The Story Of Jacob. Act Four.

The cosmic alien sentience at the beating heart of the island sought to drive the ship away. And an occult curse struggled to keep the Black Rock from nearing dry land. But sometimes cosmic energy and occult powers and the simple forces or nature - the wind and the currents and the planets orbit - all struggle at cross purposes. A great perfect storm was created and the sea opened up like a great maw to swallow the Black Rock whole but it's morsel was plucked away by hurricane winds that sent the comparatively fragile vessel hurtling through the sky from one spot in space to another, hundreds of feet directly above the island. Gravity did the rest. The magickal spell held sway and even as the ship plummeted towards the Island the the Black Rock was caught up in a ball of lightning that connected the forces of the planets atmosphere with the Island's bizarre electro-magnetic resonance. Most of the Pirates were reduced to ash - only Captain Alpert was spared and he was struck blind. And deep in the hold Jacob, sealed in a box lined with the soil of his homeland, survived.

The Black Rock landed high in the tops of ancient trees. Sturdy branches pierced the bow in places and Jacob's box fell through a hole and fell into a deep pit lined with a cluster of petrified roots. His box collapsed inward and crushed his body. The hinges and handles and fixtures of his box, which were made of silver, which are poison to the Loup Garou, nailed him to his coffins bed and a jagged wooden root plunged upwards through his chest, piercing his heart - a key step in killing the wampyr. His eyes were torn out of his face and he would never see dry land. Battered and broken, torn and pierced, Jacob died the death of a loup garou and the death of a wampyr and the death of an acursed pirate. But Jacob had been healed of death and yet lived on. In the morning the sun arose and for the first time in over a century the rays of the sun licked his flesh and he dried and shriveled and smouldered and burst aflame and burnt to ash like a soul in Hell. And Jacob - the spirit that was Jacob, the soul of a farmer and of a good man, lived on. The rain fell and the ashes settled into the soil and the spirit of Jacob became one with the Island and the alien intelligence and the strange unimaginable power of the Island.

Jacob changed the island a little, and the Island changed Jacob. Their combined intelligence continued to protect man from it's own strange power. It continued to send out an ethereal sort of beacon warning all who approached to stay away and hiding the island from any form of detection. And the spirit of Jacob, the farmer, added a healing presence and the Island grew fertile, rich and vibrant and any creature, beast or man, who came near benefitted from the islands healing properties.

Captain Alpert went to sleep blind and woke up with a sense of light and dark. The next day he saw vague fuzzy shapes. The day after that he could make out muted colors. And his eyes grew sharper and sharper until he saw again. And he had never known that his vision was less than perfect but now he found he saw better than he ever had in his life. and then he could see as if he looked through a telescope, his vision was so powerful. He was as young and strong and whole as he had ever been, alone and stranded on this rich lush Island.

A boat crashed on the rocky shore and a man and woman came ashore and lived on the island for a time and Richard hid from them and watched them from afar and saw them live their lives and he lived through them. And it saddened him to watch them grow old and die, for Richard was still cursed to live a thousand years. And when this Adam and this Eve were gone he took what was left of them and laid them side by side in a cave near the spring. The Island and the spirit of Jacob did many things but it did not heal their deaths.

Jacob - the spirit of Jacob - lived on as a force as part of the island's sentience. Jacob the farmer made the Island grow lush and green. Jacob the Immortal made things heal. But though Jacob the plague carrier and Jacob the loup garou and Jacob the wampyr and Jacob the passenger on an acursed pirate ship had died and burned away, there was still a dark part of Jacob's immortal soul that lived on, a scrap of Jacob the monster that sometimes had to come out in the form of oily black smoke and tear and crush and strike at anything he saw as a threat to the Island, or disguise itself and deceive those he did not feel he could entirely trust. And this dark part of Jacob corrupted the healing power of his spirit and could make anyone he saw as a threat to the island sick or infirm and drive them to madness or suicide.

And then somehow a group of scientists came to the Island and fearing what they could not explain they devised a way to control the island's energies by disrupting it with a counter-pulse every 108 minutes. Somehow word got out and still more people washed ashore and that's when things began to get complicated. But that emcompasses the many stories of many other people, not merely Jacob. Though Jacob's story does not end here, it merely comes to a stop for now.