The House on Stone's Throw Island Read online

  And how gross was it that her own brother was supposed to be the prince here? Did Aimee know how often he farted? Loud. Like, right in public. And they smelled worse than the hallway outside the boys’ locker room after gym class. Did Aimee really understand what she’d gotten herself into? Or did she not care? Maybe Aimee farted even worse.

  The hardest part for Josie was remembering how much she’d loved Bruno’s first girlfriend, Penny D’Agostino. Bruno had started dating Penny their freshman year of high school, when Josie was only five years old. For years, their afternoons had been filled with silly television and unending packages of Twizzlers and Skittles. Penny had been funny, cracking jokes about Bruno that made him blush, which made everyone laugh even harder. Sometimes, she’d ask to hear Josie’s secrets, promising to keep them locked in her heart, listening in a way that no one else bothered to do, just like a real big sister, the sister Josie’d never had. The sister Aimee could never hope to be. Josie had never felt closer to Bruno than when he and Penny were together.

  So when Penny broke up with Bruno during their first year at college, Josie had felt her own nine-year-old heart break. She’d never felt so helpless. She’d always imagined that things would simply continue forever. Afterward, Penny would send her an occasional message, but she’d obviously moved on. She had a new life now.

  If Josie had ever pictured herself at her brother’s wedding, it wouldn’t have been any place like this island. And it wouldn’t have been Aimee by his side. Now, here they all were. Aimee had gotten what she wanted and had convinced Bruno that it was what he wanted too.

  Good luck to the both of them, Josie thought, shoving her face into one of the fluffy down pillows to contain a brief frustrated scream.

  A gust of wind came in through the open window, rustling the gauzy curtains. They reached far into the room and brushed against Josie’s feet, which were dangling at the edge of the bed. She twisted around and sat up, thinking that someone had snuck in on her. But the wind came again, harder this time, catching on the pine branches just down the hill nearer to the shore and playing a single note like a harmonica. Hmm.

  Josie felt a chill as the beam of sunlight across the wood floor disappeared. She dragged herself off the mattress and leaned on the windowsill. To her surprise, the sky was no longer the shining blue it had been when the ferry had dropped them off. Now, it was blanketed in a solemn gray from one end of the island to the other. Off in the distance, over the water, the atmosphere looked even more menacing. Darker clouds lingered there, like a monster watching the island, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. Weird. Everyone had been saying how flawless the weather was supposed to be this weekend.

  Aimee would not be happy. And if Aimee wasn’t happy, Bruno wouldn’t be either. Josie’s future sister-in-law had come to visit the Sandovals only a few times, when she and Bruno had been on break from college, but it had been enough for Josie to get a sense of her. She seemed nice on the surface, but anyone who spent a little time with her would see that Aimee always expected to get whatever she wanted. Aimee was the type who wished she could control the weather. Unfortunately, now Bruno believed it was up to him to grant that wish. Any wish as long as it kept his love happy.

  Josie saw someone walking on the spit of land that reached out from the other side of the island. The figure was wearing Eli’s blue jacket. His dirty-blond hair was cropped short, like Eli’s, and he looked to be Eli’s height, a bit taller than her. But hadn’t Eli come upstairs to find his sleeping quarters with everyone else?

  Apparently not.

  She felt a tingling in her fingertips. Guilt. Would she have ever treated Bruno the way she’d been treating Eli that morning?

  The island was larger than she’d first thought. Her view from here was of the yard off the side of the house and of the land opposite the wharf where they’d docked that morning. The particular stretch where Eli was hiking reached from the house, like a clam’s foot, for hundreds of yards. The center of the spit was knitted tightly with pine trees. On either side were sharp rocks and steep drops to the water. Past the woods, the land was rocky and barren. There must have been a path through the trees, because Eli had already marched beyond the grove and was heading toward the raised clearing at the land’s end.

  There was another building out there — the ruins of a building. Its dilapidated stone edifice rose about twenty feet from the ground. Its top was jagged where the roof had fallen in. A couple of holes in the upper part of the wall — windows maybe? — opened on the churning gray sky beyond.

  What was that place? Another mansion? A forgotten guesthouse? Some sort of tower? Trudging steadily forward, Eli appeared determined to reach it.

  Josie suddenly felt even worse for what she’d said downstairs. If she hadn’t been such a brat, maybe he’d have asked her to come with him.

  The bedroom door opened behind her and then slammed shut.

  Josie yelped and then turned to see which of the wedding party had decided to disturb her — her mother, maybe, or Margo, the wedding planner, butting in again where she wasn’t wanted. To Josie’s surprise, she discovered a girl she’d never seen before, pressing her body against the door.

  The girl’s chest heaved as if she’d been sprinting. Her dress was wet and covered in mud, its fabric clinging to the girl’s thin frame. If Josie didn’t know any better, she’d think that the girl had just been caught in a downpour. Or had crawled out of a swamp. The girl clutched at the doorknob behind herself, as if to keep someone out … someone who might have been chasing her.

  “WHO ARE YOU?” Josie asked.

  The girl did not answer. Instead, she shut her eyes. She moved her lips, as if praying silently to herself. Her dark bobbed hair was plastered against her skull. The girl’s porcelain skin gleamed between smears of grime. She looked like she might be Josie’s age, if not a year or two older.

  “Are you hurt?”

  The girl didn’t move. Josie clutched at the window frame behind her. The longer she watched this strange girl standing there, just breathing, the tighter her own lungs began to feel.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but, uh, this is supposed to be my room.”

  The girl’s eyes snapped open. She didn’t seem to notice Josie — her gaze peering inward, her mind tumbling in thought. She turned around and pressed her hands against the white-painted wood door, staring at the floor now.

  “Listen, if you’re going to be sick …”

  The girl glanced over her shoulder toward a door directly to Josie’s left. The closet. She dashed across the room, grappled with the doorknob, then swung the door open. Josie leaped out of the way. The girl swiveled into the closet, closing the door, the latch clicking quietly behind her.

  A gust of wind slammed into Josie’s side, sending her scuttling into the safety of the center of the bedroom, where she could see every wall, every window, every door. She stood there for several seconds, now trying to catch her own breath. At any moment, the girl might explode out from the closet and rush at her, arms outstretched, fingers spread wide to catch her by the shirt and drag her into the dark.

  She was tempted to shout out to her mom, or anyone, for help, but a needling worry told her to keep her mouth shut. Staring at the closet door, Josie was confused more than anything else. Charlie and Beatrice Gagnon had claimed that they were alone on the island until the ferry had arrived that morning. If that was true, where had this girl come from? And why was she acting like a lunatic?

  Josie felt a sharp pain in her gut as she remembered Eli’s claim that there was a cannibal family out on these islands. She knew it was ridiculous to consider that maybe this girl was a member of it, but the girl certainly looked like she could be feral. Or something. There had been a glint of madness in her eyes, as if she’d seen something very bad, something no one should ever have seen, and as a result, her rational mind had flicked off.

  Then Josie had another thought. Maybe she wasn’t one of the cannibals. Maybe she was trying
to get away from them! She glanced at the hall door with a sudden desire to barricade herself inside by moving the great wooden dresser a few feet to the left.

  Josie hugged herself instead.

  There are no cannibals! Eli’s dad had said so …

  Of course an adult would say so … But that … that doesn’t mean it’s true.

  Stepping toward the closet, she sighed. She couldn’t just leave the girl alone. “Who are you running from?” she asked. Do they have forks and knives? her brain whispered. Spoons? Do they have a bubbling cauldron to boil our flesh? “Is there something I can do?” she said, blinking the bloody horrors from her mind. Then, she was at the door, her ear pressed against the wood.

  She felt her mouth twist into a smirk. She glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door. This had to be some kind of joke.

  “Bruno!” she called out. She ran out to the hall, peering in both directions. The other guests had left their own doors open, and pale daylight now filtered into what had earlier been a long shadowy space. “Get your butt over here!” She wandered across the hall, peering into the room where he’d left his luggage. “Bruno?”

  But he didn’t answer. No one answered. Quiet voices, somewhere distant, revealed that everyone must have already gone back downstairs or outside, somewhere away from here. Her smirk fell away, and she knew. This had been no joke. She was alone … except for the girl.

  She retreated into her bedroom and returned to the closet door. Trembling, Josie reached for the doorknob. It was ice-cold. She turned it slowly until it wouldn’t turn anymore. “Here I come,” she said, a soft warning. “I won’t hurt you.” And don’t you hurt me either. She pulled on the knob, feeling a slight vacuum, as if the space inside had somehow sealed itself up.

  Stale air swirled out of the crack, like a rotten belch, directly into Josie’s face. She coughed and then gagged. The stench smelled of mold and mildew, spores and fungus — all sorts of things that people are allergic to.

  Josie stepped back, allowing the daylight to filter into the dark space. She squinted, expecting to find the girl hunched over way back in the shadows or curled into a ball on the floor. But, except for a thin layer of dust on every surface, the closet was empty.

  The floor extended several feet inside. A wooden clothes rack was fastened just underneath a shelf. As Josie ducked inside, her spine shrunk, her ribs curled inward, her skin toughened like protective armor; at least that’s how it felt. Reaching out, she pressed her hands against the rear wall, almost expecting it to vanish like a magic trick. But it was as solid as the rest of the closet.

  The girl was gone.

  Josie stumbled backward into the light of the bedroom. The wind teased the curtains again, blowing them at her like arms made of mist.

  She hadn’t imagined the whole thing, had she? No. There had been a girl.

  She had obviously left the closet while Josie’d gone looking for Bruno. So where was she now?

  Josie felt her spine stiffen as she imagined a hand reaching out from under the bed and grabbing her ankle. She immediately hopped several feet away from the white, frilly bed skirt. Bending over, she lifted the fabric cautiously and peered into the shadows. The space was empty, nothing but a dusty wood floor and the sagging ribs of an ancient bed frame. She glanced at the door again and then sighed, confused. Would the girl have had time to sprint down the hall while Josie’d gone looking for her brother?

  There was another option. The window. Josie made her way toward the fluttering curtains, holding her breath. What would she see when she looked down? Though the room was only on the second floor, it was a significant drop.

  But the grass below was clear — blowing in the breeze. Josie clutched at the window frame as a blur of blue in the distance caught her eye once again.

  Eli.

  BY THE TIME he had made it through the trees, the wind was picking up, rustling his jacket against his body. Eli hadn’t expected to walk so far, but the trail had just kept going, and his brain had been whirling so furiously that he hadn’t considered stopping. Now he stood near the end of some sort of craggy, barren peninsula off the south end of the island.

  Twenty yards away, on either side of him, the land disappeared — steep cliffs dropped straight down to the ocean. Behind him, by the trees, the ground had been stony earth and patchy grass, but the farther he trudged, the more it became like the layered shale at the water’s edge back at the wharf — a surface so uneven it was almost threatening to twist his ankle.

  Ahead, there was a crumbling stone structure — a wall of some sort, with an arched doorway — that he hadn’t been able to see from back at the house. Maybe he would have noticed it if he’d been looking. But Eli had only wanted to get away.

  The sky had clouded over, and the breeze came in hard again and rustled his hair. Out on the water, there were big waves now, totally unlike the glassy surface on which the ferry had glided a couple of hours ago.

  One particularly strong gust moved Eli sideways, and he stumbled to the ground. A dull pain exploded from his hip and his shoulder. After a moment, he raised his hands and plucked out a few pebbles that had become embedded in his palms. He brushed off his clothes, stood up, and then glanced back toward the house.

  He could just see the top floor from above the thicket of pine. For a moment, from one of the windows in the center of the building, he discerned someone watching him. A girl? Josie, maybe?

  With a sigh, he turned back to the stone structure at the end of the path, hiking his blue jacket higher on his neck, as if he might be able to hide himself from her penetrating stare. A few seconds later, he crept through the doorway. Inside the structure, he sat on a large rock and caught his breath.

  Several minutes passed as Eli took in the surroundings. The far wall was twenty feet tall and curved outward like a castle turret. Many slit-like openings were set inside it. He’d seen windows like this in his history textbook, in pictures of fortresses and prisons from all around the world. They were defensive features — it was easy for someone inside to aim at a target outside while remaining hidden from the enemy. The ceiling was gone. Open sky glared from above. Pieces of rotted wood stuck out from the wall several feet over his head where, Eli imagined, a second story must have once stood. Mosses and lichens covered the stone floor like a damp carpet. To his far left, a staircase descended into the ground, steps carved right into the rocky cliff. Shadows dressed the stairs in a midnight-colored camouflage.

  In school, Eli had read that there were fortresses from early American wars way out in the middle of the Gulf of Maine. Maybe the building was a remnant of a famous battle. Eli stepped away from the wall, staring up, spinning slowly, imagining the possibilities of its past. People had probably died within these walls. Boats had probably been sunk in the waters just offshore. Sailors. Soldiers. People with families just like his own. Their tragic histories scattered up and down the coast, disintegrating under the pounding waves of time.

  Even with the fort’s ruined state, he felt protected from the wind, protected from the view of the wedding party. Grand fantasies of camping out in this fortress for the weekend began to ferment in his imagination. Fantasies of leaving the rest of the group to enjoy their party. Alone, no one could tease him or make him feel bad for wanting to be himself. Out here, he could imagine what life would be like if anyone ever actually listened to his opinion.

  Someone was calling.

  Eli peered around the edge of the outer doorway back toward the trees and the house on the hill. But no one was there. The sound came again, this time from behind him. Now he made out several voices. They were faint, as if shouting from far away. He couldn’t discern what they were saying. The voices mixed together the way birdsong became cacophony outside his bedroom window on summer mornings.

  Then, the shouting changed: A sound of terrified screaming rose up, almost indistinguishable from the howling of the wind. Eli held still, clutching his arms over his chest. He turned toward the hole in the
floor, where stone steps descended into darkness. The voices cried out from below, echoing up from the shadows, like water splashing and swirling in a tidal pool. There were people down there. They were desperate for his attention.

  HE STARED DOWN from the top step. The stairway looked solid enough, hewn from the shale itself. It followed the curved outer wall, so that from where he stood, the bottom of the stairway was not visible around an arc in the passage. Eli’s throat felt constricted. Swollen. “Hello?” he called out over the drone of the wind. But the voices did not answer. Instead, there came a great pounding sound, stone on metal or vice versa. The clang reverberated up the shaft, nearly knocking Eli backward in surprise.

  He took a moment to catch his breath. “Everything okay in there?” No one answered him. Eli pressed his hand against the damp stone wall as he carefully took a step down, then another. If people really were trapped, he thought, who might they be? A shipwrecked crew? Captives of the seemingly kind caretakers, the Gagnons? Eli sniffed, remembering his tale of the cannibal family. He shook his head and continued onward, the edge of the stone floor rising above his line of vision and darkening the day. At the bottom step, a tunnel stretched ahead into the shadows.

  Dim light followed him as he made his way around the bend. Within a few steps, he came to a door made of black bars. Rusted hinges were bolted into the rock on the left side. On the right, an ancient chain was wrapped around a metal frame embedded into the rock, keeping the door shut.

  Eli reached out to touch the chain but stopped himself. Something about this wasn’t right. Was the door chained shut to keep kids like him from venturing inside? Or was it shut to keep something inside from getting out?

  In the confines of the tunnel, the noise of his breathing echoed all around him, making him feel like he was surrounded by shadow versions of himself. He leaned close and listened. A hollow whirring sound came from deeper within the passage. Air moving through cracks in the rocks. Reverberations of falling water, droplets plink-plinking from a high, wet ceiling. Eli called out again: “Hello?” If there were people inside (and not just the wind and the surf, or some other anomaly of nature conjuring an auditory illusion), surely they were aware he was close by. Surely they’d answer. “Are you hurt?” He stood still and listened.