Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
After watching that video on the camcorder, continuing a search for Susie feels fruitless. Wary and suspicious, we all take a vote on what to do next. It’s unanimous that our first priority is, in Heather’s words, “to get the fuck off this island.”
Now we stand on the dock, figuring out how, exactly, we can do that.
The lake is currently calm and empty, save for a flock of ducks swimming fifty feet from shore.
Thanks to the poster in my cottage, I know what they are.
Green-winged teals. When they fly off, flapping wings and flinging water, all of us watch, jealous of their ability to leave this place.
“Does anyone know how to swim?” Violet says.
I shake my head. “I never learned.”
After what happened to Molly, my parents forbade me from taking lessons or even getting into a swimming pool. A strange choice, in hindsight. You’d think they would have wanted me to be as strong a swimmer as possible.
“I can, but not two miles,” Heather says, staring at the expanse of water between us and the distant, hazy mainland. “That’s triathlon shit.”
Two miles is a stretch for everyone here, with the possible exception of Ronan, who’s already proven himself to be stronger than expected.
“I can try,” he says.
Heather looks from him to the lake and back again. “But can you make it?”
“I won’t know until I reach the other side.”
We all agree that, for now, the risk is too great. Especially since the rest of us won’t know if he makes it or not. If, God forbid, he doesn’t, we’ll be down one more person and still have no hope of rescue.
A motorboat appears in the distance, zipping over the water with a steady hum.
Julianne spots it first and starts waving her arms wildly.
The rest of us do the same. Even if the people in the boat see us, they don’t slow down.
Understandable, really. We’re four women wearing period dresses and a man in a neckerchief. I wouldn’t stop for us, either.
“Maybe we could signal the mainland,” I say as the boat fades from view. “Start a fire or something. Someone might see the smoke and send for help.”
Ronan shakes his head. “It’s not like we’re shipwrecked. People know we’re here. Half the damn town watched us arrive. Even if they do notice the smoke from that far away, they’re just going to think we’re filming something.”
That was what Pete assumed we’d be doing here. He said so as he shuttled me and Loretta to the island. If he thought it, then everyone else who saw our arrivals probably thinks it, too.
Remembering our conversation in the boat makes me think of something else Pete said.
About how his grandfather was the first to realize Daisy, Mrs. Semple, and the others were missing.
How he saw their dresses hanging in the trees.
How he swore until the day he died that something supernatural had killed them.
“I have an idea who might be behind this,” I say, springing across the dock.
Ronan calls after me. “Marin, where are you going?”
“To get Daisy’s diary!”
Once on dry land, I forgo the zigzagging path for a march straight to the top of the island. There, I rush to my cottage, grab the diary pages, and start flipping through them.
While I was recalling all the things Pete had told me, it got me thinking about everything he left out.
Like how, in an entry from June 10, his grandfather Mr. Ruggle gets a name-drop from Mrs. Semple.
Or that, in the second entry from June 11, he’s identified as the man who helped carry bootlegged booze off the island.
Nor did Pete mention that June 16, the day his grandfather arrived on an empty New Avalon, is also the date after Daisy’s last known entry.
Studying the diary now, it all strikes me as a purposeful omission on Pete’s part.
Especially since he was so chatty about everything else.
While driving a boat.
That took all of us to this very island.
I snatch up the pages and leave the cottage, finding the others just making their way back from the water.
“What if it was Pete we saw on Susie’s video?” I say.
Ronan’s brow crinkles. “Who’s Pete?”
“The boat guy,” Violet answers.
“He knows we’re here,” I add. “He obviously knows how to get here. He might even know that Loretta and Brad aren’t here.”
That part of Loretta’s continued absence has been bothering me.
If, God forbid, Brad did die and she was forced to deal with the fallout, she has a phone.
She easily could have called someone to come to the island, make sure we’re okay, and take us back to the mainland.
Maybe there’s a reason that hasn’t happened yet.
“You think she asked Pete to check on us?” Ronan says.
“Maybe? Perhaps he showed up last night, found us all here stranded, and—”
“Decided to kill Susie?” Heather says.
Ronan runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “No one is saying she’s dead.”
But it’s what we’re all thinking. What else could have happened to her?
We’ve looked everywhere, and there’s no sign she’s still on New Avalon.
Yet there’s also no way she could have left on her own.
Especially if that video is real. Someone else was there with her.
Someone else made her vanish into thin air.
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it was Pete,” Violet says. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s crazy?” Ronan suggests.
I didn’t get that vibe from Pete. Grizzled and ornery, yes.
But not psychotic. So I tell the others about his grandfather’s role in the story of New Avalon, the mentions of him in the diary, the fact that Daisy was still writing in it the day before he allegedly found all of them missing.
Those last five pages torn from the diary suggest more was written—and that whoever took them did so because they were incriminating.
“Maybe his grandfather was crazy and killed the original group of women,” I say. “Pete somehow knows he did it, and now he’s worried that, by spending time on New Avalon, we’ll learn the truth.”
I realize it’s a stretch even as I’m saying it.
There are so many ways in which it doesn’t make sense, starting with the idea that Pete’s grandfather was some insane thrill killer.
Even if he had been, there’s nothing to suggest Pete knew about it and would then try to hide the truth by killing someone else. Especially someone as famous as Susie.
Then there are the logistics to consider, as Violet points out. “We’re at the top of the island. If Pete had come during the night, one of us would have seen or heard his boat approaching.”
“Not in the dark,” Heather says. “Not if its motor and lights were both turned off.”
“Then how would they see?” I ask.
“Maybe no one came to the island.” Julianne says it, a spooky look in her eyes. A madness resides just behind them, barely kept in check. “Maybe whatever those women summoned a century ago, maybe it’s still here. Maybe it never left.”
“This island is not haunted,” Ronan says. “Every spring and summer, teams of scientists spend weeks here without incident. No one’s ever reported anything supernatural. No one’s been hurt. And no one’s gone missing.”
“Then why is it happening now?” Julianne says. “That séance the other night changed something. This place has felt strange ever since. I know you all feel it.”
I don’t dare mention that I (maybe? possibly?) saw Molly during the night. Especially with Julianne sounding utterly unhinged. The others have already started to tune her out, even though she keeps talking.
“There are too many similarities between what happened then and what’s happening now to ignore. First, there was the séance in which something unexpected took place.”
“Which could have been any number of things,” Heather says, even though it didn’t feel that way then and still doesn’t now.
“But now Susie has disappeared, which is exactly what happens to her character,” Julianne says. “If Azra took Katrina, then maybe they took Susie as well. Why can’t you all just admit that history is repeating itself?”
Seeing no good reason to stay—or to listen to Julianne—Heather starts walking to her cottage. “Because it’s not.”
“It feels like it,” Julianne insists, trailing after her. “Either it’s that or—”
A thought chimes through my skull. Another theory about what might be happening. “Someone is trying to act out Ronan’s script before filming can begin.”
Heather, about to step onto her porch, stops and spins around. “Why would someone do that?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “Maybe to derail production?”
“But who has copies of the screenplay?” Violet asks.
“Tons of people,” Ronan says, rattling off the names of the director of photography, the costume designer, the art director, the hair and makeup team.
“But none of them are here,” I say.
Ronan nods, catching on. “Of the people in Vermont, it would be just me, Loretta, Brad, and all of you.”
“What about former members of the cast?” I say, thinking of my phone and the texts I received as I was whisked to New Avalon.
don’t set foot on that island. if you do, i swear, you WILL regret it
At the time, I was told it was a warning. But what if it wasn’t?
What if it was a threat?
“What does Lindy Garrett look like?” I say.
“That’s hard to describe,” Ronan says. “She’s, well, not very memorable.”
Plain, in other words. While that might have worked well in a casting notice, it doesn’t help me now. Luckily, Ronan says, “We might still have her headshot somewhere. Either in my research or Loretta’s production notes.”
He hurries into the main house, emerging a few minutes later with the leather knapsack in which he’d kept Daisy’s diary. Now he sorts through it, shuffling the pages inside until he finds an eight-by-ten photograph.
He hands it to me, and I grow instantly dizzy. I’ve seen the woman in the photo before. Not in a movie or play or TV show.
In person.
Mere days ago.
The woman with the benign smile staring from the photograph is the same brunette who started to take my picture when I arrived at the dock. As she lowered her phone, I’d thought her expression was so unusual. Those big, round eyes full of envy.
Now I know why she looked that way—and who she is.
“She’s here,” I say. “I saw her at the dock. Lindy Garrett is here. In Vermont. Right now.”