by Eva Pohler
Chapter One: Ghosts
Daphne Janus left her unit at Santa Cruz Island Resort, crept past the abandoned pool glowing in the darkness, and made her way down the sidewalk beyond the other cabanas. The wind blew heavily tonight, and she pulled the hoodie further down over her eyes—not because it was cold out, but because she did not want her bald head exposed. She stifled a giggle as she reached Brock’s unit and knocked on the door.
The door opened, and there was Brock, in a white t-shirt and boxers and with mussed up hair and puffy eyes. “Daph?”
“I’m scared. Can I come in?”
He blinked. “Of course.”
He opened the door wider, and she slipped by, trying not to laugh.
“I’m surprised you’re talking to me.” He ran a hand through his dark, unruly hair, which only further reminded her that her own was gone.
But enough self-pity. He looked sexy with bedhead and sleepy blue eyes. She fought the urge to kiss him.
“I heard strange noises outside my room,” she said. “Can I sleep here tonight?”
He placed his hand over his heart, like he was about to recite The Pledge of Allegiance. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
Absolutely not, she thought. “I think so.”
He stepped closer and touched his lips to hers. His lips were soft and thick and felt good, but the memory of what he’d done to her over the past couple of days, making her believe he was on her side, brought the clarity she needed to resist. She bit down hard on his bottom lip.
“Ow!” He flinched back, hands rushing to his mouth. “I guess I deserved that.”
And so much more, she thought. But don’t worry. Payback is coming.
“I’m sorry.” She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her lap. “I have mixed feelings about everything. I know you were only trying to help, but...”
He sat beside her, not quite touching her, and licked the blood from his lip. “I know.” Without looking at her, he said, “The whole time I was doing it, I wasn’t sure. Dr. Gray made it seem right.”
She rubbed her thighs, suddenly chilled beneath her sweats. Brock had meant her no harm. He had wanted to help her. She was wrong to deceive him back. But wasn’t she helping him now? It was revenge, but it was also therapy. “I just wish I could know for sure how much of it was real.”
He lifted her chin and gazed into her eyes. “Everything about how I feel—all of that was real. Please say you believe me. It’ll kill me if you don’t.”
Payback didn’t look so good anymore. “Oh, Brock.”
He kissed her again, taking her in both arms. His mouth tasted like mint with a hint of blood, and his hair smelled clean and musky. The muscles in his chest and shoulders enveloped her, exciting her. He pressed her down on the bed as tears sprang to her eyes. She clutched the hood to keep it from revealing her head. That’s all it took—the memory of her hair being shaved while he did nothing to stop it—to call up her anger.
He reached his hand to her bare scalp, but she pulled away.
“Don’t,” she said.
“You’re still beautiful, you know.”
“I don’t feel beautiful.” She sat up on the edge of the bed.
He sat up beside her, not quite touching her again. “But do you think this place helped you?”
As mad as she was at all of them for tricking her in such a cruel way—making her think she was in danger, terrifying her into running for her life—she had to admit she no longer felt like the pitiful girl she was a week ago. She wasn’t sure, though, if her feelings of self-loathing and guilt hadn’t simply been replaced by a need for revenge. Once she put her parents and Brock through the same terrifying torture as they had put her, would the self-loathing return?
“I think so,” she finally said.
“It’ll probably take time to know for sure.”
She didn’t like how nice he was being to her.
He covered her hand with his. “I want to be there for you, Daph. Please don’t shut me out again.”
Then a loud knock on the door made her jump. The ghosts, she thought.
“What the hell?” Brock said. “Who else would be knocking this late?”
She shrugged and shook her head, the thrill of the game making her tremble with excitement. She felt on the verge of hysteria as she waited for him to open the door.
He peered through one of the front windows. “I can’t tell who’s there, but it looks like a group of kids.”
The door burst open. Brock moved between the intruders and Daphne. Five of them stood in the doorway with their faces and clothes covered in white powder. Red goo dripped from red eyes and blue lips.
“What’s going on?” Brock held his arms out like a shield between the ghosts and Daphne.
“Are you one of the living or the dead?” a ghost boy asked in a low growl, probably Dave.
“What the hell? Get out! Do you know what time it is?” Brock charged them, but before he reached them, he was sprayed in the face with powder by means of a turbo-sized water gun. He rushed his hands to his face, shouting obscenities.
Daphne jumped from the bed, eager to play along. That’s when a pale hand wrapped itself around her wrist and dragged her from the room.
“Come with us,” one of the ghosts, whom she now recognized as Cam, whispered quickly at her ear. “Pretend we’re abducting you.”
He had his black hood pulled low over his eyes, making him unrecognizable. Her parents, whom he had helped torment about an hour ago, hadn’t recognized Cam either. She had watched from behind a shrub through the window of their unit as the ghosts played their mischief on her parents. Another giggle escaped her throat as she recalled the high she had felt then—the same high she felt now.
Her cheeks stretched wide. “Love it.”
“Let’s make a run for it,” he whispered. “The others will hold him back.”
She and Cam sprinted past the pool toward the boardwalk. At this late hour, well after midnight, no one else roamed the sidewalks of the resort. Even Gregory and Emma had left the poolside where they had been making out earlier in the evening. The place felt abandoned. Only a few lights on the third floor of the main building showed signs of life.
“Daphne?” Brock cried from the room.
“We’re taking her with us!” one of the ghosts—Bridget—said as Daphne raced away.
“Daphne!” Brock called again.
When Daphne and Cam reached the boardwalk, Daphne shouted, “Brock! Help! These people are crazy!”
She smiled gleefully and followed Cam, her heart pumping as she skipped down the wooden steps to the sand, where the moonlight illuminated the sea.
“Lie down here on the beach while the rest of us hide in the shadows,” Cam instructed. “We’ll ambush the both of you. You play the terrified victim, ‘kay?”
“Got it.”
He squeezed her hand. “You okay?”
She nodded, not sure what he meant. Physically, she felt great. And at the moment, she felt exuberant, never better.
He kissed her cheek and dashed away.
Two other ghosts joined Cam in the shadows of the bluffs as Daphne lay on her back on the cool sand by the shore. The moon was waning but still nearly full, and the stars were brilliant in a cloudless sky. The breeze off the sea chilled her.
Turning toward the boardwalk, she screamed in the otherwise quiet night, “Brock! Help me!”
Brock soon appeared on the top of the boardwalk, followed by the last two ghosts—Stan and Dave—who must have held him back.
Again, she screamed, “Brock! I’m down here!”
He rushed down the steps and knelt at her side.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Before she could answer, all five ghosts surrounded them, chanting, “You are not living! You are the dead! You are not living! You are the dead!”
Brock shoved the actors down on the sand, picked Daphne up in his arms, and raced back up the wooden steps toward the res
ort. She could feel his heart hammering in his chest against her, his breath pumping hard as it was sucked in and out. A thrill moved through her. Even though she knew this was all an act, it was nevertheless titillating. At the top of the steps, Brock looked back at the ghosts, who were no longer following them but had disappeared in the shadows.
“This is bullshit,” he said, along with a few other choice words. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
He set her on her feet and then pressed his hands to his knees, trying to catch his breath.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue.” She tried to sound spooked.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked her as he led her back to his room, holding tightly to her hand. “Did they hurt you?”
“No. They just scared me, that’s all.” She dusted sand from her bottom. “You don’t think they were real ghosts, do you?”
“Of course not, but I thought the games were over. I’ve had enough.”
She wanted to say, So it’s not so fun being on the other side, but she held her tongue because, for one thing, she couldn’t let him know how she really felt, and, for another, because she knew from experience, that despite his anger, a part of him had found the experience as thrilling as she.
The door to his room was ajar, so he went in first, turned on more lights, and checked around before motioning Daphne inside. She avoided his eyes, finding it hard not to laugh. She wanted to jump up and down and exhibit the feelings of excitement that were building up inside her, but she pretended to be frightened and shaken by the experience. Brock locked the door and pulled one of the chairs against it as she and her parents had both done before him, while she covered her face with her hands and tried to get a grip on her feelings. All she could think was how much she couldn’t wait for the next game to begin.
A half hour later, after she and Brock had taken turns in the shower, she lay in clean borrowed clothes in Brock’s arms biting her lips to keep from giggling. She could only imagine how much fun the next few days would be. She wondered what Hortense had in store for Brock and her parents. Would they get stuck in a dark elevator like she had with Stan? Would their kayak group get trapped with Hairy Larry in a sea cave by the tide? Would they be bucked off their horses during their trail ride with Kelly and get lost on the haunted side of the island?
This last thought upset her. Although she wanted to frighten them, she didn’t want them to get hurt. She could have been killed falling off of the horse. Ironically, that was what she had hoped for when she had agreed to come with Cam to this island. She’d wanted to die. It seemed like such a long time ago. She recalled kneeling in the stream in Central Valley after escaping from Stan and Larry, and then lying on her back, like the woman in the painting in Hortense’s office. The thought of taking her life now seemed stupid.
She still regretted not getting up that night her brother went to her sister’s room, and in his sickness, attempted to strangle a demon from their sister’s body. She still believed she might have changed the outcome of that terrible moment if she had gone into Kara’s room when she was awakened by the thumping sound, but she now understood she hadn’t caused Kara’s death. She wasn’t responsible. Her brother, Joey, was sick. Hortense Gray’s strange therapeutic games had forced her to face the truth: she was helpless against the past. It was immutable—the word Hortense had used, meaning unchangeable. Taking her own life would solve nothing.
If she had her poetry journal, she would write:
Today is another day
And tomorrow, too;
And though I miss your sweet voice
You’re in everything I do.
She wanted her parents and Brock to benefit from Hortense Gray’s therapy, but she wouldn’t allow their lives to be risked in the same way. As she lay there composing poetry and listening to Brock’s steady breathing beside her, she decided she would visit Hortense in the morning and make sure no rough play was part of the games.
First she’d have to convince her parents and Brock to stay. After their encounter with the ghosts, they sounded determined to leave. Daphne couldn’t let that happen. She had way too much to look forward to in the form of their torment to let them leave now.
In the morning, Daphne awoke before Brock. She snuck out to take another shower and dress in her room. She put on the scarf her mother had brought, and the fact that her mother had known to bring it renewed her anger and need for revenge. She decided to give her parents a call and ask them to meet her for breakfast. She used her friendliest voice. Her father sounded shocked, but agreed.
Up in the third-floor banquet hall, she spotted her parents sitting together at a table by themselves, avoiding eye contact with the other people, who were going back and forth from the breakfast buffet to their seats. They both wore khaki shorts and light-colored button down shirts. Her mother wore her frosted hair pulled back in the thick brown headband that had become her staple accessory. She suddenly looked small and fragile sitting there next to Daphne’s father. Daphne also spotted Cam, Emma, Gregory, Pete, and Stan sitting with Hortense, fawning over the doctor like they all had school-girl crushes. They gave Daphne friendly waves, and she nodded to them in return, still feeling ambivalent about their roles in her torment. Brock was nowhere in sight. She frowned and worried she should have called him and told him she’d meet him here, too.
Her parents looked up at her when she approached their table.
“Can I sit with you?” she asked.
“Of course,” her mother said, her brows in a v. “You don’t have to ask.”
She noticed they had waited for her before making their plates. “Let’s go get some grub, then.”
As they filled their plates with eggs, hash browns, fruit, and muffins, her father warned her that they planned to leave as soon as possible.
“But this place is helping me,” Daphne said, which wasn’t a lie. “I want to finish the therapy.”
Her parents exchanged looks of surprise, and when they returned to their table to eat, her father said, “Well, that’s good to hear, Daph. An absolute relief.”
Daphne noticed tears brimming in his eyes, and she flooded with guilt over what she planned to do to them.
“We’ll stay as planned, then,” her mother said, pulling the scarf a little further down on Daphne’s head.
Daphne flinched from her mother’s touch, causing her mother to frown and look away, down at her plate.
“I’m sorry,” Daphne muttered. She hadn’t realized how angry she still felt toward her mother. She had so many feelings bottled inside of her, and for some reason, most of the negative ones were brought on by her mother.
Maybe it was because she had said those words that continued to haunt Daphne. The morning they discovered Kara’s body, Daphne had broken down, crying and screaming how she had heard Joey go in there, had heard the head board hitting against the wall. Daphne had balled up on the floor, weeping. Her mother had turned to her with shock on her face and had asked, “You mean you heard and did nothing?”
Daphne had wanted to die then. She had wanted to curl up into a ball and die.
The past is immutable, she reminded herself as she twirled the silver bracelet on her wrist. We can only learn to live with it.
As they ate, she listened to her parents recount what had happened the night before with the ghosts. Daphne fought hard not to smile, especially at her mother’s exaggerations. Before they had finished eating, though, Hortense appeared beside their table, looming over Daphne like an evil spirit. No, like Prospero.
“I need to speak with you privately in my office,” she said to Daphne. “Please come by when you’re finished.” Then she looked at Daphne’s parents, gave them a curt nod, and left the dining hall.
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About the Author:
Eva Pohler is the author of The Gatekeeper’s Saga, The Purgatorium Series, The Vampires of Athens Series, and
The Mystery Book Collection. Check her website for details at https://www.evapohler.combooks.
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