Chapter One: Grey Island Getaway
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This place is weird as shit.

I realize that's not exactly elucidating, but hell. It's looking less and less like anyone is ever going to read this anyhow.

My name is Stephen. I'm a commercial writer. Yesterday, I got on a plane bound for Shanghai. Somewhere over the ocean, the front half of the plane fucking disappeared. Six others and I wound up on a life raft headed for an island, reaching the place just as night fell.

This place is weird as shit.


Last night, all we really thought about was the house. We knocked, not really expecting an answer from such a deserted looking place, and then smashed the window on the front door and let ourselves in. Immediately, I headed for a small couch in the entryway and collapsed.

This morning, one of the other guys woke me up with a cup of coffee. It was the best damn cup of coffee I've ever had. His name's Tim, he's an accountant for some firm out of San Francisco. He was in the row behind me, apparently. He says the others are a construction guy named Markus, a banker named William and his wife Marie, their six year old son Evan, and a girl named Marjory who apparently knows a lot about cars. Whatever.

Anyway, they'd been scouting out the island, so I went out to join them. The place is, as I mentioned, weird as shit. The house is the only structure on it except for a single telephone pole, with one end of its lines connected to the house and the other dangling brokenly across the concrete driveway leading away from it and ending after just forty feet or so at a cliff so straight it may as well have been cut with a razor. My best guess is they moor some kinda barge here or something and connect it to the house, or maybe there used to be some kinda pier… No telling. That weird straight edge forms that entire side of the island, so that the whole thing forms a wonky oblong with a flat edge at one end like an unrolled condom.

On the other side of the house is a perfectly manicured lawn, complete with a little ornamental garden and a rope swing setup. There's a small dock, too, with a canoe moored at it. Markus thinks the canoe means there's more land nearby- it's tough to prove him wrong with all the fog that surrounds the island. He wants to row out and see what he can find. Most of the others are against it, but I figure we're obviously close enough to civilization someone is gonna find us soon enough anyway, and there's no harm letting him try. Hell, I'll help him shove off if he needs it.

The house itself looks like the sort of condo you'd find in a seaside town pretty much anywhere, with a vaguely Edwardian cast to its architecture. Lots of wood and suchlike. It's set up with modern appliances and lights, but there's no power at all- I guess the power came from the same place as the phone. Tim says the fridge was mostly empty but for half a gallon of rotten milk and some cheese that was just starting to go moldy from the warmth. That's a good sign. It means someone was here recently enough for the cheese to have just gone bad. The question is, when will they return?


Markus is gone.

The canoe is gone too, so we're assuming he took it while no one was looking. There's not a sign of him anywhere, though Evan keeps claiming he can hear Markus yelling. He's just a kid, and he wants to help. I don't blame him for pretending. Tim found one of the canoe paddles washed ashore a short way down from the dock. Not a good sign. Still, it's too early to worry, isn't it?

I found a gun in one of the cabinets while rooting through the house. It's loaded. I have it shoved into the waistband of my pants now… I'm not sure whether I want to tell the others. I'll hold off for now, just in case. If help arrives, keeping it secret will have done no harm, and if it doesn't, well. Better I have it than anyone else, I think.

Marjory is screaming.

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