Chapter Fifty-One

Final Walk of Fire

Ice coagulated in thick layers upon the massive wooden pilings of a solitary pier whose reach extended more than thirty feet out to an onslaught of angry, white-capped swells. Waves of frosted jade beat against the colossal pilings, which remained unmoved against the violence of the bay. The structure sitting upon the edge of the pier was its most magnificent feature.

One cherry red conical tower rose like a battle sword held victoriously by countless hands of frosted stone. The steel base rose and then tapered to a slimmer parapet whose heaven-most end bore the octagonal copper-domed house of light. The Gill’s Rock Light flashed a luminous column several miles out into the waters of Porte Des Mortes. The Door of Death. The sky was cloudless and blue, just touched by the orange embers of dusk. I climbed a series of iron rungs fastened to the ice-encrusted pilings.

I climbed until I reached snow-covered planks and paused to take in the breathtaking view. The beacon of light flashed across three of the four islands nestled along the merging of Green Bay with Lake Michigan. They each appeared as linear stretches of evergreen, looking ghostly and unreal in the wan light of dusk. The fourth, Pilot Island, a cursed place, was not visible from the pier. All else beneath the light was the constant flow of frosted jade and deep green as the two bodies of water surged one into the other. Wave met frigid wave, and the resultant current was erratic, dangerous, and beautiful.

I recalled stories of great ships that wrecked upon these very waters. I understood those stories took place in a different place. When I left that world, the sun had already set. The sun in this world was a ball of molten gold now setting the water and horizon aglow with crimson. Oddly, it descended over the furthest island, which I knew to be in the northeast. Furthermore, the air smelled of winter. Perhaps this world was spinning off its axis. Perhaps this world was dying.

Something profound and tragic was happening here. Every snow-covered boulder, every furious green swell, every beacon of the Gill’s Rock Light, indeed the entire sky, was consumed by a shimmering ruby deeper than any shade of red I had ever seen. Then it appeared—a path of fire that shimmered over the crimson waves of the Door of Death, connecting the Gill’s Rock Light to the shores of a distant island.

“Hello Paul.” The voice sounded childlike.

The figure moved out of the shadows beneath the light tower and approached. We had never formally met but we knew each other. “Isaac!”

We ran over the snow-covered walkway until we met halfway. “I thought I’d lost you,” I said apologetically. I embraced the child with all that I was. My voice was full of pathos and relief. If I had been too late...I put that thought aside.

“I thought you lost me too,” the young man replied, only half-jokingly. Somehow he knew he was safe with me.

Isaac pulled away from me to get a closer look at my face and neck. He touched the black leather patch carefully, and studied the ligature mark around my neck. He grimaced with imagined pain but not disgust or fear. He could tell by some hidden clue I was one of the good guys. Perhaps he could read the pattern of the True Path somewhere in my face. That thought encouraged me. Would you have recognized me earlier this evening?

“What happened to you?” His voice was full of genuine concern.

I shook my head. “It’s too long a story,” I replied. “The important point is that neither one of us is lost anymore.” I grabbed the young man’s hand paternally and pulled him away from the lighted tower and toward the sun.

“We’ve got a long walk ahead of us,” I said. He laughed at the understated simplicity but when we neared the tower a ball of flame exploded to our immediate left. The explosion was deafening. The sky flashed with a bolt of lightning, making visible the fresh wounds upon Isaac’s scalp and face. “What the hell is happening here?” I asked.

“I followed the light from Fish Creek to Gill’s Rock,” the young man replied. “The fire must have followed me. Everything here will burn. We need to move.”

We climbed down the pier’s iron rungs and together negotiated the treacherous, icy beach until we reached the water’s edge. The sun set the water alight with a blood-red path of fire. Our first step upon the path felt …

Strangely warm and vibrant. The crossing hummed with the beauty of moving and somber music. Ruby swells on either side of us receded further with each step, as if the trail itself were ascending. The path indeed rose like an arched bridge that reached its apex somewhere over the vermilion waters of Porte Des Mortes. A ball of molten gold hung just above the silhouette of sanguine trees.

“I can’t ever go back,” Isaac said with deep melancholy in his voice.

“There is much lost to us,” I answered, “but there is another world waiting.”

We two travelers pushed onward, following the sun’s unswerving beacon. The burned-copper dome of a white conical tower became visible as we neared Center Island. The light of the sun set the copper dome afire with brilliance too great to bear. We were close to home.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” a dark voice called out behind us.