Island of Dark Gods

James Abraham Carter

Beneath the bruised velvet sky of the tropical night, the small island of Fogo loomed like a shadowy leviathan rising from the sea - jagged, silent, and cloaked in ancient dread. David Rutherford, a trader whose calloused hands had charted the winds and waves of the Torres Strait for over a decade, stood at the helm of his weather-worn vessel, the Sea Mist, a 17 foot Suncat sailboat, his breath shallow and his gaze fixed on the darkened shore. He had made similar island crossings a thousand times under sun and storm, but never with such unease. Tonight, he carried two passengers: Emeritus Professor Elias Jamison, an archaeologist with eyes sharp from decades of academic pursuit, and his assistant, his daughter Clare, whose shining beauty was matched only by her dark disdain.

Professor Jamison had retired, but this hadn’t stopped his inquiring mind from seeking out new knowledge. He had discovered references to the ancient ruins of Fogo in one of the diaries of the blackbirders while researching the history of the region. The people of the Torres Strait were not known for building in stone. This had piqued the professor’s curiosity. However, his former university had refused to back the expedition due to the hostile predisposition of the islanders. Hence, he had funded his own excursion and employed David as his guide and protector.

Jamison had promised David enough coin to salvage his struggling business - a trade store on the island of Tongara - a tempting sum for a man whose nets had come up empty too often of late. But it wasn’t charity the professor was offering. If David wanted the money, he’d have to earn it by taking Jamison and his daughter to Fogo, an island whispered about in portside taverns, not for its natural splendor, but for its dark past and the people who guarded it with savage silence.

Fogo had once been a victim of "blackbirding"—a grotesque trade in human flesh disguised as the hand of friendship. European vessels, draped in false flags of peace, had lured Pacific islanders with trinkets and promises, only to chain them below decks and sell them into plantation servitude in Australia. Though those days were long gone, the scars remained. The people of Fogo had withdrawn into the jungle, their villages hidden, their hostility toward foreigners - especially those of European descent - deep and unyielding. It was this very hostility that gnawed at David’s gut as he anchored offshore at ten o’clock that night, beneath a full moon casting silver ribbons across the restless sea. He had agreed to ferry the professor and his daughter, but only under one condition: he would accompany them to the ruins on the far side of the island. He carried a pump-action shotgun - more for show than for use - but its presence was a comfort, a sliver of power in a place where power lay only with the jungle and its hidden guardians.

Yet, upon reaching the moonlit beach, the professor reneged. "You’ll wait here," Jamison insisted, his voice firm. "Thirty minutes, no more. I need someone to guard the dinghy while I take photos with my night-vision camera. Should a threat arise, I need to be sure our means of escape is secure."

“I understand,” replied David, suppressing his annoyance. “But your daughter…”

“I’m not some damsel in distress in need of rescue,” Clare replied sharply, cutting him off and drawing a revolver from her satchel. “I know how to handle myself. If it weren't for my father’s money, your business would go under like a leaky boat. Remember that.”

Clare stood beside her father, arms crossed, her expression one of cool disapproval, her eyes challenging David to contradict her. To Clare, David was little more than a stereotype: a broad-shouldered, sun-bronzed, athletic lowbrow who spoke with blunt economy and whose world revolved around tides and trade rather than texts and theories. She had called him a " muscle-bound he-man," mocking his silence, his demeanor, his very physique. But she did not tell him - could not bring herself to say - that the man she saw in David was not David at all, but a ghost from her past: a former lover, strong and commanding, who had promised devotion and delivered only betrayal. The pain of that abandonment had hardened her, making her contemptuous of any man who possessed these characteristics.

David, unaware of this wound, was hurt by her comments. He remembered when she and her father had first walked into his trade store. He had been instantly drawn to her. Even the drab khakis that she wore couldn’t hide her beauty. But it wasn’t a shallow attraction based solely on physical appearance. It was something more, something of the spirit rather than the flesh. For a brief moment, he saw a flash of his own feelings mirrored in her gaze; then it was gone, smothered by sudden and, to him, unaccountable contempt.

David brought his mind back to the present. He kept his anger in check. It wasn’t his fault that his business was struggling. The entire region was experiencing a recession, and he wasn't the only one affected. The money was too vital to antagonize father and daughter. With a curt nod, he gave his assent and then watched as the professor and Clair vanished into the black maw of the jungle, their footprints already fading as the night wind blew sand across their trail.

Minutes became an eternity. David paced the shore, the shotgun cradled in his arms, every rustle in the underbrush setting his nerves alight. Then, without warning, the jungle erupted. Drums thundered. Torches flared. War cries split the night. A dozen painted warriors, their bodies streaked with clay, burst from the foliage, spears raised, eyes burning with unabated fury. David fired once; then again - the blast of the shotgun echoing across the water like thunder. Two warriors fell. A third staggered. But more came, a tide of howling, relentless figures closing in.

Outnumbered and outflanked, David turned and sprinted for the dinghy as spears hissed past him, one grazing his shoulder. Fortunately, he had prepared for a fast getaway. The boat’s bow was already pointed out to sea. He leaped aboard, and the outboard roared to life at his touch. The tender shot forward, and David powered through the waves back to the Sea Mist. After the dinghy was attached to its towline, he hoisted the anchor and set sail into the darkness, the drumbeats of Fogo pounding behind him like a war chant from the underworld.

But David Rutherford was not a man to abandon those in peril - not even those who had shown him scorn. As the island receded into the darkness, he cut the engine. He had no intention of fleeing for good. Instead, he waited in anxious silence, his mind beset with horrible imaginings of what might be happening to Clair and her father. And when he judged the natives had dispersed to celebrate their imagined victory, he turned the boat around, navigating by stars and propelled by the wind filling the sails that he had raised. He arrived in a lather of anxiety at the same secluded cove. The return had seemed to take an age, but he dared not use the engine, for its noise would have carried across the silence of the sea.

David’s fear eased a little. The beach was empty. The jungle was silent. The ruse had worked. He quietly rowed the dinghy ashore and moved inland with the stealth of a man who had spent his life reading nature’s signs. The drums returned, louder now, pulsing with ritual. Guided by their rhythm, David crept through the dense foliage until he reached a clearing choked with the ruins of a long-forgotten temple—cyclopean stones draped in vines, carved with symbols of a time-lost god. In the center, illuminated by flickering torchlight, stood a massive vertical stone altar. And against it, bound by coarse ropes, was Clare.

Her clothes had been brutally torn from her. Her naked, sweating body gleamed in the flaring torchlight. Her legs were spread and bound apart, exposing her for all to see as she struggled in her bonds, trembling, her eyes wide with terror. Around her stood twenty warriors and half a dozen priests in feathered headdresses, chanting in a guttural tongue. Before her stood the masked high priest, his body painted by the lurid light of flaring torches, a curved obsidian blade raised high, its point poised above the frantic rise and fall of her bare, heaving breasts.

David didn’t hesitate. From his pocket, he pulled a stick of dynamite - leftover from reef-clearing work months past. He lit the fuse with a match cupped in his palm, then hurled the explosive. But David didn’t desire a massacre; the hissing stick sailed high above the natives' heads and landed in the jungle. The detonation was deafening. Stone shards flew. Torches toppled. The warriors screamed, scattering into the jungle like startled rabbits, believing that the gods themselves had spoken.

All except the high priest.

Crazed and possessed, he shrieked a curse and lunged toward Clare with the blade. But David was already moving. He charged from the shadows, barreling into the priest with the force of a gridiron player. They crashed to the earth, rolling, biting, and clawing - the priest screaming invocations, David fighting in grim silence. The man was strong, fevered by fanaticism, but David was fueled by something deeper: duty, guilt, and now, a fierce, unspoken protectiveness. With a final heave he broke his savage opponent’s hold and locked his own forearm around the priest’s thick neck, twisting, tightening, until the mad light in the man’s eyes flickered and died.

Gasping, David released the corpse and cut Clare free. She collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “We were ambushed. My father… they’ve taken him,” she whispered. “They dragged him into another part of the ruins… I couldn’t stop them.”

David doffed his shirt and helped the trembling girl don it. “Do you think you can show me where?" he gently asked.

Clair nodded and pointed. They set off quickly, David acutely aware that the natives might swiftly find their courage return at any moment. They found the professor in a ruined building. Clair gasped in horror. Her father had been bound spread-eagle in front of another idol of a savage, unknown god. Hanging above him was a heavy sharpened stake, its suspending rope being burned through by a flaming torch in the idol’s stony hand.

Clair screamed as the rope parted. David raced forward as the heavy stake fell to impale the helpless man. He leapt, slamming into the falling spike with his shoulder, knocking it aside. Its point hammered the floor, missing Jamison by an inch. Clair, sobbing with relief, embraced her father as David sawed through the ropes binding him.

But the danger was far from over. Savage war cries split the night. The natives had regrouped and found the slain high priest. They were now searching the ruins in a rage, hell-bent on avenging the desecration of their sacred site and the killing of their holy man.

David pulled another stick of dynamite from his pocket. “We’ve got to go. Professor, can you run?”

“I have great incentive to do so,” replied Jamison with forced bravado.

The trio bolted from the ruins. A wild cry sounded as they were spotted. The escapees raced through the jungle, their ferocious enemies hot on their heels. They made the beach. Native warriors poured onto the sand like enraged ants from a disturbed nest. David cursed. He’d desperately hoped to avoid killing. Spears fell around them in a deadly rain. One struck the professor’s shoulder. He went down as David cast the final hissing stick of dynamite. The high explosive detonated. Sand erupted, body parts flew in gory ruin. Then silence.

David had thrown himself on Clair to shield her from the blast. He raised his head and looked around worriedly. It was a bloodstained, confronting scene that met his troubled gaze. Apart from themselves, there was no other sign of life.

“Are you okay?” He asked the girl.

“Yes,” she shakily replied. “But father?”

They quickly examined the groaning man. Fortunately, the wound wasn’t as bad as both had feared. David applied first aid using makeshift bandages - strips of cloth torn from the shirt he had given Clair. When the bleeding was staunched, he helped the professor aboard the boat and rowed back to the Sea Mist.

**********

As dawn gilded the horizon, the Sea Mist cut through calm waters, leaving Fogo a fading silhouette behind. Clare stood at the rail beside David as he steered the boat. Her father, his wound now properly cleaned and bandaged, rested below. The girl’s expression was thoughtful. After a long silence, she turned to David. “I was wrong about you,” she said softly. “I saw someone else in you… someone who hurt me. But you’re nothing like him.” She reached out, her hand brushing his. “You came back. You saved my father and me. I treated you terribly, and I’m truly sorry.”

David smiled. Encouraged by her admission he decided to take a risk and reveal his feelings. “I like you Clair,” he confessed. “From the moment I saw you I was drawn to you. I’d like to get to know you better, but after all that’s happened, I suppose you’ll be eager to head back home,” he finished sadly.

“Father has other islands he’d like to explore. He is tougher than he looks, and despite my tears, so am I. We’ll be here for some time, and after what just happened, he’ll want someone like you by his side.” She hesitated for a moment and then added with a warm smile, “And so will I.”

David grinned and placed his hand on hers. She didn’t pull away.

And as the sun rose, painting the ocean in gold and crimson, the couple sailed toward a future neither had foreseen. The horrors of Fogo receded with the island itself, but the bond forged in fire between them would grow with the quiet promise of healing, love, and a life reborn from the cold ashes of the past.

The End