Day 1: PROMETHEA

What the passengers find on the island is both charming and disconcerting

Paranormal Dinner Club is a work of fiction told in dispatches from the Invisible Man’s brother as he explores a mysterious and deadly island.

New to the project? You can find a Table of Contents here.

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On the Island — Day 1: PROMETHEA

Suitable Accommodations. Manicured Grounds. An Important Rule.

(As you’ve instructed I’m not using dates lest this letter fall into the wrong hands. I’m resetting the clock now that we’ve arrived at the island.) 

The past two days have been largely loading and unloading. Parcels and packages. Instruments and apparatuses. Everything marked “fragile.” Everything labeled “Utmost care required!” Everything accompanied by chittering scientists who scold and plead with the porters:

— be careful! 

— come along faster! 

— don’t touch that!

— hold it steady!

My instruments, of course, I did not allow any porter to touch, despite many offers. 

We still have not met our esteemed and mysterious host yet. He’s said to be “on expedition and returning quite soon.” I will say it’s quite bold to invite a group of the world’s foremost experts in various scientific fields and keep them waiting. 

Thanks to you I can adapt to most any circumstance after the many “errands” you’ve sent me on. And I bear it without complaint because of what life has already done to me. Yet, removed from their laboratories and lecture halls these scientists seem decidedly uncomfortable. They speculate about the island, what we will find here, and its secrets. But for most answers we must wait for our host. The porters seem to know little, or are willing to tell little. 

I’ve taken to sitting on the large front porch, book in hand, watching the scientists squabble. 

We’re staying in a large lodge, but “lodge” doesn’t seem to quite do it justice. It reminds me of some of the large African lodges constructed on the Savannah there mixed with some of the drawings I’ve seen of far-flung forts on the American frontier. It is enormous and is three floors high and must have at least 50 rooms. Extraordinary. 

Around the lodge are beautifully kept grounds of the kind you’d expect to see in the English countryside. They stretch from the large patio down toward the docks. And in these fenced in grounds there are what look to be specifically cultivated gardens. But these gardens contain no plants I’ve ever laid eyes on in person or in book. Some look vaguely familiar like a cousin of corn plants yet with sharper leaves and ball shapes rather than corn itself. Some look utterly unfamiliar such as a vine growing on large wooden trellises that has white flowers and thorns in equal measure. Another looks like a common vine grown enormous as thick as a man’s arm with bright green buds. The most extraordinary one is is a purple flower planted in rows with extraordinary yellow shading at the center. (Though I was fussed at for trying to touch it.) 

And there is a series of large greenhouses that we have not been allowed into yet. The botanists are livid, which I love. I wonder if that’s where the mysterious medicine that has made Dr. Moreau so much money back in England is produced? Surely not — he makes incredible quantities of that.) 

The lodge itself has large doors nearly eight feet tall that open into a cavernous main room. The other rooms such as the dining room, the kitchens, the sitting room, the solarium, are all off this main room which has at its center a roaring fire and a gigantic hearth. Our rooms are in two wings that extend out of the main room. 

Adornments are minimal. But the lines are clean and sharp. The wood darkly stained (nearly black! I wonder what they’re using for staining). Every railing is straight. Every room laid out in the strictest standards. I expected to find perhaps a military style camp with canvas tests, or a serious of roughly cut wood homes, and this is the furthest thing from it. The buildings could not be more precisely constructed had they used the king’s own engineers. And yet — without so much as a curved line or a flourish or a hint of organic shape. 

It’s quite a contrast with the landscape around the lodge. There are bright birds and flowers everywhere. The climate is warm but comfortable for most of the day. Large leafy bushes and trees are everywhere. Throughout the day there are bird calls and the rustling of bushes and leaves from the ocean breeze. Some of the scientists say it is similar to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Compared to some of the dark and damp places you’ve sent me it’s practically a paradise. 

I’ve been provided with more than suitable accommodations — a spare but comfortable room, and via connected door another room accessible only to me. I’m told I’ve been given the only key. It seems your specifications and requirements for me have been fulfilled to the letter. In fact, I doubt if anyone else even knows I have an adjoining room in which to recreate the bare basics of your laboratory back at your mansion. 

Unless, of course, others of them have similarly hidden rooms of their own. I do wonder. 

Now, that we’re here the minimal amount of relationship built among the passengers of the ship seems to have evaporated and all seem to have retreated to their own thoughts, their own rooms. Or they collect in small pockets of like-minded scientists.

At least we do know one thing about the island: its name. For on the wall of the main room in the lodge there is a large map of the explored island and over it emblazoned the name: 

PROMETHEA. 

A daring name, to be sure. From the story of Prometheus, the human who stole fire from the Olympian gods are returned it to humanity. In that single act, according to mythology, came the advancement of knowledge and technology. He was a champion — and I begin to wonder whether our host sees himself as such a hero of humanity. Yet, in the end Zeus cursed Prometheus to be eaten perpetually by a terrifying eagle creature.

That’s a fate I’d like to avoid if I can while I’m here. 

While we wait, we do have free run of the place but only one rule is strictly imposed, written in a small sign near the front doors: 

Never, under any circumstances, are guests or staff to go out at night. 

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