Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
I’m back in my cottage.
It seems like the safest choice, even with an evil spirit lurking about.
Maybe.
Possibly.
After confronting Violet, I’m not sure of anything anymore. She said nothing else as I lingered in her room, begging for the truth. She just strode silently toward the door, self-preservation nudging me backward. I didn’t want to end up like Susie or Heather or Julianne.
Where they might be or what happened to them, only Violet knows. Because she helped cause it. Right now, that’s one of two things I am certain of.
Now I’m in bed, tired but unable to sleep, and not just because the island’s insects are screeching louder than normal.
A steady, anxious trill that soundtracks my anxious thoughts.
I can’t stop wondering about what’s going on, what Violet and Loretta are up to, why they’re doing it.
Most of all, I can’t keep from worrying when it’s going to happen to me.
Because it is.
That’s my other certainty.
That at this very moment, they intend to make me vanish as well.
I know I should warn Ronan. And I will. When the night is over and there’s daylight for protection and enough time has passed since our encounter in the hallway that I won’t feel icky about it, even though right now I still very much do.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I all but ignore the scratching when it starts up. It’s the same with the thwumps. The only sound I pay attention to is a whisper of movement just outside the cottage as the shadows at the window begin to stir.
Molly is there.
Or at least the prospect of her.
Just like all her other visits, she’s hard to see. A silhouette within the shadow of night. But unlike our previous encounters, this time I’m prepared.
Reaching under my pillow, I grab the flashlight Heather took from Susie’s cottage.
I kept it after Heather herself vanished and now flick it on as I swing it toward Molly.
A circle of white light scrapes the wall, sliding toward the front of the cottage.
It hits the window, the reflection a starburst of brightness.
Outside, a figure recoils from the light, hunched over and shuffling backward.
Shocked, I try to steady the flashlight. The light skims the left side of Molly’s head, then her right. I finally hit my mark, the flashlight’s beam centered directly over her face.
She hisses, winces, lifts a hand to shield her eyes, the flashlight illuminating the pale skin of her palm. In that blur of motion, I see enough to know it’s not Molly at my window.
It’s Susie Hutchinson.
I gasp, my whole body stilling in shock. A momentary paralysis during which the flashlight slides from my grip. It hits the floor, beam bouncing as Susie uses the sudden darkness to duck away from the window.
In a flash, I’m out of bed, running to the door, opening it up to the misty night and the violent insect screech.
Susie is still there.
Scrambling to get off the porch.
She gives the door a shove, trying to shut me back inside, but I’m too fast and block it with my foot.
Kicking the door wide open, I see Susie sprint away, a wet, white blur in the night.
I chase after her, following her past the iron archway and into the trees, where the nighttime shrieks of the bugs are deafening.
Crickets and cicadas and tree frogs screaming in my ear as I bound down the stone steps cutting through the woods.
In seconds, Susie and I are both on the sloped meadow leading toward the dock.
A low mist rolls off the lake, covering the hillside in a blanket of fog.
Susie springs through it like a deer. I stumble, arms and legs pinwheeling.
At a faster pace than Susie, apparently.
Soon I’ve caught up to her and, with one last straining push, manage to wrap my hand around her wrist.
The motion tugs us both to a halt, and we smack into each other, my dry shoulder against her wet one, my skull against her dripping hair. Pain ricochets through me, but I refuse to let Susie go, even as she wobbles to the ground. I follow her down, pushing out questions.
“Why are you here? Where have you been?”
“Let me go!” Susie yelps, thrusting out a leg. The kick connects with my stomach, and I huff out a low grunt as Susie wriggles from my grip. In a flash, I’m on my hands and knees, ready to chase after her again.
That’s when I see the others.
Heather and Julianne.
Standing in the mist like ghosts.
They also catch sight of me and start running.
Not away from me.
At me.
They approach from different directions, and I spin helplessly, not knowing where to run.
Heather catches up to me first, gripping my arm with one hand and clamping the other over my mouth.
I scream anyway, the sound buzzing against her palm.
Soon Julianne is also beside me, holding on to my other arm as I kick and thrash and scream into Heather’s hand.
“Shhhh,” she hisses. “It’s easier if you don’t fight us.”
Over her shoulder, Susie reappears, taking cautious steps toward us.
She’s wet from head to toe, and in the madness and confusion of everything that’s going on, I at first think she fell into the lake.
But then I realize she’s been soaking wet this entire time.
Not just now, but all the times she’s come to my window.
So I would think that she was Molly, dripping and staring.
With her tiny stature and petite frame, she even looks a bit like Molly. Especially in the dark. Even now, knowing it’s Susie, I can’t shake the dreadful feeling that it’s my sister coming toward me.
“That bitch tackled me,” she sneers to the others.
“It’s not her fault,” Heather says. “You scared the shit out of her.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole fucking point of this.”
On my left, Julianne whispers, “I’m sorry, Marin. You weren’t supposed to find out.”
I resume shouting against Heather’s hand, annoying her so much that she removes it enough for me to say, “Find out what?”
“I’ll tell her.”
All of us follow the sound of the voice, turning toward the rising hill. Violet is there, descending slowly, the swirling fog making her look like some mythical goddess. Or, from the way the others obey her, a cult leader.
“That’s not a good idea,” Susie says.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Violet replies.
“But she could ruin it!”
Violet nudges past her to stand directly before me. She’s not smiling, but she doesn’t look angry, either. Her expression is one of bemusement. Like she’s curious to discover what happens next.
“Marin already knows too much,” she says, addressing the others but looking only at me. “Now we need to tell her the rest. She deserves to know everything.”