Murdock

As the day reached its prime, the waters were sundered by unseen forces into a state of calm. It was an unnerving calm – the likes that would come before a storm. The skies were smothered grey, and a persistently warm and muggy haze rose from both land and sea.  

Nana had retreated to the house to prepare a birthday meal. This, of course, left us alone and to our own devices.  

Jake and I stood on the wet sand, letting the lethargic waves wash over our legs. We looked proudly at our new prize – the Wild Harlock in all her glory. She was a formidable sight in this cove so serene. I felt Jake put his hand on my shoulder. Maya watched us from afar. 

“We should take her out?” Jake whispered. 

“The boat or Maya?” I laughed. 

He looked back to me. “Both,” he said.  

We humoured ourselves quietly; Maya was no fan of the open water.  

Our plan revolved around the fact that it was my birthday. There would be no need to lure her onto the boat or trick her; she would come because today was mine. Besides, we only wanted to show her what real waves looked like.  

“Come on, Maya,” we pleaded, as we circled around her deck chair. 

“We just want to have some fun,” Jake said. 

I looked at her, “Yeah! Oh, and didn’t you say yesterday, we stick together? It wouldn’t be fun without you.” 

She rolled her eyes to the sky. “It wouldn’t be fun without me, because you just want to watch me hurl or fall overboard. I know you two! I know what you’re doing…” She then pushed her sunglasses from her eyes and stared at us seriously, as we did our best to return our most disappointed and miserable looks. “You know I don’t like boats. People shouldn’t be on the water like that. It’s not natural—” 

Jake interrupted her, “You wouldn’t even exist if the Tawa had never sailed. Have some pride, Maya!” She then kicked sand at him, and he almost stumbled into his hole from earlier. 

I whined to her for one final time, with my widest eyes. “But Maya… It’s my birthday!”  

She scrunched up her eyes and covered her face, wiping away illusory tears.  

The Wild Harlock raced across the sea, and all that could be heard was the roar of her engines and the wild laughter of both Jake and myself. We could feel Maya burning holes into the back of our heads, and when we dared to turn to her, we saw only her fetal shape, cradled into the corner of the pilothouse. 

“See, isn’t this fun… Maya?” My long emphasis on her name invited chaos. 

“Cal – I’m going to kill you – if – when we get – back!” 

“I don’t think you’ll be getting any of Nana’s cake if you do that,” my friend cried, as he suddenly jolted the wheel to the side. 

Maya wailed in the background, “How – dare you – mention – food – now. Really – Jake?” 

“What? We’re hungry! Hey, Cal, what was it again?” 

“Chocolate. I heard chocolate.” 

“Good, that’s what Nana told me too. Lots of cream and—” 

“SHUT—” Maya’s voice was cut short by involuntary retching. At first, I thought she was joking, but she was most definitely not. Soon the chaos became all too real, and the Wild Harlock was about to suffer for it…  

“No, Maya! Not in the boat,” I screamed.  

“On the deck, at most,” Jake screeched. 

“I am – not going – out – there—” She suddenly gagged into her hands, and Jake and I tried to cower behind one another.  

“You have to… It’s the only way,” our voices spoke together.  

She stared at us incredulously. “Then – slow – down. It’s too – fast.” 

I looked to Jake and he looked back to me, as if he knew that we had screwed up somewhere along the line. He stuck his hand out and reset the throttle. 

As the boat slowly ground itself to a stop, Maya stumbled to the door, barely reaching it before she gagged again, making Jake squirm beside me. 

“It’s – even – worse – now,” she moaned. 

“You’re just never happy, are you?” Jake cried back. 

As Maya lurched over the stern, Jake and I silently made our way to the front of the boat. We did our best to relax with the now queasy ocean soundscape.  

“Maybe we should have left her behind,” I said. 

Jake propped himself up on his elbows and looked out to the waves – almost with an ounce of wisdom. “She’ll be fine – just needs to get it all out. Once I had a greenhorn on the trawler; then the storm showed up, and you know how my dad is; he loves to wait for the storms to come; that’s when he says he needs me on the job. What was I saying again?” 

“The greenhorn!” 

“Yes, the dear little greenhorn. He was like Maya now, but in a storm… so worse… But as soon as he spilt his guts, he was right as rain. I’m telling you; Maya is going to thank us for this experience.” 

“Oh, I agree. By our sides, she will come to realise all the wonder and mysteries of the sea. Hey, I hear footsteps. Time to go. Mind getting the anchor?” I said, motioning to the winch at the bow. 

I greeted Maya with a nervous grin, but she simply shooed me away, as if I were some kind of pest. “So, how are you feeling?” I asked. 

“Better, Cal. I’m just – hungry.” 

“Time for Nana’s cake?” I smiled. 

She looked as if she wanted to strangle me at first, but then her enraged face slowly came undone, and she released a long sigh. I saw a smile; then she punched me. Yet before I could decipher her intent, we heard Jake’s voice shake, “Hey guys, you should come check this out!” 

We found him sitting at the nose of the boat with the anchor in his lap.  

“What is it, Jake?” I asked, kneeling beside him. 

He pointed to the small anchor’s tip; its nose was a ridged dome, and the surface of this dome was rough, etched with a harsh grid-like texture. “Did you notice this in the cove?” 

I took a closer look and felt the dome, my fingers nestling in between the ridges. “No! I thought… I thought it was normal – standard.” 

“Well, in all my days, I’ve never seen an anchor like this,” he said with a hint of fear. 

Maya leant over. “It looks like a lid! Can you turn it… like a screw?” Her voice was coloured with the same dark intrigue. 

My hand responded as a vice; my fingers wrestled the ridges and my skin grated against the hostile texture. I exerted all the force of my forearm, yet when I felt my blood flee and my breath become weary, the dome had not moved, not even by some minuscule amount. I gripped it again, but this time I felt it give. It rotated slowly outwards, revealing a poorly designed screw. It took five long turns before it came apart from the anchor; what it left behind was a clandestine hollow. Jake looked at it gingerly and then cautiously worked his hand into it. “I feel something,” he whispered. Out from the hole came his hand, and nestled in his grip was a cork-tipped glass vial. It glistened in the high sun which was now falling once again. I slowly took the vial from him and brought it into the shade of my palm. Within the glass slept a rolled-up sheet of paper.  

Maya and Jake came opposite me and watched in complete silence. I saw their eyes catch, their pupils dilating as I removed the cork. The paper slid from the upturned vial and into my hand. It uncoiled itself as if it had a great longing to be read. I granted its wish. 

I held it up to the sky, and what I read changed me. My heart started to accelerate, and my mental state began to fluctuate. Excitement. Fear. Misery. Joy.  

“What does it say?” Maya asked lowly. Jake nodded too. 

I put the paper down to the deck, as if my entire life force had been spent. The wind caught the paper, and I let it go. It fluttered around us, and I watched it without a care. Yet Jake jumped up and caught it; he read it with Maya. 

It was a letter from my father. I remembered its every word. 

‘If you are reading this, son, then I am dead. For our heritage is a dangerous one, and so is our ancestral past time. We hold the obsessions of many, but the understandings of few. When you find those who will walk beside you, do not let them go; do not make the same mistakes as I have done.  

As I write this letter, I am on the verge of uncovering the legendary Tawa Gold. The tales of the island are true; make no mistake about that. If I do not survive, if you are reading this now, then I pass the helm over to you. Our family line may try to distance themselves from the mystery of the Murdock Isles, but in the end the allure always wins. Sometimes it is best not to run from fate. 

I spent the better days of my youth in search of an artefact, a compass of sorts; it is the first direction towards understanding these isles; therefore, it is the first step towards the gold. In the event of my death, I have arranged for the artefact to be hidden at the co-ordinates, written on the other side of this paper. 

Yet, I urge you to be cautious. Many rats of the sea share our allure for this gold, but there are also larger, more malevolent forces at work. The two great corruptors! I am sure that you know of them well by the time you read this, or at least you will. They may not long for the Tawa Gold, but they are entertained by those who do; and they make it their purpose to stop us, no matter how grave the cost. 

I will meet you again in the locker of the deep, 

Your father. 

22nd April 2012’ 

“Cal!” Jake cried.  

“Can you hear us?” Maya shook me. 

I came to, and I nodded slowly. It felt as if my entire head was heavy, dizzy and overflowing with thoughts and nonsensical voices. I started to speak, and I felt my mouth move, and I knew that I spoke of the letter, but I could not remember or even hear what I was saying. I think that I was in shock.  

By the time my mind actually awoke, the sun was looming over the waters, and I had returned or been returned to the pilothouse. My friends were by the helm, fussing over the letter. I went to them, and they treated me as if I was still ill – stuck in a torpor. Perhaps, I was because I was too drained to convince them otherwise. Regardless, I started the engines up, plugged in the coordinates. My body was mechanical in its every action. 

“Wait!” Maya looked to Jake. “Where are we going, Cal?”  

I replied with the voice of a dead man, drowned, “To find what was hidden – by my father.”  

Jake came beside me; I felt his energy trying to get a grasp on mine. “How far away is it?” he asked, tapping at the nav-computer. “Okay, okay. Two nautical miles. It’s just off the Murdock and Meridian Islands. We can make it there and back in time for cake!”  

I looked to him and met his sly grin. We laughed as instinct, and again I felt his hand on my shoulder as I steered us into the face of the unknown. Maya was behind us, uncertain, but with us all the same. 

As we narrowed in on the coordinates, we saw the two main islands that formed the bulk of the Murdock Isles. Murdock Island was the greater of the two, and it was home to many of the Isles’ poorer folk – poorer yet richer in many other ways. Jake and I had our homes there. Maya did also, and we would not choose to be anywhere else. For our island had kept its natural beauty in all its entirety. Pristine beaches went undiscovered to most. Thick forests formed majestic barriers around the few dirt roads. No one really knew why this island went untouched, inhabited by so few and by those whose families had lived here for generations. Many assumed it was to do with the authority’s love for the Murdock legacy; they did not want to profane the island that held his name; they were protecting its symbolic authority, or perhaps they were protecting something more. We all knew that the Admiral loved this island beyond the others, yet no one truly knew why!  

The second island, Meridian Island, was in stark contrast. Further down the separating body of water, the gap became little more than a river, and a bridge linked the two islands together. Yet despite their physical proximity at this point, the second island stood out as a separate entity. It was very built up, and it was known as the urban heart of the isles. Every civic detail was based there, and Fort Meridian, the police station, was at the epicentre of the madness. It sat in the largest town, Meridian Town – where the Governor was within prodding distance of Chief Inspector Ridley’s red-hot poker. 

The other side of the island was known as Dawntown, named after the famous battle, of course. This was where we went to school, and there were the markets, fisheries, and beach-side condos. Extensive housing estates bridged the gap between these two towns, and Monarchist Street was one of these golden-gilded bridges. 

Yet, here we were, drifting slowly towards the two great islands that jutted out of the water like the humps of a sea behemoth. Lights flickered in the distance, until Meridian Island soon became one vast array of luminescence, whilst the one that held Murdock’s name remained a dark mass. Only distant shimmers upon the far waves marked out small waterside properties. The dense forests smothered all else. 

As the coordinates came, the nav-computer beeped, and Jake alerted us. “Almost here… Hey, Maya, get out front. Tell us what you see!” he said. 

“Why me?” she objected. 

I looked back to her, as I eased off of the throttle. “I thought you liked leaning over the railings – seemed pretty good at it last time.” 

We had circled the position near on six times and after each Maya turned to us and shrugged. “What do you expect me to see? We’re basically the middle of the ocean,” she shouted. 

“Must be underwater,” Jake said to me. He seemed to shiver as he spoke, and I did too. A sickly series of spikes sheered up my spine. This artefact – to hide it in such a way! I breathed in the shrill air of fear, and yet I relished it; it was exciting and tantalising, and I believed that the same was true for my friend. “What’s the depth?” he asked.  

I looked over the wheel. The number twenty-three slowly rolled into twenty-four. I pointed to it. “Feet!” I said. 

Jake looked to his hands. They tensed, and he said with a put-on uncertainty, “I may know a remedy – for such a problem.” Beneath his broken tone was an unshaken determination. He hid it well.  

“Tomorrow,” I whispered. 

“Sunrise.” 

Maya stared at us. She could not hear our low voices, but I saw it in her eyes; she knew we were up to no good.  

We circled back around Murdock Island, away from the Meridian glare. We reached Nana’s by sundown, and as we anchored and swam for shore, the red sun was severed behind us by the harsh rule of the sea’s expanse.  

Nana greeted us on the back porch; the cake was waiting on an old coffee table, dragged out from the lounge. She seemed upset by our arrival. 

“You’re late,” she said with a hint of disappointment; it was enough to put the shame into all of us. “Was everything alright?”  She broke once more into worry, but this time it was noticeable. Jake and Maya saw it. She could not hide it this time, because she knew that something had transpired – something had changed. “Cal, did something happen?” She searched me for an answer; her eyes breached mine.  

I looked away.  

“Nothing happened. We just took the Harlock and went too far.” I looked back. “We forgot the time!” my lie rang out – a heavy deed! 

“Jake?” She turned to him. 

“We were teasing Maya. We went a bit too fast and ended up further away then we realised. Trust me, Nana, it’s easy to do.” Jake held my back, and his proficiency, and or willingness, to fib was somewhat alarming. Yet then came the real test, the crux to our fate. 

“Maya, is that true?”  

Now, Maya was the most upstanding of us all. She had proper parents, parents who raised her well. Mine were cut short. Jake’s were dysfunctional, to say the least. Yet without Maya, we were nothing; we would fall apart. She was faced now with loyalty to her friends or just plain old responsibility. And Jake and I knew that this artefact was host to dubious desires, yet we wanted it all the same; we were the fools. It took insight to see that, but pure folly to accept it. So, Maya was stuck in between a rock and a hard place – us or Nana, whom we all dearly loved. She looked to us; her face was flustered; it grew red; it became scared. She looked back to Nana; she bit her lip, swallowed, and then sighed indiscreetly. Oh, what we made her do for us, over and over again! 

“Yes, Nana. Nothing bad happened, except me getting a little seasick. They were going fast – really fast. Then we stopped for a while so that I could… you know!” 

Nana took a while to think. She finally relaxed, and a content smile crept across her face, and all seemed to be well again. Jake and Maya came to get their cake, and they relaxed as she did. 

Yet, Nana was not content. She knew we were lying; I saw her eyes. I breached them with mine, and a great fear lay within them. 

We had a choice to involve her. We chose to go at it alone. I said it before – 

Fools.