by Tasha Black
“Thanks,” Nikki said.
“So, I think you’re ready,” Nala said.
“For what?”
“This piece is done, Nikki,” Nala said. “There will be edits but the bulk of your work is done. It’s time to do the piece on the aliens.”
Nikki blew out a breath through pursed lips.
She had known this would be coming if the trading piece was good enough.
“I have to run,” she told Nala.
“Well, I’m glad you called,” Nala said. “I’m proud of you. Can’t wait to see what you do with the aliens.”
Nikki hung up, shoved the phone in her pocket and grabbed her laptop.
The screen door slammed behind her and she jogged down the railroad tie stairs.
This is the last time I’ll head back to the lawn, the last time I’ll hear the birds singing in these trees and see the island reflected in the lake.
At last she reached the lawn.
Instead of going right back to her bunk, she crossed the lush grass toward the water.
A small group was laughing and dancing and forming a conga line in the pavilion, the music sounding tinny from this distance. Kids squealed and splashed in the pool. And the smells coming from the lodge told her it was cook-out day, and the chefs were flipping burgers on the big veranda.
But Nikki climbed down onto the pebble beach, where she was utterly alone.
She watched the little waves lap the smooth stones for a moment and thought about the night of Addy’s birthday and gigantic Remington wading through the water with her floating birthday cake, which somehow looked miniature in his care, as the others looked on in wonder.
The expressions on Addy and Remington’s faces had been so bare, so loving, that it almost hurt to look at them.
Nikki had turned away and Indiana caught her eye and winked. Have fun, his wink told her. Your day is coming, Nikki Fortune.
Her day wasn’t coming.
But that didn’t mean she would exploit the friendships she had made.
For better or for worse, she was their friend, even if they didn’t want to be hers. She would guard their secrets to the grave.
Even though Indy had betrayed her, she loved him anyway. It hurt to admit, but it was true. And Nikki believed in the truth.
Nikki slid her laptop out of its protective sleeve. All of her research was backed up to the cloud, except her work on the aliens which she considered too sensitive to be stored anywhere but her own machine.
She studied the computer for a moment thinking of all the hours she had spent with it.
Then she flung it like a Frisbee, out over the water.
It skipped twice like a stone, then sank.
Nikki carefully climbed the hillside and crossed the lawn to her cabin to pack.
Her heart felt lighter now, and she found herself walking to the beat of the conga that was still playing in the pavilion.
When she reached her bunk she found an envelope on her pillow.
Come to the island at midnight. Bring your camera.
The note wasn’t signed.
And Nikki had been planning to sleep at a bed and breakfast in town so she could be on a bus back to the city by dawn.
But her curiosity had been awoken and she knew there was no way she could let the mystery rest.
Nikki shoved the note in her pocket and decided to go have a burger. There was nothing so pressing in the city that she couldn’t stick around an extra night. It wasn’t like anyone was waiting for her there.
Wade
Wade awoke in the night with the distinct feeling that someone was in the broken down cottage with him.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to disappear into the bedding, but it was no use. The whispers of fear were already bubbling through his veins like gin and tonic.
For once, there wasn’t a single sound in the rotting cabin.
He opened his eyes and spotted his phone on the bedside table.
He reached for it.
And it was gone.
Horrified, Wade pulled his hand back and cradled it against his chest.
He hadn’t knocked the phone over. It was gone.
Downstairs, the front door creaked open and banged shut again.
Footsteps thumped across the wooden floor.
Someone was in the cabin with him. But why?
And why hadn’t he brought some kind of weapon?
Maybe it was Jim. He didn’t remember asking his friend to bring anything, but Wade had gotten pretty far into that last bottle. It was possible he’d sent a message when his head was too foggy to recall.
He opened his mouth to call out, but somehow his voice wouldn’t come.
Downstairs, footsteps moved away from the dining room.
Shit.
Wade hopped up.
He was naked, he always slept naked. He tried to grab his jeans but his hands were shaking too much to get them over his legs.
He improvised by wrapping his sheet around himself like a toga.
It was quiet again downstairs. He held his breath, listening for any sound that might tell him that his midnight guest was leaving.
He heard a strange sound, like someone pouring out water…
The ghost story flashed through his head. The older sister had poured out the tea when the husband left the room.
He was pretty sure that tea didn’t have a very distinctive sound, but now that he’d thought about the story, he was one-hundred-percent positive that’s what he was hearing.
Impossible. The place couldn’t be haunted. He’d already been there for days. He would have noticed.
Downstairs, he heard something hit the trash can.
The biscuit.
The footsteps returned to the dining room.
“Why don’t you go to bed,” someone whispered downstairs. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
Wade’s skin went all goosebumpy at the sound of the voice.
The floorboards creaked as the older sister went into the downstairs bedroom. The downstairs bedroom door closed, and the frame of the dusty old bed creaked as the older sister lay on it to wait for her husband.
Wade heard the front door close quietly.
Wade stood frozen in place in the center of the second floor bedroom. His heart was pounding so hard that he was surprised it didn’t knock his makeshift toga off his body.
That ghost woman was going to murder her husband and throw herself into the lake.
Maybe she would stick around and murder Wade too…
Either way, he had to get out of here.
Outside his window he could hear quiet talk, it sounded like a woman and a man.
Shit. The little sister was already here. She and the husband were going to do it on the front porch. He had no way out.
The woman on the porch giggled, then sighed. The man groaned softly.
Fuck.
Wade ran a hand through his hair, wishing he had any escape route that wouldn’t mean running into the ghosts.
Then he remembered.
There was a root cellar. A trap door in the living room floor went down there.
And there was an access panel that led outside.
The idea of crawling under the house to get out was terrifying. It was dark under there and doubtlessly full of spiders.
But it was better than being in the middle of a ghost story.
Or being the basis of a future ghost story.
Wade shuddered and tiptoed to the staircase.
With luck, he could get out before the wife came out to look for her husband. He wasn’t sure how long she would wait, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He knew she was supposed to catch her husband in the act, and in Wade’s experience, that never lasted more than a few minutes.
He stepped on a hanging corner of his toga and nearly fell down the stairs, but managed to cling to the railing just in time.
Wade peered into the darkness of the living room and saw no one.
Slow
ly, slowly, he crossed the floor to the trap door, then leaned down and pulled the iron ring.
It wouldn’t budge.
He pulled again, hard enough to crack the rust on the hinges and force it open with a squeal of protest.
Wade could feel the cold coming from under the house and smell the musk of mold and animals.
He needed to go, but was paralyzed, too scared to climb in.
“Husband?” The woman’s voice in the bedroom just a few feet away scared him so badly he nearly fell in. “Is that you?”
Wade lowered himself immediately into the dark space, and pulled the hatch down over his own head. He had to crawl. There was only about three feet of space between the dirt below and the floor of the cabin.
Soft lines of light illuminated the dirt - moonlight from the windows coming through the cracks in the floor above.
Over his head, he heard the older sister come out of the bedroom, saw the shadows interrupt the lines as she went to the door and opened it.
A scream sent a fresh batch of shivers down Wade’s arms.
A few seconds later, a loud gunshot rang out in the night.
Something in Wade’s head finally clicked and he scrambled for the bit of light he could see around the access panel.
All he had to do was crawl through it and out to the boat. He would row over to Maxwell’s and never come back again.
He smashed through the access panel. It wasn’t really big enough to accommodate a man of his stature and he wound up ripping his sheet on the frame of the crawl space and crawling out in more of a mini-skirt than a toga.
He didn’t give two shits.
Wade just wanted out.
As he reached the edge of the trees, there was a tremendous splash on the cliff side of the island.
The older sister just drowned herself.
At least he wasn’t going to be bumping into her.
Wade sprinted to the canoe he kept on the bank. He grabbed the thing and dragged it to the water’s edge.
But before he could get it floating, something began to happen.
The perfect reflection of the moon on the lake’s surface started to wobble, then something rose up out of the water.
Wade’s jaw dropped open as a bedraggled woman in a torn gown emerged from the blackness, and leveled an accusing finger at him.
“Wade Travers,” she wailed. “I’ve come to see you, Wade.”
“Wh-wh-wh?” he stammered, his blood turning into ice-water at the sound of his name on her lips.
“You interfered with young love,” she moaned.
“N-no,” he shook his head, hands lifting in front of him of their own accord.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she wailed. “Why did you do it? Why did you try to stop true love?”
Anger blossomed in his chest.
“Honey was mine,” he yelled. “I saw her first. I took her out. He had no right.”
Some of Wade’s confidence began to return. And maybe this ghost lady was picking on the wrong guy.
“He interfered in my young love,” he added.
“I killed to avenge my lost love,” the woman moaned. “What did you do to protect your love? Why should I spare you?”
“I threw a giant rock at him,” Wade told her proudly. “And when I saw them together I set her cabin on fire.”
“You killed them?” The ghostly woman sounded interested.
Maybe he could make her understand. He was just like her.
“Well, I tried to kill them,” Wade offered. He wasn’t entirely sure why that plan didn’t work. “And, and, and… I did something else to keep them apart.”
“What was that?” The woman sounded more curious than creepy now.
“I broke up her friends,” he said, very pleased with himself.
“How did you do it?”
“I told Honey that her friend was an undercover reporter,” he said. “And that messed up their friendship and the friend’s relationship with her guy. Which meant that my… love, couldn’t be with the other guy.”
Damn, it was hard to explain. But ghost lady looked like she got it. Her mouth formed a narrow line.
“Please tell me you got that,” the ghost lady shouted in a plain and very modern sounding voice.
Wade was frozen in place as she walked right up to him.
He readied himself for her icy touch, a little stream of urine trickling down his leg.
He was surprised when she went right past him without breaking her stride, pulling something off her head as she went.
A wig? Why would she be wearing…
The moonlight caught her blonde hair and he realized what had happened.
Addy.
The ghost lady was Addy Barnes in a disguise.
“Oh, yeah, I got it alright,” Nikki yelled happily, pointing to her camera as she walked out from between two of the big creepy trees. “It’s going to be hard to turn this footage over to the police, when I just know it would blow up on social media.”
Fuck.
Wade had been tricked.
He felt the rage beginning to boil inside him at the thought. He would teach these dumb bitches to mess with Wade Travers. He looked around for something to use as a weapon.
The paddle to the canoe.
Perfect.
He took one step, and then a hulking figure appeared out of nowhere, directly between him and the canoe.
The muscle-bound lunk who’d stolen Honey from him.
Kitt.
And then one of the others stepped out of the shadows. He wasn’t sure which one. It didn’t matter.
The anger went out of Wade like the air from a slashed tire, and he slumped down to sit on the muddy bank.
Nikki
Nikki was grinning ear-to-ear. It was good to be with her friends again - more than good.
When she arrived at midnight to discover that they had included her in their mysterious sting operation as camera woman, she’d thought she could never feel happier.
But what she had just heard changed everything.
Indiana hadn’t told Honey and Addy that she was a journalist.
Wade had.
Which meant that Indy hadn’t betrayed her after all.
She looked around for him but he was nowhere to be seen.
“So, don’t you want to know how we did it?” Honey asked Nikki proudly, taking her arm and walking her back toward the cabin.
“Yeah, yes, of course,” Nikki said.
Addy jogged up to join them, wrapping a towel around her hair.
Nikki glanced down at the water once more.
Kitt was down on the bank, guarding Wade, who didn’t appear to be trying to actually escape.
Remington paced next to them, talking on the phone.
“He’s calling the police,” Addy explained as they left the men behind.
“Nice,” Nikki said.
“So, we knew Wade would be afraid of that dumb story,” Honey began. “His dad used to tell it constantly. We figured we would recreate it.”
“How did you even know what he was up to?” Nikki asked.
“I realized the video of Remington was shot from here,” Honey said. “So I brought Kitt to the island to look around. And he did a, um, quick sweep of the cabin.”
Nikki thought about what a quick sweep might mean to Kitt and it occurred to her how powerful her friend’s new fiancé really was.
“We got a sense of what was going on based on Wade’s… notes and his possessions,” Honey went on. “But nothing there was really incriminating, so we knew we needed a confession.”
“Plus we honestly just wanted to scare the shit out of him,” Addy put in. “He’s such a dick.”
“Addy,” Honey scolded. But her little smile told Nikki that Honey was in agreement with Addy’s sentiments.
“Anyway,” Honey continued. “We started the night by waking him up and then making his phone seem to disappear. That was all Kitt’s and my handiwork.”
“Is Kitt
really that fast?” Nikki asked.
“We both are,” Honey said, an unmistakable note of pride in her voice.
“Wow.”
“Then Remington and I pretended to be the husband and the oldest sister,” Addy said. “We came into the cabin. I poured out the tea and dumped the biscuit, then went into the bedroom while he went outside.”
“I met up with Remington out there,” Honey said. “And we pretended to be the husband and the younger sister.”
“Kitt hated that part,” Addy chuckled.
“We were only pretending,” Honey said with great dignity.
“Anyway, we knew Wade would be too scared to go out on the porch with them there,” Addy continued. “The back door is in the downstairs bedroom, and he didn’t want to bump into the older sister, either.”
“That meant he would have to use the trap door to the root cellar,” Honey said. “And the only way out of there is the access panel that would bring him out right where we wanted him.”
“Then all I had to do was go out the back door and into the water,” Addy explained. “And you saw the rest.”
“Indiana dumped a big rock in the water on the cliff side of the island to make it sound like the sister had jumped in,” Honey said.
Ah. So that was where Indiana was.
“So it all went exactly according to plan,” Nikki said. “That’s amazing.”
“Well, not exactly,” Addy said. “Wade almost chickened out of going down the trap door into the root cellar. So I yelled to him like I thought he was my husband. That got him moving.”
“And when did you get under the water?” Nikki asked Addy.
“As soon as I came out the back door,” Addy said. “But now that I have Remington’s gift I could have waited under there all night if I’d had to.”
Nikki looked back and forth between the happy faces of her two best friends in the world.
“I missed you guys so much,” she told them. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you my secret.”
“Why didn’t you?” Honey asked. She sounded curious, not resentful, for which Nikki was very grateful.
“At first I didn’t know you guys well enough,” Nikki said. “And after that it seemed like it would be weird. I didn’t want to lose you. What made you change your mind about me?”