Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
“What did I do?” Violet says as we stand at the kitchen sink, me trying to steady her dazed, swaying form while I pump water over her hands. “Marin, what the fuck did I do?”
I say nothing. Even if I want to talk about it, I can’t. Right now, I’m running on autopilot. The only thing keeping me from breaking down in shock is knowing I need to stop Violet from doing the same.
The screaming that began in the parlor continued as I guided Violet past Ronan’s body, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.
By then, she’d calmed into a state of quiet, stunned shock.
Now I force her hands into the stream of water, trying to rinse them of blood.
The sight of all that red swirling down the drain makes Violet whimper.
She asks again, her voice plaintive. “What did I do?”
One could argue that she didn’t do anything.
That it was Daisy who’d been in control then. It’s such an impossible notion that no one would believe it unless they saw it happen. Violet’s a great actress, yes. Possibly the greatest. But what I just witnessed seems utterly impossible to fake.
Violet wasn’t just pretending to be Daisy.
She had become her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as her.
Violet grips the edge of the sink. “I killed him, Marin. It was entirely my fault.”
“No, it was Daisy’s fault. She did this. You were just a means to an end.”
“No one is going to believe me.”
I lean against the counter, my mind racing. “They will if you tell the police it was self-defense.”
“Was it?” Violet asks, searching my face for signs of reassurance. “I wasn’t aware of anything. It was like I was in a coma. I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember a thing.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t self-defense. From where I stood, watching the ice pick plunge into Ronan’s stomach again and again and again, it clearly looked like cold-blooded murder. Violet must see it in my eyes because she begins to sob.
“Oh, God,” she says, sinking to the floor. “What am I going to do?
I replay the séance in my head. Every aspect of her had changed so thoroughly that she was barely recognizable. Violet, but also…not. Literally a woman possessed.
Then there’s the way she instantly snapped back to her old self.
I was watching closely when it happened.
I saw her reaction to the sight of Ronan bleeding out on the floor, the ice pick in his stomach, the realization of what she’d done.
There was a moment of dazed confusion, followed by a flash of pure terror.
“I’ll vouch for you,” I say. “I’ll tell the police everything I saw.”
“Which was murder,” Violet sobs. “You saw someone who looked exactly like me murder Ronan Peters. But it wasn’t me, Marin. I swear. Yet no one is going to believe that.”
I know. We are women and Ronan was a man, and those are never good odds. Especially because Ronan was famous. Not as famous as Violet, though, a fact that might work in her favor.
But me?
I have nothing going for me, which is why I say, “I know what we need to do.”
And an hour later, it’s over.
It’s shocking how little time it takes to get the job done.
Violet and I work without speaking, first carrying Ronan’s body from the parlor and out the side door in the kitchen.
He’s surprisingly light, which goes against everything I’d learned from mystery novels.
How heavy the dead can be. But Ronan proves to be no problem at all.
Perhaps Violet and I are stronger than we look.
More likely, shock and adrenaline do all the heavy lifting, in the same way you hear about people picking up a car when someone is trapped beneath it.
In this case, we’re the trapped ones, doing whatever we can to set ourselves free.
Once outside, we drag Ronan to the edge of the cliff.
Within seconds, he’s at the bottom.
It should look like an accident, with the impact from the fall hopefully covering his true cause of death.
I stare at the sky as I let go of his body, waiting for the inevitable sound of it hitting the rocks below before I look down. In that moment, I don’t think about my actions, don’t feel remorse, don’t wonder if the horrible things in his past justify his death tonight.
Those thoughts I’ll save for later.
After we thoroughly wash the ice pick and drop it in a drawer.
After we return to the parlor and sop up the blood with towels.
After we burn those same towels in the kitchen stove, along with our bloodstained dresses.
After we check the entire house for any blood spatter we might have missed.
After I go to the parlor and retrieve the camcorder, the silent witness to our crimes. We carry it out to the cliff, where Violet tosses it into the dark lake below. I tell her to return to the house, collect her things, and meet me at the dock, where we’ll call Loretta to pick us up in the boat.
I go to my cottage, where all the bad thoughts I’ve kept at bay come screaming back at me. Overwhelmed, I collapse onto the bed, suddenly sick.
I watched a man get murdered tonight.
And no good will come from it.
It won’t bring Elise back. It won’t lessen the pain Ronan caused her when she was alive. All it will do is create even more pain. For Ronan’s family. For his fans. For his friends and colleagues.
And for me.
Because I just helped cover up his murder.
The only thing keeping me from falling apart completely is the idea that it was all Daisy’s doing.
I think about everything that’s taken place on this island, both now and in the past. While most of it has been explained away, either in Daisy’s diary or in person, a few small details remain a mystery.
Enough to suggest that New Avalon is at least touched by the supernatural.
As if to reinforce that idea, I hear a sickeningly familiar noise just as I’m about to leave.
Thwump.
I whirl around, facing the empty cottage, seeing absolutely nothing that could have caused it. Still, I say, “Violet? Are you doing that?”
There’s no response, of course. Violet isn’t here. No one is. It’s just me and the empty cottage and the noise that sounds a second time.
Thwump.
“This isn’t funny, Violet,” I say, still trying to convince myself that she’s behind it, even though it’s clear she isn’t.
Thwump.
I wince at the third occurrence, for it sounds exactly like Ronan’s body hitting the rocks at the base of the cliff. Dull. Lifeless. Haunting.
This, I realize, is not a noise a human could make.
It’s the sound of the dead.
I slowly rotate around the room, still unable to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. My hope is that doing so will indicate its source.
But deep down, I already know. I suspect I’ve known since the first time I heard the scratches the night I arrived.
“Daisy?” I say, my voice a whisper in the darkness. “Is it really you?”
Thwump.
I think that’s a yes. Which means that all this time, the noises in the cottage have been Daisy’s way of communicating with me. There’s something she’s been trying to say. After what just happened in the parlor, I’m not sure I want to hear it.
But then the noise sounds again.
Thwump.
And two more times after that, making me understand that Daisy will have her say whether I want to hear it or not.
I try again to pinpoint the noise, roaming the room, skimming my palms over the walls. When it happens again—thwump—I detect the slightest vibration. A shiver of motion that occurs not in the wall but under my feet.
I drop to my knees and wait, hunched forward, hands flat against the floor. Daisy apparently approves, because there’s another thwump. This time, I feel it before hearing it. A shimmy beneath my palms as, like thunder following a flash of lightning, noise erupts in the room.
This time, it doesn’t stop as Daisy lets out a series of thwumps that have me crawling across the floor, following the growing vibrations.
When I reach the center of the cottage, she unleashes one last THWUMP that’s loud enough to rattle the rafters and make the entire floor heave.
The movement jars one of the floorboards, shaking it loose, the plank of wood now slanted atop another, revealing a dark space beneath it.
Sure, the entire cabin is mostly dark. As is the entire island. But the sliver of darkness under the floorboard is deeper than all of that. The blackest of blacks. Endless. Tantalizing.
It is, I realize, the kind of darkness that begs to have light shed on it. Like the space under the bed where monsters could be hiding.
I crawl toward the board, suddenly aware that I haven’t heard another thwump since it came loose. Maybe there’s a good reason for that. Maybe the loose board was the goal of all that racket.
Or maybe I’ve simply gone insane.
Considering the events of the night, that’s the likeliest scenario.
I slide my fingers under the board and lift.
Air whispers from the uncovered hole. An unsettling exhalation that smells of earth and dust and rot.
It puffs against my face, but I don’t look away.
I can’t. There’s something about that dark space that begs for my attention.
Because the thumps have stopped, I have no doubt Daisy wanted me to find it.
I reach into the hole, fearful. As if some horrible beast lurks just within that chasm, teeth bared, waiting to bite. There’s not, of course. As I move my hand through the darkened space, I feel nothing but cold air brushing my knuckles. The hole itself seems to be empty.
But right when I start to remove my hand, I brush against…something.
Gasping, I slowly run my fingertips over it, feeling an array of surfaces. Smooth, cracked, cold.
I yank my hand from the hole and roam the cottage, gathering every lamp and candle I can find. When all of them are lit, illuminating the place in a pulsing glow, I return to the space in the floor. It’s still too dark. In order to see inside, I need to make the hole wider.
So I do.
Prying up more floorboards.
Lifting them free.
Tossing them aside in a heap of brittle wood.
I stop when the hole in the floor is roughly the size of a grave. A fitting comparison, it turns out, because when I look inside again, I see what is unmistakably a human skeleton.