The House on Stone's Throw Island

by Dan Poblocki

  Margo and Gregory had had no success in making contact with the mainland. According to Charlie, the little dinghy tied to the wharf would hold no more than five, and even that would be pushing it. What was more unsettling was that the Gagnons seemed to have differing views on what to do. Eli had overheard them arguing. Beatrice wanted Charlie to take the boat to Haggspoint and find help. Charlie insisted that they’d weathered worse storms than this, that the front would blow through in a few hours.

  The rest of the party picked at their meals. Aimee looked pale and defeated. Bruno sat beside her, one-handedly rubbing her shoulder. If he’s possessed by anything at the moment, Eli thought, it’s by compassion for my sister. Despite the anger of the storm and his overactive fears, or maybe because of them, Eli suddenly hoped that Sunday would arrive with blue skies and cheers all around.

  As dinner wound down, Vivian chatted quietly with Otis and Cynthia, all of them wearing looks of worry as the lightning continued to flash outside. Josie slumped in the chair beside her mother, staring at her untouched plate as if it were covered with garbage. Eli wished she would look up at him from across the table and make eye contact so he could silently apologize.

  FROM THE DIARY OF DORY M. SAUVAGE

  Saturday, September 5, 1942

  Dear Diary,

  The storm has grown stronger.

  And I’m not sure I am as fond of Emil Coombs as I was only this morning. He’s proven himself to be a real spoilsport.

  After the group discovered the muddy stones I’d placed in their shoes during dinner, Emil raised his voice and said a few words Daddy would have called “uncouth.” I listened from down the hall. When Frankie and the girls laughed, Emil accused my brother of trying to turn them all against him. To “thwart” him. Screaming like someone out of his mind, he claimed he’d make them pay. This last part made the others become quite serious. I found my own cheeks burning. I hadn’t thought that anyone would have become so furious. Frankie explained that no one had dirtied his shoes on purpose. “If we were to have fun at your expense, old boy,” my brother asked, “why would we have sullied our own as well?”

  This seemed to calm Emil, but he still insisted on finding the guilty party. When Frankie suggested that the answer might be ghosts, everyone chuckled nervously.

  I must admit, this exchange has me reconsidering my visit. It was supposed to have been all in fun. I’ve already set several other tricks into motion. At this late hour, I worry that if I were to rush about, cleaning up every last one of them, I’d forfeit my status as secret stowaway. What if Emil reacts hostilely to my appearance? I don’t believe I’m prepared for such a scolding, especially from him.

  I must be careful in this secluded corner of the library. I shall hide here until I’m certain I can sneak back upstairs to the privacy of my secret space.

  Oh, Diary, what have I done? I’ve no idea how to fix —

  A crash has come from down the hallway. Oh, my heart races. It sounded like a glass or plate, or maybe even a piece of furniture breaking apart.

  Now voices are shouting. What is going on?

  Should I call out to Frankie? Or should I remain hidden?

  One thing is for certain: Writing must wait until I can sort out what kind of trouble has found us.

  Confidentially yours,

  Dory M. Sauvage

  SONNY THAYER FLICKED his windshield wipers to the highest speed. They did little to clear the deluge of water that attacked his decade-old Toyota Camry, blurring his visibility of the twisted little road that veined the jagged coast near Haggspoint Harbor.

  He slammed his fist into the center of his steering wheel, sending out a weak honking noise that barely rose over the holler of the relentless wind.

  “Whoa, Gramps,” said Rick, who was belted tightly into the passenger seat. “Take it easy.”

  Sonny eased around a sharp turn. Beyond the edge of the road, the earth dropped away. Another wild flash of lightning revealed the high tide that churned not far below. “Sorry. I’m kicking myself for waiting so long to do this. The storm makes no sense.”

  “Let’s calm down. We’ll get to the marina. And like you said, maybe we’ll have more luck with the ship’s radio.”

  “It makes me nervous that I haven’t been able to reach Margo all day. I was sure she’d try to call. Something’s gone wrong.”

  “Obviously. But we’ll figure it out.”

  “Stupid television. Stupid forecasters. For all their gadgets and gizmos, what good does it do them? Or us, for that matter?” Sonny slammed on the breaks, and the car fishtailed before squealing to a halt. He threw his hands into the air. “I can’t see for sin! If I were out on the water, I’d know exactly what to do. But driving this dumb car … Which way am I going?”

  “We’re almost there. The next left will be Harbor Street. You know what to do after that.”

  “Yeah. Drive straight and hope the dinghy’s still moored to the wharf.” Sonny flicked the turn signal and slowly pressed his foot against the gas.

  For most of the day, Sonny Thayer had kept quiet about the bad feeling in his gut. It wasn’t merely the clouds that had come in early, or the winds, or the drizzle that had started up in the afternoon. He couldn’t stop thinking about the people he’d brought out to the island at sunrise. The trip shouldn’t have bothered him; it could not have been more routine. But his intestines had started squelching soon after they’d anchored the Sea Witch back in Haggspoint Harbor. Nerves. Something was happening with the wedding party, he was certain. Most ship captains, at least the ones who sailed this far north, will tell you that half of their job is trusting their instincts. For Sonny, his current distress went beyond the job. Today, it felt like those folks were calling to him.

  By sundown, he’d phoned Rick and asked him to come along to the marina. He’d told his grandson that he’d need help further securing the Sea Witch against the storm and also that he hoped to finally contact the party out on Stone’s Throw. What he’d kept secret was his desire to take the ship out into the gulf. Sonny knew Rick would object to the journey, and he had spent most of the car ride trying to figure out a way to persuade him. So far, Sonny hadn’t come up with anything that sounded half convincing, even to himself. It was going to be a tremendous challenge just to pilot their small dinghy out to where the Sea Witch was anchored several dozen yards offshore.

  Harbor Street sloped down straight ahead. The parking lot appeared on the left, but Sonny drove the Camry all the way to the edge of the dock. The dinghy was secured at the end of the farthest slip.

  Sonny pulled the keys from the engine but left the car lights blaring so he could see through the wash of rain, which was now blowing almost completely sideways. He flipped the hood of his coat up over his balding head and glanced at Rick, who was dressed in a bright yellow poncho.

  “You ready for this?” Sonny asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Together, the men leaped from the vehicle and scrambled out into the night. They made it to the end of the slip before noticing the trouble. The dinghy was right where it was supposed to be, its rubber bumpers knocking furiously against the wharf. The surge was coming in from the ocean, and the water was already treacherously high, almost at the lip of the dock. Beyond, out in the harbor where the ferry should have been anchored securely, there was darkness. The Camry’s brights revealed nothing but the white-capped current.

  Speechless, Sonny clutched the top of his hood, his fingertips digging into his scalp. The storm had somehow stolen the ferry from the harbor and dragged it upstream or inland to who knew where. That feeling in his gut squelched harder, and Sonny had to fight to keep down the microwaved macaroni and cheese he’d swallowed for dinner.

  The deck wobbled in the surf, and Sonny felt himself toppling. Rick took his shoulder and steadied him. “Come on, Gramps! It’s dangerous out here. I know it’s not what you wanna hear, but we’ll have to worry about the ferry tomorrow!”

  Sonny shook his head a
nd called out over the wind, unsure if his grandson could even hear him. “Tomorrow’ll be too late!”

  JOSIE WAS TIRED. She was tired of being scared of the storm, tired of Eli’s weird stories and odd glances, but mostly she was just tired in the way you feel tired when the day has beaten you down and you can think of nothing but sleep. So after dinner, while the adults continued to while the night away, drinking and talking and pretending that everything was going to be all right, Josie had climbed the stairs, brushed her teeth, and then changed into her aqua-blue cotton pajamas.

  Under the comfy down blanket, she stared at the ceiling, which was painted with an amber glow from the bedside lamp. She listened to the wind batter the window. Eventually, the rattling became routine, just more white noise. Finally, for the first time that day, she allowed herself to feel at ease. Tomorrow, the storm will have cleared, she thought. Dad will have arrived with Ama. I’ll have more people to talk to and less to worry about. She hoped.

  Josie closed her eyes and thought of her friend Lisa Kowalski back on Staten Island. She imagined the race they’d run when she made it home on Monday. Lisa was fast, but Josie was faster. She smiled, thinking about how often she allowed Lisa to beat her in their races around the block. Maybe one day, when she was feeling brave, she’d tell Lisa why she let her win all those times.

  Footsteps creaked in the hallway. One of the other guests getting ready for bed. Josie wondered if Eli had come upstairs yet. He’d seemed pretty down after dinner. She tried to force away her bad feelings about him, but her brain pushed back. She knew he believed the story he’d told — the one about Bruno speaking German with the caretaker. Somewhere in her own mind, she wondered about the conclusions Eli’d come to. Possession? If it didn’t seem slightly plausible, she would have laughed. She would have laughed so hard, it would have hurt.

  Josie reached out to turn off the light, but a creaking noise at her bedroom door stopped her. She froze for a moment, then turned her head. To her surprise, the doorknob wobbled and then spun. She was so certain that Eli had come to bother her again, she rolled her eyes and prepared to scold him for not knocking.

  The girl in the peach-colored dress slipped through the entry as she’d done earlier that day.

  Josie scrambled backward toward the headboard, pulling the blanket up to her chin. Once more, the girl held her wet and muddy body against the door. “Who are you?” Josie struggled to shout, but it came out in a whisper. “What do you want?” Again, the girl ignored her; like before, she turned around and pressed her palms to the door. Josie knew what was coming next. The girl would dash across the room and disappear into the closet.

  She understood. What she was seeing was not real. There was no girl. Whatever was happening here was like a movie, a single scene caught on a loop.

  Before her doubts stopped her, Josie flipped away the blanket and leaped from the bed. She dashed toward the closet door and grabbed the knob just as the girl turned toward her. Josie swung the door open. The girl ran at her, and Josie clenched every muscle, preparing to be accosted or to have the door yanked from her grip. But the girl stepped past her into the dark and empty space. A cool draft followed. Josie watched as the girl, swallowed by shadows, lowered her shoulder as if to slam into the rear of the closet. But instead of colliding with the wall, the girl slipped right through it.

  Josie yelped, unable to move, unsure if she should trust what she’d seen. The girl had evaporated. Gone, like dust into a vacuum cleaner’s nozzle. Josie held her hand to her mouth and waited, as if the girl might pop back out. After a few seconds, Josie reached into the opening and touched the spot where the girl had disappeared. The wood panel was cold, and Josie flinched. She reached out again and knocked. A hollow sound reverberated. She and Eli had examined the closet earlier in the day, but they hadn’t gone far enough — it was obvious now that there was an empty area on the other side of the back wall.

  Her phone sat charging on the table beside the bed. Josie crept across the room, retrieved it, and then cautiously approached the closet again. Flicking on the phone’s flashlight, Josie illuminated the cramped space. The white walls, the shelf, the wooden clothes rack all appeared the same as they had earlier.

  She stepped inside, leaning close to the corners at the back. She ran her fingers along the seams where the edges of the walls met. Something told her to push. Hard. When she did, the wood seemed to snap, and a vertical crack appeared at the right joint, running from the floor to the base of the shelf above her head. She pushed again and the crack widened. With a third thrust, the right side of the rear wall moved several inches away from her.

  The wall was a door! Josie and Eli hadn’t noticed earlier because someone had painted over its seams some time ago, nearly sealing it shut. She examined the left side and realized that the hinges must be there, hidden from view.

  I am dreaming, thought Josie, even though she knew she was wide-awake. That tired feeling that had earlier threatened to drag her off to sleep was gone.

  The light shone through the crack, revealing a small room of raw wood slats and crumbling plaster. Thick cobwebs draped from these inner walls like elegantly decomposing tapestries.

  For a moment, she worried what she’d do if she found the girl just inside the secret space, waiting for her. But the girl hadn’t really been a ghost — she seemed to be a sort of echo. If places could be possessed, then that echo might be a clue. A hint toward some secret truth locked away on this island. And a clue was nothing to be scared of, was it?

  Despite a slight tremble in her stomach, Josie pushed again at the panel, making a space wide enough to slip through. She held up the flashlight. Beyond a swarm of dust motes, the light revealed two vertical beams with several horizontal wooden posts bolted to them. A ladder was built into the wall. Glancing up, Josie saw the rungs disappear into a darkness that her light could not reach through. Holding her breath, she grasped one of the rungs above her head and began to climb. She was so concerned with what she was doing, trying hard not to drop her phone, that she didn’t notice her heel knock against the secret panel and swing it shut behind her.

  MARGO LINTEL HAD left the group once they’d settled into the den for after-dinner drinks. She wished them all good night, saluted Gregory as he chatted with Aimee and Bruno, then peeked in on Charlie and Beatrice in their private nook off the kitchen.

  “Any luck with the radio?” she asked. From his chair by the cupola window, Charlie shook his head apologetically. “Well, we’ll see Sonny tomorrow, I suppose.” Margo feared that this tidbit would be of no help to her mother, who was probably having a fit at the nursing home. This storm was a doozy for folks who didn’t have a phobia of bad weather. As she made her way upstairs to the small room she’d reserved for herself at the very end of the hall, she said a prayer that her brother, Robert, had had the foresight to spend the evening with their mother.

  In bed, in the dark, Margo’s mind roiled with worry. Though she’d kept her eyes closed for what felt like at least an hour, she did not sleep. Every creak of the house, every wail of the wind, every footstep of a guest coming up the stairs was like the breath of a little beast that sat heavy on her chest, wide-eyed and salivating, waiting to feed on her fear the moment she lost consciousness.

  This was not how the weekend was supposed to begin. All of the notebooks she’d brought, all the graphs and charts she’d built to help keep herself organized, were useless against the onslaught of anxiety.

  Margo drifted for a moment before another whop of thunder rolled across the night. She sat up, gasping for air, feeling her face flush with embarrassment even though she knew she was alone. When she’d caught her breath, she lay down again, cursing her brain for refusing to allow her to slip into dreaming.

  But then something beside the bed shifted slightly. For a moment, Margo wondered if she was dreaming, for surely the silhouette that was standing over her must have been a manifestation of her overactive mind.

  A hand came down over her fa
ce. It covered her nose and her mouth with a sweat-slick grip and squeezed. Margo tried to scream, but the perpetrator’s palm was so broad, the pressure on her skin so tight, that barely any sound escaped. Eyes wide with panic, Margo looked up at the figure and struggled to make out her assailant’s identity, but the shadows were like layers of veils, blindfolding her.

  She pushed at the figure’s chest, but the attacker managed to slap her hands away before pressing against her face even harder. Instinctively, she swung out her arm and brushed against the ceramic lamp that sat on the bedside table. She clasped it and then whipped it upward, feeling it collide with something solid. The attacker’s head.

  The lamp shattered. The person groaned and fell away. Margo rolled out of bed opposite the figure, opened her mouth, and inhaled deeply. This time her scream seemed to shake the very molecules of the darkness, giving the noise of the storm some true competition.

  Her bedroom door opened and closed quickly, and she understood that the intruder had slipped away. Half relieved and half disappointed that she hadn’t managed to beat whoever it was into a bloody pulp, Margo stumbled across the room and flicked on the overhead light. She swung open the door and peered into the hallway to see if she might catch a glimpse of movement, a clue to where the trespasser had run.

  Already, a few sleepy faces stared back at her. The boy, Eli, was standing in the hall several rooms down, his expression both weary and aghast. Beyond him, the boy’s parents, Otis and Cynthia, had just cracked open their own door. No one said a word. They looked unsure of what was going on.

  So Margo attempted to clarify. “I need help. Please. Someone just tried to kill me!”

  JOSIE CLIMBED OVER the lip of the ladder, shining her flashlight before her. A long passage stretched ahead, a brick wall to her right and the house’s roof sloping down on her left. Kneeling in this new dusty space, she felt her chest tighten. The rain pounding against the house created a din that seemed to drown out her thoughts.