Roche Harbor Rogue

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “You mean the place where Calista was kept prisoner? You want me to go down into that hole? Why in the world would I do that?”

  “This place and that place may have something very important in common.”

  “I’m not going back there. No way. I was lucky to leave that house alive. I just knocked myself silly running out of a bat-infested cave. That’s enough adventure for a while.”

  “For most people that’s likely true. You’re not like most people, Adele. You’re different. You’re better. And you’re certainly far braver.”

  “Wasn’t it you who told me there’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity?”

  Delroy looked upward with narrowed eyes. “Did I? Admittedly it does sound like something I could have said. Regardless, you have little to fear. These islands like you. They always have. Go to the old sheriff’s home. See if there is a connection between there and here.”

  “What does this have to do with Bloodbone?”

  “Perhaps everything. Possibly nothing. You won’t know until you know. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? People like us, if there’s a path that might lead to an answer, we take it. We take it even if there’s a chance that in the end it takes us. That’s what I did when we first met. Even though I was an old man being eaten from the inside out by the cancer, your desire to solve the riddle that was Calista’s disappearance was that path and I had no choice but to take it with you. And I enjoyed every step for it allowed my final days to be spent doing something worthwhile. But now I wonder if that particular path was left unfinished. If there is not still more of the riddle yet to be solved.”

  Adele could hardly hear the last few words Delroy spoke. She watched his face retreat into shadow even as he whispered her name over and over. Then the same face moved back into the light.

  No, it’s not the same. That’s a face that knows how to lie.

  “Adele,” Fin said. “Are you awake?” He looked concerned.

  But is he? Is he really?

  “You want some water?”

  Adele nodded. Fin put a half full bottle in her hand and then helped her to sit up. “Easy does it,” he said. “You might feel dizzy.”

  After drinking the rest of the water Adele rubbed her head and winced. “Ouch.”

  Fin nodded. “Yeah, I bet. That’s gonna leave a mark. I had to carry you out of the cave over my shoulder. You’re heavier than you look.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Adele felt herself getting stronger. “I know. It’s fine. Say, did you go back into the cave after you put me in here?”

  Fin reached into his pocket. “Actually, I did. I found this.” He handed Adele her phone. “The screen is cracked, but I think it’s still working. Unfortunately, we still can’t get a decent cell signal. I’ve been walking around trying for the last twenty minutes.”

  “You went in there just to get my phone?”

  “It wasn’t any trouble. Most the bats had left.”

  “You sure my phone was the only reason you went back?”

  “I didn’t say that was the only reason. Why do I suddenly feel like I’m being interrogated?”

  “Because you are. Why weren’t you trying to get help? I was hurt. What if I had been hurt bad?”

  “You were just sleeping. I wanted you to have a chance to get some rest. And like I already said, I couldn’t get a signal.”

  “I’m not going to say you’re lying, but I’m also sure you’re not telling me the whole truth.”

  Fin stood, went to the door, and then turned around. “Look, I knew you were going to be fine. I also knew you dropped your phone in the cave. So, I went back and got it. What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t make you tell me everything, Fin. That’s up to you. In the meantime, I suggest we get going.”

  “But it’s almost dark.”

  “I know.”

  “You sure you feel up to driving the boat back at night?”

  “I didn’t say we’re going back to Roche.”

  “No?”

  When Adele got up, she nearly passed out. Fin caught her before she fell. “You aren’t ready to go anywhere,” he said.

  Adele took several deep breaths and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That’s not your decision. You can come with me or stay here. It’s up to you.”

  “But where are we going?”

  “It’s not far.”

  “I’m not letting you go there alone.”

  Adele looked Fin up and down and then nodded. “Okay.”

  Outside, the early evening air felt good on Adele’s face. She ignored her throbbing head. There wasn’t time for pain. The sun dipped low on the horizon to the west, covering the islands in a golden hue. She calculated it would take them nearly thirty minutes to reach the old sheriff’s abandoned home.

  That’s not enough time. It’ll be fully dark by then. You don’t want to go back to that place at night.

  With each step Adele took down the hill it felt like a little bomb detonated inside of her head. She would have given a week’s earnings for a few aspirin. Instead of moving slower, though, she sped up. Soon she was back on the bike as Fin called out for her to wait.

  Adele leaned forward, gritted her teeth, and peddled even harder as an old hell awaited her return.

  18.

  “T his is where it all started for you, isn’t it? Your life here on the islands I mean. You found her when everyone else thought she was long dead. You found her and set her free.”

  Adele didn’t feel like talking. She saw the same trees lining the long gravel drive. The same piles of junk that dotted the unkept yard. The same dilapidated porch with the rotted steps. And the same house where a deranged former county sheriff and his son kept a woman prisoner year after year after year.

  “You’ve never been back?”

  Adele shook her head as she stopped in front of the porch. The very last of the day’s light reflected off the home’s dirt-encrusted windows. An old strip of police tape hung down from one of the paint-chipped posts.

  “We don’t have to go in.”

  “I do.”

  Fin frowned. “Why?”

  “I just do. You wouldn’t understand.” Adele walked toward the side of the house.

  “Where are you going?”

  Adele ignored the question. When she reached the back patio, she again stopped and looked around. It was where Sheriff Speaks had confronted her as she attempted to escape with Calista. The place still reeked of stale cigarettes.

  “Is this the spot where the sheriff shot himself and the boy?”

  Adele glared at Fin. “The sheriff’s son was a man. His name was Will. He was simple. He didn’t understand what he had done. None of this was his fault. Martin Speaks allowed it to happen. He used Calista’s presence as a way of pacifying Will. He was the one who kept them all prisoner here.”

  “For a father to kill his own child . . . I can’t imagine. You’re so lucky he didn’t turn his gun on you and Calista Stone as well.”

  Adele wanted to tell Fin to shut up for his insistence on stating the obvious but instead opened the back door and went into the home. She had to use her phone to see. Fin followed close behind. The smell of tobacco and mold oozed out of the nicotine-stained walls. Adele didn’t stop in the kitchen, the living room, or the hallway. She knew where to go. She knew where she needed to be.

  Once inside the former sheriff’s bedroom she shined the light on the wall and found the access door to the cellar that had once been hidden behind a freezer. The freezer was gone, but the same scratches in the wood floor that had been the clue that led to her finding Calista were still there.

  Adele pulled back the deadbolt and opened the door. A rush of cool, damp air hit her face. She had never been in the cellar. There had been no reason.

  Until now.

  “It’s another damn cave,” Fin muttered.

  Adele crouched low, held her phone out in fr
ont of her, and took the first step down. She didn’t wait for Fin. Whether he followed didn’t matter. She didn’t need anyone with her. Not this time.

  “Well, we’ve had our fill of bats, so I guess it makes sense we get to see some rats now, yeah?”

  Adele paused mid-step. “Shut up.” She pointed the light of her phone toward the earth floor.

  It’s just dirt. Nothing down here can hurt me.

  Adele kept going until her feet touched the muddy floor. She didn’t want to go deeper into the cellar but knew she must.

  “Now I know what a grave must feel like,” Fin said.

  Adele was about to curse Fin out for yet another stupid comment that did nothing but further magnify her fears when she sensed something familiar under her shoes. It was the same vibration she had noticed in the crystal cave. “Feel that?”

  Fin nodded. “Yeah, just like before. It’s not as strong, and I can’t hear it, but it’s there.” He stood next to Adele and slowly moved his phone’s light from one end of the cellar to the other and then bent down and put his hand over the ground. “I think it’s a little warmer down here as well.”

  Adele pressed her palm against the earth. “You’re right.”

  “Might explain how your friend was able to survive in here during the winter months. It’s still cold but far from freezing. Not that that makes it any less horrific. I mean it’s still a—”

  Fin nearly fell backwards as a rat scurried by a few feet in front of him. “Serves you right,” Adele said. “All that talk about rats and graves. You had it coming.”

  “That was no mere rat,” Fin exclaimed. “It was the size of a small dog.” He looked far more nervous than he had been just seconds before.

  Adele moved further into the cellar. “You can stay by the stairs if you like. I’m going over here.”

  “What the hell for?” Fin asked. “We confirmed the same phenomenon we felt in the cave is also happening here.”

  “I need to see something.”

  Fin cursed under his breath as he continued to follow Adele. They both had to stoop even lower as the space between the floor and the ceiling decreased. Fin yelped and then frantically brushed a cobweb off his cap.

  “You sure know how to show a fella a good time. Spiders the size of rats and rats the size of dogs. And where there’s one you know there’s more. I can smell them—the piss and droppings. They’re down here in the dark watching us right now with their little rat eyes.”

  Adele barely heard what Fin said. She was staring at the indentation in the corner of the cellar that reminded her of a shallow grave. To reach it she had to get on her hands and knees and turn onto her side in order to keep hold of her phone so she could direct the light in front of her. She slowly pulled herself over the dank mud until she came to the hole that had been Calista’s bed.

  The ground was warmest there, though she could no longer feel any vibration.

  “I thought you were claustrophobic?” Fin called out right before he reached Adele and then noticed the hole. “How’d you know this was here?”

  “I read the police report,” Adele replied. “There were photos.”

  “So, this is where she spent most of her time?”

  “Yeah—decades.”

  Fin scooped up some dirt and rubbed it between his fingers. “It’s warm.”

  “I know.”

  “I have a theory. Care to hear it?”

  Adele turned her head. “Sure.”

  Fin dropped the dirt and sat cross-legged facing Adele with his phone in his lap so that the light illuminated the area around them. “The vibration, the sound we heard before, the heat or energy or whatever you want to call it, I think it represents the island’s beating heart and that heart has arteries that extend all over the island to places like this one. And maybe, as crazy as it sounds, the energy traveling in these arteries is some kind of preternatural life force that helps to make people stronger, healthier, and live longer. I’m starting to wonder if there really could be something to what the woman at the museum told us. How the cave, the crystals, the rumors about Bloodbone and Robert Moran, it could all be connected. Here, give me your hand.”

  Adele felt Fin put something in her palm. It was a small crystal. “Did you take this from the cave?” she asked.

  “I did. Look at it closer. Notice how it’s glowing? It started doing that when we came down here. It’s faint, you can hardly tell, but it’s definitely glowing. I’m sure of it.”

  The crystal did seem brighter. Adele closed her fingers around it and then looked up at Fin. “This is why you went back into the cave. It wasn’t to find my phone. It was to steal this.”

  Fin held out his hand. “Give it back.”

  “This wasn’t yours to take.”

  “I’m not asking, Adele. It’s mine. Now give it to me.”

  “Why did you take it? You left me alone in that shack and went back into the cave so you could come out with this. Why?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Whatever this is, the cave, the crystals, the humming in the ground, lifeforce, energy, call it what you want, it’s something extraordinary, Adele, and it should be shared with the world.”

  “Shared with the world? What you mean?”

  “I don’t need to explain a damn thing to anyone. Now give it back or I’ll take it back.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The anger in Fin’s eyes softened as his head dropped. “No, of course not. I didn’t mean it like that. Can we get out of here?”

  Adele opened her hand.

  Fin snatched the crystal with the speed of a striking cobra. He dropped it into a pocket. “Thank you.”

  Something, or someone, was moving through the house. Adele and Fin both looked up at the same time.

  “Glad to know I wasn’t the only one who heard it,” Fin said.

  Adele began to crawl toward the stairs, fearful that something was about to go very wrong. Fin caught up to her. “Hold on,” he whispered. “It could just be an animal.”

  A footstep. A creak in the floor. Adele couldn’t help but imagine herself as Calista, trapped in the dark and listening to the movements of her captors above her.

  The door to the cellar slammed shut followed by the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place. Adele found the stairs and bounded up them two at a time until she reached the door. “Who’s there?” she yelled.

  Nobody answered. Adele pushed against the door. It wouldn’t open. She pushed harder. “It’s locked. We’re trapped.”

  “Let me try,” Fin said. He put his phone away and shoved at the door with both hands. “Who could have possibly known we were down here?” He shoved again, hard enough it made the middle of the door bend out and crack.

  “Wait.” Adele put a hand on his arm and pulled him toward her. “What’s that?”

  Fin took a step back and then looked up as Adele shined her light on the inside of the door.

  The words were the same.

  Be a slave to the truth or know freedom from the lie.

  Fin kept staring at the door. “What the hell is going on?”

  Adele told him to move. Once she was past him and facing the door, she ordered him to push against her so she wouldn’t fall backwards.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Just do it,” Adele snapped. “Don’t be afraid to push hard if you have to. Just make sure we don’t end up tumbling down the stairs.”

  She steadied herself, took a fighting stance, breathed deep, and then kicked at the door as hard as she could. Fin grunted from the effort of keeping them both upright.

  Another kick followed. The door buckled and the frame cracked. Adele kicked at it again and then shouted triumphantly when the door gave way. She prepared to launch herself into the room, but Fin grabbed her shoulder and held her back. “Wait,” he said. “Whoever locked it might still be in the house.”

  Adele’s eyes were fire as she pushed Fin off. “That’s what I’m hoping for.” She stepped through the o
pening with her phone lighting the way, ran out of the room and into the adjoining hallway, and then paused to listen.

  A floorboard creaked. Adele took off, ignoring the warning from Fin that if she didn’t slow down, she would hurt herself again. She found the back door hanging open. It was night but the skies were clear and lit up by the moon and stars. Adele heard Fin crashing through the house until he emerged next to her with his fists clenched looking ready for a fight. “Where are they?” he asked.

  Adele scanned the tree line for any sign of movement. “I don’t know.”

  “They can’t have just disappeared. Maybe they ran to the front of the house.”

  “Go ahead and have a look and yell if you see something.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m staying—” Adele stopped midsentence as she noticed the dark outline of a man standing a hundred yards away beneath the branches of a large evergreen. He was tall and lean, with long, white hair and unusually sharp cheekbones. A large crystal hung around his neck.

  It was him—the same man on the cover of Delroy’s book.

  Adele locked eyes with Karl Bloodbone.

  “Do you see him?”

  “I do now,” Fin whispered.

  Adele stepped forward as Bloodbone stood as still as the trees while staring back at her. She continued walking toward him. A cloud crept toward the moon, slowly eclipsing its light. Adele stopped. She was still too far away to know for certain, but Bloodbone appeared to smile at her. The cloud covered the moon fully and the area went dark. When the moonlight returned a few seconds later, Bloodbone was gone.

  “Dammit,” Adele muttered right before she sprinted through the grass toward the trees.

  Fin ran by her. “It’s really him,” he exclaimed. “I’m not letting him get away.”

  When Adele reached the trees, Fin was already scurrying around looking for Bloodbone’s hiding spot. “I don’t understand. He was right here. We both saw him. There’s no way someone that old could move that fast.”

  From somewhere in the tree directly above them a raven called out. Both Adele and Fin froze and then looked up. Adele watched the raven hop to a lower branch. Fin walked backwards toward her. “Ah, c’mon,” he said. “Enough with the mystical bird crap. I’m not buying it.” He turned in a circle. “Where are you, Bloodbone? I know you can hear me. Show yourself. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk and have a look at that crystal of yours. What do you say?”