El's Chronicles: Shadow Island // Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I won’t lie. The first couple of days on the island were anything but thrilling. 

The first morning came with a chill that clung to the air, and I dressed in layers before venturing downstairs. I made coffee and stood by the window, letting the cup warm my fingers while I looked out at the ocean. 

The ocean was, objectively, impressive. Not in the soft, sentimental way people like to romanticize nature when they don’t have to live next to it, but in a colder, more structural sense. The kind of scale that made my presence feel largely irrelevant. The water moved with a steady, unbothered force, folding into itself and breaking against the cliffs with the kind of consistency that suggested it would continue doing exactly that long after I was no longer around to notice it.

Somewhere between acknowledging its magnificence and making vague plans for the day, I remembered the journal.

I went back to it with the mild optimism that daylight, caffeine, and a functioning brain might collectively improve the situation. But nothing changed. The handwriting remained uneven, oscillating between control and collapse, as though the writer couldn’t decide whether they were documenting thought or losing it in real time. I read more slowly, then more carefully, then just stared longer, which turned out to be a poor substitute for understanding.

I figured it was likely a failed attempt at burning paper junk, and this particular object had simply lodged in the chimney, avoided destruction, and remained there long enough to be mistaken for meaning.

The journal went back on the counter, and with it, whatever faint sense of intrigue I might have assigned to it the night before under less stable conditions.

I finished my coffee and stepped outside. The early sun was a thin streak on the horizon, casting the cliffs in shades of gray and gold. I stood there for a moment, breathing in the salt and damp earth, letting the ocean’s rhythm fill me.

There was no plan for the day. No meetings, no emails to check, no orders to fulfill. Just me and the island. It was both unsettling and liberating, like winning a lottery where the grand prize was extreme isolation.

I decided to go for a walk, following the gravel road that led away from the house and wound along the cliffs. The island began to reveal itself beneath the pale winter sky. Jagged cliffs stood against the restless ocean, their rock faces streaked with frost. At their base, narrow stretches of coarse sand were scattered with driftwood and dried seaweed, and the sharp air smelled of salt and cold earth. Definitely not the kind of place you’d see in a glossy travel brochure, unless bleak and moody were suddenly on-trend.

The afternoon brought me to the small dock I’d seen from the house. It was weathered and uneven, jutting out into the bay like an afterthought. A few fishing boats bobbed in the water, their paint chipped and faded. A lone gull perched on one of the posts, watching me with sharp, curious eyes.

At the far end of the dock, I noticed a man unloading crates from a boat. His movements were methodical, practiced, as if he could do this in his sleep. I recognized the dark hair and the weathered jacket before I looked away. I didn’t approach, content to watch from a distance. He didn’t seem to notice me. Or maybe he did, but didn’t care. Either way, I was grateful for the space.

The second day passed much like the first. 

By day three, after far too much silence and an almost concerning level of camaraderie with the local seagulls, I had come to two unsettling conclusions. One, there was, in fact, absolutely nothing to do on this island. And two, apparently, when left alone with my thoughts for too long and starved of stimulation, I don’t just get bored. I spiral into full-blown existential contemplation. This was not a great development.

So after two days of wandering the cliffs and quiet trails, I decided to venture into the small village I’d seen from the ferry. The island’s center was little more than a cluster of narrow streets lined with weathered shops and modest cafés, their faded signs swaying gently in the salty breeze. It should have been quaint, welcoming even, but something about the atmosphere set my nerves on edge.

As I walked past the storefronts, I could feel eyes on me. The shopkeepers and a few locals lingered in doorways or peered from behind windows, watching me with quiet scrutiny. They weren’t outright unfriendly. No one scowled or muttered under their breath, but they didn’t smile either. It felt like they were studying me, trying to decide if I was worth acknowledging or if I was another outsider who would leave once my self-imposed self-reflec-cation was over. It wasn’t paranoia if it was actually happening, right? And these weren’t just curious glances. They were looks that lingered. The kind that made me wonder if I had something on my face, which, given my track record, wasn’t exactly an unreasonable concern.

I ducked into a small bakery to escape the weight of their stares, the scent of fresh bread and coffee wrapping around me like a warm blanket. The woman behind the counter looked up from arranging a tray of scones, her expression neutral but not unkind.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her tone polite but distant.

I ordered a coffee and a blueberry scone, grateful for something to occupy my hands. As I waited, I glanced at the bulletin board near the door. It was cluttered with flyers and handwritten notes, including ads for boat repairs, missing-cat notices, and a faded map of the island marked with a bold ‘You Are Here’ arrow.

I scanned it with quiet but irrational hope. I think I would’ve cried with joy if there’d been an ad to join a birdwatching club or a church flyer announcing bingo night led by someone probably named Agnes. 

One corner of the board did catch my eye. A small cluster of older newspaper clippings was pinned together, their edges curling with age. One showed the house I was renting, though in the photo it looked newer, brighter, almost unfamiliar. There was no caption, just the image, left there like a forgotten relic.

“Your coffee,” the woman said, breaking my focus.

“Thank you.” I turned around. “I’m actually staying in that house.” I pointed to the article. “Why is it on your bulletin board?” 

The woman glanced at the photograph, then back at me. “It’s from an old newspaper article. We’ve kept it up because there are still questions about what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I wouldn’t want to pass along speculation.” She said it gently, sliding my coffee and the small paper bag across the counter. “There’s plenty written about it if you’d like to read more.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Enjoy your afternoon.” I stepped back outside, where the breeze carried the faint sound of seagulls and the distant hum of a boat engine. The streets were just as quiet as before, and the feeling of being watched hadn’t lessened.

When I returned to the house later that afternoon, the warmth of the bakery felt like a distant memory. The house was cold, even though I’d closed every window. It felt bigger somehow, emptier, like the walls were leaning away from me. 

I made peppermint tea, ready to unleash my particular brand of obsessive curiosity. Learning, for me, had never been about practicality. It was therapy, religion, compulsion. It didn’t matter how useless the knowledge was. Learning had always been the only way I knew how to stitch the chaos of the world into something resembling a pattern. Not knowing wasn’t a gap. It was a wound.

After a few frustrating minutes, I managed to load a search engine and typed in the address of the house.

When the results finally appeared, my stomach twisted.

The first link was an old news article. The photo, though blurry and slightly pixelated, was unmistakable. It was the same picture I’d seen in the bakery.

The headline read: “Professor’s Death Sparks Mystery: Island Community Divided Over Shocking Tragedy.”

I clicked on it, the page taking what felt like an eternity to load. The article was dated seventeen years ago. It recounted the death of a man named Dr. Elias Harrington (had to be Betty’s late husband), a respected marine archaeologist who had stayed on the island for decades. He was found dead in one of the caves near the cliffs, his body discovered by a group of tourists. The details of his death were vague. The article mentioned a fall or possible suffocation, but there were whispers of something more sinister. The locals, it seemed, had plenty of theories.

Another article suggested that Dr. Harrington had been on the verge of a major discovery, something tied to the island’s caves. But the artifact he had allegedly found was never recovered, and some believed he had hidden it before his death. As it turned out, the house had been his retreat, where he conducted his research.

Then there was the follow-up article. “Mysterious Disappearance: Grad Students Linked to Professor Harrington’s Research Vanish Under Unexplained Circumstances.”

I blinked, leaning closer to the screen. According to the article, two of the three doctoral students who had been staying with the professor that summer went missing shortly after his death. Investigators believed they had taken Harrington’s boat out sometime that night. The boat was later discovered drifting miles offshore, but the students were never found. The third one, Alexander Blackwoods, who apparently had not been with the others at the time of their disappearance, refused to speak to the press, leaving a cloud of speculation surrounding the events. 

I stared at the grainy photograph accompanying the article, my breath catching in my throat. Alexander Blackwoods in the picture looked strikingly familiar.

It couldn’t be, I thought, but the resemblance was undeniable. I had already met Alexander Blackwoods, though I’d known him as the Grim Reaper’s younger, hotter brother. 

The thought unsettled me, the coincidence too strange to dismiss. 

I continued reading. Newspaper articles suggested no conclusions, only rumors. Some blamed the caves, calling them dangerous and unpredictable. Others whispered about the professor’s research, hinting at curses, greed, and secrets better left buried. The house had remained empty for years after the tragedy, its reputation tarnished.

I sat back, my fingers brushing the edge of my mug as I stared at the screen. The words blurred together as a chill settled over me. My eyes drifted to the journal beside me. I changed my mind again. Now I believed the journal hadn’t survived by chance. Someone had tucked it above the closed flue, hidden in the one place no one would look unless they meant to start a fire.

The house suddenly felt smaller, its silence pressing against my ears. I got up, carrying my tea to the living room, and sank into the worn armchair I had moved by the window. Outside, the sky was pale and overcast, the ocean gray and restless in the distance. “Well done,” I murmured to myself, a hint of sarcasm lacing my tone. “Barely two and a half days of peace and quiet, and here I am, diving headfirst into another mess.” My mind buzzed with questions, but I didn’t know where to start. Finally, I picked up my phone and placed an order with Archivum.

I tried to sleep that night, but it didn’t come easily. The bed was too firm, the blanket too thick, and my mind wouldn’t quiet. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Grim Reaper’s younger, hotter brother, his face suspended in the darkness beneath his hood, those gray eyes fixed on me.

I finally drifted off into unsettling dreams of flickering images of the cliffs, dark tunnels, and the professor’s face blurring into a strange, disjointed narrative I couldn’t piece together. At some point in the night, I woke up to what sounded like a woman screaming in the woods. My sleep was so broken by then, I couldn’t tell if it had really happened, or if my mind had simply woven it into the dark.

When I woke in the early hours of the morning, with the light creeping through the windows, I felt more exhausted than I had the night before. The coffee tasted bitter, but it did the job of forcing my mind into focus. 

Now that I knew Dr. Harrington had lived in the house and that he was a marine archaeologist, I returned to the journal with a different kind of attention. His handwriting hadn’t improved overnight, but I had a better idea of what the words might be. Beside a column of numbers, I could just make out what looked like “low tide,” and some of the crude diagrams began to resemble sections of coastline or passages through rock. Working from those fragments, I tentatively sorted the pages into notes on tidal patterns, geology, and possibly the island’s caves, though I couldn’t tell how much I was deciphering and how much I was supplying myself. My understanding of geology, oceanography, and anything adjacent to Harrington’s world was limited enough that I couldn’t even begin to anchor any coherent ideas to what I was looking at. Whatever the notes meant, the same diagrams and clusters of figures appeared again and again. Someone had kept returning to this, and I wanted to understand why.

I spent most of the day moving between the journal and my phone, trying to make sense of one with whatever information I could coax out of the other. Reception in the house was miserable. Pages took minutes to load, if they loaded at all, and I kept carrying the phone from window to window in the hope of finding a spot where it might cooperate. By late afternoon, I had accumulated more questions than answers and spent an unreasonable amount of time watching a small circle turn on a screen.

I put the phone aside and reached for my coat. I wanted to see the stretch of coastline I had spent the day reading about, if only to give the professor’s notes something solid to attach to. With a little daylight left, I decided to walk down and see whether I could find the caves for myself.

The air was brisk, and the wind whipped at my hair as I made my way along the gravel road. A few locals passed me in battered pickup trucks, their eyes lingering just a second too long. I tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the distant sound of waves. By the time I reached the stretch of rugged coastline where the caves were said to be, the sky had begun to dim, the soft gray of late afternoon giving way to shadows. The sound of the waves grew louder, crashing against the jagged rocks with a steady rhythm. I followed the narrow path down toward the shore, scanning the rocky outcrops until I finally spotted an opening. It was small, dark, and partially hidden by a cluster of wind-twisted shrubs.

My pulse quickened at the sight, but the deepening twilight sent a shiver through me. The wind had picked up, and with the light fading fast, the caves seemed less like an invitation and more like a warning. Reluctantly, I turned back, promising myself I’d return in daylight, when the shadows weren’t quite so long and the ocean’s roar didn’t feel so overpowering.