Chapter 27
Fifteen minutes later, I’m trekking toward the Big Island Nature Park, a hunting knife awkwardly strapped around my blue running shorts and hidden beneath a neon tank top. I laugh to myself. I look ridiculous—like a yoga instructor who finally snapped and went feral.
Tugging the hem of my shirt down to cover the belt, I wade through the elms, fending off the mosquitoes, mentally noting landmarks as I go. I try to avoid dwelling on why I’m carrying a knife in the first place.
Instead, I sort through the questions that have been clawing at my mind.
Who killed Marjorie Neuman? The police dropped the case, but they clearly thought she had been murdered.
Who left the “LEAVE. OR ELSE.” note? Most likely Russ Neuman, but we can’t be sure, thanks to Eric’s insistence on “going rustic” without cameras or phones.
Could Vivek have left it? Trying to bully me off the island?
He didn’t seem surprised when I canoed up to his house.
But he couldn’t have known I was staying at the Parkers’, could he?
How did Heathcliff die? We’re still waiting on the vet’s report, but I agree with Eric: It probably wasn’t Russ. The guy looked genuinely confused when I mentioned a dog. Would the twins kill their own pet? I wouldn’t put it past them.
Could all of this be connected somehow?
The thought yanks me back to my past.
I was eleven. My dad had taken me out on the lake at sunset. We cruised through golden water, the maples darkening on the shore. I was sipping a Squirt, my dad nursing a beer. Just as we were heading home, I saw a splash.
Arms flailing in the water.
I told my dad to stop. Someone was drowning.
He said I must be seeing things. Probably just a bird.
But as the boat arced, the sun caught the lake at the perfect angle, and we spotted her. A woman, struggling. My dad didn’t hesitate. He cut the engine, yanked her out like a fishing net, and wrapped her in a towel.
She said she’d swum out too far and gotten tired. That was it. No story. No thanks. Just exhaustion.
She looked fiftyish, soft around the middle. A full mile from shore? No way she swam that far.
We dropped her off at a lakeside bar. She vanished into the dusk, and we never spoke of it again.
But we both knew there was an explanation for her presence there. We just didn’t know what.
That’s how I feel now.
There’s an explanation. I just don’t know what it is.
The note. I need to pull harder on the thread.
A small cabin appears down behind a copse of trees along the lakeshore. The spark of an idea catches in my mind. Someone might know something.
I veer off toward the structure. It’s modest compared to the Parkers’ mansion—single-story, brown siding, an overgrown yard choked with weeds and brittle branches. It looks abandoned for the season. Still, I knock.
No answer.
But as I wait, I spot something: a rusted nail hammered above the peephole. Like the one that held the Parkers’ note.
Did this place get a note too?
I circle the house, boots crunching over dead leaves, eyes combing the underbrush like it might lunge at me. After a few minutes, I find it snagged in a thicket, a yellow paper sagging from a branch.
I tug it free. The paper is soaked, the ink bleeds, but the message is clear:
LEAVE. OR ELSE.
Same jagged, childish strokes. Same cheap threat.
Now we know it’s not just the Parkers.
Someone wants everyone gone. Evacuated. Erased.
I tuck the note into my waistband and turn back to the trail, unwilling to linger a second longer.
So this isn’t about me. Not exclusively. Someone wants the entire island cleared out. But why?
Strangely, I experience a flicker of relief. If I’m going to be threatened, it’s better to be threatened in good company, right?
The comfort vanishes near the bend, where the path grows tight and the light goes dim.
I don’t know if it’s the clouds rolling in from the north, or my discovery of the second note, but the woods appear darker today.
Heavier. The deeper I go, the more the forest seems to shift.
Birds fall silent. Frogs raise their low chorus. Trees bend. The air cools.
My skin hums.
I consider turning back to brief Eric, but I don’t. Because despite everything, the silence bolsters me. But it’s not just the silence driving me forward. There’s something in these woods calling me.
The Ferris wheel.
Some stubborn part of me believes that if I find that wheel again, I’ll understand something about what’s happening here.
Or maybe I’ll find a ghost.
I keep walking.
Goldenrod slaps at my legs. Brambles claw at my shins. I mark my route with mental snapshots—gnarled root here, split oak there—in case I need to find my way back. Then I hear it.
Eek.
Eek.
Eek.
The siren squeal draws me forward until I see it: The rusted carousel. The horses frozen mid-gallop, eyes rotted, jaws forever snarled. They stare at me, judging. As if they know every bad thing I’ve ever done and every worse thing I’ll do.
And just beyond it—the Ferris wheel.
I keep going, the noise pulling me like a tether. I push into the undergrowth, snapping branches like wishbones. Twigs whip at my face and cut my arms, but I don’t stop. I’m chasing a memory now.
I shove aside a curtain of birch, and there it is: the skeletal corpse of a Ferris wheel, early 1900s vintage.
A crescent of rust and broken steel. But I can still see it: the ride in motion, slow and majestic.
Men in suits and straw hats. Women in parasols and summer dresses.
The air thick with popcorn and candied chestnuts.
And then—the girl falling.
The screaming.
The second the dream melted into a nightmare.
No wonder they shut the park down. A hundred years later, the grief still echoes. You can feel it humming beneath the dirt, like a buried heartbeat.
It’s trying to tell me something. Something about the island.
About Marjorie.
About the notes.
About Heathcliff.
About me.
But what?