Chapter One #4
“No one knows,” Loretta said. “It’s the greatest unsolved mystery that few people outside of Vermont even know about.”
“But there was definitely some kind of meaning behind it,” Ronan added.
“There were five dresses in that tree. One belonging to each missing woman. And the police only knew that because one of them kept a diary. They found it when they searched the island. In it, she wrote the names and descriptions of everyone staying on New Avalon at the time. She also wrote about what they had been doing on that island.”
“Which was?” I said, fully rapt by that point.
Ronan smiled, pleased to see it. “Holding séances.”
“Apparently, Ruth Hume Semple and the others were mediums of some sort,” Loretta said.
“Not a surprise, really. At the time, spiritualism was all the rage. The First World War and the Spanish flu had just killed millions. Everybody lost loved ones. People were grieving. And many of them sought to ease their grief by attempting to contact the dead, including the women of New Avalon. But during one of those séances, something went wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“They apparently accidentally summoned something,” Ronan said. “A ghost.”
“Or some kind of evil entity that started taking the women one by one until there was no one left,” Loretta added.
Another chill swept through me, strong enough to produce a shiver that went straight down my spine.
“That’s what’s in the diary?”
Ronan replied with a solemn nod. “For the most part, yes. There’s still some debate about that, seeing how the last five pages were torn out.
By whom, no one knows. But if the end of the story was written on them, it’s now lost to time.
All we’re left with are five women and the unknown entity that is thought to have destroyed them. And that’s the plot of my movie.”
I sat there, speechless, thinking about the previous day’s conversation-that-was-really-an-audition.
Tell me a story.
A ghost story.
Now, forty-eight hours later, I can’t help but wonder if that’s why I was cast. That Ronan, desperately needing someone to fill an unspecified role, chose me because he thought I’d told the best ghost story.
If that’s the case, does it mean he thought what I’d said was true?
Which begs a different question: Does he really believe that what happened in New Avalon involved something supernatural?
Curious, I now turn to Pete in the boat. “What do you think happened to those women?”
“Nothing good, I can tell you that.”
“So you know about the diary?”
Pete nods, sniffs, wipes his nose with a handkerchief yanked from his shirt pocket. “I do. I also know some people thought they were witches. Easy mistake to make, I suppose. That’s who was on the island before the Semple clan bought it.”
“Witches?”
“A coven, yeah. But that was eons ago. It’s even mentioned in that diary they found up on the island. How witches used to live there. Everyone knew it, so they kept their distance. Mrs. Semple and her friends should have done the same, seeing how something evil on that island is what killed them.”
“You really think that’s true?” I say.
“I know it’s true,” Pete says, never taking his eyes off the approaching island.
“My granddad is the one who realized they’d gone missing.
June 16, 1926. That was the day it happened.
He talked about it so much that I’ll never forget it.
Even if I get so senile that I don’t know my own name, I’ll remember June the sixteenth.
Gramps said finding those dresses in that tree was the most scared he’d ever been.
Said he could sense something there on the island with him.
Something watching. Even up to his dying breath, he believed those women had messed with forces they shouldn’t have been messing with, and they died because of it.
Those women didn’t go anywhere. Their bodies are still on that island.
And whatever did it? That’s still there, too. ”
He nods toward the island ahead of us, and I suddenly understand the meaning of the gesture. That’s the place he’s talking about. Not just an island but the island.
“Wait,” I say. “That’s New Avalon?”
“Sure is,” Pete says with another sniff.
I sit up in my seat, both uneasy and annoyed. Ronan and Loretta conveniently failed to mention that we will be spending the next five days not on some random island, living, eating, and sleeping just like women who vanished a hundred years ago.
We’ll be doing it on New Avalon itself.
The exact spot where they lived and ate and slept, not to mention disappeared. And it’s where, if Pete is to be believed, they and whatever killed them still remain.
My phone pings again and I jerk it from my pocket. There’s a follow-up text from the actress I replaced, finally answering my question.
to warn you
About what? I type.
I stare at the screen, anxiously watching the gray dots ripple across the bottom, signaling her imminent reply.
don’t set foot on that island. if you do, i swear, you WILL regret it