Chapter 5
Hidden deep in the pine forest, where the sand gave way to pebbles and stones, a stream trickled to the ocean and narrowed as the ground tilted gently upwards and rose suddenly to the source of the stream.
The waterfall stood maybe thirty feet tall.
Above the falls, the trees opened, but just barely.
Only the stars were seen between the branches.
They lived up to the nickname Cassidy knew them by, the tree of life, by finding a way to survive in the cracks of the hard rocks with little light.
The women she’d met from the hot tub stood beside Cassidy and Apricot in a stone clearing the size of a Hollywood Hills backyard pool and gazed up at the waterfall illuminated by the tiki torches brought from the beach.
People struggled to plunge the torches into the mud that formed a vague river bank below the falls while the vlog farmers that milled about around them ignored their struggle and contented themselves with narrating their actions into the cold glow of their cell phones.
The firelight revealed sheer muddy slopes on either side of the waterfall and thick trees surrounding the stone platform except, notably, for the trail directly opposite the falls that brought the revelers in.
Cassidy couldn’t help but feel deeply disappointed with the whole scene, especially the “waterfall.” It wasn’t a rushing, torrential waterfall like Apricot made it seem back on the beach.
Instead, three thick streams of water braided together into a single column that frayed as it fell to the hard stone below.
The air filled with mist, and water slapped the ground, bursting into more mist. Puddles formed in the rocky surface and ran the water downstream, back toward the ocean, back the way from which the partiers came.
A damp, cool breeze blew in the hollow of the rocks behind the fall, carrying the cold mist with it up past where the canopy of the trees opened a thousand million miles into the night sky, cloudless and heavily dusted with starlight.
The hot, earthy smell of marijuana mixed on the breeze with the heavy scent of mildew and fresh mud.
Another tiki torch passed by Cassidy and Apricot, and she could smell the hollow chemical stench of kerosene.
When the brief heat of the torch dissipated, Cassidy shivered in her damp swimsuit that clung to her clothes, staring up past the cliff and furrowing her brow.
Something moved in the darkness high on the waterfall.
“Is there someone up there?” she asked no one in particular.
Cassidy wrapped her arms around herself to quell the shivering.
“No, I don’t think so,” a man nearby said, but something in his voice sounded uncertain. “Maybe just another big bird.”
“Another what?” Cassidy asked, then realized that she was speaking to James.
She shifted uncomfortably on the rocks and tried to pretend that the discomfort did not stem from encountering him here. It was a small island and not unlikely that they would run into each other more than once before the festival ended.
“This fucking sucks. I can’t get any reception here. How am I supposed to show this to my followers?” A guy in a polo and Bermuda shorts shouted.
“Why do you need to show this to your followers?” Rose asked. Her sudden anger surprised Cassidy.
“Because this is why I came and what my followers expect to see,” he said, sweeping his arm around to indicate the whole space.
“They expect to see a little bitty waterfall?” Rose asked, crossing her arms.
Cassidy watched the man visibly tense up.
“No, they expect to see proof that this island is haunted, and if any place is the epicenter of the hauntings, it’s gotta be this,” he said.
Rose let out a condescending guffaw and pitched forward at her waist to project her laugh directly at the man.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” the man asked.
“It’s not funny, it’s fucked up to say shit like that out here,” Edie said, her words coming quickly, giving Cassidy the impression that the model was just as scared as she was.
Knowing that someone else was scared only added to Cassidy’s fear.
The woods around them suddenly felt darker and more oppressive beyond the safe warm light of the torches.
“I do think it’s funny because ghosts aren’t real, and this is just an island,” Rose said.
“You can think that all you want, sweetheart, but this place isn’t just haunted, it’s fucking cursed. It’s been all over Twitter all day! Everyone is posting about how fucking run down all of the buildings on this island are,” Bermuda Shorts said.
“And that’s a sign that the island is cursed? Because I think I stayed in a cursed apartment in Nice,” Rose said, turning to Edie with a smile, but her friend simply let out a single laugh that sounded more like nerves than amusement.
“Did you do your homework and look into the island to make sure you weren’t getting scammed?
Because I sure as hell did, and you know what I found?
” Bermuda Shorts took a step toward Rose and slipped on the wet rocks but continued with his diatribe.
“The dorms and the villas were already here before the Island Xperience bought the island. The only things they had to put up were the shacks and the tents. And you know what else? There’s no public record of who even bought this island.
The last known owner defaulted on payments when he disappeared, along with everyone else who was working to build the infrastructure here. ”
Many of the people below the waterfall gathered around Cassidy’s small group as the argument progressed, and it was one of these spectators who spoke.
Two skeletal women wearing bandanas as bandeau tops stepped aside and from the crowd the speaker emerged.
The man was clearly intoxicated and wore a muscle shirt damp with sweat.
“Shut the fuck up! Everyone is tired of hearing about your stupid stories you’re telling to freak everyone out and make them buy your fucking subscriptions! ”
The drunk man’s muscles gleamed in the fire light that also gave a fierceness to his eyes. He slurred his words as he shouted. In his left hand, he held a nearly empty handle of vodka by the neck. What little was left of the clear liquid inside coated the glass and ran down in uneven rivulets.
Apricot brought her phone out, likely thinking she was discrete as she tapped the screen and lifted it to focus on the shouting men. The crowd watched in rapt attention. Muscles stepped forward, and on Apricot’s screen he closed the distance between himself and the Polo Shirt.
“I don’t know who owns this fucking island, do you? Do you know who the investors are?” The man in the polo asked, puffing out his chest and taking a step toward the second man.
“I don’t fucking care. I’m just here to have a good time,” Polo said.
“Oh yeah, I bet you’re having a great fucking time, hanging out in shacks paid for with blood. Did you pay for your ticket here, or did the money come out of daddy’s bank account?”
Muscles took a step forward and pushed Polo, who lost his footing on the slick rock and fell backwards.
“Woah, what did I miss?” a voice now familiar to Cassidy asked.
Everyone she’d walked to the falls with turned to verify the source and saw Ryan LeHane trying to peek over the top of the heads of the people in front of him.
A cell phone’s blue light lit up his hand, giving his fingers and face an unnatural glow.
James was still standing near enough to Cassidy for her to hear him groan.
“Looks like he managed to find his phone,” he said.
Ryan didn’t seem to recognize Cassidy or her group, and for that she felt thankful.
She stepped away from the waterfall, where a group of men were still struggling to separate the brawlers.
Edie followed, but Apricot still attempted to capture what she could with her phone’s camera, and Rose seemed equally entranced with the drama.
A group of people sat in a loose circle of rocks and fallen logs near the edge of the wooded area that butted up to the stone clearing. Cassidy and Edie sat down on a damp log and caught the end of a conversation.
“… I’ve been seeing shit on TikTok and Twitter all day about how it is, but I think people just like to say that stuff is haunted,” said a short haired man in an oversized basketball shirt as he passed a joint to his left.
“What do you think of all that?” Edie asked.
It took Cassidy a moment to realize she was asking her.
“Of all what?”
“The … I dunno, ghost stuff.”
The memory of the child’s shadow in Apricot’s video played over in her mind. Before she could answer, Apricot and Rose were standing in front of them.
“That was so dumb,” Apricot said. “People need to, like, leave their drama at home. I’m definitely posting the video I got later.
He does not need to be here if he’s just going to start shit with people.
I’ve seen enough weird shit today, and I don’t need anyone saying this place is haunted just to get likes or sales or whatever. Anyhow, have you seen Daisy anywhere?”
Cassidy’s barely registered Apricot’s words as she continued to think about the child in the video. She stood so quickly Apricot startled backwards.
“Hey, can I actually talk to you about something?” she asked, reaching for Apricot’s arm. “Did you do something to that video you showed us at dinner?”
“What do you mean?” Apricot asked.
Cassidy couldn’t read Apricot’s expression in the low light.
“I mean, like, did you edit it or something? You can tell me the truth, and honestly you should before it gets out of hand because people are going to question the one in your story, anyhow.”
“What are you talking about, Cass?”
“There was no kid in the video you put in your story, so if you had an edited video or something—”
Apricot pulled her phone from her pocket. “There was a kid, or something. You saw it! What are you even talking about? Why would I edit anything?”
In the blue light of her screen, Apricot’s face appeared harsh and angry.
“See? It’s the same …” Apricot began to say but trailed off. In the video, Daisy stepped away from the door and nothing but light poured from the glass door behind her. “What the hell?”
Apricot played the video back, paused it again, then scrubbed through slowly, but still the video remained unchanged.
“If you’re fucking with me right now, Apricot …”
“I’m not fucking with you!” Apricot shouted.
Cassidy stepped back and the group nearest to them quieted.
“I don’t know what’s happening, but I didn’t do anything to this video. You saw it earlier, and so did Daisy and James.”
“But on your story, the video was different,” James said. Cassidy jumped at the sound of his voice, and she wondered how much more of the conversation he’d heard.
“James, this is a private conversation,” Cassidy said.
“You know, I think it involves me, actually. Daisy accused me of posting bullshit online and then you all showed me this video, so if there’s something up, I want to get ahead of it before one of you fucks me over for calling you out at dinner.”
“Look, that’s the only video I took. I didn’t fucking edit anything. I don’t know what’s going on, but I didn’t change it,” Apricot said, stepping toward the man and showing him the phone screen.
Something moved on top of the cliff. Cassidy saw it for just a moment as she turned to face James.
A shadow moved at the top of the falls. She wanted to say Apricot’s name, but it got caught in her throat.
A small shadow stood on top of the falls, no bigger than a child.
Goosebumps rose on Cassidy’s skin and the air rushed out of her lungs, and a small light appeared next to the child and grew brighter.
The shadow dashed away quickly—too quickly.
If Cassidy blinked in that moment, she might have believed it disappeared into thin air altogether.
“What is that?” Cassidy asked, her voice sounding small.
She stepped forward, away from Apricot whose attention remained on the altered video.
James followed Cassidy’s gaze, and as she continued to step toward the waterfall, Edie noticed and also stood from her seat on the log next to Rose.
Rose didn’t notice her friend step away as she was leaned over to take a bump of something the group next to them brought out.
The light flicked away and the shadow of the child seemed to reappear behind it.
Except it wasn’t a child. It was Ryan LeHane with his phone.
He somehow managed to scramble up the rocks on to the side of the waterfall and now stood at the top.
It looked like he was saying something to the camera, but Cassidy couldn’t hear him.
She took a breath, feeling silly for allowing the darkness to have scared her like that, but her relief was short lived.
Ryan took another step closer to the edge and tripped.
Cassidy gasped, which caught Edie’s attention and she turned to watch Ryan take another step, and another, stumbling on the wet rock.
Cassidy watched helplessly, her breath caught in her throat, and her feet rooted in place like in a nightmare, as Ryan’s body tumbled over the edge of the cliff.
Gravity pulled his slender frame toward the earth headfirst, and his skull hit the rocks with a heavy crack like snapping a thick branch.
Ryan’s neck bent at a right angle and his back arched backwards much like the scorpion pose Cassidy used to brag she mastered in yoga.
His legs hit the wet rocks loosely and his whole body spasmed in the stream like a fish tossed onto the shore.
Someone close to Cassidy screamed so loudly that she had to cover her ears, but when she looked around for the source, she realized the screams were hers.
“What’s going on?” shouted Rose. Edie grabbed her friend by the shoulders and pushed her toward the path and away from the body.
Several people rushed toward the body, including James, and placed hands on the torso, the arms, the neck.
The head rolled far too easily when a man that Cassidy recognized as one of Ryan’s cronies tried to straighten the neck.
He quickly stood, falling backwards through the stream of water the poured down on the corpse, and he vomited on the rock face.
“What do we do? Someone get help, I don’t have reception!”
Cassidy’s feet moved of their own accord as Apricot pulled her away from the chaos and into the darkness of the woods, back toward the safety of the beach.