CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5
SHOULD WE KNOCK?”
Ness stood on tiptoe to peek over Coco’s shoulder at the gigantic arching door. A rusty iron mermaid was mounted dead center against the flaking turquoise paint, articulated at the hips so her tail smacked down to announce the arrival of guests. Or castaways, as the case may be.
They’d staggered up a sandy path before navigating slippery stone steps set into the hill, leading them up, up, up to the building’s main entrance. Bradley had led the charge with the single actual flashlight found tucked away on the boat. On either side of the overgrown path, scraggly shrubs and tall, sharp grasses waved and rustled. Lights from the remaining functional phones barely lit the path ahead, casting shadows and creating extreme horror movie vibes.
Hayes and Ian each lugged a hard-sided cooler up with them, filled with whatever drinks and snacks had been on the boat. Ness’s legs burned, and she wished she hadn’t shied away from the stair-climber during her workouts. And maybe taken survival training. Hindsight, right?
Tyler, still shaky and clutching his head, had slipped halfway up and grabbed the handle of Ian’s cooler, trying to catch himself, wrenching it out of Ian’s grasp. They’d all stood, frozen, as bottles of water, premixed cocktails, and lord knew what else tumbled into the waving grass and bounced merrily down toward the beach far, far, far below.
Setting the empty cooler down without a word, Ian had kept climbing.
The wind was even stronger at the top of the hill, snatching at Ness’s damp hair and driving the rain into her numb skin.
“Should we knock?” she asked again, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Pretty sure no one’s home.” Libby gripped her purse to her chest. She’d lost three of her glossy acrylic nails.
Upon closer inspection, the house wasn’t a true castle. At least, not how Ness knew them from binge-watching Outlander and perusing the resulting Travel Scotland targeted ads.
It was a tropical approximation, formed from slate-colored concrete and limited to what appeared to be two stories of moldering turrets, battered shuttered windows, and a wraparound balcony that no doubt offered exceptional views when the weather wasn’t hell-bent on destruction and mayhem.
The base of the structure was set into the hill, providing what Ness hoped was a hurricane-proof foundation. This allowed what appeared to be the main floor to take advantage of walkout access to the aforementioned balcony. Assuming the whole thing didn’t crumble before their eyes, that is.
She blinked rain out of her eyes and wondered how likely it was that she was hallucinating this whole thing. Maybe she’d slipped while changing the showerhead in one of her rental units and was in a coma, enjoying high-end pain meds and full-service hospital care.
Someone coughed pointedly, bringing her back to the terrible present. She huffed out a breath. “I’d just feel better if we at least tried to make contact with anyone inside before barging in.”
“Nobody. Is. Here.” Libby said it slowly and loudly. Her eyes, still perfectly lined with the world’s most waterproof makeup, bulged with condescension.
Ness huffed a breath out of her nose, nodding and shrugging simultaneously.
“Fine. Whatever.”
“I think Ness is right. We should make an effort.” Ness’s head whipped toward Daisy, surprised she was weighing in after spending the climb up looking like a beautiful but morose Irish portrait. Ness had figured she’d collapse into a delicate heap of emotions once they found shelter, much as she wished to do herself.
Daisy continued, voice gaining strength. “We don’t want to get shot. What if whoever’s here thinks we’re . . . I don’t know, pirates or something?”
“I don’t understand why we’re standing in a fucking hurricane discussing etiquette.” Coco strode forward, elbowing Bradley out of the way. She wrapped a hand around the mermaid’s tail, waited two dramatic beats, then dropped the knocker and stepped back, arms crossed over her chest.
The wind howled, throwing vegetation and sandy dirt into their faces. Everyone turned, staring at Ness.
“Yeah, okay. Got it. No one home.” When no one moved, she edged through the group and tried the handle, ignoring the distinct sound of scoffing coming from Libby. Locked. She stepped back, staring up at the strange face of the house.All the shutters she could see were closed tight and there were no other obvious entry points. She sighed.
“We should split up, see if there’s an open window or door somewhere,” Ness said, regretting the suggestion even as the words left her mouth.
“Um, no thanks,” Libby said, leaning against the door. “I’ll be waiting right here.”
Tyler muttered something from where he sat cross-legged on the cold, wet ground. He looked as though it was taking all his remaining strength not to lie down and fall asleep right there.
“What’s that, bud?” Ian asked.
“I said, that’s a surefire way to get murdered.”
“Ummm,” Ness stalled. “Yeah, okay, so how about Libby stays here to make sure Tyler doesn’t pass out.” Libby started to protest, but Ness ignored her. “I’ll go around this way.” She pointed to the left, where the covered entry extended onto the wider balcony.
“I’ll come with you,” Hayes interjected. Ness nodded coolly, as though she wasn’t entirely surprised by this announcement.
“We’ll go with Ian and Brad,” Coco said, looping her arm through Daisy’s, whose teeth were beginning to chatter. She started walking to the right, pulling Daisy with her, and paused. “Does anyone have a cigarette?”
Silence.
“Well, shit. Alright. To our deaths, then.” She strode forward, her hand sliding down to grip Daisy’s. They’d almost disappeared into the dark before Ian and Bradley caught up, jogging ahead to light the way.
Hayes stepped out into the rain, then paused to look back to where Ness stood.
“Shall we?” he asked, rolling a hand out toward the balcony ahead.
“I guess.” Ness steadfastly ignored his extended arm, with its ropy muscles and rivulets of water running down toward his fingers.
He held up a phone, its completely inadequate light limiting the visible area to about four feet in front of them. Ness crept on, hoping they’d come across an open side door any moment now.
Something whistled past her head and, to her left, there was a deafening crash. She let out a squeak of panic and fought the urge to run, even as her brain processed the iron bistro chair rocking on its back as it settled, then the remnants of the concrete block shattered around it.
She turned her face upward, into the rain, and tried to figure out where the block had fallen from. Her breath was coming in quick little puffs. She tried to slow it down, assuring herself there was no reason to panic and this was an entirely manageable situation.
“We should keep moving,” Hayes said, settling a hand on the middle of her back. His voice came to her as if through a fog, soft and gentle. Slowly, carefully, they shuffled forward, testing the shutters as they passed. Hayes tried to pry the edges outward but came away with nothing but an impressive collection of splinters to show for it.
“Remember that time we climbed the water tower?” The words were out before she’d even decided to say them.
Hayes snorted a laugh as he tried the handle on a barred door.
“You mean the time we almost died so you could prove you weren’t scared of heights, except you really, really were?”
“It was your idea!”
“It definitely was not.”
“Was too. You said to rise above my fears! How was I supposed to know you were being literal.”
“Oh, and your memory of that time is crystal clear, is it?” He said it lightly, but Ness felt it cut deep.
“Um, no,” she said quietly, not even sure he could hear her over the noise of the raging ocean and wind.
He winced. “I didn’t mean anything—”
“It’s fine.”
She moved ahead to deflect from a conversation she definitely didn’t want to have and found a barred, locked gate over a set of wooden doors. Ness managed to sneak her hand through a gap between the bars and joggle the door handle half-heartedly. It turned, and the door flew backward as the wind grabbed it.
The door slammed against the interior wall before zinging back toward her. She jerked her hand away just in time to save it from being crushed, and held it to her heaving chest.
“Yikes,” she muttered. She looked over at Hayes. “I’m fine,” she assured them both. “Just startled.” She wiggled her fingers, verifying that the hand was intact and functional. The inner door swung back open. Not ghosts, Ness thought. Probably.
“Any idea how to pry open a metal gate?” she asked, leaning in to get a better look at the rusty lock.
Behind her, Hayes cleared his throat. Ness turned and let out a short, startled scream at the sight of him holding the iron patio chair over his head.
“Could you scooch over there?” he asked, casually nodding to the side. She scurried out of the way and he hurled the chair. They winced in unison as it clattered uselessly off the gate and crashed to the ground.
“Huh.” Hayes scratched his chin. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
Ness shivered, wishing she had a jacket or, better yet, a way into this stupid, probably haunted castle.
“Oh, for sure. My go-to move is always launching heavy objects at my opponents.”
“If they can’t catch, that’s on them.”
Ness huffed out a laugh while simultaneously acknowledging that she was moments away from crumpling into a bleary-eyed heap of sadness and dismay. She’d rather do that somewhere dry, though.
She leaned back against the gate, trying to stay under the limited protection of the small overhang. Hayes stood in the rain looking like a wet golden retriever, morose and adorable.
She nodded her head at the spot beside her. “Strategy huddle?” she offered, pressing back against the metal to allow more space.
With a sudden groan and crash the gate’s rusted hinges detached from the frame, sending Ness flying backward to land with a butt-numbing thump on a dusty tile floor.
“Unexpected,” Hayes said, offering a hand and heaving her upright. Ness patted as much debris from her soggy jeans as she could and turned in a slow circle, trying to get a sense of the space around them.
The phone’s light barely penetrated the heavy darkness, throwing strange shadows as the weak beam hit furniture and doorways. They were in a living room of sorts, if the couch and broken bookshelves were any indication.
Ness nearly had a heart attack when the phone illuminated a giant, black-framed mirror on the opposite wall, showing them their own bedraggled reflections. She cleared her throat, gracefully unwrapping herself from around Hayes’s arm.
“Thought I saw a rat.”
“I’ve heard a lot of the islands are teeming with them.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I wish.”
“I guess all creatures great and small are entitled to a place in paradise.” She swiped at the water dripping off the end of her nose.
Eyes starting to adjust to the dark, Ness paused on her way to the front door to open the black sideboard positioned along one wall. She quickly opened cabinets and drawers looking for another light source, meanwhile making big noises to scare anything (great or small) that could be lurking within.
A few feet away, Hayes pried open a wooden chest that sat to the side of a large, cobwebby fireplace.
“Aha!” Ness hefted a black pillar candle into the air with one hand, flicking the lighter she’d found with the other.When the flame caught, she thought she might cry tears of relief.
Shielding the flame with her hand, she slowly moved to where Hayes was still rummaging. He tossed a couple of damp-smelling blankets onto the floor.
“I’ll get the door,” Ness said, eyeing the pile of faux-fur throws with trepidation.
“You take the flashlight,” Hayes said, swapping her for the candle and shoving the phone into her hand in its place. “I’m going to keep looking around.”
“Sure. Yeah. Cool. I can do this solo. No problem.”
She exited the room through an arched doorway, heading back in the direction they’d started from. She walked quickly through a decrepit kitchen, another living space, and a dining room before making it to the black-and-white-tiled front entryway.
Ness twisted the deadbolt and heaved the door open eight tantalizing inches before the swollen wood wedged itself against the floor and refused to go farther. Wind whistled in, driving a fresh wall of rain along with it. She’d expected Libby to race past her to (relative) safety the second she was granted access, but no one appeared.
She stuck her head through the opening, hoping an errant gust wouldn’t suddenly slam the door on her neck, and shone the flashlight around the low-walled area that formed what normal folk would call the front porch, but which Ness presumed the rich had an alternate name for. Her ear brushed against the mermaid knocker’s tail and she flailed wildly for a moment, fending off a nonexistent spider, before she fully took in the scene in front of her. No Libby in sight, but a dark, wet form was sprawled out face down on the ground.
“Tyler?!” Ness said, trying to get the door open far enough to squeeze through.
“Hey!” she shouted. He didn’t move. She swiveled her head. “Libby?!” Nothing. The wind roared, and Ness thought that if she could see the trees they’d be practically horizontal.
She pulled her face back into the foyer.
“Need some help here, Hayes!” she yelled into the darkness. Moving to the windows to the right of the door, she fought with the rusty latch, trying to get them open to access the shutters.
She wondered if it would be faster to go back the way she’d come and run around the outside. As she was about to give up, the latch turned, scraping a couple of layers of skin off her fingers in the process.
Footsteps echoed down the hall, growing louder, until a bobbing lantern came into sight. The black candle sat in a glass enclosure, the handle looped over Hayes’s wrist.
Hayes dumped an armful of blankets onto the foot of a sweeping staircase and jogged to Ness’s side.
“Tyler’s passed out on the porch and I can’t get the door open. Libby’s gone. Help me with the shutters.”
“For god’s sake, Agnes.” A dripping Coco was suddenly beside her, grabbing the phone from her hand. She shoved it through the gap, took a cursory look at Tyler’s prone body, and shimmied partway through before getting momentarily stuck. She slid back out and rammed the door with her shoulder, forcing it open another few inches. Hayes wrapped his fingers around the doorknob and forced the entire structure upward, scoring enough clearance to open the door the rest of the way.
Daisy darted out, grabbed Tyler under his arms, and heaved him inside. His wet sneakers squeaked obnoxiously as the heels dragged across the floor, and Ness found herself stifling a hysterical giggle.
“Thanks for coming to get us,” Ian said sarcastically. He waltzed across the room from the direction Ness had come from, taking Daisy’s spot at Tyler’s head. Bradley, following behind, grabbed his feet.
“There’s a couch that way,” Ness said, pointing down the hall. “I’m going out to look for Libby.”
But before she could make her heroic, if hesitant, exit into the whirling storm, Libby fell through the door, tripping on a disintegrating carpet runner and toppling with slow-motion grace to the floor.
“Whoa, hey, are you alright?” Hayes asked, dropping to her side. He slid an arm behind her upper back and hoisted her to sitting.
Ness narrowed her eyes, skeptical.
“Where did you go?” she demanded. “You were supposed to stay with Tyler.”
Libby blinked, squinting through the darkness to take in the details of the room.
“I did!”
Ness’s eyebrows rose. Libby’s eyes rolled.
“I mean, I obviously didn’t stay the whole time. I was only gone a second. Tyler keeled over and I went to find one of you to help.” She scowled. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, of all people, Agnes.”
Before Ness could voice any of her many questions, concerns, and hopefully witty rejoinders, Bradley walked back into the room.
“No power. No running water. No telephone on the main floor that I can find.”
“Emergency radio?” Hayes asked hopefully, helping Libby to her feet.
Bradley shook his head. “I don’t think so. I haven’t done a thorough search yet obviously—you’re welcome to help if you think I missed it.” His tone had gone from cool and collected to insulted teen in the blink of an eye.
Ness took a deep breath and tried to stop the rolling of her own eyes back into her head. She was an adult, and tensions were running high. They were, after all, marooned on an island, in a castle. A castle that was probably haunted, because what good is a deserted castle if it’s paranor-mally neutral? Just a lame-o normal fake castle.
Unsure why she found this thought disappointing, she giggled, the sound surprising her.
“Shock,” she said suddenly, as if it were part of an ongoing conversation. Six faces, made pale and (ha!) somewhat ghostly in the beam of the flashlight, turned toward her. She pulled her face back into a less alarming expression. Acting for the win.
“What was that?” Hayes said politely, well-groomed eyebrows raised.
“I, er, said ‘shock.’ We’re probably all in it. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Why don’t we find somewhere to sleep? In the morning we can get back to the boat and either get the radio working or get somewhere with people. Or at least a phone.”
“Should we split up, or sleep together?” Ian waggled his eyebrows at Daisy, who sighed heavily and stared toward the water-stained ceiling before speaking.
“As much as I’d love some personal space, doesn’t it feel safer to stay together? We can take turns checking on Tyler.”
Coco sniffed. “Ugh. Him. How much do we care?”
“I’d feel uncomfortable if he died in the night,” said Ness.
“Fine, then. Fine. Onward.” Coco thrust a pointing finger in the direction of the damp velvet couch that now cradled Tyler in its moldy lap before plucking the phone from Ian’s hand and stalking off, assuming they would all follow. They did, of course, like moths to a fading, battery-powered flame.
During his short search for a means of communication, Bradley had found a number of bedrooms down a long hallway off what seemed to be the main living area. Now he and Hayes dragged four mattresses and some very slightly less disgusting blankets in and dumped them unceremoniously in a ragged arc around the couch.
Then they all stood there, shuffling their feet like preteens at a school dance.
Coco nudged Daisy to the first mattress. “C’mon. To bed with you.”
The two women lowered themselves onto the mattress and Coco pulled a thin, dark quilt over them.
“Ugh. It smells like mothballs and Polo cologne.” Coco coughed, but snuggled in.
Libby dropped her purse on the only twin mattress and pulled the whole thing to the edge of the room, as far from the rest of them as she could get and still be in the same space.
Ian flopped down onto a vacant mattress and patted the space beside him as he looked at Ness.
“Nope,” she said, sitting on the edge of the last mattress. A bit of stuffing was falling out the side, and she wondered what had made a nest within, whether it was still there, and how much she cared. The moment she was horizontal she decided that a rabid badger could be living beneath her and she would give absolutely zero effs. She was drained.
The springs creaked and the surface shifted as someone got in beside her. The smell of mint gum, seawater, and something that was pure Hayes drifted over.
She bit back a groan.
“I can sleep . . . somewhere else,” he said, already getting up.
“No!” Ness clenched her fists to stop herself from reaching out to grab him. “I mean, it’s fine. I’m practically asleep already, badger and all.” She gave up on the idea of wriggling out of her soaked jeans.
“There’s a badger?” She could hear him smiling.
“I hope not,” she mumbled.
She shifted, trying to get comfortable. Her bladder was making itself known with increasing intensity.
“Everything okay over there?”
“I, er. Well.” Ness really didn’t want to have this conversation. She also didn’t want to wander around the pitch-black house in the dark, trying to find a bathroom. Oh god. Was she going to have to go outside?
“I need a bathroom.”
There was a beat of silence, then Hayes said, “Number one or number two?”
“I really don’t want to talk about this.”
Hayes sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. Ness could hear his stubble rasping against his palm.
“Well, here’s the thing. If we’re talking pee only, you can use the bathroom, assuming it’s not falling apart or infested with snakes. If it’s a number two, we gotta go outside.”
Outside the shuttered window, something banged loudly against the stone of the balcony. The rain pelted the house as if it was trying to break in.
“Number one,” Ness mumbled.
They used 3 percent of precious battery power in Hayes’s phone finding a bathroom and making sure there weren’t any snakes or rats or unhinged criminals hiding therein before Ness shooed Hayes into the hallway. She vowed to wake up first and go down to get a bucket of water to flush with, then stood in front of the cracked sink wondering what hand washing etiquette was in a shipwreck situation.
It turned out she’d started a trend, and when she exited the bathroom, a line had formed. She scurried back to the relative safety and comfort of the living room, made sure Tyler was still breathing, and hopped back onto the mattress.
Hayes followed shortly after, and with the warmth of his body at her back and the promise of a day that might be slightly less awful when she awoke, Ness fell asleep.
CNN
Hot on the tail of Ferdinand, the season’s seventh named storm of the Atlantic season, Tropical Storm Georgette is developing 140 miles northeast of the Bahamas. Georgette is not expected to hit the island chain directly, but residents will see substantial rain and sustained winds of up to 45 miles per hour later this week.
The National Hurricane Center continues to monitor the storm, predicting moderate flash flooding in urban areas and widespread power outages before Georgette disperses.
This August has been the most active for Atlantic tropical storms in twenty-five years, with more in store over the coming weeks.