Chapter Thirty-Four
At Lyle’s house, we tied the monster up out back, leaving it in his work shed, and finally made it inside, just as the night began to give way to morning.
I started in. “Sheriff. We’ve seen one of those before. A few days ago, in Charleston. A whole bunch of them tried to attack Hailey and me.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on and why I’m up at this ungodly hour playing the role of vampire hunter with a bunch of kids?” he said matter-of-factly.
I updated him about the mysterious woman who could break through my defenses and probe my thoughts and all of the connections that pointed to her as a possible link to Naira. “What is it?” I asked when Hailey looked like she wanted to say something then thought better of it.
Hailey hesitated, and I waited impatiently. There was no time for this. Naira’s life was on the line.
She finally said, “There is something I was keeping from you. Not the stuff about my uncle eyeing your island, but about my brother.” She took a deep breath. Then another. “Luke is still alive.”
We stared at her, our shock mixed with disbelief.
Me most of all because the lies and surprises from Hailey kept on coming, making me look even more like a complete idiot for trusting her.
Luke had been the only one with Naira when their boat crashed.
Hailey had pretended he was dead. She’d gone to the marina with me, and all this time he was alive?
And what did that mean for Naira? Where was she while I was letting myself get played by Hailey?
“But he’s sick,” she said quickly. “And getting sicker.”
“You need to explain,” Lyle said sharply. “What kind of sick are you talking about?”
She wouldn’t look at any of us, especially not me. I was trying to hold it in, thinking of every single instance that I’d let my guard down with her only to have it thrown back in my face, made to feel like an idiot every time.
“How’s your brother sick? We don’t have time for this!” Sekou yelled.
“Sick!” she cried. She covered her face with shaking hands, burying all of it in her propped-up knees. “He’s sick like that thing out back, only not as sick. But almost like that.”
Silence followed her outburst. Hailey’s shoulders heaved as she cried with no sound coming out.
If Luke was that, then what was Naira?
Lyle stepped closer to her, pulling out a chair so he wouldn’t intimidate. He had to get her to trust him so she’d open up.
“Can you tell me what happened? How’d Luke get … sick?” he asked.
Hailey let out a sob. Then she hiccuped. She peeked up at Lyle, seeing him near her and at her level. She hesitated.
“I want to help you, but I can’t if I don’t know what I’m dealing with,” Lyle said.
“When Luke returned from boating that night, he was very ill. He couldn’t eat regular food.
He’d just throw it up. He kept saying he was hungry, but nothing he ate stayed down.
And then he started speaking less until it was nothing but sounds.
And his movements became jumpy and jittery.
Like he was losing control of his mobility.
His eyes were reddening and he was becoming so animalistic. It was like there was only—”
“A shell of him,” Lyle finished.
Hailey shot up in her chair, throwing her feet down. “Yes!” she said, relieved. “A shell of his former self. That’s it. He was steadily losing himself.”
Lyle nodded. “I’ve seen it before.” He walked to one of his kitchen drawers and rustled about in it. He pulled out a yellow legal pad and a permanent marker. Then he sat back down across from Hailey and proceeded to draw something.
Trusting myself to speak, I said, “What did he say about the boat accident? What happened to Naira?”
“Not much.” Hailey had her head ducked down again. “He said the boat crashed but that some woman took them off first. A woman with red eyes and long teeth. And that”—Hailey’s voice began to rise—“that—that she bit him and there was only pain. It felt like acid in his veins.”
“And Naira?”
“He said the woman had taken her and left him.”
She’d known they were alive this whole time. The betrayal was crushing. “Why did you come to the Isle?” I demanded.
“Naira told Luke about you and your grandmother, and the restorative properties of your blood,” she stammered. “We had tried every possible treatment on Luke and nothing worked. I was tasked with procuring the blood in order to find a cure. Each day, Luke was getting worse.”
Hailey wiped at her eyes and looked at me.
“I was only trying to help him. I was only trying to find whatever the doctor needed to make the cure to save my brother. Then I was going to tell the police about Naira and the woman. But I didn’t want the police to think Luke killed her or that he was on drugs, or worse, because of the way he was acting. You have to believe me, Ada.”
I didn’t have to believe anything, especially not from her.
“I didn’t want to keep this from you,” she said quietly.
I didn’t answer her.
“I was going to tell you everything tonight, afterward. I realized I couldn’t steal your blood. Not without your permission. Not even for Luke.”
“Was that the first time you tried to steal my blood? At the island?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
“When you showed up at my house, it was the perfect opportunity. I thought I could do it that night or the next. But then we were attacked by those things. I was so scared Luke would become them that I went in where you were sleeping and…” She couldn’t finish.
“And the first night,” I continued. “When I felt something in the alley.” I thought of the swirling, shaping black mass. The eyes had been the cat’s, but the growing mass and the skittering had been—
“It was him,” she whispered.
“Where is he now?” Sekou asked.
“Don’t know. He wasn’t at the facility when Ada and I went there. The night he came to my house was the first I’d seen him in days.”
Lyle finished his drawing and pushed it toward Hailey on the table. It showed an arm with dark black lines zipping up and down the inside of it, where the veins would be. “This,” Lyle said, pointing to the lines. “Could you see this on his arm?”
Hailey started to touch the sheet of paper, tracing the black veins on the sketch halfway before snatching her finger back as if she’d been shocked. Or burned.
She looked wild-eyed at Lyle. “It was light at first. I thought it was just bruising. Then it kept getting darker and darker each day. Throughout the day. And he kept scratching at it, like he was allergic. I was afraid he’d gouge a hole out of his skin.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Lyle said, pulling the pad back toward him. “That’s the hollowing.”
Sekou, Hailey, and I shared a look. “What’s the hollowing?” I asked.
Lyle settled in his chair. I could tell he was worried. Whatever he knew that we didn’t was affecting him. He hesitated, like he was weighing whether he should or shouldn’t speak.
“We should wait for Ama,” he said. “She should be the one to tell you.”
I spat out, “Only she won’t and she never will. So please, Sheriff Lyle, tell me what she won’t. I’ve known about adze, but she never mentioned them. I have to know.”
He stroked his mustache, still thinking.
Probably wondering how he’d let himself get roped into this when he’d chosen to leave the Isle to escape all of this.
“You gotta think of it like a disease, or umm … an infection rather,” he said grimly.
“Like the flesh-eating amoeba they found in that water park up in North Carolina a few summers back. Eats you from the inside out? ’Cept the hollowing burns away your humanity.
Makes you one of those things like the one out back that came after you.
Makes you that shell like you mentioned, hollowed out with nothing left. ”
“Can it be cured?” Hailey looked up at Lyle hopefully.
“Only one person will know how to fix it.” He snuck an uneasy look at Hailey. “If there’s a fix. It will be Ama’s elixir. It can do more than just prolong life and encourage good health. It might be able to reverse the hollowing.”
As if on cue, I felt the force of my grandmother’s presence as she arrived. There was no car. She hadn’t come by boat, meaning she’d transported herself as an adze, something she never did in the day. It was too easy to be spotted and much too dangerous. She’d chanced traveling by day for me.
And if we wanted answers, we’d have to open the door to get them.