. With my arms and legs stretched wide I floated to the surface beside the humpback of the boat. I took a gulp of breath and looked back. Hermansen dragged herself clear of the boat. She gave me a terrified glance. Something yanked her down beneath the water. To my shame, I turned my back and swam desperately for shore like the coward I am. It was brutal going, the water so cold that it burned my skin and numbed my arms. Only the thought of what may be behind me kept me going.
I dragged myself up onto the beach and staggered, frozen and shellshocked. I knew I was not safe. Not even here on dry land. I stumbled up the narrow path towards the village. My throat was dry and tight, and I could not even cry out as I made it to the chapel. Darkness was falling and a vicious rainstorm came with it.
I stumbled into the chapel and all eyes turned to me. They were cooking soup over a gas stove. I dragged the door shut.
“Well?” Tamenay said and raised his eyebrow at my drenched state. He looked past me. “Where’s Hermansen?”
I told him everything, it flooded out, the boat and the corpses and Hermansen and the cormorants overhead and the feathered thing in the water.
“Oh really! This is too much to countenance! I suppose it breathed fire too!” Tamenay laughed hollowly.
“I saw it with my own-”
“It was a mistake bringing you. You haven’t got the constitution. I told you this would be hard graft, did I not? You know what I think happened? I think you panicked. Probably flipped the boat yourself. Isn’t that right?”
There was a skittering sound from the roof of the chapel. The room fell silent. Even Tamenay. In unison our eyes turned upwards. There was the sound of something moving across the tin panels of the roof. I would have sworn then that it sounded like footsteps.
I could feel the world spinning. And there was Tamenay with the self-same superior smirk on his face. He shook his head.
“Spooked by birds and a rainstorm.” He strode past me and cast the door open. He stepped out into the rain and looked back at us.
My last sight of Tamenay was framed in the chapel doorway, the imperious sneer he always wore. And then something grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. Hands not talons. Tamenay was dragged up into the air and out of sight. If he screamed it was lost to the roar of the wind and the pounding rain.
I dashed towards the chapel door and slammed it shut.
“Block it! Block it!” I yelled. My shouts shook the other three survivors into action. Together we dragged barrels of equipment across to reinforce the door. Rain leaking through the holes in the tin roof of the chapel served to remind us how vulnerable our ‘fortress’ was.
“What the hell is it out there?” Escher, a historian, usually pale and now paler still. I could only shake my head in response.
I leant against the barricaded door and looked at the remaining members of the expedition stared back at me. Only the four of us left. For the first time, their expressions matched mine, wild-eyed, half manic, half numb. This shared fear strangely calmed me. I closed my eyes. Think.
“I don’t know what it is that’s out there. By God, I don’t want to know. But it means to do for us all, same way it took Tamenay and Hermansen and Mckay too. That I am sure of,” I said. The sound of something landing once again on the tin roof reinforced my point.
The others looked at me, expectant. They wanted a plan. I closed my eyes again and did my best to control the shake in my voice. “It’ll assume we make for the beach. It's flat and open. A good hunting ground for it.”
“I don’t see an alternative.” Escher said.
“We jump from the cliffs. They’re lower on the western side,” I replied.
Agnew, a wizened meteorologist, shook his head. “It’s not about the drop. It’s the rocks that’ll do for you. Ten to one you get squashed like a gnat against them. Besides, even if we make it into the water, we’ll not get far without one of the dinghies on a night like this.”
“Here!” said Jones, a short, bright-eyed archaeologist. He gestured to more of the big equipment drums that we had brought ashore. He tipped them over to empty the contents across the chapel floor. “Not much of a raft but it’ll do.”
“Good! Good idea!” I had to keep their hope alive.
The four of us set to work lashing the barrels together with ratchet straps, five of the barrels and a tarpaulin on top. It was rickety but it held.
“Now how-” Agnew started. He was silenced by the scratching sound of the thing moving across the roof. I signalled for silence. I inched over to the equipment scattered across the chapel floor and picked up Tamenay’s flare pistol. I broke the barrel open. There was a red signal flare inside. I cocked the pistol.
“Quiet as you can, get over to the side door. Be ready to make a break for it when I say, you understand? Run like hell for the cliff,” I said to the others. They nodded their agreement. They crept over to the side door, raft in hand.
I slipped off my shoes to quieten my steps and began to pad around the chapel, looking up at the roof for a gap. The largest was in the corner near the altar, rain was deluging through. I positioned myself below it. I checked to see the others were in position. And then I kicked over an old iron candle rack next to me. It landed against the stone floor with a resounding clang. I waited. And there was the sound of movement on the roof. It was coming towards me. I braced with the flare pistol. I locked my eyes on the gap in the roof. Something pale appeared through it. I fired. The flare shot out of the pistol like a firework.
In its blazing red light, I saw a scything beak and human eyes peering through the gap. The flare exploded as it struck its target.
“Now!” I cried and they crashed through the side door out into the pouring rain. I was just behind. I glanced up to the roof and there was a writhing silhouette of the thing against the light of red flare, humanoid but with a great set of black wings rising into the air behind it like a perversion of an angel. I dragged my eyes away. We ran as a group through the village, me and Jones dragging the raft between us. Agnew and Escher ahead.
We broke out past the village and now it was open ground towards the cliff edge and our only hope of escape. I heard the dread sound of heavy wings beating against the wind behind us. In pursuit. I gritted my teeth. The shadow covered us. Jones howled in fear. But the thing moved past us. Escher was out ahead. She was fast. She had a clear lead on the older Agnew. The all-consuming blackness of the night hid the thing from her until it was atop her. I saw a jagged beak rip out her throat and she dropped, horribly limp, to the ground. Agnew saw her ahead. He tried his best to bank left, to avoid the thing, but it caught him face on.
Me and Jones ran right. Agnew put up a fight I think, God bless him. I heard him roaring and screaming for almost a minute. And then there was just the rain again and no sound from Agnew. We kept going, the raft between us. Slowing us down no doubt. But I could hear something else now to go with the rain, the crash of the sea against rocks. So close. I risked a glance back over my shoulder.
The thing descended out of the darkness.
“Down!” I yelled. I hurled myself to the ground. But Jones got himself caught in the raft. He half tripped, but his head stayed up. The thing caught him by the hair with its hands. It dragged Jones up into the air. His glasses fell to the ground.
I tore one of the barrels free and abandoned the rest. I was numb now, too cold and exhausted to feel my legs as they slipped and slid over the wet grass. I could see the black mass of the sea up ahead. I was close. I heard Jones’ screams. Even over the rain and the wind, I heard his screams. Do not look back. There was the cliff edge. Do not hesitate.
I hurled myself over the edge of the cliff, pushing away with all my might to clear the rocks below. For a moment I hung in the void, then I plummeted towards the water. I landed hard. Even with the barrel beneath I could feel the impact run down my spine and knock the air out of my lungs. I slipped beneath the water. The current caught me. I could feel myself being dragged downwards.
I dug my hands into the ratchet strap and with a last surge of energy I dragged myself on top of the barrel. I wrapped my legs and arms around the strap and clung on tight as the current dragged me in a wide loop away from the island. I looked back over my shoulder.
And there I got a glimpse of the thing, stood on the end of the headland. Horribly human in shape if it were not for the great mass of ragged black feathers hanging from its pale back and the jutting curve of its pectoral flight muscles. I hunkered low on my makeshift raft and prayed to God it would not see me. As I floated into the cover of the mist, I faded into the blessed relief of unconsciousness.
I was at least two days at sea, buffeted back and forth by the tides. Many times, I saw the distant black shape of some landmass or the other and willed myself towards it, only for a current to catch me and drag me back onto the open ocean. Finally, three dawns after I had hurled myself into the water, I washed ashore on one of the outer isles of the Orkneys. I was a week in hospital in Kirkwall, starved and exhausted and half-frozen to death.
A delegation of police and coastguards sailed out when the weather cleared. They found the transport ship abandoned, and the remnants of our base in the old chapel. But no bodies. No sign of the carnage. It seemed to them as if the whole party had vanished. Save for me. When they questioned me, I told them the truth. I was too feverish to come up with a story; I told them exactly what I’m telling you now. Of course they didn’t believe me. Who would? There have been days since when I have not believed myself, when I have pretended that this is one great delusion. And then the night falls and I can see in my mind that not-bird, not-man, that thing, standing there on the cliffs, crowned by circling cormorants and I know. By God, I know.