Frankie
The emergency dispatcher doesn’t sound very impressed at my description of a raging fire on Center Island, my neighbor’s boats
all having been vandalized by a pack of white-robed girls, or my neighbor having been physically assaulted and possibly kidnapped
by them.
“Yes, ma’am,” the dispatcher says in a bored voice. “We’ve already received numerous calls about it. Firefighters are on their
way. Police, as well.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I have huge amounts of respect for emergency service workers. I know they do an amazing job putting themselves out there every
day for very little pay.
But unfortunately, more than a few of them are my patients, so I also know way, way more than I want to about the day-to-day
operations of the village of West Harbor.
“Just how do firefighters think they’re going to get to a fire on an island in the middle of a lake when they don’t have a fireboat?
” I hear myself screaming into the phone.
“How are cops going to get out there to rescue my boyfr—neighbor, when they don’t have a police boat?
Has anyone called Fish and Wildlife? What about the Coast Guard? ”
What makes the situation worse is that the DeLong boys are still standing in my yard when I make this call and witness the
whole thing. This is inexcusable. Yes, children are resilient—I’m walking proof. But that doesn’t mean they should be seeing
any of this. I tell them to go home multiple times. The smoke from the fire on the island is only getting thicker. So is the
fog. The temperature feels like it’s plunged another ten degrees, and there isn’t a sound to be heard—not a cricket, not a
bird, not even a rutting deer, even though it’s mating season. The silence is as eerie as the silence that seems to fall just
before any storm, an ironic warning of the chaos to come.
But Eddie remains where he is, one hand on Robby’s shoulder, and the other on Sammy’s, surrounded by smoke and fog.
“He’s our neighbor, too,” is all Eddie says in an unusually calm voice, but the anxiety on his face tells a different story.
I feel like I’m only sort of keeping it together. I send both Troy and Jackie the same text message. It’s possible I used
too many exclamation points, but I wanted to convey to them the gravity of the situation.
Satan’s Seat is on fire, and according to reliable witnesses, some of those witches knocked Ash unconscious, tied him up,
and took him back to Center Island. I need your help NOW!!!
But there’s no reply. And meanwhile, the only part of the lake I can see now are the flames over on Center Island, thanks to the thickness of the fog that has rolled in.
That’s when I give up on 911 and turn to the DeLong grandkids.
“Everything is fine,” I tell them in what I consider an extremely normal, nonhysterical voice—though judging from the size
of their fear-widened eyes, perhaps it is not. “But we might be on our own, so if you won’t go home, I’m going to need your
help. Do you know of a boat—any boat—that didn’t get sunk?”
They shake their heads.
“They got them all,” Robby informs me. “They even got Gran’s kayaks, and The Kraken!”
“And they stole the Rubensteins’ pontoon boat,” Sammy adds. “That’s what they put Ash on.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and nearly choke on a lungful of woodsmoke. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
And that’s how I end up standing on the edge of my dock in my bathing suit, getting ready to swim to Center Island to rescue
Ash.
“It’s too far,” Eddie says, looking across the water in the direction of the island.
Except that the water is covered in a layer of fog so thick, you can’t see more than a foot or two ahead. All you can see
of the island itself is an orange glow where the fire is raging.
“You’ll never make it,” Robby says.
“Yes, I will. I swim it every day.” Though never at night, or in fog this thick, or temperatures this low. I’m shivering in
my suit.
But what choice do I have?
“I want you to go inside. When the cops get here, answer the door, and then be sure to tell them where I am,” I say, taking my swim bag from Eddie’s hands and slipping the straps over my shoulders. I’ve had the waterproof bag forever but never had the need to use it.
Until now.
“We will,” the boys assure me.
“And don’t come out of the house. Stay there with Daisy and her kittens until I get back. Use my landline to call your grandparents.
They must be worried sick about you.”
“What’s a landline?” Robby asks.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie says. “I saw how to use one on TV. It’s easy.”
“Since there are three of us,” Sammy says, “and you have three kittens, don’t you think each of us should get one? I mean,
if we do a good job tonight.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I tell him. “I already promised one to my nieces.” Even under the circumstances, I can’t help
smiling at his disappointed expression. “But if your grandma says it’s okay, I might be able to let you have one kitten to share.”
Sammy’s face lights up, and he and Robby share excited looks.
“But whatever happens while I’m gone,” I warn, “stay inside where it’s safe.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “We will. Duh, Dr. G. You only told us a hundred times.”
He’s not exaggerating. Once I realized what I had to do, it had been a mad dash inside to get everything I thought I might
need on the island. I didn’t want to involve the DeLongs, but since they wouldn’t go home, I figured they might as well make
themselves useful.
And they did, stuffing the swim bag with everything they thought I’d need: a towel, warm change of clothes, shoes, flashlight, bottled water, bug spray, my phone, and a first aid kit in case Ash has any wounds that need tending.
It ended up being a tight fit, and heavy as hell, but they got it all in there.
Or at least I thought they had, until Sammy, standing beside me in the fog at the end of my dock, slips something into my
hand.
“Here,” he says. “You forgot these.”
I look down, surprised to see a small pair of Richard’s pruning shears . . . the same pruning shears I used to snip Ash’s
outdoor speaker cables (twice).
“What do I need these for?” I ask. I remember to smile. I’m trying to keep up a brave front before the kids. But truthfully,
my pulse is pounding. I’ve never felt more afraid.
But I can’t sit around and wait for Ash to get rescued. Every eldest child knows that if you want something done right, you
have to do it yourself.
“To fight the witches,” Sammy says.
My heart melts at his plaintive tone.
“Sammy,” I say, laying a hand upon his shoulder, but looking down at all three boys. “Those girls aren’t witches. They might
be calling themselves that, but I know from my sister-in-law, who’s a real witch, that that’s not what they are. Real witches
don’t purposefully choose to hurt others. They’re like doctors . . . like me. They try to do no harm.”
Sammy looks unconvinced. “Okay, well, then you probably need it even more. Because those girls do want to hurt people. I saw them hurt Ash. You might have to fight them.”
“Don’t worry.” Slipping the shears into my bag is not the easiest thing to do, because it turns out swim bags need to be rolled and folded in certain ways to keep them airtight, and I already lost the instructions, but I do it anyway.
“There isn’t going to be any fighting. I’m going to use my words.
Words are our most powerful defense in any conflict. ”
All three boys look skeptical, but I give them a confident thumbs-up—far more confident than I actually feel—and dive into
the lake . . .
And nearly drown.