by Ron Ripley
Zucci was at the helm, and the rest of the boat’s crew went about their work. Harper and Kaplan sat below deck, more than likely arguing about who the Patriots were going to have start the season for defense Al scratched his right forearm compulsively, irritated he had forgotten his nicotine patches at home.
I need to keep some in my locker, he thought.
A sharp flare, bright red, launched up into the sky. It reached its peak and slowly arched.
“Chief, did you see that?” Zucci called back to him.
“Aye, Zucci,” Al said, getting to his feet. “Adjust your course, get the men on their lights.”
The call went out over the communication system, and men and women scrambled to their lights. Sharp, powerful lights exploded from the helm, the beams crisscrossing the waves and the dark water.
“Strobe to starboard!” someone yelled.
All of the lights swiveled on their mounts, picked through the water and across the whitecaps. A yellow life-raft could be spotted, with what looked to be a single person in it. The lights settled on the raft, and the occupant waved their arms.
After several minutes, the boat was as close as it dared to get to the raft. The rescue team was over the side in a matter of moments, and shortly after that, they were back aboard, along with the raft’s sole occupant. A young woman, barren of makeup and looking exhausted.
She smiled wearily, tears in her eyes. “Thank you.”
Gwen Ouellette, the boat’s paramedic, came forward and did a quick, cursory exam as a rescue blanket was wrapped around the young woman.
“She’s good, Chief,” Gwen said. “We’ll have to bring her to the hospital for a full checkup when we get in, though.”
Al nodded and stepped forward, dropping down into a squat next to the seated woman. “Hello, miss, I’m Chief Petty Officer Al Arsenault. Can you tell me how you got out here?”
In straightforward, clear sentences the young woman, Courtney DeSantis, told him about what happened to the people who had been aboard the yacht, A Father’s Dream. She told him about a man trapped on Squirrel Island and the woman named Amy who was there to kill him.
Al stood up, a cold feeling in his stomach. Those who had been around Courtney looked at him.
“Zucci,” Al said.
“Chief?” the man asked.
“All ahead, full speed to Squirrel Island,” Al said. “Get someone on the horn to base, have them call this in to the city’s police. We’ll do what we can when we get there.”
“Aye aye, Chief,” Zucci said.
Al walked over to the stairs and called down, “Kaplan!”
“Aye, Chief!”
“Open the weapons locker.”
Al could feel the eyes of the crew on him, but he ignored them and turned his attention back to Squirrel Island.
Chapter 60: On the Road
Marie drove a little over the speed limit, not wanting to have to stop and explain to a State Trooper why she was in a rush.
Or why I think I’m in a rush, she corrected herself. She didn’t know for a fact if either Amy or Shane were in trouble. The coincidence was a little too much for her, though.
A missing yacht. A missing gatekeeper at a marina. No word from Amy. Silence from Shane, Marie thought. She checked her mirrors, signaled left, and went around a minivan.
Are you overreacting? she asked. Are you worried something has happened to them? Are you worried they’ve made a love connection?
Marie shook her head, chuckling. No, that’s definitely not it. More power to them. I doubt either of them is looking for more than a good time.
With the travel lane free of the troublesome minivan, Marie got back into it.
It’s likely nothing more than Amy having a night on the town, she thought. How many times has she forgotten her phone at home? Or even forgot to charge it? Or just plain turned it off when she’s been having a little too much fun?
Amy was wilder than Marie would ever be, and she still couldn’t understand how the woman did it.
Like all good cops, Marie had a scanner in her car. It was a necessity to her as much as an iPod was to the younger generation. She had the scanner turned down, but loud enough for her to hear. Occasional calls went out. Mostly the mundane, everyday chores of any police force. Moving violations. A rare report of a fight. A domestic assault call and the fear that goes with it.
The scanner squawked as she neared the coast. Some unknown dispatcher at a Maine State Police barracks called out, “We have the Coast Guard reporting a possible 207 at Squirrel Island. I say again, the Coast Guard is reporting a possible 207 at Squirrel Island.”
Marie stiffened as she drove. Her foot suddenly grew heavier, and the accelerator went down accordingly.
207A, she thought numbly. Possible kidnapping.
Marie no longer worried about the speed limit.
Chapter 61: Changing Tides
Amy, from her position in the lighthouse looking out the doorway, had seen the flare go up. And she had seen the lights from, what was more than likely, a Coast Guard patrol boat searching the ocean.
She hadn’t worried about the rest. All of her great-grandmother’s plans were unraveling.
He has to be stopped, she told herself, her thoughts ricocheting madly about her head. She won’t be able to do it alone. Not with the Coast Guard coming. Something has to be done. I have to help.
After a great deal of struggling and wrenching of her muscles, Amy managed to get her knees up to her chest and her hands under her feet. With her hands in front of her, she was able to find a shard of the broken lantern and cut her bonds.
Amy looked around the scattered tools left by the deceased Mike Puller, and she found a heavy pry bar. The dull blue metal was scratched and pitted, the hooked end of it sharpened to a fair edge.
Good enough, she thought, to remove Shane’s head!
Clutching the tool tightly in her sore and throbbing hands, Amy made her way out of the lighthouse. She looked around and listened.
From the keeper’s house came the sound of something breaking. As though boxes were being broken into.
The children! she thought frantically. He’s in the cellar! He’s trying to find the children. If he gets the bodies, she won’t be able to bind them here. If she can’t bind them, then all of it will have been for nothing!
Everything will be done.
Shaking with rage, Amy crept along to the keeper’s house and made her way to the cellar. In spite of her trembling arms, the pry bar was steady in her hands.
Chapter 62: With the Children
Shane wanted to weep.
The remains of Dorothy’s children were pitifully small. He had found a folded tarp near the stairs, and he had spread it out. The last bones, those of the baby, were put with its siblings.
“Why are you sad?” Jillian asked softly.
“I am sad you’re dead,” Shane answered, keeping a tight rein on his tears. He brought the ends of the tarp together, picked it up, and found the load to be terribly light.
“You don’t have to be,” Jillian said.
Shane didn’t reply as he carried the children up the narrow stairs and into the starlight. He brought them out several feet into the yard and set them down. The wind shifted and carried with it the stink of the bodies in the shed.
Christ, he thought, I’d forgotten about that smell.
“I’ve had enough of you, Shane Ryan!” a woman said.
Shane turned and saw Dorothy. She stood off to the right, far more solid than she had been before.
“Fair enough,” Shane replied. “I’m sick of you as well.”
“Alas,” she said, smiling wickedly, “there is nothing you can do about it.”
“Says you,” Shane said. He cleared his throat, spat to one side. “You look strong tonight.”
“Stronger than I have ever been,” Dorothy sneered. “See who I have around me.”
She gestured, and the dead appeared around her in all of their horrific glor
y.
Scott and Dane, Eileen and George. Clark and the boy, Ewan. Jillian, holding a baby, and her grandfather standing beside her. And more. Perhaps another twenty or twenty-five.
Shane didn’t bother to count them all.
They’ll either side with me, or they won’t, he thought.
Shane was armed only with the knuckledusters, having left the makeshift gauntlet and cudgel in the cellar. He took a single step forward and looked to Clark.
“Why are you looking to my husband, Shane Ryan?” Dorothy asked, laughing. “He is my creature. They are all my creatures, bound to me for eternity.”
Jillian looked at her mother and walked over to stand behind Shane.
And her grandfather.
And Clark.
Ewan and others followed. The more who left her side, the fainter she became.
Dorothy’s face grew cold and harsh.
“This means nothing,” she snarled, left only with the newest of the dead, the naked Mike Puller and others beside her. Those too weak to break her hold on them. “I’m still here. And so are they. They’ll regret this night, mind you, and I will kill you slowly, Shane Ryan. As slow as I can.”
“In the darkness, Dorothy?” Shane whispered.
Her eyes widened, and her face paled.
“No,” he said, his voice growing louder. “You’ll do nothing in the darkness. But those you murdered will.”
“And what will they do?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. One she tried to hide beneath bravado.
“They will give me the strength they deny you,” Shane answered.
He crossed the short distance between them quickly.
Mike Puller stepped back nervously, as did the others.
“Do your worst,” Dorothy hissed. “I’ve felt the sting of iron before, and it is no worse than that of a bee.”
“Not yet,” Shane said softly as if speaking to a lover. “Oh, not yet, Dorothy.”
Behind him, he heard Jillian speak.
“We give this to you,” the girl whispered.
Terror and pain, violent fear, all of it ripped through him. All of the horror Dorothy had visited upon her victims. The decades of living a nightmare denied salvation or damnation, pummeled Shane.
He grunted, remained on his feet, and absorbed all of it. Every shred of their experiences. It felt as though his blood burned in his veins, as if his lungs would explode, as though the bones would shatter. Shane tilted his head back and screamed, a long, drawn out sound which threatened to drown out the ocean’s great voice.
And then it changed.
The scream became a gasp, the gasp a laugh, the laugh a shout of triumph.
Dorothy stood in front of him, as real as the island beneath his feet.
“No,” she hissed, looking at her hands. “This cannot be. What have you done?!”
She remained silent as he lunged forward, grabbed hold of her, and dug his fingers into her flesh. She let out a shriek as the fingers pushed through the dress, through the skin, pierced the muscles and gripped them.
With a howl of savage glee, he ripped his hand back, tattering the muscles.
Dorothy tried to jerk away, but Shane didn’t let her. He wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed.
She batted at his arms, grabbed a hold of one of his pinkies and pulled it back, the bone snapping loudly.
Shane bit back a scream, the pain immediate and intense. Stars exploded around the corners of his vision and she wrenched herself away from him. She looked for a way out, but the dead who had sided with Shane made a circle around them. The ghosts kept the two of them contained.
When Dorothy saw she had no escape, she let out a shriek of pure rage and threw herself at him, parts of her arm flapping grotesquely. Shane caught her, grunted at the effort to keep his balance and punched her solidly with his good hand. Something crumpled beneath the blow.
Dorothy’s fingers clawed at his face, a thumb catching his lip and slipping into his mouth. The vile taste of her curious flesh made him gag even as she tried to rip his cheek away from his skull.
Shane jerked his head back, threw his fist against her head again and watched as her entire jaw slid to the right. She stumbled and he caught her by the hair, jerking her head back.
Her throat was exposed and as she struck at him, each blow feebler than the last, Shane leaned forward, brought his hand up and began to dig his fingers into her neck.
Chapter 63: Disbelief and Rage
Amy had observed everything which took place between her great-grandmother and Shane. The permanently bald man had looked as though he would collapse, and then the unthinkable had happened.
Dorothy had taken on some sort of physical form.
Shane’s obvious scream of pain, and the way he had collapsed, had thrilled her. It had looked like he would succumb to whatever power Dorothy exerted. And then he hadn’t.
His screams of pain had become triumphant exultations.
And he had forced, somehow forced Dorothy to become real.
There, but not quite.
Exhilaration had filled Amy, and she had tightened her grip on the pry bar. Excitement raced through her as she prepared to watch her great-grandmother destroy Shane.
Yet the opposite had occurred.
Shane had attacked Dorothy. Had literally begun to rip her to shreds. Great chunks of the woman had been cast aside. Those few ghosts who had remained by her great-grandmother’s side had fled while those who had betrayed the woman remained behind Shane. All of them pulsed with some strange glow. Their hollow voices rose up in cheers and taunts. They called for Shane, encouraged him, and made certain Dorothy could not escape. Some pushed and kicked at her, and the air vibrated with their excitement.
When Shane bent Dorothy back and tore at the flesh of her neck, Amy froze with horror.
Numb, she watched as Shane let out a howl and he wrenched up with both hands.
Amy’s great-grandmother vanished completely.
With a silent rage Amy was spurred to action.
Raising the pry-bar above her, Amy ran forward and brought the sharpened end down, stumbling at the last moment. She slammed the tool into Shane’s right shoulder, knocking him forward.
Chapter 64: Gunshots in the Night
When Dorothy vanished, a collective sigh reached Shane’s ears. A second later, a terrible pain blossomed in his shoulder.
Shane staggered forward, stumbled and fell. He twisted as he landed and looked up. Through the windows of the keeper’s house, and around the sides, a light flashed. A curiously bright illumination. What the hell was that? he wondered numbly.
Then he saw her.
Amy had gotten free, and she held some sort of tool in her hand, the top of which was wet.
That’s my blood, Shane realized.
She charged at him, and he rolled to one side, lashing out with a foot. He missed her leg as she missed his head.
He managed to get to a knee, and then tried to push off the ground with his right hand. His wounded shoulder wouldn’t bear the weight. With a grimace, he slipped down, and he saw her raise the tool up for another attack.
I’ll have to meet it head on, he thought dully.
A semi-automatic pistol barked three times, muzzle flashes coming from the left.
Amy stiffened, took a step towards him as someone emptied the rest of the magazine into her.
She collapsed lifelessly to the ground beside him.
Shane looked at her body and thought, Thank Christ.
And then passed out.
Chapter 65: At the Dock
Marie made it to the Coast Guard’s dock only a few minutes after their patrol boat had docked. Chatter on the scanner had talked about a shooting on Squirrel Island, about a wounded male victim and a dead female assailant. The State Police were sending a boat out to process the crime scene. The Coast Guard was bringing the victim in to be transported to the hospital.
Marie pulled her car in beside an ambulance. All of the veh
icle’s lights were on, the paramedics in the back.
She had put the car into park, left the keys in the ignition, and hurried to look in the ambulance. Both paramedics were in the back, as was a young woman. The young woman was holding Shane Ryan’s hand. He was sitting up on the gurney, shirtless, dirty, and bloodied. When he saw Marie, he nodded.
The paramedics glanced over, and one of them said, “We can’t fit any more in here, ma’am.”
Marie showed the man her badge and the paramedic shrugged.
“Are you okay?” Marie asked.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “They just started a morphine drip for the pain. I’ll be useless in about two minutes.”
“What happened?” Marie said, glancing at the girl.
Shane shook his head. “Later.”
Marie nodded. “Meet you at the hospital?”
“Sure,” Shane said, closing his eyes.
Marie turned to leave but stopped as Shane called out, “Hey, Marie.”
“Yeah?” she said, looking back at him.
“I will tell you one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“No more favors for your family.”
Before Marie could ask him what he meant, the paramedics closed the door and the ambulance’s engine roared to life.
Chapter 66: Back on the Island
Shane stepped onto the pier and winced. The injuries from his fight with Dorothy were still fresh, only days old. He glanced back at the boat they had chartered and saw Courtney. She stood off to one side with her arms crossed over her chest. Shane knew she had a small piece of iron hidden in her hand. The pilot of the small boat leaned back in his seat, yawned, and checked his phone.
Shane waved to Courtney and she smiled nervously as she returned the wave.
Sighing, Shane turned back to face the island, and started walking along the pier. By the time he reached the path up to the buildings, he could feel the dead gather around him. The air was cold, his exhalations a soft white cloud. He ignored both the lighthouse and the keeper’s house, walking around to the back. The door to the shed where he had stored the bodies of Courtney’s friends leaned haphazardly, the entire structure leering at him.