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  DRAGON ISLAND

  Shane Berryhill

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 / Shane Berryhill

  Copy-edited by: Darren Pulsford

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Shane Berryhill is one of Mashable.com's 100+ Best Authors on Twitter. He is the author of CHANCE FORTUNE AND THE OUTLAWS (an official selection of the NY Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age and the Texas Lone Star Reading List) and CHANCE FORTUNE IN THE SHADOW ZONE. Look for the third book in the series, CHANCE FORTUNE OUT OF TIME, as well as his fantasy thriller, THE LONG SILENT NIGHT, to release soon from Crossroad Press. Shane loves to interact with friends and fans through social media.

  Book List

  Chance Fortune and the Outlaws

  Chance Fortune in the Shadow Zone

  Chance Fortune Out of Time

  Dragon Island

  Learn more about Shane and his work at:

  http://www.shaneberryhill.com/

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  For the brave people of Japan

  In the gap, half-concealed by a confused tangle of creepers, leaves and broken flowers, appeared a figure of terror, monstrous beyond the nature of even that dark, savage place.

  —Richard Adams, Shardik

  Let the wild rumpus start!

  —Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

  Chapter 1

  The Dragon’s Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Sea or the Pacific Bermuda Triangle, is an area in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan infamous for the disappearances of ships, planes, and other maritime vessels. While some of the more recent explanations for these vanishings involve sensationalisms like UFOs and undersea kingdoms, the original explanation is the most bizarre of all. According to ancient myth, gigantic dragons inhabit this area, often creating sudden storms with the thrashing about of their massive bodies...

  —Excerpt from The Dragon’s Triangle, by James Clayton (2009)

  My name is Raymond Nakajima and sleeping like a rock is my second greatest talent. My first is my ability to sing. But that aside, Mom says I could sleep through the end of the world, if it came to it.

  But she’s wrong.

  I know because the world is ending right here and now.

  I’m shaken awake to hear the sound of Roger Daltrey shouting in my ears. My iPod has been on auto shuffle since I nodded off during my flight to Tokyo. The passenger cabin I’m seated in shudders in time with the music as gale-force winds buffet the plane. All around me, fasten-your-seatbelt signs blink in rhythm with the riffs of Pete Townsend’s guitar.

  The track on my iPod changes to Aretha Franklin and I watch in terror as oxygen masks drop from the overhead compartments to swing back and forth to the beat of Respect.

  The cabin’s lights extinguish and I jerk out my ear-buds. The noises of the cabin come alive in brilliant, high definition surround sound. Everyone is crying and wailing. I hear people frantically dialing their loved ones on their cellular phones. I hear these same people curse as they realize their phones have no signal.

  I wish my dog Bear was here. He always makes me feel safe. He has guarded me from danger since I was just knee-high. I might be the wimpiest kid in Bradbury High School, but when Bear is around, not even the upperclassmen dare to mess with me!

  I fumble around in my chair and find the ends of my seatbelt. I fasten them together and look through the dark to where the passenger window should be. Thunder echoes as streaks of lightning flash in the distance, illuminating the airplane wing and the gray-black thunderhead it’s slicing through.

  Then it sounds.

  The roar.

  A sound so loud and so deep I feel it as much as hear it. It reverberates through my chair into my chest, rattling my teeth. The noise is completely alien. If it sounded close to anything it would be thunder against a backdrop of garbled Japanese noise music. But louder!

  And if it comes from an animal, it’s no animal I’ve ever heard. It’s certainly not a sound any passing bird could make.

  Frightened more than ever, I turn and look at the man sitting across the aisle, wanting to know if he heard the roar, too. I’ve avoided making eye contact since we first bumped into each other at LAX. His features are Asian, just like mine, but everything about him creeps me out.

  From his gray suit and black turtleneck to his dark sunglasses and pale, pock-marked face, he is one nasty looking dude.

  But the thing most unsettling about him is his smile. Even now, I get the willies thinking about the first time I saw it.

  I, of course, was on my PS handheld, wailing on some Call of Duty as I walked through the airport, when suddenly I crashed into this tall, beanpole of a dude.

  I’m what my gym teacher Mrs. Fuqua likes to call vertically challenged, so when I raised my head to look him in the eye, it felt like it took forever for my gaze to reach his. When it finally did, and I peered into the dark shades covering his eyes, I was barely able to suppress a shudder.

  “Uh, sorry, dude.”

  The man gave no response. He simply stared at me. I imagined that those were not sunglasses on his face, but twin bottomless pits.

  That’s when he smiled.

  At first, I thought there was something wrong with him. The muscles around his mouth and pock-marked cheeks began to twitch and writhe as though they’d never seen use. I was about to ask him if he was all right when a small, horizontal split opened beneath his nose to reveal a tiny gleam of white. Then his pin cushion-cheeks lifted and the split began to grow.

  It’s only then that I realized he was smiling. Or at least he was trying to, for his grin was nothing like the grins worn by most people. Rather than a natural, automatic response, his smile crept across his face, moving slowly and deliberately, as though orchestrated by some tiny worker operating a crank on the other side of his teeth.

  And what teeth they were! White. Immaculate. Perfect. Too perfect in fact, like the earliest versions of dental veneers.

  Lightning flashes and I see that the same creepy smile is spread across his face right now. It manages to disturb me even here in the plane with the storm and the potential death it heralds blowing all around us.

  “Did you hear—?”

  Before the man can answer, the roar sounds again.

  Much louder.

  And much closer.

  I whip my head around and peer out the window. I stare into the pitch, straining my eyes, trying to push back the darkness through sheer force of will.

  Lightning flashes and I see dark, indiscernible shapes moving through the clouds just beyond the wing.

  They are everywhere!

  I whirl to look at the pale man. “Did you see—?” But he’s gone. Nowhere to be seen. His chair empty. His seatbelt fastened around nothing bu
t air.

  I turn back and peer out the window. I can’t see a thing. Taking a risk, I unfasten my seatbelt and slip over into the chair beside the window to get a better view. I fasten the seatbelt and press my face up against the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes so that I may better see.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Then the roar sounds again, reverberating through my entire body, frightening me so badly I scream.

  I’m shocked into silence as a huge red sun appears in the dark sky before me. It’s like a circle of crimson flame divided by a single vertical line of pitch that thickens at its middle.

  The sun blinks and I realize I’m not looking at a sun at all.

  It is an eye—a giant red eye!

  The eye grows even larger as it closes the distance to the plane, swallowing up the view beyond. I hear the roar and then the plane bucks harder than ever. It’s as though something enormous has crashed into us. The overhead compartments burst open, spilling our luggage. I see the forest-green case that houses my laptop falling toward me and then everything goes black.

  Chapter 2

  Dream Interpretation is the practice of assigning meaning to dreams. The origin of dream interpretation dates back to ancient civilizations where this process was considered to be a form of communication with the supernatural. In modern times, various branches of psychology have submitted theories about the meaning of dreams...

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

  For 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 t
rees 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.