Summer's End

by Joel A. Sutherland

  Fear swelled in Jacob’s gut like an ice-cold ball. He turned slowly as if in a dream, a dream in which he had surrendered control. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what Ichiro was pointing at but he was powerless to look away.

  This time, it wasn’t a shadow, and it certainly wasn’t a water stain. Standing between them and the front door was Dr. Stockwell. Tall and muscular with narrow eyes. They were like scalpels, those eyes, sharp enough to pierce straight through flesh and bone. He was dressed in the same suit and apron he had worn the day Jacob had seen him from the woods. He lifted his surgical case in front of his chest.

  “I told you—” He opened the first latch. Click. “Not to—” He opened the second latch. Click. “Come back here.”

  He slowly pulled out a surgical knife. It was bigger, sharper, altogether more real than Jacob had envisioned in his nightmares.

  Dr. Stockwell took a step toward them, then another. The sound of his boots clomping on the floor sent shivers up Jacob’s spine.

  His mind raced in a million different directions, envisioning a multitude of horrific outcomes. He managed to quiet his thoughts and yell, “Run!”

  In the panic-fuelled chaos that followed, Jacob didn’t see where his friends scattered. He ran backwards, unwilling to turn his back on the doctor, but his heel caught on something. He tripped and fell. His back was the first thing to slam into the ground, followed by his head. Jacob’s vision spun. Light exploded in his eyes. Despite his pain he sat up quickly.

  Dr. Stockwell towered over him, impossibly tall. “Look out,” he taunted. His voice was guttural and rough, like chains being dragged over gravel. He raised the knife in the air, preparing to swing it at Jacob.

  Jacob leapt to his feet and turned to escape.

  Then he saw her. A mere metre down the hall, between him and the stairs, was Tresa. She stood with her hands out, silently staring at Jacob with terror in her wide eyes. Her skin was thin and pale as morning frost.

  Go, Jacob commanded himself, don’t stop, just run, and he did — straight through Tresa’s frail body as if she was nothing more than a cloud of mist.

  He sped through the kitchen and into the dining room, slamming the door closed behind him. But if he kept running, he’d enter the parlour with the phonograph and then be back in the front hall.

  I’m trapped, he realized.

  SIXTEEN

  August 27

  Jacob stumbled through the dark dining room without thinking to turn on his cellphone’s flashlight. He banged his knee on the table. He crouched and peered underneath it, desperate for a place to conceal himself while he collected his thoughts. But he’d be painfully visible under the table.

  There’s nowhere to hide, he realized. This wasn’t a childhood game of hide-and-seek. How was he supposed to hide from Dr. Stockwell? Even if the ghost couldn’t see him under the table, Jacob feared he’d be able to hear his heart as it tried to pound its way through his chest: boom, boom, boom.

  Get a grip, he told himself. You can’t hide, and you can’t stay here.

  Think. Think, think, think.

  The basement. As little as he wanted to go down into the basement at that particular moment, he knew that’s where he had to go.

  The door to the parlour was open, a small blessing since he wouldn’t have to slow down to open it. If Dr. Stockwell was following him, he’d be coming through the kitchen any moment.

  Jacob took a few deep breaths, steeling his nerve. He gripped the side of the table and listened.

  Silence.

  Ignoring the pain in his knee, he sprinted to the open door.

  Except, when he was just a few steps away from it, it slammed shut with a bang that shook the walls. He reached his hands out in front of his face and braced himself as he ran into the door with a grunt.

  He didn’t know what had happened. He’d been running, the door had been open, and then it wasn’t. He’d collided with it and was too dazed and shocked to think of an explanation.

  But then he heard her.

  Right behind him.

  “Hello, young man,” said a woman’s voice, a voice he had never heard before. But he knew instantly who it was. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Jacob turned and pressed his back against the door. He could see very little in the dim light, only the faintest outline of the table, the chairs and a person sitting at the opposite end of the room.

  “Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to bite you. Turn on a light and see.” Tresa spoke with a slight German accent and her words hung in the air like a waft of smoke.

  Jacob didn’t want to oblige Tresa, but felt he had to nonetheless. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and noticed that it was after three thirty. He turned on the flashlight. The light twitched across the walls thanks to his shaking fingers. It settled hesitantly on Tresa, seated at the head of the table. She smiled.

  “See? I’m not so bad, am I?”

  “You’re not real,” he said.

  “Come, now,” Tresa said. “You’re talking to me. That makes me real. Why don’t you sit?”

  “That’s not what I meant. You’re not really alive.” He kept the quivering light trained on her face while he moved his other hand blindly behind his back in search of the doorknob. “You’re Tresa, aren’t you?” Perhaps if he distracted her she wouldn’t notice that he was trying to escape.

  “What a clever boy you are.” She clasped her hands and nodded. “But not clever enough by half. You’ll find that door quite locked.”

  His fingers finally found the knob. It didn’t turn when he tried to twist it.

  “See? I always tell the truth.”

  How could the door be locked? It had just closed a moment ago. Jacob tried to turn the knob more forcefully, no longer caring if Tresa saw him trying to escape, but it didn’t budge. He looked at Tresa and his eyes settled on the door to the kitchen behind her.

  “Also locked,” Tresa said.

  “What are you doing?” Jacob said, his confusion being replaced by panic. “I came to save you, and the children. I knew Colton. I think I can stop your husband once and for all.”

  “Please rest assured that I’m not trying to lock you in, Jacob. I’m trying to lock him out. I can stop him, but not for long. It’s safer in the basement. He hates the basement.”

  “How do you know my name?” Jacob felt on the verge of tears. Nothing made sense. His world had flipped upside down.

  “I know everything that happens in my house. Everything.” Her smile disappeared for a moment, but Tresa was quick to summon it back. She even managed to laugh demurely. “Please, sit.”

  “No.”

  “I insist.”

  The chair opposite Tresa slid away from the table, its clawed feet scraping over the floorboards. Reluctantly he sat, but he kept his back straight and his legs tensed, ready to spring back to his feet if need be. But where would he go? With a sickening feeling in his gut it dawned on him that he was totally at Tresa’s whim.

  Why was she slowing him down? She’s crazy, Jacob thought. Completely insane. How could he blame her after everything she had been through, first in life, then in death?

  While trying to devise an escape plan, Jacob figured he might as well keep her talking. “I know what he did. I know he killed you and a couple of children and himself. I think he’s somehow managed to keep on killing kids over the years.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Jacob swallowed and nodded. “I read about it in the newspaper. He used one of his surgical knives.”

  Tresa sighed and turned her gaze downwards, then nodded. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to have your belly sliced open, to have your intestines spill out through your fingers.” She cupped her stomach gently as if her cut had reopened. “Death didn’t come for me immediately. I was alive for a few minutes, lying beside my husband while I watched our blood pool around us in the hall. It felt like an eternity.” She buried her face in her palm. “Sometimes it feel
s like I didn’t die at all. I get so confused.”

  Jacob let her words wash over him without stopping to allow them to fully sink in. If he thought about what was happening, this conversation with a confused, sorrowful dead woman, he was afraid he might start to break down himself. “He was upset that you couldn’t have children, wasn’t he? Is that why he killed the first couple of kids?”

  “Have you ever seen someone die from tuberculosis?”

  Jacob shook his head, realizing Tresa wouldn’t know that TB was no longer an epidemic.

  “It’s a dreadful sight to behold. They called it the Great White Plague in Europe. It destroys the lungs, causing fever, weight loss and coughing of blood. My husband didn’t kill the first two children. They died on their own.” Tresa’s glassy eyes had a faraway look. “But they didn’t stay dead, did they? No, they did not.” Then, as if she’d just realized she had said something she shouldn’t have, her eyes snapped back into focus and she covered her mouth with her hand.

  Her shock emboldened Jacob, if only a little. “Their souls remained.”

  Tresa sat in silent contemplation for a long time. Just when Jacob thought she might not say another word, she spoke.

  “This island is special,” she said. “It kept those children here, as if it knew they were too young to die. Sharon Kennedy and Jeremy Langdon. And just like that, James and I had the children we always wanted.”

  Jacob had a hard time concealing the thought that popped into his head: They weren’t yours to keep.

  Tresa continued. “A third child, Patty Anderson, died shortly after Sharon and Jeremy, but not from TB. She died in a house fire after she left the island, her TB cured. My husband stayed up late, waiting for her to return, but she didn’t. It became apparent that in order to remain here forever, the children had to die here. When James realized that, he … he …”

  Jacob didn’t finish her sentence for her, fearful she’d get angry and stop talking. But any fear he had felt when she had first appeared in the dining room was slowly turning into pity. Tresa was weak and damaged, both of body and mind.

  “He killed him — an innocent boy, Danny Fielding. His health was improving. He was only six.” She buried her face in her hands and sat quite still. If she was crying, she was doing so without a sound. Jacob seized the opportunity to scan the room, still looking for a way out. He saw nothing new: two locked doors, one table, twelve chairs and one hutch.

  But in that hutch was cutlery. If he could somehow retrieve a knife and use it to pry open the door’s lock, he might be able to break free. The locks were old. Hopefully they’d be weak with age.

  “Am I boring you?” Tresa asked, looking up.

  Jacob whipped his head back to her. “I’m sorry. My eyes drifted, that’s all. What happened to Danny after he died?”

  She stared at him for a while before responding. “He stayed with Sharon and Jeremy, proving that anyone who dies here stays here. When I found out what my husband had done, I was sickened. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I was terrified of James, of the monster he’d become, but I knew I had to do something so I decided to go to the police. He stopped me in the front hall as I was leaving. He no longer trusted me and told me I couldn’t leave the island again. I tried to fight past him, and that’s when he cut me.” She laughed bitterly. “Of all the things that could have gone through my head as I lay dying, my last thought was that I would never have children of my own. My husband then stabbed himself in the heart, and like the children, our souls remained here.”

  The story fit with what Jacob had expected, but hearing it told first-hand from one of the murder victims made it all the more gruesome, shocking and tragic.

  Suddenly, Tresa cocked her head to the side and her eyes went wide. “Did you hear that?”

  “No,” Jacob said in a panic. “What is it?”

  A moment passed that was fraught with anxiety.

  Tresa finally said, “It’s my husband. He’s coming. Get to the basement. I’ll stop him for as long as I can.”

  Jacob jumped to his feet and upended the chair behind him. He heard the parlour door unlock, and it swung open a crack. Without waiting to see what Tresa planned on doing when Dr. Stockwell arrived, Jacob dashed out of the dining room, through the parlour, across the hall, into the doctor’s office and nursery and into the adjoining room, past the old cots and down the rickety stairs. Blood pumped through his veins and his head began to pound.

  As he took the stairs three at a time, Jacob could have sworn Tresa whispered one final warning directly into his ear.

  He can never have too many children, and it’s time for him to claim one, two, three, four more …

  But she wasn’t there. Had the voice been his imagination? There was no way to be certain.

  The final step snapped in two under Jacob’s weight, and he pitched forward into the dark, landing with a crash on the dirt floor. His cellphone flew from his hand and skidded away in the shadows. He inhaled a cloud of dirt and coughed violently. The humid air smelled just as bad — no, worse — as the first time he and Ichiro had stood at the top of the stairs and looked down. The reek of death was so strong in the basement that it burned Jacob’s nostrils every time he inhaled. He tried breathing through his mouth but it wasn’t much better. After a moment, he got to his knees, then to his feet.

  Although it was so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, he knew with absolute certainty that he was not alone. He felt eyes on his back and a slight breeze on his skin, as if from a passing body. And then he heard a faint whisper.

  “Are you alive?” said the child’s voice. “Or are you dead?”

  SEVENTEEN

  “Who said that?” Jacob demanded of the dark. “Who’s there?”

  The basement could have been large or small, completely barren or filled with unspeakable things — he had no way to tell. The uncertainty — the unknowing — made him feel anxious and claustrophobic.

  “Ichiro? Hannah? Hayden?”

  No one answered.

  Although all he wanted was to dig himself into a deep hole, he knew he couldn’t let his fear get the better of him. He couldn’t freeze. He had to act.

  Jacob got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward slowly. The right side of his body ached where he had landed at the foot of the stairs, but he gritted his teeth and tried not to groan in pain. He swept his hands through the dirt in a wide arc as he inched his way into oblivion. He hoped his searching fingers would land on his phone. He prayed they wouldn’t touch anything else.

  He heard something scuffle near his hands. It could have been anything: a large insect, a rodent or even a small human.

  The cool sensation of metal touched his fingertips as his right hand landed on something in the dirt. He ran his fingers along the object’s edge and realized it wasn’t his phone. The metal rounded up from the ground. It was a wheel.

  He planted his left hand in the dirt to push himself up, and with a stroke of luck, found his phone.

  Jacob stood and turned it on. The battery had twenty-two per cent power remaining. He hoped it would be enough to do what he needed to do, and turned on the flashlight.

  An old, rusty wheelchair sat empty in the middle of the floor. It rolled backwards ever so slightly, no more than a millimetre, issuing a brief but jarring groan. Had he bumped it when he stood up?

  The chair was rather small. Covered in dust, its cracked leather seat had two rounded indents where legs had worn it down, forever leaving their mark.

  Jacob turned his back on the wheelchair and slowly scanned the rest of the basement. He hoped to find it filled with normal storage items — boxes, furniture and old clothes — and nothing else. But he found no such reassurance.

  Near the back wall was an ornate bookcase filled with ancient medical textbooks, more than a few devoted to tuberculosis and its treatment. In front of the case was a wide wooden table. On its surface, neatly arrayed in precise rows, was a variety of archaic surgical
tools: scalpels, drills, saws, scissors, rubber tubes, a blunt metal hammer and rods that resembled railway spikes.

  Jacob’s eyes wandered over the equipment that had been intended to save lives, and he felt sickened at the knowledge they had been used to take lives instead.

  Crackle, crackle, he thought.

  It was nearly too much for his mind to handle. He wanted to get out of the basement, fast, but he knew he couldn’t. Not yet.

  Behind him, the wheelchair’s rusty wheels squealed. Jacob spun and pointed his light at it. It was still empty and appeared to be in the same spot as he had last seen it.

  Scratch-scratch-scritch.

  The sound came from his right. He swung the light to the side but there was nothing there, just an empty corner. But there was something on the wall, scrapes or markings of some kind.

  He crossed the basement to examine the wall more closely.

  They were letters. Twelve sets of two, crudely etched into the wall by hand and knife.

  Three sets of the initials had been crossed out, while a fourth set had been crossed out twice. It didn’t take Jacob long to figure out the grave significance of the letters.

  PA must stand for Patty Anderson, the girl who died after she left the island and didn’t return. SK and JL are Sharon Kennedy and Jeremy Langdon, the two children who died from tuberculosis and remained. And DF is Danny Fielding, Dr. Stockwell’s first murder victim. These must have been the last twelve children who were treated here.

  Jacob reached out his hand to trace Danny’s crossed-out initials, but his fingers met a subtle but deliberate resistance in the air a centimetre from the rough brick, as if pushed back by a magnetic field. His hand suddenly felt unnaturally cold.

  The unpleasant feeling made him flinch. He recoiled, then stubbornly pushed back, determined to touch the wall for no reason other than to prove that he could. Jacob succeeded, but his hand didn’t stop at the letters and brick. It passed straight through.

  Before he could react — before he knew what had happened — a small hand from within the wall grabbed his wrist with a firm, icy grip.