The Mystery of Croaker's Island

by Linda DeMeulemeester

  As soon as they were a third of the way to the island, Sam crept out from the wharf. Deadly currents and breakwater churned around the half-submerged bridge. Sam’s heart was pounding just watching them make their way across. When Angel and the boy reached the shore, Sam swallowed twice, and then set out to follow them and find out what they did once they got to the island.

  Sam ignored his cartwheeling stomach. He refused to think about what might be waiting on the other side and at Sinistrus Mansion. Sometimes a person could have too much imagination. He had reached the second stepping stone when the bridge submerged completely, the metal foothold sliding out from under him and almost sending him tumbling into the waves.

  What if that had happened when he’d been halfway to the island? He’d have surely drowned. As it was, the cold water soaked his shoes and legs up to his knees. Sam breathed deeply until his blood stopped pounding in his ears. He went back underneath the wharf and waited . . .

  × × ×

  SAM BEGAN FEELING like tiny rocks were tied to his eyelashes, weighing them shut. Counting starfish to pass the time had been as soporific as counting sheep. He forced his eyes open again, yawning heavily. He’d sat under the wharf, his windbreaker keeping his butt mostly dry, as he drew his damp knees and legs to his chest. Sam was, for once, grateful for the green-and-yellow striped wool sweater he wore under his jacket. Babcia certainly could knit a warm sweater.

  He should have worn his watch, but maybe that would have slowed time down even more as he’d probably have checked it every two minutes. He bit his lip to stay awake, tasting the salt from the soft sea spray that coated his face.

  A gurgling erupted across the water, and Sam shot up fully alert, almost bumping his head against the wharf. The night had grown deadly dark. Black clouds hung close to the ground, creating an eerie fog. In the distance, Sam could hear the foghorn from the lighthouse up the coast echoing across the bay. Water splashed and made the familiar churning sound.

  The strange stepping stones emerged from the water, the eerie blue-green glow lighting the way. As near as he could tell, the lineup was in reverse order, with Angel and the tall boy crossing first and second. Next were several other people Sam thought he recognized: Timothy Wheeler, Dane Parsons—who was in Dory’s group of friends—and Nancy Kim. Some of them were high schoolers, and some were from middle school. What could they all have in common besides belonging to a cat-stealing ring?

  Then it hit Sam. Every person he recognized, and he was willing to guess the others too, had been the names on the files he’d found stacked on the nurse’s desk at school! These people had not been up to date with their immunization shots—they’d all had mumps or chicken pox or measles or whooping cough.

  Khallie Saran crossed the bridge last. Sam waited until she was halfway up the bluff before he grabbed his bike and shot out from under the wharf, scurrying across the sand and the rocks. He scrabbled up the bluff, dragging his bike behind him.

  × 20 ×

  A HOUSE OF CARDS

  DIRT AND ROCKS gave way on the bluff, and Sam lost his footing and fell back into a tangle of brambles. His bike slid halfway down the bluff, catching on a big boulder, where it fell sideways, its wheels spinning. Sam carefully pulled himself from the brambles, but one vine ripped a thin line in his jeans. Babcia would not be impressed; she said she’d never seen anyone so hard on clothes as Sam.

  Sam scrabbled down to his bike, which, thankfully, didn’t show any bend in the wheel spokes. He started over, dragging his bike to the top of the bluff. The sky had lightened as the clouds thinned and a little moonlight poked through. It occurred to Sam that most of the clouds had gathered off the shore and around the island, as if they were purposely shrouding the creepy place.

  Sam peered down the coastal road and noted the weird zombie troop of kids had lost its order. The line was straggled now. Most of the teens had scattered, many leaving the road and heading into town. Although as far as Sam could tell, even if they were headed in the same direction, none of them grouped together or talked to each other. They moved fast and purposely, and some even jogged. It was almost as if they didn’t even know someone else was right beside them. He shook his head. Odd.

  There was only one shadow sticking to the coastal road—Khallie. Khallie half-ran and half-jogged along the road. Sam waited until she was almost out of sight before he leaped on his bike and started riding. His wet jeans chafed his legs as he pedalled.

  To Sam’s surprise, he saw his friend turn into the run-down trailer park at the side of the coastal road. He pedalled faster before he lost her in the maze of dilapidated trailers. He followed stealthily as Khallie turned left and then right, and then he lost her. Sam got off his bike, crunched over the gravel, and kept moving. When he neared a broken-down trailer that listed to the side, he tripped over a rock garden someone had laid out by the trailer pad and badly stubbed his foot. He accidentally dropped his bike, which smashed against his shin. Sam tripped over the wheel to pick it back up and banged his knee. A few bad words slipped out—not the worst ones, but bad enough. He rubbed his leg.

  “What are you doing here?” someone hissed.

  Sam didn’t jump as high as the maple bush—not quite . . . He spun around. Levelling his voice he said, “Khallie, what are you doing here?”

  Fury sparked from Khallie’s eyes—tired, bloodshot eyes. “Why are you spying on me—how. . . how long have you been following me?” She clenched and unclenched her fists. Sam thought she might hit him. He took a step back.

  “I followed you back from Croaker’s Island. You know—the place you said you’ve never set foot on, the place where I found your bracelet?”

  “You followed me from there?” Khallie looked down at her bracelet and pulled at the silver charms. When she looked back up, a mix of emotions clouded her face. Astonishment for one, confusion, and anger—yeah, Sam thought that was the main one.

  “I followed you after I let go of the cats you and your friends stole,” Sam said evenly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face—a face that didn’t look one bit evil, not even when she was furious.

  Khallie kept shaking her head. “You’re crazy, Sam. And you’re mean.”

  Mean? The low-down, cat-thieving imposter was calling him mean? Sam was confused.

  A battered ancient Volkswagen Beetle pulled up on the gravel. Khallie’s eyes widened. “Hide,” she told Sam. Then she turned and crossed the gravel parking lot. Sam ducked back behind the maple bushes.

  “What are you doing out? Are you crazy? Do you know what time it is?” The young woman shooting rapid-fire questions swung her legs out of the car and stood up. Despite all the weirdness of the night, Sam drew in a sharp breath. She wasn’t much older than Dory, but if he thought Khallie looked like a princess, she looked like a queen. Her long black hair swung far past her shoulders. Bracelets tinkled like bell chimes as they slid up and down her wrists. She wore huge hoop earrings that caught in the trailer porch light.

  Sam could imagine her dancing in red swirling skirts around a campfire instead of wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt and driving a Beetle.

  The young woman opened the trunk of her car. “Seriously, Khal, do you want to get sent back to foster care or end up in juvie again?”

  Foster care? Sam frowned. What about Khallie’s uber-strict parents?

  Khallie swiped her arm over her face and took a deep breath. “Azina, I was just stargazing.”

  “It’s cloudy,” stated Azina. “Try again. You know what our social worker said—you have a nine o’clock curfew. Mrs. Tutti next door told me she saw you come back late Tuesday evening too.”

  “That was my astronomy class. I almost made curfew, Sis.”

  Sister? Sam thought Khallie was an only child.

  “Khal, I don’t have time for your lame excuses,” Azina said wearily. She yanked a cardboard box out of her trunk. “You know if I have to stay here and watch over you, I can’t work nights. Do you think I like working for snotty ric
h people, cleaning their businesses instead of going to college full-time?”

  “No,” Khallie was barely audible. She took the box from her sister without looking her in the eye.

  “But this job keeps us going, Khal.” Her sister softened her own voice. “Look at the stuff Mrs. Dubois dumped in the charity box—beautiful clothes just your size, and she also put in a necklace that matches that bracelet I brought home for you.” Azina dangled a crystal red heart on a long silver chain. “Can you imagine some rich kid not even wanting this?”

  “You can keep it, Azina,” Khallie said softly. “You should have something nice too.”

  Sam knew he shouldn’t be listening in on their personal conversation, but he couldn’t leave without being discovered by Khallie’s sister. He had a pretty good idea that would only make things worse.

  Azina slipped the necklace over her head. “Thanks, but let’s not get sidetracked.” Her expression hardened. “So tell me. What are you doing outside, fully dressed in the middle of the night?”

  Khallie drew in a ragged breath. “I . . . don’t know what happened. I fell asleep on our couch and . . . woke up here when I heard a crash and a loud noise.” She looked straight at the maple bush Sam was hiding behind and then quickly looked away. “I can’t remember anything before that, not even leaving the trailer.”

  Azina placed both hands on Khallie’s shoulders. “You’ve been sleepwalking? Again? I thought me tying the door shut would help.”

  Khallie lifted her hand and scratched the back of her neck. “Apparently not,” she said so softly that Sam had to lean forward just to hear. Then they both went inside the trailer.

  Sam thought Khallie sounded completely sincere when she’d told her sister that she’d been sleepwalking. And she’d seemed genuinely astonished when he had accused her of being on Croaker’s Island.

  Sam thought there might be some truth in what she was saying about sleepwalking. But how could he trust her when everything she told people about her life was an outright lie—not an embellishment, not a fib, but a truckload of whoppers. Sam completely understood what his father meant about people building a house of cards. Khallie had built an imaginary life in a house of cards, which was crashing down in front of him.

  Sam didn’t have a clue how to sort through her tales and find the truth, even though it was key to figuring out what was going on that island.

  He could think of one expert on truth twisting, though—Dory.

  × 21 ×

  BAD CHARACTER

  MAYBE IT WAS the look on his face, but Dory didn’t balk when Sam asked her for a ride to school because he needed to talk to her. Sam jumped into the red Fiat as Dory was taking it out of neutral and rolling out of the driveway.

  “What’s up, brother?” asked Dory. “I don’t think it’s because of last night. I explained everything to your grandmother, ah, our babcia, that coming home late wasn’t my fault. Besides, she’s got to get used to the fact this isn’t the 1980s, or her old country, and I should have the same freedom as other seventeen-year-olds. That’s democracy, right?” Dory frowned. “Babcia . . . wouldn’t have called him, would she?”

  “Called who?” Sam put his hand on the steering wheel, steadying the convertible. Dory was weaving her car down the bluff a little randomly like she was upset, and the road was narrow enough when she drove straight.

  Dory brushed Sam’s hand out of the way like he was an annoying moth. “It’s nothing to do with me that Dad’s coming. . . ”

  Sam’s heart leaped into his throat—and not because of Dory’s hairpin turn onto the highway. “Dad’s coming?” Of course, Dory giving Sam a ride to school was more to do with her own diabolical motives than him asking her for a ride.

  Sam’s stomach squeezed a little. Their father, Captain Jake Novak, did important work. He couldn’t just pick up and leave—not without a critical reason.

  “I thought you knew, mate.” Dory shook her head.

  Sam had slept late after being up most of the night. Babcia and Molly had already left when he’d stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast. “Dad’s coming?” He hated how his voice squeaked again.

  “Something’s up, and it’s big, brother.” Dory chewed her lower lip and quickly added without a hint of an Australian accent, “And it’s not about anything I’ve done . . . I don’t think . . . ”

  Maybe Sam was wrong about Dory not wanting to stay with them in Croaker’s Cove. She hadn’t complained about living here for a while. Not to mention, he was pretty sure her mother hadn’t called once.

  Sam got a sinking feeling. What if Babcia had come into his room and discovered he’d been out most of the night? Or what if their grandmother had had enough of Molly’s frenzies and insisted on their father taking charge? It could have been any of their faults, and in the end, it didn’t really matter why their father was coming. Once he arrived, he’d get them and everything else all back into order, which might include boarding school. “When?”

  “Soon.” Dory swallowed. She whizzed past the turn that led back to the coastal road and the trailer park, reminding Sam about his problem with Khallie.

  “I’ll . . . do what I can to find out what’s going on,” Sam said.

  “Knew I could count on you, mate, to smooth things over,” Dory said more cheerily. “We’ve got to have each other’s backs.”

  Where she would stab me if she had to, Sam thought dismally.

  “So what did you want to talk to me about?” Dory asked.

  Sam steeled himself. Letting Dory in on his problem was a risk. What to say; what to leave out? There was something strange going on in this town, and he needed to get to the bottom of it, even if his father was coming. Maybe especially, because for whatever reason his dad needed to see them, living in a place where teenagers roamed the night in strange zombie brigades, kidnapping cats and crossing strange mechanical bridges to a haunted island, likely wouldn’t be reassuring to most parents.

  Sam resolved not to mention that part. Instead he told Dory he’d discovered his friend Khallie had lied about pretending to be a rich girl and about where she lived. “She’s always talking about having super-strict parents, but she’s been a foster kid and lives in a trailer park with her sister who works as some sort of maid or cleaner. She’s created this whole make-believe life she sells to us all.”

  Dory stared out the windshield and steered the car as if she was making her way through an obstacle course instead of cruising down a quiet street. He wasn’t even sure she was listening. Maybe she didn’t get how this was gnawing at his gut.

  Sam drove his point home. “I . . . don’t think I can trust her, and so I don’t know if we should even be friends.”

  “Get over it,” was Dory’s sage advice.

  But Sam really needed to know more about Khallie’s trustworthiness. He needed to know if she was lying about not remembering being on Croaker’s Island. “I can’t.”

  “Look, some lies aren’t bad; they can even be sort of good,” Dory said with more than a hint of impatience.

  “What do you mean?” They’d turned down the road that led to the middle school. Low-hanging tree branches tapped against the car roof, scattering coloured leaves on the windshield. Dory turned her wipers on and crunched them into leaf confetti.

  She slowed the car and hit the brakes, pulling up across the street from the school parking lot. “When Molly came out this morning in an ugly orange dress, a red sweater, and even uglier purple tights, she asked how she looked and I said very nice. I could tell she really wanted to wear that vile outfit.”

  Sam couldn’t help think how Dory never spared him her critical eye or sharp tongue. The bell rang and students began streaming into the building. Dory didn’t seem too worried about either of them making it to school on time. Weren’t they in enough trouble with Babcia? He grabbed his pack, ready to race up the steps and into class.

  Dory grabbed Sam’s shoulder when he opened the car door. “So you see, Sam, some lies are to pr
otect people.”

  Sam shook his head. His dad always said lying was a sign of bad character. But what about Khallie’s acts of kindness? Could a person be bad and good? It didn’t matter. He really needed someone he could trust. That wasn’t Khallie.

  “She isn’t trying to protect anybody’s feelings. She lies to look like someone she isn’t.” It almost hurt Sam physically to say it.

  Dory gave his shoulder the slightest shake. “Don’t you get it, Sam? Khallie is protecting herself.”

  × 22 ×

  ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE

  ON TUESDAY EVENING, as soon as Dory parked in the university parking lot, she raced for the observatory, hoping to catch a glimpse of Blake’s family. Sam followed, but stopped when Khallie stepped from the shadows between two parked cars.

  “Sam, we have to talk.” Khallie had a desperate look in her eyes. “You can’t keep avoiding me.”

  He’d been doing a pretty good job so far. As soon as Khallie turned down a hall at school, he’d turn down another hall. In class, if she tried catching his eye, he’d quickly turn to one of Blake’s friends and start a conversation. That was easy—all he had to do was bring up Blake or rowing. If she waited outside the class, Sam took his sweet time asking the teacher about the lesson. Teachers lived for that.

  But she’d shown up early for astronomy class and now he was cornered. What do you say to a person who’s been spewing a pack of lies, even if it sounds like she’s had a hard-luck life?

  Sam crooked a weak smile and raised his eyebrows. “So you’ve been to juvie?”

  Khallie let out a nervous laugh. “Not exactly.” She sucked air between her teeth. “It was more like a holding facility. Apparently habitually running away from foster homes is against the law.” Then she muttered, “I suppose you hate me now.”

  “Not even close.” The words shot out of Sam’s mouth before they even hit his brain.

  “I haven’t run away in over a year, not since Azina turned nineteen and could be my guardian,” Khallie said in a rush, “and I won’t either. I’m sticking with my sister. It’s all I ever wanted.”