The House on Stone's Throw Island

by Dan Poblocki

A GLIMMER IN the distance beyond the woods caught Josie’s eye. She stood and raised the sash. Leaning out into the spitting rain, she realized that there was a group of people out by the ruined fort.

  Several beams of light revealed details that she immediately recognized: her mother’s silver hair, Bruno’s tall silhouette. All the other members of the party were out there too. But why? Why had they left her here alone in the house?

  Think!

  Impossibly, a voice rose over the sound of the wind and surf crashing against the rocky shore.

  Briefly, Josie thought she heard someone call her name. Surprised, she knocked her head against the base of the window. The world seemed to spin, and the night filled with little glints of light. Another vision? Another illusion? The voice continued to shout, but then stopped abruptly.

  Was that Eli? Josie rubbed at her temples, struggling to distinguish the twinkling silver specks that were swirling around her head from the lights in the distance. It was clear that he’d called her name, but what had the last few words been? They’d sounded like, “Hi! Hi!” but Josie knew that couldn’t be right.

  She rushed to the other side of the bed where her duffel bag lay on the floor. She tossed her phone and Dory’s journal onto the mattress and then yanked off her soaked pajamas and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She slipped her boots on and then grabbed her jacket up off the floor. “I’m coming,” she said quietly, foolishly, as if someone out there, or in here, could hear her. She pulled her hair away from her face and then reached for the book, which she dropped into her jacket pocket, and then grabbed the phone.

  When she pressed the power button, nothing happened. The battery had died. She glanced at the open window, imagining the party in the distance. “Okay then.” The curtains whipped at her. “Let’s do this in the dark.”

  THE WOMEN WERE screaming, the men were shouting, their voices intermingling with the cacophony of waves and wind and the crackling sky, turning their words into a new language, which sounded like an ancient language — the very first language, thought Eli. The language of fear.

  He stood with the group at the top of the familiar stairway, by the curved wall of the fort, staring into the darkness below. The bottom few stairs had been enveloped by black water that was pulsing up and down, forward and backward into the tunnel that led to the old fort’s prison. Eli pictured the rest of the cave already flooded, seawater pushed upward through the thin chasm in the far wall where he’d dropped the swastika button early in the day.

  The men were shoving, and the women were pushing back. Teary and in shock, Aimee clutched at her father’s shirt, begging him to come to his senses, but he jostled her coldly away. Beatrice pleaded with Charlie to stop this nonsense, but Charlie wouldn’t look at her. Margo and Vivian had already taken several steps down, as if to simply get away from the grasping, uncaring hands of their captors.

  “Go now!” shouted Bruno.

  “It’s your choice, meine Freunde,” Gregory added. “Move of your own free will, or we shall move you ourselves. And I promise you, the second option will not feel very nice.”

  “Come on,” Eli said, holding his mother’s hand and taking the slippery stairs slowly, purposefully. “Let’s do what they want.”

  “But why are they doing this?” Cynthia asked, her fingers crushing his own. “What’s down there?”

  “It’s just a little room. Josie and I were here earlier today.” Cynthia didn’t seem to hear him. Her breath buckled and hitched. Gregory, or Coombs, or whoever he was, had already explained why they were doing this. Revenge. For what was still unclear. But Eli wouldn’t worry his mother by repeating this to her. As he stepped into the sloshing water at the bottom of the stairs, he promised himself that he’d do anything to protect her. “Don’t worry,” he said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “This must be a big misunderstanding.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, honey,” Cynthia said, in a robotic and motherly tone — the one she used whenever Otis raised his voice at them during dinners at home. Eli guessed that she didn’t believe her words any more than he did his own. “They’re probably stressed out about the wedding. And the storm.”

  Nonsense. They both knew it. In fact, this last part felt so far from the truth, Eli couldn’t think of a response that wasn’t totally ridiculous. He went for it anyway. “I know!” he whispered, giddily. “Isn’t it just crazy?” Somehow this made him feel better, if only for a moment.

  ONCE THE MEN had corralled the captives through the cavern’s entry and swung the gate shut, Charlie Gagnon removed a rusted pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket. He closed one loop on a single bar of the door and then clicked the other shut upon the loose doorframe.

  “Sind das die selben Handschellen?” Otis asked, pinching the handcuff links.

  “Ja. Ich glaube schon,” Charlie answered, nodding.

  Otis raised his voice, rattling the cuffs against the gate. “Die haben doch nicht funktioniert.”

  Gregory responded calmly. “Einer von euch wird Wache stehen. Kein Problem.”

  The group inside huddled tightly together, not comprehending the men’s argument but understanding that they had more pressing matters. Standing in an unsteady pool by the entry, they were unsure where their rocky landing might drop off into an abyss.

  Charlie and Bruno perched on the steps behind Otis and Gregory, who were calf-deep in the rising water. The men aimed their flashlights into the faces of their prisoners and chuckled, as if taking delight in blinding them.

  Gregory came up close to the gate. His light glared into Margo’s face, but she steadied her lip and raised her chin. “So brave,” he said. “How admirable.” He glanced at the others. “Strong family stock. I suppose you deserve to hear the rest of the story now, otherwise, you’ll never know why we’re doing this. And what fun would that be?”

  “You’re sick!” Aimee screamed. “You’re all sick!”

  “You cannot be sick when you are dead,” said Gregory.

  “Dead?” Margo’s voice wobbled.

  For a moment, the men stared silently at the prisoners. Eventually, Gregory added, “Drowned with my men in this very place, over seventy years ago.”

  “Gregory, you’re not thinking straight.”

  “Coombs, please!” he said. “My name is Emil Coombs. And yes, I am thinking straight. Our souls have been trapped here. Trapped until you arrived on this island, Madame Lintel. Your presence woke us up, and we slipped inside the skins of these men. I must admit, it feels quite strange to have a body after so many decades left helpless, with only salt air for breath. But it’s nice. It’s warm in here.” He smiled and rubbed at his arms.

  “Bruno!” Aimee called out. “Make him stop talking!”

  Bruno stared at her and then chortled. The sound of his laughter echoed into the cavern and continued to mock them as they all shrunk back in disbelief.

  Eli found his mother’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Please!” Margo wailed, her face turning tomato red in the glare from the flashlights. “We won’t listen to this.”

  “You have no choice but to listen,” Gregory went on. “During my life, I was an agent for the Reich. The great army had long planned an invasion of this continent. Our orders were to start small, setting up a communications base on this remote island. From the U-boat that we’d anchored a kilometer offshore, the crew could row over by raft. Once settled here, more Unterseeboote would bring more soldiers. We would spread north, west, south. We would bring more weapons. Gain control over more land, over more people. Spread the message of the Führer’s Final Solution.

  “At that time, this island had belonged to a family called Sauvage,” Gregory added, smirking at Margo. Her mouth dropped open, and she released a squeak. “Sound familiar?” He didn’t wait for a response. “While working undercover for the Nazis, I’d befriended the young man who happened to be the heir to the family fortune. Francois — Frankie — Sauvage. He told me about the island, and I ha
tched the plan. Communicated it to the Reich. They were very enthusiastic. Frankie took some convincing, but eventually he agreed to bring our gal pals out here, just the four of us. But when we got here, the campaign went awry. Frankie’s little monster of a sister had stowed away, tricked my men, locked us in this cage. A storm rose up and flooded the cavern. Despite our cries for mercy, the savage siblings allowed the seawater to fill our lungs.”

  Hilfe! Eli remembered. Help! The events of the day were beginning to make a kind of twisted sense. “You got what you deserved,” Eli whispered through clenched teeth. Aimee shushed him.

  “The girl’s name was Dory.” Gregory stared into Margo’s eyes for several seconds. “Madame Lintel, would you like to explain what this name means to you?”

  Margo was quiet for a moment, before glancing at the water that was now lapping at her legs. “Dory Sauvage. Dorothea Marie Sauvage. She grew up and married, becoming Thea Petit. My mother.”

  SEVERAL STRANGE SECONDS passed while the men simply stared at the group trapped behind the black bars. The men smiled with satisfaction, as if soaking up all of their captives’ panic, their terror, their helplessness. Then, like a flock of birds, the men turned at once and ascended the stairs to the main level of the fort. Without the flashlights, the cavern faded to black.

  The women pleaded with them, called out their names, trying to penetrate the true selves of the men who must have been horrified to watch this atrocity from the prisons of their own minds.

  Blind, Eli started to process what he’d just learned. Dorothea Marie Sauvage. She grew up and married, becoming Thea Petit, my mother. Petit must have been Margo’s maiden name. Her mother had come to this island during that long-ago war. An image of the girl he and Josie had seen earlier that day snapped into his head. Could it be …?

  The women grappled the gate and rattled its hinges, begging for release. It was too complicated, too weird for them to consider the conversation they’d just heard. Though no one could see it, the water continued to rise, now tickling their shins.

  “You’re wasting your energy!” Eli cried out.

  “And what do you suggest we do instead?” Aimee’s voice came from the darkness.

  “Listen,” he said, as calmly as he could.

  “I’m listening,” Aimee answered, “but you’re not talking.”

  “I’m not talking, but they are.”

  Above, the men were speaking. Eli thought he could make out the exchange as it bounced down the tunnel toward him.

  Otis: “Wir müssen in Kontakt treten.”

  Gregory: “Sie sind sich bewusst. Bald werden sie auferstehen.”

  They went on and on, their words incomprehensible. Finally, the talk was lost to the wind.

  “I don’t understand,” Aimee said wearily. “Bruno hit me. He hit me.”

  “It wasn’t Bruno, honey,” Margo answered. “Those people up there are not the men you know.”

  “So you believe them?” Vivian asked. “You believe that they’ve all been taken over?”

  “What’s our other option?” Beatrice asked. “To not believe them? It would seem that would leave us in the same predicament, would it not?”

  “No,” said Vivian. “It would not. I’d rather keep my sanity, thank you very much.”

  “You keep your sanity then,” Aimee argued. “I’d rather get out of here.”

  “Being rude to your future mother-in-law isn’t going to help,” Cynthia chimed in. That kept Aimee quiet for a moment.

  “I know something that might help,” Eli offered.

  “A way out?” Vivian asked.

  “A story.” Eli waited for someone to tell him to shut his mouth — there is no time for this! — but no one did. “It started almost as soon as we stepped foot on this island.”

  “What started?” Aimee asked.

  The water lapped at the bottom of their kneecaps.

  Eli sighed. “I was seeing things. Hearing things. I shared it all with Josie. We thought it might be ghosts. It sounds stupid now, saying it out loud —”

  “Eli,” said Margo, finding his shoulder with her hand and squeezing, “just tell us what happened.”

  IF JOSIE HADN’T made the trek out to the fort earlier that day, she might have ended up falling onto the jagged rocks on either edge of the spit. With no flashlight, the forest was a labyrinth of dips and turns and dead ends. But trusting her instincts and her memory, Josie assuredly placed one foot in front of the next and eventually found her way.

  She ran. She ran like she did when she raced Lisa back home, only now she wasn’t pulling punches. This time, she was determined to win.

  By the time she reached the other side of the forest, she realized that her phone running out of battery might have been for the best. Certainly, she would have been tempted to shine the light the entire way. Now, she was cloaked in darkness, which gave her confidence to continue. Thankfully, no shadows appeared at the edges of her vision, no men holding rifles, and the lightning flashes were coming fewer and farther between.

  Josie dashed the last part of the way, the cool air rushing into her lungs, clearing away everything inside that felt toxic. She was almost at the fort’s gaping entrance, when she saw lights and heard voices. She was about to call out to them, to ask if they needed help, when she realized that the voices were not speaking English.

  “Meine Geschichte war erfolgreich. Sie folgten uns wie Schafe.” Was that Bruno? Josie released a long, frustrated breath. German. It was just as Eli had insisted that afternoon. “Jetzt müssen wir nach dem Mädchen suchen.”

  What did Bruno mean? They followed us, he’d said — sort of — and then finished with something about looking out for a girl?

  Josie flinched and then swiveled her body against the outer wall, hiding herself from the view of the men. She understood. She was the girl. Eli’s comment about Bruno and Charlie being possessed flashed through her memory, but she shoved it away. She needed to concentrate.

  “Sie haben recht.” This sounded like Gregory Elliott, Margo’s assistant. “Wir werden nicht zulassen, dass uns noch eine Göre davon abhält, unsere Pflicht zu tun.”

  You are correct, Gregory had said. Josie tried to piece the rest of his words together. Something about stopping … something?

  Ugh, this was hopeless!

  What the heck were they doing? Couldn’t she just ask them? If they wanted to find her, maybe she should just show herself.

  Josie was seriously considering stepping into the doorway when she heard a woman’s scream come from inside the fort. With chills enveloping her, she hugged her rib cage tightly, feeling the edge of Dory’s journal from its spot in her jacket pocket. “Quiet!” Bruno called back. “Do not make me say it again!” Josie’s chills turned to needle pricks. “Agent Coombs,” he went on, “we are wasting time. Sie kann sich überall versteckt haben.”

  Josie’s eyes popped open wide. Agent Coombs?

  “Fine,” said Gregory. “You stay here. Guard these Dummköpfe, at least until they stop shrieking. The rest of us will go back and search the house.”

  Footsteps shuffled across the wet, rocky ground. Flashlights lit the edges of the fort’s crumbling doorway. Josie held her breath, pressing herself even harder against the stone wall, wishing she had the ability to melt into its surface the way the vision of Dory had done in her bedroom closet. She smelled the pungent odor of sweat and salt as the men passed several feet from where she stood. They hastened from the fort’s entry, rushing toward the woods at the bottom of the slope. Their silvery torches gleamed, illuminating the wind-whipped and broken tops of the pines.

  BY THE TIME Eli finished his story, the water had reached his waist and was rising steadily. Its pulsing energy kept trying to knock him off his feet. He clung to the gate for stability and waited for a response from the rest of the group. For several long seconds, the only sound that filled the dark space was the endless echo of the surf.

  Finally, someone — it sounded like Beatrice — spoke
up. “How strong are those bars? If we all pull or push at once, maybe —”

  “Say we get the door open,” Vivian interrupted. “What happens when we try to go up those stairs?”

  “One of them must be guarding the exit,” said Aimee.

  “We can’t just stand here!” Cynthia cried out. Someone pushed at Eli, grabbing for the rusted handcuffs. Whoever it was gave the door a good shove and the metal clanged, reverberating in all directions like thunder.

  “Keep it down!” said someone else. “They’ll hear you!”

  “Good!” said Beatrice. “Then maybe we can still get them to come to their senses!”

  Eli clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Had they not heard his tale, or were they ignoring him on purpose? If Eli was correct, none of the men were themselves any longer.

  The force of the churning water knocked Eli into several shivering bodies nearby.

  “Oof!” This was Margo. She’d been the quietest since the men had left them alone. Eli couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. According to Gregory, this was happening because of something that her mother had done over seventy years ago. Eli had so many questions he wished to ask her, but he knew if they didn’t escape soon, none of the answers would matter.

  “I can’t get enough force,” said Beatrice, who was standing by the gate. “The water’s like sludge. Too much resistance.”

  “What about the crevice Eli mentioned?” said Aimee.

  So Aimee’d been listening after all.

  “The one where he dropped the button? What about it, dear?” Cynthia asked.

  Wow, his mother had heard him too!

  “If that’s where the water is getting in,” Aimee went on, “maybe it’s feasible for one of us to use the crevice to somehow get out.”

  “That sounds extremely dangerous,” her mother replied.

  “What other options do we have?”

  “The crevice is really slim,” Eli added. “And who knows where it leads?”