Chapter Nine
Nine
The scratching returns in the middle of the night.
I know because I’m wide awake when it begins, the sound as unplaceable as before. Perhaps even more so now that I’ve extinguished all the lamps. I lie in the tar-thick darkness, straining to pinpoint its location, to no avail. It’s everywhere.
As for what’s causing it, that remains impossible to know. I still can’t even tell if it’s inside the cottage or out.
“Please be outside,” I say to the scratching.
“And if you’re inside, please be something cute and harmless and not a rat.
And if you are a rat—or, God forbid, rats—please don’t eat my eyeballs,” I add, citing a fear I’ve had since I was ten and read how rats go for the eyes first when they get desperate enough to prey on humans.
Scanning the room, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. A blur of motion at the window. Thinking it is indeed a rat, I let out a girlish shriek than soon dissolves into embarrassed laughter.
It’s just the shadow of that wretched oak tree in the middle of the green. A light breeze must have shushed through its branches, causing them to sway, which in turn created an undulating shadow at the window.
Still, just to be on the safe side, I whisper into the darkness, “And if you’re Molly, you’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.”
Shockingly, that seems to work. The scratching stops, which doesn’t mean I can get any sleep.
The room is too hot, the bed too unyielding, and I spend what remains of the night lying awake in the sweltering darkness, replaying everything that has happened.
Brad’s evacuation. The séance. That damned glass spelling out Molly’s name.
Several times, I reach across the nightstand, searching for my phone, only to be reminded that it’s not here but in a designer backpack somewhere on the mainland, along with everyone else’s.
“Please tell me you have your phone,” Heather asked Ronan a few hours ago, as we all stood on the dock, watching the boat vanish from view.
“Everything will be fine,” he said, answering the question by avoiding it.
“So that’s a no?” Susie asked.
I already knew that, having watched Ronan drop his phone into a velvet pouch like the rest of us.
“I saw no point in keeping it,” he said. “Not when there was no way to charge it. So I handed it over. I didn’t think there’d be a problem.”
“We are trapped on an island with no boat, no electricity, and now no phones,” Heather said. “I’d say that’s a huge fucking problem.”
“We’re not trapped,” Ronan said, a bit too adamant, like he was trying to convince himself and not us. “We have food. We have shelter.”
Heather scoffed. “And no means of leaving. Which is the very definition of trapped.”
“It’s not like we’ve been abandoned,” said Violet, who continued to stare at the black expanse of water between us and the mainland. “Obviously, Loretta knows we’re here. She’ll be back as soon as Brad gets the help he needs.”
“Says someone who clearly hasn’t spent any time in an ER waiting room,” Heather said. “That could be hours.”
“Or longer,” Julianne chimed in.
The rest of us let that sink in a moment.
An uneasy silence during which we all estimated just how long it could be before Loretta returned.
I thought about the time it took to get here on Pete’s boat, which was bigger and faster than our own.
That was at least fifteen minutes. Add in a half-hour ambulance trip to the hospital, another half-hour cab ride back to the dock, then another lengthy return to the island.
I ran through the different scenarios, concluding that even in the best of cases—Brad recovering minutes after reaching the hospital—Loretta might not be back until dawn.
Now dawn has arrived, and from the steady silence outside the cottage, I assume she still hasn’t returned.
After wasting another half hour lying awake in the gray morning light, I decide the best thing to do is just start the day. Before we all went to bed, Ronan had made it clear that Brad and Loretta’s hopefully temporary absence didn’t alter our plan.
“For the time being, we should just keep doing what we came here to do,” he said.
“Even after what just happened?” Heather asked, incredulous.
“Especially after that,” Ronan said. “Now you really have no choice but to live like the women of New Avalon. They were stuck, too. Remember how you all feel in this moment and use it when we start shooting next week. In the meantime, the same rules apply. Period clothes, period behavior, period everything. As far as I’m concerned, we’re living in 1926. ”
As silly as it seems right now, I obey his rules once I drag myself from bed. Off comes the nightgown. On goes the blue dress. But the granny panties and laughable bras left for me in the dresser remain there, realism be damned.
I leave the cottage just as the sun starts to rise over Lake Faraday.
A thick mist on the water diffuses the light, turning it soft pink.
In this cotton candy haze, I pass the other cottages on my way to the main house.
Everyone else still seems to be sleeping.
I guess I’m the only person on the island kept awake by worry and inexplicable scratching noises.
Lucky me.
Yet when I enter the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Violet there, standing over the stovetop in her high-necked lavender dress.
She moves with confident ease, nary a bead of sweat on her face, as if this is her daily routine.
There are two pots on the stove. One is just boiling water, while the other contains a thick batch of oatmeal that Violet stirs with a wooden spoon.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she confesses. “I kept worrying about Brad, the poor boy. And Loretta, of course. I spent all night waiting for her to come back.”
“I assume she didn’t.”
“Not yet,” Violet says, tapping the spoon against the pot. “But she’ll be here soon. Any minute now, I suspect.”
I move to the pantry, finding a paper sack of ground coffee. I pour some into an old-fashioned percolator sitting on the counter, add a few ladles of the boiling water, and set it atop the stove.
“I heard you made a wonderful dinner last night,” Violet says. “I figured you’d try to make breakfast, too, and wanted to beat you to it. You shouldn’t be saddled with the cooking.”
“I don’t mind. I enjoy cooking.”
Violet shakes her head. “You don’t want to be known only for that. First rule of a set. Never volunteer to do anything on a regular basis, because that’s all you’ll be asked to do.”
I assume she’s speaking from experience. Based on her filmography, years in the business, and sheer number of awards won, I suspect Violet could teach a master class in being on a film set.
“Any more advice you’d like to share? Specifically acting advice?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare tell a fellow actor what to do,” Violet says, resuming her stirring.
“Everyone’s method is different. All I’m comfortable sharing are the three things told to me when I made my first movie.
One, always be on time. Two, know your lines.
Three, always be aware of where the camera is placed.
That way you don’t need to wonder or worry about it.
Note its location on the first take. After that, pretend it’s not there. ”
I suspect it’s not quite as simple as that. Maybe to Violet, but not to me.
Julianne drifts into the kitchen then, also in costume, although not looking nearly as fresh as Violet. She’s more like me. Wilted and tired and overheated.
“Good morning,” she says. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Marin is looking for acting advice,” Violet says. “A task better suited to you.”
I check the percolator before looking to Julianne. “You teach a lot, right?”
“Hmm,” Julianne says sleepily. “Unfortunately, being a character actress isn’t as lucrative as it used to be, which even then wasn’t all that much.
Teaching helps pay the bills. It’s fulfilling, too, knowing I’m helping shape the next generation.
Those who want to be shaped. I swear, half my students care more about their number of TikTok followers than their craft. ”
Violet playfully lifts a finger to her lips. “Not in front of Marin. She’ll think we’re positively ancient.”
“Some days, I feel ancient,” Julianne says. “Including now, although I think that’s from lack of sleep. Last night was too…”
Her voice trails off, leaving me to finish the sentence for her. “Dark? Quiet?”
“Well, yes. Both of those things. But it felt…strange. The cottage, I mean. Like I wasn’t alone. Like someone else was inside, lurking. I looked around, but nothing was there.”
I think of the scratching in the middle of the night. The mystery of it all. How utterly inexplicable it was. So, too, was the voice I heard at the end of the séance. That chilling hiss in the darkness that only seemed to address me and Susie.
“Did you hear anything during the night?” I say.
“Nothing unusual,” Julianne says. “Just crickets and frogs and whatever else is crawling all over this island.”
The coffee’s done percolating, so I pour a cup for me, Julianne, and Violet, who accepts it gratefully. Before taking a sip, she says, “Did you hear something last night, Marin?”
Heather bursts into the kitchen just then, sparing me from having to choose whether to answer honestly or not.
“Hear what?” she says, making a beeline to the percolator.
“Noises in the night,” Violet says.
Heather shakes her head while pouring out coffee. “I didn’t. I slept like the dead.”
“How?” Julianne says. “After what happened last night, I found it impossible to sleep.”
“You mean with Brad?”
“Yes.” Julianne pauses, looks into her coffee cup, sighs. “And with the séance.”
“That wasn’t real,” I say, although I have no proof other than the fact that it couldn’t have been real.
There has to be some logical explanation for everything that happened, from the thumping table to the suddenly extinguished candles to the hissing voice right in my ear.
“It was exactly what Brad said it was. Just us unconsciously acting out what we wanted to happen—or thought should happen.”
“I agree with Marin,” Heather says.
“But it felt real,” Julianne says, and I can’t argue. It felt as alarmingly real as those nights when I was five, hunched under the covers, whispering to my sister.
You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.
“And how did it know all those names? None of you—” Julianne stares again into her coffee cup, too embarrassed to face us. “None of you moved the glass on purpose, did you? Not even a tiny bit?”
“I didn’t,” Violet says while Heather and I both shake our heads.
“And the table? That wasn’t—”
She’s cut off by a hiss from Violet, followed by a sharp gasp. Those two sounds let me know she’s burned her hand. It’s confirmed when she holds an index finger to her lips, sucking on the tip.
“It’s better to get it under some cold water,” I say, rushing to the sink and pumping the faucet until a steady stream flows out of it.
Violet thrusts her finger into the water, sighing. “I’m so clumsy.”
“I work at a restaurant,” I say. “You should see the ways in which even the most experienced chefs mangle themselves.”
“That’s why I’m more concerned about being stranded here than the séance,” Heather says. “What if there’s another medical emergency?”
Violet removes her finger from the water, checks it, puts it back in. “My burn isn’t remotely that bad.”
“But what if it was? What if someone else gets sick? Or is injured? Without a boat and our phones, there’s no way to call for help.”
“When is Pete supposed to come back and pick us up?” Julianne says.
“Saturday,” Heather says, feeling no need to add the obvious fact that it’s only Tuesday.
Violet, intuiting what we’re all thinking, says, “Then it’s a good thing Loretta will be back by lunchtime. I’m sure of it.”
She’s probably right. Even in a worst-case scenario, Loretta will either return by then or send word with someone else about Brad’s condition.
I’m certain we haven’t been forgotten. Yet the idea of being stuck here for days continues to hang in the air, thick and unpleasant, like smoke from something burning on the stove.
“Are you sure Brad’s problem was his appendix?” Julianne says, speaking slowly, the words shy on her tongue.
“Not a hundred percent,” Heather says. “But the symptoms were there. And something was clearly wrong with him.”
“What if it was something else?”
Heather arches one of her finely penciled brows. “Such as?”
“I don’t know,” Julianne says, though she clearly has an idea in mind. “It’s just, after the séance—”
“Which wasn’t real,” I reiterate, sounding just like my father as he exasperatedly told me the same thing for the umpteenth time. It’s not real, Mare. There’s nothing there. It’s just a figment of your imagination.
“But what if it was? What if we really contacted…” Julianne’s voice fades, and I realize she’s afraid to say the name.
Azra.
“We didn’t,” Heather says. “That was just your imagination.”
“And even if we did,” I say, “that’s not why Brad got sick. He didn’t even take part in the séance.”
“But he was there,” Julianne says. “And he was here on this island. Now he’s not. And I just can’t stop thinking there’s a reason for that.”
She doesn’t say the rest. There’s no need. It’s clear from the worry writ large on her face what she’s thinking.
Brad is gone because Azra wanted him out of the way.