by Ron Ripley
She relaxed into Shane’s arms, smelled the sharp tang of blood on him. Courtney closed her eyes, felt sorrow and rage well up within her, and let out a long, angry sob.
Shane continued to hold her, and he let her cry. He didn’t offer up soothing words, and he didn’t pull away. He quietly stroked the back of her head, held her, and began to sing softly in a language she didn’t know.
The steady thump of his heart accompanied the song, and Courtney wept for her murdered friend.
Chapter 18: Disbelief
Half an hour had passed since Eileen’s death, and Scott’s world continued to crumble
He stood in silence and looked out of the window at his father’s yacht. He watched as it drifted away, the anchor line snapped and the sails furled. It rode the current, out towards deeper waters.
Maybe it’ll be found, Scott thought numbly.
Everything was happening all at once. The yacht. Dane’s murder. Eileen’s murder.
And now this? he thought, turning to look at Courtney.
“How can you do this?” he asked her in disbelief.
Her face was stern, eyes red from crying, skin around them puffy. She had streaks of Eileen’s blood on her, her arms folded across her chest.
“What do you mean?” she said coldly.
“How can you break up with me?” Scott asked, shaking his head. “I mean, how can you do it here? You couldn’t wait until we got back to the mainland?”
“What?” she asked in surprise.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “You don’t think this is hard on me, too? Couldn't you think of me? You know, maybe that I shouldn’t have to deal with the end of a relationship in the middle of all this crap?”
“What are you, fourteen?” Courtney snapped. “Jesus Christ, Scott, act your age.”
“Why are you breaking up with me?” Scott demanded. “I thought everything was fine.”
“Everything was fine,” Courtney said. “Because we were dating. We’re not engaged. We were dating. And now we’re not.”
“Is it because of Shane?” Scott asked in a low voice, not wanting the older man to hear him.
“Part of it, yes,” she said. “Mostly, though, it’s you acting like a teenager. And, you know, passing out instead of trying to help Eileen really doesn’t qualify you as ‘continued boyfriend’ material.”
His face burned with embarrassment. “It was a little too much to deal with.”
“I managed to make an effort,” Courtney said, biting off each word.
“This is garbage,” Scott said angrily. “Our relationship isn’t done until I say it’s done. You’ll see once we get back to the mainland. You’re just stressed out.”
He stopped as her expression changed.
Hatred filled her eyes.
“You listen to me, Scott,” she whispered. “I’ve had one bad relationship where the guy wasn’t going to let me go. He broke my wrist and my arm, then he cracked two of my ribs. He ate through a straw for months because I shattered his jaw with his laptop. He’ll never, ever have children because of what I did to him. And let me tell you, Scott, you come near me, and I will hurt you. Do you understand me?”
Scott licked his lips nervously as he stepped back, bumping into the wall. He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up,” she spat. “Just shut up.” She turned around and went into the kitchen.
Scott stood alone in the living room. From outside, he heard the wind pick up, and the waves become louder. Slowly he sank into a sitting position. He dipped his head, closed his eyes, and asked himself, How the hell did all of this happen?
Chapter 19: A Good Idea Gone Bad
George Fallon steered his boat with one hand and kept his beer steady with the other. Vic Nato and Eric Powell sat in their seats, drinking their own beers. The fine, cooling spray of the Atlantic misted over them as George’s new Boston Whaler, Terminal Fleet, cut through the water.
It was nearly six in the evening, and the sun had already begun its descent. But they were only five minutes from Squirrel Island.
“Pity about Mike,” Eric said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the thrum of the Whaler’s powerful engine.
Vic, who didn’t know Mike, stayed silent.
George, who had known Mike Puller since the first grade, spoke up. “Hated the guy.”
“He was alright,” Eric said defensively.
“Sure he was,” George said, “if you were a broad. Otherwise, nah, he’d just as soon steal from you as work with you on a project.”
“I heard,” Vic chimed in, “he had screwed Nate Verranault on a job up in Bangor.”
George nodded. “One of many. He found out what Nate bid on the carpentry, went in and told the owner he could do it in half the time, and for half the money.”
“Didn’t he go to prison for that one?” Vic asked.
“No,” Eric said grumpily, “he went to Valley Street jail in Manchester. He didn’t even do two years.”
“Only because it was under five grand that he got away with,” George said, chuckling. “Anyway, we’ll be there in a minute or two. Got your phones all charged?”
Both Vic and Eric raised their beers in assent.
“Think this’ll boost the website?” Eric asked.
George grinned. “Damned right, it will.”
The three of them, with help from Vic’s girlfriend, had started up a website. It specialized in photographs of death scenes. Accidents, murders, suicides. As long as death was involved, the pictures went up on the site. They had come onto the idea early one morning, talking about a construction accident Vic had seen.
All the wackos and weirdos who had come out of the woodwork, George thought. Everyone trying to get a look, trying to take pictures.
And the site is a damned goldmine, George grinned. With the money they made from subscriptions and advertisements, they were all enjoying life. George’s new, 2017-model Boston Whaler was a prime example of it.
“There’s the pier,” Eric said, bringing George out of his pleasant reminiscing.
The new structure extended out into the ocean. George, who had been operating boats since his father stood him up behind the controls of an old speedboat when he was four, guided the Whaler in easily. Vic put his beer down, got to his feet, and was over the side in a moment, securing the boat to the pier as George turned the engine off. Eric, slightly unsteady on his feet, managed to get onto the pier and George followed.
“This the place?” Vic asked.
“Got to be,” George said. “Only pier on the island.”
“What the hell?” Eric said softly.
George turned towards Eric and saw the man was staring at the island. When he followed Eric’s line of sight, he gasped in surprise.
At the end of the pier, sitting on a rock, was a boy of perhaps ten or twelve. He wore a pair of dark blue pants, battered shoes, and a collarless, button-down shirt. His skin was tanned, his hair bleached blonde by the sun. Sharp, bright blue eyes stared at George. The boy’s face was thin and drawn. Between his narrow lips and clenched in his teeth was the stem of an unlit pipe.
The boy reached up, took hold of the briarwood bowl and took it out. He pointed at the three men, one at a time, with the pipe’s stem.
I can see through him, George realized in surprise.
“Jesus Christ, George,” Vic said softly. “Is the kid a ghost?”
“I think so,” George whispered.
“This is awesome!” Eric said, barely able to keep his excitement contained.
George took his phone out, turned on the camera, brought it up, and snapped several pictures.
“Someone recording this?” Eric asked, fumbling with his own phone.
“I got it,” Vic replied, holding his cellphone up.
The boy gave them a confused look, put the pipe back in his mouth, and said around it, “You’re all going to die.”
Eric chuckled, and Vic let out a laugh.
George felt his stomach ti
ghten. He lowered his phone and asked, “What?”
“Die,” the boy repeated. “Do you understand? We’re going to kill you. All of you.”
“Hey,” George said to Eric and Vic, “maybe we should leave?”
“Are you kidding?” Eric asked.
“Come on, George,” Vic said, grinning and glancing over at him. “Can you imagine the hits on the site when these go up? The video will probably go viral.”
George looked back to the boy, who had gotten to his feet.
“No,” George whispered, “this isn’t going to go viral. This isn’t going to go anywhere. He’s going to kill us.”
“Ghosts can’t kill people,” Eric said, grinning.
For the first time, George could hear the slur in Eric’s words. The man had drunk more than George had known. A glance at Vic showed he was too giddy with the idea of being an internet sensation to recognize death was at the end of the pier. Death in the form of a little boy with an unlit pipe in his mouth.
The boy smiled. A quiet, disturbing smile which reminded George of his worst nightmares. The smile was a promise of pain, of misery, of pure terror right before the moment of death.
“We need to leave,” George whispered. He left his friends on the pier and got back into the Whaler.
“Get in!” George shouted at Vic and Eric as he tried to start the boat’s engine.
Vic and Eric looked at him, and the engine sputtered.
“Come on!” George said frantically, trying to start the boat again.
“George,” Vic called, “relax, man, ghosts can’t do anything.”
George looked up at him and was about to argue the point when he saw the boy. The ghost was walking down the pier, humming softly to himself.
George recognized the tune. It was an old sea shanty, one his grandfather had used to sing. The boy was at the refrain.
I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid, George thought, hearing his long dead grandfather’s voice.
“This is great,” Eric said. “Absolutely fantastic!”
George tried again to start the engine, and again it refused to do more than sputter.
Vic continued to record, turning to follow the boy as he came to a stop in front of Eric. The boy looked up at Eric, who, in turn, bowed his head slightly to look into the boy’s upturned face.
“You, on the boat there,” the boy said, not turning away from Eric.
“Yes?” George asked, unsure of what else to do.
“You were smart,” the boy said pleasantly. “You’re the one who wanted to go. For that, you shall.”
George hesitated, then he tried the engine again, and it started.
“Get in!” he shouted. He climbed up, untied the boat before he jumped back down.
“No,” the boy said, his voice carrying with it a note of deadly seriousness. “They don’t get to leave. Just you.”
George went to protest, but he stopped.
The boy, with his right hand straight as a knife’s blade, plunged it straight into Vic’s stomach.
Vic stiffened, dropped the phone, and gasped in shock and pain. He convulsed slightly, tried to breathe but couldn’t. The ghost grinned and turned his arm gently to the right.
Vic’s scream echoed off of the stones, and the door to the keeper’s house was flung open.
Enough! George screamed to himself. He turned the wheel hard to starboard, slammed the throttle down, and the Whaler fairly leaped away from the pier and back to the open sea.
More of them in the house, he thought frantically, aiming for the mainland. Oh, Jesus, there’s more than one.
Fear drove him away, and he abandoned his friends to their fates.
Chapter 20: Things Get Worse
Shane had heard far too many screams. The newest one was completely unexpected.
He had finished moving the unfortunate Eileen into the shed to lay alongside Dane, who had already begun to decompose in the June heat.
He had rinsed the taste of death out of his mouth, spat it out on the ground, and thought he had heard the sound of an engine.
Shane straightened up and thought, Did they send someone a day early?
He grinned, thrilled with the idea, and he hurried to the front of the keeper’s house. He quickly ran around the corner as Courtney was coming out the front door. Down on the pier, Shane saw three people. Two of them were men, and one of them a child. The men were alive, and the child was not. A large, deep-sea fishing boat turned away from the pier and raced out into the sea.
Shane’s excitement at a possible rescue vanished.
“Stay up here, Cort,” Shane said, motioning for the young woman to stay back.
She gave him a nod and Shane ran down the slight rise to the pier. He held his horror in check as the child, a boy with a pipe, pulled his hand out of one man’s stomach. As the stranger collapsed to the pier, the boy advanced on the second man, who backed up, holding his hands out in front of him.
“Stop!” Shane yelled, his boots hitting the wood of the pier.
The boy turned, grinning around the stem of the pipe. Behind him, the man turned and ran, diving into the ocean.
Shane watched as the boy’s shoulders slumped and he turned fully to face him. The boy took his pipe out of his mouth, pointed at Shane, and said, “You’ve ruined my fun, you have!”
“Have I?” Shane asked, catching a glimpse of the man swimming away. “Let me call him back.”
“The other? I think not. He’s too afraid, he is.”
The swimmer dipped beneath a wave and didn’t appear again.
“And,” the boy grinned, “he didn’t swim out far enough. Not nearly. There are a few of us in the rocks beneath the waves. He’s joined them now.”
Shane forced his thoughts away from the drowned man, glanced at the man lying on the pier and saw he wasn’t dead. Severely injured, but not dead.
“What’s your name?” Shane asked.
“Ewan,” the ghost said, and he spoke a sentence in a different language.
Gaelic, Shane realized, translating it quickly.
Shane replied in the same. “I would have to argue, Ewan. I do know who my father is.”
Ewan’s eyes widened, and then the boy grinned. Still, in Gaelic he said, “So you speak the mother tongue, do you?”
Shane nodded.
“It is a pleasure to hear it,” Ewan said, smiling pleasantly. “Never did I expect to hear it again. I have been here a long time, Shane Ryan.”
“You know my name?” Shane asked, keeping an eye on Ewan as he took a small, careful step towards the downed man.
“We know your name here,” Ewan said. “We were told to expect you.”
Shane stopped and looked at the boy. “Told by whom?”
“By Dorothy, of course,” Ewan said. “She knew you were coming. I wouldn’t worry about the man behind me, Shane. He’s not long for this world, although he shall be in mine soon enough, don’t you know it?”
“What did you do?” Shane asked softly, hoping the boy was lying.
“I pushed and pulled, prodded and poked,” Ewan said in a sing-song voice. “I rearranged a few things. To be honest with you, Shane, I’m surprised he’s still breathing air.”
“Is there no way to save him?” Shane said.
Ewan shook his head. “And it is not his fate to be saved. Fear not, each of us has our destiny. His is to be here, with us.”
“And what is mine?” Shane asked.
“None of us have heard about your fate, Shane. Not even Dorothy. But she would like to pretend she has,” Ewan said with a wink. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a bit of a schedule to keep.”
Before Shane could react, Ewan turned around, took hold of the man on the pier, and dragged him into the ocean.
Shocked, Shane could do nothing more than watch as the man vanished into the depths.
What the hell is going on here? Shane wondered. He remained there for another minute until he heard Courtney calling his name.
Shaking his shock off, Shane turned and made his way back up to the keeper’s house.
Chapter 21: A Phone Call is Made
“So,” Uncle Gerry said, sitting down and smiling at her. “What’s new with you?”
Marie Lafontaine shrugged, relaxed, and said, “Not much.”
“Have you seen Shane lately?” her uncle asked, a falsely innocent note in his voice.
“I did, as a matter of fact,” she replied, frowning. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he said, dropping a hand to his dog’s head and scratching the German Shepherd between the ears. “None at all.”
“You wouldn’t be pushing to have us start dating again, would you?” she asked.
“Would I ever do such a thing?”
“You would,” she answered, “and you have.”
“I thought you two would get along well together,” Uncle Gerry said.
“We do, and we did,” Marie said. “We’re not compatible.”
“You make it sound like a chemistry problem,” he said.
“If you want to boil it down, Uncle Gerry,” she said, sighing, “that’s exactly what it is. We like each other. We have a good time when we go out. I don’t want to date him. He doesn’t want to date me. Even if we did, and if we got married, there is no way in hell I would live in his house. Pretty certain he won’t leave it either.”
Uncle Gerry harrumphed, took a drink of coffee, and shook his head. “Too bad. I’d like to see you married, someday.”
“How about I just shack up with someone for a while?” she asked teasingly.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started, Marie.”
She chuckled and said, “Back to the first question, yes, I saw him earlier this week. You know Amy bought the lighthouse, right?”
“Your cousin on your father’s side?” Uncle Gerry asked.
Marie nodded. “Yeah. She had a little bit of trouble with her contractor and Shane said he’d help her out.”
“Has he said how it’s going?” her uncle asked.
“No,” Marie said. “I have to call Amy in a little bit. They’re supposed to keep in touch with one another. No cell phone reception on the island, so they’re using e-mails.”