Chapter 25
Edie kept looking for a trail, but there were no paths leading into the forest and no prints on the sand to suggest that anyone went that way in some time.
She lost track of how long they walked. The sand made it seem like they hiked for far longer than in reality, but Edie thought that they should see something soon.
There needed to be a couple hundred people living on the northern part of the island to keep an island of this size going.
Whatever building they were staying in would have been large and apparent and not hidden deep in the forest.
Although they were only a few feet apart now, Edie had a hard time hearing Cassidy as her words were projected into the woods in front of them and swallowed by the cold, glossy leaves, and the soft bark of the trees.
The path became fainter and fainter as they walked and the undergrowth encroached.
Soon, their little hike became a bushwhack through spider webs and damp vegetation.
Around sunset, they emerged near the middle of the island where the two coves met.
They hiked for hours without food or water and were exhausted and beaten up by branches that caught on their arms and legs.
They hiked up and over rocks and around in circles for what felt like miles and miles, and yet they never saw any more buildings or heard another person.
The sounds of other people were surreal to hear after so many hours in the forest. After Cassidy planted the idea that maybe they were the ones who disappeared in their minds, both women began to feel alone on the island and almost forgot that there were other festival goers living normal lives and creating content.
The island that Edie and Cassidy found was not the same as the one they’d left that morning when they entered the forest. The dorms were gone, and in their place stood a closed surf shack.
Edie noted the lack of tents that morning when they’d crossed the island, but now the space between the tents was greater still.
“I want to get some clean clothes from my tent and shower at the villa.”
Cassidy assented with a grunt. Her feet dragged through the sand as she walked. Watching Cassidy made Edie realize how sore her entire body felt, and a deep gnawing hunger awakened in her belly.
When Edie pressed her wristband to the door lock at the tent, nothing happened. The red light glowed like an angry eye.
“Maybe it got messed up in the water,” Cassidy suggested.
“Or maybe it’s not your tent,” a familiar voice said behind them.
They turned to see James, towel thrown over his shoulder and blue swim trunks damp against his legs. He stepped between them and tapped his wristband to the lock. The red light turned green, and Edie let out a sound that fell between an unsurprised laugh and a disappointed sigh.
“I got an upgrade this morning,” James told them with a shit eating grin as he unzipped the door.
“How convenient that it’s my old tent. Especially after the day we’ve just had.”
“You two look like you’ve been through the ringer today. Might want to run a brush through that,” he said, flicking his wrist to indicate Cassidy’s rat nest of hair.
She stared back at him with dead eyes. Neither woman had the energy to be angry or defensive at this point, but their lack of response seemed to take James by surprise.
“Geez, lighten up you two.” He stepped inside and threw his towel on the bed. “Everything you could ever want is at your fingertips, and you’re still miserable.”
Like a struggling engine revving to life, Edie’s anger turned over inside her. The exertion made her lightheaded and she put a hand against Cassidy to balance herself.
“All I want is to have my best friend back and to get off this island and go home tomorrow, but shit keeps happening to me because of you!”
James rolled his eyes. “You give me so much power over you. Do you need me to promise that nothing else will happen? Is that what it’s going to take to avoid a libel case when we both go home? Fine, here.” He stepped further into the tent and grabbed his phone off the bedside table.
Edie and Cassidy kept their distance as he raised the device and turned so the camera caught the sunrise on the ocean behind them.
“Hey guys, I just wanted to thank everyone who helped make this whole experience one of the best I’ve ever had,” he said.
Edie caught her image on the screen, barely more than a backlit shadow, but ducked out of view anyhow. “James, don’t, we look like shit,” she said.
Cassidy covered her face and turned away.
James just laughed. “Edie and Cassidy have been communing with nature or something and aren’t camera ready, I guess, but I still want to thank them for joining me and becoming my island friends. I know that even if we never speak again, we’ll all remember this well into old age.”
James turned to Edie, his grin falling away like it was a real-life filter he applied for the video. He gave Edie a hard stare that said there, are you happy now? Putting his face back on, he continued monologuing to the camera.
“But the experience isn’t over yet. It’s almost showtime! Stay tuned for some live video and behind the scenes content in just a few.”
He tapped the red circle to end the recording and dropped his arm. The filter came off again and he strode back to the tent, all business.
“I don’t need you to make a stupid video for us, James.
We’ve already figured out what’s going on.
You tried to kill us and failed. We beat you, and it doesn’t matter what you do now, because we won!
” Edie shouted. Her head pounded and the world started to tilt at a hard angle, but none of her outrage mattered because James ignored her and zipped the flap without looking at either woman, the tent equivalent of slamming the door in their faces.
Edie took a deep breath and waited for the world to right itself again. “Come on, Cassidy. Let’s go.”
“What about all your stuff? Do you think he has it?”
“I don’t have your shit!” James yelled from behind the canvas.
“No, I’m pretty sure I know where it is,” Edie said.
Just as she expected, all of her things were at Cassidy’s villa. Her suitcase lay open at the foot of the bed and her phone sat dead on the nightstand.
“Apricot’s stuff is gone,” Cassidy said. She sounded far away, like the last of her hope disappeared with Apricot’s affects. She lowered into one of the armchairs and stared into the distance.
Edie sat on the arm of the chair and hugged Cassidy around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I kind of thought that might be the case.”
Cassidy snapped back to reality and pulled away from Edie.
“Why? How could you have known that? And what did you mean when you told James we won? Because it doesn’t feel like we’ve won anything.
” Every word came faster than the last and pitched her voice higher and higher into a register of hysteria.
She stood and ran her fingers through her tangled hair.
Edie went to Cassidy again and embraced her in a full hug. Cassidy smelt of sweat and dirt and the grit on her shoulder pressed into Edie’s arm.
“I promise I will explain everything I know to you, but first we need to shower and eat something because I’m broken.”
Cassidy’s shoulders rose and dropped with a sigh, and she wrapped her arms around Edie’s waist to give a quick squeeze back. “Okay.”
Even though Edie trusted Cassidy at this point, if only because they were all each other had now, a tension hung in the air.
Edie never liked Halloween haunted houses with disorienting lights and sounds and people waiting around the corner to jump out and scare her.
Being in the villa—or anywhere on the island, really—felt just like that.
Neither she nor Cassidy wanted to be out of the other’s earshot.
They took showers with the door to the bathroom cracked while the other chatted with them from their bed.
Cassidy, to her credit, avoided asking any more questions about what Edie knew until their food arrived at dinner. As soon as the salt and spices in Edie’s paella hit her tongue, the tension released in her muscles. Cassidy saw her cue then.
“Tell me what is going on.”
People babbled all around them, but Edie didn’t care anymore. She didn’t even set her fork down again and spoke between bites. “James tried to kill us in that tunnel, but we got out because we said we would.”
“You mean, right before the tunnel collapsed and we both almost drowned?” Cassidy asked. She pushed the food around on the plate but didn’t bring any to her lips.
Edie shrugged in assent. “Yes, but we didn’t drown.
I bet if we went online and looked at all of James’ posts, one of them would say something about us not being here anymore, or it would have before we survived and he made that awful video just now.
” She took another huge bite and chased it with ice water.
“But we said we would survive, and we did, and so we won. Whatever is going on here, we have the same power James does and we don’t need to post about it online for anything we say to come true. We just have to say it. Watch.”
She patted her mouth and then leaned over and tapped the back of the person seated at the table next to them. He turned, looking her up and down.
“Which side of the island are they filming the Blink-182 music video on tomorrow?”
The man’s face went blank, like Edie hit a factory reset button, before the lights came back on and he answered, “the west side at two.”
“Thank you,” she returned her attention to Cassidy. “See? I say it’s true and so it is.”
The man shook his head and said something to his table that Edie couldn’t hear, but it produced a burble of laughter.
Cassidy’s jaw hung slack. Edie wondered how she could be shocked after everything they’d seen, then tried to give Cassidy some grace.
After all, Edie herself denied the facts for far longer than she should have simply because they didn’t match a version of reality she recognized.
Edie laid her hand on Cassidy’s side of the table.
“We’re going to get our friends back, and we’re going to get off this island. I promise.”
Cassidy gave a sideways smile and sighed. Edie removed her hand.
“It’s not just me saying that, either. James said so in his video, too.”
“He said we would get off the island, but not that anyone would come back,” Cassidy argued, but she finally took a bite of food.
“They will.”
“How?”
Edie saw her opening. She channeled the gravity her father always presented important information to patients with.
“By saying what you want. Don’t ask for anything, just say exactly what you want.”
“I want Apricot and Daisy back. The real ones, not whatever was in that basement. And I want off this island.”
Edie shook her head. “I don’t think you can just tell me for something this big. You have to tell someone else, like you’re spreading a rumor.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but that’s all James has been doing, and that’s what happened when I made the Temple of Silence up. I told one person and it was suddenly real.”
Cassidy picked up her fork again but hesitated.
“What makes you so sure that it will work? It feels like it’s all just so random, and we have no control over what happens to us. Like with my tattoo …”
“Hey,” Edie said.
Cassidy met her eyes and Edie put her hand out again. Cassidy laced her fingers into Edie’s, warm and slightly damp.
“Look, I know it feels like we’re at the mercy of James’ bullshit, but we’re not. He tried to get rid of us and we survived. We can beat him at his own game. We just have to play like we don’t believe we’ve already lost.”
Cassidy gave Edie’s fingers a hard squeeze as her face twisted in despair. She nodded and Edie saw all her conflicting emotions at once.
“Okay. Then tell me how to play.”