by Jan Fields
She woke with a start in her dark room well ahead of the alarm. She decided to take a shower and see if she could wash away some of the cobwebs. Over the sound of the hot water she heard her phone. Annie shut off the water and reached out to snag the phone from the bathroom sink where she’d left it.
“Annie?” a woman’s voice said tentatively. “This is Nora Harlow. I’m sorry to call so late. I know it’s rude.”
“That’s not a problem,” Annie said as she stepped out of the shower and wrapped one of the inn’s thick towels around herself. “Did you find out anything about Jim and Alice?”
“I certainly found out that no one wants to talk about them,” Nora said. “People are acting scared—people who don’t normally scare all that easily.”
Annie was tempted to tell her that Ellie had said virtually the same thing. “Do you have any idea what’s scaring them?”
“No, and that’s what’s so weird,” Nora said. “It’s like some kind of conspiracy was growing in my backyard, and I didn’t notice it. That’s not an easy thing for a newspaperwoman to swallow.”
“Do you think it could have anything to do with drugs?” Annie asked tentatively. “Like smuggling?”
“No. Most of these people wouldn’t get anywhere near drugs,” Nora said. “And our coast here is not very good for smuggling by boat or air. Whatever is going on, I don’t think it’s drugs.”
“Anyway, I’m still looking for someone to take me out to the island,” Nora said. “Or at least tell me what’s going on. I have some people who owe me more than lies. I’ll try some face-to-face time tomorrow and see what I can manage. Then I’ll let you know.”
Again Annie felt the urge to tell Nora about Ellie’s boat, but she resisted. For tonight, she would keep the teenager’s secret. After the call, Annie dressed quickly in a pair of dark jeans, a dark T-shirt and the dark sweater she’d taken along before. Then she sat cross-legged on the bed and pulled her notebook from her purse. She flipped to an empty page and wrote “What we know” across the top.
What did they know? They knew Jim and Alice had made it to Preacher’s Reach. Alice had stayed at the Preacher’s Rest Inn—in the room Stella now had. Suddenly Annie had a thought; she flipped to a second page and wrote: “What happened to Alice and Jim’s luggage?”
Logically, the luggage might be somewhere at the inn, but it definitely wasn’t in Stella’s room. So where was it? And where was Jim’s car? Annie tapped the question page, and then she flipped back. What else did they know?
She wrote down: “Alice and Jim rented a boat from Bob Maynard.” Annie stared at the page. That meant both Mrs. Ayers and Bob Maynard were somehow involved. She flipped to a third page and began listing those who were definitely involved somehow, adding in the owner of Sandy’s Pizza.
Her next note read: “Alice and Jim made it out to the island.” In fact, they knew Alice and Jim had been on the island more than once without seeing anything mysterious. Alice would have mentioned it if they had. Annie’s conversations with Alice had been very normal right up until they disappeared, so if something illegal was happening on the island, it either wasn’t easy to spot or didn’t happen very often.
“They were going back to explore the island early in the evening.” Annie underlined that one twice. It wasn’t until Alice and Jim went out to the island at twilight that they disappeared. Did that make a difference? Was there something hidden that could only be found after dark? Or had someone waited until it was dark to do something to Alice and Jim?
Annie sighed and flipped her notebook closed. This wasn’t really making her feel better. Still, she decided to mention the luggage and car questions to Ian, Stella, and Mary Beth. Annie glanced at the clock—it was time to rendezvous with her friends.
She slipped quietly out of her room and found Ian waiting in the hall. He held a finger to his lips and then stepped close to her so that he could whisper in her ear. His warm breath on her neck made her shiver. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.
Annie nodded and patted her purse. Ian smiled back as he took Annie’s hand and started down the hall toward the stairs. Annie followed, looking down at her hand in surprise. She was hardly going to get lost in the dim light of the hall. She didn’t need Ian to lead her by the hand. Though—if she were honest—she’d have to admit that it felt very nice.
They crept quietly down the stairs and spotted Stella and Mary Beth near the front door. Annie looked at Stella in surprise as she’d expected her friend to sleep through their leaving since she wasn’t coming. They stepped out onto the front porch together.
“Nice of you to see us off,” Ian said to Stella.
“I wanted to see if you had any last-minute ‘jobs’ for me,” Stella said. “Something I can do while you’re poking around the swamps.”
“Well,” Annie said, “I did realize that Jim and Alice’s luggage might be around here somewhere. And we don’t know what happened to Jim’s car.”
Stella frowned. “I can’t imagine they have the car hidden here, but I could look around for the luggage a little.”
“Just be careful,” Ian said sternly.
Annie told her friends quickly about the call from Nora. “She might be able to help with ideas about where Jim’s car might be hidden,” she said. “I just wish I’d thought of it while I was talking to her.”
“Who knows?” Mary Beth said. “We might find Jim and Alice tonight. Then all of us together can go looking for Jim’s car.”
Annie appreciated the optimism, even if she had trouble sharing it. With a few more commands to “be careful,” they finally headed out to the SUV while Stella slipped back into the inn. Annie looked worriedly after Stella. The old woman was more than formidable, but she was still by herself. It certainly wouldn’t be any harder to make her disappear than it was Alice and Jim. Ian gently tugged on Annie’s hand, and she followed him reluctantly.
They reached the car, and Mary Beth pulled open the door. She sighed, and shut it again. “I can’t do it. I can’t leave Stella here to poke around alone. I’d worry about her the whole time. I’m going to stay here. You two can handle the island adventure on your own—OK?”
Annie let out of whoosh of relieved breath. “I’m so glad you said that. I was going to worry myself sick about Stella.”
“Thanks, Mary Beth,” Ian said. “But you be careful too.”
“I will.” Mary Beth gave them each a quick hug before hurrying back to the inn.
The drive to meet Ellie passed quickly with neither Annie nor Ian having much to say. Since they knew exactly where the girl would be on the road, Ian didn’t have to creep along. When they finally slowed to a stop, Annie and Ian both got out of the car and waited for the flash of Ellie’s light.
Ellie spoke in an urgent whisper when she came out of the woods. “You need to back up some. There’s a road down to a little dock. No one uses it anymore because it was wrecked so bad in the last hurricane. There’s a kind of boathouse where you can hide your car.”
“Hop in—you can show me,” Ian said.
Annie climbed into the back as Ellie hopped into the front passenger seat and pointed out the road for Ian. Even with the girl pointing directly at it, Annie had trouble finding any break in the brush. As they rolled slowly down the overgrown road, tree branches slapped at the SUV, and the car’s tires crawled over the uneven ground with bumps and groans.
Finally Ellie directed them behind a tumbledown building. “No one really comes down here,” Ellie said. “But it’s still better if you’re kinda hidden.”
They all piled out of the car and followed Ellie to the boat. Even in the soft light of the full moon, Annie could tell the small boat was old and tired. The boat appeared to be made of wood, judging by splintered edges. The tiny wheelhouse almost looked homemade, like a ragged potting shed mounted in the middle of the boat. Ian took one look at it and said, “Forget it, Annie. You’re not getting in that thing.”
“It’s better than it lo
oks,” Ellie said loyally, patting her poor boat’s rail. “And it’s the only boat willing to go out to Fuller’s Island.”
“Then it’s the one I’m riding in,” Annie said, stepping down from the half-rotted dock to the worn deck. “You can go help Mary Beth and Stella find luggage. Maybe you can find Jim’s car too.”
“Annie Dawson,” Ian said, his voice almost a growl. “Get out of that boat.”
“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
Ellie looked from one to the other and began fiddling with the lines that held the boat to the dock.
“Don’t make me pick you up and haul you out of there,” Ian said. “That boat is one stiff breeze away from a swim.”
“It’s the only boat available,” Annie said. “And Ellie trusts it. Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not my father.”
Ian huffed and ran a hand through his short hair. “I’m not trying to be your father.”
“Then be my friend,” Annie said, holding out a hand to him. “Come and help me find Alice and Jim.”
Ian shot a glance at Ellie. “Do you have life jackets?”
“Sure,” Ellie said. She hopped into the boat and walked into the wheelhouse. She tossed out two of the worst-looking life jackets Annie had ever seen. They were covered with dark splotches and stank of mildew.
“I suspect I might prefer drowning,” Annie said as she looked down at them.
Ian stepped down into the boat and picked up one of the vests. The stench even wrinkled his nose. Still he shrugged into it and held out the other for Annie. “You wear it, or we get out.”
Annie sighed and pulled on the jacket, trying to breath shallowly through her mouth. It didn’t help much. The stink seemed to coat her tongue. At least the island wasn’t far.
Ellie cast off the lines and disappeared into the wheelhouse again. She passed through to the other side and squatted to start an ancient boat motor. Apparently the shed in the middle of the boat was less wheelhouse and more storage shed.
Ellie fiddled with the motor for so long that it looked like Ian might get his wish—without a working motor, they would have a very long trip. Finally the motor coughed and sputtered before settling into a fairly regular—if tentative—rumble.
Ian pulled Annie down beside him to squat on the deck of the boat. “I think we should keep our weight low,” he said.
“Fine with me,” Annie said as cheerfully as she could, considering her mouth felt like she’d been licking slime mold.
They made the short trip to the island in relative silence, with the only conversation coming from Ellie’s coaxing of her engine and Ian’s occasional dark muttering. They followed the rocky coast of the island for a while until a dark gap suddenly appeared. “We’ll tie up in here,” Ellie called as she cut the motor. “No one can see us from the mainland in here.”
She hopped over the side of the boat into the shallow water and clambered quickly up the sandy shore. She wrapped a tie rope around the nearest tree and used the leverage to pull the boat closer before tying off.
Ian hopped over the side with a soft splash. He held his arms up to Annie. “It’s not far,” he said. “I can help you hop over. That way you can stay out of the water.”
Annie held out her arms to him, resting her hands on his shoulders. He told her when to jump, and she felt the working of the muscle under his shirt as he lifted her over to shore. Then he splashed out after her.
Ellie was sitting on a fallen log, peeling back her socks to look at her ankles.
“What are you looking for?” Annie asked.
“Leeches,” Ellie said. “The water up this inlet is a mixture of salt and fresh from a spring on the island that runs into the sea here. It’s fresh enough for some seriously nasty leeches.”
“Great,” Ian said. He shone his own light on the bottoms of his pant legs, poking at his socks. Thankfully he wasn’t carrying any blood-sucking passengers. “So—do we wait here for morning?”
Ellie nodded. “Yeah. The island isn’t really safe in the dark.”
“Not safe how?” Annie asked.
“You could walk into a tree,” Ellie said with a shrug. “Or get bit by a snake. Or fall in a hole. Some of the buildings are down to foundations.”
Annie peered out into the darkness pressing around them. She heard a rustle of bushes and stepped closer to Ian. He put a warm arm around her. “Probably just a possum,” he said quietly. “Or a raccoon.”
Or deadly poisonous snake, Annie thought with a shiver, and she hoped that dawn came early—really early.
13
I told no one about the old woman, not even my mother—though she suspected something horrible had happened on the street as I was not in the habit of soiling myself, turning pale with fear and shaking like a wet dog. She refused to take me back to the island that night and rented a room in the village. She sent word to my father that she was overwrought from the horrible circumstances surrounding my great-grandfather’s death. She told him she would not set foot on the island again. She was wrong.
—Steven Fuller, 1925
Annie jumped again at a rustle behind her. She turned and saw Ellie hauling a small rucksack into her lap. The girl pulled out bottles of water and granola bars. “You guys want some? I brought enough for all of us.”
“Thanks,” Annie said, taking a bottle of water. “That was very thoughtful.”
Ellie shrugged. “I come out here a lot. It’s a good place to think, but you gotta bring your own snacks.”
“If you come out here a lot,” Annie asked. “do you know of anything on this island that folks would want to keep secret?”
Ellie shook her head. “No. It’s just old buildings. I mean, some of them are kinda cool and spooky, but there’s nothing valuable in them. I don’t really wander around the island much. Mostly I stay near here. It’s quiet, and like I said, it’s a good place to think.”
“Could someone be using the island for some kind of secret activity?” Ian asked. “Maybe something illegal?”
“I don’t know what it could be,” Ellie said. “Especially to get Uncle Bob involved. My uncle is not a criminal.”
“Well, whatever might be hidden on the island,” Ian said, “we can’t start looking until daylight. We might as well be comfortable while we wait.” He looked around a moment before walking over to a large rock, half-covered in brambles. He took his jacket off and wrapped it around his forearm so he could clear the thorny vines. Then he spread the jacket on the top of the rock. “Care to join me, Annie?”
“After all that work, how could I say no?” Annie walked over and sat as far to one side of the jacket as possible to make room for Ian. Still, when he sat, his leg pressed close to hers and his broad shoulders seemed unusually wide.
Ian unscrewed the top of his water bottle and took a long drink. They sat quietly, listening to the sound of insects and frogs in the night. Now and then something would rustle in the bushes, but there were no howls, barks, or other sounds to suggest there could be dogs on the island.
“You said you come out here often,” Annie said, turning to Ellie. “I watched a video of two people who were on the island at night. They ran away when they heard dogs. It’s clear on the video.”
Ellie shrugged. “I’ve never heard dogs here.”
“So there couldn’t be wild dogs?” Ian asked.
“We have trouble sometimes with feral dogs on the mainland,” Ellie said. “Idiot tourists dump dogs and cats at the end of summer. And a lot of guys around here aren’t big on the whole ‘spay and neuter’ thing. Still, to get to the island, they’d have to swim over from the mainland, and I don’t know what would draw them.”
“It sounds like there are animals on the island,” Annie said.
“Sure, raccoons and opossums,” Ellie answered. “Maybe some pigs, even though I’ve never seen any. But we have those in the woods around Preacher’s Reach. Why come out here to find something that’s more plentiful where
you are?”
“No one ever brings dogs over to hunt?” Ian asked.
“Again, easier hunting on the mainland,” Ellie said.
“What if they hunt out of season?” Ian asked. “You could do it easier over here.”
“It’s not that hard anywhere,” Ellie said. “With money being what it is … well, you’ve seen the town. Some folks hunt and fish just to keep meat on the table. No one has the heart to police it really hard right now.”
Dawn came slowly, unnoticed until Annie suddenly realized she could see colors again—the faded blue of Ellie’s jeans and the green of the surrounding foliage. It was morning and time for them to hunt for clues.
Ellie led them through the woods, and Annie immediately recognized it as a daylight version of the Internet video with thick undergrowth. The island had trails, but they were badly overgrown, and Ellie seemed to find them by instinct as much as anything else. Annie watched her feet closely, watching for the snakes Ellie had mentioned.
“The first buildings are just up ahead,” Ellie said after they’d been walking for a while.
Annie saw that they’d come at the buildings from a different angle than the one on the video. The building they faced wasn’t made of cinder blocks; it was brick, now crumbling. They walked straight at the long, low brick building. Vines covered the building so thickly that the door opening looked like a cave with the corners rounded by the tangle of growth clinging to the bricks around the frame. Here and there, portions of windows—most with cracked or missing glass—peeked out from behind vine shutters. They walked to the doorway and looked in.
This was one of the buildings with little or no roof left. Inside, the broken roof had let in seeds and sun, making the undergrowth inside the building nearly as thick as that on the outside. Support columns held up nothing but sky and cracked crossbeams.
Bare spots on the floor showed half-rotted boards. “It’s beautiful and horrible at the same time,” Annie said quietly.