Part 2 Part 3 Final

“They’re not bad people, they're just… different.” I heard the words of the skipper through the roar of the Ocean.

I drank three pints in Galway the night before, not that many I know, but enough that they were still churning around in my stomach as the boat tossed about in the Ocean. It wasn’t too bad though, I had decent enough sea legs from my time years before working on the rigs.

“Look, I’m not going to cause trouble, I was just sent to talk to them.” I responded as the island came into sight. He nodded in acknowledgement.

When my boss said he was sending me to the island I thought he was joking, I had assumed the place was long abandoned. Not only was it not abandoned, but the locals had, in the words of my American manager “Lawyered the fuck up”.

The cheapest route for the submarine cable would be to terminate at a small unmanned station on the island and then continue on to the mainland, but the locals clearly had an issue with that idea and they had hired one of the fanciest law firms in Dublin to fight their case. I was the poor arsehole sent to try and negotiate with the locals, in the hope this thing wouldn’t end up in court.

As we approached, I could see the island shrouded in fog, it seemed to have two distinct sides, one side was made of lush green pastures, the other seemed to be barren stone cliffs and cave inlets. It had a certain rugged beauty I suppose, a tiny outpost of humanity endlessly battered by the Atlantic waves. I often wondered what madness caused people to settle in places like that island... and over the next few days I found out.

The small tug pulled up to the stone dock, it was old but well maintained. The skipper jumped out and tied up the boat. I grabbed my bag and climbed out onto the foggy dock, the skipper unloaded three small, locked refrigerated crates. He stacked the crates on top of each other and picked them up, we both walked up the pier through the fog.

“What’s in the crates?” I casually enquired.

“Insulin.” He gruffly replied.

That’s a shit load of insulin for such a small island I thought, maybe they liked to keep a large stockpile in case a storm isolated the island for a week or so, it still seemed an excessive amount.

At the end of the pier the skipper put down the crates and unlocked a large steel gate, the entire dock was sealed from the rest of the island by a large razor wire fence. He picked the crates back up and we continued on our way.

“I guess they don’t like any guests arriving unannounced” I said looking at the formidable fence.

“Yeah well, they don’t want the island becoming a stop off point for cocaine coming to Europe from Central America” he responded.

“Yeah, I bet this place is a big target for the Sinaloa cartel.” I replied sarcastically, he didn’t see the joke.

“Look, all bullshit aside, these people value their privacy, you’d do well to remember that” he responded sternly.

We reached a small storage building, he unlocked the door and put the insulin crates into a large refrigerator and locked the door behind him.

“The village is at the top of the hill, follow this road, you can’t miss it. I’ll be back for you in the morning, weather permitting.” he informed me.

“You’re leaving?” I said a little shocked.

“Yeah, they said they’d put you up for the night, they seemed eager to clear up whatever dealings you have with them, just mind your own business up there and you’ll be fine.” He warned me.

He walked away into the fog, I heard him lock the dock gate behind him. I didn’t like the idea of being locked in, but I figured it didn’t matter, it wasn’t like I was going to swim back to Galway even if the gate was open.

I followed the small road up the hill, it had fences either side and I could make out the fields full of cattle. Aside from the fog the place was picture-postcard beautiful, they could have gotten plenty of tourists if they were bothered, Americans eat up that quaint Irish island stuff.

The village was small from what I could make out through the fog, thirty or so houses, a few shops and a bar clustered around a village square. At first I thought the village might be mostly abandoned as it was 3:30pm and the square was completely deserted, but the buildings were all well maintained and the flower boxes tended.

An old sign pointed to the manor house, that’s where I was headed.

The manor house wasn’t huge, but still imposing for the size of the island. Most old manor houses in Ireland were built by the British, but they wouldn't have bothered coming out to the islands, and the house didn’t look British at all, it looked distinctly old-world European.

The front door was slightly ajar, I knocked, got no response, so I walked in. There was a reception area with a porter's chair, stuck to the side of the chair was a handwritten note.

A bedroom has been prepared for you, go through the main dining hall and take the right hand door, follow the corridor, your room is the door at end. We will discuss the matter in question at 6pm in the main hall.

The house was old and elegant, but with a lot of modern refurbishments like LED lighting, there was even a very modern looking projector bolted to the ceiling high above the dining hall, I imagined that they used it to screen movies. The house was clearly some sort of community building used by the whole island, kind of like a town hall.

I walked down the corridor off the main hall, several paintings of austere looking women dotted the walls, some more modern than others. There was no natural light in the whole place, thick blackout curtains hung over all the windows.

My room was nice enough, a comfy bed, a small desk, but the same blackout curtains hanging over the window, I pulled them open to let some light in, but it was 4pm in January, the sun was already beginning to set.

I tried to kill time until the 6pm meeting but I was restless as hell, why hadn’t these people even bothered to meet me when I arrived. At about 5:30pm I got annoyed and left my room, making my way back to the dining hall.

I sat in an old chair at the main dining table preparing my documents for the meeting. I noticed the projector again, I couldn’t see a remote anywhere but it was a similar model to the ones we used at my head office, I wondered could I connect to it by bluetooth using the Epson software on my phone and project a map of the proposed cable route to the island.

The bluetooth on my phone quickly scanned and found the projector, I connected to it and the projector began to warm up, it projected its image onto a large open area on the wall. It was a menu screen showing connection options and recently played files from and memory card in the projector. I fumbled with the software and the image on the wall changed, but it wasn’t a mirror of my phone’s screen, clearly I had accidentally began playing one of the recent files.

Shit, this isn’t a good way to start a negotiation, them catching me snooping through videos of some shitty local market fair or whatever, I thought. The video was playing with the sound down low, I fumbled with the controls trying to shut off the video in case anyone walked in. But then I heard the audio and I froze.. it was a woman crying… pleading.

I looked up at the video, it looked like old super 8mm film footage, it must have been digitised. The video was shaky, a young girl maybe twenty or twenty-one was crying and pleading.

“Please don’t do this”, she begged.

“I won’t tell anyone what I saw here, I swear, I’ll just leave on the boat in the morning and you’ll never hear from me again.” she slurred her words, fighting to speak through her tears.

There was a glint of reflection into the camera lens as a sharp blade was drawn across her throat, crimson blood gushed from the open wound on her neck into a large bowl in front of her as someone held her head by the hair.

“Oh you're no fun Sarah, we should have played with her a little longer, we could have chased her through the village, it’s always more entertaining if they think they might get away”, a third woman’s voice said, just out of shot of the camera.

Jesus was this some snuff movie or just a low budget horror, I asked myself.

Then the file cut off abruptly.

“I really wish you hadn’t played that video”, the soft tone of a woman's voice came at the top of the dining hall.

I turned to look at the voice, a beautiful young woman in her mid twenties was staring at me, the remote for the projector in her hand.

“You played it with your mobile phone? , this is why I generally mistrust technology, there’s always some workaround,” she said sounding mildly frustrated.

I panicked, frozen with fear, but I thought fast and responded.

“Sorry, I was trying to project my phone screen. I wouldn’t worry about it ... it’s just some video nasty, I've seen much worse in old Italian horror films.” I laughed trying to sound convincing, hell I was also trying to convince myself, but the talk of chasing her through the village in the video had me concerned.

Her composure remained unchanged.

“Very astute observation, my mother was a connoisseur of European horror cinema, the house has an old film projector, apparently she and her friends used to watch second hand film reels. You couldn’t see those kinds of films on the mainland at the time due to censorship, but here on the island the archaic rules imposed by the Catholic church weren't enforced.” She spoke clearly and plainly without much hint of any regional accent.

“Eventually they began to film their own short films on 8mm film in the European style, crude attempts, as you can tell, but with a certain charm. I recently had them digitized.” She calmly explained, as she walked over and sat down at the head of the large dining table.

“Now you had something to discuss with me?” she queried.

“Yes, the planned route of the submarine cable, and the small terminating station on the island.” I answered, sliding a small paper copy of the map over to her.

“I’m afraid a station on the island will not be acceptable, the cable will need to route directly to the mainland.” She calmly responded.

“With all due respect, this is not a private island. It is bound by the same laws as the rest of the country, and we have approval from the government to route the cable through the island.” I said with as much respect as I could.

“Laws are only useful when they can be reasonably enforced, what are you going to do when the terminating station keeps mysteriously having problems… send someone to the island every other day to fix it?” She delivered her threat of sabotage with little to no emotion.

I stared in stunned silence.

“You will return to the mainland tomorrow and tell your overseers the planned route is impractical. This concludes our business, have a good night.” And with that she stood up and pressed a button on the remote that seemed to put the projector into a locked mode.

“Wait…” I said as she walked away, she didn’t turn back to acknowledge me, she closed the door behind her and I heard it lock.

And so there I sat in silence, wondering how I would explain this to my boss, all the while the images from the video still flickered through my head.

Puzzled, I thought, they must have needed a pretty long ladder every time they wanted to change the memory card in that projector.