Chapter Forty-Nine

Isaac’s Last Stand

The wind was fiercer upon the unprotected harbor, and it stung his face as he walked further out upon the bay. The wind spoke to him in a low, menacing voice that promised doom and nothing more. It whipped fresh powder from snowbanks to smite his neck and cheeks, giving him mad chase as he tried to protect himself from the ghostly swirls.

Isaac ran to the hemlock-lined escarpment known as Eagle’s Bluff, which rose like the snout of a great prehistoric beast northeast into the desolate harbor. The bluff was conquered by neither snow nor orange ember. Its verdant strength beckoned to him.

The black river Isaac had all but forgotten in his haste now reappeared. It oozed its way through the ice from somewhere out of the south, running parallel to shore at a distance of about a half-mile. The tarry river was of one main body, which broke into smaller tributaries as it wound its way snakelike toward the bluff. From the distance it appeared to be little more than a breach in the ice as if the bay itself were being ripped violently along a seam.

Isaac glanced furtively to his left as he sprinted for the bluff. The river bubbled turbulently until it vomited spouts of black sludge. The sludge, in turn, oozed along the snowy white banks to coalesce into something solid and effluent. Clumps of sewage transformed into more distinct black piles that took root in the ice. They climbed, vine-like, from the frozen water and then changed their appearance again. They were now sinister cherry trees, stunted in growth, with leafless claws thrust threateningly toward the heavens.

The sooty trunks elongated before Isaac’s eyes until they became something monstrous. Their claws became the arms of hunched old men, hundreds of them sprouting from the sludge, blocking any escape to islands west of the harbor. The long row of hideous, rotting things ran the length of the bay from as far south as he could see to somewhere north of Eagle’s Bluff.

The creatures walked in unison toward Isaac. They grew taller and lost their slouch. Some flexed wings of raven black, and others shed clumps of diseased coyote fur. Before the staffs of rotting ash appeared in their skeletal hands he knew what they were.

An infinite cavalry of Soul Binders had come to take him. He knew they would drag him through the icy waters until he drowned. He remembered the children of the bay. Not drowning. Something different. He looked longingly at the chain of islands that ran like a string of pearls northward. They offered only false hope. He sprinted toward Eagle’s Bluff faster than he had ever run before.

The southwestern projection of limestone recoiled from jagged chunks of emerald-colored ice. A fine sheen covered the petrous wall, causing stone of rust, magenta, and copper to burnish in the sun’s final light.

Isaac ran directly north toward the bluff. Despite its groans of protest, the ice beneath him held his weight. As he neared the shore, a flash of lightning caught his attention. The limitless row of Binders was still several hundred yards west, but they were rapidly drawing near. They pursued him with fury, riding the wind like a bullet of pain along a damaged nerve.

Again the lightning flashed from the same spot at the top of Eagle’s Bluff. A lighthouse. Isaac could see its silhouette. Perhaps it had once guided ships through the treacherous shoals west of the point. He faced dangers far greater than shoals tonight. He ran straight to the boulder-strewn shore below the beam’s projections. The hoard of black-cloaked demons pursued.

The wind whipped his face and tripped him over treacherous banks of snow. It filled his ears with a cacophony of tattered sails and beating wings. He picked himself up and reached the dolomite bluff, one hundred feet of sheer height, just as the demons reached the first boulders of shore.

High above him a majestic band of Fresnel light rotated beneath an octagonal burgundy dome. Climbing the light seemed impossible, but he had to try. He searched the base of the limestone until he found a foothold. He climbed its irregular face, but the Binders neared. The breath of an unearthed graveyard rose toward him.

He ascended the uneven burgundy crag, slipping when chunks of decaying rock crumbled to dust in his hands. He managed to hang on to the wall and continued reaching with hands and feet to the next height. He climbed using all the strength of his soul, but as he neared the top the limestone began to disintegrate.

With one last effort he clawed his way to the peak. He rolled over onto his back upon a great smothering of snow. His weight pressed down upon the precarious bluff. His perch was too fragile to survive. It was only a matter of time before the lighthouse toppled into the sea.

The rotating light flashed from on high, projecting a powerful beacon sixteen miles out over the ice. The magic of the Fresnel lens appeared to arrest Isaac’s stalkers. For now. A multitude of demonic shapes looked up at their prey with unholy craving. Some clung to the crumbling dolomite with retracted wings, like fiendish angels suspended in midflight. Others waited patiently at the base of the cliff. Their soulless eyes were visible even from the great height.

The Binders cried out cruelly, their screech identical to the almost human cry of despair bellowed by the fallen Sturgeon Bay Light. How long before this point, too, was consumed? The ground beneath Isaac was already weakening, and the wildfires would not be staunched for long. With eyes closed, he whispered a prayer.

“Please God, I don’t know if you can hear me. I am all alone. Please help me.”

He opened his eyes and felt renewed strength. He stood. The sun hovered just above the frozen bay. It was a bloated red ball made stark by the leaden sky, emitting no heat and giving no hope. Thunder rumbled across the harbor, or perhaps the sound was the ice sheet cracking where the flow of black sewage ran. The day was ending, and Isaac stood below a tower of Brick City cream, measuring the moments before the darkness wrapped its sable wings around him.

Only one thing left to do. He looked down upon the thousand expectant Binders. He smiled at them and then thrust the middle fingers of both hands into the air, swirling each for emphasis.

He then turned his back to the haunted waterfront. Thick arms of black smoke flexed and extended with the winter wind, and the smell of death hung heavy in the air. He walked the perimeter of the tower with its attached home, and he looked up at the rotating beacon with a sense of awe as well as imminent loss. The last surviving place of magic. The brilliant beam shone well above the treetops, offering minimal illumination over the dusk-covered grounds. Save for one spot.

A great iron anchor of ebony, set upon two massive slabs of concrete and surrounded by chains, sat sentinel at the southeast corner of the light keeper’s grounds. Here the light washed over the mammoth anchor, casting near daylight over the perimeter of chain that encircled the memorial. He walked to the anchor’s pointed, triangular base and then followed the light upward to its source. A mirror had been placed upon the cream-colored brick chimney at the southeast end of the house. The mirror was angled to direct the rotating light down upon this very spot. He had to close his eyes each time the powerful luminescence reflected off the mirror.

This was the True Path. It had not died. He walked toward the beam of light until it washed over him.