The House on Stone's Throw Island

by Dan Poblocki

  “Prize?” Eli asked. “What prize?”

  The specter reached for another rung, pulling himself farther up the ladder.

  “Stop right there!” said Josie. Coombs ignored her and clasped the next rung with his wasted fingers.

  “What are you offering?” Eli asked.

  “Are children nowadays really this dim-witted?” Coombs answered. “What am I offering? Why, your father, of course. Your father, and Charlie, and good old Gregory Elliott.”

  Eli felt faint. The boat rocked sharply and he stumbled forward, tilting over the rail. Josie grabbed his arm and yanked him backward. He shook his head and then focused on the nightmarish face below. Were Aimee and Beatrice part of the bargain too? “You’ll … you’ll give them back?”

  “For a price.”

  Eli felt his lungs squeeze tight.

  “Margo,” Josie said. “You still want Margo.”

  The specter nodded. “All it would take is a little push at the right moment. Then, plop, into the drink. Down into the deep. With the rest of us.” Voices called from the other side of the ship. Cynthia and Margo continued their hunt for Beatrice and Aimee.

  “How can we trust you?” Eli heard himself ask. His body felt strangely weak, as if his skin were turning to mist.

  “Eli?” Josie said, staring at him, horrified. Shaking her head, she turned away. “If you want Margo so badly, why don’t you just climb up here and get her yourself? Or can you not do that anymore, now that Gregory is down in your sub?”

  “Ahh,” said the specter, his torn lips pulling back into something not quite resembling a grin. “Finally, a clever response. Two plus two equals four, does it not? And a spirit needs a body to have any effect on your plane. That’s where you come in.”

  “But how can we trust you?” Eli repeated, feeling tears welling in his eyes. “How do we know that you can even do what you say?” He felt Josie squeeze his shoulder. When he glanced at her, his lip began to tremble. “My father is down there,” he whispered to her. “I know he can be awful sometimes. Most times. But he’s the only father I have. How can I let him go? How can I let any of them go?”

  “This is not your choice, Eli,” Josie answered, slowly shaking her head. “It’s something that’s beyond our control. Like storms. Like wars. Like weddings.” Eli glanced around the deck, trying to locate Margo. Josie clutched his forearm, forcing him to make eye contact. “The others may be gone, but we’re still here. You and me. We’re together and no matter what happens, we’ll always be family.”

  “You can toss her over too, Eli,” Coombs chortled. “Come on. Help out an old man … A very, very old man.”

  “You’re not a man,” said Eli, peering over the railing. His skin and muscle and bones ached in a way that reminded him he was made of solid matter. He planted his rubber boots on the floor to prove it to himself. “You never were. You were never even human. You were a monster when you were alive, and that’s what you will always be. You’re not going to take anyone else down with you. Not me, not Josie, and especially not Margo.”

  He grasped the knot at his fingertips and tugged. Josie saw what he was doing and immediately joined him. Within seconds, the rope slipped away from the railing and dropped into the water. A splash sounded below. Eli and Josie peered over the edge.

  Coombs’s head was just visible above the surface of the water. His hollow eyes stared up at them. Just before he was swept away into the night, he shouted out, his voice like a rumble of distant thunder, “Suit yourselves.”

  ELI AND JOSIE STEPPED back from the edge, looking at each other with panic. “Margo,” they said at the same time.

  Josie took Eli’s hand and pulled him toward the bow of the ferry, rushing past the rows of benches that were bolted to the hull. They found the wedding planner standing in the crook of the railing at the very front of the boat. She was leaning forward, scanning the water for Beatrice and Aimee. Up on the bridge, Rick was swinging the spotlight back and forth across the waves. “Hey!” Josie called out.

  Margo turned around, her eyes expectant. “You kids see anything?”

  Eli imagined a pair of hands reaching up over the lip of the boat and grabbing her ankles. “Would you come here for a minute?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. He only wanted to get her away from the edge.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine,” said Josie, her jaw set forward.

  “Doesn’t look like it.” The bow dipped into the valley of a wave, striking the water. Spray came up high over Margo’s head and rained down upon her. Grasping the railing tightly, she didn’t seem to notice. “Looks like you both just saw … well, now it just sounds stupid, but it looks like you saw a ghost.” She finally stepped toward them, and Eli exhaled his relief. He and Josie held their hands open to her. She paused and then tilted her head in confusion. “You two hear that? Listen.”

  The three met before the front bench. “I don’t hear anything,” said Josie. “Nothing besides the boat and the wind and the …” Her face went slack and she glanced back and forth between Eli and Margo. “Oh no.”

  “Oh no, what?” Eli asked.

  “Suit yourself, he said,” Josie whispered, glancing toward the water off each side of the bow. “Eli, Coombs isn’t done with us yet. We told him no, but he’s not giving up.” She focused on a single spot in front of the boat and raised her hand. “There!”

  That’s when Eli noticed the white oblong patch appearing on the surface of the water not far ahead of the ferry.

  Josie turned and ran toward the stairwell that led to the bridge. “Sonny!” she called out and then climbed the stairs. “Turn the boat! Turn the boat now!”

  MARGO GRABBED ELI’S shoulders as the ship’s weight shifted sharply. Together, they spun around and fell onto the closest bench, sitting and facing forward as if ready to look out for whatever was coming. Sonny must have already seen the bubbling area spreading out; he must have already been getting ready to react when he’d heard Josie’s plea. Eli clutched at the seat beneath himself, knowing that if the rising submarine careened into them, there would be nothing to hold on to that would save him.

  “Eli!” Cynthia approached from the other side of the ship, clinging to the outside wall of the cabin. “Margo! What’s happening?”

  “Sit down, honey!” Margo called out. “And hold on!” Cynthia dove atop the last row of benches, laying her body flat, wrapping her thin arms around the seat.

  The patch of froth was off the bow to the right. The humming sound vibrated the air. What was left of the rain and the spray shimmered in the glow from the ferry’s lights. Then, as before, the sharp prow of the U-boat broke through the surface, climbing into the air like a fish scrambling to jump out of the water. It came up fast, with a deafening roar, missing the ferry by what seemed like only several feet. Eli watched in awe as details of the rusted hull rushed by. They were so close he could make out the individual rivets that the Germans had once used to build these vessels in their secret factories before the war.

  Sonny gunned the engine so that, as the U-boat began to level out, the finlike prow was near the ferry’s stern. The wake pushed the Sea Witch sharply away, aiding its turn back toward Haggspoint Harbor.

  Far off, on an invisible horizon, Eli thought he could make out the twinkling lights of the small town. At that moment, those lights looked to Eli like they might belong in heaven, they were so beautiful. As the ferry circled around, away from the U-boat, Eli took Margo’s hand. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He thought about what the specter of Agent Coombs had requested. If they’d given him what he wanted, maybe they would be safe now. Or at least safer. Maybe Coombs wouldn’t have sent the submarine to attack. But, Eli knew, none of that mattered. “I am if you are,” he answered, his face burning with shame, feeling as if he’d just told her a lie, though he was pretty sure he hadn’t. He turned around. “What about you, Mom? You all right?”

  Cynthia returned a muffled reply
that he took for an affirmative.

  “Sonny will get us home,” Margo said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as well as Eli. “He’s a good driver.”

  A good driver? He’d need to be better than merely good. Eli swallowed down his worry and nodded. Better not to think about anything else right now. Better not to imagine that they were leaving Beatrice and Aimee behind. Better not to imagine the specter of Coombs and his last words: Suit yourself.

  THE SEA WITCH RACED for the shore, cutting through the whitecaps like scissors through wrinkled silk.

  Cynthia had worked up enough courage to release the seat of the bench she’d been lying on to crawl forward and join Eli and Margo at the front. It seemed too dangerous to make any further move.

  Eli swiveled his body around, throwing one leg over the bench so that he could see what was in front of the boat as well as what was coming up from behind. He caught a glimpse through the window of the small group up on the bridge — Josie and Vivian stood behind Sonny at the wheel, hugging each other tightly. Rick clutched the spotlight, which was attached to the control panel to their left. Everyone looked as terrified as Eli felt.

  Then he spotted the large shape behind them. The U-boat was giving chase. It looked like it was as far away as the length of the Olympic-size pool at the YMCA back home. The Sea Witch was clocking swiftly along, but the sub was keeping pace.

  If the Germans had torpedoes, Eli wondered, would they be too old or deteriorated to detonate? After a moment, he concluded that the rules of technology were no longer in play. An ancient U-boat with a crater in its hull had risen from the ocean floor. He held his breath, waiting for a blast that might come at any moment.

  The humming groan grew louder, vibrating the atmosphere as well as Eli’s insides.

  The clouded sky had begun to turn the slightest bit gray. Dawn was coming. Land was directly ahead. They couldn’t be more than a mile from the harbor now, but at this speed, they’d reach Haggspoint’s rocky outcroppings long before that. Eli wasn’t sure if this was a good thing.

  He turned back to find that the U-boat was nearly upon them. The finlike prow approached their stern like the tip of a butcher knife. With a screeching howl, metal scraped against metal, and the Sea Witch jolted forward. Margo yelped. Cynthia wrapped her arms around Eli’s neck.

  Dark pines appeared through the misty atmosphere in the distance — one of the tiny, uninhabited islands that surrounded Haggspoint. Was Sonny trying to steer for it?

  The boat shuddered, then the stern seemed to rise up. Eli tried to glance back toward the U-boat, but some force — another rogue wave or the ghostly ship that was chasing them — bounced the three passengers onto the deck. He found himself rolling toward the edge of the bow. Throwing his arms and legs out, he managed to stop his momentum, and he skidded to a halt just inches from the railing. Margo and Cynthia lay a few feet away.

  The Sea Witch was tilting forward sharply now, lifted up by the nose of the submarine, its bow dipping dangerously close to the surface of the water. The pines were coming up quickly. Too quickly. Surf gleamed white as it splashed against sharp rocks.

  Eli struggled to stand, his feet slipping out from underneath him. He scrambled toward his mother and Margo, who’d managed to crawl back toward the benches. “We can’t stay out here.” He pointed up at the bridge, where Sonny was struggling helplessly to turn the ship away from its doomed course. “We’ve got to get inside.”

  The three held on to one another, hands linked like a loose daisy chain, and then dashed across the deck. At the stairwell, Eli nudged the others forward before following them up the steps.

  When he reached the top, Josie turned from her mother. She reached out toward him, as Eli watched the island approaching through the window. The land loomed large as the boat tilted even farther forward, lifted impossibly by the corpse of the once sunken U-boat.

  Rocks leaped toward them like snapping teeth. Peering into Josie’s eyes, Eli felt an odd calmness. He was about to take her hand when Sonny shrieked, “Down! Everyone get down! We’re gonna hit!”

  IF SOMEONE IN those early morning hours had been watching from shore as the Sea Witch collided with the coastline of that nameless islet off Haggspoint, what he witnessed would have been burned into his memory forever.

  It wasn’t just the boat accident that had been so remarkable. Yes, the bottom of the ship had been torn away like the lid of a tuna can — as one would have expected during such a crash. Moments afterward, the vessel turned, spinning onto its side, scraping along the rough beach with a wrenching squeal. Glass shattered; glistening shards disappeared into the pines where the forest met the ocean. Seconds after that, a great boom sounded — the engine exploding — and then, black smoke began to swirl out from the twisted mass of steel that moments earlier had been the hull. All of these sights would have impressed even the most jaded of New England souls, but what made the accident even more spectacular was the long metal tube that had halted just offshore where the rocks rose up from the water.

  It had been an alien-looking thing. From the way it seemed to sit and stare at the wreckage, one might have briefly imagined that it was alive. But when it let out a raucous wail, and began to back away into the roiling waters, any witness would have concluded that it was another vessel, an odd type of submarine, something the likes of which hadn’t been in production for a very long time.

  The strangest part of all: Before the submarine had a chance to submerge, the vessel appeared to become transparent, like a dense patch of fog. And when an enormous gust of wind whipped up, seemingly out of nowhere, the ship appeared to disintegrate. Whatever was left of its suddenly incorporeal body was carried away instantaneously, like mist, into the sky over the Gulf of Maine and beyond.

  IN THE EARLY HOURS of the morning after the storm, the coast guard received a distress call from the house out on Stone’s Throw Island. A young man was claiming that his family and friends were missing. There were supposed to have been ten people with him on the island — a wedding party, he explained. But he’d awoken that morning to find himself completely alone. When authorities asked him for details, he professed that he had no memory of the previous afternoon and evening. He assumed that he’d hit his head. A tree had fallen on a portion of the house, and he was worried that some of the party had been injured.

  As the coast guard was gearing up a helicopter to fly out and investigate the island, they received another report from the Haggspoint Police Department of a boat having collided with one of the rock shoals just outside of the harbor. The guard deployed a ship to this second scene to meet up with the police boat that had already traveled there.

  AS NEWS SPREAD about the crash of the Sea Witch, everyone in Haggspoint came to the same conclusion: What happened had been a miracle. Five passengers, the first mate, and the captain had all survived.

  They’d been taken to the emergency room at Seward General, where they were treated for abrasions — nothing serious, nothing that required more than a few X-rays and a dozen stitches total.

  BY THE TIME the sun had risen several inches over the quickly clearing horizon, the coast guard had arranged a wide search of the gulf that separated Haggspoint from Stone’s Throw. Purportedly, of the ten members of the party that had gone out onto the waters during the storm, five were still missing. Three men and two women, including the bride-to-be. Several boats and helicopters circled the area for the entire day, even scouring some of the uninhabited islands, looking for castaways.

  They had no luck.

  A MONTH AFTER the events of early September, there was a single question that Margo Lintel still struggled to answer: What now?

  Thankfully, she had a shoulder to lean on whenever she was feeling particularly sensitive. For weeks, her brother, Robert, had been staying in her guest bedroom, even when she stubbornly insisted she no longer needed him. The truth was, Margo did need him. But she didn’t want to be a burden. In fact, her greatest wish was to never burden anot
her soul with the problem of her existence for as long as she lived — not her brother, not her ex-husband, not anyone.

  Five people had been lost. Charlie and Beatrice. Otis and Aimee. And, of course, Gregory, her assistant, her partner — all of them victims of circumstances for which Margo would forever feel guilt. No one would ever be able to convince her otherwise.

  When Robert had picked her up from the ER after that horrible morning, she’d learned that her worries about her mother had been unfounded. Thea’d never had a chance to fret about the thunderstorm. She had suffered a stroke shortly after the wedding party departed Haggspoint Harbor for Stone’s Throw Island. Weeks later, their mama was still unconscious.

  The siblings visited Thea together whenever they could, usually in the evenings. Margo would sit with her mother, holding her hand in silence with Robert at her side. But whenever Robert gave them privacy, Margo would share her own tale of Stone’s Throw Island. Margo knew that her mother most likely could not hear her, but talking about the events, even to deaf ears, seemed to lighten the burden.

  While Robert was at work, Margo would walk to the library in town to see what new romance novels had arrived, or she’d stop by the organic grocery store for a special, fresh-squeezed green juice. Since the incident, she’d asked Robert to reach out to her clients, cancel her engagements, and offer refunds. She couldn’t imagine answering any emails herself or speaking with any happy couples about future plans.

  What now?

  Sometimes, on sunny autumn afternoons, she’d stroll to the beach and stare out at the water, allowing the soft sound of the surf to clear away unwanted thoughts.

  In the first week of October, Margo received a small package in the mail. When she noticed the return address, she became nauseated. She knew that one of the families would reach out one day, but she’d hoped it wouldn’t happen so soon. The bubblelike handwriting on the padded envelope and the postmark from Staten Island gave Margo an idea of what she’d find inside: a message from the girl. Josie. She gathered up all of her courage and tore away the flap. Upending the parcel over the kitchen table, she watched a water-damaged book fall from the envelope.