by Blake Crouch
“You’re standing on it. You’ll see the trail when you reach the end of the dock. I can’t believe you’re gonna camp in this shit.”
“Look, I have to be back at work in three days. I’ve planned this trip all year, so I don’t have the luxury of waiting out the storm.”
He grinned, shook his head, wiped rainwater from his eyes.
“Well, she don’t seem too happy about it.”
“No, Angie would rather be back at the inn. You get home safe.”
Charlie patted my shoulder and stepped past me to the edge of the dock.
The detective rose to her feet, rattled, shivering.
“Give you a hand there, sweetie-pie?” the old sailor asked.
Violet stood at the end of the dock, watching the Island Hopper dwindle away into the savage sea. The groan of its motor carried poorly in the wind and before long the only sound derived from the storm—waves sloshing about and raindrops pelting the rotten boards beneath our feet.
“We need to go,” I said.
The young woman turned and glared at me, crying again. Then she started walking and I followed her down the long dock.
We stepped ashore onto a sandy path and hiked alongside a creek. In the distance, rundown buildings of varying dilapidation teetered amid the scrub pines.
Wet marsh grass bent and rustled as it moved in slow vegetative waves all around us.
Violet walked fast.
Her boots splashed through puddles.
She sobbed.
The path branched. We could push south into the interior of the island or veer left, across the creek, into the ghost village.
Violet stopped and faced me. She couldn’t stop shaking.
“I’m s-s-s-so c-c-cold.”
We needed to continue south toward the middle village ruins but I doubted if Violet had the strength. She looked hypothermic.
In the village I noticed the spire of a small church poking above the pines.
“We’re going to get you warm,” I said.
We proceeded across a bridge toward the church. It rained so hard now I could hear nothing above the relentless pattering on my hood. I glanced at my watch. Four o’clock. We’d have a premature dusk with this ominous cloud deck.
One of the brochures had used the adjectives “quaint” and “enchanting” to describe Portsmouth Village but I found nothing remotely enchanting about this place. It was a dismal graveyard in the throes of decay. Had I visited the island as a carefree tourist on a pleasant summer afternoon, perhaps my impression would’ve been more cheery. But now it seemed we’d entered a village of corpses, some dolled up and embalmed with fresh paint and new foundations, the majority left to rot and collapse in the marsh grass.
I wondered why people came here, what they hoped to see. There was no mystery, no explanation to be found in these ruins. Towns degenerate. People leave. They die. Their dwellings crumble. That’s the storyline, the only plot there will ever be. Here is the house of Samuel Johnson. He was a cobbler. In 1867 he died. So will you. So what. It isn’t news. It’s just the way of things.
We arrived at the steps of an old Methodist church, a small gothic chapel in pristine condition compared to the ruined homestead just across the muddy path.
I tried the door and it opened.
I ushered the detective inside and closed the door behind us.
The silence in the nave was awesome. I could smell ancient dust on the pews. Rain ticked the windowpanes. Floorboards creaked under our weight. Walls creaked as the wind pushed through them.
I led Violet to the front pew and helped her out of the dripping poncho. I told her to sit down. She was in shock, no question, her black skirt and blouse soaking wet.
I unsnapped the hip belt of my Osprey backpack and leaned the pack against the pew. Unzipping the bottom compartment, I pulled out the compressed sleeping bag. Then I unrolled the air mattress across the floor and laid the sleeping bag on top of it.
I knelt down before Violet.
“Hey.” I patted her knee. She looked at me, eyes glazed. “Violet, we need to take off your wet clothes.” She shook her head, teeth chattering. “Can I help you take them off? Here, let me—”
“No!”
She tried to jerk away.
I grabbed her arms.
“Stop it!” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you! I am not. Now I know you have no reason to believe that, but you also have no choice.”
She just stared at me.
I let go of her arms, untied her boots, and helped her stand. She undid the clasp on her skirt and it dropped. I peeled off her wet hose, then unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it to the end of the pew. I removed my raingear and fleece jacket. I offered her my fleece and she took it, motioning for me to turn away while she put on the soft jacket.
I guided her over to the sleeping bag. I don’t know why she trusted me. The shock, probably, her thinking fuzzy. I closed the air nozzle on the Therm-a-Rest and unzipped the mummy bag. She climbed inside and I zipped her up.
She still shivered. I lay down beside her on the cold boards.
We were quiet for awhile.
I listened to the storm raging and watched the sky entering twilight through those arched windows. I stared up into the airy ceiling of the eighty-nine-year-old church. Simple lovely architecture. Sitting up on one elbow, I gazed down into Violet’s blanched face.
“Getting warm?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
My gun…her gun lay on the nearby pew. It was getting dark fast.
“Don’t be scared,” I said. She watched me. I couldn’t determine the color of her eyes in the fading light. Green perhaps. Emerald.
The wind shrieking now.
“Violet, I’m not going to hurt you. I swear I won’t. You know I’m Andrew Thomas, don’t you?”
God, it felt strange to say that name aloud. It had been years.
She nodded that she knew. Her shivering had abated.
“I would never have hurt anyone in Howard’s Pub. I have to tell you that. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t have hurt Charlie either. Or you. But I had to say those things, because you put me in a difficult position.
“I don’t know what you think of me. What you’ve read or seen on the news. But I’m going to tell you this, and I’m only going to say it once. I am not what you think I am. I did not do those murders seven years ago. I did not kill my mother. You and I came to the Outer Banks for the same reason.”
“Is Luther Kite the murderer?” she asked, her voice still enervated and slurring.
“He was involved with some of the murders, but I don’t know to what extent. My brother, Orson Thomas, was the real killer.”
I closed my eyes. Tears welling. Rain sheeting down the glass. Dusk outside. Dusk in the chapel. This thing gnawing my guts out for seven years and now I’m on the verge of telling a petrified twenty-six-year-old cop who I’ve essentially kidnapped.
I got up and walked between pews to a window. Nothing human moving through the village, among the house skeletons, the trees still manic, the grasses waving, pools forming on the lawn, creeks flooding, the Ocracoke Light winking on across the inlet, and a knot in my stomach that waxed with the darkness.
“Andrew?” she called out. I looked back—she was just a shadow on the floor now, the chapel draped in gloaming. “Please talk to me.”
I returned to Violet and sat down on the front pew.
“You afraid of me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I want to tell you what happened to me.”
“I want to know.”
I suspected she was just trying to pacify me but I told her anyway. All of it. Even what had happened in the desert. I don’t know if she believed me but she listened, and by the end of my narrative my voice could scarcely sustain a whisper. When your sole verbal communication is infrequent chitchat with strangers, your voice atrophies from disuse.
But she listened. I didn’t ask if she believed me. I’m tempte
d to say it didn’t matter but that isn’t accurate. Rather, what mattered most was that the truth had been told by me to someone.
You cannot imagine the release.
43
VIOLET sat up now in my sleeping bag, propped against the railing that separated the pews from the altar. I’d managed to fire up the camping stove, a propane-fueled Whisper-Lite. It stood in the aisle, a pot of water coming to a boil over its hissing blue flame.
I ripped the tops off two pouches of Mountain Pantry lasagna and set the freeze-dried dinners beside the stove. Then I took the potgrab and lifted the lid. A billow of steam moistened my face. I set the lid down, lifted the pot, and poured the boiling water into each pouch.
After the lasagnas had stewed for ten minutes we dined. The church completely dark now, I found a candle in my first-aid kit, lit it, and placed it on the floor between us.
“Not bad, huh?” I said.
“It’s good.”
The rain had let up. The wind was easing. A cloudy night on an island without electricity is pure darkness.
“How long you been a cop?” I asked.
“Year and a half.”
I put the hot pouch down and took a drink of water from the Nalgene bottle.
“Back in the car you said you were pregnant.”
A quick intake of breath. Stifling of tears. Violet looked at the floor while she spoke, her voice newly wrecked.
“Look, I can’t do the personal thing right now, okay? Unless you want me to just fall completely apart, please…”
I looked at her in the candlelight. Beautiful. Still a kid. Could’ve been a grad student somewhere. She wiped her cheeks on the sleeves of the fleece jacket. I wondered if she had any idea of how far over her head she was.
She finished off the lasagna, and reassuming that budding official tone, became the cop again: “You said we came to Ocracoke for the same reason. You mean Mr. Kite?”
“Yes. I came here to find him. That woman they found hanging from the Bodie Island Lighthouse—I knew her. And Beth Lancing, the Worthingtons’ neighbor who was kidnapped—she’s the wife of that very dear friend I was telling you about—Walter. I believe Luther murdered that family just to bring attention to Beth Lancing’s abduction. And he hanged Karen Prescott from the lighthouse for the same reason. Those murders were so public. He wanted me to find out. He knew I’d know it was him. That wasn’t a mindless killing spree. I think those murders were executed in such a way as to lead me to him, or his general vicinity. And that’s what’s scaring me right now. You see, my biggest fear is what if Luther knows I’m here?”
“What do you mean ‘here’? In this church?”
“No, Ocracoke. God help us if he knows we’re on this island.”
“Andrew, why are we on this island?”
“Well now that you’re in my life, that’s an interesting question. You feel any better?”
“I’m warm now.”
“And your poncho’s dry. I’ve got spare fleece pants and long underwear in my pack.” I looked at my watch. “It’s a quarter past seven. Rain’s let up. Yeah, we should get on with it.”
“With what?”
“I’m fairly confident Beth Lancing is somewhere on this island. Luther, too.”
“Oh, no, Andrew, let law enforcement handle this. We could call them in—”
“What about me? I’m wanted.”
“Of course I’d—”
“Of course what? You’d tell them how I’m really innocent and—”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t matter what I—”
“Then what?”
“You’d have a day in court.”
“A day in court. Think that’s what I need?”
“You need something. Don’t you want to settle all this crap you’ve been through? Put it to rest, one way or another? Find some peace?”
“I’ve already found my peace, Violet. My home is far out in a beautiful wilderness. And I’m as happy there as I have any right to be. It’s paradise—”
“Sounds a little escapist to me, Andrew.”
“Well, the world, human nature as I understand it, based on what I’ve seen, is well worth escaping. But I don’t expect you to understand that.” I came to my feet. Shadows and candlelight waltzed across Violet’s face, the only warmth in the church. “And besides, what if settling ‘all this crap’ means I go to prison?”
“Are you guiltless?”
“I don’t deserve prison.”
“How do you know what you deserve?”
“You’re a naïve little girl,” I said. “You think if you always try to do the right thing, it’ll all work out in the end. You think that don’t you?”
“It’s called hope. What if I do?”
“I hope you’re never faced with some of the decisions I’ve had to make. Where you lose everything no matter what.”
I grabbed her .45 from the pew and shoved it into my waistband. We’d be leaving just as soon as I repacked the Osprey.
“You need that optimism,” I said. “It protects you from the horror you see. Was what Luther did to the Worthingtons anything less than pure brutality?”
“No. It was awful.”
“Did you fabricate a silver lining there?”
“If they had their faith, I believe they’re in heaven.”
“I’m sure that’s just what Mr. Worthington was thinking as Luther Kite butchered him. ‘Boy, I’m glad I have this faith.’” I glanced up at the wooden cross mounted to the wall behind the altar. “You’re a Christian?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell me. Where is God now? Where was He when Luther savaged that family?”
She glared at me, her wet eyes shining in the firelight.
“I don’t know.”
44
MOONLESS and windless, the island brooded: cold, dark, silent. Having left the backpack in the church, we followed the path back to the old general store and turned at the junction onto a southbound trail that would lead us to the middle village ruins in the island’s interior.
We traversed Doctors Creek, passed an abandoned schoolhouse, and entered a thicket of live oaks.
Violet walked ahead of me.
The only sound came from the swish of wet Gortex, the splat of our boots in mud.
The trail narrowed.
We didn’t talk.
All around us the undergrowth rioted, impenetrable, in a state of unkempt anarchy, live oaks dripping, wet branches clawing at our arms and legs. I could hardly see Violet and she could hardly see the path before her. Occasionally she’d veer from the trail into a shrub, sigh, and right herself. I debated going back for the headlamp but decided against it. We’d already hiked at least a quarter of a mile and according to the map the ruins weren’t far ahead.
As we pushed on into the interior, I realized that I was trusting Violet to guide us, my eyes fixed on the back of her boots.
I couldn’t decide if I were more afraid of finding or not finding Luther.
At last we emerged from the thicket and arrived at the edge of a vast marsh.
I whispered for Violet to stop.
We’d reached the ruins.
Just off the trail I noticed what was left of a house—a crumbling stone chimney surrounded by a pile of rotten boards. Other remnants of the village were scattered throughout the neighboring wood. A brick chimney sprouted up from the middle of the marsh, no trace of the house it had warmed more than a century ago.
I told Violet to keep walking.
The trail followed a slim land bridge across the wetland. As we walked, distant splashes and squawks rang out across the water.
Well there’s some old hunting lodges down past the middle village ruins.
I kept hearing Charlie Tatum’s voice and thinking of that passage from Orson’s journal:
Said they have this lodge on a remote island that would be perfect for the administration of painings.
We reentered the thicket on the other side
. Scrub pine instead of live oak. A roomier wood.
The trail split and Violet stopped.
“Which way?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure. Let’s keep walking south.”
“What are we looking for exactly?”
“A lodge of some sort.”
“I don’t think anyone else is on this island, Andrew.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to wonder that myself.”
We continued southward, the air now perfumed with wet pine and cold enough to cloud our breath.
It was just after nine o’clock when the trail ended, having deposited us on the bank of a wide slough that separated Portsmouth from Evergreen Island. I remembered this feature from the map and my heart sank. If the Kite’s lodge stood on Evergreen we’d have to bushwhack east for half a mile and bypass the slough via the tidal flats that connected these barrier islands. It would take all night.
Eastward, I could see where the backwater eventually emptied after several hundred yards into the flats. The sea lay hidden behind distant dunes.
“Look,” Violet whispered.
I turned, gazed back into the wood.
“Do you see it?”
A speck of orange light twinkled somewhere in the pines. It could’ve been a ship on the sound. It could’ve been ball lightning.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Pull your hood down so you can listen.”
Violet rolled her hood back and pushed her hair behind her ears.
Leaving the path, we struck out into the pines in search of the light. The suction of our boots in the mud seemed positively deafening and the light grew no closer. I had an awful premonition that it would suddenly wink out, stranding us in the pathless dark.
We walked on, faster now between the pines, and for the first time that orange luminescence seemed closer.
I took the .45 from the inner pocket of my rain jacket.
“I see it,” Violet said.
We crouched down in a coppice of oleander.
Tucked away in some live oaks at the terminus of a black creek stood a little wood lodge. A lantern or candle (some source of natural firelight) glowed through the only window. A boat was moored to the small dock.
“Is that it?” she asked.