by Ron Ripley
“Someone recording this?” Eric asked, fumbling with his own phone.
“I got it,” Vic replied, holding his cellphone up.
The boy gave them a confused look, put the pipe back in his mouth, and said around it, “You’re all going to die.”
Eric chuckled, and Vic let out a laugh.
George felt his stomach tighten. He lowered his phone and asked, “What?”
“Die,” the boy repeated. “Do you understand? We’re going to kill you. All of you.”
“Hey,” George said to Eric and Vic, “maybe we should leave?”
“Are you kidding?” Eric asked.
“Come on, George,” Vic said, grinning and glancing over at him. “Can you imagine the hits on the site when these go up? The video will probably go viral.”
George looked back to the boy, who had gotten to his feet.
“No,” George whispered, “this isn’t going to go viral. This isn’t going to go anywhere. He’s going to kill us.”
“Ghosts can’t kill people,” Eric said, grinning.
For the first time, George could hear the slur in Eric’s words. The man had drunk more than George had known. A glance at Vic showed he was too giddy with the idea of being an internet sensation to recognize death was at the end of the pier. Death in the form of a little boy with an unlit pipe in his mouth.
The boy smiled. A quiet, disturbing smile which reminded George of his worst nightmares. The smile was a promise of pain, of misery, of pure terror right before the moment of death.
“We need to leave,” George whispered. He left his friends on the pier and got back into the Whaler.
“Get in!” George shouted at Vic and Eric as he tried to start the boat’s engine.
Vic and Eric looked at him, and the engine sputtered.
“Come on!” George said frantically, trying to start the boat again.
“George,” Vic called, “relax, man, ghosts can’t do anything.”
George looked up at him and was about to argue the point when he saw the boy. The ghost was walking down the pier, humming softly to himself.
George recognized the tune. It was an old sea shanty, one his grandfather had used to sing. The boy was at the refrain.
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid, George thought, hearing his long dead grandfather’s voice.
“This is great,” Eric said. “Absolutely fantastic!”
George tried again to start the engine, and again it refused to do more than sputter.
Vic continued to record, turning to follow the boy as he came to a stop in front of Eric. The boy looked up at Eric, who, in turn, bowed his head slightly to look into the boy’s upturned face.
“You, on the boat there,” the boy said, not turning away from Eric.
“Yes?” George asked, unsure of what else to do.
“You were smart,” the boy said pleasantly. “You’re the one who wanted to go. For that, you shall.”
George hesitated, then he tried the engine again, and it started.
“Get in!” he shouted. He climbed up, untied the boat before he jumped back down.
“No,” the boy said, his voice carrying with it a note of deadly seriousness. “They don’t get to leave. Just you.”
George went to protest, but he stopped.
The boy, with his right hand straight as a knife’s blade, plunged it straight into Vic’s stomach.
Vic stiffened, dropped the phone, and gasped in shock and pain. He convulsed slightly, tried to breathe but couldn’t. The ghost grinned and turned his arm gently to the right.
Vic’s scream echoed off of the stones, and the door to the keeper’s house was flung open.
Enough! George screamed to himself. He turned the wheel hard to starboard, slammed the throttle down, and the Whaler fairly leaped away from the pier and back to the open sea.
More of them in the house, he thought frantically, aiming for the mainland. Oh, Jesus, there’s more than one.
Fear drove him away, and he abandoned his friends to their fates.
Chapter 20: Things Get Worse
Shane had heard far too many screams. The newest one was completely unexpected.
He had finished moving the unfortunate Eileen into the shed to lay alongside Dane, who had already begun to decompose in the June heat.
He had rinsed the taste of death out of his mouth, spat it out on the ground, and thought he had heard the sound of an engine.
Shane straightened up and thought, Did they send someone a day early?
He grinned, thrilled with the idea, and he hurried to the front of the keeper’s house. He quickly ran around the corner as Courtney was coming out the front door. Down on the pier, Shane saw three people. Two of them were men, and one of them a child. The men were alive, and the child was not. A large, deep-sea fishing boat turned away from the pier and raced out into the sea.
Shane’s excitement at a possible rescue vanished.
“Stay up here, Cort,” Shane said, motioning for the young woman to stay back.
She gave him a nod and Shane ran down the slight rise to the pier. He held his horror in check as the child, a boy with a pipe, pulled his hand out of one man’s stomach. As the stranger collapsed to the pier, the boy advanced on the second man, who backed up, holding his hands out in front of him.
“Stop!” Shane yelled, his boots hitting the wood of the pier.
The boy turned, grinning around the stem of the pipe. Behind him, the man turned and ran, diving into the ocean.
Shane watched as the boy’s shoulders slumped and he turned fully to face him. The boy took his pipe out of his mouth, pointed at Shane, and said, “You’ve ruined my fun, you have!”
“Have I?” Shane asked, catching a glimpse of the man swimming away. “Let me call him back.”
“The other? I think not. He’s too afraid, he is.”
The swimmer dipped beneath a wave and didn’t appear again.
“And,” the boy grinned, “he didn’t swim out far enough. Not nearly. There are a few of us in the rocks beneath the waves. He’s joined them now.”
Shane forced his thoughts away from the drowned man, glanced at the man lying on the pier and saw he wasn’t dead. Severely injured, but not dead.
“What’s your name?” Shane asked.
“Ewan,” the ghost said, and he spoke a sentence in a different language.
Gaelic, Shane realized, translating it quickly.
Shane replied in the same. “I would have to argue, Ewan. I do know who my father is.”
Ewan’s eyes widened, and then the boy grinned. Still, in Gaelic he said, “So you speak the mother tongue, do you?”
Shane nodded.
“It is a pleasure to hear it,” Ewan said, smiling pleasantly. “Never did I expect to hear it again. I have been here a long time, Shane Ryan.”
“You know my name?” Shane asked, keeping an eye on Ewan as he took a small, careful step towards the downed man.
“We know your name here,” Ewan said. “We were told to expect you.”
Shane stopped and looked at the boy. “Told by whom?”
“By Dorothy, of course,” Ewan said. “She knew you were coming. I wouldn’t worry about the man behind me, Shane. He’s not long for this world, although he shall be in mine soon enough, don’t you know it?”
“What did you do?” Shane asked softly, hoping the boy was lying.
“I pushed and pulled, prodded and poked,” Ewan said in a sing-song voice. “I rearranged a few things. To be honest with you, Shane, I’m surprised he’s still breathing air.”
“Is there no way to save him?” Shane said.
Ewan shook his head. “And it is not his fate to be saved. Fear not, each of us has our destiny. His is to be here, with us.”
“And what is mine?” Shane asked.
“None of us have heard about your fate, Shane. Not even Dorothy. But she would like to pretend she has,” Ewan said with a wink. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a bit
of a schedule to keep.”
Before Shane could react, Ewan turned around, took hold of the man on the pier, and dragged him into the ocean.
Shocked, Shane could do nothing more than watch as the man vanished into the depths.
What the hell is going on here? Shane wondered. He remained there for another minute until he heard Courtney calling his name.
Shaking his shock off, Shane turned and made his way back up to the keeper’s house.
Chapter 21: A Phone Call is Made
“So,” Uncle Gerry said, sitting down and smiling at her. “What’s new with you?”
Marie Lafontaine shrugged, relaxed, and said, “Not much.”
“Have you seen Shane lately?” her uncle asked, a falsely innocent note in his voice.
“I did, as a matter of fact,” she replied, frowning. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he said, dropping a hand to his dog’s head and scratching the German Shepherd between the ears. “None at all.”
“You wouldn’t be pushing to have us start dating again, would you?” she asked.
“Would I ever do such a thing?”
“You would,” she answered, “and you have.”
“I thought you two would get along well together,” Uncle Gerry said.
“We do, and we did,” Marie said. “We’re not compatible.”
“You make it sound like a chemistry problem,” he said.
“If you want to boil it down, Uncle Gerry,” she said, sighing, “that’s exactly what it is. We like each other. We have a good time when we go out. I don’t want to date him. He doesn’t want to date me. Even if we did, and if we got married, there is no way in hell I would live in his house. Pretty certain he won’t leave it either.”
Uncle Gerry harrumphed, took a drink of coffee, and shook his head. “Too bad. I’d like to see you married, someday.”
“How about I just shack up with someone for a while?” she asked teasingly.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started, Marie.”
She chuckled and said, “Back to the first question, yes, I saw him earlier this week. You know Amy bought the lighthouse, right?”
“Your cousin on your father’s side?” Uncle Gerry asked.
Marie nodded. “Yeah. She had a little bit of trouble with her contractor and Shane said he’d help her out.”
“Has he said how it’s going?” her uncle asked.
“No,” Marie said. “I have to call Amy in a little bit. They’re supposed to keep in touch with one another. No cell phone reception on the island, so they’re using e-mails.”
Turk, her uncle’s dog, stood up and looked patiently at Gerald.
“Really?” Uncle Gerry said. “I just poured my coffee.”
“Why do you talk to your dog?” Marie asked. “You know you sound crazy, don’t you?”
“What do you want me to do?” he replied, putting his mug down on the coffee table. “He asked to go out, you want me to ignore him?”
Marie shook her head as her uncle stood up, wincing slightly.
“Come on, Turk,” Uncle Gerry said, motioning to the dog. “Let’s go.”
Turk walked slowly behind her uncle, and soon she heard the back door open. She took her cell out, pulled up Amy’s number, and dialed it.
After two rings, her cousin answered.
“Hey, Marie!” Amy said cheerfully.
“Hey Amy,” Marie said, grinning. “Any word from Shane?”
“Hold on,” Amy replied. “I’m just getting to this morning’s emails. Had a late start to the day.”
Marie listened to the clack of fingers on a keyboard, then Amy said, “Okay, here we go. Hm, looks like there’s nothing going on. He says he’s checked the house, and the shed. No ghosts yet. Shane also said he’ll be checking the lighthouse itself. He’ll shoot me an email as soon as he finishes up with it.
“And,” Amy said happily, “I’ll send you a text as soon as the email comes in. You worried about him?”
“Of course,” Marie replied, surprised.
“You two a couple or something?” Amy asked slyly.
Marie found herself blushing. “No, Amy. Christ, you and my uncle Gerry are absolutely terrible about Shane.”
“Even without his hair, he’s a pretty good-looking guy,” Amy said, snickering.
“Lay off,” Marie said. “Anyway, you’ll shoot me a text?”
“Guaranteed,” Amy replied.
“Great,” Marie said. “Thanks, Amy.”
“No,” Amy said, “thanks for sharing him. I really appreciate what you’re both doing to help me out.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll talk to you soon,” Marie said. She ended the call and put the phone away. From the back of the house, the rear door opened and the click of the dog’s claws on linoleum could be heard.
Uncle Gerry and Turk came into the room, resumed sitting at their previous seats, and her uncle said, “Were you talking to someone, or was I hearing things?”
She grinned. “No, you weren’t hearing things. I gave Amy a quick call. Shane’s fine.”
“Good,” Uncle Gerry said. He leaned back into his chair, saying, “Tell me, what’s new and exciting in this fair city of ours?”
“Nothing,” she said. With a sigh, she began to tell him about the rise in gang violence and drug-related crimes.
Chapter 22: Feeling Isolated
Scott had never felt so alone before. Not even when he had been forced to sleep in the musty old sub-basement of the Upsilon-Upsilon House when he was a pledge.
Courtney was asleep on the kitchen floor. Scott sat on the countertop, and Shane stood in the doorway of the living room. The older man lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then let out a long, steady stream of smoke.
Didn’t even ask to see if I minded, Scott thought angrily.
Shane looked at him, and Scott turned his head quickly.
“Come on,” Shane said. “Let’s go out front.”
The tone of the man’s voice told Scott it wasn’t a request, but an order. A command from a man who seemed to have been used to commanding.
Angrily, Scott got up and followed Shane outside. Once in the cool, night air, Shane gestured for Scott to sit down. Scott sat on the front step and glared at Shane.
Shane’s face was a perfect mask of calm. His eyes shined in the starlight. The anger in the man’s gaze forced Scott to swallow nervously, his own emotion subsiding. He lowered his eyes, cleared his throat, and asked, “Why’d you want me out here?”
“Because we need to talk,” Shane answered.
“About what? ‘Cort?’” Scott said, spitting out the last word.
“It would be best if you calmed down,” Shane said softly. The deadly seriousness in the man’s voice made Scott swallow uncomfortably. “Do you understand me?”
Scott nodded.
“Good. This is not about Courtney. Whatever is going on between you two, is just that; something going on between the two of you,” Shane paused a moment as if allowing Scott to comprehend what he had said. “This is about the three of us, this island, and the ghosts who are here. I want to move us out of the house and into the lighthouse soon. I don’t trust the house anymore, not with Dorothy living upstairs. I’m not certain as to who’s in the lighthouse, but we’ll move in and find out.”
“Dane was killed in the lighthouse,” Scott said in a low voice.
“Yes,” Shane agreed. “And Eileen was killed in the house. Got five other ghosts in the basement, one on the second floor, and possibly one in the lighthouse. Let’s not forget there are at least three dead from the pier. There are ghosts and bodies all over this damned island. I would feel better about going into the lighthouse. If you want to stay in the keeper’s house, then I’ll give you some supplies, and you can wait it out there.”
“I will. I’m not leaving the house for anything. I don’t want to be in the lighthouse. It’s where my best friend died. What about Courtney?” Scott asked, finally looking up at Sh
ane again.
Shane shrugged. “I think she’s a smart woman. She’ll make up her mind and go where she thinks is best.”
A spark of hope ignited within Scott. He straightened up. “When are you moving into the lighthouse?”
“In a bit,” Shane said. “I’m going to try and get a hold of the owner again, see if the internet connection is back up.”
“I don’t even know why it would be out,” Scott said angrily. “Even without any phone service we should be able to go online.”
“Regardless,” Shane said, finishing his cigarette and rubbing the butt out on the ground. “I’m moving in. First, I’ll divvy up the supplies.”
Without another word, Shane slipped past Scott and returned to the house. Scott sat on the front step, looked out at the haze in the sky, and smiled.
She’ll stay with me in the house, Scott told himself, nodding. I know she will.
Chapter 23: Getting Worried
Shane still couldn’t access the internet. The laptop wouldn’t power up. And neither would his phone. He stood in the kitchen, both of the devices on the counter, and he tapped his fingers lightly. The urge to light up another cigarette was strong, but he resisted.
God forbid I run out of the damned things, he thought.
Courtney snored suddenly and opened her eyes tiredly. She blinked several times, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
Shane smiled at her.
Her presence alone made him happy, which was strange.
And she’s way too young, Shane thought, shaking his head. It felt odd to be attracted to someone her age. He let the thought slide away and focused on the task before him. He needed to get his supplies into the lighthouse. Above him, he heard noises, and he wondered if Dorothy or the naked Mike Puller might wander down the stairs again.
Why will the lighthouse be safer? he asked himself.
Because Dorothy’s not here, and she’s the worst one around.
He looked at the stack of MREs on the counter. Adding them to the food he had brought, between the three of them, they had enough to last four days.
If we stretch it, he added silently.
Bottled water had been found in the basement of the lighthouse. All they needed to do was either wait for Amy, or whoever she sent, to rescue them from the island.
