Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
ZEPHYR
The inside of the house is fucking warm.
I’m guessing the heating bill for this place is astronomical.
I instantly break out in a sweat as soon as I step into the hall.
It’s not even a primary hall. This had once been the servants’ passage.
It’s all old shiplap, whitewashed. I’ve always found it interesting that shiplap is such a popular feature in rustic homes these days. It was once used for the unimportant.
There aren’t any lights on as I move quietly through the hall. Matty’s been quiet for a while, but since I haven’t run into anyone, I’m guessing there isn’t anything to report. The last thing he said was for Liam to stop since someone was coming outside.
His silence means I can hear all the quiet sounds of the house. Since there isn’t much to hear, I keep my eyes peeled while also examining the hall I’m making my way down, noting all the doors that are open for me if I need a quick hiding place. And those that are closed.
I’m on the first floor, so I imagine that most of the household will be found on the second or third floors, where the bedrooms likely are.
I stare at a door with weird handles. No, not weird. They remind me of teapot handles. I bend down to look at them since they’re out of place and see the old screw holes for the doorknobs that had been there before.
Rolling my eyes, I straighten again. Someone must have thought these were more regal. More luxurious. I step inside one of the open rooms and grab the fire pokers, shovels, and a few pieces of wood. Time to lock doors.
I make my way through the first-floor sliding pieces of wood and fireplace tools through the new, loopy handles. Someone thought they were a nice, rich touch. What they are is working in my favor and for their deaths.
Matty’s voice comes back online as he calls for Arek or Lanzo. I grin because those are two people that I wouldn’t confuse, but ghosts are ghosts. Whatever. Shortly after the warning, Matty tells us Liam is at the docks preparing the boathouse.
I’m glad he returned to Matty. Leaving him alone was causing me anxiety. Besides, it’s not like we didn’t need to deal with the boathouse anyway. It makes the most sense to do so simultaneously while we take care of the primary house.
I don’t meet a single soul until we congregate in the attic. Lanzo has blood on his hands. Otherwise, it looks like this was a quiet, clean operation. Most of them will die in their sleep. I hope at least some of them are awake enough so they know they’re burning to death.
“We’ll hang back to set the fire,” Arek says.
I nod and turn toward the door.
“Wait,” Matty says, and the six of us freeze. A second passes. “There are people in the basement. They’re chained to the wall.”
“What the fuck?” Darwin hisses.
“I didn’t see a door to the basement,” Erez says. “Did you?”
We’re all shaking our heads when Matty responds as if he’s here. “It’s behind a hidden panel by the first room Zephyr went into for the fire pokers.”
I grin. Nothing like being spied on by ghosts who track our every move.
We move quickly but silently through the house until we’re next to the room I’d gone into. We fan out and poke against the wall.
“Arek or Lanzo is at the panel,” Matty reports.
“It’s a weird guessing game when he refers to those two,” Erez says, amused.
I look between Arek and Lanzo to try to figure out why the ghosts can’t tell them apart as we join them on the sections of wall they’re pushing against. The one we’re prodding at feels like it shifts, though the latch is hidden as all fuck.
After a minute, the door swings back. The stairs are stone and disappear into the dark.
Arek pulls out his phone and turns the flashlight on. He leads the way. I keep my hand running along the wall. Ahead, a light flickers on, and we’re plunged into a cold cellar. Compared to the rest of the house, emphasis on the cold.
The floor is packed dirt. The walls are stone. The ceiling is finished with wood planks, likely hiding insulation and floorboards to keep the upstairs warm. There are half a dozen doors, but only one has a padlock on it.
“Anyone see a key?” Erez asks as he picks up the lock to examine.
“I see a sledgehammer,” Orev says. “Back up.”
“The keys are in Clark’s office,” Matty says through the radio.
“Not going to look for them,” Arek says as Orev swings.
The loud clang echoes through the room as the lock gives way. Orev pushes the door open to reveal a dark room. The quiet clink of chains meets my ears, and a sick feeling fills my stomach.
Orev flicks on the light, and I’m really fucking disturbed to find four people shackled to the wall like we’re living in the 1800s.
“What the fuck?” Darwin mutters.
There are three men and a woman. None of which are in good shape, though, unsurprisingly, the woman is worse off.
“I’m guessing the keys to these chains are also in Clark’s office,” I say.
Matty answers. “Yes.”
“Forest?” Darwin asks and squats in front of the man in the far right corner. He looks up with a black eye and a cracked lip. There’s dried blood crusting over a laceration across his cheeks.
“Hey, Darwin,” he answers.
Darwin looks back at me, clear disgust on his face.
“Sledgehammer will work here as well,” Orev says.
Darwin uses his body to cover Forest’s head as Orev swings the sledgehammer. Stone flies through the room. It takes two more swings to break the hard iron free.
“I’m going to find the keys,” Erez says. “Where are they exactly? Where’s the office?”
Matty explains in detail where the keys are hidden in his desk and how to get into the desk. Erez shakes his head.
“Keep breaking them free. I’ll get the keys to release the shackles on their wrists before we get them to the docks,” Erez says before running off.
We take turns covering the prisoners with our bodies as Orev and Arek take turns breaking through the chains.
It doesn’t take us long to recognize all four victims down here.
Brothers Jack and Toby Landon are members of the Wolfe Island Boat Club.
Cecelia Stanley is from the Carleton Island Boat Club.
Forest Salang is a member of the Grindstone Island Boat Club.
All members of rival boat clubs. I’m not the only one who stares at the empty set of shackles. What the assholes invading our island were looking for were prisoners. I shudder to think what might have happened if Darwin had been by himself on the island, as was supposed to be the case.
Erez returns with the keys just as we release Cecelia. I bring Darwin close, unable to erase the image of him in the empty chains from behind my eyes. Maybe he understands what I’m thinking. His grip on me is as tight as mine is on him.
We don’t ask questions of the prisoners on the way out. They’re silent as we help them to the docks. Matty looks horror-struck when he sees them. He turns away, and I think for the first time ever, he speaks to a ghost.
“That was you, wasn’t it? You were one of them?” Matty asks.
The four newcomers watch Matty warily. We help them onto the boat as Matty stares in distress at something no one else can see. I note that there’s an old boat tied to the side of ours. I don’t ask why we’re stealing a boat, though. Right now, I only want to go home.
“Is it set?” Liam asks.
“Yes,” Lanzo answers. “Once we’re on our way, I’ll set the fire.”
“The fire is already set in the boathouse. Wait for it to smoke before setting the house off,” Liam says. He turns to reach for Matty, the last one on the dock.
He’s staring at something beside him, but taller. His neck is practically craned backwards. “Thank you,” he says. I watch him sway, and he smiles. Then he takes Liam’s hand and climbs onto the boat. “We’ll take care of your boat. You can visit it anytime.”
“Who is he talking to?” Toby whispers.
“The dead,” we all answer.
Matty grins and then turns his attention to the shore. I’m guessing the dead are gathered again.
“Matty?” Liam asks, gaining his attention. “Are your dead with us again?”
Matty glances behind him and nods. “Yep. Mason is sitting beside the people you rescued.”
The four of them look around them uncomfortably, and I laugh.
Once again, Matty looks at the shore. “You don’t have to stay. You can leave now.”
That’s when smoke begins to billow from the boathouse. Liam urges our boat away. Everyone is silent as we watch the island. I’m not sure when the house caught fire, but it isn’t long before it’s blazing.
We move silently, steadily away until Chokecherry Island looks like nothing but a bonfire in the distance.
The Van Dorens and my brothers left early the morning after we set Chokecherry on fire. We spent the next day finishing getting rid of any sign of the trespassers’ boats on our property and chopping wood around the chopping block to explain the recent wood chips.
It’s an old castle, after all. There isn’t central air or heating. We use fireplaces.
We’ve also been informed that all the security footage from Chokecherry from the moment our boat came into view in the distance has been erased. Any record of it is buried so deep within the Van Doren Technologies digital archives that no one will find it.
We returned the stolen and asked them when they reported the incident—and we encouraged them to tell everyone of their ordeal—that they tell everyone they talk to that masked men rescued them, returned them to their islands, and disappeared into the night.
They didn’t see a thing. There were no distinguishing features. Nothing.
Three days later, the Alexandria Bay police stopped at the island. Darwin’s phone went off with security camera alerts. He left to meet them while Liam, Matty, and I sat in front of the fire watching a movie, cuddled up together.
He brought them around the castle and grounds, inviting them to see whatever they’d like.
We spoke to them, and I have to say, our acting was on point.
We were surprised, but knew nothing. We’d been asleep at one in the morning, after all.
Chokecherry Island is far enough away that we didn’t even see smoke the morning after the fire had burned the island to the ground.
Once Darwin has taken them through the castle and they’ve talked to us independently and together, I take them down to the boathouses for them to look around. The one on the east side of the island is frozen shut. There’s very obviously a sheet of ice covering the entire door.
“I see you don’t use this boathouse much,” one of the officers notes, amused.
“Not in the winter for this very reason,” I say, shrugging. “It’s on the side of the island that almost always freezes. I can find something to pick the ice away if you like.”
“Not necessary,” he answers. “What about the one where we pulled up?”
“Sure.” I bring them in the side-by-side, and we make the trek down to the west side boathouse, which is accessible, though the locks are still a little finicky because of the wet, icy wind. It takes me several minutes to encourage them to open, and I lead the officers in.
There’s nothing in the water except the large houseboat from the 1950s, and only because we’re not comfortable taking it out of the water, as old as it is.
But every other boat is raised over our heads.
All the race boats. All the party boats.
Everything that’s stored in this boathouse is hanging, including the boat we use for errands.
“You’ve essentially stranded yourselves out here,” one of the officers notes.
I shake my head and point to the one that’s hovering eight feet over the water, close to the dock.
“That one is easily lowered and raised. The river gets a little rough, and it’s incredibly light, so we don’t want it knocking around too much.
It’s safer for it and everything else in here if it’s out of the water.
Besides that, the holidays are coming, and we have family and friends coming out.
We need room for them out of the weather, and as you just saw, the other boathouse isn’t an option. ”
“Indeed,” the quiet officer states.
“This is just curiosity at this point, but how are you not running out of food?” the second asks.
I grin. “We have pre-scheduled grocery deliveries every other week. Dates are flexible in case the weather prevents a delivery. We’re never really low on stock.
And we can get to shore if we need to.” I wave at the boat close to the dock again.
“If we can help it, we don’t go on the water.
The only things we do outside are play in the snow or chop wood.
Not that we need more wood, but we have this paranoia that we’re going to run out and be stranded in a hundred-year storm that locks us inside. ”
We spend the next several minutes talking about the racing boats that we have in the rafters. I explain how we take them down when we want to race them in the summer. Which leads us to the friendly competition our boat club has with Chokecherry, Carleton, Wolfe, and Grindstone.
Mentioning the other islands has the officers looking at me, and I know that they’ve now had reports from the four prisoners about the atrocities that happened in the basement of Chokecherry’s McMansion, likely at the hands of Clark Charleton.
Charleton. Not to be confused with Carleton Island.
“Has there been any bad blood between Chokecherry and the other boat clubs recently?” one of the officers asks.
I shrug. “They’ve been very poor sports over the last few years.
They’ve been on a losing streak and accuse the rest of us of cheating.
We win the races between us, sure, but it’s not like a single boat club wins them all.
Even when Chokecherry chose the boat, they’re still insistent that we’re cheating. ”
Both officers are frowning.
“Have you had any visitors over the winter?”
“My brothers have visited. Darwin’s parents were here for Thanksgiving. A couple other members of the boat club have stopped in.” I shrug again. “No one out of the ordinary.”
We debated what to tell them, but it seemed the most straightforward to state that no one else had been here. Otherwise, we’d have to answer what happened to those who showed up.
It isn’t long before I’m waving them off, welcoming them back for any further questions if they need, though they’re welcome to call or video chat to avoid the cold. I also make it a point to invite them to a race this summer, at which they both smile.
I continue to wave before turning for the side-by-side to return to the castle, a smile on my face. That went well.