Chapter Twelve
Twelve
Tonight feels darker, even though I know it’s just my imagination.
The moon is the same size as last night, and the island as electricity-free as before.
Yet something has seemed off since sunset.
A strange disturbance in the atmosphere that would make me think a storm is coming if not for the cloud-free, star-filled sky.
Maybe it’s because there’s still no sign of Loretta. Which is worrisome. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.
“What if she’s not back by tomorrow?” Julianne said as we stood in the kitchen, preparing a variation of the hash and biscuits I made the night before.
“She will be,” I said. “I’m sure Brad is fine and that circumstances prevented her from coming back tonight.”
I couldn’t even convince myself of that, let alone Julianne. Something is obviously wrong. Variations of what that could be—and how bad—consumed my thoughts all through dinner. Rather than eat, I moved food from one side of my plate to the other before giving up and dumping it in the trash.
Now I’m in my cottage, both exhausted and anxious. When I hear footfalls on the path outside, I run to the window, hoping it’s Loretta, returning at last. Instead, I see Ronan speed-walking from the main house to the cottages.
My cottage, I think with a nervous flutter as I recall our easygoing conversation. His hand on my knee, resting there, like it was the most natural thing in the world. His pecs. And abs. And arms.
But as Ronan draws closer, a new emotion emerges: panic.
I look, for lack of a better description, like shit.
Dressed in an unflattering nightgown and greasy with sweat.
I didn’t even brush my teeth after dinner because there was no more potable water left in the kitchen and I didn’t have the energy to boil more.
It turns out, I have no reason to worry. Because when Ronan reaches my cottage, he zigs right, crossing the green to the cottage on the other side.
No. 3.
Susie.
Ronan raps twice on the door. Susie opens it wearing the same nightgown as me, although on her it looks a thousand times better.
“Hey, you,” she says.
“You needed to talk to me about something?”
“I do,” Susie says, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”
Ronan pauses on the threshold, rubbing his jaw, like he’s debating whether to enter or not. He looks around, checking to see if anyone is watching, unaware that I am. Ducked behind the curtains, peering through them as Ronan makes his choice and slips into Susie’s cottage.
As the door closes behind him, my chest begins to tighten with hurt, anger, and disappointment.
That bastard.
No, I take that back.
That bitch.
Because I know exactly what Susie’s trying to do.
She’s already admitted she’s jealous of me.
By seducing the director, she thinks she can also steal the role of Daisy.
I think about what Violet would do right now.
Probably stomp across the green and pound on Susie’s door, ready to fight for the part that is already hers. The part she earned.
I don’t, because I’m not Violet. I haven’t earned anything yet, as this morning’s rehearsal showed. Yes, there was that moment in which everything meshed, and it was magical. But a single moment doesn’t make an entire performance. For all I know, it was a fluke.
As for thinking Ronan might have feelings for me, well, that was just stupid. I’m sure Susie said he was smitten just to toy with me, and it worked. Now I only feel foolish. Going to Susie’s cottage and confronting them both won’t change that. Likely, it will make it worse.
Instead, I climb into bed and try not to think about what they’re doing this very minute.
And if I’ll still have this job once Loretta returns.
If she returns.
When the scratching starts up, I first assume it’s all in my head.
Nothing but jagged thoughts clawing at my brain.
As it continues, though, I realize it’s the same noise I heard last night.
This time, I hope it is rats, here to eat my eyes.
I’d rather that happen than face Ronan and Susie in the morning.
At some point, I fall asleep, crashing from a strange combo of anger and embarrassment. I remain out like a light until, at some point in the night, I’m startled awake by a strange sound echoing through the cottage.
Not scratching.
Something new.
A loud, emphatic thwump.
It sounds again and I sit up in bed. That is not a rat. Or bat. Or squirrel or raccoon or any other animal, save for maybe a bear, and I’d definitely notice if one of those was in the cottage.
Thwump.
There it is again.
Thwump.
And again.
It’s an unusual noise. Stronger than a knock or a rap, but not as forceful as a thud. Like a sack of laundry hitting the floor. Similar to the scratching, it’s impossible to place.
Then it’s gone.
Minutes pass. Five. Ten. I spend them looking toward the same window I watched Ronan from.
Although I can’t see the giant oak outside, the angle of the moon casts its shadow through the glass and into the cottage.
The silhouettes of spindly branches stretch across the wall, punctuated by dark, dense clusters of foliage.
Although merely shadows, they so resemble the real thing that, for a moment, I think they’re the source of the scratching. That, at night, the branches slip through cracks in the windows and doors, scraping the insides of the cottage like it’s a pumpkin at Halloween.
But then the shadows on the wall seem to separate, one peeling off from the rest. I watch, wide-eyed, as it morphs into another shape entirely.
A human one.
Although the shadow is ill-defined, I can make out the curves of slouched shoulders, a head, and long, straight hair from which smaller shadows fall. Tiny flecks of darkness that drip like water.
Because it is water.
And the person outside is—
I swallow hard, stopping the scream erupting in my throat. I force it back down, the act a painful struggle, like I’m choking. For a moment, I can’t breathe, can’t move, can only sit here gagging on my fear as panic spikes in my chest.
Molly.
Even though it’s too dark to make out any features, I know it’s her.
Dripping wet.
At my window.
After twenty years, she’s tracked me down.
Suddenly I am five again, terrified under the covers, pressing my body into the mattress. As if I can somehow burrow my way inside it. As if that will keep me safe.
Outside the window, Molly doesn’t move.
She just watches.
I stare back, fear pinning me in place. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. All I’m capable of doing is whispering the same thing now as I did back then.
“You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.”
I keep repeating it as I roll onto my side and close my eyes. Tears squeeze out anyway. Cold ones that drip like the water falling from Molly’s hair. They soak the pillow as I spend God knows how long saying the same thing over and over.
“You’re not real. You don’t exist. Please be gone.”
Eventually I open my eyes, wipe away the tears to clear my vision, and look to the window.
I have to.
I need to know that she’s gone.
She is, thank God. It’s only the shadow of the oak again, higher up the wall now that the moon has shifted.
When I was young and Molly came to visit, I never checked to see if she was real.
I knew she wasn’t because that was what my parents told me.
But they’re not here right now, forcing me to remind myself that ghosts don’t exist. This is just my mind starting to play tricks on me again.
Which shouldn’t be a surprise. My time on this island has been so surreal that the lines between what’s real and what’s supernatural would naturally begin to blur.
That theory is strong enough to push past my still-potent fear and force me out of bed, out of the cabin, onto the porch. I go to the spot at the window where I saw Molly standing.
No, where I imagined she was standing.
She wasn’t really there, staring inside, looking at me while water dripped from her always-wet hair. She couldn’t have been. I’m so sure of it that I bend down and touch the exact spot on the porch where I imagined she stood.
I jerk my hand away, more shocked than if I’d been zapped by a live wire.
Even though the rest of the porch is completely dry, that spot is inexplicably, terrifyingly wet.