by Mark Lukens
He would explain all of that to her.
Yet he still hesitated by the door as the room grew darker and the wind blew harder.
And then he was in the kitchen with no memory of walking down the hall.
He saw his daughter in the kitchen. She stood at the other side of the room, near the door that led out to the laundry room and then to the garage. She was dressed in the same clothes that she’d worn last night, but her dark skin looked a little paler somehow … gray. Her eyes were blank, vacant even though she stared right at him.
Warren’s heart jumped in his chest … something was wrong with Erin.
“Erin …” he said as he took a step towards her.
“Daddy,” Erin said and then smiled at him.
Warren felt more tears slip out of his eyes. How long had it been since his teenaged daughter had smiled at him? She reached a hand out towards him, but he wasn’t sure if the gesture meant for him to come forth or to stay back.
Warren didn’t approach; he was afraid he might spook her or make her angry. She got mad so easily these days. “Erin, are you okay?”
Erin just smiled at him.
She was still on something, some kind of drug that she had taken last night when she’d been out partying, Warren was sure of that.
“I have to go now, Daddy,” she whispered. “I just wanted to see you again … I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, and I love you and Mom so much.”
Warren was crying harder now. “I love you too.”
Erin changed suddenly. Her smile slipped from her face, her mouth forming an O, her eyes widening in terror. “Daddy,” she whispered. “You … you have to get out of there.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to get out of that place. You can’t stay there. It’s dangerous.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“That place … that house you’re in right now … there are terrible things there.”
Tears blurred Warren’s vision as he watched Erin float backwards from the kitchen into the laundry room; her feet hovering only a few inches off the floor.
“Don’t go,” Warren cried and rushed after his daughter.
When he got to the laundry room, she wasn’t there. He rushed out to the garage but she wasn’t there, either. There was no way she could’ve gotten outside that quickly, but he rushed outside to the driveway that was beside the house. The storm had gotten much worse, the wind shrieking, leaves and twigs blowing by, the sky darkening. He fought the wind back to their shed that was filled with storage. Erin wasn’t in the backyard. She wasn’t by the pool. He checked the front yard again. She wasn’t there, either.
Then he heard her calling to him, her voice carrying on the wind. But he didn’t see her anywhere. “Daddy …”
“Erin!”
“Daddy, help me!”
“Where are you?”
“Help me. It’s got me and it won’t let me go …”
Warren snapped awake in his sleeping bag and wiped at his tears. He sat up quickly and looked around to make sure nobody else was watching him, but everyone else seemed to still be asleep.
He lay back down on his sleeping bag and stared up at the ceiling hidden somewhere up there in the darkness. He closed his eyes and it seemed like he could still hear Erin whispering to him. But he didn’t hear her warnings from the dream now … no, he heard her telling him that she loved him as he drifted off to sleep again.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In Shane’s dream he was back at the Cranston House in Ohio. He was lost inside the house. There was no way it could be so big in here, but it seemed like the rooms went on forever. One hallway led to another series of rooms, which led to another hallway and then more rooms. It was like being lost in a cave and taking tunnel after tunnel, turn after turn, and then realizing that you were only getting yourself lost deeper and deeper in the cave.
It felt claustrophobic in these maze of rooms, and it felt like it was hard to breathe. But he couldn’t stop looking for Mike. His friend was lost inside the house somewhere. He had to be close because he could hear Mike screaming.
“Shane, help me! Please, Shane …”
“Where are you, Mike?!”
No answer from Mike now … just screams, and now those screams seemed farther away like Mike was being dragged even deeper into these maze of rooms.
And then suddenly Shane was in one of the living rooms. There was furniture everywhere; most of the pieces were covered with dirty white sheets. But the piece of furniture that caught Shane’s eye was the wingback chair in the corner on the other side of the room. The white sheet that had been covering the chair was halfway off of it, part of the dusty sheet piled up on the wood floor. And someone was sitting in that chair … an old woman.
An emaciated arm hung down from the side of the chair. The arm looked so skinny and long. The hand at the end of the arm was like a giant pale spider, and each finger ended in a long yellowed fingernail. The fingernails scratched at the floor.
Scratch …
Scratch …
Scratch …
The ancient woman’s fingernails dug deep into the planks of the floorboards, pulling up little scrolls of wood. The fingernails looked old and brittle, but Shane knew that was just a deception … he knew those fingernails were strong, just like those little brown teeth in her mouth.
The old woman—Old Lady Cranston—was turning around in the chair …
But then Shane was suddenly somewhere else, pulled away from the Cranston House and now he was in a mental institution in Cleveland.
He was an adult now, and he was in the large recreation room with a group of mental patients … he was visiting his childhood friend, Michael Lachance. Other patients played board games at tables or studied playing cards that they had laid out but hadn’t moved for a while. Others stared blankly at a TV that was bolted up high on the wall. One woman stood by a barred window, staring out at the daylight and muttering to herself. Two burley male nurses dressed in white stood a few yards away from the small table where Shane and Mike sat, watching just in case Mike became violent. But Mike, in his drugged stupor, didn’t look physically capable of any violence right now.
Mike was an adult now in this part of the dream, but he looked so much older than he should’ve been. He looked weary of life already, like he was in here waiting for the end to come so he could finally be at peace.
“Mike … I’m sorry,” Shane told him. He could feel tears in his eyes.
There were faint scars all over Mike’s face from the deep scratches he’d had when the police had pulled him out of the Cranston House. The official report surmised that Mike had scratched his own face after suffering some kind of traumatic breakdown after getting lost inside the Cranston House, but Shane knew that wasn’t true.
Old Lady Cranston had done it to him … she had dug her sharp and yellowed fingernails into his flesh while she held him down inside that house. What else had she done to him?
“I tried to find you,” Shane said and he couldn’t stop his tears now. “I swear I tried to find you in there. I looked and looked, but the house seemed to go on forever. It seemed to grow the more I looked for you.”
Mike sat unresponsive. He didn’t console Shane. He just stared at him with a Thorazine gaze. His mouth hung open slightly, the corners of his mouth dotted with dried white spittle that looked like tiny little cotton balls.
“Please, Mike … forgive me.”
“She showed me things,” Mike finally said in a low and guttural voice, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like he was having trouble swallowing.
Shane didn’t have to ask Mike who he was talking about. In Shane’s many trips to see Mike, this was the first time he’d ever heard Mike talk about what had happened inside the Cranston House … it was the first time he’d ever heard him utter a word.
“She showed me things that you don’t ever want to see,” Mike continued in his slurred voice, his v
acant stare focused on Shane, yet seeing something else at the same time, some other dark world that he was still trapped inside of. “You don’t want to see those things, Shane.”
“It’s okay,” Shane said.
“You don’t want to see them,” Mike said again, his voice a little louder, his eyes brightening a little, coming to life.
“It’s okay,” Shane said again. “Try to calm down.”
“You don’t want to see them,” Mike said even louder, growing angry and frightened at the same time.
Shane glanced back at the two male nurses and he saw that their attention was focused on them; they seemed ready to act at any moment.
“You don’t want to see those things!” Mike yelled and jumped up to his feet. And then he lunged across the table at Shane, his mouth open wide, revealing small brown teeth just like Old Lady Cranston’s, and his fingernails had grown into long yellowed claws …
Shane jumped awake in his sleeping bag. It was morning. The daylight invaded the dining hall. Someone (Shane’s money was on Kristen) had pulled a few of the heavy drapes back from the rows of tall windows at the far end of the room.
Everyone else was awake. Nick and Kristen had some water boiling on the portable electric stove for coffee and tea. Harold was munching noisily on a bowl of dry cereal.
“Come join us for breakfast,” Nick said, holding out a few breakfast bars fanned out in his hand like a deck of cards. “We’ve got chocolate, chocolate chip, double chocolate, peanut butter caramel, vanilla …”
Shane nodded at Nick. “On my way,” he told him. He felt the slight and unreasonable embarrassment at having been asleep in a room while others were awake. It was an uncomfortable feeling knowing that others might’ve been watching him while he slept. Had he snored? Had he thrashed about in his sleeping bag? And even worse, had he talked in his sleep?
Or screamed?
Would they even tell him?
Coffee sounded better to Shane than the assortment of breakfast bars, and the lure of coffee was enough to get him out of his sleeping bag. He felt tired, like his sleep hadn’t been deep, like it had been interrupted a hundred times through the night without his remembering it.
Harold set his cereal bowl down in a cardboard box of dishes to be washed. At least Shane and Kristen weren’t washing them; they’d already taken their turn at that. Harold drained his paper cup of coffee and tossed that into the garbage bag beside the box of dishes. He stood up and grabbed his backpack and bag. “I’m going to run some tests,” he told Nick.
Harold didn’t look at anyone else. It was like everyone else wasn’t consequential enough for him to acknowledge, almost like he was embarrassed to be on this island with a bunch of crazies chasing ghosts and spirits. Harold seemed resolved to complete the tasks he’d been hired by Nick to do and not entertain anything else.
“Okay,” Nick told Harold. “I’ll meet you out there in a little while.”
After Harold walked away, Shane poured himself a cup of coffee and then added cream from a sealed packet and then he tore open a packet of sugar and shook it into the cup.
“Why do you need a geologist?” Nigel asked Nick bluntly.
Nick sipped his coffee, not answering. But there was a whimsical expression on his face like he loved piquing everyone’s curiosity.
“Does it have something to do with the seismic activity here?” Warren asked Nick.
Nick brightened a little like that was a good enough reason to admit to. “Yes, it does.”
Nigel stared at Nick like he didn’t believe him—it was an expression he had most of the time for all of them.
But this time Shane had to agree with Nigel because he didn’t believe Nick’s answer, either.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Harold had to walk towards the rear of the manor to find the best spot in the ground to test. He’d had to trudge through the sea of weeds and tall grasses to get to this spot, but at least it was somewhat level ground and at least he hadn’t seen any snakes so far. He wasn’t usually scared of snakes—they could be a normal hazard in his line of work—but he assumed there might be some poisonous varieties on this island. A bite from a poisonous snake, or spider, or anything else, could be very bad since they were stuck on this island with no way back until tomorrow morning. He understood that most of the others on this expedition were afraid of supernatural things, but Harold wasn’t a believer in the paranormal and his fears were more rational: snakes, spiders, scorpions, falling through a rotten part of this house, and of course the seismic activity they had felt a few times since they’d been here.
There was a lot to fear here and they didn’t even have the capability to contact emergency crews unless Nick was hiding a satellite phone that he wasn’t telling anyone about. Maybe that’s what was locked inside that wooden box that Nick kept near him all the time.
Still, the lack of emergency plans on this island bothered Harold. It seemed like an unnecessary risk and Harold, as a scientist, didn’t believe in unnecessary risks.
But Nick Gorman was a different animal altogether—Harold knew that now. Nick had spent his life taking on risks. Was there a riskier profession than betting on the film industry with its unbelievable chance for failure, so much time and millions of dollars wasted just because of the public’s fickleness when it came to the box office?
Harold glanced up at the manor looming next to him. The walls were stained from decades of mildew and mold, and deep cracks penetrated the ancient blocks below the stucco finish that was flaking off in many areas. That building could be a death trap, Harold thought. The whole thing could come crashing down on itself if these quakes got a little stronger. He shivered at the thought of being buried under all of that rubble, trapped in the darkness, his bones crushed, trying to catch his breath as he breathed in the dust and ground stone.
But what scared him even more was what he’d picked up on his X-ray readings. He was sure that Nick would want to investigate what he’d found and he wasn’t so sure he was ready to go along with that exploration no matter how much money Nick was willing to pay him.
Harold’s mind slipped back to a few weeks ago when he’d been approached by Nick Gorman, a famous movie producer. He couldn’t even guess what Nick wanted to talk to him about. And Nick had kept it a secret, not wanting to divulge too much information until they could meet in person somewhere. He also forced Harold to sign an ironclad non-disclosure agreement before he would even talk to him.
They met at a restaurant two nights later, Nick paying for everything. Nick didn’t want to talk business at the table; he wanted to wait until they could be alone. Nick had asked Harold generic questions about geology and his work during their meal. He’d asked how Harold had gotten into this kind of work. He’d asked what had fascinated Harold about rocks and the earth under their feet. They compared stories of the places they had visited around the world: Hawaii, Japan, South America. Of course Nick’s stories were far more fascinating and entertaining, a one-upping of Harold’s stories without Nick even seemingly aware that he was doing it, like it was a habit ingrained so deeply in Nick that it was a permanent and unchangeable part of his personality now.
After they’d finished their dinner, they had walked down to a park. The streets were pretty clear at this late hour and the only other people around was a group of teenagers doing tricks on skateboards a few hundred yards away.
After they sat down on a park bench, Nick told him about this job on Devil’s Island.
Harold was quiet throughout Nick’s entire pitch. He didn’t know what to say after Nick had finished talking. If this hadn’t been Nick Gorman with this offer, then Harold would’ve immediately walked away. But he had stayed there on that bench and he had listened to everything Nick had to say.
“The payment is acceptable?” Nick asked, and he seemed worried because of Harold’s bland expression and stunned silence. But Nick had no way of knowing that this was Harold’s normal expression—he never showed exuberant emoti
on of any kind; it was the way he’d always been: opening Christmas presents was a torture for him as he tried to force himself to act excited at another shirt or pair of socks.
“Yes. Of course. There’s nothing wrong with the payment … it’s more than generous …”
“Then what is it?”
How could Harold tell Nick what he really thought about his offer? How could he tell Nick that this whole idea was crazy, that it was beyond the scope of the normal world that Harold lived in? But in the end Harold signed on with Nick’s little expedition not because he believed in what Nick proposed or because he was dying to go on an adventure or because he was honored to be courted by the great Nick Gorman. In the end he signed on because the money was too hard to pass up.
And now here he was on Devil’s Island with Nick Gorman. He wasn’t ready to admit that Nick was right about all of this, but the evidence was right there on his X-Ray screen … it was down there somewhere underneath his feet.
The X-ray readings were just a start, and it was worth investigating this further, and he was absolutely sure that Nick would want to proceed with this.
Something moved near the corner of the manor and Harold just caught that quick flash of movement. He turned and stared into the thick wall of trees and brush that hugged the back of the manor. Lines of weeds and small shrubs hid the base of the building and vines grew up the cracked stucco. But they only grew up to a certain height; beyond that height there were only the withered black skeletons of vines that had tried to climb higher and died.
He saw someone standing there in those trees and brush. It was a man … a man he knew.
His brother.
This can’t be real … this can’t be real …
Harold’s brother stared at him with dead eyes sunk deep into his face. The flesh on his face, neck, and stick-thin arms drooped just like it had when he’d lost all muscle tone in the last few months of his life from the cancer that had been eating him away from the inside. His skin was paper-thin, and all of it had a yellowish tinge to it, covered with splotches of purple bruises everywhere on his arms and legs. He wore the faded jeans and T-shirt that he always seemed to be wearing the last few months of his life, both articles of clothing too big for his emaciated body.
