Copyright © 2021 by Shelley Nolden
Map by Travis Hasenour
First Hardcover Edition
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Published by Freiling Publishing, a division of Freiling Agency, LLC.
P.O. Box 1264,
Warrenton, VA 20188
www.FreilingPublishing.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920419
ISBN 978-1-950948-40-6
Printed in the United States of America
For my mother, with love,
and all the essential workers and health care heroes who’ve selflessly served throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
2007
Forty-four years since the abandonment of Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, north of Hell Gate in New York City’s East River
July
thick keloid encircled the young woman’s throat like a noose, ready to seize her last breath. Though any one of the other faded wounds gripping her slender, muscular body should have already claimed it. Humming an achingly sad tune, she reached for an elixir bottle beside the cracked porcelain tub in which she stood. As she twisted, a tangled, worm-like network of whip marks on her back met the glow of dawn pervading the forest.
For the past four decades, indigenous and invasive plants had been hell-bent on destroying the remains of Riverside Hospital. Unchallenged by the collapsed outer wall of the first-floor bathroom, a shaft of sunlight irradiated her glistening skin.
Maybe she’s a ghost, Finn Gettler thought from behind a cottonwood as the woman lathered her hair. Thousands had died here, many more had suffered. But not everyone who should have perished had. This, only his family knew. A chill passed across the back of his sweat-slick neck, and he shivered.
Finn didn’t believe in the paranormal world. If ghosts were real, however, this shuttered contagion hospital would have spawned them.
A distant shriek pierced his eardrums. The sound must have come from one of the black-crowned night herons nesting at North Brother Island’s southern end.
The woman tilted back her head and released water from a camp shower bag; it flowed down her long hair to the top of her calves, where the dirt-caked tub shielded the rest of her from view.
During his stint in the Peace Corps in Africa, not once had he seen a body so mutilated. Nor, in his twenty-eight years on this earth, one so graceful. An impossible combination, yet there she stood.
His heart pulsing, Finn pressed himself against a tree trunk strangled by a mulberry vine. There was something “off” about this place he’d been longing to visit his entire life. He could feel it; an aching brittleness, as if he’d already been reduced to the same decaying state as the bird carcass his boot had crunched in the darkness an hour earlier.
As she raised her arms to rinse the suds, he could see the contours of her biceps. More warrior than victim from the looks of it, she likely wouldn’t appreciate his help. Or his gaze. Neither would his girlfriend, but if Lily were here, she’d be just as alarmed by this woman’s appearance.
A mosquito buzzed near his neck, seemingly undeterred by his bug spray. The woman couldn’t possibly hear a slap above the rising noise from the birds, but she might notice the motion, so Finn held still.
She twisted to scrub her back.
Her physique and tank-top tan lines reminded him of the rock climbers he’d encountered during his expeditions thus far in his quest to cross the world’s twenty most dangerous bridges. Her body, however, looked more like it had gone through a blender than fallen from a cliff.
Is she using this island to hide from whoever’s been hurting her? Finn wondered.
With a sudden premonition that they weren’t alone, he eyed the forest.
No one materialized from the whispering green.
Slowing his breathing, he turned to study her for signs of recent abuse.
Her eyes now closed, she continued singing the same melancholy tune. Her voice had a raspy edge; only someone confident in her solitude would croon—and expose herself—like that.
The makeshift shower likely meant she hadn’t kayaked through the predawn East River chop, as he’d done to avoid detection by the NYPD Harbor Unit. She must have camped here overnight.
To avoid an awkward confrontation, Finn thought it best to sneak back to his kayak, hidden in the brambles near the docks. Yet he couldn’t compel himself to move.
The squawking of the herons intensified. Soon, he realized, the blur of early morning would sharpen into clean lines. He had to get going, but his trek through the island’s interior with only a flashlight had disoriented him. And the deteriorating buildings that he’d passed in the dark now looked frustratingly unfamiliar.
He removed his sketchbook from his hiking pack and glanced at the map. A month ago, he’d drawn it after committing the original, annotated in German, to his nearly photographic memory. In the shed at his parents’ Long Island home, he’d found the schematic along with a dozen of his father’s old excursion logs.
During Finn’s childhood, his family’s clandestine research at the abandoned hospital, where his grandfather and great-grandfather had worked, had been a constant source of anxiety. Completely excluded, Finn hadn’t even been allowed in their Upper East Side laboratory.
Frustratingly, mere months after he had completed an undergraduate degree in physics that should have earned him a role in the project, 9/11 happened. Almost instantly, the NYC waterways became flush with patrols. Rollie had claimed it was too risky to continue collecting the environmental samples from which they hoped to pinpoint an elusive immune system boosting chemical reagent.
To both Finn and his brother Kristian, Rollie’s justification for shelving such vital research seemed flimsy and suspect.
So, when Finn came across the cache of records while looking for his camping gear, he’d decided it was time to do a little digging.
Even without the woman’s grim presence now, the aura of misery surrounding the trees and dilapidated buildings would have remained. The stench of rot pervaded the campus. Something had made his father suddenly fear this place, where he’d spent most of his childhood and too much of his adulthood.
Listening to his gut had gotten Finn out of dicey situations before. Now it was telling him to slip away before that intense woman caught him gawking at her.
He studied the notes on his map. The project logs had been written in German. Preparing Finn for the eventual day he’d have access to them, Rollie had spoken the language to him throughout his childhood. Hopefully Finn hadn’t mistranslated a critical detail.
Resisting the urge to pull off his sweaty T-shirt, Finn inventoried the three decrepit buildings within view, then spotted a rusted chain-link fence draped in porcelain berry, a vine that grew almost a foot a day. Beyond the barrier stretched a blanket of ivy, interspersed with Norway maples. It had to be the tennis court, which meant the woman was showering in the staff house.
According to the diagram, he’d need to cut across a meadow to reach his kayak, while watching out for Giftefeu (poison ivy). Rollie had noted its presence on his map.
A sharp gust zipped past Finn’s ear.
Lodged in the trunk of the cottonwood, a surgical
scalpel vibrated only inches from his head.
He raised his hands to protect his face.
The knife had come from behind; he spun to locate its owner.
Above, the leaves shook from seagulls and ospreys taking flight.
Despite their cawing, the forest seemed quiet. Oddly and creepily so.
Her singing had stopped, he realized.
The air whistled again, and a second scalpel hit the wood with a thwack. He ducked into the foliage and yanked his pack in front of his chest. Shielding his eyes, he studied the knife suspended in the tree. This one had been thrown from a different direction; there had to be at least two assailants.
If these same men had caused her scars, Finn had to get the hell out of there.
But how could he leave her, assuming she was still alive?
At the start of his second year in the Peace Corps, he’d requested reassignment to the civilian relief effort in war-torn Ivory Coast. The night the rebels took control of Danané, he’d seen what could happen to those left behind. It still caused nightmares and regret.
Cold sweat dripped from his brow.
The forest was too still; he was being watched.
He tasted blood and realized he’d bitten his tongue. Another scalpel could whiz through the air, this time landing in an eye or the back of his head. Unlike all those who’d been incinerated or transported to Potter’s Field on Hart Island, his body would rot where it landed.
If Finn had respected his father’s ruling that North Brother had become too risky, he wouldn’t now be defenseless and alone, about to die on a deserted island surrounded by eight million people.
The faint hum of traffic underscored the proximity of help; so close, yet so far.
He knew his best option was to flee. Surveying the greenery, he spotted the tennis court fence that marked his escape route. Yet he didn’t bolt.
Either his invisible enemies were defending the woman, or they wanted to kill her, too. Assuming they hadn’t already sliced her throat, Finn and she, together, might be able to make it to his kayak. The currents would quickly carry them beyond the range of those blades.
With the daylight, a patrol might notice them leaving, but he’d gladly take an illegal trespassing charge over death.
A pokeberry plant blocked his view of the decaying bathroom. He eased aside a long, thin cluster of dark berries, revealing only more vegetation. He would have to get closer.
Shifting his pack onto his back, he realized that he’d dropped his sketchbook and turned to reach for it.
The air trilled.
A third scalpel—this one from above—stabbed the moleskin cover. Protecting his face with his hands, he looked up.
On a thick branch, almost directly overhead, perched the woman.
Her blue eyes were trained on the bridge of his nose as if she were a sharpshooter scoping her target.
So she is on their side, he thought, but what are they doing here?
Barely blinking, she continued to stare at him.
He averted his attention.
Droplets landed on a bracket fungus, darkening its orange hue. Finn peered upward, realizing they’d fallen from her hair, now in a loose ponytail. She was wearing a faded tank top, khakis, and men’s steel-toed boots. Even with the racket of the birds, he should have heard her climbing the tree.
If he grabbed the weapon wedged in his book, he knew she’d react swiftly. He dared not rifle through his pack for his utility knife.
“I’m unarmed,” he said, showing his palms.
“I’m not.”
Silver glinted near her ear, and Finn distinguished an olive-green work glove from the leaves partially shielding her head. She was holding a scalpel. With a flick of her wrist, she could lodge it in his skull.
Finn leaped backward. Despite the plants around him, there was no place to hide. “I didn’t see anything.” He raised his hands. “I swear.”
“You saw plenty.”
He winced. “I meant—I’m sorry. It was dark. I didn’t even . . . whatever you guys are doing here; it’s your business.”
“Guys?”
He scrutinized the foliage again. “You mean you’re all women?” Dread gushed into his stomach as he pictured other women with similar scars and equal anger.
“No,” she said in a stiff tone. “I was refuting your use of the plural.”
To have thrown all those scalpels, she would have needed to be in three places practically at once. Or impossibly quick. “That can’t be.”
“I wish it weren’t the case,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. Keeping the knife raised, she settled into the crook of the branch.
Finn sensed an opportunity to retreat. Using his bag as a shield, he unfolded his long body. “I’m going to back away slowly, get in my kayak, and forget this ever happened.”
From this higher vantage point, he could better see her face. Even with her brow furrowed, her cerulean eyes and dark, long lashes overwhelmed the rest of her features. Spots of shade from the leaves above dappled her skin.
She swallowed hard, the noose-like scar around her neck tightening. “Do you really think you can forget me?”
Recalling her marred torso, he felt a tenderness toward her—irrational given the weapon in her grip. “How many of those have you got?”
“Enough to kill you.”
“No wonder you’re flying solo,” he muttered.
She shifted, and a branch hid her face.
Apparently, she’d heard him. Finn groaned.
Her penetrating eyes reappeared, and he met her gaze.
“So, Peeping Tom,” she said and coughed into her shoulder, “what’s your actual name?”
Once she had his personal information, he’d have to worry about her showing up at his Brooklyn Heights apartment. But if he didn’t answer, she might not let him leave.
“Cook,” Finn said quickly, picturing the explorer who’d claimed to have reached the North Pole a year before Robert Peary. “Frederick Cook.”
The woman huffed, and Finn wondered if she’d recognized the name.
She extended her free hand. “Toss up your papers.”
“My what?”
“You must have a driver’s license or draft card.”
Surreal. He held back a quip about the draft ending around thirty-five years earlier, or that his wallet was buried at the bottom of his pack, where it would stay. He scanned the forest for signs of a second aggressor, though he sensed she’d been telling the truth.
A breeze, laced with traffic fumes, rustled the green-white flowers of the vines.
She tossed the scalpel toward the sky.
Finn jumped back, cowering as it plunged toward him.
It didn’t puncture his skull, nor did it land nearby.
He looked up.
Metal winked in her hand.
Again, she flipped the steel upward and caught it by the handle—clearly a signal that she could wait all day for him to comply.
His best defense would be a version of the truth. “I was curious, okay? This place is wild, and I don’t mean wild as in wilderness. What makes this island amazing is that nature fought back against greed and exploitation and actually won. Sure, the place has a dark past, but pretty soon these invasive species will have destroyed all evidence of that. To think, from the Bronx, basically, all you can see is a dome of green. People have no idea.”
She leaned toward him. The set of her jaw had softened, and her eyes had widened.
He rubbed the beaded bracelet he always wore, a gift from a family in Séguéla. Her trust would be much harder to earn. “When you look at the island from the west, the morgue and physical plant behind it jut out like soldiers trying to keep their heads above quicksand. It’s only a matter of time before nature claims them, too.”
Sunlight, seeping through a break in the canopy, illuminated copper streaks in her brown hair. Her entire being seemed to glow. He reminded himself that it was only a trick of the light; she was no angel.
“This place seemed untouchable,” he said, “yet at the same time inviting.” He didn’t regret his decision to come, but he certainly wished he could undo the way he’d come upon her. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I should have backtracked as soon as I saw you.”
She withdrew into the canopy.
“Should have, would have, could have,” she said, now unseen. “Here’s another conditional verb to conjugate: would have lived. That’s the future perfect, correct?”
He shrugged. It wasn’t a verb he cared to analyze.
Her face reappeared. “I’ll have to check.” She glanced behind her and then back at him. “Later.”
He raised his index finger. “Will live avoids the issue altogether.”
Still no smile.
At the top of her reach, she jabbed the scalpel into the tree trunk.
Finn exhaled with relief. Maybe she had appreciated his wit.
She reached into a pouch at her hip and retrieved a handful of silver. Below the first, she wedged three more blades into the bark. “I doubt it’s become socially acceptable to spy on a woman while she’s indecent. Not that societal norms matter here. Only my rules.”
The taste of blood in his mouth; he pictured quarts of it soaking into the dirt beneath him. “I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just . . .” If he admitted that he’d been captivated by her beauty, she’d blind him with two of those blades.
“It’s not worth the effort,” she muttered as she ran her index finger downward, touching the handle of each scalpel, their pinging reverberating through the air. “You’ve been here for, what”—she glanced in the direction of the sun—“three hours? That long, you’re as good as dead.”
Finn squeezed his shoulder blades together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She scowled. “Explaining anything to you would be a waste of . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a Gettler, aren’t you? His focus snapped to her face. “How’d you know?” She couldn’t, unless Rollie was still coming here.
The Vines Page 1