Dragon Island (2 page)

—Excerpt from
Dream Interpretation: A History
, by Sigmund Jung (1943)

F
or a moment, I’m at peace. That’s because I haven’t realized that I’m dreaming yet. In the dream, there’s no plane, no storm, no monstrous eye. All that’s yet to come.

I stand in my bedroom singing under my breath as I pack for my trip to
Tokyo
, barely registering the posters of rock, pop, and hip-hop artists that blanket my walls. Bear stands at my feet, sniffing the carpet just to be sure there isn’t a treat somewhere down there that he has missed.

I visit my dad in his homeland once a year. It’s always the same: He stares at me with stern-faced disapproval, wondering—as he often puts it—how he could’ve fathered such a spineless, ill-mannered coward.

I simply try to stay out of his way as much as possible.

It should not be too hard this year. He’s overseeing the scheduled demolition of several city blocks in the downtown area. It’s part of Japan’s Neo-Tokyo initiative—the massive revamp of the city, and it’s taking up all of Dad’s time, apparently.

He will probably just dump me off on Grandmother. All things considered, it should work out reasonably well for all concerned.

The only time Dad and I do actually get along is when we go sing karaoke together. I’m old enough to get into some of the places that he takes his business associates, and he uses me as his secret weapon to win them over. Those are the few occasions during my trips that our conversation becomes more than monosyllabic and he projects something toward me other than disdain.

The dream continues and Bear turns his attention to the door, anticipating Mom’s arrival with a panting smile. She comes in, gives Bear a scratch on the back of the head, and slips her arms around my shoulders.

I hug her in return.

“How is my widdle baby?”

“Mooom! I’m not a baby!”

“You will always be my iddle, widdle baby, Raymond. That’s just how it is between a mother and her child.”

I snort in laughter and pull away from her, shaking my head.

I look nothing like my Mom. I may get my heart from her side of the family, but when I look into the mirror, it’s my father’s black hair, dark eyes, and golden skin that I see.

Without warning, Bear goes rigid. His ears press against his head as a low growl escapes his throat. He begins barking at the bedroom window. That’s when my room begins to shake as though we are in the middle of an earthquake. The sky outside my window goes from high noon to
midnight
within seconds. Mom stumbles toward the window, trying to look outside and see what’s going on.

I try to stop her, but find I can’t move. It’s as if my feet are glued to the floor. I reach for her and call.

“No, Mom, don’t!”

But fear chokes my voice and my words come out as a small, hoarse whisper.

I look over and realize that Bear is gone. In his place stands the pale man. Unlike Mom and me, he has no trouble standing. He stares at me through his sunglasses, his gaze soulless as he grins his creepy grin.

He reaches up and peels open his face like a banana so that it’s no longer the pale man standing before me, but Dad.

“Coward!”

Dad raises his hand to strike me and I collapse to the floor and shield my face with my arms. When the blow fails to land, I dare a glance in Dad’s direction.

To my great relief, he’s gone.

Mom reaches the window, grabs hold of the frame to steady herself, then throws back the curtains. I feel my heart jackhammering in my chest as she leans forward and peers through the glass, her head turning one way, then another. At last, she looks at me and shrugs. That’s when the massive, black eyelid on the window’s other side peels back to reveal a floodlight-sized pupil. It’s fixed on Mom. The window shatters inward and I wake up.

It’s dark.

I’m cold and wet.

My clothes are soaked.

The taste of brine and the grit of wet sand are in my mouth.

My night vision kicks in and I see I’m lying on a beach with the surf lapping around me. The beach is littered with the charred, burning wreckage of the plane and the remains of...of...well, I don’t want to talk about it!

A few people stumble and crawl around, dazed and confused, blood draining from the multiple gashes on their bodies. Those in better shape see to those who aren’t. The sound of low moans and whimpering seem to be coming from everywhere.

I look around for the pale man, expecting to see him standing over me, looking down at me with a face as ghostly and crater-filled as the moon in the night sky. He’s not there. For that, at least, I’m grateful.

I start to pull myself up and the world around me becomes molten. I try again, this time, taking it slower. I succeed, but the action takes far more effort than it should. I feel something trickling down my forehead and reach up and touch it. My hand comes away with a liquid smear that looks like black ink in the moonlight.

Blood.

I recall the laptop’s carrying case encompassing my field of vision before everything went black. I take inventory and realize, despite my wound and my aches and pains, I seem to be in pretty good shape.

I think I should get up and help some of the others strewn along the beach, but, just like in the dream, I cannot seem to make myself move.

All that changes when I hear the giant splash in the water behind me. Something hits the ocean with so much force that it sounds like a bomb going off. I jerk my head around and see the resulting tidal wave rocketing toward the beach, growing in size and gaining speed as it comes.

Air presses between my lips in a steady, thin stream and then, at last, forms into a word.

“Run!”

I leap up and tear out across the beach, heading for the dense forest that overtakes the sand roughly thirty yards inland.

“Run! Run!”

I pass the wounded and the dying as I go. I reach the forest just as the sound of the wave crashing over the beach eclipses their cries. I’ve no time to mourn them or curse myself for abandoning them.

I plunge into the trees and head for one big enough—or rather, small enough—for me to climb. I say small enough because it’s just a sapling. The trees beyond it rival the
California
redwoods in size and scope. I reach the sapling and scamper upward with adrenaline-fueled speed. I’m probably ten feet off the ground when the wave slams into my lower leg, almost ripping me from my perch.

But I hold fast.

The water recedes and I climb down, having to favor my bruised leg when my feet reach the ground.

The trees surrounding me stretch into the sky like tall buildings. Moss-draped vines hang from their branches, waiting for Tarzan to use them to come swinging through. Large, tangled roots sprout from the tree trunks to snake their way through knee-high carpets of green vegetation. It’s like I’ve gone a million years back into the past!

“Are you okay?”

I turn and see a large black man in a button-down shirt and slacks standing beside me. The blood smeared down the side of his face and neck glistens like oil in the moonlight seeping through the forest canopy.

“I’m—!”

Before I can answer, the same thunderous roar I heard on the plane cuts the night air. I’m glad my pants are already wet. That and the surrounding darkness prevent the black man from seeing a new dampness spreading across my jeans.

I hear the pop and crack of splitting timber and the two of us whirl around to see something literally carving a path through the forest.

Something big.

Headed directly toward us!

“Run!”

This time I don’t know if it was the black man who shouted, or me, but we both take off like our lives depend on it. Because they do!

The pain in my leg forgotten, I bolt forward, unable to quiet the frightened whimpers issuing from my mouth as I hear the thing rampaging through the trees close the distance between us.

I cry out as I trip and fall. The black man tugs me to my feet so fast I hardly touch the ground. I run along beside him, dodging tree branches and climbing over deadfall, praying I don’t get my foot caught again.

The terrain around us changes, becoming hilly and uneven. Suddenly, the man seizes me and we both jerk to a halt. I look ahead and see the ground before us abruptly climbing upward in the form of a large, vine-draped cliff face. The man rushes forward and begins tugging at the creeper vines, lifting them as he frantically searches for something.

At last, he finds it.

He reaches down and pulls away a group of creepers hanging over a small crevice in the cliff face.

“Get in!”

Before I can argue or comply, the man is shoving me into the crevice. Once inside, I realize it’s not really a crevice at all, but a cave—one too small for the black man, but perfect for me.

“I’ll be back!”

With that, the man leaps upward. His legs dangle over the cave entrance for a moment then disappear from view as he climbs the vines running down the cliff.

But he isn’t fast enough, and his stopping to help me costs him his life.

The ground begins to tremor as the thing chasing us closes in. Dust rains down on me from the rock ceiling above with its every step. I sink to the ground and wrap my arms around my body, shaking uncontrollably with fear.

The cave’s shudders abruptly stop. The black man screams. A moment later, this sound, too, stops, and I know he’s no more.

The earth begins to shake again. I hear trees splinter and a noise that sounds like the world’s biggest suction hose starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. For some reason, it makes me think of Bear sniffing around in our backyard, on the hunt for an old bone he has buried.

Then the giant eye appears before the cave opening, eclipsing my view of the world outside. The serpentine pupil dividing its red cornea shrinks in size as it focuses on me. The roar sounds, causing my rocky hiding place to shudder around me. Overwhelmed with terror, I lose consciousness.

The samurai were fierce warriors comprised of feudal
Japan
’s noble class. Like their European counterparts, the medieval knights, the samurai’s main purpose in life was to serve their daimyo, or liege lord, and their greatest honor, to die fighting for him in battle. It is said that a samurai so associated his or her self with war that they considered the swords they carried to be the outward incarnation of their very own souls...

—Excerpt from
The Samurai Way
, by Evan Newton (2003)

I
wake from a nightmare and scream at the snarling monster facing me. I scramble backward on my hands and feet until my back hits the cave wall. After a moment, I calm down. By the sunlight drifting in through the cave entrance, I can see it’s not a monster before me, but a dead man. A dead man dressed in what once would’ve been a suit of samurai armor, to be exact. It was the skull inside the remains of the helmet that frightened me so.

Ha!

Frightened.

With my plane crashing and a giant monster chasing after me, I’ve been nothing but frightened!

At least it’s daytime, now. I must have slept through the night after passing out.

Anyway, I’m sure the dead samurai’s helmet has a proper name, but I’ve no clue what it is, and frankly, at this moment, I don’t care. It’s the sword pressed against his body that holds my rapt attention.

I rise into a crouch and creep forward, my every step slow, cautious, and deliberate. Suddenly, I remember everything, including the thing with the monstrous eye that was outside last night, and I jerk my head toward the cave entrance, expecting to see it engulf the exit and blot out the sun at any second.

I relax a little when it fails to appear.

I turn away, noticing for the first time the crude paintings that cover the cave interior.

No.

To say the paintings are crude isn’t right. The word I’m searching for is...minimalist. My art teacher, Mrs. Fox, explained that the word minimalist means to purposefully take the simplest route to create art. In other words, less is more. That’s definitely the case in regard to the cave paintings.

The samurai warrior is depicted in each one, fighting hordes of grotesque monsters that defy description and range in size from mouse-like to gargantuan. In the paintings, the samurai’s armor is made of a bright yellow wood lacquered to such a high sheen that it shines like gold.

Here and now, the remnants of the cobweb-covered uniform are so rotted with time that they don’t even hold a suggestion of yellow, much less gold.

All but the sword, that is.

I reach down and brush away the dust and cobwebs from it. The warrior holds the sword in his hands, the hilt turned downward so that the tip of its wooden scabbard touches his feet.

I take hold of the sword and tug gently, not wishing to disturb the body any more than I have to. The sword doesn’t move. I reposition my hands to get a better grip, and pull. I doubt the sword would do any good against whatever owns that giant red eye, but I know eventually I’m going to have to go looking for food and water. Having a sword in hand just might make getting them a little easier.