by Bryan, JL
“It's even possible the Grolmans knew this place was unsafe, and that's why they wanted to make sure no people were allowed on the island,” I said. “Which might be something one of the living family members would know about.”
“How could anyone know?” Wyatt looked from Stacey to me. “Like Darika said, it’s been generations since they lived here. And if they had to abandon it because it was haunted, won’t they be happy to have it back in the family, fully restored, with all the ghosts cleared out? Don’t you agree, Renoir?” He looked back toward the statue, but the security guy wasn’t there anymore. He’d walked over to the front of the garden nook, looking out at the ripped-up chaos of the lawn where the construction vehicles slumbered. “Renoir?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Renoir said. He was watching Gary park his black security cart under the porte-cochère. “You’d have to ask somebody who knows the family.”
“Well, you’ve met them,” Wyatt said. “You know Adrienne.”
“I try to stay out of clients’ personal affairs,” Renoir said.
“Okay, thanks for that fantastically useful insight,” Wyatt said. “What do you two think? Stacey?” He hesitated, looking at me.
“Ellie,” I reminded him.
“Right, sorry.”
“You’re probably right, Wyatt,” Darika said before I could speak, smiling at me as she told her boss what he obviously wanted to hear. “Adrienne and her family will surely appreciate it.”
“Great, it’s all settled, then. We sally forth and continue on,” Wyatt said.
“I can handle the investigators if you want to go on your jog,” Darika said.
“I’ve got them pretty well handled. Oh, they need to catch a ferry to the mainland today. Right?” Wyatt looked at Stacey.
“Right,” Stacey said. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” Darika said, glancing suspiciously at Stacey. “We have a ferry on call. What’s on the mainland?”
“Death certificates,” I said, which pretty much killed the conversation.
“Better call that boat,” Wyatt reminded Darika, as if more than seconds had passed since we’d mentioned the idea.
“Right. Happy to. We can catch up later.” Darika walked a little stiffly toward her golf cart.
“We’d better get going, too,” I said.
“Yep, Renoir and I were going for a sunrise run on the beach,” Wyatt said. “You’re both welcome to come.”
“Maybe you could invite Darika,” I suggested.
“Yeah, she’s probably already done her morning workout, though,” Wyatt said. “She’s very into her own routine.”
“I could go for a run,” Stacey said. I threw her the most exasperated look I wanted to show in front of the client, which was pretty low-key, and it was pointless because all her attention was on Wyatt. “But first I’ll have to run to the cottage and then change before I run. I mean, we’ll probably drive to the cottage, not run, but then, I’ll run at the, you know, run…”
“Great. We’ll pick you up there.” Wyatt finally replaced his shirt as he walked off with Renoir toward the guest cottage.
Over at the main lodge, Gary stood by his security cart, watching us with a look that didn’t seem too friendly at all. No doubt he was still mad about the cemetery. He walked past Darika’s cart and through the front door to join her inside.
“Is it just me, or is everybody casting seriously hostile feels in our direction?” Stacey whispered. “Except maybe Wyatt.”
“I think Darika’s unhappy with us for going over her head to Wyatt.”
“That wasn’t intentional!” Stacey said. “We heard some guys grunting in the garden in the dark. How are we not going to go have a look? In case it was paranormal or something.”
“Let’s keep it on eggshells around her anyway,” I said. “Send her all the clips to review, too. Keep her in the loop, because I don’t think she likes to feel left out of it.”
We headed to the chambermaids’ cottage, where Stacey changed out of her boots and jeans and denim jacket, chosen despite the summer heat to provide some protection against invisible claws and bites and other ghostly attacks, and into some more jogging-appropriate attire.
“You should come, too,” Stacey said.
“Or you could not go,” I said. “Still an option.”
“You’re missing a golden opportunity to run alone on the beach at sunrise.”
“No, I’m not, because Wyatt and his security guy will be there, so we won’t be alone. I don’t jog in front of clients. Run for my life, sometimes, but never jog. But you have fun while I sleep.” I flopped down on the bed, hoping Foxy Chambermaid didn’t show up to haunt me while Stacey was gone.
Chapter Twenty
Gary's elongated security cart arrived to pick up Stacey, with Gary driving and Renoir riding up front beside him. Wyatt was in the back rows with Brad and Farlee. The rear of the security cart could technically fit four people, but it would be cramped. They were all dressed for jogging, Brad in a well-ventilated crop top with mesh sides, Farlee in a smock-style tank top that showed off the rainforest tattoos on her back, including a neon-purple poison dart frog and a scarlet macaw. Renoir was the only one in a complete shirt, a simple navy blue moisture-wicking one.
“I guess jogging’s a full-entourage activity,” Stacey said, looking through the window along with me.
“Now I feel almost rude for not joining,” I told her, then closed my eyes and returned to bed. “Well, have fun. Toodles.”
Stacey sighed and went to join them, leaving me to unwind and relax alone at the cottage, as long as the local ghosts left me alone during the daylight hours. I’d downloaded some Polish hymns in case one or more chambermaid ghosts decided to bother me.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them, leaving their farms and families in search of better pay, ending up serving at this huge, strange, isolated estate, some for the remainder of their lives.
I closed the curtains and lay in the shadowy gloom, exhausted, wondering how Stacey could feel like jogging.
My dreams were uneasy.
Barking, snarling hounds pursued me through the live oak forest on a dark night, followed by hooded figures on horseback.
My legs were tired and throbbing, like I’d been running for hours. I was near collapse.
I reached the spot where, in the real world, the crumbling bluff had undermined the high brick wall, leaving a wide break over a steep fall.
In my dream, the wall was intact, more than twice my height and topped with iron spikes. I had nowhere to run.
I turned, my back against the wall, as three boarhounds stalked toward me, their teeth bared, drooling. They looked ready to tear me apart and eat me.
A horn sounded, and the dogs ceased their advance, though they kept their aggressive stance toward me, daring me to run again.
The horse riders regarded me from their hooded dark robes. I struggled to catch my breath and realized something was partly blocking my mouth and nose. I touched that area and found sharp teeth that weren’t mine, sculpted out of some hard, smooth material, maybe clay. I wore a mask, one with a pointy nose and large triangular ears.
I tried to remove it, but I couldn’t. It was glued to my face somehow.
A rider dropped from his horse and approached me. He wore a dark hooded robe or cloak, like all of them, hiding their identities.
His face wasn’t withered, colorless, or pale, though. It was ruddy, like he’d been eating well and drinking copiously, and the ends of long muttonchop sideburns were visible on the lower half of his face.
He smiled, his lips wide and beefy, his teeth sharp and crooked.
I stood rooted to the spot as he approached, shaking with fear, unable to move, trapped by conditions beyond my control.
“Pretty,” he said, taking up a length of hair from my shoulder. The hair was long and golden and curly, in a way mine isn’t. “A perfect offering.”
He drew a long, narrow, gold-plated knife. The hilt w
as braided from platinum, gold, and silver and embedded with precious stones. It looked more like a ceremonial object than a tool or a weapon.
It cut just fine, though, when he rammed the blade through my throat.
He did it with such force that I slammed back against the brick wall. I felt myself struggling for air, drowning in my own blood.
The rider muttered something—a prayer, I thought, or a curse. The other riders joined in. Their chanting voices were the last sounds I heard before I died.
I awoke with a start, with that feeling like I’d just caught myself from falling. I was back in my bed in the chambermaids’ cottage, in the gloom created by drawn curtains that kept out the light.
Despite the hot summer day outside, I was freezing, droplets of sweat all over my body like thousands of cold pinpricks. And the window-unit air conditioning was, sadly, not good enough to make that happen.
She was in the room with me, in her black maid’s dress, her long blonde hair running in wild curls all over her shoulders, her face hidden behind her hideous fox mask.
I was tired. The ghost had been feeding on me, drinking my energy while I slept, a rather malevolent thing for them to do, especially when I was so exhausted already. But in exchange for terrible, energy-draining sleep, I’d gotten a glimpse of her memory, whether she’d intended to share it or not.
I glanced at Stacey’s bed. Empty. She still hadn’t returned from her beach exercise excursion, and our new roommate Darika was in her office at the lodge. That left me alone in the cottage to spend some quality time with its resident ghost, the Foxy Chambermaid.
“They murdered you,” I whispered, looking at the girl’s mask, the black holes of the eyes giving me no read on her emotion. “Heinrich Grolman and his hunting friends. Is that right?”
She made no sound as she turned and walked away.
I tried out some of the names from the tombstones, but I wasn’t sure I could pronounce them correctly. “Walentyna?”
She kept walking, her back to me.
“Nadzieja? Katarzyna?”
Remaining eerily, unnaturally silent, she passed out the door and turned down the hall.
“Wait! I want to help you.” I ran into the hall after her.
She was already gone, though, in that sudden and complete way that ghosts often have, which can make you question whether you’d just been dreaming, or perhaps whether your mind was slowly breaking down, making you see and hear things when you were actually all alone, haunted only by your own thoughts and feelings and memories.
Chapter Twenty-One
Stacey’s LookyLoon app wailed out its notification, loudly and repeatedly. I’d managed to drift off to sleep, apparently, and Stacey had returned from her jog at some point.
“Want to do something about that?” I grumbled.
“I don’t want to go fishing, Dad,” Stacey muttered, her eyes shut. “It’s too early.”
I rolled out of bed and picked up her phone, where the red-eyed loon logo took up the whole screen, wailing until I tapped it.
An image of Wyatt appeared, rendered as a watercolor portrait against a background of bright mutant flowers. A comic-book dialogue balloon floated above him: “How’s that ferry ride to the shore? Scenic? Should I try it out?”
I replaced Stacey’s phone on the spare bed where I’d found it. I wasn’t trying to catfish Wyatt by pretending to be Stacey. I’d just wanted the shrieking Look Now notifications to stop.
On my own phone, there was a text from Darika. FERRY ARRIVING 11 A.M. BE AT THE WHARF.
I checked the time: 10:30 a.m. “Stacey, wake up!”
“What?” She opened her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re going into town to dig through old courthouse paperwork.”
“Ugh. Can't we just get attacked by devil dogs and death riders again?”
“Sorry, you’re not getting off that easy. We’re late already, so get up and move.”
“Okay, Mom.”
We rushed to get ready and reach the dock in the meager allotted time. It turned out not to be necessary, because the ferry hadn’t arrived yet. Stacey and I spent a few minutes looking out over the water. The mainland was too far to see. The cloudy, gray weather obscured the shoreline of Jekyll Island, which was sometimes visible as a distant thin line on the horizon.
The marshy area around the wharf teemed with every kingdom of life, insects feeding fish who fed birds. A group of black skimmers, seabirds with orange and black beaks like long pieces of candy corn, loafed on a sandy patch, watching the thick brown water. Frogs warbled nonstop.
Darika's golf cart crawled down the road to join us. Wyatt rode up front while Darika drove, and his three entourage members were crammed into the rear seat. They parked alongside us.
“Whoa, party at the wharf,” Stacey said. “Are we doing an oyster roast or a shrimp boil?”
“Those both sound very cultural,” Wyatt said. “But we’re going for a ferry ride. Even if you ignored my Look Now about it.”
“What? Did I?” Stacey drew her phone, flustered. “I missed the notification somehow. Which is…not easy to do. Not for someone on your Look Closer list.”
“That’s probably my fault,” I said. “It was squawking earlier so I clicked it. Did you say you’re coming on the ferry, Wyatt?”
“We’re all coming. Farlee wants to local-source some provisions. And the rest of us…you want to tell them, Renoir?”
Renoir nodded. “All right. I was forwarded an email to Wyatt from a potential crackpot security risk—”
“The missing writer!” Wyatt interrupted. “Publius D. Tribune, who wrote that unauthorized biography of the Grolmans we needed.”
“It’s a person claiming to be that writer,” Renoir said. “He saw the LookyLoon airship on the news and started writing Wyatt emails, saying Satilla Island is more dangerous than most people know. That everyone should stay away. This person has emailed every hour since we arrived here.”
“I need to get in touch with him,” I said.
“He wants to meet with me,” Wyatt said. “He wouldn’t even talk on the phone. But he was already on his way here to Brunswick.”
“On his way to stalk you,” Renoir said.
“We’ll have him outnumbered,” Wyatt told him. “He wants to meet in public, anyway.”
“I don’t recommend it,” Renoir said.
“We’ll go in your place,” I said. “Stacey and I meet with witnesses all the time.”
“And then I just sit around doing nothing and miss out on the interesting stuff?” Wyatt looked incredulous.
“You could come to the fish market with me.” Farlee cast a warm smile at the side of his face.
“Yeah, exactly, am I going to hang out at the fish market with my chef?” Wyatt scoffed, never seeing Farlee’s smile or how his words obliterated it. “I already told the Publius guy I’ll be there. I want to see this weird little town, anyway, since I just bought an island close by. There might even be florists or whatever for the wedding.”
“There are,” Darika said. “I’ve already identified the top vendors who might be useful, as well as ones to avoid, to save you and Adrienne time after you reveal the wedding location to her—which you may want to consider doing soon, before she reads about it on the internet.”
“She’s right,” Brad said. “If NutjobStalker2000-at-AOL can find you here, Adrienne absolutely can.”
“Let me worry about Adrienne, guys,” Wyatt said. “It’s under control. Is that our boat?”
It was indeed. The Charleston Crosser made its way toward us, looking more cluttered than ever, though its parking strip was empty of any vehicles or construction equipment.
“That’s it,” Darika confirmed. “Captain Walker is the owner and operator.”
Brad and Farlee stared at the small, no-frills craft with undisguised revulsion on their faces, his arms crossed, her finger repeatedly tapping her lip in a kind of nervous tic as she stared with wide eyes. I hoped th
ey weren’t prone to seasickness.
“Looks awesome!” Wyatt said. “I’ve been so focused on the wedding and the renovation that I haven’t stopped to think how fun it is to have an actual island, especially out here in the middle of nowhere.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with Wyatt’s assessment of the area—those sea islands that hadn’t been declared protected wildlife sanctuaries had plenty of resorts and exclusive neighborhoods. And Brunswick might not have been New York City, but it was still one of the country’s oldest ports. Still, while we stood there on the edge of an uninhabited island, cut off by clouds and fog, it did feel like the middle of nowhere. The shark-infested waters added to that.
“Captain Walker will drive our van aboard himself.” I took out my keys.
“Please…do not put that beast on the boat with us,” Brad said, looking with some horror at our weathered old van. “Our ride across the water already looks unpleasant enough.”
“It’s not that bad!” Stacey said. “And you get Pringles and RC if you’re nice.”
“Wyatt, it’s not too late to charter a helicopter,” Brad said, plainly not tempted even by those finer grades of potato chip and soda. “I could have one here in less than an hour.”
“Helicopters are for hopping traffic,” Wyatt said. “There’s no traffic here. Where’s your sense of adventure? Don’t you want to see how the simple fisher folk live? Think of the local color.”
“Yes, local color, of course.” Brad shook his head and straightened his tie. He carried multiple overlapping bags again, stocked with Wyatt’s laptop and hand sanitizer and water flask and such. He wore a muted gray-plaid suit, and every red hair on his head was combed precisely into place, like he wanted to be ready for any impromptu executive board meetings that might spontaneously break out, while his billionaire boss wore cargo shorts and a rumpled Donkey Kong t-shirt.
Renoir wore a navy polo shirt and darker-hued khakis, like he wanted to be the most average-looking and least noticeable American on the street. Farlee took the opposite approach, in a screamingly bright sundress short enough to show off the colorful reptilian tattoos coiled around her legs.
