by Shea Ernshaw
“All right. No guarantees on how long I’ll stay.”
“Deal.”
* * *
I grab my shoes from beside the fire and find Rose talking to Heath Belzer. “I’m going home,” I tell her, and she reaches out for my arm.
“No,” she says in an exaggerated slur. “You can’t.”
“If you want to come with me, I’ll walk you home,” I say. She lives only four blocks from here, but far enough in the dark that I don’t want her doing it alone. And drunk.
“I can walk her,” Heath offers, and I look up at the soft, agreeable features of his face. Loose grin, dark eyes, reddish-brown hair that’s always spilling across his forehead so he’s constantly brushing it back out of the way. He’s cute, likable, even if the curves of his face have that mildly dopey look. Heath Belzer is one of the good ones. He has four older sisters who’ve all graduated and moved away from Sparrow, but his whole life he’s been known as Baby Heath, the kid who was beaten up by girls his entire childhood. And I once saw him save a blue jay that got trapped in the science lab at school by spending his entire lunch period trying to catch it then finally setting it free through an open window.
“You won’t ditch her?” I ask Heath.
“I’ll make sure she gets home,” he says, looking me square in the eyes. “I promise.”
“If anything happens to her—” I warn.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Rose mumbles, squeezing my hand and pulling me into a hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she whispers with whiskey-stained breath into my ear.
“All right. And no swimming.”
“No swimming!” she repeats loudly, lifting her beer into the air, and a chorus of echoes pass through the crowd as everyone begins shouting in unison, “No swimming! ” I can hear the chant all the way down the beach as Bo and I walk toward the bluff to retrieve his backpack, intermixing with the singing of distant voices blowing in with the rising tide.
* * *
Otis and Olga are waiting on the dock when I steer the skiff slowly up alongside it and kill the engine. We motored across the harbor in the dark, without even a flashlight to mark our path through the wreckage, the inviting whispers of the Swan sisters sliding languidly over the water so that it felt like we were being swallowed by their song.
I secure the ropes to the dock then bend down to stroke each cat’s slender back, both of them slightly damp and probably unhappy that I’m returning so late. “Did you wait all night?” I whisper down to them then lift my head to see Bo stepping onto the dock, carrying his backpack in one hand. He cranes his head up, looking across the island to the lighthouse. The beacon of light illuminates us briefly before continuing its clockwise cycle out over the Pacific.
In the dark, Lumiere Island feels eerie and macabre. A place of ghosts and mossy hollows, where long-dead sailors surely haunt the reeds and wind-scoured trees. But it’s not the island you should fear—it’s the waters surrounding it.
“It’s not as creepy in daylight,” I assure Bo, passing my father’s old sailboat, the Windsong, bobbing on the other side of the wood dock, sails down, unmoved for the last three years. My father didn’t name the boat. It was called the Windsong when he purchased it ten years ago from a man who moored it south of Sparrow in a small seaside harbor. But the name Windsong had always seemed fitting, considering the voices that rise up from the sea each summer.
Otis and Olga trot after me, and Bo falls into step behind them.
The island is shaped like a half-moon with the flat side facing inland and the opposite side curved by the endless waves crashing against its banks. A two-story, robin’s-egg-blue house—where my mom and I live—stands near the lighthouse, and a collection of smaller buildings are scattered across the island, built and torn down and added on to over the years. There is a wood shed and a toolshed and a greenhouse long since abandoned, and there are two cottages that serve as living quarters—Old Fisherman’s Cottage and Anchor Cottage—and I lead Bo to the newer of the two, a place where staff was once housed, cooks and maintenance men, when such people were required to keep this place up and running.
“Have you always lived on the island?” he asks from the darkness as we follow the winding, sometimes broken wood-slated path up through the interior of the island, the air foggy and cool.
“I was born here.”
“On the island?” he asks.
“My mom would have preferred to have had me at the hospital in Newport an hour away or at least at the clinic in Sparrow, but out here fate is determined by the sea, and a winter storm blew in, covering the island with a foot of snow and making the harbor a complete whiteout. So she delivered me at the house.” The dizzying swirl of alcohol still thumps through me, and my head feels roomy and unfocused. “My dad said I was meant for this place,” I explain. “That the island didn’t want to let me go.”
I may belong here on the island, but my father never did. The town always hated that an outsider purchased the island and the lighthouse—even if my mom was a local.
Dad was a freelance architect. He designed summer homes along the coast, and even a new library up in Pacific Cove. Before that, he worked at an architectural firm in Portland after he and Mom got married. But Mom always missed Sparrow—her hometown—and she wanted desperately to move back. Even though she had no family here, her parents were long dead and she was an only child, it had always felt like home to her. So when they saw the listing for Lumiere Island for sale, including the lighthouse, which was going to be decommissioned by the state—no longer of use since Sparrow was not a large shipping harbor anymore—they both knew it was exactly what they wanted. The lighthouse was a historic structure—one of the first buildings in town—and local fishermen still needed it to navigate into the harbor. It was perfect. Dad had even planned to renovate the old farmhouse someday—fix it up when he had the time, make it ours—but he never got the chance.
When he disappeared, the police came out to the island, filed a report, and then did nothing. The townspeople didn’t rally together, didn’t organize search parties, didn’t climb aboard their fishing boats to scan the harbor. To them, he had never belonged here in the first place. For this, a part of me hates this town, this place, and these people for being so callous. They fear anyone and anything that isn’t them. Just like they feared the Swan sisters two hundred years ago . . . and they killed them for being different.
We turn right, away from the glowing lights of the main house, and walk deeper into the unlit center of the island, until we reach the small stone cottage.
ANCHOR COTTAGE is written in letters formed out of frayed fishing rope then nailed to the wood door. It isn’t locked, and thankfully when I flick on the light switch just inside the front door, a floor lamp across the room blinks on.
Otis and Olga zip past my feet into the cottage, curious about the building, which they’ve rarely had the opportunity to explore. It’s cold and dank and there is a mustiness that can’t be cleaned away.
In the kitchen I flip on the switch beside the sink and a light shivers on overhead. I kneel down and grab the power cord for the refrigerator and plug it into an outlet in the wall. Instantly it begins to hum. A small bedroom is situated just off the living room; a peeling wood dresser is against one wall and a metal bed frame sits beneath a window. There is a mattress, but no pillows or blankets. “I’ll bring you sheets and bedding tomorrow,” I tell him.
“I have a sleeping bag.” He drops his backpack on the floor just inside the bedroom doorway. “I’ll be fine.”
“There’s wood inside the shed just up the path if you want to start a fire. There’s no food in the kitchen, but we have plenty up at the main house. You can come up in the morning for breakfast.”
“Thanks.”
“I wish it weren’t so . . .” I’m not sure what I want to say, how to apologize for it being so dark and mildewed.
“It’s better than sleeping on the beach,” he says before I can locate
the right words, and I smile, feeling suddenly exhausted and light-headed and in need of sleep.
“See you in the morning,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything else, even though I stand mute for a moment too long, thinking he might. And then I turn, my head swaying, and slip out the door.
Otis and Olga follow me out, and we trudge up the slope to the main house, where I left the back porch light on.
THE ISLAND
The wind is constant.
It howls and tears at siding and rips shingles from roofs. It brings rain and salt air, and in the winter sometimes it brings snow. But for a time each spring, it carries in the lurid and seductive voices of three sisters held captive by the sea, aching to draw out the girls of Sparrow.
From the black waters of the harbor, their song sinks into dreams, permeates the brittle grass that grows along steep cliffs and rotting homes. It settles into the stones that hold up the lighthouse; it floats and swirls in the air until it’s all you can taste and breathe.
This is what cajoles the weak-hearted from sleep, pulls them out of bed and beckons them down to the shore. Like fingers wrapped around their throats, it drags them into the deepest part of the bay among the wreckage of ships long abandoned, pulling them under until the air spills from their lungs and a new thing can slip inside.
This is how they do it—how the sisters are freed from their brackish grave. They steal three bodies and make them their own. And this season, they do it swiftly.
FIVE
I wake with the choking sense of seawater in my throat. I sit upright, fisting my white sheet in both hands. The feeling of drowning claws at my lungs, but it was only a nightmare.
My head throbs, temples pulse, the lingering taste of whiskey still on my tongue.
It takes a moment to orient myself, last night still whirling through my head. I push back the sheet and stretch my toes over the hardwood floor, feeling stiff and achy and like a hammer is cracking against my skull from the inside. Sunlight peeks through the daffodil-yellow curtains, reflecting off the white walls and the white dresser and the high white ceiling—blinding me.
I press my fingers to my eyes and yawn. In the full-length mirror mounted to the closet door, I catch my reflection. Dark circles rim both eyes, and my ponytail has slid partway free so that strands of coffee-brown hair drift across my face. I look horrible.
The floor is cold, but I plod to one of the massive windows overlooking the choppy sea and slide the window upward in its frame.
In the wind I can still hear it: the faint cry of a song.
* * *
The scent of powdered sugar and maple syrup hangs in the air like a soft winter snowfall. I find her in the kitchen standing at the stove—Mom—her dark hair tied in a braid down her back, a serpent of brown, folded and coiled. And I feel like I’m still caught in a dream, my head swirling, my body rocking side to side like it’s being pushed inland by an invisible tide.
“Are you hungry?” she asks without turning around. I absorb her movements, the sedated way she slides the spatula under a doughy pancake and flips it in the pan. She doesn’t normally make breakfast—not anymore—so this is a rare occurrence. Something’s up. For a moment I let a memory materialize in my mind: her making waffles with homemade blackberry jam, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the stove, her eyes and lips smiling, the morning sun on her face. She was happy once.
I touch my stomach, clenched and queasy. “Not really,” I answer. There’s no way I could eat right now. And keep it down. I move past her to the counter, where a row of identical silver tins sit perfectly spaced. They are unmarked, but I know the contents of each one: Lavender Chamomile, Rose Earl Grey, Cardamom Chai, Moroccan Mint, and Jasmine Dragon Pearl. I boil water then set my tea to steep—Rose Earl Grey—and lean against the counter breathing in the rustic, sweet scent.
“We have guests,” she says suddenly, sliding the lightly browned pancakes onto a white plate.
I glance around the kitchen then back at her. The house is silent. “Who?”
She looks over at me, examining the creases around my eyes from lack of sleep; the queasiness that comes in waves when I pinch my lips tightly together to keep from vomiting. She stares for a moment, eyes pinched like she doesn’t quite recognize me. Then she drops her gaze. “That boy you brought to the island last night,” she says. The memory pours back through me: the beach, Bo, and my offering him a job on the island. Again I press my palms to my eyes.
“Is he a local boy?” she asks.
“No.” I recall the moment on the dock when he said he was looking for work. “He came into town yesterday.”
“For the Swan season?” she asks, setting the skillet back on the stove and turning off the burner.
“No. He’s not a tourist.”
“Can we trust him?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly—I don’t actually know anything about him.
“Well,” she says, turning around to face me and sliding her hands down into the pockets of her thick black robe, “he’s just waking up. Take him some breakfast. I don’t want a stranger inside the house.” This is one of her gifts: She knows when people are near, when they’re coming to the island—she senses their arrival like a nagging in the pit of her stomach. And this explains why she decided to cook breakfast—what drove her from bed just after the sun rose, compelled her into the kitchen to turn on the stove and pull out her good skillet. She might not want a stranger in the house, she might not trust him, but she won’t allow him to starve. It’s just her nature. Even her grief can’t keep her from kindness.
She pours maple syrup over the stack of warm pancakes then hands me the plate. “And take him some blankets,” she adds. “Or he’ll freeze out there.” She doesn’t ask why he’s here, why I brought him to the island—for what purpose. Maybe she just doesn’t care.
I tug on the green rubber boots beside the front door and a black raincoat, then grab a set of sheets and a thick wool blanket from the hall closet. Holding a palm over the plate of pancakes to keep the rain from turning them into a soggy heap of sugar and flour, I step outside.
Pools of water collect in divots and holes beside the walkway, and sometimes the rain seems to rise up from the ground instead of from overhead—a snow globe effect, but with water. A swift wind crashes against my face as I make my way down to the cottage.
The sturdy wood door rattles when I knock, and Bo opens it almost instantly, as if he had been just about to step outside.
“Morning,” I say. He’s standing in jeans and a charcoal-gray raincoat. A fire crackles in the fireplace behind him. And he looks rested, showered, and new. Nothing like how I feel. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine.” Yet his voice is weathered and deep, betraying perhaps a lack of sleep after all. His eyes stare unblinking, soaking me in, and my skin prickles with the intensity of it. He is not someone who looks through you, past you, like you’re not even there. His gaze is sharp, incisive, and an itch settles behind my eyes, making me want to look away.
He shuts the door behind me, and I set the plate of pancakes on the small square wood table in the kitchen then brush my palm down my jeans even though there is nothing to wipe off. The cottage feels different with him inside it, and the glow from the fireplace smooths over all the hard, rough edges so that everything feels muted and soft.
I place the sheets and wool blanket on the musty gray couch facing the fireplace, and he sits at the table. “Can you show me the lighthouse today?” he asks, taking a bite of the pancakes. In this light, in the scarlet hue of the fire, he reminds me of the boys who come into town aboard fishing boats, green and wild looking, like they’ve been cast off by the winds, set adrift.
He reminds me of someone who has left his past behind.
“Sure.” I bite the inside of my bottom lip. My eyes scan the cottage. The tall wood bookshelves beside the fireplace are crowded with books and old almanacs and tide-chart periodicals, all covered in a decade of d
ust. Lumps of aqua-blue sea glass, collected over the years from the island’s rocky shores, are piled into a small porcelain dish. On the top shelf sits a large wood clock that probably once lived on the deck of a ship. This cottage has served as the living quarters for a variety of staff and hired laborers, men who stayed a week and others years, but almost all left something behind. Trinkets and mementos, hints about their lives, but never the full story.
When Bo finishes breakfast—so quickly that I know he must have been starving—we leave the warmth of the cottage and are submerged by the drizzling rain. The ash-gray sky presses down against us—a weight that is tangible. Water trickles through my hair.
We pass the small greenhouse where herbs and tomato plants and leafy greens were once tended and grown, the glass walls now tarnished and smudged so that you can no longer see inside. The island has taken back most of the structures, decaying walls and rot seeping up from below. Moss covers every surface: a weed that feeds off the constant moisture and cannot be contained. Rust and mildew. Slop and mud. Death has found its way into everything.
“The singing hasn’t stopped,” Bo says when we’re halfway to the lighthouse, our feet making hollow clomping sounds that echo against the wood walkway. But in the wind, the voices are still there, sliding lazily in with the sea air. It’s so familiar that I hardly discern it from the other sounds of the island.
“Not yet,” I agree. I don’t glance back at him. I don’t let his eyes find mine again.
We reach the lighthouse, and I pull open the metal door, corroded at the hinges. Once inside the entryway, it takes a moment for our eyes to adjust to the dim. The air is stark and smells of moisture-soaked wood and stone. A rounded staircase serpents its way up the interior of the lighthouse, and I point out to Bo where not to step as we ascend—many steps have rotted away or broken—and at times I pause to catch my breath.
“Have you ever been taken?” Bo asks when we’re almost to the top of the stairway.